The Hawk That Thought It Was A God

A desert hawk circles Dju Wa'ab, crying forlornly. Every day precisely at noon it lands on a temple roof. This is a faerie animal with the merest scrap of Faerie Might, but it remembers the days when it was an emissary of Mandulis, the Kushite sun god. When the characters happen to be close to the temple at midday, it briefly mistakes them for the priests of ancient times, and brings them the last message from Mandulis: "Where the Sun touches the Sea and the waves are stilled, there will you find Anhur's Spear." What can this prophecy mean?

Dongola also boasts an impressive cruciform church called the Church of the Angels, famous for its multicolored stone pavement that ripples like the river when struck by the sun. It has a Dominion aura of 6.

A fortress from the time of the Napatan dominance of Kush, Galu now lies in ruins and is partly covered in sand. It stands overlooking the Wadi Howar, an important seasonal spring that once formed an important route to the west, but since it ran dry the former settlements have been abandoned

A character is visited by the ghost of an ancient warrior wearing a black tabard. This visit might be a vision, an apparition to someone with Second Sight, or a vivid dream. He pleads for help; his unit is trapped, surrounded on all sides, and in sore need of reinforcements. He can lead the characters to Kerma, and on the night of a new moon the battle can be seen.

Kerma was wiped out by a terrible civil war, and the stones mark the graves of those falling in support of each side. Every new moon the ghosts of Kerma rise to fight again. If a blackliveried soldier is killed, then he joins the white side, and vice versa; and the color of the stones on his grave change gradually over the course of the year, resulting in dual-colored graves. Should one faction stand unopposed, then the army of ghosts will be united under a single commander and free to leave Kerma's environs.

It has been three millennia since Kerma stood, but its white faction now controls the majority of the graves, and it is gaining more and more converts every year. A temple priest of Dedun is responsible for the recent successes of the white faction, and one can only wonder what he plans to do with 25,000 ghostly warriors under his command.

and the region is now a desolate waste.

The failure of the Wadi Howar is a direct consequence of the establishment of Galu. The fortress was placed on the home of the spirit of the wadi after it was slain by Napatan priests; the priests hoped they could take up the reins of power over the flow of the wadi, but were unable to make this a lasting effect. The Wadi Howar dried up, and the fortress was left to guard a road to nowhere.

This is one of the largest monasteries in all of Nubia. The structure consists of a large church dedicated to the Holy Trinity, surrounded by residential buildings and a commemorative complex. The whole monastery is enclosed in a high stone wall faced with bricks and whitewashed. The church also has a barrel-vaulted crypt where deceased monks are buried. The monastery has a hospice for the housing of visitors and a hospital for the care and comfort of the sick and dying.

Markedly different from Egyptian pyramids in form, Nubian pyramids have much steeper sides — seventy degrees compared to the more typical forty five degrees in Egypt. This results in a much smaller base: a Nubian pyramid which is thirty paces high may be only twenty paces wide, compared to sixty paces wide for an Egyptian pyramid of equivalent height. Each pyramid has a pylon gate and temple at its base. The body was not placed within the pyramid itself, but rather ten or more paces beneath it; a steep set of stairs led down to the tomb. Before the tomb is an antechamber where offerings were left (the same as the serdab in Egyptian pyramids, see Chapter 4, The Structure of Tombs). Apart from these structural differences, the contents of Nubian tombs are similar to those of Egypt.

Kerma was the capital of a kingdom dating back before the Empire of Kush. All that remains of Kerma are the ruins of the circular royal palace and two deffufa solid towers made of mud bricks standing thirty paces high. The remnants of a substantial city wall, over two miles long and protected by towers, encloses an area big enough to house 10,000 inhabitants.

Kerma's cemetery lies next to the remains of the city, over a mile long north to south and containing an estimated 25,000 graves. Most are low mounds covered with thousands of pebbles. Many of these graves consist of clusters of small mounds surrounding a central larger one. Some tumuli are covered in white pebbles, others in black pebbles, and a rare few in a mixture of both colors. The reason for this distinction is unknown. At the southern end of the cemetery are dozens of huge tumuli, the graves of the kings of ancient Kerma. Four of these tumuli are truly enormous, each having a diameter of over a hundred paces. A Magic aura of level 3 lingers around these four tumuli, but weakens to 2 over the rest of the royal cemetery and 1 over the rest of the graves.

Negila is a small oasis that is a welcome resting place for caravans traveling to and from Darfur. Negila is claimed by Makuria, although it stands on the border with the Alodian district of Bayuda (see later). For this reason, Negila is home to a Makurian military outpost, including a unit of Struthophagi mounted on ostriches. These swift-footed cavalry units are used as messengers and scouts.

The region of Darfur is distant from the Nile valley and yet still firmly under Makurian domination. Occupied by a people called the Tajuwa, Darfur thrives on the proceeds of the slave trade.

Darfur buildings are made from a distinctive red-colored brick, and built as truncated cones rather than rectangular structures. They have flat tops made of mud brick. These buildings can be immense: fifty paces diameter at the base, narrowing to twenty five paces at the summit, which can be six paces high. The Tajuwa live communally in these homes, several families sharing a single roof.

Uri

Uri is the royal palace of the chief of the Tajuwa, who owes vassalage to the Makurian throne. Uri is an important emporium of long-distance trade at the crossroads of the Darb al-Arba'in, the road for Arab slavers from Asyut in Egypt south into the Slavelands, and the Tarik al-Sudan, the savannah route across the Great Desert to the west (see Between Sand and Sea: Mythic Africa.)

At 'Ayn Farah is a red-brick monastery and church staffed by Egyptian Coptics. 'Ayn Farah was established for the conversion of the slaves; all slaves passing on the Darb al-Arba'in are technically offered baptism, although the slavers rarely pause here for the monks to preach. Rather, the monks have taken to standing on the walls of the monastery and yelling out their proselytizing message of Christ's salvation to the slaves as they trudge northwards. More often than not, the slaves cannot even understand the words of the monks; while they make every effort to learn the myriad languages of the Slavelands, their opportunities to practice those languages are limited.

Fasher

Fasher is the principle starting point for those making expeditions into the Slavelands. This oasis consists of few permanent buildings, but is instead a camp for slavers, caravan guards, camel and cattle drovers,

and the like. There is a thriving rope-making industry here. Slaves captured further south are kept in pens, much like the livestock that is often captured with them.

Samna

A town built of the distinctive red bricks of the Tajuwa, Samna is the location of one of Makuria's only mosques, built to service the religious needs of the Arabic slave traders.

In the midst of a lush region of the Nile Valley is a series of marshes where elephants gather in large numbers. They come here for the abundant food, in particular a sweet rush of which they cannot get enough. The serpents that habitually prey on elephants are not found in this valley, although it would seem a natural place for them to hunt.

The Tajuwa resemble the slave races that they capture, particularly their tight curly hair and scant beards, although they generally have the height of Nubians, suggesting an ancient distant blending of the races. Both men and women dress in anklelength smocks copied from the djellebah of their Arab trading contacts, often in striped linen. Those requiring less restrictive clothing wear loose trousers but go bare chested. Tajuwa warriors — mostly caravan guards — employ a variety of weapons and armor according to personal preference; swords are uncommon.

The Tajuwa are lax Christians at best; settlements in Darfur have churches staffed by Nubian priests, but they are virtually empty for most celebrations of the Eucharist. The Tajuwa have not sought other gods to replace the Christian one; they simply aren't particularly religious.

The herds of elephants despoil any attempts at agriculture here, and the human population has been forced out of this section of the valley, dwelling instead at the fringes of the marshes and raising what crops they can hide or protect from marauding elephants. They live in tents that can be quickly packed up and moved if their sentries spot elephants coming, since the massive animals are prone to trample any signs of human habitation.