Character Creation: Mummy: The Resurrection

IMHOTEP. IMHOTEP.

The Game: Mummy: The Resurrection
The publisher: White Wolf.
Degree of familiarity: Not much, really. Mummy came out in 2001, before I moved to Atlanta or shortly thereafter. In any event, I wasn't involved in its writing, though I did write a bit of the Mummy Players Guide. I've played Mummy once, I ran it once (John Chambers' character from that game, in fact, appears in the Players Guide), I always liked it but never got a chance to do much with it. Anyway.
Books required: The Mummy book, plus some version of the core rules (I have Werewolf: The Apocalypse handy from this character). I have the Players Guide, too, though I don't recall it being especially useful for starting characters. I could be wrong, though.

 
One of the things I liked about Mummy was that it had a hopeful mood to it. So much of the OWoD was "the world is actively out to get you/grind you down/corrupt you" (as opposed to NWoD, which is more "the world is a dangerous place, but it's less dangerous if you don't go looking for trouble"), and having characters that were really about life and redemption was neat. I have nothing in the way of concept, so I'll skim the splats (called Amenti) and see what jumps out.

OK, the way this works is this: The character is a merger of a dead person and one part of an Egyptian mummy soul-component thingie. Which component determines your Amenti, and your general outlook, powers, etc. Different Amenti are attracted to different kinds of flawed people; the character I played on the one occasion I got to play Mummy was a kickboxer who let himself get beaten up in the ring (he was a kher-minu; they go looking for people who didn't take care of their bodies).

This time, I have something a little different in mind, but I'll get to it via the chargen process. In a kind of foreshadowing to Aeon games and, eventually, NWoD, we've got two stages here.

Stage One: The Second Life. As in, the life of the mortal that the mummy-spirit-thing bonded with.

Step One: Concept. I want to play someone who was basically a nihilist, but who wasn't miserable about it. He just didn't have much self-identity. Unlike the last unperson that I made, this guy had a thriving social life. It was all just vapor. He was a filler, a face in the crowd, and no one really knew him because there was nothing to know. He worked in Los Angeles as a personal assistant to some celebrity or other - really, he was an assistant's assistant. And when he died, a lot of very famous people sent flowers, with generic greetings. His name, during his second live, was Tommy Briggs.

How'd he die? Well, he was leaving a party and walking home when someone came up behind him, whacked him over the head, took his wallet and his watch, and dragged him into an alley. He died of his injuries. His attacker had no idea who he was, and by the time the police got around to investigating, the trail (such as it was) had gone cold.

But something was watching. A ba spirit (responsible for guarding the soul in the afterlife, enabling resurrection of the body) saw the Briggs was lingering, opened his caul and asked if he'd like to continue on. And Briggs, honestly, said he didn't care. He'd had nothing to live for, and if the alternatives were existence as a ghost or life as a mummy, at least as a mummy he would have a body. He agreed, half-heartedly, and the ba spirit merged with him, becoming a Khri-Habi (Scroll-Bearer).

He woke up in a funeral home and changed paperwork around to make it look like he'd already been cremated. And then he fled to Egypt on his Hajj to complete his resurrection.

I'm meant to choose Nature and Demeanor as part of this process. For Demeanor, I think the tem-akh didn't influence him much. He's still the same Bon-Vivant he always was, at least outwardly. But inwardly, his lack of a real personality has been filled by the ba-spirit's quest of spiritual rigor and fortitude. He's become a Visionary. I see this character as careful in a practical sense, but unrestrained creatively and intellectually. He's smart, and he doesn't have a lot of baggage from his Second Life getting in the way (because that person - Tommy Briggs - just wasn't really there that much).

I also choose my Inheritance here; that'd be who the tem-akh was before it died. I think it was a scholar, a person versed in medicine, but with very little in the way of people skills. It wanted to be part of the crowd around it, but couldn't find a way to slip in, socially. The opposite, then, of Briggs, who was quite adept socially but brought nothing interesting to the table.

Step Two: Attributes. The usual deal, 6/4/3. Since I'm creating Briggs, here, I'll make Social primary, then Physical, then Mental.

Physical: One each in Strength and Dexterity, two in Stamina. Briggs kept himself in shape.

Social: Two in each Attributes. Slightly above average across the board, but nothing truly exceptional.

Mental: One each, for ratings of 2 across the board. Staunchly average, and therefore almost invisible.

Step Three: Abilities. Same drill; 11/7/4. As a matter of interest, Mummy adds a bunch of new Abilities, some of which aren't on the damn sheet. I really like the NWoD approach - these Skills, now and forever amen. Anyway. I think probably Talents first, then Knowledges, then Skills.

Talents: Three into Carousing (one of those aforementioned "not on the sheet" Abilities), two each into Alertness, Expression, Streetwise, and Subterfuge. Mostly the results of living in LA.

Skills: Two into Etiquette, one each in Drive and Technology. Again, he knows how to function in his vapid world, but little else.

Knowledges: One into Academics (he went to school, after all), two into Bureaucracy and Computer, and one into Investigation and Law. Just stuff he's picked up chasing celebrities around, doing the grunt work.

Step Four: Backgrounds. Three points here on stuff appropriate to Tommy, but stuff that survived his mortal existence, and there's not much of that. I think I'll turn his cipher-ness to my advantage, here. Two dots of Resources (offshore funds) and one dot of Contacts (an agent who was never informed that Tommy was dead).

Step Five: Details. Five freebies. I'll blow it all on a dot of Perception - Tommy had to notice who was in the room, after all.

Stage Two: The Rebirth

And now, Tommy-as-mummy. He'll need a new name eventually.

Step One: The Second Death. We went through this already. Tommy died as he lived, anonymously.

Step Two: Attributes. I add two dots to Attributes, anywhere I like. This is to represent the ba's influence on Tommy, so they pretty much need to go to Mental stats. I'll put one in Intelligence and one into Wits - the ba spirit started him thinking as well as noticing.

Step Three: Abilities. Five more points into Abilities. Again, this is stuff that the tem-akh brings to the party. I'll put two into Medicine, two into Occult, and one into Science. And there are really too much Abilities in this game.

Step Four: Advantages. Magic stuff! Yay! As a Scroll-Bearer, I get a dot of Alchemy, and then two more dots in Hekau. Hang on a sec. OK, since I have a "power stat" (Balance) that has to equal or exceed my highest Hekau rating, and I don't think I'm going to have a lot of freebies handy for raising it, I'll take a dot in Effigy and a dot in Celestial. I think the mummy-Tommy enjoys the challenge of formulaic magic, but hasn't had the guts to branch in Nomenclature yet - the notion of erasing something from existence frightens him, since he knows how close he was to oblivion. For my rituals, I'll take Simple Elixir (Beloved of Ptah), which raises Dexterity by one for an hour for Alchemy. For Celestial, I'll take Simple Weather Magic; I'm tempted to take Hanging the Stars, but that really requires other rituals to make it useful. For Effigy, Command Simple Implement. Allows him to gain a bonus to actions using a given simple object.

Now I get 2 more dots in Backgrounds. I know I'll wind up blowing a bunch more of these with freebies, so for now I'll just put them into Memory.

Step Five: Finishing Touches. OK, first off, I get a Balance rating of 1. That's not changing. Then I get Willpower 5, which is nice. My Sekhem, which is my magical juice, starts at 1 (my Balance), which sucks. I can't have more Sekhem than Balance - geez, a little more attention to mechanics, here, guys? I mean, if you've got a trait that is so crucial to the character that the character isn't viable without it, you make it basic to the character. (This is mostly done in NWoD, though Wyrd is pretty darned crucial to Changeling characters.)

Anyway, freebies. I want a high rating in Memory, since I think his tem-akh kept most of its knowledge. What the hell, we'll put three more dots there. I'll put two dots into Ba, meaning that I can attempt resurrection after 70 days dead (without it, I'd need a year), and two dots into Ka, so I've got some spiritual protection for my physical body. Finally, I'll take a dot of Arcane - he's not as invisible as he used to be, but he's still not real impressive. That's 8 of my 10 freebies. I'll put the other two into Vessel, since I'll need it. My vessel is a vertebra from an ancient corpse, slightly deformed. My tem-akh, in life, found it interesting and kept it on him, and Tommy-mummy was able to recover it during his Hajj.

Would I like some Flaws? I would, but reading the ones in the book, they don't really fit. I could jigger in something like Hunted, but it doesn't fit the character's concept as an unperson discovering the world. Anachronism would work, but I want him to remember his Second Life - there's just not much to remember. I guess we're good as-is. Some more concept-type stuff.

Tommy arrived in the Web of Faith, found the Vessel, and completed the resurrection. He learned of Apophis and the destruction of the Dark Kingdom of Sand (this is all Mummy and OWoD backstory), and realized that he was in the unique position to help. He'd never been in a unique position before. He's waiting to get hooked up with a group of mummies, but in the meantime, he's asked to return to LA. He's planning to hook up with his old agent buddy (under a different name, of course) and try and get some work on a set. Not as an actor, but maybe as a script doctor or something. Something that would allow him to change the way the world is perceived. He'll need to build up his Expression to make that work, but in the meantime, he's a would-be screenwriter sitting on a great story - his. He just has to figure out how to tell it, death and all. He's dumped his old name, of course. Nowadays, he's called Scott Byrd (a nod to the ba-spird, symbolized by a bird).

I think an interesting scene in a chronicle for this character would involve someone recognizing him from the Second Life. He's not real careful about going places and associating with people he knew, because, well, who would ever remember him? But someone would. Maybe the guy who killed him, maybe just some other assistant that was taken with him (and that he never noticed).