Desires Unmasked and Unbound

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Designer Liz Spain continues her breathless romance-novel previews of Mummy's Mask, here showing off the bounties in Adventure Deck 2: Empty Graves. The desert awaits.

Far from home as it was, the city of Wati was comforting, familiar somehow to Estra. Though her old ears struggled to understand the exotic tongues the local merchants spoke, the shopkeepers were always excessively polite. This was a city that embraced death, lived next door to death. Respecting the elderly was etched into the bones of Osirion culture.

The young man managing the auction offered Estra a well-muscled arm and led her to a soft cushion to rest. "May I?" he asked, unfurling the small carpet she kept tucked under her arm. His voice was rich and warm as he comforted, "Ask for Ptemenib if you desire for anything else, Honored Grandmother." She didn't need the seat; she felt as spry as a woman half her age.

Of course you do.

But this vantage point allowed her to watch the stevedores fill the Canny Jackal's storeroom with treasures scavenged this morning from the necropolis. Grave goods crafted in a dozen different dynasties shuffled through the doors, glittering gold and lapis in the light of the oil lamps. Occasionally, pieces of the dead carefully wrapped in blessed linen joined the gaudy trinkets on the storeroom shelves. She spotted what appeared to be a severed hand and gasped. "No worries, Love," the gruff voice at the back of her mind reassured, "he deserved it."

A cleric of Nethys appeared from the shadows. He was looking for someone.

Don't hands usually come in pairs?

She was about to admonish Honaire with her favorite line from the parable of Pharasma and Forgiveness when the exuberant shouting of the auction broke into screams. A crash-tumble of precious objects clattered to the floor as the mummified remains crawled off the shelves. A falcon-headed canopic jar rolled into the bidding room, cracking against a stone column. The abomination that spilled forth was malevolent and... juicy.

"There!" Honaire spotted movement through the window. A golden-masked figure dashed into an alleyway, the cleric of Nethys in close pursuit.

Outside, merchants hunched over their wares. It was all they could do to protect them from the panicked customers desperate to escape the vanth stalking above.

Psychopomp is totally a real word.

All around Estra, young wills broke and they ran for safety. There was danger, sure. Estra had seen the chaos of death many times before. In the withering gasps of a sick child in her arms, in the bewilderment of restless battlefield shades, as the light faded from the eyes of her own Honaire, death marked the beginning of a new journey. In this hot and sandy place, on this journey through ancient graves, she carried the wisdom of Pharasma. A powerful ill will was causing the dead to rise. She could help, but only one at a time.

The screams pouring in from the street broke as the crowd passed. In its wake, a woman in mourning garb glared daggers at all who passed. With kohl-rimmed eyes streaked by tears, she was quite young to be widowed. Cold, dark energy coalesced about her arms, ready to defend the figure still wearing his funerary shroud shuffling behind her. This poor woman reminded Estra of her younger self. She remembered the black well of loss, her desperate screams into the oblivion that claimed her beloved. Her old heart cracked, then broke. Her love poured forth in a plume of vivid ectoplasm that took shape around her.

The good spells have names like "deathgrip" in this set.

"I'll protect you while you talk to the sorceress, Love," Honaire reassured. Though always together in a way, his physical presence blanketed her with a comforting armor. Called to act, she clenched her jaw and wrapped her fingers around the tassels of the carpet as it rose. This night would have hard lessons for the young, lessons Estra knew well: Death is not the enemy, and love is not enough.

Liz Spain
Adventure Card Game Designer