The Priest King – Tomb King Thutep

This is a campaign mod which adds to the skill tree of the DLC Rise of the Tomb Kings technology tree acquired Lord – King Thutep.

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The Tech tree granted Tomb King Lords can be a bit bland, effectively re-skinned base Tomb Lords with no additional skill abilities and a dynasty ability to give them a bit of flavour. This mod attempts to add to the depth that Tomb King Thutep has, effectively making him upto near Legendary Lord campaign-level status by adding powerful unique campaign skills.

This mod descriptor below contains spoilers for the epilogue of the Vortex Campaign. If you have not finished the Vortex Campaign yet and don’t want any spoilers, then I suggest you stop reading now.

…. I’m serious! SPOILER Alert

…. what you still reading this for?!? SPOILER Alert

OK. If you read this far down, and ignored the warnings, I’m about to completely spoil the Tomb Kings epilogue scene of the game for you.

After collecting the five books of Nagash and defeating Arkhan at the Black Pyramid, if you continue a few turns you finally come to an epilogue piece of story/lore. That… (duh, duh, duuun!) The Liche Priest Nerutep is actually the long lost King Thutep. The brother who Nagash threw in his father’s pyramid to rot after deposing and stealing his throne.

I know. Complete spoiler territory; game unplayable for you now.

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So what do we know about Thutep/Nerutep? We know Nagash viewed him as a "weak king", and rationalising that he’s deposing him for the "good of the people". We also know that Nagash when he expressed those views was a psychopathic, mass-murdering power-hungry evil overlord in waiting; so I’m calling him an unreliable witness.

What we can be certain of is that King Thutep (very briefly!) oversaw peaceful period after his father’s death. Like any dutiful son in Nehekhara, he spent a good deal of effort making sure his father was buried properly… Which was a bit unfortunate as Nagash promptly deposed Thutep and threw him, still alive, into their father’s tomb to die an agonising death. Thutup then disappears from record for a long time.

What we know next is from what we have in-game. Priest Nerutep is the primary quest giver for the Tomb Kings in the Eye of the Vortex Campaign. In the Epilogue section he is "revealed" to be the long lost and deposed King Thutep, Brother of Nagash.

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So Thutep is Nerutep. How to approach this in-game and in his campaign skill tree?

Clearly to give him a spellbook was my first port of call, and the Light was the most obvious first choice if Thutep/Nerutep is hating his brother.

Next, I considered what Thutep/Nerutep had been upto all these years, and so beyond a few obvious Liche Priest skills, I added two powerful personal combat enhancing skills to emphasize how he’d been studying to kill his brother for so long. Taken together the two skills (plus the Lore of Light) very much make this your anti-Undead Lord. When skilled up, and especially if you add a few choice items from the Mortuary Cult he should be a real handful for opposition Lords of Tomb Kings, Vampires Counts and Vampire Coast.

Finally I gave him a couple of Warsphinx related skills to be tied with his Dynasty flavour line.

Overall, he now presents as a powerful addition to your forces.

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Please don’t ask me to attempt to lore-wise square the circle of exactly how Thutep could be both a recruitable Lord and an NPC at the same, or, perhaps more importantly, exactly why he’s a recruitable Lord for Arkhan the Black! 🙂 I’ve tried to present things as they are in the game. Thutep is Nerutep, despite the complexities that brings with it.

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I will at some point probably return to this mod at a later date to add a couple of unique items.

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