Date: Friday June 8–Saturday June 9, 2057
Primary Locations: Cairo University → Former Children’s Museum near St. George Cemetery → The Veil → High House → Kom El Shoqafa
Session Overview
Session Twenty-Three begins in the aftermath of the boardroom war and immediately proves that leaving the boardroom does not mean leaving bad decisions behind. It only means the bad decisions now come with older corpses and worse ventilation.
David and Michael continue the Cairo University investigation that began with Omotola’s lead on Nigerian artifacts. Following the manic student from Vanahue’s orbit, they reconnect with Ahmed Farouk, who is alive, disguised, and embedded among student investigators trying to understand the desecration of graves at St. George Cemetery.
Farouk reveals that he has been hiding at Cairo University because the normal authorities are thin, the students need help, and no one expects a musician to be a storm-touched fugitive. He also reveals his own ability: he can convince others that he is dead. That power failed to get him taken by the professor, but it did help him and the students begin tracking the pattern.
The trail leads to a closed children’s museum, where Professor Charles Vanahue and a frightened storm-touched student have been using dead bodies for occult experimentation and power practice. David’s attempt to quietly dampen sound fails spectacularly, because apparently subtle magic wanted to be a public address system, and the group is forced into a direct confrontation. David snares Vanahue in a magical force net. Michael uses gravity control to flatten the student’s practice space and stop him without harming him.
The interrogation reveals a morally ugly but not purely malicious truth. Vanahue can speak with the dead. The student can blast and reinforce objects, but is terrified of hurting people and does not fully understand what Vanahue has been doing. The stolen book is an ancient Egyptian treatise on the humors of the body from the university archives. Vanahue has been looking for lost historical knowledge, especially clues to the tomb of Alexander the Great.
Before the group relocates Vanahue, the student, and Farouk to the Veil, Michael insists they deal with a soul Vanahue has left awake. That soul may have belonged to the body man of St. Mark the Evangelist. Through Vanahue’s power, the group asks it for directions to Alexander’s mausoleum and learns that the Soma was built in the heart of Alexandria, in the royal district, at the grand intersection of the main colonnaded avenues. They also learn that St. Mark treasured his Bible most and was never seen without it. The soul is released.
By morning, the group turns at last to Kom El Shoqafa. The catacombs are not empty.
They are layered with inactive arcane and divine protective sigils, old offerings, broken terracotta memory, awakened gemstones, ley line power, hidden shafts, drones, sensors, and a team of violent tomb robbers already inside. Michael crashes their drones. Tariq reads the mind of one intruder, Scrambler, and learns that the group believes there are at least three undiscovered levels beneath the known catacombs. The intruders are there to rob the place and know one another by code names, including Scrambler, Slingshot, Dumbstruck, and the small man.
The party confronts Scrambler on the first level. He comes disguised as a security guard, protected by a strange aura and shield. Michael, Rana, and Yusuf test his defenses. Tariq uses the Rod of Command to seize control. Rana sedates him for thirty days. Michael takes his form and briefly calls the last number on his phone, reaching an accented voice that may belong to Slingshot.
The deeper the party goes, the more Kom El Shoqafa wakes around them. David recognizes True Speech in the carvings. Gemstones stir in response to the party’s bloodlines. Yusuf’s X-ray vision finds blocked areas and the small man in the shafts. The “small man” proves to be a golem-like creature created to map the ventilation shafts and copy hidden schematics. The schematic reveals the central truth of the site: the known three levels were built on top of something older.
The session ends with the party approaching a hidden central chamber on the third level, where the remaining tomb robbers wait.
Kom El Shoqafa is not merely the place where Tariq received the Rod of Command.
It is a place where people remembered magic after magic had gone quiet.
And beneath it, something older is still waiting to be read.
The Story So Far
Session Twenty-Two ended with the board finally functioning in the absence of Sawiris and Luca. The Thoth Network adopted the principle that storm-touched rights are human rights, began forming a Naomi-named support trust, expanded its legal structure, and moved toward global registration and sovereign protections.
But outside the boardroom, the world kept breaking in stranger directions. Michael and David followed Omotola’s lead to Cairo University, where Charles Vanahue and a manic student appeared connected to Nigerian artifacts and grave desecration near the Church of St. George. David spotted Ahmed Farouk alive and disguised, overturning the earlier search for his body.
At the High House, Tariq and Yusuf carefully entered Yusuf’s blocked memory and discovered that Yusuf had been prepared as the new Luca, while the Master speed-learned modern medicine and languages through controlled doctors. The Master was not omnipotent.
He was adapting.
Session Twenty-Three begins late Friday night, still following the student through Cairo, and ends Saturday morning beneath Alexandria, where the dead city opens into something older than the map admits.
Major Events & Key Moments
1. The Veil, the Lodges, and the World Still Being Broken
Before the active chase resumes, the group checks on ongoing projects.
Rana asks about the purchase of the Veil and its attached properties. The answer is practical: the paperwork should take about a month, assuming no further nuclear disasters decide to redecorate civilization. Local authorities want property records restored because the Storm has left missing landowners, broken ownership chains, and basic services caught in legal limbo. Even in a world of gods and monsters, someone still has to prove who owns the building before the lights come back on. A species committed to paperwork right up to the edge of cosmic extinction. Impressive in the worst way.
The Veil purchase includes three other locations. Two are large parcels, described at industrial farm scale. A third contains a heritage site that cannot be developed. The Game Master is clear that the heritage site is not a secret treasure pile, just protected land that complicates development.
David also follows up on the funds and information he sent to Masonic lodges. The transfer completed. The lodges have not resumed regular activity since the Storm, and security has increased because of strange events. The Philadelphia Lodge received the information after seeing satellite events unfold, which affects their response. The immediate effect is credibility: David warned them early enough to establish bona fides, even if he could not stop what followed.
The side projects are not flashy, but they matter. The Veil becomes more real. David’s outside networks remain alive. The party’s influence is no longer only personal or mythic. It is institutional, financial, and social.
A terrifying development, because institutions are what humans build when they want their mistakes to last longer.
2. Farouk in the Crowd
The active scene resumes with David and Michael, with Michael still disguised as Nonso Malambo, following the student from Cairo University.
The student carries a large tome and moves through the streets with total focus. He is not trained. He does not know he is being followed. Other students are following him too, connected to the protests over grave desecration at St. George Cemetery.
Then Ahmed Farouk moves close enough to speak.
He greets them warmly without looking like he is with them. David congratulates him on being an excellent hider. Farouk clarifies that it has been a while since anyone looked for him, meaning the entity that hunts them all. The old resurrection thread is now fully inverted: Farouk is not a body to recover. He is a fugitive who has been hiding in plain sight.
Farouk explains that he came to Cairo University because the place is disordered enough to disappear into. Since the Storm, officials are hard to reach, self-governance has taken root, and students need help. Farouk could provide that help. Students are not suspicious of a musician.
Then the graves started being disturbed.
At first Farouk thought the grave problem might be part of the hunt for him. When they realized bodies were actually being taken, he used his own storm-touched ability to investigate. He can make people believe he is dead. He attempted to use that power to get taken and see what the professor was doing, though he did not intend to let the process go too far. The professor checked him but was not interested.
Farouk’s power is strange, useful, and entirely on brand for a man everyone thought was dead.
The campaign does enjoy committing to a bit.
3. The Children’s Museum of Extremely Poor Choices
The student crosses a busy street and enters a former children’s museum, closed since the Storm.
Farouk explains that the student is meeting a professor visiting from Vienna. The students believe both the professor and the student are storm-touched. The student practices on dead bodies after the professor is finished with them. The student watchers have cameras in place and have been collecting footage for two days, but they have not confronted anyone yet. They are trying to understand what the professor is doing beyond the grave robbery itself.
Michael reaches out through the student cameras and sees inside. The professor and student have placed the book on a table and are going through it. The museum is less formal museum than playland. Its most important feature is a room of giant transparent plastic balls, the kind children climb inside and roll around in, because humanity never met a liability waiver it did not want to test.
Farouk calls this the inner sanctum. The student puts bodies into the balls and practices his powers there. The group believes he can reinforce or insulate the ball so whatever he does stays contained.
David asks whether they should intervene. Michael notes that the professor’s interests may involve useful instruments or information. That is enough. David announces that they should help Farouk and the students stop this.
Farouk introduces Geb El-Nubi, the student investigator who originated the plan. Michael immediately recognizes that Geb is Nigerian and likely on the same trail Michael has been following regarding Nigerian artifacts.
The Cairo University thread widens. This is not just Vanahue and a frightened student. Other people are already hunting the same relic trail.
4. David’s Subtle Magic Becomes Very Loud
The group enters through an unlocked maintenance door and reaches the observation area above the ball room. David attempts to use his illusion abilities to dampen sound, cutting conversations to half volume so the group can speak without giving themselves away. He rolls a natural one.
Instead of quieting the room, the spell briefly broadcasts the local voices louder. The student remains oblivious. The professor does not. He stops, looks around, turns back, grabs the book, says something into the ball room, and begins to leave.
Subtlety fails. The universe notices. It has always been a petty little goblin.
David decides the professor is not leaving. He casts a magical snare, a force-net shaped around the target and tethered to the Arcane Knight’s hand. He spends a hero point, hits with a 28, and Vanahue fails badly enough to become bound and helpless. Because David described the snare as a net, the book is caught with the professor rather than knocked loose.
Vanahue yells. David answers: “Not so fast, Professor.” The scene becomes combat, though a short one. The students and Farouk hold back while David and Michael act.
5. Gravity in the Ball Room
David orders the student to stay where he is.
The student, confused, calls back that he cannot play right now. He is standing near one of the bodies in the ball room, apparently preparing to get into a ball. Michael looks with true vision and sees three dead bodies in separate balls. Beyond the room, he sees the professor’s converted workspace: books, a table, a body, and a soul hovering over it.
That last detail changes everything. The professor has not only disturbed the dead. He has left one awake.
Michael uses high-gravity control in a 50-foot area around the student. The giant balls collapse and flatten. The student falls to the floor screaming. Michael reassures him that they are just going to talk.
It is an efficient nonlethal stop. It also reveals the emotional center of the scene: the student is not a hardened villain. He is frightened, confused, and very likely being guided by someone more aware than he is.
Vanahue, meanwhile, rolls poorly and only tangles himself further in David’s force net while trying to do something. The student cannot escape either. The confrontation is over almost as soon as it begins.
6. Vanahue Speaks with the Dead
David interrogates Vanahue while keeping the snare active.
Vanahue admits that he and the student are storm-touched and are practicing to figure out what they can do. The book is an old Egyptian treatise on the humors of the body and what ancient people believed about them. It came from the university archives, not the public library, and if it was ever deciphered, that work has been lost.
His power involves dead people. He can talk to some bodies.
At first he was looking for the ones that answered. Then the answers became interesting. He began searching for lost mysteries, especially old historical clues. He claims he does not kill people. The bodies are already dead.
David pushes back on what happens afterward. Vanahue says the student practices his powers on the bodies. The student can blast things and can create something like a shield or reinforced containment around the balls. His abilities are not refined, and sometimes the blast spreads if not contained.
David calls this defilement. Vanahue tries to wave it away because the bodies are hundreds of years old.
David refuses that dodge. The age of the body does not erase the violation. People do not lose the right to be offended because enough centuries have passed. Which is annoying, yes, but also one of the few decent instincts humanity keeps misplacing and then rediscovering in court.
Vanahue also mentions hunters. He asks if the party is with the “dragon men.” Michael denies it. Vanahue says the hunters are killers and thinks the dragon appearance may be a suit.
That thread lands quietly, but it matters. The hunters are not rumor. Storm-touched people know they are being hunted.
7. The Tomb of Alexander
Michael asks what Vanahue has been searching for since he began talking to the dead.
Vanahue explains that the graveyard is full of Greeks and that the Patriarch of Alexandria is located within the monastery grounds. He names Alexandria’s greatest lost treasures: the Library, the Lighthouse, and the Tomb.
He asks to stand. David asks whether he agrees to continue the conversation. Vanahue agrees, and David releases the snare. The professor stretches, then hands over the book, asking only that it be returned to the university library.
The old tome is not a random occult prop. It is part of his attempt to understand ancient Egyptian medicine, bodies, humors, and perhaps the mechanics of his power. Vanahue is not innocent, but he is not simply a corpse-thief either. He is a storm-touched academic with no training, poor judgment, and access to the dead.
So naturally he reinvented archaeology as a felony.
8. The Veil Offer
David asks whether Vanahue would accept supervision and possible legal representation. Vanahue refuses if the purpose is merely to get out of trouble. He is not willing to work for anyone just to escape consequences.
Then the conversation turns to powers.
Vanahue says some students reveal themselves when they get near certain items. University collections have been affected by the Storm, and some artifacts react in the presence of particular students. The architecture section has items like this, and other departments do too. Vanahue does not understand why, but when the party suggests bloodline, he sees the sense in it.
Michael releases the gravity enough for the student to join them. The student Osprey Toman is scared. David explains that storm-touched communities are developing, that legal protections are being pursued, and that the Veil exists as a place where powered people can live, learn, and train with some protection.
Osprey panics, thinking they are with Russia. David clarifies that the protections are coming from Egypt. Then he gives the harsher truth: it is not just “some people” hunting storm-touched individuals. The whole world hunts them. Governments, militaries, corporations, and criminals will all want what they are. Osprey had not understood that scale.
Vanahue explains quietly that the student does not know everything. He knows hunters exist and that he is dangerous, but he does not know what Vanahue stole, what Vanahue asked, or what Vanahue was truly looking for. Osprey Toman is on the spectrum. He speaks German and Egyptian. His family has not been reached since the Storm. He does not want to hurt anyone. David reiterates the offer: the Veil, training, protection, legal structure, honesty, and accountability.
Vanahue, Osprey Toman, and Farouk agree to go.
9. The Soul Left Awake
Before they leave, Michael insists they deal with the soul in the professor’s workspace.
He tells Vanahue that when he questions these bodies, he is waking people who have been asleep a long time. One of them is still awake. Vanahue admits the soul has been awake for a while because he did not want to waste the remaining questions. This is, medically speaking, not ideal. Spiritually speaking, it is a trash fire with academic footnotes.
Vanahue believes the soul identified itself as the body man of a Patriarch connected to the Eastern Orthodox Church, likely someone who worked for St. Mark the Evangelist. He has already asked two questions to establish name, role, and approximate timeline.
David opens a mental group communication through Tariq’s long-range telepathy so the whole party can help choose questions. They debate whether the soul would know the location of Alexander’s tomb, whether St. Mark carried holy items, whether any relics survived the Library’s destruction, and whether to save a question rather than waste it.
Rana warns them not to ask yes-or-no questions if they want usable answers. Vanahue recommends leaving a question unused if they do not have a strong one. That is the moment he most resembles a professor and least resembles a man who has been letting a student explode dead people in hamster balls.
10. Directions to the Soma
Vanahue begins working his power again.
David realizes he is watching an untrained magician. Vanahue has storm-touched power, but no formal ritual framework. He may not be limited to speaking with the dead; he simply does not know what else he can do. His gestures are theatrical and self-invented, more habit and academic ritual than trained spellcasting.
Michael sees the spirit as an amorphous ectoplasmic form existing partly elsewhere. It is unpleasant to witness. When the soul answers, the voice is not spoken aloud. David and Michael hear it in their minds, and the sensation is disturbingly similar to the Master’s mental communication.
The first question asks for directions to the mausoleum holding Alexander the Great.
The answer: the Soma was constructed in the heart of the city to house Alexander. It was in the royal district, at the grand intersection of Alexandria’s main north-south and east-west colonnaded avenues.
The soul feels as if it believes those directions are excellent.
The second question asks whether St. Mark carried any significant holy items in life.
The soul resists, then says the Winged Lion treasured his Bible most and was never seen without it.
The soul is anxious to be free.
Michael asks the final question: given what it has observed since death, what would it like to see done on earth?
The soul answers that it has viewed nothing since passing and only wishes God’s will on earth.
Then it fades. Vanahue proudly gestures as if proving his point.
David’s answer is simpler: no more grave digging. Vanahue agrees.
Michael confirms to David, while looking directly at Vanahue, that the soul has moved on and is back at rest. Vanahue becomes shy and uncomfortable. The lesson lands. Not enough to undo what happened, because time remains disgustingly linear, but enough to change what happens next.
11. Farouk Goes to the Veil
Farouk agrees to go with them.
David is surprised and pleased. Farouk explains the logic: if David and Michael found him, then the entity hunting them can find him too. Cairo University is no longer safe.
David warns everyone that teleportation may cause discomfort or nausea. Then David and Michael take Farouk, Vanahue, and Osprey to the Veil around 2 AM. They use the suite normally reserved for the party so they do not disrupt the community. They wake Lucien, who is receptive and understands the mission.
Farouk agrees to keep an eye on Vanahue and Osprey. Vanahue will also keep an eye on "his" student. The Game Master clarifies that Vanahue was using Osprey, but not harvesting him or deliberately destroying him.
The St. George grave desecration thread is not finished, but the immediate harm is stopped. Three dangerous or vulnerable storm-touched people are moved into a protected community rather than disappeared into a cell or left loose.
It is the new storm-touched rights policy in action before the ink is even dry.
12. Maximus Is
Saturday morning begins at High House.
The group meets for breakfast at 7 AM. Before heading to the catacombs, Tariq confirms an overnight discovery: he has figured out who Maximus is, or whose skull Maximus is. To the player characters, Tariq has identified him as an ancient who used to go by the title of The Keeper of the Night in a city lost to time. They also learn that Adalwin has knowledge of True Name Speech and Magic
The players know him to be Adalwin Joscelin.
The Game Master confirms the identification. The visual comparison between the skull and Adeline’s image makes sense, especially with the headpiece and the reference to Adalwin’s soul being presented in earlier lore. The Game Master also clarifies that Maximus is offering Tariq training in three rituals in exchange for some kind of payment.
This is not explored fully in the session, but it sharpens Tariq’s ritual and True Name path. Maximus is no longer just a mysterious skull tutor. Maximus has a name and a prior history. Names matter.
Unfortunately, this campaign has made “names matter” one of the least comforting sentences available.
13. The Alignment of Purpose and Layla Left Behind
The group performs Rana’s morning ritual, the Alignment of Purpose, to cast away yesterday’s corruption. The ritual has become a daily stabilizing practice, part spiritual hygiene and part defensive habit.
Then Tariq declares the day’s goal: the catacombs of Kom El Shoqafa in Alexandria.
This is where he received the Rod of Command before the campaign began in active play. The party has not yet explored it at the table. They discuss whether to bring Layla or Tariq’s sister, because of her bloodline connection. The Game Master warns that introducing Tariq's sister to the field means introducing her to the field of danger. Tariq decides she stays at High House for the first visit. The others support the decision.
Some days wisdom looks like not dragging your sister into a ley line tomb full of robbers and ancient sigils. A low bar, perhaps, but civilization is built on clearing low bars repeatedly.
14. Kom El Shoqafa Opens
It is early Saturday morning. Staff and security exist on-site, but the party arrives beyond the relevant barriers. The entrance is a circular chamber with a spiral ramp descending into the catacombs. The known site has three sublevels, but it is full of narrow shafts and tunnels between two and a half and four feet tall because the necropolis has never been fully cleared.
Tariq has visited before and even received private access due to prior donations, but only in areas safe enough to show a billionaire without murdering him through historical preservation negligence.
Standing at the entrance, the party does not regain clear memory of the off-screen moment when Tariq received the Rod of Command. David, however, sees the place differently now.
Because of his magical studies and Read Magic, he recognizes repeating arcane and divine patterns all through the site. They are inactive, but they were once magical sigils capable of being empowered with protective magic. They appear designed to protect the dead and the offerings to the dead.
The Game Master explains the name Kom El Shoqafa, the Mound of Shards. Visitors once brought food and wine for the dead, then broke the terracotta vessels so the offerings remained there and could not be taken away. This was already a place of offerings and protection. Now, after the Storm, it is becoming something else again.
15. Drones in the Dead City
Michael’s senses find the first modern intrusion. There are several small drones spread through the catacombs. One is in a narrow shaft, following a very small man moving through the tunnels. Another view shows three individuals in a separate chamber manipulating something Michael cannot see because the drone angle is blocked. The drones belong to the intruders, and the intruders do not know the party is present.
Michael commands the drones to repeatedly demonstrate their reset ability for the next three hours. They crash, reset, crash, and reset. The small man notices one drone failing. The three people in the chamber lose their drone light and are left in darkness.
The party also senses the intruders’ auras. They are strong. They are threatening. They are violent.
The catacombs have tomb robbers.
16. Scrambler, Slingshot, Dumbstruck, and the Small Man
Tariq reaches out mentally for the intruders.
The first surface thoughts he finds are from someone thinking that the place is much bigger than the maps. Dumbstruck apparently believes there are at least three undiscovered levels. Tariq digs deeper and identifies the mind as Scrambler. Scrambler is not the small man. He appears to be communicating mentally or through power with someone else.
Their purpose is clear, they are here to rob the place.
Scrambler communicates with Slingshot. The group suspects these people only know one another by code names. The small man is separate. Dumbstruck may be another member or source of information.
Tariq attempts to mind control Scrambler, but Scrambler resists with a strong Will save. Tariq then tries to locate others, but the structure interferes. Some deeper areas block his reach.
The party debates whether to proceed with their own purpose or confront the robbers. Rana refuses to let violent tomb robbers keep working. David agrees they go after them. Michael offers silent movement by turning willing allies insubstantial and shadow-like.
The descent begins.
17. The Builders Remembered Magic
As the party descends, they detect more evidence of the intruders: drones, mini-sensors, and markers laid through the catacombs. Michael’s drone reset has disrupted the system, but the work is thorough.
David continues reading the place.
The symbols do not hold strong charges now. In fact, for this period of construction, they may have held mostly divine power: faith, repetition, prayer, belief. But they come from an older knowledge. The builders may not have known how to empower the sigils fully, but they knew what the sigils were.
This becomes one of the central revelations of the session.
Kom El Shoqafa’s known levels were built during a time when magic was gone or waning. The people who built them did not fully wield magic. But they were not far enough removed to forget it entirely. They preserved the alphabet even when they could no longer spell the words.
That is human in the bleakest and most beautiful way: making copies of sacred instructions for machines no one can power anymore, because maybe someday the lights come back and then the lights do.
18. Scrambler at the Tourist Display
The party moves through the normal tourist path rather than the narrow shafts.
After about 75 to 100 feet, they enter a wider display chamber. A man in a security uniform approaches and tells them the site is closed. Tariq knows immediately that this is Scrambler.
The uniform is real enough to pass, but the man is armed, wearing an earpiece, and preparing a surprise attack. Michael’s notice and danger sense beat the surprise. Michael blasts first. He misses even after spending a hero point, but the attack reveals an energy shield or protective field around Scrambler. Scrambler tries to touch Michael and misses. Now everyone sees the shape of the fight.
Michael strikes with Moonlit Erasure, trying to burn corruption, but Scrambler resists. Rana uses super speed to attempt a move-by Constitution drain, but Scrambler’s aura imposes a penalty and she misses. Yusuf uses mind control to order him to stand down, but Scrambler resists that too.
Then Tariq steps forward with the Rod of Command.
This time, Scrambler fails. He stops all hostile action. The Pharaoh’s authority, spoken through the rod, succeeds where force, speed, and mental command all failed.
The combat is brief, but it shows the enemy clearly: Scrambler is not a common guard. He has an aura that penalizes attacks, saves and skill checks, a protective defense, weapons, tools, and enough discipline to resist multiple powers.
He is also now standing still because Tariq told him to. Delightfully unfair. Finally, the ancient king nonsense works in the party’s favor.
 |
| Small Man, Scrambler, Slingshot and Dumbstruck |
19. Submit to the Arbiter
Tariq commands Scrambler to shut down his powers.
Scrambler manages to suppress his aura, something the Game Master notes requires effort and contrasts with Pembrook, who could not shut down his own aura. Rana suggests that if Scrambler can be made to willingly fail a save, she can remove him from the board.
Tariq orders Scrambler to submit to the Arbiter.
Scrambler kneels before Rana.
Rana touches him and uses Neuroshock with her sedation ability. He is put to sleep for thirty days.
No dramatic execution. No interrogation under fire. No public brawl in a sacred tomb. Just command, submission, sedation, and one extremely unconscious tomb robber.
Rana is a nurse.
Apparently this now includes battlefield-grade nap crimes.
20. Michael Becomes Scrambler
Yusuf searches Scrambler. He finds the earpiece, guns, knives, tools, a phone, and no obvious magical items. Tariq hands the communication device to Michael.
Michael transforms into Scrambler’s form and tries speaking in his voice. The disguise is visually convincing, especially with the clothes, though he has not heard Scrambler speak enough to fully know the voice.
Michael identifies the last number called through the phone and earpiece and calls it back.
A voice answers: “Did you forget something?”
Michael says, “All clear.”
The voice is confused.
Michael says there is a distraction and hangs up after being asked if he is okay.
The voice is accented, not Egyptian, and Egyptian is not its first language. The call does not give them everything, but it confirms that the tomb robber team is actively communicating and that someone else is waiting for Scrambler’s update.
The party leaves Scrambler asleep for the moment and continues downward.
They do note, sensibly and too late, that they should probably question him later.
A classic adventuring rhythm: defeat the enemy, loot the enemy, forget the enemy is also a source of information, then remember during the credits.
21. True Speech on the Wall
Near the end of the first level, Tariq notices something in a carving. It contains aspects of True Speech.
The Game Master explains that part of True Name magic is that it is difficult to say. It requires skill. The danger is not only failure. The danger is misspeaking. A wrong sound, a wrong syllable, a wrong reach can touch the name of something elsewhere: demons, devils, entities that were not listening until someone accidentally knocked on the wrong cosmic door.
This is presented as lore, not confirmed fact, but the warning matters. True Naming is not just knowing a secret. It is speaking reality precisely enough that reality notices.
At the same time, gemstones throughout the catacombs begin to react to the party. They are not tied only to Tariq. The group’s bloodlines stir newly awakened magic in them. David believes the stones could serve as metamagic components or magical enhancers like the gemstones that have attached themselves to party relics before.
The party confirms they are on a ley line. The catacombs are waking around them.
22. The Small Man Is a Golem
On the second level, Yusuf uses X-ray vision.
Some areas below cannot be seen through. This resembles other blocked spaces the party has encountered, including the Temple of the Unseen Sun and the sealed room on the ship. The blockage appears to come from the material itself, not from the robbers.
Yusuf sees no people on the second floor except the small man in a shaft.
Tariq tries to reach its mind. There is no mind.
It is humanoid, but not a robot. The party spends roughly twenty minutes examining it with their combined senses. The conclusion is that it is a golem-like creature, recently created for this task. It is shaped for the shafts and designed to map, copy, or communicate what it finds.
The robbers brought a custom-built little scout into the dead city. The little thing has found something.
23. The Schematic in the Shaft
Michael uses his insubstantial shadow movement to let the group pass into the shaft and see what the small man is studying.
The creature is focused on a schematic embedded in the shaft wall. The shafts are part of the site’s ventilation system, built for deep-earth construction. The schematic does not show the whole complex. It shows the build as it existed when that stage was constructed. The builders added more as they expanded.
The meaning becomes clear. The known three levels of Kom El Shoqafa are real. No one lied about that. But they were built on top of something older. The public catacombs are only the visible layer.
Below them is another structure, possibly older, deeper, and more magically significant.
Kom El Shoqafa stops being a destination and becomes a doorway.
24. The Third Level and the Hidden Chamber
The party uses the schematic and descends toward the third level.
The remaining intruders are easy to locate indirectly because they are in the one area on the third floor Yusuf cannot see through. The chamber lies in the center of the squared-circle public route and is not normally accessible to the public. The material blocks vision. It is not something the intruders are doing, and they may not realize its significance beyond the fact that phones do not work there.
As the party moves deeper, the magical pressure increases.
Everyone feels empowered. They could call on the magic here to gain a hero point, enhance a power, or temporarily boost themselves. Tariq describes it as the ley line reservoir being at their fingertips.
The Game Master then reframes Tariq’s memory of receiving the Rod of Command. Perhaps the rod was hidden here and Tariq’s presence awakened whatever delivered it. Or perhaps Tariq called the rod from elsewhere. Either could be true.
The known catacomb levels were built when magic was gone, blocked, or waning. The people who built them did not fully command magic, but they knew it had existed. The group prepares to enter the hidden central chamber and confront the remaining tomb robbers.
The session ends there, because apparently even cliffhangers have union rules.
25. True Names Are Enhanced, Not Merely Hidden
After the stop point, the group discusses Tariq’s True Name project.
Tariq realizes that “changing” a True Name may be the wrong idea. Enhancing it, complicating it, empowering it, and making it harder to invoke may be the better path. Rana notes that deeds can complicate a True Name even for someone who is not a True Namer.
The Game Master uses Rana as an example. Most people in the world would call her Egyptian because she worships Egyptian gods and lives within the Pharaonic States. But she is Syrian. In this world, Syria is a state within the Pharaonic States of Egypt, so she is politically Egyptian in one sense and nationally Syrian in another. That complexity matters. Calling her “the Egyptian woman” would not be precise enough.
This gives Tariq a clearer model for his own work. A True Name is not only a label.
It is a layered identity made from blood, deeds, history, worship, nation, role, and the stories others use to find you.
Which is beautiful, unless someone is trying to use it as a handle to drag your soul around.
Character Spotlights
Tariq Mansour
Tariq enters the session focused on making his True Name harder to invoke and
ends with a clearer understanding of how that might work. He identifies Maximus
as Adalwin Joscelin, opening a more defined ritual-training thread. At Kom El
Shoqafa, he reads Scrambler’s mind, learns the tomb robbers’ code-name
structure, confirms their purpose, and uses the Rod of Command to seize control
of Scrambler when other powers fail. He also recognizes True Speech in the
catacomb carvings and begins to understand that strengthening a True Name may
require complexity, deeds, and identity rather than simple concealment.
Rana Al-Masri
Rana’s major active work in this session is continuity of purpose. She rests,
performs the Alignment of Purpose, supports keeping Leila out of the field, and
refuses to let violent tomb robbers continue operating in Kom El Shoqafa. In
combat, she tests Scrambler’s defenses with speed and then neutralizes him once
Tariq forces submission. Her role as Arbiter becomes literal when Scrambler
kneels before her and she sedates him for thirty days. The storm-touched rights
framework from the prior session becomes action through her choices.
David Hassan
David drives the Cairo University confrontation. He works with Farouk, chooses
intervention over passive observation, accidentally exposes the group with a
failed sound-dampening illusion, then immediately stops Vanahue with a force
snare. He interrogates Vanahue without reducing the issue to simple villainy,
insists that grave desecration remains a violation even when the bodies are
ancient, and offers the Veil as a structured alternative. At Kom El Shoqafa,
David reads the inactive arcane and divine sigils, recognizes the site’s old
protective purpose, and sees the preserved memory of magic after magic itself
had faded.
Yusuf Khalid
Yusuf continues overnight research into storm-touched reports and then enters
Kom El Shoqafa as Sentinel. His X-ray vision becomes critical on the lower
levels, identifying blocked areas, confirming that some stone or material prevents
deeper sight, and locating the small man in the shafts. In combat, Yusuf tries
to command Scrambler to stand down and later searches the sedated intruder,
finding weapons, tools, the phone, and communication gear. His practical
detection work keeps the group oriented in a place designed to hide what
matters.
Michael Adeyemi
Michael moves through the session as investigator, disruptor, and bridge to the
dead. In Cairo, his camera-reading reveals the professor’s setup and the
student’s ball-room practice. His true vision detects the lingering soul. His
gravity control stops the student without hurting him. He insists the awakened
soul be dealt with before anyone leaves, which turns Vanahue’s crime into a
major historical clue and a moral correction. At Kom El Shoqafa, Michael
detects the drones, crashes them repeatedly, senses hostile auras, offers
insubstantial shadow movement, survives Scrambler’s surprise, and later
impersonates Scrambler to call the enemy contact.
Ahmed Farouk
Farouk’s role changes dramatically. He is no longer a missing corpse or
resurrection target. He is alive, disguised, and working with Cairo University
students. He has been hiding because of the entity hunting the storm-touched,
but he has still helped the students investigate the grave desecration. His
ability to make others believe he is dead explains how he has survived and why
he tried to infiltrate Vanahue’s process. By the end of the Cairo sequence, he
accepts that he must leave with the party because being found by them means he
may be found by the Master.
Professor Charles Vanahue
Vanahue is exposed as a storm-touched professor from Vienna using bodies from
St. George Cemetery to speak with the dead and pursue lost historical
mysteries. He is not portrayed as a cackling villain. He is careless,
exploitative, proud, frightened, and academically hungry. He uses the
storm-touched student, steals from the university archive, and leaves a soul
awake rather than waste a question. But he also cooperates, hands over the
book, agrees to stop digging graves, and accepts the Veil. His power is
dangerous because it is real and untrained.
The Storm-Touched Student Osprey Toman
Osprey Toman is a Egyptian German student that Professor Vanahue believes is on the Autistic Spectrum. Osprey is shown step by step as frightened rather than malicious. He
carries the tome, follows Vanahue, practices destructive powers inside
reinforced balls, and fears he will hurt people. Osprey can blast, has an energy shield and can reinforce or contain. He speaks German and Egyptian, may have family no one has
contacted since the Storm, and does not understand the full scope of Vanahue’s
actions. Osprey Toman's move to the Veil gives him a chance to become something other than
a scared young man with a corpse in a plastic ball.
Geb El-Nubi
Geb appears as the student investigation’s planner and lead investigator.
Michael recognizes him as Nigerian and likely connected to the same Nigerian
relic trail Omotola opened. Geb’s role is brief but important. He shows that
other investigators are already moving independently around the artifact and
graveyard threads.
Scrambler
Scrambler is the first direct face of the Kom El Shoqafa tomb robber team. He
disguises himself as security, carries weapons and tools, communicates through
an earpiece, and has strong defensive powers including an aura that penalizes
physical attacks and skill checks. He resists multiple powers before Tariq’s
Rod of Command brings him under control. He is sedated but not questioned yet,
leaving him as a captured source of information for next session.
GM Notes & World Narrative
Session Twenty-Three has two major movements, and both are about what happens when power returns to people who have no structure for it.
Vanahue and the student show the street-level version. One can speak with the dead. One can blast and contain destructive force. Neither has training. Neither understands the moral, spiritual, or legal consequences well enough. Vanahue turns the dead into an archive. The student turns them into practice targets. The party’s answer is not execution or disappearance. It is relocation, supervision, legal structure, and the Veil. That matters because it shows “storm-touched rights are human rights” becoming operational policy.
Kom El Shoqafa shows the historical version. The upper levels were built when magic was gone or fading, but the builders remembered enough to preserve forms: divine sigils, arcane sigils, protective carvings, shafts, offerings, and patterns. They built with the memory of magic even if they lacked the active source. After the Storm, those symbols matter again.
The session also expands the campaign’s relationship with the dead. Naomi reaching the Field of Reeds showed the afterlife as mercy. Vanahue’s work shows the dead as vulnerable. The soul of St. Mark’s body man is not sitting comfortably waiting to answer quiz questions for ambitious professors. It is awakened, strained, and anxious to be free. The dead may hold knowledge, but disturbing them has a cost.
Alexander’s tomb enters the plot in a much more concrete way. The Soma, the royal district, and the grand intersection of the colonnaded avenues give the party a strong historical direction without solving the mystery outright.
The tomb robbers introduce a different scale of threat. These are not confused students or reckless professors. They are organized, coded, armed, powered, and prepared. Scrambler, Slingshot, Dumbstruck, and the small golem show planning, specialization, and experience. They are robbing magical sites after the Storm, which means the party is not the only group learning how the new world works.
Finally, True Name lore becomes more sophisticated. A True Name is not just a password. It is a precise totality. Complexity protects. Deeds protect. Contradictory but true layers protect. Rana’s Syrian identity inside the Pharaonic States gives a simple example. Tariq’s path is not to erase himself, but to become too true to be easily spoken by an enemy.
Loot, Clues, & Reveals
Items Acquired
David takes custody of the old Egyptian treatise on the humors of the body from
Vanahue, with the understanding that it should return to the university
library. Scrambler’s phone, earpiece, weapons, knives, tools, and gear are
searched and effectively come under party control, though no magical items are
found. No catacomb gemstones are explicitly collected during the session, but
David identifies them as possible metamagic components or magical enhancers.
Clues Found
The Veil purchase should complete in about a month and includes three
associated properties, one with an undevelopable heritage site. David’s Masonic
lodge transfers completed and established credibility. Farouk can convince
others he is dead. Vanahue can speak with the dead through untrained
storm-touched magic. The storm-touched student can blast and reinforce or
shield containment. University collections react to some students after the
Storm, possibly due to bloodline. The soul questioned by Vanahue may have been
the body man of St. Mark the Evangelist. Alexander’s mausoleum, the Soma, was
described as being in the heart of Alexandria, in the royal district, at the
grand intersection of the main north-south and east-west colonnaded avenues.
St. Mark treasured his Bible and was never seen without it. Maximus is
identified as Adalwin Joscelin. Kom El Shoqafa contains inactive arcane and
divine protective sigils. The catacombs are on a ley line. Gemstones in the
catacombs react to the party’s bloodlines. True Speech appears in the carvings.
The public three levels are built on top of something older. The small man is a
golem-like shaft-mapping creature. The tomb robber team includes code names
such as Scrambler, Slingshot, Dumbstruck, and the small man.
Reveals or Twists
Ahmed Farouk is alive, disguised, and working with student investigators.
Farouk leaves Cairo University for the Veil because being found means he is no
longer safe. Vanahue is not merely robbing graves; he is questioning the dead
for historical mysteries. One soul was left awake until Michael forced the
issue. The questioned soul’s voice resembles the sensation of the Master’s
mental communication. The Veil becomes the new home or holding place for
Farouk, Vanahue, and the storm-touched student Osprey Toman. Scrambler resists multiple
party powers before Tariq controls him with the Rod of Command. Rana sedates
Scrambler for thirty days. Michael impersonates Scrambler and briefly contacts
another intruder. Kom El Shoqafa was built by people who remembered magic but
likely could not fully use it. Tariq begins reframing his True Name work as
enhancement and complexity rather than alteration.
Active Plot Threads
The Arbiter Network and Rana’s global humanitarian efforts.
The Veil purchase and development of a storm-touched community.
The three additional Veil-associated properties, including the undevelopable heritage site.
David’s Masonic lodge contacts and their increased security after strange activity.
Ahmed Farouk’s survival, hiding, and move to the Veil.
Farouk’s ability to convince others he is dead.
The hunters or “dragon men” pursuing storm-touched individuals.
Professor Charles Vanahue under Veil supervision.
Osprey Toman under Veil supervision and training.
Geb El-Nubi and the Nigerian artifact trail.
Omotola’s earlier Nigerian artifact research.
The old Egyptian treatise on humors of the body.
University collections reacting to storm-touched or bloodline students.
The St. George Cemetery grave desecration aftermath.
The soul of St. Mark’s body man and the ethics of speaking with the dead.
The location of Alexander’s tomb and the Soma.
St. Mark’s Bible as a possible holy relic.
Maximus is Adalwin Joscelin.
Maximus offering ritual training to Tariq for payment.
Tariq’s True Name enhancement project.
The danger of misspeaking True Names and attracting elsewhere entities.
Kom El Shoqafa as the origin site or calling site of the Rod of Command.
The inactive arcane and divine protective sigils in Kom El Shoqafa.
The ley line beneath Kom El Shoqafa.
The awakened gemstones and possible metamagic components.
The unknown structure beneath the known three catacomb levels.
The tomb robber team: Scrambler, Slingshot, Dumbstruck, and the small man.
Scrambler sedated and available for questioning.
The hidden third-level central chamber and the remaining intruders.
The possibility that the Rod of Command was either hidden at Kom El Shoqafa or called there by Tariq.
Next Session Preview
The party has left the boardroom behind and found something worse: people doing fieldwork.
Farouk, Vanahue, and the frightened student Osprey are at the Veil. A soul has been released. Alexander’s tomb has a direction. Maximus has a name.
Below Kom El Shoqafa, the known catacombs are only the upper skin of something older. Scrambler sleeps. Slingshot waits. Dumbstruck’s theory may be right.
And the party stands at the edge of a hidden chamber where robbers, ley lines, dead magic, and the memory of the Rod of Command are about to collide.
