The warmth of the night played across Ahmose, as the breeze brought him the decadent scents from the food stalls in the bazaar below.   He stood on a hillock, looking down into a valley filled with marquees and pavilions, camels and horses, and thousands of people from a dozen dozen tribes.

Merchants and traders from all over the land ... and beyond ... had gathered here, as they did at about this time every year, to barter and exchange every ware and service.


For a lone warrior, with a vendetta, it held a myriad of opportunities ... and not all of them were to his favour.
This message was last edited by the GM at 08:48, Mon 02 Dec 2019.

Three weeks Ahmose had travelled the desert. The first few days he had plied what he knew of surviving the shifting sands. Travelling at night, conserving his water, avoiding the sun. It had not availed him and despite his will and anger at Imisi's likely execution for no greater crime then love, he had faltered. His body failed his will and in the moment he was certain he had died, claimed by the desert as so many others had been. In the moment however his will did not yield, and as the desert strove to claim his spirit, he instead claimed it. Or at least that was how it had felt.

Since then, the rest of the last three weeks Ahmose had trudged across the sand with no mind to the burning sun, his empty belly, nor even raging sandstorm. At times he travelled across the desert, at times he was the desert, sand born on a hot wind across the dunes. He told himself he would rest when he was tired. He did not stop until he crested the last dune and looked down on the bazaar.

It was the first sign of human life he had seen since his banishment, and strangely the first thought he had was that his clothes had been reduced to tatters. The thought drew a wry chuckle from the banished prince. He had little to trade beyond his self at this point. He was beginning to suspect that had more value then everything in the bazaar however. For now he could take stock of the situation. Maybe even find some new cloths. Gathering himself he started down. Here he could begin.

Whatever levity he may have was only masking the the insistent drumbeat of rage at his  core. In time he would see it sated.

As Ahmose approached the bazaar, not a eye was turned in his direction.
For none here recognised him as a Prince; banished or otherwise.  None recognised him as beating the spirit of the sands itself.
And nobody cared.


The smell of the myriad foods being cooked assailed his senses, as did the cacophony of sounds and shouts.
He crowds pulsed and throbbed in such a symbiotic experience that it almost seemed that the bazaar itself was alive: an entity in its own right, living and breathing like the desert that spawned it.


It was the the colours of the Red Scythe tribe that first drew Ahmose’s attention to an specific detail within the living community.
Four ‘raider’ within the unwashed masses, unloading several chests from several camels into a small covered pavilion.
Heir speak and dress somewhat familiar among many that Ahmose had never experienced.


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