The manor on the outskirts of town

Most of the wealthy inhabitants of Springview owned large houses or expensive Condos in the Oasis district, or the grove if they were the gardening type; they were afraid, a primal fear of isolation in the vast empty desert with the creatures they could not know existed yet somewhere in their fearful subconscious did. Victor on the other hand found his family home in the desert rather charming; he was hardly alone as there was a small staff of servants... servants of a human nature but ones he looked quite fondly upon, and who possessed the wisdom not to pry into what he was doing with experiments of his nature, the oasis or even the grove might draw unwanted attention. There was his less human servant too, the result of his first foray into necromancy, a big man stolen from a cemetery after a substantial bribe, and converted into a soulless zombie; so far they had been most useful in manual tasks, like helping him carry in the box with the mummy in it that now rested chained to an opperating table in what was at this point more some kind of dungeon of dark sorcery and research than a basement as Victor stood over him mixing strange ingredients in a ceremonial bowl and chanting in some long dead language.

Slumber...deep...deep slumber, the soul of an ancient older than the walls of China, but younger than the Pyramids floats through the gentle tides of the Du'At. The eyes of his ka closed he lets the shifting current of the soul world swirly him about, it's shining primordial waters surrounding everything. He has slumbered within this other realm, serene, rested for millenia....But he is beginning to stir.

The ancient's ka shiftins from side to side as he feels something calling him up. Dark words of ancient evil, growing louder and louder! He resists as best he can, content to stay in his eternal rest...but no. Why? Why is anything calling him now? If he cannot got to the after life proper, can he not at least sleep?

Victor on his end had a very simple motivation for calling the restless mummy back, to test and see if he could, to see if a being could really be brought back into this world with an intact soul. He had no intention of soul binding and killing someone to find out. So he would instead animate a being already soul bound, one who he could only assume would find life preferable to eternally static purgatory after so long. On a table not far away lay his tissue sample of the ancient mummy, and various medical and ritual equipment. When the incantation was finished he would set his bowl on the table, and wait with insatiable curiousity.

Yet as he watched it, as he looked over this dessicated fram strapped to a table, he couldn't help but feel a sense of rising dread. Like a child running about in play only to realize he was lost. It burrowed deep, deep into his living flesh down to the marrow of his bone, this sensation fo suffocating anxiety that hung in the air. Silence...enough to here a pin drop, enough to hear the sneeze of a mouse.

Then slowly, from that table came the most horrible sound a low, dry groan, like the slow creak of a door. The crackle of movement under leathery skin, the stony grind of ancient bones moving, it all came second to that horrible groan as the corpse began to stir and move. If he could rip his attention from the ancient cadaver he'd notice green hieroglyphs faintly dancing in the air around it as, arm cracking and popping the mummy lifted a skeletal arm, dust cascading down to the floor.

Victor gave no visible signs of fear, as if his emotions had been completely detached from his physical body if they weren't however, he would have been trembling as he was on the inside. As it was after a moment's hesitation he stepped back out of the circle around the opperating table, and ordered his large zombie in a cold and level voice "Restrain him until he calms down and can talk..." The zombie of course stepped forward to seize the Mummy.

Without ceremony or hesitation the finger pointed at the undead thrall and in a flash of light that Victor would recognize as powerful destruction magic, reduced it to a steaming puddle.

"Hmmm" was Victor's reaction to that, that was powerful magic more powerful than his, but it wasn't his power that held the  circle between them intact. If his reading was correct the creature shouldn't be able to leave or cast spells at him through the circle "That body was quite expensive..." He observed looking at his melted zombie.

Slowly the arm returned to it's side as it sluggishly began to rise from the cold operating table, eyes glowing with ancient unholy light, body raining dust and dry flakes of skin. Then it turned those eyes on Victor, and he felt the weight of two thousand years of despair drop firmly onto his unprepared shoulders.

Yet this brought only brief pause, before he simple seemed to... brush it off at least externally, this was someone who had gone through six years of medschool and soul crushing unpaid internships "I don't suppose you speak english..?" victor asked as he brought out a notepad and pen to take notes

An empty stare was his only reply, and empty stare from the face of a corpse, a stare that said only one thing 'you should have left me asleep'. Seemingly ignoring the man's words the mummy began to stand, rail thin legs shaking ever so slightly as it stretched to it's full massive height. Letting out another low groan it began to almost shiver, shedding off flake after flake of dead leathery skin, the glow of it's eyes like flashlights. Then the groan began to grow lower, lower and lower and louder until the very floor rumbled. And that's when he realized it was not a groan after all, it was a terrible snarling growl, the angry reprimand of a creature of unknowable rage. Quickly, quicker than he could have expected from such a dessicated figure the mummy lased out with an arm towards him, bony fingers reaching out to grab his skull and crush the life from it! Only to bounce harmlessly off an invisible wall of magic. Growling even louder it turned away,and in it's anger flipped over the metal table it had awoken on, the growl beginning to shake the very room!

Perhaps Victor should have fled, but he had people he cared about in the building and he wasn't going to let it collapse, so he did what any sane necromancer who couldn't flee would do. He gave him a rather calm "alright I'll just put you back down" look  and began  to unravel the spell animating the mummy to send him back to his eternal slumber as quickly as he could.

Silence returned, too quickly, far too quickly, as the mummy began to stumble and clutch it's head. Victor had not seen this happen from de-animation before...perhaps it was something else. Clutching it's head in it's hands it began to whisper something in it'd dead tongue, over and over as the lights from it's eyes shifted to a bright golden shade. Then suddenly it just stopped, the rumbling, the whispers, and the mummy rose back to it's true height, seemingly relieved. He could almost feel the dread lifting from his shoulders as it turned and put out a hand, this time seeming to ask him to halt.

Against his better judgement, Victor did halt the incantation to deanimate the creature, although he did not trust the creature, it was intelligent but he had not been able to communicate with it, and the first thing it did was waste his money try to kill him and everyone in the building for woefully inadequate reasons, presumably because it wanted to continue to nap in purgatory. Distrust was clear in his eyes, but... he did cease his spell for the time being.

Eyes still glowing gold it lifted the table back up with a hand and set it down, then began to scan it's..his surroundings. Intrigued by all the strange devices he saw he raised a brow and pointed to the lights attached to the wall up above. How was it producing such light? Was it magic? There were so many questions to ask, yet without a tongue in his mouth, or language in his mind, he could not communicate.

Victor flipped through a nearby grimoire for a while looking over a few  pages rather thoroughly, and setting it down again after finding what he was looking for. Soon after a voice range out in his head, the language was strange, but he understood the meaning "Are you quite finished trying to bring down my house?"

If his dessicated face could express surprise it would have " You have my apologies young one, rising from the dead after so long drifting in the sea of reeds...it is easy neither on the Ba nor the Ka...let alone the Ib." He replied, voice a rich and deep baritone spoken with a regal tone "It has been long since I died." He noted as he looked around once more "And much has changed it seems since my heart beat it's last, yet as I'm sure you know...some things never fade. From which of the ancient orders do you hail young one, The Speakers of Dreams? The Hermetics? Ah...Perhaps the Thanatosi?" He questioned with an assured confidence, those orders had lasted for a thousand thousand years, even if they bore new names they must still live yes?

Victor had no idea what the mummy was talking about, and for that very reason his eyes lit up with interest, as he took a moment to interpret and decipher that which he could. It didn't take him over long to determine the Mummy was talking about magical orders of some sort "Your apologies are accepted, perhaps this was not the best of awakenings I am rather new at this... as to your question... I take it those are magical orders of some sort, if so the last of those died out the better part of a century ago, and even then I've never heard of the orders you speak of... but then it has likely been many thousand years since you first slept."

Dead eyes widened as he almost stumbled, so struck by the news "...No...that cannot be...All of them? The Sons of Marduk? The followers of Typhon Set? At the very Least The Daughters of Nephtys ?" He replied shaking his head in disbelief, it could not be! The Five Orders of The Pentacle had existed since before the collapse, even far back into the Mythic Ages Serving them, aiding the quest for mystic knowledge had been his life's work...If they were gone, what could have happened since he last fell asleep? Gathering his resolve he raised his head once more to meet this young one's gaze "We both have much to learn then."

"Indeed we do."  Victor agreed with the old mummy and stepped closer to the circle "Our kind is an endangered species now, and I will be honest I brought you back to see if a soul could truly return from death. Yet also because I suspected you may be the only remaining record of a time when our people formed societies and held influence... if I release you I take it you will not try to kill me again?" This was all very exciting for him, the prospect of learning about a lost age from a proper ancient wizard.

He winced as he heard the news, a pang of pain shooting through his unbreathing chest as he processed that and replied "...What atrocity could have laid us low? Once we were the exemplars of man, guiding them, ruling...sure some were cruel, and craven but...What could have caused us to fall?" He questioned as he approached the barrier "No I will not strike you down, my anger is abated, and besides if what you speak is true, our people could not afford another senseless death."

"I do not entirely know in fact I am quite new to even knowing about magic it's widely regarded as a myth in this day and age you see..." Victor was eager to explain as he began to remove the circle "The records of my grandfather state that in the lasts several centuries our people rose to heights never dreamed of even by the ancients by; after hunting down the parasites known as Nosferatu, and binding demons and spirits to their will... he doesn't go into much detail about that or what happened, but from what I can gather some undescribed internal conflict left us vulnerable... and we had many enemies naturally only those who hid survived."

Arne nodded slowly, absorbing and digesting the information as he paced about on his skeletal feet "...To imagine, so many millennia of knowledge simply lost to internal dispute...I will tell you what I can, for my memory is not perfect, and it shall take some time I sense for it all to return." He replied, one hand to his chin the other propping up his elbow " I wonder if Sutekh still draws breath, that old blood drinking snake." He murmured with a hint of fondness in his voice.

"Who is that?" The young wizard Victor wondered, note pad out and ready, this was all so fascinating. He had no ideas how the humans of the house would react to this, and that worried him a bit, but he had known them his whole life; perhaps if he broke this to them in the right way he could convince them to stay, they knew as all who lived in the desert knew that strange and unnatural things lurked in the wilderness, and they knew many of those things would like to eat them so perhaps this wouldn't be too terrible a shock... well he would cross that bridge when he came to it.

"Sutekh?...He is a story for another time assuredly. For now I figure we can do this, I ask one question, you ask one question..what else would you like to know?" He questioned as he sat down on his table to rest his tired bones.

"That is more than acceptable" Victor quickly and eagerly agreed, and took a careful few moments to consider his questions, before he asked "What order of magic were you from?"