Within the Tomb

We, the heirs of the forgotten Sheikah tribe, have many secrets. To our shame, when the bloodline of the original Sheikah was broken, many of the precious artifacts safeguarded by the shadow peoples were lost; more disgraceful still was the loss of much of the tribe's accumulated knowledge and the secrets known only to the Sheikah.

No one, not even us, knows why or how the Sheikah were destroyed. We can only guess that some time in the 4th Age of Hyrule the Sheikah tribe was decimated, and it's thought that no pure-blooded Sheikah exists in Hyrule today. The secrets of the old clan were lost, and it is likely that we will never uncover all of their mysteries.

Indeed, modern Hyrule has lost many of the 'legends' of the old stories; it has been centuries since one with with the blood of the Goddess has sat on Hyrule's throne. Yes, Hylia's sacrifice during the First Age, this is a legend that we managed to preserve after the destruction of our ancestors.

Protecting the descendants of the Goddess, the most sacred duty of the shadow people. Given that the man who now sits on the throne of Hyrule hasn't a drop of Princess Zelda's blood in his veins it would seem that the Sheikah failed. However, if we know anything of our ancestors, its that the truth is rarely readily apparent. A true heir to the throne of Hyrule yet lives, and, silently, we keep our ancestor's vigil over the Goddess' blood.

However, we have another mission.

During one of Hyrule's wars with the Gerudo peoples, some of the Order of Time's men pillaged several holy Gerudo shrines; they uncovered something better left forgotten.

Deep within an ancient temple, the soldiers stumbled upon a dark crypt. Anticipating the loot that might be stolen from a royal Gerudo tomb, the soldier's greedily broke into the sealed room. However, no gold or jewels were within the room; instead, there was only a single corpse lying embalmed on a stone table. Disappointed, the soldiers abandoned the body in order to search for other areas to plunder. That night, every man who had set foot in the tomb died in their sleep.

When the King's soldiers were eventually humiliated in battle and forced back to Hyrule, echoes of this story followed them, and eventually reached us.

Panic seized me when the rumors were reported to me. The ancient Gerudo were second only to our ancestors when it came to arcane knowledge and secrets. What had these soldiers unearthed? As I said, we know little of the secrets of the ancient Sheikah; was this corpse in possession of one of the 'shards of dusk, possessed of otherworldly power' described only occasionally in ancient grimoires? Perhaps the corpse was one of the Gibdo, cousin to the ReDead that stalked the old Shadow Temple?

I personally journeyed with members of our clan to the ancient tomb in order to investigate the body; the potential that the soldiers had unearthed one of Hyrule's sleeping demons was simply too great to ignore. More knowledgeable of the esoteric than the plebeian soldiers who had discovered the crypt, our group could sense the evil that lay shrouded within that room long before we actually saw the corpse.

When I laid eyes on the corpse, I was seized by unimaginable fear. The body was unmistakably that of a male, an ancient Gerudo king.

I commanded that the body be removed from that tomb and spirited away to our catacombs, where it would be perpetually guarded. The body would be magically sealed away in a cul-de-sac within the bowels of our tunnels; we would invoke some of the darkest arts we inherited from our ancestors to guard the body itself. We could not allow the corpse to ever be disturbed again.

I could not say exactly what provoked this reaction in me, the body was not recognizable, and time has done to that corpse what it does to all others. Yet, whenever I gaze upon that body it's as if the deepest part of myself shudders, though my eyes tell me that I see nothing more than the corpse of a forgotten desert king. I do not know why, but the corpse conjures to my mind a passage I read long ago: "Know this: there is a Demon, garbed in the Body of Man; when he walks this land, he hungers for the Golden Power, and he will never stop until he has claimed it. Hear his name if you would know your demise: Ganondorf, King of Evil."
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See, I haven't forgotten about Zelda!

Incidentally, do you know how hard it was to make this resemble Ganondorf? It's a millenia old corpse, so no red hair or funky skin pigment; I chose an angle that minimized his nose; and his body is shriveled and frail.