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Hyksohs Luwaen
Hyksohs Luwaen was a murderer. He'd killed a man -- Hieperion Tepsys -- over a woman that he loved because she'd chosen Hieperion over him. Every day for months he'd watch them together, getting angrier and angrier until he could stand it no more. And then one night, when he'd had enough, He crept into Hieperion's bedroom and drove a 25 centimeter blade into the woman stealing pig-eater's chest and killed him.The man had no protection whatsoever -- no guards -- certainly no City Guards -- and no magic. Of course he wouldn't -- the man was a Kohmahnys-Civilian, just one step higher than Hyksohs on the caste system that he'd lived under his entire life.
He was what the other humans in Mushiban City called a street rat, born and raised as part of the lowest caste -- Kohmahnys Rohq. Everything he ever possessed had been either bought by coins and gems that he had stolen, or through some kind of second story work where he'd serve as lookout. He'd been mugged enough times to know how to avoid the business end of a dagger, but if he had to choose his beating, it would always be from a stranger. His father had a nearly magical talent for destroying every good thought that Hyksohs had ever had about himself. The man's drunken rages had driven away every friend and business contact that he'd ever had, and the ensuing ruination would always be put upon Hyksohs, as if his being born had been the ultimate curse that anyone could visist upon him.
And so Hyksohs sat in a 2.5 meter cage in the sub-level of a dynastic guard tower in the Eastern District of Mushiban City.
He hadn't seen the sun in 30 days, and during that time the cell seemed to shrink from the size of an animal cage to that of a coffin.
Killing Hieperion had been the easy part. What he'd not realized at the time was that Sara would run rather than face him. Or that Hieperion had friends in the City Guard who'd been watching him.
And so it came to pass that he sat on a bunk, in this cramped, stench filled cell, wondering what he would do next -- the same thing he'd done time and again since he'd been arrested.
What did the Fates have in store for him now?
There were Abolitionist and Progressive Advocates he could call upon to get his sentance reduced to hard labor, as opposed to death by arena or a life spent in the mines. Or worse...
"Convict!" The pig-loving Cell Guard stood next to a Merchant-Prince dressed in a white robe. "You've got a visitor."
The Cell Guard stood 8 inches taller than Hyksohs, who was small and wiry, and had muscles akin to an Ohgrahn -- big and tough -- and from what he'd seen, the lack of brains to match. Of course he knew about the Cell Guards -- convicts were often local heroes in the Rohq. So getting some young street rat to follow or befriend the child of some Cell Guard's child in order to get information about him was easy enough to do -- simply find 2 or 3 Rohq children and jingle some coins. For a short time as a child, Hyksohs had 'rescued' a Cell Guard's 5 year old daughter from 3 bullies that had terrorized her the day before. He had been her Knight in Shining Armor, and there wasn't anything she wouldn't tell him about her father, who it turned out liked to do more than play card games with the wenches at one of the ale houses down at the commercial ports in the North District of the city. That little nugget of a tale won him an entire gold piece to himself. He'd used it to buy a new pair of pants, a shirt and enough jewel candies, known to some as hard candy, to buy the loyalty of all the other street rats his age for an entire day. And of course like everything else in his life, someone bigger and meaner than him took it from him. He'd come home 2 days after that particular caper beaten and naked as the day he'd been born.
