The Sins of Sasamo

See also: Lore

With a name as imposing as the winding climb required to reach their terminus, the Eighty Sins of Sasamo have endured countless summers to tell the tale of a princess who would dare defy the throne, only to pay the ultimate price for her folly. Yet while once a scandal that rocked the ruling house to its foundations, sending waves of shock and awe throughout the populace, details of the sordid affair have, with time, grown as worn and weathered as the very stones that shape the eponymous steps.

Crime and Punishment

According to records penned by Ul’dahn court historians, it was in the 1388th year of the Sixth Astral Era that princess Sasamo Ul Samo—first in line to the throne—turned cloak against both nation and kin. Having grown weary of her elder sister Sasadi’s rule, Sasamo is believed to have quietly forged alliances with remnants of the recently overthrown Thorne dynasty in a plot to claim the sultanate for herself. Before the plan could be executed, however, one of Sasamo’s own cabal betrayed her to the sultana, resulting in the princess’s immediate arrest and imprisonment in the Marasaja Pit.

At the much-publicized trial, the princess was charged with and convicted of a remarkable eighty counts of wrongdoing, from high treason against the sultanate and attempted regicide, to blasphemy and libertinism. Normally, such crimes (and in such abundance) would be punishable with a sentence no less than death. Yet matters were not as simple as erecting a gallows in the Gold Court, for sultanate law specifically prevented the execution of any member of the royal family. To see justice meted, the sultana tasked her counselors to design a punishment that would serve to duly humiliate her sister, while proving severe enough to deter any future uprisings. The resulting sentence was, at the time, the most extravagant the realm had ever witnessed.

For each charge brought against her, Sasamo was ordered to climb and descend the eighty steps leading from Scorpion Crossing to the Western Trade Gate (now the Gate of the Sultana) eighty times a day for eighty straight days, reciting aloud one of her eighty crimes with each step taken. For some of the more vertically endowed races, this might not have been such a daunting task, but for a privileged noble weighing but a few stones and measuring not a hair over three fulms, the punishment was brutal to say the least.

As is their wont, the citizenry of Ul’dah were eager to witness the shaming of one in such high standing, and took relish in their part of the ever-raucous rabble. In the first weeks of Sasamo’s punishment, the crowd would gather every morn at cockcall to jeer and spit, hurling profanities and refuse without surcease. The repeated abuse was a heavy burden on both mind and body of the princess, and soon it began taking Sasamo upwards of eighteen bells to complete her daily circuit, leaving little time in the oubliettes to regain strength before the following sunrise. Yet, to her credit, the disgraced second daughter of the former sultan refused to flinch, refused to hang her head in shame. It was this stubborn resilience that saw a transformation of the smallfolk’s hearts. After witnessing the tiny maiden will herself up and down the dusty tor day after brutal day, the ever-present jeers slowly began melting away into silent awe before eventually rising to cheers.

However, while the encouragement of the populace was enough to brighten her spirit, it could not provide succor for Sasamo’s weary flesh, and on the 50th day—the 67th step of her 75th ascent—the princess could lift her legs no more, and collapsed of exhaustion, never to rise again. Yet what would happen next would leave the city-state awestruck—the crowd of smallfolk who had accompanied the princess for nigh on three moons rushed to her side and gently raised aloft the wasted frame. They then proceeded to carry it in somber silence for the five remaining circuits so that Sasamo Ul Samo might be absolved of her crimes before the long journey to Thal’s realm.

The sultana was visibly shaken by the turn of events—wrought with guilt for approving the punishment that would ultimately condemn her only sibling. In response to the actions of the smallfolk, Sasadi immediately proclaimed Sasamo’s sentence rightly served, and moved to rename the very stairway upon which her sister fell the “Eighty Steps of Sasamo,” that the people might ever remember the day. Or so the royal court would have us believe.

An Inconvenient Truth

Often do we find that history is as malleable as hot wax, with historians serving as but the seals of the ruling class. Might there not have been another side to this tragic tale—a side that might paint a different picture? ‘The recent discovery of a diary allegedly penned by Sasamo in her final days casts doubt on the court-spun narrative that Sasamo was the driving force behind the failed coup, suggesting that the true villains of the story may be her advisors—advisors working under orders of the sultana herself in an attempt by Sasadi to preemptively quell any potential threats to her rule by constructing an elaborate plot that would see her sister implicated in crimes inescapable. This theory is further supported by the fact that, despite documented collusion with the princess, each of Sasamo’s advisors silently escaped any manner of punishment, with most simply disappearing from Ul’dah altogether. A convenient end for the sultana, to say the least. Is it not possible that, trapped in a position where any negativity towards the now-martyred princess might incite the Ul’dahn citizenry, Sasadi Ul Sadi was forced to make a move that would be received favorably by the public? Had she truly forgiven her sister? Her actions would suggest otherwise. Petitions by the populace to hold yearly remembrances for the fallen princess were consistently denied, and pilgrims who had journeyed to walk the steps turned away by guards citing “congestion.” What is more, but three summers had passed before the sultana ordered the city charters rewritten, quietly changing the steps’ name once again to the current “Eighty Sins of Sasamo.” And the episode involving the smallfolk bearing the princess after her premature passing? Rewritten with an “official” account stating that Sasamo collapsed on the final step of the final pass. A slow, yet surgically precise barrage of palace-centric propaganda had become a pall over the memories of the people, leaving them susceptible to a truth convenient to none save the court.