Amnar Structure 11: Servant life

This is another post in the series on Amnari background. You can find the others here.

Introduction

The ten Lesser Servants, known as the Ishcai-Nashim, have become in 4785 the most significant and powerful officials of the Amnari Empire. Bound by the Nascir Ishcai-Nashim, the Servants’ Second Indenture, they are tattooed with the sign of their Capillite and dedicate their lives to total Service to Amnar. They are not permitted to marry or to have children.

The basic structure of the Servants system is written out here. Although Servants are responsible to their Capillites, by the start of the Second Age, an internal structure had built up, with the Senior Servant of the Guardian Defender acting as a defacto leader. This paved the way for their gradually becoming an autonomous group that largely managed itself.

This was partly due to the work of the Guardian Defender Ashad Amin, who placed great emphasis on recognising the hard work and dedication of the Servants. In his six thousand years of leadership in Duum, he encouraged all the Servants to consider themselves able to become leaders in their own right, rather than simply waiting for a Capillite to tell them what to do.

It was his Senior, Tishca, who fully embraced this possibility, and the Servants began to organise their own activities and work beyond the rule of the Capillites. They would turn to their masters when required, but the rest of the time they were able to arrange their own rota of duty and work with Ta Dasi leaders.

Choosing and training

Potential Servants are chosen within their first year of life, by the Samedim Ishcavei. They are Zurasim or Seers with the capacity to see the potential of souls to serve the Empire. All Servants are orphans with no direct relations. They have a Gadasim, or Guardian, as do all young Amnari children. The Gadasim is given responsibility for the child for the first five years, and they are raised very much like other children.

At the age of five, they attend a ceremony at the Nas Ashca, where they are signed to the First Indenture. This is a training indenture, and details the type of training and education they will receive. This includes being given a tattoo on their arm that indicates the position for which they are to be prepared.

Each city produces Servants and potentials for a different Capillite:

Amin Duum – Guardian Defender
Nas Trinitar – Guardian of the Higher Mortals
Rad Ruinn – Guardian of the Lesser Mortals
Am Rune – Guardian Watcher
Nas Isca – Guardian of the Dragon Realm

Two candidates for each position are taken out of the city each year. Forty children graduate each year, filling out the ranks of the Ta Dasi if they’re not able to take a position. They will only take a position if the previous incumbent has died, and they are selected by the Capillite responsible.

The watcher Servants train at Am Rune from the age of 5 to 16, when they graduate and transfer to Amin Duum for two years. They finish their training at the Nas Ashca and Nas Trinitar and graduate at 20. On their twenty-first birthday, if they have not been chosen for a position, they are assisted into the role of a Watcher.

Warrior Servants train at Amin Duum from the age of 5 to 18, then at the Nas Ashca until the age of twenty. At 21, they become Duty Warriors if they haven’t become a Servant.

Potential Servants are expected to be amongst the highest achieving graduates each year. Their Gadasim are deeply involved with their lives and their emotional health, given the intensity of both their training and the expectation for their life and work. Most potentials who don’t become Servants have incredibly powerful careers and go on to become Senior Masters or even First Highs in their discipline.

Servant life

There are a variety of things Servants spend their time doing. The core of their work prior to the collapse of Duum was serving on the line at Nas Trinitar and Amin Duum. Both watcher and warrior Servants take part in this.

Aside from this work, the Servants of the Guardian Watcher are also involved in organising and maintaining the infirmaries around the whole of the Empire, working especially in the areas that are especially vulnerable, like the Red Desert and the Nahabi. Servants generally take responsibility for organising relief efforts during famines.

Servants can be asked to do pretty much anything, and they are trained to cope with this. They have built up a culture and a powerful sense of identity, relating to each other as siblings. Since they have no family, they turn to each other, and trust and mutual support is crucial to them. They socialise together, eat together and know they can turn to each other in need.

Cosai describes becoming a Servant:

“I was intensely excited, I remember… And you can’t really describe what it’s like, after twenty years… there you are being this thing that you’ve always dreamed of being…

“And then it came home to me that I was going to be fighting on the line. I think I’d avoided it for a long time because I was nervous fighting. I hadn’t had a great time at Duum learning to fight properly, and going down onto the line the first time… Welll, you go down and do your first tour with Arandes, and by that time he was legendary you know.

“I think I’d heard… I’d heard somewhere that he’d yelled two warriors off the line for fighting with each other. Stripped them of their graduation marks because he said their behaviour showed they didn’t deserve it. So he has this huge reputation, the most amazing warrior ever, the greatest Servant ever, and up until then I hadn’t really spoken to him, I don’t think.

“So I was terrified. I don’t think I’ve been that terrified in my life. We were at Duum then, and I went down to the, the line tower, and he was waiting for me. And I was pretty much shaking like a leaf. Trying to hide it, you know? But there was no way I was going to look like a big tough warrior. No way at all.

“And he just looked at me and said, “What’s up?”

“And I just broke down. There’s something about him, I don’t know, makes you open up. I just said that I was terrified, and that I really didn’t think I could do this, and how I was scared I was going to mess this up and not measure up as a Servant.

“He just looked at me and said – really, this is what he said – “You don’t have to do this. You’re a great watcher, one of the best to come through the Academy. There’s never enough watchers with that kind of skill. I’ll find a way to make it look like you go out and fight, but I bet the others will understand if you can’t do it.”

“I just stared at him – gaped, you know? This is the greatest warrior in Amnar telling me I don’t have to fight on the line, ever. And I don’t know what it was about that conversation but then I just said that I would do it. I would go out on the line and fight. He made it easier, you know?”