Coronation time

After the death of a Tsolyani Kolumel (= Emperor), all his or her heirs who have not "renounced the Gold" are summoned to the city of Bey Sü to take place in a ceremony called the kolumejalim, subjecting them to "a roster of tests which cover every facet of character thought by the Tsolyani to be needful for a ruler: bravery, endurance, cunning, physical prowess, judgement, knowledge of history and the arts, and a dozen other fields."

Candidates can name champions to stand in for them in three of the trials, but must compete personally in the others. We are told that each event is carefully judged, and the strongest contenders are taken into the temple of Hnalla where the adepts of all the gods and the High Princeps of the Omnipotent Azure Legion make the final selection "according to ancient and secret ritual methods". The winner is taken to the palace at Avanthar and enters seclusion as the new Emperor. All the others are sacrificed at the temple of Karakan.

That bit about "ancient and secret" methods has the whiff of how the House Cup gets awarded at Hogwarts, where you might earn the top score throughout the year only to have the headmaster arbitrarily award enough points to make his favourite the winner. And I've never seen the kolumejalim handled well in any Tekumel game, including the ones I've run. It should be a secret ritual, impenetrable and inscrutable, not a big, brash, crowd-pleasing, last-man-standing arena fight like you'd get in a Netflix or Amazon TV show*.

Supporters of the losing princes have to accept the outcome, not least because their candidate will have been sent to the gods by the time they get to hear about it. That's how it should work in modern elections, mind you, (minus the human sacrifice at the end) but not everybody has it in them to be a good loser.

In one of my Tekumel campaigns I staged a kolumejalim and allowed a few rumours about how it went to reach the ears of the player-characters. The candidates were Prince Eselne, Princess Ma'in (pictured), Prince Mirusiya, Prince Rereshqala, and Prince Taksuru. 

In the test of bravery, they were given a shield and had to touch an archer who was shooting at them from ten metres away. Eselne walked straight up to the archer, fending off arrows as he went. Ma'in was hit in the leg and faltered. Mirusiya threw his shield, hitting the archer. Rereshqala ran forwards, took an injury to his arm, but still touched the archer. Taksuru closed in by walking rapidly around the archer in a spiral so that he couldn't get a shot off.

Ma'in lost that one, but it's not obvious who came out best. Eselne and Rereshqala showed the most obvious kind of bravery, but the other two were cleverer. It wasn't supposed to be a test of cunning, but the watching dignitaries want a smart Emperor, not a dummy, so that might sway them.

The test of endurance involved picking up a red-hot metal bar and plunging it into a tub of water ten metres away. Eselne showed some cunning this time; he threw the bar into the tub. Ma'in and Mirusiya both managed to carry it to the tub, showing their endurance for sure. Rereshqala appointed a champion for this contest, and the champion failed. Taksuru dragged the tub over to the bar, and only then picked it up and dropped it in.

I don't recall who won the kolumejalim in that campaign. In another campaign, Eselne won but Mirusiya escaped and began a civil war that split the player-characters and the empire. The argument about whether he was behaving honorably in doing so was a complex and interesting one, and took place in a spectacularly dramatic location. But I'll tell that story another time, hopefully before the next coronation in our world.

*Unfortunately in Professor Barker's ur-campaign the kolumejalim played out exactly like a crap TV show. Read about it here if you really must, but don't say I didn't warn you. Though we may never know Barker's true political opinions, there is absolutely no doubt that his instinct for storytelling was banal and pulpish. Better to imagine the Tekumel he described in his source materials rather than in his dreadful novels.