Erangoul, the were-rat lich, created the artifact now known as the Filthy Cloak as the centerpiece of her foul regalia. Worn as a mark of authority over the monstrous vermin that policed her kingdom, Erangoul’s regalia was composed of a cracked mask, a rusted gauntlet, a gore-soaked scepter and a grubby moth-eaten Cloak. From her crawling citadel she raided the civilized lands for slaves and riches, eventually carving out a small city-state of her own. After centuries of terrorizing the dusty townships that surrounded her stronghold, and crushing any army that came to cast her down, the undead ratling was finally destroyed by her own concubines. While her army of abominations pillaged the caravan routes, a revolt of the lich’s harem soon spread unimpeded throughout her poorly defended spire. In the chaos, a jubilant mob of slave boys sacked the alchemical stores. The careless looters sparked a conflagration of magical fire that consumed the crawling tower, singing and crippling the twisted legs that gave it its name. As the villain’s citadel burned, her surviving servants plundered the treasure vaults and ransacked the libraries. Of the foul regalia, only the Cloak survived; all knowledge of the other artifacts has been lost under the shifting sands. Even in death, Erangoul was a curse upon the land, as the princes of the nearby oasis towns fought over the charred scraps left behind by her passing.
During these brutal wars, the Cloak resurfaced as the tattered banner of an undead mercenary company from a far shore. Under that filthy flag they sold their swords to whoever could meet their price. Although the rotted warriors fought with great valor and honored all the oaths sworn by their dead lips, when the wars ended, their fat purses made them no friends. The victorious salt prince Najib umThani had declared himself the Rauss of the oases and made the city of Aranibad the capitol of his new kingdom. With a sermon from the burnt tower of Erangoul at the city’s center, he betrayed the undead warriors who had fought so hard for his cause and coin. Denounced as the harbingers of the long wars, they fled back onto their dark ships, but most were torn apart by enraged mobs of refugees. Dismembered and deceived, the corpse soldiers fled to the east, and their tattered flag was not seen again for many years.
Though the reign of Najib was short, his two sons were quick to take up his mantle. The brothers, first princes of the Najibeem dynasty, split the oasis towns between them. One brother, mighty Sufian, raised his sword and ruled his kingdom as a warlord. He ruled from his ever- marching camp, extending his domain with each charge of cavalry. The other brother, crafty Haroun, took up a staff and used magic to enforce his will. It was Haroun who first enslaved the hot-tempered Djinn of the wastes and set them to building the gleaming cities of the twin empires. He took Aranibad as his seat, scribed the laws of the land along the base of the burnt tower and diverted the rivers that would make the city the center of the silk trade. The crafty mage even had a palace built to mark the engagement of his brother Sufian. But as is common among brothers and kings, jealousy grew in their hearts.
On the day of Sufian’s wedding, his brother arrived carried aloft by a cloud of biting flies and surrounded by his Djinn servants. Haroun demanded that his brother surrender his betrothed and his half of the kingdom. When he was refused, he waved his hand and a sea of maggots boiled out of the earth to consume his brother’s wife, while his powerful slaves shattered the conjugal palace they had only just built. Although he had come to depose his brother that day, it was crafty Haroun who paid the ultimate price. Mighty Sufian grew enraged and called upon all the gods of the desert wastes as he struck his brother’s head from his body. Haroun’s head was wrapped in the grubby rags he wore that fateful day, and interred beneath the burnt tower of Aranibad. Sufian became the Rauss of a united empire and ruled as a brooding tyrant. With his brother’s enslaved Djinn under his control, he harassed the maidens of his empire and crushed even the smallest hint of dissent with paranoid ruthlessness.
The Najibeem dynasty survived through nine of Sufian’s sons, each reveling in their forebears’ draconian tactics. Although each was born of their lustful father’s indiscre- tions, none questioned their right to rule after his passing. Each time a son of Sufian died, another would march a legion to the capital to declare himself the new Rauss of the Oases. This cycle continued again and again, until the night the dead rose from the highborn cemetery. Fearing the gods’ displeasure, the peasants and laborers of Aranibad revolted, forcing the last of the true Najibeem rulers to flee for his life. After leaving his noble sheikhs
Erangoul’s
Filthy Cloak
The Filthy Cloak, the Corpse Banner, Shroud of the Ghoul Sheikh, Abaya of the Azmadid By Khaldoun Khelil
to fend for themselves, most of the Najibeem aristocracy was slaughtered. With gold borrowed from wealthy silk merchants, the few surviving sheikhs restored order with well-placed bribes and hired swords to clear the graveyards of the undead and public squares of the living. When no new son of Sufian appeared at the city gates, and with the old Rauss discredited, a Republic was declared. In reality, the surviving nobles ruled by the consensus of their elder sheikhs and the small number of Djinn slaves that still remained enforced the peace as they saw fit.
This hidden oligarchy ruled for nine decades but was shat- tered when one of the elder sheikhs was unmasked as a grave stalking-ghoul. Draped in the unearthed rags of the crafty Haroun, he had engineered the downfall of the Najibeem. The ghoul sheikh’s family, the Azmad, had been the source of the undead that sparked the initial peasant revolt. Suspicion and acrimony soon overturned the long alliance of the noble families and civil war between the oasis cities was once again inevitable. Each family left the capital to rally their raiders and protect their home cities. Disease infested the land as the war raged and the trade routes became too dangerous to travel. One by one, the oases fell to the ghoul sheikh and the pestilent swarm he commanded. Decimated and weary, the last of the sheikhs
surrendered to the undead overlord. Even the destitute descendants of the last Rauss were invited back to Aranibad as figure- heads to satisfy the superstitious com- moners.
And so it went that the Azmad family created an empire of their own, and although they ruled it as Viziers from the shadows behind the throne, it lasted many cen- turies. The infested Cloak of Erangoul, worn by the first ghoul sheikh, be- came their badge of secret rulership. When the ghoul sheikh finally fell from power, the family selected a new Vizier from
amongst their elders. The former sheikh was ritually buried in a state of eternal undeath, and the new ghoul sheikh arose clothed in the tattered cape that so pleased the rat lich. Bolstered by the Cloaks’ strange powers, the Azmadids became manipulative spy masters and brutal assassins to protect their position of preeminence. But those who come to rely so heavily on the Filthy Cloak rarely come to a good end. The other noble families, long undermined by the Azmadids, came to resent the great house’s strange rituals. Their veneration of the scorpion and the bat, and the pitiful moans that emanated from the ancestral crypts at the base of their crumbling tower, finally became too much. Making common cause with the free Djinn of the wastes, the noble sheikhs rose against the Azmadids. Looting the Azmadid tombs, they exposed the sinister secret of the undead Viziers who had been locked howling in the earth. When the free Djinn dragged the screaming skeletons of famous Viziers through the streets of Aranibad, the aroused city dwellers began to burn and riot.
When the rebels freed the last of the Djinn warrior slaves, they besieged the ancient spider legged tower in the heart of Aranibad. Trapped in their capitol, the
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