How to destroy hundreds of (inert) mummies that won't burn?

[Jay R]

I am in a game set in ancient Egypt. We have just accidently awakened a pair of Primordial Ones (from the Cthulhu Mythos). We're trying to find and destroy them. We know that they are in the Sahara, and have destroyed a couple of caravans.

Spoiler: Details if you want them

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We found the old ruins of a temple to the old gods. We've found symbols of both Cthulhu and Yog-Sothoth in rooms that end in archways. We translated the runes on the archway (“Blessings to the sleeping god Cthulhu”; “servants of Cthulhu”, etc.). We discovered that past the archway into the catacombs, there were hundreds (at least) of mummies, stacked on shelves five high, that went in 100 feet, branching off, and going further that we could see, even after going in another 100 feet.

The walls looked like plastered stone, and were once heavily worked. As we went through the archway, we got a creepy feeling.

The mummy wrappings had protective wards on them. The tunnels radiated a dim dweomer all over, as did the mummy wrappings. Based on their appearance and what we read, it seemed clear that these were being preserved as an army for Cthulhu when he re-appears to destroy the world.

So we went back near the front, took one mummy off its shelf, and set fire to it and burned it to a crisp, which took three hours hacked it apart to see what was inside. It turned out to have a few items in its body – an electrum amulet, two gems worth 2,000 and 50 gp, a fireproof metal scroll case containing a scroll of Protection from Magic, 15 silver sling bullets +1, and a Potion of Animal Control.

So we decided to trying burning them – further towards the front, so the smoke would clear more easily. We picked up one and started to carry it out.

As we passed the arch, it came to life, or to unlife, or whatever you call it when the undead attack. Sheila was overtaken by fear, and could do nothing. The rest of us attacked.

Pteppic used the most useful cantrip he’s ever had, setting it on fire with Firefinger. Eventually we wore it down, and soon had a flaming dead mummy.

Only one of us did actual fire damage to a couple of his companions.

Tolath attacked one of the runes on the archway, hoping that would destroy the arch’s power. Since it’s quite possible that that power is the only reason we aren’t being attacked by hundreds of mummies at once, Pteppic wasn’t really sure what the strategy involved was. Anyway, the rune was destroyed, but the magic was still active. We did start hearing some occasional wailing inside the catacombs. The mummy continued to fill the hallway with smoke, so we retired some distance away to wait. A couple of hours later we returned, and searching through the still-flaming remains, finding 5 pieces of jewelry.

Filled with an obscenely greedy lust for riches a deep heroic desire to protect the world from the threat of the mummy army, we decided to burn all the rest of the mummies. Pteppic cast a Flaming Sphere and sent it rolling down past all the mummies, but as soon as it passed the archway, it went out. He lit a torch (on the still flaming mummy) and tried to do it by hand, but as it went through the archway, the torch went out. Tolath went through the archway and tried to light a torch, but couldn’t even raise sparks.

We took one mummy on that side and hacked it apart. We found that it was wearing scale mail. It also contained 2 silver items worth about 2,000 gp (if undamaged), 4 electrum items worth about 4,000 gp (if undamaged), a Potion of Dragon Control, and a scroll case with a scroll of Otto’s Irresistible Dance and Power Word Blind.

Based on watching the DM roll up treasure in front of us, it seems clear that each mummy contains the standard mummy treasure from the MM. Three mummies have yielded 40,000 gp worth of treasure plus six items (two potions, two scrolls, armor, and sling bullets.

As we pass the archway, it seems different – more oppressive, but also just somehow wrong. Pteppic wonders if it is a gateway to another plane.

So there we are, with a reasonably productive mummy mine: hundreds of mummies that are filled with treasure an omnipresent threat to mankind, lying where we can’t burn them to get at the riches they contain destroy this evil threat.

Also, we don’t know if taking any action down here is risking waking Cthulhu. So there’s that.

And finally, this is not our mission. I don’t think the aliens are coming here, and I have no idea what we need to do now.

tl;dr: Hundreds of inert mummies in an area where fire doesn't burn. It's an army that is supposed to come to life someday to help destroy the world. Each mummy contains treasure. If we carry them to where fire does burn, they wake up and attack. We can cut them apart, but that would take too long; the PCs don't want to spend their lives operating a mummy mine. Also, it might wake up Cthulhu. All in all, not a good plan.

So does anybody have any ideas? How do we destroy these mummies to gain all the treasure save mankind from this terrible threat, fairly quickly, so we can get back on our own quest?

[LibraryOgre]

What's the ground like outside the arch?

My first thought? Dig a big pit... 10+ feet deep. Dig it just outside the arch. *Throw* the mummies into the pit, so they come to life and land in a pit. Then you can either have a healthy fire burning down there, or you can shoot them with flaming arrows.

Might not be feasible.

[Jay R]

Good idea. It would get several, not hundreds or thousands, but that's better than we've done.

It's a 30 x 100 foot room of well-worked stone, by the way, so it would be hard to do. The walls are painted with hellish scenes of Cthulhuian beings (old ones, etc.)

My initial plan was to send a Flaming Sphere down the hall to light lots of them. That's how we found out that fire won't burn there.

[Telok]

Hmm, choices. This is a good one.
1. Mummy mine. Pros: loot & saftey. Cons: Time, potential for world destruction, fail another/current mission.
2. Mummy mulcher. Setting up a trap/something to kill mummies thrown or dragged in. Pros: safe-ish, fast once built, minimum loot loss. Cons: probably slow/expensive/difficult to build, plus the other cons above.
3. Mummy fight club. Pros: fast & looty. Cons: dangerous & mummy rot.
4. Leave and come back later with more prep work. Pros: safer & doesn't risk current mission. Cons: slow & others may find the location before you return.

If you can do some rapid wood working and have enough rope there's the possibility of some sort log trap...

Millstone. Can you get or make a quick millstone on an axel? Dump mummies in the corridor and run a heavy rock back and forth over them a bunch of times.

[LibraryOgre]

Good idea. It would get several, not hundreds or thousands, but that's better than we've done.

It's a 30 x 100 foot room of well-worked stone, by the way, so it would be hard to do. The walls are painted with hellish scenes of Cthulhuian beings (old ones, etc.)

My initial plan was to send a Flaming Sphere down the hall to light lots of them. That's how we found out that fire won't burn there.

Can you hold the flaming sphere outside and toss mummies on it?

[Jay R]

Can you hold the flaming sphere outside and toss mummies on it?

For five rounds. It's a 2nd level spell.

Millstone. Can you get or make a quick millstone on an axel? Dump mummies in the corridor and run a heavy rock back and forth over them a bunch of times.

Millstone? No, but we have a djinn. We can make wooden objects up to 9 cu. ft. (a cube 63 cm/25 inches per side), and temporary metal objects up to about 100 lbs (45 kg). The djinn won't go back down there (it's too Evil), so we would have to carry anything down about 200 feet of 10x10 corridors.

The party includes a 5th level MU and a 5th level cleric, with four servants -- 4th level Thief, 4th level ranger, 4th level Fighter-Archer, and 4th/3rd level Thief/MU.

Here are the thoughts I just sent to the party. Any comments?

Spoiler: Sent to the party

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Consider a gamble in a dysfunctional Vegas. You spin the wheel, and 999 times out of 1000, you get $100. But one time in 1,000, you die.

The two most obvious facts about this game are:
1. Playing the game continuously will eventually lead to a total disaster for you, and
2. Playing the game once, right now, will almost certainly put you in a better position than you are in right now.

So it seems reasonable to play the game just once, and then walk away.

Unfortunately, after you play it once, and win $100, the same logic applies again. Play it just once more, and you are almost certainly better off.

And there’s no end to it. It also seems good to play just once more – until the time you miss.

The right play is not to play at all. $100 is not worth a 1/1,000 chance to die.

Pteppic and Tolath may be in this situation. Playing just one more time (cutting up one more mummy) will be profitable for them. But if we ever do whatever it takes to wake them all up, or worse, to wake up an Elder God, then we will die.

We’ve gotten several magic items from it. They might be nice in the right situation, but we haven’t found anything that will really improve our abilities. It’s tempting to keep carving up mummies at least until we find something that really fits Tolath or Pteppic. I was going to suggest that we try one more time.

But after that one time, we’d want to do it again – just one more time

We don’t know what the odds are of disaster. One more mummy, or just enough time in the catacombs, might be too much.

The mithril mines in Moria were so profitable that the dwarves delved too greedily and too deep. Eventually, they woke up the Balrog. I don't want to do the same thing in our mummy mine.

My suggestion is that we leave, and see if we can close the entrance again. We need to start hunting for the aliens, since it seems pretty clear that they aren’t coming here.

[Lord Torath]

What's the ground like outside the arch?

My first thought? Dig a big pit... 10+ feet deep. Dig it just outside the arch. *Throw* the mummies into the pit, so they come to life and land in a pit. Then you can either have a healthy fire burning down there, or you can shoot them with flaming arrows.

Might not be feasible.

Good idea. It would get several, not hundreds or thousands, but that's better than we've done.

It's a 30 x 100 foot room of well-worked stone, by the way, so it would be hard to do. The walls are painted with hellish scenes of Cthulhuian beings (old ones, etc.)

Spoiler: Zombie Mining for Fun and Profit

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I suppose if anyone had a 'dig' spell or a Wand of Earth, you'd have mentioned that by now.

Do you have someone who can cast Transmute Rock to Mud? That would make digging the pit easier.

Do you have any holy water? You could soak their wraps in it. (Nevermind, you'd need a swimming pool of it for that many mummies)

In the absence of a pit, douse each mummy in oil. Throw them through the archway and have someone on the other side light them up. Keep someone in the archway to prevent them from walking back through

If you can find a Wand of Earth, you can Dig a pit, and possibly a tunnel or two to ventilate the area more efficiently.

Anyone have an axe? Put a block of wood under each 'sleeping' mummy's neck, and decapitate them (the block of wood is so you don't dull your axe on the stone they're lying on). Drag each mummy and head through the arch and toss them on the pyre. This takes, what five minutes per mummy (unless you need to chop off arms and legs as well)? 12 an hour, 120 per ten-hour day. Eight days (approx) to get through each thousand. If you can split up into two-man teams, you can go much faster. Can you just tell your DM you spend the next month systematically destroying the mummies and skip to the looting phase? Or will that make you late accomplishing your real mission.

Does this pay better than your real mission?

What other assets do you have? (If we only had a wheelbarrow, that would be something.) Something like a cart or wheelbarrow could actually increase your mph - Mummies per Hour - up to 20 or 30, allowing you to 'mine' much more quickly. 30 mph = 300 per day. Two teams would be 600 or so per day, letting you clear 5000 mummies in just over a week.

Got a bag of holding? Throw the mummies into the bag, then empty it out over the pyre/fire pit. Only problem is the mummies might come alive in the bag (it's in another dimension, so while they haven't passed the arch, they're no longer in the 'storage' chamber) and burst the bag, scattering themselves across the astral plane (as well as ruining your bag). So do the aforementioned wooden-block-decapitate/dismember routine before tossing them in the bag.

You could do the same thing with a portable hole, with the added advantage that it holds more, can't be damaged from the inside, and functions as its own fire pit. Plus, once you've burned them up, peel it off the floor and slap it on the wall for easier access to their (hopefully) charred remains.

Edit: Okay, Saving the World Right Now probably takes precedence over mass looting Saving the World Sometime in the Future. So spend, say, an hour working your Zombie mine Saving the World Sometime in the Future, and then say "We'll come back if we can" and get back to Saving the World Right Now.

[LibraryOgre]

You're probably right in your assertion, Jay R.... you're going to have to stop, at some point, or you will get fatally stopped.

[Lord Torath]

Millstone? No, but we have a djinn. We can make wooden objects up to 9 cu. ft. (a cube 63 cm/25 inches per side), and temporary metal objects up to about 100 lbs (45 kg). The djinn won't go back down there (it's too Evil), so we would have to carry anything down about 200 feet of 10x10 corridors.

Is the Djinni too evil? Or is the corridor too evil for the Djinni? In any case, the Djinni can probably make you a wooden wheelbarrow to speed things up.

The party includes a 5th level MU and a 5th level cleric, with four servants -- 4th level Thief, 4th level ranger, 4th level Fighter-Archer, and 4th/3rd level Thief/MU.

So you've got 40,000 gp divided among two PCs and four henchmen. That's roughly 10,000 gp(xp) per PC and 5,000 per henchmen (just about enough for everyone to level up once each after you get that loot back to civilization) plus regular Mummy xp, assuming the henchmen each get a half-share of treasure and xp. Not too shabby.

Here are the thoughts I just sent to the party. Any comments?

Spoiler: Sent to the party

Show

Consider a gamble in a dysfunctional Vegas. You spin the wheel, and 999 times out of 1000, you get $100. But one time in 1,000, you die.

The two most obvious facts about this game are:
1. Playing the game continuously will eventually lead to a total disaster for you, and
2. Playing the game once, right now, will almost certainly put you in a better position than you are in right now.

So it seems reasonable to play the game just once, and then walk away.

Unfortunately, after you play it once, and win $100, the same logic applies again. Play it just once more, and you are almost certainly better off.

And there’s no end to it. It also seems good to play just once more – until the time you miss.

The right play is not to play at all. $100 is not worth a 1/1,000 chance to die.

Pteppic and Tolath may be in this situation. Playing just one more time (cutting up one more mummy) will be profitable for them. But if we ever do whatever it takes to wake them all up, or worse, to wake up an Elder God, then we will die.

We’ve gotten several magic items from it. They might be nice in the right situation, but we haven’t found anything that will really improve our abilities. It’s tempting to keep carving up mummies at least until we find something that really fits Tolath or Pteppic. I was going to suggest that we try one more time.

But after that one time, we’d want to do it again – just one more time

We don’t know what the odds are of disaster. One more mummy, or just enough time in the catacombs, might be too much.

The mithril mines in Moria were so profitable that the dwarves delved too greedily and too deep. Eventually, they woke up the Balrog. I don't want to do the same thing in our mummy mine.

My suggestion is that we leave, and see if we can close the entrance again. We need to start hunting for the aliens, since it seems pretty clear that they aren’t coming here.

Sounds good. Decide how many more you want to get now (an hour's worth, a turn's worth, five minutes' worth) and stick to it! Tell the DM how many more you want to get before leaving, and if he asks tell him it's because you don't want to delay your main quest any longer than that. (That gives him the knowledge that you don't plan to sit and exploit this resource endlessly so he doesn't need to have them all spontaneously rise up and murder you, but doesn't give him the idea to have them wake up and murder you if he doesn't already have it). Then 'harvest' that many, grab your loot, and run.

[Telok]

Millstone? No, but we have a djinn. We can make wooden objects up to 9 cu. ft. (a cube 63 cm/25 inches per side), and temporary metal objects up to about 100 lbs (45 kg). The djinn won't go back down there (it's too Evil), so we would have to carry anything down about 200 feet of 10x10 corridors.

... you have a djinn.
You can get a millstone or a boulder. Ask it to make 16 cubic feet of holy water in a barrel. Have it make lots of rope or damp rawhide cables to tie up mummys for incineration.

You have a djinn and are having trouble with this?

Ask if there is a chemical/alchemical that bursts into flame on contact with air. The catacombs suppress fire, soak mummies in there, tie them up, drag them out. Wait... don't drag. Get the djinn to make you a wheelbarrow.

[Jay R]

Is the Djinni too evil? Or is the corridor too evil for the Djinni?

The tunnels are too Evil for the Djinn. He's a young one, without full powers.

So you've got 40,000 gp divided among two PCs and four henchmen. That's roughly 10,000 gp(xp) per PC and 5,000 per henchmen ....

We do not get xps for money -- only for defeating encounters and fulfilling quests. Will will certainly get xp for the mummy we fought, I don't know if we will get any for the two inert ones we dismembered.

Sounds good. Decide how many more you want to get now (an hour's worth, a turn's worth, five minutes' worth) and stick to it!

Deciding and then sticking to it has a logical flaw. However we choose that number, the same logic for choosing it will apply again after we've done. That's why I've about concluded that the correct number to choose is zero.

To answer earlier questions. No wand of earth. Aside from weapons, armor, and protection, we have three Cloaks of Elvenkind, a Wand of Magic Missiles, a Pearl of Power, a Robe of Useful Items, a Scarab of Enraging Enemies, a Bag of Holding, a Ring of Invisibility, and a Marble Elephant.

[Because 10-foot-high catacombs are too small for an elephant, that's why.]

It pays much better money than our real mission, but that's not the point. The pay for our real mission is that the Primordial Ones are attacking desert caravans, and we are princes of Egypt. It's our responsibility.

... you have a djinn.
You can get a millstone or a boulder. Ask it to make 16 cubic feet of holy water in a barrel. Have it make lots of rope or damp rawhide cables to tie up mummys for incineration.

He can make drinking water. I'll ask about holy water, but if I were the DM, I wouldn't allow it. Rawhide is not listed as in his ability, but cotton or linen ropes should be possible.

According to the MM, a djinn can create:
nutritious food for 2-12 persons,
water or wine for 2-12 persons,
soft goods (up to about 16 cubic feet),
wooden items (up to about 9 cubic feet)
metal items of short life span (1-24 hours) of up to about 1,000 gold pieces weight.

I haven't asked about either rocks or holy water, but neither is implied by the description. And I know that the DM goes past that description to some extent, because the djinn is making the pearls for my Identify spell. A wooden wheelbarrow is a good idea.

You have a djinn and are having trouble with this?

No trouble at all with destroying a few mummies. I would like to find a quick way to destroy them all -- hundreds or thousands -- fairly quickly, to acquire all the treasure and magic end the threat they pose to mankind.

Ask if there is a chemical/alchemical that bursts into flame on contact with air. The catacombs suppress fire, soak mummies in there, tie them up, drag them out. Wait... don't drag. Get the djinn to make you a wheelbarrow.

It would shock me if the djinn could create what is essentially a modern explosive, but I'll ask. But since the djinn won't come back down to the catacombs, whatever he makes will be made outside and brought down by us, in which case I would expect it to explode when he makes it.

[Telok]

Straight sulfur and water woud do, people have known about that for a long time.

Really I think having the djinn zoom off to the nearest village, swap some gems for a 600 lb. millstone, and come back would do. The 9 cu.ft. of wood gets you a strong axel. Then dump the mummies in the hall and run roll the millstone up and down a few times.

You'll lose some potions and wands to save vs. crushing blows but it should be faster than manually hacking all the arms off...

What happens if you rip the arms off all the mummies and take those outside to burn?

[Bohandas]

How about using water on them, thus allowing rot and mold to set back in

[Lord Torath]

Deciding and then sticking to it has a logical flaw. However we choose that number, the same logic for choosing it will apply again after we've done. That's why I've about concluded that the correct number to choose is zero.

Possibly, but you've got a party agreement that you'll stop at "x additional mummies", and you have other urgent matters to attend to. Each mummy you spend time killing and looting is more time for the alien raiders to hit a caravan. That said, "zero" is an acceptable number of additional mummies to destroy.

How about using water on them, thus allowing rot and mold to set back in

This is actually a pretty good idea, both from a DM and a player perspective.

It is a slow destruction, so the DM doesn't need to worry about you getting the treasure from several thousand mummies. Also, they won't all be destroyed for a while, so any contingency that makes them more likely to wake up the more of them are destroyed won't trigger until you are long gone, and they will all be fairly well rotten by that point.

It's a fairly certain destruction, meaning that in a year or so, those mummies will be rotten and thus when Cthulu & Co come looking for their minions at some point in the future, they'll have a mass of bacteria and fungus instead of legions of mummies, so Egypt will be safe. From the mummies, anyway, not so sure about the Old Ones.

[LibraryOgre]

How about using water on them, thus allowing rot and mold to set back in

Oh, that's REALLY good. It's slow, but pretty sure. If you can arrange for it to be holy water, all the better, but just rehydrating them would destroy them.

[hamlet]

Oh, that's REALLY good. It's slow, but pretty sure. If you can arrange for it to be holy water, all the better, but just rehydrating them would destroy them.

Unless the DM then modifies them into "squishy mummies" or something . . .


. . . it's not like I did that once as a DM . . .



. . . stop looking at me that way.

[Bohandas]

It's a fairly certain destruction, meaning that in a year or so, those mummies will be rotten and thus when Cthulu & Co come looking for their minions at some point in the future, they'll have a mass of bacteria and fungus instead of legions of mummies

so possibly a Mi-Go problem

[Mutazoia]

So what level is the party? What kind of casters do you have?

Some basic ideas:

• Wall of water/Tidal Wave to soak everything, followed by Ice Storm to freeze them solid. Apply hammer
• Polymorph into a black dragon and breath acid on them
• Trasmute the rock under their feet to mud. Push them a few feet into said mud. Transmute said mud back into rock. It doesn't break them but immobilizes them for later.
• Insect Swarm: Just have them munched into nothing
• Kill a few mooks. Cast Animate Dead to create zombies. Have zombies work the mummy mine while you go off adventuring. Sure, you lose control of the zombies after a bit, but they are only zombies, you can easily defeat them when you come back.
• Casting Conjure Animals at 7th level gets you three times the creature. So 24 Giant Badgers. Commence clawing the Mummies into pieces.

[Lord Torath]

So what level is the party? What kind of casters do you have?

Some basic ideas:

• Wall of water/Tidal Wave to soak everything, followed by Ice Storm to freeze them solid. Apply hammer
• Polymorph into a black dragon and breath acid on them
• Trasmute the rock under their feet to mud. Push them a few feet into said mud. Transmute said mud back into rock. It doesn't break them but immobilizes them for later.
• Insect Swarm: Just have them munched into nothing
• Kill a few mooks. Cast Animate Dead to create zombies. Have zombies work the mummy mine while you go off adventuring. Sure, you lose control of the zombies after a bit, but they are only zombies, you can easily defeat them when you come back.
• Casting Conjure Animals at 7th level gets you three times the creature. So 24 Giant Badgers. Commence clawing the Mummies into pieces.

They're around 5th level. So they have the friendly young Djinni (is Djinni singular? Or is Djinn singular?) summon a wheelbarrow and/or cart and several barrels of water. Load them in the wheelbarrow, cart the thing in and spend ten - twenty minutes thoroughly dousing the (hopefully-still) inactive mummies.

[knag]

They're around 5th level. So they have the friendly young Djinni (is Djinni singular? Or is Djinn singular?) summon a wheelbarrow and/or cart and several barrels of water. Load them in the wheelbarrow, cart the thing in and spend ten - twenty minutes thoroughly dousing the (hopefully-still) inactive mummies.

Djinn is singular, djinni is plural.

[Jay R]

Thank you all for your advice. It helped a lot; I now know far more about the possibilities than I did.

We have decided that if anything -- anything -- went wrong, we'd be in way above our abilities. So we are going to close the temple cellars back up, go complete our mission, and then report this to higher authorities to see if they want to mount a larger mission to deal with it.

We'd rather get a smaller percentage of a very large treasure, than risk getting all of an overwhelming enemy, and potentially letting a major menace out into the world.

[thorr-kan]

Wait. Y'all have decided to take the prudent course, and let sleeping mummies lie? Is...is that allowed?

Asking for a friend.

(Seriously, this whole discussion has been really cool. Thanks for sharing.)