History TabletopGame / MummyTheCurse

* BrownNote: Being in the presence of a mummy's Sekhem causes Sybaris, hallucinations of Duat and a growing understanding of what mortality entails. Only Witnesses are immune, and even then they don't get off unscathed-they just grow obsessive. This is more boon then curse for the mummies themselves, however-moderate or mild Sybaris causes people to be more receptive to cult recruitment and manipulation, and the understanding of mortality comes from [[MadOracle perceiving the cycle of life]], leading to those afflicted with mild Sybaris to develop profound revelations about the nature of the world.

* CursedWithAwesome: Very averted-you'd have to have a complete LackOfEmpathy or any connection to retaining your memories to think being Arisen is purely good. Or even mostly good. [[spoiler:Apotheosis, on the other hand, is very much a self-inflicted Curse With Awesome; You are condemned to eventually die, and will never achieve the sheer power of Utterances again...and in return, you're free of the Judges' yoke, your memory comes back and is now perfect, you can make your own Relics, and your waking periods aren't on a timer. The price of freedom is high, but worth every cent.]]

* MoralMyopia: The Deceived [[spoiler:or more accurately, the [[DemonicPossession temakhs]]. They hate the Arisen for [[RevengeByProxy their masters]] stealing their chance at godhood...except they were planning to betray the other Shan'iatu first and become rulers over their brothers once ascended. It's entirely possible the other guildmasters found out and were just protecting themselves, or even that their mad scheme backfired and they have nobody to blame but themselves.]]

** [[spoiler:Deceived have a double-dose of this; they're explicitly not immortal, but ''eternal''; it's heavily suggested that if the Earth dies and humanity survives in colonies, they will reincarnate as Martians, as an example. They pay for this by the fact that their ''menet'' cycle is an AndIMustScream situation...which many actually ''prefer'' to their waking periods, since then they have to deal with the fact that each and every one of them is possessed by the temakh, the insane remnant psyches of the Shan'iatu who once headed their guild. Their nature is such that they cannot attain the independence the Arisen know; their version of Apotheosis is Ascent, which frees them from their temakh but binds them eternally to Fate itself, to serve as its agent... though Fate is simply alien instead of alien and a homicidal StrawNihilist MadArtist, and an Ascended's menet period is just resting happily as part of the cosmos. That the Ascent can be seen as both positive, becoming a willing agent of a higher power, and negative, condemned to eternal service of one kind or another, is entirely intentional.]]

* TheEmpire: Irem was...not a nice place to live if you weren't a citizen.

''Mummy: The Curse'' is the eighth gameline released for the TabletopGame/{{new World of Darkness}}, the fourth to be released after WhiteWolf merged with CCP, and the first to be released by Onyx Path. In making it, they took the hopefulness of ''TabletopGame/MummyTheResurrection'', their previous mummy game, and twisted it upside down.

In the beginning there was the city of Irem, heart of a powerful Nameless Empire, based where the Egypt of the Pharaohs would one day arise - an empire far more mystically advanced than any of the time. You and a select group of people were subject to the greatest feat of magic that has ever been attempted by mortal hands, the Rite of Return. Now, as an Arisen, you walk the line between life and death, which is both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, you have life everlasting. It takes nothing short of a nuclear bomb to destroy you. On the other, you're able to rise only for short periods, your power steadily ebbing away each time. Your friends and family are long since dead and gone, even fading from your memory as the centuries pass.

Your 'true' body remains as it was when you underwent the Rite, a preserved corpse, but it's an easy thing for you to adopt a more human guise, shaped by your memory of yourself - for better and worse.

The initial plan for ''Mummy'' was to do the corebook and three supplements - ''Guildhalls of the Deathless'', ''Book of the Deceived'' and ''Sothis Ascends''. A KickStarter for a deluxe version of the core added citybooks ''Cursed Necropolis: DC'' and ''Cursed Necropolis: Rio'', [[{{Defictionalization}} propbook]] ''Dreams of Avarice'', a ''Ready-Made [=PCs=]'' PDF, a fiction anthology and a novel. The free supplement ''Lore of the Deceived'' added some bonus material on the Lost Guild.

'''Mummy: The Curse''' is the eighth gameline released for the TabletopGame/{{new World of Darkness}}, the fourth to be released after WhiteWolf merged with CCP, and the first to be released by Onyx Path. In making it, they took the hopefulness of ''TabletopGame/MummyTheResurrection'', their previous mummy game, and twisted it upside down.

* [[EvilIsNotAToy The Arisen Are Not Slaves]]: A cult that tries to abuse their patron's stewardship too many times will quickly find that mummies are quite capable of ExactWords in their purpose, or sticking around after it's completed, thank you.

* HeelRealization: [[spoiler:What initially motivated the Heretic to seek Apotheosis, according to ''Dreams of Avarice''. He would always be the man who murder slaves to power the Rite of Return, but he wouldn't ]]

* SorcerousOverlord: The Shan'iatu, the priest-kings of the Nameless Empire. The Arisen used to be directly under their command, [[PosthumousCharacter though they did not use the Rite of Return on themselves]]. [[spoiler:While it was implied they may have become the Judges of Duat, recent books revealed that they actually attempted to betray or control their gods, and got mightily smote in the process.]]

* CursedWithAwesome: Very averted-you'd have to have a complete LackOfEmpathy or any connection to retaining your memories to think being Arisen is purely good. Or even mostly good. [[spoiler:Apotheosis, on the other hand, is very much a self-inflicted Curse With Awesome; You are condemned to eventually die, and will never achieve the sheer power of Utterances again...and in return, you're free of the Judges' yolk, your memory comes back and is now perfect, you can make your own Relics, and your waking periods aren't on a timer. The price of freedom is high, but worth every cent.]]

The initial plan for ''Mummy'' was to do the corebook and three supplements - ''Guildhalls of the Deathless'', ''Book of the Deceived'' and ''Sothis Ascends''. A KickStarter for a deluxe version of the core added citybooks ''Cursed Necropolis: DC'' and ''Cursed Necropolis: Rio'', [[{{Defictionalization}} propbook]] ''Dreams of Avarice'', a ''Ready-Made [=PCs=]'' PDF, a fiction anthology and a novel.

** Furthermore, on the [[NighInvulnerable extremely rare]] cases that a Mummy is permanently destroyed, those with the right Iremite rituals can bring them back to the world of the living by helping them to BodyJack a living human victim. Only problem is that it's not an easy ritual, and if catastrophically botched? The Arisen is brought back alright... and transformed into a Shuankhsen.

* {{Defictionalization}}: ''Dreams of Avarice'' is a personal manifesto by the Heretic.

* IKnowYourTrueName: The importance of the true name (see 'Ren' above) is important in Iremite magic. The most powerful beings in their cosmology are creatures that have reclaimed their own true names, so that no other being can exert magical power on them. [[spoiler: This is what happens to Arisen that achieve Apotheosis - they become invisible to the magical world.]]

* MoralMyopia: The Deceived [[spoiler:or more accurately, the [[DemonicPossession tekhmah]]. They hate the Arisen for [[RevengeByProxy their masters]] stealing their chance at godhood...except they were planning to betray the other Shan'iatu first and become rulers over their brothers once ascended. It's entirely possible the other guildmasters found out and were just protecting themselves, or even that their mad scheme backfired and they have nobody to blame but themselves.]]

** This extended to their deities, the pre-dynastic forms of what would become the Egyptian pantheon: Re, the Nameless Lion; Esit, the Nameless Falcon; Sutek, the Nameless Serpent; Ptah, the Nameless Bull; and Anpu, the Nameless Jackal. The names give to them were not their true names, but titles used by mortals.
* PureEnergy: Sekhem. Stated in developer blogs to have no relation to [[TabletopGame/MageTheAwakening Supernal Realms]]-it's far too old for that.

* ShoutOut: This gem, from the chapter that describes the use of your cult.
--> Well, the mummy just shouts, [[LargeHam "Slay them, my minions!"]] and then they chant "[[{{Warhammer40000}} BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!]]" in flawless Iremite Egyptian.

* EnlightenmentSuperpowers: [[spoiler: The upside to Apotheosis. Besides being free of the Judges' control, an Arisen's Memory score becomes their new power stat.]]

* TheDragon: Sadikh and Fasad, to Arisen and Shuankhsen, respectively. The former even goes into a self-induced LotusEaterMachine when their master is asleep.

* RevengeBeforeReason: The Lost Guild, to the point where literally the only thing anyone knows about them is that they're obsessed with avenging themselves upon the descendants of the Nameless Empire. [[spoiler:It's outright stated that the Shuankhsen, if someone were to cult their ties to Ammut, would still hunt down Arisen to the last mummy-[[HeWhoFightsMonsters for perfectly understandable reasons]].]]

* BackFromTheDead: Each Arisen can come back from the dead under certain circumstances. However, coming back is not the problem. It's doing everything you can with the time you are given before going back to sleep.

* RaiseDead: Mummies have two versions of this at their disposal.
** First of all, on the [[NighInvulnerable extremely rare]] cases that a Mummy is permanently destroyed, those with the right Iremite rituals can bring them back to the world of the living by helping them to BodyJack a living human victim. Only problem is that it's not an easy ritual, and if catastrophically botched? The Arisen is brought back alright... and transformed into a Shuankhsen.
** Secondly, the third tier of the Awaken The Dead Utterance allows an Arisen to bring a dead human back to life. The only drawback is that, unlike the similar [[TabletopGame/HunterTheVigil Benediction]] or [[TabletopGame/DemonTheDescent Exploit]], such a resurrection is impermanent. The resurrected individual gets 20 hours of life, maximum, and usually a lot less. After that, he or she disintegrates and is ''utterly'' extinguished, preventing them from ''ever'' being resurrected again by anyone.

* EldritchAbomination: The Amkhata are so obviously errors in the natural order that they demoralize mortals who look upon them. Ammut is far more along the lines of "Lovecraftian goddess".

* EldritchAbomination: The Amkhata are so obviously errors in the natural order that they demoralize mortals who look upon them. [[spoiler:Ammut is far more along the lines of "Lovecraftian goddess".]]

** [[spoiler:Deceived have a double-dose of this; they're explicitly not immortal, but ''eternal''; it's heavily suggested that if the Earth dies and humanity survives in colonies, they will reincarnate as Martians, as an example. They pay for this by the fact that their ''menet'' cycle is an AndIMustScream situation...which many actually ''prefer'' to their waking periods, since then they have to deal with the fact that each and every one of them is possessed by the temakh, the insane remnant psyches of the Shan'iatu trapped on Earth. Worse, they ''can never escape this''-their version of Apoptheosis is Ascent, which actually instead binds their destiny to being an eternal errand boy for Fate itself...though at least Fate is just alien instead of alien and a homicidal StrawNihilist MadArtist, and an Ascended's menet period is just sleeping happily.]]

* DarkerAndEdgier: In the old Mummy, you were an immortal Egyptian superhero fighting against evil, greedy occult forces. Here, you overcame so much to be screwed over by your own powers, your purpose is to be pushed around by your cult and the Judges, [[spoiler:and pretty much ''are'' the servant of evil, greedy occult forces.]]

* ImplacableMan: Anyone who [[TooDumbToLive steals a Relic from a Mummy]] will very quickly realize how astoundingly difficult it is to put them down, even temporarily.

* SorcerousOverlord: The Shan'iatu, the priest-kings of the Nameless Empire. The Arisen used to be directly under their command, [[PosthumousCharacter though they did not use the Rite of Return on themselves]]. [[spoiler:Though perhaps not as dead as they think-it is ''heavily'' implied that most, if not all, of the Judges of Duat [[DeityOfHumanOrigin are ascended Shan'iatu]], made immortal so that they may preserve the Nameless Empire forever. Why they did this [[ShrugOfGod is unknown]]-a Shuankhsen claims IC they were simply looking for more power, but given that she's a Shuankhsen, [[UnreliableNarrator she's more than a bit biased]] (though understandably-see how highly you think of the guys who condemned you to a FateWorseThanDeath, after you were a chattel slave in their empire, no matter how sympathetic their motives were).]]

* IKnowYourTrueName: The importance of the true name (see 'Ren' above) is important in Iremite magic. The most powerful beings in their cosmology are creatures that have reclaimed their own true names, so that no other being can exert magical power on them. [[spoiler: This is what happens to Arisen that achieve Apotheosis - they become invisible to the magical world.]]

* {{Mummy}}

** Hell, most of the Utterances are of the CosmicHorrorStory (or perhaps more accurately, given how you're the source, LovecraftLite) bent. Foremost among these is Words of Dead Glory, who's ''lowest'' tier invokes EverythingsDeaderWithZombies and sends [[TheVirus highly-infectious]] ''nenitu'' after people the Arisen doesn't feel like protecting, and only gets scarier from there, and [[ShoutOut Dreams of Dead Gods]], which also ''starts'' by putting possible allies under MoreThanMindControl and sends nightmares after enemies until they run off, and oh yeah, ''can be invoked while the Arisen is still dormant.''

* NobleDemon: When following the concept of Dedwen, the Mesen-Nebu tend to act like this: Their morality resembles a more mystical, slightly more charitable version of Objectivism, and they apply the principle as ruthlessly to themselves as much as anyone else, to the point where they will ''forgive Relic thieves'' if they evade the first attempt at punishment and retrival, since they obviously deserve it more than the Arisen (an exception is made for if the theft woke them up, but in that case they don't really have a choice in the matter).

* NobleDemon: When following the concept of Dedwen, the Mesen-Nebu tend to act like this: Their morality resembles a more mystical, slightly more charitable version of Objectivism, and they apply the principle as ruthlessly to themselves as much as anyone else, to the point where they will ''forgive Relic thieves'' if they evade the first attempt, since they obviously deserve it more than the Arisen (an exception is made for if the theft woke them up, but in that case they don't really have a choice in the matter).