The God Emperor
The God Emperor is head of the Imperial Power, and the Ruling Lord of the House of the Masks
The Apotheosis
The Apotheosis is a blood ritual, normally carried out at the time of the Rebirth and in the Umbilicus, overlooking the Plain of Thrones, when the Candidate—elected by the Chosen—is transformed into the God Emperor, the incarnation on Earth of the Twin Gods, when his blood is turned to ichor and They become fully divine
Ichor
Ichor is the fiery substance that runs as blood in the veins of the Gods. The Chosen believe that through the ritual of an Apotheosis, the blood of a God Emperor is transmuted into ichor, the purity of which They pass on to their offspring. The Chosen minutely calculate and tabulate how much ichor burns in their blood because this is the basis on which they determine status
The Rebirth
The Rebirth is a ritual carried out every year in the Plain of Thrones before the assembled tributaries off all the peoples subject to the Chosen. This is when the flesh-tithe is brought to Osrakum. The Chosen, arrayed on the thrones of the Umbilicus, witness the renewal of the God Emperor, a repurifying of his blood to purest ichor, and with Their renewal, the Commonwealth is renewed. The Apotheosis is a special version of the …
The Three Powers
Power among the Chosen is divided among the Three Powers: the God Emperor (and the House of the Masks) the Great and the Wise. The balance between the Powers is maintained through a system of checks and balances called the Great Balance
The House of the Masks
The House of the Masks is the House of the Chosen that transcends all the rest because it is from within it that a Candidate is elected to become God Emperor. As a consequence, the members of the House of the Masks have the purest blood of all the Chosen. It is the House of the Masks that constitutes the Imperial Power, one of the Three Powers. The Great Balance forbids that anyone of the …
The Imperial Power
The Imperial Power, one of the Three Powers, is that exerted by a God Emperor, though it is his House, the House of the Masks, to which, in a more general sense, that power belongs
God Emperor taint scar
A child fathered by a God Emperor has its mother’s taint placed on the right and the left is left unscarred to indicate the untainted blood of the father. This reversal is a result of the belief that a God Emperor is possessed of a sinistral nature associated with the darker aspects of the Twin Gods.