Monster Monday: Mummy Wraps - The Embalming Construct

I approached the door with some trepidation, my earlier discourse with M. H-- on the subject of curses weighing heavily on my fevered mind. As a man of science, I held myself above such superstitions, but in that dark sandstone tunnel, choked with the dust of ages, such things seemed terrifyingly possible. Cuvier beckoned me examine the inscription on the door. Those inscrutable hieroglyphs remain a mystery to me, and I truly have no idea how my companion, learned though he was in such things, and quite more well-endowed with critical faculties than I, was able to derive meaning from them. Nevertheless, he did his best to explain. 'The room beyond must be the embalming chamber. Therein, the cadaver was prepared for the afterlife by the removal of the organs and the preservation of the flesh.'
   This gruesome fact was not new to me. I had, of course, read the MS by the renowned Mr. B-- of the Royal Society on the details of the process, which I have already laid out for you in great detail earlier in my account. But the idea that this place of ritual disemboweling lay just ahead of me through a foot of crumbling stone was, at the time, most disconcerting to my temper. Pallid though I was already, I am certain I grew more so at this news, though good Cuvier either did not notice or was kind enough not to remark upon it.
   Cuvier bade the workers make use of the great prybars which they had brought along for that purpose, and within the hour they had shifted the stone aside enough that we could make our ingress. Cuvier insisted on going first, and to my great and ongoing regret I let him do so with no small measure of relief on my part. He cast the light of his hooded lantern around the room, revealing what to the ancients must have been an impressive laboratory. Jars full of chemicals and unguents stood intact in chests of desiccated wood. An array of tools, equally at home in the hands of an anatomist as in those of a torturer, glinted in the light as if they were new, the dry desert air having preserved them for thousands of years without rust or decay. But in the middle of that cursed room - and I say cursed now, with full confidence and the benefit of hindsight - stood a solid stone mortuary slab topped with a tangle of ancient linen bandages. O that we had taken our leave then! But no.
   Fancying that I spied a scrap of writing on the bandages and fearing that my hands, moist from the fever and - I must admit - from nerves, might damage any ancient ink, I motioned Cuvier to take a closer look. When he did - O! If only this truly had been a fever dream! - the bandages rose up of their own accord and wrapped themselves around him. Helpless before these twining snakes of fabric, Cuvier at first stared in wonder, then tried to scream. His aborted scream, cut off by the living bandages as they covered his mouth, still chills me to my very core. With his last ounce of will, my dear companion reached out a shaking hand in a silent plea for help, but before I could grasp it, the bandages tightened and forced his arms to his sides. Before my very eyes, his skin grew brittle and taut and deathly dry. I could not help but turn away and, in my cowardice, flee headlong into the night.
   I know not how I made it out of that warren of ancient tunnels, the workers long since having fled and my only light source lying abandoned on the ground at the feet of my dead friend. Perhaps the instinct for survival alone carried my tired body back to my apartment on K-- Street. I can tell you that I did not sleep at all that night, as my thoughts were focused entirely on the arrangements I must make to leave this benighted country on the morrow. The full horror and the burden of guilt did not wash over me until that dark hour which lurks in the shadowy spaces between midnight and dawn. Alone with only my thoughts, I fancied that I perceived a dull scratching on my chamber door. I attempted to dispel the notion, but the sound grew only more persistent, its terrifying reality intruding even on my fevered and terror-stricken mind. At last, in a misplaced attempt to assuage my fears, I went to the door and opened it.
   There stood Cuvier, wrapped in those ancient linens, his skin browned with naptha and pulled tight across his bones. It is his face that still haunts me - cracked and sunken, with hollow eye sockets that could only be sightless and yet seemed so terribly perceptive. His papery lips pulled back into an accusing sneer, revealing yellowed teeth and a black tongue. I slammed shut the door immediately, and pushed my steamer trunk in front of it as a barricade. The scratching at the door came again in earnest, quickly becoming an insistent rap, and then a pounding that echoed in my ears. Abandoning my earthly possessions, I made my egress through the shuttered window and went by barge that very night to the port, with the intent of catching a ship bound northward at first light.
   I write this account from within the walls of St. S-- Asylum for the Criminally Insane, in the hopes that someone might read my words and know that, while I did not kill Dr. August Cuvier, I most certainly do not hold myself blameless in the story of his death. If his mummified body is ever recovered, I pray that whosoever finds it has the sense not to touch the bandages. 

Today's Monster Monday is mummy wraps, a dangerous construct that takes the form of spell-inscribed linen bandages with the power to wrap themselves around their victims, embalming them and turning them into mummies. While the victim's companions are presumably trying to figure out how to hit the bandages without harming their friend, the mummy wraps can control their cohort like a puppet, attacking them with their body as the victim watches helplessly.

The above vignette is written in the style of Edgar Allan Poe, albeit with fewer wordy and tortuous digressions on substitution ciphers, the value of inference, and the details of 19th century Parisian police-work. Don't ask me why, it just seemed fitting. Call it a tribute to my first DM, who kept a volume of the complete works of Poe on his shelf and insisted that it was "good fucking literature for Dungeon Masters."

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Kherty - Scourge of the Living, Defender of the Dead

Today's Monster Monday is kherty, an outsider who strides through ancient desert ruins, protecting the dead and slaughtering the living. The kherty has the gaunt, bandaged body of a mummy, but its head is a dried out ram's skull.

Limned in negative energy, the kherty's every attack is inimical to life itself. But aside from its array of spells, its life-taking spear, and its draining touch, this creature is outfitted with a range of abilities that bolster nearby undead, making tomb encounters particularly deadly for adventurers who run afoul of this unwholesome beast. Undead within the immediate vicinity of a kherty gain bonuses to their AC and saves, and the kherty's touch can mend the wounds of the undead. Plus, dying creatures close to the kherty cannot stabilize, so fallen heroes are just two rounds (death knell + create undead) away from joining the ranks of kherty's allies.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Aker, Two-Headed Golden Lion

   On bare feet, the thief padded across the cold marble floors of the palace. Bars of moonlight filtered through shuttered windows as he slipped from shadow to shadow, keeping an ear open for guards. He saw them before he heard them - so still were they standing that even bedecked in gleaming mail they made little sound. Two palace guards, fauchards in hand, standing guard over an iron-bound door. This must be the hiding place of the Khwarzid Ruby. 

   The thief produced a small linen-wrapped tube from a pouch at his side. He slunk as close as he dared to the guards, keeping to their periphery where their vision was obscured by their helmets. At last, he took a deep breath, unwrapped the tube, placed it to his lips, and blew. A cone fine powder billowed out like the breath of some foul beast, choking the air around the guards. Purple lotus powder - a paralytic. It had cost the thief dearly, but it would all be worth it if he could get out of this palace with the ruby. 

   Wrapping a fold of his cape over his mouth and nose, he sprang into the poisonous cloud, catching one of the paralyzed guards before he could fall and, with a crash of armor against the stone floor, wake the entire palace. He held the guard up by the throat, but as he moved to catch the other, he was met with a blade. The second guard had not yet succumbed to the poison! He caught the edge of the thin dagger against his leather bracer and, right arm still holding up the first guard, began to grapple with the second guard with his off-hand. The towering brute of a guardsman stabbed at the thief awkwardly, slashing his back thrice with his blade before the purple lotus poison finally took hold. The thief silently lowered the two men, conscious but immobilized, to the floor. 

   The guards, of course, did not carry a key to the door they were guarding, so the thief picked the lock himself. He ignored a false keyhole, uncovered the true lock, bypassed a few trapped tumblers, and finally worked the door open. The room beyond the reinforced door glittered. Torches burned in wall sconces, casting orange light upon piles of gold, silver, and gems, which sparkled enticingly. In the center of the room rose a copper statue of a cobra, an enormous ruby clenched in its fanged jaws. A trap, obviously, but the thief saw no way to retrieve the ruby without triggering it. He knew he could afford to carry little else out of this room except the ruby, lest he be encumbered by it as he escaped. Still, he stuffed a handful of gold into his pouch as he approached the ruby, never taking his eyes off the snake statue for fear of being surprised by some wizardly trick.  

   The hair on the nape of his neck stood on end, his primal senses picking up on some danger his eyes had failed to notice. A low, purring growl began behind him, joined soon by a second. Whirling, he saw padding towards him a twin-headed lioness, fearsome in her power and beauty. Her fur gleamed just as brilliantly as the piles of gold she navigated between, as if the beast were herself wrought from the stuff. The thief froze, calculating his next move as the two-headed creature tensed and readied to pounce. Just as it move to strike, he whirled, snatched the ruby out of the snake's jaws, and ducked. Just as he expected, a spray of poison burst forth from some mechanism hidden in the snake's mouth. He could feel his back blistering where droplets of the poison splattered it. The beast growled and shook its heads, but was otherwise unfazed.  

   Immune to poison? Of course! This was an aker. The thief had heard tales of them in the south. Terrible golden lions with two heads. Legend held that ancient kings once used them to keep the giant snakes of those lands in check, for they were unaffected by the serpents' bites. The thief cursed as he ducked a swipe of the beast's claw. rolled to a pile of ceremonial weapons, and pulled a jeweled scimitar from its gilded sheath. He held it up prophylactically as the creature bit at him. One head caught the blade and bit clean through it. The other sunk its teeth into the thief's shoulder. Hot blood spilled out over the gold-strewn floor as the thief stifled a roar. He brought the shattered blade up and stabbed it deep into one of the beast's necks. It roared like a peal of thunder, surely waking the entire palace. Working quickly, he stabbed its neck over and over again until its eyes faded and closed. The other head snatched his sword-arm in its mouth and bit hard. The thief screamed, wrenching his arm from its mouth. He could not move his fingers, nor feel the pain he knew was there in his arm.  

   He cradled the ruby with his good hand, the other arm hanging dead at his side, and rolled between the legs of the aker. The beast wheeled to pursue, zigzagging awkwardly as its injured head hung limp from its bleeding neck. The thief knocked over a table covered with statuettes, but the aker crashed through it effortlessly. He leapt over a chest of coins and slid across the slick floor out through the open door. Guards were shuffling down the hall from both sides, leveling their polearms at the thief. The wounded aker burst through the door behind him, starling the guards for a moment. Just the moment the thief needed to act. Let them deal with each other, he thought. He sprung through the shuttered window and exploded out into the night air, plummeting toward the palace moat far below.

Today's Monster Monday is the aker, a two-headed lion often used as a guardian beast by the wealthy  and the power-hungry. With golden fur and dual slavering maws, these creatures certainly make a statement when lounging at the foot of a petty warlord's throne or chained in the gardens of an extravagant maharaja.

The inspiration for this monster came from a picture in the 2nd edition AD&D al-Qadim supplement showing a rogue sneaking into the gold-strewn chamber of a sleeping giant and confronted by a roaring two-headed lion (page 45 for those of you following along at home). As I began to stat the creature up, I realized I needed a name for it, so I searched for a mythological precedent for a two-headed lion. What I found was Aker, an Ancient Egyptian deity often depicted as two lions or a two-headed lion who protects the pharaoh from poisonous snakes. This lent some additional character to my monster, and its protective nature fit in well with the picture of it as a treasure guardian.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2017 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Dust Mummy, Accursed Cloud of Decay

With one final roar, Abdul thrust the ancient spear into the attacking guardian's chest, bursting through the intricately detailed blue faience surface.  He gave it a twist, and the wings of the spear ripped at the crumbling clay.  The falcon-headed ushabti collapsed, now nothing more than a pile of ancient ceramics.  Hassan was over by the passageway, roasting the bodies of the two mummified cheetahs with vindictive glee, divine flame jetting from his outstretched silver holy symbol.  With the tomb's protectors defeated, Abdul and Hassan took out their blessed chisels and went to work on the walls, obliterating every instance of the priest-king's name and every image of his face, just as they had done in the previous rooms.

Hassan found the secret door.  He had always been better at that than Abdul.  "What do you think, brother - will this be the real burial chamber, or another false one?" Abdul asked as he chipped away at the plaster covering the door's seams.

Hassan continued to focus on the door, clutching his holy symbol with white knuckles.  There was a series of mechanical clicks from behind the door, and Hassan instantly relaxed.  "The traps are disarmed," he said in the calm, pleased tone of a butler presenting a particularly fine roasted peacock.

"The door was-?" Abdul dropped his crowbar and scurried back.  "Mound of Mu'at, man!  Why didn't you tell me?"

"I would have stopped you before you triggered them."  Hassan spread his hands wide.

"Alright, you open the door."

When the stone door fell to the dusty ground with a great crack, they stood face to face with a gilded sarcophagus.

"Entombed standing upright.  Typical Yuttub-worshiper."  Hassan spat at the mention of the hated god.

Abdul hefted his sledgehammer and swung it at the sneering golden face.  "This is for what you did to our people!  And this is for what you did to our homeland!  And this is for the thousand years of suffering that followed!"  With his last swing, the ruined face cracked, the sealant on the sarcophagus lid failed, and the whole stone edifice fell to join the door, narrowly missing Abdul's toes.

The desiccated corpse within was bound in strips of ancient bandage inscribed with arcane sigils, and what flesh was visible was covered in gold leaf.  The gaudy tyrant stood for only a split second before collapsing into a pile of sparkling dust and shards of bone.  Hassan let a rare shout of jubilation escape his lips, and the brothers exchanged triumphant smiles.  But the grave dust rose in a swirling cloud between them, scraps of spell-cloth whipping around as if caught in a dust devil.  Occasionally the dust would congeal into the vague shape of a hand or a leg.  A cruel face formed in the dust and uttered in a soul-rasping voice, "REMEMBER... MY... NAME."

Hassan recovered his composure before Abdul did.  Winged holy symbol raised before him, he invoked the name of the Goddess and three beams of brilliance ripped through the priest-king's temporary face.  With a scream, the mummy cloud spread out to fill the whole room with itself.  The dust blasted at their skin, causing it to crack and blister.  Abdul pulled his own holy symbol from the folds of his robes and held it aloft.  The flash of divine light sent visible waves through the dust cloud.  Hassan followed suit with an even more powerful burst, filling the room with crackling energy.

The cloud reformed into a vaguely humanoid shape for an instant, pressed its immaterial hands against Hassan's face, and disappeared into his mouth.  Hassan's eyes widened.  He fell to his knees, skin tightening against his bones.  With a belated cry, Abdul rushed to press his holy symbol to his brother's forehead, channeling a burst of healing magic through it, but it was not strong enough.  Hassan gasped, then with a sickening cracking sound he disintegrated.  The dead priest-king swirled up from between Hassan's dry bones, its face re-forming, one partial hand stretching out towards Abdul's throat.  "REMEMBER... MY... NAME!"

Abdul snatched up his brother's holy symbol, divine fire already blazing from between its silver wings, and thrust it into the discorporate face.  "NO ONE WILL!"

~ ~ ~

Today's Monster Monday is the dust mummy, a sentient undead cloud of dust formed from a disintegrated mummy, held together by rage at the living and a desire to be remembered after death.  Far more insidious than your typical mummy, these swirling collections of dust can easily spread their curse to all that they touch, and can even infest the lungs of their hapless victims, rotting them from within.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2016 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Ammit - The Deadliest Egyptian Chimera

Today's Monster Monday is the Ammit, a soul-devouring creature from Ancient Egyptian mythology with the head of a crocodile, the forequarters of a lion, and the hindquarters of a hippopotamus - the three deadliest creatures in Egypt.

Photographed by the British Museum, via Wikimedia

The artist didn't know what a hippo looked like sitting down, so he was just like, "F*** it - stubby legs"

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2015 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Wadjet - Ancient Egyptian Fire Cobra

Last week, d20 Despot received its 10,000th pageview!  It was only a few months ago that we got to 5,000 and, as I mentioned in last week's news-post, it was made possible by a reader's post to the RPG section of Reddit.  d20 Despot is a labour of love, and I'll keep coming out with new content no matter how many readers I have, but if you want to start seeing illustrated d20 Despot PDFs chock full of bonus content, I'll need a bigger reader-base.  And for that, I'm relying on you, my loyal minions!  Spread the word all around these glorious interwebs!

Speaking of content, today's Monster Monday entry is the dazzling wadjet, a giant winged cobra straight out of ancient Egyptian legend.  Watch out for their poisonous spit and their searing gaze!

via Amentet Neferet

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is (C)2014 Jonah Bomgaars.