Mummy The Curse 2e - The Book of Lasting Death (2022) [PDF]

Zitiervorschau

A SOURCEBOOK FOR MUMMY: THE CURSE SECOND EDITION

CREDITS Developer: Matthew Dawkins Chronicles of Darkness Line Developer: Dixie Cochran Writers: Chris Allen, Matthew Dawkins, Jason Inczauskis, Lauren Roy Editor: Reginald Pewtey Art: Michael Gaydos, Alex Sheikman, Tilen Javnornik Art Director: Mike Chaney Creative Director: Richard Thomas

© 2022 PARADOX INTERACTIVE AB. All rights reserved. Reproduction without the written consent of the publisher is expressly forbidden, except for the purposes of reviews, and for blank character sheets, which may be reproduced for personal use only. Mummy and Chronicles of Darkness are registered trademarks of Paradox Interactive AB (publ). All rights reserved. Vampire: The Requiem, Werewolf: The Forsaken, Mage: The Awakening, Mummy: The Curse, and Storytelling System are trademarks of Paradox Interactive AB (publ). All rights reserved.

2

The Book of Lasting Death

Relics 4 Introduction 6 Eternity Awaits

Chapter One: The Minor Guilds

7

9

The Deceived 10 Kher-Minu 15 Maar-Kherit 19 Wadjet-Itja 23

Chapter Two: Lifeless and Depraved

29

The Judges of Duat 29 Bastu, the Stare 29 Fentu, the Snout 30 Neb-Imkhu, the Lord of Faces 31 Nefer-Tem, the Eternal Lotus 32 Amkhata 33 The Sha 34 Dread Powers 34 Immortals 35 The Purified 36 Patchwork People 37 Visitors 39 The Red Shores of Nu 42 The Shadow 42 Spirits 42

Numina 44 Ephemeral Cultists 44 Ghosts 45 Shades 45 Spirits 46 Ephemeral Cultist Character Creation 46

Appendix: Utterances and Affinities

48

Utterances 48 Color from Void 48 Echoes of Faded Voices 50 Obedient Implements 52 Rotting Flesh Divinity 53 Tenebrous Consumption 54 Usurping the Red Shores 55 New Soul Affinities 57 All 57 Ab 57 Ba 57 Ka 57 Ren 58 Sheut 58 New Guild Affinities 59 The Deceived 59 Kher-Minu 59 Maar-Kherit 60 Wadjet-Itja Affinities 60

Table of Contents

3

RELIC S They’d been watching this place for days, noting who came and went, its busy times and its dead ones. They watched for silent signals — hand gestures or slight nods at passers-by, a subtle cough precisely seven steps from the door — but the people streaming in and out of the building were just businesspeople, nothing more. Neheb was cold. It’d been pissing down rain all morning, and the coffee he’d bought to keep his hands warm was long since gone. Beside him, Tara Baxter was poised and alert, but showed no signs of being affected by the chill. He wondered if it was something the surgeons built into her, if they installed some kind of self-regulating temperature control the last time they tinkered around in her guts. Or maybe the flow of Sekhem through her kept her warm. This close to her, he could feel the presence of her clockwork heart, could almost track its pulse by the subtle shifts in Sekhem around her. “Where’s our third?” she said, though her lips barely moved. “He’ll be here.” “You’ve seen it in your cards?” She cast a withering glance toward the pocket where he kept his deck. “I know them. Our success is written in the stars, my friend. We’ll get this done and you’ll be on your way in time to watch Vitas Varnas bring down the house.” Nothing was ever certain when it came to prophecy, but Neheb’s readings had all been clear: the vessels were inside, the Arisen’s cult barely active. Once upon a time, the mummy’s tomb was built

in a deep and solid foundation, but decades of construction and blasting weakened its walls. Much of its sacred geometry was still intact, but Neheb was feeling lucky. He was sure they could get in, grab the vessels, and bring the whole thing down before the Maa-Kep inside so much as stirred from her henet. A tall, thin man paused at the corner of the building across the street. Something about the way he stood was off, as though he wasn’t used to being so tall, or wasn’t quite sure how arms worked. Tara sighed. “He’s going to blow our cover.” “He won’t,” Neheb said, though he wasn’t entirely certain. He’d seen a lot of strange things in his long, long life, but Visitors were a whole new experience. Usually, Neheb was keen on new experiences, but the way Paul’s eyes didn’t quite match what his mouth was doing unnerved him. It reminded him vaguely of the Shan’iatu, but that was more a sensation than a solid memory. It was a word on the tip of his tongue, and a distant, fleeting familiarity when he looked at the Visitor. “Let’s go.” Tara didn’t wait for him. She had a play to catch. ••• All signs had pointed to a cakewalk, but even Neheb was a little

weirded out by how easy it was to get down here. Security guards let them pass with one Do you know who I am? look from Tara. No one disturbed them as they descended the stairs to the sub-basement, or called out after them while they traversed the tunnel leading them farther underground. As far as they could tell, no one had walked here for a hundred years, which made it a trivial matter to set the explosive charges they’d detonate on their way out. The tomb ought to crush the mummy within, but the building above should remain standing. At least, that’s what the Architect he’d consulted had told him. Neheb had left out the part where they’d be destroying another Arisen’s tomb. Now they stood in the MaaKep’s tomb, lit by ancient bulbs that must have been installed the last time she rose, in the early 1900s. They ought to have burnt out long ago. Amazing, the things a Lifeweb could keep going. Speaking of the Lifeweb, there were the vessels, all lined up atop her sarcophagus. Neheb grinned. “See? Just like I said.” He pointed at a row of small sealed urns on a ledge. “Canopic jars, as promised. Take as many as you want.” Paul stood silent, observing them both. He said he’d taken the job to study the tomb and any cultists guarding it. Neheb had figured he’d at least take a stroll around. If Paul wasn’t going to take a look, Neheb would take a gander for them both. This place was a treasure trove; it was almost a

shame they were going to collapse it as they left. But they’d never be able to carry it all, and once the Arisen was awake, they were as good as dead. Still, he thought of the luxuries the piles of hoarded art would buy him. Hell, it’d probably buy Tara several surgeries to replace her various parts as they wore out. This statue alone would sell for... Neheb took another look at the statue. At the hammer in its grip. “Shit.” “What?” asked Tara, her fingers an inch from the rightmost jar. Paul tilted his head, curious. The gesture still didn’t read as human. “I figured out why there aren’t any cultists on guard.” He pondered the readings he’d had the last few days, looked for

something that might have heralded this, but nothing jumped out. Still, he always had a contingency plan. Today, that contingency was named Paul. “When I say go, grab your jar and run. Don’t look back, just run. Ready?” Neheb backed away from the statue, careful not to breathe too hard in its direction. “Paul, I need you to cover our retreat. Okay?” The Visitor shrugged, bored. Neheb approached the sarcophagus and eyed the vessels in their precise configuration. A

lapis amulet set in gold was the smallest and lightest. The easiest to snatch up. His hand hovered over it. “Three... two... one. GO.” His fingers flashed out, snagged the amulet. Tara cradled a jar like a football and dashed out of the tomb. The statue roared to life, chips of stone falling away as the Eternal burst free of her stone prison. Neheb didn’t stick around to watch the rest of her awakening. He turned and fled, shooting past Paul, who finally looked excited. “We’ve got this,” said Paul, and Neheb realized he didn’t know if that was the Visitor’s name, or the host’s. “Bring it all down. We’ll be fine.” Neheb didn’t truly believe him, but he’d be testing Fate if he stuck around. “Good luck,” he said, and ran to set off the charges.

“Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?” “Yes.” “Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.” — Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

T

o be an eternal being, never aging, never dying, never succumbing to time’s assorted ravages. To be an eternal being, locked forever in service to sadistic gods, ever fated to forget your sins and glories, always destined to return with destruction in your wake. Immortality can be a great thing. It can also be a terrible thing. Mummy: The Curse introduces the concept of playing beings locked in the flux of godlike power and unreliable memory. It allows players to take on the roles of beings that exist across multiple timelines, serving or rebuking their gods, fostering cults while destroying the beliefs of others. The Book of Lasting Death expands the possibilities in a game already benefiting from a lack of limitation. With this book, Storytellers and players alike find a range of new playable options, powers, and antagonists to make Mummy: The Curse a game with an impressive range of facets. Though they appeared first in the Mummy: The Curse core book, this sourcebook provides the full details players need to play mummies from the minor guilds. The tragic artists among the Deceived, the steadfast sentinels among the Kher-Minu, the blighted medicants among the Maar-Kherit, and the underestimated oracles and gamblers that make up the Wadjet-Itja all appear here for Storytellers to incorporate into merets, position as prominently as the major guilds of the Arisen, or position as intriguing foes seeking power or vengeance. Whether players take on roles as mummies of these minor guilds, or Storytellers use them as terrifying antagonists, the range of possibilities for their use in chronicles is vast.

6

Introduction

The Judges, unknowable and alien, receive greater coverage in the Book of Lasting Death, with Bastu, the Star; Fentu, the Snout; Neb-Imkhu, the Lord of Faces; and Nefer-Tem, the Eternal Lotus each acting as possible patrons or villains, or both, in an upcoming chronicle. As the Judges become increasingly alien, drifting farther and farther from the human mold, their cults and Arisen followers follow suit. Among antagonists presented in this book, a Storyteller will enjoy the expanded options for Amkhata, including new Dread Powers. Likewise, a range of new immortals — from the spiritual Purified and the macabre Patchwork People, to the terrifying Visitors — might serve as terrible enemies or worthy allies. Each contains the option for play, expanding the range of potential cultists in a game of Mummy. This book delves deeper into the spiritual aspects of Mummy too, casting a gaze over to the Shadow, its inhabitants, and the possibility of playing ephemeral cultists to round out the possibilities available for the troupe of players. Finally, the Book of Lasting Death deepens the well of Utterances and Affinities, with some being associated with the minor guilds introduced in this book, and others open to Arisen from the core book. These powers pack a punch and the Storyteller is encouraged to consider each before granting players free rein over which they choose. Some might fundamentally alter the expectations you have of a game of Mummy.

ETERNITY AWAITS The breakdown of this book’s contents is as follows: • Relics — Fiction that helps set the scene for the characters and features found within this very book. • Introduction — Our brief opportunity to tease what lies ahead, should you wish to delve deeper.

• Chapter Two: Lifeless and Depraved — A selection of Judges, Amkhata, immortals, and rules for incorporating spirits in your chronicles. • Chapter Three: Utterances and Affinities — Expanded options for powers wielded by mummies and their most potent cultists.

• Chapter One: Minor Guilds — Providing greater depth and playability to the Deceived, Kher-Minu, Maar-Kherit, and Wadjet-Itja.

Eternity Awaits

7

Was it enough to live on in legend if the legends were lies? — Traci Chee, The Reader

I

n their arrogance, the Arisen of the major guilds consider themselves Irem’s only true successors. They are certainly not its only survivors. Others walk the Earth, carrying their own memories of the Nameless Empire: the Deceived, the Kher-Minu, the Maa-Kherit, and the Wadjet-Itja. Like their brethren, they too served the Shani’atu and shaped the City of Pillars. They were Irem’s warriors, its healers, and its prophets — no less essential to the Empire than the alchemists and scribes. In the case of the Deceived, they were both sorcerers and sorcerer-princes, denied the Rite of Return at the very last breath. Still, all four achieved an imperfect immortality, whether by betrayal, sorcery, trickery, treachery, or a combination of all four. If the Arisen who underwent the Rite of Return are living monuments to Irem, these mummies are those monuments’ twisted shadows.

The Minor Guilds

9

TRADITION OF THE SEBA The relics of the Deceived are intangible. They’re inspiration itself: the first stirrings of a song crying out to be composed, the kernel of an epic before pen even meets page, the thrum of one’s muscles anticipating the dance. They are the creative spark itself, the divine rush of revelation in an artist’s mind. When such a relic does coalesce, that spark is fleeting — how often does the painting on canvas exactly match the masterpiece in its creator’s mind? What writer can say the book they wrote is as perfect as the one they envisioned in that first gasp of inspiration? Others may see the masterwork and praise it as a classic, but the artist herself feels that nagging sense of what yet might have been, were there enough time. Like their seba, the Akhem-Urtu encourage the pursuit of creativity. Once, they were the creators themselves, conjuring great works by speaking them into being. Where their souls once blazed with the fires of inspiration, now those embers lay cold and dead. The divine voices that once praised their art now only scream and gibber for vengeance. Deprived of their own ability to create, the Deceived nurture that spark in others, building it to a bonfire that they might bask in its heat once more.

Eternally Fractured, Inextricably Bound The Deceived act as muses for their followers, though their gift of genius comes with its own terrible curse: an obsessive need to create until the artist succumbs to exhaustion or despair. But oh, the beautiful creations that flow from their adherents’ hands! The Deceived feel pride in their

10

Chapter One: The Minor Guilds

patronage, but their resentment toward their followers runs deep. They were the makers in a time long forgotten. Their own great works captivated the hearts of an Empire. Even at the height of beauty, mortal creations are but a dim shadow of the glories the Restless Stars brought forth in Irem. If the Unforgiven retain anything resembling the capacity to create, it’s the vengeful plans they aim at the Arisen. Much like their cultists’ minds always churn with melodies or turns of phrase, the Restless Stars dream of ways to make the Arisen pay for their ancient betrayal. The Deceived lurk in the shadows, watching and waiting, eager to destroy those who turned immortality itself against them. They steal their enemies’ relics, and undermine the other guilds’ machinations. For all their torment and fury, the Akhem-Urtu are also proud. Theirs is the power of ren-hekau, the magic of true names, the Will. Mastery of the Nomenclature grants the Deceived a power that terrifies other Arisen, and rightly so. Though their prowess is greatly diminished from the miracles they worked in Irem, the other guilds don’t know how much they’ve lost, and the Unforgiven are disinclined to show them. Let the ones who recall the Restless Stars’ once-awesome power trade stories of the horrors they might rain down. Let it make those would-be princes, those betrayers, those usurpers feel small and afraid.

FOUNDATIONS In Irem, the Deceivers were not one, but two: those who claimed to be the eldest of the Shan’iatu, and the mortals who served in their guild.

The mortal Akhem-Urtu learned the art of sorcery from the Shan’iatu. They were the Pharaoh’s priests and protectors, and the overseers of his rituals. Their masters stood above them, revered as high priests and the conduits by which select mortal prayers might — if they were worthy — reach the gods’ ears. Though the Shan’iatu gifted their mortal servants with knowledge, the guildmasters held many secrets back. That knowledge was too powerful, claimed Irem’s masters; it was too sacred to share with lesser beings. In truth, the Shan’iatu had seen the wonders mortals created — how deftly they wove magic into metal, how their alchemy coaxed perfection out of the flawed — and feared their subjects might someday surpass them should they come to fully understand the Nomenclature.

THE WHEEL TURNS The other Arisen, when their own Memories of Irem resurface, believe the Akhem-Urtu to be long dead. They’re ghost stories now, the boogeymen who terrify even the fearless children of Irem. If the Arisen speak of the Deceived at all, it’s in vague terms and abstractions, lest they name the Namers and call them screaming out of henet. Some Sesha-Hebsu, those masters of Word but not Will, worry that the Deceived might still walk the world, and what it might mean for the Scroll of Ages if the Restless Stars were the ones guiding the flow of ink over its parchments. The Deceived are used to working from the shadows, keeping their identities secret and their movements untraceable. Trust doesn’t come easy, when you’re the victims of a cosmic betrayal. When they do form merets, it’s often with other Deceived and their trusted followers, but even these alliances are fraught with uncertainty. Though their hatred for other Arisen unifies them and gives them common goals, the Unforgiven by their very nature are inconsistent and unstable. Whatever ambition the Deceived sets for herself, the temakh within may tear to shreds. Mostly, the reason they avoid other Arisen merets is a confluence of hatreds: The Akhem-Urtu seek to destroy other Arisen for their perfidy, while any smart mummy would attempt to annihilate the Unforgiven upon realizing a member of the Lost Guild — to the Arisen, the true betrayers — stood in their midst. This isn’t to say the Deceived never join forces with other mummies. Infiltrating your enemy’s inner circle is a valid strategy, after all, but since the chances are greater than zero that the temakh riding along in your sahu could assert control at any point, it’s an extremely risky one.

The Deceived

11

When they’re not actively pursuing another Arisen or their relics, the Restless Stars gravitate toward two different callings in the modern world. They put the skills they’ve gained staying in the shadows to work, making connections in the criminal underworld and leading their own tightly-controlled organized crime outfits. They’ve learned how to move anything — money, artifacts, people — without detection, and can call in a string of favors at any time. Some prefer staying on the other side of the law and hang out their shingles as private investigators instead. Surveillance work never goes out of style, and there’s a high likelihood of crossing paths with a Maa-Kep or their cultists in the line of duty. Yet, what they do from dark and hidden places is work circumstance has forced them into. The Memory of creation never truly fades, and though they’ve lost the spark themselves, the Deceived nurture it in others. They’re talent scouts, museum curators, and anonymous benefactors. They’re the wealthy patron in the box seats who never misses the prima ballerina’s performance, and who listens to the aria with tears in their eyes. The Akhem-Urtu find the flames of inspiration in mortals and fan them to a bonfire. Sometimes they can almost recall how it felt to create Irem’s masterworks. Deceived cults are often artists’ communities. The maker spaces they inhabit are temples to art itself, full of completed works and works-in-progress. The creative spark burns within them, though that’s not always a good thing. Having one of the Unforgiven for a muse can bring with it a near-constant barrage of ideas. They heap atop one another, requiring the artist to have half a dozen works in semi-finished states at all times. Or, if she can focus her energies, inspiration leaves her no time to rest between completing one piece and starting another. It’s exhausting work, and many Deceived cultists become the stereotypical starving artists, or depend on their Unforgiven benefactor to sell their work and provide them with a living. Other Deceived gather followers whose skills help them exact revenge on the Arisen: criminals and detectives, money launderers and informants. Anyone who’s adept at digging up dirt or tailing a mark is a valuable member of the mummy’s cult. Some are even highly-placed members of law enforcement agencies, with access to financial documents, facial recognition software, and other records. The Deceived don’t see themselves as successors to the Shan’iatu. They are the Shan’iatu, at least partly. Yet in the blessed silence of Twilight, when they’re temporarily

12

Chapter One: The Minor Guilds

free of the temakh and can at last be alone, the AkhemUrtu dream of shaping an empire. Once, they plucked grand ideas from the ether and guided them into being. They took the intangible and made it exquisite, formed order from their Will. Their guildmasters intended to set themselves above the gods, and though those machinations begat this eternal torment, their once-mortal selves can see the merits in the plan.

AN IMPERFECT ETERNITY The Shan’iatu guildmasters of the Akhem-Urtu attempted to use the Rite of Return to seize a place above the Judges in Duat. How their scheme was uncovered is a mystery as lost as Irem, but what they know is this: At the moment they called upon the Nomenclature to make their Will manifest, the other Shan’iatu rebuffed them. The backlash shattered their temakh — the soul-stuff of the Shan’iatu — and would have cast their shards spinning into Neter-Khertet, eternally lost. However, the Namers were Will itself, and clutched onto their servants’ souls as the Rite completed. The Deceived are Deathless, but they are two beings within one body. What will their servants might assert is often undermined by that of their masters, though precisely what the temakh wants is indecipherable. The shattering broke the gods; the commands they issue to their servants lack all coherence. At best, they’re a low constant gibbering at the base of the Deceived’s awareness. When that babble becomes a scream, the Deceived must scramble to interpret the temakh’s demands. She’ll do almost anything to make the screaming stop. Denied Duat, the Unforgiven never stood before the Judges and made their Decrees. When dead, the Deceived and her temakh wander Neter-Khertet, separate at last. For the ghostly mortal soul, it’s a respite she’d go to great lengths to extend. The temakh, however, hunts her through Twilight, determined to drag her back to the living world and continue their eternal mission of hate and revenge.

AS SOTHIS ASCENDS For the Deceived, immortality is torment. What should have been an eternity spent luxuriating in power is instead a life lived in the shadows. They can never rest, not while the Arisen walk the Earth. When they can wrest a measure of control over their Descent and focus on something other than vengeance, nothing guarantees the things they

build will endure. The temakh may very well force them to tear it down, leaving them helpless to watch as their own hands destroy their hard work, or words spilling from their own mouths ruin a hard-won friendship. The Restless Stars’ inner turmoil can’t erase their capacity to see beauty in the world, or stop them from perpetuating it. At heart, they’re artists and creators; they understand better than anyone the catharsis that can come from transcribing your pain into words, images, and songs. They know how art can power movements and shed light on issues of inequality and oppression, and encourage their followers to change the world with their work. They also see betrayal at every turn. Determined never again to be caught by surprise as they were during the Rite of Return, the Unforgiven study what makes people turn on one another. They’ve learned to exploit what drives those actions — shame, coercion, jealousy, rage, greed — and put them to work. Their agents dig up Arisen cultists’ secrets and threaten to expose them. They infiltrate other mummies’ companies and entice employees to divulge corporate secrets or destroy equipment. Those Arisen who don’t dismiss the Restless Stars as ghost stories suggest their skill at coaxing people to betray one another isn’t because they’ve studied the act. It’s because the Unforgiven were the first to deal in deceit.

Starfall The Deceived have no Judges to turn their backs on when disillusionment settles in. Their struggles are literally within their own selves, as the temakhs’ inscrutable machinations make their mortal souls weary. Instead of refuting the Judges’ will, they rebel by refusing to submit to their temakh’s screaming whims. Unforgiven who grow tired of the eternal quest for vengeance withdraw from the world as much as their dual-souls allow them to. They disband their cults, pull support from the artists who worship them, and make themselves as unreachable as they possibly can. It’s less a matter of choosing seclusion, and more about making it harder for their temakh to set them back on the inevitable path toward payback. Milder versions of this retreat involve sequestering oneself in a remote, off-the-grid location, while more extreme attempts may see the Deceived sealing herself in her own tomb. Vessels: Seba Affinities: As Whispers in the Night, Wielder of Names

Beyond the Embodiment of Vision Kher-Minu: Only fools would bind themselves to the Arisen’s service. They will not weep if you’re destroyed. Turn your bloodlust on them, and set yourselves free. Maar-Kherit: You, too, were betrayed. Come, together we’ll exact vengeance upon those who sentenced us to such eternal torment. Wadjet-Itja: Cleverness and luck run out eventually. If your auguries don’t point to your downfall, look into our past and see what comes of trickery and deceit. Sesha-Hebsu: You scribble down words, but only barely understand their meaning. You think yourselves our successors, our replacements, but you’re nothing more than children mimicking their betters.

WHO WE ARE

• Talent scout for a prestigious agency, whose stars top

charts, hit bestseller lists, and are the first names on casting directors’ tongues before they retreat from the spotlight, citing burnout.

•

Owner of a makerspace where the greatest artistic minds gather to bring their fevered visions to life.

• Private detective who takes on supernatural cases and keeps tabs on their endeavors.

•

Procurer of Iremite relics, who trades in favors rather than cash.

• Silent partner in a company that moves assets

around for high-profile clients, alert for the guilds’ use of their services.

PLAYING THE DECEIVED The Deceived are two beings in one body, linked together for eternity. One of those entities, the temakh, is a shattered piece of its original soul, making their The Deceived

13

entanglement even more fraught. People who encounter the Unforgiven sense the strangeness about them, feeling that uncanny union on an instinctual level. Rolls to resist Sybaris in the presence of the Deceived suffer a −2 penalty.

Wresting Control While the human-souled half of the Deceived is often in physical control of their body during Semektet, the temakh occasionally rouses from its endless muttering and gibbering to steer their actions. At a dramatically appropriate moment, the Storyteller or the Deceived’s player may declare that her temakh is attempting to wrest control of their shared sahu. They enter into a Clash of Wills, with the Deceived’s player rolling for her character and the Storyteller for the temakh. The temakh’s dice pool is their Sekhem only. If the Deceived wins, the temakh recedes. For the rest of the scene, the Unforgiven may pursue her own agenda in a state of temporary peace. She gains one of the following Conditions: Driven, Inspired, or Steadfast. (Mummy: The Curse, p. 351, p. 355, p. 359, respectively). If the temakh wins, it takes control, and the Deceived’s player roleplays its actions for the remainder of the scene. The player and Storyteller should discuss what the temakh’s goals are, and how it affects anything the Deceived has been working on to this point. The temakh may sabotage an ongoing project, represented by either removing successes from an extended action or adding to the number of successes required. Additionally, any Conditions or Tilts imposed while the temakh is in control remain in place when the human soul returns to the fore, leaving her to clean up her other half’s mess.

Life or Death Death is the only time the Restless Stars can be alone. Many look forward to the release that Twilight brings, where they are, for a time, free of their temakh’s eternal gabbling. The temakh, on the other hand, resent this state. They endeavor to stay in the living world as long as possible. At Sekhem 7, 5, 3, and 1, when the Deceived succeeds at a Descent roll, her player immediately makes a second Descent roll representing the temakh’s determination to prolong their time among the living. If the temakh fails the roll, the Descent is extended as usual.

Deceived Character Creation Character creation for the Unforgiven follows the rules for creating Arisen in Chapter Three of Mummy: The Curse with the following changes:

14

Chapter One: The Minor Guilds

Temakh Concepts Even in its shattered state, the temakh retains echoes of the Shan’iatu it once was. The AkhemUrtu guildmasters were divine artists, interpreting the Judges’ laws through the Nomenclature. They distilled that knowledge to the other Shani’atu through song, oration, and philosophy. Their media were voice, dance, pigment, and intellect, and their bodies were the holy instruments and canvasses through which they revealed truths. Now, they howl in their mummies’ minds, railing at the lesser state of art in a world that’s only a shadow of Irem. When creating the Deceived, consider what kind of art the sorcerer-priest clinging to their soul practiced in Irem, and how that informs the Akhem-Urtu’s goals, the artists they gravitate toward, and the cultists drawn to their service.

• Because the Akhem-Urtu never stood before the Judges of Duat, they have no Decree. However, their power has always been that of the Nomenclature, and thus Ren is automatically their defining Pillar. Choose one of Resolve, Manipulation, or Wits as their Favored Attribute. • The Deceived begin play with Enlightened Senses as a bonus Affinity, and Color From Void in the place of Dreams of Dead Gods. • Once per chapter, when your character either submits directly to her temakh’s desires despite it being against her own, or directly disobeys her temakh, take a Beat. Regaining Pillars: The Deceived regains a Pillar point of her choosing after any scene in which she inspires another character to create something. Once per chapter, she may fully restore her Ren Pillar by thwarting the plans of another Arisen or their cultists.

TRADITION OF THE STATUE The relics of the Kher-Minu take varying forms. These neoliths may be small idols, faithful weapons, or ancient tools, depending on the Sentinel’s role and experiences in Irem’s warrior guild. In general, they’re small and portable, easy to keep on one’s person, though some Tomb Guardians shunted their deaths into larger items like shields or battle-axes. Like their tokens, the Kher-Minu endure. They are staunch allies, relentless foes, and peerless killers. Sometimes, guarding another Arisen’s tomb suffices to sate their bloodlust, but woe to the Deathless who treat them as things. When not in service to a mummy, the Kher-Minu find a cause to protect. This may be a person, a company, or an institution, as long as that cause’s values align with the Sentinel’s — if it offers a chance to satisfy their bloodthirsty urges, all the better. Also like their neoliths, the Kher-Minu resist change. Once they’ve settled on a course of action, convincing them to alter that plan is nearly impossible. It’s rare that a Stone Spear’s victim lives long enough to beg for his life; rarer still that he convinces the Kher-Minu to stay her blade.

DEATH IN STONE; LIFE IN STASIS The Kher-Minu believe that power means little without might supporting it. Empires are won by warfare, and while the other guilds may have etched spells into the Iremite army’s weapons, the Sentinels were the ones who wielded them. They might not have been the rulers, but they were the conquerors whose blood slicked the battlefields. Their forays expanded the empire’s territory, brought more goods flowing into its coffers, and yielded more corpses for the necromancers’ experiments.

The Stone Spears prize strength and steadfastness. If you can earn their loyalty, you gain an eternal ally. They aren’t fazed if the Arisen they’ve aligned themselves to (or their cults) are bloodthirsty, as the magic that rendered them immortal also planted murderous urges in their psyches. A leader who makes big, ambitious plans and prefers action to observation piques the Sentinels’ interests. They were built to fight beyond death. That, combined with the years they spend watching the world go by from the stone prisons of their bodies, means they use their living cycles to act.

FOUNDATIONS In Irem, the warriors of the Kher-Minu comprised the largest of the minor guilds. As a conquering army, they churned across the sands, invading cities and forcing enemy leaders to surrender their territory and resources to the Nameless Empire. The Shan’iatu envisioned the Stone Spears as a resource that would never need replenishing. While they were perfecting the Rite of Return for their own guilds, they practiced iterations of it on Irem’s other citizens. By shifting their deaths into an object, the warriors could take a lethal hit and keep fighting, no matter how grievous their wounds. It would make them terrifying enemies, and eternal guardians for the Shan’iatu’s immortal servants once the Rite of Return was complete. Only a small number of Kher-Minu are active today, though very few of those who survived Irem have been permanently destroyed. Far more still lay buried in tombs or sealed away in ancient vaults, an army of stone ready and waiting to cut a bloody swath across the world.

Kher-Minu

15

THE WHEEL TURNS The Kher-Minu don’t directly shape civilization, but align themselves with those who do. They are the fighters and the footsoldiers, the bodyguards and muscle-for-hire whose fists get messages across when words and diplomacy fail. They defend those whose grand visions seek to rebuild Irem in the modern world, and clear away the obstacles in their allies’ paths. The other guilds have mostly forgotten the Kher-Minu, considering them a lost guild. Those who do learn that the Sentinels live on use them as tomb guardians, or charge them with standing watch over their places of power. The row of statues in the lobby of a Tef-Aabhi construction may contain a single Stone Spear standing guard, ready to awaken if an enemy threatens the building’s sacred geometry. In a meret, the Kher-Minu are the first to step up to a challenge. They’ll hit whatever — or whoever — they’re pointed at, and protect the other members of their crew. Stone Spears intrinsically understand the ebb and flow of the battlefield; they can also offer strategic insights and formulate attack plans. On the field itself, however, their bloodlust holds sway. They’re brutal, unstoppable fighters, and will always be the last ones standing. Tomb Watcher cults are extensions of themselves as fighters and protectors. They’re bands of brothers, revolutionaries, and mercenaries. The share the camaraderie that comes from being under fire, of surviving to fight another day, and mourning the lost. Kher-Minu plant their cultists in armies and corporate security firms, in gangs and in groups of guerilla fighters. They aren’t always charged with

16

Chapter One: The Minor Guilds

starting a fight, but when one breaks out, they’re damned well going to finish it. The Kher-Minu view themselves not as the Shan’iatu’s successors, but as Irem’s. What is an empire without an army to defend it, to crush its enemies, and expand its boundaries? The Stone Spears are willing to do the grim, bloody jobs from which others recoil. Most are content to leave the work of nation-building and leadership to the other Arisen. Some even offer themselves as the weapons to enforce the Deathless’ laws. This isn’t to say that no Sentinel has ever dreamt of the glory of sitting on the throne — plenty of emperors were once generals themselves. Not all Kher-Minu look fondly upon the Arisen of the major guilds. The Shan’iatu condemned the Stone Spears to a life without death. They awaken, they bleed, they spend their henet as cold, unmoving stone rather than returning to Duat. Even though the sorcerer-priests are long gone, the Kher-Minu have had lifetimes for their resentment to fester. These Sentinels may instead dedicate themselves to destroying those who’ve declared themselves successors to the Shan’iatu. What an army can build up, it can also destroy.

AN IMPERFECT ETERNITY The same sorcery that shunted the Kher-Minu’s souls into their relics also instilled the warriors with a deep and abiding bloodlust. It made them terrifying foes, when they fought for the Nameless Empire. The Stone Spears’ ruthlessness was another weapon in their

arsenal. Yet, after a lifetime of fighting, even career soldiers seek to lay down their arms and leave the battlefield behind them. The Shan’iatu stole this away from the Kher-Minu just the same as they stole their chance at an afterlife. Today, that bloodlust still sings in Sentinels’ veins. The urge to spill it arises and subsumes anything else they’re trying to accomplish until their thirst is slaked. Many Stone Spears simply give in to it, joining armies or setting out on vengeance tours for the Arisen to whom they’ve pledged themselves. Others remember old dreams of beating swords into plowshares, and search for a way to end — or at least suppress — the urges. Like the Deceived, the Sentinels’ souls have never traveled into Duat to stand before the Judges. Unlike the Deceived, they don’t spend their henets in Neter-Khertet. The Kher-Minu are eternally earthbound; when their Sekhem is gone, they return to stone. To the world, they’re dead things, inanimate and unfeeling. Inside that granite façade, the Sentinel watches the world pass by, second by sluggish second. She doesn’t rest. She doesn’t dream. A defeated Stone Spear can’t awaken again for 100 years. This was a Shan’iatu failsafe, woven into their sorcery to prevent enemies from using captured Stone Spears against Irem. Some cultists search for a rite to awaken their Tomb Watchers early, but if such magic exists it has yet to be found.

AS SOTHIS ASCENDS A Kher-Minu deals with immortality by packing as much life into her Descents as she can. When she’s dead, time passes interminably in the stone prison that is her body. So when stone gives way to flesh once more, she finds a cause and fights passionately for it. When her bloodthirst lies dormant and her allies are safe, she seeks out experiences: new foods, new relationships, new locations. She devours books and music and films, attends concerts and sporting matches, binges television shows on streaming services. Her next henet might last a century or more — best to take some memories with her when Semektet ends. The patterns the Kher-Minu see and perpetuate in the world are those of conflict and resolution, conquest and revolution. They track international incidents and street-corner dust-ups. They understand how disputes escalate toward violence and how one small action can turn the tide for good or ill. The Stone Spears know what makes negotiations break down between world leaders,

or what will make a nation’s people flood the streets in protest. They have insight into generals’ tactics and fighters’ instincts, whether they’re trained combatants or civilians putting their bodies on the line to protect loved ones and allies.

STARFALL The Kher-Minu have no loyalties other than the ones they forge themselves. No Judges demand their fealty, and while an Arisen can coerce a Tomb Watcher into service, those Deathless command their actions but not their hearts. A Kher-Minu turns her back on a chosen cause when she discovers it’s rotten at its core. If she learns her actions taken in an organization’s name have done more harm than good, the leadership she put her faith in is self-serving and corrupt, or the Arisen she’s served sees her only as a weapon and a tool, they’re lucky if the Sentinel simply walks away and cuts all ties. More likely, she’ll dedicate herself to tearing it all down, turning her tendency towards bloodlust on the people who’ve betrayed her. She may embark on a one-woman quest for vengeance, or sign on with her former associates’ greatest rivals. Vessels: Neoliths Affinities: Butcher Demon Transfiguration, Tread the Crimson Field Eternal

WHO WE ARE • Soldier on the front lines, leading her unit into battle and keeping up morale. • Antifa activist who places herself between marginalized protestors and police wielding pepper spray and tear gas. • Freelance muscle for other creatures, helping changelings defend their freeholds from Huntsmen or protecting a deviant’s touchstone from the Conspiracy threatening them. • Tomb guardian for another Arisen, who oversees the acquisition of relics and vestiges — especially when procuring them means fighting their way into another mummy’s sanctum. • Mob enforcer charged with expanding their criminal outfit’s territory and influence.

Kher-Minu

17

PLAYING THE KHER-MINU A Tomb Watcher must always protect his relic. Its destruction equals his true, permanent death. However, even those Sentinels who long for that final release can’t make the choice to shatter their own neoliths, or allow someone else to destroy them. The same sorcery that bound their death into it requires them to safeguard it at all costs. The rite also ensured that Kher-Minu tokens can’t be cannibalized or returned to the Judges. When the Stone Spear’s sahu is damaged, the Sekhem flowing through her automatically repairs her injuries until that resource runs out. She has no control over this action — where other Arisen may choose to let aggravated damage heal on its own, the Sentinel’s repair is reflexive and involuntary. Depleting her Sekhem in this way causes both the mummy and her relic to turn to stone. In this state, neither her body nor her neolith can be damaged. The only way to truly kill a Kher-Minu is to destroy her relic while she lives, and then destroy her body. Otherwise, as long as the item holding her death within its shape exists, she will return to fight another day. A Tomb Watcher may voluntarily bind himself to an Arisen’s service via an ancient blood ritual. After entering into this agreement, he becomes a faithful guardian, and will awaken when the mummy’s tomb is disturbed or their cultists spill blood nearby to call him forth from stony slumber. Some Arisen, viewing the Kher-Minu only as tools, bind the warrior’s relics to their Lifewebs and force them into service. This is a dangerous undertaking: stealing the relics in the first place means gambling on surviving the Sentinel’s self-preservation instincts and ensuing wrath.

KHER-MINU CHARACTER CREATION Character creation for the Kher-Minu follows the rules for creating Arisen in Chapter Three of Mummy: The Curse with the following changes: • Because the Tomb Watchers never stood before the Judges of Duat, they have no Decree. However, their steadfastness and physical prowess make their Defining Pillars one of Ab (heart), or Sheut (shadow). Kher-Minu take one of Resolve, Stamina, or Strength as their Favored Attribute.

18

Chapter One: The Minor Guilds

Beyond the Sentinels of Always The Deceived: We pity your eternal torment, but have no illusions that, had the Rite of Return gone differently, you’d treat us any better. You are as complicit as they are in our creation. Maar-Kherit: You stood for what you believed and paid the ultimate price for it. You were our healers once; we can’t cure you, but perhaps someday we’ll help you rest. Wadjet-Itja: Your auguries predict the whims of kings and generals, and you gamble on what’s otherwise uncertain. We’ve seen the outcome of thousands of battles — come, read the future in our enemies’ entrails. Mesen-Nebu: In Irem you forged our armor, but we shaped ourselves into weapons. Spare us your talk of perfection; we’ll hone our own blades.

• The Eternals begin play with Guardian Wrath as a bonus Affinity, and Dust Beneath Feet in the place of Dreams of Dead Gods. • Once per chapter, when your character either gives in to her bloodlust, or resists its call at a detriment to herself, take a Beat. • Unlike other Arisen, the Kher-Minu can be permanently killed, though doing so is incredibly difficult. An enemy must first cannibalize the Sentinel’s neolith, then do enough harm to the Sentinel to fill her rightmost Health box with aggravated damage. Regaining Pillars: The Kher-Minu regains one Pillar point of her choice in any scene where she protects another character. Once per chapter, she may fully restore her Defining Pillar by committing an act of self-sacrifice for the cause she’s dedicated herself to.

TRADITION OF THE ANKH Once, the Maar-Kherit wielded healing instruments and commanded magics to restore health to the sick. Their scalpels cut away dead flesh. They kept soothing salves in palm-sized pots to encourage new skin to grow or lessen pain. They lifted carafes of clear water to parched lips, and pressed cooling cloths to feverish foreheads. The relics of the Physics are ankhs: those sacred vessels that harness the breath, purify life-giving waters, protect patients from harm, and heal the sick. They may take the form of healing amulets and holy urns, or be as mundane-looking as a doctor’s black bag. The emotion pouring forth from a parent relieved by their child’s breaking fever, or the announcement that a loved one’s cancer has gone into remission give such symbolic tools great power. Long ago, the Maar-Kherit resembled their relics, restoring and prolonging lives, chasing away disease. It’s been millennia since that was the case. Today, they’re twisted versions of those same relics, their bodies rife with the very illnesses and mutations they once cured. Their skin crawls with the virulent strains of new horrors they fear to pass on. They’re the taste of poisoned water, the smell of salve gone rancid, and the epitome of the body’s inevitable betrayal.

HEALERS IN LIFE; HORRORS IN DEATH Today, the Maar-Kherit sequester themselves in the world’s forgotten places, keeping well away from humanity for mortals’ own good. Their very presence begets corruption, the spread of which the Malignant are helpless to stop. Mortals who blunder into their lairs are

overcome with the Terror Sybaris constantly emanating from the Maar-Kherit. The few who don’t flee succumb to the Malignants’ twisted Sekhem: tumors metastasize throughout their bodies, driven by corrupted life magic. In an attempt to alleviate their pain, the Maar-Kherit seek out relics and hidden objects of power. They hold on to the hope that a sorcerous solution will end their suffering, though millennia of searching has thus far yielded nothing. When they do encounter others, the Physics beg for death. They know it’s a futile ask: Even cutting themselves into tiny pieces and scattering their remains only kills them temporarily. They always regenerate within a few days, and the torment continues. Still, they demand others try. When they inevitably fail, the Malignant lash out in fury. Their victims’ last moments are an agony of bodily pain and the cosmic terror of Sybaris.

FOUNDATIONS In Irem, the Maar-Kherit were physicians and healer-priests. The name of their guild is as lost as the Nameless Empire, but they learned the secrets of mending flesh and curing the sick. The Shan’iatu taught them healing magics, and how to restore the flow of Sekhem through the body. The sorcerer-priests charged the Physics with discovering methods to extend human lifespans and eradicate disease. The concept of the Rite of Return appalled the MaarKherit; it went against everything they believed. Prolonging life was an acceptable practice, but the Physics truly believed that death was also a natural part of nature’s cycle. When they raised their objections and condemned the Rite as an abomination, the Shan’iatu slaughtered them. They

Maar-Kherit

19

quarantined the Maar-Kherit in their guildhall and told the citizens of Irem their healers had been felled by plague. A handful of Su-Menent, sister-guild to the MaarKherit, learned what had truly happened. The Necromancers knew a great deal about death, the soul, and the shell, and launched a secret attempt to restore the Maar-Kherit to life. Their clandestine ritual failed horribly. What rose from the pit of corpses weren’t their fully-restored friends and colleagues, but monstrosities that were a mockery of what they’d once been. The Malignant begged for death — the one thing the Su-Menent should have held sway over — but the magic that revived them wouldn’t relinquish its hold. They were alive again. Eternally. While the other guilds slept beneath the sands after the Rite of Return, the Blights wandered, undying and in agony, in search of an ending that never came.

THE WHEEL TURNS Only those Su-Menent who attempted to save the healer-priests remember the Blights’ true fate, as Memory slowly returns. Other guilds, and the majority of the Shepherds, may hazily recall Irem’s once-storied healers, but that recall is tinged with sorrow: They died valiantly, killed by the very plague whose progress they were trying to halt. Such a shame. The Su-Menent who dragged them back into this awful half-life live in terror of the other Arisen finding out the healers do still exist, and what awful fate has befallen them. Whether those Necromancers attempting to relieve the Malignants’ suffering wish to do so to atone or to hide their failure is a question they’d rather not answer.

20

Chapter One: The Minor Guilds

Blights sometimes band together in merets, joining forces as they seek out places of ancient and forgotten power. Members come and go, striking out on their own to follow rumors of new spells or uncovered tombs. They return to the fold when immortality spent in isolation grows too lonely to bear. Physics tend to one another as their ailments wax and wane, and stay by their companions’ bedsides as their illnesses mutate into strange new strains. Each brings the others what comfort he can, knowing that soon enough, it will be his howls of agony splitting the night. The ancient medical knowledge of the Maar-Kherit still exists. The Shan’iatu murdered them to bury those secrets, and the Su-Menent hoped to salvage them when they attempted to resurrect their kin, but the Physics held on to what they’d learned. Their unending agony often makes it too hard to focus, and most see little point in trying. No elixir they imbibe will stop the tumors’ progress through their bodies. Their twisted Sekhem corrupts any life magic they perform, on themselves or on others. Yet, the modern era has allowed those Physics who still feel the call to practice a much-diminished version of their former professions. Some days, the pain lessens enough so they can form coherent thought and see past the blinding auras migraines bring. On those occasions when they also regain the ability to speak or can still the tremors in their hands, they act as remote consultants to far-away hospitals via satellite phones, or send emails to medical journals critiquing articles and offering insights. Some hear of telesurgery technology, and dream of operating on patients from the safety of their isolation. Their cults are made up of epidemiologists and terminal patients, of palliative care nurses

and grief counselors. They’re people who run drug trials and monitor experimental therapies... or those who participate in them to stave off death a little longer. Maar-Kherit cultists aren’t like those of the Su-Menent, whose business is that of death itself, but are instead those people who take care of the dying and prepare their families for what happens when we’re gone. Some of them fight to make human lives longer, or their passing easier. They may be seeking ways to prolong a whole population’s life expectancy, or are simply trying to delay their own demise long enough to attend their child’s graduation. The Maar-Kherit aren’t the Shan’iatu’s successors. They never wanted to be. The way the Malignant see it, Irem died millennia ago. Though the Arisen attempt to rebuild a piece of it with every Descent, they ought to let it go. The Physics rebel against the memory of the Shan’iatu by perpetuating the idea that all things end, eventually. People die. Empires fall.

AN IMPERFECT ETERNITY Dying once was bad enough. The Shan’iatu made certain the rebellious guild died in agony, and they took their time with the executions. Still, what followed should have been the great journey through Duat, where the Judges would weigh their souls and determine whether they ascended to A’aru. Some Maar-Kherit, with millennia to consider those glorious days when they were dead, think they did travel through the lands beyond death, and may even have been judged. But the Su-Menent’s ritual ripped them away from their afterlife and condemned them to this terrible half-life. Their souls are trapped in shells that constantly betray them. Flesh rots, sloughs off, and grows back as necrotic and gangrenous tissue. Tumors bloom and burst internally, or swell and suppurate on their skin. Sickness twists them into grotesque forms and makes every movement, every breath torturous. Organs and muscles fail, while diseases run rampant in their blood. The Physics can’t control the corrupted life magic leaking out of them, and can only watch with despair as it spreads to anyone foolish or unlucky enough to get close to them.

AS SOTHIS ASCENDS The Malignant deal with immortality by searching for a way to escape its clutches. The kepher leads them to potent Sekhem-filled relics and places of power. They might be old ritual sites, junctions of geomantic energy, or monuments meant to channel cosmic energy. Someday,

the Physics hope, they’ll find the right combination of powerful items, unearth the right spells, and earn their eternal rest at last. The patterns the Maar-Kherit see and perpetuate in the world are those of life and death, sickness and healing, the spread of disease and the race to cure it. Walking vectors themselves, Blights can track the path of a pandemic and predict how many lives it will claim before it’s contained. They understand mortality rates and what causes life expectancies to increase or fall, which health protocols are effective, and which ones are just propaganda.

STARFALL Although the Maar-Kherit were yanked out of Duat before their souls and deeds could be fully weighed, and though they did not participate in the Rite of Return, they did encounter the Judges, however briefly. Their ties to the Lords of Duat are not as ironclad as the Arisen of the major guilds, but the Judges’ otherworldly influence still guides the Malignants’ actions. A Maar-Kherit turns his back on the Judges when he witnesses sickness spread through bureaucratic incompetence, neglect, or greed. Sometimes, it’s enough to make the Physic emerge from his seclusion to seek out those at fault and show them what real terror is. Vessels: Ankhs Affinities: Flesh-Splitting Canker Rejuvenation, Harvest of Profane Fecundity

WHO WE ARE • Lone explorer uncovering ancient tombs and plundering their relics. • Physician who only takes cases remotely; she can see her patients, but refuses to appear on-camera herself. • Epidemiologist studying a new and virulent disease which only affects supernatural denizens. • Reclusive leader of a small off-the-grid community, whose members are terminal patients living out the ends of their lives in solitude. • Anonymous benefactor funding radical new cancer-treatment therapies, providing grants for disease research, and arranging distribution of lifesaving vaccines in developing countries.

Maar-Kherit

21

Beyond the Reborn in Pain Deceived: The part of you that is Shan’iatu is complicit in our murders. We wish you luck in your quest for vengeance, but perhaps you ought to have heeded our warnings about the Rite of Return’s dangers. Kher-Minu: Your deaths are delayed but not entirely lost. If there’s a key to our own rest in that, we’d certainly be interested in turning it. Wadjet-Itja: Surely you could use your oracular powers to see a way to help us, but you’d rather gamble with fate and mimic your betters. Su-Menent: You say you want to help us now, but is that because you truly want to make it right, or because you’re afraid the others will learn of your shame?

PLAYING THE MAAR-KHERIT The agony never ends. As much as the Maar-Kherit beg for death, it never comes. Twisted Sekhem deforms them, spreading tumors that affect their ability to function and to think. No matter the method of death they’ve tried — and they’ve tried them all — a Blight’s body regenerates in a matter of days. Chop them to pieces, feed some of the remains to wild beasts and burn the rest to ash, and all it does is add a new type of suffering to their litany of agonies. The Physics’ very Sekhem is polluted. The power radiating from them is a constant Terror Sybaris — any character who gains the Sybaris Condition (Mummy: The Curse, p. 360) immediately begins it at Stage 2. In addition to bone-deep fear, the twisted life magic leaking from the mummy infects mortals with a horrifying pestilence. Their

22

Chapter One: The Minor Guilds

flesh writhes as boils erupt. They’re filled with a glistening, highly-contagious black pus. Only a small percentage of the infected survive, but those who do are rendered immune. Many of these survivors join the Malignant’s cult. Though they seek out and hoard powerful relics, the Maar-Kherit can’t cannibalize them to regain Sekhem or heal their traitorous bodies. Neither can they sacrifice them to their Judges.

MAAR-KHERIT CHARACTER CREATION Character creation for the Maar-Kherit follows the rules for creating Arisen in Chapter Three of Mummy: The Curse with the following changes: • Because Blights never endured the Rite of Return, they have no Decree. However, Sekhem, that most sacred of energies, has long been entwined with their beings. As healers, they learned to repair its flow through broken bodies. In their death and rebirth, they’ve witnessed the destruction it wreaks when corrupted. In their eternal hope, they seek out relics that might someday set them free. Thus do the Maar-Kherit characters take Ka as their Defining Pillar. Choose Intelligence or Presence as their Favored Attribute. • The Maar-Kherit did encounter the Judges during their fleeting time in Duat, and though they’re not sworn to be the Judges’ eternal servants in the way the Arisen are, they still serve. Choose a Judge whose values best align with the character’s outlook. • The Malignant begin play with Retributive Curse as a bonus Affinity. They receive the Utterance Dreams of Dead Gods for free. Regaining Pillars: The Maar-Kherit regains one Pillar point of her choice in any scene where she offers healing to another character. Once per chapter, she may fully restore her Defining Pillar by stopping the spread of a deadly disease.

TRADITION OF THE TRICKSTERS The Wadjet-Itja don’t have relics of their own, but they do have tools of their trades. They make their living with dice and knucklebones, tarot cards, and coins. They read their client’s futures in numbers and suits, and guide them to the outcomes that best benefit the Thieves of Eyes themselves. They’re also gamblers, staking their fortunes on a toss of the dice and knowing which person is the easiest mark in the room. Like the items they deal in, the Wadjet-Itja are dual-natured. They’re both Oracles and Gamblers, and many times, the line between the two is blurry at best. A pack of playing cards can be used for divination or games of chance, but who’s to say they’re not doing both at the same time? If the Queen of Hearts appears in your poker hand, maybe the Queen of Cups has something to say to you as well.

LUCK OF THE DRAW; STACKING THE DECK Some people insist you have to play the hand you’re dealt, but the Wadjet-Itja see no shame in keeping an ace up their sleeve for emergencies. The other Arisen guilds complain they’re disrespecting their sacred duties as Irem’s Oracles, but when did Fate ever step in and confirm an augury’s interpretation? The symbols that appear on the cards are just that: symbols. They provide the elements of a story, but it’s up to the fortune-teller to piece them together into one that makes sense. Until the gods start sending explicit instructions, there’s room for interpretation. Heads you go left, tails you go right, but nothing says you can’t meander a bit along the way.

It’s a confidence game in more ways than one. Act like you know what you’re doing and people will follow your lead. If they don’t wise up to the trick, that’s on them. Sometimes, if you don’t like what you read in the entrails, you make another sacrifice and hope for a better outcome. When that doesn’t work, you cheat until things turn out in your favor. The Oracles largely laugh off the major guilds’ criticisms. What hypocrites they are! What difference is there between a Maa-Kep maneuvering his protégé into a position of power by cashing in favors, and a Wadjet-Itja advising her client which elevator to catch so he can pitch his brilliant idea to the CEO? How dare the Brokers complain when a Gambler wins $10,000 on a scratch ticket, when the Mesen-Nebu manipulate the stock market and rake in millions? At least the Tef-Aabhi understand that, when the flow of Sekhem is weak, the gods aren’t affronted if you reconfigure the ley lines.

FOUNDATIONS In Irem, the Wadjet-Itja were a lesser guild of Oracles, whose talents at reading faces and predicting actions dovetailed nicely with their second profession as professional gamblers. What to the Gamblers was a match made — possibly literally — in heaven was an affront to other fortune-tellers in the City of Pillars. They felt the Oracles, in whom people placed their trust, shouldn’t swindle those same people out of their fortunes later on. How could anyone trust them? Why would the gods speak through a guild of cheats and grifters? The other soothsayers railed against them as false prophets. They begged the Shan’iatu to discredit the Oracles and raise up a new guild in their stead, but the sorcerer-priests never interfered.

Wadget-Itja

23

The guildmaster of the Wadjet-Itja wasn’t one of the Shan’iatu himself, though he spent much time in their company. They gambled with him, and threw power into the pot instead of coins. Some of his riskier bets and long-cons paid off, elevating him to a position just shy of the sorcerer-priests’ equal. It amused them to keep him around, and though they still withheld some of their closest-guarded secrets, the status put him into position for the biggest grift of them all. First, he raised his guild to be on equal footing with the other major guilds. Then, when the Shan’iatu began the Rite of Return, he guided the Wadjet-Itja as they performed their own version of the spell. Theirs wasn’t as perfect, substituting the Oracles’ predictive magics in the gaps where they lacked the sorcerer-priests’ knowledge. Still, it worked, and the Thieves of Eyes rose from their tombs at that first Sothic Turn, alongside the Arisen of the major guilds.

THE WHEEL TURNS The Wadjet-Itja consider themselves Arisen. They serve the Judges, just as the other guilds do. They’ve had their souls stripped down to the very core of their beings and made their Decrees. They spend their Semektet rebuilding lost Irem in the modern world, and return to Duat during their henet. Still, the other guilds think of them as lesser, as hangers-on and upstarts, only immortal because they swindled their way into it. They rarely bother to hide their disdain and frustration, reminding the Thieves of Eyes that their ritual was imperfect, and thus their immortality’s a weaker version of the one the Shan’iatu bestowed. They deride the Oracles for not having relics of their own. If they don’t flat-out refuse to help procure them, members of other guilds spend relic-hunting operations making sure the Gamblers know what a massive favor the Arisen are doing for them. Still, they accept Wadjet-Itja help for their own endeavors, and ask them to forecast the future. In merets with other Arisen, Thieves of Eyes makes themselves useful as both insightful seers and clever tricksters. They’re the strategists in a party, the ones who think outside of boxes and come up with ideas no one else even considered. They know every loophole, cheat, and dirty trick, and feel no guilt exploiting those options. If they weren’t meant to be used, surely Fate would block off those avenues. Wadjet-Itja cults are made up of fortune tellers and mystics, corporate strategists, professional gamblers, and street-level hustlers. The true seers are at the heart of the cult, steering their colleagues toward a brighter future.

24

Chapter One: The Minor Guilds

Any and all divination methods are welcome: The more data they gather, the clearer the path. The cult’s mystics interpret dreams, enter trances to pursue visions, consult star charts and tarot cards, and ask the spirits for their insights. In the digital age, more technology-minded mystics use predictive algorithms to determine probability. They cobble it all together with their hard-won magic and share the results. Those who have no true mystical talents are still valued cultists. They’re the grifters and charlatans who spend 30 seconds cold reading a target and know every one of her hopes and fears. They charm fortunes out of even the most skeptical marks — people think they can beat a shell game, but sometimes it’s not as obvious as a card table and some walnut shells set up on a sidewalk. The corporate strategists play their own version of it; clients who would walk away from the sidewalk huckster book appointments with the cultists’ assistants, eager to hand over cryptocurrency and get in the game. Everyone’s got an angle. The Gamblers consider themselves the true successors of the Shan’iatu because they’re the only ones who understand how the whole game works. The biggest secret is this: When you’re the one holding the rulebook, you get to interpret the rules. They’re the ones who can read the omens and shape an empire accordingly. Maybe along the way you cheat a little. Move this pawn out of the way, slide the person you prefer into their spot. Maybe you reshuffle the deck or declare the best out of three wins. As long as everything turns out the way the portents predicted, who cares if a few details changed? Fortune-telling’s an inexact art, but it helps if you know how to count the cards.

AN IMPERFECT ETERNITY For a ritual cobbled together from stolen power, borrowed wisdom, and predictive magics, the Oracles’ version of the Rite of Return was an incredibly impressive piece of sorcery. Considering how many iterations of the Rite of Return the Shan’iatu performed before they perfected it — and how many times those iterations produced monstrous results — for the Wadjet-Itja to get it so close to right on the first try is a miracle all its own. The major guilds might scoff and suggest the Gamblers’ rite simply allowed them to clutch at their betters’ coattails, which is no true feat of magic, but the end result is that they returned from Duat with their minds and bodies intact. It’s more than can be said for the Deceived, the Maar-Kherit, or the Shuankhsen. Still, the Oracles’ rite was a weaker one, which complicates their immorality in three primary ways.

The first is their lack of relics. Other Arisen can sift through the sands and find evidence of their lives in Irem. Even the horrific Maar-Kherit have their ankhs. The Gamblers brought no such objects of power out of the Nameless Empire, and awakened with no vessels to sit in the center of their tombs’ Lifewebs. They must steal relics from other Arisen, barter for them, or swindle them out of collectors’ vaults. Second, they must supplement their Descents with years stolen from mortals. As their Sekhem drops, their bodies age. The Gamblers arrange a series of sorcerous games to siphon years off their mortal opponents, or convince them to use a decade of their lives as their ante in a high-stakes card game. Others use divination to guide their mortal target to an early death, and claim the years he should have had left as their prizes. Failing to steal years in this way hastens the end of the Thief of Eyes’ Descent. Oracles also don’t experience Timelessness like the other Arisen. Time marches on in the regular linear fashion, and where other Arisen experience some Descents slightly out of order, they do not. Though they don’t speak of it outside of their own guild — Why give the others yet another thing to be smug about? — it’s intensely frustrating for the Arisen who predict the future to be unable to say they’ve experienced it.

AS SOTHIS ASCENDS The Wadjet-Itja don’t see immortality as the burden some of their colleagues do. Yes, their Judges make demands that sometimes feel impossible to satisfy. Yes, sometimes the plans you set in motion fall apart from one Descent to the next, and you have to rebuild from the ground up. Yes, forever is a long, long, time. But you’re alive to see how it all pans out. An Oracle doesn’t deal or cope with immortality; she relishes it. Her guild gambled and tricked their way into a lesser Rite of Return, and it paid off. She arranges for a damned fine life during her Semektet: rich foods, lofty company, exciting opportunities. The thrill of a grift well-played excites her. It’s fascinating to see how much changes from one lifetime to the next, and how much stays the same. The patterns the Wadjet-Itja see and perpetuate in the world are those of chance and fate. They study the choices people make, how the information they have affects their actions and decisions. How many variables are too many? Why do some people deny the inevitable even as it’s bearing down on them? They track the what-ifs, too, tracing the

Wadget-Itja

25

branches of possible futures. Oracles also see the patterns symbols make, how similar items have similar meanings in different cultures, or how they differ.

Beyond the Arbiters of Destiny

STARFALL For all that the Wadjet-Itja are content to give Fate a nudge or even a shove, an Oracle turns her back on the Judges if she senses the deck is too heavily stacked. People should be able to overcome insurmountable odds on occasion. Those who sin shouldn’t be set up to fail time and again. She carries out the Judges’ will because it’s the right thing to do, but when Fate pushes people into bad decision after bad decision, sometimes it seems more about cruelty than correction. When a Thief of Eyes sees the gods’ thumbs weighing too heavily on the scales of Fate, she rejects the idea that anything has to follow the path they’ve set out. She asserts her own free will. Vessels: None Affinities: Ominous Harbinger, Trickster’s Wager

The Deceived: We weren’t even invited to the party where the others betrayed you. Leave us out of your vendetta against the other guilds Kher-Minu: You know better than anyone else what a heavy hand destiny has, though we prefer our method of cheating death over yours. Maar-Kherit: If only the Necromancers had consulted us, you might have been brought back whole. Maa-Kep: All your threats can’t revoke our immortality. Sniff around all you want; we always know when you’re coming.

WHO WE ARE • The sidewalk fortune teller who offers hope to passers-by with the flip of a card. • Professional poker player who always knows which cards his opponents are holding, and spots their tells within moments of the deal. • Corporate strategist who always seems able to predict the competition’s next move months before they make it.

Sekhem

Required Number of Years

• Stock trader who made a fortune in a volatile market.

10

1/2

9

1

• Television psychic whose predictions change lives.

8

3

7

5

6

10

5

15

4

25

3

35

2

50

1

100

WADJET-ITJA CHARACTER CREATION Wadjet-Itja characters follow the same character creation rules as other Arisen. Their Descents must be augmented by stealing or winning years from humans using Ominous Harbinger or Trickster’s Wager. When successful, Sekhem flows from the victim into the mummy, restoring years to their sahu’s appearance and granting her the Inspired or Steadfast Condition for the rest of the chapter.

26

If an Oracle hasn’t gathered the needed number of years when her player needs to make a Descent roll, the player adds 1 die to her Sekhem pool, and the Oracle’s sahu ages by a decade. The Oracle may build up a pool of years as her Descent continues, subtracting from it when her Sekhem drops. For example, if she’s gained 10 years from mortals while she’s at Sekhem 9, she won’t have to replenish her store until the drop from Sekhem 6 to Sekhem 5.

Chapter One: The Minor Guilds

EXAMPLE CHARACTER CREATION Jess is creating a mummy from a minor guild for the game their friend Ava is running. Ava has informed her players that the game will take place in a small New England town, where rumors of a powerful relic have reached several mummy cults. Jess takes their blank character sheet, and goes through the process of creating the character.

Step One: Character Concept The players will be part of the same meret, and have decided they’re a mixed troupe made up of members of one Arisen cult. Another player is portraying the Tef-Aabhi at its core. Jess decides they’d like to play Maged, a Kher-Minu who’s a fighter, a protector, and an idealist bound to the Tef-Aabhi’s service

Step Two: Attributes Jess considers the Attributes that would best fit Maged. They choose Physical for their Primary, since they’ll be taking the brunt of the hits in any skirmishes. Since they’re also an idealist, they pick Social for the Secondary, as Maged tries to rally people to their cause, leaving Mental as Tertiary. They assign Maged’s five Primary dots, marking down two to Strength, two to Stamina, and one to Dexterity, as their fighting style is more about brute force than finesse. This gives Maged Strength 3, Stamina 3, and Dexterity 2. For their four Secondary dots, they assign two to Presence and one each to Manipulation and Composure, giving them Presence 3 and Manipulation and Composure 2. Lastly, Jess puts one dot into each of Intelligence, Wits, and Resolve, bringing all three Attributes to 2.

Step Three: Skills Jess decides Maged’s Skills reflect their Abilities, making Physical their Primary, Social their Secondary, and Mental their Tertiary. They assign eleven dots among the Physical Skills as follows: Athletics 2, Brawl 3, Stealth 1, Survival 3, and Weaponry 2. They spend their seven Secondary dots to gain Expression 1, Intimidation 2, Persuasion 3, and Streetwise 1. Lastly, their four Mental Skill dots are distributed into Investigation 1, Occult 1, and Politics 2.

Step Four: Specialties Jess reviews their choices so far, and looks for ways to flesh out Maged’s training a little more. They were a leader in Irem, and were good at keeping up their troops morale with boasts and praise. They spend their three dots in Specialties on Survival (Battlefield), Brawl (Dirty Fighting), and Persuasion (Rallying Speeches).

Step Five: Add Arisen Template Jess chooses Courageous as Maged’s Balance, since they’re the first to charge into battle. They pick Rageful for their

Burden, reflecting the bloodlust the Sentinels feel. They don’t assign a Touchstone just yet, but make a note to talk to the other players about potential non-player characters who the cult knows and may have made a connection with Maged. Maged’s relic is the stone hammer they carried into battle in Irem. Jess makes a note of this on their character sheet. They decide Maged’s Defining Pillar is Ab, and place three dots in it. They put one dot into each of the other Pillars, to make sure each is covered, then add an extra dot in each of Ba and Sheut. Their Favored Attribute is Stamina. For their Affinities, Jess chooses Butcher Demon Transfiguration as their Guild Affinity, Guardian Wrath as their bonus Affinity, and Red Chains of Sacrifice as their Soul Affinity. Finally, they choose two Utterances, Obedient Implements and Rotting Flesh Divinity. They note down Dust Beneath Feet as the bonus Utterance all Sentinels begin play with.

Step Six: Merits Jess notes their dots in Cult and Tomb, then spends their ten Merit dots to gain Allies 3, Danger Sense 2, Demolisher 3, and Safe Place 2.

Step Seven: Advantages Jess and Ava take a look at Maged’s character sheet and make sure they’ve noted everything down: Maged’s Memory is 3 and their size is 5. They awaken from their stone slumber at Sekhem 10. With Dexterity and Wits at 2, plus Athletics of 2, their starting Defense is 4. Their Size of 5 and Stamina of 3 starts Maged’s Health at 8. Adding their Resolve and Composure of 2 each gives them a starting Willpower of 4. Their Dexterity of 2 and Composure of 2 sets Maged’s Initiative at 4. Their Strength of 3, Dexterity 2, and species factor of 5 sets their Speed at 10.

Step Eight: Experience Ava tells Jess they have ten Experiences to begin with. They spend two Experiences to bring their Stealth up to 2, and another two to raise their Intimidation to 2. Since they’re probably going to be sneaking around an unfamiliar town, they spend two more Experiences to bring their Streetwise to 2. Lastly, they spend 4 Experiences on Tenebrous Night.

Step Nine: Return to Life Now Jess can join their meret in search of relics! Example Character Creation

27

To define is to limit. — Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

T

hose who believe that immortals are in any sense languid are fools. After tasting eternity, one grasps at retaining the powers that grant everlasting life. Even Arisen are not immune to this hunger. While absolute death for a mummy may come as a mercy for some, the need for self-preservation and desire for expanded powers far outweighs the desire for oblivion. As it is for the Arisen, so it is for their foes. Immortality makes monsters of them all.

THE JUDGES OF DUAT

B

eyond the seven most powerful and active Judges, many of the remaining 37 have significant retinues of mummies. The four assessors of Ma’at presented here either wax with new strength in the modern era or have devoted heralds and followers constant in their loyalty across the ages.

BASTU, THE STARE LOCATE. PURSUE. INTERROGATE. EXTIRPATE. The relentless Stare appears as a divinity sat in judgment; a million guilty secrets embroidered upon its alabaster robes. The Judge’s head bears a mass of writhing snakes, each with a single unblinking eye at the tip. More eyes bubble and seethe upon its face in an ever-shifting mass of ocular genesis. Bastu judges those who cheat justice or evade punishment for their crimes — or who help another do so. Its alien awareness has an overflowing hunger for knowledge,

an obsessive need to be utterly certain of the guilt of the criminals it would pursue. The Stare does not, however, care about justifications or mitigating circumstances that may have driven a transgressor — only that they now seek to avoid the consequences of the actions they took.

WHY WE SERVE THEM If judgment is sacred to the Judges of Duat, evading rightful punishment is blasphemy. Justice must be done, however insane it may be, and in a world where mortals so often cower and hide from the true impact of their crimes some Arisen take satisfaction in bringing about an overdue reckoning. Bastu encourages obsessive fixation on a transgressor, and its mummies are notoriously relentless. Some are hunters at heart, thrilling in the pursuit of the prey; others crave the affirmation of catching the smartest and most ruthless criminals. You’re a methodical investigator, covering every angle and leaving no window of escape. You’re a wild soul, crashing through any barrier once the hunt is on until guilty blood wets the ground. You’re a seeker of the secrets burning in mortal hearts, for with total knowledge comes perfect judgment — perhaps even of the Judges themselves. The Stare drives you all to forever move forward, to never rest on your laurels, and never flinch back from awful revelations.

WHO WE JUDGE Those who have “eaten their own heart” and hidden themselves or others from punishment come in

The Judges of the Duat

29

30

all stripes of wrongdoing. The Judge condemns the corrupt politician and the battalion of lawyers who bury the accusations against him, the fugitive killer on the run, and the war criminal who now hides behind a different name on a different continent. Sometimes the crimes that the Stare obsesses over are opaque or unclear, however, and Arisen receive visions to hunt down transgressors where neither hunter nor hunted is entirely clear on why — only that the target has not received appropriate punishment in the Stare’s view. The often-mobile nature of Bastu’s prey leads its Arisen to be more likely to travel widely than many of their peers, and also frequently draws them into the dealings of other mummies as either meddling competitor or welcomed trouble-shooter. Sometimes Bastu stirs sedentary Arisen to travel by rupturing their cultists into grisly tableaus of blood and basalt, etched with Iremic condemnations of crimes as yet unpunished and the names of sinners who would deny the Stare its satisfaction.

FENTU, THE SNOUT

HOW WE WORSHIP

WHY WE SERVE THEM

The Stare’s slaves believe acceptance of consequences for one’s actions is a sacred revelation; there’s virtue in facing punishment. They practice ritualized confession and penance, even self-mortification, for their own transgressions, with immortal or sadikh cultist as repository for a litany of personal sins across the ages. They also prize conviction derived from knowledge. Learning is holy; knowing everything about a criminal is the closest one can get to the Stare’s ideal of perfect justice. When a mummy of any Judge goes rogue, Bastu’s servants see hunting down the renegade as their righteous duty. Cults of the Stare share this focus on conviction, dividing the sin-mired world along stark lines of black and white. Some obsess over Bastu-inspired transgressions that make little sense; one upholds the forgotten laws of Sumer, another awaits the static crackle of the sacred radio-steles to deliver condemnations from the distant Pleiades. These cults are usually small but absolutely devoted, whether vigilantes watching the screens of their glass-eyed surveillance networks, hunter-assassins bringing retribution to the supposedly untouchable, whistle-blowers dredging up damning material, or elder magistrates and officers rigging the outcomes of trials together. Some travel as widely as their Arisen masters, bounty hunters and knowledge-seekers who heed no boundaries in the chase for their chosen prey.

The world is — and always has been — rife with greed and avarice. In the eyes of the Arisen, the drive and ambition to possess more is not necessarily immoral, but most believe it is the code of Irem and the Judges that dictates who rightfully earns such rewards. Those who steal what they are not truly due threaten the fabric of society, ripping at its pretty threads with idiot cupidity. They infect the world with a moral rot of pure want, and disrupt the flow of Ma’at that would deliver what they deserve. For some Arisen this strikes particularly close to home, resentful at the symbolic freedom mortals demonstrate in simply taking their heart’s desires; for others, the theft of vessels serves as an ultimate blasphemy against the rightful tithes of Sekhem owed to the Judges. You’re a modern day Robin Hood, emptying bank accounts and warehouses of ill-gotten gains and distributing them to those in need. You’re an eternal guardian of the sacred from the grasping hands of the profane, and you’re not above tempting thieves in with metaphorical or literal poisoned chalices just so you can catch them. You crave riches and splendor, and you’ll fill your tomb with a thousand treasures taken from the unworthy. Whoever you are, the Snout will show you wealth beyond measure and utter desperation both, and demand you balance the scales. Weigh your decisions carefully.

Chapter Two: Lifeless and Depraved

SEVER THE HAND THAT STEALS. The Snout is a vision of grandiose divinity, a muscular and powerful giant with the head of a white bull and a disc of shining energy between its horns. Towering over its petitioners, its every move sets jangling the many redgold rings that pierce its skin; the largest ring, through its nose, bleeds words of condemnation and revulsion when in the presence of the guilty. Fentu is the Judge of thievery, condemning those who take that which rightfully belongs to another. In a world that has become a churning cauldron of shifting values and possession rights, theft occurs in more ways than just physical seizure. However, Fentu takes little interest in those who steal out of genuine necessity, such as the refugee who takes bread in order to survive another day. Those souls are for the meager mercy of its brother-Judge, the ominously named Crusher of Bones.

WHO WE JUDGE Fentu’s followers believe rightful ownership descends from diligence, effort, and the order of authority. A piece of paper saying something is yours doesn’t make your claim righteous or spiritually whole. Vulture capitalists looting a company’s pension fund are as guilty to the Snout as a thief smashing a window to get a television; in both cases, someone else worked for the thing that the transgressor now strips from them against their will. Things get murkier when an authority seems chaotic or illegitimate, or where someone is stealing something back that originally belonged to them. Fentu urges its mummies towards condemning everyone involved in such cases, for completeness’ sake and nailing the collection of severed hands up in a public place to dissuade future transgression. Their greatest wrath is reserved for those who steal vessels of Sekhem from the grasp of the Arisen — even if that means judging other mummies.

HOW WE WORSHIP While some servants of Fentu adhere to austere frugality and become embalmed paupers, most believe in demonstrating the rewards of righteousness. They show off their wealth and decorate opulent temples to Fentu with treasures taken from thieves. The Snout’s mummies largely frown on hoarding and miserliness, though, as hiding worth away squanders its potential and disrespects the society from which it came. Instead, they’re free with gifts and rewards; the soul learns much about attachment and greed from the pain of parting with a prize and, in time, sheds such shackles entirely. Cults of the Snout are cults of wealth and prosperity, whether cultivating or protecting it. They lurk behind the skin of mercantile concerns, trade unions, and neighborhood associations; they’re locksmiths, accountants, and artisans. One cult builds elaborate temples and vaults with cruelly ingenious traps; another worships a golden bull-headed idol and kidnaps wealthy victims, force-feeding them precious metals before incinerating them as a sacrifice; another sees even flesh and blood and life as a gift of the gods that must be earned, brutally carving up the unworthy to ‘redistribute’ their internal organs on the black market.

NEB-IMKHU, THE LORD OF FACES REVEAL THE DISLOYALTY BENEATH HIS FALSE MASK. TEAR THE SKIN OF HIS FACE AWAY. Neb-Imkhu appears as a classic depiction of an Egyptian god, wearing pristine white linens and with the head of a hooded The Judges of the Duat

31

cobra. The divine figure’s voice, though, emanates from everywhere; a sibilant hiss rustling among the lapis lazuli sands, echoing from the hollow mouths of skulls, and thundering across the void-dark sky of Duat. The Lord of Faces presides as Judge over traitors and spies, particularly those who exploit stealth or trust to gain information and act upon it to further their agendas. It includes those who merely eavesdrop under this purview, even if all they do with what they hear is make petty gossip. Neb-Imkhu’s strength grows alongside the increasing sophistication of communications technology and has exploded with the advent of the internet.

WHY WE SERVE THEM Betrayal is the rejection of loyalty, the breaking of trust; two things upon which the righteous order of the Judges and of community rely. Traitors and spies break down the chain of order with the currency of civilization itself, turning words and meaning to poisonous perversion. This deeply offends Arisen who hold to a worldview of unshakable integrity, eternal loyalty, and Irem’s enduring legacy. It terrifies others who share the hyper-vigilant paranoia of the Lord of Faces; they see a world of spies and liars and backstabbers, frayed threads and hidden enemies, and personifications of chaos and Ammut. A rare few sense a weight deep in their own souls — a notion of some truly great betrayal, of the bedrock of their own loyalties turned to quicksand. Neb-Imkhu eagerly steals faltering, questioning Arisen away from other Judges. You’re an unyielding, uncompromising officiant of oaths, determined to cultivate a culture of trust and honor. You’re the name spies and informers whisper to one another, the one who hunts down the unwary and skins them alive as a message to the rest. You’re terrified that it’s betrayals all the way down, that you must suspect your cultists, your fellow Arisen, even the Judges themselves. Neb-Imkhu enfolds you all with its eternal vigilance and sometimes, perhaps even without knowing itself, it whispers to you: Trust no one.

WHO WE JUDGE Purging the venom of eavesdropping and petty breaches of trust from a community is but light work for an Arisen. The Lord of Faces and its followers concern themselves more with those whose betrayals have far-reaching consequences, and those who use information they gain covertly for significant impact. A traitor can crop up anywhere, and

32

Chapter Two: Lifeless and Depraved

many modern principles of free speech or morality are irrelevant before the otherworldly hatred of Duat; the industrial spy who steals a blueprint is as guilty as a journalist whose snooping unearths a legitimate story of corruption. Sometimes Neb-Imkhu demands grotesque punishments such as feeding the severed ears of wrongdoers back to the people who they betrayed or spied upon. Many of its Arisen slaves choose to interpret this as an indictment of whatever lack of vigilance allowed these breaches to occur in the first place.

HOW WE WORSHIP Arisen servants of the Lord of Faces practice paranoid levels of information security. Every scrap of knowledge they leave behind in a Descent, every recording of their name, is a potential vulnerability. Some even choose to take a new body from a cultist on each Descent, cycling their mortal identities with regularity. Neb-Imkhu’s mummies place the utmost weight in their oaths and loyalties, and a pledge sworn in Neb-Imkhu’s name is nigh-unbreakable. Cults of Neb-Imkhu are usually tight-knit affairs buoyed up on rampant paranoia. They guard boundaries, literal or metaphorical, that surround some treasured community or concept. They always have an enemy; if a real one doesn’t exist, the cultists will invent a foe to serve the purpose. They appoint themselves the judges of loyalty and honor, hunt for spies and traitors with crazed fervor, or practice ritual scapegoating ceremonies to cast out unwanted influences—often bloody, and often targeting those who stand in the way of the cult’s agenda. One cult might be a pack of gang members who hunt down and flay informers, snitches, and turncoats in the city’s underworld; a troupe of artists who turn ‘outsiders’ in their scene into the raw materials for their revelatory art; or a military unit devoted to rooting out the enemy from their fellows’ ranks.

NEFER-TEM, THE ETERNAL LOTUS DO NOT RUSH TO JUDGMENT. DO NOT FLINCH FROM JUDGMENT. FIND THE BALANCE. Nefer-Tem sits on a crumbling throne surrounded by still waters and lotus flowers. Its body is the withered, wrapped form of a mummy, a corroded scepter in one hand and a single lotus flower cradled in the other with

roots digging through the dusty flesh of the palm. The neck is a ragged, dry wound; in place of a head, several falcons roost upon the stump, and watch with golden eyes. The Eternal Lotus is a strange Judge even by the standards of its ilk. Rather than berserk condemnation without compromise, it acknowledges nuance and subtlety. Indeed, it takes as its preserve the judgment of morally gray wrongdoings — acts of transgression that sit murkily within the draconian codes of Irem, and that do not always have simple, clear-cut answers. When Nefer-Tem’s decision comes, of course, it comes without mercy or compassion, yet it must by necessity have some inkling of what these things are, and give them weight in reaching its judgment.

WHY WE SERVE THEM Most humans already understand the fundamentals of the Judges’ laws, whether through nature or nurture. Yes, mummies must sometimes intercede to reinforce the legacy of Irem and harvest tithes for Duat, but an Arisen who goes around crushing the skulls of murderers isn’t really teaching anything that mortals don’t already know. The highest service to Duat must be in providing judgment where human understanding simply isn’t enough, or where the mortal heart struggles beneath a weight it simply cannot resolve by itself. Mummies are uniquely placed to offer that guidance, standing between humanity and a greater power. You’re a modern-day King Solomon tackling the toughest moral quandaries, whom even other Arisen call on to resolve intractable questions of judgment. You’re a merciless confessor, hearing the laments of mortals who doubt their own righteousness before doling out harsh but fair — oh, so agonizingly fair — penance. You’re a cartographer of conundrums, mapping out the places where the flaws of human justice meet the cruelly uncompromising edges of the Judge’s law, and quietly wondering if perhaps the flaws lie with the Judges instead. In service to the Eternal Lotus, you’ll all face questions of heart and mind that even the Arisen struggle to resolve, even with eternity in your grasp.

WHO WE JUDGE The Arisen of Nefer Tem assess crimes that, by their nature, are varied and unusual: transgressions which catch communities in paralysis as they struggle to find a verdict acceptable to their morals and laws; bold and defiant crimes where righteousness and lawfulness seem at cross-purposes, and which might give rise to a martyr; and those who sin for a greater good. The Eternal Lotus

sets its slaves on the tracks of ‘hard men making hard decisions’ and demands their claims be put to the test, with bloody penance due for failures — and there are oh so many failures. Yet these Arisen also look at the quieter, inner moral ambiguity that plagues the human heart. They assess those caught in internal contrition or conflict over their deeds, those who cry out for an outside agent of judgment who can bestow the conflicted soul with absolution or penance. That penance often comes in peeled skin, or bones plucked steaming from the petitioner’s flesh, but it comes with the cruel honesty that this is what you know you deserve.

HOW WE WORSHIP Arisen of the Lotus don’t just appreciate nuance, they actively seek it out and hunt for alternative perspectives that might cast a situation in a new light. Nefer Tem encourages its followers to treat everything as a puzzle, a complex and multi-faceted convergence of influences that can be pulled apart and studied piece by piece. Many Arisen of the Judge use puzzles, games, or clocks in their contemplative practices and their temples; some feel driven to render such complexities from the red remains of transgressors, creating human bone chess sets or mechanisms of flesh. Servants of the Lotus try to avoid acting in haste and without prior consideration, preferring wisdom to wrath. This makes such mummies all the more terrifying when they do bring the hateful retribution of Duat down; a servant of the Lotus kills with cold, calculating efficiency. Cults of the Eternal Lotus see themselves as wisdom-seekers and occultists of refinement, abased at the foot of a higher power in return for a glimmer of esoteric understanding. They treat subtle scraps of knowledge as vital insights that raise their judgment above that of the common folk — they think they simply know better than the sheep, and so should hold the reins of humanity. One cult nestles among board room directors who meet to spill a sheep’s guts and fire hundreds of employees based on such haruspexy; another cult gathers at an old stone circle to discuss the geomancy of city planning and the manipulation of the next generations’ lives.

AMKHATA

T

he twisted mistakes of false life known as the Amkhata come in a disturbing array of broken shapes and mismatched parts, and few Arisen would claim to know the full variety in which these ghastly chimeras can manifest.

Amkhata

33

THE SHA Lifeless in the image of sacred Sha animals are thankfully very rare, but their presence marks an ancient legacy of which some Arisen recall a few frayed threads. In some ancient time, automata of human flesh, golden wire, and words of power crafted in the shape of the Sha — the sacred, impossible animals of Sutekh — came among mummies bearing gifts of eldritch knowledge. Those servitors long since fell to lifelessness, but sometimes Amkhata bearing their parts still appear. Most Amkhata with Sha parts in their make-up are the intentional efforts of sorcerers and heretics who have laid hands on ancient lessons of Amkhata creation and attempt to build new sorcerous constructs from human flesh. A handful occur accidentally where a newly formed Amkhata emerges near a Sha animal’s ancient resting place and steals the beast’s nature as the scaffolding for its new existence, or where the slaughtered remains of mortal sorcerers or lesser immortals provide it with the needed raw materials. A complete Sha Amkhata never forms, and perhaps cannot form, but these mockeries with a patchwork of other Amkhata parts are frighteningly potent and utterly mad.

SHA-HEADED The Sha-Headed’s visage is a jackal-like head with a down-curving snout and tall, angular ears, glinting with the metal wires that stitch its flesh together. Sha-Headed are erratic at best and prone to tearing at their own bodies in fits of confusion. Essence Cost: ••••• Dread Powers: Godly Vision (•) Attack (Bite): 1L for Lesser, 2L for Greater Special Qualities (Utterance-Bearer): Each ShaHeaded possesses the power of a single Utterance, and can use the first and second tiers and their bonus Pillar effects by spending Essence points in place of Pillar points. It uses its Rank in place of Pillar rating for calculating any appropriate effects or dice pools.

SHA’S BODY The body of the Sha is the same amalgamation of human flesh as the head, given the form of a large and stocky canine frame. The air around it seethes with contained occult energy.

34

Chapter Two: Lifeless and Depraved

Essence Cost: ••••• Attribute Alteration: +2 Finesse Species Factor: 6 Dread Powers: Cosmic Detonation, Roiling Power

SHA’S LIMBS The Amkhat stands upon wolf-like legs and claws that are, on closer scrutiny, made from human meat and golden threads of occult circuitry. It has a stiff, forked tail; each fork ends in a scorpion barb Essence Cost: ••••• Extra Attack (Claws): 1L for Lesser, 2L for Greater Extra Attack (Sting): 1L for Lesser, 2L for Greater. This attack also inflicts the Poisoned Tilt when it deals damage (moderate for Lesser, grave for Greater) unless the victim succeeds on a roll of Stamina + Sekhem – Amkhata’s Rank. Special Qualities (Infused Claws): The Amkhat’s claw attacks ignore supernatural sources of Defense and armor, and can strike ephemeral entities in Twilight. After injuring a victim, the Amkhat imposes its Rank as a penalty on all dice pools to activate supernatural abilities that victim attempts for the remainder of the scene.

DREAD POWERS Amkhata are not limited in their form or function. Underestimating one of these chimerical monstrosities is a mistake cultists make, and rarely survive.

FALSE BA If the false Ka writhing through many Amkhata is a mockery of life, worse still is the glimmering of true purpose and constancy that a handful of Lifeless display. Something black and tarry oozes from the Amkhat’s eyes, ears, and mouth in an unending trickle of muck and self-awareness. The Amkhat gains a Vice and Virtue, increases its Willpower to 8, and can manifest successfully as if Sekhem were spilled whenever a mortal in its presence fulfils a Vice or Virtue that matches its own. It links with the mortal in question until it returns to Neter-Khertet; it can sense their thoughts, perceive what they perceive, and cannibalize sources of Sekhem remotely through them and their actions.

FALSE KA (AVARICE) This Dread Power replicates the effects of False Ka (Mummy: The Curse, p. 228). However, the Swarm Tilt created only has the Harmless Tilt Factor. Rather than damaging creatures, a swarm of corrupted, gleaming scarabs pours from the Amkhata’s fetid heart and rotting veins to stir greed in the hearts of those they enfold; anyone in the area of the Swarm Tilt on their turn gains the Avarice Condition, and must succeed at a roll of Composure + Sekhem – the Amkhata’s Rank or gain a temporary Obsession Condition towards gaining material riches that lasts until resolved or until the end of the story.

FALSE KA (SCOURING) This Dread Power replicates the effects of False Ka (Mummy: The Curse, p. 228). However, the Swarm Tilt created only has the Harmless Tilt Factor. Rather than damaging creatures, a swarm of termites, worms, or corrosive fungal spores pours from the Amkhata’s fetid heart

and rotting veins to attack any objects nearby, dealing 1 point of structure to everything inanimate in the Swarm area each turn and ignoring Durability.

ROILING POWER The distorting impact of the occult energies within the creature interfere with magic. When a supernatural effect targets the creature, or would catch it in an area of effect, it may reflexively spend a point of Essence to impose its Rank as an additional penalty on the activation roll; should the roll fail as a result, the creature may shift the power onto another valid target or area present in the scene instead, prompting a fresh activation roll by the original source and resolution in accordance with its new target. This may even force the source to target themselves if they are a valid choice of victim for the effect.

IMMORTALS

T

he ranks of mortals who strive for unnaturally long lives and are prepared to forge deals of subservience

Immortals

35

or practice immoral activity to attain their aims are disturbingly vast. Arisen rarely understand the drive. They see these fragile people, clutching at curses they don’t understand, and pity them. This pity often leads to a fall, as the right kind of immortal makes a terrible foe for a mummy.

THE PURIFIED “I pity you,” he says, steepling his fingers. He watches her carefully. Her expression turns sour. “Pity? From a blasphemy like you?” The ancient, perfect, unchanging man shrugs with infuriating nonchalance. “You’re still… just human. Eternal, yes, but laden with all the foibles and weaknesses of the mortal you once were. Whereas I… I purified myself of those flaws. I became something truly more.” “You’re not even human at all, now,” the Arisen says. “I know. But what really angers you is that I’m free.”

WHO THEY ARE The Purified are frighteningly potent immortals, drawing power from the alien realm of the Shadow. A Purified trades her human soul for spiritual transcendence, keeping one foot in each world while strengthened by both. The eternal life of many immortals is a fragile, precious thing, but Purified are like the Arisen themselves — killing one is only a temporary setback.

HOW IT WORKS Numerous paths to Purification exist; spiritual meditation upon a Locus of strength, the transmogrification of internal energy via alchemical elixirs, or even outright accidents under auspicious alignments of Shadow and reality. However, the Purified-to-be must die at the culmination of the ritual. If she has prepared correctly, then her soul and mind flee into the Shadow and are transformed there, returning to her body afterwards. She is now as much spirit as human and, as the years pass, she will grow ever more like her Shadow peers. The power of the Purified does not come easily. Most who attempt such rites die due to a lack of will or a mistake in occult arrangements. The successful seize true immortality, capable of returning to life even from total bodily destruction if their spiritual self survives. It bears a heavy

36

Chapter Two: Lifeless and Depraved

price, though; humanity seems increasingly distant, even as the alien laws of the Shadow writhe ever deeper into the Purified existence.

ARISEN AS FOES The Purified pose a troublesome challenge to the superiority of the Deathless through their durable immortality and continuity of awareness. An individual Purified may not have the raw occult might of an Arisen but these immortals soon recover from mere bodily destruction. In turn, Purified possess strange spiritual powers that can give them an unexpected edge, and the ability to marshal eldritch servitors or allies from the Shadow can pose a serious threat to a cult.

ARISEN AS ALLIES Purified immortality makes them perhaps the closest to actual peers for Arisen from among the Endless. A Purified can be relied on to survive the ravages of time and tumult, and can leap into danger alongside a mummy with similar disregard for physical risk. In some cases, this forges tight bonds lasting across millennia. Purified also serve as a bridge with the chaotic denizens of the Shadow that an Arisen likely struggles to understand or deal with. In return, Arisen and their cults possess the sort of wide-reaching political and occult influence that lets them shape the landscape in accordance with flows of spiritual power, granting the Purified and her Shadow allies a rich bounty of Essence.

Aspects Rank: Purified possess Rank like an ephemeral entity rather than Sekhem, cannot spend dots of Rank to fuel Sekhem-based effects, and can never lose Rank. A new Purified begins with Rank 1 and can raise it higher for 8 Experiences per dot. Purified cannot use the Endless Potency Merit. Ban and Bane: Purified possess a Ban and a Bane in the same way as a spirit of their Rank. When a Purified gains Rank, her Ban and Bane may change to reflect her new level of power. Essence: Purified possess Essence pools of appropriate size for a spirit of their Rank. Purified regain Essence from Loci, or by stealing Essence directly from spirits while in the Shadow or Twilight in the same way as a spirit can. They can also cannibalize vestiges, gaining 1 point of Essence per each vestige dot drained.

Inhuman Destiny: Purified suffer the Blighted Action quality on Empathy rolls towards mortals. Purified Power: Purified gain a number of bonus dots equal to Rank to assign among their Attributes in ephemeral and physical form, which can take an Attribute above the normal maximum of 5. Ritual Focus: A Purified who possesses a Relic can use it as the centerpiece of a ritually prepared chamber, allowing her to reform her body at the Relic’s location rather than where the remains lie after her physical form dies. Shadow Attunement: Purified can see ephemeral entities in the spiritual frequency of Twilight, and understand the language of spirits. They can sense the presence of Loci, and detect the presence of possessing spirits within a host at a glance. Shadow Dominion: Purified can replicate the effects of the first two tiers of Words of Dead Dominion Utterance on spirits instead of ghosts. This costs points of Essence equal to the usual cost in Pillar points, and the Purified cannot access the bonus Pillar effects. Enlightened Power: A Purified possesses a number of Dread Powers and the same amount of Numina equal to 2 + her Rank, using her Disembodied ephemeral Attributes to determine her dice pools for them. A Purified can only use these Dread Powers and Numina in Disembodied ephemeral form. Twilight Projection: By spending a point of Essence, the Purified projects her spiritual presence away from her body. She gains the Disembodied Condition for the spiritual frequency of Twilight instead of Neter-Khertet, using her own Rank and determining her Power, Finesse, and Resistance as if she were a mortal but adding her Rank to the value of each. While disembodied, she may cross over into the Shadow via Loci. Purified never gain Beats from resolving the Disembodied Condition. Undying Ka: A Purified neither ages nor suffer the ravages of disease. She heals one point of bashing damage per turn, one point of lethal damage very fifteen minutes, and a point of aggravated damage every twelve hours. She can spend a point of Essence as an Instant action to heal an additional point of bashing or lethal damage. If her physical body is killed but her spiritual presence survives, she can spend five points of Essence to reform it from the remains and rejoin with it immediately. If her spiritual form is killed but she has any Essence remaining, she spends a point of Essence and reforms over the course

of a week. If killed without any Essence remaining, the Purified truly dies.

PATCHWORK PEOPLE Her captor stepped into the light. Human, but the proportions were all wrong. The skin was blotchy. His left arm, withered and decayed, hung uselessly. She screamed. He stuffed a strip of cloth into her mouth. “None of that. It will be over soon. I’m really sorry. This isn’t personal.” As he raised the gleaming blade and looked to her arm with his mismatched eyes, understanding dawned. Even the gag couldn’t muffle her scream.

WHO THEY ARE They call themselves the Elite. Like most immortals, they fear their own demise, but they have the means to buy a reprieve from the reaper’s scythe. The Patchwork People, a name they despise, consist mostly of fabulously wealthy individuals. Through expensive treatments performed by well-trained, morally questionable surgeons innocuously referred to as Specialists, the Elite replace body parts as they’re damaged or wear out. The donors for these replacements are seldom willing, necessitating an elaborate network of human trafficking to ensure a steady supply of desirable organs and flesh. The Elite politely ignore the realities of their continued existence, veiling them behind masks of high society and specialized medical procedures. Other immortals share the Elite’s method of immortality, but lack their resources or network of Specialists. These experiments and outcasts, disdainfully referred to as Riffraff by the Elite, perform surgeries on each other or themselves to maintain their existence, receiving little choice in replacement parts. Adrift in the world, the continued existence of these monstrosities relies upon ceaseless effort and peril rather than a steady financial drain. Lacking the resources to effectively cover their tracks, Riffraff easily gain new foes thanks to the trail of bodies and amateur amputations left behind. Many of these Patchwork People find their eternity short-lived.

HOW IT WORKS The secret to the Patchwork People’s immortality lies in their special hearts, which channel Sekhem through their bodies to preserve them. Most Elite possess clockwork hearts, constructions of gold and silver gears concealed behind plastic or medical titanium. Invented in the 1800s,

Immortals

37

these pacemakers and modern medical technologies have allowed these Endless to flourish. Their society slowly grows, guided by the hands of the Specialists. The oldest Patchwork People possess enchanted hearts rather than clockwork ones. Hieroglyphics of gold and silver were ritually inscribed upon the still-beating heart of a dying person, a possible imitation of the Rite of the Engraved Heart. While few survived these attempts, some Ancient Egyptian artisans crafted eternally beating hearts, granting a new lease on life to a dying person. Many of these early immortals were once wealthy and influential themselves, but expenses from maintaining their immortality in the absence of modern medical techniques took their toll. The Elite consider these impoverished immortals Riffraff, no better than the hideous experimental test subjects or the hapless immortals banished from the circles of the Elite. The only truly immortal parts of a Patchwork Person are their brain and spinal column. The heart’s Sekhem maintains these against the ravages of time, slowly healing them if they’re damaged but not destroyed. Their other body parts enjoy some of these energies, but must supplement them by harvesting still-living parts from other people. Over time, any body parts not taken from a mummy break down, requiring regular replacement or infusions of special glandular extracts and hormone treatments. Few donors survive the process even when the part removed is non-vital. The Specialists hold the true power in this arrangement, as their expertise enables them to customize the results, ensuring the Elite’s changes are long-lasting, seamless, and indistinguishable from ordinary humans to outside appearances. Inexpert attempts to perform surgeries can still be successful, but the parts usually wear out faster, and over time, the Patchwork Person increasingly resembles their true monstrous self. When a Patchwork Person is slain but their heart remains intact, a race to acquire it ensues. These hearts don’t need to be specifically created for an individual, so a recovered heart becomes quite the resource, allowing a person to grant immortality to a chosen ally or sell it to the highest bidder. While the hearts of the Elite are more coveted, even those of the Riffraff are precious.

ARISEN AS FOES Lacking interest in vessels, most Patchwork People have little to do with the Arisen. Conflicts between them usually arise when a mummy’s cultists are targeted as donors, or when they uncover the network of Specialists and mistake them for a rival cult.

38

Chapter Two: Lifeless and Depraved

Parts harvested from a mummy’s sahu never wear out, requiring destruction by fire before replacement is necessary. Canopic jars tempt these immortals, as those organs offer greater power beyond mere durability. While these are particularly useful to Patchwork People, mummies returning from death still have the option of resurrecting at these organs, causing severe injury as the reforming sahu bursts from the immortal’s body. Immortal hearts count as Relics, with dot ratings equal to the Sekhem of the Endless. If torn out, its rating decreases by one each day until it reaches one dot. Arisen can use kepher on Riffraff. Each new Patchwork Person starts at the Sekhem level of their donated heart.

ARISEN AS ALLIES Patchwork People easily slide into the ranks of an Arisen cult. With resources to spare and unconstrained by conventional morality, the Elite excel when steering a cult toward a mummy’s vision. With the right followers, the Arisen might offer alternatives to the demands of the Specialists for maintaining their life. Riffraff may serve as muscle in exchange for the cult’s protection. Utilizing parts from rogue cultists or other mortals a mummy needs to disappear is tacitly encouraged. Favored Attribute: Strength

Aspects Immortal Heart: The energies coursing through their hearts render Patchwork People immune to unconsciousness, aging, and bleeding out, though severe injuries may hasten body degradation. They don’t require sleep, suffering no penalties from fatigue. Once per story, a player may declare a body part is failing to gain a Beat, and the Storyteller may do the same for the character. This increases to twice for Riffraff, but their imperfect surgeries also impose a –2 penalty to Social rolls against humans who are unaware of or uncomfortable with the Riffraff’s condition. Pillars of Life: Invested Patchwork People may spend a point of Willpower to seal the flesh once per scene for a number of turns equal to the highest Pillar they hold. This doesn’t halt the degradation of their body parts, but keeps them moving longer. Replacement Parts: Whenever Patchwork People replace body parts, they may reshuffle their Physical Attributes and Skills. They may receive parts from any donor without fear of rejection. Attempts to perform surgery on Patchwork People are Blessed Actions. Parts taken

from a mummy don’t wear out and recover from injury over time if they’re not destroyed by fire. Any additional effects from parts taken from other supernatural creatures are left to the Storyteller’s discretion. Strange Biology: In addition to the above effects, when a replacement part originates from a supernatural creature, the Endless perceives similar creatures through discomfort in the transplant as though they possessed the Unseen Sense Merit. Organs taken from a mummy’s canopic jars allow the immortal to purchase one Pillar dot for each canopic organ, similar to the Resplendent Soul Merit. The immortal may purchase a single Soul Affinity for each dot, though these only function while the Pillar point is available. Any replacement parts from a mummy also allow the Endless to always perceive the direction of the mummy’s current sahu.

VISITORS “But how will I know who to trust?” Ian St. John watched the people passing on the street, wondering how many housed alien invaders in their heads. “I’ll tell you,” the Visitor in his own said. “Find the silver scorpion. Our aid lies there.”

The courier began to ride, watching the graffiti. “I don’t think I can do this.” “You must. To save your people and mine. You’re our only hope.”

WHO THEY ARE An alien race, determined to uplift or destroy humanity. Beings from a parallel universe, thrust into our own. Travelers from a distant future, desperate to save the past. The Visitors are all and none of these things. Every Visitor knows the truth beyond any shadow of a doubt, but the truth of each Visitor may not coincide. Each one has boundless confidence in their mission, and an inflated sense of their own greatness. Shaped as much by the imaginations of their host as their true origins, the Visitors are an enigma even to themselves. Their seldom-seen natural forms are transparent, iridescent worm-like entities, bristling with coils of branching tentacles. Usually, Visitor hosts are indistinguishable from ordinary humans, the Visitor safely nestled in the brain of the host. Their grandiose visions drive them onward, forging alliances with Visitors professing compatible visions, and clashing with those possessing conflicting ones.

Immortals

39

HOW IT WORKS Deprived of a host, a Visitor becomes ephemeral, drifting helplessly through time until it settles into an era with an appropriate host. The factors rendering a host suitable are unknown even to the Visitors. Upon reaching an appropriate time, the Visitor creates a tiny physical cocoon for themselves as an inclusion within a crystalline structure. When a suitable host encounters the crystal, the Visitor briefly becomes ephemeral once more, drifting through the crystal and into the future host’s bloodstream. The threadlike larva latches onto the host’s brainstem, and feeds. The Visitor’s consciousness arises as it grows larger, consuming the brain of its host. It takes control of the brain’s natural functions, leaving the host unaware of their situation beyond vivid dreams and a sense of euphoria. Removing an entrenched Visitor is fatal to the host. The host’s body is enhanced by its immortal parasite, resisting age and infirmity and healing rapidly from injuries suffered. Destroying the brain destroys the Visitor’s physical form, rendering them ephemeral and shunting them off into another time. Anything short of this, the host fully recovers given enough time. The host usually retains full control of the body, though the Visitor makes its wishes known and urges the host to fulfill them. Visitors communicate telepathically with their hosts, encouraging certain behaviors and sharing their brilliant knowledge and epic plans. Vivid dreams fill their nights. Their days fixate on the Visitor’s mission. When a Visitor and host’s ambitions align, the two seem to fuse into a single being.

ARISEN AS FOES Most Visitors patronize the Arisen, considering them and the Judges they serve to be of little consequence in the grand scheme of things. While they acknowledge mummies pose short-term threats, Visitors are more concerned with

their own plans than those of the Deathless. The Visitors have no great desire for vessels, so seldom compete with the Arisen on that front. The cults of the mummies are far more intriguing to the Visitors. Large groups of obedient people, especially those already prone to believing in strange realities, offer potential pawns or soldiers in a Visitor’s personal quest. Co-opting cults while their sovereign slumbers allows a Visitor to divert their resources toward their own goals, often pitting them against cults manipulated by rival Visitors. Even when Visitors don’t directly antagonize each other, differing ideologies frequently draw cults into conflict.

ARISEN AS ALLIES Visitors side with the Arisen for the same reasons they act against them, seeking to take advantage of their cults. When the teachings of the Arisen and the ambitions of the Visitor align, they make easy allies. Few Visitors tolerate inferior roles outside of infiltration efforts, but a minority accept the Arisen as equals and are satisfied with a partnership. Their innate talents make them ideal for disseminating information through the cult during critical operations. Understanding the trials of arising in unfamiliar times gives them another point of common ground. Many Visitors claim greater knowledge of ancient times, tempting the Arisen with forgotten secrets they’re all too happy to share, for a price. Favored Attribute: Resolve

Aspects Communication Hub: Invested Visitors serve as a communication hub between a mummy and their invested cultists. The Visitor, the Arisen, and their Inheritors may communicate together telepathically over any distance. The Visitor perceives all communications. Once per chapter, the Visitor may steal a Willpower point from another Inheritor. By spending a Willpower point, the Visitor

Tenacious Eternity (••••) Patchwork Person: Your character may harvest replacement parts from corpses, provided they haven’t been dead for more than 1 + Sekhem days. These wear out faster, but may be attached with less care, granting the rote quality to rolls to connect the part. Visitor: The Visitor has grown particularly large, extending tentilla throughout the host’s nervous system. Only the complete destruction of the body, such as by fire, forces the Visitor from the body. Destruction of the brain inflicts the Amnesia Condition.

40

Chapter Two: Lifeless and Depraved

Alien Aspirations While largely divided between those wanting to help humanity and those wanting to hinder it, the missions of the Visitors vary greatly from individual to individual. The following are several examples of possible Aspirations, and the strange behaviors they may engage in to fulfill them. Breed the Inheritors of the Earth: Humanity is doomed, and the Visitor knows it. The best thing to do is to prepare the species that will inherit the world when humanity wipes itself out. The Visitor wishes to breed the smartest and most robust rats to create the next sapient race, and they need to act quickly if they’re going to prepare them in time to oppose the octopi being bred by their rivals. Construct the Monolith: The great structure must be built. The Visitor knows it is the only hope for their ultimate plans to be realized, so every effort must be made to ensure its construction, and all impediments to its rise must be removed. Destroy the Cure: A great plague will soon ravage the land, striking a blow so severe humanity might not recover. They are a resourceful species, however. To ensure they don’t shrug off this plague, the Visitor must destroy the vaccines or cures that could defeat it, and the ones responsible for their creation in the first place. Establish our Cult: The Visitor knows they are a god, currently trapped in a mortal body. To unleash their true divinity, they’re going to need to gain many worshipers, and build a cult that will last through the ages. When enough people embrace the Visitor’s truth, the Visitor shall ascend, and their loyal followers will reap their ultimate reward. Kill Sam: The Visitor remembers their future life, and that the world was shattered when a person named Sam killed an important individual. They remember that it happens this year near this location, but they don’t remember the victim, the exact time, or the full name of the killer. To save the future, the Visitor is prepared to kill every grown person with the name of Sam. Protect the Traitor: The Visitor recognizes the corruption flowing through the ranks of an organization, and they know the end result of this corruption. Only one person has the moral fortitude and courage to betray this group and bring about its ultimate downfall, and the Visitor is going to see to it that this person is kept safe at all costs. Unveil the Secrets of the Past: This Visitor holds a grand vision of an important event from the past, such as the events surrounding the Rite of Return. They wish to share this vision and ensure these secrets reach the right people who need to hear it. The exact people who need to learn these secrets and those who must not may be a bit unclear, however, forcing the Visitor to vet each potential recipient.

may extend the communication network to include other cultists present for the duration of the scene. Neural Net: Visitors may communicate with each other telepathically up to 100 miles away, but only in images and sensory impressions. The Visitor may also offer Numina to the host. Numina are purchased as though the character was an ephemeral entity, and they spend Willpower instead of Essence to activate it. The Visitor may only possess one Numen for each dot of Sekhem, and none may interact with or permit travel to the Shadow. Overshadow: The Visitor’s mission becomes a new Aspiration, in addition to the host’s existing Aspirations. They may take control of the host while the body is asleep or

unconscious. Any lethal or aggravated damage suffered awakens the host. While in control, they suffer a –2 penalty to all Skill rolls. If the Visitor slumbers with the host, they regain two Willpower points from rest. Regeneration: Visitors shrug off mundane diseases and recover quickly from injuries, healing at four times the human rate. Even lost limbs and organs may be regenerated, which takes a few months. Only destruction of the brain puts down a Visitor, but even this isn’t final. The Visitor becomes adrift in time, finding a new host in another time and place, though they have no control over when they return. When melded with a new host, the Visitor begins at Sekhem 1.

Immortals

41

THE RED SHORES OF NU

T

he ancient Iremites were aware of the spirit world and its denizens, though interaction with them was the domain of the select few. These individuals viewed the spirit world as the eternal moment of creation, the place where the timeless waters of Nu meet the primordial stone of Atum. Gazing upon the spirit world, they saw an eternal battleground between Order, called Ma’at, and Chaos, called Isfet. The conflict between them is destined to wage perpetually, lest the jaws of Ammut close forever upon Creation. While this unending conflict is necessary for the continuation of life, these individuals recognized the danger it posed to civilization. They sought to understand the ways of its bizarre denizens and master their strange tongue, to forge alliances with some and appease others. They steered Remet away from places where the barrier between the worlds grew thin, protecting them to the best of their ability. When the native denizens danced across the barrier to wreak havoc, they stepped aside, allowing the Anointed of Anpu to hunt them down in the forms of great beasts, flanked by spirits bound into the flayed skins of their ancestors. Few future Arisen dealt extensively with the realm, beyond those commissioned to craft vessels capable of binding or controlling spirits. Following the Rite of Return, they lacked the mystics they previously relied upon for such matters, leading some Deathless to take up the studies of such things themselves. While the hand of Isfet is anathema to most Arisen, the perpetuation of civilization drives some to explore realms they were never meant to walk.

THE SHADOW While it is known by many names, most Arisen have adopted the common terminology in use among occultists for the spirit world. The Shadow reflects the world of flesh in most places, but reveals their true nature. A corrupt police station might loom larger, appearing more intimidating where the police are overly brutal, while one housing police who accept lucrative bribes to look the other way may gleam with golden highlights. The geography of the Shadow largely follows the physical world’s, though some strange places exist in the Shadow alone. For material beings entering the Shadow, things are eerily familiar, yet twisted enough to confuse and disturb travelers. The strange land is no place for mortals, and outsiders seldom find themselves welcomed by the denizens of the Shadow.

42

Chapter Two: Lifeless and Depraved

Gauntlet Strength Despite the abundance of spirits born in the presence of human activity, the Gauntlet is strengthened by increasing numbers of people. Entities seeking to affect anything on the other side of the Gauntlet suffer the Gauntlet’s strength modifier on rolls to do so. Location Dense urban areas City suburbs, towns Small towns, villages Wilderness, countryside Locus

Gauntlet Strength 5

Strength Modifiers −3

4

−2

3

−1

2

0

1

+2

The above table shows general trends, but thicker and thinner spots arise from events occurring in the area.

THE GAUNTLET The Shadow is separated from the physical world by an invisible barrier, known most commonly as the Gauntlet. Strengthened by the order imposed by human civilization, the Gauntlet protects the flesh world from the endless battle between the forces of Ma’at and Isfet. Loci are places where the Gauntlet has become incredibly thin, allowing easier access from one world to the other. Each Locus has its own Resonance, drawing compatible spirits to it. These are the easiest places to cross over, and mummies with the Opener of the Way Affinity (Mummy: The Curse, p. 128) who locate such a place may use it to cross into the Shadow.

SPIRITS All phenomena in the material world, objects, living things, emotions, even concepts, produce spirits in the Shadow. Every frog produces its own spirit, as does every moss, every car, and even every moment of fear. The exception to this are humans and the supernatural people who dwell among them. These

produce no spirits themselves, but their activities aid the generation of new ones. Spirits are born as tiny motes of Essence resonant with the phenomenon they’re tied to, gradually awakening and consuming Essence tied to their nature or spirits closely related to them. The predation exhibited by spirits are sometimes abstract, such as car spirits running down smaller spirits on the road to feed from their Essence. Spirits possess alien minds, primarily seeking to generate more resonant Essence. As the Shadow and the physical world are interlinked, this often involves spirits meddling with the physical. Some extend their Influences to strengthen desirable phenomena or weaken its opposite. Others possess physical bodies to interact more directly. A crocodile spirit could benefit from tending a relevant habitat, making it more habitable for the animal and its prey. They do not always understand the best way to promote their interests, though. A spirit of fear or death may benefit from possessing a human and going on a killing spree, allowing the populace to wallow in fear, but a spirit of happiness won’t. That spirit may possess someone surrounding themselves with happy people, but it will expect those people to always remain happy. If those people become miserable, the spirit may kill them to end the flow of sorrow, and then be legitimately shocked when this makes other humans miserable as well. The Arisen view spirits as functionally the Ka of the phenomena observed, rising to protect Creation against the forces determined to unmake it. As spirits reinforce their Essence through enacting natural feeding behavior, so do they reinforce their concept in reality. As savage and cruel as the denizens of the Shadow seem, their behaviors support the natural order of Creation. The proof of this are the bizarre, chaotic spirits resulting when spirits feed on Essence alien to their nature, which the Arisen see as manifestations of Isfet. Ordinary spirits group themselves into hierarchies based on the similarities of their phenomena, practicing strange politics of their own. Whether bound to Ma’at or Isfet, the alien minds and bizarre tongue of spirits make understanding them difficult for mummies without relying upon Affinities or Utterances, unless the spirit possesses capabilities allowing for easier communication.

SPIRIT TRAITS Spirits possess many of the same traits as ghosts and shades, following the same table for creation (Mummy: The Curse, p. 232). Spirits don’t possess Virtue, Vice, or Integrity traits.

Spirit Influences relate to the forces that birthed them. A Rank 3 falcon spirit might have Influence: Falcons •••, while a Rank 2 grief spirit might possess Influence: Death • and Influence: Grief •. These are generalized Influences. The falcon spirit’s Influence affects falcons in general, not the specific falcon it arose from. The Bans and Banes of spirits reflect the phenomena that birthed them. A dog spirit may have a Ban forcing loyalty toward any who make an offering of food, while a car spirit may be unable to leave the roads, and a grief spirit may flee from laughter. A minor fire spirit may have a Bane of water, while a potent rabbit spirit might fear a lash lined with the claws and fangs of seven different predators. Spirits of more than two Ranks higher also count as a Bane to lesser spirits. In the physical world, spirits exist in a state of Twilight different from Neter-Khertet, which is as intangible to entities in Neter-Khertet as it is to those in the physical world. Spirits interact with Essence similarly to ghosts, suffering Essence Bleed in the physical world each hour outside of appropriate Conditions. Even in the Shadow, spirits must spend 1 Essence each day to prevent hibernation. Spirits regain 1 Essence per day when in proximity to Conditions related to their purview on either side of the Gauntlet. Under such Conditions, the spirit may attempt to gorge itself on the Essence. Once per day, they may roll Power + Finesse, gaining their successes in Essence. If attempted across the Gauntlet, the roll is penalized accordingly. Gorging or stealing Essence from other spirits also replenishes 1 Willpower point for every 3 points of Essence gained. Spirits take advantage of many of the same Manifestation Conditions and wield many of the same Manifestations utilized by ghosts and shades. They also have some specific to themselves, related to their nature as Shadow entities.

MANIFESTATION CONDITIONS Reaching: The spirit has opened a conduit through the Gauntlet, allowing it to wield its Influences and some Numina on the other side. The Condition allows use of the following Numina from this book and Mummy: The Curse: Dement, Emotional Aura, Entropic Decay, Firestarter, Implant Mission, Rapture, Seek, and Telekinesis. Resonant: This Condition occurs naturally where something in the physical world matches a spirit’s purview. Spirits still suffer from Essence Bleed in the physical world, but otherwise substitute Resonant for the Anchor Condition for Manifestation purposes.

The Red Shores of Nu

43

Shadow Gate: A hole has been punched through the Gauntlet, allowing beings from either side to cross effortlessly to the other. The portal is visible to spirits and physical beings alike.

MANIFESTATIONS These Manifestations, reserved for spirits, are penalized by the local Gauntlet Strength. Reaching: The spirit applies the Reaching Condition to itself for 1 Essence. Gauntlet Breach: For 3 Essence, the spirit forces itself through the Gauntlet, appearing in Twilight Form in the material world or returning to the Shadow. Shadow Gateway: (Requires Open Condition and Rank 3+) By spending Essence equal to the local Gauntlet Strength, the spirit opens a portal to the Shadow usable by any being, applying the Shadow Gate Condition to the location.

The entity spends 1 Essence to cause flammable materials to combust, igniting a small fire per success within its Power in yards.

HOST JUMP By touching another host under the appropriate prerequisite Condition, an entity may spend 3 Essence to transfer the Claimed or Possessed Condition over to the new host, leaving the previous host to recover normally.

RAPTURE

These Numina supplement the ones in Mummy: The Curse and may be learned by any ephemeral entity.

The target is overwhelmed with pleasure and ecstatic visions. The entity spends 2 Essence, inflicting the Insensate Tilt. The target rolls Resolve + Sekhem, suffering a Condition binding them closer to the entity’s wishes for its Power in days if the roll fails.

EMOTIONAL AURA

SEEK

For one scene or until they activate a different Numen, the entity imposes a powerful emotion on anyone coming within five yards, who contested it with Resolve + Composure + Sekhem. If the entity wins, victims suffer a –2 penalty to all actions for as long as the aura persists.

For 1 Essence, the entity senses the nearest suitable Condition for Manifestation within 20 miles per Rank, as opposed to the usual two.

NUMINA

ENTROPIC DECAY The entity hastens natural decay by spending 3 Essence, inflicting one point of lethal damage for each success. The activation role is resisted by the target’s Durability, Resistance, or Stamina as appropriate.

ESSENCE THIEF For 1 Essence, the entity may consume Essence from an entity of a different type from its own (i.e., a spirit may consume 1 Essence from a ghost). This form of sacrifice to harm another is rare and always antagonizes the victim, who cannot roll to resist.

44

FIRESTARTER

Chapter Two: Lifeless and Depraved

SPEED The entity moves rapidly, spending 2 Essence to double its Speed or 4 to triple it.

STALWART The entity uses their Resistance instead of Power or Finesse for Defense.

EPHEMERAL CULTISTS Some ephemeral entities are drawn to the cults of mummies, joining (or being conscripted) into their ranks. Ephemeral cultists can prove a great asset to a cult, and more than a few mummies have gathered large crowds of invisible followers. These entities can aid the cult in many

Other Ephemeral Entities Ghosts, shades, and spirits are far from the only ephemeral entities in the world. Other entities may be brought into the fold, either because the entity offers something the cult requires or due to the entity’s own enigmatic reasons. Amkhata: Most Amkhata can’t function as cultists, but may be trained to serve as sentries or attack beasts if they are well fed regularly. Some sphinxes may be intelligent enough to enter into bargains with the Arisen, but even they would require incentive to cooperate. Mummies cannot invest Pillars into Amkhata, though feeding them to the lesser ones can help to keep them docile for a time. Angels: The biomechanical servants of the God-Machine sometimes infiltrate mummy cults in the course of their missions. The Deathless are usually oblivious to this unless the angel actively disrupts cult activities. Angels store Invested Pillars within for analysis, gaining the Informed Condition related to the mummy. Fiends: Cults welcoming fiends into their ranks are often terrifying, as suffering invariably follows in the wake of fiend activity. When a tentative alliance is reached between a fiend and a cult’s Arisen, it may aid the cult for its own ends. Invested fiends gain the ability to instantly travel to the Arisen or any of their other Inheritors. Goetia: Astral manifestations of dreams, thoughts, and concepts native to an individual’s mind or the collective unconsciousness of humanity, these entities are more likely to be born of a cult’s activities and the faith of the cultists than they are to join the cult. If such an entity was dragged into the physical world and underwent the Rite of Investment, they’d gain the Manifestations such entities usually lack. The effects of other ephemeral entities joining a mummy’s cult are left to the Storyteller’s discretion.

ways, acting as invisible reconnaissance, sources of supernatural might, or producing miracles even in a mummy’s absence. Ephemeral cultists gain easier influence in the physical world to pursue their own enigmatic goals. Gatherings of the mummy’s cultists serve as the Open Condition for ephemeral entities once they’re initiated into the mummy’s cult. Ephemeral entities may hold up to their Rank in Pillar points from the Rite of Investment, though the mummy must be capable of interacting with them to do so. A mummy may not resurrect into the body of an ephemeral cultist unless they have Claimed a host, though the ephemeral cultist doesn’t survive this process.

GHOSTS Ghosts are the ephemeral entities most likely to seek out a cult with the intention of joining. Many loyal cultists who meet their end in service to the Deathless may seek to continue their service even in death. Others hope to resolve the Anchors binding them to the world, seeing loved ones provided for or getting vengeance upon their killers. Many hope for the opportunity to indulge in the pleasures of the flesh for just a bit longer. In exchange, some ghosts offer

useful information, while others haunt targets of the cult’s choosing. Many are employed as unseen spies, collecting secrets to return to their Deathless masters. Initiated ghosts maintain their memories and need not fear being drawn forcefully down into the Caverns of NeterKhertet, though they may still enter willingly through an open Avernian Gate. Ghostly Inheritors may Materialize near appropriate Conditions even if they don’t possess the Manifestation, and are indistinguishable from the living to most senses in this state, allowing them to partake in the pleasures of the flesh like the living.

SHADES Shades are drawn to cults for many of the same reasons as ghosts and offer similar advantages to the cult. Shades make excellent guides and scouts in Neter-Khertet, and many serve as sentinels watching for Amkhata and other threats on this front. Others test or punish cultists, forging them stronger through horror and adversity. Initiation into the cult bolsters the will and identity of a shade, allowing them to regain Willpower twice as frequently from their Virtue and Vice. Invested shades treat all deep

Ephmeral Cultists

45

shadows large enough to conceal them as having the Open Condition for Manifestation. An Invested shade who is present in the mummy’s tomb when they enter henet accompanies them to Duat, though this is a one-way journey for the shade.

SPIRITS

Ghost and shade cultists possess a Virtue and Vice, enabling them to regain Willpower according to the system in Mummy: The Curse (p. 232). Spirits don’t possess Virtue and Vice traits.

Few spirits seek out cults with the intention of joining. Most spirit cultists are brought into the fold by sorcerers, who track down or summon spirits with desired Influences or associations. Those who do seek out the cult personally hope to use the cult’s practices and activities to their own advantage. If they receive what they desire in exchange, most spirits are all too happy to perform the services requested of them, whether it is to wield their Numina and Influences on the cult’s behalf or serve as eyes and ears on the other side of the Gauntlet. Spirits usually wish for the cult to promote their purview to produce additional Essence for them, but some wish for a body to possess or Claim, and others simply appreciate easier access to the physical world. Initiation into the Arisen’s cult grants a spirit the ability to understand and speak a language known to the mummy, and they may attempt to gorge themselves on Essence during cult rituals directly involving them. Invested spirits may filter Essence through the Pillars they hold, allowing them to consume Essence unconnected to their purview without warping their nature. Consuming unrelated Essence in this way grants 1 Essence for every 2 points absorbed.

ATTRIBUTES

EPHEMERAL CULTIST CHARACTER CREATION

Willpower equals Finesse + Resistance, to a maximum of 10. Ephemeral entities replenish 1 Willpower point each day.

Players wishing to create an ephemeral cultist character may follow this procedure.

CONCEPT Determine your character’s basic concept. Note who they would have been in life for ghosts or shades, or the origin phenomenon for spirits. Also consider why they have joined the cult, both what the cult offers to them and the role they play in its operations.

ASPIRATIONS Ephemeral cultists have two short-term Aspirations and one long-term Aspirations. At least one of these must relate directly to the cult’s Doctrines.

46

VIRTUE AND VICE

Chapter Two: Lifeless and Depraved

Ephemeral characters begin with one dot each in Power, Finesse, and Resistance, and may spread six additional dots between the three traits.

SKILLS Ephemeral cultists lack Skills at character creation, but may gain them through advancement.

MERITS Select 10 dots worth of Merits. Ephemeral characters cannot possess Merits related to having a physical body.

RANK Ephemeral cultists begin at Rank 2.

INTEGRITY Ghosts and shades begin with an Integrity of 7, or the level possessed at death if known. Spirits lack an Integrity trait.

WILLPOWER

CORPUS Corpus equals Resistance + Size. Ghosts and shades generally use Size 5, as this is the standard adult human Size. Spirit Size is more variable, but usually corresponds to their originating phenomenon’s Size. For spirits lacking a physical manifestation to compare to, double Rank or Size 5 may be used as defaults, at the Storyteller’s discretion.

DEFENSE Defense equals the lower of Power or Finesse.

BAN AND BANE

Ephemeral Advancement Ephemeral cultists have Aspirations, earning Experiences like mortal cultists. As they possess different traits, they use the following Experience costs to advance. Trait Attribute dot Numen Manifestation Influence dot Skill dot Merit dot Rank

Experience Cost 6 3 3 5 2 1 5

Increasing Rank requires more than just Experiences. Ghosts must drink from one of the Underworld Rivers, shades must consume Sekhem, and spirits must devour Essence related to their purview, usually by consuming similar spirits.

Each ephemeral cultist has a Ban and a Bane appropriate to a Rank 2 ephemeral entity.

INFLUENCE Ephemeral characters begin with two dots worth of Influences appropriate to their nature. They may sacrifice a Numen for an additional dot of Influence.

ANCHORS Ghost characters begin with a number of Anchors equal to their Resistance. Shades and spirits lack Anchors.

NUMINA Ephemeral cultists begin with three Numina and may gain an additional one by sacrificing one of their Manifestations. Shades may learn Sheut Soul Affinities as Numina, activating their ability to use it for a scene for 1 Essence.

MANIFESTATIONS Ephemeral cultists begin with the Twilight Form Manifestation, plus two additional Manifestations. An additional Manifestation may be gained by sacrificing a Numen in exchange.

SPEED

INVESTMENT

Speed equals Power + Finesse + species factor. Species factor for humans is 5, while that of inanimate objects is 0. For concepts and animals, the Storyteller determines the appropriate species factor.

Determine whether your character is an Inheritor, and which Pillar has been Invested in them. Ephemeral Inheritors tasked with a mission by their mummy gain the Impassioned Shade Condition.

Ephmeral Cultists

47

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Elective Affinities

W

as it the Judges, the Shan’iatu, or the unknowable gods that granted mummies the power to split open earth, spread plague, and break the minds of those around them? The Arisen do not know for certain. Some wield their powers, convinced these Utterances are the only actions they can take freely and without rebuke from their unseen masters. Others believe every action, whether using an Affinity’s blessings on a cultist or altering reality to reduce a Shuankhsen to dust, are steered by the hands and minds of beings far beyond them.

UTTERANCES COLOR FROM VOID Tier 1: Sheut • (Subtle); Tier 2: Ab •••; Tier 3: Ren •••••

Tier 1 The Arisen whispers to places past the cracks of flawed reality, where void and color mix in phantasmagorical potentiality. She gains the Blessed Action quality on a Crafts or Expression roll to create a piece of artwork. The resulting art maybe be beautiful or grotesque but it is never dull, and its imagery is unsettling and subtly alien. Anyone other than mummies and the Arisen’s cultists who view the artwork suffer a –2 penalty on Resolve and Composure rolls for as long as they witness it. This power remains in the artwork indefinitely, or until the Arisen creates new art with this tier.

48

Appendix: Utterances and Affinities

Sheut: If the Arisen uses this tier to create art of another character from live reference — such as watching a target as she paints a picture of them — the resulting art reveals a guilt or secret the character holds through metaphor and symbols both obvious and subtle. The first time the depicted character sees the artwork, they immediately gain the Guilty Condition.

Tier 2 The Arisen opens the cracks that lead to the formless chaos of void and color, turning her art into a gateway. She may use this tier to enchant artwork she has created, or to create an Iremite obelisk or needle that tears up from the ground, its flanks covered in ominous but beautiful glyphs. The obelisk is Size 10 and extremely unsubtle in its emergence. She can maintain up to 1 + her Ab pieces of enchanted artwork. By touching any of the enchanted artworks and activating the tier again, she may pass through the cracks in the illusion of reality. She emerges out of another enchanted artwork 11 – her Sekhem turns later, and gains the Madness Condition for the remainder of the scene; she does not gain a Beat for resolving this Condition. Mortals other than her cultists who witness her emergence from the artwork are exposed to Sybaris. She may also activate the tier while touching her enchanted artwork to unleash a soul-tearing beauty upon witnesses. This only affects those who are looking at the object.

Nameless Thing A manifested Nameless Thing functions as a Rank 4 spirit. Attributes: Power 7, Finesse 11, Resistance 8 Initiative: 18 Defense: 8 Size: 8 Speed: 22 Corpus: 16 Essence: 25 Ban: The Nameless Thing cannot move through or strike through written names. Bane: The tools used to create the originating artwork. Influence: Madness 4 Manifestations: Twilight Form, Materialize, Possess Numina: Dement, Drain, Hallucination, Regenerate, Telekinesis Artistic Gateway: The Nameless Thing always treats the area around its originating artwork as Open, as well as characters who spend time in the scene closely looking at the artwork or recalling when they did so. It can spend 1 Essence as an Instant action to teleport to the location of its originating artwork. A Thousand Impossible Hues: The Nameless Thing can spend 1 Essence to grant a single mortal it can perceive the Inspired Condition, pertaining to creating artwork. Successfully creating artwork while benefiting from the Condition is an immediate Integrity breaking point for the mortal. Overwhelming Presence: Mortals who witness the Nameless Thing itself suffer an Integrity breaking point, and gain the Madness persistent condition if they fail. The Arisen’s cultists are unaffected. Ren Erosion: When the Nameless Thing successfully uses its Dement Numen on a target, rather than the Insane Tilt it may instead apply the Amnesia Condition pertaining to either the target’s name or a specific segment of memory of the Nameless Thing’s choice. The Amnesia Condition cannot be resolved until either the Nameless Thing returns to the void, or it uses Dement on a new target. Whispers from the Void: While the Nameless Thing is present in a scene with its Arisen conjurer, the Arisen adds 2 to the effective value of one Pillar (to a maximum of 5) other than her Defining Pillar for the purpose of calculating dice bonuses, dice pools, and Utterance tier bonuses derived from that Pillar. However, failing any roll that includes the chosen Pillar or comes from an Utterance tier bonus linked to it causes an immediate Lapse breaking point of Memory.

Dice Pool: Sekhem + Ab vs. Resolve + Sekhem Action: Instant Roll Results

Dramatic Failure: The artwork shatters or crumbles. Failure: Nothing happens. Success: Characters with souls who fail to resist the effect suffer the Soulless Condition as the art absorbs it

from them. Characters without souls must flee the presence of the artwork. Mummies are unaffected. Destroying the artwork releases the stolen souls back to their owners. Exceptional Success: Affected characters without souls also suffer 1 point of lethal damage each turn they remain in the presence of the artwork, all color leaching from their bodies as they wither away.

Utterances

49

Ab: With an Ab rating of 3 or higher, the Arisen may limit the effects of the soul-tearing beauty to a single specific target.

Ren: With a Ren rating of 5, the Materialize Manifestation no longer costs the Nameless Thing any Essence.

Tier 3 The Arisen calls one of the obscene Nameless Things that writhe within the places of void and color, shaping its form in her art and sealing its service by forcing a name — a fragment of Ren — upon it. The Arisen summons the Nameless Thing through an existing work of art, whether sculpture or painting or photography; if the Arisen creates a new piece of art herself that depicts the Nameless Thing for this, this tier costs one less Pillar point than normal. The Arisen places a task upon the Nameless Thing, whether to guard the artwork or its environs, hunt for a target, assist with magical workings, or so forth. The Thing attempts to perform this task to the best of its ability but will misconstrue orders malevolently if given the leeway to do so. It has no way to regain Essence, bleeds one Essence per scene when outside the presence of its originating artwork, and returns to the void when out of Essence. Destroying the artwork immediately banishes the entity. The Arisen may only have a single Nameless Thing bound in art at a time.

50

Appendix: Utterances and Affinities

ECHOES OF FADED VOICES Tier 1: Sheut • (Subtle); Tier 2: Ren ••• (Curse); Tier 3: Ka ••••• (Curse, Epic)

Tier 1 The mummy interrupts an individual’s current course of action, causing them to forget their plan and leaving them vulnerable in their confusion. Dice Pool: Wits + Sheut + Sekhem vs. Resolve + Sekhem Action: Contested Duration: One turn Roll Results

Success: The target’s current action is interrupted as they forget what they were doing, causing them to lose their turn. They also lose their Defense until the beginning of their next turn. The memories of the intended action remain lost until the end of the scene,

but the target is likely to think of undertaking it again depending on context. Exceptional Success: The effects on the target also extend to their next action, and they suffer the Confused Condition. Failure: The target’s actions are unaffected. Dramatic Failure: The mummy loses their next turn, suffering a Memory Lapse. Sheut: With a Sheut Pillar rating of 1 or higher, the mummy imposes a haze over the events leading up to the current scene, causing them to lose the context of their action as well as the action itself. This haze lasts for the remainder of the scene. This can potentially cause an individual to forget which side of a conflict they’re actually on, especially if they were already coping with divided loyalties. All lost memories return at the end of the scene, and depending on the individual’s actions during the scene, they may suffer the Guilty Condition at the Storyteller’s discretion.

Tier 2 The victim’s memories are washed away, leaving holes in the target’s experiences. These may be specific events, specific periods of time, or even certain aspects of their life, such as a relationship or a hobby. Without direction, the memories wash away entirely, the target forgetting who they are and losing track of their true desires. Dice Pool: Resolve + Ren + Sekhem vs. Resolve + Sekhem Action: Contested Duration: One chapter Roll Results

Success: The mummy may cloud memories of single events or entire sections of an individual’s life, such as a relationship or recurring event. The target must be within the mummies line of sight or capable of hearing their voice. These lost times become blank spots, lost time in the target’s mental record of events. This doesn’t prevent them from forming new memories related to forgotten aspects, but previous ones are forgotten for the duration. If specific events or segments of their lives aren’t targeted, the victim loses all memory of who they are, gaining the Amnesia Condition and the Forgotten Skill Condition for one Skill chosen by the mummy. Mortal targets suffer a breaking point at a −2 penalty, while mummies suffer a Memory Gap. Targets retain any supernatural abilities they possessed, but may not remember how to use them properly.

Exceptional Success: The target’s memory loss endures for the remainder of the story, and the mummy may apply the Forgotten Skill Condition twice. Mummies suffer a Memory Absence instead of a Memory Gap. Failure: The victim’s memory remains intact. Dramatic Failure: The mummy suffers a Memory Gap, losing some of their recent memories if they fail in addition to all memories of events the targeted individual was intended to forget. Once the duration has passed, lost memories begin returning to the victim, appearing in their dreams and as flashbacks as they encounter familiar situations. Ren: With a Ren Pillar rating of 3 or higher, the mummy may replace forgotten memories with new ones they utter, inflicting the False Memories Condition. These memories must be able to logically fit within the gaps, but don’t necessarily need to be expected. Memories that are extremely out of character for an individual would be more likely to be investigated, however. If the target’s memories are removed entirely, the mummy may completely duplicate the mind and experiences of a named target within the victim when removing their identity, inflicting the False Memories Condition. The target becomes convinced they are the named individual, gaining Skill dots equal to Ren in relevant Skills necessary to maintain the identity for the duration of the Utterance. They also change their Virtue and Vice accordingly.

Tier 3 The mummy calls upon an alternate time stream where a target was never born to wash through their current one, wiping them from the world’s memory. The intended target must be in the mummy’s presence when the Utterance is unleashed, but the effects extend far beyond. Dice Pool: Intelligence + Ka + Sekhem vs. Resolve + Sekhem Action: Contested Duration: One story Roll Results

Success: All evidence that the victim existed disappears. The mummy’s and the target’s own memories remain untouched, but others are not so fortunate. Memories cloud, databases become corrupted, and documentation is lost or destroyed. For all intents and purposes, it is like they never existed at all, denying them the use of most Social Merits and dropping all impression levels to Average for social maneuvering.

Utterances

51

Exceptional Success: The target remains forgotten for the entire chronicle. Failure: The intended victim worries people may forget them, but is otherwise unaffected. Dramatic Failure: The mummy suffers an immediate Memory Gap, forgetting the target themselves if they fail. Once the Utterance’s effects wear off, the victim’s identity gradually reasserts itself, as people begin to recall the individual and documents are successfully recovered. If the first tier is unleashed in conjunction with this one, a given event may be clouded in the minds of all people simultaneously. If unleashed as a death curse, the duration of the effect doesn’t begin to decrease until the mummy rises again. Ka: With Ka Pillar rating of 5, the mummy may instead create an entirely new identity for the target, creating appropriate documentation and other evidence to support this identity. The target may temporarily benefit from Social Merits equal to the Arisen’s Sekhem.

OBEDIENT IMPLEMENTS Tier 1: Ka • (Curse, Epic); Tier 2: Ba ••• (Curse, Epic); Tier 3: Ab ••••• (Curse)

Tier 1 The Arisen claims dominion over the tools of civilization, demanding they serve the heirs of Irem. An affected tool performs its function without need for outside influence, floating as though wielded by an invisible slave. The implement performs tasks within its intended purpose requested by the Deathless to completion, using Ka + double its equipment modifier as a dice pool. Vehicles drive themselves, screwdrivers tighten screws in hard-to-reach places, and guns provide covering fire as the mummy slips away. The tool requires no fuel to function and remains animate for the remainder of the chapter, but requires additional orders to continue functioning once its task is completed. The Arisen may render the Utterance Epic, animating every implement of a certain type within a radius equal to Sekhem in miles. The tools instinctively perform their intended functions without direction. The mummy may give orders to the objects, but must personally address them individually or in small groups. A mummy’s cult may command them on their sovereign’s behalf. Objects animated as a death curse target the mummy’s attacker as the focus of their attentions. A mummy

52

Appendix: Utterances and Affinities

returning to henet in their tomb may unleash this tier as they do so, letting its effects lie in wait for the next time someone violates their tomb. Ka: With a Ka Pillar rating of 1 or higher, the mummy rapidly assembles or disassembles a tool with a touch. Assembling requires all necessary components be nearby, while disassembling separates the implement into its components without damage to them, even when such separation should be impossible. Each turn of contact affects up to Ka Size of the object, requiring multiple turns for larger objects. Vessels and permanent structures can’t be constructed or disassembled in this manner.

Tier 2 Every implement serves the legacy of Irem, so those who oppose its righteous servants find their tools betray them. The Arisen glowers at an implement or a group of similar implements, rendering them difficult to use effectively. Affected objects twist in the hands of their wielders, imposing their equipment bonus as a penalty to attempts to use them, and rendering them Blighted Actions. The Arisen may target all implements or only those of a certain type, such as power tools, vehicles, or weapons, within a Sekhem mile radius, rendering the Utterance Epic. The Arisen may exclude their cultists from the effects if they wish. Vessels and other magical implements are unaffected. Ba: With a Ba Pillar rating of 3 or higher, the uncooperative tools become outright rebellious, turning upon their wielders. Attempts to wield affected objects are reduced to a chance die.

Tier 3 The greatest tools of civilization are humans themselves. This tier puts them to use, calling all slumbering individuals within Sekhem miles to erect a terrible monument to Irem’s glory. Affected individuals sleepwalk to the location of the mummy’s call, dismantling human technology en route. These parts are then constructed into a great effigy of the mummy’s Judge, so its wrath may be brought down upon civilization. Dice Pool: Resolve + Ab + Sekhem vs. Resolve + Sekhem Action: Contested Duration: One night Roll Results

Success: Those failing to contest the effect gather to construct a towering idol, allowing the mummy’s Judge

to manifest an avatar through it. This avatar follows the Judge’s wishes, but often focuses on punishing transgressors against its laws. This manifestation lasts no longer than a full journey of the sun before crumbling into its component parts. Exceptional Success: The Judge feels gratitude toward the mummy. The avatar offers a service to the Arisen before pursuing its own ends. Failure: The target slumbers on, dreaming of the great structure they almost helped to create. Dramatic Failure: The mummy invokes the Judges’ wrath. The construct is built, but the avatar focuses on punishing the Arisen and their cult for their hubris. A mummy may only have one such construct active at a time, and may not unleash this tier again until it has run its natural course. Ab: With an Ab Pillar rating of 5, the mummy may create a loyal and longer-lasting companion. The blasphemous construct functions mechanically like a Rank 2 Amkhat (or Rank 3, on an exceptional success), manifesting freely in the presence of the mummy. The construct is unable to be healed or repaired in any way, mundane or magical, crumbling when it loses its last point of Corpus.

ROTTING FLESH DIVINITY Tier 1: Ab •; Tier 2: Ka •••; Tier 3: Ba ••••• (Epic)

TIER 1 The Arisen calls upon the Courtiers of Flesh, who keep red laws in the gurgling place where corpsemeat goes once lacking hunger and soul. They gird her in cloth-ofgristle, veils of skin, and bindings of gnawed cartilage; the gore-clothes thread around and through her Sahu. She may either call this raiment directly into the world and onto her, or may make use of a human or large animal corpse she touches as the raw material; if she does the latter, the resulting garb raises her Defense by 2. For the remainder of the scene, she wears — and intermingles with — majestic but stomach-turning robes of flesh and bone and a mantle of charnel power, a god of the blooddrowned underworld. Anyone apart from the character’s cultists and other Arisen who wishes to spend a point of Willpower in her presence for any reason must spend an additional point to gain the desired benefits; the second point can exceed the usual per-turn limitations on Willpower but provides no additional advantage. Furthermore, all sources

of damage in her charnel presence deal one extra point of damage to anyone other than herself and her Inheritors. Ab: With an Ab rating of 1 or higher, the Arisen’s grotesque majesty imposes her Ab rating as a penalty on any rolls to resist first-stage Sybaris.

TIER 2 The Arisen utters a proclamation of entitlement to the charnel land’s oozing resources, and calls its Courtiers to attend her needs. She chooses traps worth up to three dots of Peril and conjures them from the red realm into the current scene; each is entirely functional but made of carrion, gristle, and bone. A spiked pit is a gnashing, monstrous maw of bladed teeth; a falling column is a throat of sinew and cartilage just behind the walls that crushes and contracts in sudden, bloody spasms; a body comes apart in an eruption of teeth and noxious gas when someone treads too close. The mummy may instead use existing human and animal remains whose Sizes add together to at least 10 as raw material; the traps crafted from the carcasses linger for the rest of the story rather than just the scene if she wishes, and every additional 10 Size worth of remains she has to hand allows her to spend an additional dot of Peril, to a maximum of 3 additional dots. Ka: With a Ka rating of 3 or higher the Arisen can also use this tier to mend a persistent physical Condition or Tilt with a touch, reattaching severed limbs or sealing spilled guts back up.

TIER 3 The Arisen commands the charnel realm to give up a truly momentous tithe of gore and gristle, her words of divine power infusing the resulting titan with false life in her service. She may either conjure the tithed carrion directly into the world, bubbling out of the blistered skin of reality, or may make use of human or large animal remains whose Sizes add together to 50 or more (so ten intact human bodies, for example); if she does the latter, the resulting titan has 10 additional Health. The charnel titan is a ghastly agglomeration of flesh and bone clad in bloodied wargear. If humanoid, its head is that of a huge sacred animal, usually a crocodile, jackal, or ibis, inlaid with gold and lapis lazuli. However, the Arisen may conjure different forms, such as a mass of grasping, rotting limbs that staggers and ripples in a tide of movement. It lasts until the next time the sun sets, then collapses into moldering meat.

Utterances

53

Charnel Titan Attributes: Strength 15, Dexterity 2, Stamina 10; Presence 5, Manipulation 1, Composure 2; Intelligence 1, Wits 1, Resolve 2 Skills: Athletics 3, Brawl 3 Willpower: 4 Initiative: 4 Defense: 5 Speed: 25 Size: 20 Health: 30 Armored Protector: If the charnel titan is within 5 yards of its Arisen master or a character it has orders to protect, it grants that character partial concealment. Crusher: The charnel titan’s unarmed attacks inflict 2L and the Knocked Down Tilt on victims of Size 15 or less. Anyone within 5 yards of the victim must succeed on a Dexterity + Athletics roll or also suffer the same Tilt. The charnel titan ignores the Durability of structures and objects it strikes. Dead Meat: The charnel titan cannot heal damage normally. Any time an attack would deal 10 or less damage to it, it reduces all damage taken to one; attacks dealing 11 or more damage take full effect. Whenever it suffers a physical Tilt, it may suffer 1 point of lethal damage to ignore the Tilt entirely. Howdah: The charnel titan may carry up to four Size 5 characters in a howdah of dentine plating and ragged skin, offering them substantial concealment. Imbued Ba: The charnel titan cannot be reasoned with and is immune to any form of mind control or influence other than commands from its creator, which it obeys with absolute loyalty and literal-mindedness. Whenever the creator would regain a point of Willpower from her Balance or Burden, the charnel titan also regains a point.

Ba: With a Ba rating of 5, the charnel titan’s imbued Ba is more potent. Its Dexterity, Intelligence, and Wits all increase to 4, it applies its Defense against firearms, and it can intelligently assess a combat situation and show initiative of its own in interpreting its orders. Furthermore, it does not collapse when the sun sets as long as it is within the Arisen’s tomb at the time.

TENEBROUS CONSUMPTION Tier 1: Ab • (Subtle); Tier 2: Sheut •••; Tier 3: Ba ••••• (Curse, Epic)

Tier 1 The mummy calls imperceptible wisps of shadow to snuff out the passions of their targets. They may target a single individual or all within Sekhem miles. Magical

54

Appendix: Utterances and Affinities

circumstances altering impression levels or imposing strong emotions provoke a Clash of Wills. Dice Pool: Composure + Ab + Sekhem vs. Composure + Sekhem Action: Contested Duration: One night Roll Results

Success: Targets contest the mummy’s successes individually. If the mummy succeeds, all targets’ find their passions dulling, love and hate fading into apathy. Their emotions become highly muted, and their impression level toward everyone changes to Average for the duration of the Utterance. Rolls requiring focused thought gain the 8-Again effect. Exceptional Success: The target is also unable to regain Willpower from their Virtue or Vice.

Failure: The target’s passion wavers for just a moment. Dramatic Failure: Emotions rage out of control, including the mummy’s own, imposing the Berserk or Wanton Condition on all affected at the Storyteller’s discretion. Ab: With an Ab Pillar rating of 1 or higher, the mummy may leave one emotion untouched. This remaining emotion is invariably felt strongly in situations where it would be triggered, and affected characters must succeed at a Composure roll to keep from acting on their impulses.

Tier 2 The creeping shadows heeding the mummy’s call rob mortals of their consciousness, lulling a single target or all within Sekhem miles into a troubled sleep until dawn. Dice Pool: Presence + Sheut + Sekhem vs. Resolve + Sekhem Action: Contested Duration: One night Roll Results

Success: Targets contest the mummy’s successes individually. If the Deathless wins, the target falls into a deep but troubled sleep where they are. The target endures horrible nightmares following a theme of the mummy’s choice, regaining no Willpower from rest. If the target encounters an aspect of this nightmare in the waking world the next day, they suffer the Spooked Condition. Touching the target or sudden noises wake the target normally. Exceptional Success: The sleep is far deeper. Any lethal or aggravated damage suffered immediately rouses the target, but otherwise they sleep through anything. Failure: The intended victims yawn deeply, but fight off the enchanted slumber. Dramatic Failure: The mummy suffers the Fatigued Condition, while all others become hyper-alert, gaining the 9-Again effect on perception related rolls. Sheut: With a Sheut Pillar rating of 3 or higher, the mummy may cocoon slumbering targets in solid shadows, protecting the sleepers from harm. Cocooned targets reduce all damage suffered to a single point of the same type. They also provide the Open Condition for any nearby shades.

Tier 3 The world grows eerily quiet, punctuated only by the echoing cries of the lost as the shadows darken, pulsating with

malevolent awareness and unseen movement. Even the least sensitive people feel as though the deep shadows watch their every move. The mummy intensifies the shadows in a radius of Sekhem miles for the remainder of the night. All within the affected area other than the mummy suffer the Distracted Condition, and mortals suffer the Spooked Condition as well. By spending a point of Willpower, the mummy may extend their immunity to their meret and Inheritors, as well. Characters failing an action within the affected area draw the attention of the shadows, as quasi-physical tendrils of darkness rise up to drag their hapless victim into the void. Entangled characters make a contested Strength roll against the mummy’s Ba. If the target succeeds, they break the tendrils, freeing themselves. If the victim fails, they’re dragged through the shadows, vanishing from the world until dawn. If a victim is helpless, such as by being bound or unconscious, the mummy may order the shadows to drag them away without resistance. Those dragged into the darkness wander a pitch-black reflection of the world, with blazing solid flames replacing all sources of light. Each individual is unable to find another, though their voices echo through and from the shadows. Mortals suffer a breaking point, gaining the Shaken Condition if they succeed or the Broken Condition if they fail. At dawn, each person is regurgitated unharmed into the world, having lost 2 Willpower points from the ordeal. Ba: With a Ba Pillar rating of 5, the mummy creates a shadow duplicate of themselves, sending it after a named target. As long as the target exists within the affected area, the duplicate can track them unerringly, slipping through any opening to reach their target. The duplicate shares the mummy’s traits, but only seeks to grapple the target. If the duplicate can successfully apply the Restrain option, the target is dragged into the shadows until dawn. This effect can only be unleashed against a single target per unleashing.

USURPING THE RED SHORES Tier 1: Sheut • (Curse); Tier 2: Ka •• (Curse); Tier 3: Ab •••• (Curse, Epic)

Tier 1 The mummy twists an individual’s relationship with language, replacing their natural language capacities with the ability to communicate with spirits for the duration of the scene. They also gain the ability to perceive and interact with things in the spiritual frequency of Twilight. The mummy may affect Sheut + 1 targets with each unleashing.

Utterances

55

Midnight at High Noon The Tenebrous Consumption Utterance functions best at night, when it draws upon existing shadows to enhance its effects. When used during the day, targets gain a +2 bonus to contest the effects, but the Utterance still lasts until the following dawn. Other alterations to the effects follow: Tier 1: Targets gain a second chance to contest the effects when the sun sets, potentially shrugging off the effects earlier. Tier 2: When targeting an area to effect instead of single target, instead of rapidly falling asleep, those affected gain the Fatigued Condition unless they already suffered from it. Individuals targeted by the Utterance are affected normally. Tier 3: The sun is clouded, the world becoming as dark as a terrible thunderstorm without the need for any cloud cover. Only people who are alone or within particularly dark areas are targeted by the shadows until night falls.

Sheut: With a Sheut Pillar rating of 1 or higher, the Arisen may choose to grant the ability to speak the tongues of mortals and spirits alike. Alternatively, they may blend the languages together, rendering the mortal incomprehensible to both as all attempts at communication result in gibberish. If this is unleashed as a death curse, the effects remain on the killer for the remainder of the story.

Tier 2 The Deathless alters the Resonance surrounding a target within a radius of miles equal to the mummy’s Sekhem, whether it is a person, place, or object, to match the mummy’s desires. The chosen Resonance draws compatible spirits to it from all around, providing the Resonant Condition for them. Actions intended to work against this Resonance become Blighted Actions. This effect lasts for the remainder of the chapter. If unleashed as a death curse, the effects last for the remainder of the story, and spirits sense the target is inimical to the Resonance calling to them. Ka: With a Ka Pillar rating of 2 or higher, the mummy may bind a spirit of Rank equal or less than their Ka into an appropriately Resonant object. The spirit is released to perform a service for an individual touching the object. The spirit may refuse a commanded task, returning to its bindings. After fulfilling Ka total tasks, the spirit is freed and may not be bound with this Utterance again for the remainder of the chronicle, though it likely holds a grudge against the one responsible for the binding.

56

Appendix: Utterances and Affinities

Tier 3 The mummy’s will drags down the Gauntlet in a radius equal to Sekhem in miles, temporarily fusing the two worlds into one. All spirits in the area have the Materialized Condition, regardless of which side of the Gauntlet they’d initially been on, and the geography of the area warps to include the perspective of the Shadow. Mortals attempting to navigate the warped area suffer the Lost Condition, and those witnessing spirit activity gain the Shaken Condition. The mummy adds their Sekhem to all Social rolls targeting spirits in the affected area. By spending a point of Willpower, the Arisen may render spirits in the area hostile toward all physical beings. If Unleashed as a death curse, only the attackers suffer the spirits’ wrath, and no Willpower expenditure is necessary to provoke it. By unleashing the first tier along with this one, they may extend its effects through all humans in the affected area, granting all a common language or rendering them incapable of understanding each other. By unleashing the second tier along with this one, the entire area takes on the desired Resonance, and spirits associated with it are empowered, functioning as though they were one Rank higher for the duration. A mummy who wishes to limit the effects of this tier may use it to punch a hole through the Gauntlet, creating a portal that remains open for the remainder of the scene. Unleashing the Utterance in this manner isn’t Epic. Ab: With an Ab Pillar rating of 4 or higher, the mummy may impose a new Ban or Bane to all spirits in the affected

area. This functions in addition to an entity’s usual Ban and Bane, and it fails to take hold if the Ban or Bane in question would interfere with their usual ones or are so ubiquitous as to be unavoidable.

soul onto another. Resolve the threat against the new target. Red Chains of Sacrifice offers no protection from indiscriminate area-of-effect dangers.

NEW SOUL AFFINITIES

Supernatural means cannot influence the admiration or love of characters who feel genuine, natural emotion towards the Arisen. Such characters add the Arisen’s Ab rating to their Doors against social maneuvers to turn them against the mummy via mundane means. The Arisen can always identify those who have shown her genuine love in the past, even when at Memory levels which would normally deny her that knowledge, although all she recalls is the authenticity of their love and she gains no further details beyond that sense of warm affection.

A

ffinities affect and alter the weave of the universe, turning events to your favor or foiling an enemy’s actions before they even try and attempt them. For the most part more subtle than Utterances, mummies often use Affinities in the presence of their cultists to demonstrate their power and win devotion from anyone unsure of following an impossible being such as a Deathless.

ALL Pillar of Destiny The Arisen bears Fate’s blessing and radiates good fortune. She never experiences minor mundane inconveniences such as hitting a red light in traffic. She may choose the outcome of mundane games of chance; at will, she can draw any card from a deck, roll snake-eyes on the dice, or pull the winning result on the slot machine. If a supernatural power would vex or harm her with ill fortune — such as inflicting the Blighted Action trait on her, denying her 10-again, granting an attacker a beneficial dice trait from magical luck, or cause disastrous ill fortune to afflict or kill her — the player can choose to reflexively spend a point of Willpower to cancel the power, even if the character herself is unaware of the threat and has no way to perceive it. Mortals who spend at least one scene in the presence of the Arisen gain a random dot of a mundane Merit as chosen by Fate, lasting until the end of the chapter; this might be a lucky windfall (Resources), a timely friendship (Allies), or the like, but a mortal can only benefit from one dot at a time via this Affinity’s effects.

AB Red Chains of Sacrifice When an attack or hostile power targets the Arisen, the mummy may reflexively spend a point of Willpower and redirect the threat onto another character within 5 yards of the Arisen’s location, even if the Arisen is unaware of the threat. The new target must be either one of the Arisen’s cultists or a non-Arisen character who is entirely unaware of the threat. A cultist throws themselves into the path of a shot, or malign energies course off the Arisen’s

The Heart Burns Eternal

BA Coax the Flames of Brilliance The Arisen reduces all mundane penalties to her Mental and Social Skill rolls by her Ba rating, including unskilled penalties. Mortals who witness her brilliance with a Mental or Social Skill also benefit from the reduction to penalties on that Skill if they use it during the same chapter (or within the same interval, for extended actions), and once per story she can mentor a mortal to achieve an exceptional success if they achieve even a single success while doing so. Furthermore, those who attempt to puzzle out, predict, or decipher her plans and schemes suffer her Ba rating as a penalty to their dice rolls to do so.

Thousand Paths Serve The Pharaoh The Arisen’s soul blazes with invigorating power that encourages fresh perspectives, new approaches, and tireless effort. She may rewrite one of her cult’s Doctrines each story without having to sacrifice a dot of the cult’s Dominance — even the Judge’s Doctrine, although the new one must still serve the Judge’s overall agenda. She can always choose to resolve a Heresy Condition immediately by adopting it as a new Doctrine for her cult. Whenever her cult fails a Task within a cult action, it adds the mummy’s Ba rating as a bonus to the next Task roll within that action.

KA Desert Swallows The Forgotten Temple Those who stand against the Arisen’s legacy are doomed to be forgotten. Whenever her cult would take any amount of damage to its Fidelity from an action due to a war with another cult or organization, it suffers one less damage; New Soul Affinities

57

when it would deal any amount of damage to the Fidelity of another from an action, it deals one additional damage. The Arisen may reflexively spend a point of Willpower when dealing damage to another character, or when her cult damages another cult or organization, to erode their presence; for the remainder of the story, any attempt to investigate the details of the conflict or the cause of the harm suffers the Arisen’s Ka rating as a penalty. Police picking over the scene of a cult battle struggle to identify the dead bodies; investigators find it hard to believe the rantings of a wounded victim.

Rest Beneath The Turquoise Trees The Arisen’s unwavering conviction offers comfort and reassurance to those around her, safe in the knowledge that she will always be there for them. Characters who regain a point of Willpower by resting in her presence also restore one additional point, and recover from fatigue and exhaustion twice as quickly; no supernatural influence can reach their dreams as they rest. Attempts to discover the location of or remotely harm a character resting or recuperating from injury in the presence of the Arisen, whether mundane or magical, suffer the Arisen’s Ka rating as a penalty to their dice pools. Even when in henet, the Arisen’s physical remains extend these benefits in their near vicinity. Finally, the Arisen may reflexively spend a point of Willpower to treat a wounded, unconscious, or otherwise stricken character she touches towards whom she intends no harm as weightless for as long as needed to get them to safety or aid, letting her carry them without any penalty to her actions or Speed, and grants them full cover from her own body against all attacks. Nothing stops foes attacking the Arisen directly when carrying the needful, however.

REN Scroll of Flayed Truths The Arisen’s sorcerer and immortal cultists gain access to the Rite of Flayed Truths, a closed rite, for as long as they remain in the cult; if they leave, they also lose the rite. This knowledge comes from the power of the Arisen’s own soul, and she does not need to be active to impart it. In addition, the mere presence of she or her physical remains can replace one element in any rite her sorcerer and immortal cultists perform. The three elements of the rite are: • The leading sorcerer must cut (dealing 1 lethal damage) or permanently tattoo her skin with sacred

58

Appendix: Utterances and Affinities

glyphs. A point of Ba allows the sorcerer to merely paint or ink the glyphs on temporarily. • The sorcerers must hold vigil over the area to be warded from dusk until dawn. A point of Sheut merely requires them to be present in the area at dawn to perform the rite. • The sorcerers must daub or paint incantations upon parchment made from animal or human skin. A point of Ren allows them to use papyrus, paper, or even digital media. Upon completion, the rite wards an area consisting of chambers or rooms up to the number of participating sorcerers. For the next month, anyone not of the cult who enters the warded area without invitation for the first time suffers 1 lethal damage as a strip of their skin flays off, leaving behind a painful brand of their trespass that remains for one story — or permanently, with a point of Ka. A point of Ab causes the warding to detect internal strife within the cult should many of its members pass through the chosen place, causing details of any Heresy Condition to well up in bloody words beneath the skin of the lead sorcerer.

Verdigris Chains of Deceit The Arisen adds her Ren rating as a dice bonus to her Subterfuge rolls. Whenever a rumor, gossip, or lie spreads that concerns or relates to the Arisen, she can always sense the occult flows of truth and deceit to track down the source via an investigation action, and starts with a single Clue with a number of elements equal to her Ren rating. She may spend a Willpower point as an Instant action to spread a rumor without trace; it spreads rapidly as gossip or across social media for a single day among those inclined to speculate on the matter, then propagates or diminishes naturally. It cannot be tracked back to her as the source; indeed, she does not even need to speak with anyone to spread it, merely writing it down and letting the power of her soul carry it off to suitable minds.

SHEUT Beast Soul Fury The Arisen’s soul burgeons with feral power and instinct. She always uses the highest of her Wits or Dexterity when determining her Defense, imposes her Sheut rating as a penalty on dice pools to supernaturally influence her mind or emotions, and adds it to her dice pools to detect

or overcome illusions. She may reflexively spend a point of Willpower to enter a state of monstrous fury for the remainder of the scene, her swift and brutal reactions catching foes flat-footed; enemies must make a contested surprise roll or suffer the effects of being ambushed even if they knew of her presence, and even if they are trying to ambush her.

Unerring Gaze of Judgment The Arisen can always see perfectly regardless of light levels, whether pitch darkness or blindingly bright, and is unaffected by the Blinded Tilt. She may spend a point of Willpower as an Instant action to witness those deemed unclean to the sight of Sheut for the remainder of the scene — Lifeless creatures such as Shuankhsen, characters who regain Willpower by indulging a Vice (or equivalent trait) during the scene, characters whose actions cause a breaking point in themselves or others during the scene, and entities from outside reality (reality including the underworld, Duat, and the Shadow). She can see such characters as radiating profane power for the remainder of the scene and does not lose her Defense when making all-out attacks against them. If she uses this power while conducting an investigation of a character who registers as unclean to her sight, the first Clue she gains includes one element relating to that character drawn directly from her perception of their corrupt aura.

NEW GUILD AFFINITIES

T

he guilds are highly protective over their range of powers, and while, theoretically, a mummy of another guild could learn one of these Affinities, stealing such knowledge would place a firm target on the thief’s back.

THE DECEIVED Wielder of Names The Deceived wields the power of Nomenclature with practiced ease. She can use another character’s name — whatever others currently and regularly use to refer to them, but not titles — to empower her magic against them, pronouncing it as part of an Utterance that targets them specifically. This reduces the cost of unleashing the Utterance by one Pillar point, which can reduce the cost to zero. Alternatively, she can draw upon the greater power of another character’s True Name. Learning the true name requires at least one scene of interaction or investigation of the target, and success on a roll of Intelligence + Occult

– (5 + Sekhem); the penalty reduces by 1 for each additional scene the Deceived spends seeking the True Name. Mummies’ True Names belong to the Judges, and they cannot be affected by this form of Nomenclature. With the True Name, the Deceived can investigate and track the named character as if they were a relic via Kepher, and she increases her effective Sekhem by 4 for calculating Utterance dice pools, effects, and access to Utterance tiers that specifically target the character.

As Whispers In The Night The Deceived masks her own name and presence from the world with the power of Nomenclature. When another non-Deceived character would detect the Deceived’s nature as an Arisen, her Decree, her Guild, or her Judge, she senses the attempt and chooses false information the character receives instead; in the case of Decree, she always reads as Ren. By spending a Willpower point as an Instant action, she may apply the Blighted Action quality to any perception, Investigation, or Survival rolls to spot or pursue her or investigate her identity for the remainder of the chapter. If she knows the name of a character pursuing or seeking her, she may also spend a Willpower point once per scene to invoke Fate and obstruct them directly; a seemingly random event will befall the target to expedite the Deceived’s evasion, such as a vehicle stopping to block a road and hide the Arisen from sight, or the arrival of another, unrelated antagonist.

KHER-MINU Tread the Crimson Field Eternal The Stone Spear is as a divinity of slaughter upon the battlefield, reaping a bloody harvest from those who dare face her terrible wrath. Whenever the Kher-Minu kills another character directly with her bare hands or weapons, she reflexively heals up to three points of bashing, lethal, or aggravated damage. Victims must be fighting the Kher-Minu, attempting to steal or damage her relic, or trespassing on a place she guards to trigger this healing; she gains nothing from killing unresisting characters.

Butcher Demon Transfiguration The Kher-Minu channels the righteous strength of the guardian butcher-demons who watch over souls in Duat. She retains her Defense against firearms, and allies of the Stone Spear within 5 yards of her benefit from partial concealment against all attacks as she intercedes to protect them with lightning reflexes. Furthermore, she may

New Guild Affinities

59

spend a point of Willpower as a reflexive action to take on demonic aspect for the scene. Curved butcher-blades of black stone jut forth between her fingers and toes, serving as weapons with a damage rating of 3L, initiative modifier of +2, and she may inflict the Arm Wrack or Leg Wrack Tilt on victims she damages.

MAAR-KHERIT Flesh-Splitting Canker Rejuvenation The Blight’s tumult of cancerous rejuvenation constantly repairs her body. She heals one point of bashing or lethal damage per turn, and one point of aggravated damage every twelve hours. If she suffers one or more points of lethal damage from a source, she may reflexively spend a point of Willpower to shape and channel the resulting tumorous overdrive. She either removes a single physical Tilt as ruined limbs twist back into shape or entirely new ones bud forth, or grants herself a point of armor for the remainder of the scene. This armor stacks with other sources, and is cumulative with itself to a maximum of her Ka rating via toughened lesions and cartilaginous cancers.

Harvest of Profane Fecundity The Blight can see the raw vitality and life within a mortal’s body — both their own, and that of all the diseases and parasites and flora that nestle within their flesh. At a glance, she can perceive and identify any diseases a human suffers from or carries, whether they have passed such on to others within the past week, and whether they have any parasitic organisms within them. She knows whether such ailments are mundane or supernatural. As a move of desperation or malevolence, she can stir the life within a mortal into maddened overdrive with a touch, reflexively spending a Willpower point as she does so. The mortal makes a Stamina roll, immediately healing as many points of damage of any kind as they roll successes. If they roll no successes, they instead contract a grave, bloodborne disease that inflicts the Blight’s Sekhem in lethal damage every 6 hours. If they dramatically fail, they die immediately as internal flora and fauna erupts into overgrowth and their own flesh rebels.

60

Appendix: Utterances and Affinities

WADJET-ITJA AFFINITIES Ominous Harbinger The mummy gazes upon portents in the world around them, from the flights of birds to the spread of viscera from sacrificial victims, revealing secrets previously unknown to the Oracle. • The mummy benefits from the Omen Sensitivity Merit, and may interpret omens a number of times per chapter equal to their defining Pillar. Wadjet-Itja suffer no drawback when interpreting omens. • By spending a point of Willpower, the Oracle glimpses the fated death of a mortal. By hastening their demise by the same or other means, the Gambler steals the years the victim would otherwise have enjoyed. Their new death cannot be brought about directly by the Oracle or their allies, but they may steer the mortal toward looming perils through false prophecies or other manipulations.

Trickster’s Wager The Thieves of Eyes are renowned for their skills at gambling and mastery of the odds. • The mummy adds their defining Pillar to rolls for gambling or when cheating at games of chance. • When specifying the rules for a game or formal duel, the Gambler may forbid cheating in any form, rendering all such attempts Blighted Actions, including their own. • By spending 1 Willpower point, Oracles may gamble with the stakes being days, weeks, months, or years of life. Gamblers who win add the years to their available total, and their next Descent roll becomes a Blighted Action. Those who lose subtract it from their available total, and make an immediate Descent roll. Mortals who lose life in this way subtract them from the end of their lifespan, and reduce their healing rate to half of its usual value for the same amount of time, while winning life has the opposite effect. Endless characters and others without a natural lifespan cannot stake their lives in this manner, but may gamble for Sekhem instead if they possess any.

There is naught more powerful than life. Life is the wellspring from which all hope and endeavor emerges. How selfish of you Arisen, to deny us the same secrets you hold so close. Not to worry, my entombed friend. My friends and have found ways of replicating your eternal state, though I daresay, our choices require a little more cutting and pasting than your ancient methods. How fortunate for you that you only needed to practice your Rite of Return a single time. For us, we are always on the lookout for a new little finger, a new femur, a new heart… Maybe we will learn at your feet, when you awake. Perhaps we’ll steal what you have and make it our own. Needless to say, we will serve you, for a time. But when we know all that you know, you will find even your eternity will come to an end.

THE BOOK OF LASTING DEATH INCLUDES: • New guilds to play in your chronicles of Mummy: The Curse,, from the tragic Deceived and stoic Kher-Minu Curse to the blighted Maar-Kherit and oracular Wadjet-Itja. • New antagonists among the Judges and Amkhata and playable options such as Patchwork People, Purified, and ephemeral cultists, as well as many more. • New cosmic powers, some specific to the guilds in this book and others usable by Deathless created from the Mummy: The Curse core book.