The night the party got back from Gazra, a mob came up the street with a battering ram — and somebody put marksmen on the rooftops behind it.
The Question
Was this a riot the party got caught in, or an attack dressed as one? Who were the snipers?
What We Know (all S6)
The build-up
- The capital in midsummer: muggy, foul, and hot enough that “everyone is crabby.” The heat got worse while the party was away at Gazra.
- Anti-elf talk had thickened over the summer: “elves brought plague” and “the elven seductress who got her fangs into Baahir tried to assassinate him.” See The Elf Scapegoating.
- Politically, nothing else had changed.
The night
- The riot started the night the party returned.
- The party fortified the Ulpia estate and sent runners to neighboring estates to consolidate defenses. House Balventia guards and servants joined them.
- Attempts to talk the mob down failed; it kept growing.
- The mob brought an improvised battering ram to the front door. Farraj blasted them.
- The party tried to hold the roof and was driven off it by snipers, teleporting inside.
- A score of rioters broke in through side windows and the back door and were fought off in the house.
- Two Ulpia guards went down. Gnaeus teleported them out and tried to heal them; nobody knows whether they lived.
- Farraj killed and wounded scores of people outside the estate with electrical blasts.
- When the mob saw Ari, it got angrier.
- The session ended as the fight ended. Whether the riots are over is unknown.
The snipers
- Never located. Never identified. Nobody saw them.
- Long range, and doing significant damage on a hit despite Haroun’s magical protections.
- The party’s read: professionals, possibly taking advantage of the situation.
- The party’s considered analysis (S7): they can’t tell whether the mob was targeted at the estate — but they are fairly certain the snipers were.
The Aftermath (S7)
- One of the two downed guards died; the other was saved.
- The guards captured a very drunk/high survivor of the battle. Nobody thinks he knows anything — “an amusing part of the battle.”
- A fire that started in the elven quarter got out of control and spread toward the docks; Haroun and Farraj fought it with fire magic for ~24 hours.
- ~Four dozen Eagle cavalry under Knight-Lieutenant Zahir ibn-Zahir arrived and cleared the streets, leaving a small force in the district.
- Haroun’s estate sweep: several dead servants at the al-Bushra estate; Menenia servants alive in their wine cellar; al-Akram guards beat the rioters back. Gnaeus posted guards against looters at the Menenia estate.
- The party spent ~a week and a half coordinating initial recovery and the noble district’s defense; the Balventia estate also needed recovery.
- Five days after the riot, ~100 people described as “leaders of the rioters” were publicly executed. (Who ordered it is not stated in the notes.)
- The pogrom’s toll: roughly half of the capital’s ~10,000 elves dead, most of the rest homeless. See The Elf Scapegoating.
- Weeks later: recovery ongoing, priority on clearing bodies to avoid plague.
Why It Matters
A mob does not bring marksmen. Everything else that night is explicable as a hot city and six months of poison about elves; the snipers are not. Somebody with money and trained shooters was on those rooftops while a crowd hammered the door of a Great House.
And there is now a body count — scores, killed by a noble of House al-Rabi with lightning, in the capital, in front of witnesses. That is legally defensible and politically radioactive, and nobody has dealt with the aftermath.
Theories
Theory: Opportunists
The party’s own reading. Riots draw professionals the way floods draw looters — settling scores under cover of chaos, with no one able to investigate afterward. On this theory the snipers were hired for someone in that street, not necessarily for the Ulpia estate.
Theory: The riot was steered here
The mob “kept growing” despite attempts to disperse it, at the house of the one Great House known to keep an elf, on the night that house’s occupants came home. If someone wanted Ari found or the party hit, an anti-elf mob is a delivery mechanism with no fingerprints — and the marksmen are the actual attack, with the crowd as cover and alibi.
Half-supported by the party’s own S7 analysis: the mob’s targeting is undeterminable, the snipers’ targeting is fairly certain. The crowd may have been weather; the marksmen were aimed.
Theory: This is the scapegoating campaign reaching its intended pitch
Whoever seeded the elf-assassin rumor in S3 has been building toward exactly this: a pogrom in the capital that forces the Eyes to crack down and discredits Sultan Fahim’s tolerance policy. The party’s house was incidental; the snipers belong to a different question.
Theory: Someone is counting the party's magic
Three sessions of Gnaeus teleporting, Farraj throwing lightning, and Haroun warding — now performed on a rooftop in front of a crowd, against shooters who kept hitting anyway. If the intent was to make the party fight in public and watch, it worked perfectly. Nobody was caught, and everything was seen.
Contradictions & Oddities
- The snipers were never found, in a city street, by a party that includes a teleporter and a man with magical sight.
- They penetrated Haroun’s protections repeatedly at long range. That is equipment, training, or a gift.
- The party had been back less than a day.
- Ismad told the party the attempt on Baahir was “thrown together hastily” but involved three very professional people (S6). Two sets of professionals in one summer in one city may be the same set. See The Attacks on Baahir.
Next Steps
-
Find out whether the two guards lived.One died, one saved (S7) -
Establish whether other estates were attacked, or only this one— others were hit: dead servants at al-Bushra, rioters beaten back at al-Akram, the Balventia estate in recovery (S7). So it was a riot — which sharpens, not settles, the sniper question -
Search the rooftops and firing angles— the party did search, visually, in the aftermath — it was too chaotic and risky to do more (Aaron, 2026-08-16). Nothing was found; anything recoverable now is luck - Ask Ismad whether Uncle’s Men saw it coming, and whether the professional shooters match the Baahir assassins — still not done
- Who identified ~100 “leaders of the rioters” within five days, and who ordered the executions? That speed implies either good intelligence or a list written in advance — and it may have executed the snipers’ hired mob-shepherds, if there were any
- Deal with the political aftermath of scores of dead commoners — House Ulpia, House al-Rabi, and the Crown all have a view. (Unaddressed through S7 — the executions may have absorbed the public’s appetite, or deferred it)
- Ari cannot stay at the estate. Gnaeus already had the head servant quietly buying a small house for exactly this; finish it
- Ask House Balventia what their people saw — partially overtaken: the party has since been their guests at Karven, but the notes don’t record asking about the riot night