Hi, gang. Last week, we talked a bit about how magic suffuses the Arisen, from their fleshly shells to the occult wonders they can work in the living world. This week, we expound on magic in Mummy.
Magic as Lifeforce
Wherever life exists—or even the potential for life—mystical energy bubbles up from the cosmic firmament like water into an oasis. This flowing energy is called Sekhem (“lifeforce”), and it is the source and substance of all magic. On its own, Sekhem is a passive force of emotional resonance, often revealing itself through remembered passions and pains. Given sufficient mystical knowledge and willpower, however, Sekhem can empower miracles and wonders beyond imagining, even to the point of rebuking death itself.
As creatures of necromantic power, rather than simple living beings, the Arisen do not create Sekhem. Yet they alone concentrate and radiate this energy through the Rite of Return empowering their existence, and they therefore feel its ebbs and flows on a base, instinctual level. This is perhaps Sekhem’s greatest irony—that it sees purest expression in the most impure of forms. When a mummy calls upon his eldritch power, whether to strengthen his physical form or to unleash a mystical effect, it is the power of Sekhem upon which he draws. Like memory, Sekhem is so fundamental to a mummy’s existence that it’s represented by a game Trait.
Pieces of the Past
As a source of power, Sekhem emanates from the living world and comes to reside in objects, which the creators of the Arisen called vessels. The most common form of vessel is the vestige. These objects, from the humblest baubles to the grandest artifacts, are the touchstones upon which the Arisen can moor their memory against the eternal turbulence of time and fate. Vestiges resonate with the inner being of a mummy, and his purpose draws him to them as an iron filing to a magnet. While the Arisen prize ancient vestiges most of all, modern vestiges can sustain and comfort them as well. In times of need an Arisen can strip a vestige of its accumulated pathos, to cannibalize it for the power required to continue his earthly toil, but doing so removes its Sekhem from the living world forever.
All vessels contain dim memories of the past, a reward precious enough for the Arisen, but some vessels are “supercharged” with distilled Sekhem and infused with strange magical powers. This type of vessel is known as a relic. Often times, these objects were crafted by the same beings who birthed the Rite of Return, or by those who copied their great art, but a rare few are the organic products of a more long-term distillation of Sekhem. Like vestiges, relics can be cannibalized for their Sekhem, but a mummy never, ever does such a thing lightly, for there are… consequences to murdering the world. Of all vessels, the Arisen prize relics from their own bygone empire most of all, and are drawn to (re)claim them like no others.
And of course, woe be to any soul who would dare steal a treasured piece of a mummy’s past….
Until next week,
Senebti!
That’s…. wow. Interesting. If i were to sit here and pull out other games to compare it to, i would use Wraith: the Oblivion and of course the Ressurrection Mummies. The distillation of power into items reminds me of the restless deads’ Fetters, while the use of items to store/retrieve their power source is very old school Mummy Relic.
But it’s the way you pulled them apart, refused them and created a story for how the use of these items “feels” and reflects the nuances of the life and times of the Arisen that really struck me as imaginative, original, and very cool. Kudos to you good sirs!
I’m really looking forward to using the items as great McGuffin’s to tell a deeper story of need, memory and wrath. It’ll be interesting to see if these same Vessels and Relics are similar to anything from the other game lines, or if they are able to be used by the rare human -ala Reliquary.
Keep it up! I’m already dying to see what comes out next week!
Thanks, Lost. And your post was right on the money, about everything. Vessels are definitely prospective McGuffins, but they’re also essential to the purpose of the Arisen and a natural manifestation of the archetype’s overall worldview.
And yes, World of Darkness: Reliquary (among other core setting material) was taken into account in the design of Mummy. 🙂
So. Mummies are “living” relics, right?
So how does this tie in with magic as a material, real substance as mentioned in the last post? The way sekhem is being described here seems to go back toward glowy, but it’s possible I’m misunderstanding it.
Because it only exists as a quality of physical (and mental) things – Mummies have Sekhem, Vessels have Sekhem. Emotions have Sekhem. Sekhem is never free-floating particle effects.
You could almost substitute the word “zeitgiest” for it – Sekhem is the magical quality of emotional resonance, almost a twin to Essence but based in the real world rather than the Shadow. It’s what a object-reading psychic would pick up on, the name for that feeling you get when you associate an emotion with a place and time or when you relive a trauma.
For Mummies, it’s the thing keeping them alive.
That answers my question perfectly, thanks.
“You could almost substitute the word “zeitgiest” for it ”
Yes – except that it’s spelled “Zeitgeist”. Sorry – German is my first language, and I’m a stickler for these things. 🙂
Not that I usually wonder about these things, because I’m kind of a no-crossover purist, but I still wonder how Sekhem interacts with Glamour, which can be derived from strong emotions.
“For Mummies, it’s the thing keeping them alive.”
That’s a bit of a stronger relationship between mummies and memories and relics and things of the past than I expected, honestly. Still -this makes perfect sense and is in line with the themes of the game as presented in other blog updates.
Heh. If we’re asking crossover questions, I was wondering instead how it connected to Plasm. The way sekhem is being described sounds almost exactly like plasm, but for life rather than death.
As a quick note, taking core WoD material into account doesn’t constitute “crossover.” Like the other WoD games (with the exception of Hunter, of course), there’s a default presumption of no crossover. So, questions pertaining to Plasm (or Pyros, or any other proprietary term/concept) remain academic until and unless an individual Storyteller chooses to incorporate them into his Mummy game. 🙂
i think the idea that sekhem is something that can exist in objects OR people OR Mummies makes it sound fluid, or even particle like. Which conceptually separates it from the idea that it IS a material thing itself. I’m sorry to keep going there, but the “glowy” idea is out of the bag, and I doubt very much any RPG can put it back in. I have no problem with it so i don’t understand the issue really, but sekhem, pathos, lifeForce (ehem, ‘force’), these ideas are already familiar to WoD fans. I’m most curious about the idea that sekhem can be destroyed or removed from the world permenantly, and what these means to the world and the mummies who cause it.
Thank you; this, I get: magic in Mummy: the Curse is based on properties of things rather than mystical energies, and saying that Sekhem is an energy that resides within a vessel is like saying that Willpower, Morality, or Health are energies that reside within a human being.
In fact, given your comparison of Sekhem to Essence, I would not be surprised if the Arisen view Essence as a ghost’s Sekhem.
Now you’re getting it!
Things I believe we might see, based on this very interesting blog entry:
Some sort of connection between Sekhem, virtue and vice?
Mummies empowering their physical form in a similar way to vampires burning blood to boost physical attributes?
Sekhem being the fuel stat, most likely. Mummies possibly really, truly need Sekhem to survive and to perpetuate their existences.
Vessels as unliving metaphors for the Arisen, or maybe the other way around. Mummies are, like vessels, relics of a bygone age, except that they walk and talk when they really shouldn’t by all reason.
Maybe there’s a connection between Sekhem and the cult rules? Ritual worship as a method for the Arisen to gain Sekhem?
“woe be to any soul who would dare steal a treasured piece of a mummy’s past….”
This. Sounds very Mummy’s Curse to me. excellent.
DaveB hinted that this post gives away something big through the innocuous choice of words. So I’ll go over what has stood out to me.
Life and the potential for life being a source of Sekhem seems interesting to me. While some of what is posted above steers me away from it. i wonder just how visceral an Arisen could get in their pursuit of of Sekhem.
“This is perhaps Sekhem’s greatest irony—that it sees purest expression in the most impure of forms. ”
It’s fairly stark that we see the Arisen nature described as impure. Given the ritualistic and probably religiously oriented nature of the Rite of Return, given it’s time in the ancient world. That they are made as impure beings speaks to some sort pragmatic desire on the part of the ones who made the rite. Without of course knowing the details the desire to exist forever would stand out as the obvious reason.
Vestige as the word of choice stands out to me in the next paragraph. Given the importance of Memory and the meaning of vestige as part of something that no longer exists or is disappearing. It makes the relationship between vestiges and Arisen tricky. As desperate times might result in the consumption of something that is truly irreplaceable. For creatures of memory that represents an even tougher decision. We also of course see a purpose ascribed to them.
On the “consequences for murdering the world.” One thing that comes to mind is that just as the Shadow influences the “real world.” The “real world” influences the shadow. So for a place that exists in more symbolic representations of what they reflect. Stripping objects infused with Sekhem into oblivion could warp that reflection.
“Of all vessels, the Arisen prize relics from their own bygone empire most of all, and are drawn to (re)claim them like no others.” (Emphasis added)
Does this perhaps indicate that you’ve got mummies from different cultures, each prizing the artifacts of “their own bygone empire[s]”?
Hi, Andrew. It doesn’t indicate that, no. All mummies in the game can trace their origins back to the same overall source. 🙂
It’s Atlantis, right?
😉
No, it’s not Atlantis.
If it’s Lemuria, I’m flying to Atlanta to slap the lot of you.
In a surprise turn, it’s El Dorado.
*laugh*
Oh cool, i really overlooked that bit! Now you guys have some weird group that’s been making all these eternal, cursed creatures using profane rites? Or at least a ritual descended from some group that has mysterious reasons of their own?
Get outta town! That’s great! I thought their genesis was wrapped up in a nice tidy bow, but with this wrinkle they continue to explore why they were created too, and look for McGuffins’ pointing to thier own origin story! My, my, you all have been busy with your scheming!
*claps* Bravo! You guys wow me like evey other day…
Phylacteries (Horcruxes) anyone?!?
I ran into this looking up those terms. Neat 🙂
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koschei
Liches like Kosciej are much more of a Mage: The Awakening thing, but it is the narrow edge where Mage meets Mummy. Like CAS says, though, we don’t do crossover in corebooks. Perhaps a supplement, if there’s a call for it, like Changeling’s Rites of Spring.
Umm… I have two questions, one of which I’m certain you’ll be unable to answer. And that is whether Mummy: The Curse will see a hardcover release?
The second question is if you’ve seen Mummies: Alive!? :/
Not a DriveThru employee, but it’s big enough. They do hardcover PoDs for other books if you’re willing to pay, so… Probably?
And I’ve seen the intro on youtube “nostalgic cartoon intros” compilations, but nowt more.
This is probably more of a question to CAS than to you, but it still can’t hurt to ask 🙂 sometime last year, at GenCon I believe, there was mention of two supplements for Mummy. Have the plans changed, or can we still expect both supplements to be published?
Just out of curiosity, was retaining the terminology of Mummy: the Resurrection (Sahu, Sekhem, Vessel etc.) an intentional decision as a sort of homage to the old game, or are the Egyptian terms for the human parts of being simply that iconic and appropriate that re-using the terms was the only sensible decision?
They were appropriate for the new game, regardless of whether they’d been used before. Also, words are not always used for the same concept. It ends up familiar, yet different, if you’re aware of any of the three previous Mummy games. There may be a certain amount of re-learning to do, but if you can put cMummy out of your mind, you’ll do fine.
It’s a tricky situation, this, and one the nWoD doesn’t have a unified policy on. As games designers we don’t want people to assume false equivalence based on terminology, but the danger in abandoning words simply because they were used elsewhere is that.. Well… They were chosen for cMummy because they were the best words for those concepts. Why should nMummy *not* use the most appropriate words for it’s concepts, just because they were already taken by another game? That way lies madness, and clunky game terms noone uses.
It’s been handled in a lot of diffeent ways over the nWoD. nWerewolf changed the form and Auspice names, and when I ran it just after release for the life of me I could *not* remember the new ones except for Guaru (for obvious reasons). I had to have a poster with a translation guide put up in the gaming room. But when other people I know ran it, having never played cWerewolf? They were just fine with it.
nVampire, though, reused old words for thigns that weren’t equivalent and has suffered a tiny bit for it. I wish nVentrue weren’t called Ventrue, for instance, as it’d help people to not get entirely the wrong idea about them..
nMage cheerfully uses new words for similar concepts – Sanctum, Mana, order – but then also uses the oMage words – Chantry, Quintessence, Tradition – to mean something completely different. Half of the Mage translation guide is going to have to be a literal translation guide*. Having run and written nMage for so long, I’ve gone completely native and cMage books now read “wrong” to me, But my group – who are all cMage players – *still* habitually call arcana “Spheres”. The challenge is there.
To sum up, we didn’t shy away from using a word just because cMummy used it. We’re aware that you can go too far, though.
* This is hyperbole. I have no idea what’s going to be in the Mage translation guide.
“Why should nMummy *not* use the most appropriate words for it’s concepts, just because they were already taken by another game? That way lies madness, and clunky game terms noone uses.”
I agree – I think it’s perfectly sensible to use appropriate terms, with little regard to the terminology of other games. I don’t have any problem at all with, say, “sahu” being a word that has meaning (different meaning, quite obviously) in both Mummy: the Curse and Mummy: the Resurrection. If “sahu” is a term that accurately describes the concept, it should be used.
I can understand the use of many of the old terminology, but they are so closely tied to Egyptian mythology and mummies precisely because cMummy was built around Egyptian mythology. I thought the nMummy was going to break away from that tradition and open up the venue for more varied Mummy histories/approaches. With that assumption, I would have thought that some break away from the old terminology would be merited – akin to Mage, where some is kept and much is changed.
I fear that with terminology so intimately related to just one slice of the world, that the writing will end up focused in on that little slice of the world. Granted, there is the Empire that all these mummies apparently came from, but even with that, I suppose I was really looking forward to a Mummy that could be played across the world and with different cultural identities easily – and perhaps as another useful source of tension in group.
Hi, Zhinn. The problem there is that it’s a mistaken assumption to begin with. Mummy: The Curse uses some of the same terms precisely because they correspond to the same overall milieu, and within that, because they accurately describe the concepts in question. As Dave said, there have been some re-applications of those terms, so as to provide new context and ideas, but where a given term was the best choice, and an entirely new and different one wouldn’t have added anything or made anything clearer, we used it.
If you’re really looking to play, say, South American mummification tradition beings, or mummies of the Far East, then it’s Mummy: The Resurrection you want, since we covered all those multicultural angles in that game.
Hmm. Mummy: the Curse appears to be a game about playing a very specific kind of mummy. I’m still not certain how I feel about all mummies being descendent from one particular, specific culture. I hope that there will be as much variety in terms of possible character concepts as there is in Mage: the Awakening, where the developers did really interesting things with the Atlantis backstory, things that allowed for a great deal of flexibility.
I await further information with great enthusiasm 🙂
Slightly disappointed we won’t be getting to play many varied mummies from across history, the idea of pitting your classical egyptian mummy to perhaps a celtic peat bog mummy would be rather intriguing to me, but never mind, so far it all sounds good and the artwork is looking sick.
Hi, DJ. Not so fast. 🙂 Just because mummies all hail from the same general origin point doesn’t mean you won’t be getting to play varied mummies from across history; simply that the magic and mummification tradition that created mummies is consistent between them. There are innumerable possibilities for character concepts, including opportunities for historical mining and roleplaying. And of course, as an earlier blog post revealed, there’s more than one kind of mummy in Mummy.
Many thanks for the clarification. I must have missed that. As an aside I am digging this so much, I adore the more occult and mystical games and characters, currently playing a Appolinaire vampire, so this is definitely a day one buy for me. One of my friends is even getting a campaign written up based solely on what you’re putting up here, ready to take over from our currently running Vampire game. Dedication or what!?
Keep up the amazing work. Also any chance there’ll be some nice wallpaper sized images? 😛
I don’t know how far back the Rite of Return goes, but the Egyptian Empire goes back pretty far in recorded history. If the Arisen come back over and over, there definitely seems like lots of opportunity for mummies to have appeared in different historical settings. I, for one, am not disappointed with a common origin for these mummies. Time itself equals lots of character development and a great range in character concepts. The storytelling and character creation should still be up to us, unless someone’s gone and changed the stortelling system all of a sudden?!
No Tuesday post?
The gods are not pleased.
🙂
Your wish is my command. 🙂
hi CAS! big fan of your work in cWoD! so excited to hear that you’ll be working on new Mummy! =D
question: one of my favorite aspects of the M:tR was the emphasis in the Hekau of physical object based powers such as alchemical potions, amulets, and effigies. i see that Vessels will play a large part of the game as potential McGuffins, but can i expect these new Mummies to be as crafty and object-oriented in their powers as well?
thanks! really looking forward to the game!