The Tomb King Cimejez and his long-suffering mortal servant, the vizier Amaimon[2a].
Cimejez, called "Lord of the Necropolis of Zelebzel," is the Tomb King who rules over the Undead Nehekharan city-state of Zelebzel in the Land of the Dead.[1][2a]
There is no denying that the greater number of the Tomb Kings of ancient Nehekhara are not at all philosophically inclined, and by no means intellectually blessed, but there are a few Tomb Kings who take a greater interest than their fellows in matters philosophical. And there is one among them who takes such matters seriously enough to ask questions which are deemed slightly heretical by the majority of his peers. This is Cimejez, Lord of the Necropolis of Zelebzel.[1][2a]
History[]
Cimejez is by no means one to eschew violence, and he certainly played his part in the Great Crusade Against Araby. Because Zelebzel is located in the far west of the Land of the Dead, in the desert borderlands which separate that land from Araby, his Undead armies have abundant opportunities to meet their counterparts. It is by no means unknown for the rulers of Araby to raise armies with which to mount crusades of their own, and Zelebzel has borne the brunt of more than one such incursion.[1][2a]
The liche Nagash has never had any cause to complain about the zeal with which Cimejez has conducted his own expeditions or repelled those sent against him. This undoubtedly helps to explain why the Supreme Lord of Death has always been tolerant of the occasional eccentricities of his follower -- but it must also be the case that Nagash approves, if only slightly, of Cimejez's attempts to build better bridges between the worlds of life and death.[1][2a]
One of Cimejez's eccentricities is the taking of prisoners, which armies of the Undead are usually disinclined to do. The dead have little need of living slaves, and no interest at all in sexual congress with the living, so there is no obvious reason for Lords of Death to make captives of their adversaries. Cimejez makes an exception because he is a philosopher, and likes to debate philosophy with the living -- although it is, admittedly, rare that he can find one among a hundred randomly-accumulated prisoners who is capable, despite their terror, of taking part in a half-way competent argument.[1][2a]
However, Cimejez returned from one of his raids into territory held by Araby with a famous vizier named Amaimon, who had been travelling in a diplomatic camel-train from one emirate to another, charged with a mission of the utmost delicacy.[1][2a]
Cimejez took some delight in displaying to his unwilling visitor the treasures of Zelebzel, which had been accumulated by the best-informed tomb-robbers in history. He had decorated sarcophagi by the score, statues and paintings by the hundred, and thousands of gem-encrusted objects moulded in gold, silver and brass. It was another of the Tomb King's eccentricities to accumulate such objects, which most necromancers disdained to possess on the grounds that they had risen far above such worldly concerns.[1][2a]
In the long, hard years of servitude that followed, Amaimon discovered that the first curse afflicting Human life is indeed hunger -- which, for accounting purposes, might be taken to include and subsume thirst. He discovered, too, the scrupulous accuracy of the estimated hierarchy of needs that had ranked cold the second, disease and injury the third, loneliness the fourth, loss the fifth and childlessness the sixth. He suffered all of these afflictions in their fullest measure, but he was not allowed to die. As the Vizier of Zelebzel he helped bring death to hundreds of thousands of the living, and he helped bring the greater number of those he had betrayed into the ranks of Cimejez's deathless army, but he was not allowed the kind of release he devoutly desired, nor any other kind.[1][2a]