Chapter 1: Shunet El Zebib

The Swordsman looks down into a squarish pit about 20 feet deep, with spikes in the bottom. The voice must be referring to some other pit. Possibly not even a literal, physical pit.

The disembodied voice booms again. It seems to come from everywhere.

"Darest thou utter lies in our sanctum?! Thou offered water and performed the obeisance, but then sought to cross the forbidden Threshold. If ye be false supplicants, our servant, Nechepso, shalt deal with thee!"

The sarcophagus trembles anew, and the lid falls away. A mummy rises from it. The desiccated flesh underneath the linen wraps crawls with vermin. Nechepso sways on his feet, as if gauging you, or deciding what to do. Is he hesitating?



At length, the mummy speaks in a rasping voice, "Seek ye knowledge, you say? Of power? And of folly? Power IS folly. Flee while you still can."

What do you do?

Nechepso's mummified features are hard to read, but he appears to be dealing with some sort of internal struggle -- as if his body is being pulled in two directions at once.

"Twice a fool was I, seduced by promises of power, first by Khut-hotep, then by Amenhemet!" Nechepso laughs bitterly before lapsing into muttering in Hiptite too obscure and incoherent for Akh to follow, "huz dulur aljulus amat, alqiam 'abjad huz altahrir akharun..."What do you do?

The fighter lands a blow on the dried up husk with his callused and meaty fist!

Battle Music

The Swordsman's punch explodes Nechepso into a cloud of buzzing, swarming, biting insects!

Jana can tell these insects are unnatural. Such a wide variety of bugs (scorpions, centipedes, cockroaches, spiders, locusts, gnats, flies, beetles...) would normally not swarm together like this. And would not attack people the way they are attacking now! The swarm of vermin nearly engulfs the Swordsman, getting under his armor in the most uncomfortable places! Insects pour out of the sarcophagus and crawl out of the piles of bones scattered about, crawling and biting, hungrily burrowing into living flesh!

Battle Music

You all desperately stomp and smash and swat the bugs away, but there's just too many of them. Akh's arcane missiles slam into the swarm, eviscerating countless bugs, but they keep coming! In the midst of the maddening, seething cloud of vermin, the vague shape of a malevolent face.

What do you do?