Editing Tomb Kings (section)

=== 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, [[Lizardmen|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 [[Extra Heresy|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 [[Just as Planned|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 [[Queen Neferata|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 [[Vlad von Carstein|her husband]], [[Abhorash|the Captain of the Guard]], [[W'soran|her local priest]], [[Ushoran|her cousin]], and others. Lahmia quickly became a den of the very first [[Vampire Counts|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.