To celebrate Halloween, our Deep Dive series this month will feature some of the most iconic creatures from film, literature and of course, D&D. This week, we will be taking a look at the Mummy, and it’s not the one that gives you hugs and tells you, you’re special.

The mummy of ancient Egypt may not be the mummy we know from D&D, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t any less creepy. The earliest ancient Egyptian mummies were not the ones we think of, sitting in museums with their tattered cloth and fancy tombs. The first mummies were created by nature, as the Egyptians buried the dead in shallow pit graves. Being in a really big desert, it was mother nature that created the first mummies by dehydrating the bodies, which resulted in natural mummification.

Soon though, Egyptians saw the preservation of the body after death as a way to allow the dead to live comfortably in the afterlife. As Egypt grew in power and wealth, the rich and nobility began to demand a higher quality of embalming to preserve their social status in the afterlife. This socio-economic structure in Egypt led to the creation of incredibly elaborate tombs, and more sophisticated methods of embalming. You may have heard of a couple of them… like the Pyramids.

The concept of the undead mummy was introduced in literature in 1827 with the novel, The Mummy!: Or a Tale of the Twenty-Second Century, written by Jane C. Loudon. The book was meant to be a science fiction book and not horror, as the plot revolves around the Egyptian mummy named Cheops, who is brought back to life in the 22nd century. Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of Sherlock Holmes, is credited by many as writing the first gothic horror story revolving about mummies, but it’s H.P. Lovecraft who takes the monster and transforms the undead creature into the thing nightmares are made of. In the early to mid 20th century, mummy movies dominate the undead movie genre, trumping vampires, zombies and all of the other great classic monsters. Our love affair continues to this day with the undead horror, as Hollywood continues to produce movies based on the mummy. Of course, sometimes they create an accidental comedy, such as the Mummy remake starring Tom Cruise. Two hours of my life we’ll never get back.

OD&D - Mummy

Number per Encounter: 1-12

Alignment: Chaos

Armor Class: 3

Move in Inches: 6

Hit Dice: 5+1

Number of Attacks: 1 + Special

Points of Damage/Per Attack: 1d6 + Special Save: F6/C6

% in Lair: 50%

Type or amount of Treasure: D

The Mummy was first released in the Dungeons & Dragons White Box (1974) and they were part of an undead category of monsters that included Skeletons, Vampires, Wights, and Wraiths. Interestingly, the description goes out of its way to say that the Mummy does not drain life force, like Wights or Wraiths, but rather their touch causes a rotting disease which makes wounds take ten times as long to heal. Luckily, if your friendly cleric has the Cure Disease spell, they can reduce the length of time to twice as long, but only if the spell is cast within an hour of contracting the disease.

For those of you that have only played the latest edition and are scratching your head wondering how that works, we’ll take a second to describe how healing works in OD&D. Common wounds can be healed by “the passage of time” or by magic. Your first full day of complete rest gets you nothing but time to read your spellbook or sharpen your sword. Every other day of full rest gets you one hit point per day until you are fully healed. Our favorite part of the healing description in the manual is the last line which simply says, “This can take a long time.” Thank you Captain Obvious.

It’s vague on how magical healing works in conjunction with the rotting touch, but based on the limited information available, one would assume that cure light/serious wounds would do their normal amount of healing, which is why every party should have a cleric and be thankful for the cleric. Otherwise, getting back 1 hit point every 10 days means your character better have some hobbies they enjoy, like roleplaying or dice.

The Mummy is also only affected by magical weapons, which may not seem like such a big deal now, but magic items were pretty rare in OD&D. To screw you over even more, when you do land an attack all damage, including bonus damage, is half its normal amount. The characters do have a big advantage though, and that is that the Mummy is vulnerable to fire, even regular old fire from a torch. What does being a vulnerable mean in Original Dungeons & Dragons? There are no defined rules for it, though the only creature with a vulnerability in the White Box is the Mummy, so maybe it never came up. Regardless, all attacks deal 1d6 of damage in the original game, unless they have a magical bonus, so your torch would probably deal the full 1d6 damage and maybe if your DM is kind, would have the Mummy be on fire. That way when it hit you, it hurts even more.

AD&D - Mummy