Council of Suffering

The Council of Suffering is an extensive office of the Bureau of Heaven’s Department of Abstract Matters, which holds itself to be the ‘unified council of Divisions responsible for matters of pain and suffering in Heaven and Earth’, though most outside its ranks consider it to be simply another Division of the Bureau, one which suffers overwhelming delusions of grandeur… indeed, the title of ‘daimyo’, normally reserved for the head of a Division, is borne by no less than six gods within the Council.

The structure of the Council is, however, not mere accident nor ostentation. Suffering can be found across Creation and Yu Shan, and excels as motivator for mortals to offer up prayers to the gods, making many of the Council’s members potent divinities. During the Prehistoric Era and the First Age, they largely operated in their own Offices and Divisions, distributed across the Bureaus of Heaven, Nature, and Humanity, but the time of the Golden Age was one of significant difficulties, as some amongst the Solar Exalted sought to suppress suffering in all its forms and experienced increasing successes in doing so, in cooperation with gods of health and happiness. The Most High Sol Invictus dismissed the many individual petitions from the gods of pain that this was interfering with their purviews, and from this the Council took its original shape not as a bureaucratic office but as a lobbying group of pain gods who sought to sway the Incarnae into taking action.

That goal has certainly failed to bear fruit, but the powerful gods of the Council were able to exert their influence in other ways, influencing gods, Exalts and divine departments to expand the scope of suffering in Creation. The Usurpation was a time of widespread pain and suffering, though gods on the Council were intensely divided in support and opposition as the dominant pains of the First Age fell and those of the Age of Sorrows rose to prominence. The Great Contagion saw the Council reach its zenith and tumble downward in a brief span, as suffering spread to nearly every corner of Creation but then wiped out nearly all who were afflicted, before the Scarlet Empress drove it back and saw desperate mortals suddenly brimming with hope.

Today, the Council remains a potent force in the politics of Yu Shan, and looks upon the return of the Solar Exalted with mixed feelings… the gods remember their efforts to eliminate whole types of suffering during the Golden Age. And yet, the Realm of the Scarlet Empress and the Immaculate Order have also worked to reduce suffering in Creation, so some Council gods wonder if perhaps an opportunity has come to bring about its end...