Rostam Ibrahimi

Mask: Before being Taken, he was a slender young man, 5’10” and about 155 lbs. Now he is 6’7” and over 340 lbs., built like an NFL offensive tackle. He has light brown skin, short black hair and a luxuriant black beard. His eyes are an unusual pale green color.

Mien: His size and proportions are the same. He generally resembles a (very powerfully built) cartoon devil, but with vague hints of something more feline. His bluish gray skin is covered with fine white fur, with faint gray leopard-like spots, mostly on his limbs and back. He has claws on his oversized hands and feet and a mouth full of teeth that are numerous and sharp. His ears are very large and slightly pointed, and his facial features are coarser and more exaggerated than the Mask’s. His green eyes are large and cat-like with slit pupils. His beard and thicker patches of body hair are a darker blue-gray. His most obviously non-human features are the small horns growing from his forehead and his lion-like tail.

He walks with a very slight limp, which is more apparent when he is tired. He has the scar of a bullet wound on his left leg just below the knee. There is another, smaller scar above his right eye, dividing his eyebrow.

Mantle (Winter): A slight dimming of the light, as if a cloud is passing in front of the sun.

Background:

BEFORE

Omar Esfandiari was the American-born child of Afghan refugees. His parents were loving but demanding, driving their son to succeed as they themselves played out the classic immigrant success story, rising from poverty to build a prosperous restaurant business in Oakland. Omar was an excellent student in high school, gaining admittance to UC-Berkeley, but that was not enough. His parents expected him to get a useful degree. Business, Engineering, Pre-Med... Omar, who had been fascinated by art from early childhood, had other ideas. He majored in Fine Arts, and with scholarships and loans, was able to complete his degree without financial assistance from his parents. The strain on their relationship, however, could not be measured in dollars. Then Omar doubled down by returning to Berkeley to start on an MFA…

His life finally jumped the rails in the summer of 2002, after he had completed his first year of grad school. It had been a long year, with the tumultuous aftermath of 9/11 and all that implied for a young Muslim American along with the gradual decay of his relationship and final, explosive breakup with his partner. His visit home did not go well, and after yet another argument with his parents over his studies and his future, he lost his cool and spilled the secret that he had promised himself never to tell them. No, he was not going to settle down and marry a nice Tajik girl. But maybe, if he found the right Tajik guy… His parents, conservative and traditional to the core, were not amused. His father ordered him out of the house and told him not to return until he got his head on straight and stopped acting like some Pashtun queerboy. Well, his head certainly needed clearing after that nightmare. On impulse he decided on a camping trip in the Sierras to get away from… everything.

ABDUCTION AND DURANCE

On the third day of his trip, Omar returned to the campground after a morning hike. The two families that had been there earlier were gone, but strangely enough, there was an elderly Afghan woman sitting at a picnic table eating her lunch. She greeted him and invited him to sit. He was too polite to refuse. Then she offered to share her meal. No, thank you… but the kebabs grilling over the firepit smelled so good. Maybe just a little bit… The meat tasted much better than it smelled. Much better than anything that he had ever tasted. He just had to have more, but luckily there was plenty for both of them. They talked as they ate. Omar found himself telling Auntie about all of his troubles. She was such a good listener, and her voice made him feel so peaceful and content, like he was 10 again and he was home after a long fall afternoon of touch football and capture the flag and Mom was making kofta kebabs. Don’t worry, it will all be better soon. And these kebabs are very tasty, aren’t they? As the day went on and on Auntie began to tell folktales. Omar recognized most of them, from the Shahnameh and other epics, but these ended… differently… with the heroes getting slaughtered by the monsters instead of the other way around. But that was OK. Rostam was just another fag-hating jock anyways, and he laughed when Auntie described how the White Devil sucked out his eyeballs and ate them… Speaking of eating, how about more meat? There was still plenty left. Finally, as the sun began to touch the horizon, Omar drifted off to sleep…

The next day he woke up… somewhere… in a house far away in the mountains. He awoke to the smell of cooking. Auntie had made him a big breakfast. Because he was a growing boy. And every day he felt himself growing bigger and stronger as he ate the generous portions that Auntie prepared for him. He was always hungry, and he always finished every meal. Even when the meat was screaming. Even when it begged and pleaded for its life. He was a growing boy after all…

Khaleh Farzaneh (Wise Auntie) had once been beautiful. Back in the days of legend she had been a peri, an angelic fairy. Now she was a twisted old crone. A witch. Because the days of legend were over in the East, ended by Christianity and Islam and the darkest God of all, Science. Once Iran and Turan were full of wonders. Magical creatures and mighty heroes were everywhere. But the people would no longer listen to Auntie’s stories. They would hear them and retell them and even make them into movies and comic books… but they would not truly listen and believe. So Auntie’s stories became darker and crueler. The people no longer deserved heroes. They only deserved monsters, and all of the harsh lessons they brought. Maybe after enough terror and blood, the people would remember the old ways and beg the old gods for forgiveness. So she surrounded herself with a retinue of monsters, the most terrifying beasts and flesh eating horrors of legend. Omar (or Whitey as he was now known, after his new form and role model, the Div-e-Sepid or “White Devil”) was one of these, one of Auntie’s Boys. They were her servants, bodyguards and concubines. They built, gathered, hunted and terrorized her slaves into obedience. Whitey spent untold seasons as Auntie’s pet, and he was happy. He had never been happier in his life.

ESCAPE

Auntie hated the West. Westerners, with their faith and technology and love of profit, had unmade the world she loved. Most of all, she hated America, which was all of her darkest fears taken to their logical extreme. When she was not instructing harsh lessons for the people of the East, she pleased herself by inflicting horror and despair on soulless Americans. Maybe even they could be awakened for just a moment before their dreadful ends, if their fear and suffering were great enough… Before being Taken, Omar had had to squirm through countless jokes about sleeper cells and the bomb that was in his backpack. And now he was a terrorist for real, although serving a cause far stranger than anything Osama bin Laden could have imagined. Auntie sent her Boys on raids through the Hedge into remote areas in the western United States, snatching campers, hunters and other unfortunates who were taken back to become slaves, playthings, meat... or all of the above. Whitey was a valued member of these expeditions, as his bestial senses… especially his keen nose… made tracking prey that much easier. The rash of disappearances led to rumors of all sorts. Satanists. Sasquatch. Alien abductions. Terror spread, and with it, legends were born and reborn. Just as Auntie wanted. But Whitey’s hunting pack finally overplayed their hand. They returned too frequently to the same hunting ground in the Northern Sierras (ironically, not far from where Omar was Taken). And on their second to last raid they kidnapped the son of a US Senator. On their last raid they found an inviting campground full of college students enjoying the 4th of July weekend. Who were actually undercover cops. With an FBI SWAT team on overwatch. The ensuing firefight was as brief as it was one-sided. Within moments, Whitey was the only one of Auntie’s Boys left alive. He ran for the river and the Trod on the far shore. A bullet tore through his leg… and then another struck him in the head. He lost consciousness as he fell into the water and the current took him…

Omar woke up on the riverbank, somewhere downstream, with a splitting headache. He was Omar, again. The injury to his brain had… reset… something. He fled into the woods, with the sound of helicopters approaching in the distance… He ran all day. That’s all that he had to think about. Getting away. If they caught him they would shoot him down like a dog. No arrest, no courts. At the moment he wasn’t sure just why he was so sure of that. But it was something bad. Very , very bad. So he ran. And finally he lost the search parties, using tricks he did not understand. But then, that night, when he finally had a moment’s peace… when he had the chance to take a longer look at a body that was not his own… the memories began to come. It was the longest night of his life. For a long while he was certain that when day came he would head back to the searchers and throw himself at their guns. But when the sun rose he went the other way. Why, he was not even sure. After another hour’s walk he found a road…

AFTER

Omar spent the next two weeks as a vagrant. As something worse than a vagrant, stealing and scavenging whatever he could. He could not be caught. He could not be seen. He had no idea how the Mask worked yet… Then one night in a vacant lot behind a bowling alley in Redding, as he was devouring a freshly killed possum, he was approached by young man. A young man with a fly’s faceted eyes… “Uh, you must be new here…” So Omar found his first Freehold. In Redding he learned the basics of Changeling life and society. There he found his affinity for the Winter Court. Sadness. And shame. He had so much to be ashamed of. He heard the stories of the other Changelings and their escapes. All of them had made some choice to break free. But not him. He was only freed by random chance and the actions of others. He had loved Auntie so much. He was happier with her than he had been with anyone, ever. He had never so much as dreamed of leaving her. Looking back, thinking rationally, it was easy to understand that he had been a brainwashed slave. All of the unspeakable things he had done before finally being reawakened were her fault, not his. But in the end, there was nothing rational about it. The shame was immense and unending. What could he ever do to make it right?

The Redding Freehold was a very small one, and like many small groups, its politics were ingrown and bitter. Omar was hounded from the start by the Summers. As an Ogre he should be a natural warrior. He should use his strength to fight the good fight. But fighting… and killing… were the last things he wanted now. When he refused to join Summer he was called out as a slacker and a coward. Ultimately, as an unproven newcomer, Omar was expendable. The other Courts agreed to expel him, heading off what might have been a much uglier conflict. So it was time to move on… but where? The Bay Area was right out. First thing, Omar was dead. There was never any Fetch. He found the details online… Omar’s body had never been found, but a considerable amount of his blood, along with his shredded clothes and personal effects, had been found among the dismembered and partially eaten corpses of the other ten victims of the campground massacre (or the “Slaughter in the Sierras” as the gaspers on Headline News had called it). The logical conclusion had been made. There was no life to return to. And there was no way he was going to stay that close to his parents and all those memories. So, Sacramento…

He’s been in town for a few weeks, trying to get the details of his mundane life together. He has a new identity and documents (a parting gift from the Redding Winters). As his new name he chose “Rostam.” Because fuck you, Auntie, that’s why. He has a job of sorts. Got to start somewhere… Now it’s time to find a better place in the Changeling world...