Tiziri Bakhta'ul Tayri'ul's Story

Backstory by MC

Tiziri Bakhta'ul Tayri'ul (Ziri) doesn't have much in the way of ambition. With his 83rd birthday on the horizon, his parents, siblings, and the rest of his tribe are long past subtle inquiries about his plans. His mother, as the head of the family, asks him outright, regularly, at high volume, what he plans to do with himself once he reaches adulthood and is no longer welcome to spend his middays (the hours during which the nomadic tribes of the Tarzur Desert trance) in his parents' tent. Ziri has no answer, and no intention of finding one anytime soon.

Instead, he and his friends spend most of their nights sneaking across scrub brush and sand on camelback to see what trouble they can find. An encounter with a friendly mud mephit; attempted theft of another tribe's closely guarded supplies—minor mishaps and rash stunts like these break up the monotonous, never-ending trudge through the desert. Never mind that he is the oldest of these dedicated troublemakers by twenty years. Never mind that his family stare at him with pity as he slinks back into their shared tent, instead of taking the initiative to craft and carry his own.

The elders look the other way as long as the occasional bag of spell components, stolen waterskin, or other spoil makes its way to the tribe's shared stores. As far as Ziri is concerned, that tacit consent more than outweighs his mother's open, public disdain.

Ziri's name is itself a catalog of expectations. Bakhta'ul designates him a child of his mother, Bakhta, who leads her family with ferocity and will definitely be a contender for chief one day. Tayri'ul designates him a child of the Tayri tribe, one of the couple dozen that still exist in their traditional form after centuries of persecution. Ziri puts no thought at all into whether he might meet these expectations, now or ever. Instead, he creeps and slinks and sidles and steals his way around to avoid confronting the question of what he'll do when he is one day forced to act his age.