Egyptian Horror

>Mi-Go
>Yithians
>worm wizards

I'll check them out, but can you tell me now if any of them would have a reason to be in Egypt? I'm dead set on that setting because it's something we've never explored as a group before.

Why would any of them be anywhere? I thought one of the central points of lovecraftian horror was the lack of meaning

I've always understood particular creatures being tied to certain locations (like Deep Ones being in sleepy harbor towns) so I want to know ahead of time if this applies to any of the monsters listed.

>Mi-Go

We encounter them exactly once in rural Vermont, but they're mentioned as being part of the basis for many folk beliefs from Irish fairies to Tibetan Yetis. Think about that for a second. These creatures, which we see in one way, described as master surgeons whose forms we see now might not be their original forms but surgically altered, are the basis for who knows what on Earth. They have every reason to be in Egypt, but of course, we'll never know exactly why. Maybe something to do with a hitherto unknown dark and terrible secret of embalming.

>Yithians

Again, we had a single instance of contact, but it's hinted they do this a LOT before beginning a mass mindswap. Maybe one finds its way into some long dead Pharaoh, or a modern person. You could go for the embalming thing again, maybe they like the idea of preserving bodies, too, and they're getting in on that now.

>worm wizards

The story tells us, essentially, that wizards (pretty much of all kinds) in their tombs don't die, but 'fat and instruct the very worm that gnaws'. Ancient Egyptian sorcerers living through the necromantically mutated vermin that infested their tombs. Scarab wizards instead of worms, maybe.

I like the Mi-Go, they sound pretty flexible.

What if they were riding motorcycles?

A particularly powerful Worm Wizard would be a good idea. What sort of magic did they access?

FPBP

you should watch the mummy and the mummy returns user

Where do you think I got the OP pic from?

>Egyptian horror
>Not set in ancient times

You had one job, OP

Booooring.

I want the characters to have access to some serious firepower to use against these monsters. That way it really hits home to the players when said firepower is useless.

>Egyptian horror
>not set in a cyberpunk future

The very idea!

Bump.

OP, this user is on top of his game.

Have a secret passage to the middle of the earth.

How do you even make a mummy scary?

Oh, silly me, I forgot we need to accomodate everything for colonial taste

Im pretty sure there is a campaign about Nyarlethotep in the 1940s era.
Basically you play Nazi archaeologists unearthing stuff and then stumble into a spooky pyramid and a cult that want to summon the Black Pharoah aspect of Nyarlethotep.

>crew finds mummies with animal heads
>bandits ambush trying to recapture the mummies
>following the bandits to the cairo
>bandits were actually members of the museum
>human-animal hybrids in the basement

Mummies don't attack you or move. Something is turning your friends into mummies.

...

Let's see... Undead that won't give a single fuck about being shot/sliced/diced/set on fire? Not even headshots will drop them?
Now even if they will be slow and limbering, that's still scary, because duh, they just won't stop.

It sounds more annoying than terrifying though.

If one wants to connect it to Lovecraft without necessarily including detentacled gribblies (which, as a Lovecraft fan, I find way over used; HPL didn't really use them that much), have the PCs uncover the tomb of Nephren-Ka, the black pharaoh. In the Mythos lore, he was supposed to be an Egyptian ruler who gained possession of the black trapezohedron, an artifact that allowed one to summon one of Nyarlathotep's masks. He constructed a great lightless temple and perfomed some acts so terrible that his name was erased from all records (which in ancient Egypt was a huge deal: that's pretty much equivalent of condemning his soul to oblivion). It's heavily implied he got possessed by Nyarlathotep, and that Nyarlathotep's human mask is based on him.

Bump

posting pages from the book

...

...

...

...

Which book?

how about the players face off against the most horrifying demon known to man: alimony payments

...

...

Strange beasts, said to be sacred to Set, live in the sands.

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

>)

Why not? It's a pretty horrific thing isn't it? This card game where the loser is trapped forever in a dark hell dimension is distributed to kids.

I think the main issue about this not being scary is how absolutely desanitised average player is.
I mean think about it for a while. Your average PC is often almost literally swimming in gutted enemies and people don't even squirm about it, no matter how detailed will be the description of what they've just did... or how vague it will be to keep them on their toes.
Instead, they just don't care.

Ancient Egypt didn't really have a ton of literature about mythical creatures, but it had some. And there's plenty of artistic representations. They had some positive mythical creatures we know a little about, including the griffin (which could show up with or without wings) and the bennu, a stork-like phoenix associated with the sun. Their destructive creatures included the serpopard (pic related) or what one scholar called "chaos serpents," huge snakes associated with water, the forces of chaos, and the demon/god Apep. There's no literature or even a proper name for the serpopard, but they show up a lot in art, usually attacking other creatures/humans or being restrained by heroic humans. Their snake-like features probably also identify them with the forces of chaos. As a group, these sorts of mythical creatures, both good and bad, seem to have been thought of as living in the remote wilderness and high desert, making those already dangerous regions even more so.

One has to keep in mind the Egyptian worldview. Originally, reality was a vast, lightless, chaotic ocean from which the gods created land and light. Chaos is that long, formless dark to the Egyptians, and is strongly connected to water, and it is through that water that Apep, the great serpent-enemy of the gods, swims. It is that water one must pass through to reach the afterlife. It is that water on which Ra's barge must sail at night, bearing the sun after it sinks beneath the horizon. Apep attacks the barge every night, and is driven back by Set every night, a god also associated with destruction and chaos but who serves a useful purpose..

On that note, I should also mention demons. "Demon" in the Egyptian sense means a spirit from the underworld. They were generally seen as amoral beings, though some could be chaotic or destructive. They could also be useful. Some were invoked for charms or wards against other demons or against other dangers. One of the most common forms of sorcerer in ancient Egypt was essentially an exterminator/pest control expert, who would be hired to set up wards around your property to keep out snakes and scorpions, usually by invoking demons against each other. One of the better known demons is Ammet, the Eater of Souls. On the one hand, Ammet is a terrifying hybrid creature of crocodile, leopard, and hippo who devours hearts and souls, but on the other hand he is a useful tool for the gods, as they use him when the dead are judged and feed him only the hearts of the wicked.

Snakes, scorpions, crocodiles, and hippos all were associated with the forces of chaos, and when demons are depicted in Egyptian art, as seen on this ivory magic wand, they usually include features of those creatures, mixed with human forms and other predatory animals. The exact origin of demons is unclear. There are a lot of rites in Egyptian funerary practices about protecting your soul from these demons on your journey to the afterlife. You have to pass through the waters of chaos to reach the underworld. If you don’t know all the right rituals to keep the demons at bay and to earn entry to the underworld then the demons will eventually tear your soul to shreds, either destroying you entirely or possibly turning you into one of themselves. The Egyptians feared the spirits of the wrathful dead, as did most cultures (though usually as ghosts, not as mummies) and it can be hard to tell them apart from their depictions of demons.

So, even if the Egyptians were relatively scarce on written details, this should at least give you enough to go on when it comes to themes and visuals for their conception of supernatural dangers. Keep in mind, I say danger, not "evil." Demons and monsters were often seen as destructive, but they were not so much evil as chaotic. It would be like called a storm on the Mediterranean evil, or calling the Nile's floods evil. They just did what they did, and an enterprising sorcerer could use that to his advantage.

But yeah, stick to these themes and use the features of these animals to form your own jigsaw Egyptian demons and you're pretty well set.

bump

>creatures/scares I could utilize here?

Djin (genie)

That's a fucking cool monster.

Yeah, Djinn and other Arabian-originating mythical beings/concepts would be a good thing to draw on for a 1920s setting. People still believe in djinn in Egypt now, and I suspect the belief was even more widespread back then.

Fun fact: in modern Egypt, afrit are sometimes used to describe what are essentially ghosts, because according to Islamic cosmology ghosts shouldn't exist and certain imams look down on and shame any belief in them as heretical. Instead of truly changing their supernatural beliefs, the locals have just switched the names a bit.