Neferuset

This page contains spoilers for the following products: Pyramid of the Sky Pharaoh.
You can disable this banner in your personal preferences.

Neferuset

(Person)

Titles

Queen

Alignment

Chaotic evil

Ancestry/Species

Human (mummified)

Class

Oracle 17

Gender

Female

Homeland

Sothis, Osirion

Died

-1611 AR

Companion(s)

Hakotep I

Images of Neferuset

Source: Pyramid of the Sky Pharaoh, pg(s). 58

Neferuset was a mad oracle of the Dark Tapestry who served as the queen of Pharaoh Hakotep I of Osirion from -1653 AR to -1611 AR.

History

Neferuset was the youngest daughter of Chopehra and Gheneris, cousins of the pharaoh and high priests of Set in Sothis. Her paternal grandmother was Neferisis, also an oracle of the Dark Tapestry, and her adopted sister was the elf Nailah. At a young age, she began assisting her parents in their job and reading books from the temple of Set, growing more and more interested in dark things.

When she was 12, Neferuset went missing for three days until she was found comatose, with a book named Secrets of the Dreaming Dark bound with dwarf skin. No one could wake her up, and she was believed dead until waking up exactly 30 days after. Initially, after her coma, she only spoke Aklo; her first words in Osiriani was 'I have seen the Dark, and it is beautiful. All must prepare for its arrival.' Her discovery as an oracle unsettled her parents, but her enigmatic presence and bizarre pronouncements, despite having little to do with Set, nonetheless attracted more worshippers to him.

Neferuset first met the then-prince Hakotep at the age of 15. In the middle of a ritual, Neferuset walked straight into Hakotep, who was disguised among the congregation, and whispered something in his ear. No one exactly knew her words, but from that day he was devoted to her. Less than a year later, Hakotep replaced his father as pharaoh and named Neferuset the sole queen that he'd ever take. Their only child, a son named Hakmothes, predeceased his parents, having been killed by a manticore during an ill-fated hunt in which his father forced him to participate.

As her husband indulged every of Neferuset's bizarre whims, she encouraged him to elevate his god Set above all else and fed his paranoia about the Shory Empire. After the first assault on the Shory, Neferuset cruelly interrogated the captives and asked her husband to build the Khepsutanem. As she continued to spend her time with dangerous rituals from the Secrets of the Dreaming Dark, some of Hakotep's bold advisors warned him about her unstable behaviour and the threat of rebellion, and all of them were handed for Neferuset to be sacrificed in her rituals. Among the victims were her own adopted sister Nailah, who was involved in a coup against Hakotep.

When Hakotep died, Neferuset committed suicide with snake venom and asked to be buried with the Secrets of the Dreaming Dark. Her corpse was mummified and entombed with her husband, and her lungs were preserved in a canopic jar of unlife which would regenerate her undead body if it was destroyed. As Hakotep's pyramid rose into the sky, the residents of Sothis celebrated after having suffered so much at Neferuset's hands. Her precious book was not buried with her: an advisor burnt it, divided the ashes into four portions and scattered them deep in the desert so it could never plague Osirion again.