Pren­tiss dodges a mummy; April accel­er­ates its collapse.

Played

25^th March 2010.

Dramatis Personae

• Miss Con­stantina Spit – a Rebel­li­ous Debutante.
• Cap­tain Ben­son Cur­ruth­ers – a Mil­it­ary Policeman.
• Jack Pren­tiss – a Dodgy Pedestrian.
• Miss April Sharpe – a Self-taught Inventor.
• Rod­ney Marsh – a Par­tially-reformed Thief.

Plot

As Lady Ant­o­nia headed off to loc­ate the ver­ger to inform him of the grave rob­bery, the rest of the team slowly became aware of a throb­bing vibra­tion in the ground and of a green glow from above the hill. With the fog and mud mak­ing it impossible to make out much in the way of details, they invest­ig­ated, head­ing back up to the woods in search of clear­er air and firmer ground.

Pren­tiss pressed on ahead as the main group got caught up in mud and a tangle of roots and, sep­ar­ated from the rest of team, found him­self con­fron­ted by a strangely-aseptic smelling fig­ure. Turn­ing his torch on the fig­ure’s face, he found him­self con­fron­ted by a hor­rif­ic sight: a dry, crum­bling, parch­ment-like vis­age wrapped in yel­low­ing band­ages. Pan­ick­ing as the fig­ure took an ungainly swipe at him, he hit at it with his cudgel and ran back to the group, nearly toppled by a power­ful blow as he went.

Miss Spit magic­ally-illu­min­ated the scene as he returned, imme­di­ately regret­ting it as the creature lumbered into view, now clearly iden­ti­fi­able as an anim­ated Egyp­tian mummy. Marsh was imme­di­ately immob­il­ised by the shock, but the rest recovered and a con­fused battle ensued. Pren­tiss let fly with his blun­der­bus and Cur­ruth­ers leapt for­ward with his sword­stick, stab­bling it through the chest. Marsh recovered from his bout of sick­ness and ran around to attack from behind with his dag­gers. Nobody seemed to have much effect, as blades slipped eas­ily through the band­aged without dis­turb­ing them and bul­lets passed through with little impact, until Pren­tiss real­ised that fire might work. He opened and emp­tied a cart­ridge of black powder over the creature, just as Miss Sharpe finally got her mys­ter­i­ous weapon to work, dis­char­ging a cor­ros­ive sub­stance at the mummy. This reacted with the creature’s pre­ser­vat­ives and it caught fire, encour­aged by the black powder. A second blast put it out of the run­ning for good, although Miss Sharpe’s weapon then promptly failed with a spec­tac­u­lar shower of sparks and a wor­ry­ing grind­ing noise.

Notes

Mak­ing up for the pre­vi­ous ses­sion’s lack of action, this was basic­ally an all-out fight. The mummy had the upper hand until the play­ers figured out how to dam­age it, whereupon it went down quite fast. This was basic­ally the plan. I had no urges to fudge the dice rolls, which was quite pleasing!