One week later...- Standard storytelling point of view...
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Two weeks have passed since Klaus ascended to the Exuperius throne.
Two weeks since he had arrived in this world.
The first week was rough and slow, with many rumors filling the nation as a whole and a legion of people making their way to the castle in hopes of getting an audience with the new King.
However, a large amount of those same people turned right back around as soon as word of Klaus' purges reached their ears. The roads to the castle were filled to the brim with black carriages, each ferrying a noble in mourning and/or lost in rage.
A new tyrant... The people's hearts burned with fear and trepidation. This was not welcome news, not that tyranny ever is, but it came at an especially dark time.
Poverty and starvation wracked the land, leaving the people in an already hopeless at worst and rebellious at best, mental state.
With that said, many of the people were also grateful for Klaus' early actions of purging his court. It did not take a smart man to notice that the people who were killed by the king were not based in good or evil but in their overral usefulness. Their deaths left plenty of room for improvement in many otherwise stagnating counties now that it's peasantry was no longer "improperly administered".
Many noble families were forced to sell their titles and homes in an effort to survive, leading to a sharp rise of peasant-born nobility and the birth of an entirely new faction that held Klaus' in decently good view, considering the king was largely responsible for their rise in social status.
Their zeal for the tyrant king only grew once the word of his efforts to finally address the horrible crisis that is afflicting the nation managed do spread. Some are even claiming that a weaker, kinder king would not be able to ensure the survival of the nation as a whole.
By now, thousands upon thousands of people have arrived at the king's castle, the township surrounding the great building being overfilled with bodies, causing a rampant rise in disease and crime, despite being so close to the crown. It also had the added effect of speeding up construction, much to Klaus' satisfaction as he watched his laboratory basically rise from the ground. The upper portion of the building was already made, with the majority of the work still waiting to be done being digging into the earth in a safe manner to expand below, which was made much easier than it should be due to the dwarven slaves bought a week prior.
The day that Klaus finally addressed the nation was a spectacular success as the king delivered a speech perfectly constructed to both confuse and inspire the people, kicking the population into gear. One of the main points of rumor among the peasantry is the fact that the King had not spread word of his own coronation, seemingly preffering it to be a humble and unimportant event, which caused even further rumors to spread.
Some say that the king is a man that desires only results and that pleasantries such as these are meaningless and a waste of money. Others yet say that he does not consider his own claim to the throne to be rightful so he isn't willing to bask in the splendor of being King.
This, combined with the fact that the church crowned him, has not bought Klaus much favor with the nobility, who hold fame in high regard, as well as those who seek to gain it. Those who show that they do not care for prestige are instead ostracized and become the targets of all forms of defamation.
The peasantry is not sure what to think. King's spending money on coronations as a way to promote themselves is such a regular occurrence that it's become a tradition so keeping it simple and contained has caused quite a few eyebrows to raise, but not in a specifically negative manner.
Merchants around the nation are also stuck between anger and hope for the future due to the many recent benefits they've gained, but the news that there won't be any spectacular coronation has made many regret their purchases made in preparation for it.
Dispersing the peasants from the castle city is currently underway as per the king's orders, which is something that also served to give the people cause to feel malcontent.
Despite all this, the news that the overral situation is being addressed, plus the tyrannical culling of the "useless" nobility has endeared the king to the people, causing many nobles to have great troubles with recruiting soldiers for rebellious causes.
Although there is no immediate benefit from all the new laws and national foci being pushed to the forefront, the increase in jobs and stability has served to revitalise the nation to some degree, giving many who were feeling lost a good deal of hope for the future.
With the advent of Klaus' coronation, Truth left the royal castle and returned to attend his divine duties, leaving the Archbishop Rex to attend the king and act as the representative of the church alongside a duet of high paladins.
Many among the court have already titled the archbishop as Klaus' next victim, despite the fact that the two seem to be on stunningly good terms, even further in spite of the way the two supposedly met.
Klaus' coronation and the visibly enchanted crown that now rested on his head have all but evaporated the rumors of him being a demon possessing a human body. Not that this has stopped aspiring nobles from continuing to defame the king as a monster in human form.
Asmodeus' lobotomization in itself has had multiple consequences.
Firstly, it has shown the entire nation that the king cares very little about personal relationships with others when it comes to his murderous tendencies. Only talent and loyalty will spare you his wrath and even that will only last for as long as the tyrant considers you useful.
Secondly, it has served to destabilise the entirety of the northeastern region as a myriad of powerful mage lords have risen beyond their station in an attempt to fill the void left behind by the "death" of the Grand Wizard.
These mages have split into three separate factions, further dividing the nation.
The first and most numerous faction is the so-called Council of Authorities. This a group formed by the most powerful mages in the north, whom are not necessarily all nobles. An "authority" is a title given to any mage specialising in one specific form of magic, having mastered it to a point that they're recognised by all of their peers as the ones standing at the top of their specific field of magic. These people wish to uphold the ideals of Asmodeus and keep magic free from any regulations or laws in general.
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The second and most powerful of the factions has no real name as of yet, but it is a group of mages sponsored by the church. They wish to impose strict regulations on magic as a whole as well as outright ban the use of some schools such as necromancy and blood magic. They are, of course, directly opposed to the council.
The final of the three is a faction of mages that have declared themselves part of Klaus' faction, desiring to join those supporting the new tyrant king. This is due to a variety of reasons; such as the fact that Klaus' actions are seen as efficient by many mages due to their own antisocial natures, leading to many of them praising the king for his supposedly logical mindset.
People also tend to respect power and the fact that not even the Viper himself was safe from the king's scrutiny has made quite a few mages largely unwilling to oppose him. This combined with Klaus being absolutely adored by the Knights has made the north an ideal hotspot for the growth of fear. People are uneasy, both about their king as well as the actions of their lord's.
Meanwhile, missives from the south bring ill tidings from the Greymarch as tales tell of gathering hordes of undead swarming the bordering settlements. A new lord of the dead may be on the rise, giving many yet another cause for concern.
Raids from the dwarves as well as the Vestilander tribes continue to plague the western lands, though with much less intensity than before largely due to a new edict made by the church which allows for its valiant knights to finally come to the defense of its people, much to the dismay of the dwarves and the disapproval of the rest of the church. Popular rumor among the faithful claim that the avatars of Rhothmir will soon meet to discuss the future of the church as well as the true nature of the new human king, though no official statement has been made.
On the other hand, dignitaries from Exuperia have made contact with the merchant city states of the Worldwound mountains. Rumors claim that the representatives have been met with much celebration and that several cities have already begun construction efforts on embassy buildings in order to ease the surprising but incredibly welcome diplomatic efforts made by the King Exuperius. This has done much to ease the tense situation in the north, though it could never completely calm it down.
Klaus, for his part, has met this week with a lot more enthusiasm than the previous one, having spent the majority of it administering the nation on multiple fronts, focusing mainly on his own county. The lands directly under the influence of the king, otherwise known as the Exuperius duchy, were a newcomer on the political and territorial scape of the heartland, having been carved out of several other counties by the previous king, causing most of the people that were now considered one, to have originally been enemies at one point or another.
It was a difficult land to rule, to be sure, as it was highly underdeveloped and rife with corruption. However, it was also rich in resources as one would expect from a central location. A great deal of trade allowed for a great deal of growth and great growth allowed for the sustaining of a great deal of population.
This alone makes it an ideal demesne for any aspiring king which almost made some nobles think that the previous ruler knew what he was doing when he was drawing up the territory.. almost.
In any case, Klaus' administration of the land has seen the diminished military helping the growth of the nearby settlements, helping to build amenities and freshening up the dirt roads, clearing out bandits, rouge covens of magic users, monster lairs as well as the culling of dangerous beasts. In the king's mind, these were all little more than temporary but necessary solutions.
He has also ordered the construction of several new settlements dedicated to mining, each built in accordance to a detailed blueprint rather than the will of the people, with only minor leeway given to the builders and construction workers. These standardized blueprints made many shake their heads in frustration as not every plot of land could support the same building and when this was brought up in court, Klaus simply told the people responsible to find a way to dominate the land and make it serve their purposes instead of adapting to it.
This also served to increase the amount of jobs as construction required a great deal of unskilled labor and the king's duchy did not employ slaves as much as the others, which left plenty of opportunities available for aspiring peasantry. However, the Exuperius duchy is the one that suffered the most due to the last kings warlike nature and cruel conscription laws, so the majority of these workers were actually immigrants from other counties. Homeless and begging for work, they provided a cheap source of labor that many exploited, including Klaus.
Migrational waves such as these do not make nobles happy, as being on the receiving them is troublesome due to the increase of crime and poverty, while having too many people migrate out of your lands lowers taxation and can potentially cripple the land for years to come. This is why a couple of disgruntled lord's have decidedly closed the borders between their lands and the king, cutting off valuable supplies and trading routes, which has not made Klaus happy in the least.
While this is completely within their right to do, it is also a direct insult to Klaus' authority and may end up escalating into a conflict. At worst, there will be a rebellion and at best, the lord's will have their ancestral lands revoked and their titles removed. What most hope for however, is that the vain nobles relent and submit to the king, though the growing popularity of the nobility faction seems to make that happening extremely unlikely.
While on the topic of the nobility faction, the news of the Regina Festival being approved was a welcome surprise in the sea of seeming dissapointments in recent times. Already, aspiring would-be queen's gather in social circles around the nation, with a number of fools inviting the king to grand balls and other such parties in hopes to curry his favor, only to receive an outright refusal of attendance. This has only served to increase the intensity of these invitations as getting the king to attend your party quickly turned into an outright symbol of approval among the ladies, for surely the most beautiful among them would not be refused.
Klaus, of course, was absolutely flabbergasted by this as he considered the Regina Festival as a way for the ladies to fight for his attention, not something requiring his attendance or shows of courtship. It was mindboggling to him that they still wanted to be courted, even while fighting for the right to be Queen.
Still, he would have to entertain some of the highest ranked among them, even if only for appearances sake, simply because Vivian's insistence on the matter was beginning to be rather annoying.
Katrin constantly reminding him that he wouldn't be going through all this had he simply married her did not help in the least and only served to ruin both their reputations as the duo didn't really care for what others thought of them, which meant that their argument in the matter were often loud as well as public.
The marshal, for his part, was completely flabbergasted by the situation, comically divided between his newfound respect for Klaus and his daughters bipolar affection towards her own tormentor. It made the old man question his own sanity on multiple occasions.
Clearly, he was "too old for this shit", a fact which his son loved to remind him off, followed by the instantaneous demands to step down as marshal and allow the next generation to take it's rightful place. Thankfully, the old highlord was still more than capable of putting his hotheaded child in place, which was an impressive feat in itself all things considered.
Sebastian himself found the whole ordeal to be endlessly amusing, having discovered it to be fertile ground for teasing his sister as well as pissing off Klaus. In his mind, the two suited each other well, which wasn't surprising as the knight supported their marriage even before the king's reincarnation. Him making a vocal show of this opinion however, was an unwelcome surprise to most as it meant that those who push for a Regina other than his sister were in direct opposition to both of the siblings.
With the fall of Asmodeus however, not many were really willing to take up the mantle of being the butcher's rival, though Sebastian would surely find a worthy foe to amuse himself, eventually.