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@Make(Report)
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@comment(Set these values appropriately for each character profile)

@string(name="Leannot Hiram ")
@string(realname="Arammas ello-Lene Casade ")
@string(playername="Player Name")
@string(id="762304")

@include (/mit/abstract/Characters/Sheets/cover.mss)

@MajorHeading(@value(realname))

@i[Busy, busy, busy!]  It seems that you'll never get a vacation, at
least not at the rate that things are going now.  You've been playing
both ends against the middle for a long time now, and it looks like
things are about to come to a head.

And here you thought that becoming a member of the Shadow Cabinet was
going to make your life easier.  You were really pleased when you were
promoted to the Shadow Cabinet three years ago.  It really appealed
to you being one of the three people who ran the Thieve's Guild --
Barak, and the mysterious Shadowlord being the other two.  You'd get
off the streets, and start running the black market operations you'd
only been a "cog in the machine" for, you thought.  Really, that would
be much more your style.  How were you supposed to know that prior
obligations would pit you against your own organization!

You've known Deveral alle-Judah Marai all your life.  You were known by
a different name then, Arammas ello-Lene Casade.  You two were the
only ones among your peers that understood that strength is power, and
with power came responsibility.  The poor clods always semed to take
exception to when ever you two exercized the privileges that came
with your responsibilities.  When you were younger, your strength lay
in your physical abilities; now it lies in your knowledge.

It was the mage Benedicht Judah who first introduced you to magic; and
oh, what power!  He, too, understood that strength meant rights and
responsibilities, and set about grooming you for the duties he knew
would be demanded of you.  He made you his apprentice, and did you him
proud by becoming one of the most promising mages to have ever passed
the Time of Trials.

Judah gave you the chance to help garner power for those with the
ability and strength of will to use it; he and several of your fellow
mages had formed the Order of the Sceptre, and planned on seizing
control of the Realm from the aging King Rashid XIII.  Judah, who took
the title SceptreHolder, had cast several mind control spells on
Rashid; Judah had total control over Rashid's actions.  He was only
steps away from having Rashid hand over the crown to Judah and his
line, and control of the Realm to the Order of the Sceptre.

It should have been a bloodless coup; instead, it was a disaster.
Somehow, Mahalael Enoch, one of Rashid's advisors, discovered that
the aging King's capricious decisions were not of his own making.  He
figured out the names of everyone in your Order, and gave them to the
Wizard's Conclave.  And the Council of Magi and Heirophant, like the
cowards you always knew they were, chose to support Rashid.  They
proceeded to cut your links to the Orb of Nairaphi, one by one,
rendering you all powerless.  

Judah soon realized what was happening, and knew that this once, he
was powerless to stop it.  As a final act of defiance, he cast a mind
control spell on one of the Crown Warriors, and sent him to kill
Rashid.  Mere minutes after Rashid's death, Mahalael Enoch appeared as
if out of no where, and summarily executed the SceptreHolder.  Many of
the remaining members of your Order were jailed or executed; you
barely managed to escape with your life, and that only because you cut
all ties to your old your old life, and adpoted your present identity.

You tried to get in contact with Judah's daughter, assuming the two of
you together would have a better chance of surviving.  But she had
disappeared, to only the Gods knew where.  Demoralized, you began to
rebuild your life.  As risky as it was, you couldn't stay away from
court life; you worked your way up the political ladder, to your
present position of advisor to the Table of Peers, the ruling body
that replaced the monarchy you helped topple.  Over the years, you've
paid special attention to Mahalael Enoch, who was made a Peer for
accomplishing Judah's death; you wre hoping to find out how he was
able to find out about and crush the Order of the Sceptre.  What you
learned was that trifling with this man was definitely a mistake.
@i[He] knew how to use his power, and was one shrewd politician.

Your position in the court made you an ideal contact for the Thieve's
Guild black market operation; when you were approached for the job,
you accepted gladly, see yet another method of garnering the power due
you.  You rose through these ranks relatively quickly, but you were
pleasantly surprised when offered the post in the Shadow Cabinet.

Which brings you full circle to your present conundrum.  Months after
your promotion, you were approached by a strange woman.  She was
familiar somehow ... and she addressed you by your old name!  She
quickly drew you aside, and introduced her self as Ezakiel Leah, "who
you once knew, old playmate," she smiled, "as Deveral Marai".  You
were stunned!  She had returned to Capitol City (and you never could
get her to explain her long absence!), and had reinstituted the Order
of the Sceptre.  She wanted you, as her father's apprentice, to be one
of its leaders.  How could you resist your childhood friend?  How
could you resist a second chance at power?

Leah, as she calls herself now, wants power, and you can give it to
her.  You're an advisor to the Table of Peers, and a trained, but
powerless mage.  You had too much pride to tell her you had sunk to
being a thief (much less risen to the Shadow Cabinet), but you did
recruit one of your like-minded lieutenants, Ananim Isachar.  He was
an ambitious one, who obviously had an eye on your position; you were
more than pleased to give him another focus for his energy.

Leah's plans called for a take-over of the Table of Peers.  Somewhat
understandably, she wanted the first victim of the Sceptre to be
Enoch, the man responsible for the downfall of the first Sceptre, and
who killed her father.  However, after watching Enoch for many years,
you convinced her that direct action was not the way to deal with this
man.  She had you direct your energy to another Peer who she felt
couldn't be controlled, thus had to be eliminated.  The Peer was
Arpachshad Seth.

Oh, her plan was wondrous -- she was definitely her father's daughter!
She gave you a slow acting poison you'd never seen before (small,
silvery flakes) to administer to Seth.  The poison affected his
nervous system, triggering early senility.  His place on the Table was
in jeopardy.  To add fuel to the fire, you had befriended Seth's son,
the Ambassador Arpachshad Chaim.  You hinted to him that you didn't
think that his father's senility was natural (the truth can be a
powerful weapon!), and that the other Peers might be responsible for
it.  Nonetheless, you counselled him, he should be prepared to step in
and take his father's place on the Table.  Without outside influences,
Chaim's voting record would likely be much like his father's.  But
Chaim is more tractable than his father ever was, he would be easy for
the Sceptre to manipulate.

No matter how well Leah's plans for Seth were proceeding, she couldn't
get over her desire for vengeance against Enoch.  She finally came up
with a way to deal with him that was ingenious, because it involved
not Enoch, but his son, the mage Mahalael Jeremiah.  She wanted
Jeremiah replaced with a simulacrum, one who was a member of the
Sceptre.  You "volunteered" Isachar to undergo the spell that would
make him, for all intents and purposes, Jeremiah.  She found an old
Sceptre mage who could perform the spell; she left it to you to find
the mythril he'd need to power it, and she didn't care where you got
it from.

Sometimes that woman ... did she think there was that much mythril
lying around in the gutters?  Luckily for you, your offices are
sitting on the biggest pile of mythril in the Realm.  The Thieve's
Guild traded mythril to certain mages for "services" -- everything
from teleport blocks to item histories.  It was the Guild's main
treasury.  After pouring through your old notes, you were able to
cobble together a spell that would, for very little cost, allow this
mage to tap into the Guild treasury. 

Jeremiah was kidnapped by a few of your Guild people (who were
appropriately eliminated soon afterward), and kept unconscious until
the identity transference spell was cast.  You figured that it would
cost about 100 mythril pieces to cast the spell.  Your calculations
were a bit off ... by a factor of about 1000.  That fool mage had all
but drained the treasury!  But at least the spell had worked --
Isachar was now the spitting image of Jeremiah, and Jeremiah was
eliminated. 

You couldn't stand it.  You just had to @i[see] for yourself the
wreckage that had been made of the treasury.  You managed to make it
down to the vaults when no one was down there -- or no one was
supposed to be down there.  You'd seen Barak, another member of the
Shadow Cabinet leaving the vaults.  Dammit!  What was he doing down
here?!  Well, if he'd been in the vaults, he'd know that the mythril
that was in there was all spent and worthless, and would probably be
on his way to tell the rest of the Cabinet about it.  Dammit.  Well,
the best way to deal with this, you decided, was to get to the Cabinet
before he did, and accuse him of stealing the mythril (you'd be able
to honestly say that you'd seen him leaving the vaults, and when you
looked in, you'd found spent mostly spent mythril in there).

So you did it.  And, as expected, a witchhunt for Barak was initiated.
His case wasn't helped at all when it was discovered he'd disappeared.
The Guild has to find him before your little fabrication gets around
too far; if it becomes common knowledge that someone hit the Thieve's
Guild itself and got away with it ...

So now you and the rest of the Shadow Cabinet were up here on the
Shadowlord's orders to gather the money needed by the Guild to keep
fighting this war (with an enemy you haven't even identified yet!).
You've also been given orders to track down the traitor Barak if you
could, and make an example of him.  After he'd given you back the
mythril.  Good thing you knew better than to try to get the mythril
back, but you could certainly enjoy making that prig Barak squirm.

The need for the mythril is fast becoming critical.  The Thieve's
Guild is under attack, and you're not sure from whom.  There have been
major unordered hits on several establishments under the Guild's
"protection"; the latest of them was Ireani Terhanna's Alchemist's
Shoppe, and this one was especially important.  Unknown to Terhanna
(at least to your knowledge), the herbs bought from her shop were
traded to a merchant from the Clans for some of the highest grade
mythril you'd ever seen.  That mythril was in turn traded to the mages
for spending services and small change -- and the mages were willing
to give a lot of small change for that mythril.  Because of the hits,
the House of Guilds has stopped paying protection money, further
strapping the cash flow.  You need the money, to determine who is
after your turf, and to stop them.  Cold.

The Shadow Cabinet has recently recruited a new member, Gilead Joel,
to fill Barak's place.  He wasn't the first choice, actually; you'd
planned on promoting Ananim Isachar, your second, to the post.  To
think, Isachar hadn't needed to work so hard at getting your job after
all.  Too bad he'd missed his chance, but the needs of the Sceptre
come first...

Well, the Shadowlord has put out the orders to gather funds, quickly
and quietly.  Joel proved himself to be quite adept at arranging that
sort of thing; it was his idea to open a gambling ring, and he started
collecting the grand prizes to attract the big spenders.  When the
rumor got back to you that the traitor Barak might be on Kalerege's
castle, you moved that particular operation up here.  You're both very
pleased with his work.

Well, enough of this.  You have a peace treaty to help shoot down, a
Peer to make senile, his son to lead astray, mythril to gather, and a
traitor to seek out.  You don't have the time for all this reflection,
you need to get out there and @i[do] something.  Time's a-wastin' and
you don't have much of it to spare.


@newpage 

@section [Items, Abilities, and Spells]

You begin the game with the following items:
@begin [itemize]
5 doses of neurotoxin

2 potions of glibness

A sword

Some bitter-smelling green leaves

A pair of bracers

A suit of leather armor

Three diamonds

A crate of weapons

A small wooden treasure chest containing:

@begin [itemize]
Two doses of tailchasers (an amphetamine when eaten)

Four doses of sensen (a euphoric when eaten)

Three doses of belladonna (induces vomitting when eaten, a narcotic
when burned, and induces severe anemia and violent death when brewed)

Two doses of cupid's arrow (an aphrodesiac when brewed)

Four doses of hairaku pods (induces visions when burned, an
hallucinogen when  eaten or brewed)

A dose of kathkusa leaves (increases strength when eaten)

Six doses of klick-klick (causes addiction to anything it's mixed
with) 
@end [itemize]
@end [itemize]

Your abilities are:
@begin[itemize]
Pick pockets

Martial arts 1

Weapons skill - Sword 2

Hide self

Hide item

Magical Knowledge 1
@end [itemize]

You know the following spells:

@include [/mit/abstract/Lore/Magic/Spells/detect_magic.minor.mss]
@include [/mit/abstract/Lore/Magic/Spells/purify_poison.major.mss]
@include [/mit/abstract/Lore/Magic/Spells/truth_total.major.mss]

@include [/mit/abstract/Guides/lore.creation.mss]
@include [/mit/abstract/Guides/guide.realm.mss]
@section [Organizations]
@include [/mit/abstract/Organizations/house.sceptre.mss]
@include [/mit/abstract/Organizations/guild.thieves.mss]
@include [/mit/abstract/Organizations/peers.realm.mss]