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Jasir Qemhet
Jasir Qemhet
"Someone remembers that you were here." · Keeper of Goodberry's House of the Dead
Basic Information
Full Name
Jasir Qemhet
Nickname
None
Race (Grade)
Human (E)
Class
Cleric
Height
6'5"
Birthday
Yearend 20, 1214
Age
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Birthsign
Bloodline Ability
Unknown
This Bloodline ability has not yet been unveiled to you.
Physical Description
Jasir Qemhet at the altar of his temple in Uir, holding the candle he lights for every rite
Appearance
Jasir is ninety-two years old and looks a little past thirty, as E-grade humans do. He is a tall, powerfully built man with deep bronze skin, a strong jaw, heavy dark brows, and amber eyes that give his resting expression a severity he does not intend. His dark hair falls in long, tight curls well past his shoulders. A curling temple mark is tattooed across his right shoulder.
He dresses in the vestments of his order: a mantle of white linen draped over one shoulder, a broad collar of gold set with deep blue enamel, long gold earrings, wide banded cuffs at both wrists, and a gilded jackal mask worn at the belt. In Goodberry he has added a heavier cloak for the House's cold vault, and nothing else.
Unique Characteristics
Jasir carries a plain white candle marked with his temple's looped sign for life, and he lights it for every rite he performs. It represents a simple promise: someone remembers that you were here. He has lit it for kings and for paupers, and he has never once let it go out before the rite was finished.
He looks at the living the same way he looks at the dead, which is to say closely. Within a few minutes of meeting someone he will have noticed the old break in their wrist, the mended clasp on their necklace, and which shoulder they favor. He means nothing by it. It is simply how he has learned to see people, and he will remember all of it for years.
Personality & Temperament
Positive Traits
- Calm and compassionate, with all the time you need
- Tells the truth about death plainly, even to children
- Gives a pauper's rites the same care as a king's
- Will not leave a body nameless while a clue remains
- Remembers every name he has ever written down
Challenging Traits
- Refuses euphemisms, even when a family begs for one
- Openly challenges the powerful over concealed deaths
- No patience for casualty counts quoted as statistics
- Severe in appearance; strangers assume the worst
- Cannot close a case while a name is still missing
Death is not the frightening part. Being forgotten is.
Do not tell the child her father is sleeping. Tell her that he has died, and then stay in the room.
You have given me a number. I asked you for their names.
Likes
- A lit candle beside a name correctly spelled
- Ledgers kept in a clear hand, with nothing left blank
- Old scars, mended jewelry, and what they reveal
- Strong tea shared with a family that has questions
- The quiet hour after the last rite of the day
Dislikes
- The word "unidentified," written down too early
- Officials who call the dead "losses" or "figures"
- Anyone who conceals a death for convenience
- Mass graves dug in a hurry to tidy up a disaster
- The raising of the dead, for any reason at all
Background & History
The Temple of the Vigil
Jasir Qemhet was born on Yearend 20, 1214, in the desert city of Uir, into a culture where caring for the dead is considered one of civilization's highest duties. He was raised in the Temple of the Vigil, a mortuary order whose houses keep watch over the dead of the desert. The jackal carved at its door is not prayed to. It is the temple's oldest promise set in stone: something stands watch. The temple taught him that death itself is not frightening. Being forgotten is. There he learned embalming, funerary ritual, genealogy, the preservation of remains, and the painstaking methods used to identify a body recovered long after death.
Not a Guardian
Jasir grew into an imposing young man, and his elders fully expected him to become a temple guardian. He preferred quieter work. By adulthood he could reconstruct a dead person's identity from details as small as a healed fracture, a repaired piece of jewelry, the wear on their teeth, an old scar, or a fragment of clothing. The guardians got on perfectly well without him.
Where Others Hesitate
Over the decades Jasir became especially respected in the aftermath of disasters. Fires, battles, collapsed buildings, floods, and monster attacks often leave behind bodies that an ordinary undertaker cannot identify, and Jasir goes where others hesitate. He records every detail, preserves the remains properly, tracks down relatives, and refuses to let the dead become anonymous numbers unless it is absolutely unavoidable. His order's temples keep exhaustive death ledgers, so that families can learn what became of a missing loved one, and so that inheritance disputes do not linger for generations. He has performed rites for kings and for paupers with precisely the same care.
Plain Answers
Despite the severity of his appearance, Jasir is calm, compassionate, and surprisingly easy to talk to. He does not use euphemisms around death, and he believes people deserve truthful answers, children most of all. He has little patience for officials who treat a casualty count as a statistic rather than as people, and he will openly challenge a powerful figure who tries to conceal deaths for political convenience. To him, wealth, rank, and reputation all become irrelevant eventually. What remains important is that someone knows your name, someone marks your passing, and someone tells the people who loved you where you went.
The Dead of the Geldergreen
When Gelderai fell in Goldenleaf of 1306, Jasir went, as he always does. He spent most of a year at the edges of the Geldergreen among the dead who could be recovered, working fast, because in a land overrun by undead a body left unattended does not always stay where it fell. He filled a ledger with names. Then he noticed that almost nobody was coming to ask for them. The people who might have been looking had scattered to Haven.
The House of the Dead
Jasir followed them. He came to Goodberry in Heatwave of 1307 with his ledger under his arm and began knocking on doors. When Queen Arties established a House of the Dead for the city soon afterward, she gave its keeping to him. The House's coroner, a physician trained at the Scholar's College, examines the bodies and answers the Courthouse's questions. Everything else is Jasir's: the register, the vault, the rites over every new arrival, and the families who come in to identify someone they love. He approves of the line carved over the door, "Every death has something to say." He has added a candle beneath it.
Goals & Aspirations
No Numbers in the Graveyard
The House enters every arrival in its register by number, and anyone left unclaimed after thirty days is buried in the Town Graveyard under a marker bearing that number. Jasir accepts a number as a place to begin. He does not accept it as a place to end. He intends to keep working every numbered case for as long as he lives in Goodberry, and he would like, one day, to walk through the graveyard and find that every stone in it has a name.
Delivering the Ledger
Jasir still carries the ledger he filled at the edge of the Geldergreen, and most of the names in it have not yet reached the people they belong to. He is working through Haven's refugees one household at a time, in Goodberry first, with Silmarithil and Rokoura to follow. It is slow, and every visit is the worst news a family will hear that year. He goes anyway, sits down, and tells them plainly.
The Roll of Burrowbough
Not long ago a village of kobolds arrived in Goodberry carrying something Jasir has almost never seen survivors bring out of a disaster: their own list of the dead, every name written down by their scribe on a strip of birch bark the morning after. Jasir has asked, with great respect, to copy it into the House's register in full. In his long experience, the dead are usually counted by strangers. He considers a people who wrote their own names down to have done the hardest part of his work for him, and he would like to shake the scribe's hand.
Development
Current Status & Relationships
Residence
Role
Mortuary Priest
The House of the Dead
ATTENTION!
Jasir Qemhet is an E-grade human mortuary priest with seven decades of practice, and he is built like the temple guardian his elders wanted him to be. He is not a soldier and does not pretend to be one, but he has walked into the aftermath of battles, fires, and monster attacks for most of his life, and very little frightens him. He will tell you the truth about a death in plain words, whoever you are and however little you want to hear it. Do not ask him to soften a finding, lose a ledger, or leave a name out of the count; he will refuse, and if the request came from someone powerful, he will say so in public. He regards the raising of the dead as the worst theft there is. He also notices far more about the living than they expect.