I’m about to run our first session and a need some advice on my mummy monster.
Name: Posht Set-ankh, the Reanimated Mummy
Type: Devourer
Powers: Inflict Curse, Insect Swarm Form, Life Drain
Weaknesses: Fire
Attacks: Slam 2-harm close, Insect Swarm (attack) 2-harm area, Insect Swarm (envelop) 3-harm intimate restraining
Armor: Wrappings 1-armor.
This is our first session so I didn’t want anything crazy complicated. The gist is that a budding necromancer (a minion who will ingratiate himself to the hunters if possible) raised this mummy and immediately lost control. The mummy’s goal is to force people into its sarcophagus where it can devour them, leaving the mummified husk of the victim behind. It’s a fairly stupid monster, but would become smarter the more people it devoured. The setting is a natural history museum (I plan to use this location again unless things don’t go at all like I think they will).
I have two questions:
1. How should the mummy’s curse affect the hunters? A -1 ongoing seems boring, but it’s about all I can come up with.
2. What other weaknesses make sense? I’m loosely planning this as a 3-parter, each with different undead monsters (mummy, ghost, reanimated t-rex). So I want there to be a common thread of ways to hurt (but not kill) the monsters: holy water/symbols, certain runes etc, and then specific ways to permanently kill each type of undead. But I think the mummy needs other weaknesses – fire is fairly generic and I’m not sure how the hunters would deduce it.
Here’s some ideas:
1. For the curse, you could write it up as a custom move with some specific effects, and pick one of those for the curse victims. E.g.: become sick with a fever, lose something important, automatically fail when next trying to stop Posht.
2. If you have a fairly general weakness already, a very specific one might be a good complement. E.g. a specific magic ritual, or very particular substances and wardings, to harm the creature.
Well,fire as you said works and you could make the curse swap their stats around,make it so rolls work differently,or you could make it so they are forced to switch bodies until the mummies death
There are several ways to handle curses. One is too simply make it an attack with dire side effects (slow and painful transformation) or a situational penalty (-1 to a roll at night or luck costs double). Regarding the Weakness, maybe something in keeping with a larger Mythical bent?
You could also have an Item of sorts that keeps it bound to the Mortal Plane,such as an Ankh or headress,something like that
I don’t want to make the curse too strong, unless maybe the curse in itself could become a monster, removing it could be the next mystery.
Michael Sands Ah okay, maybe the next time the hunters try and do something that is a direct attack on the mummy they become nauseated and fail? I like the sound of that. I just didn’t want to do straight numbers.
Sora The Blind One ChaosBorn I like that. Perhaps something that was used in the ritual that raised it could also be used to destroy it.
Exactly,and since its a Mummy,its not out of the realm of possibilites,and you could make it so the Mummy keeps coming back until the items destruction
I dig it, especially since it can turn into a swarm of insects. I can absolutely see myself faking out the hunters by making them think it’s dead only to have it burst into a swarm of insects and run away.
Maybe the curse could be they couldn’t use luck points when fighting it?
I don’t have any advice for you, but I’m chiming in to say that this is a really fun-sounding mystery, and I’d like to steal your idea for my game!
I’m working on a short writeup. Will post it if/when I finish it.
Tim Regan the writeup is here. I’ll post it in the Mysteries section once I run it and make some adjustments. The only thing its missing right now is names for some bystanders.
docs.google.com – Mummy in the Museum
Nathan Smith Looks great! Thanks for sharing.