Concept Notes 02

Religious

King

As the inheritor of the Great Ahuriyata’s position, the king is also considered the reincarnation of the Great God himself!

And so, worship is centered upon their station. The king, aside from his many duties, must travel to the capitals of each of the country’s regions within the year in order for their subjects to be able to countenance and show adoration.

Princes do basically the same thing, but do so in the capitals of their provinces.

The Young Ansa

These Ansa of the court without a mandate are instead given the job of being one who is paraded around the land as a focus of veneration. They are taken to a town’s plaza to lead the people in chanting prayers of peace and prosperity, or victory in battle. In times of war, they lead in calling upon Akkibati warriors to join in the conscription.

The Ansa in the Grand Monastery

Grand Monasteries are large communities of Ansa who have been displaced by a “changing of the guard,” so to speak. Some have also voluntarily moved as a penance for shame or…

The Death of a God

The king of Ahuria, sick with an unknown illness for about two years, finally died and the kingdom mourns his passing.

The new king must now be crowned in the presence of the Princes of the Ahuriyata at the Palace in the Isle of Gods.

Sorha XVII, King of Ahuria, is dead. Long live Sorha XVIII, whosoever he may be.

Whenever a Grand Convocation occurs, it is said that the King chooses princes to come with them to the Great Beyond—a place of eternal peace, beyond the wheel of suffering.

Not only do the Princes come, of course. An entire retinue of attendants, courtiers, and relatives are also brought along with them for better or for worse.

Prince Kolha XIX doesn’t really want to go, of course, but she must! The princedom is in good hands anyway, hopefully.

And so she, her high-priest, her Akkibati guard sans her general, head to Kolha Ahuria to join in the Convocation. Hopefully, she thinks, she is unimportant enough to be “spirited away.”

Cast of Characters

Kolha XIX

Age: 51, Female, Star of Hope

The nineteenth prince of Kolha Ahuria—described to be a weak prince who allowed the sundering of her princedom. She doesn’t much care for their games. In fact, she secretly dreads having to leave Kolha and take residence in Piya. Her hope is to stay in Kolha both to keep the peace, which she feels would inevitably decay during another transition, and because she’d learned to love the autonomy of the region. This would be so foreign to her.

Chian Pashe

Age: 72, Female

Kolha XIX’s high-priest and primary confidant. Chian is a formal and proper Ahurikishki and runs a tight and orderly ship. She, however, is quite warm with her prince and the members of the prince’s house.

Her whole life is dedicated to her prince and her study of the stars.

Giza IV

Age: 64, Male, Tiger-blood

Governor of Giza now and was the chief of the princes Tunhi when he took office. He dislikes the fact that the ruler of Giza is not a prince but a governor since Giza is larger than even Kolha. But only insofar as he stays in Giza.

With the news of Sorha’s illness, he’s positioning himself to be prince of Kolha already, and one that would be known as the one to reunify the southern territories!

Tunhi XVI

Age: 71, Male, Swift-fist

Heir-apparent due to his current position and definitely afraid for his life right now. The most ambitious ones of these princes are definitely out for his head. He’s considering just announcing his retirement but his wife is quite angry with any indication of leaving. He is most afraid of Purha in particular.

Burning Star

Age: 75, Female

Tunhi XVI’s wife. She does not want to lose the chance of becoming the Queen by Consort.

Purha XVII

Age: 69, Male, Strong Fist

Purha is a very driven, very ambitious person who had maneuvered himself into the position of Tunhi in the first place.

Rumors are that Sorha’s sudden mysterious illness was Purha’s fault—poison is his region’s secret export.

Notes

• Kidnappers from some group thought can try to take Fai from the caravan, wanting to sell her to the Minian to gain some advantage.
• Mercenary group tracking an information network may be catering to Sorsha/Fai.
• News of other ships being wrecked by strange weather and vortices; sailors saying blonde hair and yellow eyes are ominous and are bad luck for voyages.

Character Note for Fai

No one knows that she’s magic! No one but Matarelha.

No one knows who raised her.

Caravan to the Gate

The overland voyage may take a week at the least, but damned if it didn’t seem safer than continuing.

Provobati Merchants

Towns on the Way to the Gateway and the Problems They Face Along the Way

Of course, it is unlikely that other princes are taking the same route as Kolhan’s retinue, it is not unheard of to have assassins sent once word does reach. That would take some time to happen though, even with the fastest horse.

Faster means of communication:

• Trained hawks/kites or other birds.

So What Kind of Minions Does Purha Have? Is it Purha? How About Giza?

Typically only the twelve have “regnal” names, but Giza, who had trouble with ministry and on-the-fly thing calls himself Giza, which is his regnal name.

Giza is the villain? Who is behind everything? Is Fai’s death a red herring?

Session 3 Notes

We start with the group leaving the waystop at the fields. They would be heading south through the mountains next. So we have the option of a mountain range raid perpetrated by a band of Harsi bandits.

Harsi Bandits

These are people who’d been left and disenfranchised by their rigid society. They probably come from different places, around Sorha and Tunhi, from different castes.

Their leader is a Pariya who’d been wrongfully convicted of graft and corruption. He was a Provobati merchant whose business in Port Piya was once thriving until a new Akkibati tax collector had been appointed to his district. He was from a coalition of “urban patriots” who worked…

Harsi “Bandit” Groups

When you’re considered the dregs of society, you become the dregs of society. So these disenfranchised people have had to care for themselves outside “polite” society. Akkibati police often consider these groups/communes as bandit groups or otherwise suspicious.

Harsi peoples are considered “untouchable” due to the perceived taint on their person. They aren’t a caste defined by the Sudras of the Great Ahuriyata. Instead, they are a group created by the gaps in that construct. They are the group of people who have fallen in the cracks, or have seen the cracks and squeezed through themselves.

Harsi Communes

Many Harsi do not want to be a drain on the mainstream Ahurian society. They instead have made communities that are self-sustaining and mostly away from society.

They are able to get things they do not/cannot grow or make themselves by trading with foreigners.

One of the most prominent communes are in the mountains, a few miles from Port Piya.

By the more autonomous and anarchic management of these communes, people are able to do whatever they choose. Most of them do try to lead quiet lives to ensure that authorities have no cause to hunt them down. There are yet others who revel in their lawlessness, and do what they can to disrupt Ahurian society.

Little Spring Village

• Kahnan
• Natuna
• Dursa

Ahurian Chronology

Years are defined by the start at the beginning of a new king’s rule. Days of the king’s death are intercalary.

Ahurian Calendar System

There are 12 months in an Ahurian year. Each month is named after a prince of the Ansa.

• Sorhima
• Tunhima
• Purhima
• Katsima
• Lansaima
• Luksoma
• Chosima
• Tsikhima
• Chesima
• Yatsima
• Visima
• Pisima

Years are counted beginning on the first day of the reign of the new king. Before his death, the year was RKS XVII. After Sorha XVII’s death, the first year is called “Intercalary,” so XVIII.

Because of these systems, there is a reliable record of the passing of kings and the reinstatement of new ones.

The Great Ahuriyata’s Reign

RKA 1-173

Reign of Sorha I

RKS I 1-120

Sorha II

RKS II 87

Ahurian Regnal Years Compared with Posaran Standard

Great Ahuriyata’s Reign RKA 1-173

Reign of Sorha I RKS I 1-120

Sorha II RKS II 87

RKS III 7

IV 21

V 22

VI 57

VII 65

VIII 17

IX 19

X 76

XI 68

XII 81

XIII 62

XIV 27

XV 16

XVI 81

XVII 88

XVIII 66

Today’s Game

• Tray’s death
• Harsi Bandits

Who actually killed Tray?

Prince Kolha? Disguised as taken Prince of Ahurian

Superproxy

Daniel Browning?

• He’s too quiet, probably an Ahuriya.

Settings

• Tahusa Valley
• Little Spring Village
• Quiet Pastures (Harsi Commune)

Currently, players are in the Harsi Commune of Quiet Pastures to investigate the death of Tray Montague, a merchant running a deal with the Prince Purha XVII. He, it’s been claimed, had been selling the Prince goods such as poisons that explain the symptoms of King Sorha’s death.

The players follow the trail of another merchant, a man called Daniel Browning. He styles himself as a foreign merchant, but follows a couple of Ahurian customs, and holds a sigil of Tharabat.

He was also seen in two places at once. He was seen both in the garden of Little Spring and near the outskirts of town at the same time.

How does he do it?

There are some Harsi Bandits who take refuge in Quiet Pastures. They might not all be quite so impressed with the Madereyana and his guy, Daniel Browning.

Basically, there are two kinds of Harsi, those who do not care to return to the old hierarchy anymore, and those who long to return to their former places in society.

How are they governed in Quiet Pastures?

They have a council of elders, who are duly appointed by the inhabitants of the commune to decide on disputed matters, laws, etc. They also get to decide who stays and who goes.

The Madereyana is given an honorary position due to the riches he’s brought with him into the commune. He would have no actual decision-making power aside from what he might be able to convince the council to do, such as to allow certain people join them within the commune.

Madereyana would try to convince Fai to join him in his quest to destroy Purha, and perhaps rid the world Ahurian Empire of the Tunneyata Primogeniture, and replace it with a different system altogether.

He would seem very sincere in his wish to help Ahuria, but an Insight roll of 25 makes the players somewhat dubious of his true intentions (plus or minus some role-playing stuff).

Persons of Interest

Madereyana (Principled Leader)

• Once was a Magistrate of North-Eastern Sorha before the death of Sorha XVI. He became a living legend among the people of the Harsi of Ahuria, as the Ansa that threw away his divinity for the sake of the Harsi disenfranchised.
• Since his deposal, he’d been quietly amassing a power base for himself, and taking a new, stylish face.
• His own interests truly lie with something inside the Palace in the Isle of Gods.

Daniel Browning

• The guy seems to follow the strictures of the Ansa to the letter.
• He is of Ahurikishki descent, once a member of the Gigan Lord of Governance.
• No one in Ahuria knows who he really is, nor what his goals are.
• He is capable of casting magic, how he does so, no one really knows.
• He does know, however, he had been in communication with the Reformist Church, as he was first cast into the Harsi. They have performed some strange experiments on his person, which, in turn, gave him a wellspring of magical energy.
• In exchange, they only ask him to bring one of the Orbs of Enhancement onto the Isle, which he did not do at all; he left the orb in question in a store in Port Piya instead.

What do the players want to do?

1. Learn more about magic.

   How do we learn more about magic?

   a. There are multitudes of books listing demon chants and words which claim to hold magical knowledge but have no actual good information on the matter at all. Except for one book, which would call upon Sorscha’s Hexblade.

   b. There are “magical” sources in the Stairway who claim to be able to access magic in true some ways to bottle spells. Most of them are bunk. One can at least make “Greek fire.”

2. What else is in the Stairway to the Heavens?

   The Stairway is a city built around the Great Monarchy of Sorha at the pinnacle of the stairway itself. The region surrounding the Stairway are a series of terraced farmlands as it cut against the side of the mountains.

   a. The lowest, larger outermost layer, are occupied by Provobati farming collectives. They not feed the city, but are also in contact with many of the Provobati merchants to sell-off surplus farms.

   b. The lowest, innermost layer are filled with Provobati craftmen dedicated to the “dirty crafts” of leatherworking, smithing, soap making, and candlemaking.

   c. Akkibati Academy of Righteous Battle, among weapons and armor shops, training grounds, houses.

   d. Traders district, inns, stores, supplies, the Institute of the Five Arts, the Conservatory of Music, the Balcony, a theater hall.

   e. The Temple to Sorha. A massive worship hall. The Hanging Library of the Stairway.

Inventory

• Grappling hook
• Angles
• Life rope
• Bell & twine
• Small cloth bag
• Small mirror
• Marbles
• 10-foot pole
• Extra common workers clothes below her knees
• Cyanne
• Beef, lamb & deer, slabs of meat
• Fragrant of flowers, marigold & lilies
• Hecharide
• Hecharide
• Prentha, the Goat
• Flower shop, The Green Hyacinth