32nd Nachgeheim 2512
Mid morning
"Master? Why is everyone so quiet?"
Meister Glook spares the blind youth carrying his standard a kindly smile. "They're overjoyed that we've reached our destination, boy. The stonework here has to be seen to be believed; it's struck them quite dumb."
On the howdah behind me Aranei Soulflenser rolls her eyes, futilely fanning her face with her fan. "It's…
Large."
I always thought that Dark Elf names were trying too hard, but apparently they sound better in druhir.
"Nothing compared to the slave-wrought wonders of Naggaroth, I'm sure."
"Slave-dwarf-wrought, slave-human-
cleaned. This sand gets...
Everywhere!"
"Hah!" Meister Glook holds his right arm high for his men to see, then drops it forward as he spurs his mount. His Desert Dogs take up his challenge, geeing their mounts to accelerate into the necropolis ahead.
Aranei sighs as they race away, then turns to make doe eyes at me. "My lord,
might I prevail upon you to free me from this most
distasteful sand? I would be…" She licks her lips. "
Ever so grateful."
I take a look at the open gate ahead of us and
command my mount forward. The Construct Lantern mammoth is nothing like as fast as the Desert Dogs' horses, but Meister Glook advised that if I wanted to be seen as important a stately procession was more appropriate than pure haste.
"There is little point until we are inside, but once we are I will make sure that you are presentable before our audience."
Aranei's attitude is hardly surprising. Since I rewrote the.. less than social desire-sets of my Dark Elf prisoners, they've been..
extremely eager to please me. Or maybe this is just a part of their culture? I've felt somewhat self-conscious about asking the few High Elves I've met so far about that sort of thing, particularly given what
else I've asked of them.
"How jealous I am that the favour of a
dead woman can compel you to cross
continents."
"You know perfectly well why we're here."
"My own people have no love for the chaos gods. If you treated with them as you treated with Lord Barblash's reavers, your greatness would only be
magnified by your possession of a people truly
worthy of you." She looks up at the walls surrounding us, sighting the ranks of armoured skeletons staring blankly across the desert. "Unlike these... Mindless...
Things."
"It will be some time before I am ready to treat with the Witch King." About the same time Thurgun finishes my gromril armour with that nifty anti-magic master rune we found in Karak Azgal. Or maybe later. "And I do truly appreciate your people's service to me. Yours especially." Her face lights up with delight. It's true that in combat I mostly use her as a scroll-caddie, but magic is one of the few things around here I
can't just blast through and that makes her
essential to my ongoing wellbeing.
Hm. The city of Lybaras is.. dead. Its people are -for the most part- animated skeletons with little to no will of their own. Not that any of this was
supposed to happen; the Tomb Kings and Queens were self-interested but there's very little point ruling anything if there's no one around capable of revering you for it. Now, I watch a naked skeleton mime the actions of putting damp cloth on a washing line when in reality both cloth and line have long since gone to dust. Another sits at an empty market stall in an empty market, selling nothing to nobody. My
limited understanding of the magics employed tell me that a Liche Priest or Tomb Prince could.. order them to 'wake up' from acting out scenes from their lives, to actually think about what they're doing. But in these troubled times
they spend their time either with other intelligent undead or with their military forces.
Aranei carefully stands and walks across the howdah to sit at my side, following my gaze to look down at the later peasantry of Nehekhara. I wonder what she makes-?
"But how do they
whip them if they can't feel the
pain? The whole situation is completely futile."
Ah.
I can see the
Grand Temple of Asaph up ahead, and.. since the gates were open I'm going to assume that
someone intelligent is keeping tabs on our progress up the city's main thoroughfare. Hm. Looking up, I see a small flight of those undead vultures the Nehekharans like so much. A Liche Priest looking through their eyes, perhaps? Regardless, if I'm to establish myself as a powerful figure a full procession is probably in order and the half dozen construct mammoths forming my baggage train are
hardly sufficient.
And this is one of the few places in the world I can do it without having anyone try to burn me as a necromancer.
Aranei's eyes glow in wonder as I raise my left hand and
release my Construct Lanterns to form ranks before and behind me.
Beastmen gathered during my purge of the Drakwald Forest appear first, followed by goblins and skaven from my campaign in the World's Edge Mountains. I
compel them to march in perfect lockstep, entirely contrary to their nature. Closest to the mammoth I
call a handful of daemons who didn't have the sense to flee from the material realm once their bodies started turning orange. Tidied up plaguebearers for the most part, with a small unit of steed-mounted daemonettes… Yes, that should be sufficient.
Aranei takes me lowering my left hand as a sign that she can press up against my right side. "It's a such a shame that you don't let them out more often, my lord."
"I do want people to see me as powerful. I
don't want them terrified. Terrified people make stupid decisions."
She looks mildly exasperated. "Not even a
little terror?"
"That's not how I'm choosing to work with my current group of allies."
She… I'm reasonably confident that she
can disagree with me, but a combination of her ring-compelled loyalty and her upbringing makes her unwilling to flat out tell me to my face that she knows better. But these people have been long-familiar with tyrants and monsters. If I'm going to see my goals recognised,
I need to be more than that.
Far ahead, a few of the Desert Dogs look back at the source of the stamping behind them
and I see the fear on their faces as they dig their spurs in. Meister Glook sits up slightly as they ride past him and then looks back himself.
I can just about see him laughing. Public school in Marienburg must be
crazy.
I sit back a little as the Temple slowly draws nearer.
On an upper balcony I see skeleton warriors march out from the temple's interior, carrying banners and musical instruments. Below, Meister Glook comes to a halt before the entrance and is directing his men around to the side of the temple, out of the path of my constructs' advance. An instruction which seems to relieve them greatly.
Boom. Boom-boom
boom. Boom. Boom-boom
boom.
The skeletons begin beating their drums in perfect unison as my vanguard moves into the plaza before the Temple and spreads out to the left and right. But it isn't until my mammoth steps into the plaza that the
woman I am here to see steps out from the shadows.
I have the ring magnify my vision so that I can precisely judge her physical state. That's usually a
rough guide to the mental state of a Tomb King; the more decayed they are the more out of it they're likely to be. In her case… Her wrappings appear to be in good repair, and her gold and blue ornaments appear to be intact. She's wearing a fan-shaped headdress, an ornate belt with a scarab belt buckle and a.. semi armoured ruff/shoulder armour thing. Her face is.. covered in a mask, but the mask appears to have been damaged on the left side. I can see her bare skull beneath it. Hm. A little worrying that she hasn't simply had it repaired… Her outfit is completed by a blue cloak which is attached to her shoulder armour and arms and a.. sort of open-at-the-front mini-skirt of the same material. She's also carrying her asp-tipped staff of office, which she hands to an attendant as she takes her seat at the front of the balcony.
In her wake, the lesser Tomb Princes, Princesses and Liche Priests file in. The Priest hovering on her left side must be the local Hierophant, as the other Priests stay well back. My mammoths are nearing the front of the plaza now, and I make a point of maintaining direct eye… Eye-to-enchanted eye socket contact with her. Though she no longer has the capacity for facial expression, her completely still pose gives me no way to even
try and guess what she's thinking about this whole thing.
My mammoth stops at the front of the plaza, and I wait.
After a moment or two a Tomb Prince wearing more robes than armour steps up beside his sovereign.
"Bow, pilgrims, bow before the Wisdom of Asaph made flesh, the Voice of the Vengeful, the Lioness of the Hills, She Whose Legions Blot Out the Sun With Their Arrows, High Queen Khalida, Guardian of Damned Lahmia, the Watchful Soul and the Serpent Queen. Kneel, so that you might bask in her radiance!"
I stand, bringing Aranei up with me by taking hold of her left hand with my right. Next, I hold up my own left hand and
command every one of my construct Lanterns -save for the mammoths-
to kneel. Once they're all down, I bow from the waist and persuade Aranei to do the same with a slight tug on her hand.
"Your majesty. Thank you for receiving me."
