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Villain In Need Of A Name: Evil Ancient Pharaoh


Marcus Impudite

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The back story on this guy can be summed up as follows:

 

Centuries ago, he was one of the wealthiest, most powerful, and most feared rulers of Ancient Egypt. Unfortunately for him, his cruelties and excesses ultimately lead to a (surprisingly successful) rebellion against him and he went to his tomb a little earlier than he was expecting. He was reanimated in modern times when a group archaeologists made the mistake of opening his sarcophagus.

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Hmm... for your purposes I would suggest either Apepi or his successor Khamudi, the last two pharaohs of the Fifteenth Dynasty, aka the foreign Hyksos invaders of Egypt.

 

Apepi, or Apophis (a name already fraught with evil implications) is believed to have usurped the throne from his predecessor. He also "usurped" several monuments to earlier pharaohs by inscribing his name over theirs. Apepi took the god Set as his patron and exclusive god. These names, and the Hyksos themselves, were demonized by later Egyptians (whether justified or not), so lend themselves well to an evil interpretation.

 

Unfortunately Apepi reportedly had a long and peaceful reign. But his successor Khamudi was the last Hyksos king of Egypt, defeated by Ahmose I who restored native Egyptian rule over the whole country. If Apepi was an evil tyrant, perhaps Khamudi continued his predecessor's policies until he was overthrown.

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One of my friends played a heroic mummy/super-mage in a Champions campaign a while back named Sanakht. Since his primary feature as a pharaoh is that no one knows much about him and can't even agree when his reign was, or how long he lasted, I'd find it amusing (on a purely personal level) to know there was a villain out there claiming the same name and origin.

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It doesn't fit the origin story, but tales portray the last really-truly-Egyptian pharaoh, Nectanebus, as a powerful magician. When an army invaded Egypt, he set up model soldiers on a sand table to represent the two sides... then poured a bucket of sand over the invaders. In response, the sands of the desert rose and buried the invaders alive! The Sorcerer Pharoah's reign ended when Persia invaded by sea. Nectanebus put model ships in a tub to represent the Persian and Egyptian fleets. When he cast his spell, though, the Persian ships rammed and sank the Egyptian model ships, by which Nectanebus knew the gods were with the invader and his magic was overthrown. So he fled to Macedonia, where he disguised himself as the god Amun to father Alexander the Great, future conqueror of Persia. So there!

 

(From E. A. Wallis Budge's Egyptian Magic. I may have misremembered some details, it's been a long time since I read it. But it can give an idea of the sort of magic a sorcerer pharaoh would wield.)

 

Dean Shomshak

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Mentuhotep IV (full name Nebtawyre Mentuhotep IV).

 

From the link DT provided:

 

 

 

Obscure pharaoh absent from later king lists; tomb unknown. May have been overthrown by his vizier and successor Amenemhat I.

 

You could say that his "absence" from later king lists is because Amenemhat ordered all mention of Mentuhotep IV striken from monuments, tablets, etc. due to his predecessor's excesses and despotism.  And there's the fact that Mentuhotep IV's tomb is unknown...

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Nyarlathotep.

 

 

 

What? Someone had to say it.

Just don't say it again.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary says it would be wise also to refrain from mentioning the name of the legendary demon pharaoh who reigned for three unhallowed and unhistoried midnights...

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When his name was razed from all monuments and documents and ceremonially cursed, it was magically forgotten even by the Gods, even by himself.

 

The only place it remained was written on the walls of his tomb, as part of a curse to keep him safely sealed away. It was when one of the archeologists read the name aloud and then said "Well ______, we're going to get you out of that sarcophagus" that full awareness and the ability to move and act returned to the accursed one, who promptly slew the archeologists.

 

To stop him, the player characters must recover the name (probably from the tomb walls, although anyone able to talk to the ghost of the archeologist could learn it that way) and use it to tell the accursed one to return to his sarcophagus and stay there.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary says meanwhile the old dead king will answer to "Hai Yu"

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Technically, since millennia can be divided into centuries, he wasn't wrong. ;)

I'm trying to remember, how long is an aeon?  'Aeon' could actually be a cool name for an Egyptian-themed hero.

 

Akhenaten the Heretic Pharaoh was the one who tried to convert his people to monotheism/sun-worship, almost all traces of his reign were destroyed.  He and his sister had elongated skulls leading to today's alien hybrid theories.

 

In the old Dr. Who story 'Pyramids of Mars' the big bad was Sutekh; I just love that name as it sounds sibilant and sinister.

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