City of Sand

Sultan Nahas was a cruel man, even for a Sultan. Where other sovereigns before him merely ruled over their sultanate with an iron fist, condemning thousands to lives of sheer misery, Nahas went above what was expected of him by harbouring ambition for something beyond his zenithal position. What made his rule so terrible was his willingness to sacrifice his people to achieve this dream. For there was a legend of a scarlet ring, hidden somewhere in the ancient City of Sand, that when obtained granted the wearer absolute authority over all of the plains. The catch was that as long as people could remember, anyone who ever dared to enter the city, never returned. Nevertheless, Nahas wanted the scarlet ring, Nahas wanted the ring badly. 

He was not always so obsessed though, at first it had been a mere curiosity. As one of his first acts as Sultan after the death of his father, the seventeen year old sovereign hired fifty squads of explorers, and sent them out from the Immortal City to the City of Sand, with the task of scouring the necropolis and bringing the scarlet ring back to him. More than anything it was a show of daring to his subjects, Nahas presenting himself as a Sultan who would not be bound by anything. Naturally, the responsibilities and benefits of being a young ruler soon drew his attention away from thoughts of the elder citadel, with three weeks of politics, pleasure houses and construction plans filling the time until his mind returned to the ring.

He had heard no word from the explorers since their departure, and so might have forgotten the escapade entirely had it not been for the letter that had appeared mysteriously on his bedside one morning. Opening it up, he had found symbols he vaguely recognised as the language once used by the long-dead denizens of the City of Sand. Curious as to its content, he gave it to his translator, who produced the message: You're going to have to do better than that. Maddened beyond measure at the insolence of his translator, he whipped the aged man to death, before summoning a second translator to read it properly. Still, the message remained the same, bar the addition of Your most divine sovereign. at the end. After checking and rechecking the authenticity of the paper, ink and handwriting, in case it was all some heretical prank, Nahas came upon the theory that it must have been written by someone within the necropolis, a challenge to a Sultan that would not go unanswered.

Over the next five years he invested mountains of gold into hiring explorers, scouts, magi, sellswords and anyone else who had the gall to search the ruin, grinding the progress of his own Immortal City to a halt due to the expenditure. Each time a party failed, he recruited double their number to send in next time, each failure yielding another message at his bedside, despite his efforts to seal off the room. After twenty-three tries with no reward but the cutting lines of the letters he received, the Sultan got angry enough to venture out of the Immortal City himself.

'Call me a noble imbecile will you? I'll show you. you cursed jinn! I'll storm the City of Sand myself with the might of the sultanate behind me, and when I have the ring in my possession I will decree you die the worth of a thousand deaths!' he roared at the bonfire as the letters within it burned, along with all those in his palace who had whispered of his madness.

So it was that Nahas traversed the southern desert, bringing a quarter of the Immortal City's population with him. Nobles, knights, merchants, and slaves were all brought along for the enterprise, a party of thousands gathered on the whim of one man. After several days had passed, a fair few of the trekkers dying on the way for not being used to the desert heats, the group arrived at the gigantic gates of the City of Sand.

'I will either make myself ruler of the plains here, or I will be buried within these walls. Either way, my followers will share the same fate of their Sultan.' he proclaimed before ordering everyone forth, into the unknown.

Months were spent exploring the monumental citadel, with the mobile nation making camp at night within the elder ruins. Every corner come across was examined to the utmost, yielding many treasures for Nahas to take away, but none satisfied his ambition, for none granted him the plains. After a full season was spent in the City of Sand with no sign of the ring, and more and more dying every day, the Sultan's magistrates advised him to regroup the party at the Immortal City, so he might try again next year. Too weary and embittered for his ambition to drive him on, the sovereign agreed and moved his subjects back the way they came. Nonetheless, when reaching the city limits, they found that in place of the gateway they had come through, was a vast wall of sand.

Ordering the beheading of his mapper for the fault he'd undoubtedly made, he assigned a new one to find the exit, but the way out was nowhere to be found. For weeks on end the party scoured the ancient city for any escape route, a great deal perishing due to the unforgiving cold of the autumn nights. In their desperation and hunger, fighting broke out among the people, and the Sultan had to put down a great many who wanted more food than their rank deserved. Blistering swelter followed piercing freezing, the stretch of days running long in the presence of a relic lost to time. Sorrowfully realising there was no way out to be had, and that they would all soon perish due to want of substance, the Sultan moved the remaining populace to the tower at the centre of the city where they would spend their last moments without toil. A small comfort for a people who had given their lives for nothing but his scorn. As the days marched on, thousands more died, until there was only Nahas and his favourite slave girl left, sitting outside in the shade of the tower.

'How do you think I will be remembered, my girl?' he asked her with a wheezing breath; 'as a dreamer or a fool?'

'They are one and the same.' she replied.

Just then, the pile of sand before them rose up into the shape of a man, one with a scarlet ring around his finger. 'You are a murderer before everything else, Sultan.' the jinn spoke; 'One who would throw away thousands of lives in the quest for power. I do bow before your callousness.'

'You... you are the one who has been sending me the letters all these years!' Nahas rasped.

'Yes, as I have to every Sultan who has ever tried his luck on my grounds. A test to see if any of my descendants would be able to take the plains from me. Though you came further than any before you, you have still failed the test. The ring was at the very top level of the tower you are sitting beneath.'

'But... I only covered a third of the city with the thousands I brought... to reach the tower would have taken...'

'The entire population of the Immortal City. You were cruel, Nahas, but you were not cruel enough.'

With that, the ambitious Sultan died of grief, leaving the slave girl and the man of sand alone. 'Now to await his heir to ascend to sovereignty, so the cycle may start anew.'

'But Sultan Nahas bore no heir,' the slave girl spoke; 'maddened by the legend of that crimson ring, he vowed he would never take a wife until his ambitions had been completed first.'

'Do you mean to say that he was the last of my line?' the jinn replied gravely.

'Yes.'

'Then I have laid waste to my own legacy.'

With that, the man of sand dissipated, bringing down the walls around the citadel, and leaving the scarlet ring on the ground. Taking hold of the ring, and placing it on her finger, the slave girl felt immediately rejuvenated, the power of the Sultan of Sultans coursing through her body.

Afterwards, the slave-made-royal traversed the desert with a cruel grin on her face. 'Gullible jinn, the young sons of Nahas will suffer a terrible reckoning when I return to the city, for these are my plains now.'