What was the fall of Amoneph you might ask? In order to understand a man's fall one must first understand the man. In his time Amoneph was the greatest ruler in all the known world. His domain sprawling from the Western cliffs of the Stormline Mountains to the land of broken crags of the East known as Serpents Path. Spanning the icy tundra of the Northlands to the barren deserts inhabited by the mad tribes of the South.
Amoneph a king born of the Sun's love for the Moon, he rose as a swan from the fifth inland sea in the chain. Mirridon. Called up from the womb of the Moon as it passed over the still waters by the great Manithoule. Manithoule guardian of humanity, Manithoule whom bestowed the mantle of kingship on Amoneph alone. Amoneph to who I, Pastrid Nuel was sworn protector.
Amoneph in his time bestowed the gift of knowing upon us who so devoted our lives to him. Of the signs of the heavens and the letter of the stars. Inscribing great volumes of knowledge within our minds. Knowledge that broke many, leaving their thoughts fouled. Wasting away for no want to live, or becoming as beasts succumb to the madness of knowledge. Regardless the outcome those of us that entered the test were left to their own designs in the pits of Brokheral.
Yes Brokheral, that same labyrinthine monument of the ancients. Sealed beneath the crust of the Earth, now home to all things that crawl with its myriad tunnels more unpredictable than those carved by the worms of the prairies. Invested with the souls of the generations sacrificed upon its infernal altars, it is said that any unfortunate enough to find themselves in the halls of Brokheral have already stepped into the Jaguar’s maw.
I laugh at that for it is within Brokheral’s very maw I spent five chittas and from which I once crawled free a new man. Leaving behind my Father’s name and accepting that of Pastrid Nuel. Gifted unto me by the High Luscra of the cult of Aphormis, Zul Nastroah. Zul Nastroah whom took me without warning, as I rose from Brokheral into The Temple Bathed in Crimson. Washed in the dancing red light that passed through the perforated fabric like dozens of webs of layered membrane that make up the temple’s walls, birthed from the crust of the earth. Met with an edge to my throat and Zul Nastroah at it’s handle, she tested my manhood. Stradling and pinning me to that large pad of spewming cracked clay amidst the moans and pained howls of the sadistic orgy which surrounded us.
I was given the lowest of low roles as Illusoh servant to all, at the beckoned call of even the lowest dog of the prairies. I was lashed, lacerated, branded, stitched and reformed time and time again into the man I am now in the name of Amoneph. For his Glory I suffered and was raised up to Luscra within three chitta’s. By my tenth chitta in service of our Lord, I was active once again in Zul Nastroah’s bath. No longer as a low initiate but as the High Luscra’s guardian and a willing participant, I now bore witness to the judgement of the Knowing and played my role in the High Luscra’s orgies. It was here Amoneph first recognized my skill as a protector and devotee.
Our Lord would come now and then to take part in the carnal worship and accept offerings of his own, during which he would often make blood sacrifices to Litchikr, Rthugan, Mordrin, Praest, Cthalun and many more. Offering up the lives of his followers to the Elder Gods for promises of continued success and yet greater power than that which Manithoule had bestowed upon him. During one such event in the High Luscra’s bath, a pair of madmen arose from the Brokheral Pit raving and armed with weapons crafted of human bone. The Second Man struck out at Zul Nastroah as the High Luscra reached out to grasp a handful of the First Man’s hair. His accursed blade gashing into her wrists to sever flesh and tendons. Zul Nastroah’s wrist falling limp before the Man’s bone weapon shattered.
Witnessing this all from mere steps away I leapt into action, striking the Second Man in the back of his neck with my axe, snapping the Fool’s head back and splinting the weapons wedge into his spine. I then seized the First by his throat and crushed it in my grip as easily as I would have a puny apple. Amoneph applauded my actions bringing even the sobbing limp handed Zul Nastroah to feign a clap.
On the second new moon following that night Zul Nastroah was called to the Serpent’s Path where she is said to have offered her body to the ice Goddess Rthugan. Drowning herself in a crag lake far to the North East.
With her departure Amoneph was once again in our midst and he had not forgotten my recent valor. I was well into my thirtieth chitta of service by this point having long lived with the knowledge he had bestowed, and I believe when he looked into my eyes that day, he saw the glimmer of what that knowledge had forged there. For it was that day I was made High Luscra of the Cult of Aphormis. From this position I was given a much wider view of the young Amophaean Kingdom in those private audiences I shared with my Master. With Amoneph.
In the early days of the kingdom only the peoples who dwelt on the Five Seas shores and within the Serpent’s Path were under Amoneph’s rule. However I quickly turned our Lord’s gaze towards my homeland which lie westward beyond the Serpent’s Path. A dustbowl prairie full of life, with great varieties of beasts roaming in herds of thousands and a strong willed federation of Chuun peoples like myself hunting them. A people who could take the knowledge Amoneph offered without breaking and create a much more prosperous center for the kingdom.
The Chuun, with their strong societal values and foreign systems rose against the Aphormis prophets I would send into their midst. Skinning Lucrag alive and delivering his tanned hide to the Temple Bathed in Crimson, burning Pend Ruthrega, Loun Simasc, Huuli Shole and Blind-man Sul on stakes when they came to preach of Amoneph. Leaving their remains to rot and be cleaned by the birds. Their Skeletons have been left in the places they died to this day in commemoration of their sacrifice.
Amoneph having tired of the Chuun's insolence, opened the Pits of Brokheral on their lands. Releasing both the cannibalistic madmen and those fearful creatures that crawl in the underworld’s depths. Causing the earth to shake and the animals to die as the labyrinth surfaced, I stood by my Lord’s side at the unearthing.
I bore witness to the unholy rising of the gigantic insectoid beast Krakloth and It’s thousand razor legs each larger than a grown man, It's slick, long, scaled body snaking away faster than I care to acknowledge over the horizon. Paeladis the bastard of Praest and some creature of old, scurried away by slick prehensile tentacles from one of the infernal pools of green slime in my view as well. A horrible slime which itself rose oozing forth over the unsuspecting land leaving not but rot in its wake. Among dozens of other horrors that continued to pour forth for as far as the eye could see, and farther yet I am sure. To say I did not fear for my life would be a lie, but I remained.
Within half a chitta not only the Chuun but all of the people’s of the prairies had sworn allegiance to Amoneph. Each of the emissaries bringing word of the terrible routing of their people by these gruesome men and creatures. Begging our Lord to close the Pits once more and return peace to the Prairies. While Amoneph complied, he explained that the creature’s freed must be slain or pacified. As no amount of coaxing could bring any being, human or not to willingly return to the madness of Brokheral.
A chitta following the gruesome and far felt fall of the Chuun Federation a number of tribes began to converge within the newly formed heart of the Amophaean Kingdom. Swearing allegiance to Amoneph and converting to the Cult of Aphormis. Even the city states and tribes of the Stormline Mountains and their luscious valleys farther west began sending messengers out as the horrors that Amoneph released spread and ravished farther flung lands. Begging the one they called the Sorcerer King for a reprieve from the nightmarish life they now lived.
The tribes of Astohpi, Cluutpok, Mindris, Sichract, Loaok Ruthi, Njik Njik, Bossi, Ardonn Zuhgr, Luerdradas, and Juk all bowing heads to Amoneph. In very little time the small world we had once known grew. Word of Amoneph’s glory and the tale of how it was bestowed by Manithoule spread. Along with tales of unimaginable terror and those of the powers over Brokheral gifted to the Sorcerer King by the Old Gods.
In ten chittas following the fall of the Chuun Federation there was a rising from the Southern deserts. A great war band had formed of the fearful Cheil, Sunnan and Haelskiyat peoples, marching around the Mirridon Sea on a path for the Temple Bathed in Crimson. Among the Southerners were a myriad of nightmarish creatures from the war bands own dreadful lands, both under reigns and caged.
Whole legions of those bleached hair, leather skinned people bestrode screeching Yusuk, whose serrated beaks so easily shred through human flesh. Bhraraba among them as well those four legged, black furred, clawed beasts with frothing jowls, bound to the posts of their wheel cages to keep them from sating their hunger on the Beast Masters. Packs of the smaller brown furred Vuln caged loosely as well, snapping their snouts out at any who came too close. The Vulns domestic cousins the Shurk were loose, living among and between the different camps that made up the War Band. I of course know all this from my own time with the Haelskiyat Tamers, as their expertise in this field is unparalleled to any other, as far as I have seen this far in my long life.
Sporting bone and leather weapons all but the Beasts of the War Bands maws shattered to splinters against the bronze plated armor of the Amophaean Legions. It was here that Amoneph truly discovered joy in the heat of battle, as I myself had long ago found during my entombment in Brokheral. Meeting the War Band far to the south banks where the Rthugan River rand North into the Mirridon Sea our two armies battered one another. Tooth, claw, edge and point all clashing in a roar of tumult. Shields were battered by arrows and plates broke away or were torn away by clasping talons and hands. Volley after volley fell on us from our own men as they unleashed hell on the raving horde.
Beside me a man was torn in half, his offal strewn across all of us there as the great bird flailed its head. I thrust my spear point riding it up under the Yusuk's chin and into its skull, tip snapping off as its rider was sent somersaulting forward. Finding their feet quickly the Attacker spun on me, embedding a claw knife into my right cheek, leaving a scar I wear proudly to this day. Before I knew what had happened I had seized the Woman by her arm and twisted it snapping her elbow and witnessing the fear in her eyes the moment before I flung her screaming into the spears and blades of her comrades. Retrieving a large bronze axe from a dead Amophaean I was once again lost in the fog of battle.
Red light scattered from the glasslike water across the dying battlefield as the sun set that night, disguising the gore of the body piles that leak channels of blood through the earth to the shoreline. Each and every one of the Southerners in that first wave had been slain. Their Yusuk butchered and feasted upon with any remaining animal flesh offered to Manithoule and the Mirridon Sea. Bringing the calm water to life with fish, and those larger animals that prey on them.
Of the humans slain Amoneph had a grisly scene erected. “Nothing can compare to the immediate power of fear”, He had told me that day.
For not only had his actions struck fear in the enemy but he had created yet another terrible legend among the Amophaeans themselves. We cleared a nearby grove of trees to construct the five stride spikes, impaling each and every soldier that was whole enough; both friend and foe alike, driving the pike up through their rectum and out one of their shoulders.
When the task was completed all three thousand six hundred and twenty four spikes were dressed with corpses and stood lining a sizable chunk of land from Mirridon's shoreline to a glen four hundred paces away and South East to the banks of the Rthugan River.
Amoneph pitched his tent one thousand paces North perched atop a hill facing the field of dead. Here my Lord and I met every day for much of that moon cycle, speaking and awaiting the arrival of the Southerners second wave. Upon the completion of the Field of the Dead he bode all away but for his personal entourage, consisting of myself and eleven others. Each one a survivor of the trials of Brokheral and Amoneph’s most loyal servants.
“I will call up the serpent Lundmeierag from Mirridon’s depths should these fools challenge my might. For hearing of the horrors I have brought forth from Brokheral and witnessing this field of dead should they deny me and refuse to bend their knees. I will deny them the right to live on my land.”
None of us ever bore witness to what the Lundmeierag was that day. As I am thankful that when that next horde arrived along the banks of the Rthugan River and Amoneph led us down to meet them each and every man and woman present was as frozen as the corpses that awaited them. Even their beasts whimpered at the unnatural sight before them, the smell of rot soaked into the ground rising heavily in the air. Nauseating.
In a new tongue of hard consonants that I had never heard; yet understood the utterances of, our Lord spoke, “Witness the weakness of your kin. The folly of those who came before does not have to be your own. Bow here and now lest I open the Tombs of the Earth to pull you under. Bow before I, Amoneph Beacon of the Eastern Sky.”
Thousands kneeled. Animal and human alike brought to cower before Amoneph. Shurk and Vuln howling in shivering tones that brought my hairs to stand as I witnessed the spectacle of submission from my Lord’s side.
With the Desert Peoples now in the Amophaean fold, lands beyond measure lined the far Southern horizon. Tales of the Shining Cities of Torhetokichak and Mitralodttzik climbed the Southerner’s trade routes enchanted my Lord. Home to the small oaken people known as the Uljhan known only through their intricately painted ochre earthen ware depicting men, women and animals with a level of detail thought unattainable by human hands.
Let it be known that my grievous folly was born of the wish to please my Lord. In order to advance the Cult of Aphormis in a more efficient manner, I called upon four heroes from all the lands of Amophaeat to undertake the perilous journey South. To deliver Amoneph’s teachings to the Uljhan that they might offer themselves to our great Lord.
These heroes were, Guzalt Ilt, the Crusher of Krakloth, Moa’ayt Otto, Executioner of Paeladis, Nais Ohn, Sorceress of Nulottg Bog, and Huppran Suerae, the Collector of Trophy’s. It was I who brought them before Amoneph, I who united the foul demons.
Our Lord accepted their audience graciously. Thrilled with the prospect of spreading his influence over yet further realms, and it was as we entered the great hall for this very audience that they struck me down, hobbling my legs. Amoneph awestruck by their audacity began to unleash all of his dark and terrible magicks within the vast hall. Clinging to the wall I quivered as fissures broke the stone. Brokheral yawning before us all. Madmen, undead monstrosities and children of Krakloth flowing out of those ungracious depths. Filling the large space with a blinding flurry of action. Between the pangs of pain I watched it all unfold. How such mortals could drive the hordes back into Brokheral struck me with Awe.
Nais-Ohn all the while battling Amoneph’s own will. Summoning all of her strength to seal those yawning fissure’s my Lord had opened, the cracked earth severing limbs and chewing the skulls of beast and man alike as it shook closed. It was left to I, Pastrid Nuel to block the foul Party’s path to our Master. His form slumping down from the energy spent in that great upheaval. Who was I to stand before them with broken legs? Can such a servant as myself be blamed for surrendering? It was not I who has slain Amoneph.
The End