Menu Close

Sanaam

Here’s a little mood music, folks:

Sanaam Sadiq b. December 17, 1336. Between trips, Sanaam lives with his wife, Brigadier General Glorious D’Iver, and daughter, Maggie, at 217 Violena in Room 202. He is a ship’s captain, working for a trading company which employs converted supply ships from the war, and many of their wartime crew as well. He is a large bundle of fun, joy and curiosity. He’d like to know everyone and everything, and a ship offers a convenient springboard to adventure. Unfortunately, his wife and daughter and not ideally suited to cramped quarters and getting along with others, and he must leave them over and over again. So, when he is home, he tries to make things as fun and interesting as possible. Ann and Maggie are frequent conspirators, while Hyacinth and the General at least seem to find him amusing. Erik and Calliope are like surrogate children, or maybe more like a niece and nephew, whom he can play with as much as he likes before returning them to the people who are actually responsible for them. Despite his fun-loving nature, as his relationship with the General might indicate, when the chips are down he is incredibly resourceful and responsible.

He is used to a command position, but when off the ship he is often left stunned by events that happened in his absence — metaphorically ‘at sea.’ In these cases he feels it more appropriate to hang back and let the people who actually know what is going on ignore him or command him at their discretion. He finds such helplessness emotionally taxing and is at his most miserable when he doesn’t know what to do. When home, he is often upstairs with his wife, or else doing something fun with his daughter anywhere in the house or the city.

Magic has never been much of a concern for Sanaam. At home, his wife and daughter are so far beyond him there is no point in trying to catch up. On board ship, he needs to know the basic functions of several magic-assisted systems — including propulsion — but he is by no means an engineer. He knows approximately what can be accomplished and must delegate to other people the ‘how.’ The General is perfectly okay with this, though she often condescends to him. Maggie occasionally does so as well.

Ocean life has not yet left Sanaam with an eye patch or peg leg. He does have numerous scars, accompanied by calluses. His earlobes have been pierced and stretched — he wears non-metal plugs in them, because Hyacinth steals the other kind. On his left arm is a tattoo of an anchor done in gold metalwork. On his right, he has twin hearts shot through with an arrow and labeled ‘Glorious’ and ‘Magnificent.’

Description

Sanaam is tall, 6’4”, broad and very dark. He has a full face and a soft belly but more than enough muscle to compensate for it. He keeps his head closely-shaved, even the eyebrows. It is shiny. His eyes are dark brown. He wears 3-inch wide plugs in his earlobes, usually of stained wood. More recently he has added a wooden ring to his left hand, but it is hard to see against his skin tone. His captain’s uniform has a white shirt and medium blue pants — rarely will you see him in the jacket or without the sleeves rolled up. He favors black boots with rubber soles and clothing in rough, sturdy fabrics at all times. His carnival-like appearance is not offset by conservative fashions. He does not own any hats or suits, but he will wear such things in stores — for his own amusement. Dressing rooms are free entertainment. He is often laughing, or just about to.

In the original concept of the household as two sets of people with each of the four classic temperaments, Sanaam is a sanguine. He’s friendly, funny, and can command either a room or a shipful of people at the drop of a hat. He seeks out new knowledge and experiences with positive glee, and will relate stories on everything from mermaids and volcanoes to marriage and child care. In all things he is a tourist, which can sometimes result in a disconcerting feeling of detachment from his own life and loved ones. He has more photos of Maggie than memories of her. Whether his shallowness is a personality trait or a defense mechanism for the nomadic lifestyle his employment enforces is up for debate. He does sometimes seem to regret his situation, but never for long.

Sanaam’s fondest wish is for everything to be easy. Ideally, one should be able to coast through life as if on roller skates in an all-u-can-eat buffet, sampling freely from every plate and table. However, he has a similarly strong desire for fun which often interferes with his primary motivation. Skating backwards through life is much more fun, or while playing a kazoo and juggling chainsaws. He has essentially married a chainsaw, which requires much careful handling and often complicates things. In his maudlin moments he pines after the simplicity of his youth, when there was a lot less magic and screaming, but after even a few days he finds visits to his island home and extended family intolerably dull. He seems to have no capacity for controlling just how ‘fun’ any given situation is going to get and sometimes he feels at the mercy of forces beyond his control, but he is unwilling to make the changes necessary to live a quiet and unassuming life.

Sanaam does in fact get along with his wife. His optimistic nature and the fact that he is never home can only partially explain this. He values logic, intelligence and ruthlessness, and in an emergency situation he will display these qualities himself. He also flatters himself that she chose him. It’s like having a tiger — not a pet tiger or a tame tiger, an actual wild tiger that hangs around with him due to mutual respect. He has no illusions about her psychotic nature; he admires it.

He is more ambivalent about having her as his daughter’s primary caregiver. Maggie is getting a vastly different upbringing from his own: she is under a constant state of pressure and spends most of her days shut up in a room, whereas he ran around all the time and did whatever he wanted. On the one hand, he recognizes his daughter’s potential and knows it needs training. On the other, she’s missing out on her own childhood, which is even worse than him missing it. He tries to balance things out, but he’s just not around enough to really do it. She seems to be quite resilient and happy enough, which eases his conscience somewhat.

Nostalgia strongly influences Sanaam’s musical preferences. Off the island, anything that reminds him of the island is good. Parang, calypso, reggae, anything with a steel drum. On the island, he quickly becomes annoyed with the sameness of it all and obsessively listens to distant radio stations. Sea shanties are only consumed with ironic humor, or if necessary to time rope and chain hauling.

History

The Simple Life

Sanaam grew up on a small island in the South Seas, half of which was under the jurisdiction of Marsellia, surrounded by siblings, cousins and honorary family that he did not really bother to differentiate between. Displaying an early thirst for adventure, he at one point attempted to ride a pushcart down the peaked roof of his house. This resulted in a nickname which he still must put up with whenever he goes home. Furthermore, he demanded information, sending away for books, magazines, comics and finally a full set of encyclopedias. The frequent ships passing through were not only his best source of news and entertainment, but the only way to get off the island and into real trouble. He managed this at the age of sixteen, with pay. Thus began a dual existence where ‘home’ meant love and family and boredom and ‘away’ meant excitement and new friends and missing home.

The Radio Lady

Wartime inflamed a sense of duty to his semi-homeland, and provided a convenient excuse for more adventure — probably more the latter than the former. Marsellia has a policy of accepting skilled volunteers into its military forces with minimal training and no requirement to enlist, or even unskilled volunteers who are willing to train for something non-military and necessary. Sanaam’s seafaring experience offered him an in, although he may have conflated his limited knowledge of magic drives and his comfortable familiarity with sailboats. Army command let him get away with it, and a quick mind and a competent engineering crew got him up to speed fast.

Military discipline and protocol were a bit more elusive. With his new crew on the supply ship being about half-and-half and his first mate a fellow volunteer, they frequently screwed up their use of radio codes. They managed to humiliate themselves pretty well in front of a no-nonsense female voice on the radio while trying to make their way into and iced-over port in Gundaland. She appeared to be in charge of breaking up magical interference with the delivery of supplies, but in fact she was juggling quite a few other responsibilities, and a command. She repeatedly refused Sanaam’s offers of meeting for a meal or drinks.

He lost patience and went over the side of the boat to make her acquaintance and/or rescue her during a subsequent battle involving more ice and illusory magic. He handled himself well enough to earn her trust and they fought together intermittently from that point on. After she fell into the water and nearly drowned — either by accident or to wind him up, he’s still not sure — he indignantly proposed marriage and she accepted.

Take Care of This for Me

There was an understandable amount of difficulty, but his new wife eventually caught pregnant and produced a child — which was released into his responsibility with all speed. Maggie’s maternal grandmother was busy being shot at elsewhere, so Sanaam spirited her away to his parents on the island. As she got older, he also sneaked her onto the boat with him, with the complicity of his crew. He delivered her to her mother and her mother to her as much as possible, but Maggie’s relationship with her mom was tenuous at best for the first few years of her life.

The Peace Problem

Maggie was five years old when the war ended with Marsellia’s defeat and subjugation. This meant that, theoretically, he could be a family with his wife and daughter for the first time in forever, although he was a little uncertain what he was going to do for a job. He deposited the two of them on the island with his parents and followed his boat to the trading company she’d been sold to, in hopes that they’d like to hire someone familiar with operating her. He returned home a few months later, securely employed, to find scorched earth, shattered relationships, and a whole island on the verge of burning the witch. She’d also made the Marselline Consulate stop serving happy hour specials.

An attempt to keep them with him on the boat went similarly, and he began desperately searching for somewhere safe to store his terrifying wife and child while he tried to make enough money to support them. The discovery of a red man playing the ‘cello on a street-corner in San Rosille provided an opportunity. Assuming that someplace willing to house a colored person would be okay with lots of magic, he followed Mordecai home and found Hyacinth’s house. It was not too impressive, but on the other hand it seemed unlikely that Maggie and the General could damage it more. There were some arguments about the hole in the roof and whether the ship’s cat could go with them (no) but eventually they agreed to try it.

Slowly, he became about as secure as possible that they had found a home, but he still gets a little nervous every time he comes up the walk to find out what’s been going on in his absence.

Key Installments