Mummy: The Resurrection

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Mummy: The Resurrection
MummyTR cover.jpg
Mummy: The Resurrection cover art
Designers Justin Achilli, Tim Avers, Andrew Bates, Kraig Blackwelder, Philippe R. Boulle, Carl Bowen, Ken Cliffe, Jess Heinig, Conrad Hubbard, Richard Thomas, Stephan Wieck, Stewart Wieck, Jim (Looking Eagle) Estes, Graeme Davis
Publishers White Wolf
PublicationMarch 19, 2001
Systems Storyteller System
Parent games Vampire: The Masquerade
Series World of Darkness

Mummy: The Resurrection is a role-playing game released by White Wolf Game Studios on March 19, 2001, where the players assume the role of resurrected mummies living in the modern world. Mummy: The Resurrection introduces the Amenti, a new style of mummy instead of those presented in earlier World of Darkness products. [1]

Contents

Setting

In 1999, a catastrophic storm (the Sixth Maelstrom, a major event in White Wolf's metaplot) shook the Underworld and - among other things - woke Osiris from his long slumber. Osiris took a glimpse at the Earth and realised that the world was a very dark place, very much in need of his help. Osiris decided to issue an announcement to his worshipers on Earth, in which he assured them that they were not forsaken, and then he granted them a new spell - the Spell of Life - to resurrect the chosen ones who would do battle in his name. Taking the formal name of Amenti, in honor of the lost city of the dead, they were created, armed with Hekau magic to do battle against the servants of Apophis, the game's main antagonist.

Mummy (Vampire: The Masquerade) 1st edition cover Wod mummy1st c.jpg
Mummy (Vampire: The Masquerade) 1st edition cover
Mummy (World of Darkness) 2nd edition cover Wod mummy2nd c.jpg
Mummy (World of Darkness) 2nd edition cover

Creation

Mummies are agents of balance. They are created with the perfected Spell of Life given out by Osiris. The tem-akh is a shard of an old and powerful Egyptian spirit. It is the strongest portion of a soul that has been destroyed in the Sixth Maelstrom. This tem-akh looks for an imbalance of a mortal's soul who has recently died. This soul or nehem-sen is weak where the tem-akh is strong. The tem-akh offers a chance of resurrection and a second chance at life. If the nehem-sen refuses, the tem-akh moves on to find another and leaves the nehem-sen to the dangers of the underworld alone. If the nehem-sen agrees, the tem-akh tears away the portion of the soul that is most flawed. This causes intense agony. After tearing this away, the tem-akh inserts itself into the missing part of the soul and perfects the flawed soul. The soul is now strongest where it was once the weakest. The tem-akh forces itself across the shroud and back into the dead body. The body is then reanimated and appears as a walking corpse. With the nehem-sen in shock, the tem-akh is in control and has the responsibility of getting the body back to the Web of Faith which is in Egypt and the surrounding area. At this point the body and hybrid soul has not attained true rebirth. It has 70 days to return to the Lands of Faith. As the potential Amenti gets close to the Lands of Faith, resurrected factions use Hekau or receive visions from Osiris to discover when and where the Amenti will appear. Once one of the resurrected factions secure one of these new arrivals, it is taken to one of the sacred sites within the Lands of Faith. At this time the Spell of Life is performed. During this time the soul faces the Judges of Ma’at. If the soul fails the test, the spell of life fails and the body and soul die. If the soul passes the two souls are permanently fused together and are returned to the body. Once the spell of life is complete the Amenti is truly immortal and ready to serve as an agent of Ma’at in the service of Osiris. The Tem-akh is from the Amenti’s First Life. The nehem-sen is from the Amenti’s Second Life. After the spell of life is complete the Amenti is now in his Third Life. In the Third Life, the Amenti is literally a new person. It is a melding of the first and second lives. It has memories and personality traits from both of the previous lives. The type of mummy that the reborn returns as is dependent upon the tem-akh that joins with the nehem-sen. There are five types of tem-akh. They are as follows:

The Resurrected

Hekau

The six paths of Hekau are divided into distinct magical sciences. While an old and powerful mummy will learn every art, the young Amenti struggle with just a fraction of the magical art. Each Amenti finds that a certain path comes naturally to them based on their tem-akh. These six include:

Resurrection Factions

Life as the Undying

System

In its first inception (circa 1992), Mummy was released as a softcover rules supplement for Vampire: The Masquerade which printed rules allowing play as an immortal mummy originating from ancient Egypt. The rules also provided the option to play as a mummy character originating from ancient China or the ancient Andes. The rules stated that the resurrected mummy character was revived by combining their original soul with their mummified body using a magical spell granted either by the god Osiris (Egyptian mummies), ancient Inca spirits (South American mummies), or the Eight Immortals (Chinese mummies). The mummy character was deemed to be centuries-old, and had managed to live undetected among humans throughout history.

The Second Edition of the supplement (1997) was similar to the first, but updated the rules regarding mummies, their role within the World of Darkness and aligned them with the background and metaplot of Vampire: TM's second edition.

Reviews

In the beginning of the partnership between World of Darkness owner Paradox Interactive and interactive fiction video game developer Choice of Games, the latter pitched several ideas for World of Darkness adaptations, including a hardboiled Mummy: The Resurrection video game where the player investigates serial killers by assuming the form of their favored type of victims; in the end, the partnership instead resulted in three Vampire: The Masquerade games, [4] although Jason Stevan Hill, the editor of the project, has expressed an interest in developing further World of Darkness video games after the three Vampire: The Masquerade ones. [5]

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References

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  5. Musgrave, Shaun (2020-04-30). "Choice of Games and Paradox Teaming Up to Create 'Vampire: The Masquerade' Gamebooks". TouchArcade. Archived from the original on 2020-07-05. Retrieved 2020-04-30.