Serkos
Introduction
Serkos is the single focal being? of Serkosia? and various related timelines, including that of the Dark Circuit?, Arcite Circuit?, Nazoth?, and even Hoq Prime?. Born in 12,386, Serkos would not become physically important in cosmic history until the pulse 12,390 with the onset of the First Revelation?. Despite this, and due to the circumstances of Serkos' latent powers, Serkos is thought to have had a prenatal potent habit, only possible with heavenhearkeners?. Serkos is largely responsible for every single major event in Crowns of The Cosmos? from 12,386 onward. Whether directly or indirectly within one or two degrees of separation, practically every motivation for war, political shift, or major SoS change comes from or relates to Serkos. Serkos is often characterized as a vicious bloody ruler, but this framing of Serkos has not always held true throughout his presence in Serkosia, where he was characterized as everything from a humble underdog to a holy savior.
Life
Vitructus
Early Life
Formation of Freedomwrath
Efforts in Orscus
Far World Efforts
Crelin University Bombing
Hyruga
Final Days' Mandate
Revelation Wars
Reorganization of Freedomwrath
Dynastructon
Kaiser
Hyravatara
Ouroboros-Osporos War
Freedomwrath Era
Serkosian Banquet
The Freeterrors
Crown Disperse
Auctorates
Principle Wars
Dius Subwar
Low Ambrosian Phase
Caelum Ambrosian Phase
Zolos Skirmishes
Fall & Chronos-Nil Involvement
Fall of Freedomwrath
Prophet
Chronos-Nil Alpha
Chronos-Nil Beta
Serkos Game
Sarzola Reign
Influence on the new regime
Return
Kaiser Era
Betrayal
Kaiser-Scalar Wars
Dormancy Termination
Second Battle of Hyravatara
The Ladder & Argand War
The Ladder Slaughter
Battle of the Prophet
Argand War
The Blood of Vascalatra
Post-Argand Serkos
Denouement
Death
Unique Characteristics
Factions, Allies, and Enemies
Trivia
- As a Vitructan, Serkos killed his mother with a fork and then used her spine to kill his father. It is unknown exactly when this happened, but it has been confirmed to be Serkos' doing
- During his rule of Freedomwrath, Serkos did a considerable amount of writing, a common Crown pass time. Serkos was an avid tragedy and even romance writer, a fact which would inspire The Serkosian Letters? later on after Freedomwrath's fall. Serkos is said to have written roughly 700,000 novels, novellas, plays, short stories, poems, or essays in his lifetime, ranging anywhere from manifestos to comedies about how odd he found reproduction to be in cosmic races.
- Serkos had an active effort to retain Vitructan customs, even if they did not make sense in a cosmic setting. This meant that Serkos often had functional replicas of Vitructan furnishings and appliances in his Crown dwellings, including the Vitructan equivalent of a toilet, radio, shovel, and most iconic, a sword, which he often used in battles equipped with extreme enhancements and essentially acted as an extension of his manipulation arts during fights.
- Serkos was known to throw massive parties and events, and left practically all of these events open to all those who could attend, of any race, status, or identity. This led to multiple instances in which attendees devolved into aggression over racial differences, with Crowns commonly being the aggressors in these cases. In nearly every notable case of these aggravations, Serkos would apprehend the Crowns, transport them to the Tibera Void, and simply leave them in the middle of the void, with their escape being their own task. If it was known a specific Crown could escape from this quickly, the Crown simply was killed on the spot. Serkos would often remark that ill-mannered behavior was unbecoming of the Pryos and should be left to the battle field.
- Serkos was known to make a frequent pilgrimage to Hyravatara where he had created a pseudo-grave for Angstrom, an effigy of his corpse bound to a flat disk. Every time he would locate the structure, Serkos would slash a small cut in this effigy. It isn't completely clear what this action represented to Serkos personally, but it is widely accepted as a potential representation of pity for Angstrom. Although it is unknown how many cuts came from Serkos or just external interference, it is worth noting that there are exactly 18,779 of these cuts upon the effigy, and not a single one more was added until the effigy's complete destruction in the Argand War.
- Serkos was such a popular ruler at the height of the Freedomwrath Empire that about 166 million independent holidays were celebrated in the name of Serkos amongst planetary communities alone.
Out-Of-Lore
Development
Serkos' development was perhaps one of the most unexpected, and came about roughly during the days of Crowns of the Cosmos when the Second Corpse War was still the primary focus of the story, at that time, the "Second Reality War?." Serkos came about as part of the initial effort to expand the story in the past direction, as a focal, third party antagonistic character within the "First Reality War?," a prequel story which, as the name suggests, became the "First Corpse War" later in the story's evolution. Another prerequisite piece of knowledge is that around this time, there existed a unified council of crowns which would later be the basis for the Sarzola or Terror Council of the Sarzola Regime. Unlike the modern adaptation of this concept however, at the time there existed successive councils, and on one of the older councils, Serkos was a member. Serkos was a High Crown originating from Vicoto within this older narrative.
Serkos was intended to remain only on this council until the end of the First Corpse War, when his corruption and desire for power would lead him to form the "First Serkos Game," or alternatively, the "Old Serkos Game." Serkos would disappear during the time between the First Reality War and the Second, and became fully engrossed in this mysterious terror group. On the onset of the Second Reality War, Serkos began to pit the Nicovian Army (the older analog to the Nicora Army, there is too many naming semantics for discussion here, but understand they exist, please see the development sections for Nicoraqel or Nicovis for this information) against the Qalhade Army (which one could make the argument was the analog to the much later Grand Coalition, although there are enough differences here to argue the opposite as well). The motivation for this seemed to be some kind of god complex narrative for Serkos.
Ultimately, this fails and much of the First Serkos Game's members die, save for a few, including Serkos. It appears as if sometime closer to the end of the Second Reality War, Serkos makes a return with the Second Serkos Game, but it is all undone by Temple Cognia in this narrative. Finally, it appears there was even attempts to make a "Third Serkos Game" during the "Reign of the Shear Wave" arc which was largely equivalent to the events of Loyalties? in Crowns of The Cosmos, however this never was fleshed out due to the rapidly shifting narrative structure at this time, as it began to very quickly transform into what we now know it to be.
Now from this we can gleam many similarities and parallels, most obviously, Serkos Game. The main difference being that Serkos was the leader of this group and led multiple of them rather than it being practically a cult of Serkos with a continued existence through both Corpse Wars (analogous to the Reality Wars here). We can see how Serkos evolved to become practically the main character of the narrative from this point of view, as his narrative intentions superseded the intentions of Nicoraqel and any other major force by this point. Over time Serkos become more akin to the primary antagonist until what is most likely the crux of the iterative shift in the story which was the introduction of Angstrom. After this character introduction, Serkos became the de jure focal character, alongside a ton of other additions, which were all littered with elements that went into his development as the focal character.
From then on, elements such as Serkos Game were reintroduced more clearly, Serkos' influence in the Corpse Wars was funnily enough less direct despite his critical involvement in the past story versions. From the more in-depth cultural detailing efforts evolved the Serkosian Legacies, which naturally lent itself to the growing Prophet narrative influence, and later the symbolic mysticism of Serkos. Serkos' symbolism will be discussed more directly below, but it also evolved very independently of all of the story material itself, and oddly, much later. A common theme with development of Crowns of The Cosmos is how often the symbolism was introduced after the content, and yet still came together in a satisfying enough way to not cause any insurmountable plot issues. This is especially true of all of Serkos' symbolic aspects, most were all natural lead-ins from the ongoing content development.
As for other similarities to the narrative before this aforementioned iterative shift, Kaiser's allegiance has some notable changes. Serkos had no notable relation to Kaiser in the Reality War era narrative despite their coexistence, but the Nicora-Kaiser relation is what remains in a vestigial form. In the modern narrative, Kaiser serves Nicoraqel for a number of reasons, but never for any kind of actual devotion to Nicoraqel, this is the main distinction from the past relation to Nicoraqel, but we can see how a shift occurred with some remnant of this relation. Obviously, Kaiser is now more entwined with Serkos, as are practically all the other characters, factions, and elements of the story.
The last developmental notions to make are latent in the briefly mentioned "antagonistic" phase of Serkos' development, in which he was the main antagonist of the story. Serkos evolved into this obviously because of his secondary antagonist role in the original narrative, however his shift to a more flawed but not necessarily pure evil character actually came alongside a similar development for all the characters. The largest reason why the latest iteration of Reality Game has lasted so long without any major shifts comes down to the greater effort to complexify faction and character dynamics in a way that made the story less black and white. The problem inherent in all the oldest versions of the story largely comes down to this form of simplicity, it had too little complexity to be compelling, and too little background from which the story was to "evolve" from within its own universe. This meant that no matter how much the story shifted, without this complexification it essentially meant a complete wipe and rewrite every time, until the eventual complexification that led to this form of the narrative, in which minute details and local changes are made in ways that don't necessarily change the trajectory of the entire story.