The Emperor

I'm going to be posting daily prompts to inspire writing, art or journaling. Use these as you would like to help keep your creative practices moving.

Key words/ideas:

• a calm and composed leader

• order vs control

• power vs service

Some thoughts that occur to me:

• A character who leads and has to address the challenges it brings. When does strong leadership become a tyranny? When does serving the needs of the many become the repression of the few?

• The Emperor may be holding a book of knowledge. What secrets does he know that make him so calm and determined? What are the consequences of that knowledge?

• A leader is facing the end of the world. They cannot prevent it. What do they do?

• Someone comes to power unexpectedly and attempts to keep to their oath in the face of those who would prefer it otherwise. The oath could be good or bad.

Note that cards are drawn at random and may be drawn more than once. In that case I will repost with an additional idea. I am going to cap the number of repeats at 3 until I’ve been through the whole deck, but other than this I let the luck of the draw decide. Coming up with more ideas for the same card will force me to be more imaginative and its something I strongly recommend.