Deposing of Amun-Re

The area which now forms the Raurin Desert was once ruled by a series of benevolent pharaohs. The last of them discovered his father's tomb had been despoiled by tomb-robbers. Amun-Re was overcome by grief and rage at this indignity, and in fear at the risk it posed to his own afterlife, he became a tyrant. His people rose up and overthrew him but his death-curse plunged the land into drought.

Amun-Re was raised by his father to become the latest in a succession of benevolent priest-kings. Tahet-Re was a kindly man who ruled wisely and well, and was much-loved by his people. He had a long reign which was celebrated throughout the realm, and he taught his son to follow in his footsteps. When he eventually died he was interred in the modest pyramid he had built, with the minimum of grave goods suitable for his station: the rest was left for his son and his people.

When Tahet-Re's mourning son entered the pyramid soon after to make an offering for his father, he discovered that tomb-robbers had already plundered it. Much of the grave goods were missing, the holy gold panelling had been peeled from the sarcophagus, and even the ushabti servant statues were damaged in the search for valuables. The sarcophagus had been pried open and his father's personal wealth, intended to prove his station when his soul was to be judged in the afterlife, had been stolen. His Staff of Ruling was missing. With the gold panels bearing his names and deeds missing, and the staff marking him as Pharaoh gone, Tahet-Re would spend his afterlife as a nameless, formless, spirit cast into the void with nothing to provide for him.

Amun-Re was overcome with grief and fury at this indignity to his father. When the rage cooled, however, he was overcome with fear. If this had happened to his father, it could just as easily happen to him. He was terrified by the thought of spending his afterlife as less than the lowest servant.

Consumed by his fears, Amun-Re became a tyrant. He taxed his people mercilessly to accumulate gold for his treasury, and plunged them into ceaseless wars with neighbouring kingdoms to plunder their wealth and add it to his own. Meanwhile, he built a huge pyramid as an impregnable tomb-fortress, filled with cunningly-designed methods of killing any tomb-robber who dared enter it.

Eventually the people could bear their suffering under his heel no more. When he was inspecting his completed pyramid one day, they rose up in revolt. Secure in his arrogance, he met them outside the pyramid's funerary temple, beside the Fountain of Athis - the wellspring which was created by the First Pharaoh as the headwater of the river which had greened the desert.

Amun-Re ordered his people to return to their homes and work, but they only grew more violent. Realising his vulnerability, he tried to cow them by pronouncing a death-curse: if he was slain, as a divine representative of the gods, the Fountain of Athis would cease to flow.

Ignoring his words, a javelin flew from the crowd, straight and true into his heart. He fell dead, but the curse took effect. The magical wellspring which had flowed for four thousand years flowed no more.

As the River of Athis dried up, the arable land around its course shrank to nothing. The hungry desert took back its own and the desperate people were forced to flee or die of thirst and starvation.

As for Amun-Re, the gods judged his soul and found it wanting. So long as his royal regalia lay within his theft-proof tomb, he was cursed in turn to wander the desert as a ghost, immortal witness to the ruin he had brought upon his people. Only when his tomb was successfully plundered and his regalia removed would he be allowed to enter the afterlife.

Conflict Type

Skirmish