Kasiell
"Do not presume that I ruled for the sake of ruling. This planet was never yours to exploit, and I intended to make it live its own way. Look what your disgusting kind have done to your own home!"
Kasiell is the name of the "ice-demon" who laid claim to the southern reaches of Shantania since possibly before the beginning of Shantanian Reckoning. Historical texts from prior to his defeat are strangely supportive of Emperor Kasiell's rule; whether this is indicative of his populace being genuinely happy or due to Kasiell's tight control over what texts survived leaves to be determined. In the years leading up to the appearance of Gregor Caynea, however, Kasiell's rule is no longer described positively. Due to the indeterminate nature of the Kasellian regime, we cannot be certain what life was truly like prior to Caynea's famous Duel of Hearts.
Gregor Caynea appeared just days before the Sundering and claimed himself to be a representative of the downtrodden, the poor and sick and hungry who formed the majority of Kasellia's people. Kasiell disagreed. Gregor Caynea's journals from after the event claimed that Kasiell, who was believed to be immortal, could not bear to give up his considerable land claim. Kasiell is capable of prolonging his lifespan indefinitely, should he be able to "latch on" to an equivalent life force to his. Not all creatures and people of Shantania have a life force strong enough to keep him alive; humans have dabbled in similar things for a few centuries but have had limited results at best, not to mention the ire of those who feel that such magic is an abomination.
Kasiell subjugated his entire country to seek powerful life forces within his own population. But this did not make him invulnerable to the largest weakness of an ice-demon: heat. Kasellia, at the time, was covered in a thick, solid fog that obscured the sun and kept temperatures nearly as low as those of the Lestalian mountains to the north. When Caynea challenged Kasiell to a duel, he immediately recognized Kasiell's ice-demon heritage and "opened the sky" - actually, dissipated the fog - which caused Kasiell's body to melt into the ground.
Kasiell spent the next three centuries without a body, wandering Shantania as an invisible soul. This, ironically enough, made Kasiell immune to the intense heat that began to cover what is now known as the Kingdom of Caynea, but Kasiell still needed to keep his soul form alive by clinging to life forces. He got lucky for the first hundred or so years, claiming the life forces of a Shogun of Gozen, at least two Lestalian Margraves, and a high number of the Rigans' short-lived kings and queens, contributing a non-insignificant number of their "mysterious" deaths. His standards fell over time, as Kasiell began to claim noblemen, then ordinary citizens, then orphans and vagrants.
It was when Queen Aliana of Caynea was near giving birth to a child that Kasiell found himself near a position of power once again. He monitored the Caynean Royal Family as a matter of personal vendetta, and eventually enticed High Queen Jennet into allowing him to sap the life force of Aliana.
The more spoilery explanation...
Kasiell is no mere ice-demon.
[23:23:31] <wildweasel> There was no logical reason for him to do what he was doing. There's no reason he should continue to cling to life after the people he ruled basically melted him with the sun. [23:23:52] <wildweasel> But that quote implies that he has a greater understanding of Shantania as a whole than the people who live on it, and have done so for centuries [23:24:46] <wildweasel> there was another fragment of something that I just hadn't messed with before: the idea that Shantania, the planet, was not created by a god, but as a final project by a disgraced Archmage who felt he was going to waste. [23:25:05] <wildweasel> What I've decided: Kasiell IS that archmage. [23:25:36] <wildweasel> Kasiell created the planet to live out his last days. The fact that its beings became sentient and killed him basically defeated the purpose of what he'd done. [23:26:28] <wildweasel> So Kasiell isn't just some demon made of ice. He's a creator of worlds, whose creation decided it'd be better off without him. [23:26:35] <Ryusui> Heh. :3 [23:27:36] <wildweasel> And it hasn't necessarily been going well for the population at large - after all, the southern half of the continent has all but dried up, and that's the entire reason why the Kingdom of Caynea wound up being in a desert...AND why they're planning on annexing their way north in order to not collectively die of thirst. [23:29:23] <wildweasel> so Lynia's whole quest to stop her father's war could essentially be flipped on its head so she winds up being in the wrong. And yet, Kasiell still needs to die, because if he doesn't, his entire planet is going to basically absorb them. [23:33:01] <wildweasel> I also have an event here where the planet splits in two [23:33:13] <wildweasel> Old Lestalia, the Elven mega-city, was right on the fault line. [23:33:45] <wildweasel> My own notes are contradictory as to when the start of the Shantanian calendar actually starts; in one place I say it's the day the planet split, but in another, it's the day Kasiell was defeated by Gregor Caynea. [23:33:53] <wildweasel> Why not both? [/taco commercial] [23:34:16] <wildweasel> Kasiell, being the planet's creator, basically serves as the planet's own Load-Bearing Boss. [23:35:02] <wildweasel> He created the planet, he's holding it together with his own life force...and because he has no intention of being killed by his own creation, he stops using his life force to hold the planet together and instead uses it to cling to existence. [23:35:16] <wildweasel> Advantages: Kasiell gets to continue living, albeit as an incorporeal soul. [23:35:34] <wildweasel> Disadvantages: sudden, gigantic earthquake that carves the planet in half. [23:35:59] <wildweasel> It severs contact with several ancient civilizations, and displaces an entire race. [23:43:14] <wildweasel> It has just occurred to me: the whole thing about Kasiell literally holding the planet together? Maybe that should factor into a good/bad ending divergence [23:43:40] <wildweasel> or I suppose "choose your own crapsack" [23:44:13] <wildweasel> because killing Kasiell, totally for real this time dude, would probably blow up the planet and finish the job that Gregor Caynea inadvertently started 600 years prior. [23:44:46] <wildweasel> But he's far, far too dangerous to leave alive, on account of how he keeps possessing and controlling authority figures to selfishly keep himself alive [23:46:02] <wildweasel> an old, old, old draft of the ending (no longer relevant to the story sadly) has the Caynean royal family - including the twin Kings, one of whom has abdicated after realizing how much of a dick he's been - take him back to their palace and crucify him so he can't pull his little possession game [23:46:33] <wildweasel> seem to recall adding a note there that one of the Bermands had taken to using him for archery practice [23:47:02] <wildweasel> which honestly seems a little mean-spirited, even against the self-styled God Emperor.
