The Eye of Anubis: Book Eight

[yalenusveler]

Andre rubbed the bridge of his nose as he investigated the acid burn, then turned to Lia "Right. Getting a significant quality of diamond...and then hoping the spell doesn't go awry." He winced "Part of my research before the expedition began was trying to find out why resurrection can be rather hit or miss. Sometimes mobility is restored to the body, but not life. And it tends to be tied to the health of the individual pre-mortem. I'm unsure if we would get Pelletier back, or simply one of the walking dead in his shape."

It was fairly clear that that wasn't a possibility Andre was particularly fond of. "I had wanted to investigate the library..if any would want to come along, I'd like to think it better than staying here, unless anyone else has an investigative technique to apply that hasn't been brought up yet."

[lostboy]

unless anyone else has an investigative technique to apply that hasn't been brought up yet."

Khalil spreads his hands "no I am finished here, I think I have seen all I can. Not that it makes much sense." He adds with a grimace.

"We should move on, but we certainly should move together."

[NeoTiamat]

The Late Professor Pelletier's Room, The Monastery of Stilled Nightmares, Sebua
July 17th, 761, 11:25 AM; Day 122 of the Menetnashte Expedition
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Lia turns to Maleagant. "Do not be too hasty to burn the body. With the right components, if we find the head, the professor could be restored."

"With all due respect, Miss Mournswaithe, I disagree." Samael's nose twitched slightly, as it did when the Borcan was thinking. "Andre's right, there's risks involved. Not to mention there's still this taint of yours around, and a pack of undead outside, and a Dreamspawn or something floating about. We can't risk it."

"Kuzan," Maleagant turned to the priest. "I know Pelletier wasn't much of a person for religion, let alone Varuna, but you're still someone he knew. Could you handle ceremony? By night-fall?"

"Please?"

The Library, The Monastery of Stilled Nightmares, Sebua
July 17th, 761, 1:07 PM; Day 122 of the Menetnashte Expedition
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Shortly after the funeral arrangements were settled, one way or another, the rest of the group departed for the library of the Monastery of Stilled Nightmares. Maleagant and Marchand-Renier would inform the monks that... something had gone very badly wrong, and that Pelletier was dead. Guy and Jervis would lay out the body and clean up the scene. Pursuant Kuzan's orders, no one would travel alone.

So it was with a, if not easy heart, than at least with a sense that you had done everything you could, that you headed for the little library. It was... strange, really. Pelletier was dead, but the regular orders of business had to be continued, understanding this Monastery of Nightmares, stilled or otherwise, was important. So it was you maneuvered the mazes of the Monastery to reach the library.

After about an hour and a half of wandering around corridors that seemed to bear only a loose resemblance to normal architectural practices, you found the library.

It wasn't a very large library, a quarter the size of the one in Dezbar, and a fraction of Phiraz's grand library. It was an odd little library, though, with little nooks and crannies fair stuffed with tomes, without organizational or architectural pattern that you could determine. It was a library out of a madman's fever dream, with entire sub-rooms hidden behind bookshelves, out of sight and almost out of their mind. And through it all, it was filled with books.

Old books, massive tomes with leather covers and faded titles in bronze. Young books, tattered, water-damaged copies of the products of Darkon's print shops, fair destroyed by their journey. Large books, black-bound folios on the bottom-most shelves that were two feet to a side and weighed at least thirty pounds. Small books, little pamphlets stacked on the top shelves, with pencil drawings on the front cover, only half of which you recognized. And above all, strange books. Books without titles, books with covers stained black, books filled with spidery writing, books that were so covered in shadows, filed so deeply in the backs of their shelves, that you wondered if they moved when you looked away.

In the center of this rather unpleasant array was a small table, and on it a candlestick, and some more books, and near a little fireplace, a samovar enameled in blue and white, though somehow faded and decrepit. A few over-stuffed chairs ringed the small table, their once grand beauty faded by time and wear.

Somewhere, you heard a little shifting of dust across the top of the shelves, a soft skittering of myriad legs upon old pages. Just insects.

Of course.

[Search Checks: You may take 20, and you may Aid Another (stacks with more people), on that take 20.]

[lostboy]

Khalil looks around the room, feeling very out of place. It wasnt that the desert guide didnt understand the value of books, far form it, just that well wasnt life more interesting to live rather than read about?

Musing aside Khalil pulls an old book from the nearest shelf with enough casual heavy handedness to make most bibliophiles have a heart attack and begins flipping idly thorugh it.

"I am no scholar so would someone enlighten me as to what we are looking for specifically here? Subjects, languages, maps, booby traps that imprison our souls perhaps?" he asks with a one sided grin.

[Nathan of the FoS]

Charles had spent a while in Pelletier's room doing--nothing, really, except looking at everything.

Very carefully.

More than once.

The place where Pelletier's spellbook had rested interests him in particular, but the net result of his searching seems to be rather disappointing...no Eureka! moment, and no J'accuse either.

Finally, shrugging slightly, he says "Well, that's done it. Poor old fellow. What a way to go."

***

"Information on..." Charles touches his cheek just below his eye. "Information on the tomb we're looking for and the man in it, information on the Cult of the Jackal. That's what I intend to look for, at least. I'm sure there are other interesting things to be found."

Already suiting deeds to words, he has moved off down a little alleyway of shelves and is scanning the shelves.

Seach 33, taking 20.

[lostboy]

Information on..." Charles touches his cheek just below his eye. "Information on the tomb we're looking for and the man in it, information on the Cult of the Jackal.

"Very well" Khalil shrugs replacing the book of what appears to be a selection of most unsavoury recipes from Ghenna utilising a variety of lichens and small bugs.

So said he heads along to another shelf and begins looking.

[OOC: Search 33 taking a 20 as well]

[NeoTiamat]

The Library, The Monastery of Stilled Nightmares, Sebua
July 17th, 761, 2:07 PM; Day 122 of the Menetnashte Expedition
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You found it in one of the little nooks in the wall. It wasn't really much more than a closet, to be honest, just an indentation in the wall which let more books be fitted in. As a matter of fact, you almost missed the alcove, hidden as it was behind a free-standing shelf of books. And yet...

Inside, there were more old books, and amongst them some odd old knick-knacks. It was one in particular that drew the eye. It was a large, brass paper-weight, carved into a shape resembling a human hand. Well, mostly like a human hand. Human hands generally don't have claws. They also generally don't seem to be standing on their fingers, ready to scuttle forward like a demented crab, and they certainly don't have a slender tentacle come from the stump, providing balance.

Beneath this little trinket of someone's dementia was a large, simple book. It's cover was series of wooden plates, well-bound with glue which had proven irresistable to endless generations of insects. Upon the back of the book were written some words that you had been hoping to see for months.

• The Jackal Wars: The Rise and Fall of the Menetnashtean Dynasty and the Cult of the Jackal
  By Farhid Razavi
  

Insect damage notwithstanding, the book was in marvelous condition, written in a clear hand by a scribe, and organized in the scholarly manner immediately familiar to the many members of the University of Dementlieu-backed Menetnashte Expedition. It was also fabulously illustrated, and in fact, the very first illustration on the cover page was...

A drawing of the Statue of the Faceless. Labeled Kadey, Southern Pharazia. And with a skull in the basin to catch blood.

• “… The Menetnashtean Dynasty was the last of the great Akiri kingships, born from the ashes of the late Ahmosian Dynasty, and existing as a brief flicker of vitality before its destructions upon the blood-soaked fields of Dahnitae...
  
  …For an empire that, at its height, united more of Har’Akir than any since that of Ra-Kharesh III, surprisingly little is known of the Menetnashtean Dynasty. The Late Akiri Kingdom was a strange time, when the glory days of the past were gone, and the weak Ahmosian Dynasty ruled over a disparate federation of kingdoms and tribes. All manner of strange cults and secret societies arose at this time, and the traditional structure of Akiri religion was fractured as partisans of the gods squabbled with each other and with foreign gods...
  
  …Records on the early days of the Cult of the Jackal are sparse, destroyed intentionally by the secretive Cult itself and by the Alliance of the Gods. It is known that the mystery cult arose in the tiny desert city of Kamarn-Quse, and over the years of the Ahmosian Dynasty’s decline grew to the de facto domination of the city, even as the governorship of that city atrophied to nothingness…
  
  …
  
  …
  
  The Cult of the Jackal first burst upon the world scene in the time of Ahmose XXI, judging by military reports. In the eleventh year of Ahmose XXI’s kingship, a military force was dispatched to Kamarn-Quse regarding a matter of unpaid taxes. A fragmentary account of the expedition survives.
  
  • We departed the Fortress of Nefa with a force of six-score charioteers and thrice thousand retainers, as well as twice-hundred archers from the Southlands [A force of some thirty-five hundred men, total.]… It was on the seventh day of Amshir that misfortune befell. First came the plague winds, and men sweated and grew emaciated and died within a span of hours… thus did a third of our force die. That night, the shadows rose against us, and fell upon our men with hungry maws and poisoned bites… thus did the second third of our force die…
    
    …At the gates of Kamarn-Quse, before the ugly, dingy walls of the desert-slum, did we face the Walker in Shadows, a figure in gold and bearing a sword of fog and shade. It was alone, a single figure in gold against a thousand survivors of the army. But it was not afraid, and raised its sword to the sky. And from the underworld it called daemons, hideous warriors part man and part beast, and they fell upon us with a maddened fury, and I felt a great fear sweep the force, and many men ran, only to be born down by the daemons. I too, was unmanned by terror, but escaped upon horseback.
  Even ignoring the fanciful elements of ‘daemons’ and ‘plague winds’, all of the hallmarks of the Cult of the Jackal’s early successes are present here. At a time when battles were still decided by great maneuverings of chariot wings and massed clashes of infantry, the Cult of the Jackal were marvelously cunning irregular warriors, specializing in all manner of environmental and psychological tactics. In the first instance here, Cult agents managed to spread cholera in the enemy camp, provoking a fearsome killer into the ranks, without risking a single soldier. Hit-and-run attacks at night further sapped morale, and by the time the Cult soldiers, garbed in their fearsome masks, rose up from concealment in the sand, the surprise was so complete as to utterly disable the opposing force. This would be consistent throughout all of the Cult of the Jackal’s victories…
  
  …As far as the Walker in Shadows, this would appear to be one of the many epithets the Ahmosian troops coined for the great high priest and general of the Cult of the Jackal, Menetnashte. Little documentation remains, but this man must have been a truly marvelous figure, able to manipulate his troops and his foes alike, inspiring rabid fanaticism in the former and abject terror in the latter…
  
  …
  
  …
  
  Unlike most prior conquerors, or for that matter the Great Prophet of Phiraz, the Cult of the Jackal were not traditional imperialists. Even when their empire stretched from the borders of modern-day Pharazia all the way to lands now long hidden in the Mists, the Cult of the Jackal and their emperor-priests, the line of Menetnashte, never attempted to incorporate their captured lands into an actual, cohesive nation-state,
  
  Rather, the Cult troops would conquer a city-state, and would either sack it, or else extract a surrender treaty on quite ruinous terms. All the wealth of the captured lands would be funneled back into the tiny desert city of Kamarn-Quse, which during this time underwent a campaign of rebuilding the likes of which would not be seen till the days of Phiraz. Equally, the Cult of the Jackal took their pick of the young men of the city, who would become equally the rank-and-file soldiers of the Cult, though the elite core of the army would always remain the natives of Kamarn-Quse.
  
  In exchange, the Cult of the Jackal frequently left the local government and religious organizations intact, preferring to rule at a distance rather than install governors and bureaucracies. The only interference the city-states had to brook in their day-to-day affairs was that of a Cult emissary, known as an Exarch of the Jackal, who would ensure that the various temples and priests of the old Akiri deities worshipped and respected the Cult of the Jackal’s double-god, Anuberith, as lord and master. Seeing as the Exarchs were uniformly mages of some strength, one must conclude they exerted no small influence. In fact, one of our very few records of the Cult’s religious ceremonies consists of a scribe’s account of the confirmation of the Exarch of Balnea, a city some two week’s journey south of Kamarn-Quse:
  
  • …It was a fortnight after the elder Awi was slain that the new Jackal-Priest arrived with her entourage. She was an old, small woman, yet firm of back and with eyes that saw the soul. Her name was Ramla, and she was accompanied everywhere by a great dreadful beast, an ape wearing a mask of purest gold, though it was no ape’s face beneath the mask…
    
    …Exarch Ramla spoke, and said that beneath the thunderstorm she would consecrate Balnea to the Twin God. And some few people laughed, those born after Awi, or who did not remember, for a thunderstorm happened but very rarely. But the Exarch took this all in stride, and said only that the Twin God will provide. And lo, the next day were dark clouds across Balnea, and lightning played through the streets, and the people were afraid.
    
    But the Exarch was not afraid, and with her servitor went to the greatest square of Balnea. I was curious, and with others more curious than clever watched as she drew a nine-pointed star upon the ground, humming a toneless tune beneath her breath. She took a dagger of black obsidian from her robes, and cut lightly at her wrist, letting a single drop of blood fall at each of the star’s points.
    
    Then the Exarch placed within the star an idol of dark obsidian, of a faceless man, a foot tall. Upon this statue she placed a fresh jackal-skin, still bloodied and raw, and at the points of the stars she placed coins of gold, silver, copper, electrum, brass, bronze, iron, lead, and tin. Each of these she anointed with a drop of jackal’s blood. Then the Exarch spoke, but it was in no language that I knew, though I am an educated man. And the shadows moved around old Ramla, and all was queerly silent. The Exarch stayed silent for an hour, in silent communion, and then spoke.
    
    ‘Balnea has accepted its Exarch. Let the Twin-God hold dominion, let Anubis and Berith join, for Balnea is Anuberith’s demesnes once more!’
    
    And though I cannot prove it, ever after there was a shadow upon the stones in that square, even at noon of the brightest day.
  …An intriguing tale, if heavily biased against the Cult of the Jackal, and also likely embellished, as shown by the rather dubious ending line, characteristic of a mythmaking attempt. Nevertheless, the symbolism of earthly possessions with Anubis, a trait more often seen in other religions, is intriguing, as is the presence of the faceless man, possibly Berith, though I’ve had difficulty tracking down references to this figure. Likely a foreign god that the Cult of the Jackal adopted in some early stage.
  
  In a way, the Cult of the Jackal was remarkably enlightened for its time, practicing a pagan dualistic religion that echoed the truth of Purity. And while the figure of the Prophet is as the sun to the stars of the various Hierarchs of the Jackal, this procession of charismatic figures, uniformly called Menetnashte, were nevertheless powerful symbols…
  
  …
  
  …
  
  …Of course, all empires come to an end, and thus happened with the Menetnashtean Dynasty. In many ways, the end of the Cult of the Jackal came of their own success. Their economy, predicated as it was on constant expansion and conquest, couldn’t survive once the Cult had over-run all of Har’Akir. The conquest of desert tribes brought swiftly diminishing returns, and campaigns too far away from the heart-land brought difficulties in logistics and control that would be the foundering of many a campaign.
  
  Likewise, as the Cult expanded, army mutinies began to plague the Dynasty. While the troops of Kamarn-Quse would remain ever loyal and ever fanatical, the conscript-troops of neighboring cities were always of dubious loyalty, and by the end of the Menetnashtean Dynasty, simply outnumbered the Cult’s troops by a factor of almost sixty-to-one. And now all these troops were trained in Cult tactics.
  
  Still, these problems could’ve been managed, were it not for a third issue that arose. The old Akiri gods proved tenacious, even as the Cult actively promoted the worship of their dualistic deity, Anuberith. Eventually, a religious unrest would begin as the various disparate cults and groupings that were present before the Cult began to band together, setting aside doctrinal squabbles to overthrow their enlightened masters. In fact, we have some remnants of the Alliance’s religious anathemas, which are educational for the, admittedly rather biased, view they provide of the city of Kamarn-Quse and the Cult of the Jackal.
  
  
  • ...the Empire of Menetnashte was an empire built upon sin. All virtue, reverence and tradition were forgotten in place of hedonism and selfishness. Arrogance, greed, sloth, blood thirst, and wicked lust were encouraged amongst even the common people, and the nobility took their depraved decadence to unimaginable depths. Painted women did business alongside of bakers and bricklayers, and often performed unspeakable acts of debauchery in public places. Every manner of demon and monster walked the streets openly alongside of man, and it is well known that many of these foul and black beasts held seats of the highest power. All those who rebelled against this loathsome empire were brutally put down and slaughtered...
    
    ..There was no place in the city where its wickedness was more evident than the Grand Colosseum. In this arena thousands of men and beasts were set upon each other to feed the bloodlust of the crowd, who would roar like animals at every drop of blood spilled. Even those who at first abhorred such foul displays of gore would soon find themselves caught in the maddened frenzy of the other spectators, screaming to urge on the orgy of violence and bloodshed...
    
    ...And there were none in this unrighteous empire more repellent than Menetnashte. Known as the Golden One to the sycophantic masses of the empire, this ungodly ruler delighted in every blasphemy and perversion possible. Tribute was extorted from every region to support the gluttony of Menetnashte's court, and the slightest perceived offense would incur the Demon Pharaoh's wrath. Every night throngs of nobles were called to Menetnashte's Golden Hall, where they performed every perversion possible. The tables were set with foul courses cooked from human flesh and blood. The harems were filled with beautiful youths, both women and men, torn from their homes to satiate the desires of the upper class. Those who gave into wickedness, regardless of fortunes, would gain the favor of Menetnashte and quickly rise in position, but such evil methods would not avail them for long. All manner of treachery was encouraged by Menetnashte, especially among those in power. Only the high priests were spared this murderous culling, at the price of their immortal souls, for the priests of Menetnashte openly bargained with demons, and their rites were naught more than reveling in the highest blasphemy to the true gods
  
  
  Calling themselves the Alliance of the Gods, these rebels inspired great fervor in the common populace, unlike the elitist Cult of the Jackal. The triple-blows of a foundering economy, constant mutinies, and religious unrest were too much for the Cult of the Jackal to handle. At first, a few cities began to declare independence of the Cult, and then that trickle became a flood. Joined by the mutineers and the religious fanatics of the Alliance of the Gods, these rebels rallied themselves around a distant scion of the previous Ahmosian Dynasty, a figurehead who went by the name of Ahmose XXVII.
  
  This is not to say that the Cult of the Jackal and their leader, Menetnashte (whom I believe to be the eleventh of that name), did nothing. Though egregiously outnumbered, the Cult still possessed a core of well-trained and well-equipped troops, and the overwhelming majority of the great wizards of that time were Cult Exarchs. Likewise, Menetnashte XI proved himself to be a very skilled general, using superior sorcerous skill and disciplined troops to route the Alliance of the Gods on numerous occasions through ambushes and night attacks. Menetnashte XI plundered all the tricks of his predecessors, and it was almost as if the Ahmosian armies were once again being defeated by a band of desert dervishes.
  
  But it was not to be. The weight of numbers was simply too great, and eventually the Alliance of the Gods forced Menetnashte XI to an open battle on the field of Dahnitae, an area that I have yet to be able to find, despite copious research. Nevertheless, fragmentary accounts of the battlefield say that it must have been quite spectacular, with the wizardry of the Menetnashtean Dynasty finally being overturned by the combined divine magic of the entire Alliance of the Gods. Once Menetnashte XI lost the battle of wizardry, the demise of the Cult of the Jackal was assured. By all accounts, the Cult fought like demons, but with their high magics stymied, the Menetnashtean Dynasty was slowly ground into the sand…
  
  …After the battle, the Alliance of the Gods embarked on a decade long campaign to expunge every mention of Menetnashte and the Cult from record. Thus we know very little of the this golden age of the Late Akiri Dynasties. Nevertheless, from the records, I can safely say that this must have been one of the finest hours of Har’Akir, a sophisticated, vigorous empire that ruled one of the greatest extents of land of the last two thousand years…
  
  …
  
  …
  
  …After Dahnitae, there is a single curious footnote in history. According to one religious log, Menetnashte XI was captured by the Alliance of the Gods at the culmination of the battle. Unlike most captured rulers, however, Menetnashte XI was neither ransomed, nor paraded through the streets of captured cities in a show of might. Rather, it seems that the last of the Hierarchs of the Jackal was summarily put to death, or as the original document puts it rather strangely, ‘given up unto Anubis’…"

[Kaitou Kage]

"Biased?" Kuzan sounded a bit incredulous, but he spoke quietly, as if to ward off prying ears. "I don't see where that's biased. I was there. It was terrible. Menetnashte had demons, he was depraved. He needed to be put down. What's wrong with this book is too much trying to not be biased. The point is entirely missed!"

[yalenusveler]

"The Abbot mentioned Karman-Quse, didn't he?" Andre asked, thumbing over a rather bizzare collection of bawdy limericks in Draconic involving the rather unusual lifecycle of hypothetical insects.

"And Kuzan, of course they're going to downplay and avoid bias. As a historian, he wasn't present. Thus leading him to assume that any demonization of Menetnashte was merely a victor in a civil war attempting to quash any partisan activity and to win the hearts and minds of the populace."
Andre shrugged "History written by the victors and all that. Of course, when the horrible things you say about the looser are in fact TRUE, then we get situations like this, where historians are being woefully uniformed."

Andre began an almost pace for a moment, then mused aloud "Any chance the Anubite is a repentant Ramla, made to live till Menetnashte is undone? And I wonder what the language she spoke in the consecration..or desecration was. "

[The Whistler]

"Shadows rising up against armies...mm. If Menetnashte's wrath lasts to the present day...perhaps an explanation for the assassins at Kermanshah?" Otto says it half to himself, still caught up in his own thoughts.

[DocBeard]

"Oh, good, sinister references to jackals and Anubis." Tomas mutters sourly, crossing his arms because he's unable to bring the Professor back from the dead and wipe his utter failure to do anything worthwhile from the stars. Err, because he's less cheerful than usual. "I swear, if that lady ends up being some kind of super ghost, I'm giving up on dating alltogether."

[Rock of the Fraternity]

"This has all been fascinating," Lia says, "and I do not doubt it may help us in the future. However, it might be prudent to now start looking for any references that might help us solve our current problem. Books on the origin of the taint and the 'dreaming lord', if any such are to be found, perhaps ..."

[NeoTiamat]

[DC 35 Search Check to find anything else in the library. Again, you may take 20 and Aid Another.]

[Kaitou Kage]

Kuzan wandered around idly, ignoring Lia and her sanctimonious nonsense. He glanced over the books and hoping something would jump out at him -- figuratively speaking. Enough weirdness had happened on this trip that a book literally jumping out at him wouldn't surprise him.

Search check to Aid Another on Charles.

[Nathan of the FoS]

Charles is, at first, elated to have the book which escaped him in Phiraz in his hands, but his excitement soon turns to a brown study as he considers the new light the book throws on their understanding of events. It's less than he had hoped; for one thing, it's not at all clear why the Anubite would have particularly desired that the Expedition not have this information. But that's a topic that can be considered at length later; for now, other opportunities abound, if one can only thing of the right questions.

Hence, Charles takes it with good grace when Lia offers her opinion on what to look for next. "True, true. Although it's all of a piece, I suspect. I mean, there's certainly a connection now, through Cavendish. And us. But there may well have been a pre-existing connection--a link between the taint and Menetnashte." Making a slightly irritated gesture at the jumps in his train of thought, he says, "Well, anyway, nothing's stopping us from looking, ne c'est pas? Oh, thanks, padre," he says as Kuzan appears from a darkened corner with a pile of books in hand. "That's the spirit. Let's see if there's anything to satisfy m'selle's curiosity in this lot."

Take 20 on the search check for 33+2 for Kuzan's help--thanks!--for 35 total.