The Ophidian Empire was born out of the mass exodus of the living from the Ahmunite Empire, with the living seeking refuge in Northern regions, settling in Hokh-man. The Princes who led the exodus were hailed as saviours and God Kings of the people. These refugees made home in a new realm, Ophidia with it new laws to control the learning and practice of the once dark art.
The Ophidians saw the madness that had befallen south to Ahmun, the spread from the south need to stop. Using the most trusted and powerful magi, the God Kings summoned spiteful and powerful demonic djinn's.
Together they unleashed a biblical plague upon Ahmunite, sandstorms and insects, stripping them to bone and driving them back into the wastes of the their broken crumbling cities, then scoured from the face of the world.
The Ophidians had condemned an entire civilisation,the Ahmunite Empire, to an eternal torment of undeath, stripped bare for all to see as a terrible reminder to those who seek to abuse power and believe they can master both life and death. What was once a prosperous, sprawling empire of merchants, art, learning and science is now a shattered, bitter, hateful and smouldering lesson against hubris and conceit.
Although neutral in its outlook, in the ancient kingdom of Ophidia, all manner of vile magical practises are condoned and encouraged. Here, the unnatural arts are studied, like necromancy and demonology like any other school of magic, and skilled necromancers are awarded high status, and treated in many respects as priests.
Mastery over death has been an ambition of these strange peoples since the earliest days of humanity, with blasphemous text finding their way northwards.
Within the great temples the people are preached to by the necromancer-priests, conducting elaborate funerary rituals, summoning the mighty dead to walk alongside the living, so for a common man they see a measure of immortality.
Ophidia is unusual in that its armies comprise undead and living warriors marching side by side. Labours of the dead raise the monumental buildings, who toil longer and harder than a hundred times as many slaves ever could.
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