This is a follow-up to the introduction of Souchart, exploring his life in the near-desert highlands West of si‘Scatvatsa, the primary location of The Right of Rule,the role-playing game I’m in. I should reiterate that I’m exploring the world, but exploring a part that is very different from the game. This gives me some leeway, but I’m also not able to really display the richness of what she’s created.
There will be more about Souchart. I’ve already invented a sail-powered train to get him around. There’s no way I’m leaving that in the dustbin.
This is just over 4000 words, and writing this for one post is why I did not post my 2000 word story on Monday. I plan to stick to the schedule more closely from now on.
Souchart had just entered his eighth Summer when he was sidecast and turned out from his family. A sidecast was untouchable, not an orphan. No family was allowed to take him in, but none could deny him his living necessities.
His first night he spent in the tribe’s herd of kamidar. The lumbering reptilians stank and moaned all night, but they were warm and they did not seem to mind. The light was dim and kamidar are not smart creatures; perhaps they saw his mottled, hairless skin and thought him one of their young, just out of the nest, encephalitic and unfortunately missing a tail.
Unlike the kamidar, Souchart had no beak with flat grinding plates, and he could not eat the grass and scrub brush that they seemed to relish. He owned a wooden bowl and a bent spoon, and was able to acquire food just by asking. One morning he decided he was tired of sleeping in the corral, and he bathed and washed his clothes, drying them in the sun as he carefully held them aloft to keep the dust off. That evening, he timidly approached a yurt just south of his family’s.