The Annual Camel Race
This is the starting point of Jahur’s annual across-desert camel race. A great tent city opens for the week over which the race runs. The event is so popular, and Jahur so populous, that the tent city is itself the Shrouded Lands’ fourth most populuous city for that week.
In the race, competitors must lead a chain of any number of camels through the wastes, and end with at least one camel still alive. Gnolls and Nekh delight in the custom, and help weed out riders and camels.
The races have been won the last three years by a visored knight of Thring who competes in full plate. This or her identity as as yet unknown.
Other personalities of the race include Samwiss Ghanjees, the race’s announcer and organiser. Almost too large to be of human stock, he is solemn and tense. Rather than instilling excitement in the audience, his voice is funereal as he gives updates to the crowd in the tent city of the competitors progress over the week. His art lies in bringing scenes to life. The crowd may not be chanting or buying drinks from the vendors as he describes a Nekh sorceress’ pet mongoose eating the eyes of a camel that succumbed to exhaustion while its wracked chest still strugglingly rises and falls, but they are certainly engaged.
On the final day, the role of announcer is claimed by one of the Viceroys of the city. This post alternates from year to year, and this year it is Viceroy Orhan’s turn. Whether they’ll let him out of the dungeon, and what would happen to him in the public eye, is unclear.
The Ibraheen sponsor the race. Rather than a noble family, or even one of the rising merchant families, the Ibraheen is a trade guild of street vendors, publicans and newspaper printers. Their ambition is sneered at by the greats of the city, but none can deny that a camel race is precisely their bailiwick.
Hooks
- Who is the knight? Why does he or she hide his or her identity?
- What is the prize for winners of the race?
- Why do people risk life and limb to compete?
- What is the origin of the tradition?
- What are the other three most populous cities of the Shrouded Lands?
- Is Samwiss Ghanjees of human stock?
- Was it just a coincidence that a month after an assassination attempt on the viceroy, he is due to announce a race?
- So there’s newspapers in Jahur? What sort of broadsheets and tabloids do they have?
- Does that use old Zhuriman technology, or is it a recent innovation?