Deep within the desert, the undead of Egypt stir restlessly, ruling over what remains of their ancient empire. The deathless Pharaoh Ramses and his vassals command undying armies of reanimated corpses, skeleton warriors, resurrected animals, and terrifying constructs such as living pyramids and obelisks infused with the souls of powerful necromancers. When combat ensues the armies of the enemy dwindle while the Liches ranks grow with each dropped body. The necromancer kings are descendants of antediluvian dynasties from the time of Atlantis, who are not bound by human frailty nor conscience due to the terrible power that animates their flesh and twists their minds. The Lich Kings are at war, not merely with mortal empires or jealous gods but the natural order of the cosmos itself. They seek undo creation and reshape it into a deathless state of timeless perfection… but only after exacting their revenge upon the mortal and divine world.
Over nine thousand years ago, mankind reached its zenith and ushered in an age of miracles. The white spires of Atlantis pierced the stars above while the keen minds of their sages fathomed the deepest inner workings of the universe; the might of the grand city extended in all the four directions and the enlightenment of man established the impossible as real. Immense fleets of silver ships carried their splendor to shores near and far, reaching all lands on Earth, where their colonies shone like glittering jewels against the savagery of their primitive human brothers. The Atlantean minds were of utmost refinement, thought replaced speech and their mouths held songs of veneration only; the might of their valiant kings was vast but tempered by selfless virtue; flying astral ships traversed the deep blue of the sky like the azure of the seas, puncturing the veil between worlds and crossing beyond to cast their nets like fishermen into wonders inconceivable; bringing them down to the earth to add to the vast learning of their wise for the benefit of all. Alabaster pyramids made of sentient materials housed libraries containing the stored memories from aeons past and secrets of the planes beyond. The natural force that animates the skies and the workings of all beings was made available, powering machines of mind boggling complexity and infusing living metals for holy purposes. Its worldly splendor was matched by its arcane mastery which saw perfection to a semidivine degree. They grasped the unseen essence of things, which beget wondrous reverence of the cosmos in the hearts of their kin. Atlantis understood magic like few other mortal civilizations and the city itself was built as an isomorph of the ultimate geometric shape underlying the cosmos. In an act of sympathetic magic they drew the powers of the stars and the perennial forces of existence into the city to resonate in harmony with the hum of creation itself. The span of life extended tenfold, disease was unknown and all that is excellent in man to this day is still but an echo of the Atlantean apex. Only faint shadows of memory remain, because even all this glory was ultimately futile. Legend speaks of how, in its quest for knowledge, Atlantis unleashed an apocalypse. A transgression against the order of the cosmos was committed, whose exact nature has been obscured by the dark gulf of time; it condemned Atlantis and with it sealed the fate of all. Death swept across land, sea and sky, dooming the old world and erasing the age of miracles.
The stars seemed to divert from their course and like a titanic giant in paroxysms, the earth shook viciously. A cataclysm was set off which drowned the lands to the highest mountain in a world-ending deluge, ravaging all in its path. The ocean crushed the mighty city and only a small group of survivors escaped the waves by the luck of their fortunate stars. They emerged into a dangerous, reborn, post-apocalyptic world. The small band of lost souls traversed the seas, sailing the coasts, searching for suitable land to settle and for signs of their brothers and sisters, but the flood had brought all variety of monsters out of hiding to prey on solid ground and sea alike; emboldened by the catastrophe, and the weakened veil separating worlds, demons, fiends and all sorts of unnatural things settled on the earth, making each excursion by the survivors costly to their dwindling numbers. But in the land of Khem, they finally reached their resting haven, an old colony which had been established along the river Nile during the previous age. Deeply shaken by the events that had transpired, they sought to salvage what they could. But even in this place, so far inland, the waves had demolished what once stood so proudly and carried its inhabitants into oblivion. The lush landscape of Khem had been raised and transformed into a desert, except for the serpentine stripe of life that was the Nile. Although Atlantis had reached heights hitherto unknown to mankind, that development was not shared equally among the Atlanteans; the survivors carried only a small fraction of that treasure and most of what was attained has been lost to the depths forever. The antediluvians settled in the region of Upper Egypt where the ravaged colony lay, but soon expanded into Lower Egypt, closer to the sea and the Nile’s delta. The children of Atlantis set about to rebuild their civilization and after they ascertained that the deluge was a consequence of their kin’s actions, they swore not to suffer such calamity ever again. The furtive natives of Khem emerged from their caves, where savage instinct had directed them to safety, foreseeing what mere reason could not. They bowed to the Atlanteans and worshiped them as living gods. The Atlanteans gave them guidance and the Khemites provided the manpower to rebuild their lost splendor. Thus, a new civilization was born, magical Egypt, who bore the memory of humanity’s Golden Age but also the lament of its annihilation.
Ceaseless fear of a new cataclysm moved the antediluvian survivors to create vast megalithic structures to store their knowledge. They encoded what remained of their attainments in geometric and mathematical relationships that could be deciphered by those advanced enough to understand; these were built in such a way as to withstand the ravages of time and the punishment of the elements. The Khemites—now Egyptians—set about to execute the designs of their newfound gods, and the god-kings gave them tools and knowledge to accomplish their holy task. To further secure the survival of the ideas they had saved from the waves, the Pharaohs encoded their wisdom into myth; for should even the stones be reduced to rubble, their knowledge would be chiseled into the memory of mankind and carry their wisdom, through story and song, along with their warning of the calamitous event, that nearly eliminated all civilization, across the corridors of time into the distant future. Obelisks were erected to harmonize the above with the below, enormous pyramidical structures were raised to mountainous altitudes. Temple complexes were built and landscapes reshaped to accomplish a symmetry between the stars above and earth below. It was a principle of ‘resomorphic magic,’ a mechanic of the astral realm that underlies the material universe, where like shares in the nature of like, a resonance of form and quality. The perfection and eternal nature of the sky was transferred to the earth below to bring permanence to Egypt and create a sanctuary for life and learning, meant to thwart future calamity. Thousands of years passed thus in harmony. Egypt reached such shining refinement and purity that even gods took sojourns in the lands of Khem to share their blessings upon man. Imhotep, the grand vizier of Pharaoh Djoser of the Third Dynasty, became the disciple of the god of scribes, ibis-headed Thoth, whom the Greeks call Hermes Trismagistus, the Thrice-Great Hermes. He shared his knowledge of the immortality of the soul and how man could ascend even beyond the pinnacle of the Atlanteans to the radiance of the Creator. The fires of magic were rekindled and Egypt reached renown as the home of arcane perfection, which echoes to this day, as even the word for alchemy is derived from their hallowed land—Khem. It is said that Imhotep achieved his goal and uncovered the secret of immortality, but being selfless to a fault he intended to share what he had attained with all. To prevent the entire human race from becoming immortal, the gods removed him from Earth and remade him into a star in the firmament, where he now shines eternally in the secret 13th constellation of Ophiuchus, whom the Greeks of later ages deified and incorporated into their myths as Asclepius, the god of medicine.
Humans outside of holy Egypt found new banners around which they gathered. Civilizations arose swiftly like reeds in the wake of the cataclysm and spread their influence surrounding the land of Khem. In the east the Nephilim Flesh Splicers of Sumer thrived. Their ancestors had summoned entities down from the stars who had traversed the Outer Night, the acosmic void separating multiverses. These ‘Outer Gods’ were already old when our universe was young. They taught the Sumerians many things and sired offspring with their daughters, producing giants who ruled cruelly over them, large in appetites and madness. To the south arose the Nubians, a civilization that learned from Egypt but never abandoned their autonomy. In the north the Mycanean civilization prospered. A culture of heroes which produced legendary Perseus who slew the Gorgon Medusa. In the north-east of Egypt arose the Phoenicians. Master sailors and navigators who expanded their influence far, and whose descendants would later form secret-clad Carthage. And the Hittites, who blossomed in Asia Minor, worshiping storm gods.
Unaware, these cultures would soon come to face a new enemy—as deadly as any natural catastrophe could be. For a new doom was looming. The Sea-People, terrors of the deep, fishlike humanoids better known as the ‘Acolytes of Dagon,’ were approaching unseen below the waves. This aquatic power sought to conquer and destroy all, for it saw value only in its deity, the Outer God Dagon, who, like the Star Gods of Sumer, had arrived from a cosmos completely alien to our own and traversed the chaos of the Outer Realm to settle on this material world, aeons ago. Dagon had corrupted the fishmen to be little more than moths to his unnatural flame, not by conscious machination but by his mere reality-altering presence alone. Dagon possesses vast power, but, being an Outsider, his mind and designs do not adhere to the principles of reason. His very being, from soul done to his body’s equivalent of atoms, were created under completely different natural and metaphysical laws and only exist here through the unholy miracle of Dagon’s force of will. His body does not prevail solely on the material plane, but casts a lower dimensional shadow into our realm from a hidden sphere on the Astral Sea; this shadow takes the shape of a colossal fishlike monstrosity of shifting flesh and impossible anatomy that disregards all laws of space or sanity; a writhing terror of ichthyic eyes and humanoid arms erupting from a great dragon-like tail, covered in sense organs who reach in hunger and futility for objects which this universe can not provide. He emanates an abhorrent aura that morphs his surroundings into a reflection of himself, a living nightmare. Out of this maddening force, the fishmen, his acolytes, were sent forth to do his twisted bidding—to acquire gold and cut a gash across this world. Dagon broke chains of form and reason, the fishmen didn’t even know existed, and liberated them into an ecstatic frenzy where they followed unquestioningly, freed from all care. All that mattered was Dagon and his unhallowed wishes.
The horrors emerged from the sea like thieves in the night, mounting their invasion with unnatural speed and propelled by the cosmos-defying powers of their god, catching the ancient empires completely off guard. They set the coasts alight and reddened the seas with gore while they advanced inland, leaving a trail of death and ruin. Mycanea, the Hittites and the Phoenician empire were completely wiped from the face of the earth. Their cities blundered and burned, their people put to the blade or dragged off into the depths for unspeakable purposes. Sumer was vandalized but held onto existence due to their massively fortified cities, and their Nephilim King’s mutated blood. In Egypt, the aquatic abominations swept in from the north and advanced along the Nile into Upper Egypt, destroying and desecrating holy temples that had stood for thousands of years, and killing every soul in their path. The number of their dead was beyond counting and Pharaoh Ramses’ heart became filled with great despair and grim foreboding. He called the wise to his court for council but they could not alleviate his worry, the portends all spoke of even greater calamity approaching. Little did they know how right they were. A figure emerged from the assembled court that would not be denied an audience before the king. As he moved towards the throne, all guards who touched the dark figure disintegrated instantaneously to ash. The pharaoh was struck by the otherworldly nimbus emanating from the man cloaked in long black robes, his face hidden behind a strange silver mask. The stranger spoke with the calm and certainty of the desert, his words reverberated across the palace marble like the rumble of a thousand horses approaching. He claimed to be the legendary Last Atlantean, a semi-mythical figure, and only living survivor from pre-cataclysmic age, known to appear at crucial junctures in Egyptian history. It is told in myth that this antediluvian achieved immortality like Imhotep, albeit by darker means. He revealed his face to the king alone, who seemed to be enthralled and dropped any reservations as to his identity. The Last Atlantean presented a way out, he told Ramses to use the resources at hand—the mountains of dead fouling across his kingdom and turn them into undying soldiers, a force even the sea could not outnumber. To achieve this, he materialized a book out of thin air, the dreaded Book of the Dead, a forbidden tome also known as the Necronomicon in later ages. It was a great sacrifice that was required, but one that needed to be made for the benefit of all. Having delivered his message, the Last Atlantean disappeared. But it was enough, the King had been swayed by the vision he saw in the antideluvian’s face and proceeded with a steeled heart for the sake of the kingdom.
The abhorrent rites described in the book were followed assiduously, the mortality of the king and his closest priests, as well as his loyal generals, was extracted by bizarre rituals and sealed into containers called phylacteries; from these objects, the undead could be restored even in the event of complete physical disintegration, making them deathless. Organs were removed into canopic jars to allow the unholy currents of necromantic energy to flow unobstructed through their physical avatars. The king’s closest servants sacrificed themselves willingly to feed the phylacteries and charge them with their life force. The family of the king was sacrificed too, as instructed by the terrible book, to break any attachment that could anker the life force of the king besides the phylactery, and through this severing provide no space through which death could enter and strike at the essence of the undead pharaoh. When it was done, Ramses gathered the dead and raised them by the force of his will. Liberated from human concerns through the rituals, the potency of his spirit could be focused in a way that was not possible to mortal wielders of magic. He imbued skeletons, fresh corpses, chariot-carrying steeds, fallen Nephilim giants, and all manner of creatures with the necromantic force for which he acted like an inexhaustible conduit. Thus reanimated, they marched north to meet the Acolytes of Dagon in combat, raising all corporeal remains from tombs, mastabas and ancient temples along their way. The armies clashed in the ‘Battle of the Delta’ and fierce combat ensued that dragged on for seven days and nights, into which the fishmen poured more and more of their forces from other lands, in the hope of exhausting the Egyptians; but each dead Acolyte was raised and fed the ranks of the Necromancer King as his loyal, undying servant. His army grew larger and larger until they broke the Acolyte’s resolve and cut them all to pieces on the battlefield. It was done. What remained of the aquatic monsters retreated into the sea and a schism occurred within the Acolytes. One group broke off and abandoned their allegiance to Dagon, forming the ‘Supplicants of Axaloth,’ a new ichthyic faction. Both erupted into a brutal civil war that rages until this day hidden underneath the waves. Ramses emerged victorious but the price was more than steep. The king and his men had sacrificed their very humanity, possibly dooming themselves to eternal torment in the nether realms for their forbidden acts, if their phylacteries should ever be destroyed. And the symmetry between Egypt and the stars had been shattered through the rampage of the fishmen which had destroyed constructs that took thousands of years to establish through the sweat and blood of millions of Egyptian hands and the hallowed worship of their hierophants. Once more, the blood of Atlantis had suffered a cataclysm that nearly wiped them out. Victory tasted as bitter as ash.
The necromantic rituals had taken a drastic toll on the pharaoh and his undead minions. Their minds had become warped, some were driven into intense melancholy, others into outright madness. But the Necromancer King, who had peered with the eyes of the Last Atlantean beyond the veil of creation into the dimension called the ‘Noumenon,’ fell into a mania, where he beheld the universe as a defective construct. He saw himself chosen with the mission of remaking, rectifying the imperfection at the heart of creation. To remove death, entropy and suffering from the fabric of the universe itself which he took to be the flawed handiwork of an imposter god masquerading as the Creator. And so, he set out to accomplish, what the lich necromancers termed, the Great Work—a revolt against the seemingly inexorable fate of all in this universe. Ramses believes the destruction of Atlantis was directly tied to the antediluvians uncovering this cosmic secret. They had reached a dimension of complete perfection in their occult exploration, against which our cosmos seemed like a demiurgic mockery. Thus, Egypt became a haunted land, where undeath was more valued than life and contact to the outside ceased for hundreds of years except for those who sought to have their souls sealed in phylacteries through the necromantic arts of immortality. The phylacteries themselves took the shape of small boxes, sometimes unassuming everyday objects, but also, as in the case of the most powerful magic wielders, entire pyramids, obelisks and temple complexes, fed by the sacrifice of tens of thousands of loyal subjects to fuel the enormous energies needed to pierce beyond the stars into the deepest secrets beyond the veil of creation
And so, the pharaoh and his vassals ruled, undying and with little care for the material realm and the petty squabbles beyond their borders, content in their ability to achieve their goal of transforming the nature of the cosmos and turning a dying universe to eternal undeath… It was only a matter of time now. Until catastrophe struck once more. This time in the form of a man. Alexander the Great, Bane of the Achaemenids, Son of Zeus-Ammon, Champion of Helios had arrived at their door. Alexander crushed the Persian empire and had set his eyes on further conquest. Empowered by the sun god Helios, Vanquisher of the Undead, he was able to withstand the powerful arcane forces wielded by the Necromancer Pharaoh and his minions—he conquered Egypt, slew most of the lich kings, toppled their blasphemous constructs and ground their undead armies into dust.
Beaten but not defeated, the pharaoh and the remaining liches retreated deep into the desert—to abandoned cities, forgotten pyramids and haunted temple complexes, long buried by sand. Deep in inhospitable territories, where attrition would not allow for the pursuit of mortal armies. There they wait, plotting, brooding, never sleeping, their minds twisted by undeath, no longer concerned chiefly with the completion of the Great Work, as originally intended, but consumed with burning hatred for what was taken from them by the audacity of mortal upstarts and the cruel twists of fate since the time of Atlantis. Each day their army of the dead grows. Time is on their side, for soon the stars will turn in their favor once more and when they do, they will teach the world the true meaning of wrath.
“Your brave warriors may fight until their last breath, but mine can fight a while longer.”
—Iset, Scholar of Apophis
There exist many types of undead creatures in this world, ranging from skeletons, zombies, ghouls, unholy flesh constructs, vampires, mummies, resurrected dragons and many, many more, but none of these is perhaps as dreaded as the lich. What makes this undying monstrosity especially fearsome compared to the others is that this class of undead retains its intelligence through the process of joining the unliving, unlike most of the other types, with the exception of vampires, mummies and more exotic types. Furthermore, a lich can not be as easily destroyed as the other unliving, who are vulnerable to fire, sacred spells, decapitation or other forms of injury. Liches are usually powerful magic wielders—necromancers—who are able to perfect their mystical art beyond the natural lifespan of mortal wizards, and for many this becomes the driving force behind undergoing the process of ascending into lichdom. But, in principle, any creature can be turned into a lich, if the complicated process is executed correctly.
A lich’s body can easily be mistaken for the animated corpse that the undead uses to interact with the world, which is commonly his previous mortal form. But the lich’s real body is the so-called phylactery, which houses the life force together with the consciousness of the necromancer. When the lich’s organic body is destroyed, his consciousness survives and can reconstitute a new physical form from the safety of the phylactery’s hiding place. Since the phylactery is vulnerable and central to the lich’s survival, it is usually well hidden in a secret location and protected by traps or guardians that shield it from danger. The phylactery itself can take on any form suitable to house the spirit of the necromancer, ranging from alchemically altered everyday objects to impressive obelisks or even larger structures such as pyramids. But for the most part, they take the shape of small containers, which appear unassuming to the untrained eye and can easily be hidden in tombs or among more precious objects to throw off those that would do it harm.
The process of becoming a lich is gruesome and irrevertible. It not only involves unholy processes directed at the individual that undergoes the transformation, but also affects those around him, and specifically, those closest to the proto-lich in terms of emotional attachment. During the dark rituals the new lich is killed, and his soul prevented from escaping into the Astral Sea but instead redirected to the alchemically prepared phylactery. Specific organs are removed from the body, depending on the type of lichcraft employed (Egyptian, Naga, Infernal, Abyssal, Eldritch etc.) to allow for the unhindered flow of necromantic energy from the infernal planes or the Outer Realm; but also to remove focal points towards which the life force of the lich may gravitate to, and thus be drawn away from the phylactery back into the body. During these macabre operations unholy incantations are invoked to charge the process with the dark blessing of death gods and other otherworldly patrons of necromancy. To complete the task of becoming a full lich, the attachments not only to the body but also to other individuals must be broken. Family members, close friends, pets, venerated objects etc. must all be sacrificed. If this step is not completed, the phylactery may not receive the entire consciousness of the necromancer, and the lich will deteriorate and die after a set amount of time. Murder is only necessary if the attachment is serious and can not be given up otherwise. A mere acquaintance, or a family member for whom the would-be lich carries no love, does not exert a pull on his consciousness and can therefore be disregarded. But etiquette is important in the face of the dark gods watching over such a ritual and at least someone close to the lich must be slain. If there is no one close to the future-lich, then a symbolic sacrifice of a pure virgin must be performed instead to satisfy the demands of the rituals.
To further empower the lich and his soul’s container, other beings are usually killed together with the proto-lich then just those close to him. These serve mainly as a source of life force, or food, to the newly born lich and to help him over the traumatizing transition. In the case of the rituals described in the Necronomicon, an unborn, someone young, someone old, and a soul from beyond the grave are sacrificed. The purpose of this seems to be more poetic than a fathomable mechanic as other carriers of life force would in principle serve the same purpose. But the laws of the Necronomicon, and similar tomes, deal in the strange dream logic of the astral realm and do not yield to common reason.
Not all undead are created equal and a lich is royalty among the unliving. Other undead creatures exhibit a natural reverence towards liches and easily submit into their service as if driven by an unseen hierarchy exerting their influence over them. As mentioned, liches are generally powerful magic users in life and the additional years granted to these necromancers allow them to elevate their craft to humanly impossible levels, making this process—no matter how horrific—an alluring temptation to the most serious adepts of the arcane arts.
“The lower is the price of the higher, just as life is the price of immortality.”
—Hermes Trismegistus
The concept of the Great Work, or Magnum Opus, is central to the liches’ motivation. It signifies many things to various people throughout history. But to the undead of Egypt it means a complete revolt against the natural order of the cosmos and a reshaping of the universe at a fundamental level. It is an alchemical endeavor of cosmic proportion that seeks to perfect a seemingly flawed universe. It was born out of a vision of Ramses III. In it, he peered beyond the known confines of existence into a dimension of timelessness and bliss, called the “Noumenon” or Omnihedron—the ultimate platonic form— which lies beyond the astral domain. He was overcome with the sense of imperfection that is imbued in the basic fabric of our cosmos that is tainted by the passage of time.
Death, disease and suffering seemed like abominations in the face of such flawlessness. Ramses could not accept this and blamed the Creator of the multiverse with either deliberate malevolence or incompetence for creating this realm of agony and tears, where the creeping passage of time ultimately turns everything into desert. This impression was fueled by the memory of the twists of fate that have haunted man since the fall of Atlantis. The undead pharaoh and his kings see themselves tasked with alleviating this. They take necromancy to be the extropic remedy to the crawling decay inherent in everything from the material plane to the highest planes of the astral realm. For even these places, Elysium, Celestia, Paradise etc. with all their magnificence, and their billions of years of existence, must eventually end—be undone—in the Great Cosmic Dissolution at the end of time.
Many plans swirl among the lich kings on how to achieve this goal. They range from the more reasonable and pragmatic, like vast alchemical machines that need to be built across the planes, to the more deranged such as killing and resurrecting the Creator of the multiverse, so that through this zombie god the multiverse can be reshaped into permanent undead form. Ramses’ fervor centers around elevating his power level to a divine degree so he can assemble a force of titans, dark gods, abyssal lords, outer gods, archdevils and other nameless things from the Outer Realm, around himself; and lead them in an onslaught against Omnius. And after raising him, transform the cosmos into an undying state, freed from the touch of entropy… The motivations of other empires on Earth pale in comparison to such nightmarish aspirations. But it reveals that the true driving force behind the Necromancer King and his loyal vassals is not a twisted obsession with death—as commonly assumed—but a warped love of life.
“Don’t judge. I was… raised this way.”
—Zombie Plato
Ramses III.
Ramses III. is the final ruler of Egypt, with a long lineage tracing back to the days before the deluge. The pharaoh was forced into embracing necromancy to save his civilization from certain annihilation by the Acolytes of Dagon, but in doing so lost his mind. What first he embraced so reluctantly, he now follows with unsurpassed passion and zeal. Undeath is the ultimate state of being for Ramses and he wants to share it with everyone and everything. Pushed into megalomania by a cosmic vision presented to him by the Last Atlantean, the chief necromancer wants to kill and raise the creator of the cosmos himself whom he takes to be a false deity, and reshape the universe into a timeless, deathless state free of imperfection. But not before he has exacted his revenge upon the mortal and divine world that had the audacity of delaying his Great Work and punishing the greatness of his ancestors.
Iset
Iset was born into royalty as the daughter of King Ptolemy II, but was seduced into the path of undeath by a cursed artifact. It was the skull of Menkaure, a Lich King, one of Ramses’ vassals who was defeated in battle against the armies of Alexander the Great. The skull was able to reconstitute his power slowly over the centuries as his phylactery was never destroyed. He lured Iset with promises and revelations into doing unspeakable acts and convinced her to abandon her court life and embrace true lichdom. Ultimately, Iset betrayed the skull and took the power within his phylactery for herself and set about to follow in the footsteps left behind by the Last Atlantean, who she assumes is speaking to her across the gulf of time through messages left behind in ancient temples and texts, in the foresight of her coming across them in the future and leading her towards fulfilling her occult destiny…
Naghara
Naghara belongs to the plutonic nagas, an old and enigmatic race that dwells in the Inner Earth. He joined the necromancer empire to expand his arcane mastery and raise his dead companion, who was slain by one of the many dangers of the Underworld. He was exiled by his kin for taking his newfound love of reanimation too far. Naghara has assembled a small following of loyal naga warlocks around himself who want to explore the magical arts unfettered by restrictions and have committed themselves to the vision of a new universe as expounded by Ramses. As a reward for their service they have been elevated into full lichdom, not just mere undeath, by the necromancer king’s blessing. Naghara’s designs, like the pharaoh’s, are not easily understood since they are so far removed from the desires of regular mortals.
Terrorcropolis
Terrorcropolis is a construct charged with the souls of powerful necromancers, and fed by the sacrifice of tens of thousands of loyal subjects that has taken on a collective consciousness merged out of the many souls that were fed into it. The Terrorcropolis escaped destruction at the hands of Alexander due to its hidden location deep in the deserts of Upper Egypt. This sentient temple complex is haunted by the ghosts of the dead and surrounded by armies of skeletons and other ancient guardians that protect the immense treasures of gold and priceless artifacts hidden in its chambers. The Terrorcropolis serves at the pleasure of Ramses but seems to have developed ambitions of its own as of late. It has begun to doubt the feasibility of challenging Omnius and the natural order of the cosmos; but it is bound by ancient rites into obedience to the pharaoh. The mind of this construct is vast and relentlessly looking for a way to break free. The Terrorcropolis has materialized a series of bodies with which it explores the world beyond Egypt’s borders; and, in secret, is amassing a titanic wormlike form made out of the flesh of a myriad corpses. It must find a way to free itself from Ramses even if it has to bring about the end of days in the process.
“Long ago, when the enigmatic being known as the Last Atlantean appeared before my court, while the great Ichthyic Invasion was sweeping through our holy land, he allowed me to behold his true appearance. He removed the silver mask covering his face, but instead of a man, I was met with a vision. I saw swirling stars and nebulae, in complexity unlike anything on Earth. It was inexpressible, I peered beyond space and time, into the Noumenon, beyond the veil that shrouds all creation. Epiphanic understanding overwhelmed me and I burst into uncontrollable laughter. For I grasped what a joke it all is. Everything is upside down. The touch of necromancy is the spark of life, our enemies can bestow the grave only. We will change the very face of the universe; through us death shall die.”
—The Exultation of Pharaoh Ramses III
