The Sapphir'd King

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"I have ordered the telescope directed entirely at the azure. We feel the full force of its glare. I see shades, spirits, phantasms. Sometimes, I think I am being toyed with. Just the other night, I awoke to a beam of blue starlight, right over the scope. I crept out there, and stood, alone, on the edge of night. I felt judgement."

The Sapphir'd King, also known as the Azure and the Westernmost King, is the Judgement of the Blue Kingdom, the realm of the dead.

He Emanates From its Heart

"The Sapphir'd King suffuses the entirety of the Blue Kingdom, but he emanates from its heart."

The Sapphir'd King is the king of the dead in the High Wilderness, and almost all souls that die there end up in his realm. Despite his firm grip on his kingdom, he is notoriously elusive as a Judgement. Only those who have passed Death's Door can see him in his full, terrifying glory. This may cause issues with timekeeping, as a "day" in the Blue Kingdom is rather vaguely defined. To make up for this limitation, the Blue Kingdom uses a massive, stationary sundial called Horologion to keep track of things.

The Sapphir'd King is also responsible for the shutdown of the Forge of Souls, due an incident that remains unspecified. The King is quite fond of using Logoi as servants, and he controls the numerous yoked spirits that serve him.

Crimes Soaked in Blue

"You find him there. He turns his attention to you for a moment. This is enough to immediately and utterly annihilate your officers and crew. Your engine, too, is unmade. You hold yourself together for only a moment longer. Long enough to perceive a blazing, roaring, singing, exhilarating, crushing fraction of him. He is mind. He is light."

The Sapphir'd King is implied to be a member of the Amaranthine Conjunction of stars, which believes in the philosophy of culmination and ending. The King practically designed his realm to be a soul-feeding machine, and his bureaucracies decide which souls are good to eat and which souls aren't. Despite Death's Door's appearance as the gateway to salvation, it is nothing more than the mouth of a hungry star. The Sapphir'd King is also seeking out the Repentant Devil for his skills in soul-refinement, much to the devil's annoyance.

His dominion over the dead and belief in the completion of all things led him and his daughter to murder the King of Hours, who was using his jurisdiction over time to prevent his and his subjects' deaths. He is also a nemesis of the Halved, and any servants of the Azure that reveal themselves in Eleutheria are promptly locked in Piranesi.

The Sapphir'd King is quite fond of using the White Well to imprison his enemies. Unlike the other wells, the White Well isn't just reserved for the most powerful of beings; the Sapphir'd King will imprison anyone he perceives to be a threat. This is often a punishment reserved for the Failed Dead, or those who once sought out immortality during their lives. It's arguably the most densely packed out of the four wells, though the Azure's abuse of the White Well may come back to bite him one day...

The Arbiter of Fates

"She, at the centre, a nucleus of violent light. The daughter of a star. She is a pillar of blazing time and rushing song. A winged and skeletal sun. A seven-limbed, seven-headed colossus of sapphire and silk, whose words dance like fireflies on the burning wind. "Welcome," she says, her voice a howl and an orchestra and a shivering crystalline song."

The Azure's daughter is known as the Arbiter of Fates, and she resides within a palace of her own called the Shadow of the Sun. Audience with the Arbiter is only granted to those who pledge their service to the Blue Kingdom, and even then, those of mere flesh and blood must undergo a procedure to properly prepare themselves for her radiance. The Arbiter is her father's second-in-command, and she is the only being capable of granting Indulgences, which can override all of the Kingdom's bureaucracies with a single word. Despite her power, however, she cannot leave the Blue Kingdom.