Opening the Gate
Description: This ritual prepares a corpse so that it becomes a focus for the Setite’s magic. If the corpse is not already mummified according to ancient Egyptian tradition, it must undergo the procedure before the ritual begins. This process alone can take several nights, and is usually performed by a coven of Setite priests and sorcerers.
Once the body is prepared, the ritualist begins the ceremony by verbally recounting the victory of Set over Osiris, and informing the corpse of Set’s subsequent penetration of the Western Lands and the powerlessness of Osiris to stop his progress. He arranges the canopic jars in reversed order, placing the jar that’s supposed to be positioned to the west of the body to its east, and so on. The ritualist then saws open the corpse’s chest cavity and breaks open the ribcage. He severs the corpse’s spine and drills dozens of hooks into the corpse. Into the hooks he threads catgut strings, which he then attaches to a metal frame around the mummy. The sorcerer pulls the strings tight, forcing the body into a tortured position. The ritual takes 12 hours to complete.
The Storyteller assigns the corpse a rating from 0 to 5, showing the degree to which its funeral arrangements satisfied the requirements of The Egyptian Book of the Dead. Zero represents no similarity whatsoever - which will most often be the case - and 5 signals the greatest adherence to those rituals possible in modern times. The Storyteller keeps his value secret until the ritual’s successful completion.
A successful Setite now possesses a means of siphoning energy from the Western Lands. He may at any time increase his blood or Willpower pools by a number of points equal to the rating the Storyteller assigned the mummy. After the passage of a number of hours equal to his successes on the ritual, he loses the points. He may do this once per night.
If anyone destroys the corpse or unstrings it from the frame, the Setite loses a sum of blood and Willpower points (distributed by the Storyteller) equal to twice his
mummy’s rating.
