Fortress of Imkhoten

Lost in the deserts of the Dulqa for centuries, the Fortress of Imkhoten guarded the trade routes from Siul to the Fabaas Oasis. Located in rough proximity to the ruins of the ancient provincial capital of Mashkapal, the fortress was as much a victim of the fading Basaami Empire as it was of the ferocious desert storms. As the Basaami Empire gradually retreated from the peak of its influence, abandoning outposts, forts, and even entire cities to the desert and barbarism, the fortress remained something of a holy grail for treasure hunters due to the suggestions of a single fragile legend.
To preface that tale, the fortress was never properly abandoned, but rather was buried along with all of its inhabitants by a ferocious sandstorm in the year -1877, and so, barring any subsequent looting, its original cache of weapons and armor and several months' payroll for its soldiers remains intact. It might hold more, as legend tells that a trade caravan lost that same year along the trade route secretly carried a majority of the assets once held by the Fabaas provincial treasury and its last Basaami governor. Siul's pregnant silence after the governor's death was not one of apathy, but one of condemnation. The rulers knew their hold on Fabaas was untenable, and of little worth as their power slowly ebbed from its imperial peak, and so their withdrawal from that province was not by happenstance with the governor's death, but rather a planned abdication sped along by his unexpected (or perhaps expected) death.
As much wealth as the fortress might still hold if that legend were true, none of its rumored contents have ever appeared in the legitimate antiquities markets of Siul, nor in their unregulated, illicit counterparts, and for good reason. Due to causes unknown, but perhaps related to their sudden deaths or some artifact held within the trove, the soldiers of Imkhoten never abandoned their posts. The dead still man the ramparts and patrol its grounds, either as skeletons bearing desiccated flesh on their bones, or drifting as specters through the sand like passing sharks, leaving behind trails of frost in the desert sand that vanish with each sunrise. Even if the fortress were to be found, any treasure-seekers face the daunting task of confronting an entire regiment of Basaami troops, each soldier augmented by undeath.
Category:Ruins
Category:Locations
Category:Locations in Upper Basaam
Category:Locations in the Kaspari Empire
Category:Ruins of the Basaami Empire