log

Djinn Hashim of the Kaldun Ma­jid Richard Anaya richard.anaya@g­mail.­com 281 785 3434

Desert Ranger, Cousin of Tariq

Kaldun Majid:

This mil­i­taris­tic clan has been heav­i­ly in­flu­enced by Fist. Many of their mem­bers have moved to Qa­trun cities. Their war­riors serve as scouts and mer­cha­nar amoung the armies of Fist. They live by hunt­ing, herd­ing, and raid­ing oth­er clan­s.

Their trib­al garb in­cludes a red tur­ban with black trim.

Pregame:

Trav­eled with cousin west through the Ma’Basht mtn pass to the trade city of Kah­ta(­many Babrem, Hu­mans of the Old King­dom, oth­er peo­ples. It was once a province/­colony of the Old King­dom). From there got pas­sage with a “fleet” of three Dar­sian trade ships go­ing south along the coast to Pa­trae and Beroea(both Pelosian Em­pire con­trolled).

Along the way one of the ships was lost to Ut­bah(or­c) pi­rate raider­s. Your and your cous­in’s bows great­ly aid­ed the es­cape of the oth­er two ves­sel­s. In thanks cap­tain, Ti­ta Vopis­ca, of your ship, the “Laugh­ing Siren”, said that to find the beasts you hunt as well as ad­ven­ture and fame you must “get to the fron­tier”. These days Scu­pi province(a colony of Pe­ols Mi­nor) is the place to go. On­ly trad­ing North-­South be­tween Dar­sis and Beroea she could­n’t take you there. In­stead she helped you find a ship in Beroea go­ing that way(which is un­com­mon) and con­vince the Pelosian cap­tain/crew that there are ad­van­tages to hav­ing bar­bar­ians from the Dune Seas on board.

Killing time wait­ing for the ship to be load­ed you run in­to a Babrem from the Thukiri tribe(­guardians of the oa­sis­es across the Dune Seas). Stunned and hap­py to find some­one from “home” you tell him of your trip and plans to con­tin­ue to­wards Scu­pi. He asks to to come along and it would be an in­sult to refuse. He spends much time med­i­tat­ing or pray­ing and in­ter­acts rarely with any­one.

The trip was un­event­ful. Af­ter ar­riv­ing you wast­ed no time leav­ing the claus­tro­pho­bic caves of Scu­pi. Tar­ry­ing on­ly long enough to buy camel­s, sup­plies and find a car­a­van head­ing east to Sil­ver­town. Around cook­ing fires the first cou­ple days you heard old min­er’s tales of a ter­ri­ble beast that lives in stone and eats met­als and gem­s. Al­so de­scrip­tions of crea­tures nev­er hunt­ed or even heard of in the Dune Seas; Ash­wor­m, Gi­ant Desert Tor­tois­es, and the fa­bled Sphinx. The last caused ridicule of the the Ka’im who men­tioned it as the oth­ers know it’s noth­ing but a myth used to scare chil­dren in­to be­hav­ing.

1st session “Deadly Desert part1”

The car­a­van is es­cort­ed by nine Pelosian sol­diers on hors­es who are dressed in black with sandy yel­low cloaks and black and yel­low crest­ed hel­met­s. You are more com­fort­able around the Ka’im(orc­s) la­bor­ers than the elit­ist and sneer­ing Pelosian­s. Still you and your cousin keep most­ly to your­selves.

Trav­el is fast at first along a road of stone the likes of which you have nev­er seen. Ear­ly the 4th night you pass a large crew of Pelosian and Ka’im build­ing the road. Be­yond this the bare­ly vis­i­ble track is rough and filled with stones. The car­a­van’s speed is cut in half. Late on the 7th night the car­a­van is am­bushed by ???

You see the at­tack­ers briefly, twice. You don’t think they were the same in­di­vid­u­al and guess there were at least two at­tack­er­s. The lead­er? of the Pelosian’s tells you to flee when you stum­ble on him and oth­er sol­dier fight­ing one of the gi­ants. The at­tack­ers are at least twelve foot tal­l, wield­ing gi­ant Khopesh’s. Very tal­l(4-5ft), curv­ing for­ward met­al helm­s. Sleeve­less shirt­s, met­al arm­band­s, short cloth wrap/skirt with met­al or leather “loin cloth”. Ob­vi­ous­ly gi­ants you did not rec­og­nize there type. Their dress and weons was clos­est but not the same as that of Sunesh traders you have seen.

You are tracked and at­tacked by “sand hunter­s”, some sort of pack car­ni­vore. Vi­cious on the at­tack but eas­i­ly killed or driv­en away.

2nd session “Deadly Desert part2”

You stum­ble on a “forest” of limb­less, leaf­less, trees made of stone. Many of which are top­pled and bro­ken. You did­n’t have time to fig­ure out if they had been carved or were the re­sult of some sor­cery be­fore be­ing am­bushed by hye­na men.

Ione has been killed or less like­ly es­caped. The rest of you are trussed up on poles and car­ried north. On the first day Ian dies of his wounds and is dumped by the hye­na men. Af­ter two more days the hye­na men are them­selves am­bushed by medi­um height hu­manoid­s, cov­ered from head to toe in bil­low­ing lay­ers of tan, brown, and sand col­ored sheet­s. On­ly the thinest sliv­er across the eyes was bare. In the dis­tance and dark­ness you could­n’t make out skin, eye col­or, or even the shape/p­res­ence of eye­s.

They moved in burst­s, rush­ing away and around the charg­ing hye­na men. You no­ticed them us­ing thrown weons of some sort but nev­er a melee weon. Find­ing on­ly hye­na blood and bod­ies you as­sume they took no ca­su­al­ties or in­juries. No more than a hand­ful of these hu­manoids slaugh­tered al­most 20 hye­na men!

Some bod­ies of hye­na men were head­less their necks fused and sealed but not burn­t, some had flat, sharp, point­ed discs of flint stuck in them, oth­ers had no wounds that you no­ticed while search­ing.

That night you have a bizarre dream. Ian, Ione and the rest of you are in some sort of oa­sis. The ground is cov­ered with green grass and sur­round­ed by tall leafy wood­s. The oa­sis was crawl­ing with Pelosian­s, fly­ing, ap­pear­ing out of nowhere, and per­form­ing oth­er foul ar­cane act­s(­Fist is slight­ly against ar­cane mag­ic). Stranger still were the many mag­i­cal beasts and con­structs fly­ing, crawl­ing, rolling and walk­ing ev­ery­where.

In­ex­plic­i­ty you can now read the words carved in­to the pil­lars of this build­ing. Al­though lit­tle of it is more than non­sense. Af­ter solv­ing the rid­dles a hu­man(a Dar­sian?) dressed in un­usu­al green cloths (like noth­ing you have heard of, pants, shirt, many pock­et­s) ap­pears, looks at each of you and then says “Don’t open the Flakarg, argh! The seal, don’t open the seal.” Then looks over his shoul­der and dis­ap­pears.

You awake to find your­self sur­round­ed by Pelosian sol­diers dressed like the car­a­van guard­s. They de­mand your sur­ren­der. The man­a­cles the clamp on your wrists are en­chant­ed to pre­vent you from talk­ing or see­ing, but you can hear. Trans­port­ed on horse back for two and half days to some camp or town. Af­ter spend­ing the night the next day you trav­el by wag­on to what sounds like a large town.

Through sev­er­al walls you can hear the faint roar of a sand­storm rag­ing out­side. Its fine grit pen­e­trat­ing this far and clog­ging your noses. With­out warn­ing your vi­sion is re­stored. Seat­ed on the floor in a rough semi­cir­cle are the com­pan­ions you have strug­gled to sur­vive the desert with. Like your­self they are re­strained with man­a­cles. But, al­so like your­self, they ap­pear to be in bet­ter health than at any time since this or­deal be­gan.

Djinn and Taqir still dressed in robes and tur­ban­s, sit stiff and up­right. De­fi­ant looks on their dark faces. Qazir sits eyes closed med­i­tat­ing. Still you sense he’s aware of ev­ery­thing around him. Ian bereft of the gold­en breast­plate he briefly but proud­ly wore re­clines ex­pres­sion­less and calm. Qui­et­ly await­ing his fate or per­haps his mo­ment of es­cape. Dyrk­ius an­gri­ly shouts what no one can hear. He slow­ly ceas­es stamp­ing his foot af­ter gaz­ing across at Ione. You are all some­what stunned at see­ing how ra­di­ant Ione is af­ter be­ing re­freshed, rest­ed, and not en­cased in desert gar­b. The be­jew­eled veil of sheer red silk she wears en­hances her con­sid­er­able nat­u­ral beau­ty.

One of four sol­diers sneezes jostling the black and yel­low bris­tles of her crest. She holds a well worn broadsword drawn at her side. As does the sol­dier op­po­site her. The two far­ther away have load­ed cross­bows held with the loose­ness of long fa­mil­iar­i­ty.

From sev­er­al square holes in the ceil­ing light pours in­to this room. Cre­at­ing beams in the dusty air. Pil­lars of light that il­lu­mi­nate an or­nate wood­en desk. Up­on which sev­er­al desk type things are pre­cise­ly ar­ranged. The front face of it’s rich red­dish wood is carved with an ea­gle tri­umphant­ly grasp­ing a de­feat­ed drag­on in its talon­s. You know this to be the Seal of The Re­pub­lic of Pe­los.

The four Pelosians raise their weapons ver­ti­cal­ly in front of their faces salut­ing a fifth who con­fi­dent­ly strides through an arch­way and up to an ar­mor rack against the wall near the desk. Two at­ten­dants dust off her boot­s, un­fas­ten her greaves and spurs while she un­buck­les and re­moves her hel­met. This hel­met is sim­i­lar to oth­ers you’ve seen ex­cept its black and yel­low crest cross­es hor­i­zon­tal­ly from ear to ear and two huge, three foot, yel­low with black spots feath­ers ex­tend up from ends of the crest. With one hand she sets it pre­cise­ly on the rack and with the oth­er ad­justs a greave that one of the hasti­ly re­treat­ing at­ten­dants had slight­ly mis­placed.

Run­ning her hands over cropped black hair “sum­mon­s” a small cloud of sand dust which slow­ly set­tles to the stone floor. Shafts of light re­flect off of the bird em­bossed in pro­file on the gold­en breast­plate she wears. A small yel­low gem or crys­tal is mount­ed in its eye. An­oth­er glow­ing gem emits mes­mer­iz­ing rays from the cen­ter of the cir­clet wrapped around her fore­head. She is tal­l, thin and her point­ed ears be­tray her High Pelosian her­itage.

Her lu­mi­nous yel­low eyes ob­serve each of you in turn. Then in a clear, com­mand­ing voice states, “I am Cit­i­zen Hyr­mi­na. There are a great many ques­tions I wish to ask of you. Short­ly your speech in­ter­dic­tion will be re­moved.” Look­ing point­ed­ly at Dyrk­ius, “I ex­pect on­ly civ­i­lized be­hav­ior. It would be some­what dis­pleas­ing to me if any of you be­came un­nec­es­sar­i­ly in­jured, es­pe­cial­ly be­fore your guilt or in­no­cence has been de­ter­mined.”

The same sol­dier sneezes again.

With­out in­ter­rup­tion Hyr­mi­na smooth­ly con­tin­ues, “This is a mil­i­tary in­qui­si­tion to de­ter­mine the facts sur­round­ing the fate of a feath­er of cit­i­zens and the car­a­van they were es­cort­ing. Your tri­al is to­mor­row. Do not waste my time plead­ing your case now.”

Dur­ing this two Com­mon Pelosian­s, a male and fe­male en­ter through the arch­way. The fe­male sets up a chair next to the desk. The male starts trac­ing a pat­tern on the floor in front of you in col­ored chalk­s.

Af­ter fin­ish­ing a rough cir­cle of ar­cane sym­bols the male Pelosian chants a few words sum­mon­ing a misty, in­dis­tinct hu­manoid form float­ing gen­tly with­in the chalk mark­s.

“Now that the pleas­antries are over I am sure you are all ea­ger to tell me the truth.”

Speak­ing clear­ly with no­tice­able in­dig­na­tion “C­i­t­i­zen Hyr­mi­na, I am Dyrk­ius Reeseus, Third Tail, Am­phipo­lis Pi­geon. Your at­tempt to com­pel my hon­esty has failed. No mat­ter: I will de­brief you truth­ful­ly and will­ing­ly. Had I not been in­ter­dict­ed these past few days, I would have been able to do so ear­li­er.”

Un­fazed by Dyrk­ius’ at­tempt­ed seiz­ing of the ini­tia­tive, Hyr­mi­na asks “Do you have a writ?”

“In my belt pock­et.”

With a nod from Hyr­mi­na one of the guards sheaths his sword, re­trieves the writ, shows it first to Hyr­mi­na then to the misty fig­ure. Which a few mo­ments lat­ter gives a dis­tinct nod.

Sat­is­fied, Hyr­mi­na con­tin­ues the in­ter­ro­ga­tion with Ione. “And you? What brings you to this fine province?”

“Ione of Sari­a. I’m in Scu­pi Prov­ince be­cause it is far away from The Em­pire. Al­so, I’ve heard in­ter­est­ing ru­mors about for­mer res­i­dents.”

“Very cu­ri­ous. Sari­a? It is not fa­mil­iar to me, part of the Em­pire? And ex­act­ly what ru­mors?”

“No, it is an in­de­pen­dent city-s­tate, town re­al­ly, in the N. Wild­land­s. That Vervigis once had a lab in the bad­lands West of here.”

Rais­ing an eye­brow to­wards Ian at that last re­mark. “Ian Ikase, cor­rupt­ing the young and in­no­cent with tales of fame and for­tune are we? But for now I’m far more in­ter­est­ed in how you came to be wear­ing Cit­i­zen The­be’s ar­mor?”

Ian smiles broad­ly but re­mains silen­t.

“Well, we’ll get back to that. Ione, thank you for your co­op­er­a­tion. Please es­cort her away.” A guard gen­tly stands Ione up and walks her out of the room.

“Now, you three, quite a ways from the Dune Sea trade routes would­n’t you agree?”

Djin­n, Qazir, and Tariq re­spond with their names and “to hunt”, “seek­ing the wis­dom of Na­ture”, “with my cous­in”.

Hyr­mi­na asks in­to de­tails of what ships they trav­eled on where they stayed, when and for how long. All of which she seems to con­firm with the ghost­ly fig­ure who nods af­fir­ma­tion to each in­quiry.

Ap­peased, she asks of no one in par­tic­u­lar. “Sand­men do not leave sur­vivors. Yet you live. Why? And how? Do you have some abil­i­ty to ab­jure their pow­ers or drive them away?”

First again Dyrk­ius an­swers “I do not know why they at­tacked, and I have not found enough ev­i­dence to form a strong hy­poth­e­sis. I have some abil­i­ty to drive away any foe. And as for be­ing alive, I am sur­prised by that my­self.”

Tariq and Djinn con­tin­ue to pro­vide min­i­mal, al­most de­fi­ant an­swer­s, “I do not”, “I know not”. Al­though, in a mo­ment of hon­est con­fu­sion re­gard­ing the sand­men Tariq shrugs and says “They seem to come from nowhere, and to re­turn there again when their killing was done.”

“And what about you Thukir­i? Does your kin­ship with the desert ex­tend to sand­men?”

“Well, to be pre­cise, I don’t be­lieve these “sand­men”, as you la­bel them, ev­er did at­tack me. I fell vic­tim to the hye­na men’s am­bush. Some time lat­er I opened my eyes to Djinn cut­ting the ropes that had bound me. Dead hye­na men lay strewn hap­haz­ard­ly about in the tell­tale fash­ion of bat­tle. I my­self nev­er saw the sand­men. It is rea­son­able to as­sume that they nev­er saw me, and were there­fore un­con­cerned as to my fate.”

“Where were you head­ing when the sand­men at­tacked you?”

“This I do not know. The hye­na men were trans­port­ing us some­where, but the des­ti­na­tion is un­known to me. More­over, as I was un­con­scious for the en­tire time they were car­ry­ing us, I have no idea how long, or in what di­rec­tion we were trav­el­ing.”

Djinn adds “North, we were tak­en North for two or three days.”

Out­side the sand­storm sub­sides and the room bright­ens con­sid­er­ably. Work­ers in oth­er rooms start sweep­ing away the ac­cu­mu­lat­ed sand dust kick­ing up clouds of it. Caus­ing the fe­male guard to sneeze and cough for a minute. The misty fig­ure fades. The male Pelosian moves to re­cast his spell but Hyr­mi­na waves him away.

Fo­cus­ing on the Babrem “Where is the hye­na men’s cam­p? How many run with this pack? What brought them this far south?”

Tariq, “I do not know. They am­bushed us among some ru­in­s, in the desert. I was wound­ed, very near death. I know noth­ing oth­er than I was cap­tured.” Shrugs again.

“I al­so do not know. All I can say is that the “ru­in­s” ap­peared to be nat­u­ral. A large for­est of top­pled and bro­ken tree trunks as hard as stone.” of­fers Qazir.

“Still be­ing qui­et are we?”

Ian nod­s.

“Nine cit­i­zens are dead or miss­ing. Your si­lence is ir­rel­e­van­t. In front of the Coun­cil to­mor­row the in­for­ma­tion will be ex­tract­ed from you.”

Ian nod­s.

“Ikase is too pre­oc­cu­pied with his tri­al please take him away so that he may con­sid­er his de­fense.” The same guard as be­fore takes him away.

“C­i­t­i­zen Dyrk­ius, can you en­light­en us re­gard­ing the hye­na men? Per­haps you hired them to at­tack the car­a­van?”

“Of course not! I’m in­sult­ed at the in­sin­u­a­tion. Cit­i­zen, I near­ly died out there. In fac­t, I’m as shocked to be alive as I am by your treat­men­t. As to your ques­tion, I do not know any­more about the hye­na men.

In bursts a fat, bald mid­dle-aged Pelosian male wear­ing priests robes and a red sash with gold trim across his chest. “Did they find it?” Look­ing at the sur­vivors. “Did you find it? The box?” See­ing their con­fused ex­pres­sions he be­gins moan­ing to him­self “O­h, they don’t have it. We’re doomed.”

“Trypho!” As­serts Hyr­mi­na.

“But, the box, the box. What are we go­ing to do?” Try­po’s foot long black “goa­tee” shak­ing with pan­ic.

“Come here let’s dis­cuss it.” Says Hyr­mi­na as she gives a sig­nal to the fe­male Pelosian who clos­es her eye­s.

Hyr­mi­na and Trypho move to the far cor­ner and have a short dis­cus­sion. Trypho leaves no less ag­i­tat­ed. With a touch on her shoul­der the Pelosian opens her eyes again.

“Ex­cuse Trypho the heat makes him a bit ex­citable. Back to busi­ness, what did you do with Cit­i­zen Thebe and Cit­i­zen Ae­son. Un­der what au­thor­i­ty did you seize their equip­men­t?

Dyrk­ius “I am sor­ry but they died in the ini­tial am­bush. We buried them as best we could. But time was of the essence if we were to sur­vive our­selves.” We took what­ev­er we thought might help us to sur­vive.”

Qazir “The dead have no con­cern for, nor need of pos­ses­sion­s. Those guards gave their lives de­fend­ing us, the mem­bers of the car­a­van; I can­not imag­ine their spir­its would then balk at giv­ing their breast­plates in ser­vice of the same cause.”

“And the oth­er mem­bers of Desert Con­dor? The sev­en oth­er guard­s.”

“My best guess is that if they did not sur­vive, their phys­i­cal forms lay buried be­neath the sands wait­ing to be re­claimed by the de­sert’s em­brace. Al­though, it is pos­si­ble that who­ev­er, or what­ev­er at­tacked the car­a­van took some or all of them pris­on­er.”

Tariq “I am sor­ry. I know of no oth­er sur­vivors of the car­a­van.”

“So, you all claim to be in­no­cent vic­tim­s? Who just hap­pened to sur­vive an am­bush while nine vet­er­an cit­i­zen­s, all the work­er­s, an­i­mal­s(save your camel), and wag­ons have con­ve­nient­ly dis­ap­peared from the face of Dirt?”

Dyrk­ius ex­claims “Ab­so­lute­ly we are in­no­cen­t! There were two dam­aged wag­on­s, their an­i­mal­s, a cou­ple camel­s, five gnomes, and about sev­en oth­er work­ers with us. All were dead. You have not found those or the oth­er wag­on­s? I lost some of my own prop­er­ty I was hop­ing to re­cov­er.”

“No, our di­vin­er was on­ly tuned to The­be’s breast­plate. Which we found dumped with Ikase and sur­round­ed by the tracks of the hye­na men lead­ing us to you four. Oth­er pa­trols found Ione West of Blood Rock but no trace of the car­a­van.” Hyr­mi­na re­spond­s, un­char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly dis­tract­ed.

“They like­ly are all at the site of the am­bush. We found the wa­ter wag­on rough­ly a half night’s trav­el from the car­nage. Fa­rooq is more in­tel­li­gent than most camels and no stranger to sand­storm­s.”

“Sand­stor­m?”

“Yes, four or five days out of Scu­pi a great sand­storm sud­den­ly hit us. The wag­on mas­ter fool­ish­ly did not im­me­di­ate­ly halt the car­a­van. We be­came scat­tered. Dur­ing the chaos we were am­bushed.” An­swers Tariq.

“By gi­ants, a type I am un­fa­mil­iar with­.” Adds his cousin.

Ig­nor­ing him and im­pai­tient­ly de­mands “Who else is work­ing with you? (Even with the hye­na men you could no suc­cess­ful­ly at­tacked the car­a­van.)”

Stand­ing up again Dyrk­ius shouts “I have no idea what you are talk­ing about! As I told you, I am a stu­dent and a loy­al cit­i­zen of The Re­pub­lic. I refuse to say any­more. I de­mand rep­re­sen­ta­tion. I am Dyrk­ius of House Reeseus! I de­mand the re­spect I am en­ti­tled to!”

“Very well, we shall con­tin­ue to­mor­row in the Coun­cil Cham­ber­s. Till then.” Hyr­mi­na bows slight­ly and then rush­es out of the room.

3rd ses­sion “Mine Mon­ster”

4th ses­sion “Ophid­i­an’s Buried Tem­ple part1”

Sign con­tract with Eri­boa