DescriptionOnce, not too long ago, the land that is now known as A Seihid Pashrat was the demesne of a cruel Sorcerer-King, one of the last of his kind, a relic of a much more cruel and primal era in which dark ritual and bloody sacrifice was far more common than it had any right to be. His was a line that could be traced back centuries, millenia even, to the arrival of the first humans on the continent, on great, brightly painted ships propelled by legions of malnourished, scurvy-ridden oarslaves. His rule, as that of his predecessor and on and on, appeared absolute and uncontested, it was merely a fact of life in the far south, in that opulent, lapis-lazuli domed city known as Famarqud wherein he held court.
It was a paradise, of sorts, depending on your station in the great Sorcerer-King's political machine. It was a cityscape of diverse extremes, high and low, beautiful and disgusting, virtuous and depraved. So many recall the immaculate monument-lined plazas, the pleasure gardens perfumed by exotic flora, amphitheatres and arenas filled with jubilant crowds. Many more recall the dusty periphery, the winding streets that stank of human habitation and were fit only to keep their denizens alive and contained. It was a place entirely out of time, isolated by endless dunes on three sides and by a glimmering sea on the other, so carefully maintained by the cipherates and eunuchs of the so-called 'Venerable System'.
This was not to last, however, even given the admirably long period of rule that the Sorcerer-Kings of Famarqud, of many dynasties and bloodlines, had enjoyed. Their system proved ultimately unsustainable, and even as Famarqud grew to be ever richer, the systemic problems under which it suffered continued to fester out of sight and out of mind of the patrician, rune-tattooed overlords. A lax policing of the deserts, of the wastes that were thought to be entirely uninhiabitable - save by those deemed unimportant - would prove to be their downfall, for it was here, in the dunes and canyons that surrounded city of Famarqud on three sides that great change brewed.
It was here that the messianic warrior Aheid was banished, having been granted his 'freedom' to leave the bonds of servitude and the city itself if he so choosed. It was a sardonic gift that he had been given following his victories in the great arenas, for the great masters of the city long thought that it would be simpler to remove any slave of such growing prestige before any common rallying point could be found for the chattel slaves. Bread and games without any of the subsequent mess - there would be no choice in the matter. He would leave, or he would disappear and the narrative would be that he left. And so he did, for there were none amongst the gilded upper classes willing to offer patronage to the insolent gladiator.
And so life proceeded as usual behind the great frescoed walls of Famarqud, the great masters sneered down their noses at those they did business with and those they offered their sons and daughters and dowries to. Intrigues played out in the high courts while the grating song of bullwhips and shouted orders played out down below. A daughter of high prestige, the only child of the last Sorcerer-King Zelidizzar, was betrothed to the corpulent master of the neighboring realm of Khumer. It was a union that was distasteful to many, but moreso a means to an end than anything. A union of Famarqud and Khumer would have spelled great trouble for the other peoples of the world. It would be as the beginning anew of a second Khum Imperium. The only true concern is if barbarous Khumer customs would wind their way south if friendship was secured. The perfumed aristocrats would not abide by as much.
Meanwhile, in the wastes to the north, Aheid trudged onwards upon a desolate, stone-partitioned caravan road. His canteen was dry as bone, and no food remained in the pack he clutched with slackening hands. He, as many others, looked set to be killed by his freedom. One last, cruel joke by the slavers of the city. The buzzards circled, the bleached bones of men grew ever more common on the trail, but he did not give up. Not as far as he was concerned at least. He passed out and tumbled into the sand before he could surrender. But the tale did not end there.
Kessik riders, those who dared to travel the routes between the Famarqudian patrols in search of fat merchants and dead men alike, came upon his body there. He was not dead, and he would not die if they acted, and they knew this, and they knew just enough to decide that it would be best not to end him and take his meager possessions. The crone who decided much of the affairs of the tribe had, on the night prior, made each of them promise to draw no blood upon the road. And they did not. After all, it was unlikely that they would in Aheid's case, for many of them had come into the fold of the Kessik tribes in the same manner. Skilled warriors banished for their competence.
The young, half-dead gladiator-no-more was taken and shored up on one of the camels they had rode out. They retreated from the roads and took refuge in the shade, in a crevasse at the mouth of an ancient, violet stone canyon. It was there that they tended to him to ensure that he would not pass. Some strength returned to him, and they spoke, Aheid and the leader of these particular bandits. The man was known simply as Vahs, and his father had made the same pilgrimage. After some ruminating, especially in regards to the peculiar commands of the crone, they thought it best to return to their camp deeper within the maze of stone and sand, so that they might present Aheid to the crone and to the chief.
Aheid knew now a sort of kinship he never had before. These lean men of lean means had decided to rescue him from the carrion birds rather than make use of his meat and his rags as those back in Famarqud, desperate as they were, might have. Any suspicions he had were quickly cast aside as they treated him more like a brother than a prisoner. The rest of his journey was far more comfortable, he had company and food and drink, and he could enjoy the desert rather than be killed by it. The crystals and the mind-boggling rock formations of the canyons the Kessiks had secreted themselves away in boggled him, and as the sun descended it all become just that much more entrancing.
They became family to him, and he to them, in a short span of time. He had nowhere else to go, he had no knowledge of the rugged, cruel world beyond Famarqud's walls, and indeed he had no intention of abandoning these hospitable kindred souls. He grew stronger in body and spirit in their company, they taught him the way and will of the desert and refined the raw brutality of his swordplay into something keen and deadly by the teachings of the ancient martial art known as Ghiv Nujad, or 'The Fluttering Steps'. He was adopted by the Kessiks, and while their means were meager it was so much more to him than the squalor of the Famarqud slave quarters. He had become a master of his own fate. A free man perhaps.
Or perhaps not.
The mysterious crone, the wise woman of the tribe who had so quickly faded from memory as days stretched into months and months stretched into years, had finally decided to call for Aheid and allow him an audience with her. She had, up until this point, made herself into more of a recluse than usual, only lurking on the periphery, shrouded in tattered burgundy, watching as the Kessiks and Aheid grew closer and stronger. She who had once enjoyed a place of unrivaled power over the Kessiks had stepped back into the shadows from which she had emerged decades ago, if only to tug the slick strands of fate ever closer to their intended path.
She cultivated a leader by her absence. A decisive leader of men to whom the Kessiks readily rallied. A man whose incomplete formal education, the gift of a brazenly coercive Famarqudian nobleman to a rising gladiatorial star, had made him into an asset beyond his swordplay. He aided in the transcribing of old manuscripts, where the old scholars were now unable and the young scholars were unprepared. He deciphered the riddles of the mystic metal known as steel, refining the techniques of the Kessik smiths. He sojourned, with his fellows, deep into the dunes, the mountains, and the jungles on the hunt for artifacts and legends of old, wherein he took up a sword, one that was eight feet of rippling, pattern-welded steel carved with old scripts that were neither elfish nor dwarfish. And it was on these adventures that the Kessiks seized the greatest opportunity in their history.
An apathetic dislike for distant Famarqud would have been nothing more than that had Zelidizzar not thought to finally do what his ancestors could not and suppress Kessik subsistence raids once and for all. Clashes became more frequent and they became more chaotic as the faceless, cruel legions of Famarqud intensified their campaign of extermination in the north and east. The Kessiks would have said it was a stalemate, the Famarqudians would have said victory was inevitable, but neither side had truly gained the upper hand until King Zelidizzar blundered right into the hands of the ragged enemy.
He had in his heart great ambitions, he wished to see a Great Khum straddle the continent once more, to erect great works near and far and permit arcane discipline - and greatness - to reach all those with potential. He wished to see the upstarts, the pretenders, and the barbarians cast aside once and for all so a new golden age might be ushered in. His city and its residents, as wealthy as they were, could not fulfill this wish of his alone. Zelidizzar instead sought to make use of the maligned art of diplomacy and politics, to tame the wild men of the east. To fasten bridle and bit to the dread cannibal legions who had taken old Khum theology to its ultimate conclusion. To Famarqud, these men of the east, these 'Khumerites', were mad and just as savage as anyone else, but they were kin. And they were pliable and just as susceptible to the ambitions of world conquest.
It was their corpulent king, not quite man, but not quite beast, who the rune-inscribed Sorcerer-King reached out to. A man without an heir or a queen. Zelidizzar offered to him his only daughter, Najia, and with her the keys to the Kingdom of Famarqud upon his death. While suspicious of such an earnest offer, one in which Zelidizzar truly had little to personally gain, the king of the east accepted, and a wedding was to be had in the wretched capital of Khumer. One between the most basic of beasts, as highborn Famarqudians had said, and the most beautiful of princesses. It was above all else a marriage of politics and convenience.
Najia was privy to Zelidizzar's plans, and though her coming future as the wife of a gluttonous cannibal was distasteful to her, to put it lightly, she saw her father's reasoning. If the machinations of the Sorcerer-King and his Cipherates were fully realized she would control two thrones. An Empress of a new Khum Imperium, a sorceress whose power would be unmatched the known world over. It was a destiny she was keen on fulfilling, even if it meant being wed to a perpetually blood-flecked monster.
WIP
