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ScourgeLord

The Scourgelord and the Dark Lords

The Scourge Lord was feared for having such great control of electrokinesis that they could teleport, or even be in different places at once. In truth, they cheated: they used their actual considerable electrokinetic skill to brainwash a few lieutenants into psychic copies of the Scourgelord. The Scourgelord would disavow those who were defeated by remote disintegration, and take credit for the actions of those who succeeded, with psychic "synchronizations" happening every few standard months so that the original and the copies would know all that the others had seen and done.

Eventually, after years of unending war, this and other tricks were discovered. Once it was discovered that the electrokinetic powers of the Scourge Lord were great but not limitless, it took a daring raid performed by Photon Knights from all seven orders to infiltrate the Imperial capital and perform a decapitation strike, while an alliance of all the minor powers kept the Imperial fleet busy.

The Emperor at the time claimed to have been brainwashed into submission the entire time, but was essentially forced to abdicate in favor of his nephew, just in case. He retired to a resort world and wrote a memory, which sold remarkably poorly.

After the Scourgelord was defeated, a few of these backup copies kept causing trouble, each commanding a remnant of the Scourgelord's guard. Most of them have been defeated; a few are alive today, usually under psychiatric care since the brainwashing did not leave much under it.

Two, however, remain. They both survived the shock of learning that they were disposable copies. One, Stra-Khul, has taken to histrionic behavior, reveling in things like flowing black capes, terrifying architecture, bombastic proclamations, and other Saturday morning cartoon evil-overlord cliches. Stra-Khul is a reasonably competent administrator, and runs a small domain of around a dozen worlds between the two Imperial rump states. The other, Zarth-Arn, is apparently more sane, preferring to give his little rogue empire a militaristic, somewhat fascistic demeanor. He is also significantly more cruel. For example, Stra-Khul outlaws slavery in his domain with the rationale that all those in his little empire are slaves to him and no being can serve two masters; Zarth-Arn makes no such grand proclamations, but buys and sells chattel slaves routinely.

The two Dark Lords, as they both style themselves, have an irrational hatred for each other and would be at war if it wasn't for the fact that there is a strip of territory belonging to the Phoenician Republic between them; the Republic has let it know that while warships of the Dark Lords are welcome to cross its territory, they would have to pay for passage, and have set the fee so high that neither Dark Lord can afford it.

Recently, one of the two main planetary systems in this strip has been taken from the Republic, specifically the Argo cartel, and seized by Kalradian nobility, with one of the Dark Lord likewise making a claim on the territory.