Breakfast was not a meal you usually attended. You preferred to sleep in, but this was a new day and you wanted koshary. Ismail was surprised to see you awake so early. The two of you walked to the dining hall after washing up
"So you quit?" Ismail asked as he loaded his plate with boiled egg, ful, ta'meya, and flatbread. You grabbed some bastrma and ta'meya, intending on stealing bread from your cousin. You two sat on the floor near in the corner diagonal from the doors.
"Yep. I'm done," you said as you stole some bread and dug into the food.
"Done with what?" asked Rina as she sat down. Why was one of the committee members sitting with you two? Was Ismail and her friends? How long had that been going on?
"Nasir quit his job," Ismail said, mouth stuffed with food. Rina scowled at him and took a piece of bread from his plate.
"Manners, boy. Your mother taught you better than to eat so grossly," said Abu Taw'aman. Why were there two committee members sitting with you? Was Ismail this well-connected?
"Stop lying, Uncle. My mama was a lioness. She ate worse than me. Isnt that right, Nasir,"
Nadia-auntie had been a messy eater. It had been a common complaint of your mother and grandmother, but speaking ill of the dead was bad luck. Though was this speaking ill of the dead? It was true. Multiple people had been witnesses to how she ate. Still did you risk your aunt's ghost haunting you? Gods, that would be horrible. Nadia-auntie had such a shrill voice. It was like a needle running along a steel plate.
"Is he alright?" Rina fake-whispered.
"He's fine. He does this when he gets stuck in his head. Just yell at him if he gets stuck there for too long," Ismail said.
"Uh..what was the question?" you asked. Why were they staring at you?
"Why did you quit your job?" Rina asked.
"You quit your job?" said Abu Taw'aman, "Do I need to grab my boys so you can get your pay?"
"To answer your questions in order: I quit because I found it was no longer worth working for my employer. Thank you, Abu Taw'aman, but I am okay with never seeing Abu Nufaya again,"
Mostly because he was probably dead already and you did not want to mess around with the unquiet dead and their servants.
"Oh Ibn Ibrahim. Understandable," said Rina, stealing another piece of bread from Ismail. Hunh, other people knew the name too.
"What will you do for work now?" asked Abu Taw'aman, taking a piece of bread while Ismail was trying to get his bread back from Rina.
"No clue, hopefully someone needs someone educated. Does anyone in the house know of anyone looking for a scribe or translator?" you asked.
"Give me a week, brother and I'll have something for you," Ismail said, frowning at his defeat by Rina and theft by Abu Taw'aman.
"My cousin Mikael works at the palace. He might hear about someone," said Rina.
Abu Taw'aman scratched his beard, "I have some friends I'll ask,"
-------------------
Cousin Mikael: 34 (Noble)
Ismail: 89 (Magician)
Abu Taw'aman: 92 (Foreigner)
Making bricks was muddy and sweaty work. You mixed mud, straw, and water in a mould, scraping the top off, and removing the mould. Repeating it nearly a hundred times while Ismail checked the previous batch and flipping the others to cook each side underneath the hot sun. These would be used to fix or build a new section of the house. Useful, but by the gods, it was boring.
"So I heard from a friend Rasmya. She's a shopkeeper in the Whispers who heard that a fakir needs a scribe," he said as you two took a water break, lying underneath the shadow of the house.
"Is she a friend or a friend?" you asked, history had made it clear that when Ismail mentioned a friend, he usually meant someone he charmed. Your cousin was a handsome man and this meant he had a lot of friends. You just wished he kept away from certain segments of people. You were tired of fighting jealous wives and husbands. The last one had knocked you out when she found out about Ismail talking to her husband.
"Ah, you're too old to be an uncle, brother," he said, but his smile told you everything. You sighed. Hopefully, her spouse was not a veteran pit-fighter as well.
"Alright, so who is this fakir?"
Ismail Learning: 10+8=18
"Devorah bant Eliyahu is the name, but when I tried to find out more. One of the committee got a visit from a Generous man, saying questions about upstanding members of society was not morally correct behavior,"
That got your attention. A fakir with friends among the Generous was dangerous. Fakirs were already a dangerous group. Fakirs could tell the nobles no and the nobles would have to accept it. Jaffar himself gained a lot of authority because of his status as a status as a magician and his status among other magicians. At least until he turned out to be a sahir. To have the people who worked in the shadows as friends meant a person with a long reach and possibly darker business.
"That's something to consider," you said after a moment. Ismail gave you a stare.
"Brother, I don't know what happened with Abu Nufaya, but if you need someone to back you up, then you know you got me. Not a fakir, but I've got skills" he said, flexing an arm with only the barest amount of muscle and that made you smile.
"Of course, we're the children of Grandmother Lion," you said and Ismail laughed at that.
"Momma would kill me if I forgot that," he said and you chuckled. Nadia-auntie had been dedicated to Grandmother, even more so than your mother. She had been the one who did your coming-of-age ceremony. You still remembered the cold of the desert night, repeating the chant under your breath, waiting for Her to come. She never did, but you were glad. Gods were complicated enough from a distance.
–
The bazaar was thick with people today. It usually was, but even this was excessive. You could barely move without hitting another person. You double-checked your fake coin-purse while the real one beat against your chest. It was a common way to trick the pickpockets. The younger ones at least. Luckily you looked too poor with your drab yellow robe and gray turban to attract the skilled ones. Fitting for the role you were playing.
You were a simple porter today, helping Rina carry her purchases. It was rather funny to watch Rina purchase fish from the fishwives.
"Ah, daughter. You're too skinny. You need to eat more," said the fishwife, trying to argue more food into her hands.
"Mama, you're so cruel. He will have to carry it all," Rina said, looking back at you with a smile.
"Bah, he's a man. It's his place,"
"Let me give you a dinar then," the fishwife frowned at the coin in Rina's hand, "Please, so my grandmother can rest well,"
"Fine for your grandmother," she said, taking the dinar with a reluctance and a smile. You took the wrapped fish and headed back to the house.
"She's a sweetheart," you said on the walk back. Winding through a hundred paths seemingly unconnected but there was always a side street or set of stairs that brought you closer to the house.
Rina snorted, "She's trying to get me to marry one of her children,"
"Really? Odd way to go about it. Trying to buy you with fish,"
"Oh, no. She really does think I'm very skinny," she said and you did not look at Rina. You did not stare at all. The sky was a bright hue of blue today and that was why your gaze was focused on it.
"My cousin Mikael said there's an amir who needs a clerk for his staff," she said as you walked.
"Which amir?" you asked.
"Rashid al-Ma'ad. Heard of them?"
Challenge 40: 93+15 (Learning) =108 (Gained one momentum point)
"Minor naval house, heard they were on the downturn though. Cause of someone joined the Tahiriyya," you said. It was a rare thing to hear of a naval house going to the Liberationists. Naval houses made their wealth on the loot they won from their raids and counter-raids. A large part of that was slaves. That was a large part of their profit gone and you were no longer as an attractive prospect for veteran sailors and commanders.
"That's Rashid,"
"Damn, so he needs a clerk?"
"Yep," she said as you came to the house. Afraz let you in and walked you two walked down to the cooler. It was freezing in the cooler. One part
due to being underground and the other part coming from a cooling charm. You fought the shivers as Rina hung the fish.
"Thank you for being my porter," Rina said as you headed up.
"My pleasure," you said. It was nice to do something helpful and simple.
---
The Pilgrim's Path was the street to the Sacred House and it was the safest street in the city. None of the Generous or any criminal dared on the road to the Gods. Even the impious would not dare if only to save themselves from their more faithful kin. Thousands of people walked with you and your group. Some chanted, others sung, others walked in silence, but all wore their simplest clothes. You could not stand before your gods without showing the proper respect or as your mother would say, "What is your wealth to them, beloved? They who are as far above you as you are to the insects. Only a fool tries to speak of coin to a storm and expect the storm to listen,".
You continued walk besides the wagon. One of the Kophri brothers held the reins of the donkey while the other sat in the back with the rest of the elderly, handing out water and keeping the umbrella up. Abu Taw'aman walked besides you. His eyes switching from the street to his sons.
You wondered how much worry and pride was in his stare.
"Your sons are good with the elders, Uncle," you said.
"I would hope so. Their mother raised them well," he said, but he smiled nonetheless before his smile vanished.
"I heard from my friends and they heard of some foreign noble in need of a translator,"
"Where from, Uncle?'
"Bretonnia," he said, scowling as he said the word. That made sense. There were very few in the Civilized Lands who spoke well of the invaders, especially among al-Haikki. Very few people forgot the wounds they left on the land and the city even after five hundred years. It was a funny thing that the Estalians had a law forbidding the presence of Arabyans in their waters or lands, but it was Bretonnia that remained despised, but then again the Estalians had never built a city in the lands they pillaged. Though they did defile the Uniter's home, so maybe the hatred varied by minute levels.
"Do you hear anything else about them, Uncle?"
Abu Taw'aman Learning: 4-10 (Old Hatreds)=-6
"Bah, I closed my ears to them once I heard of their origin. Children of fetid lands, carrying the stink of their demon-goddess. Spare yourself from their evil, beloved. No matter how wealthy they are, it is not worth serving a wretched prince of a damned people," Abu Taw'aman said and you nodded. It was not worth angry him on the way to the House.
The House was a single temple, but it took up the same amount of space as the Grand Bazaar. A massive courtyard of smooth white stone surrounded by columns supporting a large fabric covering to provide shade. Five fountains were placed equal distant from one another so people could drink and also to help cool the air. The wagon was led to a stable where temple initiates stabled your donkey and wagon. Another came by with a pushable litter. You helped the elders move from the wagon to the litter.
Pushing them from the stables to through the courtyard and cleaning the wheels before you entered the temple, you stood in the House of the Gods. It was as always breath-taking. Shrines of every god and spirit worshiped in the Civilized Lands and elsewhere could be found. Whatever material preferred by the cult was shaped by the hands of masters. The stoic visage of the Tileans' warrior-patron with shield and spear in hand. The wolf-god of the far north gazing out with a grim disapproving look. The ancestor-gods of al-Anbat and the numerous gods of al-Qahtani from across the sea. Of course, the largest of the shrines was to the cult of djinn. Here four great altars held the embodied gods. Efreet danced and moved to the hymn being sung. Marids sighed and stared out. Zawba'ah whirled on their altar. Al-Arid simply stood, eyes closed.
Thousands of people sat before the altars singing the praises of their gods. You helped your elders out of the litter and sat with them and sang along. Thousands of voices rose and fell in a wonderful unison. You lost yourself to the song, to the music of the instruments, and to the gaze of the gods.
Which of three do you send a letter to? (It can be all of them):
[] Devorah bant Eliyahu, a fakir with ties to the Generous:
+ Fakirs are powerful and that carries over to their servants.
+ Fakirs are rich and can pay more than the usual rates.
-/+Ties to the Generous Hands of the Pious is always suspicious, but your own home has ties to the Generous if only in the sense of agreeing to turn a blind eye.
[] Amir Rashid al-Ma'ad, a radical noble of a naval lineage.
+Even a radical noble is still a noble and all with that comes with it.
+ As a tahiriyy, he definitely hates the man who ruined your life.
+ Tahiriyya is very popular in the south and the Gulf of Medes.
-Sailors get their money through the prizes they win, a decent percentage of this is slaves. As a tahiriyy, Rashid frees them and thus lessens the wealth his sailors gain.
-Tahiriyya is very unpopular in the west and northeast. This includes al-Haikk.
-As a tahiriyy, the man who ruined your life definitely hates him.
[] Bretonnian Noble
+No matter the nation, nobility is still nobility.
-Everyone hates Bretonnians and probably you if you agree to work for them.
-You still have to figure out who they are.
---
Reaching Out: 79+9 (Diplomacy)=88
The Gardens were famous for being the inspiration of two major artistic movements, four famous writers, and one dismal attempt at poetry when you were eighteen. Here the brilliant and mediocre came to sit and submerge themselves in the experience of the world. It was also the place the young would come to fool around, but that was also important part of life. Fooling around in the Gardens was romantic, but very impractical. You walked down the familiar path leading you to your old picnic spot. Your feet moved carefully over the root-covered earth surrounded by trees of a hundred different lands. Each filling the air with their scent mixed into a heady perfume by the passing breeze. Here the air was humid and hot, but bearable. Here the noise of the city was silenced by the music of the insects, streams, and shaking of the leaves. An oasis in the urban desert.
You were not surprised to see them, sitting on a laid-out blanket. Khadijah and Suleiman sharing a bag of candied oranges. Khadijah had not changed. She was still the short, visibly loud in her red silk dress and gold headscarf. Suleiman, on the other hand, was far broader than you remember him being. His arms seemed far too big for the tunic he wore. Was that what natural philosophy did to you? Yet, these had been among your closest university friends. Part of you wanted to go home. Could you actually forgive them? You knew logically what they had done was only for their careers, but you still felt your resentment and loneliness bubbling beneath you. You had been friends. They could have said something. Just one thing. Were you not worth at least that?
They had answered back though. They could have ignored you. It was not the stalwart loyalty you wished for on that day, but maybe your anger was blinding you to the fact, they did not have to answer. You took a deep breath and stepped forward.
"Nasir!" Khadijah shouted when she saw you, rushing to embrace you in the tightest hug you had ever received outside of your family. You embraced her back, not as tight if only because your arms were crushed by her hug. You did not mind. It was a pleasant crush. She released you to Suleiman who hugged you as well, but with much less force.
"How have you been?" Khadijah asked and it was such a strange question. Part of you wanted to answer with sarcasm, because she knew what had happened. It did not leave your life in the best position for success. Yet, there was an honesty to Khadijah that made you know she was sincere. She was really interested and concerned. Suleiman just gave you a worried look.
"Better. Definitely better. How have you been, Dijah?" you asked.
"Not Dijah. It's been so long since I heard that. I've been busy. I'm the Deputy Librarian of the Library of Usman now, so I handle all the busy work and oh my gods, Nasir. It is killing me," she said, elongating syllables at the end of each sentence. She should have been an actress. There was never anyone as dramatic as Dijah.
"You look really good for someone whose dying,"
She posed like a model for an artist, "Well of course. Imagine me leaving an ugly corpse. Besides have I ever not looked good?"
Tilting your head, you squinted at her, "88 spring if I remember right,"
"How dare you, sir? I looked amazing. Your illiteracy in modern fashion is not my problem. Tell him, Sulie,"
"Yeah Sulie, tell me," you said. He just widened his eyes as Dijah and you turned to him, your arms crossed and her hands on her hips. The look on his face was hilarious given the amount of muscle on him. This man could pick you both up. You could not help yourself but laugh. Soon enough, Dijah was laughing too while Sulie looked on both of you bemused. You were not friends, but it was nice to be among people again.
–
Challenge 20/40/60/80: 63+15 (Learning)=78
You stared at the book. Leather-backed cover, golden letters writing out al-Kitab al-Ulum Ghayb. The introductory text for all magicians if the bookseller was not lying to you. Ibn al-Nadim's lifework, a magician and scholar who spent twenty years collecting the knowledge of a hundred different magicians to create the prefect manual for a beginning magician. His fellow magicians did not care for this project at first, mostly because magicians back then were not prone to sharing or being lied to. Yet having read it after burning him alive. They found it was actually a brilliant work and set up the College of Magicians. The Book of Occult Sciences became the primary text in the beginning years and remained so even centuries after its foundation. All of this you learned from the dedication. Unique way to start a book.
You read it in the quiet of the leisure room, a teapot of koshary and cup by your right. A notebook and pencil on your right. It was not a page-turner. Each page filled with dry technical language. If you cut all the jargon and their definitions, you think it would be missing a third of its content. At one point, your eyes began to ache and you had to refill your teapot. Yet, you had read worse and survived. You would not be defeated.
As you could understand, the occult sciences were based on one observation. Magic or as Ibn al-Nadim termed it, arcane energy was not of the world, but of an invisible realm. He was not very clear on exactly what this was but listed the commonly accepted theories of its nature. This supposed realm was the realm of the gods, the realm of the dead, or the primordial substance used by the gods to make the world. The first theory pointed to the magical ability of certain priests. This with the historic meaning of fakir led the southern magicians to argue all magicians were unknowingly priests. Their unconscious need reaching out to any deity favorable to their aims. Magic mishaps, a thing you learned was a thing, happened when the aims of the deity and the invoker were not unified. Thus, the results could be argued as divine punishments. They strengthened their argument by comparing the practice of rituals and chants between magicians and priest. Ibn al-Nadim seemed to argue this was more a product of the evolution of magicians beginning in religious cults and that if this was true, it seemed to complicate the theologies of multiple faiths.
The second said that magic was fueled by either the user's soul or the souls of the dead. The various types of spirits were ghosts who had forgotten their human lives. The evidence stated for this was in the effects magic had on its users. They also pointed to the power and ability of necromancers compared to their non-necromancer compatriots. The proponents of this theory reflected on the nature of the mortuary cult, the ancient Nehakarin faith. Their heavy focus on understanding the nature of the soul and its parts. A note of distention you had was Ibn al-Nadim's mention of its popularity among the eastern peoples. You had never heard of this in the sixteen years of your life in the east. Ibn al-Nadim seemed hostile to this given his repeated mention of the observed effects of necromancy on the individual and the environment, but he seemed to miss the proponent's own hostility to necromancy as an unnatural practice.
The third theory which was derived from the schools of elementalism and alchemy as well as various religious origin myths. They argued that magic was the basis of all reality. The original and primordial substance shaped by the gods to make reality. Something they called Chaos which was a rather uncreative name in your eyes. They pointed to the creative and transformative power arcane energy had. It also referred to the improved ability of elementalists compared to the other traditions. As one drew closer to the proper understanding of the substance, so did their ability and effects grow in their impact.
Yet, all three theories seem to reinforce the same two messages. Magic was ever-present and it had deleterious effects on the user. This second point was the most important to you. Each listed different reasons for why, but no one could deny using magic caused changes and worse.
This led to the second major point of explanation. The degrees of interaction with magic. The first degree which was the direct interaction of the user with arcane energy. Ibn al-Nadim deemed this the most dangerous form of interaction with the highest rate of negative effects. The second degree which was the indirect interaction of the user with arcane magic. This was the usage of magical items and spirits. This was safer, but not without its own effects and limitations. Ibn al-Nadim called the most common method of interaction in Araby. By using magical items or making deals and contacts with jinn, the individual could call upon arcane energy with the least risk to themselves. It was this method Ibn al-Nadim preferred all magicians use as it provided the greatest chance of longevity.
This led to the question of inherent and learned ability. Ibn al-Nadim noted that the majority of magicians including himself had something of a sense for magic. Ibn al-Nadim described his as a primarily tactile experience. This was to him at least a mark of an intuitive ability to perform magic. Yet, he did note there were magicians who did not have this sense, but who could develop it through exposure. This sense seemed to a specific marker for other magical entities. Very rarely were people able to gain the attention of Jinn or worse without already having this sense. He even developed an exercise to help see if you had this ability.
Do you try the exercise:
[] Yes. Might as well.
[] No. You don't know enough and the mention of shayatin was not a good sign of messing with forces you did not understand.
Apologies for how long this took, but I wrote nearly fifteen thousand words and the amount I had to edit was so frustrating and painful. Hopefully this is enjoyable, but I don't know if I wrote it well enough. If anyone knows where I could find a beta reader, please let me know. If anyone has any questions or grammatical errors, feel free to post that as well. The voting will be closed on April 11th at 1700 hrs. The next informational post will be a dramatis personae on April 11th as well. Thank you everyone who has engaged and read.
