Amanar

Amanar (Tamasheq "Warrior of the Desert") leads the recently established Seattle community group and militia branches of the international revolutionary organization Bab es Salaam. In addition to his exemplary reputation in providing community service through the organization's Auburn madrasa, mosque, and hospice, Amanar has built over the last year or so a name for himself among Seattle's shadowrunning network as a mercenaryworth more than his salt. Although he has received sterling reports from Johnsons on the runs he has taken, he has also demonstrated what seems to some as erratic criteria in choosing which runs to accept. Even though he controls Seattle operations for Bab es Salaam, Amanar still reports to the organization's global leadership, and probably as a result of some combination of Bab es Salaam's priority needs, ulterior political goals, and a stringent personal code of ethics, Amanar has refused to take a number of jobs offered that would have seemed windfalls to most runners, and has meanwhile at times taken on runs requiring firepower and risk-bearing beyond the pay grade of most Auburn runners.

Although both outlandish runners and traditionally-clad and devout Muslims of various ethnicities can be seen throughout the Seattle metroplex, the combination of the two in the person of Amanar is still a bit of an oddity. His appearance in Auburn nearly two years ago did not go unnoticed. The construction of the Bab es Salaam community centre and the growth of its membership has alarmed some, even though the relative calm it has brought to its immediate area, as well as its outreach efforts, have brought hope to some of Auburn's sub-working-class denizens. Amanar has described himself on occassion as a simple blacksmith, explaining to blue-collar potential converts that he descends from the ìnhædʻæn caste of metalworkers rather than from the imúšaɣ traditional noblility, who would not deign to handle coarse metal like iron. Of course, he does not generally bother to explain that the imúšaɣ were decimated over the course of the 20th and 21st centuries, such that the blacksmith class have come in large part to fill the void at the top of the social hierarchy throughout northern Africa, nor that the ìnhædʻæn are also traditionally regarded as lore-keepers and sorcerers with their own secret language, shrouded in such dense mystery as to be feared even by their nominal warrior-masters.

As a shadowrunner, Amanar offers his services as a war mage and soldier. He specializes in blitz attacks and hit-and-run tactics that rely on his considerable ability to deal out a lot of pain in a short period of time. While not incapable of discretion, Amanar's real strengths as a runner fall on the brute force side of the equation, a fact that, combined with his substantial fees, might dissuade some from hiring him in situations that don't call for a rain of fire. In those instances, however, one would be hard-pressed to find a runner more capable, nor would one often be needed. In those instances in which his one-man-army-for-hire approach is deemed insufficient to bring down an exceptionally tough target, Amanar also offers to enlist the services of any number of his milita members, at a commensurate addtional fee, of course. In the rare circumstance when even that might not be enough, Amanar can call on his international network, although he has not been know to do this without very good reason, nor without very great cost attached.