Our story begins with an explosion.
Well, the true beginning was many years before, but I did not know that at the time, and the explosion is the most convenient starting point. Because it was after the explosion that I and my granddaughter were drawn into a story that was much larger than the both of us put together.
(We are both rather small people, really. It's not hard to find a story bigger than us. But I digress.)
And so, we begin...
7 Thuthi, Inundation, Year 4 of the Reign of Rameses II (July 27th, 1275 BCE)
I and Mayet, my oldest daughter's youngest child, left home about a week ago, off to see the world. Our first destination was Thebes, with the thought that together we might find the trail that leads to the Valley of the Kings and see it for ourselves. We found a riverboat sailing up the Nile, one of thousands that ply the waters carrying cargo and passengers to and fro. This was a mostly-passenger boat, and there were an assortment of others on it. There is not much to do on a long ride like that other than sit and talk to one's neighbors, and so we got to know each of our fellow passengers at least a little.
Mayet, I have mentioned, is my granddaughter, a young priestess of Hathor with a kind heart and a head stuffed with book knowledge and unfortunately not much else. I love the girl, but she needs a bit more spine, and I am hoping to prod her into acquiring one before she either settles down in a Temple along the way or finds a young man and gets married. She's a bit old for marriage, but priestesses often marry quite late, so I'm not truly worried.
I am Sitefnut, and I am a hedge-witch. I have birthed six children and buried two, I was widowed almost twenty years ago, andafter my husband died on the Nile I turned to my herbalism to support myself. My apprentice has been trained up in my craft and I am, for the first time since I was married at twelve, free. Free to delve in truth into the studies everyone in my village assumes I have been deep into for the last many years. Free to leave the village of my birth and finally see the world.
Of the others, perhaps the most striking is Raam, a taciturn half-giant. He tends to communicate mostly with Looks; I approve of this heartily. He is...large. And wields the largest sword I have ever seen. Fortunately, he does not seem to be easily provoked to anger. Another striking person is someone with one of those very long names who we call Pepy; in his rust-red armor, he is the perfect picture of a warrior of Sekhmet. There are secrets and madness living in his eyes, that one, but I think underneath those secrets may lie a heart broken but still good.
There is an elven man and a human woman traveling together; Amunet and Tetikare are their names. The elf blends in, but in that way of blending that anyone who has kept a shop as long as I have can tell is deliberate. Tetikare looks perfectly human in every way, except that the way she moves is very slightly wrong. She is not what she seems, I think. I assumed at first that those two were married, but now I am strongly suspecting that they are not. They do seem bound together somehow, but how? And what is Tetikare?
Another of the travelers is Terik, a tall, thin man who wears leather armor and the symbol of Osiris. Such elevated company! Not one, but three priests! And the half-giant is surely of elevated social status, as well; most of his kind are. And the last passenger was a man about my age named Sekath, with a pronounced limp, who I spent some time trading stories with.
All in all, it was a pleasant voyage, and I was looking forward to finally seeing Thebes. As is the custom, all of the passengers were sharing one large cabin belowdecks, and we were all asleep when the explosion happened. I remember waking to a bright light and noise, and then darkness, and then Mayet was bending over me, looking concerned.
We were trapped in a cabin belowdecks, the doorway having been caved in. Terik looked concerned and pointed at the wall, saying a humming noise was coming from the next cabin over. Tetikare hopped up from where she'd been sitting and volunteered to go look; before any of us could object, she turned herself to a mist and flowed between the cracks in the planks.
Most suspicious. That was no mage spell! She neither spoke nor gestured. But I was dazed enough from the explosion that I did not remark on it at the time. She called from the other side, "There's some broken magic in here, that's what's humming. It's sparking, too, and I fear fire..."
Raam got busy clearing the doorway between the two rooms, and in a few moments we were freed, to see a sight I have very little to compare with in even my life. People, all over the deck...dead. I've seen the dead before, you can hardly avoid it; I've buried two of my children, so the deaths of strangers should carry no shock. But it was the first time I'd ever seen so many bodies, and so much blood.
I remembered Mayet behind me, steeled my stomach, and proceeded to investigate.
It turned out that Terik, as a priest of Osiris, can speak to the dead. And when he speaks to them, they answer, which is the real trick of it. Turns out that the one he spoke to was the victim of a toulican, a sort of vampire who walks in the day, and some of the others were the victims of zombies. Those that hadn't been killed by the undead had been killed by the swords of a pair of Anubis priests, and they had taken something precious--the thing that had been guarded by all of those broken spells. The treasure belonged to Rameses, the Pharaoh, and was being taken to Thebes to be installed at the Temple at Luxor.
Whatever the treasure was seems to have been designed to be a weapon against Anubis. Something tells me that the fact that Anubis priests were among the attackers is no coincidence.
The boat had evidently been poled to the western shore. There were tracks, as of many people, heading westward into the desert--some in chains. We hemmed and hawed a bit and then decided to go after then. Sekath said that he'd stay behind, as his limp made him slow, but he offered to give us a number of potions. It seems that one of the things he hadn't mentioned was that he was a druid "of some power", and said he'd be fine if we left him behind, he'd just find another boat after sunup. He also mentioned that there were some hills to the west that they would need to cross, but if we tended slightly north of their path, we'd come to some mines that would be a shortcut through the hills.
We thanked him, packed up our things, and started walking.
At dawn, Mayet started her infernal singing the praises of Hathor, having to stop and pray and then run to catch up several times over. She claimed she'd be all right lagging behind, as Hathor would protect her. She and I have agreed to disagree on that point; Hathor might protect her, but the gods often have an interesting idea of what protection looks like. She'll never learn unless she gets bitten, she's always been like that.
A few hours later, Terik pointed out some tracks--two horses, two large people (probably Unas, the race used as slaves in this country), converging on our path. When we came upon them, some of us went forward, leaving Tetikare, Mayet, and Raam behind. I told Mayet to make friends with the half-giant, and as we left I heard her somewhat lame attempt at conversation. (Really. "You cast great shade"? I was not perhaps the most silver-tongued of creatures at her age, but I had to have been better than that. Of course, at her age, I'd already had two children and was working on the third.)
The two people turned out to be a pair of Pharaoh Guards, escorting a pair of escaped Unas back to a dwarf who was mining in the same place we were heading towards. (As a quick digression, children, I will explain that City Guards are the law enforcement inside of large cities, and a more corrupt group of rapscallions you'll never meet. Outside the cities, the law is the Pharaoh Guards, who were once as bad as the City Guards, especially in Seti I's time. Rameses II, among other welcome improvements, has cleaned out the greater part of the corruption in his guards. All of us are grateful. Great is the son of the gods, etc etc. We go on.) We told them about the group of people who were heading over the hills, and they volunteered to chase them towards the exit of the mine while we went through if we would take the Unas to the dwarf. We thought this was a good exchange, and the guards rode off.
This is the point where things began to get very, very strange...
We took the Unas back to the rest. Raam started to talk to the Unas--I knew they were capable of speech, but I did not know they would choose to communicate with anyone not their own kind! He translated for Tetikare, who was being nosy, and said, that they didn't feel like working any more, and they had run away when they had been frightened by some Anubis clerics.
And then he drew his huge sword and struck off their chains!
Unsettling. Very unsettling. Unas are a reptilian people who once were a tribe in the western desert. They are large, strong, and very long-lived, and common lore says that they are also dumb as rocks. There are no more in the wild, all having been hunted down and...domesticated...many years ago.
For domesticated, read enslaved. We tell ourselves many lies, we humans. The Unas are the servants of royalty and the rich, much valued for their strength and ability to work for long hours. Most people consider them to be large, intelligent animals, and though they are humanoid, they are spiky-scaled and quite obviously nowhere near human. I have seen them several times in my life but never been near them for any length of time, and I found that they made me uneasy.
Especially out of their chains.
However, one does not argue with a half-giant. The Unas appeared for all the world to be lost and at somewhat at loose ends. Raam shook his head. "It never works. I try and try..."
A half-giant who speaks the Unas tongue, and who is replied to when he speaks to them, who frees them whenever he can. Raam is an eight-foot-tall mystery with a sword large enough to discourage most questions. I will watch, and wait.
We left the Unas outside after burying the cut chains, and went into the mines. We discovered a tripwire that seemed to be more of an alarm than anything else, and Amunet stomped on it and shouted, "Hello in the mines!"
A gravelly voice replied, "Who the hell's there?"
It was quickly established that we simply wanted to pass through, and the dwarf who had replied invited us to have a beer. All of us other than Terik and Pepy decided to be polite. Dwarven beer is delightful, a strong, dark, chewy brew. Unfortunately, Mayet is unused to beer that strong, and was a little tipsy for some time afterward. I must talk that dwarf out of his beer recipe next time I see him.
Before we left, he mentioned that something might be wrong at the Black Pyramid, the pyramid that is being built for Seti I. The dwarf was mining black marble and slate, and nobody had been by to pick up a shipment for the last little while. We thanked him for the beer and the information, and went through the mines to the other side. By the back entrance to the mine there were many great piles of black slate, a perfect place to catch a catnap in the shade and watch for the group we were waiting for.
Presently, there were our undead friends, with three Anubis priests in front, the undead in the back fighting the Pharaoh Guards. One of the Anubis priests was carrying a large, cloth-wrapped item; quite possibly the stolen object.
(Another digression, this one provided by Terik: a toulican is a vampire-like intelligent undead, feeding on blood to survive, but without many of the classic vampire's weaknesses such as burning to death in the sun. As it ages, it grows stronger; an old toulican will live in a lair and send out its "young" to forage and bring back food. An old toulican is about as strong as a full-blood giant. In contrast, zombies are relatively mindless and feed by biting chunks off of living creatures, transferring that creature's strength to themselves. Once the victim dies of shock or blood loss, they exsanguinate the body and then lose interest.)
Quickly, we spread out. I have little that would impress an undead, but the living are quite a bit more impressionable. I raised my hands, preparing to cast a spell--
--and looked down in surprise as a crossbow bolt sprouted from my shoulder. For the second time that day, all was darkness.
I came round to Mayet holding a bloody bolt and a fierce battle raging around me. I elected to retreat and watch, as being rendered unconscious knocked the spells I had prepared clean out of my head. However, as the lead Anubis priest seemed to be getting away, I pulled out a dagger or two and threw them. Gratifyingly, I hit both times. (My father taught me how to throw daggers a number of years ago. I've kept my hand in.)
We finished off the enemy and then regrouped, the clerics doing some laying on of hands to the wounded. The item that had been stolen turned out to be a longsword, a very magical one to boot. After some negotiation, it was agreed that the Pharaoh Guards would take the item to Luxor, and we would escort them there.
The strangest thing then happened. They began to refer to Raam as Lord Raam, and they seemed disappointed but not angry when Raam told them that he had freed the Unas rather than taking them back to the dwarf. In all ways, they treated Raam as their superior.
Perhaps our taciturn half-giant is much more than he appears, eh?
And now we head back to the dwarf's mine, where we will hopefully find some rest in a sheltered location.
And, as for me, I've read something in one of my scrolls about calling a familiar. I suppose if I'm going to be serious about my studies at last, I should call one. I have heard they can be most helpful....
Quotes:
"The last thing you remember is an explosion."
--Storm, starting the campaign
"Try not to hit me with that ax, axhole!"
--Tetikare
"The thing belongs to the pharaoh."
"Not mine! Not any more. Er. Never did!"
--Sitefnut and Raam
"You cast great shade...heehee!"
*annoyed look*
--Mayet attempting to make friends with Raam
"Let the zealous ones do the guarding!"
--Amunet
"We have three main weapons--surprise, fear, and...running away?"
--Raam
"You got your psionic groove on?"
--Laura
"He gets to control undead and other cool stuff, just not turn."
"That's not cool, that's illegal."
"Well, it's not like they're citizens..."
"Actually, this is Egypt, they're not only citizens, they're leaders!"
--Derek, Bryan, Ray, Bryan
