Agashn
Powerful leader who joined Trchkithin to further his own goals.Major favour: Above average land control
Minor favour: Army is at least 15% the size of your population
Negative favour: End the turn with fewer cities than you started with
Favour bonus: The overcrowding effect is reduced by 3,000 people
Likes: Trchkithin, Laegus
Dislikes: Alki
Grand objective: Control the most land
Divine intervention: 10% of your slaves turn into population for each follower, cannot go above 100% and give extra population
Backstory: In the age before Trchkithin rose, there were many wars, and conflicts, for her rise to power was not the first, nor was it the last. Many of these tyrants came before her, gathering allies to themselves, fighting enemies of every race and creed. The records of most of these has been lost, even to the Cayim Amiy scholars, and the researchers of the Greymin.
One such warlord that remains in the annals of history, for he was perhaps the last great warleader, and certainly the last before the coming of Trchkithin and the Trchig wars. Agashn was of the Ogoth, a race of hulking reptilian creatures, long almost crocodilian snouts for faces, four muscular arms and a thick, stumpy tail.
The son of an ineffectual leader, Agashn was quick to realise that his people were slowly dying off, neighbours encroaching on their lands and their younger citizens leaving to seek their fortunes in foreign lands. He spent many weeks and months preparing his path to sovereignty, seeing to it that his father's most loyal counsellers were disgraced and removed from power.
Then, one night, he walked calmly into his father's chambers, and pushed a knife through his heart.
He was crowned the following day, and was quick to start an 'aggressive foreign policy.'
By the end of that year the Ogoth army was deep into enemy territory. By the end of the following year they had capitulated. A rival First One in chains, and a new province to rule over, Agashn started his legacy well.
Over the next decade he expanded his borders, and with each expansion came new neighbours to conquer. He quickly ruled over a huge number of minor nations and city states, a dozen lesser First Ones as thralls and servants, a dozen greater ones dead in his wake.
Many years passed, the people of Ogoth growing rich and powerful under the leadership of Agashn, but as they rose, so to did rumours of an invading force to the south. Rallying his legions, hundreds of thousands of men from a score of backgrounds, he met Trchkithin in what is now known as the Uxebrith desert, then a rich and verdant land of valleys and hills.
The two mighty armies lined up opposite one another, and eventually two delegations rode forth. Trchkithin resplendent in her armour, already a powerful demon, flanked on either side by her generals, Bjath in his ebony armour, and Laegus, a wide man on foot, in the heaviest looking full plate Agashn had ever seen. Agashn was not one to be outdone though, standing tall, a minor demon from a victory long past, two sets of arms crossed over his chest.
The First Ones spoke for a long time, servants from both sides bringing forth meeting tents and refreshments. After many days Agashn walked out, and spoke to his men. A treaty had been reached, and the two armies were now one. The Ogoth would retain their autonomy, and, most importantly, a new enemy had been found.
As Trchkithin marched on, her army resupplying in the newly allied lands, Agashn turned his attention to the things that his new leader had left him. Perhaps he should have been mournful for the loss of his command, for he was now just a regional governor, but the demon had found for him a new front to fight upon, and a new weapon. A violent artefact of a peace-loving people, she had said, their First One had attempted in vain to stop her from taking it, she had said, and now, it was to be Agashn's. Trchkithin had not known its capabilities, perhaps even showing some measure of fear or respect for the interlocking discs of metal that she had towed to his command tent.
The Ogoth spent many nights trying to master the device's capabilities, until Agashn grew impatient, and chose to test it. As the rings and discs aligned themselves, a dart of bright light shot skywards, to eventually fall far to the south. The Uxebrith desert was born.
Ever smiling at what was to come, Agashn smiled, and looked East, towards the Magal.
With his armies rallied around him, and the device set up, he looked down on the approaching First One armies. Hundreds of thousands of men and women, the blood of Arl running through them, arrayed before his own force. They clashed. Though numerically superior, his own Ogoth soldiers found themselves forced back under a ferocious assault. Refusing to see this battle lost, Agashn commanded his mages to align the machine, to utterly destroy the enemy army.
The Magal Truebloods, a dozen First Ones, intervened, appearing as if from no where, to assault his command. Agashn and his lieutenants fought fiercely, but were slowly overwhelmed, buying time for the weapon to fire with their own lives.
Magrelasch, father of the infant Nabletek, smashed through, and drew blades with Agashn, both First Ones trading blows as men died all around them. The fight took them to the edge of the Device, whereupon Magrelasch tackled the Ogoth, both of them dropping into the aligning rings and discs.
The device fired, the dart of light striking the wrestling warriors, and detonating.
Both armies were decimated, limping back to their homes bloodied and beaten.
The story turns now to Agashn himself, for with so many followers, the blood of demons in his veins, and the blast of the Device, he was to ascend to godhood. Perhaps the blood of so many First Ones being spilled was what triggered it, or perhaps that Device held more secrets than Trchkithin knew. Regardless, he stands now as a powerful god of power and conquest.
Written by Strife