[1001 Nights] The camel, the monkey and the pirate with no name.

[GB Steve]

PCs
Farouk (Simon) - Chronicler - old with disgusting hands - Ambition: have Sheherezade cure my hands
Sheherezade (Paula) - Perfumer - young and vital with healing hands - Ambition: become wine taster
Naruzah (Dave) - Steward - proud and efficient - Ambition: ?
Cassim (Me) - Chief Eunuch and strangler - quiet and menacing - Ambition: see Naruzah lose his manhood

I did the first story as Cassim:
How the Camel got its hump
Farouk - humpless Camel
Sheherezade - Mohamed the merchant
Naruzah - Old Witch

Mohamed arrived at the edge of the desert with his trusty camel and realized that he could not carry enough water for him and his camel and his goods. Whilst he pondered what to do, the witch espied them from her hovel and cursed the camel with hot feet. The camel charged into her house and knocked everything over until he found a soothing unguent. The witch knew that the travelling magistrate would be here soon and kept Mohamed busy with offers of presents, a genie's lamp and others, until he arrived. She then took a case to the court for busting up her house. The magistrate got wind of funny business and declared a test of faith. The witch summoned a doppelganger to take her place in the test.

Mohamed  gave the lamp to the magistrate as proof of magic. The magistrate summoned the genie but the witch from her hiding place summoned an enormous Marid that swallowed the genie and made off. The guards threw spears at the witch and killed her but she transferred into the doppelganger and then transformed into a flea on the camel's back. The camel jumped into a pool to rid himself of the flea and the witch became a fish. The camel drank all the water causing a giant hump to grow on his back. The witch was revealed and killed by the guards, and that is how the camel got his hump.

As GM, I got all but one of the gems used making the story rather shorter than the others, but my ambition was spoilt by the Chronicler.

There was narration as to how ambition had been approached, the Chronicler managed to get Perfumer to touch him during the story by sidling up to her as the camel. He was rebuked for this overt show of affection by the Sultan. The Steward was rebuked for seeming to have knowledge of the dark arts. The Eunuch was secretly happy at this rebuke.

The second story, from Farouk, was How a prince who delivered the bird of wisdom to the Sultana to get the hand of her daughter in marriage. Sheherezade played the prince, Naruzah was the bird and Cassim was the prince's pet monkey. The prince tricked his way into a harem by stealing the clothes of one of the women who had gone to bath. The monkey was transformed into a hairy man in a harem, but the women turned out to be demons who shaved him and inflicted the ecstasy of a thousand cuts on him. The only real woman from the harem, the one who was bathing then rejected the monkey as unclean. The prince killed the Sultan who owned the bird when he was revealed to be an evil Djinn.

The final story was about Sheherezade's great-grandfather Ahmed (played by Naruzah), a master perfumer who set off with his sea captain friend (Farouk) to find the Black Lotus flower whose scent can cause madness and desire. They were chased by the pirate with no name (Cassim) who had no name because Ahmed had stolen it from him, making his face hideous anc causing him to always wear a mask. Ahmed found the island with the flower but the pirates driven mad by the scent crashed the boats together, only the three protagonists survived. The raced up the island where the pirate was caught by the guardian and lost and eye and his mask. Driven mad by the scent of the Black Lotus, the pirate came upon the other two carefully retrieving the stamens of the flower. A fight ensued in which the pirate lost his life but regained his name. However the island erupted and the fate of Ahmed remains undecided, although there is a strange stone statue to him in some atoll in the far China seas.

After this, Farouk obtained his ambition. His familiarity with Sheherezade caused him to be publicly rebuked by the Sultan who finally noticed his damaged hands and ordered Sheherezade to heal him.

A very enjoyable evening all round with much enthusiastic storytelling. Gem use was sparse to start with but accelerated during the next two stories as players realised that dice were a way of signalling the direction you wished the story to take and acted as a proxy for having things happen to the other PCs. At most people had 4 dice in front of them.

[Meguey]

Cool! I think the pattern of the dice flowing slowly at first, then picking up as people get the hang of it is pretty common. Did Naruzah ever have a clear Ambition?

[GB Steve]

Naruzah did have an ambition but I can't remember what it was and I don't have the character sheet. Naruzah was a bit unluckly during the game because whilst Farouk fulfilled his ambition, Naruzah only managed to lose one of his Safety points. But I guess that's the way the dice roll sometimes.

[Pelgrane]

Farouk achieved his ambition at the risk of his safety - he was down to one safety at the end.

[fon]

What a shame I missed the session!  Sounds great.