Abbe Barakat was born in the city of Eto. His father was a historian working at the Grand Library, a well-respected member of the academic community in Eto. The Barakat family did well enough to get by, but was far from wealthy. There were many times Abbe had to endure his mother stretching meals to cover days.
Abbe’s father, Ibrahim, held to the ideal of knowledge being more important than almost anything. He made sure that Abbe attended school, studied, and received high marks. He was also a very traditional man, holding to the old gods and ways of Osirion. “The Past will illuminate our way forward, my son!” was a common lecture we would give to Abbe. Ever the dutiful son, Abbe followed his father’s plans and learned all he could of the past, studying the history of his people and country.
Being admitted to the university at Eto, he was hired on to a few excursions into the old ruins and sites of Osirion. On one such dig, he received a letter from home telling him of his mother’s illness. It was a rare illness that required an expensive cure. Far too expensive for an aging historian to afford. This was the first time that Abbe used his position on a dig team and knowledge for his own gain. He arranged for some of the excavated artifacts to go missing…and then sold them to some people he knew on the black market.
When he arrived back in Eto with the medicine for his mother, his father was curious as to how he obtained such an expensive remedy. The argument between Ibrahim and Abbe was long and heated, and resulted in a rift between the two. Abbe found the extra money left over after buying the medicine to be nice to have as well. He repeated these sales five more times over the next few years.
Recently, on a sale gone bad in Sothis, Abbe was running from some thugs who wanted their money back for a less than authentic Pharaonic headpiece. As he ran, he came across a wandering Chelaxian knight, who he convinced to aid him in his escape. Seeing the potential benefit of having some extra muscle on hand, Abbe offered him “work” as a shareholder in a dig team he intended to form in Wati, after having heard the news of the necropolis being opened.
