The eternal king is dead! he ruled for 1000 year and confident with his immortality never set a line of succession...

The eternal king is dead! he ruled for 1000 year and confident with his immortality never set a line of succession. who are the upstarts vying for control of his ancient throne and how are they gaining their power?

Nobody. Everyone hated the king, so now that he's dead there's no reason to continue having a monarchical system. Instead, the kingdom splits into three, each ruled by a military leader each with their own supporters. The three divide the king's riches amongst themselves based proprotionately on how much of the kingdom they control and how many supporters they have.

the upstarts are innumerable, altough most of them are not jockeying for control of the entire kingdom. Several provinces have declared their independence, even as the people organising these are poised to fight eachother, a rivalry stoked up for the last 1000 years to keep the power of the provinces limited.

That depends, what was the king like?
Did he share power during his rule?
Did he rule through proxies?
What caused his downfall?
Who caused his downfall?

Man, post-carolingian Europe was rough.

Well, i hear some young colonel in the south is gathering up his forces. I doubt he will cause too much trouble, tough, noo matter how manyy friends he has at court.

How big was his kingdom? Chances are, everyone will get their own nationalist revolt and try to take over, only to find out they can't control anything except for the homeland that spawned them.

The Eternal Grey Cardinal steps up.

this is actually an amazing setup for a campaign

and then they all fight to the death, utterly destroying production and culture over the next decade.

I read is as Eternally gay cardinal.

I'm guessing from the pic he didn't have bastards?

Well, there's bound to be at least one guy who'd claim to be one/descended from one anyway.

Any significant institutions the king had in the country will likely pick their chosen successor, or at least power blocks will form from within those institutions if they're big enough - two high-up priests might pick different successors despite being part of the same religion

He's that too, so we'll get this whole thing again if he too doesn't think to select a successor

Well, cardinals are catholic, so that part is implied.

That also means they are supposed to be celibate and thus cannot have official heirs, meaning that we'll have to do this all over again in a few centuries.

Death itself.

Doesnt even want to sit on the throne, just want to deal with this shitty little upstart.

The kingdom needs to grow and advance in every single way. Be it social, military, magic or this new thing called engineering, I shall turn it into an Empire the likes nobody has ever seen.

I don't think grey cardinals necessary refer to actual clergy.

The invention of firearms brought revolution to the long opressed and overtaxed people of the country.

>Nobody. Everyone hated the king
That's pretty harsh. I mean, the guy just died.

Agreed.

We know that kings are mostly arses, but he was the least arse-ish. Hell, compared to the other Eternal King that was before him, he was an overall improvement.

Depends on the setting.

Yeah, though he hadn't really got it worked out - didn't he only reign for something like 20 years?

>Instead, the kingdom splits into three, each ruled by a military leader each with their own supporters

Yep. Add to this that at one point he even wanted to summon a being from another dimension to gain great wisdom and knowledge.

Too bad the being he wanted to summon was a she-devil that wanted to grind the kingdom to a paste and devour every single soul. Good thing his bodyguard saw the madness and slew him when the summoning was halfway there. The she-devil was cut in half when the portal collapsed.

Nah, the left one and the right one rek the middle guy together. They then swear in the others language being cool with each other and fuck off to their now larger realms.

It matters little, for the true goal of the Eternal King was to make his subjects realize the hell brought by Tyranny. Through his merciless reign, humans have come to understand the foolishness of being blindly led by a single individual, on an instinctual level. His kingdom will shatter and send little shards of a smarter humanity throughout the World. And these scattered seeds will ensure Mankind's survival.

Whether what comes next is war, enlightenement, democracy, plutocracy, or oligarchy is of no consequences. The Eternal King was prepared to make that sacrifice if it meant his subjects would become wiser as a species.

Succession crises and full-blown wars of succession are great - all that conflict, intrigue, backstabbing and shit

>democracy, plutocracy, or oligarchy
People aren't ready for these at all. If the Eternal King did all of it to show that tyranny was bad, then he didn't thought it out completely.

These systems of government require a level of actual thought and poli-social interaction. That also requires a high level of education and moral sensitivity.

Without these a stable and efficient government cannot exist. If he did managed to include them, then his plan worked. If not, then it will result in a government that is quick to become corrupted and amoral, which will result in a individual to rise and take control as a new Eternal King...or will change it to something else so that people wouldn't see it as negative.

Given that in many cultures, it's held that any object used consistently over a century will gain life and becoming intelligent, my bet would be that the ancient throne, crown and scepter would either form an alliance to deny themselves to any mere mortal upstarts and/or fall into internecine struggles amongst themselves over who is the ONE TRUE holder of the office of "eternal king".

The eight heroes that slew him divided his corpse into eight parts to use as powerful mana sources, while clone daughters he created carry around coffins trying to put his body back together.

Chaika wasn't so bad.

Didn't say it was.

The ending was a bit of a cop out, though. Honestly the only part I hated.

A lot of people have very mixed feelings about it.

Nothing is perfect.

Raven Man will claim the throne.

The kingdom fractures as the Kings hundreds of bastard children and their descendants begin to fight amongst themselves.