Diamant Coppercoin

The Arena City of Velyzar is famous for being a place where the downtrodden can make a name for themselves. Many a lowly gladiator has clawed their way up from the most underground fighting pit to the heady heights of the Grand Arena. But Velyzar’s most famous rags to riches tale does not concern a scrappy pit fighter. It involves an Ogryn orphan who came to the desert city with nothing but a single copper coin in his palm, and became the richest individual in Pehas. This Ogryn is Diamant Coppercoin: the ‘merchant-mogul’ of Velyzar. He often strides among Velyzar’s hoi polloi, meeting and greeting, adorned with the various honors and tokens of gratitude the city’s guilds and foreign dignitaries have bestowed upon him. On these strolls, he often tosses out gold coins from the giant chest he straps to his back to the roars of adulation from ‘his’ fawning public. If Velyzar needs repairs to its central market, Diamant gladly foots the bill. Whenever disaster has laid the city’s structures low, builders from Diamant’s Corporation are the first on the scene to repair – free of charge. His investments, particularly to elevate Ogryn out of poverty, have paid great dividends, creating a thriving class of Ogryn merchants, doctors, blacksmiths, and performers. All in Velyzar owe a great debt to their beneficent sponsor. Underneath this golden veneer however, hides Diamant’s true motive. From his gleaming pleasure palace, he effectively rules over Velyzar, puppeteering the city’s council of five guild leaders with his pudgy fingers. While he remains a private citizen, Diamant acts as Velyzar’s unappointed sovereign, with his will being done via his vast Corporation. The Corporation is a huge crime syndicate that has its hands in every level of Velyzari society. Members sit in the highest positions of the Arena Guild, rigging matches while Corporation bookmakers fix favorable odds. Weapons, narcotics, and slaves are smuggled in and out of Velyzar’s docks under the eyes of Merchant Guild foremen on the Corporation’s payroll. New buildings are only constructed if they are supervised by Corporation overseers or built atop land within Diamant’s vast holdings. It is through this pincer hold of both polite and impolite society — as a generous public financier and grim private tyrant — that Diamant keeps his gilded grip upon Velyzar. He leaves the majority of the Corporation’s day-to-day running to his underbosses, only stepping in to officiate on matters of treachery. He deals with these cases swiftly — fatal bludgeoning with his bejeweled, bladed rod of office is his preferred method. Most in Velyzar know the truth of Diamant’s character but look the other way. None are blind to the war raging in Anhelt and the stability and strength Diamant has given the city is preferable to anarchy. For all the blood the Corporation has spilled, it has not been that of the working people, who remain Diamant’s strongest supporters thanks to his programs of slum clearance and urban renewal. Even if a group were to rise to challenge Diamant, they would be buried under the foundations of a new Corporation tollhouse before they could organize. It is also common knowledge that the tale of Diamant’s origin is a fabrication – one maintained by his legion of pamphleteers and journalists. The truth remains a well-kept secret. Diamant is no gutter urchin; he was born to a line of wealthy Ogryn traders who made their fortune selling secrets and arms to the Telerian League during the Gaellen War. Diamant has taken great pains to scrub any mention of this from the historical record, replacing it with the fanciful tale of building his empire on the back of a single copper coin. His eponymous coin is indeed real, but it has a blood-soaked origin — it is all that remains of the last payment Diamant’s ancestors received for selling the Telerian League weapons; weapons that helped set the City of Dreams ablaze. With his Corporation in firm control of Velyzar, Diamant’s sights have turned outward, with lreth being his current focus. He longs to bring the dread city under his control, as its former leader, Bad-el-Kazar, reneged on a major deal and rumors reached him of extensive Ogryn exploitation and experimentation within the foul former colony. Diamant wants nothing more than to see lreth remade in his image, decorated with the heads of the lunatic arcanists who have tortured his kind and betrayed his trust. He has found fast friends in the massing army of a certain Gharol Bloodmaul, who also have their sights set on toppling lreth’s overlords. Diamant sees great potential in the Orc warlord — so much so that he has commissioned Corporation smugglers to run weapons, armor, and food to Gharol’s ramshackle host. With this careful investment, Diamant sees a bright future ahead — one where he rules all of southern Peltas.