The Mummy of the British Museum

This is the fifth adventure in the Tavistock Expeditions campaign. 
=== Session 1 ===
The new bi-monthly edition of the
Tavistock Foundation’s magazine Voices
from Beyond is out, featuring tales of two of the party’s previous
adventures – Alpine Landslip and The Tacitus Manuscript. But in order to make
it look like the Foundation has wider resources, as well as protecting their
identities now that the SS-Ahnenerbe
seem to be interested in them, neither article named them. 
Professor Dalgetty thought they
dropped the treasure hunt at the right point. Though it cost the Foundation a
fortune in aeroplane and salvage boat hire for no return of Spanish gold or
silver, clearly the point of the spirits’ guidance was directing them to the
mysterious sphere. Which arrived safely in Britain incidentally, but since the
Navy carried it across the Atlantic to avoid sea-monsters they have demanded
involvement in its investigation. Mrs. Tavistock would rather have kept it
in-house, but again Dalgetty backed the party’s decision. 
The Foundation are thinking
deeply about how to salvage the treasure.
Funds are tight now, so for a
while it looks as if international trips are out. Luckily, a possible
investigation in London has come to light. Dalgetty seemed a bit dubious about
this one (he has previously been sceptical about those favoured by Mrs
Tavistock’s ‘spirit guide’) but to avoid prejudicing them he decided to send
the party to meet the instigator without a briefing. 
The person they need to talk to
is Dr Henry Pownell. Mrs. Stanley managed to find an assistant at her favourite bookshop who had heard of him from the Egyptological studies section – he is
the co-author on a couple of respected texts on the translation of
hieroglyphics. The author profile in the books list him as a researcher in the
British Museum, and the assistant passed on a piece of juicy gossip – another
of the post-doctoral researchers in the Museum died there a couple of weeks
ago. Apparently it was a heart attack while he was working alone, late at night.
Donald phoned Dr Pownell at his
home, as instructed, and invited him to dinner a couple of nights later at a
discreet private room in a nice hotel. 
Kohath used his knowledge of the
medical bureaucracy to get a look at the post-mortem report on Dr Steven
Hawker, Assistant Curator of Egyptology. It didn’t seem to be an in-depth
investigation: he was an overweight man in his forties, there were no signs of
violence on the body, and his lungs were badly scarred by a gas attack in the
Great War. The internal signs were consistent with heart failure, which was the
cause of death listed on the death certificate. The body had been returned to
his family and the report advised the coroner to return a verdict of natural
causes, which he duly did. 
Pownell turned up to the meal
with a copy of the Daily Sketch (a
Conservative tabloid newspaper – later it merged with the Daily Mail which is its modern equivalent). It featured a
scare-story about a cursed mummy coming to the Museum: Re-ah-hep-tu was an evil
sorcerer, buried deep in the desert with no grave goods nor texts from the Book of the Dead in the hope that his
spirit would not be able to find its way to the afterlife, nor haunt inhabited
regions. 
The mummy was found by an English
explorer, and given an immediate export licence. Pownell tells them that the
truth is, the Curator of the Cairo Museum demanded that it be either taken out
into the desert and re-lost, or removed from the country immediately. The
British Museum has written to the Cairo Museum for further details of this
story.
The mummy is now in the labs
below the Museum, and ten days ago Pownell was working late when he saw a mummy
walking along the corridor. Pownell promptly ran away and hasn’t been in the
building after dark since then. His boss and co-workers mocked him, pointing
out that Re-ah-hep-tu was fully bound – even if he had risen from his packing
crate, he would have had to bunny-hop around and would be unable to attack with
his arms bound to his sides. 
Three nights later Dr Hawker was
working late in the same lab where the mummy is stored. He was found dead in
the corridor. Pownell’s fear that this was linked to the mummy was dismissed by
the others. Hawker was never well since the gas attack in the trenches, the
consequent lack of exercise made him overweight and short of breath, and him
having a heart attack surprised no-one. 
The party wanted him to sneak
them into the Museum, but Pownell was not going for that. The Sketch story has attracted a bit of
attention from morbid thrill-seekers so Dr Leicester, the Curator, has banned
visits from staff members’ friends till the mummy goes on display. Pownell also
works in a neighbouring lab to the one where the mummy is, so can’t casually
take outsiders in to see someone else’s work. 
When they then started discussing
sneaking in without his obvious help, he pointed out that they could try
asking. Dr Leicester does seem annoyed at the Sketch’s sensationalist take. Since they come from a Foundation
that might play it up even more, he might be prepared to co-operate if it would
help him move the angle they might take away from the ‘Curse of the Mummy’. The
party decided that Donald and Mrs Stanley would be the ones to ask for an
interview. 
=== Session 2 ===
The players started by planning their
response for when Dr Leicester, Curator of Archaeology, refused to meet them.
Which was undermined when he agreed to their interview, so Donald and Mrs
Stanley met him in his nice sunny office, well above the basement lab where
Re-ah-hep-tu lay. 
Dr Leicester heard them out
politely but reserved judgement. He had been inundated with requests from
fringe groups and individuals since the story in the Daily Sketch, so initially treated them as one more of the kind.
However, he had heard of one of the respectable archaeological digs Mrs Stanley
had worked on, so he softened his attitude slightly. Donald then brought up the
possibility of sponsorship to get them in – which improved Leicester’s attitude
still further. However, the sum mentioned was more than the Foundation has
available at the moment, and likewise more than Donald was prepared to put up
from his family money. He didn’t admit that though, and discussed possible
deals which he could “take back to the financiers of the Foundation.” 
The interview was interrupted at
this point by a fire alarm – there was a fire in the basement, started by an
electrical fault. 
After the all-clear, Mrs Stanley
went to the Museum’s offices and enquired about opportunities in a volunteering
position. Because Egyptology is very fashionable, they have a long waiting
list, but she also enquired about the Mesopotamian section since she has worked
on digs there. She was sent to the appropriate office and interviewed. Again,
the legitimate digs she had been on were persuasive, and the people
interviewing her had not heard her name in conjunction with less ‘formal’
activities, so she was accepted and would be shown around next day. As they
chatted, she asked about the fire and was told that there had been a lot of
excitement from the building infrastructure lately – last week a blockage in
the main sewer pipe backed up all the toilets, and lights flickering had become
a regular problem. 
Dr Pownell was in contact again
later. After their interview, Dr Leicester had received the reply from Cairo
Museum’s Director. Two previous mummies have been found in similar
circumstances: in each case the museum suffered a string of deaths, accidents
and bad luck until the mummies were once again buried in the desert and their
locations forgotten. Dr Ahwab apologised for not accepting the body and then
immediately having it returned to the desert, but one of the casualties of a
previous sorcerer-mummy was the Chief Curator of the Museum, and as a man with
a young family he didn’t want to take the risk of having it on the premises
even for a few hours.
The ‘string of accidents and bad
luck’ sounded remarkably like backed-up toilets and electrical fires to the
party…
The letter also contained more
detail of the Ancient Egyptians’ treatment of sorcerers. The concept of a
‘lost’ burial in the desert as punishment for evil sorcerers is engraved on the
walls in the Temple of Karnak, amongst other places. 
It says that destroying the body
of a sorcerer, for example by feeding him to crocodiles, will release his
spirit to haunt the city. Only proper mummification and burial rituals will
send him over to the afterlife where he cannot harm the living. The burial site
for an evil sorcerer should be ‘lost in the sands’ so that no other can use his
power, or speak with him to learn his evil rituals. No artifacts will be buried
with him, so that he has no wealth in the next world. There must be no script
from the Book of the Dead in his resting place to help his journey to the
afterlife, in the hope that his evil spirit will wander for centuries trying to
pass the tests of the Gods before passing through their gates into the
afterlife.
They decided to give Mrs Stanley
a few days in the Museum to get to know the routines and see if she can work
out a way to get them in, but on only her second day Dr Leicester called
Donald. He had been researching the Foundation, and decided that their magazine
would be a good source of positive publicity. If Donald wanted to bring in
witnesses to the exorcism ceremony which would solve the problem that would be
acceptable. It would be held in the early afternoon of the following day. 
Leicester’s decision relied on
his view that the Ancient Egyptian ‘Gods’ were mere projections of the Devil’s
minions trying to tempt people into sin. An expert Christian exorcist could
drive out demons that their feeble powers could not. 
Kohath knew that religious
ceremonies rely on psychic power, so the presence of either him or Albert would
scupper things. So they would attend the Museum, but stay out of the room,
along the corridor so their auras did not interfere with the priest’s power.
The party members going into the room took whistles to summon them (and
concealed handguns!) in case things went wrong. Also in the room were other
witnesses: journalists, and representatives of occult-interest groups like the
Foundation. 
A Catholic priest, Father Damon
McGuire, performed the exorcism. It was a disaster. As he proclaimed the words
to drive out the demon, the figure of Re-ah-hep-tu rose from the table to which
he had been transferred, leaving his wrapped body behind. He appeared to be a
strong, deeply tanned middle-aged man, nude but for a loincloth and sandals. 
As he advanced on the priest,
Father McGuire presented his crucifix forcefully and commanded the spirit to
begone. Forcing himself on as if against a high wind, Re-ah-hep-tu closed the
distance and then reached into the priest’s chest. Father McGuire gagged for a
moment before returning to a strained repetition of the banishment. 
The party was blowing their
whistles frantically, and the other witnesses variously ran for the door or
fainted. The official photographer was the exception, standing at his post to secure
a picture of the spirit with its hands in the priest’s chest. Haggart alone
stood motionless, stunned into immobility by the sight. 
Donald, Willie, and Mrs Stanley
whipped out their pistols and fired – much to the surprise of Dr Leicester. At
that close range none of them missed, but Re-ah-hep-tu didn’t even notice the
bullets passing through him and smashing into the lab walls. Luckily, the
crossfire didn’t hit any living people. 
Since bullets had failed, Willie
drew a knife and closed in, plunging it deep into the solid-looking chest, only
to pass straight through it. He distracted the spirit though, which left the
priest alone and thrust its hands into his chest. Willie felt an icy chill
surround his heart. 
Kohath and Albert whipped the
door open, guns in hand. This was a particularly terrifying sight for those who
were just running at it from the inside, to be confronted by gunmen in their
way. One of the running men vomited in fear, the rest screamed as they plunged
through the doors, too fast to stop. Albert caught sight of the Egyptian with
his hands in Willie’s chest and it brought back memories of the zombies of
Dominica – combined with the effect of being splattered with a stranger’s
vomit, he lost his lunch too. 
“The amulets!” cried Donald,
grabbing up a window pole, “They contain him!” He rushed up to the table and with
the hook at the end of the pole started ripping apart the mummy’s bandages,
looking for magical amulets. Mrs Stanley joined him with a retort stand grabbed
from a workbench. 
Kohath powered into the fight,
confident that his psi-blocking power would banish the ghost. Instead, its only
effect was to block the power Father McGuire was pouring into the exorcism.
Willie tried to fight Re-ah-hep-tu but in vain. He could feel the life-force
draining from his heart. 
Suddenly he was yanked sideways
by Mrs Stanley, surprising the ghost as much as it did him, and the drain was
lost. Kohath plunged straight into the spirit, expecting his psi-null state to
block its attacks and perceptions, but instead felt his own life-force being
drained out while the spirit turned and also attacked Mrs Stanley. Feeling his
power blocked, the priest and his assistant abandoned the exorcism and started
hauling fainted bodies to hopeful safety outside the lab. 
Donald and Mrs Stanley held two
of the amulets within the spirit-body and Kohath tried to power them up by
pouring magic power into them, but they didn’t seem to affect Re-ah-hep-tu’s
ability to drain Kohath and Mrs Stanley simultaneously. She called out to Dr
Leicester and Haggart to bring more amulets. Donald slammed Mrs Stanley out of
the spirit’s range, but in the process tripped over one of the fainted bodies.
“We need all the amulets!” Mrs Stanley realised and they scrambled away from
it. Dr Leicester triumphantly snatched the big pectoral from amidst the mummy’s
wrappings, accidentally beheading it in the process so the head fell off the
table and bounced across the lab floor. The photographer grabbed a shot of that
moment, which Leicester may have trouble living down in the archaeological
community…
Leicester threw the pectoral to
Kohath and continued rummaging in the rapidly-shredding bandages. While Kohath
tried to hold the pectoral in the right position, the others converged on the
body to find the remaining magic amulets. Re-ah-hep-tu ignored them all in
favour of draining the life-force from a fainted body on the floor. 
Donald tried to drag the
unconscious body away, but the spirit finished draining its life-force and
turned on him. Amulets flew around the room as everyone tried to jockey for the
right position – Donald feeling very weak trying to escape the spirit’s grasp
and get out of the way, everyone else surrounding it and trying to hold the
amulets in the right positions. The ghost plunged its hands back into Willie
again and drew out more of his life-force as everyone jostled to get their
amulets into position and Kohath poured more power into them. 
Suddenly, it worked. Re-ah-hep-tu
vanished, presumably back into his mummy, just as Albert charged into the room.
They rushed to restore the amulets to their former place, as the GM uttered the
immortal request: “Someone make a First Aid roll to bandage the head back on.”
=== Session 3 ===
The party retired to their hotel
for rest for those who had lost life-force to Re-ah-hep-tu’s attacks. They only
managed 36 hours of undisturbed rest before a frantic midnight phone call from
the Museum: Re-ah-hep-tu had risen again, the security staff seeing him walking
through the corridors. Sensibly, they had stayed out of his way and frantically
phoned round for guidance. The party advised them to evacuate the museum –
exactly what the Directors had been doing, but they had been hoping for
something more positive. Next morning, the door to the lab where Re-ah-hep-tu
was stored was found to be open, the lock apparently either picked or magically
opened. 
The party attended the Museum’s
morning meeting and found out that police had reported that two rough sleepers
and one street-sweeper were found dead in the streets close to the Museum.
Another homeless man, this one drunk at the time, testified that he saw a man
in ‘just his underpants’ walking away from the corner where the two had been
sleeping. This emphasised the urgency of finding a solution. 
Worried by the open lab door, the
party doubted the reliability of the Museum’s security staff, and advised that
they should be temporarily laid off and an external company brought in – people
whom the Museum has used in the past on special events. The Museum directors
decided that this would be insulting to good, reliable people on no other basis
more than the party’s mistrust, and rejected the suggestion.
The Museum directors did come up
with a stopgap plan, for which they needed extra security staff, so they did
bring in more men. Their job was to sheepdog the ghost whenever he escaped –
running the streets ahead of him (he still can’t move quickly) to move on
anyone in his path. Though the newspapers agreed to keep it quiet to avoid
public panic, this was not a good long-term solution.
It took quite a while of people
throwing suggestions around, mostly involving lead coffins and deep-sea
trenches, before they remembered the solution that had been found two
generations earlier. Since Donald’s grandfather had been one of the Beresford
Travellers, many of the party had read Theo’s books
about them. Kohath and Mrs Stanley recalled the Tibetan adventure, which was
resolved with a Soul Trap scroll imprisoning a vengeful Chinese ghost who had
posed as a minor Goddess. They realised that this was their ideal solution: a
Soul Trap spell to imprison Re-ah-hep-tu’s ghost in perpetuity. All they needed
was a necromancer to cast it, and a fabulously valuable gemstone to act as the
trap. 
The
latter was no problem – Donald persuaded the Museum that, under the
circumstances, it would be to their advantage to divert one of the finer
examples from their gemstone collection to be the starring feature in a new
high-profile display, the eternal prison of the evil Ancient Egyptian sorcerer
who had brought death to the streets of 20th-century London. 
But
necromancers are, understandably, reluctant to let their studies become known.
They are secretive and mostly evil. Trying to track one down was not going to
be easy. It was Donald who realised the solution lay in looking at convicted
necromancers. He used the Museum’s contacts to open the doors to the police
Occult Activities Unit, who agreed to help. Most convicted necromancers had
been promptly hanged, so there would be no ‘Hannibal Lector’-type prison cell
interviews. 
By
researching their trial details, though, Donald found that a man called John
Voluter was an expert witness for the Crown in several trials, and from his
testimonies Donald worked out that he had a significant knowledge of the
necromantic school of magic. Vouched for by the Occult Activities police and
the Museum, Donald managed to get Voluter to admit that he was a ‘good
necromancer’ and that he could cast the Soul Trap spell, but against a sorcerer
as strong as Re-ah-hep-tu he would need help. All the party members agreed to
be present to take part in the ritual, and Kohath loaned him the Foundation’s
powerstone. The Museum also put forward the volunteers from their on-staff
mages. 
Voluter
brought the party members – those who were strong enough as those who had been
drained were still weak – and the Museum’s mages and Egyptology staff into a
spell ritual that backed him up with their power. Apart from the executioner’s
hood Voluter wore to conceal his identity to the other participants, the casting
was an anti-climax. The midday ceremony was timed to catch the mummy at what
seemed to be his weakest time, and he was imprisoned in the gem without
excitement. 
The
Museum is now preparing their new exhibition, and expect it to be a smash hit.
Not just because of the current popularity of Egyptology, but also the
sensational draw of ‘The Curse of the Mummy’ and ‘The Sorcerer who Killed from
Beyond the Grave’ as the tabloid press are calling it. Party members were
offered a fortnight in a medium-grade hotel in Brighton at the Foundation’s
expense to recuperate the health they lost to Re-ah-hep-tu’s energy-draining
touch.
Category:Tavistock Expeditions