Twelfth Day, First Month, 871 AD.
Lykourgos Sperakos, Prince.
Kingdom of Teleytaios.
Aenirhen.
The River Keep.
Dear Lyk,
I apologise for the lateness of my response to your letter, for I realise by the time this reaches you it must have been months since you wrote to me, but then I am currently over six-thousand miles south of where you keep sending your letters. When I make my way back through to Polaeros I will attempt to make a stop through Aenirhen, but I feel that with your reports of increasing unrest and preparations for a civil war there may not be much time for us to catch up.
And let us not kid ourselves here; it is a civil war you are preparing for. The formulae that you wrote to me of three months ago that you learned from Marren, who I understand now bears the rank Lieutenant in your forces, made my skin crawl.
Yes, the mathematics are correct. The substance he purports to be able to create, as I'm sure you've seen at this point, should work very well indeed.
That does not mean I like it, nor do I agree with it.
To kill men in war is one thing Lyk, but to burn them alive?
That is something else entirely.
Still, I know you would not pursue such things unless you believed, whether consciously or not, that there was a war coming to your homeland. Said war must be civil in nature, since I have heard of no forces being amassed in Nordicos or Owkrestos, and when I was travelling south the Malikah of the Al-Alema spoke of nothing but peace. There are the raiders that your brother must deal with, of course, and I do not expect those groups to lay down their arms anytime soon, but there were no armies gathering there either.
But that is enough on that topic for now. Lyk, I have sailed down the Kikhepis river and lived amongst the nomads that remain in this dead land for about two or three months now, and I must say their outlook on life and death is fascinating! I know our records of the original nomads down here are almost non-existent, with only fragments of records and artwork detailing the battles that the Sotenari and Nekhtoudum fought against them remaining, but these nomads that remain provide hints at that ancient group. They have heavily blended with the old Nekhtoudum, likely from the collapse of the kingdom when the survivors sought shelter and livelihoods with the relatively unaffected nomads, but hints of a different culture remain.
Unfortunately there is not enough for one such as myself to piece together what remains, and the nomads have no written language to keep records in, and so all I know are the oral histories of this group and what is carved in stone on the silent cities of this land.
And what a land! I have touched pyramids and walked in mastabas! I have rode upon camelback to the site of the long-gone city of vultures, Nrtkha, and worn the bronze helms of the old champions of this land, styled in the likeness of their jackal god. It has truly been a trip of wonder and learning, more so than perhaps any other I have embarked upon. I can only hope my trip to the old cities of the Sotenari Empire will bear just as much fruit!
I must say I was elated to see those symbols you sent! I apologise that they will not make mention in the main body of this report I am sending back to you, but at the time of writing this letter I have only just received them. I have a theory relating to these symbols, more specifically how we can work out what they mean, but I will include that at the end of this letter. What I feel I must tell you beforehand is that these symbols you have sent match up with some I have seen here!
Again, I will include more information on this below.
I did stop briefly in Sothettar, the last city of the Sotenari people, in order to resupply and rest before our great journey south, but I must confess I am sorely looking forwards to heading back north and exploring the city properly once my trip across the great Nekhtou desert is finished.
Enough talk from me; encased below is the information I have learned of the ancient Kingdom of the Kikhepis compiled into a kind of first draft for the book I am writing.
The Kingdom of the Kikhepis:
"Once, long before even the old kingdoms of Klironomea and Terranea, there were two great nations to the south. Both were rich beyond imagining, ancient beyond measure, and cruel beyond reckoning."
The above is an excerpt from Chronicler Thesis' work, On the Subject of the Southern Continent. Whilst perhaps an exaggeration, it can be hard to truly wrap one's head around both the wealth of these two nations and the depths they were willing to sink to both internally and in their actions towards outsiders in order to gain the advantage against their foes, usually when facing each other for dominance of the trade routes and client kingdoms that formed a buffer area between the two nations.
One of these nations, by most accounts the eldest civilisation in the known world, was the Kingdom of the Kikhepis. Whilst the splendour of the Sotenari Empire may have captured the imaginations of a dozen generations of nobility in Kliskorios in its heyday, I fervently believe that the civilisation that flourished to its south is far more interesting, despite the fact that almost all records of the civilisation were lost in the Age of Silence, with most of what little remained being held in the Sotenari Empire and as such likely is lost to us forever, having been destroyed in the Year of Desolation centuries later.
Here below is a translation of the hieroglyphs lining what remains of the western gate of Tjenkha, the ancient capital of this long-gone kingdom.
"I implore the Gods to look upon our creations and weep, for we have built eternity! Time shall kneel, and men shall turn unto dust, and still, for as long as the mighty Kikhepis flows towards the sea, the Nekhtoudum shall stand as the chosen heirs of all creation!
So read the words of Djaf the Undying, the legendary first King of Kings of the Nekhtoudum."
Far to the south of even the Apolean Jungle lies a vast and seemingly endless desert, broken only by small oases and the occasional river. This is the great Nekhtou desert, the lands of the Nekhtoudum, the desert dwellers, or at least they once were. Once, this great and mighty civilisation was united into a single Kingdom, but they found their strength utterly expended during the wars of the Age of Silence. Slowly this proud and ancient people have faded, their vast cities that once shone as beacons of civilisation in the desert lying empty and still. Great sandstone walls inscribed with hieroglyphs stand proud and tall, even though great statues depicting animal-headed soldiers and demigods are all that remain to stand watch over the desert expanse outside these walls. Great and mighty pyramids and monuments remain defiant against the passage of time, whilst entire cities of ports, houses, workshops, markets, courts, temples and barracks lie completely and utterly abandoned, save for the dead in their mastabas.
These people once worshipped a myriad of gods, but during the Age of Silence, where strength and surety of the afterlife were needed above all, the priesthood of the jackal-headed God of Death, Warriors, and the Desert, Tskal, grew greatly in power and influence. The Priesthood of Tskal, after the war, sought to eliminate worship of the other gods, and appear to have been largely successful in this matter. As a result, the God Tskal is the only member of their pantheon of which the modern world knows anything about.
Once the lands along the mighty river at the heart of this nation would have been lined with great plantations as far as the eye could see, growing a huge variety of goods. Of course the essential crops for this civilisation were grown en masse; wheat, flax, and papyrus reeds formed much of the backbone of Nekhtoudum agriculture due to the need for food, clothing, and primitive parchment in that order, but it was the variety of fruits that once grew down here that truly made this land a tapestry of colour and flavour unlike anything the northern continent would see until the mass cultivation of peaches and citrus fruits in Licotemos in the fifth century AD. Native date palms, fig trees and cactus-pears were grown in truly vast quantities along the banks of the river Kikhepis and its tributaries on great estates numbering hundreds, in some cases even a thousand acres.
Whilst these native crops were being grown some enterprising nobles grew mighty plantations of more exotic fruits, such as mangos imported from the Apolean jungle to the north, pomegranates from the lands of Terranea, or plums from even further afield in Klironomea.
This was supplemented primarily by the meat, milk and cheese of the goat, and by the commoners who were tasked with the upkeep of small plots of land which were used to grow common vegetables known to lower class citizens and lowborn peasants the world over.
The Nekhtoudum were ruled by a royal who bore the title 'King of Kings'. The King of Kings typically had loose authority in internal matters, with a few known exceptions, but their word was law when dealing with outsiders. The King of Kings ruled from Tjenkha, and the Priest-Kings that ruled in every other city were sworn to him in life and death. Some claim that these ancient pacts involved magics the likes of which were known to no other culture on Anamanesis, so different was it to the sorceries of their Sotenari neighbours to the north. If, and it is a big if, these scholars are correct, then all that would be required for the pact to be fulfilled would be for the King of Kings to reawaken from death, and soon all of his subjects would follow.
Personally I do not agree with this assessment, after all, the only tales of anything even approaching the raising of the dead came out of the mountain tribes of the eastern continent, but nothing has been heard of from those lands in a millennia.
Besides, whilst it is claimed that the King of Kings need only reawaken for his kingdom to follow, we have no way of knowing which King of Kings would be needed to reawaken.
This, of course, assumes that it is even possible to raise the dead. As previously mentioned there are tales from the mountains of the eastern continent, but those stories have gone through over a thousand years of retellings and even when they were still new and novel they would have passed through a hundred mouths across thousands of miles in a dozen languages, so I hesitate to believe them either.
I must admit however that the wording of the oaths are, if not disturbing, strange. They swore their oaths upon sand and sun, on death and night, upon the sacred river that upheld their lands and upon the people that yet lived within it. Some of the symbols surrounding these tombs and cities are stranger still; they match none of the hieroglyphs in the Nekhtoudum language that we know of, and certainly nothing from any other culture that once existed in the region. They are strangely artistic and almost hypnotic, and of a completely different art style than the old hieroglyphics of the Nekhtoudum.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
The nomads with whom I have travelled revere these strange markings as waystones and landmarks, though they admittedly know little of their origins or meaning.
Speaking of the nomads, the Nekhtoudum warred with the tribes of marauding nomads on and off for generations, with some royals choosing to attempt to integrate them as merchants and traders whilst others attempted to wipe them out completely.
It was the Sotenari Empire, however, who proved the greatest adversary of the ancient kingdom. For time immemorial the two nations were locked in extremely frequent yet short wars over the trade routes and client-states that lay between them in the Apolean Jungle, with vast hosts and huge warfleets doing battle across the breadth and width of both the southern continent and the Synsett Ocean to the west.
As well as human adversaries there are also tales that say their armed forces frequently needed to ward off raids from mysterious grey-skinned men from the darkest depths of the jungle, where few are foolish enough to enter. This seems to be backed up by what little surviving art we have found within the once-great city of Dimedjaykha, loosely transliterated from Nekhtoudum hieroglyphs and translated to mean the 'Northern Guard City', depicting ranks of Nekhtou warriors opposing much larger club-wielding warriors with tusked mouths and great size.
The nobles fought atop great wooden chariots with brass linings, whilst their infantry used bronze khopeshes and spears. They made great use of bows and slings, with bronze-tipped arrows and small bronze balls as ammunition. It is thanks to the prowess of the Nekhtoudum chariots, archers and slingers that the infantry of their rival, the Sotenari Empire, reformed to counter these deadly warriors, becoming the greatest infantry in the known world along the way. Indeed, without the constant warring between the Sotenari and Nekhtoudum the former would likely never have become famed for its lockstep legions with long, heavy spears and interlocking shields.
It is said that their greatest warriors were handpicked to serve the ruling Priest-Kings of each of the great cities of the ancient Kingdom, and that these men each wore a bronze helmet in the shape of an animal. There are many different examples of these helmets that have been found, but towards the end of their people's existence it seems the champions of the Kikhepis favoured jackal helmets, so as to show that they serve Tskal.
Whilst the Nekhtoudum greatly predate the concept of knights, and thus knightly Orders, it seems that these champions formed a sort of Holy Order pledged to their gods and God-Kings, fighting to earn their favour.
According to legend the greatest honour for these champions was to be chosen to be interred in a stone sarcophagus by the side of the far more opulent sarcophagus of their monarch, so that they may rise by their side again when commanded by the oaths mentioned earlier.
The grand fleets of the Nekhtoudum, both merchant and militant in nature, lay moored in great cities along the coasts of southern Sothena, mostly the western coast of the kingdom where they could better project power northwards and against the marauding pirate fleets that infested the islands in the Synsett sea. Their ships were primarily oar-based, with large quinqueremes backed up by smaller biremes designed for combat in the green waters of the world. Given the size of the river Kikhepis and its tributaries I would not be surprised if the old biremes were capable of combat in the great river as well as the coastal seas.
That is what was, but it is no longer so. The Kikhepis river, in the long centuries since the Nekhtoudum golden age, has long since given up most of its waters, the desert continuing to claim more and more of the continent whilst life gets harder and harder for those remaining nomads in the dunes. Some theorise that the nomads are actually the hybrid descendants of both the ancient nomads who warred with the Nekhtoudum and those Nekhtoudum who fled persecution when the rest of their pantheon of gods were cast down in favour of Tskal. This, however, is not the place to discuss such theories. Regardless of how much water it has given up, the river Kikhepis is still almost as wide as the mighty river Aenir, and including the lengths of its tributaries it is far, far longer. Indeed, judging by the size of the riverbanks the river Kikhepis was around three times wider than the Aenir at its widest point, though much of this is shallow and may be floodplains, and at several points there are actually sizeable islands on which there seem to have been settlements or palaces. Following these same channels, it seems that there were at least three tributary rivers the size of the river Aenir that flowed into the Kikhepis, perhaps as many as six, along with dozens of smaller rivers, though the majority of these rivers including the Aenir-sized tributaries have long since dried up to nothing more than sand, dust, and a forgotten dream of domination.
Once there were many more towns and cities in the Kingdom of the Nekhtoudum, also called the Kingdom of the Kikhepis, so named for the mighty river that acted as its beating heart, but most were destroyed in the Age of Silence, and further destruction was wrought in the chaos afterwards, when the Priesthood of Tskal banished all other gods from their pantheon. There is one particular ruin that has been of great interest to scholars, myself included; the largest of the Kingdom's cities, Tjenkha.
Whilst the only surviving cities, if abandoned, are those great and mighty few that had the capabilities to rebuild from the chaos of the Age of Silence, Tjenkha is one that stands as an outlier. It seems to have been destroyed in the Age of Silence, and then as chaos engulfed the Nekhtoudum in the following years, according to the tales of the nomads, the survivors of the remaining cities embarked on a journey to their ruined capital, seeing it as the last hope for their people. Restoration of some areas of the city were completed, but even with the vast majority of the remaining Nekhtoudum living within its crumbling walls, they simply did not have the resources to survive. After multiple successive droughts and famines both the city and the last of the desert dwellers, save only the nomads, were claimed by the sands of the vast desert and the still silence of eternal rest.
Tjenkha, despite being the largest city in the Kingdom of the Kikhepis and its apparent capital, has been greatly degraded even compared to its sister-cities across the desert. There is very little of it left now, but the ruins are all that remains of what was once one of the greatest cities in all the realms of man, smaller than only the capital of the Sotenari Empire, Zamettar itself, and even then it can have only been by a slight margin. Both Anaria and Tilda, the capitals of the Kingdoms of Klironomea and Terranea respectively, could comfortably fit side by side inside Tjenkha even at their height.
And yet, all that remains now are a few pyramids, the remains of a hundred odd mastabas and houses where now only the dead remain, and the plinths and stumps where once dozens of statues of stone or pure bronze would have stood. There is this, as well as the single stretch of wall that still stands; a solitary gatehouse leading into the city from the west. As with other walls on the more intact ruins, there are hieroglyphics written all along it telling stories and recording the deeds of past heroes and armies, as well as prayers to Tskal. The hieroglyphs that stick out are those that were not carved neatly into the walls as all others were, but seem to have been chiselled in far later in the city's life. These words, written below the words of Djaf the Undying which I recited near the start of this entry, read as an epitaph for one of the greatest and most ancient people to have ever lived:
"To whoever who may be reading this, if anyone, know that we were here. Please, remember us. We did our best. We, the few survivors, who were doomed by our own mistakes, did our best. We were aware of the risks when we came here, and the price we would pay should we fail.
We took our last chance.
And we failed.
May Tskal keep us, and may Djaf never look upon the ruins of his children.
A line of tombs in desert sands; all that remains of once mighty dynasties and great armies.
Six silent cities and a single message scratched into a wall; all that remains of the Nekhtoudum."
So read the words of the last of the Nekhtoudum, sons and daughters of Djaf the Undying, and the chosen heirs of all creation.
Angels, I was so excited to see the ruins down here, and they haven't disappointed. I apologise if these notes and writings seem more scattered than usual, but there's so much for me to write and so little paper to hand, so I've only written some of the basics alongside the bits that I think you will find most interesting, especially the oaths of the dead in their tombs and the symbols around them.
In the writing of this piece an idea came to me, Lyk. Some of the areas in Tjenkha, Djafkha and Hrwkha have those symbols that, if I'm right, and I'm fairly certain I am, should match those you have found on your expeditions. Some of these areas, including those markings by what must be the sealed door of the pyramid of Djaf himself, have writing in Nekhtoudum hieroglyphs immediately below them. I think that both the Nekhtoudum and whoever made these symbols swore the same oaths here! If my theory is correct, then we might be able to start working out the language of whoever carved those symbols using the Nekhtoudum oaths as a starting point! Isn't that exciting! I am glad to have received the images of the symbols you have found at the Tledaal and those caves on the coast you spoke of. I am grateful to be able to have these to work with.
Forgive the messy handwriting, but I'm adding this on in a rush at a later time to the rest of this letter. They match almost perfectly with those found down here! Lyk, I know we were shocked when you realised that these symbols were found at the Tledaal and at the Aauta pass one-and-a-half thousand miles away, but this is something else! Lyk, the distance between the ones you found in those caves where the Aenir meets the sea and the ones down in Tjenkha... you'd be looking at a distance approaching eight-thousand miles, seven-thousand at least! I will make note of any further sites I encounter these symbols at, and mark their approximate location on a map for you. If there are symbols down here, then surely there must be some in the old ruins of northern Sothena as well?
I'm not sure how you've been able to rope me in to your occult mysteries when I'm this far away and supposed to be cataloguing the cultures of the world, but then you've always had a way of remaining in my mind's eye no matter how far the distance grows between us.
I look forwards to meeting you again, though I fear it will not be for some time. I will be spending another week with the nomads down here, then it shall take me somewhere around three months to return to Sothettar, where I will likely spend another few weeks before seeking passage to explore the Sotenari cities along the northern coast of Sothena.
Think about it, Lyk! Next time we meet I'll have visited the ruins of both of the greatest cities in the known world! It'll be likely take another two months on top of what I have already mentioned to visit the Sotenari ruins, perhaps four if there is something truly interesting and unexpected is found at one of the cities, or if I am able to find passage to Gorratar for that matter. I know people say it's an accursed place but think of the lost knowledge such a bastion of learning must hold!
I was going to say knowledge that men would die for, but then I remembered the number of doomed expeditions to recover the secrets of that city and realised a great many men have died for it.
Regardless, though it may be quite some time before we are able to see each other again, I know we will not grow apart. I am so excited for the adventures before me, but more excited to see you again and share all I have found, all I have learned. I hope you will act likewise with your occult mysteries and strange symbols!
Forgive my poor handwriting there, but I could not stifle a chuckle at a thought I had whilst writing that.
Only you could find something that is more interesting than travelling across the known world by stumbling onto old records and strange symbols without going more than fifty miles from home.
I will see you again perhaps not soon, but one day.
Remain ever in my thoughts,
Prince Alekos Virgilos.