Father, Daughter, Feather
To a loveless and distracted father
To a loving and dainty fourteenth daughter
To a lonely passerby, this floats to as a feather,
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My name is Karstefan Sejoulo, of House Sejoulo, Dhampir son of the Master Lopanse and Mistress Gwadeen Sejoulo.
Dear reader, you would be oh-so forgiven if you believed my repetition of a name with such higher societal status would be an admission of my clear adoration and gratification.
Alas, rather contrary to what most here in Qarsi Palace believe, scarce few summers were sorely spent in that glorified hatchery. All that is to say, I’ve no love, no sequestered satisfaction to my accursed surname.
For far quicker than I had time to learn the proper pronunciation of my name was I shipped off to its very namesake: Qarsi - (Karst)efan. This was unfortunately learnt much later into my twenties via a drunken night’s induced loud ramblings by none other than her Holiness, Bitch-queen, Clan Sultai Leader, (she hates it when she’s not referred to as Khan,) Sidisi, herself.
It became known that night that I was, at the very least, not a mere offering, but a trade. Well, part of a trade, mind you, Lopanse traded the rarity of Dhampir child and his utter autonomy for an ugly keep and the ironic offspring of a certain Solemgar. To which the then grand-scaly-sons and daughters are unceremoniously smote by both Sidisi and my mother for that ever-so-present essence.
Under normal circumstances, a mortal son would be thanking these actions to keep their dear-old mother around. However, I’m not mortal nor, for all intents and purposes, a “son.”
She was all too complicit in sacrificing my literal and metaphorical essence to the scathing snake to omit her connections to her mortal bindings upon this plane of existence.
Vampires are rare enough in Tarkir; rarer still are the Dhampirs and their juxtapositioned famous charisma. Whereas their progenitors lose a little of their potential to be… nice, good fathers, and generally charismatic to their rampant and rapacious need for status, wealth and feeding. Dhampirs are intrinsically given the choice to retain their humanity, humility and humour.
And Sidisi saw and acted on that promise, an altogether oddity in which to raise for her every whim and wish. For every one of those eighty long years, the corpses I bled dry were left holding the short stick and her the rest.
I held a rather auspicious role in Qarsi Palace as her Royal Orator and, often enough, her entertainment. I was an unassuming bodyguard of sorts to weed out the ne’er do wells that would deign take advantage of a court devoid of obvious security.
This position was extended only to fit entertainment due to my royal duel, a fight in which no blood was unfortunately spilled by my hands nor incisors. The delinquent human who made her laugh the most with his funny verbiage held the title previous. Until I bested him at his own game and shockingly gained an undead version of Etomer, now my own personal assistant.
Attending all too many meetings of hers, I inadvertently learned an imposing wealth of information. Statuses of the other clans, our relationships with them, and theirs with others. I developed an inherent penchant for words and the gift of wielding them to bolster or tear down her guests.
Queen-Bitch Sidisi and I held an absolutely symbiotic relationship, truly. However, when the bells struck true on my eightieth year of unproblematic servitude, she erred a most erroneous mistake. She gave birth, well, laid an egg to her loveliest and fourteenth daughter.
Since that fateful day, she was the permanent holder of the aforementioned short stick. Thirty more uninterrupted years of her dutiful reign ooze by, and a few demon-cats later, her fourteenth daughter is present for one of my late-night shows.
She was not allowed to venture from the palace like I was; she was not allotted such time to fraternize with the rabble; she was hatched to live a life much like the thirteen, now only ten, before her. Dutiful, boring, and scaly, but, this one was different. The three that seemed to have fallen off the face of Tarkir were rumoured to have died of a sickness no essence nor manifestation could mend, but we knew they grew too powerful, dangerously nearing the power to potentially overtake Sidisi and claim the crown. She would not have that happen.
At that time, Sidisi was pushing three-hundred years, and any mortal, even with an unending supply of essence, will noticeably teeter off in vigour and constitution. It manifests in all the usual ways, less thought put into political decisions – less care. One way nobody expected it to manifest was another living and breathing juxtaposition like myself.
Her fourteenth, shrouded insufficiently with a golden, silk hood, walked into the tavern to, as I later learned, to finally hear for herself this illustrious orator. She was rather in luck at the moment, for I was telling the tale of the greatest and fattest of them all: Feyo. She seemed to relish in the humour and palace slander, for mid-soliloquy, she reared in laughter and exposed her features.
A teal, fair face. Not quite human, not quite Naga. A commanding presence in the room, standing taller than most in the crown, but clearly humble and not yet manipulated by the Searing Sultai Society, Sidisi so eloquently borne out of our clan’s successful battles and strategic positioning.
Weeks and months pass by, and her laughter remains the loudest in the room on every Second Day I used to play in that tavern - The Drowning Sibsig - if you’re curious. A year finally ticks over, and upon another regular night in which the hungry crowd is awaiting my usual comedic slander or honourable veneration of our past heroes. Instead, well, I venerate a no longer teal face, but a reddening future wife of mine.
“A teal face in such an unusual place;
bend me your ear, you bashful woman:
you pay to see me and yet will not see me;
I could show you strength and severity,
a universe of passion yet room for humility.
My eyes leave your face never,
Every night a plea for a sample.
I’ve witnessed your every angle.
I’ve helplessly constructed every since punchline to watch you alight.
Your every side as you enter and exit this unlikely place.
Your every deepest corner of emotion dredged by tales of woe or heroics.
I thought I knew what all I desired, but your geometry is what I wish.”
So few poets, storytellers, and ferocious weavers of tales exist in this tenuous Tarkir. The historians among us would tell you it’s due to the warring, and the mothers would tell you it’s due to the violence. But to my kids and their kids and to the future of this clan under the virgin rule of Co-Khans, I will tell the people it’s because those that came previously did not know of or be able to kiss Hisiraë’s sweet geometry.
Hisiraë now exists same as she always has, just older and wiser and nearing an age I refuse to write and refute to number. She still has plenty of time, you still look as ravishing as the first nights I saw you, but everyone knows me and my kin will insurmountably outlive that of a Naga, especially one tailing the ten-long food chain in dead-last. Unless, of course, Sidisi were to befall a great failure, and thus the ones with blood on their hands or dripping from their fangs are the next obvious suitors and could extend her life long enough to live a greater truth and marriage.
To all this letter may reach, know that your newest Warden of Clain Sultai was sent and chosen specifically to be snuffed out by the raging fires across this land because I loved her daughter too much. I became “misguided,” and “distracted,” by the finest future this swamp may yet ever witness. Her time on that throne has brought riches and enough status to last another thrice her length, but I am not alone in the burgeoning belief that she has grown slow and complacent.
Sidisi hath given me a weapon fit for her utter incineration. I will burn down all she holds dear, wielding that very weapon: my rage and my voice. I will subdue my every enemy with an unrelenting blood rage and simultaneously thrall our future citizens as I use the joke I was equipped with to slice Sidisi’s scaly scalp from her shoulders with but a single scarf.
Join me, as I return from an unwilling journey of unknown length and grow in strength aplenty to lead you right. To spearhead from a place with just a bit more colour than green and purple and gold, we could use a splash redder in these streets, don’t you think?
