Year 105,618: The Pharaoh Takes A Bride

In the year 105,613 the giants of Chon Zin along with the bird-men of Alvian came south from the Teeth to lay siege to the well-fortified city of Nagiz.  The city lay nestled between two rivers and was built with impenetrable walls.  It was the stronghold of final resort for the Pharaohs of Sathad, and in it were garrisoned the strength of his troops.  The giants brought with them siege engines pulled by teams of huaca, and the birdmen prepared to assault the high walls both in air infantry and on horses of the savannah, specially bred with wings.

Although no enemy had ever taken the city of Nagiz, the giants were in possession of the city within three days.  Their siege equipment was never used; their air cavalry was never launched.  The Pharaoh’s army lay down their arms in fear the moment the walls crumbled, which is a tale to be found in Cha-Thas-Tek's History of the Empire, Volume III.

The destruction of the walls of Nagiz rendered it indefensible and virtually useless for a Pharaoh’s palace, and the site was abandoned to the river.  A new capital was built further west, in a more familiar Chon Zin style.  The city was one of several that had been weakened by the flood of the Galos.  It was renamed Chazinta, rebuilt in quarters, subdivided, with each quarter built in a different scale to accommodate a different way of life.  The Chon Zin giants’ quarter was built in the largest scale, for they were large men and women; for the tiny winged Pizay, the rooms were much smaller and more open to the air.  The larger winged Alvians lived in lofts and penthouses more accessible for their wingspans; the Thryadean tree-people lived in dense gardens.  One quarter of the city or more was thus reserved for those citizens of human size.

A new throne was built and a new dynasty established, but ruling the restless empire of Sathad was another matter.  By general assent the throne went to Orlali, the winged matriarch of the Alvians, for she was the most human of the people of the valley, but this was not an easy thing to sell to the people of Sathad.  They were unaccustomed to being led by a woman of any species, much less one with wings.  The more superstitious of the peasantry certainly didn’t need to know she had come from the valley — in their legends, the Sathad had been punished by the gods with exile from Paradise Valley, and told that gods and men did battle for possession of it.  A winged woman as Pharaoh?  It would never work.

The giants and alvians were eager to adapt to the cultural ways of the Sathad.  They had been prepared to volunteer one of their own for leadership of the Empire, unaware of the warlike tradition of bloody dynastic succession, but had been convinced that a military takeover was more suitable.  Now they were coming to terms with the history of the Pharaohs of Sathad:  each Pharaoh was said to descend from the divine line of Theu himself, God of Conquest, and most importantly, each Pharaoh was a man.

If that is the local custom, then, the giants and alvians decided they could accommodate it.  The Pharaoh would continue to be Matriarch Orlali, but all of the statues and all of the frescoes would be painted in a man’s likeness.  A man with wings, it is true, but a man nevertheless.  Any discrepancy between the Pharaoh’s actual appearance and that of “his” likeness could be masked with illusion.  The citizens, they reasoned, need never know that the Pharaoh was actually a woman.  There was, they discovered, ample precedent for such a deception.  Orlali would not in fact be the first female Pharaoh.

However, Matriarch Orlali — or Pharaoh Alvatheu, as she had been christened, first Pharaoh of the Dynasty of Sathad-Zin — drew the line at marrying her own brother to secure an heir to the throne.  Of all the traditions of Sathad, this was one she could not accept.

Pharaoh Alvatheu (F, 28) is young enough to still have children of her own, and is just far enough into her reign that she is beginning to feel secure about her adopted country.  She hasn’t captured all of the former lands of Sathad, nor converted all the warlords to her side, but much of the river country is hers to command.  If nothing else, the Chon Zin giants, and the other people of the Great Valley, are no longer bottled in by the Pharaoh.  It will soon be time consider ways to expand her reach.

The signs indicate that it may already be too late to expand beyond her present borders.  The people of Sathad, both within the Pharaoh’s dominion and without, are becoming concerned that there is no heir forthcoming.  An heirless Pharaoh does not promote stability.  An heirless Pharaoh may easily be deposed.  This Pharaoh has arrived in Sathad and has not yet produced a single heir; the people uneasily suspect that this Pharaoh may soon become a target for an ambitious warlord.  Were not the Abbadar Oracles predicting just such a conqueror?  Have not the Abbadar suspiciously been seen making pilgrimages east and west out of Sathad?

To quell the rumors and ease the minds of her people, the Pharaoh announced that she would marry and produce an heir, but as there was no close relative in the family, the marriage must be to an ordinary mortal.  Surprisingly, the people of Sathad were sanguine with this explanation; a Pharaoh with wings surely had enough divine blood for two.

And so in a tradition more ancient than the Empire of Sathad itself, a tradition dating back to the Dar before them, the people of Sathad began to send their daughters to the Pharaoh.  They were obeying the ancient custom of bridal exchange.  One fortunate family would marry into the divine line and be forever exalted; the other daughters would, with good luck, become part of the Pharaoh’s privileged harem of women — royal concubines they would become, to be given special treatment and education, with some political influence at the palace, and ensconced safely under the protection of Theu’s divine offspring.

Matriarch Orlali, of course, cannot have children with any of these young women.  Even if magic could be found to change Orlali into a man for that purpose — and there is, for the mages of the Pizay are said to have the power to create a temporary magical disguise — it’s possible that an Alvian and a human cannot have children at all, or if they could, then the children may not be viable.

Some deceit is apparently called for.  A child might be substituted, perhaps.  That is the least of the Pharaoh’s worries.

Five powerful families of the plains have each offered their daughter as the Pharaoh’s bride.  All of the young women are relatively young, of childbearing age, and raised as befits the daughters of the well-to-do.

Two of the families are devout Oraclists.  They believe in the story of the Conqueror, as told in the Gospels of the Abbadar.  Now that the giants have arrived on the scene, every prophecy seems already fulfilled, or perhaps about to be.  With the time of the Conqueror evidently at hand, many people are fearful and uncertain.  These families, like many people of Sathad, have cast out the old pantheon of gods and have instead turned to worship Chimata, the all-seeing God of the Abbadar.

Two of the families are sworn enemies of the Abbadar.  They fully believe that the Abbadar summoned the Conqueror to the lands in order to destroy the Empire, and they insist that the full might of the Pharaoh’s army be immediately used to crush the Abbadar wherever they may now reside.

The fifth family doesn’t believe or disbelieve in the Gospels of the Abbadar, specifically, and they didn’t raise their daughter to play favorites among the gods.  This is only natural, because the mother is Sathadi, the father was an Abbadar, and their virgin daughter is High Priestess of the Great Temple...

What The Players Decided

The Players seemed to enjoy The History of the Empire, Vol III, especially what the herald had said following his third trumpet blast and its unexpected results.  They settled in to their debate, paying particular care to divide their difficulty into two distinct areas:  which family to choose, and how they would contrive to get the Pharaoh's chosen wife pregnant.

Almost immediately they ruled out the two Oraclist pro-Abbadar families and the two rabidly anti-Abbadar families.  They had just barely managed to get the Empire stitched together under polytheism and they didn't want to see it fall apart through religious civil war.  However, they were equally opposed to the middle ground candidate, the High Priestess, because it would further consolidate the power of the priests of the Temple.  Never mind that the purpose of a political marriage is all about consolidation of power, the players apparently decided; they didn't want to give the priests any more power than was strictly necessary.

They addressed the second problem first with typical gamer subtlety.  A man would be procured to do the husbandly service on one of the wives.

Who? I asked.

"Who cares?" said Joe the Leader.  "An heir's an heir."

"That means the wife has to be in on the secret," Dave the Artisan pointed out.

"She'll just have to deal with it," Joe said.

That made some sense, I admitted to myself, but I didn't say anything.  If the family wanted to maintain its legitimate hold on the throne, of course the bride would continue to insist that her heir was legitimate.  Who would know?

"She's got a brother.  I think she should just marry him," said Connor the Mystic.

She won't do it, I reminded them.

They stared at each other.  "This is going to haunt us," said Joe.

Yes, these things usually do.

"If having a female Pharaoh is the problem, just put somebody else on the throne," Joe suggested.  "She has a brother."

"If you do that, you're opening up a can of worms," said Jack.

"Why don't we just get her brother to get the bride pregnant?" Dave asked.  "We get the guy, the mage who does the illusion for the Pharaoh, and make the brother look like the Pharaoh just for one night."

Then he'd have to be in on the secret too, I pointed out.

"We're going to end up with a whole culture based around a Pharaoh that's a transvestite," Connor observed. 

They turned from that problem for a moment and addressed the political situation.  They didn't much care for any of the candidates.  "We can't choose that one Abbadar-hating family," Dave insisted.

"The Abbadar would become like the Jews," Connor observed.  "Everybody hating them."

Well spotted, yes; there were certain similarities in the early beats of their culture.  So far as I know, nobody ever accused the Hebrews of being mutant psychics, however.

"We can't put the bigots in power?" Joe said.  "So, no Republicans."

"And we can't have the High Priestess.  We already said last time that she was one of the political advisers to the Pharaoh.  If we make her his bride, too, that's going to come bite us in the ass," Dave said.

"Transvestites and ass-biting don't go hand in hand," said Jack.

"Look, all I have to do is invent the turkey baster," Dave said.

"Who's going to fill it?" Jack asked.  "Not it."

The Players examined the list of spells that were available during the Iron Age, and encountered a Biotech spell that gave them pause.  "Analyze Heredity," Joe said, pointing at the list.  "They'll be able to tell what the real lineage is going to be."

Their idea of bringing in a ringer was disappearing quickly.

"Why would they do that?" asked Connor.

"Are you kidding, it's a succession," Joe said.  "All the other families are going to want to make sure it's legitimate."

"We just get that mage who does the Pharaoh's illusion to cast the spell.  He's already in on the secret," Connor said.

His would be the only result that showed the proper lineage, I observed.  Any other mage casting the spell would know the truth.

They toyed with the idea of a contest, getting more than one bride pregnant, and whichever heir was born first would be Pharaoh.  Pregnancy races?  "Aaaaand they're off!" said Dave, like a play-by-play man at the Preakness.

"The Pharaoh should just marry all of them," Dave went on.  "I know it's not a good idea, but when has that ever stopped us?"

"You'd end up with women killing their rivals so they could be first," Joe pointed out.

They looked again at the families who were jockeying for position, and again rejected the idea of the Oraclist pro-Abbadar family.  "We worked really hard to get all their gods together into the Great Temple.  We don't want them to go worshiping this other guy, Chimata."

"Chamandra?" asked Connor.  "Yeah, definitely not."

"Right," Joe said, "because worshiping us has always worked out so well."

Not Chamandra, I said.  Chimata.

"As long as it isn't Chamandra, I don't give a shit," Connor announced.

They asked a few questions about the illusion of manhood that had been granted to the Pharaoh.  Joe lamented that if she had just had an heir already by herself, they wouldn't have to solve this problem.  Why had she even bothered disguising herself as a man, anyway?

It's the Sathadi tradition, I said.

"But it's their tradition to pass along leadership peacefully to whoever wants it," he pointed out.

They're just trying to adapt to local customs, I noted.  They're taking over an existing apparatus, not imposing their own.

"No, they came down and offered to take over leadership," Joe said, referring to the history.

Backed by their army, I said.  At least they gave the Pharaoh fair warning, but it was you who convinced them that a military takeover was necessary.

"Yeah, I can't think whose idea that was," Dave said, looking hard at Joe. 

"We didn't tell her to lie to everybody," Joe said, indignant.  "That's our job."

Dave was working on another idea whereby an heir might be found — adopted, perhaps, or discovered in a basket amid some reeds.  "Worked for Moses," he said.

There came an awkward realization when Joe asked, "What if it's a girl?"

There was no guarantee, of course, that even if they arranged to get one of the brides pregnant that a male heir would be produced as the next Pharaoh.  "They'll just have to do the illusion for her, too," Connor suggested, and then groaned.  "We're going to start a whole tradition of female pharaohs disguised as transvestites.  They're going to expect that."

No, I said; this was an old Sathadi tradition that was used in the past on the rare occasion that there was no male heir.  They kicked that around for a while.

"We could just get the Pharaoh pregnant," Connor said.

I'd like to say there was a silence as everybody appreciated the deviousness of that idea, but there wasn't.  I duly noted Connor's comment on scratch paper and listened as Dave, Jack and Joe haggled over something else.  Eventually I pointed out what Connor had said, because it had been a good idea that I thought they might want to examine in more detail.

They circled around the idea for a while without success, until I finally pointed out the obvious path that they had been stumbling over.  Why didn't they just name the Pharaoh as the bride? 

Now there was a silence as the Players took in that idea and rushed off with it.

"We take the female Pharaoh, without the illusion, and we announce that she is the bride," Dave said.

"We don't have to name any of those other families," Jack the Storyteller said.

"And it's going to confirm the Pharaoh's lineage," Joe said, "if they check.  It'll definitely say the female Pharaoh, without the illusion, was the mother."

Who's going to be the father? I asked.

"There must be somebody she's attracted to," Joe said.  "Somebody she already knows.  That'll make it easier."

Sure, I imagine there is, I said.  And if they cast Analyze Heredity, they'll know the Pharaoh wasn't the father.

"Well," Dave drawled, "I can think of four candidates right here who could do the job.  Three," he said, with a sidelong look at Connor.

"I'm a woman," Connor said.  It was true; he played the Goddess of Fertility.

"Wait a minute, can you say that again?" Dave said, fumbling for his phone.  "I'm going to make that my ringtone."

So, I said, one of you is going to be the father.  Did you want to confirm the divine lineage of the Pharaohs?

Jack put his face in his hands.  "No."

All right, I said.  Then you want to disprove the divine lineage of the Pharaohs?

Now Jack moaned.  "No."

Joe spoke up.  "They already believe the Pharaohs are descended from the gods.  This won't change anything."

Great, I said.  So who's going to be the father?

Three fingers pointed across the table at Dave.

Results
I won't have the results of this round until I prepare for the next round.