Tomb Kings

Welcome to Nehekhara.

"Lightning shall sunder the skies, the rivers will flow with blood and war will come to the land. The legions of long-dead kings shall once more rise eternal in conquest, and death shall ride beside them."

– Settra the Imperishable

"Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till it's gone?"

– Joni Mitchell

"So I prophesied as I was commanded; and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and suddenly a rattling; and the bones came together, bone to bone. Indeed, as I looked, the sinews and the flesh came upon them, and the skin covered them over; but there was no breath in them."

– Ezekiel 37:7-8

The not-Egyptians of Warhammer Fantasy, if every single thing in Egypt died and was mummified but maintained the lifestyle as if still alive for several thousand years before pesky Europeans came to steal gold and use the corpses of historical rulers as skin cream (the latter is not a joke, they really did that).

One of the more underpowered groups on the tabletop due to powercreep in other factions not being fairly distributed around and being structured around Death Star-like massive weaknesses, although not without their strengths. This has resulted in their having a reputation as the single hardest faction in the game to play due to their needing to be played well to achieve victory, which puts them in the category of expert difficulty.

Players of the "Other Warhammer" know them as the original basis of the Necrons. In fact, whereas Necrons were originally the soulless and mostly unthinking, Terminator-like ("Terminator" as in the robots from the Schwarzenegger movies, 40k-fag) the rank and file troops of the Tomb Kings, later editions made the Necrons almost entirely just Tomb Kings IIIIIIIIN SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE by giving the Necron leaders eccentric personalities and rivalries.

History

Early History

I think that statue just moved...

After the Old Ones created the various races, but before Chaos came and destroyed the Warp Gates, humans (rejected as a failure by the Old Ones due to short lifespans and Chaos corruptibility) expanded throughout the world. The exact direction mankind went is unclear; the Old Ones notoriously created special environments for their creations in order to observe them, and the fact the bulk of Warhammer Africa is one giant bowl called Nehekhara suggests Warhammer Africa really is the cradle of life in the setting as much as it is real life. At any rate, the ancient being known as Drachenfels noted that before Chaos came to the world a race of dark-skinned peoples who he hated had entered his territory as they spread northwards.

Nehekharans were a dark-skinned people, as you would expect (not necessarily black, just as real Egyptians are not African and actually came from the same region as Uruk and left numerous settlements showing the slow evolution of their culture into Egyptian), with a pantheon of animal-headed gods and goddesses, as you would expect, had a massive fetish for triangles in architecture, as you would expect, who used gold in everything they did and believed that it belonged to the divine royalty, as you would expect, and were absolutely fascinated by death, which you may have predicted. On the other hand their civilization reached a level of sophistication which could rival the future Empire, with magitech allowing them to build battle automatas and flying machines. They also imported firearms from Cathay, but sadly this is only seen in the Time of Legends novels Only in Lahmia. It was implied that Lamasheptra who signed a risky treaty with the Cathayan in order to acquire it and used it against Nagash, who held his sister Neferem as a prisoner. The said firearm is called "dragon staff", and its "gun powder" are called "dragon powder", which the Cathayan did not share it recipe with the Lahmian, causing its supply to be extremely limited. By the time Lamasheptra died and Neferata becomes a vampire, the so called dragon powder has already been withered away in time.

Most of these advancements where lost or replaced by mortuary rites, but more of that later. For many, MANY years the Nehekharans waged wars on each other, built small empires that didn't last long outside their own lifespan, and were entombed in great monuments. During the collapse of the Warp Gates and the ensuing invasions by Chaos, Nehekhara was left completely untouched due to the MASSIVE and almost impossible to traverse mountains that circled most of the subcontinent. What didn't stop however is the flow of magic through the world, in particular the Wind of Death which empowered the priesthood of the Nehekharan pantheon to suddenly be able to produce actual miracles.

Settra and the Mortuary Cult

Not long after, centuries before the start of the High Elf and Dark Elf civil war, the greatest Nehekharan to have ever lived was born. Settra, who immediately set out on a mission of conquest to become the singular ruler of the entirety of Nehekhara, as well as solidify a single organized religion. Over time his name gained many titles, The Imperishable being the most notorious although its telling that the main job of his greatest warrior was to list them. While most Nehekharan kings before him had been simply spoiled inbred inept brutal dictators who managed to keep even the most prosperous kingdom in a state of constant poverty, Settra built the infrastructure of every land he claimed and spared any who swore loyalty to him while punishing those who did not in unspeakable ways. After doing the unthinkable and uniting his people, he followed it up with a second inconceivable feat; becoming the first Nehekharan king truly loved by his people, and feared only by those with disloyalty in their hearts. In other words, he was Pharaoh Namer/Menes, the man responsible for uniting Upper and Lower Egypt.

As he neared middle age he came to the realization even the greatest king must die, something he refused to accept. The temples of Nehekhara, now called the Priesthood of Awakening, were appointed to use their connections to the Nehekharan gods (implied in some lore to be the same death gods for all races, notably Morr) and their magic to keep him alive forever. The Grand Hierophant (Nehekharan Pope), Khatep, promised him eternal skin made of pure gold, of endless rule, of the pleasures his position of Da Best came with. Instead, they only managed to come up with a way to extend the lives of wealthy Nehekharans to around 300 years or so, and preserve Settra's soul inside his aging body so that future generations could deliver on their promises. Settra sacrificed his children to form a pact with his gods, then allowed the Priests of Nehekhara to mummify and entomb him in his great palace tomb, the Pyramid of Eternity at his capital city of Khemri.

It took very little time for the Nehekharans to break up Settra's dynasty (possibly because he sacrificed his heirs?) and factions battled for dominance again, although now there was an extra incentive: eternal life and a body of gold for paying into the promises of the priests, not to mention the dick-measuring contest of having the biggest and most elaborate tomb (to the point that some were cities for the living before, sometimes even after, the intended occupant died). The only unspoken rule was that nobody's could be taller than Settra's, for even thousands of years after his death the man was feared and loved.

The rise of Nagash

The next major event would come five hundred years after Settra's reign, the birth of the OTHER greatest Nehekharan. Nagash. By that point, the tradition was that firstborn sons were given to the priesthood to train, the second born inherits the throne. Nagash had the misfortune of desiring power and respect but being the firstborn, and fostered a deep hatred of his brother (and healthy amount of lust for his brother's wife) and the systems the Nehekharans had developed. One day, Dark Elves were captured and brought to the palace. Nagash was put in charge of interrogating them, and discovering not only what they were but why they had come. Instead, Nagash tortured the female in their number (as only female Dark Elves are allowed to learn magic as their leader Malekith fears a prophesy involving a male Elf wizard killing him) until she spilled the secrets of true magic to him.

Rather than mastering an existing Lore of magic, Nagash managed to do something no other being in Elflands, South America, or The Warp had done; invent Necromancy, recording all of his discoveries in nine books called the Nine Books of Nagash (title needed a bit of work). Nagash promptly killed his brother and assumed the throne, making his co-conspirators part of his royal court and making Arkhan the Black his Vizier. Then he got Arkhan to lead a massive army of the Undead and become Settra 2.0. During the war Nagash built a pyramid made of pure Warpstone, the Black Pyramid, which dwarfed Settra's pyramid by a great deal.

Regardless of the immensely powerful magics used by Nagash and Arkhan, they were defeated by the son of a man named Lahmizzar from the kingdom of Lahmia that had united all other Nehekharans against the Undead, and Nagash was driven into the desert as man older than a century while Arkhan led a suicide attack to buy his master time to escape. Nagash wandered through the desert until he simply died, then got back up as his Elixir of Longevity proved to be a success and continued moving as the very first free-willed Undead. Arkhan in the meantime had been taken prisoner, and given to the descendants of Lahmizzar. The brother, a warlord with no interest in the more complex natures of what they were dealing with, left his power-hungry sister named Neferata in charge of interrogating Arkhan. With his help, she entered the Black Pyramid and stole one of Nagash's books. Neferata developed a crush on Arkhan as both were semi-hedonistic nobility that craved independence that their circumstances kept them from possessing.

Neferata pored over the recipe for the Elixir of Longevity and eventually sampled her own perfected version which would keep her youthful and fleshy in contrast with Nagash's extremely anorexic look. The unfortunate cost of Neferata's elixir was a need to drink blood for all nourishment, although the powerful queen kept herself fed on the slaves of her kingdom easily. Some time later she shared the elixir with her favorite people including her husband, the Captain of the Guard, her local priest, her cousin, and others. Lahmia quickly became a den of the very first Vampires in the setting, and after the death of her brother Neferata took control of the kingdom.

However, Neferata couldn't keep the horrifying rumors of her people secret and word spread throughout Nehekhara that the Lahmian court had become Nagash-worshiping monsters (not untrue). Neferata's solution was to accuse her cousin, High Queen Khalida who was essentially a Paladin queen of the nearby kingdom of Lybaras, of being a bloodsucking Undead. The already stupid plan failed when Neferata's duel for honor with Khalida resulted in both receiving mortal wounds despite Neferata's immense power. In desperation she sucked Khalida's blood in front of the assembled nobility who fled in horror to alert Nehekhara that the Undead had returned. Neferata attempted to turn Khalida into a Vampire, but Khalida's dying prayers to her snake goddess Asaph turned her blood to venom and purged the Vampiric taint. Khalida's body was recovered and her people buried her as the greatest Nehekharan monarch after Settra ("greatest ever" is a theme with Nehekharan royalty) while the rest of their people gathered in a massive army.

The Beginning of the End

The Vampires fled to the Black Pyramid where they found Nagash waiting for them, eager to take these new generals to lead the Undead against the living once more. The battle raged for some time, and the leader of the living was captured and held while Nagash used the break in the fighting to begin casting a spell that would kill all life in Nehekhara for use as his animated skeleton army to march on the rest of the world. Unbeknownst to all beings involved, the Skaven had been watching the conflict and were horrified at what Nagash could do to the world if left undefeated (presumably at the fact that he would do it before they would).

They forged the ultimate weapon made of pure Warpstone, a dagger so dangerous that upon touching it the bearer was doomed to a horrible and painful death and gave it to the leader of the living, who killed Nagash with it before perishing himself and falling into the ocean where he turned up later bearing Nagash's Crown Of Command. Nagash, as one last "FUCK YOU" to the living, repurposed his spell to simply kill everything in Nehekhara. Although always a desert with ample skulls (it IS a Games Workshop IP afterall), the spell rendered the entire land devoid of water or vegetation while the ground layer immediately below the sand is made up of solid skeletons. Animals, merely animated bones, still wander the desert looking for living flesh to tear.

The Vampires began to fight over whose fault the defeat was before making their way north to find more living beings. Some among their number had already fled previously, with Neferata and her husband having deserted even before the battle out of disdain for having to potentially follow Nagash as their leader, while the Captain of the Guard had left immediately after the battle in shame.

Mummy Time

The most drastic effect of the spell was the effect it had on the dead; those killed by the spell immediately stood back up, bewildered at their new state. Desert winds stripped the dead flesh from the Nehekharans, leaving only bleached and animated bones remaining. As they returned to their homes they found that the kings of old, now called Tomb Kings, had awoken as well as those Nehekharans who had been entombed in their great tomb cities over the centuries.

The commoners were content to reenact their living ways by maintaining the buildings, and shifting from buying, harvesting, and selling food to buying, crafting, "harvesting", and selling rocks and bones shaped like food. This however was not enough for the Tomb Kings. As hundreds upon thousands of generations in the same family line awoke, they immediately came into conflict with one another. For example, great great great great grandpa was enraged at how everyone had forgotten his name and accomplishments, great great great grandpa was shocked that his own son had taken his tomb and shoved the old man's body in a slave's casket in the entrance, great great grandpa demanded explanation for why his son had signed a peace treaty with the king who killed him in a war rather than avenge his father, great grandpa signed the peace treaty so he would be allowed to peacefully marry his own sister, grandpa revealed his son was a bastard that washed up on shore because his own sister/wife had miscarried every babby, dad died at the age of 14 after conceiving a child and demanding a prom be thrown in his honor, son had changed the main faith of the kingdom to another god and pissed off everyone else in the line, and grandson had failed to stop Nagash.

Every single one of them wants to be in charge, and sit in the throne that every single one of them sat at during their reign, and every single one has a big enough and infinitely respawning army of skeletons to use to demand they get their way. Fueling the frustration was the relatively poor upkeep many of the early tombs had seen, on top of the worst offense at all; no body of gold, less blessings from the gods, no immortal flesh, only brittle bone and wrappings with the odd scarab or two scuttling around the hollow places inside. The only exception to the dusty carnage was Khalida, who strode past her warring ancestors who fought over the palace to her own palace which had been located inside the Temple of Asaph, wearing the golden armor and death mask her people had made for her and resembling the promised skin no other Tomb King had received, and took her throne to usher in the only peace to be found in the lands of the dead.

The priesthood, now mummies themselves, found they had absolutely no power over the enraged entirety of the Nehekharan existence. Without option, Khatep (who had reclaimed his Grand Hierophant role) chose to seek out the only Nehekharan who had ever brought peace to the land; Settra, the only Tomb King who had not awoken with Nagash's spell.

Mac-daddy returns

Settra's first order of business was to banish Khatep to seek a way to give Settra his promised golden skin. Second, beat the shit out of EVERY Tomb King and secure oaths of loyalty from them. Settra's masterful tactics and general ferocity in battle allowed him to capture each king and end what would otherwise have been eternal wars. Those who bowed and sent tribute were released and allowed to fight over territory with their fellows if they so fit, so long as they knew who the true king was. Those who refused were granted horrible fates even for the undying, including being spread piece by piece into the desert and having their skull used as replenishing artillery ammo for catapults, while on fire. This thinned out the ranks enough to have enough kings able to claim at least a portion of the empires they had while alive. Settra respected Khalida, and secured her oath without need for conflict.

After Settra reestablished the Tomb Kings, he set his sights on eliminating the threat of Nagash as the first Lich was just as undying as the Tomb Kings, and would return in time. Arkhan became a Tomb King mercenary, working for anyone and everyone (even once creating a giant magical bridge for a Tomb King to ride chariots to other lands on) while not-so secretly working on Nagash's resurrection. Khatep wanders the world, looking for a way to give the Tomb Kings solid gold cocks again. Khalida attempts to wipe out all Vampires, everywhere because fuck Vampires and fuck Neferata, those fucking thots. Many Tomb Kings and their architects awoke to find their temples desecrated and/or looted, sometimes even by non-Nehekharans! Oftentimes Dwarfs or Warriors of Chaos were to blame, and any Tomb King worth anything will slaughter a genocidal path through the descendants of the thieving fucks while retrieving every single last fleck of gold dust. Other Tomb Kings have taken to enjoying their respawning nature to hunt greenskins or even Daemons like animals for sport. Beyond that even, some wish to emulate what they had in life and will trade or raid other parts of the world to gather anything from real food to slaves for unnecessary harems to fine silks to weave the emblems that otherwise only exist within their own memory on.

Tomb Kings have absolutely no consistent alignment. Some destroy the living out of envy, others like Khalida work willingly with the living, still others like Settra give no fucks as long as you're their underling. Even on the tabletop, the Tomb Kings army is completely Neutral and can work with any other faction.

Cultural influence of the Lizardmen?

There are numerous cultural and religious similarities between the Lizardmen of the Southlands and the Tomb Kings, likely because it was always apart of the Great Plan to have them watch over Humans, due to humanity's ability to be corrupted by Chaos and ability to be influenced into developing Necromancy. In cultural anthropology and historgraphy this is usually referred to as "syncretism", and could show exactly how civilization developed in history.

Such similarities are laid out here:

• The language of High Nehekharan is very similar to Saurian in being a logosyllabic script in which harsh consonants are emphasized. There has been at least one documented case of a Skink speaking High Nehekaran as is documented by the Arabyan Scholar Ibn Jellaba who writes that the skinks of Zlatlan spoke in a cultural dialect from far before the coming of Nagash.

• The cultural of tradition of mummifying the dead predates the Mortuary Cult, and likely derived from the same tradition of the Lizardmen doing this to exalted Slann Mage-Priests, and given the name of the leaders of the Tomb Kings in life were the Priest-Kings who had a similar cultural role in their society as having the duty of speaking to their gods (or in the Lizardmen's case, contemplating the great plan of the old ones).

• Motifs in Lizardmen art such as geometric shapes such as consummate triangles repeating in a cyan-blue pattern or repeating squares. Similar patterns in jewelry can also be seen such as emphasis on gold in ornate jewelry, bracelets, headdresses, etc. Some of these seem to be ubiquitous to warhammer, but when you see the specific designs on the Ushabti or other constructs and compare them to the patterns on the warmachines an thrones of the Lizardmen, and there's a clear inspiration.

• The battlefield roles of specific units seem to parallel one another, with Temple Guard and Tomb Guard having a similar cultural and social role, the use of Javelins between skinks and common warriors, etc.

• Asaph, the goddess of vengeance and snakes, is shown to regularly have similar attributes to Sotek the Deliverer, the skink god, who is seen as the righteous smiter of the wicked, specifically the Skaven. Given the Nehekharans made contact with their Gods at Mahrak where their covenant was sealed and before the founding of Rasetra this was very close to the jungles of the south, it is likely some beliefs of the Lizardmen may have leaked into the ancient humans.

• Finally, Rasetra as a city is known for using Lizardmen in their armies, implying some degree of cooperation and knowledge of the Slann of the Tomb Kings an their role in the Great Plan to this day. The fact even the most powerful units of lizardmen such as Thunderlizards being known to be used and the use of horned ones in their armies-potentially to this day-would clearly show cooperation between the two.

Given we know that the continents of Lustria and the Southlands used to be unified before the Great Castraphe, and the first humans in the setting were placed in Ka-Sabar first and spread either North, East, South or West. Over time, when the continents split, what likely resulted was the Kingdoms of Araby and Nehkhara were formed from the people of the West, the Amazons and the people went south became the various peoples of the Southlands such as pygmies totally culturally and ethnically sensitive depictions of indigenous cultures. Those that went North ended up probably becoming either the Barbarian tribes that would become the Empire, Norsca, or Beastmen. Needless to say, such as result for a society as ancient as Nehekhara's is far from surprising, as the only cultures older would either be High Elves or the ever reclusive Dwarfs.

Heroes

The Bob Marley of Warhammer

• Settra the Imperishable: The man, the myth, the legend. Settra is like an undead spellcasting Chuck Norris. He's got a weapon skill of 7 and a strength of 6 and eats lesser characters for breakfast. He also has the best beard in the whole Warhammer Realm (this statement alone is getting you front page in GREAT BOOK OF GRUDGES), this alone making him worth his points. Some claim that Settra is in fact a rastaman, judging by both the length of his beard and the amount of spells he can dish out each turn. He is also made out of an intense amount of cheese. He was nerfed in 8th edition, but in return you're able to actually use him in a 2000pt army. Rides a pimped-out ride called the Chariot of The Gods.

• High Queen Khalida: Pelor can fuck right off, Khalida is responsible for more dead Vampires than little Mr. Sunshine will ever be. Unique among Tomb Kings in that you can actually see what she looked like while alive since she wears armor cast against her corpse - although half the face of the mask is gone. Rules a devoutly religious kingdom that hails the goddess of phallic imagery and has the most giant magic robots made of gold out of all the Tomb Kings. Makes your ranged attacks so unbelievably OP you'd think she's a tsun alien.

• Grand Hierophant Khatep: The supreme alpha-pope of the Tomb Kings. Woke Settra up and was subsequently forbidden from coming home and relaxing until he finds a way to give everyone golden bodies with living sensation.

• The Herald Nekaph Nekaph is the best buddy of the undead spellcasting Chuck Norris. He is NOT nice in challenges. He will mangle any Hero he thinks smells a bit off, and can munch some Lords for breakfast too. And so will his flail, since it's comprised of perpetually gnawing skulls. Whether its artificers consulted Khorne about the design of this weapon is anyone's guess.

• Arkhan the Black: Nagash's second in command, works with anyone still loyal to Nagash and does odd jobs for just about anyone willing to pay him. Has a crush on the queen of the Vampires, only gets to reveal it to her and have one kiss before the world ends. As a young man, fucked everything that moved and took so little care of himself his nickname refers to his teeth... as a young man.

• Prince Apophas: He was an evil asshole, so he was put into a crypt to be eaten by beetles. He made a deal with a god though, and now he can fly and barf insects on people. He's a super-powerful warmachine killer. Beyond that, he's not entirely worth it when you consider all the heroes you can choose from. He is also "resembles" but is legally distinct from a similarly named character in an Egyptian themed sci-fi tv show, the titular character from The Mummy and the Egyptian god of evil and chaos and stuff (though you can't copyright ancient mythology) Terrible.

• Rahmhotep the Visionary: Nehekhara's best architect and most merciless taskmaster. In return for building monuments, the ancient architects would be sacrificed so their ideas couldn't be shared with other kings than the ones who commissioned them, so the man got his fellow architects wasted and then he'd disguise himself as them and go around building monuments. Yeah, how many people can say they escaped sacrifice several times and walk around like nothing was new. He's pretty pissed that everything is falling apart, so he's caught between a murderous rage that is the stuff of legend and playing a one-man game of Minecraft after a Creeper apocalypse.

• Prince Tutankhanut: King Tutankhamun expy. Died young, had a golden body that was artificially made for him until he gets his fleshy gold from Khatep.

• King Phar: In life, absolutely HATED greenskins and was the only man able to defeat Settra in a single battle. Died of old age while fighting him, allowing Settra to claim his kingdom of Mahrak. After rising, he was angered beyond words that his descendants had sworn loyalty to Settra and destroyed their bodies which left him the only ruler of Mahrak. Returned to being Settra's rival and destroying any greenskins in or near Nehekhara. Uses a skull flail that puts those of any Khornate to shame, made from Orc Warboss skulls. In the End Times he was retconned to be from Numas, not Mahrak.

• Sehenesmet: Vizier of Quatar, either a High Liche Priest with the skills of a Necrotect or a one who happens to wield magic. Perfected the process of animating living statues, and towards the end of his life put himself in one. So famous are his statues that one would find it difficult in Araby to find people who didn't hear of them.

• Amanhotep: The primary Tomb King of Zandri. Taken by Bretonnian Knights who thought he was their ancestor and woke up buried in Bretonnian regalia and sealed in a Bretonnian tomb. Woke up, ran amok through the region, then marched walked angrily back home while nursing a grudge against not-Frenchmen ever since. Had a special part to play in the Dreadfleet campaign where once again humans come and wreck his shit, in this case a thief named Jaego Roth from Sartosa who stole a literal boatload of gold in order to pay mercenaries to sail with him to kill the vampire who killed his family. Amanhotep immediately went to his ship, the Curse Of Zandri, which was a pyramid on a very large Solar Barge with a tail like a Warsphinx that fired a powerful laser armed with catapults and crewed by Ushabti.

• Behedesh: Hates greenskins as much as Phar, takes the fight outside Nehekhara to the Old World.

• Setep: Seeks to make a kingdom in the nearly impassible mountains around northern Nehekhara, the Border Princes. Rivals include greenskins, Vampires, Dwarfs, and living humans. Made a magical golden sword with a blue edge that slices through normal armor effortlessly and shatters magical armor.

• Alkharad: A Tomb King in eternal war with Slayers over a golden disk stolen by one of their ancestors and set in a hammer. Dwarfs barely recognize humans as having property rights, Undead humans are less than nothing so no crime was committed in their eyes. Alkharad gave them a chance, now the Dwarf race is forfeit and will pay for their dishonor one dead Slayer at a time.

• Pharakh: Killed by the Empire. Going to blitz the FUCK out of not-Germany once he gets back from resurrection.

Religion

• Ptra The not-Ra sun god and heavily implied to be the god Settra worshipped the most.
• Neru The Nehekharan goddess of the moon and paramour/love interest of Ptra.
• Djaf The not-Anubis god of death.
• Usirian. The not-Osiris god of the Nehekharn underworld, who might also be Morr and a many-faced god of all human afterlives.
• Asaph: Snake goddess, primary temple in Lybaras and used as the palace of her champion, High Queen Khalida. Favors ranged combat and tips arrows in magic poison while guiding their path into enemies. Domains are beauty, vengeance, and magic. Also had some priestesses who practiced ritual prostitution, at least in Khemri during Thutep's reign.

Army Composition

Hit and run

To make an appropriately fluffy army rather than a superior army tactically (which has its own page below), the best route is to do like GW and copy non-fictional history.

Although the Mortuary Cult began with Settra, and thus he would logically be the oldest and first Tomb King, it wouldn't be lore breaking to come from an older generation as the Mortuary Cult could have had a less-organized predecessor.

Settra is known for his amazing Chariot Of The Gods, something that indicates his era parallels real-life Egyptian New Kingdom military, where the Egyptians had been introduced to the composite bow and horses, with chariots coming soon after. As a result early Tomb Kings should have ample Horsemen, some Chariots, and Skeleton Archers. The New Kingdom saw the rise of professional armies meaning Settra would have introduced the Tomb Guard.

Any older than Settra would likely be similar to the Egyptian Old Kingdom, made up of large peasant levies armed only with simple bows and basic weapons like clubs. Such a force should have no Chariots, and the oldest would have no cavalry at all. Old Kingdom Egypt relied heavily on its navy for protection, so your Tomb Guard would be marines rather than palace guard.

Constructs were a later invention of the Tomb Kings, and thus only the younger generations should have them in large numbers unless your Tomb King is the sort to be diplomatic and trade (or draw Necrotects away from their rivals with promises and bribes). Likewise, Horsemen should be totally abandoned for Chariots alone. Lybaras had the most complex Constructs among the Tomb Kings, and older Lybaras Tomb Kings may have had access to them earlier than their peers.

All Egyptians regardless of era used heavy ranged support, so feel free to stock up on Catapults, Archers, and whatever else. Spears remained an uncommon weapon which was normally used by cavalry more than infantry. Most Egyptian forces favored shields.

Egyptians were reliant on mercenary armies and rarely innovated new equipment or tactics, relying instead on applying what successful enemies utilized against them. The only hint of this in the Tomb Kings is Khalida being extremely open to hiring Gotrek and Felix to slay vampires in her name, although with this as a precedent players could field forces from another army as a proxy. Egyptian mercenaries were citizens and used Egyptian colors and symbols rather than those of their own people, so any mercs should be matching the rest of your force (there's also a snippet of lore about living humans cohabiting with the undead Nehekharans in a city, but that lore said that the military was exclusively undead and the living are drafted after they die; their corpses reduced to skeletons then inducted into their ranks). Remember that since Nehekhara is devoid of much life or sources of drinking water that living subjects and forces would be rare and only for Tomb Kings capable of keeping them alive via control of an oasis, coastline, or mountain pass.

Death of an Era

In Age of Sigmar, as of February 2016, the entire Tomb Kings faction was squatted, with the entire model range being moved to the "Last Chance to Buy" section, including Settra. Tomb Kings players everywhere cried manly tears of pain and rage. Unconfirmed reports state the only thing that stopped them from marching on Nottingham and laying siege to Games Workshop HQ is a shortage of bones for the catapults, and the Bretonnian players began sharpening their swords waiting for the inevitable. To add insult to injury, the pdf rules for the Tomb Kings were removed from the Games Workshop website at the time.

If you want to get into the army these days, buy the models second-hand or convert some Deathrattle/Ossiarch Bonereapers. As GW has managed to do repeatedly since End Times, they replaced their former iron grip on the market with a void that third parties have filled with various Tomb King replacement model lines from various sculptors and various companies.

RIP Tomb Kings. May your rotting corpse be forever restless. (See Geheimisnacht where they fuck everything over even today.)

This ended up being the harbinger of the future; just as Nehekhara was the first nation destroyed in the End Times (based on the End Times: Nagash armybook being released before the End Times: Khaine armybook), so were the Tomb Kings the first faction to get the axe but not the last. Not long after the Bretonnians got the axe as well and several other product lines took massive hits early on in the life of Age Of Shitmar Sigmar, and with each year more and more of the old models were squatted as well as some that weren't even five years old. To date, almost all of the Dwarfs and High Elves ranges have been squatted, with the survivors being combined with the unsurprisingly still thriving Empire range into one faction alongside all the Dark Elves. Goblins were largely removed as well, showing a lack of respect for the past at the time with the most iconic factions and armies as dead as non-Nehekharan skeletons.

I Don't Wanna Die, I'm A God, Why Can't I Live On?

Not happy with Age of Sigmar, several fans came together to make The 9th Age, a fan-run successor to 8th Edition and Warhammer Fantasy using totes not-copyright violating renames.

Better yet, model manufacturers reached out to make proxies for the Warhammer Fantasy models, replacing that which Games Workshop gave the axe and providing non-Games Workshop alternatives to the rest. The first model range to be replaced? Delicious irony and dried salty tears, it was the Undying Dynasties AKA the not-Tomb Kings.

These come from TMS (Tabletop Miniatures Solutions) via an Indiegogo campaign (found here) and will be available to purchase on their store page (found here). As of October 2020, TMS has shut its doors for good

Mantic Games, GW's upstart young rival, has recently made Tomb Kings fans' lives a lot easier. They've released a line of miniatures for their not-Tomb Kings army, the Empire of Dust, that more or less covers everything you need. The cheeky SOBs stock their models here, and you should give it at least a look if you're considering a walk on the other side.

Old kings don't die, they just fade away...then come back to life to break their foot off on your ass again.

As of 2019, GW announced they are going to bring back Warhammer Fantasy in some form! Though they also said it wont be ready for a long time, and we don't know what form that will take, so...

Return in Age of Sigmar!

In the third page of The Blood of Centuries section from The Realmgates Wars: Godbeasts (pag. 14 if you have the PDF), there is an entry titled Wrath of the Obsidian Monarchy which talks about the Crimson Monarchy (that's GW editors for you),a dynasty of undying kings living in the Voidglass Desert which fight with chariots and skeletal legions, now, you may say these could be vampires, but only the Tomb Kings fit this image. It's quite a small entry, but this leaves open a chance to see some Tomb Kings-like Death factions coming to Age of Sigmar; what with Shysh being now an entire plane of existance for different aftelife realms and undead civilizations thriving. We have seen other things coming back despite being declared dead, so why not?, Hell with the amount of heroes returning should we really be surprised that Settra would also return?, specially since GW likes to use him as a meme propaganda for the Old World game.

Tomb King specific units have occasionally featured in some Age of Sigmar novels. In Josh Reynolds' Nagash: Undying King, Nurgle Rotbringers are ambushed by an obviously-TK bone-giant, it's armed with a khopesh and everything. Josh Reynolds no longer writes for Black Library. The curse spreads...

Hopes were raised (no pun intended) in a Necropolis video from Warhammer TV on Youtube which seemed to be about an ancient king returning... unfortunately, the faction was revealed to be a faction of OCs of artificially manufactured undead, with their "king" just being a Mortarch. While it has a bone motif, priests, and catapults hurling flaming skulls, it also only resembles the Tomb Kings in the sense that they visually match Nagash and the Morghasts from End Times rather than the actual Tomb Kings. They even have the Morghasts in their ranks.

Whether it was a giant unpleasant tease or "close enough" is subjective. But objectively, the Tomb Kings have not returned and the only promise that it could happen is future Made To Order releases.

Return of the Kings!

Just recently, it seems the Tomb kings were announced for Warhammer: The Old World! It seems the boney boys are coming back and better than ever!

Total Warhammer

The Tomb Kings have arisen again in Total War: WARHAMMER it seems. With Hierotitans capable of shooting eye laser beams no less. Even more, Settra has a voice actor!

Say it with me now!

Gallery

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  The 6e/first Army Book.

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  The 8e Army Book.

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  Bone Giants and Bone Catapults; the final word in "GET OFF MY LAWN!"

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  Wouldn't be an Egypt-expy without sphinxes.

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  Fuck you, Nagash and GW

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  Farewell, Tomb Kings This was the true fall of Nehekhara

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  I'm back, bitch!

See Also

• Tactics/Tomb Kings
• Tomb Kings tactics for the glorious 6th edition
• Tomb King Dynasty Creation Tables
• Necrons - With their recent 6th edition fluff update, Necrons are now the TOMB KINGS IN SPEHSS of the 41st millennia.
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3vhpk7DhZM Tomb Kings themesong
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCJ7BOeCpkY&feature=player_embedded#! Tomb Kings better themesong
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Icwd9HYIuq8&feature=player_embedded#! A rather more serious themesong, done by Egyptian Death Metal band Nile.
• http://theendlessdeserts.blogspot.com A fan website dedicated to Tomb Kings in Age of Sigmar, with unofficial rules and lore.

Playable Factions in Warhammer Fantasy Battle
Human Kingdoms:	The Empire of Man - Bretonnia
Elves:	High Elves - Dark Elves - Wood Elves
Dwarven:	Dwarfs - Chaos Dwarfs
Undead:	Tomb Kings - Vampire Counts
Heirs of the Old Ones:	Lizardmen
Greenskins	Orcs - Goblins
Ogrekind	Ogre Kingdoms
Servants of Chaos	Warriors of Chaos - Daemons of Chaos - Beastmen
Skavenkind	Skaven