[Sombre]

Long had the Grand High Priest Tet Nukh Baset slumbered in his gilded tomb. Too long. Tet Nukh Baset awoke to find his glorious kingdom as dead as he, the priests in torpor, the great lineage of kings sealed in their tombs. This was not paradise. This was not even Nehekhara. This was a wilderness, the like of which Tet Nukh Baset knew only from the tales of Nehekhara's birth and the rise of the first dynasty. As galling as the circumstances of his awakening were, they were also somehow appropriate. He was reborn and his people would be too, in a perfect new form, to rise once more and show the world the glory of Nehekhara.

No paradise, mused Tet Nukh Baset, crushing the last of yet another group of mewling savages beneath his sleek gilded form. But an opportunity. The kings would be awoken in due course, but first his loyal servants. His right hand priest Muntuhotep had risen from his torpor already, and each month more priests awoke to curse the world and praise Baset.

As crude, jagged axes bounced from his carapace, Baset sensed something dark whirling at the edge of his mind. He ignored it. These last savages were odd, covered in tattoos that were strange yet at the same moment familiar. No matter. He crushed a handful of them and they fled, gibbering in their foul tongue. They would not threaten Nehekhara.