Dawn of Heresies
A novel of the White Wolf gaming universe, set in the world of Mummy: The Curse.
Rawhead and bloody bones
Steals naughty children from their homes,
Takes them to his dirty den
And they are never seen again.
So says the nursery rhyme that gives birth to Rawhead, the most fearsome entity to imperil the living since the infamous Roller. Once an obedient mummy by name of Benefre, a desperate bid by his cult fails in tragic fashion, and in so doing, sends him to the Devourer’s waiting, corruptive maw. What remains of Benefre’s ambitious soul rises again, impure and unholy, set to the execution of a scheme so baleful, it constitutes a heresy even among his own misbegotten kind.
All that stands between Rawhead and his terrible aim are a lone mummy, Kemsiyet, and what little remains of her cult following its destruction at Rawhead’s hands. Declan, her prized security aide, and Fiona, an Irish researcher only just recently inducted into the cult and its blood-soaked world, must fight both the odds and the clock in order to prevent a calamity the likes of which the world hasn’t seen since the days of the mummies’ creation.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Like the Hellboy novel I wrote in between the two excellent movies by Guillermo del Toro, Dawn of Heresies is a product of what I call getting to play in someone else’s yard. In this instance, the White Wolf gaming universe in general, and specifically, the world of Mummy: the Curse, as designed by C.A. Suleiman.
But I had an uncommonly long leash. As long as the book hit a couple of major reveals about the way that world works and how it came to exist, it could be 100% my storyline and characters.
Hence, a novel that takes place in parallel timelines … both today and at the end of the last Ice Age, with repercussions stretching across more than 12,000 years. I worked very hard to make it accessible to someone who has no familiarity with the game at all.
And it all had to come together in an exhausting seven weeks, because … well, that’s another story.
