The Tomb King Amanhotep the Intolerant
Amanhotep, called Amanhotep the Intolerant, is an Undead Tomb King and the ruler of the city-state of Zandri in the Land of the Dead in the 26th century IC.[1a]
When the infamous pirate captain Jaego Roth undertook a daring coastal raid, looting countless treasures from the city of Zandri to finance his campaign, he could not have predicted the consequences of his actions. Roused by the desecration of his realm, Amanhotep vowed eternal vengeance on those who had stolen from him.[3a]
Summoning forth his skeletal legions, Amanhotep commanded his tireless servants to labour night and day until they had built a warship worthy of his quest for revenge. After many long weeks of relentless construction, the Curse of Zandri was finally ready for the hunt.[3a]
History[]
The ancient kings of Nehekhara were wealthy beyond imagining. So advanced was their civilisation that they once ruled the heart of the Known World. These proud monarchs suffered no upstart invaders to defile their realm and meted out swift death to all those that would challenge their rule. Though they suffered the curse of Undeath millennia ago due to the sorceries of the Great Necromancer Nagash, the vengeful pride of the Tomb Kings did not decay alongside their mummified mortal bodies. Woe betide those who give a Tomb King a reason to bring his undying wrath down upon them.[1a]
King Amanhotep the Intolerant, known as the "High-Handed Avenger of Zandri," was one of the most spiteful and unforgiving of all his kind.[1a] During the time of the Desertblood Crusades, a regiment of Bretonnian knights returned from Nehekhara with the remains of what they believed to be Duke Cheldric, a Bretonnian hero whose daring quest into the Land of the Dead was the stuff of legend.[2a]
However, the knights had actually returned to the Old World with the mummified body of King Amanhotep the Intolerant, who awakened after unknowingly being paraded up and down the length of Bretonnia and carried across a score of battlefields by zealous Battle Pilgrims. Amanhotep's wrath was great indeed, and he single-handedly slaughtered the inhabitants of dozens of towns before returning to his sarcophagus in Zandri.[2a] Yet it was the city of Zandri that the pirate Jaego Roth chose to raid in order to secure his new fortune.[1a]
When Captain Roth was in search of the bounty he needed to muster the sea-lords of Sartosa to his cause to defeat the Undead Dreadfleet, he undertook a daring raid into the southern seas, fighting his way through the perilous Nehekharan waters and making landfall on the borders of the coastal city of Zandri. Using the Heldenhammer as a sea-going fortress, Captain Roth mounted a lightning raid upon the tomb-structures that clustered around the walls of the city of Zandri itself.[1a]
Though these tombs were the resting places of lesser nobles, they contained enough treasure to make a merchant prince weep -- treasure to which the audacious Roth and his men helped themselves, narrowly escaping the desert revenants and animated statuary that rose to block their escape.[1a]
Roth was not fool enough to believe he could escape retribution entirely, but in seeking to recruit more allies to his cause with stolen gold, he had earned himself a powerful and determined enemy. King Amanhotep, a miser in life and a madman in death, knew the location of every gold coin and jewel in his empire. Vowing revenge, he summoned the mightiest war barque in his navy, the Curse of Zandri, and commanded that the tombs that Roth had raided be taken apart, stone by stone, and rebuilt into the warship itself.[1a]
Thousands of Skeleton Warriors and unliving Ushabti statues laboured night and day to build pyramids, obelisks and Necrolith Colossi into the war barque's hull. The hooded Necrosphinx of Zandri was torn down and reconstructed as the ship's figurehead, and the four Necrolith Colossi of the city walls were built into its hull, ready to power the warship forward or sweep the decks of enemy vessels clear with massive ritual halberds when the time of battle came. The Liche Priests and Necrotects of Zandri used their ancient magic to bind the animated titans to the vessel's sides, and King Amanhotep himself oversaw the mounting of the Great Blade of Kharpesh upon its prow.[1a]
Finally, the arching structure that rose above the mighty warship's deck was rebuilt to hold a gigantic sapphire -- the fabled Jewel of the River Mortis, heirloom of the sun god Ptra himself. By channelling the solar energies harvested by King Amanhotep's pyramidal tomb into the Jewel, the Curse of Zandri could direct a great beam of burning light from its arcing stern into an enemy vessel.[1a]
The Curse of Zandri was complete -- a warship built specifically to locate and destroy the impudent Humans who had raided Zandrian property. Amanhotep vowed that for every ounce of gold stolen, he would consume a Human pirate's soul. Under the blinding sun he swore an oath that he would find Roth and destroy him utterly as a lesson to the upstart civilisations of the north.[1a]
Through the divinations of his Liche High Priests, Amanhotep learned that Captain Roth was on a quest of his own. The mortal sought to destroy one of the Vampire Counts who had once roamed the Land of the Dead. Using the ancient star magic of Nehekhara, Amanhotep journeyed through the stormy seas to the Galleon's Graveyard. There he made a pact with the Vampire Count Noctilus, intending to use him as bait until his quarry revealed himself.[1a]