Motivations and Morality

The present situation is a status of peace, except for 3 gripes by our main character which causes him to act out and allows him to justify his conquests of the world beyond naked ambition.

1. Is the betrayal of sica by kpor and r4, as our main character is a descendent of sica and the lost army. This is a historical gripe he possesses. This is one of the weaker motivations since he's only learned about sica academically and he largely identifies with the present day civilization.

2. Similar to 1, he thinks the world is hiding some terrible truth about the Lost Army, the history of Kpor, and so on, and because there are so many layers of secrets, he thinks there is a lot that he is not allowed to know as well. This is generally correct. He is very motivated to find out.

3. He blames the demons for many ills in the world. Demons would occasionally pop up somewhere and go on a rampage. There are many powerful demons that have destroyed towns and such, and the powers that be frequently find it too hard to destroy the demons and just leave them alone. He thinks the only explanation for that is because there are people that protect them, demon worshippers. He thinks they are in cahoots with the political/religious powers, and that's why demons are not wiped out. Of course this is incorrect since demons can appear with a union of the red string of fate. Demons are also not expansionists since they have no real will of their own, so there is no great need to destroy them where they exist.

   1. These recurring demon attacks is actually the reason why feudalism still exists and hasn't been destroyed by centralization. The royal government with their royal armies cannot respond quickly enough, and frankly do not want to waste their soldiers responding to every demon attack out there. They prefer to let local lords handle it. It is hard to tell a local army to disband after they just got done saving a city from demons.
   2. In the recent past MC has witnessed demon attacks. When he was about 16 years old there was a demon attack that his parents fought off. It is the responsibility of the Lord of the land to battle the demons in these situations. MC at the time felt more annoyance that he has to than any sense of heroism. Is the world so poor and improperly working that he HAS to do so? It feels like shit work. But as he grew older his sense of responsibility for his people grew, and he now feels like a proper father defending his realm.
      1. He is very appreciative of his parents, and now even more so than he was. At the time there was somewhat of an annoyed feeling, but overtime he came to saw his parents as heroes. He has very rose-colored memories of his parents commanding the defense.
      2. His parents are impressed by his magecraft, it surpasses their abilities, and that's why they feel comfortable handing the army over to him.
      3. I think this has room for further development, including potentially adding more demon stuff into his backstory. Not sure.

4. In his somewhat local national court of Piyse, he deals with haters and rivals. His grandfather's history with Piyse leads his whole family to be looked down upon and treated with disrespect. This leads him to feel worried politically. Emotionally, he also feels bullied. On the grand scheme of things it's minor, but history is sometimes influenced by even these little things. As a result he doesn't feel patriotic towards country and instead have seditionist and anti-social inclinations.

In contrast to many fantasy stories, where the world is broken, in chaos, or oppressive, or corrupted somehow, the world is stable and working fine. He is the disruptor, and his conquests come from a desire to reshape the world to what he thinks is right. The end result may contain more or less freedom for certain downtrodden classes, it's up to the player. But work is going to be put in to justify villainous routes so that the player would feel righteous still going down those routes.

He himself is personally not particularly oppressed though he can pick up the mantle for the poor if he really wishes for a righteous justification for his ambitions. This means, in the general case, he needs to pay a moral price for his ambitions, and it is not freely delivered to him for simply doing the expected thing. A big part of the gameplay is therefore giving him the opportunity to propagandize to make himself appear righteous, as all evil doers in history do.

The intent is for the character to be someone who is extremely privileged but is driven by minor impositions to feel like a victim. Basically, a regular-ass human.

Ego

We'll be expanding on this with an ego framework and contrasting him with other characters.

Ego here, means a sense of self, a self identity that he thinks he sees and a willingness to pursue its realization, and insecurity and defensiveness if people insults that identity.

While I personally think that's not a great thing, as having less of an ego makes you more free and powerful, and a character-flaw, this is very relatable and very human. Most people have such an ego and it takes great wisdom to get beyond it.

The MC is a young man who reflects the player, and as such is full of ego and is driven by it. Thereby giving him a strong sense of purpose.

The Foils

The Most Ego Supporting

Yaling in particular really enjoys his ego and feeds off of it to build and reinforce her own. She is already quite certain in her place as a duke's daughter, but having MC around to strengthen her identity and give her the wife identity really empowers her.

The adaptable

Weilan is very adaptable, and that speaks to a certain lack of ego or a more flexible ego?

The wise queen who returned to childlike state

Peizhi is ancient, and in her early centuries developed an immortal's detachment to life and and humanity in general. She'd starts seeing ego and identity as fascinating but ultimately transparent illusions.

She starts finding human attachment to fixed identities amusing but also touching - the way we might view children insisting "I'm a transformer!" She remembers being that way herself, many times over. She's been a warrior, a scholar, a tyrant, a recluse, a goddess to some, a demon to others. Each identity felt absolutely real at the time, yet flowed into the next like scenes in a dream.

Peizhi experienced the slow loss of ego, but felt that it was contrary to “the human experience” and so purposefully restored her ego with the memory wiping thing, so that she can become youthful and childlike.

peizhi is ultimately the one who gets to explain this to mc. She knows what she thought, that all her tricks and superiority is pointless, but in her refreshed youthful form she doesn’t think that way, she has a totally different set of values and a much stronger sense of self that she wouldn’t have as an ancient necro.

In the darkest route he fully restores all her memories, so that she’s 4000 years old, with all of her wisdom, so she can fully appreciate what she’s about to lose.

The wise who lacks ego

Your father, who abdicated his position to you to pursue his own interests and to go along with your mother. He's the least egoistical person in the story.