Simurgh · Chapter 6 of 6
Thirty Birds
A hundred thousand veils · Thirty survivors · A pun that is the point
Thirty birds crossed the world to find out they were the answer.
Two centuries after the Shahnameh, a Persian poem used the same name for something else entirely. The birds of the world set out to find their king, who is said to live behind a distant mountain and a hundred thousand veils of light and darkness. The journey destroys almost all of them. Thirty arrive — and the whole poem turns on the fact that thirty birds, in Persian, is si morgh. They are what they had crossed the world to look for. This is a different bird in a different kind of book: an allegory built on a pun, and the name in the oldest layer does not mean thirty birds at all.
- A hundred thousand veils
- Thirty survive
- A pun
Unlocks in-game at Ascension tier 5.
