I hope everyone had a great Christmas. Now that it's midnight in the UK, it's time to announce the winner of the Christmas conspiracy theory competition. Also, happy New Year!

  First up, thanks to everyone who entered. I had great fun reading through them.

  Many of them were a variation on the Undying Queen being fake/a liche/Ester, some were worryingly detailed and worthy of a wall with lots of pictures and string stuck to it, all of them were entertaining.

  Now, the winner, the conspiracy theory that I found the most entertaining!

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  Winner:

  Master Tabasi is actually Ester's grandson who, with his time magic, got stranded in the past. He does not recognize Ester though. The Undying Queen has guided him there through the Wyrd to turn Ester into her suitable successor, because in the future, her old enemy who would always disappear returned as the shadowy force behind the subversive ideology that is the republic. As a side note, that also means that all known powers are actually led by liches, even if the Empire and Republic are seemingly human. In fact, that is only to create a better breeding ground for human cattle for soul farming. Which also means that the animosity between Empire and Republic is more akin to an argument between organic and free-range chicken farming. Anyway, all of the current affairs are planned and set Ester up for progression towards the aforementioned goal. She needs to slowly get to know the necromantic forces and magic, first hand. Because of its importance, a certain beloved author is part of the diplomatic mission as a direct line to the queen. I am still not sure about Lindholm being the equivalently groomed successor to that other woman necromancer I mentioned though, but the signs are there.

  YawonNoway

  I thought this was the perfect mix of completely insane, but with some elements that are just about plausible enough to draw in the nutters, with Ester being Master Tabasi's grandmother as the icing on the cake.

  @YawonNoway - if you DM me your email address, I can send you the Patreon gift link.

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  Unfortunately there can only be one winner, but I enjoyed everyone else's entries, so here they are:

  The ruling class of the empire (Or maybe just the Eternal Queen) are necromancers…

  Termi244

  I expect the immortal empress to be more akin to a golem or memory engram or some other such thing; perhaps even a full magical cyborg.

  Rompafrolic

  My conspiracy theory is that the Empire is run by a lich and the Republic is hoping to have Ester blow her up via this mechanism or at least have Ester recognize the truth when called to an audience and be turned to the Republic's side.

  Rilkefan

  The steam train isn't really running on steam, that's just a noisy distraction. In reality, it is using invisible and very quiet sails.

  Slightly_Morbid

  Sigrid actually likes and sees her younger self in Ester. This trip was supposed to be a dog and pony show of the "front lines" in an effort to recruit Ester as a Republic asset and this situation was unexpected. So, while Sigrid was tasked with keeping Ester safe, she'll use and abuse her to flush out any Liche agents in Fort Statvinger...mostly because Sigrid hates the undead, but also because she likes Ester and wants to see what she's capable of. Oh, and Sigrid knows what happened that night outside of Ester's room.

  Sigrid also thinks Bjarne Midthun is a pompous blowhard that spews egalitarian propaganda for a Republic paycheck.

  X4non

  Ester is actually the granddaughter of her Eternal Majesty. Her gramgram (Eternal Majesty's preference from her grandkids) ordered her to be raised by commoners to see if the environment would change the strength of a person's magic. Ester doesn't realize that she's actually 13th in line for the throne...not that that matters...see definition of eternal.

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

  X4non

  The empress has been dead for a long ong time and the high nobility are conceiling the fact to rule unoppsoed (and also as mutually assured destruction, since anyone can revela the big secret)

  Wearing black

  Ever since the scene with Duke Marcni's children I've wondered if something similar could have happened to Ester: sterilized, mindwiped, and given to commoners to raise after a member of her noble family was caught practicing necromancy when she was a young child.

  Esplanade

  No one actually likes Bones in the Dark. About 90% of the comments are TF Warden using sock puppets to pretend he has fans.

  TF Warden

  My conspiracy theory is that the eternal queen is dead. She died long ago and the inner circle of the imperial power structure are just pretending she lives in order to maintain a symbol of power and unity.

  Plaintext

  Ester is actually the undying Empress just that she doesn't know it, she'll end up going through a time loop, because the paste that makes people explode actually sends them back in time.

  MithralDragon

  My conspiracy theory is that the necromancy based poison was manufactured and deployed against certain Republican targets by an Empire sponsored clandestine organization named Rose'add.

  It's a false flag operation- obviously the necromancy based poison must be coming from the evil liches over there, right? Wake up, sheeple! Rose'add's general goals here are to remove individuals that strengthen the Republic disproportionately, wield great influence, who's demise would increase economic opportunities for Empire based entities, or are somewhat randomly chosen to cause unrest and desperation within the Republic. All of which would force the Republic to treat with the Empire more favorably and offer better terms out of desperation.

  If it were the liches that had this substance and the power to create it, why haven't they deployed it more broadly against the Republic and its armies? Or as a general chemical weapon? They have every incentive to follow the Geneva Checklist after all.

  Lord InsidiousTroll

  The liche kings are real but they're actually pretty chill now. They weren't before, but they've mellowed out. There is no war in the Republic. It's all a propaganda effort by Bjarne Midthun to try and make the Republic look better.

  The Empire doesn't know this, though, and are falling for the propaganda. 'To what end? ' you might ask. The Republic knows it can't beat the Empire in a straight war, but they still want to spread their freedom all over. Getting the Empire to cooperate over the 'war with the liche kings' is only step one in the Republic's plan to change the Empire from within.

  Jan Ong

  Bjarne Midthun is orginally someone from either a high standing himself or a family who was ‘disgraced’ in the enpire and so went to the republic where he now writes (or has written about how the republic is superior in both subtle and not-so-subtle ways)

  Ebbesen

  The Undying Queen doesn’t exist.

  Gwenya

  Sir Vitaly is actually a double agent, he's a republican pretending to be an inquisitor pretending to be a knight! He sent Ester to the republic because he knew the truth of the republic's superiority would steadily become apparent to a bright commoner and he could get her to flip sides.

  ArtificerProdigy

  I think the reason the Republic isn't utterly crushing the liches is because they're too busy stabbing each other in the back in order to gain premiership of the central committee.

  Rompafrolic

  The eternal empress is a high grade lich, and banned necromancy so nobody would be able to connect the dots. Bonus points if she always interacts via constructs or illusions. Could even be a dude.

  EHKOWarrior

  There's actually no such thing as necromancy: a powerful cabal of illusionists and mind mages has tricked everyone into believing in the undead and lichdom as a way of diverting people from the path to true immortality.

  jwilliamson

  The Empress isn't a horrible undead abomination feeding on the life of her subjects bent on eventually taking over the world.

  Seonor

  The Empress isn't a lich because the republic is relatively chill with her. She's an elf or some other long lived non human. Or the eternal empress is a front for a cabal of multiple long lived mages.

  ham

  Sigrid is actually the Undying Queen. She was bored of being cooped up in the Imperial Palace and decided to sneak out and spank some undead arse. She scoffs at being called "undying" because she's simply a long-lived powerful magic user. Sir Vitality and the Inquisition are actively wandering around all over the Empire right now because they are trying to find her before there is an incident. Ester was an early suspect.

  inkanddagger

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