Replay of Type 40’s Call of Cthulhu scenario, The Mummy of Pemberley Grange, written by Allan carey, the first scenario in the Seeds of Terror series.

The Mummy of Pemberley Grange – Call of Cthulhu Scenario Narrative Replay (Seeds of Terror)

This is a narrative replay of the Call of Cthulhu scenario The Mummy of Pemberley Grange, by Type 40, the first scenario in their Seeds of Terror series. You can find the written version of this replay on mjrrpg.com, as well as a written review.

This game of Type 40’s Seeds of Terror scenario, The Mummy of Pemberley Grange, was run on the Good Friends of Jackson Elias Discord server. I highly recommend the scenario for just about any group, and you can read my review of it here, complete with a short spoiler-lite version for players and a longer spoiler-full review for keepers. You can find it for purchase it here (DriveThruRPG single), or here (DTRPG Bundle), or here (Type 40 Patreon). I also highly recommend checking out the Good Friends of Jackson Elias Discord server for conversation with other Call of Cthulhu and TTRPG fans, as well as plentiful pickup games. And of course, the Good Friends of Jackson Elias podcast is wonderful.

This narrative replay is completely full of spoilers. If you are a player, I would suggest not reading any further – but do share it with your friendly keeper!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The socialite and Egyptophile Jessica Pemberley had recently come into possession of a genuine ancient Egyptian mummy, and as wealthy eccentrics are wont to do, she decided to make a show of it. She invited her friends and acquaintances to the ‘unwrapping’ part; the taciturn businessman Mr. Rupert Evan, brilliant archaeologist Professor Farouk Basar, world-weary reporter Ms. Lucy Dowling, and the foppish dilettante Clayton Moody. One-by-one they arrived at Jessica’s countryside estate, Pemberley Grange. Received by the head butler, the guests were led to the library to await their hostess.

After being served drinks, the dilettante Clayton Moody making sure the butler gave him the good stuff, the group chatted amongst themselves and poked about the books. As expected, most of Jessica’s collection focused on ancient Egypt, burial traditions in particular, though Professor Basar noted that many of the texts had curious religious tilts to them, concerning cults that he knew to be rather obscure in the ancient Egyptian pantheons.

Announcing that their hostess was ready to receive them, the butler led the guests down the hall to the reception room. Jessica Pemberley, exquisitely dressed as always, spun to the door, arms held out over her prize; the yellowed bandage-encased mummy. Behind her stood the yawning-open sarcophagus, a few canopic jars in a row beside it. Jessica excitedly greeted her friends, accepting some smooth talking from her comrade-in-wealth the dilettante, and then introduced one more guest, unknown to the others; Professor Hewitt, a finely dressed, hawkish-looking man sitting off to the side, scribbling in a journal. The man only briefly acknowledged the others before turning back to his notes, answering a few questions with grunts or monosyllabic words.

Jessica laughed off his rudeness, saying that he was a man of few words, but she had invited him to assist with ‘unwrapping’ the mummy safely, being an expert in such things. The reporter Lucy Dowling asked where Jessica had obtained the mummy, to which Jessica replied that she had family contacts in Egypt who had helped arrange the purchase.

Meanwhile, two servants, one an older woman, the other a young woman, topped up drinks. When Clayton Moody eagerly requested another whisky, the young servant, seemingly flustered by the blustery man, over-poured and spilled down his shirt. She ducked away under a barrage of insults from the dilettante, and Professor Hewitt also made passing snipes at her as she fled from the room. The butler apologised profusely and gave Clayton another drink to soothe his irritation, while Jessica explained that the girl was new to the job, and asked for some forgiveness as Clayton did have rather overwhelming personality. He took that as a compliment.

The others inspected the sarcophagus, finding it covered in well-worn inscriptions and hieroglyphics, which Professor Basar deduced to depict the fertility goddess Renpet. Before beginning the main event, Jessica posed with the sarcophagus so Lucy could snap some quick pictures for her article. With an impatient grunt from Professor Hewitt, Jessica ushered everyone around the mummy, and then asked Hewitt to begin unwrapping. Clayton looked away, nose hanging over the whisky glass – his experiences in the Great War had left him adverse to cadavers and their stench.

Starting from the toes, the bandages peeled and cracked away to reveal the desiccated corpse beneath. Skin and bones hardened nearly into rock. Thin legs and hips, spider-like rib cage, Hewitt slowly revealed the skeletal form, until only the head remained. The last bandage slipped off, leaving silence for a few moments as they processed what they were looking at. Though without flesh or colour, it was clearly the spitting image of Jessica Pemberly.

Professor Basar tumbled back over a chair. Lucy gasped. Mr. Evan paled. At the commotion Clayton peered over his friends’ shoulders, and promptly vomited into his whisky.

Before anyone could get hold of themselves, Hewitt jammed a knife up to the hilt in his own chest. Pulling it out, splashing blood across the mummy, he cried out, cursing the group to a thousand years of damnation so ‘she’ would live again. Before any others could act, Hewitt stabbed Clayton Moody in the shoulder. Those with their wits about them rushed the crazed Hewitt, managing to knock the knife out of his hands. He then made to grab at the reporter, but she slipped out of his way, sending him falling in a heap. His twitching stilled as blood pooled around him.

Jessica stumbled from the room, faint and nearly swooning, rambling about finding her diary. As Lucy tried and failed to apply some first aid to the skewered dilettante, and Professor Basar regained his feet, everyone suddenly felt as if a strong wind blew through the house. For some, it seemed to knock their breath away, leaving them feeling ‘thinner,’ while others were simply buffeted by the breeze. Looking about to see no papers having shifted or blinds rustling, the group were perplexed. The Mr. Evan squinted at the mummy, now speckled with both Hewitt and Clayton’s blood, and thought it looked slightly fuller – a little more colour to its cheeks – than before.

With Clayton warding her off from prodding his gaping wound any more, and dismissing the business man’s warnings that something was happening with the mummy as absurd, Lucy turned her attention to Jessica. The hostess begged once more for her journal before fainting. A few slaps failed to wake her, so the reporter had the butler help drag Jessica to a lounge chair in the library, then sent him off to the kitchen for some smelling salts. Professor Basar
joined them, searching through the bookcases and finding Jessica’s diary.

Jessica’s notes detailed how she had obtained the mummy, and indeed not only did she have contacts there, but her family in fact descended from Egypt, with connections going back millennia to the priesthood of the fertility goddess Renpet. Also enclosed between the pages was a letter posted from Cairo that contained a complicated prayer written in Arabic, and in English headed by the words “for your protection.”

Before he could impart this discovery to the others, another gust rushed through the group, once again leaving them feeling as if a small part of themselves had been blown away. Though not in a physical or even mental sense, they felt tired and drained. And having been standing over the mummy at the time, Mr. Evan and Clayton saw first hand how the mummy fattened, its skin blushed, and one curled finger straightening with a crack and a pop. This proved too much for the already physically and mentally battered dilettante, who with a shriek began throttling the corpse.

Hearing all the racket from down the hall, Lucy and Professor Basar hurried back to the reception room. Clayton’s companions calmed him down, and coming out of his violent stupor, he found himself falling into a bout of Automania – the excessive desire for solitude. He fled the reception room and closed himself in a nearby wash-closet. Simply shaking her head at Clayton’s outburst and Mr. Evan’s claims that the mummy was changing, the reporter began re-bandaging the mummy, and then asked the others to help her put it back into its coffin.

While his companions man-handled the cadaver, Clayton regained his composure, and opened the wash-closet door. The barrel of snub-nosed revolver greeting him, the nervous face of the servant girl over it. She put a finger to her lips and motioned with the pistol for Clayton to move into the hallway. Still bleeding from the knife stabbing and wanting to limit the number of holes poked in him today, Clayton raised his hands and silently complied, letting himself be led to the library.

Luckily, Mr. Evan had heard the wash-closet door open and peeked into the hallway in time to see his companion being led away at gun-point into the library. Drawing his own revolver, the businessman hurried down the hall, finding the library door shut. Even with a firm shove the door staid shut, evidently blocked by the servant. He called out for the girl to drop her gun and open the door, to which she stammered that no one was allowed to leave until the event was complete, and then everything would be fine.

Once again drawn away by her associates getting up to some trouble, Lucy left the archaeologist with the sarcophagus and hurried over to the library, where she made an impassioned appeal for the servant to open the door. Looking ever more uncertain, the girl did step away from the door, allowing the businessman and reporter in, but she kept her pistol trained on them. Aiming his revolver, Mr. Evan demanded she drop the gun, while Lucy also kept trying calm the girl and have her explain what was going on.

In an increasingly nervous and halting deluge the girl explained that Hewitt had commanded her to not let anyone leave the estate after the ritual had started, not until their priestess had been returned to her immortal glory. Seeing this girl was clearly out of her mind, Clayton waited until the gun pointed away from him, then tried to make a grab for it. Despite her scattered attention, the servant was faster, stepping back and pointing the gun in the dilettante’s face. Mr. Evan gave one last warning, to which the servant spun her gun onto him.

The gun went off, leaving a smoking pock mark in the library wall. Lucy and Mr. Evan tumbled to the floor, just out of the way of the shot, the reporter having thrown herself at her friend. Clayton rushed forward and knocked the gun from the girl’s hand and restrained her. Using his pin-striped tie, he bound her hands. As the other two regained their feet, once again that unholy wind rushed through them, the girl crying out in joy for her priestess.

Back in the reception room, Professor basar had taken some time to read the Arabic letter addressed to Jessica more closely. It seemed to be a warding prayer, or spell, of some sort. Then the wind hit him like a punch to the gut. Before he could regain his breath, a grating screech stole his attention, and looking up, he was horrified to see the lid to the sarcophagus slide open and thump to the floor. The bandages, only loosely wrapped about it by Lucy, slid free of its face. Its grinning face, and its bright-green eyes. With jerky, unsure movements, the mummy stepped out from its resting place. Remembering the warding, the archaeologist held up the note and recited it as fast and as loud as he could.

The mummy’s smile dropped into an almost comical wide-eyed frown, and it looked around. Spotting the canopic jars, still sealed, the smile returned, and it strode toward the archaeologist with frightening speed. One hand shot out and took his upper arm in a vice-like grip, the other shooting forward in a blur. By a hair Basar managed to twist out of the way, the mummy’s fist smashing through a lounge chair behind him in a shower of splinters and feathers.

A mighty swing of his cane to the mummy’s head knocked it back, releasing him, though the creature seemed unharmed and only stunned for a moment. Just enough time for the professor to flee the room screaming.

His companions, also recovering from the last draining wind, watched Basar sprint down the hall wailing about the mummy living again, and then skitter around a corner and out the front door.

The servant answered in a euphoric cry – her priestess walked again!

Still disbelieving – the dead stay dead after all – Lucy checked the reception room. No mummy. Mr. Evan huffed that he’d been trying to tell her all along that something was going on with that damned corpse. And to punctuate his statement, once more they all felt an ephemeral punch, sapping their spirit. They couldn’t take it much longer, Clayton in particular going pail and numb.

From the courtyard came a barrage of honks, and Professor Basar yelling for the others to get in his car and get out of there! Remembering the unconscious Jessica, Lucy rushed off to the kitchen to get those smelling salts the butler had mentioned before disappearing. Or not disappearing, as she soon discovered, standing over the desiccated corpse of the butler. All skin and bones, as if dead and dried for a century.

Basar continued laying on the horn and screaming at his companions, revving the engine to underscore his point. Finally, the three, along with the tied up servant-girl and an unconscious Jessica, exited the estate. They argued briefly about whether to stay and find the creature or immediately decamp, but were interrupted by that infernal soul-sucking gale. Clayton could barely keep to his feet, much less keep track of the conversation, and the archaeologist’s complexion had gone unmistakably pallid.

With one last desperate plea, Basar demanded they get in the car now, or he would leave without them. That damned mummy had nearly taken his head off with a single swing, and battering it with a heavy cane hadn’t even left a mark, and something was draining their very souls! Having had more than enough of this, Clayton got in, the businessman following, and finally the reporter, not much wanting to be left alone, piled in along with Jessica and the servant.

Just as the doors closed, a body slammed into the hood of the car in a shower of glass. The older servant, a pile of broken bones and limbs, her face emaciated. And up on the second floor from a broken window, a silhouette among billowing curtains. The reporter snapped one last picture as the car sped away from the grange.

But the draining waves continued, and the next morning Clayton fell comatose. The reporter developed her last picture, revealing a cheerfully grinning woman of fine health standing at the window, the spitting image of Jessica Pemberley. Later that evening, Professor Basar also became vegetative. Feeling on death’s door themselves, the Lucy and Mr. Evan returned to the estate in desperation. There they found the manor abandoned, the sarcophagus and canopic jars gone. Their last shreds of will tearing away, they fell to their knees beneath a last message scratched into the wall of the reception room.

I have returned, and the Goddess’ will shall reign for a thousand years.

And so they knelt for days, their bodies shrivelling away to nothing, following their already departed souls to oblivion. And the Mummy of Pemberley Grange, unholy priestess of a corrupted Renpet, walked the Earth again.

 

If you’d like to see how it turns out for your group, you can purchase the scenario, along with the other Seeds of Terror scenarios, on DriveThruRPG individually or as part of a bundle, or on Type40’s Patreon.
DTRPG Single: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/329641/The-Mummy-of-Pemberley-Grange?affiliate_id=3534349
DTRPG 3 Scenario Bundle: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/376913/Seeds-of-Terrhttps://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/329641/The-Mummy-of-Pemberley-Grangeor-bundle-1–Mummies-and-Madness-BUNDLE?affiliate_id=3534349
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/seedsofterror

Before you go, though, maybe take a look at some more scenario replays?
MJRRPG: Branches of Bone
Seeds of Terror: The Mummy of Pemberley Grange, Endless Light, One Less Grave, Hand of Glory
Chaosium: Amidst the Ancient Trees, The Necropolis, What’s in the Cellar?, The Dead Boarder
Japonism: Do Gods Dream of Digital Drugs?
Bibliothek 13: A Cup of Horror