"In that dread desert, beneath the moon's pale gaze, dead men walk. They haunt the shifting dunes of the breathless, windless night, brandish weapons of bronze in mocking challenge and bitter resentment of the life they no longer possess. And sometimes, in ghastly dry voices, like the rustling of sun-baked reeds, they whisper the one word they remember from life. The name of the one who cursed them to their existence, more than death but less than life. They whisper the name, Nagash..."
- —Words of Abdul ben Rachid in the Book of the Dead, translated by Mannfred von Carstein.[3a]
The Book of the Dead was written by the mad Arabyan Prince Abdul ben Raschid. He travelled to the Land of the Dead in the far south and, driven mad by his experience, wrote his blasphemous masterpiece. He did not live to see the widespread public revulsion for his work, or the great pyre where the Caliph of Ka-Sabar burned all the copies of it he could lay his hands on. Unfortunately, many of them survived and were carried to the Old World by the victorious knights during the Crusades.[1a]
There are many lesser copies of the book, most of which have been altered with new 'facts' and originally sublime turns of phrase changed by the limited imaginations of lesser historians and poets.[3a]
The Book of the Dead speaks of a great desert to the east of Araby, from which rise the necropolises — tomb cities of the unquiet dead. On dark nights, corpses of the dead stir, locked in a dance of death until the end of eternity. And within the pyramids, built aeons ago, the unholy aristocracy sit on gilded thrones amid faded grandeur and numberless corpses. They dream long, dark dreams of their former glory, stirring occasionally to issue commands to their rotting courtiers. Then the armies of the dead march to war against the other kings of the Land of the Dead, or sometimes attack the Arabyans and other humans unwise enough to live too close.[1a]
In the specific this great tome tells of how the powerful Priest King, Settra, conquered all the cities of the realm of Nehekhara, yet he was not content, for he could not defeat death. He set his priests to solving the mystery of immortality, and though they extended his life for many years, they could not unlock the secrets of eternal life. Following Settra's death and entombment within a vast pyramid, successive Priest Kings became similarly obsessed with avoiding death. Over time, the great mortuary temples and pyramids dwarfed the cities of the living, and all thought and endeavor was bent towards achieving immortal life. Eventually, this obsession with achieving immortality would bring about Nehekhara's demise and, from its death throes, the birth of the Vampires.[2a]