Nov., 1888, Jiddah, Arabia
Note 1: Voronika has in her keeping the piece of Tibetan prayer wheel obtained in Timbuktu.
Note 2: With the addition of more statuettes, Vononika's reconstruction of the Memory they hold gains in detail, not in increased temporal duration.
Upon disembarking at the last airship port, the ladies of the Expedition were offered enveloping black garments by the ship's staff. "Burka. To go out uncovered may be to invite a stoning," Lord Ava noted. Miss Costorari eyed the dull, form-extinguishing garb with clear loathing; Dr. Davis donned hers without appreciable comment. Nevertheless, thus attired, the women seemed to blend into the native population. Nothing could easily make the Anglic men blend in - particularly the mechanical man.
In Jiddah, the Party members realized that the tall towers that severally adorned Arabic cities and towns served as platforms from which Believers were called to worship. Different gods required worship at different times of the day. All worshippers, however, seemed to bow towards the East in making their prayers. Lord Ava said that there was a revered city to the East that housed a shrine to every god of the peninsula: Mecca.
While others seemed to wilt in the desert heat, Mr. Penrington seemed energized and insisted on searching out the most competent muqarribun - mage - in the city. Lord Ava said he had local friends who could provide the name of such, and invited Dr. Davis to accompany him to dinner therewith. The doctor again found his lordship's friends quite westernized and willing to shed their black robes within the walls of their home. Their children were fascinated by the strange blond visitor.
Thus an interview was arranged with Zatan [Ahem! That is The Great Zatan, please] who came to the Party at a rented coffee shop. Lord Ava volunteered to stay with Abdul who wished to stay out of sight of the locals as much as possible. (One might suspect that Lord Ava has subjects he wanted to discuss with the Yemeni prince. :))
The local magician wore long, flowing robes decorated with stars, a tall pointy hat, and a long beard. Miss Costorari was pleased to offer him a pocket watch from the stash she had brought from Anglia, and Zatan could not quite conceal his delight. "We've got him!" Voronika whispered to Madeline. He spoke Anglish with a very thick accent.
Penrington asked about the sorcerer to the south. When Zatan hesitated, Dr. Davis (again hidden in her burka) mentioned his purported location: the slopes of Jabal an Nabi Shu'ayb, the highest mountain in Yemen.
Zatan said, "Ah, the evil sorcerer of Shu'ayb. He sees no visitors. His path is guarded by 'efrit and djinn. He has great command of the forces of magic - the djinn and 'efrit - because he greatly understands Tawil.
Po asked, "How does one deal with djinn?"
Zatan: "They are very sensitive to magic, and unharmed by the mundane. Each of them wants something. If you figure out the shape of gold it wants and offer that to it, it must belong to that thing."
Penrington asked, "How are djinn different from 'efrit?"
Zatan: "The 'efrit are rebellious djinn. They rebelled against the order of djinn which, as do humans, has tribes and organization. Thus a creature of air becomes a creature of fire and smoke."
Po asked, "How does one deal with 'efrit?"
Zatan: "The secret of all Arab magic is Knowing Names so to control those so named."
Penrington described the djinn the Party saw in Paris. Zatan asked, "Did it have cloven hooves?" but the answer never came, as the hunter continued to describe what had been learned about insubstantial djinn entering and controlling unconscious humans through the nostrils.
Zatan affirmed, "While one is conscious, one cannot be entered by a djinn."
The subject wandered slightly when Miss Costorari asked, "Can you tell if this," she gestured to her sword, "is magic?"
Zatan: "Why of course. If you left it with me for a time I could even tell what kind."
Miss Costorari: "Can you describe its properties?"
Zatan: "Such things require conversing with the spirit within. Magic is the work of spirits, the djinn within the object. There are ceremonies that can only be performed by moonlight..." The conjuror's further attempts to get the gypsy to leave the magic sword in his possession were ignored.
Dr. Davis tried to bring the conversation back to the so-called evil sorcerer. "From where did the sorcerer of Shu'ayb come?"
Zatan: "From further south. He is probably one of those scurrilous Yemeni."
Dr. Davis: "How long has he held Jabal an Nabi Shu'ayb?"
Zatan: "He has been the sorcerer there since my father was a young boy."
Someone else asked, "How does one know that he is a sorcerer."
Zatan: "There are always people trying to enter a wizard's tower. Sometimes they escape with their lives. I heard tell that he lays waste to the land about and once soured all the milk in a village."
Penrington: "How does one defeat him?"
Zatan: "I know of no one who has met and defeated him."
Penrington switched the subject. "What do you know of the City of Brass? Irem..."
Zatan, with recognition, "Ah, Irem Zhat al Imad? Irem of the Pillars. But that is not all. The secret meaning of that name through the encoding of Tawil becomes 'old ones.' Irem of the Old Ones."
Dr. Davis: "What is the Tawil?"
Zatan: "Tawil is the art of understanding. One uses the 32 characters: the 22 alphabetics and the 10 numerals. There is a correspondence between the alphabetics and the numerals. One can gain great power when one understands. The understanding is given in The Reception in your language, that is, the Kabbalah."
Miss Costorari noted that her skill in numerology sounded similar but that in numerology, numbers on their own had meaning and power. She expressed an interest in studying the Arabic art.
Zatan: "In the Kabbalah, the power of numbers is the power of naming. One discovers relations one did not know were there. But one must become an apprentice. No woman has ever mastered it."
Penrington returned to the subject of Irem.
Zatan: "The city still exists in the Void. The path is closed off. The last to find it rode a carpet - 60 miles on a side - and flew across the desert. The door was guarded by two eagles, the eldest of which had lived 1300 years. They had been bequeathed the place after every one had left." The magus coughed dryly. Penrington offered him coffee, which refreshed the speaker. "The mage opened the door and descended a staircase down to the remains of Irem on this earth. There were many statues, some of which came to life; he put them down. From one he withdrew from its throat a silver plate on which was written:
'I, Shaddad ben 'Ad, ruled over a thousand thousand provinces, rode on a thousand horses, had a thousand thousand kings under me, and slew a thousand heroes, and when the Angel of Death approached me I was powerless.'The city had suffered a great drought and its people had had no way to stay alive even though they ground their pearls into flour and ate them. Having discovered this, the Wizard Suleyman [or Solomon] climbed back up out of the city, got on his carpet and flew away."
The conversation returned to 'efrit and djinn. "An 'efrit is 40-feet tall with a blade of flame. He can destroy in an eye blink. Camels fear him."
Penrington: "How can we learn what a djinn wants?"
Zatan: "Learn how to ask." He gave Penrington a gold coin. "This was created by a djinn. It will disappear in a day." [The mage proved correct in his statement.] "'Efrit can be bargained with and dealt with but they cannot be controlled."
Po: "Can djinn be controlled at a great distance?"
Zatan: "They need clear instructions. Something more complicated than 'go fetch' must be precise and nearer. Djinn are very intelligent and understand the ways of people, therefore they can sneak out of that with which they are tasked."
Penrington: "They must obey the letter of the instruction?"
Zatan: "Yes. Simple precise instructions."
Po: "Can they be enticed from their previous instructions, their previous master?"
Zatan: If you can give it what it really, really wants and must take. That breaks all previous engagements."
Po asked something about a djinn's "container."
Zatan: "If it wants a gold ring, it becomes part of that gold ring. You could not use that ring for another."
Penrington asked if there was anything the Party might obtain for the magician. He responded, "If you can find silver frankincense....," at which point the Party's hunter made deprecating comments that the mage interpreted as backing out of the offered service. Zatan made his farewell and vanished in a puff of smoke and a thunderclap.
The Party proceeded to discuss possible approaches to the sorcerer of Jabal an Nabi Shu'ayb.
Miss Costorari: "Why not just walk up and knock on the door?"
Po: "Force won't be the way to get the statue."
Dr. Davis: "He doesn't sound evil."
Miss Costorari: "If we go to other wizards, it may be that Zatan is considered evil or incompetent."
Lord Ava counseled, "If they are from different tribes, they consider each other evil. Otherwise they are rivals."
Dr. Davis: "We could find out from the locals if they think he's evil."
Consideration was given to skirting the mountain Nabi Shu'ayb and seeing the king of Yemen first, before tackling the wizard. It would cost 6 extra days.
In the 2nd week of travel in Yemeni territory, the Party spotted a thought-better-of-it ambush pretending that a party where everyone carried rifles was uninteresting. By this time, camping and watering of the Party happened in small subsistence villages. Abdul took care to muffle himself in order not to be recognized.
The 2nd day of climbing into foothills found the mountains rising to the Party's left. Over the largest peak - nearly 4000 m. tall -- could be seen dark clouds and lightning. Po, exercising his improving command of Arabic, asked a villager, "Is the mountain always like that?"
Villager: "This time of year, the storms come in. One year every house in our village got hit by lightning."
Miss Costorari asked about the trail up the mountain.
Villager: "Up there Haddad has his homestead and goats. They are the most ornery goats around."
An hour up the trail the Party encountered a man with a clumsy rifle, a boy and a herd of goats. Miss Costorari offered another mechanical trinket. The goatherd was obviously impressed. "Learned great and powerful wizards - with a mechanical man rather than a mechanical woman? Many wander up the mountain. I cannot offer guidance to the wizard of the mountain to whom you are clearly bound. I have never been up the mountain." The people from up the mountain to whom he sold milk and meat and cheese were always different people, no one person was a repeat customer.
Smith could spot no tower through his telescope.
Reluctant to risk Abdul with the "evil" sorcerer, the Party left him and their camels in the trees above the goatherd Haddad, under Lord Ava's authority. Packs were prepared for 2 days or so of hiking in a cold mountain climate. Miss Costorari examined tracks along the higher trail and determined that a single person seemed to make regular and frequent "grocery runs" along the trail. The Party began to climb.
Voronika, in the lead, suddenly saw someone pop out of nowhere and run past her back down the mountain. Inadvertently she took a startled step backwards, just as the mountain path ahead of her burst into flame. She dodged further back. Behind the wall of flame could be seen a great figure of fire. "'Efrit!" the gypsy shouted warning.
Steele to the flaming figure: "Please stop that; it's rude!"
Po created force fields on everyone but the hard-to-target dodging gypsy. Dr. Davis concentrated and a mental bolt visibly shot from her forehead into the wall of flame. Mr. Blake attempted a radiation Flash while Mr. Forester's Cone of radiation warred spectacularly with the flame wall. Finally Penrington shot his rifle and the flame wall collapsed with a FOOMPH!
The 'efrit put his hands together and, having been waiting ready, Steele tried a shotgun blast that wasn't quite aimed correctly, while Smith lobbed a mechanical orange. A tangle of springs flew out, entangling the 'efrit and nearby rocks. The 'efrit disappeared in a ball of fire, melting the metal springs. Miss Costorari advised, "Get it, Dr. Davis!" Penrington asked Smith, "Did you kill it?" Smith snorted. But other attempts proved ineffective. Po edged forward, sure that he'd spotted something glittery behind the 'efrit.
The Ball coalesced back into a figure with a huge two-handed sword. He swung at Steele who had moved up for a closer look. The flaming sword missed. Mr. Blake fired a Blast of Radiation; the 'efrit jerked backward. Mr. Forester braced and aimed his camera which emitted a sickly green ball of light that just missed the spirit and hit, instead, Mr. Steele who felt some of his life force leech away.
Again the figure collapsed into a ball of flame. Again Mr. Blake fired the only seemingly effective attack. The Flames seemed to curl up in a WHOOSH! ... and were gone.
Po called the group over to investigate his find: in the dirt of the path, two piles of glittery stone, one pile blue, the other white, and - on a partially hidden ledge on a rock -- 2 white stones and a blue one.
Forester and Blake could detect no radioactivity in the stones, but Po's sensitivity indicated that this was connected to someone or something not long ago. The geologists identified the stones as quartz-feldspar with an additional pyrite component, of no particular value. The stones were neither marked nor absolutely uniform.
Penrington deduced that the stones on the ledge represented numbers. Dr. Davis guessed that they might relate to the word "fire." One of the students of Arabic reminded everyone that Arabic is read right to left.
Miss Costorori picked up the blue stone from the ledge. She got a vision of a noble fiery creature being sucked into the void as it died. The white stone provided her a vision of an old bald Arabic man putting the stone on the ledge near the already-placed blue stone. The second white stone again gave the fiery creature vision. Then the gypsy explained object-triggered Retro-cognition to those still unaware of her powers. Even as he recognized that the sense of magic was rapidly dissolving from this site, Po asked, "Why the same vision from those two stones?" A very good question.
Further up the path, another set of piles of stone and, on a ledge visible from the up-coming direction, the carved word "Piety." Dr. Davis recognized the word as an attribute of one of the Arabic gods, Dhofar. Further consideration of the relation of numbers to letters had Mr. Penrington eager to try the letter "P", or 16, using the blue stones to represent 10s and the white stones to represent ones. Miss Costorari voiced a discomfort with that approach. So the Party fell to translating the names of the gods of the statuettes into numbers, and for awhile considered the sum total. Then, realizing that the sum of each syllable was more natural, settled on 27 and 25 for Dhofar. So 2 blue stones, 7 white, 2 blue, and 5 white were place on the ledge. Then the Party, led by the indomitable Miss Costorari, walked past. Unmolested.
The next ledge read "Charity." Idha. 13 and 9.
Then "Honour", Katul, 12 and 54; "Hospitality", Saba, 20 and 3; "Obedience", Hird, 39; "Tribe", Salimah, 20, 21, and 22; and "Strength", Hafizun, 9, 15, and 61.
The trail wound round the mountainside. About a third of the way up at the northern-most point of the mountain, the Party came upon the Tower. In appearance it was more like a blockhouse, four stories high and 10-hexes on a side. A great stone door looked upon the path. The lightning storm was in full force although there was no rain. Mr. Forester glanced around, then stepped up and knocked on the door.
Next Run: Sorcerer's Castle
Note: The week after that will be Christmas. The following week, New Years. There is a possibility of a non-Thursday game if players are willing/available.
(a) Cumulative (b) Cumulative since Volume II
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