Its called the ELEVENS:
Basically the Elevens is made up of criminals, foreigners, slaves who are too stupid to know that slavery is better and the truly insane who want to "forget" then have to find something to help them forget being in the Elevens. Fortunately there is always the Enclosure for those who can't make it.
STRUCTURE AND MEMBERSHIP: Joining is voluntary and involves being intitiated into the Redeeming Path of Shargash where he was dead but through his obedience and loyalty, he rose again with Yelm and brought the world to life with all the things that he'd taken into his Enclosure.
Membership is for Eleven years, till you die or till you quit which is the same thing as being dead.
All Elevens are formed into units of Eleven men, 10 are initiates of the Elevens and the leader is an Initiate of the Purifier aspect of Shargash. The imperfection of the number 11 is shown by the need to have an full initiate to control his men - this is a great source of shame to them and speaks much of their ways to any Dara Happan. The Purifiers role is to clense their souls by gruelling suffering and work, to scour their weakness and make them clean again with the fires of Yelm.
The Elevens are already dead in the eyes of full Shargashi. They "died" in the initatory Enclosure ceremony and only by their service can they be redeemed. Serving the time is considered enough and then they are freed in another ceremony whence they are brough back from the dead on ReAscent Day.
DUTIES Eleven squads make up a full Eleven (company sized) which is their largest military organisation. Each Eleven is assigned varying duties but in battle they fulfil the role of the Lost Company in a Landsneckt Regiment or the Folorn Hope company in a British one. Their job is to break the line, storm the wall, absorb the arrows, charge the ford, stand and die or any number of functions while the full Shargashi prepare to finish the job. This is not to say Shargashi don;t do this either but the Elevens get to do it first - the full Shargashi have nothing to prove, unlike the Elevens.
In Alkoth there are perhaps a thousand of these men and that is the extent of them in Dara Happa. There used to be more but Danfive Xaron took over their functions in the Empire at large - only in Alkoth, the most patriochial city of the Tripolis, do they still remain - much to the annoyance of the Danfive Xaron leadership......
Martin Laurie
Powered by hypermail