Explore our Warhammer campaign: Enemy Within: Death on the Reik
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Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay · From The Old World to 5th Edition · Mythveil Chronicles
Spooky October · Pulp Finale · The Desert and the Dead · Nehekhara · Stacy & Caelwyn
CAELWYN:
The mummy has reached the city gates.
STACY:
And the soldiers are shooting at it.
CAELWYN:
Understandable. It came out of a tomb, brought an army of skeletons and appears rather determined to enter.
STACY:
Have you noticed something peculiar about that army?
CAELWYN:
Apart from the fact that every soldier has been dead for several centuries?
STACY:
They’re marching towards the cistern. They’re not attacking houses or the market unless someone gets in their way.
CAELWYN:
Perhaps their king has a particular dislike of plumbing.
STACY:
I think he wants the waterworks closed.
CAELWYN:
That’s inconvenient. This settlement survives because of that water.
STACY:
Exactly. Six years ago, its engineers opened an ancient passage beneath the necropolis. They found an underground channel, and the water saved hundreds of lives during a drought.
CAELWYN:
A rather admirable achievement.
STACY:
They also broke a stone gate and removed a blue eye from its mechanism.
CAELWYN:
Ah.
STACY:
And the channel was built by the very king who’s now knocking at the gates.
CAELWYN:
With an army of corpses.
STACY:
Setep-Ka. Keeper of the Seven Channels. Defender of the Living Banks.
CAELWYN:
Sounds remarkably responsible for someone trying to demolish a town.
STACY:
Perhaps he isn’t trying to demolish it. I’ve translated part of the inscription. The seventh channel wasn’t another source of drinking water.
CAELWYN:
What was it?
STACY:
A floodway. And possibly something more.
CAELWYN:
Something more?
STACY:
There’s a gate beneath the riverbed. Something is imprisoned behind it. The ancient engineers designed the channels to keep it contained.
CAELWYN:
And our modern engineers accidentally opened the prison.
STACY:
Yes.
CAELWYN:
Splendid. I preferred the explanation involving bad plumbing.
STACY:
The king has guarded that gate for centuries. His army is trying to restore it.
CAELWYN:
By killing anyone who interferes.
STACY:
That’s the problem. He believes the old agreement still gives him authority.
CAELWYN:
An agreement made by people who have been dead for generations.
STACY:
And recorded in the names of everyone who constructed the channels.
CAELWYN:
Everyone?
STACY:
Stonecutters, labourers, surveyors, water carriers. Their names were carved into the mechanism itself. They formed part of the seal.
CAELWYN:
Then why won’t the gate close?
STACY:
The inscriptions are broken. Some names were destroyed when the waterworks were altered.
CAELWYN:
So we need to recover them.
STACY:
Which means entering the king’s tomb.
CAELWYN:
Of course it does.
STACY:
And asking him for help.
CAELWYN:
Do you suppose he’ll appreciate our archaeological interest?
STACY:
He might appreciate the fact that we’re trying to prevent whatever is beneath the river from escaping.
CAELWYN:
Fair enough. But there’s something troubling me.
STACY:
Only one thing?
CAELWYN:
Those workers. Did they willingly bind their names to the king’s promise?
STACY:
We don’t know.
CAELWYN:
Did they choose to build the gate?
STACY:
Some may have. Others may have been ordered to.
CAELWYN:
And many died doing it.
STACY:
Yes.
CAELWYN:
Then the mummy might be protecting the living from a terrible creature while still being a tyrant.
STACY:
Exactly. A king doesn’t become good simply because his enemies are worse.
CAELWYN:
Nor does he become harmless because he’s been dead for two thousand years.
STACY:
Especially in Nehekhara.
CAELWYN:
Then what happened when you restored the seal?
STACY:
It nearly worked. But the final inscription was missing. We couldn’t recover every name.
CAELWYN:
And the thing beneath the water was waking.
STACY:
I saw its eye, Caelwyn. Something enormous looking at us through the black water. It knew the king’s history.
CAELWYN:
Did it tell you anything?
STACY:
That thousands had suffered to build the prison. That the king called their suffering protection.
CAELWYN:
Was it telling the truth?
STACY:
Perhaps. But a prisoner isn’t necessarily an impartial historian.
CAELWYN:
So how did you finish the inscription?
STACY:
We asked Nadira, the engineer, to name the people who had opened the channel and those who had helped repair it.
CAELWYN:
The living?
STACY:
Yes. They had worked to save their families, just as the ancient builders had. Their names belonged in the story too.
CAELWYN:
And the dead king accepted them.
STACY:
He did. The gate closed. The settlement survived.
CAELWYN:
Then perhaps he learnt something.
STACY:
Perhaps. But we mustn’t mistake that moment for an acquittal. We still don’t know how he treated the people who built his kingdom.
CAELWYN:
Or whether the creature behind the gate deserves its imprisonment.
STACY:
No. We only know that opening the gate now would be catastrophic.
CAELWYN:
And the people of the settlement?
STACY:
They’ve begun rebuilding their waterworks. This time they’re studying the inscriptions before moving the stones.
CAELWYN:
A promising development.
STACY:
There’s one more thing.
CAELWYN:
I suspected there might be.
STACY:
The creature beneath the river spoke to me after the gate closed.
CAELWYN:
What did it say?
STACY:
That one day I would want to know what the king had buried.
CAELWYN:
And?
STACY:
That when I did, I would open the gate myself.
CAELWYN:
Please tell me you aren’t considering it.
STACY:
Of course not.
CAELWYN:
Stacy.
STACY:
I’m considering what questions we’d need to answer before anyone ever approached that gate again.
CAELWYN:
Somehow, that’s less reassuring.
THE QUESTION
If an ancient king rises from his tomb to protect the living, does that make him a guardian rather than a monster? What if his protection was built upon the suffering of people who never had a choice? And when the dead preserve a promise the living have forgotten, who has the right to decide whether that promise must still be obeyed?
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Enemy Within: Death on the Reik — StartPlaying
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