Lymarce IV, Highest Orator of the Cult of Xïl [WIP]

Portrait of Lymarce IV taken while studying

Species: Voxen (Snow Voxen)
Sex: Male
Height: 6'9"
Weight:147 lbs
Age: ~31,500,000

Sosani Lymarce (stylized Lymarce IV) is the current Highest Orator of the Cult of Xïl. Sosani ascended to to throne following the Final Pilgrimage of his father - a ritual in which he voluntarily fed himself to Xïl. As a Highest Orator trained his whole life to deliver speeches and sermons, the level of skill Sosani demonstrates in charismatic endeavors is astonishing; a single sentence from his lips can move a whole planet for decades with the meaning placed behind it. As a person, Sosani has been described as very introverted, and extremely invested in his family. Few outside his mother and three sisters have seen him in person.

Sosani was born thirty million years ago, in 5520M, to Ahrinne Lymarce and Yorsi Lymarce on Teeth's southern pole. After his birth, he was raised primarily by his father until the age of 24. During this very early period of his life, he was taught the ins and outs of statecraft and leadership, as well as oratory and religious knowledge. At the age of 4, Sosani's father abdicated his throne, and, in accordance with tradition, passed down his purple robe to his son and walked into the Onyx Forest. He would never be seen again.

Sosani was devastated by the absence of his father, and would not begin recovering even with thousands of years of occupying his father's position. Sosani would go on to become highly shut-in; very few would ever meet him in person beside government officials, advisors, and the rest of his family. Sosani became extremely invested in his surviving (or, rather, unascended) mother and three sisters; according to interviews, he believes that his family is all that kept him stable through the earliest parts of his reign, and that they are the most precious thing he has.

Throughout all parts of his life, Sosani has been described as a glutton for knowledge. It has been reported that the vast majority of the time he does not spend between official matters and attending family events is spent reading books, most of which pertain to statecraft, game theory, the nature of Naturism and of Xïl, oratory skills, history, and art. Even outside of public appearances, Sosani demonstrates exceptional charisma, and intelligence far above and beyond most Voxen.

Upon ascending to the throne, Sosani assumed the same policies that his father pursued. This was focused entirely around the use and application of missionaries and diplomats to expand the Cult. At the time, the Cult's defense and intelligence services infrastructure was very rudimentary. The Cult of the day relied utterly upon foreign posts to secure its own borders, leaving it without the level of coordination possible by having its own armed force. It is during this period that Sosani learned the basics of statesmanship with the help of his advisors and his mother, Ahrinne.

Seventeen million years into his reign, an extremist group of Eldrist worshippers seeking to suppress the Cult's influence ambushed Sosani and his family during a meeting with ambassadors from the Sardimane Host to negotiate Cult expansion within its space. During the fighting that ensued, Ahrinne was severely wounded by a stray kinetic round and was almost killed.

This event would have a huge impact on the Cult's future history. After the incident, Sosani had a mental breakdown, with his servants, courtesans and many Councileers reporting highly erratic and panicked behavior. According to Sosani's older sister, Keeliss, the Highest Orator tossed furniture around his bedchambers and smashed vases in rage for the following months. Sosani would never be the same afterwards and to this day demonstrates extreme protectiveness over his family, refusing to meet them in public without bringing in heavy military escorts to escort and guard them at all times.

After calming down and returning to his duties, this experience would lead Sosani to change the policies that he had more or less inherited from his father. Sosani immediately ordered a major expansion of the Cult's militaries to supplement its internal security - a move deemed highly controversial by the Cultist masses, but one that he justified as completely necessary. If the Cult could be attacked so easily in the manner it had been, he reasoned, then measures must be taken to keep it safe lest it be destroyed and its efforts of spreading Xïl's message be lost forever.

Aside from the expansion of the Cult's armed forces, Sosani's military reforms also funded an extensive program of intelligence and counterintelligence expansion. The Cult had already been made extremely well-versed in intelligence-gathering owing to its need to carefully plan out its diplomatic interests and ideological expansion. Sosani's reforms applied this towards the defense of the Cult by recruiting a massive force of the most capable agents that the Multiverse had ever seen. Such was their expertise that even a single one was capable of bringing whole planet, systems, star clusters and even galaxies to heel by the subterfuge they could enact - often without knowing they had been played. Sosani played a very direct - and passionate - role in the building of this network.

With the Cult's capabilities awakened and angry, Sosani saw fit to utilize it to its full extent. While the Cult has never officially been at war in its existence, it came the closest in the period immediately following Sosani's reforms when its newly-made intelligence services were put to work installing themselves within the numerous terror groups that existed through the known Multiverse - one of which being the very same that had attacked his family. In less than a thousand years - the blink of an eye by cosmic standards - their organization was erased from the scene utterly.

Under Sosani's direction, the Cult continues to make good use of both its military and its intelligence agencies. With no true enemies, the military's first and foremost purpose has been relegated to foreign aid and has itself become a very useful tool of expanding the breadth of Naturism to other nations and cultures. Cultist intelligence agents are estimated to be planted in almost every polity in the Known Multiverse by the present day, and are especially active in territories that often produce problematic organizations, as well as states that Naturism has spread its roots into. Such a degree of intelligence allows a minor polity such as the Cult a great deal of sway in international matters.

Ever since these policies were instituted, the Cult has been safe and secure. There has been no more trouble with terrorist attacks and assassination. With this in place, Sosani has once again developed his policies toward expanding the Cult's influence; however, his latest strategy for doing so has been the dissemination of transfiguration drive technologies. Sosani's present stance is that of heavy industrial subsidization towards drive yards and laboratories dedicated to the studying of the nature of reality and the ways that it can be bent to allow for transportation. Doing so, he believes, will not only enhance the lives of the Cult's potential allies and secure positive relations, but also allow more people to access the Onyx Forest for themselves.

- Orator Focus: Sosani is placed at the head of a very sprawling and potent network of Orators; essentially the Cult's equivalent of priests, high priests, popes, and super-popes given charge over increasingly large areas of space. Sosani is in a position roughly equivalent to "hyper-super-emperor Pope". One of Sosani's key strategies revolves around the maintenance and operation of this network as effectively as possible; to this end, he has made several exceptions to many travel laws for its constituent leaders as well as granted them special authorities so as to enhance their ability to project their ideals. This has allowed the Cult to become much more united in its ideals and goals than it was before.

- Transfiguration Subsidization: The current strategy for achieving the Cult's goals revolves around the expansion of all industries and research related to novel Transfiguration Drive technologies. This is achieved through heavy subsidization, which itself is funded mainly through donations and is projected to pay for itself once the technology becomes widely sold to foreign markets. Sosani has made it a point to only deal with the Cult's close allies before anyone else in order to mitigate the potential for this practice to provide the Cult's enemies with advanced drive technology.

- Humanitarian Aid: Under Sosani, the Cult employs its military primarily to provide humanitarian aid to other nations. This effects a "hearts and minds" program in assisted nations.

- Spies and Secrets: Sosani has stressed that the best way to prevent an attack on the Cult is to see it coming from as far away as possible. To this end, the Cult's infiltration and subversion agents are employed almost everywhere there is sapient life. The Cult is often in the know because of this, and exploits it to its fullest extent to make sure things go in its favor.

For: Organized Religion, Democracy, Alliances, Capitalism, Multiculturalism, Foreign Aid, Science
Neutral: Humans (viewed as well-meaning but dangerous), Autocracy during times of serious danger and hardship, militarism, corporations, communism
Anti: Fascism, extremism, killing, power for the sake of power, intolerance (racism, sexism, etc), threats to his family

- Sosani is a Voxen - a tall, lightly-built vulpinoid alien from a lower-gravity world possessing innate magical abilities. As a Voxen, he is naturally attuned to a second dimension present in most universes called "Afterspace", which he can interact with in order to manipulate the Physical Universe via fundamental forces and the application of kinetic energy. This quality is called "afterffinity". Sosani's afterffinity is such that he can stop a speeding truck moving at over one hundred miles per hour to a standstill in under a second, stop bullets in the air, heat objects to several thousand degrees in a short time by imparting energy into their constituent molecules, and alter electric currents and magnetic fields.

- Because Afterspace also interacts with sapient minds, Sosani can - to a very limited extent - interact directly with other minds through what can be described as telepathy. This process is a very difficult one, and for the most part, he is not capable of anything more than causing splitting headaches, basic hallucinations, mind tricks, and short-term memory loss. This can also be used to detect the 'soul' (mind imprint) of a sapient being from a distance. It is important to note that none of this works on humans; as humans do not register within Afterspace at all.

- Sosani also has the capacity to (partially) reassemble and operate his own body when it becomes damaged. This ability to resist physical death is so fine that he can resist death even when his body has been shredded into hundreds of bloody pieces. This is achieved by telekinetically keeping blood and organs in place, but requires a great deal of concentration to maintain, rendering him in a weakened state.

- The Voxen connection to Afterspace is strong. If Sosani were to ever truly die, his consciousness-imprint (or his "soul" as it were) would persist in it after death. His powers would become much more potent in doing so, and through a technological process, he could be reattached to the Physical Universe and revived.

- His powers can also be used to maintain biological immortality without the use of implants, by intervening in bodily processes to keep his body at maximum performance and health. This includes: manually destroying pathogens, stimulating cell growth, selectively targeting cancer growths, and various other maintenance functions. Despite being over thirty million years old, he is biologically frozen at the Voxen equivalent of about 26 years old.

- Aside from their magical abilities, the Voxen are rather physically unimposing despite their tall stature. Sosani is much weaker than a human of smaller size, and must make use of his powers to perform actions requiring high strength and speed. He is also quite frail, due to the lanky build of the Voxen body.

- In an effort to make up for his physical disadvantage and help tune his body, Sosani has extensively studied numerous martial arts. Despite this, an untrained human will usually hand his vulpine butt to him if he does not make use of his abilities, owing to sheer physical inferiority.

- Sosani's mind tricks can also be used as a form of telepathic communication when needed.

- Sosani prefers the cold. This ties in with his phenotype, as he is a Snow Voxen. Vox was a tidally locked planet, and possessed a completely iced-over night side that was barely habitable thanks to isolated ecosystems near volcano-melted rivers. Sosani's lineage traces back to the Voxen who originally lived there.

- He, like all Voxen, does not wear shoes, as the feet of a Voxen are digitigrade and thus unsuited to most footwear.

- He hates the Chinese board game Go because his sister triggers him massively whenever they play it for no real reason.

- As a Voxen (who are obligate carnivores), Sosani eats almost exclusively uncooked meat and other animal products. He is capable of safely digesting raw meat without worrying about parasites and infections, due to his stomach being well-adapted for such a diet. He particularly enjoys Inuit cuisine when sampling Human culture.

- Sosani is not easily angered, but two sure-fire berserk buttons that he has are threats to his family and wanton violence. Seeing either will immediately send Sosani into a mix of disgust and rage.

- He enjoys Minecraft.