Dark Sun: The Shadow King of Nibenay

The original Dark Sun campaign setting calls the Sorcerer-King Nibenay "a bizarre and enigmatic
figure." He is seldom seen by his people--to the degree that rumors sometimes spread than he has died. All his Templars are women, and they may or may not all be his wives. By the 4e version of Dark Sun they were definitely his wives, though the marriage is "purely ceremonial."

In the later versions of the setting, Nibenay is seldom seen because he looks like a humanoid dragon. But in the novel Amber Enchantress, Nibenay is inhuman, though more of a mollusk-arthropod creature. I like this version better for reasons I discussed in an earlier post.

Nibenay is called the Shadow King because he's so reclusive. I think we could do better and have him typically giving audiences from behind a screen so he's seen only as a shadow (and likely a magically or psionically generated one). Perhaps he even uses his powers only to appear as some sort of shadow puppet. Maybe he appears to those who have displeased him in any place in the city in the same way?

Nibenay's son Dhojakt is monstrous in form, as well. In the canon, this is due to actions of his mother, but I think it might be interesting if Nibenay himself was just rather to only partial human children. Nibenay is not only trying to ascend to a transhuman form himself, but to breed progeny who are also transhuman. He's the family-oriented Sorcerer-King.

Here I would draw inspiration from Gregory Keyes' Chosen of the Changeling duology where the royal family descended from the River God sometimes produce inhuman fish or water aspected children the royals keep locked away. Also, there's the recent comic book limited series the The Goddamned: The Virgin Brides by Jason Aaron and R. M. Guéra where a cult of nuns on an isolated mountain are offering up child brides to angels, and then tending the monstrous, Nephilim children.

I feel like Nibenay's Templars are both his cult and the source of his brides. There could be in number of inhuman children sulking about his massive and forbidden palace.