Plebians of Jakalla

There are various lists of clans for Tekumel, but I feel they tend to emphasise the upper end of the social scale, while my games are ones of gritty low clan struggle. If you are following the classic 'off the boat' start you are not going to hob nobbing with the Joyous of Vra and Golden Sunbursts from the get go, you are far more likely to run into the kind of working class clans detailed below.

 

Low Clans

The Swaying Tree

A long established Pe Choi clan that has been recognised by the Imperium for over a millenium and who live in cities all across Tsolyanu.

They provide a long distance courier service and have way stations at many major cities of the Empire and even beyond. They are not as fast as the Imperial couriers but they are a lot cheaper and are available to the general public. Their Jakalla office is down at the Sakbe road interchange, but their clanhouse is in the foreign quarter.

They have a reputation for being extremely reliable, at least compared to the alternative which is to entrust your letters to a merchant caravan; if they ain't your own clan they are going to treat mail as a low priority and have their own routes and timetables. The Swaying Tree guys will go out of their way to get your letter to a clanhouse off the beaten track (for a fee), and make a big deal out their heroic couriers running through wild animal and bandit ambushes. They will also run messages across the city, getting their cute Pe Choi kids to do the local jobs. 

 

They are noted for their use of wooden leg splint-cum-boots. Pe Choi have more delicate feet than humans more suited to walking on mossy forest floor and climbing trees than pounding hard stone pavements. Their odd woooden shoes have padded linings and are more like stilts attached to their shins and lower pair of arms enabling them to run for miles along Sakbe roads on all fours.

They favour the temples of Thumis and Hnalla, but still worship the Father of Nests at their own clanhouse.

White Skull

The White Skulls are a Sarku worshipping clan who specialise in the manufacture of palanquins and sedan chairs. They also hire them and their bearers out on a daily, hourly or even per trip basis in a number of cities in Tsolyanu.

The White Skulls do not do the carrying, they own slaves to do that, but they may personally assist by preceding the planquin shouting the customers name and lineage, blowing trumpets and using a swagger stick to get low clan foot traffic out of the way.

In Jakalla their hire depot is opposite the Palace of Mruthri, the upper class hostel in the Foreign Quarter, where they have two-slave-power sedan chairs, four-slave standard palanquins and an eight slave limousine quality palanquin with proper cushions, an awning, privacy curtains and an optional refreshment slave to make you chumetl while on the go.

Their carriers are always well turned out with shaven heads, white loincloths and white skull face paint, and their palanquins are clean and painted in the clan's white andblack livery.

They are quite sniffy about their competitors. The Lordly Domicile of the Hand of Hrugga have their own in house crew who are overweight, unfit and slow in the White Skull's opinion, and the 'democratic' wretches from the Serene Company of Bearers, Porters and Watermen are just unspeakably awful.

Most of the business is within city limits, but they can, for a pretty considerable fee, do intercity runs along the Sakbe road

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Blue Lamp 

The Blue Lamp are found all over Tsolyanu and Mu'ugalavya as city and market police, Sakbe Road guards and prison warders, as soldiers in the Marine and light infantry Legions, and as lower level civil servants in the courts of the Palace of the Realm. They favour the Temples of Avanthe, Chegarra and Hnalla.

They are loyal servants of the Petal Throne always, but their clan network amongst the lower reaches of the law enforcement apparatus means they can sometimes get cases dropped and sentences lightened for a suitable inducement and for the right kind of sympathetic perpetrator. Their annual 'Feast of the Blue Lamp', a festival in aid of police and guards injured in the line of duty and the dependants of those killed in service to the Emperor upholding his laws is always a far grander affair than you would expect from a low clan and attracts some quite interesting and occasiopnally quite high ranking patrons.

Very Low Clans

The Serene Company of Bearers, Porters and Watermen 

A clan unique to Jakalla, this clan are the product of an administrative initiative by a governor of the 14th century. He licensed the business of river transport; to run one of the numerous small boats that take passengers across the Equnoyel river and run packages from the ports and goods up river you had to have a license. A nice earner for the city and for barbarian Nakome who could make a coracle or canoe an actual legal way of running your own business in what can be a pretty tough city.

 

Eight centuries later the watermen have an actual clan and the licensing system has been extended to sedan chair and planquin bearers, and members will do pay-by-the-day portering too. There are only so many licenses in circulation and they have become hereditary heirlooms of the Company. They exert pressure in the Communal Clanhouse to stop the governor from issuing any more, and take anyone who infringed on their rights to court. They lost in the case of the White Skulls and the bastards got an assignment of a dozen precious licenses, and there has been rancour ever since.

 

Being a clan that formed out of an eclectic group of Nakome and tribals the Serene Company still have very little status. They often look a bit different from the typical Tsolyani, being descended from a mix of Pakalan, Chakan and Salarvyani immigrants. They also employ Ahoggya, at least on the bigger barges they run upriver, which many find repugnant, and they have a pretty flat almost democratic structure with a large council of 'Captains' as they call the license holders.

 

You will find Serene Company carriers and their black sedans and palanquins hanging about outside most temples and the Palaces and in quite a few marketplaces, and if you can't see a ride waiting, check the nearest wine shop. They are an ecumenical clan, but of late the Ksarulites have been using the aspect Eyun the Knower of Skills to recruit Company members by encouraging them to think of their trade as a skilled craft. The Company pride themsleves of their knowledge of the streets and alleys of the city and claim they can run a passenger to any back street clanhouse by name alone.

 

Chequered Lizard

Tekumel does not have rats, it has a bunch of insectoid, molluscoid, avian and reptillian vermin like qigekh, kurgha, kuruku, aqpu, gerednya and some uncharitable sorts would include Pygmy Folk on this list.

Mere dogs and cats cannot handle most of these and in severe cases of infestation the Clan of the Chequered Lizard will step in. Their clan was actually a tribe from the Gilraya forest but now live in clanhouses in villages and small towns all across south east Tsolyanu, mostly making leather from lizard hides.

In Jakalla's foreign quarter they have a shop selling lizard and snakeskin belts, pouches, sandals, and bundles of cured lizard pelts for the armourers shops. But they also have a body of pest controllers who use tamed Maraibo lizards to hunt down vermin. These are scavengers somewhat like a small Therazinosaurus about three feet in length. They have a keen eye, large clawed hands for grabbing prey and a beaked mouth for crushing it.

The Chequered Lizard clan are aware that some outbreaks of the larger vermin can be traced to the Tsuru'um and have some knowledge of how to get down there and how to navigate to under a client's house to deal with the issue.

 

 

Adventure Hooks, Rumours and Other Nonsense

• The Swaying Tree have been asked to take a message to Thayuri Isle by a noble client and couldn't really say no. Trouble is that it's over the sea and they are all Pe Choi and scared of water and of going on a boat. They are entrusting the honour of their clan to hirelings who they expect to be as conscientious about getting the message through to the right person as they are. 

1. The PCs are to take it, they must swear to some wierd piece of white wood that they will do so faithfully. If they are blase about it, they find that the Pe Choi's abstract deity has some abstract demons to gee them up.
   
2. Letters to Thayuri and the other Isles are usually taken by ships of the Red Flower and they are miffed by the snub. Expect shenanigans, the Red Flower have friends in every port in the islands.
   
3. The message out goes fine, the one they are supposed to return to Jakalla is a well wrapped package with a note. Of course the Swaying Tree would never dream of opening any mail they were entrusted with, but the handover by a one eyed Pakalan at a semi-ruined villa on top of a cliff over a sea cave has 'dodgy' written all over it...
   
4. The village on the address label is not apparently on Thayuri Isle and none of the locals know where it is - except one old guy from the Thumis Temple who says it is on an Engsvanyali wall painting he knows of. Turns out it sank into the sea millenia ago and currently lies somewhere in the channel between Thayuri and Burru isles. Who sent this letter? Were they a ghost? Isn't that wall painting one of the dubious ones that includes a nexus point?

• The White Skulls allegedly have a special palanquin for high mucky-mucks of the Temple of Sarku with actual M'rur bearers. They keep it in the underworld and the M'rur plod along this network of underground passages by way of short cuts. One of the guys from the Chequered Lizard saw it, though what he was doing down there he wouldn't say.
  
  
• The Serene Company want some deniable adventurer types to do a jailbreak on the slave quarters of the White Skull bearers. But do the slaves actually want to go? They are well fed, they even have a gym and an on site masseur and make up artist to ensure they look and work at their best - sure beats being on the run and living in ditches.
  
  
• One of the Serene Company's more eccentric Captains has passed away and rather than leave his license to the Company council to reassign he has decreed a competion for it; run a palanquin loaded with a dozen live kaika round five sites in the city as fast as possible and you get the precious plaque, and the event is open to ambitious Nakome in memory of the origin of the clan. The White Skulls are putting a team in to grab the license of course, various desperados at the Tower of the Red Dome are building palanquins including a very fit looking N'luss team, some Ahoggya want a go, various jokers are planning to drop Tiuni from windows along the route onto the flocks of birds to add spice to proceedings, and what is the route anyway? The mad old coot wrote in some cryptic poetic code that presumably only someone with 'the Kowledge' of Jakalla's streets would understand.
  
  
• The Chequered Lizard have bitten off more than they can chew. Qigekh in the granary of the Palace of Murthri were a regular job, but the chnelh in the wine cellar getting drunk were new. That hole was bricked up, but the scruffy apes now had a taste for alcohol and pitched up in various foreign quarter wine shops. Drunk apes rioted one night and killed a city policeman with tiles thrown from a tenement roof and the Palace of the Realm haver hired the whole Chequered Lizard clan to find them. The Clan of the Blue Lamp also wants revenge. Chequered Lizard hunters have fought skirmishes with the bastards and trapped a few using beer kegs as bait. They are sure there is a veritable town of them down there somewhere and when they and their Nakome adventurer allies find it the Blue Lamp have said they will get a legion of cops together to grab the whole flea-bitten tribe for drunk and disorderly.
  
  
• The Blue Lamp are coming up in the world. One of the young ladies of the clan is marrying Purusa hiJonel of the far higher status Glory of the Worm clan, though people are noting that Purusa is not happy. What is going on? Is this the Blue Lamps price for getting a Glory kid off the hook for some crime? Who and what crime was that? Is this some scheme cooked up between his long suffering family and the Blue Lamps to put a cop in his very bedroom to stop some of his wilder ways?
  
  
• Some years ago a friend of the PCs got in one of those hire palanquins while drunk, and it turned out to be bigger on the inside - it was a portal to a Bethorm! It was honestly like a palace inside, and practically deserted. He went to bed in an upstairs room but a couple of huge demons woke up and threw him out the behest of a small man wearing a robe and skull cap.
  
  
• All kinds of stuff gets left behind in a hired palanquin...
  
  1. A PC hires a palanquin from the Serene Company to run him across town, and on the way realises that there is a scroll tube knocking about under the seat... What is it? Papers from the Palace of the Realm? A magic scroll? Instructions from the OAL that will self destruct in five seconds?
     
  2. The White Skulls have found a baby in one of the palanquins. It has been a busy day, runs all over the place, and kid seems to have sleeping soundly until they got the planquin back to the depot.
     
  3. It's a spider! It is crawling up your leg, and its definitely one of those horribly poisonous red ones from Penom that doesn't like loud noises. Did some bastard leave in in here to kill you? Or has some assassin's little helper managed to get out while he was on his way to a job? Either way calling out to the bearers doesn't look .like a good idea, and lets hope they are sure footed types who make no sudden twists and turns.  
     
     

The Tsolyani Day

The Tsolyani day is counted from dawn and has eight three hour tenmre, each given a name. 

Earth time	Tenmre number	Name(s)
6.00 – 9.00	First Tenmre of the Day	Tenmre of Dawn
9.00 – 12.00	Second Tenmre of the Day	Tenmre of the Market
12.00 – 15.00	Third Tenmre of the Day	Tenmre of Rest
15.00 – 18.00	Last Tenmre of the Day	Tenmre of Labour
18.00 -21.00	First Tenmre of Night	Tenmre of the Home Tenmre of Joyous Sitting Together
21.00-24.00	Second Tenmre of the Night	Tenmre of Sleeping Tenmre of Pleasant Parting
24.00 – 3.00	Third Tenmre of the Night	Tenmre of Darkness Tenmre of Pleasure Tenmre of Going Beyond
3.00 -6.00	Last Tenmre of the Night	Tenmre of Dreams Tenmre of Returning

In practice these are all a bit vague for most lower caste Tsolyani. The Tenmre of Dreams is when a lot of farmers get up and the Tenmre of Labour starts soon after that and doesn't really let up for the rest of the day.

Pious types will use names related to their deities and tier chorots. Thus the Tenmre of Sleeping is the Tenmre of Gruganu and the  Tenmre of Darkness that of Ksarul for worshippers of those deities, while the Tenmre of Dawn is Belkahnu;s and the Tenmre of the Home is Avanthe's.

The more pernickety priests and sorcerers will name some of the kiren too, and there was one eccentric Thumis scholar who named every last sivel (a 'moment', 4.5 seconds earth time) of the year, all 7 million plus of them.

Astrologers like this system, and the wealthier ones at least have a copy of this book, 'The Almanac of All Moments unto Eternity' by Nirua hiSsaagu, and casually drop in obscure names in conversation with each other as a game to catch each other out. The sivel of Preening Pedantry and the sivel of Blustering Embarrassment come round quite frequently in these circles.

Of more practical use are the manuals of times used by ritual priests and sorcerers looking to maximise the effect of their ritual magic. Combined with the atlases of magical locations and the workings of magico-meterologists who track the daily flows of tappable universal pedhetl these make possible some truly awesome magics. At least in theory. Getting to the right place at the right time can be a bit of bind, especially when that locale is a hundred or more tsan out to sea in the vicinity of the Hluss isles.

Time for an adventure:

1. The Mighty Ziggurat of Ssirandua the Punctual is a bit of a mystery. Built in the Engsvanyali period it is a whole pile of stonework filled with pipes, most of which are too small for anyone to fit in, an attached shrine housing a whole bunch of huge gears and a pointer, and the whole top level is one huge cavity lined with lead.

Some bright spark at the Ksarul temple has realised the whole thing is a gigantic water clock. Back in the day Ssirandua probably used some kind of Avanthe magic to fill the cistern, but this priest is going to make a diversion to an aqueduct and bring in water at the appropriate height.

It is going to take a bit of work, monsters may have to cleared out of the pipes, repairs made and the incurious nay sayers from the Temple of Avanthe who say there was probably a good reason this thing got shut down and abandoned convinced not to interfere one way or the other.

And what does happen when the great clock starts? When exactly do the mechanism bang the huge tunkul gongs on level two and what does that announce? 

 

2. The Midnight War is being fought between a sect of the servants of Ksarul and a sect of the Dlamelish Temple. Who 'owns' the Third Tenmre of the Night? Ksarul or Dlamelish? This supremely trivial question is a matter of honour for the youth of the Clan of the Dark Moon and the Clan of the Silver Bell. Silver Bell have getting the better of it - their wild party-like rituals have been popular with all sorts of other High Clan gadabouts, and the dour and serious Dark Moonies have been fuming.

But Harchan hiUrkullush has found an old document relating the legend of the Dark Moon clan founding back in the hoary times of Dormoron Plain, when they summoned the mighty beetle demon Erbule and his minions and invaded the gardens of moon Gayel turning the whole moon black.

The guests at the Silver Bell's latest shindig at the Garden of Unsubtle Hints might be in for a big suprise.

 

3. The Nameless Moment has been discovered. The chronometrists of the Observatory of the Mighty Planets have found that the Tolsyani year is bit off. There ought to be a leap-sivel every 17 years; over the millennia since the founding of the Empire of the Petal Throne the day count has wandered off by several days.

And of course that pedant of pedants Niruas hiSsagu doesn't have a name for it! This year the Palace of the Preisthoods of the Gods is holding a competition to name it. Contestants are to attend their local Palace at the apointed moment, the extra sivel being added to the end of the leap day Kolumehagi, the extra intercalary day that occurs every four years. 

Contestants are to sit and mediate upon the moment and see what it feels like, before they pronounce their name for it.

However the rumour has spread that the Palace also intend to put the calendar back 6 days in the coming year, and the clans do not like it or understand why. Riots over the Palace 'stealing a week of our lives' may disrupt the event.

And as it turns out that is exactly what is happening. No one is sure how but the first of Hasanpor has become the seventh by the time people wake up. The astronomers confirm the true date and time, but no one can remember the past week, at least not in the town where the PCs find themselves. A mass mind bar? Have those ratbags at the Temple of Sarku nicked these weeks from thousands of people to add to the span of a Jajgi? Is a demon involved? The college of wizards from the End of Time?

Conspiracy theories abound, further riots threaten...

4. The Eye of Enumerating. A body was fished out of the harbour, somewhat decayed and gnawed upon by lampreys and krua. On it's wrist was a metal bracelet that temple investigators are calling the Eye of Enumerating, as it has a grey face upon which characters form and change not unlike the charge indicators on the back of an Eye. The character system is unfamiliar though and the rate at which they change is very regular. 

It dawns on some that this is an ancient clock using a time system unknown to modern Tekumel, but still covering the same period as the Tekumel day, though messing with the button reveals two more time systems, each of different length. Where did it come from?

Investigation will reveal the man to be Yuraki, a Pakalan merchant (or at least a less rapacious than normal pirate), but where he get it? And where did he get the carved bone dagger found inserted into his viscera, the likely cause of his death?

(Inspired by Heliconia Summer by Brian Aldiss)

 

The Grand Kevuk Championship

Another bit rescued from the Inner Sphere blog:

The shrine of Niyunen, the Giver of Unlooked for Wealth, (an aspect of Hrihayal) is between the towns of Pala Jakalla and Hyatla in Jakasha Province. Starting on the 5^th of Langala through to the 8^th Langala the humid summer nights are filled with the rattle of dice as the grand yearly Kevuk championships are held. The courtyard of the temple is filled with booths and stalls selling food, drink and drugs, a veritable city of tents houses the festival goers, there are stages for musicians and dancers, and other gambling games carry on apace on the outskirts.

But the main event is in the central hall of the shrine, the Kevuk game. It is an unusual event in that the common street corner players who play for a few qirgal and a round of drinks get to challenge the aristocratic rakes who play for thousands of kaitars; wealth is not an issue here, and even social divisions are relaxed a little. It is all about luck and the fvaour of the Lady.

The selection of players for the final three days of gaming is made by drawing numbered lots at the start of the festival; 1000 play on the first day in groups of 10, the 100 winners play in groups of 10 on the second day, and the last 10 play on the last day, all games starting at sunset and ending at sunrise or when all players bar one are out of tokens. The winner gets to experience as many of the 32 Unspeakable Acts as they care to participate in free of charge (including the inevitably fatal 32^nd if they so desire), free lodging at the temple for a year and, most prized of all, a jade bracelet of unusual design that denotes that they have been the favourite of Niyunen for that year.

Since it is first come first served for the big game, the event actually begins as early as late Didom, when hopefuls start to camp out in the temple grounds, and the first dice games inevitably start just to pass the time until the festival begins. Many a player has been reduced to penury by the time the Priests and Priestesses throw their gates open to the players of the sacred game.

Scenarios:

Saving Utlen

Utlen hiTelsu, a youth of the impeccably aristocratic High Pinnacle clan, has not been seen for weeks. Before his disappearance he was on a determined path of drinking gambling and wenching and in the opinion of his elders possibly over doing it a bit. They have checked the debtors prisons and Ketengku temples and cannot find him there, they are hoping he will turn up at the Kevuk championship.

1. He turns up as a player not of Kevuk, but Six-Glass, a very decadent game of chance involving six drinking glasses and a bottle of Dreaming Diamond Tsuhoridu. The normal game is played with five glasses of water and one of Dreaming Diamond, which most people can take maybe three or four shots of before passing out into a hallucination filled dream, the loser being the one who passes out first after several rounds of random drink selection. He gets to pay for the Tsuhoridu. The ‘fun’ version Utlen is playing involves five big glasses of Double Diamond (aka The White Mist of Inchoate Dreams) and one of poison. All persons go out after the first drink, but only five wake up half an hour later. They are usually so mashed they immediately set the glasses up for another game. Winner/survivors are considered a) mad but also b) blessed by Hrihayal and therefore gain +2 on any seduction rolls among those who think this sort of thing is cool.
   
   
2. He is in the big game, and he had better win. He has made a side bet with a ‘friend’ of his of some 10,000 kaitars that he will make it to the last round. If he doesn’t he will become that friends property as a slave. The friend, depending on how evil the GM is feeling, may be another foolish rake doing it for a laugh, a priestess of Dlamelish who will just use him as a sex toy for a while, or a priest of Ksarul who needs a good looking youth for a demonic sacrifice he has planned. In any case other friends of his will be breaking the rules by intimidating and/or killing rival players, and his opposition will be trying to get people to swap numbers so he inevitably faces the best players in the field.
   
   
3. He turns up not as a player but a prize. He has been introduced to Zu’ur and is one of a batch of addicted slaves who are being offered as prizes in a high-stakes Tlatlen game.
   
   
4. He turns up as a slave merchant. He is up to his eyeballs in debt and he has hit on a pretty creepy but workable method of making some money back by offering to buy the children of big losers as slaves at a real knock-down rate. He has accomplices targeting those attendees known to have families and inveigling them into crooked kevuk games.
   
   
5. He doesn’t turn up. However it does get about that some bunch of guys are looking for a kid called Utlen and they are inundated with random people called Utlen, drunks and junkies claiming to have seen him and willing to tell them about it for a few kaitars, panderers who know a lovely young lad called Utlen they should meet, variously unconvincing fake Utlens who think they can pass themselves off as him long enough to get access to some of High Pinnacles’ cash etc. etc.
   
   
6. He turns up, but his activities are obscure to say the least. He is disguised as a sailor and is hanging about with the most debauched sorts imaginable but appears to be staying away from most of the considerable temptations on offer. He has in fact been secretly recruited by the OAL to ‘go undercover’ and ferret out Zu’ur smugglers. A bunch of fools turning up and telling everyone that he is a young nobleman will seriously screw things up and put his life in danger.
   
   
   
   
    

Tugo the Lucky

Tugo is a latrine digger (or corpse washer, street sweeper or other yucky very low clan occupation). He also happens to be pretty good at kevuk, and has a knack for spotting when a bird is going to poop on people. He is cutting a swathe through the festival, filling his pockets with small change at the lesser kevuk pits, coin tossing, hoopla and wheel of fortune stalls.

1. The story of the lucky pleb have got about. A certain priest of Gruganu has a theory; in all the games he is good at some physical object is involved – a wheel, dice, a hoop and so on. He reckons this fellow is a raw psychic with a powerful telekinetic ability and wants him recruited to the temple. PCs must observe him and see if they can confirm or deny this suspicion; teaching him tsahlten and seeing how he does might work. If a mage is available he might be able to detect the psychic energies in his vicinity during a game. He might not want to come with you – threatening or trying to kidnap him might result in some difficulty as he will instinctively use telekinetic force to avoid capture.
   
   
2. As 1. but Tugo is well aware of what he is doing; this is no wild talent, he is a sorcerer in disguise. His temple is one of the dull and straight-laced stability ones that frowns on using magic to affect the outcome of dice games, but he decided to slip out and have a laugh. Apprehending him might prove tricky, as he is well trained with some very hairy abilities.
   
   
3. AS 2, but Tugo is not just any old sorcerer, he is an Undying Wizard, come to this probability and time to find some really awful demon and deal with it. The messing about at the gaming tables is just a ruse to attract the attention of a certain Gruganu priest who lies at the centre of the nefarious and world-threatening goings on.
   
   
4. Tugo is a demon in disguise. He is looking to gain attention from some of the big cheeses at the fair and challenge them to a game of kevuk for a sum unspecified (it will turn out to be their souls…). If they accept a game with a latrine cleaner they are demeaning themselves, but if they refuse, they will never know if they really are the best Kevuk player. With the right style and quantity of charm and ego prodding he might manage it.
   
   
5. Tugo is a very lucky hick on an extraordinary roll of good fortune. This is likely to come to an end, as the PCs over hear a couple of jealous lowlife types planning to relieve the jolly menial of his winnings. He’s a latrine digger, who will investigate or pursue shamtla? Do the players let this happen, mug him themselves, or protect him? What is the decent thing in these circumstances as far as their temple is concerned?
   
   
6. Tugo is blessed by Hrihayal; his astrological chart has some perfect trines and other aspects, he was born to play dice. Someone who investigates his background appropriately might persuade him of this fact, or if not him, then perhaps the temple staff. There would be a big reward from the temple for discovering a person in whom Niyunen is so manifest.

PCs may hear a curious rumour about him – he is allegedly a penis thief! A couple of people near him at one of the stalls ran away screaming saying that their penises had disappeared. If they track down these persons it turns out to be true. This is because they tried to pick his pocket and the goddess Hrihayal exacted appropriate revenge on behalf of her chosen son.

 

The Law of Chance

An event like the festival needs careful and discreet policing. It can’t be left to run itself, gambling, drugs, drink and sex all in one place in large amounts will almost inevitably lead to something else in even bigger amounts – violence and theft. Various agencies take an interest in the festival and its legal side.

1. The Order of the Absolute Light of Justice are a lesser sect of the temple of Hnalla (with a few Karakan, Thumis and Chegarra adherents thrown in) who are dedicated to maintaining the utmost standards of probity and decorum in public life. A bunch of puritanical busybodies in other words, and it is their contention that gambling of any kind is an affront to the orderly running of the Empire and probably the universe as well, as all events are preordained by mighty Lord Hnalla and betting on them is blasphemous. Under the rules of the Concordat they cannot ban the Kevuk Festival, but they can turn up and poke their noses into everyone’s business and make sure every petty infraction of the word of the law is scrupulously investigated and the offenders punished. PCs are either a member of the sect trying to uncover as many ‘crimes’ as possible and/or convert the benighted gamblers to the way of Absolute Light, or one of the long suffering policemen who follow them about trying to keep the fools out of trouble.
   
   
2. The Temple Guard of Hrihayal are pretty easygoing lot; fat, lazy and corrupt might be a little uncharitable, but not entirely inaccurate. However the Kevuk Festival does require them to be a bit more on the ball than usual – the provincial governor keeps getting it in the ear from those Hnalla twerps about the amount of petty crime it attracts and they might be forced to scale the thing back or stop it entirely. The PCs are draftees from the Jakalla temple, unsure of the how things are done at the festival and have to try and keep order in a Hrihayal-ish fashion. A challenge to roleplaying if ever there was one.
   
   
3. As 2. but life is made a tad more complicated by the presence of a gang of lads from the Chiteng Temple. They are supposed to be providing muscle to back up the Hrihayal guards should armed force be necessary, but seem to be more intent on getting drunk as lords, spending their pay at the gaming booths before they even get it and getting laid. Being Chitengi, they doing all of the above with maximum aggression, seeing how many people they can intimidate and/or beat up and/or impale for public order offences along the way.
   
   
4. as 3, but not to worry, a cohort of the Legion of Gusha the Khirgari are on leave after a long and boring garrison duty in the Pass of Skulls, and have turned up on a regimental day out to the festival without their officers a day after they received three months back pay.
   
   
5. Zu’ur is on sale at the festival. The OAL want to know who is selling it, and where they got it from. Keep your knives hidden but keep them sharp, Zu’ur smuggling gangs are nearly as well organised and vicious as the OAL itself. Fortunately the forested garden of the Temple of Niyunen offers many places to set ambushes and hide corpses.
   
   
   
   
   

Luck and Death

There is of course a distinct possibility that PCs may just want to turn up at such an event and have a game of dice and bit of a laugh. The following options are mere random events and situations they may encounter at the festival.

1. Lucky Kuruku Feet are on sale, a must for any gambling man looking for an edge. Trouble is they are not quite dead, and may randomly reanimate in the dead of night, grab something small but valuable and finger walk their way back through the gardens to the villain who is selling them.
   
   
2. Scandal at the Tsahlten tent erupts when players accuse one of the judges of bias. Tsahlten is a high class game for the well heeled, and the poor judge, a mere low clanner from the Bright Sword, cannot act against the high clan complainers. To make matters worse his honour is being further impugned by another judge from the Clan of the Balanced Stone who says he definitely was cheating. A matter of honour is rapidly escalating out of control, duels may be fought.
   
   
3. A popular side show among the lower clan types is the contest to see which woman attending the festival has the biggest breasts and which man the biggest penis (don’t titter, this is deeply seriously religious stuff to a goddess like Hrihayal!). The appropriate organ is weighed and a prize of the equivalent in silver is awarded to the winner, or their owner should they happen to be a slave. The PCs may want to enter, trawling the slave markets of Jakalla for a suitable contestant, or may have been asked to find a sponsor for the contest if they are followers of Hrihayal or Dlamelish. A prize slave dancing girl, Orella, a lass with a chest like two chlen-calves fighting over a turnip, has gone on the run – if she makes it to the festival she would probably win the prize and if not buy her freedom, at least make enough cash to get home to Salarvya.
   
   
4. An utterly bizarre funeral is taking place at the festival this year. Lady Gashon hiYtlenu has finally expired from the side effects of her deep devotion to Hrihayal, and as a final act of piety is donating her preserved corpse to the temple for use in certain necrophiliac rites. The funeral procession is a sight many will not forget in a long while, and as for those privileged to see the ‘interment’…
5. Shen shouldn’t gamble really, they become addicted too easily and they are poor losers. In fact that big one over there is such a poor loser he is running amok with a sword-axe and, oh look, he is heading your way...
   
   
6. A fantastic new game is sweeping the festival – cat racing! The Clan of the Hidden Hand have created tiny carts and puppet cart-drivers and hitched them to tiuni. The spectacle is chaotic but hilarious and it costs a lot just to get into the pavillion and have a look, let alone put a bet on. Aficionados of the dying art of dog-racing, a sport much like greyhound racing on Earth using saluki-like tlekku, are appalled and want the farce banned forthwith.
   
   

Many years ago now I had a blog called 'The Inner Sphere' entirely devouted to EPT. Events in James Maliszewski's 'House of Worms' campiagn has reminded me of something I wrote about the nefarious workings of the temple of Ksarul, so I have dug it out.

All of the following is non-canonical, but if I am GMing EPT excpet some of the nonsense below to be true in my game...

Ksarul, Ancient Lord of Secrets

Ksarul is the Tsolyani god of secrets, mysteries and magic. Like all Tsolyani deities his religion is a complex business with 62 different recognised aspects (plus a few local ones), a close relationship with his 'cohort' Gruganu and his 27 aspects.

Ksarul goes by numerous epithets; the most common is 'The Doomed Prince of the Blue Room', alluding to his aeons long imprisonment in a room hung with deep blue curtains, permanently asleep, surrounded by ten impregnable magical walls. Even in this comatose state Ksarul is a mighty god.

 

Philosophy

This religion is a mystery cult writ large. Believers accept that the 'Outer Doctrines' as taught to lay members are essentially false, and that as a priest rises within the temple more and more of the true 'Inner Doctrines' are revealed to him. 

What constitutes real promotion in the temple is complicated by the presence of three major mutually mistrustful sects and the presence of the secret 'Inner Sphere', the membership of which is unknown and which directs the actions of the temple through secret meetings and subtle pressures.

The Temple of Ksarul operates on a paradox - everyone is expected to behave with utter faith and sincerity, doing what their higher ups tell them is the will of the Doomed Prince at all times and without question, while at the same time making it perfectly clear members of it's clergy are not only expected to tell lies to those below them in the hierarchy, it is their religious duty to do so.

This is Zen Stalinism, deliberate belief in a dictatorship that you know is lying to you, in order to gain sufficient knowledge and power to become a liar yourself. Add to that the fact that there are several different interpretations of what the will of the Doomed Prince actually is, and that it is difficult to know precisely who your superiors are when the most important ones - the Inner Sphere - lurk within the temple as spies on their own people.

Never, ever question whether a superior is telling you the truth. He is probably lying and certainly keeping various salient facts from you, possibly for your own good, possibly not, but never come right out and say it to their face, or even subtly imply that you do not trust the smiling goon as far as you can throw him/her. 

However Ksarulites are not gullible, far from it, the religion values intelligence (as opposed to wisdom, the domain of Thumis). And thus ambitious types are always on the lookout for opportunities to work out what kind of conspiracy is really going on, to spy on each other, steal documents, use blackmail and so on in order to ensure that they on the inside of any conspiratorial cabal pissing out and not one of the urinated on.

Of course all temples are like this to some extent (even those snivelling Thumis wimps) but with the Ksarulites it is tacitly accepted, and a follower caught in the act of any number of petty treacheries and misdemeanours will get off comparatively lightly - and might even be marked for promotion as being a person with a bit of flair and ambition and a suitably change deity attitude to stuffy stablity-favoured things like precedent and hierarchy.

 

Ksarulite Masks

Priests of Ksarul wear black robes with silver masks depicting the blandly smiling and friendly face of their deity, and square mortarboard like head-dresses, female priests have black wooden masks of the same kind. 

This kit is stiflingly hot, and unless they are attending a ceremony most priests will just wear the hat with a black and deep blue collar and a black kilt with a silver belt. Unlike priests of other religions Ksarulites do not usually wear insignia depicting their Circle rank; you often have no idea if you are talking to a junior clerk or a temple commandant, and given the vagaries of the Inner Sphere system the junior clerk may in fact have more real authority.

When they talk to the laity or say a chant or prayer in their role as a priest or priestess they use a droning sing-song voice that makes it hard to tell one from another. You will know whether it is a priest or priestess, but that is about it.

It is a tale the Ksarulites like to spread that the truly powerful among them like to circulate among the lower clergy and laity incognito and with deep cover indentities. That sweeper who works in the lower cloister, with a cast in one eye and muutters to himself? May well be the Chagun Hikkolei, Commander of Energies and Powers, a sorcerer outranking the High Priest himself... 

 

Sects of Ksarul

There are three major sects within the temple, each with its own spin on the theology and mythology of Ksarul; the reasonably open Society of the Blue Light, the ultra secretive Refulgent Blue Curtain Society which dominates in Tumissa and the Chakan provinces and the feared Ndalu society which conspires to gain greater political power for the temple. (See the Temple of Ksarul netbook and Mitlanyal Vol 2 for further details.)

There are numerous lesser sects, three of which are detailed below.

Cartographers of the Luminous Pylon

This is a group of two dozen adherents of Ksarul and Gruganu (and one of Dlamelish) based in Tumissa who are trying to map the many alternative demon planes. They are seeking to do this not through visiting these mostly lethal places, but through visions and scrying. They are of the opinion that it ought to be possible to use psychic methods to look into the other planes just as it is possible to use clairvoyance and telepathy; it is just a matter of getting your mind into the appropriate state of consciousness. They mostly do this through immoderate use of drugs. They communicate their findings through pictures and poetry, trying to capture the true otherworldly essence of the places they have seen in bizarre abstract paintings and incantations that appear to be gibberish.

Serious magicians regard them as dangerous loonies and disdain their methods and loathe the provocative and ungrammatical way they express their ideas, but the Cartographers are sure that they are onto something, perhaps the biggest revolution in magical theory and practice since Llyani times. The temple hierarchy will not stamp them out however; perhaps they secretly think the Cartographers will produce something useful, perhaps they are useful to the temple as a fertile source of false and confusing doctrines to baffle the uninitiated as to what Ksarul worship is really about.

The Cartographers have no hierarchy as such, just a charismatic leader, Zuthau hiTlekku of the Dark Fear clan, who pays for much of the 'work' out of his own pocket. Meetings of the Cartographers take place at Aubshoi's Palace of Alchemy shop in the Arcade of Three Lamps. They often start out like poetry readings or art exhibitions, proceed into drugged and drunken debauches and fairly frequently end in fist fights over disputed aspects of transplanar theory. Once in a while they will try an experimental incantation, which even more rarely will, after a fashion, work. 

They were banished from the temple proper when a particularly annoying plague of demonic teleporting crickets spewed forth from one of their nexus gates and infested the temple for weeks.

Stalkers of the Indigo Night

A secret organisation dedicated to protecting Ksarul and Hru'u pilgrims on the road to the shrines at the ruined city of Hmakuyal. Most people are well aware of the shrines, but the official line is that they are secret, and certainly no non-worshipper is allowed into the underground complex beneath the city, and access for most lower order clergy and lay members is seriously restricted. The Stalkers are made up of members of the Temple guard from Ksarul, Gruganu and Hru'u, and given the sinister nature of these cults are likely to have other functions as well as policing.

Whisperers in the Velvet Dark

This is an order of dedicated seers. Every major city temple will have a few such and a special secret chapel and cloister housing them. The fully initiated Whisperers are not allowed to be in the presence of light of any kind, if they are exposed even to lamplight they lose their gift of prophecy and incur an arduous period of re-purfication. Their apprentices are sometimes seen around the ordinary lamp-lit levels of catacombs, flitting to and fro unmasked but with their eyes sewn shut, touching the wals to feel the carvings that guide them around the temple. The novices stumble about even on the upper levels at night blindfolded learning this craft.

The priests of this sect are needed to perform the Acts of the Velvet Dark, and also perform divinations for the higher priesthood. Rich laymen may also consult them, being led blindfold through unlit labyrinths by the apprentices and allowed to listen in on their whispering rites from adjacent cells. 

Once a year they issue an almanac of prophecies for the laity, a nice little earner for the temple scriptoria, but since the originals are written by blind people working in total darkness and in black ink on black dyed vellum made from the hide of unhatched Shuoleth demons scribal interpretations are by neccessity a little free.

 

The Inner Sphere

The most important institution in the Temple of Ksarul is the Inner Sphere, a temple within a temple, the knowers of the most secret secrets and paracticioners of the most potent magics.

This is not be confused with the 'Inner Temple' - this is merely the holiest part of a physical Temple, the sanctuary made in the form of the Blue Room and its subterranean adjuncts like the Cloister of the Velvet Dark, the Hall of Encroaching Nullity and Halls of the Priesthoods of Shadow.

Nor has it anything directly to do with the 'Inner Doctrines', the succession of secrets a priest may be initiated into as he rises from circle to circle in the 'Outer Sphere' of the temple, its outwardly apparent hierarchy.

The Inner Sphere is a network of cells within the temple and occasioanally extending to the laity. Each member will know a few bits of spycraft that enable him to stay in touch with his cell. He or she probably not know the identities of his fellow cell members with any certainty, as they only ever meet masked and robed and using tricks and magic to disguise their voices. Each cell will have a grandiloquent or utterly mundane title like 'The Jilted Lovers of Kriyag', 'Zanatl's Hidden Blades', 'The Thirteenth Day Luncheon Club', 'The Collectors of Ji-Flies' or some such.

One member of a cell will the the 'First' and will be a member of a higher cell. Some will in turn be the first of a lesser cell with people to reporting to them. The orders passed down to each cell are every much on a 'need to know' basis, and allegedly utlimately originate at the Doorway of the Blue Room, where demons sit in communion with the mighty dreaming mind of the Doomed Prince himself. In addition each cell may make local adjustments to plans, submit reports to higher cells and manipulate the action of lower cells. 

And there are plenty of False Spheres, those who are told only fake secrets and given meaningless rites and tasks to perform. A given worshipper will never know whether they are in a real Inner Sphere cell or one of the False ones. There are quite defintely spheres made up of only the stupid and least adept at spycraft to create a lot of silly so and sos sneaking about as a diversion from the real secret societies. 

One of the few religious crimes the Ksarulites will act upon (through secret assassination of course) is the heresy of suggesting that all Spheres are false spheres, that the whole arrangement of cells is circular and the secrets passed about no more than 'Livyani whispers', spin and distortion piled on rumour forever recirculating and that the Doomed Prince is in fact dead and says nothing.

Shargash the Destroyer

Shargash, destroyer of all, killer of everything (including himself), god of the Red Planet and all round arsehole has come to burn down your internet!

By Johnny Shumate (https://johnnyshumate.com/2012/09/27/canaanite-warrior/)

Shargash is a throwback. Even in the God-Time the Dara Happans had moved on to war-chariots and phalanxes and soon after the dawn had adopted light cavalry and horse archery to contest with the Pentans. Shargash is a tribal warrior god from the days when bashing your opponent with a rock on a stick was the last word in military technology and head hunting was a popular hobby.

Shargash woz 'ere!

When Yelm fell out of the sky and the great darkness stole over the land Shargash became Emperor, a brutal god for a brutal time, and his all encompassing rage and hatred was all that kept humanity from extinction. And the later Emperors magnanimously allowed his cult to keep going just in case such apocalyptic times come again. And besides if there's one thing the bastards are good at it is handing phalanxes their own backsides on a platter, often quite literally, how could they stop them?

There is no denying they are good at what they do, but wanton massacre, scorched earth and sadistic oppression are just not the current fashion in the heart of the modern Lunar Empire. At the frontiers maybe, but even there you have to leaven it with 'hearts and minds' missionary work to get those Sartarite and Praxian yobs to see the truth that 'We Are All Us.'

So go visit Alkoth while it still has that Old World charm that comes from being literally in Hell, full of thugs beating drums with the thighbones of their foes and liberally sprinkled with the ashes of burnt human sacrifices. It won't be around forever.

An RQ2 write up of the Cult of Shargash.





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