Description
Fifty-six, Armenian, Calcutta-born. Not a large man, and entirely unbothered by that. He wears European coat and Indian cotton in whatever combination the weather argues for, and he has the flat, patient stillness of someone who has spent forty years waiting on winds that do not care about him.
He speaks Armenian, Bengali, Hindustani, Persian, Arabic, and an unhurried, precise English with the Calcutta rhythm under it. He states terms once. He does not haggle, and he is visibly unentertained by anyone who tries.
Voice note: courteous and entirely unimpressed. He has carried nabobs and he has carried pilgrims and he charged both, and nothing in a passenger’s manner has ever once changed his price.
Background
Born into Calcutta’s Armenian community, which has been established in Bengal since long before the East India Company mattered there — the Church of Holy Nazareth on Armenian Street dates to 1707. He is a country trader: privately owned, Indian-built shipping working outside the Company’s monopoly, running the Red Sea coffee season up to Mocha and Jeddah and home to Bengal on the turn of the monsoon.
He has never worked for the Company and enjoys saying so, in the mild way of a man who considers it simply a fact about himself rather than a position he is defending.
As Played — Session 7
He brought the Shah Alam into Suez at dawn and was standing at the gangplank watching his crew tie up when Adrien, Holt and Ashby reached him — a column of Ottoman soldiers marching for the same berth a few minutes behind them. He spoke English, he was open to negotiation, and the whole thing was settled in one short exchange: one hundred pounds for eight passages to Calcutta, the passengers sharing the ship’s cabin, the captain keeping his cargo of coffee and hides. A Board of Control man among the passengers was enough to discourage the soldiers from pressing their claim.
At Socotra he did not refuse the rescue. When Georgiana and Ashby reported the boy missing, he was unimpressed — assumed Jumman had wandered off following a coloured bird — but he sent a lookout to the crow’s nest, and when the search became a rescue he made no objection to his crew’s ladders, rigging and torches going into the cliffs. The party never had to argue with him.
Connections
- Master of the Shah Alam; his working chain of command runs through Serang Ismail and never around him.
- Belongs to the same continent-spanning Armenian merchant network as Krikor Bedrossian in Cairo — invoking Bedrossian’s name opens the charter in a single conversation.
- He is the party’s introduction to Calcutta’s Armenian community before they ever see the city — a friendly door in Bengal that owes the East India Company nothing.
Appearances
Connections
People
Allied with
- Krikor Bedrossian NPC neutralSame Armenian trading network, Egypt to Bengal; the name opens the charter
Served by
- Serang Ismail NPC warmTakes every order from Aratoon and gives them all onward himself1 session: The Sterile Bay
Trades with
- Freddy Cavendish Player character neutralChartered the party's passage to Calcutta for one hundred pounds at the Suez gangplank1 session: The Sterile Bay
Places
Commands
- Shah Alam Location warmMaster and part-owner; the ship is his living and his season1 session: The Sterile Bay
Located at
- Shah Alam Location neutralAboard for the Suez → Calcutta passage1 session: The Sterile Bay
Served by
- Shah Alam Location warmMaster and part-owner1 session: The Sterile Bay
Visited
- Socotra Location neutralHas watered in the sheltered bay before on the Mocha run without trouble1 session: The Sterile Bay
Events
Participated in
- Socotra Cave Rescue Eventdismissed the disappearance; sent a lookout aloft