24XXoth - lo-fi dark fantasy, like o.g. Conan

In the city called Belthaar, in the confederacy of dirt that men call Susrah, there once lived a great wizard by the name of Ikhtanabu Xul. He was well versed in the arts of sorcery, and his red tower was filled with strange treasures and iron-bound books of arcana. The wizard’s life was one of luxury and pleasure, served as he was by servile eunuchs and dutiful apprentices. Devils obeyed his whims.

As he grew old, Ikhtanabu Xul’s beard became white as snow, and he began to fear death, for that he should lose all his accumulated knowledge and be denied his worldly pleasures. The wizard studied forbidden books of necromancy to learn the secret of immortality. While Ikhtanabu Xul learned many secrets of the tomb, he did not find the recipe for the coveted elixir of life, nor any spells that could prolong his life beyond the number of years allotted to him by the black candles of life that burn in the secret temples of Yadar.

Thus the necromancer died, old and weak and bitter, and his last instruction to his chief apprentice, Arakshat, was to be preserved by the arts of the embalmer and placed in a private tomb, safe from the depredations of ghouls and tomb-robbers, hoping for some future resurrection by the spells of his apprentice. Unfortunately for the dead wizard, the loyalty of his apprentices was as short-lived as his own quest for immortality. Within months, the apprentices of Ikhtanabu Xul had squandered their former master’s wealth on feasts and debaucheries and rivalries, each trying to become the new master of Ikhtanabu’s tower.

When the funds ran out, the apprentices abandoned the tower, scattering as dust on the winds. The autumn rains soaked the red tower and made puddles in the muddy plaza that surrounded it.

Yet there is a rumor that the devil haunted tower has, somewhere in its fastness, a secret treasury, undespoiled by the wastrel apprentices.