Mummies

Mummification is an act of optimism. An irreversible bet that the future will be better than the present. It's a big investment to have a secure tomb built, a body prepared and (often reluctant) favored retainers rounded up for interment. The commitment of capital is total, an undiversified stake in the most illiquid of assets, a spice-packed, spell-swaddled, sealed-for-freshness corpse.

Mummification is the cryonics of my setting's bronze age. When things went wrong, when the sky fell, when the heavens warred, in the days of Ragnarok, of Apocalypse, the Flood and the Sea People, the great high priests and god-kings retreated from the world to sleep through disaster and awake to a new day, when they could emerge and resume their rightful dominance.

Karloff in the Mummy (1932)

After our recent discussion of the wight and wraith, monsters with comparatively weak presence in the popular imagination, we're once again examining a monster with a lot of cultural resonance. All the usual writers had a go at mummy stories (Poe, Conan Doyle, Stoker, later Lovecraft & Rice) and there's a stack of memorable movies: Karloff for Universal, Lee's Hammer mummy and then the 1999 action romp reboot. Each with a constellation of sequels and spinoffs. 

When mummies appeared in the original D&D Monsters & Treasure booklet, they were culturally ubiquitous and that popularity has continued to the present. 

All that to say, your players might not know what a wight is but they definitely have a mental image for mummies. Does the D&D mummy actually feel like the mummy pre-existing in players' imaginations? Does it have anything interesting to do?

Lee in The Mummy (1959)

Mummy Dearest

Across D&D editions, the mechanical structure of the mummy is fairly consistent: Fear-based paralysis, melee hits convey rotting disease, resistance to basic attacks. Usually vulnerable to fire. It's a tough, but eminently physical threat (distinguishing it from the wraith & spectre) and often has a religious/cleric flavor (distinguishing it from the Lich). Honestly... very solid. 

Of the Basic undead, the mummy is one of my favorites.

The initial save vs. paralysis can swing a fight. I've run into mummies a couple of times recently as a player in an OSE Arden Vul campaign. In the first, we mostly made our saves, volleyed spells and crushed the mummies handily. In another tomb-raid, we discovered mummies but most of the party (including our cleric) failed the fear save and it turned into a desperate scramble for escape in which we lost several characters. 

We managed to avoid the Rot but that's another iconic, thematically resonant danger. It's an effect that lingers and often even a successful fight results in a side-quest to find a cure. 

Even as a mid-level party, discovering mummies is a tense, scary moment. 

Vulnerability to fire is also perfect. On the level of practical instinct, a dehydrated, cloth or paper enveloped corpse seems like an ancient Duraflame. On the fictional memory level, Karloff's Imhotep is destroyed when his animating scroll is burned by holy fire. 

Trampier for the AD&D Monster Manual. This rocks

We'll keep all this good stuff in and I'll add a sprinkle of my own spices as we wind up the bandages and tie it off with a bow. 

Speedy Starting Equipment

I recently started a new Ultra  Bastard campaign with some players who are completely new to role playing games. Wanting to get into the action as quickly as possible, I opted to forego purchasing equipment at character creation and instead made this little chart.

It's a handy thing to have printed out & pasted into my DM notebook and I'm sure it'll get a lot of use in the future. 

Posting it here, in case it comes in handy for any of y'all. 

Pick Your Poison

Sometimes it's handy to have a list of poisons. 

When stocking a dungeon or a search-the-body table, it's nice to add something specific to the key rather than just "poison" and, if you're running someone else's key, what does "poison" actually do?

There's a page in my DM notebook for just this eventuality: 

Ignore the central diagram. It's an artifact of a recycled page.

The poisons I've pre-loaded on the page are mostly gestures toward real world toxins. They might not be medically accurate, but the profiles are recognizable. These seemed like a good starting basis for improvisation and cannibalized concoctions. Lots of space on the page to add new entries as they come up in play. Reproduced below, so that you don't have to suffer through my hand-writing.

If you have poisons that you like to use in your games, please put them in a comment. 

Nightmare Before Christmas

Wraiths

Wraiths have a strong visual identity: hooded, faceless black figures. They are the Grim Reaper, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, the Nazgul, even the Dementors (if you must). They look scary. Everyone knows the empty cowl means death. 

My own drawing

D&D doesn't know what to do with them. Are they corporeal? Do they paralyze or Energy Drain? Are they Nazgul or is that Spectres? It all depends on which edition you prefer. Delta has a great round-up. 

With their intimidating visages, wraiths should advance the thesis that I've explicated in previous posts (skeletons, zombies, ghouls, wights) that each undead type ought to be uniquely terrifying. 

My wraiths are of the semi-corporeal, black mist mode of wraithdom. They'll look solid enough, but your glaive-guisarme passes clean through. Unlike wights, wraiths don't have names or personalities. They are anti-life voids, avatars of nihilistic hatred. They just want to snuff all the candles. 

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

Death Spirals Revisited

These guys are brutal. They've got auto-hit life drain (don't worry, I won't make you deduct levels), dissolution at 0hp (no save, no res) and escalating damage that snowballs like a motherfucker.

This monster sets up tactical puzzle-fights and is a bit more mechanically complex than my previous undead. They can float over obstacles and flow between people, so fight positioning will be unusual.

Instead of the canonical level-drain, I've given the wraith an area-of-effect aura. Wraiths deal damage to all adjacent creatures, with no roll and the monster gains the hit points taken. This damage increases every round. The party needs to win fast or it will get out of hand. 

The goal here is for the players to fear them. For their arrival to be an "Oh, shit!" moment, without having to resort to level drain.

Muppets

Wights

As the appellation Wight once referred to men, so too the creatures thus called were once mortal lords. Now they are bitter undead, who loathe and envy the living. Their visages are bleached and their personalities eroded by time, until nothing remains but fierce hostility and simmering resentment. 

They were lords and still believe they should be. 

My own post-it drawing, referencing this one by Vance Kelly

A Boss Suitable for Low-Level Parties

The wights in my game are an undead boss monster. I want something that can stand on its own thematically, not just a stronger zombie with "No. Appearing 2-16" and level-drain. 

A wight should have a name and a story.

In my version, I hope to bring back the dread and vindictiveness of the Tolkien original and evoke the draugr sagas they were based on (e.g. Grettir, Hrómundar and Hervör's saga, perhaps the barrow-dragon from Beowulf). Fun fact: the original use of the term "barrow-wight" was by William Morris in his Grettir's saga translation. I also thought of M.R. James' "A Warning to the Curious" and its BBC adaptation. 

Wights haunt the vicinity of their own tombs and must return to them during the day, unless they are deep underground. 

They'll gain the ability Shuttered Room suggested in their comments section, "undead being vulnerable to weapons that were made while they were still alive, so that rusty old broadsword is of use while that specially imported custom rapier is not." You can reduce them to zero hit points, but they'll dissolve and reform until they're finally dispatched with a suitably ancient implement.

They can track treasure stolen from them, with dire consequences for anyone paid with it. 

You'll think you've defeated one only to have it show up at your campfire a night or two later.

Cairn in Snow (1807) by Caspar David Friedrich 

All Hail the Ultra Bastard

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Ultra Bastard, my homemade franken-creature of a ruleset is now available for your perusal. 

Download Now 

It's a compact (16 pages for core) distillation of the rules I actually play at my table. 

I've previously described myself as a heterodox, universal harvester and that ethos is evident throughout this project. This is a love letter to the hobby, not a product

I am a big believer in the ethos of DIY and the notion that every DM with the inclination to do so, should make their own D&D. I hope you'll chop it up for parts, excise the sections that aren't a perfect fit and re-combine the remaining bits with your favorite house-rules to make a bespoke ruleset that's perfect for the campaign you're running right now.

A few distinctives:

• Classless core with optional, simple-to-implement classes
• Cast as many spells as you like, but they cost HP
• Hit points are capped at the higher of Strength or Constitution score so they never over-inflate.
• Speed Sandwich initiative (per Dwiz)
• Optional Wounds table
• Wisdom is replaced with Alertness. One stat for perception instead of two for mindfulness.
• Familiar, old-fashioned D&D chassis but with Advantage/Disadvantage, slot-based encumbrance and critical hits.

I'm proud of this and I hope you'll tear it apart and make something you're proud of. 

Waxen Shambler

 

My own drawing, referencing this.

The Waxen Shambler (or Candle Golem) is an idea I came up with for a haunted chapel. It's essentially a Shambling Mound, comprising the waxy mass of hundreds of melted together liturgical candles rather than vegetation. 

Waxen Shambler

Armor Class: 10 - a slow moving blob isn't hard to hit

Damage Immunity / Resistances: Immune to normal missiles & bludgeoning attacks. Other weapons deal half damage.

Vulnerabilities: If it takes cold damage, it will move at half speed and only take one attack. If it is set on fire, it will take double the normal recurring damage but will act as if under the effects of a Haste spell until the fire burns out.

Hit Dice: 8d8 (36HP) + Regenerates 5hp / round

Attacks: 

• 2x bludgeoning limbs, +2 to hit, d12 damage
• Engulf - if both limbs hit, the target is swept into the mass of the shambler and will suffocate in 3 rounds unless freed.  

Move: Half human speed

Saves: 12+ 

Morale: Implaccable

Encounter Design

This thing is very hard to kill but pretty easy to flee. It won't chase beyond the church building.

My hope is that it pursues the party around the church area, maintaining pressure but they're smart enough not to stand against it toe-to-toe.

If they set it on fire... characters are likely to die. 

Loot

You'll undoubtedly find the oddments of previous victims lodged amid the mass.

Big inspiration for my design