The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.
--Kosh, Babylon 5
It is sometimes the small things that choose the course of events. The pebble begins the avalanche, a rainstorm in the desert floods the Nile.
However, sometimes a large event has even larger consequences.
We were about to have one of those large events happen to us...
8 Thuthi, Inundation, Year 4 of the Reign of Rameses II (July 28th, 1275 BCE)
I called my familiar yesterday evening. A hyena; not perhaps the most noble of creatures, but appearances can be deceiving. Hyenas are strongly pack-bonded, and this one is a male--in hyena society, the females are the leaders. And those jaws are strong enough to take off a grown man's arm at the shoulder, if need be.
(Besides, if you look at them closely, they're actually sort of cute. They have fuzzy round ears and liquid brown eyes. Ignore the teeth and the mismatched legs. Hells, babies are cute, and they're much uglier than hyenas.)
Usi, the hyena, is a bit more intelligent than I was expecting, and evinces a sense of humor that would worry me if I didn't find it so delightful. The others expressed...dismay, mostly. I just grinned and held my tongue.
In the morning, the leader of the dwarves mining here came to us and told us they were leaving. When we inquired why (as it is normally difficult to move dwarves), he told us that they had discovered a door.
A door. A threatening door. The dwarves were afraid of a door...that wouldn't open...that was locked with magical wards that had stood for many years...and nothing was coming out of. I honestly couldn't see the fuss. Lot of superstition, if you ask me.
Pepy came out with a bunch of stuff about what he thought was behind that door. Evidently, there was a dwarven city named Ulath behind there that, to make a very long story short, had been invaded by an army of undead that belonged to a fellow named Plinth and, ultimately, the pharaoh Menes. Capture, torture, execution followed. Behind that door are probably no live dwarves and a large number of undead. The door was sealed to keep what's inside there, and the only way to open it is with a passphrase that is likely lost to history by now.
Pepy is certainly up on his history. Rather too much so for the cleric he seems to be. We elected to not try to open the door. First sensible move we've made in the last week, if you ask me.
About this time is when Terik discovered that the longsword we'd killed a bunch of Anubis priests for was actually a rather shoddy replica of the real thing. Someone had stolen it, it seemed. After much scratching around, it was discovered that Amunet was carrying the real one in this pouch he keeps under his arm, and evidently has a device that can make a copy of just about anything.
Someone is cruising for a bruising, if you ask me. I think his mother didn't spank him nearly enough.
We departed along with the dwarves and the pharaoh guards, heading towards Thebes. Along about noon, those of us who are more observant than others noted that there was a sandstorm heading our way. An unnatural sandstorm, it appeared. This observation on Tetikare's part was quickly followed by an ambush, and Tetikare yet again doing something unusual. She turned into a whirlwind, and picked up a couple of the Anubis priests that had surprised us and banged them around some.
Their leader told us if we dropped the sword, we could go free. Most of us were fleeing at this point, and Terik tossed the replica at them and finally took flight as well. Crazy man. Handy in a fight, but crazy.
Tetikare joined us carrying a couple of corpses, and Terik interrogated them. They said there was another force out looking for us. We talked to the pharaoh guards and agreed that the longsword was the trouble magnet, and that they would take thee dwarves a different route into Thebes.
It was not until after they left that I realized that was my chance to abandon these insane people and this stupid sword that seems to have brought the whole world down on us. On the whole, though, I'm having a good time, so I don't really regret my choice to stay.
I may eat those words, later.
Through the afternoon, evening, and then the night we walked. The desert night is cold and unforgiving, and I found myself wishing I had more than a thin blanket to wrap around myself. My bones seem to chill more easily than they used to. Usi, in his element in the darkness of night, spent his time loping in wide circles around us, scouting. Terik, too, went on ahead, and it was he who ran into Seketh, the druid we'd left behind a few days ago.
We exchanged conversation, and he looked at a replica of the longsword for us. He said it looked like the Osirean longsword, which has great power against the undead--and is rumored to be able to bring the undead back into life.
Creepy thing. The dead should stay that way, that's why they're dead. It's very rude of the dead to get up and walk around as if they still belonged here rather than in the afterlife! We send them off with so many things, why do they need to come back?
Seketh decided to walk with us, and we rather slunk into Thebes in the grey light of false dawn. We found a guesthouse that would hold all of us and slept for a few hours, decided to go to the Temple of Ra near noon when it would be most crowded and we would blend in a bit better.
Mayet slept right through sunrise. First sunrise in three years that I haven't been woken by her caroling.
9 Thuthi, Inundation, Year 4 of the Reign of Rameses II (July 29th, 1275 BCE)
Into the Temple we went. I'd taken the chance to help Usi bathe, though I refused to tie a ribbon in his forelock. Fortunately, I have a few things in my pack that drive away fleas, and an application of a combination of aromatics should drive the vermin off and keep them away. Familiars may get special privileges, but I'd no wish to push my luck.
We spoke to a priest, who spoke to the high priest for us, and returned and said he would be with us shortly. I started to get suspicious at this point. It was too easy. Far, far too easy. The high priest joined us a few minutes later, a strapping big man, clean-headed, accompanied by a cloud of perfume that was nearly a creature of its own.
Mayet greeted him, going into that complicated ritual of sign and countersign that the priests use among themselves. In the middle of this ritual, she straightened, her eyes wide. In a tiny voice, she squeaked, "Where's...the real high priest...?"
Guess he didn't know the secret handshake. I was proud of Mayet for thinking of it, and irritated with her for not thinking of what she'd do if she found he wasn't really a priest. However, half is better than none, and I'm glad she's taking the initiative. Maybe she'll survive this, after all.
In response to Mayet's squeak, the priest said, "The sword. Now. Or you will all die." And then he spoke the words of a spell that seemed to hold us fast with invisible rope. Seketh, who had accompanied us, was the only one visibly unaffected, though I noticed Tetikare going a bit translucent next to me. Evidently, the priest and Seketh knew each other, and though the priest blustered Seketh kept his head, stalking around us, claiming not to know which of us had the sword...and incidentally freeing us.
Raam was the one who discovered that the high priest was an undead, conveniently enough by carving a chunk out of him and noting that he did not bleed. Pepy spun into him, blade swinging, and said, "Take that, Ahmose!"
[Slight digression here. The names of pharaohs are not for mere mortals, and so a pharaoh's name will never be used in wide circulation. Therefore, we all recognized Ahmose as the name of a pharaoh who had died a very long time ago. End of digression.]
Ahmose stared at Pepy, squinted a bit, and asked, "What are you doing still alive?"
[Another digression: I must corner Pepy soon and insist he tell me what's going on. I have a feeling more hangs in the balance here than just a sword.]
Ahmose did his best to change Pepy's 'alive' status, and the cleric fell unconcious. Mayet darted in to heal him, and past me went Amunet, pulling out what I recognized as the real Osirean longsword.
Which he promptly dropped. Which Ahmose promptly stepped on.
Oops.
Terik, for whatever reason, cut the man's robes off, probably on the assumption that they were magical armor of some sort. At this point, Raam and his Very Large Sword stepped in and split Ahmose in half. Terik retrieved the longsword and took the undead's head, then did a quick questioning of the body. The real high priest was buried alive out in the desert four miles away, and the best way out was though the high priest's study.
Out we went, I taking a moment to snatch a couple of very interesting-looking books from the shelves in the study. Mayet was very proud of herself, but she seems to not have learned that Sanctuary doesn't protect against area-of-effect spells. She'll learn. I hope it's not a fatal lesson.
More walking. (Horses. We have got to get horses--though I fear horses might be even harder on my bones than all this walking.) In the place that Ahmose had told us about was a boulder, signs of recent digging, and the tracks of Unas. Ignoring the tracks, we set to moving the boulder. rather, Raam did. Damned useful fellow, that one. Wonder if he needs a mage and a healer as retainers? Might be worth it, especially if he's nobility and might get called up to fight.
Tetikare and Amunet put their heads together over the metal trap door that was revealed when the boulder was moved. Amunet disabled a trap, and I spoke my last spell of the day, one that detects undead. There was one twenty-five feet below us. Attracted by the noise, it seems, it was rising towards the surface.
Experiments with opening the door and dropping rocks and holy water down inside made the undead retreat, but not flee. Careful looking revealed that it was something called a bloodmass, an undead creature made from the blood of people who died in terror. Mayet waved her arms and, somewhat miraculously, managed to Turn the creature. It fled from her in terror, possibly the first being ever to do so. (With luck, not the last.)
Several of us, me not among them, went down into the tunnel to see if they could find the priest. It turned out there was an entire tomb down there, and where we were must have been the Valley of the Kings. They did indeed find the priest, trapped in a sarcophagus, covered with water that seemed to be holding him in a state between life and death. When we revived him, after some talk it was determined that he had been buried alive twenty-two years ago.
Hadn't aged a day, either. If I only looked that good at his age.
We had hoped that it had only been a short time since the high priest had been replaced by an undead pharaoh. Our hopes were pretty much dashed by that, and there may be some difficulties with restoring this one to his rightful place.
While all of this had been happening, Amunet was looking for the back door in. He found it, and, evidently, also found some Unas. Fortunately, he can speak their language. Leaving Usi up top to keep guard, I slipped down into the tomb, to hear what I could hear.
At first it was nothing but the Unas language, and then they switched to Egyptian, to my shock. Unas speaking a civilized tongue? May wonders never cease! They said, to an audience that now included Pepy and Tetikare, that the effect of the drugs in the food that keeps the Unas docile and stupid wears off in about six months, restoring them to their true selves.
They were well-spoken, intelligent, and they made my head swim. I did not dare go close, only hung back and listened. They claimed to have been hiding here for years, free, and they away the rebirth of the dwarf called Stongen. Stongen's name was familiar from the tale that Pepy had told earlier about the dwarf city. Stongen had led the dwarves, and Stongen was the one who had surrendered. Evidently, the reason the Unas had been guarding the door was to keep Stongen's spirit from being taken to the afterworld, for if they lost him, they lost all hope.
Everything leads back to Ulath. But even if we went back, we could not get through the door...
And it was at that point that Pepy said, "I know the passphrase to open the door to Ulath."
All right, then. Undead city it is.
May the gods have mercy on our souls.
We came back to the surface, Amunet taking the opportunity to do a bit of tomb robbing on the way out. Now that offends my sensibilities. There are a few things one just does not do, and robbing graves is one of them. Tetikare insinuated to me that this was a regular habit of his, which made me think that perhaps something needs to be done about it. It's almost too bad I like Tetikare as much as I do. The elf she's bound to certainly isn't a good sort.
And the need to get answers about Pepy grows more urgent. As does the need to get rid of this longsword that everyone seems to want. The people who want it likely want it for evil ends, and we don't want the thing but appear to be stuck with it while we figure out if we can set the high priest of Ra back into his place. I have half a mind to track the pharaoh Ramses down and give it back to him. It's not ours, it belongs to him.
Until we've gotten rid of it, none of us will have any rest. Even if we split up they know our names and faces, now.
And the question remain, what do they want it for?
Who do they want to bring back from the afterlife, and for what purpose?
None of us will sleep soundly tonight.
Quotes:
"Well, that turned out well."
"In an 'I'm still alive' sort of way."
--Terik, Amunet
"This is starting to look like a Monkees episode."
--Laura, referring to the fact we were all rolling 1's and 2's.
"You mean you attacked him with the sword?"
"Why do you think we're trying to get it back?"
--Derek, Ray
"I think I'm going to go for a butt stab next time."
--Amunet
"I'm going to pull his robes off."
*entire room erupts into laughter*
--Terik
"We can bring him back to life, and kill him!"
--Amunet
"Where do undead come from?"
"Animate Dead..."
"The undead stork brings them."
--Amunet, Tetikare, Sitefnut
"Did we let Storm read that undead book, is that what we did?"
--Laura
