The Amirate of Ijevan


The City of Ijevan lies in the northern-most part of Zamora. The climate in this region is cooler and far more pleasant than it is further south, and this has attracted many wealthy Zamorans, both merchants and noblemen, from other parts of the country to settle in the city. 

A large number of wealthy Brythunians, who have been allowed to settle freely in Ijevan by the Amir, also live there. There are also many Hyperboreans from the savage lands of the north who have found employment in the city, mostly as guards or mercenaries, and even a small but influential Corinthian community.

  The city is ruled by an Amir, who also claims suzerainty over the towns and villages around it. Most of these are ruled over by lesser noblemen who acknowledge the Amir as their overlord in theory, but do as they please in practice.

 

 

The concentration of so much wealth within the walls of a single city has also attracted a large number of those who make their living by entertaining others, and the city is known throughout the Hyborian world as a centre for pleasures of all kinds. An inordinate number of pleasure palaces are found in Ijevan, and even those who seek the most perverse forms of satisfaction can be catered to.

 

The largest and most well-known of these is the House of Sa'ad, which is owned by an uncle of the present Amir. This magnificent palace is not actually in the city itself, but lies about a mile beyond its walls. The House of Sa’ad is renowned for the particularly perverse form of recreation known as The Chase, in which a young woman is stripped naked and then pursued across the surrounding countryside by a small number of men on horseback. If the young woman, usually a slave owned by the House, manages to escape, she is actually granted her freedom. The more usual outcome of these ‘Chases’, however, is that the slave-girl is captured and brutally taken on the spot by a number of her pursuers, often after some form of punishment has been administered.

 A common pastime of the leisured classes in Ijevan is the reciting of erotic stories. Such recitations typically occur during small, intimate dinner-parties, where they are usually read out loud by a young man or woman for the entertainment of the guests. The most beautifully written of these stories have been recorded on scrolls and preserved for posterity. 

This website is a collection of some of the most popular of these tales. Some of them may sound harsh and perhaps even a little vulgar, but this is only because it is difficult to translate the more subtle refinements of Zamoran into our own language. It is hoped that the educated reader will be able to enjoy these tales as they are, without allowing his or her own concepts of morality to cloud their appreciation.

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