Mummy’s Mask: The Dead Come Knocking…

This past week my brother and sister-in-law came over for our weekly game night–an event which hasn’t occurred in weeks! Can you say ‘thrilled’? So while all of our kids settled in for a late night of Scooby-Doo cartoons, the adults dusted off our Mummy’s Mask characters and settled in to play!

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The Mummy’s Mask Adventure Path is a six part campaign which begins with Book 1: The Half-Dead City, and continues with Book 2: Empty Graves, both of which take place in the town of Wati. The Mummy’s Mask Player’s Guide is a free download on Paizo’s website, available here. If you intend to GM the Mummy’s Mask Adventure Path, I highly recommend picking up the Mummy’s Mask Pawn Collection, which has over a hundred awesome and unique minis to go with the campaign. You’ll also get a TON of use from the Mummy’s Mask Poster Map Folio. Trust me, by the end of Empty Graves your map of Wati will have had one hell of a workout. Mine’s already covered in a ton of numbers and labels I’ve added in permanent marker, to help my players keep track of the many locations in this quirky city. Mummy’s Mask is also the subject of many other neat (but not necessary) game supplements, including Mummy’s Mask Face Cards, Mummy’s Mask Item Cards, and a gorgeous Mummy’s Mask Dice Set by Q-Workshop, which I’d love to get my hands on. Heck, you can even play Mummy’s Mask as a card game (Pathfinder Card Game Mummy’s Mask Base Set), or listen to it as an audio adventure (Beginning with Pathfinder Legends Audio Adventures: The Mummy’s Mask: The Half Dead City). Seriously! There’s a ton of Mummy’s Mask supplements out there, and if that doesn’t tell you Mummy’s Mask is a fun, popular adventure path, I don’t know what does. Other than, you know, me. Haha.

If you’re interested in my previous posts about Mummy’s Mask, check out Mummy’s Mask: Game Aids, Mummy’s Mask: The Shrine of Wadjet, and Mummy’s Mask: The Canny Jackal.

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We last left of our adventures in Wati with a cliff-hanger. My group’s characters had just finished participating in a wonderfully fun auction at the Canny Jackal. They had finalized their purchases, selected some choice buys to wear immediately, and scheduled delivery for the other items at their inn, the Tooth and Hookah.  They spent a bit of time worrying over Salal, the ancient slave girl they witnessed sold, and a bit more time socializing and hob-nobbing with the many colourful characters in attendance alongside them at the auction.

Arc Goodstorm, my husbands awkward, plant-obsessed witch, chatted with a local coffee plantation owner, Basif Iosep, while Arc’s guest at the auction, a pregnant gold-digger by the name of Pahetti he had only met that morning, tried her best to flirt with the other eligible bachelors in attendance. Arc hadn’t bothered to dress up for the auction at all, although his date did convince him to purchase her new clothes, jewelry and perfume for the evening’s festivities, in addition to purchasing her an object or two during the auction itself. On his back, Arc carries a deep, heavy basket filled with soil and luscious plants, which he tends with care. His rabbit familiar, Mischa, lives inside the basket, and a sarcastic silvanshee named Kal follows him around most of the time, mocking him and his friends. And his dates. And everything, really. Except the rabbit. The silvanshee LOVES his rabbit. So while Arc chatted, Pahetti flirted, and his rabbit twitched its nose, Kal heckled the surrounding nobles, and cast irritating cantrips at them when no one was looking.

In another part of the room, Nazim Salahadine, my brother’s undead-hating catfolk cleric of Pharasma, chatted with Menya the Whip, a local, up-and-coming armoursmith who Nazim had decided to sponsor. Nazim looked like an overgrown persian cat, and was dressed in some of the finest attire one could purchase in Wati. Bedecked in silks, gems and expensive perfumes, he cut an interesting figure!

Kasmet, my sister-in-law’s catfolk rogue, was similarly attired in the finest ancient Osiriani-inspired fashions. With her revealing white linen dress, collar of gold and blue beads, and her bracelets, anklets, and armbands, Kasmet looked like Bastet herself, pulled through time to the Canny Jackal. Kasmet chatted with her date–well, the date she and Nazim shared–a pregnant peasant woman named Manat whom they had met that morning at the Insula Mater. Manat quickly won them over with her down-to earth attitude and complete lack of shame. While she and Kasmet spoke, Manat stuffed her face with the finest food she had ever tasted, while wearing the finest clothes she would ever worn. The clothes had been a gift, from Kasmet and Nazim to Manat, which Manat only accepted on the condition that she be allowed to sell the clothes afterwards, which would feed, clothe and educate her family for months to come.

Thus arrayed around the room, there was a sudden knocking at the front door. Ahteb and Hamapetra, the most eye-catching of the Canny Jackal’s many servants, moved to open the door–only to have it smashed in by six zombies. With the servants pinned to the ground and dying under the heavy doors, the zombies poured into the Canny Jackal… And we had stopped.

You see why we were so excited to get back into the game!

We picked up this week with the zombies pouring into the Canny Jackal, spreading out to attack the various nobles and adventurers that my players had grown to love over the past few game sessions. Some nobles were prepared to fight back, of course, like Teos Okhenti, a bastard of House Okhenti who moved immediately to protect Yuya Mahfre, who openly hated him despite his many shameless attempts to flirt with her. Most panicked and screamed. Luckily, there were a few other capable combatants in the room at the time, including Sigrun Firehair and her mysterious companions known only as The Twins, all of whom were members of the Daughters of the Desert adventuring group.

My players leapt into action to protect their pregnant guests and help those in need around the room. Ah, but this battle wasn’t so simple! Crawling hands, shifting crowds, panicking guests and collapsing scaffolding all worked to complicate this fun, dynamic encounter. My personal favourite part? Their pregnant guest Manat stood unworried at the back of the room, filling a massive bowl with as much left overs as she could carry.

In the midst of this battle, the group could hear cries of “More!” and screams of alarm from outside in the Sunburst Market, and deeper into the showrooms of the Canny Jackal, so at its conclusion they took a moment to heal themselves, and ensure their guests were safe, before hurrying on to the next nearest sounds of panic.

In the showroom warehouse they discovered the owner of the Canny Jackal, Minnothet, being attacked by a zombie, while the coffee merchant Basif Iosep protected his mistress, Lady Nubumshaset, from another. Splitting up to better protect the nobles worked well–for a time. Unfortunately a nearby sarcophagus burst open a few moments later, revealing the mummy of Amadjawat the Many Veiled to them in all her undead, angry glory! Luckily, only Kasmet and the nobles suffered under her fear aura, leaving Nazim to shout his ululating battle cry and hurry into battle, with Arc following close behind with his magical lighting spear in hand.

Throughout this rolling series of encounters, the Fateway Five, as our trio of heroes is known, saved other nobles from zombies and rescued the ancient slave-girl Sallal from being abducted. After ensuring the Canny Jackal was safe and looked after, they headed out into the city of Wati–only to see MORE undead terrorizing the populace.

Nearby a terrified man hurried to unlock his door while two zombies closed in on him. Nervously he fiddled and fussed… and dropped his keys. Further away, the familiar sight of Mila Ansretti, a travelling merchant who they had befriended during our first play session and who had been a recurring character since, stood in the market surrounded by four zombies, with only a pair of market stalls and her wits to protect her. The many severed hands of thieves tied to the Pillar of Second Thoughts twitched with unlife, while in the distance they could see The Abadaran Sanctum of Silver and Gold, and the Nethysian Temple of Arcana Unbound both under assault. The other way they could see the holy, white crocodiles being devoured by zombies–their keeper apparently having decided to leave them to their fate. And further away? They could hear the screams of the terrified residents of Wati. The dead had risen!

The rest of the session turned out to be a fun, dynamic series of battles, where our heroes saved familiar faces, made new friends, and brought the dead back into undead. When they had finally cleared the Sunburst Market of dangers they spoke with the nearby churches in order to coordinate a plan to save Wati, and investigated a nearby wagon accident. There they discovered wagons had been smuggling corpses from the Necropolis into Wati, when the dead had suddenly burst out of the wagons and killed the drivers and camels. Although this showed them where some of the undead had come from, it didn’t explain how they had animated, or where all the other undead had come from. Unfortunately, as they were investigating the wagons, the corpses of the wagon drivers stood up, and the broken pinned down bodies of the camels twitched to life. Or, more accurately, unlife. Fighting off the zombies and dodging zombie camel bites was a ton of fun, and when it was over my players were left with an imposing sense of doom.

Something had made the dead rise. And then, right before their eyes, the freshly killed had risen again.

By then it was late, and the time had come to wrap up for the day. So we tidied up, collected our children, and said goodbye.

They have some time to think on their plans before we play again this week, and I can’t wait to see where they decide to visit next!

See you next time!

Jessica

And remember, if the dead come knocking, don’t open the door!