Prince Mazaru Eramzir
Vice-Prince of Mikena Mazaru Eramzir- Enkefin
His Heavenly Radiance Mazaru Eramzir is Prince of the Vice-Kingdom of Mikena, a populous and production Western kingdom in the Empire of Zerua. He is an old man with an ancient dragomander, whose immense magical potency seems to animate his aged body. The charisma and expression of sorcerery seems to flow through him, giving him a wise old smile one moment and a cackling menace the next, but always gleaming like fire in his milky brown eyes. He is a businessman, a scientist, a sorcerer, a proud patriarch, and a stern ruler; an absolute master of his domain, who has bent the court of Mikena to his orbit. Embodying Mikena's meritocratic values, he rose from the dirt and ascended to heaven. Under his guidance, the kingdom's wealth grows and grows.
Mazaru is a master of intrigue and magic both; his nobles and bureaucrats sometimes feel his scrying, invisible eyes from miles away. Within his palace, he keeps a veritable archive of personal information, blackmail-worthy secrets, and person affects to use in spells or curses. What his own magic cannot give him, the Lunar Gods often do - he has business dealings with both Hiku Matsune and Emesh, but he does not rely on their patronage or grovel at their feet.
Prince Mazaru is the black sheep of the Zeruan Princes. Once, back in the 1980s, he eyed even the imperial throne. But decades of hostility from two reigning emperors, who have driven his agents from the imperial court, have forced him to turn his kingdom into an island of his might. The rest of the royal family thinks he is dealt with, that they simply have to wait for him to finally die. They underestimate him.
As a person, Mazaru is a narcissist with a penchant for cruelty. He sees himself as the protagonist of Zerua, a hard-working genius held back by a world of blue-blooded lazy fools. He can be cruel, seemingly without reason; he can be oddly generous when he feels like someone has 'proven themselves'. Always, the Prince needs to be in control.
Mental characteristics
Personal history
Mazaru was born to a humble family in Kreniko. His young parents were children of the great Mikenan economic depression, raised on desperation and full of timid and secret hope. His father was a lesser clerk employed by the Ministry of Public Health, and his mother was a minstrel and Circle informant who had hopes of moving onto a legitimate life. They raised Mazaru with all their hopes, and promised their child the world. When Mazaru was nine, his father died of tuberculosis along with his younger sister. They paid handsomely for a paladin to heal them, but the healing never came. The fee sure vanished nonetheless. Falling into debt, Mazaru's mother turned back to informant work and took her son with her. Through her cleverness, they were able to survive and even thrive in that dangerous work, paying off their debts and securing Mazaru a decent education. He learned early to listen for the right information to pass on and how to be hidden in plain sight. When he was in his early teens, his mother began to work her contacts to get Mazaru hired in the Mikenan royal court as a servant - somewhere where his new skills could translate into a secure and legitimate job, like his father wanted. When Mazaru was sixteen, his mother died in a workplace accident and court life absorbed him entirely.
Already by age 14, Mazaru was getting into trouble - he had stolen a Dragomander from the inbound court supply. While this normally would have ended with him in jail, the reigning Princess Rugata found the boy's antics entertaining and kept him on staff as her private informant and student. She held the crime over him for years, and enjoyed watching him struggle through avoidable turmoil. After Mazaru's mother died, Princess Rugata intensified her games; in his late teens, they even entered a relationship. Mazaru embraced the idea that he was special and had earned a position at Rugata's side, and he exploited his position as her consort for everything he could. In his early 20s, Mazaru began to try and build alliances of his own, particularly in the Princess' new Greenspirit Corporation. At 21, he began to work as an assistant on the staff of Greenspirit analyst Idwo Enkefin. Later that year, Princess Rugata was detained and imprisoned in a palace coup. Mazaru fled the palace and reinvented himself as Idwo's apprentice, even managing to get himself adopted into the Enkefin family. The new appointed Prince, Prince Entawi, was not particularly threatened or interested in the immature street trash consort of the prior Princess - but one of Entawi's entourage, a former military intelligence expert named Neppa Ettefri, put Mazaru's name on a list of loose ends to be driven from politics. Mazaru narrowly escaped being fired or even killed, and he fled the city of Kreniko entirely to a small sugar refinery town.
Mazaru slowly crawled through the company ranks for the next eight years, practicing magic and curating relationships. He was convinced that the new Prince was out to get him, and worked hard to get away from Mikena. He traveled, looking for new possible technologies, techniques, and markets, often stealing or bickering with the Greater Makal Company and Aludarzir Corporation. Mazaru had a good eye for profit and opportunity, and he worked well in this position. However, after five or six years he began to feel stifled. Idwo, his adopted father and supervisor, was transitioning from friend to rival - they bickered over credit, over profit, over how far Mazaru could go in his plots. Finally, Mazaru was ready to move on. In 1971, at age 29, Mazaru was able to make a massive jump: from Greenspirit all the way to the imperial court in Argena, to work as an imperial spellcaster under the Court Magician.
From 1971 to 1980, Mazaru worked in the court service, moving between Argena and the Grand Hatchery of Karema. After five years, Mazaru had a heavy tome of blackmail and number of schemes in both Mikena and the imperial core - but he had many more enemies. Most notably, the Princess of Karema, Princess Darima, came to despise Mazaru's brazen shit-stirring. Mazaru played dangerous games, at court and beyond; as his power grew, he placed himself in a position where two Lunar Gods, Emesh and Hiku Matsune, competed for him in their camps. He also dabbled in organized crime and corporate politics. These risks and clever plays eventually led to Mazaru throwing his hat into the ring for the new Prince of Mikena after the death of Prince Entawi in 1980. By humiliating his rivals, playing up his perceived influence in Mikena, and creating the appearance of a crisis in Kreniko, Mazaru saw himself swiftly adopted into the royal family and appointed as Prince of Mikena.
Ascended to the throne of Mikena as a young but masterful sorcerer, Mazaru's career seemed to have only just begun. And yet, the young Prince's disruptive tactics also mobilized his many enemies. Not long after getting his appointment, Princess Darima called for an imperial investigation into the whole affair. Mazaru barely kept his throne and found himself under embarassing scrutiny. Even worse, Darima was appointed imperial heir during this time, and ascended to become Empress in 1984. The ascended Empress Darima I hoped to finally crush this nasty little social climber at her leisure, but she soon had her own problems: while the Zeruan government transferred power, the Kingdom of Esedeta marched into the Zeruan tributary borderlands. The new Empress found her forces blindsided and struggled to hold the reigns of power amidst this chaos. Rather than strip Mazaru of his title and hobble the war effort, Darima decided to just push him into battle to hopefully die fighting the enemies of the state. Sad for her, Mazaru became a war hero instead. The chance to unseat Mazaru had officially passed by.
After the war, the Empress decided to just leave him to his kingdom. Ever-paranoid and hyper-competetive, Mazaru refused to let the rivalry die, and continued trying to extend his influence into Argena. Over the years, the Empress rallied the rest of the imperial family to isolate Mazaru and contain him in his corner of the empire. Mazaru consolidated control over his kingdom, ready for when they came for him again. He bent the Far Harbor Club to his will, industrialized Kreniko, and worked to make the local nobles totally dependent on him. In 1991, the Empress once again hoped to kill Mazaru by sending him to war; once again, she was dissapointed. Afterwards, Mazaru was just accepted as an unfortunate fact of life; a miserable ghoul who howled at the rest of the family and terrorized his little gentry, who would drag you into the mud if you tried to mess with him. He saw this as a grand victory. In truth, it was a political death sentence. In 2000, the next emperor was to be chosen, and Mazaru hoped to contest the appointment of the new emperor to seize the throne himself. He discovered that the entire court was now hostile to him; no matter how much dirt he had, there was no world where he was voluntarily chosen by the court. The new emperor, Emperor Sophan Eramzir, was just as hostile as his predecessor. Since 2000, Mazaru has soaked in resentment and rage. His bitterness has become his personality, melting through his charming and pleasant persona.
Current Location
Species
Ethnicity
Year of Birth
1942 ME
78 Years old
Birthplace
Children
Gender
Male
Eyes
Brown
Hair
Grey-white, short
Skin Tone/Pigmentation
Pale, light brown
Height
5'10"
Belief/Deity
Kamada
Aligned Organization
Other Affiliations
Related Plots
Ruled Locations
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