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Horace al’ Xukif
I was born on the road to Okeno in Katapesh, 23 years ago, birthed to a mother traveling in a merchant caravan. Her name was Alz’ta, and was one of a small number of women and men kept by the Pasha Xukif’s Harem. She had been born into slavery after my parents had been captured by gnolls 15 years before. The pasha was fond of drunken couplings, and rarely worried about accidental pregnancies. If a girl was found pregnant, he simply had his holy man end the life of the mother. When she found herself with child, she did her best to hide it from the Pasha, and confided only in her closest friend, a fellow harem girl and slave, Izora. She kept the secret for some months, but finally betrayed her for a chance to gain the Pasha’s favor. Taken by a cold fury, my father had her first whipped, then inspected. When they found that She was nearly seven months along, he commanded the holy men to induce birth. My mother died with the promise that I would be raised to be the next Pasha , the next harem owner and slave lord, still ringing in her ears.
Raised a noble merchants son, I learned something of nobility, of economics, and of the vices of men. My father was not only a slave seller but a pesh dealer, as well as having his hands in several other unsavory dealings. I suppose I was exposed to at a young age what many would call inappropriate and poisonous things for children to see, let alone experience, but to me, these were the facts of everyday life. I tried pesh at eight, and was with a woman for the first time at thirteen, my fathers favorite, Izora. When I was fifteen, he put me in charge of the care of his slaves, teaching me a firm hand, and to see all those below me in station as expendable joys at best, and work animals at worst. Sometimes I would study faith and religion with the holymen, priests of Nogorber and Calistria. It seemed strange to me that wherever the caravan went, we would see the shrines and temples to the Dawnflower, Sarenrae, but never enter.
When I asked about the sun-faith, they scoffed, calling it a fool’s religion, and only good enough to be the empty faith of slaves. Curious, I in secret asked some of the slaves of this , and in-between confused looks and worried glances, told me to speak to one of the oldest of there number, Felton. When I asked the old man, he looked at me with gray eyes that seemed to sunder years of luxury and amorality, and said simply that they worshiped Sarenrae because she represented something unheard of to me until that moment: a life that they were meant to live, that had not been forced on them. He explained her justice, and her mercy, traits that I could not help but admire, but not see in myself. He explained her protection of the innocent, and I found myself thinking, for all my physical pleasures, this perfect being would not protect me, but would abhor who I was. Or perhaps, who I had been. Seeing his words affect me so, he told me that perhaps the thing that best pleased Her, that most would touch Her, was personal sacrifice. He hoped this, he said with a sigh, because he traveled with the band not because he was forced to, but because the other slaves needed a someone to put there faith in, and so he would minister to them as best he could. Pushing the sand aside, he revealed a wooden symbol of the Dawnflower, carved over the course of months long ago, and said simply that as he could never hope to defeat all the guards, he would not try to escape without all of the slaves, but would neither leave them here alone.
That one act of decency , of honor, may have changed the way I look at Golarion more then anything else. These were not animals, these men and woman we kept to be workers and playthings. These were people, and better people then I could ever hope to be.
That night, as my father and his guards slept , deeply under the influence of the newest and most potent shipment of pesh yet, I freed the slaves from there shackles, and bayed them slip off in the night. They ran quickly enough, save Felton, who explained that the sacrifice of the life I had known, in favor of a better life for those people, was perhaps just the act that could redeem me. He asked for me to come with him, to enter a shrine to Sarenrae for the first time, and perhaps in time, to take my place as one of her champions.
It has been eight long years, since that night in the desert. Felton is long dead, and I have just begun to try to fill the hole his absence leaves. Scimitar in hand, and ankh-angel held aloft, I shall spend the rest of my life doing what Felton did for me, redeeming those who know no better, and righting the wrongs that I can in Her name. In the North of Avistan, they call those of my calling Knights and Paladins, but I choose to think of myself simply as a master turned servant, knowing that sometimes all it takes is the right person in someone’s life to make the difference.