Pradhana Ali is Definitely Alive
- Pronouns
- He/Him
"Hemal, prepare Nar, and any other tools you will need to puppet Pranadha Ali for the next day or so," you say, "I will assist and prepare for the meeting. Begzai, Sundari, bathe Pranadha Ali and make him look presentable. We're aiming for 'broke his jaw' instead of, ah-" you point at the corpse. "His current condition."
Scarcely a second passes before Sundari protests. "Talib! You would make a married woman bathe a man? Such scandal!" she exclaims, "I thought you a religious, righteous person."
"He's dead!" you protest, "Hemal must prepare for his part in the plan. Begzai cannot clean and prepare Ali alone. I will be working almost every other part of the scheme, surely you cannot begrudge me this?"
"It does not matter how much work you do," protests Sundari, "It is no more appropriate than I demanding you lie with my husband because I have finished paperwork!"
It is a decidedly unfair comparison, but you've no retort that is not merely more trouble. You throw your hands up in defeat. "Fine! Just...prepare the meeting room, then. And help Hemal get his Nar," you say. This, at least, seems acceptable and she smiles as she leaves the room.
The bathing of Pradhana Ali was disgusting, in no small part due to the poisons he had consumed. You do not wish to recall it, and so I shall skip over it, that you might repress those memories and simply pretend they had never happened. So you might believe that, against all odds, Pradhana Ali simply found himself clean and in new clothes as you and Begzai entered the final steps of the procedure.
Instead you find yourself in one of Begzai's private chambers. A small, cool room with a high ceiling and only a small window for light. A massive desk hosts an enormous array of cosmetic items, makeup and blushes and perfumes from across the known world, as well as several mirrors, some handheld, one large enough to stand up and examine yourself in full.
Begzai is doing the bulk of the work, applying makeup, telling you what to hand him, how to most convincingly pass Pradhana Ali off as a man who just had the stuffing beaten out of him, rather than a corpse. You do not have embalming fluids, for such a thing is generally held to be sacrilege to hindu and muslim, but between the bath and the arsenic he should last for a bit.
The result is, at least, a convincing corpse before Hemal arrives. The red remains in his cheeks, his jaw is oh-so-slightly broken and swollen, his eyes maintained their gruesome intensity, and his neck looked no more damage then it had on half a dozen occasions when he had stumbled into the office insensate and brutalized.
Then Hemal arrives, Sundari wheeling in the Nar, a pump, and two hoses with needles behind him. You stare at it for a long while until Begzai says, "Must we inject it?"
Hemal just laughs his big, genial laugh. "How do you think this works, my friend? We bathe him in it?" he says, "It must be injected, or this plan will fail." You shudder, and Begzai groans, but you have no other choice.
So you get to work.
The process of injecting the Nar and extracting enough blood to allow it to flow was, in truth, almost as unpleasant as the process of bathing Pradhana Ali. To describe it would be puerile and, save for an incident wherein you were sprayed with a jet of arterial blood and were duly horrified, largely uninteresting.
I instead implore you, Talib, to remember your prayers instead. Or, failing that, a particularly amusing memory of a cat.
Eventually, it is done. You dab at your bloody face with a rag while Sundari wheels away the Nar. Hemal and Amir simply stand, admiring their handiwork. As you look at yourself in the mirror, Hemal begins to accessorize Pranadha Ali, sewing small strings into his clothes, adding a tasseled turban, a long shawl from Kashmir, and a thick bandage to keep his swollen mouth shut.
Then Hemal puts a hand on his shoulder, you can see the light return to Ali's eyes, and for a moment you think he has returned from the dead. That you've made a horrible mistake and he's going to try to beat you again.
Then the moment is gone. Hemal tweaks his shoulder, you likely would not have noted if you weren't looking for it, and Ali's arm reaches out, clumsily grabs a bottle of perfume. Another touch, a pull on the elbow loop, and he flings it deftly to a startled Begzai, who barely manages to catch it.
"It works!" you exclaim, eliciting a cheer from Hemal.
Begzai blanches. "You didn't know it would work?" he asks, "We've less than an hour! What if it didn't!"
"It's good science," you offer guiltily, "Nar as a psychoactive locomotion guide-" You see the blank look on his face, and switch tacks. "-Like in Shah's Shatranj, or the fancier sort of train, is extremely well documented," you attempt, and this he seems to understand. "This is an, admittedly, crude application, but as a Djinn-"
"I am not a Djinn," grumbles Hemal.
"-As a Rakshasa I predicted that Hemal would be able to compensate for the primitive nature of our setup." you finish.
"The fact that we replaced his blood with alien oil," offers Hemal.
"Yes."
"And if he couldn't?" Begzai responds.
You shrug. "Well, I suppose it would have been some sort of crude puppetry situation," you say before correcting yourself, "Well, moreso than it already is."
Begzai mutters darkly about this, and about how you are all going to die, but it is too late for nay-saying. Instead you hook an arm around one of Pradhana Ali's shoulders, and Hemal hooks two of his arms around the other, and you hoist him up for the long walk to your meeting.
Ali manages a punch-drunk stumble as you leave Begzai's room. You drag him across the courtyard to your main building, scribes and administrators give you wry, sympathetic smiles as you pass. A djinn woman you don't recognize, burning hair shining through her translucent hijab, waves at the three of you as you pass, and Hemal nearly drops Ali's full weight onto you as he waves back.
You kneel under the weight, stumbling forwards with Ali as you call, "Hemal! Hemal help us you lecherous oaf!" It takes him a moment, but you feel the crushing weight lift off your back as he grabs hold.
"Bad day, Talib?" asks one of the guards at the door. He leans against the door, resplendent in his flowing uniform, not particularly moving to open it for you.
"The door, Faruq," you mutter, "Stop talking and get the door." He laughs, gives Ali a high five that scares you to no end, and holds open the door for you.
The Office of Transportation and Public Works is a beauteous, modern building. Grand Iwans and calligraphy bless its stony exterior, while the interior is covered with grand murals. Men laying rail, Tippu Sultan signing an alliance with the Marathas, an Ottoman Army lead by Napoleon Pasha coming to the Sultan's aid at Srirangapatna. Little to do with the Office's work, of course, but grand scenes nonetheless. You might appreciate them more, were you not half-dragging the Pradhana through the halls and up a flight of stairs.
And finally, sweating and wheezing and with Ali having bumped into rather more pillars than you are comfortable with, you make it to the veranda where the meeting is scheduled. Two guards wait outside the door, rifles in hand, while Miss Sundari, her youngest child, and a pair of servant women stand a respectful distance away. Sundari flashes you a winningly false smile as you approach.
"Chikka Dervish Ali is the only one authorized to meet with the Sultan," says one guard. You push on an arm, and Ali gestures in the general direction of his own face, looking offended. Hemal gives him a comforting pat on the back and he coughs, rough and wet.
"Do you want to help him in?" you ask. The guards look at each other and take a half-step away from Pradhana Ali. One eventually looks at Sundari, desperate not to have to touch the man.
"It's fine, brothers," says Sundari, "This happens sometimes. I'll have the staff put on more tea."
There is an audible sigh of relief from the guards and, you admit, you have to suppress one of your own. After all, the first phase of your work is done, now you merely have to make it through a meeting with Akbar Sultan without being charged with murder and corpse desecration.
Akbar Sultan sits resplendent on the far end of the Veranda. He is framed against the building's central courtyard, against the setting sun behind him, and against the skyline of Mysuru. His hair, dark as night, is flecked with tinges of grey, his beard cut close, and his head covered by a green mysuran peta with silver laced border inlaid with calligraphy. He wears a white kurta covered entirely in golden kasuti embroidery, and silver ornaments festooned with jewels from his wrists, neck, and the red belt around his waist. The placket runs from his neck to the edge of the ribcage, and is surrounded by embroidered flame.
He leans forwards as you stumble in, graceless and sweaty, with Pradhana Ali. Whatever annoyance, offense he must feel entirely invisible to your dull eyes. "Salaam, Brother Ali," he says, gesturing for you all to take a seat, "I see time has not treated you well."
"He's doing fine, your highness," says Hemal, who takes his hands off Ali to give the Sultan a reassuring wave, "Got in a fight is all." The sudden shift in weight overtakes you, and you and Ali tumble messily to the floor. You think you hear one of his ribs break. Akbar gives an amused chuckle as Hemal helps the pair of you up, mumbling reassurances all the while.
"Well, regardless of your health, it is good that you brought Mir Talib with you," says Akbar, he gestures at you all to sit, "Today's matter concerns him, after all."
Sundari put out a couch for the three of you, and however unsubtle it is that the bench was already there you are far too grateful to worry about it. Ali collapses heavily into place, slouching with an arm draped over the back in a manner that is all too lifelike. You pay your respects, and as you sit Hemal nudges an arm, causing Ali to gesture for you to speak.
"Your majesty, it is an honor to be part of this privileged meeting," you say, "May I ask why I am needed?"
Akbar smiles and places a great rolled canvas upon the table. He gestures and you unroll it, revealing a map of the subcontinent. Mysuru in bright gold, the Marathas to your north, and then the enslaved states all around you. Delhi to your northeast, Thiruvithamcode in white to the south, Madras to the east. And all beyond and all around, filling in the gaps between nations, occupying any scrap of territory they could steal from its rightful owners, the English. The map is light on detail, some cities and forts, some hint as to natural features, but mostly it notes railways, roads, and regional populations. It is a stark contrast and shows you how direly the English and their servants outnumber you, and how sparse the roads are in colonized territory.
"Tensions have been rising for months, the English demand an indemnity over the fifth war, and they agitate for an invasion to swell their coffers," says Akbar Sultan, "We expect them to invade inside of the decade."
You stare blankly forwards, joined by Hemal and (by default) Ali. You're civil engineers and infrastructure specialists, not generals, diplomats, or soldiers. You vet trains and boats, devise better methods of farming, sericulture, or rail transport. "We are but humble bureaucrats, your majesty," says Hemal, "What place do we have in the discussion of a war?"
"I have a plan. I believe we can win, and permanently turn the tables upon the English in the subcontinent," says Akbar Sultan, "But for it, I need an army that can march faster than any baggage caravan. When I asked about for an inventor to make this plan happen, a mind brilliant enough to make the vehicle I need, I was pointed to one man."
Your heart drops, your throat clenches, and your mind is filled with nothing but gnawing anxiety and a litany of curses towards each of your teachers, from when you first started school to when you graduated college.
"I was told that Talib Quadri was the man to make my logistical vehicle happen," he says, looking Pradhana Ali straight in the eyes, "I had, of course, meant to brief you ahead of time, Pradhana Ali, but as you have kindly brought Mir Talib with you we shall skip the pretense."
Pradhana Ali, at Hemal's prodding, gives and holds a pained salute. You follow a moment later, heart threatening to rip free of your chest, mouth suddenly dry. "I live to serve," you croak, "What must this vehicle do?"
Akbar Sultan smiles, and it is like the sun itself smiles upon you, and you drop at ease immediately. "I need a vehicle to obsolete the baggage train of our army. It must be faster and better armored than an elephant, and not bound to the tracks of a train," he says, "And it must be able to transport enough supplies for a battalion."
You blanch at what is being proposed. A machine unlike anything that exists in the world, with ambitious goals and built largely, if not entirely, from scratch. "I thank you for your trust, oh Sultan, but Wallahi I do not think I am not up to this task," you say, head bowed, "Surely there is some other-"
"Insha allah it won't be necessary, and I shall find allies, or strip away those of the English, and we shall win without. Insha allah it will simply be a curiosity developed by a paranoid Sultan," interrupts Akbar, "Certainly enough of my advisors oppose it. But if we are forced to fight this war on our own, I need to know we can win it. And every person, every inventor, and every professor I have spoken to has told me you are the man to do this." He touches a finger to your chin, tilting your head up until you meet his eyes. "If you truly feel you are unable, I will not force your hand. Speak, and I will try to find another."
You do not like it, but you know the stakes. The numbers. You know that the English have destroyed the industries of every nation they conquered. Driven millions back into the countryside, reversed centuries of development, and stolen innumerable artifacts for their barbarous throne. Your grandfather had fled to Mysuru during the Famine of Skulls, when there were so many bodies they could not be buried or cremated, and had told you of its horrors at lengths. You know that tens of millions, through starvation and disease, have died under the English boot. You know that if Mysuru does not win, this hell will come for it.
"I will do it, my Sultan," you say.
The Sultan smiles and snaps his fingers. A servant boy comes in, holding a long, sealed envelope, and hands it to Pradhana Ali. "This contains everything you need to know, as well as the officials overseeing the project in my name," he says, "God bless all three of you, I look forward to seeing your results."
You do not manage to open the envelope until after Maghrib. By then, you sit in the comfort of your own office, slit open the envelope, look at who your supervisors for the project will be, and begin to panic.
Pick Three Supervisors.
[ ] General Nazir Wadiyar
Pros: Genial, understanding, sympathetic to what you're trying to do, appreciative of logistics
Cons: A nobody. Uninfluential. Syphillitic. Wants his name in history
[ ] Admiral Muhammad Dervish Khan
Pros: Level-headed, appreciates sane project scope
Cons: Likes Rockets. Really, really likes rockets
[ ] Mir Muzammil Al-Farisi
Pros: Son of a national hero, easily misled, mercurial, likes new things
Cons: Son of a national hero, easily misled, mercurial, likes new things
[ ] Yasin Ali Shahzadi
Pros: The Sultan's beloved daughter, loves the concept, hands-on testing
Cons: Knows nothing about engineering or vehicle design, insane ideas
[ ] Sahiba Vandana Gowda
Pros: Has access to Nar, likes clever automatons, economically minded
Cons: Wants your budget for iron boats, highly ambitious, deeply eccentric
[ ] Sayyida Makmoor Amin
Pros: Can boost your budget, engineering prodigy, djinn-friendly
Cons: Believes she can do your job better than you, weird ideas, can cut your budget.
Scarcely a second passes before Sundari protests. "Talib! You would make a married woman bathe a man? Such scandal!" she exclaims, "I thought you a religious, righteous person."
"He's dead!" you protest, "Hemal must prepare for his part in the plan. Begzai cannot clean and prepare Ali alone. I will be working almost every other part of the scheme, surely you cannot begrudge me this?"
"It does not matter how much work you do," protests Sundari, "It is no more appropriate than I demanding you lie with my husband because I have finished paperwork!"
It is a decidedly unfair comparison, but you've no retort that is not merely more trouble. You throw your hands up in defeat. "Fine! Just...prepare the meeting room, then. And help Hemal get his Nar," you say. This, at least, seems acceptable and she smiles as she leaves the room.
The bathing of Pradhana Ali was disgusting, in no small part due to the poisons he had consumed. You do not wish to recall it, and so I shall skip over it, that you might repress those memories and simply pretend they had never happened. So you might believe that, against all odds, Pradhana Ali simply found himself clean and in new clothes as you and Begzai entered the final steps of the procedure.
Instead you find yourself in one of Begzai's private chambers. A small, cool room with a high ceiling and only a small window for light. A massive desk hosts an enormous array of cosmetic items, makeup and blushes and perfumes from across the known world, as well as several mirrors, some handheld, one large enough to stand up and examine yourself in full.
Begzai is doing the bulk of the work, applying makeup, telling you what to hand him, how to most convincingly pass Pradhana Ali off as a man who just had the stuffing beaten out of him, rather than a corpse. You do not have embalming fluids, for such a thing is generally held to be sacrilege to hindu and muslim, but between the bath and the arsenic he should last for a bit.
The result is, at least, a convincing corpse before Hemal arrives. The red remains in his cheeks, his jaw is oh-so-slightly broken and swollen, his eyes maintained their gruesome intensity, and his neck looked no more damage then it had on half a dozen occasions when he had stumbled into the office insensate and brutalized.
Then Hemal arrives, Sundari wheeling in the Nar, a pump, and two hoses with needles behind him. You stare at it for a long while until Begzai says, "Must we inject it?"
Hemal just laughs his big, genial laugh. "How do you think this works, my friend? We bathe him in it?" he says, "It must be injected, or this plan will fail." You shudder, and Begzai groans, but you have no other choice.
So you get to work.
The process of injecting the Nar and extracting enough blood to allow it to flow was, in truth, almost as unpleasant as the process of bathing Pradhana Ali. To describe it would be puerile and, save for an incident wherein you were sprayed with a jet of arterial blood and were duly horrified, largely uninteresting.
I instead implore you, Talib, to remember your prayers instead. Or, failing that, a particularly amusing memory of a cat.
Eventually, it is done. You dab at your bloody face with a rag while Sundari wheels away the Nar. Hemal and Amir simply stand, admiring their handiwork. As you look at yourself in the mirror, Hemal begins to accessorize Pranadha Ali, sewing small strings into his clothes, adding a tasseled turban, a long shawl from Kashmir, and a thick bandage to keep his swollen mouth shut.
Then Hemal puts a hand on his shoulder, you can see the light return to Ali's eyes, and for a moment you think he has returned from the dead. That you've made a horrible mistake and he's going to try to beat you again.
Then the moment is gone. Hemal tweaks his shoulder, you likely would not have noted if you weren't looking for it, and Ali's arm reaches out, clumsily grabs a bottle of perfume. Another touch, a pull on the elbow loop, and he flings it deftly to a startled Begzai, who barely manages to catch it.
"It works!" you exclaim, eliciting a cheer from Hemal.
Begzai blanches. "You didn't know it would work?" he asks, "We've less than an hour! What if it didn't!"
"It's good science," you offer guiltily, "Nar as a psychoactive locomotion guide-" You see the blank look on his face, and switch tacks. "-Like in Shah's Shatranj, or the fancier sort of train, is extremely well documented," you attempt, and this he seems to understand. "This is an, admittedly, crude application, but as a Djinn-"
"I am not a Djinn," grumbles Hemal.
"-As a Rakshasa I predicted that Hemal would be able to compensate for the primitive nature of our setup." you finish.
"The fact that we replaced his blood with alien oil," offers Hemal.
"Yes."
"And if he couldn't?" Begzai responds.
You shrug. "Well, I suppose it would have been some sort of crude puppetry situation," you say before correcting yourself, "Well, moreso than it already is."
Begzai mutters darkly about this, and about how you are all going to die, but it is too late for nay-saying. Instead you hook an arm around one of Pradhana Ali's shoulders, and Hemal hooks two of his arms around the other, and you hoist him up for the long walk to your meeting.
Ali manages a punch-drunk stumble as you leave Begzai's room. You drag him across the courtyard to your main building, scribes and administrators give you wry, sympathetic smiles as you pass. A djinn woman you don't recognize, burning hair shining through her translucent hijab, waves at the three of you as you pass, and Hemal nearly drops Ali's full weight onto you as he waves back.
You kneel under the weight, stumbling forwards with Ali as you call, "Hemal! Hemal help us you lecherous oaf!" It takes him a moment, but you feel the crushing weight lift off your back as he grabs hold.
"Bad day, Talib?" asks one of the guards at the door. He leans against the door, resplendent in his flowing uniform, not particularly moving to open it for you.
"The door, Faruq," you mutter, "Stop talking and get the door." He laughs, gives Ali a high five that scares you to no end, and holds open the door for you.
The Office of Transportation and Public Works is a beauteous, modern building. Grand Iwans and calligraphy bless its stony exterior, while the interior is covered with grand murals. Men laying rail, Tippu Sultan signing an alliance with the Marathas, an Ottoman Army lead by Napoleon Pasha coming to the Sultan's aid at Srirangapatna. Little to do with the Office's work, of course, but grand scenes nonetheless. You might appreciate them more, were you not half-dragging the Pradhana through the halls and up a flight of stairs.
And finally, sweating and wheezing and with Ali having bumped into rather more pillars than you are comfortable with, you make it to the veranda where the meeting is scheduled. Two guards wait outside the door, rifles in hand, while Miss Sundari, her youngest child, and a pair of servant women stand a respectful distance away. Sundari flashes you a winningly false smile as you approach.
"Chikka Dervish Ali is the only one authorized to meet with the Sultan," says one guard. You push on an arm, and Ali gestures in the general direction of his own face, looking offended. Hemal gives him a comforting pat on the back and he coughs, rough and wet.
"Do you want to help him in?" you ask. The guards look at each other and take a half-step away from Pradhana Ali. One eventually looks at Sundari, desperate not to have to touch the man.
"It's fine, brothers," says Sundari, "This happens sometimes. I'll have the staff put on more tea."
There is an audible sigh of relief from the guards and, you admit, you have to suppress one of your own. After all, the first phase of your work is done, now you merely have to make it through a meeting with Akbar Sultan without being charged with murder and corpse desecration.
Akbar Sultan sits resplendent on the far end of the Veranda. He is framed against the building's central courtyard, against the setting sun behind him, and against the skyline of Mysuru. His hair, dark as night, is flecked with tinges of grey, his beard cut close, and his head covered by a green mysuran peta with silver laced border inlaid with calligraphy. He wears a white kurta covered entirely in golden kasuti embroidery, and silver ornaments festooned with jewels from his wrists, neck, and the red belt around his waist. The placket runs from his neck to the edge of the ribcage, and is surrounded by embroidered flame.
He leans forwards as you stumble in, graceless and sweaty, with Pradhana Ali. Whatever annoyance, offense he must feel entirely invisible to your dull eyes. "Salaam, Brother Ali," he says, gesturing for you all to take a seat, "I see time has not treated you well."
"He's doing fine, your highness," says Hemal, who takes his hands off Ali to give the Sultan a reassuring wave, "Got in a fight is all." The sudden shift in weight overtakes you, and you and Ali tumble messily to the floor. You think you hear one of his ribs break. Akbar gives an amused chuckle as Hemal helps the pair of you up, mumbling reassurances all the while.
"Well, regardless of your health, it is good that you brought Mir Talib with you," says Akbar, he gestures at you all to sit, "Today's matter concerns him, after all."
Sundari put out a couch for the three of you, and however unsubtle it is that the bench was already there you are far too grateful to worry about it. Ali collapses heavily into place, slouching with an arm draped over the back in a manner that is all too lifelike. You pay your respects, and as you sit Hemal nudges an arm, causing Ali to gesture for you to speak.
"Your majesty, it is an honor to be part of this privileged meeting," you say, "May I ask why I am needed?"
Akbar smiles and places a great rolled canvas upon the table. He gestures and you unroll it, revealing a map of the subcontinent. Mysuru in bright gold, the Marathas to your north, and then the enslaved states all around you. Delhi to your northeast, Thiruvithamcode in white to the south, Madras to the east. And all beyond and all around, filling in the gaps between nations, occupying any scrap of territory they could steal from its rightful owners, the English. The map is light on detail, some cities and forts, some hint as to natural features, but mostly it notes railways, roads, and regional populations. It is a stark contrast and shows you how direly the English and their servants outnumber you, and how sparse the roads are in colonized territory.
"Tensions have been rising for months, the English demand an indemnity over the fifth war, and they agitate for an invasion to swell their coffers," says Akbar Sultan, "We expect them to invade inside of the decade."
You stare blankly forwards, joined by Hemal and (by default) Ali. You're civil engineers and infrastructure specialists, not generals, diplomats, or soldiers. You vet trains and boats, devise better methods of farming, sericulture, or rail transport. "We are but humble bureaucrats, your majesty," says Hemal, "What place do we have in the discussion of a war?"
"I have a plan. I believe we can win, and permanently turn the tables upon the English in the subcontinent," says Akbar Sultan, "But for it, I need an army that can march faster than any baggage caravan. When I asked about for an inventor to make this plan happen, a mind brilliant enough to make the vehicle I need, I was pointed to one man."
Your heart drops, your throat clenches, and your mind is filled with nothing but gnawing anxiety and a litany of curses towards each of your teachers, from when you first started school to when you graduated college.
"I was told that Talib Quadri was the man to make my logistical vehicle happen," he says, looking Pradhana Ali straight in the eyes, "I had, of course, meant to brief you ahead of time, Pradhana Ali, but as you have kindly brought Mir Talib with you we shall skip the pretense."
Pradhana Ali, at Hemal's prodding, gives and holds a pained salute. You follow a moment later, heart threatening to rip free of your chest, mouth suddenly dry. "I live to serve," you croak, "What must this vehicle do?"
Akbar Sultan smiles, and it is like the sun itself smiles upon you, and you drop at ease immediately. "I need a vehicle to obsolete the baggage train of our army. It must be faster and better armored than an elephant, and not bound to the tracks of a train," he says, "And it must be able to transport enough supplies for a battalion."
You blanch at what is being proposed. A machine unlike anything that exists in the world, with ambitious goals and built largely, if not entirely, from scratch. "I thank you for your trust, oh Sultan, but Wallahi I do not think I am not up to this task," you say, head bowed, "Surely there is some other-"
"Insha allah it won't be necessary, and I shall find allies, or strip away those of the English, and we shall win without. Insha allah it will simply be a curiosity developed by a paranoid Sultan," interrupts Akbar, "Certainly enough of my advisors oppose it. But if we are forced to fight this war on our own, I need to know we can win it. And every person, every inventor, and every professor I have spoken to has told me you are the man to do this." He touches a finger to your chin, tilting your head up until you meet his eyes. "If you truly feel you are unable, I will not force your hand. Speak, and I will try to find another."
You do not like it, but you know the stakes. The numbers. You know that the English have destroyed the industries of every nation they conquered. Driven millions back into the countryside, reversed centuries of development, and stolen innumerable artifacts for their barbarous throne. Your grandfather had fled to Mysuru during the Famine of Skulls, when there were so many bodies they could not be buried or cremated, and had told you of its horrors at lengths. You know that tens of millions, through starvation and disease, have died under the English boot. You know that if Mysuru does not win, this hell will come for it.
"I will do it, my Sultan," you say.
The Sultan smiles and snaps his fingers. A servant boy comes in, holding a long, sealed envelope, and hands it to Pradhana Ali. "This contains everything you need to know, as well as the officials overseeing the project in my name," he says, "God bless all three of you, I look forward to seeing your results."
You do not manage to open the envelope until after Maghrib. By then, you sit in the comfort of your own office, slit open the envelope, look at who your supervisors for the project will be, and begin to panic.
Pick Three Supervisors.
[ ] General Nazir Wadiyar
Pros: Genial, understanding, sympathetic to what you're trying to do, appreciative of logistics
Cons: A nobody. Uninfluential. Syphillitic. Wants his name in history
[ ] Admiral Muhammad Dervish Khan
Pros: Level-headed, appreciates sane project scope
Cons: Likes Rockets. Really, really likes rockets
[ ] Mir Muzammil Al-Farisi
Pros: Son of a national hero, easily misled, mercurial, likes new things
Cons: Son of a national hero, easily misled, mercurial, likes new things
[ ] Yasin Ali Shahzadi
Pros: The Sultan's beloved daughter, loves the concept, hands-on testing
Cons: Knows nothing about engineering or vehicle design, insane ideas
[ ] Sahiba Vandana Gowda
Pros: Has access to Nar, likes clever automatons, economically minded
Cons: Wants your budget for iron boats, highly ambitious, deeply eccentric
[ ] Sayyida Makmoor Amin
Pros: Can boost your budget, engineering prodigy, djinn-friendly
Cons: Believes she can do your job better than you, weird ideas, can cut your budget.
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