The stained glass windows in the Imperial Chapel had been designed centuries ago, before the Art had been all but lost, to reflect the fortunes of the Empire. Triumphant victories, calamitous defeats, the crowning of new Emperors…they were all duly reflected in the shifting panes. The Pontifex had been silent on how he had affected such an enchantment, but the subsequent Emperors did not care. They trumpeted each feat they performed which was noted in the Chapel as “worthy of the glass” and hired artisans to copy the designs for reproduction throughout the realm once they had vanished.

In time, though, the glass began to shift. Fewer scenes were of triumph, or even of defeat; instead they showed scenes of misery and disorder from throughout the Empire and abstract visions of death and decay. The Emperors soon realized that, as the royal family and its entourage were the only ones with access to the chapel, they could easily lie about the windows’ content. As far as the populace knew, the deeds of later Emperors continued to be “worthy of the glass.”

Things came to a head with Emperor Septimus IX. He gathered an army to repulse a challenge from his half-brother for the throne, only to have the Imperial Chapel glass reflect a terrible defeat–before he had even set out. Fearful of the prophecy coming true, Septimus IX avoided open battle, conceding field after field and undermining confidence in his leadership. When the glass finally changed, appearing to predict a great victory, the Emperor triumphantly rode with his troops into battle…and a massacre. The Battle of the Three Rivers has entered the annals of Imperial history as one of the most disastrous ever fought; meeting on poor ground in a wood that prevented effective communication, the two armies all but wiped each other out, with both Emperor and usurper unhorsed and killed.

Chaos descended over the realm, until a minor noble from a cadet branch of the royal family entered the Imperial chapel and, to his surprise, found words written in the glass for the first time: LET US RULE THROUGH YOU.

As the long-ago Pontifex Maximus had neglected to mention, the Imperial chapel glass was sustained by a gestalt of the spiritual energies, the souls, of the strongest of the departed Emperors. No longer content to watch, observe, and reflect, the glass had sought and obtained total power over the realm through a series of weak puppet Emperors. Dependent on the glass’s ability to see a short distance into the future, and given succinct orders etched in blood-red translucence, these late Emperors were unworthy of the glass in the old sense–for the glass itself had become worthy in a sense.

The Empire was, in effect, ruled by the glass for the next two hundred and fifty years, until the Imperial Chapel was sacked and smashed by the Holy Successors.

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