log

Qazir bar Kessr of the Thukir Jerod Flip­pen jflip­pen@g­mail.­com 512 363 3256

Druid of the sands

Scim­i­tar and Rakesh(sick­le)

Qui­et, se­ri­ous young man. Typ­i­cal­ly wear­ing a blank ex­pres­sion. Dark, pierc­ing eyes which sel­dom blink stare out from be­neath a heavy brow. A large, bent nose juts out from a vis­age which is all planes and an­gles. His skin is a deep rud­dy brown be­neath a lay­er of dust, stretched across a slen­der whip-­like frame which moves with the self­-as­sur­ance of a hunt­ing cat, if not quite the grace.

Qazir is on Wis­dom Quest. He is fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of his fa­ther and two old­er broth­er­s. He is trav­el­ing to Sil­ver­town be­cause he hopes to en­counter the alien Xorn, a species none in his pool have ev­er en­coun­tered, and guess­es that the aban­doned mines might pro­vide a way to draw near to their dwellings.

Qazir grew up idol­iz­ing his fa­ther and par­tic­u­lar­ly Hamza­h, though he was clos­er to his broth­er Fa­ree­q. Qazir tries his hard­est to fol­low in Hamza­h’s foot­step­s, be­cause Hamzah is ev­ery­thing that a Thukiri should be but Qazir is wor­ried be­cause some­times fol­low­ing Hamza­h’s path does­n’t come as nat­u­ral­ly to him as it should.

Thukir:

Small clan of druidic de­sert-­folk who re­vere as holy the oases that dot the track­less wastes. The Thukir de­fend the wa­ter­s, al­low­ing all who wish to drink their fil­l, but de­ny any at­tempt by man to es­tab­lish his towns or cities in the vicin­i­ty. These small patch­es of ver­dant re­lief are some­thing like sanc­tu­ar­ies for the sur­round­ing an­i­mal life, in that the Thukir do not al­low the hunt­ing of any an­i­mal by man with­in its bound­aries. An an­i­mal stalked by an­oth­er an­i­mal is an­oth­er sto­ry, and in these hunts the Thukir do not in­ter­fer­e.

Thukiri be­lieve that there is more to na­ture the bloom and the feath­er, there is al­so the fang and the talon. The rock li­on’s ef­fort­less grace is matched by its preda­to­ry sav­agery. Death is as much a part of the nat­u­ral or­der as birth. If a man knows one thing about the Thukir, it is that they prac­tice a form of rit­u­al can­ni­bal­is­m. The Thukir do this to learn more about a new crea­ture, or to hon­or a wor­thy foe. Thukir will con­sume a bite or two if they are in a hur­ry, but with am­ple time, a par­tic­u­lar­ly strong op­po­nent be­comes a feast. Un­like a preda­tor in the wild, a Thukiri does not rip and tear at the flesh with the fren­zied aban­don of a pack of wolves, but rather goes about his meal with an au­ra of deep con­tem­pla­tion.

Among the Thukir­i, there ex­ists a house of elite oa­sis guards who stand vig­i­lant watch over the sa­cred wa­ter­s. All the mem­bers of this guard are from the same fam­i­ly line, but each one has un­der­gone a wis­dom quest, trav­el­ing the world to ex­pe­ri­ence the true breadth and depth of na­ture.

Thukir Quest Ritual:

Thukiri gain “Un­der­stand­ing” about na­ture through ob­ser­va­tion, con­ver­sa­tion, and in­ges­tion. Quote: “There are many paths to un­der­stand­ing, the wise tred them al­l.”

When first dis­cov­er­ing in a non-­com­bat sit­u­a­tion that Thukiri are can­ni­bal­s, roll an in­tim­i­date check. A failed roll by the hu­man re­sults in him be­ing in­tim­i­dat­ed for 1d4 hours. A suc­cess­ful roll re­sults in the hu­man be­ing un­friend­ly for 1d4 hours.

Family:

Fa­ther: Kessr bar-Ashraf, Clan El­der of the Sand­s, Druid 9-12 lev­el The ways of the clan are as much a part of him as his own bones, and are about as flex­i­ble. As one of three Clan El­ders of the Sand­s, Kessr guides the clan in it’s deal­ings with the out­side world. To his son­s, Kessr is a dis­tan­t, al­most oth­er­world­ly fig­ure.

Moth­er: Ameera sur-A­teef, Clan El­der of the Wa­ter­s, Druid/­Ex­pert/­Com­mon­er/Bard 9-12 lev­el As de­vot­ed to clan tra­di­tion as her hus­band, if not more­so. Stern wom­an who nev­er­the­less adores her chil­dren. The Cir­cle of Wa­ter­s, of which she is an el­der, gov­erns the in­ter­nal af­fairs of the clan.

Old­est Broth­er: Hamzah bar-Kess­r, Great­fang, Druid/Ranger/­Fight­er 8-14 lvl Great­est war­rior, and lead­er of the Thukir against threats to the clan. Pow­er­ful­ly built, swift afoot, and at home in the sad­dle, Hamza is a ter­ri­ble sight on the bat­tle­field. Hamza views the lim­it­ed, sim­ple craft­work of the Thukir to be a nec­es­sary evil (though he fre­quent­ly ques­tions just how nec­es­sary). But the great cities of man, with the de­struc­tion wrought to main­tain them, and the pol­lu­tion cre­at­ed to sus­tain them, Hamzah won­ders if “civ­i­liza­tion” is­n’t just an­oth­er word for “abom­i­na­tion”.

Mid­dle Broth­er: Fa­reeq bar-Kessr Druid/Bard/­Com­mon­er/Ranger 3-6 lvl jovial, would much rather trade friend­ly barbs than fear­some blows, though he has a self dep­re­cat­ing sense of hu­mor he roared with laugh­ter when Qazir named Fa­rooq, and gave the rea­son that the camel looked more like Fa­ree­q’s broth­er than any­one else, stil­l, Fa­reeq is obe­di­ent and fol­lows clan cus­tom. He is a ca­pa­ble war­rior, a de­cent track­er, and high­ly knowl­edge­able of na­ture, par­tic­u­lar­ly herb­s.

Pregame:

Trav­eled south to the great trade port of Kashan. Bar­gained with Sunesh mer­chant for pas­sage to his coun­try. From their up riv­er then along the old Pe­los road through the Pam­phia mtns to Beroea where you as­ton­ished to find two oth­er Babrem from the Kaldun Ma­jid. They were head­ing to “S­cu­pi Province” and from their de­scrip­tions it sound­ed like a place to find a Xorn and oth­er tri­umphs of na­ture. They ac­cept your re­quest to trav­el with them. But do not in­ter­act with them much(the Ma­jid are close al­lies of Fist and have for­got­ten prop­er re­spect for na­ture and the de­sert)

The trip was un­event­ful. Af­ter ar­riv­ing you wast­ed no time leav­ing the claus­tro­pho­bic caves of Scu­pi. Tar­ry­ing on­ly long enough to buy sup­plies and find a car­a­van head­ing east to Sil­ver­town.

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 keep most­ly to your­self.

Trav­el is fast at first along a road of stone like the old road you took out of Sunesh. Ear­ly the 4th night you pass a large crew of Pelosian and Ka’im ex­tend­ing this scar on na­ture fur­ther east. Late on the 7th night the car­a­van is am­bushed by ??? You nev­er see the at­tack­er­s.

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

2nd session “Deadly Desert part2”

You en­counter some sort of un­nat­u­ral poi­soness tree. And lat­er an un­fa­mil­iar species of bar­rel cac­tus with many large thorn­s. From it’s dessi­cat­ed ap­pear­ance you know it has­n’t rained here in many month­s.

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, are some strange nat­u­ral for­m, or an ab­ber­a­tion. be­fore be­ing am­bushed by hye­na men.

Ione has been killed or less like­ly es­caped. The rest of you are cap­tured. You awake from un­con­scious­ness to dis­cov­er Ian is no longer present and lat­er to Djinn pro­vid­ing you wa­ter. You like­ly owe him your life. You don’t know how many hours or days have passed. But the hye­na men are gone.

One 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 is crawl­ing with Pelosian­s, fly­ing, ap­pear­ing out of nowhere, and per­form­ing oth­er mag­ic­s. Stranger still are 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, you sus­pect a tem­ple. The pas­sages re­veal a rev­er­ence for na­ture and es­pe­cial­ly forests and wood­land crea­tures. 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 be­ing trans­port­ed on horse back. You can’t see, or talk and your con­nec­tion to na­ture(spell cast­ing abil­i­ty) is gone! A non-­na­tive ex­plains to you in Qadir that you are be­ing de­tained by the Pelosian au­thor­i­ties and that your tem­po­rary lack of sens­es and cast­ing abil­i­ty is due to the man­a­cles you wear. Al­so that a camel she sus­pects is yours is be­ing well tak­en care of. Af­ter an­oth­er day and half you arive at a camp or town. Af­ter spend­ing the night the next day you trav­el by wag­on to what sounds like a large town.

<to be con­tin­ued>