Former sorcerer of the Cherkess court, Said left Cherkessia years ago — either due to ideological disagreements with Amir and the rest of the court, or excessive ambition and dissatisfaction with his prospects for advancement (depending on whom you ask). By mutual and secret agreement with the members of Kiev's City Council, Said presented himself to the people of Kiev as official and plenipotentiary ambassador of the great nation of Cherkessia, sent to Kiev to implement Cherkessia's will, and to promote the interests of alliance between the two nations. (This was completely false; Said has no formal status in or with Cherkessia.) (See this session log for more information about these events.)
Since then, Said has insinuated himself into Kievan politics and life. He has been training a cadre of sorcerers, drawn from those native Kievans, born in the past three and a half decades (since the Mongols? sacked the city), who have begun to manifest arcane talents. This group of mages is officially under the authority of the City Council, but in fact its members are fanatically loyal to Said personally. Said has used his and his followers' arcane power to improve the lives of Kiev's people in many ways; his sorcerers have even fought alongside the Kievan Guard in the recent war against the goblins. Thus Said and his mages have become increasingly indispensable to Kiev. It is also whispered in Kiev that Said has his hands in all manner of illicit and worrying dealings, having contacts both among Kiev's political and social elite and among the city's criminal element.
Among the sorcerers whom Said has trained is Tatiana Dolgorukaya?, granddaughter of one of the wealthiest merchants of Kiev — and now Said's wife. Now that Tatiana has inherited all of her family's wealth and resources, Said has access to great financial resources. Tatiana has also taken her late grandfather's place on the City Council — but as she has little time for politics, with having to run her merchant company, her husband often takes her place at Council meetings and in back-room political dealings.
Said's ambition is not satisfied, however, and he continually plots to gain greater power. Not long ago, the faux-ambassador tried to eliminate one of the other major players in Kiev — the Assassins' Guild — by ordering a false hit on himself. The sorcerer planned to flush out the assassins, forcing them to reveal themselves to him, while simultaneously bringing down on them the wrath of the city's authorities. He hoped to eliminate the guild, thus removing a significant counterbalance to his power and his sorcerer followers' freedom to operate in Kiev. This plan was foiled, largely due to the involvement of the player characters, and Said's plotting was seemingly reined in for a time.
In the meantime, Said somehow discovered, far to the south of Kiev, a dungeon near the town of Oleshie near the mouth of the river Dnieper — a dungeon once used by the then-mortal wizard Vladislav Chernovsky? for his arcane experiments. In this dungeon were remnants of Chernovsky's research into the application of shadow-magic to create simulacra from snow and ice. Said has apparently figured out how to use this magic, and has created an unknown number of simulacra of himself. The "Said" who has appeared in public in Kiev lately — for some weeks or even months — turned out to have been a simulacrum.
This was discovered after the Assassins' Guild of Kiev got another contract to kill Said — but this one was real; it was taken out by the Polish? ambassador to Kiev, acting on orders from the highest levels of his government. The contract specified that Said must "disappear", in time for Kiev's impending victory celebration. The player characters found out about this, through Boris and his friends among the assassins, and carried out the contract by kidnapping the sorcerer — only to discover that "Said" was a simulacrum. The PCs tracked down the real Said — lurking in the dungeon near Oleshie? — and parleyed with him, reaching an agreement (by their usual tactic: a generous offer not to kill him, conditional on his submission to their authority). Said would indeed fail to appear at the victory celebration in Kiev (at least, publicly — he would be there, but disguised), making it seem to the Polish ambassador (and whoever he was working for) as if the assassination had been successful.
It later turned out that Said's apparent disappearance played directly into the hands of Kiev's enemies. The Polish courtier (and international man of mystery) Count Rudolf Sikorsky? convinced Prince Vladimir of Novgorod that Cherkessia had withdrawn its support for Kiev, and that (especially with Poland's support) the prince could now easily conquer his neighbors to the south. Sikorsky had pointed to the Cherkess emissaries' destruction of the Cult of Loki's base in the Valdai Highlands? in Novgorod as a sign of Cherkess displeasure with Kiev, and predicted that Ambassador Said would not appear at the Kievan victory celebration, as (Sikorsky said) he had been recalled to Cherkessia. When Said indeed failed to appear, Prince Vladimir took it as clear evidence that Sikorsky had been right, and now has declared war on Kiev.
Said is currently in hiding, having not appeared in public since the player characters kidnapped him (or rather, one of his simulacra) from his residence in Kiev. He is, now, nominally an ally — or perhaps more accurately, a pawn — of the PCs.
Future Knowledge
When the player characters traveled to the future, one of the past events they learned of was the sorcerer uprising in Kiev. In that timeline, Said, having trained enough loyal sorcerer followers, rises in rebellion against the City Council of Kiev, aiming to rule the principality himself. Archbishop Satyros? of the Orthodox Church opposes Said; he calls forth the demons that dwell in the catacombs beneath Kiev to fight the sorcerers for him. In so doing, the cleric awakens something dark and terrible that dwelled beneath the city. The ensuing battles ravage Kiev, and the demonic corruption from the awakened dark power make the city uninhabitable, forcing the surviving population to disperse throughout the countryside.
With Satyros seemingly dispatched (he was called to Byzantium, and has not been heard from since), the worst outcome seems to have been prevented. Does Said still have ambitions of ruling Kiev? Is the demonic presence, the "darkness", beneath Kiev still a threat? Unknown... (But see [stuff about possessed assassins [LINK])
Ambassador from Cherkessia to Kiev. A sorcerer of some power, he is rumored to have his hands in all sorts of dirty deeds. He seemed very interested in the letter? we asked him to decipher the hidden message of. The party suspects that he killed Danil & Anastas.
Recently he has begun to spread the sorcerers he has been training for Kiev throughout the city, and they seem more loyal to him than to the city or its council.
Additionally, it appears that he is behind a contract with the Assassin's Guild to kill him, as indicated by the divination result "He who calls to be struck with the sword, seeks not his own demise, but the sword's destruction." Speculation is that he intends to foil the assassination and use it as impetus to strike overtly at the guild and perhaps also the council (as the contract was ostensibly placed by the influential council member Dmitri Dolgorukiy?.