The Vampire Kings of Angust

The ghost kings are marching; the midnight knows their tread,

From the distant, stealthy planets of the dim, unstable dead;

There are whisperings on the night-winds and the shuddering stars have fled.

 

A ghostly trumpet echoes from a barren mountainhead;

Through the fen the wandering witch-lights gleam like phantom arrows sped;

There is silence in the valleys and the moon is rising red.

 

The ghost kings are marching down the ages' dusty maze;

The unseen feet are tramping through the moonlight's pallid haze,

Down the hollow clanging stairways of a million yesterdays.

 

The ghost kings are marching, where the vague moon-vapor creeps,

While the night-wind to their coming, like a thund'rous herald sweeps;

They are clad in ancient grandeur, but the world, unheeding, sleeps. 

 

Robert E. Howard, The Ghost Kings

 

Many eons ago, in the ancient past of old Angust's forgotten histories, there rose seventeen kings who ruled the seventeen cities.  Scions from another world, they came with a powerful relic from another dimension - the Head of Angkhor Jehun. With them came vile plagues and monstrous diseases.  Through dreadful conquest by armies of the undead, they came to rule the cities of Angust, for they had no powerful necromancers at the time, for the art was illegal.  The vampire kings, who rode upon great dragons, gathered to their cause the necromancers spurned by the Angustian rulers.  For seventy years they ruled, and humanity became a slave race to the undead.  The drow were their allies in the darkness, and they summoned great things from certain unspoken places to bring further terror upon the land.

 

While here, they scribed many ghastly grimoires of grim glooms and they brought with them atrocious treasure troves of terrifying tomes. They founded several new cities, and created new Vampire Kings from powerful Angustian necromancers and conjurers.  They conquered new lands, always with the same strategy - the unleashing of horrible plagues, and they come and pick off the survivors.  There was no freedom for man.

 

There arose a powerful man of the ancient line.  He championed freedom and the free will of man.  His name was K'thul R'mathul, and he was the first Chaos Lord.  With him was Anakia Ghor, a powerful warrior, and she wielded Couthen, a scythe deadly to the Vampires.

 

The leader of the Vampire Kings is King Rackham of Enrikhal. At the height of his power, he commanded over 120,000 human slaves and an army of 7,000,000 undead. He is an extremely powerful alienist necromancer.  It was his laws that created the great Angustian market in human sex trafficking that persisted for centuries - until the fall of decadent Angust.  He prefers young blood.  In his heyday, he slaughtered three dozen young girls, often younger than twelve years, daily for their blood.  He also enjoyed summoning celestials to capture them and drain their blood.  He does not delight in the suffering of others, as Ocska Jehaila does, but he completely lacks compassion or empathy.  He is utterly alien in his thoughts and manners.  He rarely tortures others - just kills them quickly and expediently.  He wrote the original text of the Könyv Vacak Sötétség, a record of vile thoughts, evil concepts and malevolent experiments so horrible that only the most foul of heart can read it without emotional and mental trauma.  He craves domination over all that he sees, using minions to accomplish his dark deeds.

 

The second of the Vampire Kings is a queen, Ocska Erzebet Jehaila of Vulba Mon.  She is sadistic and cruel. Ocska grew up experiencing uncontrollable seizures and rages.  Eventually she married a sadistic man who taught her cruel methods by which to discipline the servants, such as spreading honey over a naked girl and leaving her out for the bugs.  He also showed Ocska how to beat them to the edge of their lives.  After the death of her husband, she moved from Angust to Vulthrhavan. She also stepped up her cruel and arbitrary beatings and was soon torturing and butchering the girls. She might stick pins into sensitive body parts, cut off someone's fingers, or beat her about the face until the bones broke.  In the winter, women were dragged outside, doused with water, and left to freeze to death.  Even when Ocska was ill, she didn't stop.  Instead she'd have girls brought to her bed so she could bite them. She eventually went to far and murdered a noblewoman.  She was arrested and put on trial, where it was proven that she had killed over 750 people.  She was imprisoned and sentenced to be beheaded.  The night before she was to die Rackham visited her cell - and she died.   Since she was already dead there was no point in beheading her, so she was buried.  She rose again on the third day as a vampire.  She supported Rackham and led legions of the undead against the Angustian city of Vulba Mon, conquering and ruling it.  She was a sadistic despot and ruled both Vulba Mon and Vulthrhavan for 300 years before she fled with King Rackham and King Gwallish Thovar III into hiding when K'thul R'mathul, Anakia Ghor (with Couthen), and the other slayers brought down the other 14 Vampire Kings.

About Vincent N. Darlage | Inzeladun Updates | Inzeladun