i want to not only take the throne
but take the harem as well
asdfghjkl, SAME
#MakeLoveNotWar
I'd imagine the emperor to have had four wives, hundreds of concubines and a legendary amount of children. The princess that I mentioned earlier is one of the legitimate children he had one with one of his empresses while the prince is a child that he had with his favorite concubine. Unlike his older sister, the prince was born frail and was considered lucky to have even survived infanthood. Due to his weak constitution, he remains indoors the vast majority of the time reading, tinkering with objects and conducting experiments in his hidden alchemy lab. Needless to say, he's a very reclusive figure but once Steele meets him, he can be befriended (not to mention eventually romanced). Once he's made a friend, he could craft you items and provide you with potions that will help you in your endeavors (i.e. a tonic with a faintly herbal scent that heals the wounds you earn in battle.)
The princess couldn't be any more different. She's the tallest and strongest of all of her father's children. By the time Steele first lands on her planet, she soon returns to her home after silencing the beginning of a rebellion in a distant conquered planet. Steele wouldn't meet her, though, until after they won their first battle in the arena. She'll become quite intrigued that the new fresh meat managed to win despite the odds being heavily stacked against them and would decide to secretly follow Steele to test for herself just how battle-ready they
truly are.
¹ She'll respond most favorably to a Steele who's a mercenary — especially if they also have a Hard personality. No matter which character class or what kind of personality, though, if a Steele had high enough reflexes (like ≥40) to dodge her strike from the shadows, her interest in them only grows. If Steele wins a more few battles, sparring with her will become an option. Spars with her work more like Paige's yoga lessons rather than actual fights in their own right. After a sparring session with her, Steele will become sore and sweaty but will gain a status effect called "Battle Ready" that sharply increases their physique and reflexes (and that lasts a good three days, too).
I would love to be a gladiator. Even as a Techie, I kinda want them to remove our space tech before fighting, maybe even kidnap us and force us to fight. Like, perhaps a slaver ship is here to prey on the weak and shoot us down thinking we're competition, and we crash-land on the surface.
Just spitballing.
And that's a great idea! Perhaps first-time battlers are even forced to fight
naked as some of test where if you prove that you're capable of coming out on top despite not having any armor, you can earn back said armor. Also, they just do it because they're sadists who find it funny (but hey, this is why they're widely known as conquerors and not comedians). The gladiators, themselves, tend to fall into any one of the following categories: prisoner of war, honorable tribute, or career fighter. As you might expect, prisoner of wars are enslaved aliens from conquered worlds who are forced to fight for their freedom and are the most vulnerable to exploitation out of the three major classes. An honorable tribute is a slave who volunteers to fight in another's place; they are less preyed upon than the prisoner of wars but lack the privileges that a career fighter would have (unless they prove to be surprisingly skillful). Career fighters are said to crave a lust to spill blood from the moment they are born. At the early age of 7, select young children start training in gladiator schools for the honor of one day making their great empire and the royal family proud when they provide "entertainment" in the arena. Training is rigorous and their instructors beat down the concepts of duty and discipline hard on them.
Failure is not an option. To a member of this proud warrior alien race, there can be nothing more humiliating than being defeated in combat. If someone were to suffer several consecutive losses in battle, their reputation would be besmirched and they would be branded as a pathetic weakling. Normally if a baby is born sickly or deformed or with any sort of anomaly, the poor little thing would be left abandoned in the wilderness and exposed to the elements. However, luck was on the alchemist prince's side for his mother — an exotic beauty from one of the conquered worlds who was as clever as she was a vision — was one of his father's most prized concubines and she managed to persuade the emperor not to dispose of their child. ('Twas a shame, though, that she died when their son was only a lad of barely 3 but sudden mysterious illnesses will do that to ya).
