[Masters and Minions] Why Are Mummies Cool?

[Tav_Behemoth]

As Ron has said, the Masters and Minions books are more about archetype than procedure. So rather than help with designing a mechanic, I'm looking for help making sure that we do justice to an icon with Horde Book 4: Tomb of the Mummy.

Being a newbie in the Indie Game Design forum, I'm going to approach this in an undicisplined way: throwing a bunch of questions at the wall. Answer those that move you; I'll provide more specific details about what Brian is creating for the book for you to respond to as they become available.

Why are mummies cool? What part of the legend appeals to, resonates with, or just scares you - both when you were a kid and from your current perspective?

What drives, needs, fears, or desires do you think the mummy symbolizes? How do you think these can/should interact with the classic themes, tropes, and play of the original fantasy RPG?

What are the aspects of the mummy legend you think are essential, and which do you think are hokey cliches? What omissions would make you throw down a mummy book in disgust?

What's your favorite mummy novel/story/movie/website/resource?

Thanks for your help!

- Tavis

[Mark D. Eddy]

What makes mummies cool for me is why they exist in the first place. They are the specially prepared bodies of the dead that are designed to be a gateway for the dead to interact with the living. This leads to all sorts of fun things that could be done with mummies that have not been done in gaming (at least in my experience). Think about what these gateways would mean in, for instance, HeroQuest.

My problem with most of the mummy stories out there (and this includes the versions from Major Game Publishers Who Are Left Unnamed [tm]) is that they are based on Victorian and Edwardian concepts of why the bodies were preserved, and the lurid "curse of the mummy" sensationalism of those times. Dark, shambling, undead whose curse radiates outward and infects all who come too close leave me cold.

Mummies are the ultimate memento mori: unliving proof that death is right there – waiting for us to stumble into it's grasp. They feed the fears of death by being obviously and grotesquely dead but without further decay. Not that the bandaged-wraped corpse that we think of when we hear the word mummy is what a mummy would be within its own culture.

And that is another thing that mummies represent: A different cutural view of death, very alien to the Western idea that the dead are asleep, to be buried in sacred ground and forgotten until some mystical end time. The idea that the dead are with us, barely more than a doorway away, and still have enough power that they need to be bought off or given enough toys to leave the living alone.

[greedo1379]

I thought mummies were cool just like Jason or Michael Myers or zombies were cool: because they couldn't be stopped no matter what the heroes did.  The just kept shambling toward the heroes, taking a couple slugs in the chest and so on.  

And even though the mummy, zombie, etc. was just shuffling along you knew that all it took was for the hero to look back for just a little too long and come up on a blind corner, turn to face the front and the villain would be right there.  How did he get there?  He was moving like grandma in her walker while the big, athletic hero or svelte heroine were running full out.  No one knows.

[Doug Ruff]

Some of this echoes what's been said before, but I hope there's enough new stuff to make it useful.

1) Mummies are strongly associated with ancient Egypt, which is cool in itself.

2) Just like vampires, mummies perpetuate the archetype of 'eternal life, but at a cost.'

3) Like greedo said, mummies have persistence. You can run, but can you hide? A bit like the sci-fi 'slow bullet'. For extra scare value, make the mummy unable to speak. Mummies should not curse, threaten or taunt their opponents, they just need to walk towards them slowly... and maybe make a very dry, sibilant-yet-raspy hissing.

4) Going back to (1) mummies have been waiting... for something... for a very, very long time. Great potential for tragedy - I believe that the mummy is a much more potent tragic symbol than the vampire (IMHO, the vampire is as much a sexual archetype as anything else, more so than a tragic figure even.)

Classic tragic concepts for a mummy:

Love that does not die - mummy is looking for the reincarnation of a former lover. Usually this quest is futile, and centred upon one of the heroic protagonists (and nearly always a woman).

The horror disturbed - mummy is unearthed and 'wakes up' prematurely. Although this is ostensibly a horror theme, there is a strong tragedy element here too - 'if only I had never opened that sarcophagus!'

The stars were never right - mummy was waiting for some great event, it never came, so he is doomed to wait forever. (Actually this last one may not be a classic, but I think it's darn cool, so there.)

5) I think that the mummy also symbolises fear of aging They are dessicated husks of their former selves, shambling around yet never actually dying. Facing a mummy is like facing Age itself.

6) Then there's that whole 'sealed in a tomb/buried alive' thing.

Absolute musts for the guide? Mummies throughout history (not just the Egyptian ones), the science behind the mummification process itself, and classic literary references. I'm afraid I can't help too much with these, on the bright side that means I need this book!

Hope that's useful, anyway.

Regards,

Doug[/i]

[greedo1379]

Absolute musts for the guide? Mummies throughout history (not just the Egyptian ones),

I'm reminded of the Ice Man.  You know the guy that was found frozen in the Alps in Switzerland or Italy or whatever?  I think it would be pretty slick to make him a mummy.  Like he was crossing the Alps to be with his lover or some such and carrying some magic trinket.  He got frozen and defrosted and he's still looking for ol' whats-her-name.

[contracycle]

Why are mummies cool? What part of the legend appeals to, resonates with, or just scares you - both when you were a kid and from your current perspective?

Nothing, I'm afraid.  Mummies have become "traditional monsters" and, unsurprisingly foir the undead perhaps, hung around for a great deal longer than the issues which raised the concept to public consciousness in the first place.

A hundred odd years ago, when Egyptology was current, when we were finding things about ancient societies we never knew existed, and more importantly, when mummies where on public display in major western metropoli or possibly being stripped before a paying audience, the mummy trope had a lot of resonance.  Tie this up with the last great upsurge in Western spiritualism and similar chicanery, the mummy as subject of horror stories at the turn of next-to-last century makes sense.

But I don't, myself, find them at all interesting.  We;ve moved on a long way sonce the apparent regularity of the pyramids and sundry features of Egyptian religion were that big a deal.  Several tropes that were in fact the premises of original stories - love conquoring death, for example - have themselves just been reduced to schticks for mummy characters.  Mummy's are now laughably inept monsters in kids cartoons.

[Christopher Weeks]

Why are mummies cool?

Because you can go see them at the museum!  I mean, obviously not walking around and radiating evil and stuff, but there they are!  Ghosts and demons and vampires and stuff are just fictional kids' stuff -- fairytales.  

Chris

[TonyLB]

The Victorians go out to all of these ancient cultural sites.  And, not to mince words, they loot them systematically.  And some of the Victorians feel, on some level, "Gracious, old chap, I get the impression that... well... we shouldn't have done that.  It's just not cricket."

But there's nobody stopping them, no rules to say "Do not horribly oppress people just because you can".  The world doesn't seem to be reinforcing a moral compass.

And that's why the mummy is cool... because he punishes people for the crimes they know, in their heart of hearts, they have in fact committed.  The fundamental issue of the mummy story is that it transitions from punishing the guilty to punishing the innocent who just happen to be caught up with the guilty.  And then the mummy must be defeated.

The message being "This was a wrong thing to do, and my people did it, and I should suffer somewhat because of that... but not too much... not as much as the people who are really guilty."

[TonyLB]

EDIT:  Double-clicked, apparently.  Whoops!

[Walt Freitag]

While I agree for the most part with contra, I think it's possible that  mummies could be ripe for reinvention, the way vampires were around the early 70's (when much of the same "traditional monster" and "cartoon fodder" characterizations could have been said for vampires).

Such a reinvention could include the following elements:

- No longer Egyptian only (any more than Vampires having to all be eastern European); there's a lot more information available now about mummies in other cultures, including Scandinavian "bog people," the South American "mountain children," perpetually preserved Soviet dictators, dead mountaineers (modern and ancient) frozen at high altitudes and in glaciers, and our modern-day liquid nitrogen corpsicles.

- Some solution that escapes from the inherent contradiction of animate mummies as figures of horror, which is that mummies focus on death as frightening stasis -- but when the mummy becomes an active agent, shuffling around or casting spells, that's no longer relevant and the mummy becomes pretty much like any human murderer or evil sorcerer. That's why the mummy's curse, persistent over centuries, is more interesting than the animate mummy itself.

- What do mummies want? The revenge motif is clunky, because there's little sympathy in our culture for wanting to take revenge on distant descendents of the original offender, making the vengeful mummy come across like a thug. Wanting to hook up with the reincarnated long-ago love worked fine for one mummy story, but is that what every mummy is up to? The preservation of things that we'd be better off if they were abandoned and forgotten is one motif that could be built on. Non-animate mummies as body-thieves or possessors might tie in with that effectively.

- Mummies as player-characters don't appear to have much hope, unless mummies become social beings somehow. You'd pretty much be starting from scratch on that angle.

Note that in Anne Rice and the Vampire role playing game, the oldest vampires take on mummy-like qualities: withdrawn, usually sealed away in some kind of stasis, and difficult to wake, though very powerful once disturbed.

What's potentially cool about mummies is that they're the most frighteningly dead of the undead, existing in stasis through deep time, unlike for-all-paractical-purposes-living vampires or short-shelf-life zombies. That very aspect makes them difficult to use as active agents in a drama. Still, I think a creative enough author might pull it off.

- Walt