"AND SO DID THE MEN OF AL-KHASA WALK BELOW THE SANDS AND DESPAIR, FOR ALL BUT ETERNITY WAS LOST TO THEM..." -Saga of Heshet, from the Munnanyishu Shard.

The desert is as old as the stone that begat it, worn to dust from time and the raging of the earth. It has seen tribes turn to towns, towns to cities, cities to empires, and empires to dust. There are those who linger, mad with heat and thirst, lamenting for the fallen and the profaned. They are forgotten in time, as is all else, bones ridging the dunes that claimed their lives. Countless souls have been lost, their efforts and monuments buried under a millenia of uncaring sand, forgotten by all but the dead. For unless the dead themselves were to claw themselves free of their shawls and speak of their tales, the cities of man are naught but fragments of clay, crumbling away.

Yet, some do. It is not known what arcane rites can tether a soul to its vessel, nor what kingdom spawned such creatures, but there are those that walk among the dunes. They are not named, and they do not name themselves. They are myths, stories, legends, walking upright, speaking in dead tongues and weaving tales of forgotten gods. They wield magics of blighted riverbanks, searing winds, starlit skies, of pillars toppled, of temples burned. They are the dead, ancient and unknowable.

Sekhemkare is one such relic. Where or when he came from is not fully known. He does not speak of it lightly, and no record of him nor his kingdom have been found. All that is known of him is his name, which may not even be his. He claims he is from Al-Khasa, a truly ancient civilization. The men of Al-Khasa were renowned for their mystic capabilities, weaving the forces of the desert for their own ends and seeking visions among the stars. It was said that they even spurned the forces of death itself. Such tales, Sekhemkare will tell you, are very true.

Al-Khasa, however, could not stave off oblivion forever. Sekhemkare himself is unsure what occurred on the Day of Moonlit Sands, as he calls it, but he is certain it is the cause of his existence. He and those others buried in the Great Tombs of Al-Khasa rose and wept tears of dust, for they found their city had gone. They would be forgotten, inscribed on a single clay shard, one portion of a saga that can never be retold. It was then that the dead began to wander, and continue to do so. Some bury themselves in the sand to rest, some are struck down, some crumble away, and some, quite rarely, stumble out of the endless dunes and find themselves among the living.

Sekhemkare is one of them. He does not look like the living. A dessicated and looming figure, clad in a cloak made from his burial shawl and wrapped in worn bandages, he radiates an aura of age. He wears many trinkets of bronze and gold, remnants of burial procedures long past. If cut, he bleeds sand, if bludgeoned, it is like hitting leather. He is also quite slow, his dried body unfit for rapid movement. However, his strength is incredible, likely the result of whatever feel energy animated him in the first place.

He is armed with a khopesh ornately inscribed and inlayed with odd metals and glyphs. It is tarnished and scratched, looking totally unfit for any warrior, but it cuts with a hunger not seen by the sharpest steel. It dries those it strikes, leaving corpses as parched as Sekhemkare himself. He calls it “Suhtuk”, something Sekhemkare recognizes as a name. Who Suhtuk was, he cannot explain.

How he first arrived in the Empire is a matter of convention. Some say he merely wandered in from the wastes. Some say he was found wandering the halls of a forgotten catacombs by an explorer. Some say he appeared to the ruler in a dream, whispering of things that would never come. Only those who employ him know for sure. A new acquisition, maybe a novelty, one wonders how they would use him, and to what end. Time will tell, and perhaps, when all is done, he will return to the sands, speaking of another empire fallen into the sands....