Children of the Night: Ancient Dead

[Joël of the FoS]

An idea I once had for the LCotN project:

Antunia Papiècu
(Ancient Dead)

Appearance : Slightly withered corpse. She isn’t wrapped in clothes like a traditional mummy. One can see what she looked in life: 40 years old, broad shoulders, short black hairs. Her front head hawk brand (she is Falkovnian) turned blackish.

Stat: Mummy 3rd rank

Background: Antunia Papiècu was a dedicated Falkovnian soldier. Even in chauvinistic Falkovnia army, she was able to get a few ranks with a lot of determination. Her life was divided between the army and raising her two boys, Passmoilè and Niapud.

Falkfuhrer Vjorn Horstman, head of the Falkovnian Ministry of Science, had some researches going on mummification in order to create a super soldier. A select group of Talons, of which Antunia, went to the Amber Waste to kidnap an embalming specialist, Rashid-al-Wawat. The Falkovnians established a secret research camp north-east of Morfenzi, near the Shadow Rift void. The camp was in an abandoned mine in the Crumbling Hills. With the information provided by the Har’Akir mummifying specialist, a tar pit was used in these experiments.

To create the first Falkovnian mummy, they used a soldier that has proven his dedication to Falkovnia: Antunia! Her last souvenir of life was the horror of being drowned in a tar pit under the laughs of her former comrades.

After various alchemical treatments, she was raised to unlife with exhilarating new powers. She was still loyal to Falkovnia. Under direct supervision of Vjorn Horstman, they had her defeat easily 10 Falkovnian soldiers. Horstman was pleased: a small shock division of 50 similar super soldiers could easily seize a town, and then leave control to regular Falkovnian troops.

Antunia was charged of training new mummy “recruits” to their new powers and into discipline. She liked her new role in that secret division of the Falkovnia army. The other mummies created are mindless and under her control during the training. After, control was to be transferred to Otto Klockasup, the Talon in charge of the camp.

However, one day she saw her own sons taken out of the tar pit as a mummies. Old forgotten emotions came back to her. She felt pity for her sons and for the brutal lack of concerns of her superiors.

The Falkovnia government had taken her all she had. From then on, she really hated the Ministry of Science.

Current sketch: to bring down this hated secret experiment camp and destroy those responsible for it.

Personality: cold. Hateful, methodical, patient.

Adventure: Traitor or hero?

• The PCs (or a trusted person or mentor) get a letter from an unknown source. It is a spy report that tells about a Falkovnia “super soldier” program. This program is close to success and that would mean great danger for Falkovnia’s south neighbours. It should be stopped.
• As they progress on their enquiry to the location of the camp, they get more anonymous couriers providing hints (“do not use fire”, etc.). The question of who is writing these anonymous letters stays without answer.
• The last letters ask to be prepared to fight ancient dead. It urges to destroy the lab and all notes. It also offers to save Rashid-al-Wawat, a kidnapped scholar person.
• A last letter strongly hints at wearing a hawk brand on the front head in order to infiltrate the camp.
• The PCs attack the camp and (hopefully) destroy all mummies, lab, etc. The mummies attack all persons not wearing a Falkovnian hawk brand, unless attacked first by a person wearing such a brand, or commanded by Antunia. This gives the PCs an hedge in choosing carefully when attacking.
• During the attack, they might even be helped by Antunia if the PCs need it!
• In the end, she will tell the heroes that they “erased the Falkovnian menace to the region’s stability” or similar. But she will be using a specific phrase that will make the PC realize that it was her who wrote the letters…
• The PCs then have a choice: should they destroy Antunia too, as she is too one of the living dead?


Recurrence:

If Antunia isn’t killed, she is an enemy of Falkovnia’s Ministry of Science and her long term goal is the destruction of Falkfuhrer Vjorn Horstman himself.

[Jeremy16]

A few final notes...

To Dion: I read your The Ashen netbook while I was thinking about some of these. It really inspired me to amp up my work. Thanks!

To Joel: That's a cool character. I'd never really expect to meet a mummy in Falkovnia.

To Anyone Else: Feel free to post your own mummies here if you want to add to the list. I feel the Ancient Dead are a neglected beastie when it comes to the ranks of the Children of the Night.

[KingCorn]

Rise, oh thread! Rise from your grave
Been over a decade but I just like this so much. Besides what is already mentioned (especially love the Falkovnian Tar Mummy) some other ideas could be:

• Pharoah Rottentop: The Carnival fan-character, cursed to age yet never die. Perhaps he has gained some curse/psychic powers with his state
• Mummified Animal: A crypt-cat or some sort of ancient crocodile, or even a husk of a snake worshipped in some village in Sri Raja. Maybe even an elephant graveyard in the wildlands. Could also be the Avatar of the Wolf God from BoS
• Simon Audaire: Some sort of adventure with him would be nice
• Petrified Giant: Based on the Cardiff Giant Hoax, only this ones no hoax.

[Wolfglide of the Fraternity]

• Petrified Giant: Based on the Cardiff Giant Hoax, only this ones no hoax.

I recall there being ancient undead giants (called raam) in the Kings of the Rift adventure (Dungeon magazine 133) in the Age of Worms adventure path. They died out because they stopped bearing female children, and the last males entombed themselves alive.

[Rock of the Fraternity]

o_o I can imagine some feelings of unhappiness if you're facing extinction, but it seems like an odd decision to hasten your end. Especially in such an awful way.

This does remind me of a series of sci-fi stories that featured a race of Advanced Alien precursors. They were gentle. They were kind. Something happened so the males could no longer find the females. Everyone assumed they were extinct - but they'd left a weird monument behind: a holographic display of titanic creatures that generated an inhuman harmony at regular intervals.

In one story, a plague had broken out and no-one could cure it. It was known that the precursor species had cured this or a similar plague before, but they were supposed to be gone, their knowledge gone with them.
One scoundrel and his assistant realized the monument's harmony was in fact a mating call; presumably that of the male precursors. They composed an answering harmony, and it turned out the monument was actually the gateway to a timeless other-realm, where the precursors had been waiting for the female precursors to respond to their call.
They promptly returned to the universe.

The scoundrel and his assistant collected a reward and fled into hyperspace. The precursors were wise and kind, but nobody who's been waiting for their lover to show up for THOUSANDS of years is going to take a crank call lightly...

Indeed, the precursors gen-engineered a perfect assassin to track the offenders down. He wound up saving the scoundrel at least once; he was designed to bring them great despair, but knew next to nothing about their species. Therefore, he fully believed them when they said their natural human lifespan was around 10.000 years ... and he planned to kill them around the halfway point.

[Mephisto of the FoS]

o_o I can imagine some feelings of unhappiness if you're facing extinction, but it seems like an odd decision to hasten your end. Especially in such an awful way.

The Cathars who were sick in death's bead refused to eat as to fasten their death, as they believed their soul would reincarnate in another body upon their death in an attempt to fully realize their goal of freeing and redeeming their spirit. Hell was not a concept that the Cathars believed in. It is said that they believed that this life was their Hell.

The consolamentum, the laying of the hands ritual, was a form of baptism that was intended as a supplement, of a complete replacement, of the assumed baptism by water, and it was a believer’s initiation into the Cathar sect. This was said to be a necessity for the eventual salvation of the soul. Because of this, it was common for ill or dying believers to request a Perfecti, a fully realized and high ranking Cathar, to perform the consolamentum as their dying wish.

The refusal of food after receiving the consolamentum was another Cathar practice known as the endura. The endura was the final stage of penance for a Cathar. As with the consolamentum for laity, the endura typically took place when the individual was close to death, as the process was a difficult one involving the restriction of food and water. The individual then had to say the Lord’s Prayer, if possible. If not, another present person would in their place, or they would be refused the endura . The endura was symbolic of the Cathar belief in abstaining from the material and forming a more ascetic lifestyle.

Long live Zhakata!!! ... the Devourer...

[Rock of the Fraternity]

Yes, but abstaining from food and drink in your bed, at the end of your life and surrounded by what should be friends and well-wishers is a bit different from burying yourself and everyone you know and love alive. o_o

[IanFordam]

o_o I can imagine some feelings of unhappiness if you're facing extinction, but it seems like an odd decision to hasten your end. Especially in such an awful way.

The Cathars who were sick in death's bead refused to eat as to fasten their death, as they believed their soul would reincarnate in another body upon their death in an attempt to fully realize their goal of freeing and redeeming their spirit. Hell was not a concept that the Cathars believed in. It is said that they believed that this life was their Hell.

The consolamentum, the laying of the hands ritual, was a form of baptism that was intended as a supplement, of a complete replacement, of the assumed baptism by water, and it was a believer’s initiation into the Cathar sect. This was said to be a necessity for the eventual salvation of the soul. Because of this, it was common for ill or dying believers to request a Perfecti, a fully realized and high ranking Cathar, to perform the consolamentum as their dying wish.

The refusal of food after receiving the consolamentum was another Cathar practice known as the endura. The endura was the final stage of penance for a Cathar. As with the consolamentum for laity, the endura typically took place when the individual was close to death, as the process was a difficult one involving the restriction of food and water. The individual then had to say the Lord’s Prayer, if possible. If not, another present person would in their place, or they would be refused the endura . The endura was symbolic of the Cathar belief in abstaining from the material and forming a more ascetic lifestyle.

Long live Zhakata!!! ... the Devourer...

That is an amazingly apt comparison to make... amazing and disturbing.

[Jeremy16]

Rise, oh thread! Rise from your grave
Been over a decade but I just like this so much. Besides what is already mentioned (especially love the Falkovnian Tar Mummy) some other ideas could be:

• Pharoah Rottentop: The Carnival fan-character, cursed to age yet never die. Perhaps he has gained some curse/psychic powers with his state
• Mummified Animal: A crypt-cat or some sort of ancient crocodile, or even a husk of a snake worshipped in some village in Sri Raja. Maybe even an elephant graveyard in the wildlands. Could also be the Avatar of the Wolf God from BoS
• Simon Audaire: Some sort of adventure with him would be nice
• Petrified Giant: Based on the Cardiff Giant Hoax, only this ones no hoax.

I like the idea of a mummified giant and the Cardiff Giant is one of my favorite stories... did you know that P.T. Barnum was interested in buying that particular item for his circus, but the owner of the "Giant" rebuffed him, so good ol' P.T. went ahead and made his own - essentially creating a fake of a fake!?!

[Mephisto of the FoS]

Time to make my list of Ancient Dead I would like to see and an accompanied adventure.

1) Simon Audere and his cult (Richemulot)

2) The Last Mistress and the Buried Hands (Falkovnia)

3) Igil Wotanshand (Graben island)

4) Quinn Roche (Barovia)

5) The Lamenting Rake of Paridon

6) Thaumiol and the mummified lernaean cryohydra of Sithicus

7) A Rokuma ancient dead

8 ) A preserved mummy mistaken for a vampire (Borca?)

9) Senmet plotting using Nephyr? (Har'Akir)

10) The Living Mummy as mentioned before

11) Any mummified animals for low level adventures.
The Hog of Vallaki (people believe Ludmilla has come back to life but it a mummified wild boar from a tar pit.

12) An ice mummy in the Balinoks or Sanguinia

13) A Book of the Dead scroll used to animate someone into a mummy

[Mistmaster]

My Coldhands article on QtR26 introduced a L/G Mummy cleric, Louis Mournsworth; Same issue also presents another mummy cleric, on a more traditional villainous bent, Kallist Rekthed .

[KingCorn]

7) A Rokuma ancient dead

Are you talking about those buddhist monks who self-mummify? Cause I actually thought about one of those, but just couldn't think of a way to implement it (since we've never really filled out Rokushima, and didn't want another 'thing from foreign land comes to core, causes chaos'.

[Mephisto of the FoS]

7) A Rokuma ancient dead

Are you talking about those buddhist monks who self-mummify? Cause I actually thought about one of those, but just couldn't think of a way to implement it (since we've never really filled out Rokushima, and didn't want another 'thing from foreign land comes to core, causes chaos'.

Mostly I had in mind villains in karate and forror kung fu movies such as Human Lanterns (1982), The Boxer's Omen (1983), Witch from Nepal (1986), The Dead and the Deadly (1982), or David Lo Pan (who suffers under the Curse of No Flesh) from Big Trouble in Little China (1986) yes I know that most of these movies are Hong Kong or Hollywood productions and not Japanese, but since I haven't delved into the 5th edition dream city of I'Cath (and the old domain was lame, an island with five buildings) I thought of Rokushima Táiyoo as the setting for such a villain and adventure. Sokushinbutsu (Buddhist mummies) I believe are more appropriate for G'Henna though interesting as a concept too.

[Jeremy16]

Time to make my list of Ancient Dead I would like to see and an accompanied adventure.

1) Simon Audere and his cult (Richemulot)

2) The Last Mistress and the Buried Hands (Falkovnia)

3) Igil Wotanshand (Graben island)

4) Quinn Roche (Barovia)

5) The Lamenting Rake of Paridon

6) Thaumiol and the mummified lernaean cryohydra of Sithicus

7) A Rokuma ancient dead

8 ) A preserved mummy mistaken for a vampire (Borca?)

9) Senmet plotting using Nephyr? (Har'Akir)

10) The Living Mummy as mentioned before

11) Any mummified animals for low level adventures.
The Hog of Vallaki (people believe Ludmilla has come back to life but it a mummified wild boar from a tar pit.

12) An ice mummy in the Balinoks or Sanguinia

13) A Book of the Dead scroll used to animate someone into a mummy

Clearly, Ravenloft is not lacking for mummies. The real question is, how many unique adventures could be run? The gist of every mummy story is basically "ancient secret is uncovered, mummy comes alive and tries to reclaim power and glory (probaby a comely maiden or two as well), then is put down by the good guys".

Anyone see the Mummy movie series from Universal Studios or Hammer Studios? They weren't as popular as their Dracula and Frankenstein moviews because it was basically the same story over and over again. Anyone have any fresh ideas? I know Lovecraft tried to add a cosmic horror twist to the genre with Nylarhotep, but I'm not aware of any more modern fiction that has tackled the issue. Maybe I should review my copy of Van Richten's Guide to the Ancient Dead for inspiration...

[Rock of the Fraternity]

I'm not sure whether it's unique, but this idea I had back in the day found some favour with the audience...