How Do You Solve a Problem Like Kirktá?

First, thank you to everyone who took the time to make comments or send me emails regarding yesterday's post about upcoming events in my House of Worms campaign. I've gotten a number of excellent suggestions and I now have a better handle on how I'll likely proceed, though I'd be happy to continue receiving more suggestions. After the Kólumejàlim, as the Choosing of the Emperors is known in Tsolyáni, has taken place, I'll write a post or two about it, because I am sure that, no matter how it turns out, it will be of interest to my readers. That likely won't occur until sometime this summer, as the campaign is currently focused on other matters at the moment and I'm not ready to shift gears quite yet.

Aside from my already stated reasons for wanting to adjudicate the Kólumejàlim in this way, there's also another: one of the player characters is secretly an heir to the Petal Throne. Years ago, when a new player joined the campaign, he asked if he could base his character on one from the original Tékumel campaign in Minneapolis. Named Kirktá, he was a priest NPC whom the characters in the Twin Cities campaign later discovered was one of the emperor's secret heirs, whose true identity was hidden, unknown to almost anyone, including himself. I had no objection to the new player basing his character on Kirktá, largely because I never expected it to amount to anything.

And it didn't. For many years, there was never a hint that Kirktá – my Kirktá  – was anything other than he appeared to be, namely, a young and naive priest of Durritlámish, the Black Angel of the Putrescent Hand. He served as protégé and amanuensis to Keléno, one of the four remaining original player characters of the campaign, without complaint. Indeed, Kirktá had something of a reputation as being incapable of making decisions for himself, deferring instead to the wisdom and experience of his master (and any other PC who cared to offer an opinion on what Kirktá ought to do). It's a fun dynamic and soon became one of the hallmarks of the campaign.

Then, a little more than a year ago, the characters reunited with an old antagonist of theirs, an Undying Wizard known as Getúkmetèk. Like a lot of Undying Wizards, Getúkmetèk existed outside of normal time. Consequently, when the characters encountered him, there was no telling exactly where the wizard was on his own personal timeline. On this occasion, Getúkmetèk was quite young, early in his own career and not yet an Undying Wizard. In fact, it became increasingly clear that it was due to their interactions with him early in his life (but late in that of the characters, relatively speaking – non-linear time is weird) that he would eventually become antagonistic toward them. 

When this younger Getúkmetèk met the characters, he greeted them pleasantly, since, from his perspective, he hadn't yet met any of them – or, at least, most of them. Somehow, he already knew Kirktá and addressed him differently than the others, using a formal Tsolyáni second person pronoun reserved only for the emperor, "you of supernal omnipotence," that is probably unknown to most characters, given its exceedingly uncommon usage. One of the characters, Nebússa, comes from a very high clan involved heavily in imperial service. He recognized the pronoun and quickly put two and two together, realizing for the first time in the campaign that Kirktá was likely a hidden heir to the Petal Throne. 

Initially, Nebússa kept this secret to himself, not even telling Kirktá. However, events eventually required that he reveal it, to the surprise and incredulity of his clan mates. There was a lot of debate about what the characters should do with this information, as well as the realization that, if Nebússa figured it out based on very limited information, there were probably others within Tsolyánu who also knew it and might seek to take advantage of it. That's partly why the characters elected to undertake a lengthy, months-long journey outside the Imperium: to keep Kirktá safe. However, once the Kólumejàlim is declared, events may overtake them. What happens next is anyone's guess, hence my desire to establish a means to handle the Choosing of the Emperors, just in case Kirktá decides to participate ...