<History>

Premise: Ancient Egypt creates Space Pyramids and explores space.

Included: FTL travel, communication with the spirits of the dead, aliens do exist, magic exists through hieroglyphics.

Excluded: Metalwork and metallurgy.

(Note; we used Egyptians as our base people/flavor; names and features of the Egyptian concepts that we used don't necessarily line up with the actual historical Egyptians)

We began in the period of Egyptians discovering space flight when the dead spirit of King Ramses XXXI visits his wife in the middle of the night and gives her the secrets of spaceflight. Inspired by her husband's words, Queen Nephrote (Neff-Row-Tee) gives a speech to the masses of he empire telling them all about the wonders of space flight, only to incite a riot where the crowd strips her of her crown and sends her to her exile (and presumed death) in the vast desert. The crowd believed her words were heresy and unclean.

Accompanied only by the Royal Guard Captain, a Lieutenant, and 3 Royal Guards, the group stumbles upon an apparently blind, mysterious old man who tries to get the confused queen back onto track with space flight, which only angers the Guard Captain. As he asks for her last words, the Lieutenant reveals himself as a human kept alive by the science of the Queen's magic and kills the Captain along with one of the guards, also an ally of the Queen.

The period ends with the entombment of Queen Nephrote at a small ceremony at a secret location. Fitting for her contributions to the empire, the Queen's tomb is at the heart of the first Space Pyramid, a ship capable of space flight. This event kicks off the beginning of the era of Egypt exploring the stars.

Soon thereafter, the space pyramid "The Nine Lives," piloted by the spirits of 9 royal cats attempts to land on a previously uncharted planet, only to be attacked by a race of telepathic cats, who perceive the Nine-Lives as mistreated brethren. Meanwhile, the spirit of the planet begins attacking the ship and assists the attacking cat people in snuffing 4 of the Nine-Lives. At this point, the speaker to the dead (a sort of navigator who pilots by communication with the dead) sends the ship back into the afterlife (hyperspace), only to be trapped halfway between the real life and the afterlife, which abruptly sucks the spirit of the planet into the ship.

In a different area of space, the True Tut, another space pyramid, crashes on a planet inhabited by scaraboids, who quickly turn to worshiping the humans as gods. The leader of the scaraboids, Supreme Scab Chik'Chik, schemes to leave with the "gods" after the True Tut is repaired. An inebriated pyramid Captain leads an ensign, a scarab shaman, and Chik'Chik to the heart of the True Tut only to have Chik'Chik run into the spirit column which housed the dead spirit who guides the space pyramid. It is then revealed that the scarabs actually have knowledge of astronomy as Chik'Chik guides the pyramid to several planets instantaneously, then back to the scaraboid planet. Sensing a resource to be added to the Egyptian empire, the pyramid captain orders the enslavement of the scaraboid people.

This discovery leads to the empire conquering the southeast quadrant of the galaxy and allows Raoul the Enlightened to open the doors to the Institute of Man, a collective dedicated to furthering the Egyptian empire. At the same time however, a small sect of worshipers of the ascended Queen Nephrote help her religion spread like wildfire leading to a direct ideological conflict within the empire. This conflict leads to the iron-fisted rule of the Institute of Man over the Egyptian empire.

The Institute seeks to crush the worship of the gods and false idols like Nephrote and succeeds when Raoul the Ignorant crushes the space pyramid of Nephrote, thus ending a period of Egyptian progress. As tensions arose, open conflict started in the form of the War of the Sundering with the Institute of Man on one side, and the worshipers of Nephrote on the other. Towards the end of the war, Nephrote was on the losing side when space and time opened in the midst of the battlefield, only to reveal the abomination that was the return of the Nine-Lives space pyramid. Twisted by the afterlife and the spirit of the planet, Nine-lives landed while the two sides looked in awe. Once it touched ground, the horrifying vessel of the damned released hordes of spirit warriors, instantly decimating the Institute of Man.

While it appeared that this victory would be beneficial to the Egyptian empire, it actually marked a dark time when the empire was cut off from the afterlife! This meant chaos would ensue as space pyramids were lost or couldn't travel for lack of ability to navigate since the navigators couldn't communicate with the dead anymore. No longer content to sit back and watch, the council of the gods decided that the Egyptian empire was going to perish because of their heresies and affronts to the gods.

While Anubis ultimately decided the fate of the Egyptians, the Judger of Souls, Thoth tried to convince the god of gods otherwise. Hinting at rumors of dissent among the pantheon, Thoth accused Anubis of piloting the creation of the abominations of the Egyptians long ago through the introduction of space flight, only to have Anubis reveal that the source of the dissent was actually Anubis himself! In a last ditch attempt to save the Egyptian Empire, Thoth decided it was time to judge Nephrote's soul himself. Nephrote, tired of being in the background while the gods argued the fate of her people, she lashed out and tried to destroy the scale of the soul, only to have Thoth instantly rebuild it. Unable to do anything, Nephrote reluctantly stepped onto the scale, only to find out that her soul didn't disturb the feather she was weighed against; her soul was pure in every way!

Bolstered by the chaos, the scaraboids revolt against their captors and become a spacefaring race in their own right. As this rebellion spread and the sun set on the Egpytian empire, a brave group of Egyptian spacefarers set out on a journey only to discover the existence of the gods! In awe and shock of this discovery, the old mysterious man steps forward and reveals himself as Anubis, ruler of the universe, and he is most displeased. This however ties into his appearance at the exiling of Nephrote at the beginning of Egyptian space travel and opens a whole new plot on how history progressed.

</History>

As the title says, I wanted to share this with Sev, I'll have the writeup done sometime this weekend!