It is October 7th, 1984, and you are a young man in a rural village in soviet-occupied afghanistan.
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As a man, you have two first names. The first (d6) is a common islamic name, your subordinate name, the second (d20) is the less common name by which you are actually known.
Subordinate name (d6)
1. Mohammed
2. Abdul
3. Gholam
4. Ali
5. Khan
6. Jah
7. Shah
8. Din
Personal name (d20)
1. Nabi
2. Ghafoor
3. Jangi
4. Madad
5. Ahmad
6. Nasim
7. Akhtar
8. Sharif
9. Sakhi
10. Zaman
11. Qadir
12. Waleed
13. Ghulam
14. Fahim
15. Akram
16. Latif
18. Zubair
19. Sayd
20. Agha
Roll stats 3d6-down-the line. If you have STR 14+, you are taller than 5'6, and if you have STR 14+, you're a giant (taller than 5'11). If you have CON 14+, you aren't addicted to opium. If you have Int 14+, you know a language other than Pashto (choose: Dari, Uzbek, Turkmen, Urdu, Pashayi, Nuristani, Balochi, Arabic, Russian, or English), and if you have INT 16+ you can read and write. If you have WIS 14+, you have a half-decent grasp of islamic orthopraxy, and if you have WIS 16+, you have enough quran memorized to pretend you're a proper hafiz.
One of your cousins, a goatherd of unfortunately low intelligence, came stumbling into the village a few days ago absolutely terrified, claiming to have discovered a fortress of jinn hidden in the mountains. A crevice had opened up in a cliff he grazes his herd around occasionally... he wandered in, finding a huge complex of ornately sculpted stone, but barely fled with his life after he saw one of the jinn approaching down the hall, saved by the glint of light reflecting off its silver skin. You'd discount him, but he brought with him a bronze kaffir statuette he claims he took from the site - jinn or no jinn, it's clearly of high-quality craftsmanship. You've heard rumors that the farang buy these sorts of thing, and if there's more of these artifacts in whatever ruin he happened across their sale could bring your clan some much-needed cash.
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It's taken some time to calm him down now, but at last you've been able to convince him to lead you to the "jinn fortress". You're with a party of twelve of your kinsmen, all young men like yourself. Combined, you carry with you fifty-million afghanis worth of equipment split between tools, food, fuel, and weapons (~$1,000 USD, which is ~$3,000 USD 2026). Your goal is to enter the ruin, pry out anything of value, and take as much back as you can carry.
You don't quite realize yet exactly what it is you're entering, but both the promise and danger of the enterprise you've now embarked on is far beyond your current comprehension. If you survive the hazards of the ruin, and that is certainly an open question, you will quickly become very wealthy men, though your party is sure to be reduced in the process. In a time and a place like this, wealth is itself a dangerous thing to have, and its accumulation sure to draw the attention of the powers that be. KHAD and Mujhadeen will both be showing up on your doorstep, seeking to seize your discovery for themselves, but lucky you, the horrors below will have hardened you for those above, and the one nice thing about living through a war with so many fronts is that guns and bodies aren't hard to buy.
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| Get in loser, we're going to jihad |
