Emperor Kern Overmere

The wealthiest and most powerful man on the continent, Emperor Kern Overmere rules the Corran Empire without significant challenge. Much of his biography is popular knowledge, though separating history from propaganda can be difficult. Where facts below are personally known or rumoured to the members of the The Ladies' Hiking Club, those facts are identified.

Background and Biography

Childhood

Born to the purple in 820WA, Kern was 'the spare' in the public view. His elder brother Ericus, the heir apparent, was much beloved throughout the homeland. Where Ericus was courting a relationship as a "man of the people", attending games and celebrating festivals in public, Kern was withdrawn and aloof. Where Ericus was a remarkable swordsman and a brave soldier, Kern developed a reputation as a man of letters and a military strategist. Ericus was funny. Kern was sharp. Ericus studied at his father's knee. Kern stayed home with the sages. Ericus was a carouser who liked the ladies. Kern has never wed and is reputed to be asexual. (Clytemnestra "Fanny" Glitters has heard witness accounts that both confirm and deny this simultaneously. The word is he has no preference as between men and women, and no interest in sex; but the grapevine is clear that he is a bad date.) Ericus ran up well known gambling debts, though nothing too unseemly. Kern never cared for games.

Military Career

Overmere was dispatched to the front twice: once to take over mopping-up duties after the defeat of the Marsher Lords and to shore up loyal sentiment among the exhausted and plague-ridden troops there; and again to take over command of the Portavian conflict as Ericus was recalled to Correhal to rule in his father's absence. None of you can remember what Optimus was doing, but you vaguely recall he had business out of town.
In both cases, according to Vega Spritzer's sources on the other side of this conflict, the results of Overmere's command were immediate and stark. Corran discipline improved. They always seemed to have fresh meat. The regiments took fewer casualties in securing new positions. They stopped doing weird trick-play maneuvers and executed on fundamentals, rotating lines effectively, fighting downhill and taking sudden and ruthless advantage of inclement weather and lunar conditions. Strongholds were made permanent and Corran field engineering feats became more audacious and impressive.
The men quietly disapproved of Overmere's preference to lead from the rear, but they lived in fear of his casual wrath, all while reveling in seeing it doled out to the enemy. That is, until that became a little unsettling, too. If anything went wrong and blame was to be assigned, the men knew to turn to his younger brother Sylvio instead, the more level-headed of the two Overmere men on the front line. None of you can recall whether Sylvio came to the front along with his brother or if he joined later. All you know is that the two were apparently inseparable by the end of the conflict as effective co-generals.

"Week of the Wasp":

Deaths of Optimus and Ericus

In a stroke of terrible bad luck, for the Empire at least, Optimus suffered a stroke at sea and Ericus fell to his death after the failure of one of the rope bridges in a middle-class suburb of Correhal. Two or three days later, according to the official line, in an apparent fit of grief over his beloved brother and father, Numerius Overmere -- a brawny, teetotaling career soldier now second in line to the throne behind Kern -- was killed in a tavern brawl with no other casualties reported.
When the news of these events reached the front, Kern Overmere was acclaimed Emperor by his troops and recalled to Correhal for his coronation. Kern left Sylvio in charge of the Portavian conflict and headed south. He was crowned Emperor on 4th Summerfall, 848WA. Both Beulah Garland and Vega were familiar with the announcement that Ericus' Portavian assassins had been caught and impaled gruesomely using methods I will not repeat here. He further commissioned the Court magi to amplify their screams across the breadth of Correhal for the four days it took the last one to die. They all professed their innocence to the very end.
This demonstration of Imperial resolve and the certainty of retribution did not have the desired effect either domestically or north of the border, where no one on the Portavian side was able to identify those assassins or took credit for sending them. Kern was already known not to be personable; after days of enduring ear-splitting shrieking as an introduction to the new regime, his subjects began to wonder if he was a sociopath.
Still, it was wartime and there are worse things than coming into a public period of weakness such as a succession with an accomplished general that might be psychotically violent suddenly on the throne. It's not bad for your bargaining power. Domestic reception was mixed. Public grief over the tremendously accomplished Emperor, who had united the kingdom and raised it to a dominant military and commercial power was substantial; and the foiling of expectations with the death of Ericus was a shock to the body politic, who expected upon the old man's passing to enjoy their hard-earned prosperity under a good-natured and just emperor with his ear to the ground.  They got the opposite. 

Reign

Over the last 18 years, Overmere has shed some of the early concern about violent tendencies. Among the Corran public, there is a casual debate about whether he is a sadist, a high-functioning sociopath or just a black-and-white believer in formalistic criminal justice. Very few Corran citizens actually believe he is violently insane anymore.

Much more damaging to than questions pertaining to his comportment, however, are those pertaining to his competence. Less than four years after his coronation, Overmere tried to make a great splash legitimizing his rule amidst the natural questions arising from the coincidental deaths of his father, eldest brother and heir.
Kern directed the creation of seven new shipyards and directed all standing shipyards to convert to naval production. He launched a massive maritime offensive against Tenthun (against whom they were technically at war, though hostilities had largely ceased over the previous few decades). Beulah recalls many a night spent around the hearth in Come-by-Chance ridiculing the whole enterprise with friends and family, opining quite accurately that the Corran Armada was doomed from the start. Correhome's army is a terror, but it was never a great maritime power. Soldiers are not sailors, and architects are not shipwrights. A blockade of Tenthun would have been a brilliant strategic coup, but his rushed forces simply were not up to the job and were utterly routed by the Tenth fleet under the command of Commodore Denby Mott.
Queen Luisa Fel played the situation like a lyre, acting with uncharacteristic speed and ruthlessness. She directed an immediate counter-blockade and ordered the Bright Legion and the Third and Fourth Cavalry through the High Spine and into Whiteridge, threatening to cut the northern Corran legions off from supply or from the reinforcement of a siege of Correhal. Facing an active war in the heart of Corran territory with both arms tied behind his back, Overmere was prevailed upon by his advisors to tender a white peace to Tenthun. He did so, and while the Treaty of Exeter Long was signed to bring that conflict to a close, fifteen Corran courtiers paid with their lives for what was very likely Kern's own incompetence.
Beulah is aware, through dispatches from the front, that it was not until a month later, with Tenth troops finally departing the northern territories and embargoed messages beginning to get through from the border, that the treaty was unnecessary from the Corran perspective. The Fourth Cavalry had been obliterated, and the Bright Legion deceived into losing a quarter of its force in a moonless evening conflict with the Portavian military. The war in the north was being won, and won quickly, without the Emperor's knowledge. Fel had been bleeding badly throughout the entire negotiation but hadn't given any hint of it. There are nine years left in that peace, and Overmere is counting the days.

Present Concerns

At present, Overmere is juggling the war in Portavia with his hated peace in Tenthun. He is managing the desires and demands of his numerous siblings and the internal threat posed by the succession and the people's largely unspoken preference for Sylvio. After the two were separated in 848, the competency gap was stark: Kern threw the entire navy away in a single week, whereas reports from the Portavian front only improved. Sylvio took the Palefort within a year, rescued the Duke of Vertis' heir, Marcus Moltisantum, from a lengthy captivity and smashed the Tenth army by smashing the Portavian army against it. The waves of returning and retired troops do nothing to mitigate that internal threat, as they are flush with loot (and depending on their Duke, slaves) and fanatically loyal to Sylvio, whom they see as the second coming of Ericus, but with a greater military mind. The men never were terribly impressed with the sulky and short-tempered Emperor, though fear remains an effective imperial adhesive.
In the last few months, as inflation has grown steeply and taxes have increased to support the war effort in Portavia, graffiti has begun to crop up across the walls of Correhal: Tirix Sylvio, it says, or simply an "O" with a crown scribbled on. The Emperor's retainers have dedicated a sub-group of themselves without authorization to remove and to direct the Emperor away from those sites out of an imperative of mutual preservation.

Related Historical Events

• 16457
  Thalia Overmere Exiled
• 16455
  Week of the Wasp