Ulix

Ulix, the so-called Eeternal Emperor of Old Ixhasa, built his pyramid atop a Nexus—a place where three ley lines intersect—and tapped the power therein to bring eternal life to Ixhasa. But no entity was meant to channel such power. The Nexus festered and erupted, geysering negative energy up through the great pyramid and liquefying the land about it. The great pyramid—and the heart of Ixhasa—sank beneath the waves of a new ocean. In their absence, the rest of the Empire languished and died, falling to barbarism and internecine conflicts. Ihaxasa—or at least that incarnation of it—was no more.

But Ulix had, in a way, succeeded in his quest to conquer death. The negative energy hemorrhaging from the wounded Nexus permeated the population that had sunk with the pyramid.

Thousands of years later, the Ixhasans awoke anew as the Dread Army, the Empire of the Dead. When they took their first steps ashore, they found their empire gone, overtaken by squatters and invaders, pretenders all. Enraged and possessed of the unending endurance and might of the dead, Ulix commanded his army to retake their conquered lands. Ixhasa had succeeded in beating death.

Fictions

 * The Gift and Truth