SESSION 8 - DAMAGE CONTROL, OR LACK THEREOF
Session 7 | Log | Quotes

When it became clear that Anubis would eventually recover, he was transferred back to his temple to recuperate.  Khnemu cared for him and kept an eye on the gate to the Land of the Dead.  He also oversaw the repairs to Anubis's temple, large swaths of which had been reduced to rubble in the battle with Shesmu.  Unut and Khonsu aided in these efforts, and Weret also paid a visit, to examine the scales and the border with the Land of the Dead.  While there, she saw a worker headed back towards Anubis's private section of the temple, though she thought little of it.

Shu further infiltrated Mot's temple in Nineveh, retrieving some of the death god's research.  It appeared that Mot had been trying to punch a hole through into the Land of the Dead, through a series of rituals involving the sacrifice of hundreds of people.  He had as yet been unsuccessful, though.  Shu also learned that the Assyrian army, falling back from Fort Geb, had split into two forces.  One was headed to the capital city of Ashur, which had a large military fortress.  The other was headed to Nineveh, for reasons unknown.  Nineveh did not have any kind of garrison large enough to hold an army of that size.

When Keket learned of this intelligence, her first suspicion was that Assyria had found a way to enter the Land of the Dead, and thereby march an army into the heart of Amber.  She began looking into ways to bring an army to Nineveh first, though no one knew of a way to march Amber humans into the Land of the Dead without killing them.  Keket and Unut went so far as to test this with one of Unut's mortal followers, but he quickly expired.

Their experiments were interrupted when Weret recognized that someone hostile had entered her temple.  Keket, Unut, and Khonsu traveled there via the Land of the Dead, and determined that someone in anonymous form had entered with a group of servants.  They split up and searched the temple for a few minutes, until Weret trumped them to let them know that the intruder had left.  The three quickly checked on the exits, and found two dead cult guards at one gate.  They pursued their quarry into the city of Bahariya, where they searched a market full of people without success, and then picked up the trail again, headed out into the desert.  They could see a figure several dunes ahead of them, and Keket managed to hit it with an arrow, though the arrow bounced off some kind of armor.  They continued to give chase until they found the tracks ending, as if the person had skidded to a stop and then vanished into thin air.  They combed the area for a while, but found no signs of the target.

Meanwhile Khnemu, searching for one of Anubis's priests which had gone missing, was looking through the tombs in Anubis's private section of the temple and made a startling discovery.  The mummified bodies of both Set and Isis had been interred there, their organs (save Isis's heart) sealed in canopic jars nearby.  What alarmed Khnemu was that the organs of both gods, which had been present as late as that morning, were now missing.  There were some signs of a struggle near the entrance to the tomb, with a bit of blood, but it had been largely cleaned up.  Khnemu passed this news along, and general panic set in.  Most of the family returned to their own temples briefly to check their security and lock things down as much as they could.  Khnemu, Weret, and Khonsu, whose parents' bodies had been looted, were especially concerned.

As a further security precaution, the tomb of Sokar was searched and sealed.  It seemed that Mot had broken the seal on the door and released Shesmu, and then hid while the beast departed.  There was little to be found within the tomb, as it had mostly been reduced to dust.  As best as could be determined, Shesmu had been chained deep within in the tomb by Ra, Osiris, and Anubis, but the chains were only enough to hold him briefly while they sealed the door.  After that, Shesmu was trapped in the tomb, and over the centuries destroyed everything within.  The tomb itself blocked trump contact, and retained a little of the malevolent presence of its former occupants.  Khnemu sealed it with the faintly magical stone from a nearby quarry, and used blood from all those assembled in the mortar of the wall.  Ptah reinforced it with magical metals.  And Weret cursed any who would be foolish enough to break the seal.

Shu returned to Assyria and heard a few rumors about the advancing army.  It seemed that they would be garrisoned at Nineveh, perhaps as a punishment for Mot, who was in disfavor with Astarte if rumors were to be believed.  Shu gathered some stones from the area where the garrison was to be built in preparation for some later sorcery.

Khonsu experimented in the Land of the Dead with some water from the Nile, hoping to find a way to protect Amber from invaders from that gray realm (or at least find an interesting effect).  So far, his experiments failed to yield much.

Harmakhis spent this time in Greece, where Hera had asserted her independence from Amber.  Word reached Amber that Harmakhis had brokered a deal with the last Olympian, granting Greece greater rights, but retaining it as a vassal state of Amber.  Apparently there was an attack on both Hera and Harmakhis during that time, and Harmakhis managed to save Hera from death at the hands of archers firing poisoned arrows at the two gods.