Part 1 - Shirekeep
Brigadier Darsam Mulali’s flat in the Old City was only ten minutes walk from the MoMA Main Building on Shirekeep’s Ministry Row. As acting head of Section A in the Directorate of Anomalous Affairs, he had to be on call twenty-four hours a day and besides the normal phone had a secure line routed directly to his office. His office, which he often tried to avoid, also had a desk bearing the heavy load of a bulging in-tray, the subject matter almost exclusively pertaining to the perennial insanity of the Nordland region of Elwynn. These days he preferred to work from home, deleting most emails he received and only prioritising those from the Khan, lest he fail to gain the post on a permanent basis and instead wound up like his predecessor, distributed liberally over five hundred acres of prime Goldshire woodland amidst much flaming wreckage in another one of those tragic accidents which periodically thinned the ranks of the senior management across the various MoMA Directorates. Working from home was also the safer option, it allowed Darsam to install his own private security measures; deadlocks, CCTV, bulletproof windows, steel shutters, a panic room and not least a specially adapted ejector capsule. Darsam had reached the rank of Brigadier in the Khan’s service by taking his own personal safety very seriously; and so it was on that particular evening that he answered the scrambler phone as he sat by the empty fireplace working on some files his secretary had brought round.
‘Malik here, Brigadier, just back from Echo City.’
‘And?’
‘No sign of them sir, I’d say the trails gone cold. It’ll all be in my report tomorrow.’
‘No matter. Call in on your way home; I may have a new assignment for you.’
He put the phone down and went and got himself a malt whisky, a tired insipid looking man who was starting to feel his age, he ran a hand through his greying hair and fretted silently when strands of it came away in his hand. It was the stress, not just the stress of working for the Khan who might on any given day summon a subordinate to his office, produce a revolver and either give it to the startled visitor as a present… or well otherwise… and who the hell had taught that man his management skills anyway? Did he not realise that he was the direct cause of his own staff retention problems. No it wasn’t just that, it was the case load that Rrakanychan Station and the Directorate as a whole had to deal with day in and day out, it was the sheer anarchic chaos and strangeness of the world that bothered Darsam, that gave him sleepless nights, that led him to continually pester his physician about stomach ulcers which he was told time and time again were imaginary but yet did not for one instant persisting in their mortal throbbing agony. No it was the almost certain knowledge that one day all the daemon monsters of Balgurd would come swarming onto the mortal plane and that he, poor bastard, was somehow expected to be up there with the gods and the immortal heroes and the flaming wizards trying to hold the line against the damned things. And what use would he be on such a day anyway? His whole life had been spent monitoring, sifting, collating, writing up and submitting, report after unread report, and now all the evidence was building up that the end days were fast approaching, and he wasn’t even sure if he was on the winning side, not that being on the winning side in that particular battle would be any less awful than losing. Darsam was of two minds as to whether it would be preferable to be corrupted or dismembered on the fateful day. The last initiate of the Descendi he had encountered had been cremated in a secret facility in Ardashirshahr not forty-eight hours after the termination of the interview – now looking back, Darsam half-wished he had asked for an introduction into the dreaded secret society instead.
It was in the midst of such cheerful thoughts that the doorbell rang and he admitted Captain Malik al-Umra. The pair exchanged the usual pleasantries whilst Malik shrugged off his coat. He was wearing the field grey of a Jaeger in the Kaiser’s Life-Guard Division.
‘Help yourself to a drink and then come and sit down.’
Malik nodded gratefully and went straight to the drinks cabinet, with which he was all too familiar.
‘So what’s the prognosis on the Nordland situation?’ The Brigadier asked.
‘It’s impossible to give a rational account of the principals over the last seventy-two hours. Sightings during the period have oscillated wildly between Eliria, Agnesia and Echo City, and now, in the last twelve hours, the trail has gone cold.’
‘Cold?’
‘Quite cold I’m afraid. No sightings, no reports of any unusual activities outside of those one normally associates with a genocidal interspecies war… wait, Shapur al-Osmani, that’s the old boy’s son, has checked into a specialist clinic claiming to he haunted by… garden gnomes.’
‘Really? That’s a shame. I rather thought he was going to be sparred the usual insanity associated with his family. Well, whatever. I suspect in the end we will just have to wait for this all to die down and then just quietly shoot the entire Elwynnese nobility and start over again. Perhaps import some titled breeding stock from Stormark.’ Mused Darsam in a somnolent and dispassionate tone of voice. ‘But in the meantime we have plenty to occupy ourselves with. Here I want you to have a look at this’ The Brigadier proceeded to hand across a thin manilla folder bound in red cord which Malik took and unwound.
‘Read the first page.’ Darsam instructed. Maliki did as he was bidden to do. It was a summary of sorts detailing what an official in MoMA Main Building considered to be points of interest at the present time.
‘Operation Lusyya's Seasoned Kapsrang? Not seen that name crop up before.’The "Citadel" continues to defy every attempt at its destruction to date. Recommend stockpiling extra napalm & DDT plus commence planning for the eventual assassination of the Count of Agnesia.
Assault on Balgurd still likely to go ahead, time frame remains uncertain.
MoMA is awaiting final casualty returns from Imperial Volunteer Forces in Amokolia. Short term impact on operational effectiveness of Kampfgruppe of casualties sustained in the assault on La Terre likely to be significant.
Work on the discontinuity detection device (Triple-D) by the Panopticon Corps is progressing steadily. A prototype is expected soon that will be attuned to the bleeding through of 'magical' influences from the astral plane as well as the more commonplace breakdowns in the overarching meta-narrative.
The Narrative Discontinuity Bomb shall continue to be given the highest priority for Research & Engineering resources. The missing component is still urgently sought.
Monitoring of the Attack Interpreter and Logical Analyzer is ongoing. Benefits include ease of comprehension and a potential to sidestep long sessions of tedious litigation after each and every skrimish. The downside is that it seems as though, in order to be programmable, it will have the tactical sophistication of a game of diplomacy bred with Rock-Paper-Scissors to produce a new bastard son, and worse still, it could favour the inexperienced - a world where a Jess could beat a Montague is not a world worth living in, still less one worth fighting for. Aside from that it could be very promising.
Unusual seismic activity has been reported near the ISI Ground Zero Facility in Yardistan
Operation Lusyya's Seasoned Kapsrang, nothing new to report at this time.
‘No you wouldn’t have. It’s an Elwynnbrigaden Black Op begun a couple of years back. Of course now they are being run ragged trying to keep on top of this business with the damned eight-legged freaks, they’ve had to cut funding and now it’s our baby.’
‘What would you have me do sir?’ said Malik, anticipating the reassignment.
‘I want you to take the lead on the operation. Progress has been slow so far, and if we are to deliver the results the Khan desires, there has got to be a step change in momentum down there.’
‘Down there sir?’
‘You’re a Babki, with a resonant Babki name; you should have what it takes to knock those hopeless Babkhans into shape.’
‘I see.’
‘Your historical name sake had a reputation as an inflexible hate-filled firebrand, sorry, sorry, is this Umra Khan an ancestor?’
‘Not that I am aware of.’
‘Good. As I was saying then, he was an utterly unscrupulous and practically psychotic grievance monger. Revisiting that on them should have the effect of stirring them up nicely.’
‘To what end if I might ask sir?’
‘Why the righteous path of Jihad of course.’
‘Jihad sir… you do know what Jihad is?’
‘Oh spiritual striving or something like that, but to your average fool in the street it means Holy War.’
‘And why then are we trying to start a jihad?’
‘Not start – revive. Revive the great and noble tradition of the Babkha-e Jihad. There are times when things need to be done, messy things, disgraceful things, but things which are nonetheless necessary which you cannot be seen to do. For these sorts of things you need Babkhans. But the Babkhans aren’t what they were. You see those Blackfriars who are in charge in Kamalshahr these days, they’re good for a drink and they’ll help do a spot of killing if one of their ancestral enemies happen to be involved in the fracas, but really they don’t care for much these days, they’ve even let the Ashkenatzim start settlements in Alkhiva. This is where our problems start. The Elwynnbrigaden’s training camp was near Sajin City, which is now in the hands of the Ashkenatzi. You are to proceed tomorrow to Tymaria City in the Norfolk Isles, where you will await contact from the emissaries of Khan Mellah Khan, our associated partner for matters pertaining to the Dyre Straits. Here read this press cutting about him. He will then convey you to our contact – who is a rather enigmatic gentleman, we don’t even have his name on file, and he is merely called the “Old Man of the Mountain”. Everyone in Alkhiva is quite terrified of him so he’s a good man to know. I dare say you will be the first kuffar to have ever met him. It will be an honour I’m sure.’
‘Indeed sir, I’m sure. But – well there is one thing.’
‘Go on. Out with it.’
‘This isn’t exactly our remit. Murderous Babkhans hardly count as anomalous phenomena. Indeed a Babkhan pacifist would be more exceptional, I don’t think there has been one since Rakesh Ackbar perhaps more than millennia ago.’
‘You’ll see. These Babkhans are different. You’ll see.’
And with that the interview was concluded. Malik al-Umra finished his drink and went on his way home to pack. Darsam went back to monitoring his CCTV feeds and contemplating the profound injustice of incipient baldness.
