ARCHINT: The Five-Sided Ankh

Last month, I ran a short scenario centered around an unnatural artifact. The scenario leaves the exact mechanics up to the Handler, so I thought I'd write them up, plus some spot rules for Raise From Essential Saltes. I recommend making Potemkin an archeologist of some sort and having journals from the dig he recovered the ankh at. They contain sketches and descriptions of the ankh enough for an Agent to guess at the later clues, but not draw any solid conclusions.

When an Agent wears the amulet for the first time, they lose 0/1D4 SAN from a brief moment of dissociation as they feel a wave of dry heat. Ask the the player if they want to shut it out (ie: project onto a Bond). What they learn from the vision depends on the amount of SAN lost after projection, if any.

0 SAN: A wave of dry heat and a tingle in the corners of their vision.

1 SAN: A sound accompanies the heat: a cascade layered over the low buzzing hum of a didgeridoo. Art (Music), Science (Geology), or Survival recognizes this as singing sand.

2-3 SAN: The vision sweeps out, revealing an expansive desert with towering dunes, but the wearer feels safe and protected.

4 SAN: The wearer also feels ancient and timeless and gains +1% Unnatural.

If the Agent is in a hot place, the vision takes place in the cool antechamber of a tomb.

The wearer does not age and does not need to sleep, breathe, eat, or drink. Lack of food and water may still weaken them, though. They cannot be knocked unconscious and are only stunned if they have 0 HP after an attack lowers their hit points. More importantly, while wearing the amulet, they can only be killed by complete destruction of the body.

In mechanical terms, 0 HP does not guarantee death. If no one intervenes with First Aid within CON minutes, they will still die if they ever take off the ankh. Surgery can prevent permanent injuries and reattach limbs, provided the surgeon intervenes within the time window. Discovering the wearer should be dead but isn't costs 0/1D6 SAN from unnatural (or 1/1D8 for the wearer if not adapted to helplessness). Hit points can always be recovered with medical attention and rest, though this won't stop anyone from dying if the amulet is removed if they've already "died."

The Handler should secretly track how much damage the wearer accumulates at 0 HP. If this ever reaches their maximum HP (or they're subject to a successful Lethality roll) they are incapacitated for an hour or until they regain any hit points. They must also roll CONx5 or suffer another permanent injury. The excess damage 'resets' when the wearer reaches their normal max HP again, or whenever the Handler thinks is appropriate.

mellon's original conception of the amulet, though he said he liked my design because it looked like an opium poppy, a plant associated with ancient Egypt

Examining the Amulet in the Field

Archeology: Ankhs were commonly made into hand mirrors in ancient Egypt. Mirrors were considered symbols of regeneration and vitality for their ability to reflect the light of the sun. As a hieroglyph, the ankh could be considered a "root word" for life. It shows up in oaths and politeness phrases because those typically started with a form of the word "live." Ankhs were also placed into sarcophagi to ensure eternal life after death. Though, destroying the deceased's physical body would have dire consequences in the afterlife. The tiny symbols etched into the five-sided ankh don't make sense as any dead language you know, but you could probably pronounce them by guessing their similarities to existing ones.

Anthropology: The history of the ankh stretches beyond ancient Egypt. It predates the ancient civilization and was used later by early christian cults and now in neopagan traditions. Historically, ankhs were used as protective amulets, but also appeared in funerary rites and in the hands of the gods. As a hieroglyph, the ankh showed up in a lot of words derived from "life" and "oath." The tiny symbols etched into the five-sided ankh remind you of badly translated "words of power." An incantation originally in plain language, reduced to nonsense syllables repeated out of tradition through linguistic drift.

Occult: The ankh is an ancient Egyptian symbol, typically referred to as "the key of life" in more modern occult traditions. It's a powerful magic symbol because it symbolizes infinity by the union of the male, the staff, and the female, the closed loop. You recognize the tiny symbols etched into the five-sided ankh from theosophic traditions, commonly used to invoke a higher power.

Unnatural: For every 10% in the skill, the Agent gets the answer to one question. With a successful roll, they can answer another question or phrase an answer in terms of game mechanics. A critical success provides an additional answer or mechanical explanation. A fumble costs 1 SAN and provides an ominous but technically correct answer to a question. Thus, Agents with 9% Unnatural or less have a 19% chance at most to answer one of the questions below, but more than half of the time the answer will be flawed.

• What does the amulet do? It allows the wearer to persist despite severe injury or lethal harm (they're still 'alive' even at 0 HP and don't need to sleep, eat, or breathe). Fumble: it confers immortality or invulnerability upon the wearer.
• How do you defeat someone wearing it? An unnaturally animated body isn't of much use when it's mangled beyond repair, or you could just take it off (inflict twice their HP in damage to incapacitate them). Fumble: they can only be killed by total destruction of the body via incineration or explosives.
  
• What about the writing? It invokes Yog-Sothoth in an incantation to raise the dead or return them to dust (it's the Raise From Essential Saltes ritual). Fumble: it refers to a being known as the All-in-One, master of space and time, the latter giving him power over life and death.
• Fumbling with 30% Unnatural or more: The five-sided nature is an expression of an ancient (maybe inhuman) civilization with impossibly advanced technology. Regarded as angels, demons, and gods, these old ones had a special place for the number five. It serves as a trace of their influence in cultures that grant no special importance to the number.
  

Stay on the Case

An Agent who looks into Delbert Potemkin's life should roll whatever skill the Handler finds appropriate for their described method of research. For example: Archeology to sift through academic papers, Bureaucracy for requesting files from the university, Occult to see if anyone else has ever found a similar artifact, etc.

Fumble: The Agent is seized with the nagging feeling that even if this particular instance of the unnatural has been resolved, there might be more like it out in the world somewhere.

Failure: No one who was on the expedition with Potemkin has fallen mysteriously ill or lived for an unusually long time. He appears to be the only one affected by the artifact.

Success: Some of Dr. Potemkin's colleagues from the dig have died, but all from natural causes. The dig was uneventful, not unearthing anything of interest besides the ankh itself, which was largely ignored by the academic community.

Critical Success: If there are any other instances of the artifact, the Agent finds them. Otherwise it doesn't show up anywhere else in the historical or archeological record, or they were destroyed/lost when a museum got bombed.

 

Study the Unnatural

The Ankh Itself

A rating of at least 10% in both Anthropology and Archeology (or either in addition to 20% or greater in Occult) reveals all the clues described in Examining the Amulet in the Field except for those from Unnatural. In addition, if an Agent has at least 5% in Unnatural, they also learn the amulet's purpose, how to defeat the wearer, and the significance of the writing on it. If they already knew at least two answers to those questions, they also learn one of them phrased in game mechanics

Agents more versed in Anthropology, Archeology, and Occult learn more. They get all the clues from the Examining section, including the ones from Unnatural. If they already knew at least two answers from Unnatural, they also learn one of them phrased in game mechanics.

The Writing on the Ankh

Basic research into the writing reveals it's part of a larger alchemical formula. The Agent can choose to learn the full process, the Raise from Essential Saltes ritual, or just master the incantations. In order to learn hypergeometry from the artifact, the Agent must have the Archeology skill. If not, they can seek out the ritual from other sources, using the ankh as a 'reference point.' This requires an Anthropology test (or Occult at -20%). If the test fails, the Agent increases the skill they used and their Unnatural skill by 1D4 points but is ready to learn the ritual in another Home scene.

To study the ritual, the Agent rolls SAN. If they fail, they learn whatever parts of the ritual they set out to learn. If the SAN test succeeds, the Agent should mark down that they have studied the ritual in the "developments which affect home and family" box on their character sheet. Whenever they attempt to learn the ritual in the future, they get a -20% penalty to the SAN test. Succeed or fail, the Agent increases their Unnatural skill by 1% for every Bond point lost.

If the Home scene represents a few weeks, there's only enough time to learn the incantations to raise the dead from (and return them to) essential saltes or the process of reducing an existing corpse to essential saltes. This costs 1D10 SAN and only increases the Agent's Unnatural skill by 1% if they already learned the other 'half.'

If the Home scene represents a month or more, learning one of the 'halves' of the ritual (as above) is automatic and does not require a SAN test. By contrast, learning 'the whole thing' does require a failed SAN test. If learned, the ritual costs 1D20 SAN but increases the Agent's Unnatural skill by 1%.

If there's over a year between sessions I usually give players two Home scenes. If treated as a single vignette, Agents can automatically learn the incantations alongside as many simple rituals as the Handler finds appropriate. They can also dedicate all their time towards the Raise From Essential Saltes ritual, learning it without the need to roll SAN.