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Quoted from the NPC Gallery entry for Hakotep in Pyramid of the Sky Pharaoh:
"...Hakotep was afflicted with a recurrent disease of astonishing virulence, and he eventually succumbed to the malady in -1611 AR."
Okay, it says "astonishing virulence." Fine. Were there no 13th level clerics around that could cast heal? I mean, he's the Pharaoh. Summon the highest-level cleric in Osirion, have him cast heal and Hakotep lives to a ripe old age. My players will notice this plot hole and I'd like to provide them with a plausible reason why a simple disease could lay low a Pharaoh. Or maybe a way for Hakotep to die that isn't so mundane.
Some things can't be cured with magic.
Perhaps it was a curse from Osiris. Set and Osiris vying for control of the pharaoh of Osirion makes sense.
Alternatively, it doesn't come up in anything they learn about him and they don't learn how he died unless you add that information in yourself.
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For my own lore, the gods were furious at Hakotep for his warmongering, his necromantic experiments, and his promotion of Set over all the other gods and marriage to a devotee of the Dark Tapestry. So they withdrew their favour from Hakotep and his bloodline - rather than a cleric, he became a sorcerer thanks to Set's patronage. But they sent a plague to Osirion, and divine magic used to heal him or his bloodline was cut off at the source - no spell could heal or cure him, and when his son died it should have been a simple matter for a Pharaoh to have him resurrected but the magic just didn't work. This curse utterly obliterated him, and was only lifted when Djederet II did his best to reset the status quo and bury Hakotep's legacy, both politically and literally.
But even that wasn't the end of it - millenia later, the Cult of Lamashtu would find an obscure tomb dating to Hakotep's reign, with decorations relating the gods' cursing Osirion and the massive incurable death toll, and from the occupant's mummy they extracted the plague and refined it into the Plague of Madness that struck ancient Wati. Moreover, Osiris is still keeping a watchful eye on events as best he can from the afterlife, and has a personal interest in foiling the machinations of Set, and will be helping the party indirectly.
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Let's go with recurrent for a moment. MW has it defined as "occurring often or repeatedly." Sure, he has clerics and his void oracle wife could heal him *every single day*, but that would show weakness. Yeah, when the disease actually gets him in its throes, he just has his wife pull down her heal spell from the dark elder gods she serves and he's back to ship shape for a while. It keeps coming back though.
How is this recurrent though? Hakotep had 2 known Shory slave/prisoners at hand: the ghost in the Pyramid, and Chsisek who designed the Aeromantic Infantabulum for him. Its not a stretch to see other Shory POW's being forced into servitude in his immediate vicinity. The Shory were tech geniuses, perhaps as part of their long game against Hakotep's offensive, they engineered a disease that specifically made *HIM* sick. Infect some of his house slaves, boom, he's constantly battling a disease that only makes him sick. Ironically, this just fuels his hate for Shory as he *KNOWS* its a conspiracy as it only he is getting sick.
Eventually, as the Order of the Blue Feather begins to work on removing Hakotep from power, they begin paying off the clerics, begin whispering in Neferesis' ear that the elder gods' will is for Hakotep to be sick, begin preparing for their ultimate corpse desecration. Eventually, as his greatest pyramid completes construction at the Slave Trenches, his sickness reaches crescendo, and the Blue Feather jumps into action, tearing his soul asunder as they embalm him.
Then the funeral comes, his queen and his retainers all load up on their pyramids, ascend to their staging areas, then the Blue Feather coups all the rest of the Hakotep regime, erases him from history, and lets the pyramids drift through the skies for centuries to come.