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cpthero2
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Posted - 09 Dec 2020 :  06:39:00  Show Profile  Visit cpthero2's Homepage Send cpthero2 a Private Message  Reply with Quote  Delete Topic
The Holy Orphan of the Ormpe Trashpickers

Sahil

08 MAY 2017

From the travelogue Shaar and Beyond by Loducius the Laughing, in the chapter entitled “The Holy Orphan of the Ormpe Trash Pickers.”

“My principal reason for visiting the mining town of Ormpe was to catch a glimpse of the famed Curna emeralds. These gems – harvested from the nearby mountains by the wealthy dwarves of the Gemstone chaka and cut in Ormpe by the town’s sizable population of gnomish gemcutters – were found nowhere else and I was eager to see them. However , it was not the gems, regardless of how exquisite I indeed found them to be, that most occupies my memory of that town; rather, it was the sprawling squalor of ramshackle homes that festered outside the city walls, and within that dilapidated slum, the singular child I met during my sojourn.

“Here, in what had come to be called The Quarter of No Hope, I experienced poverty unlike any I had witnessed in this most prosperous nation. Here, I was greeted by a sullen, taciturn people, far different than the warm and curious folk I had met elsewhere in this tolerant and hospitable land. This was a community broken by poverty. That I should find such desperation in a town whose singular wealth had catapulted the leader of the Gemstone chaka into the nation’s High Council posed a mystery I was particularly motivated to solve. My initial inquiries, however, yielded few results. Few among the downtrodden residents proved willing to communicate with an outsider such as I.

“Nonetheless, I was able to assemble at least a general explanation of the poverty I encountered here: The economic boom that had been precipitated by the Curna emeralds has attracted laborers from across the Shining Lands and beyond. Few of these arrivals, however, found profitable work. It was rumored that the mining jobs that these migrants, largely of human stock, had come to claim were instead granted only to dwarves. Gem cutting also was granted largely to the town’s gnomish minority. Consequently, the humans who had sold their worldly wealth to migrate here found few opportunities for gainful employment, and so ended up among the town’s most desperate.

“With this knowledge, at least, the mystery of the unexpected poverty I encountered in this town was solved, but another mystery, far more intriguing, arose during my search, especially during my inquiries among the younger residents of the Quarter. Time and again, they, in their own broken dialect of the common tongue, referred me to a certain Sahil, an individual to whom they attributed various wonders and no small amount of wisdom.

“It seemed that the rapid growth in wealth among the city’s more privileged residents had given rise to a sprawling dumping grounds outside the city walls, near the Quarter of No Hope, in which the region’s newly rich had dumped many of their old, worn possessions in deference to their newly acquired luxuries. And here, children, many of them orphans either in fact or in practice, picked among the discarded possessions of the newly prosperous, hoping to find something that still retained enough value to trade for food.

“Among these child trash pickers, this Sahil individual had attained the status of something like a holy man. Or so I assumed him a man, until I fully parsed the Durpari phrase by which they referred to him: Roughly translated, he was child saint, or more literally, holy older brother not yet reached adulthood.

“In the end, I did not find this Sahil. Sahil, rather, found me.

“It was on my third day of inquiry regarding this holy child that a single songbird alighted upon my path. Many such birds I had witnessed flitting among the refuse of the Quarter, but this particular specimen possessed feathers of purest white and glowed with a vibrant health to rival his ragged kin. And when this unusual creature furthermore spoke a single word in the common tongue, I could not refuse.

“‘Follow,’ it trilled, before it took wing. I followed. How could I not?

“The bird, I later learned, was named Pak-Pak, a common name for such avian pets among the Durpari. But this particular Pak-Pak I followed with an inspired zeal, as he flew through narrow alleyways, one after another, until he returned to find his home in a tiny birdhouse of thin, patinated copper. This tiny birdhouse was lashed to a frayed rope belt, and that belt was tied about the waist of a boy who had seemingly not yet reached his fourteenth year.

“His eyes, however, seemed decades older. He sat upon a half-broken chair of carved rosewood, an object that might have fetched a few coin in mint condition, but now, compared to the ascendant wealth of whatever dwarven emerald miner once owned the thing, was rendered nearly worthless by comparison.

“This child on a broken throne, this was Sahil, I knew it.

“His robes were tattered, dirty, and beneath them, I noticed something like armor, made of scraps of leather sewn together by tiny hands, and reinforced with cheap copper coins affixed with needle and cords of sinew. More curious, however, was the mace that he wielded like a scepter. This iron thing, almost certainly stolen from some abandoned temple and wrenched from the grip of a forgotten idol, was forged to encompass on each of its four sides the visage of what I assumed was some Durpari deity or hero or another. To certain buyers of antiquities, I’m sure, this scepter would still retain some value, despite having been rusted almost beyond recognition.

“But this was not my query. I simply wanted to know: Who was this child saint of the Ormpe trash pickers? For a ten-day, I sat at his feet asking questions, and found at least some answers to my queries. But mostly I found a child ignorant of his own power and influence. I witnessed children bringing to Sahil stale loaves of the local flatbread, having already begun to become spotted with mold. And Sahil, with a gesture and a brief prayer, erased the spoilage with the ease of an innkeeper wiping a tavern’s drink-spotted counter. I saw children approaching with empty pitchers, and again, I saw Sahil touch the pitchers’ rims with a whispered prayer and the things fill to the brim with clean, potable water.

“Now, I had seen such minor miracles performed by numerous priests from here to Waterdeep, and I had no doubt that clerics dwelt here too in these lands for whom such feats were a trivial effort. This child was no proper priest, it was certain. Even the raiment and accoutrements of this child, his tattered robes and makeshift armor and rusty mace, seemed a mockery compared to the merest acolyte in even the most modest temple. And yet, among the urchins of Ormpe, this Sahil was regarded as a saint.

“It became apparent over the weeks I spent among them why this was the case: Priests indeed came to visit the Quarter over those weeks and many other goodly individuals besides. The Hin of the local Baker chaka came to distribute their unsaleable day-old goods among the hungry, and even a few properly trained priests passed through long enough to assuage their consciences.

“But few dwelt here for any meaningful duration, and the poor of the trash heaps treated all of them with skepticism and distrust. Sahil, however, was one of their own, an orphan of Ormpe. His miracles, however meager, were homegrown, without the pretense of pity or self-indulgent sacrifice, and so the others in the Quarter held them in high esteem.

“Sahil himself seemed reluctant to answer any personal questions. Instead, he spoke mostly in cryptic sayings and rambling parables, as if trying to imitate the wisdom of properly educated priests. But over several weeks, I did manage to tease out a few pertinent facts about his history.

“His family, like most residents of the quarter, had moved here in search of work, but they had succumbed to the slum’s despair. His father had turned to the cheap but strong drink plentiful in such neighborhoods as these. His mother had turned to despondency. The father disappeared, in the end, and Sahil’s mother disappeared within herself.

“From what I had been able to prise from Sahil, his mother still dwelt here in Ormpe, but he was unwilling to speak of her. When I inquired further about his family, he seemed to grow annoyed, until he at last gestured to the children who had assembled before him. ‘These little birds,’ he said, ‘These are my mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers.’

“I did not press him further on the matter.

“The next day, I departed. In the marketplace, I had encountered a Calishite merchant bound to Pyratar. My purse had grown light through my travels, so when he offered me passage on his dhow for a modest fee, I could hardly refuse. Had I time and coin enough, I would have investigated more thoroughly the mystery of the Holy Orphan of Ormpe, but the exigencies of travel forbade it.

“I worried that Sahil might be offended by my sudden departure, but, as our dhow departed the dock in Ormpe, a certain thrush alighted upon the taffrail. ‘Come again,’ he chirped, ‘Come again.’ I laughed heartily at this cheerful bird. If the gods will it, I shall indeed return one day to Ormpe.”

~

An excerpt from the later correspondence of Loducius the Laughing, in a letter responding to a reader of his travelogue Shaar and Beyond

“… In response to your latter query, I did indeed return to Ormpe, some three years after I penned my initial account. I did not, however, find any trace of the Holy Orphan Sahil.

“It seems that, after my departure, tensions had arisen between the young denizens of the Quarter of No Hope and the merchants of Ormpe. These tensions began at first with a series of minor incidents: a mango snatched from a street vendor’s stand, a hole cut in the bottom of a purse in a crowded market, events that seemed relatively insignificant to me and common enough, especially in a town of such disparate wealth. But as I observed often in my travels in the Shining Lands, the famed tolerance of this region did not extend to sins of trade and commerce. For such crimes, there was little forgiveness.

“As the merchants of the town grew impatient with these offenses, minor thefts quickly gave way first to scuffles and soon to more violent altercations, and the ruling Gemstone chaka was eager to put an end to such disruptions in the marketplace. Moreover, the dwarves were eager to find some cause for the urchins’ newfound audacity. To this end, they could find no better scapegoat than the child preacher Sahil, who held such sway among the town’s younger poor.

“In a torch-lit assembly in the dead of night, the town’s Nawab, that is, its chief merchant and de facto ruler, prevailed upon his appointed judges to condemn Sahil for conspiring to interfere unlawfully in the free trade of goods. They agreed, and since Sahil possessed precious little in material wealth, they determined also that seizure of his property would affect him little. Instead, he would be taken into custody and deprived of his freedom.

“Fortunately for Sahil, his young disciples, his ‘little birds’, had already caught wind of the Nawab’s efforts, and when the town guards came to seize Sahil early that next day, they found him already gone.

“It seems that several bands of mercenaries had passed through Ormpe in recent days, responding to a call out of Assur for individuals willing to help them quell some troubles they had experienced there of late. Sahil’s disciples, having already heard rumors of the trouble that was to come for Sahil there in Ormpe, prevailed upon him to offer his services as healer to one such band and thus secure safe travel out of the reach of the local Nawab.

“Sahil was reluctant to leave, I was told, wishing rather to face arrest than to abandon those whom he called family. But when he could no longer bear the tears of his followers, who had no desire to see him bound in chains, he conceded to their pleas and departed without further objection.

“With this, I heard no more of the Holy Orphan of Ormpe. I can only hope that whatever god or gods he worshipped – and I confess I never wholly understood the nature of his faith – guided him to a new calling and a good end. Perhaps his later adventures will someday too be recorded, but as of my last visit, I could find neither rumor nor trace.

“I apologize that I cannot provide a more satisfying response to your query.”








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Edited by - cpthero2 on 09 Dec 2020 06:46:42

cpthero2
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Sahil's First Miracle: Part I

Sahil

01 JUN 2017

The town of Ormpe in the month of Kythorn, 1368

Even the water in Ormpe came at a cost, the stuff worth drinking at least. During the rainy season, there were plentiful streams and rivulets that would descend from the Curna Mountains, but these waters carried with them sand and dust and the detritus of mining spoils washed by rain.

If you were poor but wise, you knew, at least, to drink from the streams south of Ormpe, nearer the mountains, before the transient runoff flowed past the town. These waters were cloudy and gritty with sand, but they quenched the thirst with no ill effect.

Some poor, less wise than the others, drank of the waters north of the city, nearer the sea, where the runoff had combined with the effluent of householders and shantytown dwellers alike. These waters were cloudy with substances worse than mere sand. Newcomers often made this mistake. Their retching the next day was almost a rite of passage.

Of course, the rich, wise and foolish alike, merely bought their water from the water chaka, who maintained enough wells and cisterns year round to quench the thirst of all who could pay. The Durpari, however, are not a people without compassion.

Ashvath the Carter carried wagons of water to market each day in Ormpe on behalf of the water chaka. Often, he would return from market with a single unsold barrel of water. He explained, as any good Durpari would, that it made little financial sense for him, as an independent contractor, to carry a single barrel back to the cistern. Better instead, he explained, that he reimburse the water chaka for the loss of a single barrelful from his own purse and spend the last hours of daylight fulfilling other more profitable deliveries.

Instead, at his own expense, he would set the barrel down amid the begging children of the Quarter of No Hope, pick up the empty on a later passing. He did not bring them water every day, mind you; he did not care to attract too much attention and cause a riot. But he visited often enough that the children all knew the name of Ashvath the Carter.

“Lies! Lies!” Pak-Pak trilled quietly in Sahil’s ear, perched upon the boy’s shoulder. Sahil and his newfound feathered companion watched together as children gathered around with cracked vessels and broken potsherds, jostling for position to scoop what clean water they could from the open barrel.

Sahil laughed, “He lies with his words to preserve his honor as a tradesman. The water, however, speaks the truth he cannot say aloud.”

“True! True!” the songbird sang.

Later that day, Sahil performed his first miracle.

~

The city of Assur in the month of Eleasias, four years later

Outside the temple of Lucha, Sahil observed with no small wonder the lines of those who had assembled here in search of work. Years ago, similar rumors had gone out from the town of Ormpe, rumors of profitable labor. A much younger Sahil had watched in silence as crowds lined up in hope of finding employment. Many were turned away, his own father among them. “Perhaps I should grow a beard,” he joked briefly before his face turned somber. “Godsdamn dwarves.”

There were dwarves here too waiting in Assur, as well as halflings and gnomes and humans of every description. Durpari mostly, but Halruuans too in their billowy garments, grandstanding with their arcane tricks; Shaaran savages, talking among themselves and clutching bone knives; even the occasional Shou or Chultan, each with their own exotic dress and unusual armaments. An elephantine Loxo shifted uncomfortably while waiting in line, and Sahil quickly stepped away quickly to avoid being trod underfoot.

“Water! Water!” Sahil shouted, “Free for those who thirst.”

Most of the Durpari looked at this boy, just now on the cusp of adulthood, with a skeptical frown. But a few, perhaps not aware of this land’s customs tentatively extended a jug or waterskin. Sahil touched the rim of each, closed his eyes and said a brief unintelligible word in supplication. The vessels filled to the brim with clean, fresh water.

Those who received the water, almost without exception, nodded in acknowledgement, perhaps uttered a word of thanks in Durpari if they knew the tongue. To Sahil’s astonishment, however, few looked impressed.

“You!”

Sahil turned to face the one who had addressed him. By his dress, he was an acolyte of Lucha, as near as Sahil could guess, or else some minor administrator associated with the temple.

“Are you here for work?”

“I am here to obey the will of the Adama.”

This acolyte or administrator or whatever his title merely crinkled his brow. “No one knows the will of the Adama. I just need to know if you have any skills.”

“I can heal the sick, provide water for the thirsty, encouragement for the…”

“A healer, then. Fine, fine, thank you. Join the line there, and you will be seen in a moment.”

Sahil joined the line, somewhat silenced by the irreverent treatment he had received by one whom he had assumed to be a person of faith. Not long after, a familiar white bird alighted upon his shoulder.

“It wills! It wills!”

Sahil sighed. “Fine, then, we shall see what the Adama holds for us. You will join me on this venture, I assume?”

“I will! I will!” the bird tweeted, as the two were ushered into a temple chamber to meet their new companions.







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Sahil's First Miracle: Part II

Sahil

14 JUN 2017

Somewhere between Assur and Lastarr, in the month of Eleasias, 1372

The hobgoblin’s swollen tongue lolled from between his cracked and blood-flecked lips as he lay on the ground, dehydrated, dead.

During the night, Tuck the Hin had taken it upon himself to devise a ruse by which he thought the hobgoblin might lead the party back to his fellows. He had run toward the Curna Mountains, but devoid of water or supplies, he covered little ground before succumbing to the oppressive heat of the land.

Sahil was not sure what he thought of the hin’s stratagem, but in this hobgoblin’s death, at least, none of his companions had played a direct role. It was his fate, Sahil thought. Of this one’s death, our hands are clean. Not so the others.

Sahil did not recall who suggested severing the head of the hobgoblin and taking it with them to Lastarr. He remembered only turning his back as the others began their grisly work.

The town of Ormpe in the month of Kythorn, 1368

The goblin boy’s name was Snig, although he insisted that all the other children of the Ormpe slum call him Chieftain Snig. Alternatively, if you were lucky enough to be one of the lackeys who doled out beatings on his behalf rather than receiving them, you could get away with merely calling him Chief. Whatever you called him, though, he was known as the chief bully among the children of the shantytown.

His family had travelled out of the Beastlands when Snig was still a suckling, not wanting their child to experience the short and brutal life lived under the lash like so many of their race. True to their reputation, the people of The Shining Lands tolerated the goblin family’s presence among them, but tolerance is still a far cry from kindness: Freedom from the threat of harm is one thing; the promise of profitable living, another entirely.

It was hard enough for humans to find work in Ormpe. For goblins, it was nigh impossible. And so Snig’s family joined the rest of the masses here in the Quarter of No Hope eeking out a different type of short and brutal existence than that they had left.

Now, one could suggest that Snig turned bully because bullying was in his blood. One could suggest alternatively that the slums had the potential to turn even the kindest heart mean. Regardless of the cause, Snig had an early advantage at bullying insofar as goblins reach their full size long before their human peers, and that was enough for him to establish himself atop the pecking order long before his human contemporaries began to overshadow him in stature.

Sahil watched as Snig and his lackeys pushed themselves through the crowd of children. At its center was the barrel of clean, fresh water provided by Ashvath the Carter, who had long since left to carry on with the last of the day’s deliveries.

“Oy, did you pay for that water?” Snig snarled, peering down his wrinkled green nose at a small child named Navesh, not yet seven years old. “Because nothing’s free, friend, and you owe a water tax to Chieftain Snig.”

He smacked the child’s wooden bowl to the ground, and the spilled water turned red upon the dusty clay.

“Now, all you idiots, form an orderly queue like good children. Bring your tribute to Chieftain Snig and you’ll get your due. Never let it be said that Chieftain Snig is anything but fair, right lads?” he said, turning to the young thugs in his employ, who were snickering through idiotic, toothy grins.

Someone picked up a rock.

“This won’t end well,” whispered Sahil to his newfound bird companion, as the pair watched from beneath the eaves of a nearby shanty.

“End well! End well!” the bird tweeted. Sahil assumed the bird was merely repeating a phrase in a tongue that it seemed to be slowly learning. He had little time to contemplate the animal’s true meaning. Instead, he watched as a rock struck Snig right on the side of his boney green brow. It was hurled by the child Navesh, who ran away even as the crowd smelled blood and surged forward.

The crowd pushed forward. Snig and his fellows pushed back with a flurry of fisticuffs. And then, from amid the crowd, came a wet crash and a surge of water rushing past the crowd’s feet and stirring the red clay into a muddy slurry. The crowd parted, a stunned look on every face. The barrel had been overturned, the precious water spoiled.

“Enough!” The shout came from Sahil. He was chiefly known among them as the awkward child who had recently taken up the habit of holding whispered conversations with an albino pet bird. But now, his fists were clenched and his eyes ablaze with a light that suggested more than mundane anger.

The crowd parted as he approached. “You two,” he shouted to two of the burlier bullies. “Right that barrel.”

They obeyed, and Sahil stood behind the now-upright barrel, clenching the rim with white knuckled anger. “You fight over the water that quenches the body’s thirst, but you forget generosity and compassion for your fellows. That is the true water that satisfies the soul.”

“But if you would have mere water, then you shall have water enough.” Sahil began to intone a prayer beneath his breath, and his hands began to glow with a faint light. Soon, water began to trickle from his fingertips into the barrel. The trickle became a torrent, and the crowd watched in stunned silence as the water rose within the barrel until it began to overflow and pour over the rim. The children began to approach tentatively at first, then more eagerly, scooping water from their barrel and sharing it among the crowd.

Sahil drew a cup of water himself and offered it to Snig, who only stared in a combination of fear and wonder. “You who once demanded tribute will now render it onto another.”

Snig began to rifle through the folds of his garment, searching for whatever coppers he could find and fearing that any moment a bolt of divine wrath might strike down from the heavens.

Sahil merely smiled. “No, not unto me, friend. Unto them. The adama has seen fit to grant you a gift. Your companions obey your commands. But you shall no longer command them to take for your own benefit. You shall command them to give. Whenever we receive bread or water or any good thing, you shall ensure that everyone here gets what is needful and fair. Now, share a drink with me, friend." And with that, Snig took the cup from Sahil’s hand and drank.

From that day forward, the goblin Snig became Sahil’s most devoted disciple. And thus came to pass the first miracle of the child priest of the Ormpe trashpickers.

The Free City of Lastarr in the month of Eleasias, 1372

For the better part of the day, Sahil’s companions had walked from temple to temple, his companions haggling with priests and acolytes over the cost of a rite that would allow them to communicate with the severed head of the hobgoblin.

At this, Sahil was deeply confused, first over the idea that wonderworkers capable of such a miracle could be so plentiful that one could shop around for the better deal, and second, that miracles should be bartered and sold at all for such unimaginable prices.

The last of the temples wanted more than six-hundred gold. Sahil had no experience with such sums. His remembered only the barking of the street merchants in Ormpe, “Loaf of bread, two coppeeers! Loaf of bread, two coppeeers!” His brow creased as he counted calculated the numbers in his head. Thirty-thousand loaves. Thirty-thousand starving souls who, for just one day, might feel a respite from hunger.

It seemed a poor bargain for a moment of conversation with a severed head that, even when attached to its original shoulders, offered little in the way of helpful advice.

That evening, the party retired to a tavern called The Eye for a moment of respite and entertainment, but what Sahil observed there only continued to vex his soul, people spending gold freely on wine and women and gaudy spectacles.

“These too! These too!” whistled Pak-Pak quietly into Sahil’s ear.

Indeed, Sahil thought. These too. I must not forget that the adama dwells as much in those who forget as in those who are forgotten. He withdrew from his bag his wooden begging bowl. He touched its rim gently, watched as it filled with fresh water, and drank.

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A Heart of Wood and Pith

Sahil

27 JUL 2017

I haven’t always been able to make letters. Pak-Pak had to teach me. Prayers, at first, were all he taught me. He scratched out the letters with his beak in the dust. I copied them with my finger. When I got them right, he would whistle with delight. When I got them wrong, he would ruffle his feathers and squawk, “Again, again.”

I quickly learned to form the letters, but the words seemed strange. They were words for priests in golden temples, not for a child of alleys and trash heaps. After I had learned to copy, he said I should write my own thoughts. “Write your thoughts,” he said, “and they may outlive you.”

I wished to be a tree yesterday. Monstrous vines had ripped us from the path as we walked. They crushed the wind from my lungs. My vision turned dark and I saw a dusting of lights like the Tears of Lucha when they pass by night.

And in the darkness, I saw the children of Ormpe, sick with hunger. I saw the bodies of those we found in the desert, abused and burned. I saw the woman of Lastar clinging to our garments as they wailed and demanded news of those they feared lost. I saw the dwarf whose throat was cut to the spine. I saw our camels snatched aloft by great talons. I saw their eyes huge with fear. And in this, I wished to be a tree.

The adama dwells as assuredly in leaf and bark as it does flesh and bone, yet trees are insensible to pain and terror. So, even as I felt the signs of death upon me, was it really so strange a wish?

My hair turned to leaves and drank in the air that had fled my lungs. My legs that had trembled with weakness grew stiff and immovable. My feet turned to roots and sank deep in the soil. I ceased to struggle, and the vines which threatened to crush me grew suddenly slack. The spell, however, did not render me completely insensible. I do not understand how the magic works, how I could still hear without ears or see without eyes. But I could see my companions wrestling to escape the vines’ grasp. I could hear the sound of vines being crushed and ripped by Danjo’s blade as he struggled to free us. The sights and sounds seemed muted and distant, as in a dream that is only scarcely remembered upon waking, but I could not escape them.

I could see the hin who mutters in his sleep and dulls his memories with women and drink. The easterner and his servant rejected from their homeland for some reason they seemingly fear to confess. The pale Halruuan who bears a palpable burden of hate and his loyal sibling who forgoes her own desires to help him carry the weight. I could see them all and I managed only to preserve myself. They survived, all of them, but not through any help that I had rendered.

In former days, I could fill a cup with water or cleanse the spoilage from a heel of bread and ease another’s suffering. But now, when lives hang in the balance, the best the adama grants me is to turn my heart to insensible wood and pith.

I understand now at least one prayer that Pak-Pak taught me. “Illuminate my path, Lady of Silver, as I navigate the terrors of night.” Indeed, may all the gods, and the spirit which dwells in all things, preserve our paths.







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A Time of Doubt, a Time of Respite

Sahil

12 AUG 2017

“Zionil!” Pak-Pak squawks.

“Wonderbringer,” I reply, repeating by rote what he has taught me. “His portfolio is artifice, craft, and smithwork.”

“Good! Good!,” he trills. “Curna!”

“The Wise Goddess. Gives inspiration and knowledge.”

And so we continue with the gods most known in these lands. I still do not understand all that these words imply, but I repeat them back to the bird just as he has taught me.

I don’t know where he himself learned these things. His knowledge seems to come in fragments, fits and starts, as if he too is learning, but from whom I do not know. Sometimes I ask him questions, inquire after deeper knowledge of the subjects he has me rehearse. Usually he ignores me. It is in those moments as if he were just another bird; I, a madman for talking to a dumb beast.

But this land, at least – and a quiet moment to repeat my lessons – is a welcome respite from our troubles. Our most recent encounters have been with folk either helpful or indifferent, the fey creature who gave us healing mushrooms or the walking tree who questioned us only to seem unconcerned with any of our answers. There are wonders in these lands, and shade trees and cooler breezes besides, which is no small thing.

It was a hard-earned rest for my companions. We faced demons and Enalda suffered a grievous wound. I called upon the spirit that indwells all things to heal her, but I could barely soothe the pain much less knit the wound. It seems I remain too weak a vessel. She and her brother both were also infested with some sort of fiendish infection that could not merely be scraped away. I shuddered when I thought of the mango worms that would infect the dogs who scavenged among the trash heaps alongside us in Ormpé.

The foreigners Danjo and Shino suffered an even more grotesque transformation, though thank the gods it too turned out to be temporary. A formless, roiling beast emerged from the sands as we traveled, and its touch transformed them both, for a brief time, into shapeless horrors.

Nonetheless, we survived, and now we’ve had a few days to recover. I would take it as a good omen that we have met with no new terrors, but my companions are shaken with doubts and I fear our fellowship may soon fracture. I am not confident, however, that they will fare any better in Assur. I know well that cities too can be as cruel as the deepest wilds, that man can visit upon his fellow man horrors equal to the worst of fiends. As we walked, I asked them to consider what it is that we seek.

“Is it safety we want?” I asked. “Last we were in a city, we were shot, shackled, nearly burned alive. It seemed scarcely safer. Is it coin perhaps? I have never had so much coin,” I said as I jingled the coins in my belt pouch, “and this found beneath a bush in the wild. Food and drink and supplies? I’ve seen children begging for food next to merchant stalls overflowing with plenty because they lacked coppers enough to meet the merchant’s price. And in this time of scarcity, who knows what the prices will be? And these fey we’ve encountered, they seem to have found food enough here in the wild.”

But I confess, I was attempting to summon a confidence that I myself scarcely feel. I have faith that if we align our will with that spirit who dwells in all things and with the benevolent gods, that we will do well. And, thanks to Pak-Pak, I know their names, at least, and can pray for their aid. But the heavens remain unmercifully silent. I can only hope that our aims are noble and our hearts pure and that the gods will reward our efforts.

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The Dream of Sahil, Trashpicker Priest of Ormpe

Sahil

15 APR 2018

I dreamed I was a bird, a white songbird just like Pak Pak. Or perhaps I was Pak Pak in the dream. Or perhaps Pak Pak and I had always been one and the same.

I flew over great forest canopies and across untamed savannas. All the lands glowed with hues of red and purple, but whether it was dusk or dawn in this wild land, I could not tell, for two suns of equal size hovered at the edge of opposite horizons. I alighted upon the boughs of a great cedar to catch my bearings, for I recognized nothing of this place. As I sat and contemplated my strange circumstances, purple clouds above me began to roil as if disturbed by some great wind, though the boughs of the tree upon which I perched remained undisturbed. I gazed as the roiling clouds began to form, to my astonishment, the likeness of a human face.

Like thunder, the face boomed, “Petitioner, what merit do you claim that you presume to come to the Beastlands?”

I opened my mouth, or beak rather, startling myself with the piping tones that warbled from my throat, “Brother Cloud, I do not know where I am, nor how I came to be here.”

At this, I heard nearby a hooting laughter, as of a mad man, but it was no man: An orange-furred ape swung into view from a nearby tree. “Ho, ho, ho, the child does not know! Does not know!”

“Forebear from your mockery, ape,” growled a third voice, that of a great-maned lion who entered the clearing before me. He stretched and yawned in the dusky sun, before continuing, “You too were quite confused when first you arrived. Let the child make his case.”

“I do not understand what case I am to make.”

The orangutan howled with laughter, but the face in the cloud spoke again like thunder, and the ape fell silent. “The Lord of the Dead has judged you fit to pass from his City to this realm, and yet I cannot divine which god you serve that you should be granted admittance here.”

“Perhapsss it wasss a missstake,” hissed a great python that unwove its enormous length through the branches above me. She eyed me like prey, and I recoiled in instinctive dread.

“I serve them all,” I warbled, shrinking away from the great python’s predatory gaze.

“Hey, hey, hey!” laughed the orangutan. “It doesn’t work that way! He cannot stay! Cannot stay!”

“I have prayed to She Who Guides to safeguard us in our journeys,” I replied. “To The One Who Endures to help us relieve the suffering of the innocent. To the Goddess of Wisdom that I might use my abilities to their greatest potential. I have prayed to all the gods I know, in such circumstances as their aid was proper and fitting.”

“Faithlesss he isss,” spat the python as she inched slightly closer, flicking the air with her tongue.

“Perhaps,” opined the lion, “But it may also be that his worship, though ignorant, was genuine in its intent, and the Judge of the Damned was merciful in light of his sincerity. Certainly, if the Judge required of petitioners a complete understanding of the afterlife, then none would find their way here. Did we not all arrive here with a degree of ignorance?”

“Well said,” replied the face in the clouds. “But we still know nothing about how this child conducted himself in his first existence. Speak child. Make your case.”

It was then I understood. I did not remember having passed from the prime material, but I knew then that I was dead.

“I kept my hands clean of bloodshed. I caused no violence to any sentient being.”

“Death isss not bad. It isss the way of all thingsss,” hissed the python, creeping still closer.

“That is true, my sister,” replied the lion. “But the child’s intent is nonetheless a noble one for those who are able to live by such tenets. Certainly the antelope would be quite happy if I were to dabble in pacifism.” With the semblance of a wry smile, he laid his head upon his great paws.

“Hoo, hoo, too true, too true!” howled the orangutan.

The face in the cloud gazed upon me intently and I felt at once as if he was seeing that which had passed before. “But you helped take many lives, did you not?”

“None by my hands. True, I manipulated the strands of fate that I might aid my companions. I summoned creatures to do my bidding. But I myself slew no one.”

The lion frowned. “So you establish your case upon a technicality. I care not whether you killed, for indeed, much suffering could be avoided if evildoers were given a quick death. But regardless, you should at least be faithful to yourself, not attempt to assuage your conscience with such pedantry.”

“You have told us what you have not done,” thundered the cloud. “But inanimate matter, sticks and stones, these things also do nothing, and they do not rise again as petitioners. What have you actually done, child?”

At this, I thought of the siblings, Setibyr and Enalda, who had begged to return from the wilderness. I had argued that we should proceed, that the gods would safeguard our steps. I remembered the sounds as they were torn asunder in the forest.

I thought of Malakai, brained by a stone in a senseless explosion. I thought of the suffering of my other companions whom the gods chose to make whole again but who had suffered horribly before they were restored to life. I thought of the visions in the temple, the bodies tortured and violated, sacrificed for some diabolical end.

And lastly, I thought of the vile pact we had entered into in order to spare our own lives. I convinced myself that the pact would be forgiven if my intent was pure, if we could yet come to the aid of the suffering. But now, I questioned whether this was just more technicalities and self-deception.

I had sought to combat the great suffering that had fallen upon my homeland, but in the end, I could not point to anything my actions had actually accomplished.

“My heart was pure,” I said. “But I cannot say exactly what I have done.”

With this, the snake flicked the air again with her tongue, catching my scent. “Hisss sssoul, it doesss not sssmell ready.”

“Ho, ho, ho,” laughed the orangutan, “Away then he should go!”

“I concur,” yawned the lion. “But the child does show potential.”

“Indeed. This, then, is my judgment,” thundered the face in the cloud. “You shall leave this place and return to the life you knew, but know this: Make your preparations. All things must come to an end, and indeed, your end approaches quickly. Make sure, ere you next come to this place, that you have made yourself worthy.”

And with that I awoke. No harm had come to me. The dream, alas, was merely a dream. But I knew that in dreams the gods may reveal portents of future events. Regardless, this much was certain: Whether it was soon or many days from now, death would come for me, and I would need to answer for what I had done with my years upon this sphere. A judgment was coming, and I would need to prepare my soul.







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Visions of Damnation

Sahil

27 JUL 2018

When I close my eyes, I see her still clinging to the wall, wreathed in a circle of fire. Her red eyes glowed with a hatred that belied her beauty, until an arrow struck deep into one of those crimson pools, sunk the shaft down almost to the fletching. I looked up from my summoning ritual to see the drow’s unnatural grip on the wall go slack. She plunged through the flames to collapse on the stone below, and the air turned acrid with smoldering hair and scorched flesh. The beast I summoned arrived a moment too late, all claws and beak, ready to act on its bestial rage, but the drow was already dead.

Not two nights ago, I dreamed again that I was in that purple-tinted land of eternal twilight. But in my dream, both forest and savannah had gone silent. No birds flew in the sky above, no lions paced the grassland, no apes swung from forest branches. All was motionless and silent as if in awful expectation. And then the land itself shuttered with a report of such terrifying volume that I fell prostrate upon the ground and clutched at my ears in pain. And there, I saw in the midst of that land, rising from the sundered earth, a citadel of cyclopean dimensions, carved of solid ice. Freezing vapors cascaded down from its walls and spread in an ever-widening circle, a palpable wave of frost that withered foliage and cracked wood as it advanced.

And upon the ramparts of that citadel, giant chitinous creatures stood sentry, clutching massive spears. Their mantis-like faces betrayed nothing like human emotion, yet still they projected a cold and alien hatred. And then I saw, frozen among countless souls trapped within the walls of that fortress—to even think upon it, I feel that horrible, unrelenting cold rise anew within me—faces that I knew well, frozen eternally in what seemed to be a rictus of horror. Danjo, the old warrior, and Shino, his companion. Rakor, the orc. Weshtek, the mage from Chult. The halflings, Tuck and Chand both. And I saw my own face frozen like the others. Dead, I thought at first, but somehow I knew otherwise. No, not dead, but entombed alive, burning with cold, eternally suffocating, but never experiencing the release of oblivion.

I awoke panting to catch my breath. I fear my soul is forfeit, and my companions as well.

Weshtek seems to be on the edge of madness. Shino’s sanity seems also to rest upon a knife’s edge. And I know not how long Rakor can endure the conflict that grows within him. Meanwhile, our newest companion sleeps in shackles because fear and uncertainty grips us all. I try to count my beads and chant and pray for the Broken God to bear our sufferings, for the Loyal Fury to send our enemies to flight. For the Wise Goddess to grant us the wisdom we lack, and for She Who Guides to show us the path to freedom. But when I close my eyes, all I see is that vision of damnation. Gods of the Adama, help us all.







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The Parable of the Thief and the One-Copper Loaf

Sahil

22 MAR 2019

A crisp Ches morning, 1372 D.R
The trash heaps outside Ormpé

Flocks of seabirds from the shores of the Golden Water would descend by the score upon the trash heaps outside Ormpé, picking at the refuse of discarded animal bones and moldy bread. And the trash-pickers would chase the birds off so they could pick through the rubbish unmolested. Sometimes, if they were lucky, the pickers would find something like a robe with a single tear or a copper kaeth pot with a broken handle, items that no doubt once belonged to someone grown rich from the emerald trade, who thought it easier to throw an item away and buy anew than bother to mend what was broken.

A picker would chase away the flocks of gulls, and the birds would gyre about for a few moments before descending on another trash heap, only to be chased away by a few minutes later by a different picker eager for scrap. One bird, however, a songbird of pure white, whose feathers never seemed besmirched by the dust and debris, remained unperturbed.

Near that bird, on a once-broken, now-mended chair of rosewood, sat the trash-picker priest Sahil, and at his feet, the younger pickers, some of them as young as seven summers, who had taken a break from their efforts to listen to Sahil’s words.

“One day, I was walking down Satama Street, and a child, one of us, ran past me clutching a one-copper loaf of bread. A few moments later, a bread merchant, red-faced and sweaty, ran up to me, proffering a single silver coin. ‘Which way did he go?’ the merchant demanded. And what do you think I said to him, little birds? Do you think I told him the truth?” Sahil asked with a sly wink at the smaller children who sat cross-legged, dirty-faced but smiling, at his feet.

“No, I pointed down an alley opposite the way the child had run, and sent the merchant blundering the wrong direction. I still took his silver, of course. I took that coin to the merchant’s own booth, and from his partner, bought ten more loaves to distribute among the hungry.”

“And so, that day, the merchant lost eleven loaves in his greed in order to save the one. And I, with a tiny deception, spared one child a beating and fed ten others besides. Did I lie, little flock? Of course I did. But remember, I do not say to you that honesty in unimportant. Be truthful with one another, every one of you, especially among your brothers and sisters here. But I say this to you also: Mercy is the greater value.”

~

Two days later, in a Quarter of No Hope hovel, a stern young woman chided Sahil over a meager meal of stale bread and foraged herbs. “Sahil, my friend, why do you defend thieves and liars? It is only a matter of time before the merchants have you chains.”

Sahil called his friend Auntie, although Anaya was barely three years his senior and no blood relation. Still, she had a habit of chiding Sahil like an overprotective aunt, and so Auntie Anaya she was. Nonetheless, Sahil appreciated her pragmatism as a check to his most dangerous impulses.

But not today. Today, a child had been whipped by a merchant in the market square for stealing a mango, a mango that meant a few coppers to the overfed merchant, but for the child meant an afternoon of respite from the drowsiness and gnawing pains of hunger.

“And what of it, Auntie? If I should be in chains, then the gods have willed me to be in chains. But my heart will not be changed even if my body is in shackles.”

“Sahil, you fool.” Anaya uttered the insult with a sigh of resignation and compassion, not spite, and Sahil took no offense. “I’ve heard it already from the scullery maids who take out the Nawab’s rubbish. The merchants are ready to hold you to blame for rise of thievery in the market.”

“Thievery, you say? My family came here to Ormpé for the promise of a better life. And that promise was stolen by those who would amass wealth at the expense of the vulnerable. When that promise was stolen from us, my father drank himself to death from despair. My mother will barely stir herself from her bedroll to take food. You speak of thievery, but what has been stolen from us, Auntie, from all of us?”

“I am not blind, Sahil. I see the merchants grow crueler and the poor grow more desperate. This place is a tinderbox ready to be set aflame, but I would not have you be consumed in the firestorm. You must think of yourself for once, Sahil.”

“Myself?” Sahil laughed. “And what am I but a part of the whole? Does not the Adama dwell in all of us alike? Then why should I alone be exempt while others suffer. No, if my brothers and sisters are to suffer, then I will suffer by their side, whatever the cost.”

“You righteous idiot, what will we do with you, Sahil?” Anaya sighed. And the two ate their bread and herbs in silence.






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