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In my current campaign I have a player who is playing an oracle with the possessed curse and Intrigue mystery, the idea being that the character is possessed by a spirit which is helping him navigate Taldan politics by whispering secrets and rumors in his ear. The PC is also a Rakshasa-Spawn tiefling, so I decided to make him the secret son of
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So my suggestion would be pick a time and place in Taldor that you like and make up an emperor. You could really have fun with it and that this Grand Prince was real in existed but maybe is purged from history. You know that first emperor lived an awfully long time for a human did he really live that long?
By making your own guy up you can add another level of surprise. And maybe somewhere you can have clues in the game. If you haven't started you might be able to put those clues or the first of them under the Senate. Maybe even you can make up a new relic or change the history of one of the existing relics to go with this person and be exactly the sort of relic and Oracle would want.
I really love your creativity on this.
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The problem is that I'm struggling to find Taldan emperors that are not relevant to the AP that would be a good choice for a vengeful spirit. Does anyone here have a good idea of who the spirit could be?
This is a cool idea.
If you don't want to go the route of simply inventing your own Grand Prince (although I think that's a fine idea, too, and there's plenty of blank canvas in the sweep of Taldan history to work with -- I invented my own Grand Princes for the Shining Crusade era), there are a couple of figures from extant Pathfinder lore who might work.
Micheaux the Magnificent is the emperor who is supposed to have fathered the first Stavian. He makes no direct appearance in the AP but is definitely relevant to certain events and figures in it. His reign went from 4499 AR to 4526 AR.
Micheaux created a timebomb of a situation in so doing. The knowledge of his treachery was preserved in the necropolis of House Adella known as the Tomb of the Iron Medusa: the module actually revolved around players being hired to retrieve that information for a Qadiran agent. That information pops up in a later book of War for the Crown to significantly complicate the throne struggle (supposedly released by bitter followers of Maxillar Pythareus who are determined for nobody to have the prize if their leader could not, though I prefer to attribute the act to some other faction).
The spirit of Micheaux would still have a deep antipathy for House Adella, one of whose members is now a vampire in service of the Immaculate Circle. He would be dedicated to seeing a Stavian sit the throne but would certainly have no time for the supernatural puppet that is Prince Carrius doing so. So, while a ruthless and cruel soul, he would still have motivation to be a PC ally.
Beldam II was Micheaux's predecessor and adoptive father. The lore originally proposed him as the figure who expunged House Adella and he is in a way a direct Stavian ancestor, so if you chose not to use Micheaux's lore, this earlier Grand Prince would still have some of the same motives.
Uirtamon II reigned sometime in the 28th century AR and has a connection to the Mantle of Kings, which is also relevant to the AP. He is the emperor who hid it, some suspected because he was a disguised imposter. A spirit version of him might repent of the instability that act has now made possible and might even remember the original hiding place. He would also possibly have been quite familiar with intrigue and backstabbing, both literal and figurative, during his mortal life.
Goscelyn II is the most ancient potential figure with a WFTC connection, this one more distant. He reigned from 1592 to 1622 AR and is credited with founding the Lion Blades. Since this organization is now playing a role in current events, perhaps he has some loyalty to it. That connection can become more important if you choose to give some play to Dominicus Rell, who isn't actually mentioned in the AP but is prominent in other Taldor-related lore and one of the Lion Blades masters at the time of WFTC.
A figure like Rell, who was canonically a close advisor of Stavian III, might either have warned the Lion Blades about the Exaltation Massacre or conspired to make it happen; if the latter, it would align him with the Immaculate Circle and constitute the grossest betrayal of the Blades' mission perhaps ever to occur. That's something that could motivate vengeance from the spirit of the Blades' founder.
(Rell also potentially offers an opportunity to spice up the ranks of the Immaculate Circle baddies a little bit, if that's something you're in the market for.)
At any rate, most of these figures will be obscure enough to most players that you can probably use them without the risk of spoiling anything. Using Micheaux might be especially useful if you can get your hands on a copy of Tomb of the Iron Medusa, because he actually appears in a flashback in the module which you could use to help build a sense of his character and mannerisms.
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Great options CJ
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Thank you both for the ideas, I ended up picking Micheaux because I think he's exactly the sort of emperor who would want to meddle in politics form beyond the grave. So far I've had the spirit help the oracle win a debate using obscure legal knowledge and had him forewarn about the cloaked figures in the senate. I was hoping to use Senator Nicodemus and her occult knowledge to drop a couple hints but the players didn't seem to interested in talking to her.
I really like the idea of creating a new relic for the PC but I'll probably wait to see what sort of magic items the oracle is drawn to before designing it.
Thank you so much for all the advice!