An Angel Called Eternity

Lore Chapter: The Kingdom of the Kikhepis

Twelfth Day, First Month, 871 AD.
Lykourgos Sperakos, Prince.
Kingdom of Teleytaios.
Aenirhen.
The River Keep.

Dear Lyk,

I apologise for the lateness of my response to your letter, for I realise by the time this reaches you it must have been months since you wrote to me, but then I am currently over six-thousand miles south of where you keep sending your letters. When I make my way back through to Polaeros I will attempt to make a stop through Aenirhen, but I feel that with your reports of increasing unrest and preparations for a civil war there may not be much time for us to catch up.
And let us not kid ourselves here; it is a civil war you are preparing for. The formulae that you wrote to me of three months ago that you learned from Marren, who I understand now bears the rank Lieutenant in your forces, made my skin crawl.

Yes, the mathematics are correct. The substance he purports to be able to create, as I'm sure you've seen at this point, should work very well indeed.
That does not mean I like it, nor do I agree with it.
To kill men in war is one thing Lyk, but to burn them alive?
That is something else entirely.

Still, I know you would not pursue such things unless you believed, whether consciously or not, that there was a war coming to your homeland. Said war must be civil in nature, since I have heard of no forces being amassed in Nordicos or Owkrestos, and when I was travelling south the Malikah of the Al-Alema spoke of nothing but peace. There are the raiders that your brother must deal with, of course, and I do not expect those groups to lay down their arms anytime soon, but there were no armies gathering there either.

But that is enough on that topic for now. Lyk, I have sailed down the Kikhepis river and lived amongst the nomads that remain in this dead land for about two or three months now, and I must say their outlook on life and death is fascinating! I know our records of the original nomads down here are almost non-existent, with only fragments of records and artwork detailing the battles that the Sotenari and Nekhtoudum fought against them remaining, but these nomads that remain provide hints at that ancient group. They have heavily blended with the old Nekhtoudum, likely from the collapse of the kingdom when the survivors sought shelter and livelihoods with the relatively unaffected nomads, but hints of a different culture remain.
Unfortunately there is not enough for one such as myself to piece together what remains, and the nomads have no written language to keep records in, and so all I know are the oral histories of this group and what is carved in stone on the silent cities of this land.

And what a land! I have touched pyramids and walked in mastabas! I have rode upon camelback to the site of the long-gone city of vultures, Nrtkha, and worn the bronze helms of the old champions of this land, styled in the likeness of their jackal god. It has truly been a trip of wonder and learning, more so than perhaps any other I have embarked upon. I can only hope my trip to the old cities of the Sotenari Empire will bear just as much fruit!

I must say I was elated to see those symbols you sent! I apologise that they will not make mention in the main body of this report I am sending back to you, but at the time of writing this letter I have only just received them. I have a theory relating to these symbols, more specifically how we can work out what they mean, but I will include that at the end of this letter. What I feel I must tell you beforehand is that these symbols you have sent match up with some I have seen here!
Again, I will include more information on this below.

I did stop briefly in Sothettar, the last city of the Sotenari people, in order to resupply and rest before our great journey south, but I must confess I am sorely looking forwards to heading back north and exploring the city properly once my trip across the great Nekhtou desert is finished.

Enough talk from me; encased below is the information I have learned of the ancient Kingdom of the Kikhepis compiled into a kind of first draft for the book I am writing.