Ula Aethel

When Ula Aethel thrived, the Kothian Desert was a far less hostile place.  The city was an teeming oasis, astride a caravan trail running from the Kothian capital, Khorshemish, through Khoraja and on to the great Shemites cities of Eruk and Shusan.

This road was also known, however, as the Tides of Lamentation, as with the ebb and flow of war in Shem, either between its city-states, or with Stygia and Turan, captives flowed northwards to Khorshemish, where one third of the almost one-million inhabitants are slaves.  Preying on this human misery, the inhabitants of Ula Aethel fell into decadence, using their wealth to purchase ever more sophisticated and cruel pleasures, until they came upon the Black Lotus, a torpor-inducing drug that soon become the lifeblood of Ula Aethel.

The idea of resurrecting the Acheron Empire goes back several generations in the lineage of the current Kothian Emperor, Strabonus. Visiting Ula Aethel, Strabonus' father had a black lotus-induced vision, which taught hum that Ula Aethel was built over the ruins of an mighty city of Old Acheron.  Over more than a decade, he had these ruins slowly excavated.

Building on this inheritance, the mad Strabonus instated the "Emperor's Toll", giving him the right to one of every twenty slaves brought through the gates of the city.  Those he culled were then sacrificed beneath the city to some evil god, providing much-sought after entertainment for the population.

Time, blood and suffering, and the twisted knowledge of the Emperor's necromancers, ultimately brought forth the creature of Acheron who had sent the vision, a being born before the Cataclysm, the terrifying serpent-god Stthag.

Something went dreadfully wrong, however, forcing one of the sorcerors to seal himself, and all the inhabitants of Ula Aethel, within the city, so as to keep Stthag from getting out.

A generation passed, the hungry Stthag preying in the ruins of Ula Aethel upon men, women and children occasionnally awakening into madness, before slipping back into the lethargy of the black lotus.  Then came an Aquilonian witch, fleeing with her companions before the wrath of a Zhemrian necromancer.  Having learned of Ula Aethel, but not fully understanding the danger it represented, she used it to ensnare her enemy.

Ula Aethel was, indeed, the death place of Aetulla, but what Nuala had come to fear indeed occurred, loosing Stthag upon the world.  No sooner did the barrier around the city fall, than the past link between the demon and the Imperial line of Koth was re-established.  In Khorkhemish, Strabonus fell to the ground frothing at the mouth, an incident that cost the lives of all that witnessed that moment of weakness, their quarters hung from the city gates the following day.

Any alliance between Stthag and Strabonus, especially if the latter has moved from paranoid delusions to outright madness, will make the rebirth of Acheron a very real possibility...