Nebkhaset [Greater Mummy]

Nebkhaset is indistinguishable from an ordinary mummy: a shriveled corpse in burial linen with an unholy symbol hanging from a chain at his throat and a faint smell of herbs and spice around him. Where wrappings have slipped, brown skin shows pulled taut over bone. He is very intelligent, speaks many tongues besides his kingdom's own, and telepathically commands any normal mummy he knows is nearby, needing no words or gestures.

Like his kind he radiates fear; viewers make a fear check at -1, and failures suffer doubled effects. Remove fear, cloak of bravery and similar magic help heroes stand firm. In melee he punches once per round at +1 to hit for 3d6.

Anyone he strikes contracts a rot that kills in 1d12 days. From the next day the victim trembles too badly to cast spells or attempt delicate Dexterity tasks, and loses 1 Strength, 1 Constitution and 2 Charisma as the skin flakes away. Only regeneration cures it; casting one cure disease for every day since infection keeps the victim alive by halting the rot, but does not remove it. Those who die usually crumble to dust, but Nebkhaset can instead make an infected victim his slave. Strangled, the victim rises within 8 hours as a desert zombie. Taken to his hidden temple and mummified alive, the victim dies and rises as a mummy. Either way the new undead obeys him completely.

Unlike other greater mummies he cannot cast priest spells, having given that up for power over desert zombies, perhaps through the serpent god's dark rites; anyone who learned the secret has died keeping it. Nonmagical weapons cannot hurt him and magical ones do half damage. Cold, ice and mundane fire are harmless, but lightning deals 50% more. Poison, disease, sleep, hold, charm and their like have no hold on him. Holy water does nothing, the symbol of any non-evil faith sears him for 1d6, and an unholy symbol of the serpent god heals 1d6 per round; he always wears a coiled cobra amulet and so heals 1d6 each round for as long as it remains around his neck.

Long ago, before his desert kingdom was swept into the misty dread realm, Nebkhaset was an ambitious priest of the undead pharaoh, scheming to bring his master down. Discovered, he was mummified and sealed in his tomb alive, yet buried with full honors and proclaimed a loyal martyr so no one would suspect the pharaoh's rule had been challenged.

Centuries later a young priestess of a benevolent god of the dead found a scroll describing how the pharaoh made his greater mummies. Unable to destroy it, she hid it, but its evil wore at her. Study of the serpent god's teachings, begun to understand evil, turned into devotion, and she eventually recovered the scroll. Her fragments were incomplete: she woke Nebkhaset but can command him only 2-8 (2d4) rounds a day. Otherwise he is free, and he works to destroy the pharaoh and take the kingdom.

Because the pharaoh did not create him, unlike the other greater mummies guarding the kingdom's tombs and temples, he cannot command Nebkhaset.