The Pillar Of Flame

An adventure for Mombasa PCs, working for Hassan’s Emporium.

Giyorgis. Abyssinian court dwarf.

Orthodox bishop. Grave demeanour. Conical embroidered robes. Gilded staff and mitre. Spiritual advisor to recently deceased Empress Zewditu. Renowned for his knowledge of Ethiopian monastic history. Sense of humor. Fond of biblical parables. Strong opinions on Neoplatonism and Arian controversy. Four foot tall.

Kidnapped in dead of night from sleeping cell in monks’ quarters of Gebbi imperial palace in Addis Ababa. Taken into countryside - waste dump on town outskirts. Featureless brown flatland. Thorn trees. Round huts. Camel caravans. Blue mountain horizons. Eucalyptus groves. City new, unfinished - built in southern highlands to lock in Menelik II’s conquests. Low-density village clusters. Half-built train stations and hotels.

Hogtied. Smeared with gravy. Left to mercy of hyenas. Soothes beasts by reciting scripture. Chews through his bonds. Escapes Abyssinia one step ahead of the Kebur Zabagna - the Grand Negus’ private guard.

Has a grim tale to tell.

Ras Tafari Makonnen. Born to offshoot branch of Solomonic dynasty. Regent under Zewditu. Enemies among traditional nobility. Abyssinia’s most powerful man.

Moderniser. Scarlet Isotta Fraschini limousine. Chauffeur in powder-blue livery. Pages with crimson silk parasols. Loyal chiefs resplendent in lion skins, curved swords, striped shirts. Tight-uniformed soldiers with stern hawklike features and curly black beards. Fixed bayonets. Lion-of-Judah badges in polished brass.

Spies everywhere. Palace coups, rebellions crushed by disciplined riflemen, Fiat 3000 tank delivered by Prince Luigi Amedeo as tribute from Mussolini. Friendship treaty signed with Fascists. Keeps morbidly obese Muslim-convert former emperor Lij Iyasu, still considered Mahdi by some Somalians, in solitary confinement, under heavy guard.

Crowned Negus by Zewditu. Beat her seditious husband at Battle of Anchem - man on white horseback vs. machine guns and aerial bombardment. Zewditu drowns in tub of ice-cold water - said to die of grief.

Now preparing for coronation as Ethiopian Emperor, Negusa Nagast, King of Kings, under name Haile Selassie. Dignitaries from across world invited to ceremony. Every world power will have someone in attendance.

National anthems played in full to point of tedium by Armenian musicians rescued from Jerusalem orphanage, led by bandleader Kevork Nalbandian - first orchestra of the nation. Concrete. Scaffolding. Work gangs clearing rubble. Corrugated-iron sentry boxes. Spotless white robes. Cartridge belts as personal adornment and medium of exchange.

Stick-wielding boys driving mules. Veiled women on horseback with floppy felt hats. Greek hoteliers and brothel-keepers. Ubiquitous Indian traders selling tinned food and coarse soap. Vaguely Byzantine chapels and mausoleums. Bumpy roads. Dusty courtyards. Markets like construction sites selling bales of cloth. Butchers with tethered goats. Spongy injera bread. Coffee. Spicy meat stew. Honey wine.

Perplexed hard-working diplomats. Scholars of Chinese. Private secretaries who speak thirteen languages perfectly, none of them Ethiopian. Bankrupt German planters ranting unintelligibly. Cheeky Australian prospectors who’ve heard rumours of platinum. French Foreign Legionnaires. Curiosity shops with monkey skins, jewelry, Amharic illuminated manuscripts, wooden-panel paintings of saints, bones of the giant of Harar.

Royal Marine dance band. Tobacco-chewing sergeant majors. Casino entrepreneurs. The Duke of Gloucester. French general, American ambassador, Italian prince. Journalists like locusts chasing down the emperor for Time magazine.

Pudgy, sarcastic Evelyn Waugh covering the whole affair for consortium of English papers. Makes fun of everything he sees. Running out of reading material - desperate for more books. Easily annoyed and bored.

Dr. Vitalien. Guadeloupe physician. Tafari’s early French tutor - proud of how far he’s come. Deep in conversation about his childhood with Jamaican sailor Henry Archibald Dunkley, who’s developing a theory that Ras Tafari is Jesus Christ returned.

Arthur Rimbaud, limping, scarf wrapped around his face, debating theology with excitable Beta Israel Jew. Gave up career as groundbreaking Symbolist poet due to dream vision of impossibly beautiful androgynous figure. Devoted rest of life to finding them. Wooden leg. Faked own death in Marseille after several years as coffee merchant and arms dealer in walled Muslim holy city of Harar.

Julius Evola. Fascist mystic.

Son of Sicilian baron. Studied engineering. Painter. Futurist. Great War artillery officer. Dadaist. Mountaineer. Brooding. Shy. Judgmental. Wears a monocle. Prone to fits of bombast. Quick to dismiss entire fields of human achievement.

Convinced not to kill himself by reading of obscure Buddhist texts.

Alchemy. Hermeticism. Tantric yoga. Left-hand path warlock. Believes all reality illusion that can be shaped by Ego. Self-proclaimed heir to aristocratic caste of Hindu golden age - world currently plunged into darkness of Kali Yuga. Pagan imperialist - wants revived Hyperborean Caesar ruling caste.

Searches for Holy Grail with French Muslim Orientalist René Guénon in ruined Cathar fortress Château de Montségur. Delves into Pyrenean caves with Nazi medievalist Otto Rahn and Tarascon mystic Antonin Gadal. Breaks into the sealed Neapolitan Masonic library of Guistiniano Lebano, the Wizard of Torre Annunziata, Grand Master of the Egyptian Osiridean Order.

Co-founds Ur Group with Arturo Reghini - mathematician, Mason, journal editor and devoted nemesis of democracy. Adopted by Mussolini as deniable cabal of esoteric advisors. Italian Thule Society equivalent. Given funds, airship, soldiers.

Leads expedition to north Abyssinia. Explores Danakil Depression. Lalibela rock-cut churches. Gondar castles. Lake Tana monasteries. Obelisks of Axum.

Finds in secluded valley in Semien Mountains the lost city of Kor.

Ayesha. “She.”

Claims to be biblical Queen of Sheba from Sabaean kingdom in south Yemen. Exiled from Solomon’s court by jealous rival wives after his tragic death. Leads retainers to Abyssinian highlands. Enters hollow cavern below ancient ruins. Finds pillar of flame sprouting from crack in barren rock.

Steps into it. Granted eternal life. Trapped forever in the rage and humiliation she felt at the exact moment of her apotheosis.

Immortal. Condescending. City rose to greatness, wrecked by plague, rose and ruined again. Gigantic statue of Truth - naked veiled woman poised on huge stone sphere - in central plaza. Domes. Empty reservoirs. Vaulted halls gathering dust.

Silent catacombs. Noble Korite corpses laid out on stone biers - infused by sacred resin, preserved exactly as they were in life. Seem asleep. Hope to one day be resurrected by future science. Ritually burnt as celebration torches by Amahagger nomads - clan of mountain brigands who force travellers’ heads into red-hot iron pots.

Highlands inhabited by mutants. Faceless troglodytes. Cynocephali. Monopods. Blemmyae. Shadowless men. Pygmies who war with cranes. Gather in Kor for midnight bonfire dances, dressed as animals - baboons, impala, pythons, goats.

Ayesha is master chemist. Surprisingly well-stocked lab. “Vision pool” of black water in depths of cave enables remote viewing. Spends much of her time contemplating huge pyramid of bones. Spares Evola’s life when he shows her picture of Tafari - a direct descendant of King Solomon, and his spitting image.

Grasps immediately that she must marry him. Revive the ancient empire. Teach him to conjure demons. Dominate the world from this new place called “Rome”.

Can turn hair white with a touch. Must travel veiled. Anyone who sees her face immediately and permanently falls in love with her, to the exclusion of all others. This in no way means they cannot hurt her.

Only a return to the pillar of flame can permanently kill her. Love lingers after she dies.

Tafari is in thrall to Ayesha and Evola.

Mysterious masked advisors who came out of nowhere in the last few months. Subject of frightened palace servant gossip. Abuse of Zewdita loyalists - clerics used as target practice, favourite cooks drowned, noble widows beaten and locked in oubliettes. Strange chanting from behind closed doors of Tafari’s private quarters.

Evola has commandeered Giyorgis’ study - treats the servants as his own. Demands to be fetched sacred texts from monastery libraries. Debre Libanos, with its baboons and healing spring. Debre Damo on its mesa, accessible only by climbing a rope. Abuna Yemata in cave atop 200m sandstone pillar. Flies into shrieking petulant rage and orders executions when his slightest whim is denied.

Midnight expeditions to Menelik II’s palace among imported eucalypts on slopes of Mount Entoto. Black Mass conducted in blue-painted octagonal Entoto Maryam Church. Debtera white magicians tortured for their secrets.

Zār demon possession. Goat blood mixed with butter. Playboy spirits conjured into women’s bodies - Eve’s invisible rejected children. Old woodcutter women overhear shrieks, indecent noises, thick bubbling laughter. Stray minor devils inhabit hyenas - form vicious red-eyed packs that attack Western tourists in broad daylight with no fear of guns.

Special dignitary banquet on night before coronation. Only most important people invited. Guests promised view of priceless religious artefact, recently recovered by intrepid adventurers from forgotten storeroom below Axum church.

Long dining table in glittering royal feast hall. Guards on all doors. Honey wine flows freely. Passable French cooking. Vermouth. Cigars. Awkward diplomatic chatter. Ayesha and Evola occupy places of honour at Tafari’s sides.

Ark of the Covenant sits in centre of table. Possibly one of many - duplicates floating about. Draped in red velvet. Mysterious. Subject of discussion. Revealed at end of banquet. Opened in full public view.

Tower of golden light. Swarms of howling angels. Evola prepared with blindfold.

Faces, souls of anyone who looks directly at it melted by direct experience of God. Power of gathered nations transferred directly into body of Tafari, who as Solomon’s descendant can bear unflinching witness to the majestic presence of the divine.

Ayesha unfazed. Unstoppable force meeting immovable object. Veil blown back from face. Not a hair disturbed.

Rises from the table. Lights cigarette on column of holy fire. Raises glass. Toasts oozing skeletons. Welcomes her destined consort, King Solomon, back into the world.