Catherine West Schemes

Being a collection of various plots and schemes that Catherine west has thought of to increase her power and so forth. They are compiled here so that the Storyteller can reference them at his leisure.

The Great Mummy Scheme

The Basic Idea

In ancient Egypt people would make sacrifices to their dead and write them letters asking them to plead the cause of the living before the gods and the spirit courts. Naturally pharaoh, having become an Osiris in the afterlife, received particular attention and was best able of all to intercede before the gods. In return for this support the living performed sacrifices and rites to nourish the spirit of the dead, enabling them to return to the mortal world and do their work there. The rites at a pharaoh’s tomb were doubly important, since they concerned the wellbeing of the land itself, and thus drew the attention of the gods themselves.

Thus rescuing the mummy of a pharaoh from a museum or the desert or a private collector, restoring it to its former glory, and enshrining it in a proper tomb with attendant mortuary temple would be a very good deed in Egyptian ideology. It would make the gods look favourably upon you, it would give you the status of a mortuary priest, and it would make the pharaoh inclined to use his influence with the gods to benefit you. In short it’s a lot of work and could be dangerous, but it just might be worth it.

The Candidates

Now the question is which pharaoh should we seek to rescue? Well there were quite a lot of them, I’ve made a list of four, but there’s plenty more that could be saved. Note that I’ve left out people like Ramses II since I don’t think it’s plausible that their mummies would be unclaimed. I think it’s far more likely that the real mummies have been rescued or recovered and that a counterfeit has been left in place to be displayed in the museum.

Kheti

Kheti or Kheti III is most known for being the putative author of the Instructions of Merikare. He is a fairly obscure pharaoh with an apparently keen grasp of the difference between reality and ideal, but one who still encourages following the ideal. There is however a small risk that his mummy has already been recovered by someone else. A bit of scrying should show where he’s really at in any case.

Horemheb

As the successor to Tutankhamon Horemheb devoted himself to protecting Egypt and to eradicating the last remains of Akenatens heresy. He is a potentially good candidate due to being a good military leader, also his tomb was apparently robbed with only a few bones left in his sarcophagus. Perhaps this was the Celestial Chorus retaliating for his strikes against Atenism? At any rate if any of the bones are his it’s hopefully nothing that Matter 3 or 4 can’t fix. Alternatively scrying could be used to see where the mummy is really at.

Ramesses IX

Ramesses IX is a fairly obscure pharaoh, but one who helped stabilize Egypt in a time of trouble. He is also known for cracking down hard on tomb robbers and other miscreants, which hopefully translates into an active opposition to the technocracy. A mummy claimed to be him is found in the Cairo museum, which means that recovering it would be a simple snatch and grab.

Nectanebo

Nectanebo II was the last native pharaoh of Egypt and thus a very romantic figure. His sarcophagus was for a while used as an ablution tank in a mosque, but no one knows where his mummy is kept. Definitively and interesting figure, but it seems very likely that someone, somewhere has already claimed his mummy.