Mahrak was never a city of kings but a city of gods. In the ages of Nehekhara's glory every temple of the great pantheon raised its spires within its walls, until it became the holiest ground between the mountains and the sea. Its priest-councils grew rich on tribute and richer on authority, for a king who wished his tomb consecrated came, in the end, to Mahrak.
When the awakening dragged Nehekhara from its rest, Mahrak rose as much reliquary as army. Its defenders are the temple's own: guardian constructs of consecrated stone, ushabti raised in the likeness of the gods, and censer-bearing dead marching beneath the graven icons of the pantheon. An enemy who breaches its precincts finds himself fighting statues that will not stay fallen, and priests who answer to powers older than any throne.
Mahrak insists still that the gods, not the kings, are the true masters of Nehekhara, and that Settra's dominion is a thing to be surrendered when the divine reclaim their due. The King of Kings does not trouble to win the argument; he lets the City of the Gods lose it slowly, secure that even the gods must wait upon the patience of the Imperishable.
Order of battle
The Mahrak field the units of the Tomb Kings of Khemri, a detachment from the roster:
Other Tomb Kings of Khemri formations
KhemriThe eternal city, first among the necropolises of Nehekhara and seat of the Great Pyramid, in whose shadow every other crown is a vassal's. Khemri's legions are the grandest in the Land of the Dead, marching beneath the standard of Settra himself, and its dust remembers being the center of the world. By decree of the King of Kings, it will be again.
LybarasCity of the High Queen, sacred to Asaph and rising from Nehekhara's eastern reaches. Lybaras stirs when vampires stir, for its serpent-crowned legions are bound to Khalida's long vengeance against the treachery of Lahmia. Its arrows are said to bite twice: once with bronze, once with the goddess's venom.
NumasThe city of the plains, whose kings counted their wealth in grain, herds, and the loyalty of the river-folk who worked its wide fields. Numas woke gentler than its rivals, but gentleness in a Tomb King is a relative thing: its skeletal legions still sweep the dunes clear of tomb-robbers, and its dead farmers still tend fields that have grown nothing for three thousand years.
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