In the Court of Dust
Third Day of the Second Month 294 AC
Grey are the skies over Sathar and heavy as though laden with the unshed tears of Sarnor, and grey are the walls worn by the winds hissing over the plains. Guardians of
hollow bone stand upon its ramparts, remembering perhaps dimly the duties they took on in life, but these are not the only dead you see from afar.
Ancient guardians wrapped in funerary linens to long dead gods watch the road with withered and unwavering gazes. Engines of war, now empowered as much by the spirits of their masters as golem-craft, each painted in the guise of some beast mundane and fantastical, glare down through murder holes.
"The magic on the gates has to be new," Tyene muses. "There is no way the Dothraki would have left them with well... any gates at all really, much less ones enchanted against fire and acid, and hardened against blows."
She is right, of course. You wonder what it means that the Dead of Sathar chose to clad the new gates in silver poplar, a tree of weeping but also of wealth and prestige. That much finely carved wood is probably worth a quarter of its weight in actual silver. The scenes are strange, too, a woman rising from a lake, one hand outstretched to offer aid, another to ward off a blow, yet the face is left uncarved and empty save for the barest impression of a nose and jawline, as though the artist could not recall what it aught to have looked like... or perhaps they were overcome by despair before they could do so.
"Hail travelers upon the wary road," the guard upon the gate calls out in a deep echoing voice in the tongue of Sarnor known to you by sorcery. "What brings you to sorrowing Sathar?"
"We come with a Gift of War and a Gift of Peace for the Queen in these lands, that we might speak to her, know her wisdom, and share our own," you call back, the book of ritual formulas unfamiliar upon your lips.
"Pass then and be welcome into the City of Namaaru, Queen of the Bountiful made Bare, may you remember us for the glory that was, not the sorrows that flowed over it."
You wait for some other comment, perhaps a question as to who you are and why you have taken this road with no mounts or mules, but the dead guardian returns to his silent contemplation of the road. Apparently a declaration of peaceful intentions and desire to see the queen was enough to let you past.
"Namaaru means she who brings bountiful peace," Teana interjects as you pass under the arch. "It is one of the eldest names we considered and sadly also the ones we know the least about. She ruled in a time of peace and plenty, and we think before the Freehold's first expansion and the wars with the Ghiscari. Dragons and their get would have been a distant rumor for her, for better or for worse."
"Definitely for the better," Dany snots. "Our ancestors were not ones to leave a kindly impression upon their contemporaries." She sighs. "Can you imagine dying in a time of peace and plenty, an honored monarch at life's end, and waking up to this?"She motions to the city stretching out before you, crumbling towers and shattered arches, temple domes like half rotted fruit open to the sky, and through it all resounding the shambling gait of the dead, the scrape of bone upon stone.
The roads at least had been cleared, and you even catch a glimpse of a company of skeletons pulling down a wall whose foundations have been undermined. Behind them, a
dead priest in gilded vestments whose bond to the divine had long since rotted away to nothing, directs yet more of the lesser dead in rebuilding.
"I can feel their eyes at the back of my neck," Waymar grumbles as you pass.
"They don't have eyes," Tyene jests, though you notice she too keeps her hand near her belt pouches just as Waymar does Purity's hilt.
Finally you come to the palace, guarded by two vast wights with the heads of elephants propped upon a manlike frame, as much iron as bone, and bound in the tattered panoply of lost idols. No simple brutes these, you sense, but animated instead by sorcerous will fit to rain down lightning and curses from the heavens.
The doors open slowly, as though reluctant to let out the dusty air, the scent of myrrh and lemongrass. Through you pass, again met with the company of scores of unliving courtiers, from some wrapped in rotting bandages to the souls of ancient generals bound in their armor. Never have you seen the dead so many or so strong. If the other cities are this strong than hard it shall be to make an end of them.
You shake your head.
Deal with the one in front of you first.
It does not take you long before you come to the one who rules this place in truth, bones wrapped with care in sacred linens, adorned with a headdress of gold and mask of ivory. You feel the queen's magic like a black sun on your skin as soon as you enter the throne room. No, more than magic, you stand before a being of myth, risen by her own ancient tale in response to the wailing of Dead Sarnor. The queen is impassive as only those who require neither breath nor motion can be, seated upon a throne of white marble that does not rest upon the ground but levitates in the air.
You offer formal and respectful greeting before laying down your gifts upon the floor as custom dictates, a
sickle sword of Valyrian Steel and an enchanted clock that shows Imperial Time. Only then does the unliving queen speak. Her voice is not the rasping whisper you had expected, but melodious and fair, as though she were still among the living. "A clock, and one of interesting make besides, but I wonder, is it a sign that you think Sarnor's hour is passed?"
How do you reply?
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OOC: The elephant headed sorcerer giants seem to be some combination of construct and undead but you did not roll high enough to get more than that, and yes the queen is mythic. Not yet edited. 
