Har'Akir
The Domain of Har’Akir lies beneath an unrelenting sun, its sky bleached white by heat and time. Once a cradle of forgotten civilization, Har’Akir is now a desert wasteland where sands shift to bury memory, mercy, and the mortal dead. Cyclopean monuments rise from dunes like the bones of gods, each carved with the faces of pharaohs and warnings no longer heeded.
Nothing grows here. The rivers have long since dried. The winds howl with prayers turned curses.
Har’Akir is a desert with no dawn, a world of withered worship and drowned time. Its winds carry the voice of a god who was never a god, whose soul festers in a gilded sarcophagus of his own design. Here, death is not final—only sacred.
“The pharaoh has ruled for five thousand years.
He will rule for five thousand more.
His servants will bring your bones to him,
and he will thank you with silence.”
Geography
Har’Akir consists of three landscapes—each deadly in its own right:
- The Sea of Ash: an endless dune field where mirages haunt the thirsty, and scarab swarms strip flesh from bone in minutes.
- The Monuments: colossal stone tombs, pyramids, and crumbled temples, half-swallowed by sand. Their corridors twist into the Under-Sands, vast subterranean necropolises crawling with undead priests, cursed kings, and lost gods.
- The Desiccated Delta: a barren basin where a mighty river once flowed. Villages built on cracked riverbeds survive in ruin, their people praying to the old gods—and to Ankhtepot—for deliverance that never comes.
Rain hasn’t fallen in generations. Wells dig into rock and still find only dust.
Fauna & Flora
Most of the domain’s living inhabitants huddle in ruined cities or semi-nomadic clans that trade relics scavenged from buried temples. Every village is a tomb-in-waiting, its population dwindling as disease, raids, or Ankhtepot’s hunger takes them.
- Priests of the Old Pantheon wander the sands, their rites mingling truth and madness.
- Tomb raiders and relic thieves—some from other domains—search for plunder, rarely escaping the vengeful spirits or traps meant to guard eternal sleep.
- A secretive sect known as the Veiled Moon believes Har’Akir is a dream, and seeks to awaken the world by desecrating the sacred dead.
The people live by ritual and fear, clinging to the illusion that obedience will spare them. It never does.
Har’Akir crawls with desert monsters and undead:
- Canopic mummies stitched from the remains of many souls.
- Living hieroglyphs that crawl along temple walls, rewriting fate.
- Sun-blighted jackalfolk, once sacred guardians, now rabid and crazed.
- Shadow-vultures with voices like weeping children.
- And deep beneath the sand: the Serpent Below, an ancient entity sealed beneath a broken temple, whispering truths even Ankhtepot dares not hear.
History
Ankhtepot, Har’Akir’s undying ruler, once claimed to speak for the gods. His mortal ambition led him to usurp divine power, and in return, he was cursed with unending undeath. Now he lingers in his Black Pyramid, entombed in obsidian and madness.
- He rules not as a king, but as a false deity, his proclamations enforced by undead viziers and death-masked high priests.
- Each year, the living are compelled to offer treasure, bodies, and memories to Ankhtepot’s cult in a holy procession called the Procession of Dust.
- Though his mind frays with centuries of silence, he remains obsessed with reclaiming his mortal soul, believing it lies hidden in a long-lost tomb buried beneath the domain.
He does not rest. And so, the dead do not rest either.
Tourism
- Doomed archaeology: explore forgotten tombs that warp the minds and bodies of intruders.
- Faith versus truth: uncover the lies of Ankhtepot’s divinity and what true gods may still sleep in the sand.
- Cycles of death: help villagers resist the eternal rituals that bind them to the undead.
- Escape from eternity: assist (or sabotage) Ankhtepot’s search for release.
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