Gaia Name: RikProwley
Character Name: Sayyid ibn Samam ap Kediin
Race: elf
Class: noble
Subtype: Persian
Element: cold
Gender: male
Age: 453
Family: Sayyid was born into the most powerful Persian family of the considerably powerful Persian Empire, or at least the elven branch of the empire. His father, Samam (regrettably still alive and kicking at 810), is the Merchant Prince of Persia, a true sultan among his noble elven brethren, controlling at least six times as much land as the average elf. Sayyid's is one of the few families who has managed to actually increase its land holdings since the Crossing. While most elves split their lands among their children or send their offspring off towards newer parcels in the south, Sayyid's ancestors have negotiated cutting deals and overtaken the lands of their neighbors. For every three generations of Sayyid's family, another original settlement parcel has been acquired. It's very hard to say no to these people. They drive a hard bargain and are reportedly not above using rather underhanded intimidation techniques.
Sayyid's mother Sabiha (574) is the fourth of his father's five wives. She was a true beauty in her youth, part of a settlement with Samam's most ornery neighbor, Farhad -- Sabiha is Farhad's second (and youngest) daughter. She was a very young wife to a very old elf but bore this burden well. Unfortunately her beauty deteriorated after her pregnancy with Sayyid; her breasts and figure never quite recovered, which sent Samam looking for another wife. Sabiha is nevertheless a striking woman, with raven eyes and teal green hair, very cultured and sensible. She resisted her marriage and while she loves Sayyid, she has never been overt about it. She is actually not a pureblooded Persian, with some Egyptian blood running in her veins.
Samam's fourth (and final) wife is Laily (329). She was the magical wife that surpassed all others. Trained in the art of dance and singing, she was not from a family of any importance, but Samam married her anyways. But do not think this was out of love! Samam married Laily so he could own a thing of beauty and have it forever be his.
Only not quite so long as that. Laily is gorgeous, she is the fire of the desert. Her long red hair tumbles and rolls to her hips which gyrate so enticingly to the beat of the tambourine. Her eyes are a welcoming heavy-lidded brown, her skin a smoldering, sun-baked tan. Every movement she makes is like sand cascading down a slope, or the illusion of desert water. She has some Sand Dancer blood in her, one-quarter to be exact. Her grandmother was an exceptionally favored concubine of a Persian lord, but being only a concubine, the children that resulted were not legitimate, and thus Laily's comparatively low station.
But from the moment Sayyid met Laily, he was enchanted, and he has plans to marry her as soon as his father dies. She is coy about it, flattered by Sayyid's attentions but conscious of her precarious position in the family. She cannot let Samam ever hear of Sayyid's intentions or her own life will be forfeit. So Sayyid has patiently waited for two hundred years, desperately trying to be satisfied with comfort sought elsewhere. But Samam had better die soon, because Sayyid cannot go on waiting forever, and his life is already halfway over. Thankfully the union between Laily and Samam has been childless. Laily has been careful to prevent any pregnancies.
Sayyid himself has three wives so far. His first union, to Bahareh (609), was one of political convenience: her family was powerful and the marriage enabled Sayyid to obtain a position on the High Council at the tender young age of 200, making him one of the youngest councilmembers ever. Bahareh is not a beautiful or kind woman; how else could she have been unmarried at the age of 400? Her marriage to Sayyid is joyless and barren and she makes no secret that she finds other lovers outside of her husband. Since Sayyid does not object, they remain legally married. (There are no elven laws against adultery, though it can be grounds for the dissolutoin of a marriage.) The arrangement is convenient for both. Bahareh has free run of Sayyid's family's palaces thanks to her husband, and everything that entails.
Sayyid's second wife, Parandis (303) was married out of longing for Laily. She is similar in appearance, though not nearly as fine, and is even ungraceful. But her hair is red and her eyes dark, even if she does not have that spark that Laily possesses. Sayyid spent some time trying to make Parandis into Laily but failed miserably. Their relationship (what little they had) never recovered from the attempt but Parandis is too scared to divorce Sayyid.
Finally, Yasaman (460) is Sayyid's third and, for the moment, final wife. She is the most Sayyid's equal of the women in his life, in both age and intelligence. She is exceptionally well-read and has a considerable drive for power, though she prefers to obtain that power through mercantile means and not politics. She therefore manages the monetary affairs of Sayyid's household, albeit secretly, for Sayyid would sooner die than let it be revealed his finances are in the control of a woman! Yasaman has dark hair and eyes but pale skin and wear glasses. She is no beauty, but she is not without her charms.
Sayyid has a son with Parandis, Zafar (144), who lives with his mother and is a passable merchant (but will probably stop pursuing that route soon; he has no particular gift for it). Sayyid's strained relationship with Parandis has made him distant from his son. He does not hate Zafar, but Zafar is too much a reminder of how Parandis is not Laily. Yasaman has borne him a daughter, Anusheh (120) and just recently a son, Sanjar (11). Sayyid has a good relationship with his daughter, who is torn between her love of books and reading and her love of tinkering with mechanical objects, but it is fairly likely Anusheh will soon become a wife, a mere pawn in Sayyid's ever-constant bids for power, and will resent her father. Yasaman is busy digging her claws into Sanjar in order to give herself more leverage over Sayyid. Sayyid is unfortunately a mostly absentee father, too busy spending his time out with other women and pursuing politics.
Sayyid has two elder half-sisters and an elder half-brother from his father other marriages. Sayyid does not get along with any of them, but then, that's common for the children of different wives. He's had many fairies throughout his life, but he does not care for fairy company, so does not live in direct contact with his fairy bond. He couldn't even tell you what his current fairy's name is. He thinks it's a female, or was that the previous one?
History: Sayyid was raised by a human nanny for the first forty years of his life, and was almost too attached to the woman. He wept and wept at her death and his father called him no better than a human woman for his anguish, and those words Sayyid never forgot. The failure of Sayyid's father to offer his son any recognition in Sayyid's childhood fostered in Sayyid a great feeling of inadequacy and his life became a quest to earn his father's approval. This manifested in him a strong desire to display power, to be recognized by a great number of people, and be successful.
Sayyid grew up in palaces beyond imagining. He had private tutors and the best education that could be bought. He had servants and slaves to answer his every whim and call. His mother was only a fourth wife, but as two wives before her divorced Samam and the first was a marriage of political convenience, Sabiha enjoyed quite a bit of favor until Laily's arrival.
Of course, being a fourth child, nothing much was ever expected of Sayyid. It was thought that his elder brother would take over the family lands, the elder brother being the son of Samam's first wife. As you might expect, this stilting only encouraged Sayyid to study and work even harder.
When Sayyid was only 80, he first saw the glimmer of hope in politics. His elder brother was already too firmly entrenched in the family merchant business for Sayyid to get ahead there, and had he tried he would have ended up his brother's assistant at best. Politics were the way to go, and Sayyid set his mind on obtaining a position on the High Council as representative of his people. Building upon a natural knack for interpreting what people wanted, Sayyid learned the art of public speaking and how to twist words to do his bidding. He was soon involved in local government, mediating land disputes and divorces, and he caught the attention of the Egyptian High Councilmember. The Egyptian, wanting to have more influence, helped Sayyid to supplant the Persian High Councilmember at the time, making Sayyid the youngest Councilmember at a mere 200 years.
Little did the Egyptian know, for Sayyid soon had the Egyptian in his own pocket. He befriended numerous councilmembers, or better yet, their wives and daughters, and quickly enamored himself -personally- with almost all of the female councilmembers. He arranged his first marriage to a strong family, cementing his position as Persian representative. He found himself 250 years old and exactly where he wanted to be: powerful and with hundreds of women under his spell.
If only this had impressed his father. Sure, Samam handed over the keys to the estate, but the old man did not offer his son the least encouragement or congratulations. Sayyid was crushed to find that the one person whose love he wanted the most was still unattainable.
So he redoubled his efforts, met more women, had a son, and met Laily. Laily was the first person to ever cause Sayyid to forget about his father. Suddenly impressing father seemed not to be the important thing: winning Laily became everything. It quickly became clear that he would never have Laily so long as his father lived. A poisoning attempt failed. He married his second wife, that went disastrously, and he found himself more upset than ever.
As his outlook on life changed, so did his political tactics. He moved from simply offering benefits to blackmailing fellow Councilmembers, seeking out their weaknesses and exploiting them. Not all councilmembers were susceptible to this, but enough were powerfully corrupt to play into Sayyid's hands. He no longer made simply friends. He earned as many friends as enemies, and even his friends had their doubts. He married his third wife, he dreamed of Laily, and gathered as much power as he could.
But now Sayyid's career is probably as great as it will ever be. His tarnished reputation as a blackmailer means he will never achieve the greatest prize, the Chair of the High Council, because even with all his blackmailing he cannot accumulate enough votes to supplant the current Leader of the High Council, Teiron (of Greece). The favored choice for successor is not Sayyid as it was a hundred years ago, but Vladimir Arschev (of Russia), who plays as hard as Sayyid but not as personally (Vlad's never slept wiht any wives other than his own). Vladimir Arschev is probably the smartest man on the council at the moment, and he was smart enough to befriend Sayyid and never let any weaknesses show.
So Sayyid's political career is admirable but stuck, and Sayyid can only dream of Laily, who is now his ultimate prize.
Sayyid lives on his family's lands in his own palace with his third wife, who is his only comfort (and is not much of one at that). He's rich and lazy and uninspired, but it's a living. How could it not be a living when he has so much to his name?
Present: Sayyid NEVER misses the festivities at Terralusk -- hasn't missed them for the past 400 years -- and this year is no exception. He comes for the wine, he comes to watch the fights, he comes to watch pretty girls dancing... but mostly he comes to have a few extramarital flings with whichever pretty girls happen to dance too close to his chair.
Personality: Sayyid is the worst kind of elven male. He's chauvinistic and philandering, oversexed and underprincipled. He will sleep with any female who crosses his way. Throughout most of his life, desire for his father's recognition drove him to excel. It was the reason he went after so many women, the reason he became so power-hungry, the reason he landed himself a position on the High Council. When none of this got him what he wanted, he was crushed.
Sayyid was once energetic and determined, but in recent years he has devolved into a creature of sloth and laziness, seeking only earthly pleasures and delights to try and fill that emptiness in his heart. But don't think for a moment you should pity Sayyid -- he certainly doesn't. Sayyid is about as anti-philosophical as they come. He only employs as much philosophy as is necessary to convince others of his views; besides that he is unrepentent and unsentimental. He likes his life, even with that bit of miserable failure. He's rich, he's spoiled rotten, he powerful and corrupt. He would sooner be himself without his father's approval than be you.
The only real genius to Sayyid is his knack for being able to figure out what it is people want, or perhaps this is merely the fact he has realized that the only things worth wanting are sex and power, and most people equate power with precious jewels and gold. He understands that a small gift of favor here can plant the seeds of an alliance later on, that love is a strong emotion but fear even stronger, and that it is possible to force other people to do what you want them to do without their realizing merely by listening and offering a few careful suggestions. Sayyid is a very good listener. His face can take on such a look of earnesty that his bond with the speaker becomes an intimate one and nothign outside of the covnersation seems important. He notes how a person's eyes light up when speaking of something, or how she suddenly become nervous and rubs her fingers, and then he has her. Then he knows what it is she wants and has only to cause her to feel empowered by his presence, telling her how she can accomplish it (with his help). Sayyid's presence suddenly becomes like a narcotic. Having him around, one feels empowered.
He was more noble and highminded in his youth, but as he has aged, Sayyid has realized that nobility and morality are not so important in the long run, or in another sense, forgotten how important they truly are. Once he saw that he could achieve his goals without, he dropped all noble pretense, devolving into the creature he is today. After all, he might say nowadays, even elves and humans are still animals.
There is no fairness, no hope, no truth in Sayyid's universe, only animals scurrying around trying to grab power. He has no room left for any of it in his world view-- except Laily. Laily is the thread that holds what little remains to make Sayyid a worthwhile person together. Only Laily offers any light in Sayyid's life and he is more than devoted to her, he is obsessed. His obsession is, in fact, a mirror of his father's, only stronger. Somewhere along the way Sayyid became his father. He wants to own Laily, he scorns his children, and he is breeding the seeds for yet another generation of discontents. But they will be powerful discontents, perhaps driven to succeed in the way Sayyid and Samam and their forebears have been.
Sayyid does have a temper. It most often emerges to play at meetings of the High Council, where he is alternately renowned and despised for often jumping out his seat and yelling at his fellow. Several times he has even climbed up on the table to either give a speech or shout in the face of his adversary. (Climbing on the table is not uncommon on the High Council, but no one employs the tactis quite so much as Sayyid.) Outside of the Council, Sayyid's temper is rarely seen. He's fairly easygoing so long as he has his comforts to assuage his ego. He never gets angry over general affairs of love or finance. He's actually bored by most of life's everyday dramatics; he only saves his for special causes and occasions. So long as he can see pretty women, have a little something to smoke, and sit on a pillow, Sayyid is content in all he does.
(I must take a moment to digress and note that in recent years Vladimir Arschev noticed Sayyid's incredible difference in his home and Council behavior and will sometimes bring Sayyid something to smoke at Council, which does seem to calm Sayyid down considerably. This has gained Arschev even more admirers among the Council. Vlad's careful not to do it too often, though, or Sayyid (who's not an idiot) might figure out that it's a ploy and not merely a friendly consideration.)
When it comes to charming ladies, which Sayyid will doubtless be doing quite a bit of at the festival, Sayyid is smooth and relaxed and very charming. He loves to compliment women almost as much as they love to hear compliments, and he's memorized lines of poetry to flatter them. His speaking voice is exceptionally melodic and he can control his voice down to the tiniest details.
Appearance: Sayyid may be an egomaniac, but he is right in his assertion that he is a very, very pretty man. His caramel skin is youthful and unlined, his nose is finely-shaped and pointed, a perfect fit to his symmetrical oval face. He has eyes of a royal purple color, very critical and discerning; he lines his eyes in black, drawing attention to the unusual shade. His short light sea green hair is full and lustrous, with bangs over the right side of his brow. In fact, the only thing not exceptionally handsome about him is his ears. The lobe joins to his jaw in a straight line, which is considered unattractice by elven standards. But because Sayyid makes no attempt to hide this or cover it with hair, most folk do not give the feature a second thought.
Rather unfortunately, Sayyid is almost laughably short for a fully-grown adult male at 5' 4", which is part of the price he pays for his boyish good looks (the result of growth-stunging magic). His height is the only thing he is self-conscious about, and he is often torn between whether to surround himself with ladies who are shorter than him or women who are taller. (He knows that to surround himself with shorter women as he actually prefers would make too obvious his weakness, so he tends for a mix with more taller women, and never, ever tries to wear platform shoes. That would be an awful mistake.)
Sayyid dresses like the prince he is, preferring a simple backdrop of white robes and throwing over it robes of the finest colors and detail, deep purple with threads of silver and gold, silks and the finest cottons. He hates wearing hats; his hair color is one of the things that first causes others to notice him, and Sayyid likes to be noticed. He enjoys in particular the admiration of women, who are drawn to his side by his good looks and riches and the aura of success and confidence he exudes.
Sayyid's mannerisms are never nervous or confused. He knows that being considered powerful is a direct result of how you present yourself. He has excellent posture and can easily relax even in the most trying of situations, looking at ease everywhere he goes.
