Aligept

Aligept is a Lesser Elemental Dragon of Earth, one of the 125 Celestial Censors of Yu Shan serving within the Division of Divine Order in the Bureau of Heaven. In the corrupt world of Heavenly politics, Aligept is particularly adept, having accumulated significant wealth and blackmail in order to secure his own position.

Aligept has long operated a scheme by which he dispatches his Lion Dog constables to various townships in Creation to investigate the local gods,so he might audit them and have them removed, placing one of his constables in place as a ‘temporary’ Custodial Receiver overseeing the city until the supposed corruption is resolved, with Aligept pocketing a share of the worship and treasure gained by his newly-elevated subordinate. At first this required the Lion Dogs to frame the local gods for crimes they had not committed, until Wun Ja, head of the Bureau of Humanity, approached him with an alternative to her usual futile calls for an audit of the Lion Dog who had ousted one of the City Fathers in her Bureau. Perhaps, the Director of Humanity suggested, she might report directly to Aligept on gods who were ruling cities in violation of Celestial Law, or who her Bureau suspected to be falling to corruption (from other Bureaus), so he might enact his practiced and perfected methods to punish their crimes. It was lost to neither that the gods so-named were all those outside the Bureau of Humanity, or within it but suspected of wavering loyalties. Today, the end result of this is that one of Heaven’s most corrupt censors, were his own actions audited, would be found justified and the guilt of his victims confirmed, a fact which amuses the Dragon to no end.

In recent decades, Aligept’s scheming has begun to reach new heights. Encouraged by their existing clandestine relationship, Wun Ja had begun to suggest to the Censor that the Ministry of Celestial Censors might find a better home in the Bureau of Humanity, free of the control of Ryzala and the Division of Divine Order. Aligept has reason to encourage his peers to consider such a move, for it would assure his ability to oust Ideal Flame and ascend to the post of High Minister of Justice, a job Wun Ja has promised him if the defection is carried out. While the move of the Censors to Humanity would indeed strengthen that Bureau and lay low their rival the Bureau of Heaven, Wun Ja may receive more than she bargains for with the transition: already, Aligept’s pen works upon drafts of a brief positing that, given the danger of corruption inherent to close connection between gods and humans, the Bureau of Humanity’s head surely must also be equipped to regulate such issues, in the way only a Celestial Censor can…