Character Description
Name: Ardashir son of Mehr of Navavasta, called by some the Farseeker, called by others "Arda"
Species: Human
Race/Nationality: Austarion (Mitradaevka)
Gender: Male
Age: Twenty-seven.
Languages: A scholarly prodigy, Ardashir fluently speaks, reads, and writes Mitradaean (his native tongue), Arventian, and Sidfirian. Competently if not fluently, he also speaks, reads, and writes Firindorian and Central Valindorian. He speaks some South Sylpharimese, but does not read or write it; he speaks stilted Gundrukanian and High Valindorian, but reads and writes both those languages much better. Ardashir reads and writes Turakindian, but does not truly speak it, and he has picked up some basic Eahamish over the last four months in this country.
As a general matter, Ardashir's command of a language tends to one of two extremes: when he has learned it as a survival skill rather than an academic subject, he speaks it colloquially and idiomatically; but when he has made a focused study of a language, his speech is elaborately formal and freighted with archaisms, because he has mastered the tongue as much from ancient inscriptions and chronicles as from ordinary conversation.
Appearance: Ardashir is a handsome young man, albeit in a way that draws the eyes of women more than the respect of men. He is slightly taller than average (at least for Varadaban), and slender in a way that suggests good health and regular exercise rather than hard living. He has the powerful arms and shoulders of an archer, and the strong, long-fingered hands of a musician or a physician. His clean skin is the typical warm olive of the Mitradaevka, tanned somewhat darker by his travels; his hair is a close-cropped mop of dark nut-brown curls, which he is constantly pushing back off a high forehead. Ardashir's features are dominated by that intellectual's forehead, by pronounced cheekbones, by a stubborn jaw, and by large luminous green eyes - atypical for a Mitradaevka, and attributed to the House of Zaranaka's mythical origin in the long-ago union of a Valindorian maiden with one of the leaders of the Mitradaevka Hejira to the South. The effect is attractive in a fresh-faced boyish way, and Ardashir has mitigated his apparent youth by cultivating a few days' growth of dense dark stubble. His nose healed slightly crooked after a break, and there is a single circular burn scar near the corner of his eye - the legacy of a close encounter with a Gurzat torturer.
Ardashir typically wears the traveling clothes of a Mitradaevka nobleman: opulent but hard-wearing, of superb craftsmanship and material. Sturdy steerhide boots, rising to the knee, cover his feet; the typical baggy silk trousers of the South are tucked into those boots. Soft doeskin gloves - discreetly loaded with steel shot in the knuckles - protect Ardashir's hands. His main garment is a tabbādeh - the double-breasted knee-length robe of the southern elite. It is fitted from the waist up and loose from the waist down to allow free movement. Ardashir's tabbādeh is of midnight-blue watered silk with silver toggles, and the body is discreetly lined with lamellar steel plates - invisible from the outside. The robe is trimmed with a narrow band of exquisite embroidery: stylized gold vines, bearing red fruit, interwoven with frolicking green and white birds.
Over the tabbādeh, Ardashir wears a burnoose - a loose hooded mantle that can be wrapped in various ways - of tawny cashmere wool, now well-stained by the dust and mud of the road. A length of white cotton is draped around his neck; it can serve as a scarf, turban, or mask - or all three. A crimson silk sash is wound around Ardashir's waist - the Mitradaevka mark of a blooded veteran - and a vambrace of watered steel covers his left forearm: the distinctive tool of the Arsama school of furussiya, which does not use shields and instead relies on precise off-hand deflections using an armored forearm. Nashkasta, the Blade of Zaranaka, rides in her silver scabbard at Ardashir's left hip; Arda's leather medical satchel hangs from his left shoulder at his right hip.
Unlike most men of the North and West, Ardashir bathes regularly and uses scented oils: he has a faint but consistent aroma of smoky oud and dried limes. His bearing is formal but open; his demeanor is courteous but straightforward. He moves with a precise and measured grace, like a dancer: each step, each gesture, is considered and exact. His large green eyes are usually in constant motion - observing, assessing - except when a book, or artifact, or other scholarly contrivance has seized his interest. Then his gaze is fixed and scarcely blinking, and his lips part slightly, and all courtly poise falls away - replaced by the unselfconscious bliss of all-consuming fascination.
Personal Effects: On his person, Ardashir carries weapons and other essential gear. The most notable such item is Nashkasta, "Unbroken," the Blade of Zaranaka: the scimitar carried by Ardashir's illustrious ancestor at the Battle of Navavasta. Its blade is of the finest Varadaban wootz steel, rippling light and dark like shining water; the hilt is long enough to be grasped with one hand or two; the pommel is the golden head of a desert lion, with sapphires for eyes. The blade rides at Ardashir's side in a scabbard of worked silver, every inch of which is embossed with flowing Mitradaean calligraphy extolling the virtues of Eruherion. A vambrace of the same watered steel encases Ardashir's left forearm; he is trained to use this armored forearm to control and redirect enemy blows. Ardashir also carries a powerful recurve bow, comprised of many laminated layers of horn and yew and sinew, and a quiver of arrows - the finest of which are fletched with green peacock feathers.
In addition to these weapons, Ardashir carries on his person a variety of odds and ends. There is a purse, tucked securely inside his tabbādeh, bearing a small fortune in Varadaban dinars - the gold is so pure that one can easily dent each coin with one's teeth. A ney - the ancient reed flute of the Austarion peoples - is usually tucked into Arda's sash; so is a rope of simple tortoiseshell prayer beads. A satchel slung across his body serves as a medical kit. Its contents are physicians' tools, not the dried herbs of a country healer. There are surgical blades and twice-distilled alcohol to sanitize them; there are complex magnifying lenses to assist diagnosis (Ardashir also uses them to examine ancient artifacts); there are enchanted tools like azazel stones - which have been emptied of innate mystic resonance so that they attract magic, drawing curses by osmosis out of the patient and into themselves. Even the drugs are different: distillates and resins and tinctures, the chemical extracts of healing plants rather than the herbs themselves. Just for himself, Ardashir keeps a few treats in the satchel: some wholesome (a spice box containing coriander, cumin, saffron, pepper, and other aromatics), and some less so (a parcel of majoun - a confection of hemp, opium, honey, nuts, and dried dates).
In his saddlebags, or in a knapsack that he uses when he expects to be separated from Sahar for a time, Ardashir keeps other valuables. First and foremost, these are books: in Sidfirian and High Valindorian as well as Mitradaean and Arventian and Gundrukanian, more books than a man on the move could reasonably wish to be burdened with - and yet the collection continues to grow with every stop. There are spellbooks, and treatises philosophical, historical, theological, and astronomical - but also poetry and mythology and maps. And in addition to the books, there is a collection of alchemical equipment, packed into specialized cases of padded leather: an alembic, a retort, an alubel, and all the other tubes and coils and vessels necessary to reduce substances to their chemical elements.
Finally, Ardashir's horse warrants mention in her own right: Sahar, or "Dawn," whose acquisition represents one of Ardashir's more famous adventures since leaving Varadaban. For now, suffice to say that she was the prize and sorrow of a very great Prathmava chief - for though she was the finest of all the chief's horses, she was cursed with madness so that she could brook no rider. When Ardashir cured that madness, the mare claimed him for her own, and he named her Sahar. Swift, untiring, and beautiful - sorrel red, with a mane and tail like cream - Sahar is by far the most valuable of all Ardashir's possessions; among the Prathmava, she would be worth the ransom of a great chief. She bears a light saddle in the Prathmava style, designed more for horse archery than for the clash of lances, and constructed from finely worked leather and silken rope rather than from wood or metal.
Background:
Role: The Farseeker: the Searcher after Secrets, the Hunter of Hidden Truths.
Backstory:
What, then, would you have me tell you of my wandering brother? Would you hear that we knew all along that he was fated for a great destiny - that he would be chosen by the Ancient Fair Ones to seek the secrets of their past? Would you know what star he was born under, or what great deed he performed in the cradle to show that he was fated for such honor?
Well, I was there when he was born, and I can tell you that he seemed an ordinary enough child - at least to me, and at least for a while. We were, however, no ordinary family. 221 years before Arda was born, our great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Zaranaka the Unbroken defeated the Nemrozan horde at the Battle of Navavasta, and saved the Empire of the Elf-Friends. We are his blood - the House of Zaranaka - and at Navavasta our citadel has stood ever since. There our family keeps its watch as Marzbans of Casm-Dahyu, the southern bulwark of Varadaban, sentinels against the return of the Nemrozan threat. Here Arda grew up, the second child but the eldest son and heir - heir not just to our land, but to our name and our legacy and our duty. Perhaps you can understand why I am not - that is, why I celebrate less than wholeheartedly his discovery of high purpose elsewhere.
But I must admit: even if Arda did not strangle serpents in his cradle, we still knew from an early age that he was a prodigy. He was one of those golden children who excelled at every task to which he applied himself, and for whom the only challenge was growing bored with his studies ere he had mastered them. In the combat ring and riding lists of the castle at Navavasta, our family's furusiyya-master Kurush taught Ardashir to ride and to fight. Arda was a magnificent horseman from a young age, and a competent archer with the recurve bow - both in the saddle and on foot; and he was graceful and precise in his practice of zourkhaneh, the Mitradaevka art of grappling and throwing and wrestling. He struggled at first with the sword, until Kurush - who understood Arda better than any of us, I think - made the training harder rather than easier: he took away Arda's shield and taught him the Arsama way of the sword. This is the most elegant and the most risky of all the furusiyya traditions, and requires the greatest skill to master: it shifts unpredictably between a one-handed and a two-handed grip, and uses an armored forearm to control and redirect the enemy's blows instead of relying on a shield to block them. Before he was ten, Arda had a dozen scars from training accidents. But he found Arsama a challenge worthy of his abilities, I think; and that is why he persisted until he was as fine a swordsman as he was a horseman, and his skill with a blade surpassed his ability with the bow.
But in Varadaban, the sword and the pen are never opposed; even on the frontier, we learned from our Immortal Teachers that the greatest weapon is the mind. So Arda did not spend his youth only in the combat ring. He also spent it within the walls of the castle, learning languages and history and philosophy, music and art and literature. Yes, he studied military affairs too: tactics, strategy, logistics; the design of fortifications, the construction of siege engines, the analysis of terrain. As he grew older, he joined our father and uncle on the periodic punitive expeditions that we launched to the south, to keep the Nemrozans quiet; he had plenty of chances to see his classroom lessons applied in practice. But Ardashir also learned the ways of the Empire's court: how to speak the truth without giving offense, and how to conduct himself at a kingly banquet, and how to sniff out deceit or intrigue without missing a step of a formal dance. Our tutors taught Arda to play the oud and the ney, to write poetry in Mitradaean and Sidfirian, to design an irrigation system or diagnose a disease. We are the Elf-Friends; of all the peoples of this fallen age, I think, we best remember and most revere the wisdom of the past; and so a Varadaban classical education is without equal in Minadra. That was the gift we gave Ardashir, and in the end it was that gift that cleaved him from us.
The Sidfir took notice of him, I believe, for the ways in which he surpassed his tutors. Not in raw magical power: for though we learned soon that he had the gift of the Creator, never was Arda's ability so wondrous as to attract the attention of our Teachers. Rather, Arda surpassed his tutors in the independence and clarity of his thought. When he was taught a simple charm, he suggested a new way to make it simpler still; when he was taught an equation, he invented an alternative proof; when he was taught to mix a potion, he introduced variations, and tested them by trial and error until he had improved on the original. I think that for the Deathless, there is nothing so intoxicating as novelty. And so the Sidfir came to us one day when Arda was twelve, and asked to take him into their kingdom to teach him what little of their ways a mortal mind could encompass. I think that for my father, it was the greatest honor our family had received since Zaranaka prevailed at Navavasta.
Arda has never told me exactly what he learned, in the four years that he spent in the Vale of Lomendil. Perhaps he was sworn to secrecy, or at least not lightly to share the Fair Ones' lessons. Certainly, he returned to us having waxed greater in sorcery, though still he was far from mastery. Mostly, though, he seemed to have learned more of the past than seemed natural for a mortal - and certainly for a youth of sixteen. He spoke the Sidfirian tongue as one born to it; he would talk with longing of the ivory spires of Telepimas, as if he had been shown them in a dream. What we had learned from tomes of history, Arda had heard from those who had witnessed it themselves. It worked a change in him. Ever since, I think, he has walked the world with one foot in the present, and the other in ages long past, and felt in his secret heart that the latter are more to be prized than the former.
In any case - Arda returned to us a young man, and not a moment too soon. Ruin had befallen the House of Zaranaka in his absence. Our father, on his last campaign, had been ambushed by a coalition of Gurzat and Nemrozans; neither he, nor any of his company, had come home. Then his brother Ariaspes had seized the marzbanate, and he was a man both corrupt and cruel, so that the people groaned and I myself lived in fear to see to what bloated old sardar my uncle would sell me in marriage. When Ardashir returned to us from the Ancient Fair Ones, therefore, he gathered those few of our father's men who remained loyal, and set out to into the desert to find the rightful marzban and to bring him home. Long he journeyed, far beyond the edge of the map, and the survivors of that expedition told me many tales: of strange beasts and jungles, of basilisks and giant serpents, of abandoned cities of onyx stone. Tales of my brother, too: of how Arda could study a rock and know whether water was to be found nearby; of how he could place snake venom into his glass alembics and somehow distill from it an antidote to save a man's life; of how he was captured and tortured by the Gurzat, and of how he escaped by tricking them into letting him play his flute, with which he ensorceled them with Sidfirian melodies. At length, I am told, my little brother stole into a camp of the Enemy deep within a ruined city of long-lost ages, and Arda found there our father: who was wounded sore, and on the verge of perishing, but who before dying blessed his son and pressed into his hands Nashkasta, the Unbroken Blade of our ancestor Zaranaka. And with that sacred sword - and our family's honor - Arda returned alive from lands where hardly a Graced foot has ever trod.
Our uncle Ariaspes, upon beholding Arda, suddenly found his presence urgently required at court. He fled to Ap-Vio, and we made ready to proclaim Ardashir, son of Mehr, the rightful Marzban of Navavasta. It was then that Arda solemnly told us that he was called - by the Ancient Fair Ones, and more importantly by his soul, through which Eruherion speaks to all that He hath made - to a different purpose than the guardianship of the frontier. He gave to me the seal and signet of the marzban, and explained that he was bound to wander in search of the ancient secrets of former ages, of which the Sidfir had showed him much, and which he longed to behold with his own waking eye. He asked only a yearly share of gold from the marzbanate's revenues - one third, which I granted gladly - and Nashkasta, which I could scarcely deny him when he had returned her with his own hand from the camps of the Nemrozans. So we embraced, and I blessed his name, and he blessed my rule, and Arda went his way.
That was ten years ago, now. I have not seen him since.
But I have heard stories. I have heard that his road led south again, at least at first: for he copied the glyphs with which the ancient onyx cities are inscribed, and sought to decipher them. There, too, Arda tracked and found the Nemrozan chieftain who had captured our father and tortured him unto death - and he discovered that this warlord was, in truth, a witch of the Unseelie, whom he dueled with sword and spell. She had nearly overcome him when, with some alchemical potion, Arda ignited the whole cursed cave in which they fought - burning away the Shadow that concealed his foe's minions and that nourished her strength. Then, as she stood illuminated in cleansing flame, Arda took her life, and avenged our father's torments.
I have heard that Arda next sojourned for a time among islands of white sand, where pepper and cloves grew wild and coconuts littered the ground. Here he found a crew of strange-speaking Firindor, and a graceful dhow, and he sailed up the southern sea from beyond the edge of the map until at last he arrived back in lands that are known, and docked in Segestia. Here, they say he passed a year or two in study at the knee of the great Arventian sages, and spoke to them of their kingdom's past, and learned what they knew of the ancient ways of the Valindorians in the Silver Age: in remembrance whereof the Arvenses outstrip all other mortals, just as we of Varadaban surpass others in our acquaintance with the Ancient Fair Ones. The Arventian scholars awarded Ardashir a seal of the Universitas Segestiae, in recognition of his studies among the Sidfir; but he delved too deep into the sages' archives, as was ever his wont, and found certain secrets concerning the War of Arventian Succession that had been meant to remain hidden. So Arda left Segestia in the middle of the night, under hot pursuit by assassins who wore angelically beautiful masks of bronze, and fled into the Taurethil Forest.
There Ardashir remained for several years. He sojourned in Nimrithil, where a wight of the deepwoods troubled the Firindor hunters; Arda tracked the wight to its tomb, and by magical skill escaped with his life. Then, by long research in the city's archive, he found who had been laid to rest in that tomb, and the circumstances under which he died. In so doing, Arda solved a murder from two centuries ago - and when he shared his findings with the city guard, and the murderer was at last brought to justice, so the wight returned to its tomb and troubled Nimrithil no more.
Next Arda climbed the passes of the Ambarrones, and learned the Skyborn tongue in Binn Nechtain, and compiled a collection of Sylpharim tales and legends. He was thereafter a guest in the deep-delved halls of Stormfjellheim, and helped to excavate one of the vast Turakindi ruins nearby - where Arda found a collection of surviving letters from the Silver Age, exchanged between great lords of the giants and the High Elves. He wrote me after that, for the first time in months, and his own letter was filled with the exhilaration of a purpose confirmed and a dream achieved. And so, by small steps, my brother came to the sea of grass at the heart of Minadra, and traveled into Tridanu.
Here, in a small city of tents upon the windswept steppe, a mighty chief of the Prathmava offered Ardashir her hospitality. She was Opoea, sister of King Ardaros - a great warrior and seeress. She was intrigued by this stranger from far Varadaban, and feasted Ardashir in her tent, and much he taught her of the deep history of the world, and much she shared with him of her own ancient people's cherished lore. It was here that Arda met Sahar, the mad mare of Opoea's herd, whom no Prathmava horse-lord had ever been able to ride: for she was cursed. Long did Ardashir toil with that horse, attempting one treatment after another, magical and medicinal and both combined, until finally he discovered a rune cut into the mare's flesh that bore the curse of madness. This evil spirit he mastered, and cast out into a flock of goats, who raced into the waters of Belkhazun and there destroyed themselves. Thereafter the mare would not be parted from Arda, and he named her Sahar, and made ready to go his way again. And at this the Lady Opoea was sore grieved, for I have heard that she had loved Arda, and that he had passed the nights those many months in her tent; and perhaps he returned her love, for he tarried in those grasslands longer than anywhere else in his journeys. But he had a different path to walk; and so he journeyed on into the waste of Morgador.
There, the report of Arda is that he fell in with a tribe of the Scale Folk, whom he recruited as guides to the ruins of that desolate place. Long months he spent alone among the serpent creatures, exploring the buried cities of lost ages, filling notebooks and sketchbooks with ancient glyphs and street-maps and renderings of the shattered statues of dead kings - and fighting off the blighted monsters, weapons of long-ago wars, who linger in the places time forgot. Arda wrote to me of the end of that adventure: at last, deep beneath the earth in an Elf-hall lost for countless millennia - a place whose very stones were turned to glass by the heat of Apocalypse - he found a treasure so fair, a secret so profound, that even to behold it struck his scaly guides blind. But when Ardashir reached out his hand to claim it, it vanished from his grasp, and instead that entire ancient city quaked and began to crumble around him, so that he fled through passages that filled with sand beneath his feet, and barely escaped with his life. And afterward, Arda found that he could not recall what he had found beneath the earth, for the curse that buried the city had buried its secret as well, in a place so deep that even memory could no longer touch it.
It was after that, alone and harrowed, that Ardashir came to Eoham. He has learned, I think, that there are some things too vast for a mortal mind to compass - even Arda's mind. But he is no less determined to learn what he can; his commission from the Ancient Fair Ones will permit no less. There are rumors of lost cities in the Grey Mountains, and if I know my brother, he is already seeking guides and guards and supplies to pursue them. He has, the Creator knows, enough money: one third of the revenues of one of the Empire's great provinces. Perhaps soon he will find what he is looking for; perhaps then, he will come home.
But I doubt it. A mortal life is but the flare of a lamp-wick to those who sent him out, and my brother will be old and grey and dead before he has found what our Immortal Friends lost to the sands of time before any of us were born. So be it - a life pledged to such a quest is spent, not wasted. And the Sidfir would not have chosen him were he not equal to the task.
I know. All of this I know of Ardashir the Farseeker, slayer of monsters and explorer of lost cities. Yes, I know.
And still: I miss my little brother Arda.
Character Intro: "Lost cities?" said the tinker, and raised a curious eyebrow. "Are you sure you would not prefer the fingerbone of Blessed Fledbert? A very holy man, I assure you."
Ardashir folded his arms across his chest and fixed the man with a steady gaze: luminous green eyes unexpected and unsettling in his handsome brown face. His cashmere burnoose was wrapped well around him, both against the cold blowing in from the eastern sea, and to hide the embroidery of his tabbādeh and the silver scabbard of his sword. But salesmen smell money, and the fine cloth of Arda's mantle - and the obvious impatience in his posture - revealed a man used to getting his way. A man, that is, who could pay well for what he wanted.
"Quite sure," Ardashir told the tinker. The other man opened his mouth, and Arda raised a warning finger. "Goodman," he warned - his Eahamish accented and careful but unmistakably confident - "if you try to sell me one more monkey bone, you will get not a groat from me. I am not interested in your wares. I am interested in their origin." Arda pointed at the fingerbone of Blessed Fledbert. "The origin of that, I know: when I was ten, I dissected the pet macaque of my family steward. He never forgave me for that." The Mitradaevka flashed a sudden, brilliant white smile; despite himself, the tinker let out a brief chuckle, and then frowned. Arda stepped forward. "But this?" He fingered an old stone seal, half chipped away, that hung from the tinker's pack. Strange runes lined its edge. "I would very much like to know where you found this."
The tinker flinched away. "Not for sale," he snapped. "It's not valuable - good luck, nothing more. No use to anyone but me."
"Could not any man benefit from a bit more good fortune?" The tinker opened his mouth, and Arda waved a soothing hand. "Peace. I do not wish to buy it, and I will not take it. I only wish to know where you found it."
The tinker worried his lower lip between his teeth. "My lord" - the honorific was instinctive, as natural a reflex as ducking from a blow - "I would tell you if I could. But I do not know. It came from the mountains to the west; miners sometimes find these carved stones after avalanches, mingled with the other rubble. One of them, ah, gave this to me."
"He gave away good luck?" One of Ardashir's eyebrows crooked upward toward the mop of dark curls hanging over his brow. The tinker coughed uncomfortably. "Hm. Well, no matter. Thank you for your counsel, goodman." The Mitradaevka tossed the tail of his burnoose over his shoulder, and turned to go.
"My lord!" The tinker stuffed the monkey's arm-bone back into his tunic. "Well, you see, I don't know rightly where this seal came from, but I know someone who might be able to find more like it. A sylph, come into town a few days back, telling all who will listen of lost treasures in the Grey Mountains." The tinker shrugged, elaborately indifferent. "Some might find her helpful, my lord. Perhaps not you, but - "
Ardashir abruptly guffawed; the man's belated attempt to play hard-to-get was desperate enough to be endearing. "Sold, goodman. Sold." One gloved hand reached under the burnoose; a moment later, a heavy gold coin inscribed with flowing Mitradaean calligraphy flipped lazily through the air and into the tinker's eager grasp. "Where is this sylph friend of yours, then? I hope she has more substance than your miner who was so generous with ancient seals."
"She does, my lord, she does." The tinker stumbled over his words in a way that made Ardashir believe him; his attention was still on the coin, turning it over and over in his hands as if trying to convince himself that it was real. And without looking up from the gold, the tinker gave Ardashir of Navavasta exact directions to the inn where he could find a young woman named Aderynel - and the destiny that had waited for him, patient as the sands of time, since long before he ever set foot in Ealdormuda...
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