BTH: The Last Mistress and the Buried Hands

[DeepShadow of FoS]

This is an offshoot of the Bait This Hook thread, dealing with the Last Mistress and the Buried Hands thieves guild in Lekar. Nathan suggested they were a direct rip-off of the Lankhmar theives guilds, whereas Giamarga wanted to know about the guild's relationship with the vampyres.

Maybe she was an individual rogue who defied Drakov and thereby became an icon for the dashing rogue wanna-be's of Falkovnia? They formed a cult of sorts to keep her memory alive...and discovered one day that she was more alive than they would have liked?

Okay, I think I just handled that one...here's the next one:

In the Book of Crypts adventure Bride of Mordenheim, Elise Mordenheim's neice comes looking for her. She's a wizard, of all things, and the spitting image of her aunt. What happened to this young woman?

Lord Cyclohexane

Why necessarily mix Drakov into it? Mixing two notions:
- Bog Monster of Hroth
- Concrete shoes

I think it'd be neat to have a rogue who betrayed the "family", slapped in concrete shoes, sunk down beneath the muck at the river's bottom (Lekar is on the Vuchar River) where the body was perfectly preserved... Only to rise again to take control of the local syndicate.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

About the problem of getting such a powerful mummy from a concrete-overshoes burial:

Perhaps the Last Mistress was originally just that: the mistress of a prior crimelord. However, she was also a public figure, the "trophy wife" of a major Talon security-officer. Bored with her circumscribed life of formal dinners, militant ceremony, and chauvanism, she rebelled against this stifling existence by passing on her overheard knowledge of Lekar's guard operations to a crimelord, eventually having an affair with him.

When her husband grew suspicious, she turned to her lover to help her get away. Unfortunately, the crime boss realized she was no longer useful to him if she was under suspicion, so he had her killed and dumped in the drink to cover up their dealings. Her husband quickly figured out what happened, but he couldn't let word of his wife's security-leaks get out without winding up on a stake for his troubles; thus, he staged a "frantic search" for his missing wife, plastering drawings of her everywhere and turning her into a sort of 'poster-child' for vanished innocents, in the eyes of all Lekar. The tide of popular sympathy for the woman -- whom most Falkovnians secretly believed took her own life out of misery, being wedded to a Talon -- grew to a cult-like fervor, allowing her to rise from the grave and kill the crime lord ... hence, she really was his last mistress.

[DeepShadow of FoS]

While I like the cement shoes idea, I really don't see any way to get a 4th rank AD without an ornate tomb and a decent amount of grave goods.

If you're so hooked on cement shoes, why not have her collect a number of bog mummies as her underlings, cast-offs from the guild who were executed, now coming back to help her take over?

[DeepShadow of FoS]

About the problem of getting such a powerful mummy from a concrete-overshoes burial:

Perhaps the Last Mistress was originally just that: the mistress of a prior crimelord.

In this version, did she gain most of her rogue levels...posthumously? I can't justify gaining 16 levels in rogue just as a gossipmonger.

Then again, I have a hard time justifying 16 levels in rogue, period. What could she possibley gain from those later levels the wouldn't be better served in a prestige class, such as shadowdancer?

[Nathan of the FoS]

Then again, I have a hard time justifying 16 levels in rogue, period. What could she possibly gain from those later levels the wouldn't be better served in a prestige class, such as shadowdancer?

Sneak attack, trap sense, and mucho skill points. Skill focus and opportunist ain't bad, either.

And, y'know, maybe she just never had a chance to go to dancing school...

[Rotipher of the FoS]

Maybe she didn't ever enter a prestige class because she earned most of her levels posthumously. As an Ancient, she might not have the mental flexibility to change classes; even gaining levels in her original class must be quite a challenge for a mummy.

[DeepShadow of FoS]

Then again, I have a hard time justifying 16 levels in rogue, period. What could she possibly gain from those later levels the wouldn't be better served in a prestige class, such as shadowdancer?

Sneak attack, trap sense, and mucho skill points. Skill focus and opportunist ain't bad, either.

And, y'know, maybe she just never had a chance to go to dancing school...

All good points, but I also cite them as evidence that she was a traditional rogue rather than some nobleman's wife. She was arm-candy but never learned to dance?

[DeepShadow of FoS]

Maybe she didn't ever enter a prestige class because she earned most of her levels posthumously. As an Ancient, she might not have the mental flexibility to change classes; even gaining levels in her original class must be quite a challenge for a mummy.

Hmm...maybe. So she was a low/medium-level rogue who was the mistress of the last guildmaster? What about the grave goods issue?

I like the cement shoes, I really do. I just can't see it with Rank 4.

In other issues, what about Giamarga's question regarding the vampyrs? What's the guild's relation to them?

My first thought is vampyrs feeding off AD = eewww. My second thought is that a vampyr mummy = . So...where does that leave us? What if the Undead Hands contained many of the vampyr's bloodless victims dumped in the river?

This brings up a point: what's their motivation? Are they just obsessed with gathering more loot? Are they rogues fighting against the system? I can see it a couple of different ways. Do they have any living members?

[The Giamarga]

Vampyr mummy = over-the-top. IMO they should be antagonists. Note that the slumlord Vladimir Ludzig is either a Ftr6/Vampyr8 or an Ari3/Ftr10/Vampyr8, so he's a force to be reckoned with.


Let's have the original hook again

p 106, Lekar sidebar, important figures: The Last Mistress, (head of the Buried Hands, an undead thieves guild), female Rank 4 Ancient Dead Rog16

I think this is a pretty direct rip-off of the Thieves' Guild of Lankhmar, actually. Of course, the Guild in Lankhmar is staffed largely by living thieves, but the guild masters stick around after their decease to keep an eye on things (so to speak).

Okay, then it sounds like we need to break away from that. Let's pick a tenet of that archetype and go against it.

Maybe the Last Mistress wasn't a guildmemember in life? Maybe she was an individual rogue who defied Drakov and thereby became an icon for the dashing rogue wanna-be's of Falkovnia? They formed a cult of sorts to keep her memory alive...and discovered one day that she was more alive than they would have liked?

That does not quite work as the whole guild is noted to be undead, DS! :ankhtepot:
To create an undead guild she has to have the power to create more undead, most probably minor/lesser mummies. Probably through an SLA. (This is a bit too similar to Simon Audaire from the great Dragon article The Cult of Simon Audaire btw.)

I'd personally have her a high level Rogue before coming back undead. Gaining that much experience afterwards is hard to justify. As for the level being so high, Falkovnia has lots of very high level NPCs.

About the title: The Last Mistress. Whose mistress was she? Probably another very high-level NPC, possibly from Falkovnia. So... ...Drakov perhaps? Or General Falkführer Pol Amarant (Ari1/Ftr15/Rog4 and the director of the Stangengrad Military Academy), or Marcos Vedarrak (Ftr6/Enchanter10 from Book of Sacrifices) ?

What kind of Rogue was she in the first place? She must have been "adventuring" to get to such a level of competence. What would have to happen for a rogue mistress of a man of such caliber to be entombed and come back as a mummy? Where/what is her tomb?

Perhaps she led a double-life right under the nose of her husband. Is an alignment given for her? Could she have secretly been a rebel? Then she was entombed alive together with her whole guild in the secret headquarters which happened to be a secret temple to some ancient gods (dark/akiri?). Or she herself did bring back an item from such a tomb while adventuring and with that the means that later made her come back? Or was there a mummy who somehow got to Falkovnia and sought to make her his mistress?

[DeepShadow of FoS]

I'm musing over your ideas, giamarga, but let's just interject this for now: "mistress" may not mean the object of a sexual infidelity. It might just mean the feminine of "master."

[The Giamarga]

Yes of course. It could just be The Last (Guild) Mistress. So why is she the Last? Because the guild died. And came back. Undead. But how? where?

[DeepShadow of FoS]

Vampyr mummy = over-the-top. IMO they should be antagonists. Note that the slumlord Vladimir Ludzig is either a Ftr6/Vampyr8 or an Ari3/Ftr10/Vampyr8, so he's a force to be reckoned with.

All the more reason to raise some of his lackeys as allies.

That does not quite work as the whole guild is noted to be undead, DS! :ankhtepot:

Well, we gotta start somewhere. My vision was that she came back after a decade or two of "worship" by a living cult that doubled as a guild (there was no guild when she passed away). She might have killed the guild to make them into her servants, or she might have reanimated them after they ran afoul of the vampyrs, or any other number of scenarios.

To create an undead guild she has to have the power to power to create more undead, most probably minor/lesser mummies. Probably through an SLA. (This is a bit too similar to Simon Audaire from the great Dragon article The Cult of Simon Audaire btw.)

Any mummy-worship group is going to resemble Simon Audaire.

What kind of Rogue was she in the first place? She must have been "adventuring" to get to such a level of competence.

That's where I got the idea about her taunting Drakov. I'm thinking a 16th level rogue could pull off some hilarious stunts to thumb her nose at the man, and get a huge following doing it.

Then she was entombed alive together with her whole guild in the secret headquarters which happened to be a secret temple to some ancient gods (dark/akiri?).

I don't see any need to bring in a temple to anyone.

Or she herself did bring back an item from such a tomb while adventuring and with that the means that later made her come back?

Possible...

Or was there a mummy who somehow got to Falkovnia and sought to make her his mistress?

I get the feeling that you want to involve more classical mummies, as opposed to the general Ancient Dead. After all, the Lamenting Rake of Paridon didn't have a temple to some forgotten deity, or an item from such a tomb, or an Akiri mummy, and he managed to make the transition.

If you want to involve more traditional mummies, I'd recommend looking into the Falkovnian tombs mentioned in VRGttAD. One of those was collapsed to seal such creatures in, but that's hardly an obstacle to a 16th level character.

[ChrisNichols]

The Last Mistress is actually a subtle reference to an ancient mentioned in VRGttAncientDead.

Now the trick is finding the reference.

Chris Nichols

[The Giamarga]

Aha! Thanks for the pointer. Now where's my copy VRGttAD....

DS, I don't neccessarily have to involve any Akiri references, I was jsut playing aroudn with some ideas there.

I'll have to reread the exact requirements for rank 4 too.

[DeepShadow of FoS]

Okay, skimming VRGttAD, I find only the prolonged unlocated to Falkovnia, in the section on second rank AD's. I've often found it worth exploring in more detail, but I don't think this is it, because:

--the section is on second-rank Ancient Dead, and the Last Mistress is fourth. There is the leader-mummy at the end, but that is a staff-wielder, almost sure to be a spellcaster.

--It's in a mining camp in the middle of nowhere, not in a city.

So that leaves the stuff on thieves at the end, where it talks about how a previous guildmaster might be venerated and turned into an AD. Sounds reasonable. Still, I knew this when I suggested breaking the mold, and none of this tells us how the entire guild wound up with a severe case of dead....

I say we keep running with our version.