How do we make mummies scary again?

How do we make mummies scary again?

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mummy_(2017_film)
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Unless you do this all you get is a zombie.

Make them sexual.

Death curses so powerful that it makes better sense to lock them away than to destroy them.

make the curse interesting and make them relentless in chasing their target. Just like golems, they may be slow but they walk non stop and can rip a troll in two without breaking a sweat

You cannot, they're inherently goofy.
But seriously, drop the bandages.

Destroying them will make the Egyptian afterlife crash, which will attract Apophis to Earth.

Or the mummy is carrying a very virulent disease.

Or the mummy is sealing a powerful entity within the confines of its prison, and if the mummy ever leaves it, so will the entity. There's a found footage movie about this if I recall.

All of the above.
99% of mummies in your setting should be inanimate piles of dust and bandages.
The ones who aren't should be literally God-tier sorcerers who are fucking pissed that they're not enjoying paradise with their harem right now.

Or you can make a glorious Nubian Pharaoh who returns to reveal the secret of the kingz to the world.

I'd tell you OP, but it's under wraps.

Mummies have all of their organs removed during the process, so you could have each organ work as a phylactery or something. Maybe allow the organs to influence their surroundings according to the mummy's will.

They're usually buried with all their treasure, too, so that could mean a shit tin of magic or cursed items. Could be scary if it actually used them.

Just general supernatural abilities. Paralyzing scream/gaze, curse that wastes the victim to dust, can mummify someone (organ removal included) with a touch, etc. Being a brawny caster can make a lot of things scary.

>mummify someone with a touch

Does that turn them into a regular inanimate mummy or an undead one?

Causes their organs to burst out of them one at a time and dries up the remains. Whether they get back up or not is up to the mummy.

I'm not sure that'd leave an intact body to mummify, but I guess they're not looking to have anyone pretty around.

Another thing you could do is have the tomb itself try to inflict despair and curses on the party alongside its ruling mummy.

If someone completely gives up hope of escaping, they might throw themselves into a suspiciously-empty sarcophagus, only to find themselves quickly mummified.

Others could end up trapped in "gaps" on the wall hieroglyphs, either by the mummy's doing or by the tomb's. Don't think your summons or animal companions are safe, either - those can be mummified or hieroglyph-trapped just as easily.

Most of this is probably terrible, though.

Why did they pick based Imhotep of all Egyptians? It'd be like making a monster story about the Renaissance and deciding that hey, DaVinci would make a great Frankenstein's monster.

>those belts
>those levers
>those spinning blade things
He would.

Because the only four Pharaohs people have heard of are Ramses, Imhotep, Tutankhamen and Cleopatra.

I know a girl player who I would avoid using it, mummification is her fetish. But the mummification one isnt bad.

Ramses II and III.

There was a Paizo module that did a pretty good job of that. Cursed pyramid, with X number of rules that, if you saw all of them, would instantly turn you into a mummy yourself. So the threat wasn't so much the mummies as trying to go through this whole fucking dungeon without noticing all of the runes and becoming a mummy.

>Make a perception check
>28!
>You've spotted it! In the far corner of the room, obscured behind an urn... Is the fifth rune
>FUCK
>*mummification intensifies*

desu, unless you pick some random unnamed alchemist made-up for the movie, I'd rate it pretty likely for Da Vinci to become an immortal monster.

You know, that's true. Or maybe Archimedes come back from the dead as a cyborg zombie to get his revenge, and the players have to storm his insanely well-defended fortress filled with death traps.
IMHOTEP WASN'T A PHARAO REEEEE

>DaVinci would make a great Frankenstein's monster.
That would be so awesome.
DaVinci's Flying Monster.

Akhenaten is relatively popular these days, too.

They got this guy on Arrow now

That just sounds annoying and stupid, the kind of thing a newbie DM thinks is hilarious but just makes everyone want to pelt him with dice.

As a child, mummies never scared me because they're such a distant threat. I'm not desecrating Egyptian tombs, why why the fuck would one come after me in bumfuck America?

Stop having them shout "Aaaand... that's a wrap!" after each kill

Wouldn't work in a movie/tv because the writers would ruin it by always having him saying "Eureka!"

It ages everything it touches to dust.
>Blast it with magic? The magic dissipates and flames die immediately.
>Hit it with sword? Sword is now dust and maybe your hands as well.
>Hit it with arrow? Arrow disintegrates on contact.
>Teleport away? You're trapped in the magical pyramid used to contain this thing. You really think they didn't put up meta-magical barriers to block that shit?
>The only way out is a key tied to the shortest trailing bandage on the mummy.
>The mummy follows you out

Also
>There is no initiative order.
>There is no combat
>There is only escape

because of monotheism memes

Nefertiti, his wife, is possibly more famous.

One thing I do know is that when they were wrapping mummies they put the amulets in, but I'm pretty certain they wouldn't all be on the same layer - if you give the amulets curses or sigils of activation then you might cut into a mummy only for them to get more powerful as you knock away restrictions, trigger more serious curses, or wake them more (hit the outer wrappings, you've got the shambling mummy, but if you're getting close to their precious heart you've got the undead terminator on your hands)

That's interesting. So would that mean as players deal X or more damage I just pull out a different sheet of stats and go on and on until I got the equivalent to a demilich walking around?

Dwarf fortress mummies are the scariest

>resurrect the dead

>curse you forever causing you to be critted easily

>super buff and can choke you out with his lower legs

Curse with each attack.

>>I know a girl player who I would avoid using it, mummification is her fetish.
that so?

Yeah, that could work, though actual HP should probably always be going down.

Maybe roll for every successful hit - on a 1 or something they actually hit the amulet dead on, in addition to what else happens, a spell also triggers - something that would really inconvenience a thief, for example

make them very strong, and very tough, hard skin and flesh, only killable permanently when you find and destroy their organs.

They also try to reach down your throat and pull out your guts to eat them.

surround their location with mobility impeding traps, for example crow feet slow down your party, but the mummy can traverse them at full speed.

Scary enemies are always made scary by their surroundings, a crocodile is not scary on a football field, but it's scary if you're trying to cross a murky river.

I thought this was Prototype the game

#
This is literally how dry lich's from 3.5 work.

They are essentially mummy liches with a magical touch that drains liquid from your body and causes con damage. They can turn your corpse into a salt mummy as well. They can also grab a handful of dust and give you a horrific wasting disease that mummifies you alive. Also yeah 5 phylacteries.

They get Cha to HP ontop of that d12 hitdice. Oh and they can create Sand Golems that are huge sized and will cause you to choke to death on sand.

Oh right and i forgot they can turn you into a Salt statue.

realmshelps.net/monsters/templates/drylich.shtml

and the Walker in the Waste class is needed for this template

realmshelps.net/charbuild/classes/prestige/general/walkerinthewaste.shtml

Did you implied they ever were scary?

If it's D&D, a high level mummy might have around 100ish hp, could do a d100 +10 roll every time they're damaged to have a layer removed

first layer: Base stats
Second Layer: Gain shield of faith and Mage Armor
Third Layer: Damage from slam moves up one size category
Forth Layer: Stone Skin, Damage reduction 10/Good, Strength, Con, Dex Increase by 4
Fifth Layer: IDK something more crazy

The idea would then be that you don't want to spend time hitting it till it's wrappings fall off, you want to kill it while it's still weak in as few hits as possible.

Because your great grandfather was on an archaeological expedition and brought them back to the US and now it's been taken to a museum near you or it falls out of a lorry or something enroute and is awoken and wants revenge.

In that case, you just need to go to the local retirement home and find the guy with the best jawline that thinks he's Elvis.

Make them like liches. Mummies are associated with curses anyway.

Mummys are basically Egyptian Liches.
>Except some might not sorcerers / magic users.
>During some time periods Pharaohs were considered gods / demigods

>How do we make a demigod lich scary?
Pretty dang easy

Because it wants its stolen slab back that you bought at the local garage sale

>RETURN THE SLAB...

>DaVinci would make a great Frankenstein's monster.
He fucking would though. And now I want to run that

But he ded now

And now I have a plot hook for my chronicles of darkness game. And an intense need to watch courage the cowardly dog

I thought it was pretty cool when I played it. Most of the instances are avoidable, but a couple of them are pretty clever "gotchas," like they have a sort of microscope for looking at slides, and one of the slides is just a really tiny rune painted there by the BBEG to fuck over anyone who went snooping around.

WHAT'S YER OFFER

Define different classes of mummies.

Animal mummies, like the known cat mummies can manifest shadow astral beings.

The common, low tier ritual but preserved mummy, just walking around like zombies.

The formerly palace guard. Inteligent enough to follow orders, carry weapons and use war tactics.

Higher ritual performed but poorly condition mummy. Body is composed of dust, sand and critters. The bandages just collect the remains but are able like formwandlers or slime to alter their appearance. Sneak through doorcracks, burst into critters.

The high caste mummy. High tier ritual magic, well preserved. Able to think freely, reanimate mummies or ceremonial figures, like stone Shakties or anubis statues. Perform magic.

The Tom Cruise mummy movie is kinda doing that famalam...Cant wait

Bring back Mummy Rot, death curses. Borrow more from a Lich than a Zombie.

It is impossible, ground mummies were basically medieval version of viagra.

>Tom Cruise
>Confusing good human primarch Brendan Frieser for a retard Scientologist

Go and never come back

Mummies aren't really supposed to be scary. They're supposed to preserve a person long enough that their body doesn't rot. It was considered a privilege more than anything.

Wasn't mentioned yet, but curious if any systems draw from other culture's mummys and not just Egypt.

>Sokushinbutsu (Buddist Mummies)
>Bog Bodies (Mummified via natural means in bogs, peat bogs)

Sure there are others as well

You're the mummy. You wake up soon after your death, unable to move, locked in a tight space with no light. You can't smell anymore, you hear nothing. You try letting out a cry for help but it comes out a horrifying, unintelligible moan. Your dulled senses can sense you're wrapped in cloth, and you try desperately hard to recall your memories but only scant images come to mind. Slowely, your mind deteriorates from both the rot and the isolation and you grow progressively insane, your fear erodes away into anger, which further erodes away until only your most primal instincts remain, all semblance of your former humanity is gone. You continue to rest for an untold period of time, sensing nothing for an uncountable number of eons.

Then you feel a movement, a thud, as your body is rattled by the shift in the sarcophagus' weight. You see the light for the first time in millennia, and it's blinding, painfully so. Your primal fury reawakened and directed at the sap who opened your tomb hoping to find treasure and instead awakening a tortured soul from his slumber.

This is a fucking great idea

Chinchorros had pretty interesting mummification practices.

maybe its bandages aren't keeping it together. Maybe the bandages are keeping "it" back.

Source on the video?

I'd love to see an evil undead Dadulus from Greek mythology all the crazy things his dungeon could have

>mummification is her fetish.

The chemicals used in preservation are a potent explosive when left to mix over the course of a few centuries.
The bandages have lots of metal charms wound into them for the purposes of enchantment.

Add fire, and you will have walking enchanted shrapnel bombs.

>tfw only couple hours from where i live there rests a naturally mummified priest who was famous for his hell and brimstone filled sermons and for his promise that his corpse wouldn't rot away if what he preached was true

...

user... You haven't heard?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mummy_(2017_film)

Nietzsche was right

...

The movie called "The Pyramid"

Its a very CoC thing to do, definitely memorable.

Make it a lich.

It's a purposefully preserved corpse with religious significance, why shouldn't they have more power?

CUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRSEEEEEE!!!!

I hate Prototype 2. They ruined all of Alex's characterization and the main character was dumb as fuck. Like actually unintelligent. Fell for every trick thrown his way.

A mummy should return as they originally were, also watch this movie for inspiration, it doest get as much love as the other universal horrors, but i say its probably the best of them.

Mummy Rot

>There is porn of them for women

>DaVinci would make a great Frankenstein's monster.
Yep, and he does that to have the inhuman strength to move his tank and fly his wings.
He would have to keep his sexy voice, though.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Flamel
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perenelle_Flamel

>Or maybe Archimedes come back from the dead as a cyborg zombie to get his revenge, and the players have to storm his insanely well-defended fortress filled with death traps.
>I'm going to SCREW you for ruining my Solar Death Ray!

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egypt,_Indiana

It's a relatively simple name but has the "tep" sound which makes it sound pretty egyptian and exotic.

Because he's a fucking monster, he doesn't fucking care about your rationalism and will come to spook you because he's evil and magic. What kind of autistic child you were?

But Flame didn't design a shitload of weapons, he would make a poor villain.

A one shot I sometimes direct where the players are invited to a monster party the Mummy is a bankrupted movie director. He's kind of a cunt.

So does mummification count as having rotted away or not?

eastern europe?

Let me tell you how:

Make the mummy look like picrelated, withered, dried out, empty eye sockets and toothless gums. A dried corpse is inherently a little unnerving, now add the following factors:

It's slow moving, but unstoppable.
It will never, ever stop hunting you down if you are cursed. It will walk the ocean floor or crawl the tallest mountain to get you, and strangle the shit out of you, breaking your windpipe in the process.

Now make it nigh-invulnerable. No fire, no acid, hardly anything can touch it because it's a fucking cursed murder machine. Like a bulldozer slowly coming down an endless hallway behind you and you could easily outrun it, but eventually you'll have to lay down and sleep and THEN WHAT?

What's scary about it is the curse part. It will get you eventually, even if it has to dig its way through titanium walls with its bare hands, and the massive strength and unparalleled resistance it has is no joke.

THAT is fucking scary. All you can do is run, run and keep running. It WILL knock down your cabin door, it WILL track you down, and it WILL NEVER STOP COMING AT YOU UNTIL YOU ARE DEAD.

>Break legs.
>Break arms.
>Break neck.
>Keep breaking stuff.
>Put all the bits in different containers.

>break
You can't.
And now your dumb ass got into arms reach of the mummy.
You're the one broken into a million separate pieces.
RIP.

Here, a faster version:
Rock falls, everyone dies.

1. Make the setting take place in a vast desert region, it spans for days in every direction.
2. Make the mummies regular zombies, but with a few key differences (not susceptible to holy magic, protection from most magic, no fire susceptibility)
3. And this is the crucial part: define a mummy as any creature that has been buried in sand after death, and thus naturally mummified. This includes every person or animal that has ever died in the history of the world.
4. Now let all of these millions of mummies rise from the sand anywhere, at any given time, and in vast numbers.

You're sitting at the oasis with your bedouin buddies? Well guess what, 100 years ago a caravan was decimated by bandits at that very spot. Now +40 mummies have started crawling out of the sand right under your feet and at least half of them are heavily armed and armored guards who died that night, along with their undead camels.

Obviously it's a hook to go BREAK the curse, if a bit railroad-y

Do that weird Psion class in 3.5e that lets you make Thralls or whatever and select a bunch of mummies and mummy rot the living fuck out of everything.

>you could have each organ work as a phylactery or something

This, plus every time you destroy an organ it gains a new power.

That'd be pretty weird for a BBEG but mummies are supposed to be site-specific guardians and being stuck somewhere with a monster that keeps getting stronger is cool.

Do what my old DM did. The body isn't the creature, the bandages are.

Mummy kills a peasant? Congrats, now you have a two times larger mummy. The damn flatworms would just envelop whatever flesh they could get their bandagy appendages on, and keep growing.

Few things are quite as scary as a mummified manticore. Except it WASN'T a manticore, it was 7+ different dead monsters that some mummy ate.

Oh, and they could hide inside bodies too. So hey, remember that cute girl you found in the woods? Better be careful, there might be a mummy just waiting to burst off her chest Alien-style and devour you.

Fuck, I hate mummies. And my DM.

That's no mummy, that's a sentitent bandage monster, that's fucking terrifying.

They're basically an ancient proto-lich.

Stolen for a bedouin campaign.