Chohwelk VII

"I can see him in the Force, and there is no flame here now. He is a candle burned down through the wax. Weak, guttering embers clinging to the last cinders of their wick.  When the flame has died so fully, only one thing can be done.""

- Rin Sakaros, just before Chohwelk VII's death

Chohwelk VII (//) (fully "Chohwelk VII, Lawgiver, Descendant of the Gods Beyond Galaxies, Fountain of Faith, the Blessed Son of Chohwelk VI") was a male Exoi who was the last Exoi God-King from Toriafas.

For over a century before his birth, the God-Kings had suffered a variety of physical and mental defects due to excessive inbreeding among the royalty and nobility, and ultimately within the royal family itself. Chohwelk VII's father, Chohwelk VI, had been barely functional, using a to move and requiring regular assistance bathing and cleaning himself. The Acolytes of the God-King, by now performing all the God-King's duties for the Exoi Kritocracy, attempted to get Chohwelk VI to mate successfully with everyone from noble women to common prostitutes to his own aunt. Several of the children he sired died in utero, and these were vastly outnumbered by failed attempts at procreating at all.

Chohwelk VII was finally born of Chohwelk VI and his mentally incompetent second cousin. Chohwelk VII was so profoundly retarded, physically and mentally, that he could not speak or care for himself at all. The desperate Acolytes attempted to perpetuate the line, but with the death of Chohwelk VI and his cousin consort, Chohwelk VII was left as the last of the royal line. Worse, he was completely impotent, having no response to the endless parade of potential mates the Acolytes brought in.

The Acolytes continued to run the government and scramble for ways to ensure the lineage of the God-Kings would not die out, all the while putting forth a public ruse that the God-Kings for several generations had gone into religious seclusion, and that the Governing Judges and others were not pure enough to look on the God-Kings' forms. Many government officials suspected something was amiss, but no one realized the full extent of the deception until 155 ABY.

Late in that year, Rin Sakaros brought the Golden Empire to Toriafas. When the Governing Judges admitted they could not submit to her on their own authority, she went to the Temple of Incarnate Glory to see Chohwelk VII, pushing past the protesting Acolytes. She discovered the mindless God-King, who soiled himself in view of Rin's party and the horrified Governing Judges. Realizing Chohwelk was little more than an empty shell, his life preserved only by the mechanical apparatuses the Acolytes had installed, and that his continued existence stood in the way of the Empire's acquisition of the Kritocracy worlds, Rin killed him with a touch of the Force.

Though there was some disagreement initially, when the Governing Judges elected to dissolve the Kritocracy and give its worlds to the Golden Empire, they blamed Chohwelk's death on the Acolytes on the theory that he was effectively dead to begin with.

Behind the scenes
VII was chosen as Chohwelk's number as a twisted sort of homage to Queen of ; though she was substantially more functional than Chohwelk, Cleopatra had an almost equally.

Appearances

 * The Final Judgment