Encyclopedic Entities: The Tyrant (Patreon)

As per last time we talked about this, I decided that The Tyrant, Kingdom Death's Best Boi, was going to get his own entry in full. This is because of all the monsters in the game right now, the one we know the most about is the Tyrant/Dragon King. We know a huge amount about him, his personality, his goals and the ultimate results of those goals.

We're going to talk about themes, history and all the other bits and pieces here.

As before, if it is in italics, then it is official material, everything else apart from information on game content is speculation, conjecture or received via back channels (which means it's mostly official, but subject to potential change). 

Themes:

A lot, and I do mean a LOT, of the Tyrant's mechanics, theme and lore are devoted to exploration of Kingdom Death's sky. In particular space. 

As always, when analysing things like this, the aim is to distill down the themes from the mechanics and from the words used. The Tyrant's theme is a dual one of being heavenly, and he is absolutely this, but not in the literal sense, he's not come from heaven above (at least as far as we know, he could be like a Great Old One in that he's actually from another planet, but we don't really have the evidence to support that.

Space Dragons? 

Speaking of something that we don't have the evidence to support. It's time to discuss the ceiling situation. So, there is a theory that floats around the circles of Kingdom Death, that the world is all "underground"; that is above everyone is a ceiling. This one has gained a lot of traction, and there are some particularly staunch defenders of it out there - but there is not a lot of evidence in the form of game text or lore to back this up.

So, time to go back to basics of investigation here, when one investigates, the first thing one does is gather up all the scattered pieces of evidence and attempt to form a picture. Whether you are investigating civil and criminal crime, as I used to do, or you are investigating the scattered pieces of lore from a game world - it is important to hold a few key things when you start to draw your summations. 

• Base them on the evidence you have found as much as possible.
• Hypothesize only where you have to, and based on conclusions drawn from the facts you do have in a logical manner.
• Apply Ockham's Razor - the simplest answer is often the right one. 

I am absolutely oversimplifying things, I'm very aware of that as I spent years training to be able to investigate into things as cleanly and clearly as possible. There's a lot more to it than that, but this is a little fantasy world from a small group of people, one of whom is already known to change his mind and correct things just for the sake of the lulz and trolling.

Additionally, when I went into this, I am stating very clearly here - I had absolutely no stake in what is above the heads of our survivors, to be honest, I still don't. I really don't give the slightest hoot what's up there - because it doesn't matter for the game experience one bit.

But I can say that the entire Dragon King expansion is based around making it explicit that there is a void above the world that has something like stars in it. And in fact, there is no real support of the ceiling theory at all - while there is a literal description of the experience of being in space on one of the cards. So we're going to look at the various things involved in this expansion that try and spell it out for us - most of these I'm going to just list:

Tyrant AI/HL

• Blistering Star
• Smashing Star
• Mercury Eyes
• Celestial Hit Locations
• Resonance Cascade Trap - Reference to the Black Mesa event that created portals to other worlds.

Dragon King AI/HL

• Cosmic Uppercut Trap and Starward Status card - more on this below
• Meltdown mechanic

Other various cosmic themes:

• Frozen Star Secret Fighting Art - the Tyrant's own constellation, built around his themes of being the last one alive and the (hypothetical) celestial phenomena of a Frozen Star. Also present in the Frozen Corpse hunt event.
• General Radiation and nuclear themes - like stars who are hydrogen fusion reactors on a massive scale
• Tyrant's position in the settlement as the center of it, like a star in a system
• Various People of the Stars timeline events
• Constellations
• Use of statues that allow for teleportation, called gates. Reminiscent of Stargate.
• The Tyrant himself has many of the traits of a living star

In short, the existence of the Dragon King/Tyrant and all his mechanics spell out to us that there is no ceiling to the world of Kingdom Death, above is an endless void with stars. This is explicitly referenced in events from People of the Stars and the Starward status card.

"The Dragon King punches the attacker skyward, sending them sailing into the darkness. They gain the Starward survivor status card". -- Cosmic Uppercut Trap HL

"You are transported to an unfamiliar, terrifying world without sound or direction." -- Starward survivor status card.

"Reality is shattered, revealing the teeming depths of the limitless night." -- Unveil the Sky: PotStars

Teaming means 'filled with or swarming' so these depths are massive, as if 'limitless' wasn't enough of a clue that there's no ceiling.

"...It is the face of the stars and you are one of the people of the stars." -- Faces in the Sky: PotStars

"There was a monster who's only fear was to be forgotten. Driven by that terror smoldering in its heart, the monster inscribed its face in the sky with a glowing breath. All who saw it grew sick and died, leaving nothing alive that could remember the monster's face." -- Showdown: The Tyrant Lore

Note the wording here: "inscribed its face in the sky" not 'on the sky' or 'on the ceiling'.

So, short of a retcon from Adam, when you encounter the 'Flat Ceilingers' in the world of Kingdom Death, ask them to provide an explicit mention of the ceiling direct from either Adam or the text in the game. I haven't found it to date, but I've found ample evidence of space above and that's what one should base your conclusions on. So until we get information to the contrary, there's a void up there.

Religious Iconography:

So the other half of the Tyrant's theme is highly Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian. We'll start with the most obvious and overt parts of his theme. Specifically his model. 

So, you might have been wondering what that ornate thing on his back is. Well it's the Celestial Diadem (as per the hit location deck) and it's a direct reference to the halos that saints and Jesus are given in stained glass windows. Here's a couple of pictures for you to see the similarities in between the Tyrant model.

Here are multiple additional examples of what inspired the design of the Tyrant's celestial diadem.

You'll notice that in the second image of the messiah. Jesus carries a shepherd's crook, the Tyrant likewise has a staff, well to be more specific he has a cane. Additionally he wears robes, has a thorn like appearance to his decorations, has plants embroidered on his robes and holds his head at a tilt, much like some depictions of the messiah. His entire appearance is designed to signal the ending of the story of People of the Stars as clearly as possible - he is Kingdom Death's messiah.  Which is where the nickname for him of Dragon Jesus comes from (well it comes from me, but the design of the model is why I coined it in the first place).

However, I'm sure you might be thinking that Jesus preached a path of non-violence and meekness, so how are they the same?  Well, in philosophy the Tyrant deviates greatly, his objective is not to help his survivors ascend to a better afterlife, it is very different.

"Weakness is anathema to strength." -- Midnight's Children

This phrase, and the name of the timeline event itself tells you all you need to know. But I'll spell it out for you here just so that everyone is on the same page. The Tyrant has plans for these "insects" he has gathered to him, he sees their potential in the strength they have and he believes that with his guidance they can transcend their current forms and become new Dragon Kings. But he has to first prepare their spirits for this, normal survivors cannot withstand the process and that would be a waste of his time and life.

The second big hint here is that the event is called 'Midnight's Children' the phrase 'two minutes to midnight' from the Iron Maiden Song of the same name is a protest song about how close the world came to utter annihilation during the cold war. It's based on the Doomsday Clock - which is currently back at 2 minutes to midnight because of the twin threats of nuclear war and climate change. Now we're not getting political here, but the fact that the event is called 'Midnight's Children' is a reference to this clock, and the time of midnight is for the Dragon King's people - they already were annihilated and their civilization erased. We know this because of the text for the Dragon King showdown and the hunt event - Cultivated Crypt, which is 'littered with the preserved corpses of dragons'.

There are a total of three hunt events that reference the Dragon King's history, these are the Cultivated Crypt, the Lorekeeper and the Ornate Temple. The latter two events are wonderfully open to interpretation and there are myriad hypotheses you can draw from these. But you can be sure that the Lorekeeper holds the lore of the Dragons (the 10 result is very similar to the 10 result from The Throne location, just less lethal) and that the Ornate Temple is utterly laden with symbolism. There's so much in that one card that it would take ages to unpack, the size of it, the music, the way that the survivors can reach the gates but not enter (they're not the right kind of people), the voice and it's cryptic message. It's a beautiful piece that can be considered as 'nothing happens, it's just a random hunt event' but it's really a huge stone of dense lore and storytelling. There's also probably meaning to the Doppel Den hunt event, but it's hard to unpack what's lore hints and what is memes.

So our best boi, Dragon Jesus is the last of his kind, lonely and desperate he hits upon a plan, which is to take the malleable tabla rasa that survivors represent and reforge them into vessels that can withstand the transformation into nuclear fulled "star" dragons. This can only be done by first priming them with an indomitable spirit for fuel, and then igniting them with sufficient power - and this all needs to be done in a reasonable time because the Dragon King is slowly dying (he's described as moribund during the climax of the campaign - though if the players fail, the Dragon King's rage filled rampage keeps him sustained for a era of spiteful cruelty). The first part is done via the Tyrant's teachings, and the second part, in a very Christian metaphor, is done at the end of the victory result of People of the Stars. The survivors eat of the Dragon King's body and that provides the spark to complete their transformation just before they die. 

They become the new generation of dragons, but with the loss of the Tyrant his civilization will never return. That which lives can never replace that which was glorious. He saves his species, but not his people and the memory of them dies with him. It's a very poetic and poignant ending that has an appropriate amount of melancholy to it.

The blanks:

So, there's a huge area of the Tyrant's history that's just straight question marks. We know he's the last of his kind, we know that his people's bodies are kept preserved in crypt(s) and we know that the civilization of his people was utterly glorious before it fell. 

We also know that the Tyrant has links to the following entities:

• Goblin
• Witch
• Absolute
• Rust
• Gambler
• Sculptor
• Reaper
• Storm

Which makes him an entity of incredible power in himself (as evidenced by how strong his own constellation 'Frozen Star' is), and we can also guess that he's one of the few who actually knows the face of the real Goblin, but we can't be sure about this one, because even if he did, he would not reveal that he did - that would break the myth of the Goblin. You die when you see the face of the Goblin because that is what is expected, if someone survived then the Goblin would be in a huge problem. This is the Captain Reis of the Crimson Roger situation (points for understanding that one without googling).

Other things which are possible is that the Tyrant is a cosmic entity, that is like the Great Old Ones of the Cthulhu Mythos the Tyrant's people came from another world and fell to the world of Kingdom Death. This would make them like the Great Race of Yith, but we are left to wonder what caused their extinction. Was it the actions of the prideful Tyrant as per his showdown text suggests? Or was their some other enemy the way that the Flying Polyphs that caused the end of them? Only the Tyrant and by extension Adam, knows for sure.

Ultimately, this is what makes the Tyrant the most evocative and interesting monster in the setting right now, unlike the Golden Entity - who is mostly just lore snippets, two expansions (Manhunter and Lion Knight) and a few related sculpts - we know a huge amount about this melancholic, depressed, angry and powerful creature. We know more about him than we do about any other monster in the game apart from the Suns/Sunstalkers - Watchers remain a mystery as their story was broken without completion (to date, we'll talk a little about potentials to healing that story next time) and the same lays with the White Lions/Lion God/Silver city - it's something that might be told in the future, but we can't be sure.

So until next time, thank the Tyrant, without his sacrifice we would not have the best campaign and lore in the game. Thank you Dragon Jesus.