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When Belos was but a young lad, his father - the Grand Thalass Doge of the Most Serene Republic of the Little Finger - would often say that “hard times make strong witches; strong witches make good times; good times make soft witches; and soft witches make hard times.”
(He wasn’t known as Belos then, but his birth name has been lost to the ages - as has so much else.)
Belos always thought that he and his father were strong witches living in hard times. Every year saw less trade and smaller harvests, and the Doge was running himself ragged trying to keep his struggling little city-state afloat.
Yes, Belos always thought that he and his father were strong witches making good times- until the day his father was slain on the field of battle, defending his home against the Marquis de Leder - Seeker in Iron, Vagabond of the Arm and Lord of the Hundreds. The city itself was soon put under siege. Young Belos was smuggled out only hours before the walls fell, sent off to live with his mother’s sister - the Venerated Lord Pope of the Titan’s Holy Republic.
Belos spent the rest of his youth in the Holy Republic. Expensive tutors taught him the Titan’s Word, and the art of war, and so much more - and the scheming and infighting of the Pope’s court taught him politics and backstabbing. But sometime around his eighteenth birthday, young Belos realized the true reason he was being kept around:
To reclaim his homeland in the Lord Pope’s name.
Emperor Belos stands in the human world, not quite ready to unveil his masterstroke. His father was not a strong witch - but the Emperor is. He ended the Savage Ages, crushed Wild Magic, and has replaced the weakness of division with the strength of unity. And now, the next age of witchkind is almost at hand.
All that is left to do is loosen the forces containing the spell he has already cast. The most powerful spell ever cast. A spell cast in a space secured by Odalia Blight herself (though she knew not what for). A spell cast over the course of a day and a night, with the aid of seven of his Coven’s strongest and most loyal witches. When the Emperor uncorks that spell, the Humans will have no choice but to grimly set themselves to their role in the Titan’s Will. The last step in the Titan's plan is so simple... and yet Emperor Belos hesitates to act.
Belos had seen just over two and a half decades when the time came to march home. He had since joined the Lord Pope's military, and risen to Lieutenant Major General, and so heused his rank to assemble a force of a hundred ships and ten thousand men, all to storm the city of his birth and liberate the Most Serene Republic.
They set sail under the holy blessing of the Lord Pope, and made landfall on the Hand a few days later. The witches and demons left by the Marquis to hold this part of his empire scrambled to respond to General Belos’s invasion, and a daring overnight forced march allowed the Holy Republic’s armies to storm their staging point in the Palm. General Belos then turned his attention to the city of his birth.
But its walls were high and thick, and Belos lacked the strength to breach them before the Marquis de Leder could raise reinforcements. So Belos sent spies to infiltrate the city, and made contact with a demon in the garrison who remembered his father, and who yearned for the good old days. One starless night, that demon threw open the gates and let Belos’s armies in, and treachery succeeded where strength failed.
Today Emperor Belos shall use both treachery and strength to enact the Titan’s Will… but first, he decides he needs more information. He must know how the humans will respond to his masterstroke. He casts a mighty spell, and he becomes aware of every witch, demon, and human in a hundred miles who utters his name. Dozens of conversations assault his mind, and he struggles to keep track of them all.
But one stands out.
After the city was liberated, general Belos stood victorious - as the Venerated Lord Pope’s loyal vassal. He spent the next few years “liberating” the rest of the Marquis’s empire, all the while debating tactics with his captains, politics with his new allies in the Hand and Arm, and theology by letter with his rivals in the Holy Republic’s court. Over time, young Belos developed views on the Titan and his Word that were… unusual.
Many called for the young general to explain his views on the Titan's Word in person, under pain of being branded a heretic. Although the Venerated Lord Pope stood by her nephew, often saying “young Belos’s unorthodoxy gives valuable insight into those aspects of the Word we overlook," nothing lasts forever. Old age came for her, one sad day, and the court mournfully declared: “the Pope is dead; long live the Pope.” And the new Venerated Lord Pope was not nearly so tolerant of General Belos’s heresy.
The letter arrived three months later, ordering the general to travel to the Pope’s court and personally defend his interpretation of the Titan's Word - and face judgement as a possible Heretic.
It was obvious that if Belos left the Arm, he would not return. Which left him only one option: defy the Venerated Lord Pope of the Titan's Holy Republic. His officers would stand by him: he had long since converted them to his beliefs, and they would defy the reactionary Pope to the end. His men would stand by him: they had grown fat and rich from conquest, and they would follow their charismatic general to the end. So General Belos declared that he owed no allegiance to the Venerated Lord Pope, and that the Arm and the Hand stood now against the Titan’s Holy Republic.
The assassin struck three weeks later.
Emperor Belos first heard the Titan’s voice in the weeks following that attempt on his life, after the assassin’s poison brought him to the brink of death. But he doesn’t hear the Titan’s voice now. Instead he hears a cacophony of voices, one of which is saying:
“If Belos is the Columbus of this analogy, then we’re the natives, heedless of our own impending doom.”
The voice clearly belongs to a human woman, middle-aged. He focuses his attention on that voice, and uses it to auger on the person it belongs to. His magic shows him three humans, the woman and two men - one clearly related to the Noceda girl. They sit at a desk in front of a painting of the human city, and seem to be talking to some group the Emperor’s spell will not show him.
They are talking about the threat Emperor Belos poses.
General Belos spent a month recovering from the assassin’s poison, a toxin that assaulted his body and his mind with equal ferocity. The Lord Pope made excellent use of that month, and sailed his armies to the very docks of the Most Serene Republic. The officials there, cowed by their former overlord and uncertain of Belos’s fate, allowed the armies of the Titan’s Holy Republic to enter without a fight.
The Venerated Lord Pope repaid their loyalty by burning the city to ashes, as warning to his other vassals. The very day Belos found out, was the day the Titan began to speak to him. It told him that the destruction of his homeland was the start of his new life, and that Belos would be the Titan’s Prophet, destined to spread the Titan’s Will across the Boiling Isles. The citizens of the Titan’s Holy Republic would be the first to be taught its Will… and their leaders would be the first to learn its fury.
Emperor Belos listens to the conversation with alarm. The humans seem to realizing that they could be taken just as unaware as he was, all those years ago. He doesn’t know how many are listening to this woman - perhaps one, perhaps a dozen, maybe as much as a hundred? But it does not matter. The Titan has shown him this for a reason. It grows weary of its Prophet's delay.
The time has come.
The general reinvented himself the day he first heard the Titan’s voice. He took the name Belos, gave a rousing sermon to his officers and his men, and marched to war. Belos outmaneuvered the Venerated Lord Pope, crushed his army, imprisoned his person, and then prepared to invade the so-called “Titan’s Holy Republic.” The first victim of his crusade.
That was the start of Belos’s wars of unification. Sometimes, he would wander the land, teaching the common folk about the Titan’s Will. Sometimes, he would lead from the front, risking his own person on the field of battle, confident that the Titan would protect. Many witches stood against him, from The Other King (who Belos converted), to Morfin’s Riddle (who Belos conquered), and even The Slaughterhouse Five (who were subverted). But one by one, all opposition either joined his cause or died in defense of their apostasy, only to be erased from history.
And then one day, every last witch and demon of the Boiling Isles had pledged him their loyalty. That day he was crowned Emperor. And that day, the Titan warned him that its children needed a common enemy, to give them unity and purpose.
Emperor Belos once thought wild magic would be that common enemy. But it took only five decades to extinguish wild magic forever. And as wild magic shrunk, disunity grew. When Belos was unifying the isles, his subjects stood arm-in-arm, looking only to further the common good. But now, his subjects have begun to fight each other, vying to grow in esteem and power at the expense of the common good. Lillith Clawthorne, who had cursed and schemed and backstabbed her way to the top, is but one example.
What was it his father always said? “Hard times make strong witches; strong witches make good times; good times make soft witches; and soft witches make hard times”? Emperor Belos has spent years fruitlessly pondering ways to break the cycle.
But two months ago, just after the Noceda girl arrived in the Boiling Isles, the Titan finally revealed its plan for its Prophet and for its children.
And now, chastised by the Titan, Emperor Belos puts the final step of that plan into action. He makes a small change in the magic that keeps his spell in check, and starts a process that will release an incredible amount of magic in a single moment of holy light and destructive fury. And then he starts to don The Suit, because he must return to his castle quickly.
For when his masterstroke is revealed, the humans will retaliate - they will have no choice. They seek security just as witchkind does, and they will be forced to seek security by seizing this very portal from the heroic martyrs who shall die defending it. And then the humans will be forced to invade the Boiling Isles itself. Yes, they shall be forced to invade the Boiling Isles, a realm of vicious beasts and burning rain, where the land itself will resist just as strongly as the Titan’s children. Their armies will have to march through a single portal, only six meters tall and four wide, and their armies will have to fight in the mountainous wilderlands of the Knee, where killer demons roam free and where magic is strongest.
The humans will be the grandest common enemy imaginable. And the witches, faced with an invasion from beyond reality itself, will unite together, just as they did during Belos’s crusade across the Isles. The infighting will stop, the complaining will cease, and they will stand arm-in-arm behind the Titan’s prophet.
And Emperor Belos will rule forever.