Emperor-General Ollilontan

Emperor-General Machellen Ollilontan (c.3 BME-58 ME) was an author, artist, and the last Emperor-General of the Empire of Dor-en-Sann. He rallied the remaining forces of the empire to briefly rout the Mother Army, after the collapse of the last imperial dynasty. His leadership was the final flowering of EnSanni arts and culture, which ended with his death.

Throughout his life Ollilontan was a polymath and artist, a fellow of the Imperial Academy of Arts. In his youth he wrote several collections of short stories as well as essays on life and morality which were a serious challenge to imperial authorities. He is most remembered for his operas, most famously his tragedy The Woman of Despair, and Drinking at the Apocalypse, a theatrical hit containing songs which inspired an upwelling of national pride. He was briefly imprisoned after publication of his essay Influence without Conscience. A crowd burst into the imperial stockade and liberated him, naming him emperor in a relatively bloodless coup.

Ollilontan was from a bourgeois family living in Gaalkedch, who traced their ancestry back to the Gobalay warriors who ruled in the early days if the empire. In subsequent centuries they had sunk to genteel obscurity, distinguished merely as bureaucrats and functionaries in the Imperial court.

Ollilontan was a passionate and intensely driven man, hugely productive with a prestigious ability to organise and drive creative and administrative projects. He was also subject to prolonged bouts of depression and despair which dogged his career, particularly after setbacks or the conclusion of endeavours.

He married fairly late in life to the daughter of his housekeeper, who all said was a pretty, practical but quiet girl who stayed firmly “backstage”, even on his rise to the status of Emperor-General.

Creatively he is most remembered for his operas, but Ollilontan was primarily a writer and theatrical producer. After years of writing detailed philosophical treatises and empassioned but ignored articles on politics, he concluded that the only way to get his message across was through a medium that people flocked to: popular musical theatre.

He did not directly compose any of the music himself, instead commissioning composers around him to create music under his approval and guidance, which he supervised in orchestrating into a single whole. Ollilontan exclusively wrote the story and acted as director and producer.

Boys and Assassins was his first successful work, a coming-of-age story of a young man who joins the imperial army yet questions the ethics of his actions. It was a moderate success, most innovative because it contained many comic elements as well as music, unusual in the theatre of the era.

Of his four known operas only fragments survived the burning of his works by Therist forces. Sections of The Woman of Despair survive, as well as several songs from Drinking at the Apocalypse, which became popular folk tunes still sung in the region today. A copy of his most controversial work, The Faithless Vulture, a blasphemous and thinly veiled retelling of the life of the Prophet Therion, is claimed to have been discovered in Harthera, though its authenticity has not been verified.

• Boys and Assassins 38 ME
• The Woman of Despair 39 ME
• Drinking at the Apocalypse 42 ME
• The Faithless Vulture 50 ME

Ollilontan died in 58 ME after months of illness. According to official Ororran history he drank himself to death following the defeat of Ensanni forces at the Battle of Meldaoun, though this may be an attempt to discredit the last ruler of the old empire.

He was buried in a hastily constructed mausoleum within the confines of the Temple of the Final Mother, with mourners sitting in vigil for many weeks following his death. The temple was destroyed during the razing of the city eight months later, his remains probably buried in the ruins.

In later years many people claimed to possess the bones or skull of Ollilontan, passed secretively amongst imperial loyalists. Many ended up becoming holy relics of the Heterodox Church in Hesjbagaaia, where he is considered a saint.

The Hartheran wit Arnut Gethifer observed in the 9th century: “if all the bones of Ollilontan were assembled together, twould make a whale big enough to swallow the world”.