Nephren-Ka

Nephren-Ka (AKA "Nophru-Ka", "The Black Pharaoh"), first mentioned by H.P. Lovecraft in "The Outsider (fiction)", and described in more detail in "The Haunter of the Dark (fiction)".

In the Mythos

Now I ride with the mocking and friendly ghouls on the night-wind, and play by day amongst the catacombs of Nephren-Ka in the sealed and unknown valley of Hadoth by the Nile....
— H.P. Lovecraft, "The Outsider (fiction)"

The Shining Trapezohedron crossed strange lands and stranger seas, and sank with Atlantis before a Minoan fisher meshed it in his net and sold it to swarthy merchants from nighted Ancient Khem. The Pharaoh Nephren-Ka built around it a temple with a windowless crypt, and did that which caused his name to be stricken from all monuments and records. Then it slept in the ruins of that evil fane which the priests and the new Pharaoh destroyed, till the delver's spade once more brought it forth to curse mankind....
— H.P. Lovecraft, "The Haunter of the Dark (fiction)"

The Black Pharaoh Nephren-Ka was supposedly the last pharaoh of the Third Dynasty of Egypt, a sorcerer alleged to have introduced the cult of the animal-headed gods to that nation, drawing the attention of Nyarlathotep who took interest in him and, summoning him to the city of Irem, proposed a bloody pact: Nephren-Ka would sacrifice one hundred victims in his honor and Nyarlathotep would give him the gift of prophecy. The pact was sealed, and Nyarlathotep granted the Sorcerer-Pharaoh the power to see the future by securing for him the cursed Shining Trapezohedron with which to divine the future. Due tot he requirements of the Haunter of the Dark, a spirit trapped within the device, Nephren-Ka had a lightless temple created to hold the stone and contain the Haunter within, with the temple becoming the center of the Black Pharaoh's abominable cult, with the rites carried out there were so monstrous the temple was destroyed. Nephren-Ka, realizing that his life was coming to an end, took refuge in his own crypt beneath a twisted pyramid, and there he spent what little time he had left writing down on its walls everything that the future of the world held, but no remains of the pyramid or Nephren-Ka have been found.

Years later, Queen Nitokris and her mummified husband Khephren had a son whom she named "Nophru-Ka"; the boy, a strange, wisened youth marked as having been fathered by the gods, was allegedly spirited away into the catacombs of the inner Earth to serve as the reincarnation Nephren-Ka, and Nyarlathotep's avatar on Earth. In the 18th Dynasty, centuries after his death, Nephren-Ka - apparently in this incarnation - appeared to Pharaoh Akhenaten to propose that he resume the cult of Nyarlathotep, but Akhenaten refused and had Nephren-Ka banished from the surface of the Earth, his name struck out from all records and monuments to let no one remember the atrocities he had committed, but not before Nyarlathotep cursed Akhenaten with madness, causing the collapse of his empire and the name of Akhenaten, too, to be struck from history. Nephren-Ka is said to live on in the catacombs of the Underworld (see Catacombs of Kish) and within the Vale of Pnath.

Cult

Nephren-Ka's cult appears to have originally been a violent, eccentric cult dedicated to animal-headed Gods of Egypt, but quickly metamorphosed into a blood-soaked abomination after obtaining the Scroll of Thoth: graduating to the creation of Children of the Sphinx first as ghoulish mummies and then as nightmare reanimated corpses, and then merging with elements of Mythos cultism when the Pharaoh's experiments with Dreaming and Astral Projection drew the attention of Nyarlathotep, with the Pharaoh's cult driven to human sacrifice and mass murder on the scale of hundreds (by some accounts thousands), ultimately turning to even more outre expressions with Nephren-Ka's acquisition of the Shining Trapezohedron, granting the Pharaoh glimpses of the distant past and far-flung future, and to activities of Mythos cults on other worlds. The windowless Temple of Shadow, built by Nephren-Ka and his cult in the catacombs beneath the Sphinx to house the Trapezohedron, would become the center of the cult's activity at the height of its power and influence.

The cult disintegrated after the people of Ancient Khem rose up against the abominations to slay the cult and destroy the Temple and strike the unspeakable original face off of the Sphinx, with the cult completely suppressed by the Black Pharaoh's successor Sneferu and only reviving years later under the influence of Queen Nitokris upon the birth of her son, Nophru-Ka, reincarnation of the Black Pharaoh and avatar of Nyarlathtep. The revived cult was quickly banned, and remained active in obscurity until finally destroyed by Akhenaten, who banned the cult and all others after being contacted by the Black Pharaoh and resisting its proposal to revive the cult's official activities, and recoiling in horror and madness from the revelation, founding a new Sun-worship religion for Egypt to oppose Nyarlathotep and striking all references to Nyarlathotep's cults from history. Many of Akhenaten's most extreme reforms were short-lived - his Sun religion collapsing shortly after his death, traditional Egyptian cults revived, and Akhenaten's own name struck from Egyptian history - but the Black Pharaoh was banished from the Earth's surface, the entrances to the underworld beneath the Sphinx sealed, and the cult of the Black Pharaoh was effectively destroyed, never fully revived in the aeons to follow.

There have been short-lived attempts to rebuild the cult - see:

• cult: Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh
• cult: Brotherhood of the Beast
• cult: Church of Starry Wisdom sect
• cult: Cult of Khotep

Heresies and Controversies

• Lovecraft himself provided few details about Nephren-Ka; most of the description above - especially those referring to Nophru-Ka (apparently a typo by the scenario author) was inspired from or inspired by later sources, especially materials written for the Call of Cthulhu (RPG).
• Nephren-Ka / Nophru-Ka may be been re-incarnated at some point as "The Black Pharaoh" Khotep, at the end of the Sixth Dynasty of Egypt. ("Curse of the Black Pharaoh," Lin Carter)
• Nephren-Ka seems to have been reincarnated numerous times through history down his blood-line, including an incarnation as a cult-leader masquerading as Harry Houdini's guide in "Under the Pyramids (fiction)" (YSDC, inspired by "Under the Pyramids")

Associated Mythos Elements

• tome: Unaussprechlichen Kulten, referring to elements of the Pharaoh's cult and the Haunter of the Dark
• tome: Scroll of Thoth, used as part of the foundation of the Pharaoh's cult
• location: Twisted Pyramid
• location: Catacombs of Nephren-Ka (AKA Catacombs of Kish)
• location: The Great Sphinx
• Setting: Hollow Earth
• Setting: Ancient Khem
• Setting: Dreamlands
• race: Children of the Sphinx
• race: Ghouls, Ghasts
• race: Petesouchi
• deity: Nyarlathotep, Haunter of the Dark
• cult: Cult of Nephren-Ka (see above)
• cult: Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh
• cult: Church of Starry Wisdom sect
• cult: Brotherhood of the Beast
• characters: Nitokris and Khephren
• character: Nophru-Ka

References

• fiction: H.P. Lovecraft's "The Outsider (fiction)"
• fiction: H.P. Lovecraft's "The Haunter of the Dark (fiction)"
• fiction: H.P. Lovecraft and Harry Houdini's "Under the Pyramids (fiction)"
• campaign: The Fungi from Yuggoth (Supplement)
• campaign: The Brotherhood of the Beast