Are we there yet?

Undaunted by the fact that they have been exploring this …tomb…maze of deathtraps…whatever it is for almost month, the intrepid heroes press on and after exploring some death traps, find their way through a secret door into a hallway that ends in stairs that lead up to a trapped wall, and a hallway that leads to another door. That door registers as a trap and an elaborate scheme is hatched to open the door from afar. When the door opens a cloud of gas floods the hallway and the mage falls into a deep sleep. The rest of the group drags him to safety and watches as a stone roller proceeds to travel the length of the hallway – it would have certainly crushed anyone who was prone. Upon doubling back, they find a secret trapdoor set into the floor.

Eventually it is opened and a steep staircase leads to a narrow hallway that ends in a steep staircase up to another trap door. Days pass as doors are opened but eventually the adventurers find themselves in from of a massive mithril door adorned only by three horizontal slots. Eventually, swords are jammed into the openings and indeed the door swings open, revealing a huge room filled with pillars and dominated by a massive obsidian throne at the far end.

Since the pillars all radiate as traps – as do the large demon heads on the walls, they circumvent the room and end up discovering a secret door under the throne, activated by a scepter that they subsequently use to open a second massive mithril set of doors at the end of a short flight of steps in the subterranean hallway below the throne.

Those doors reveal a room dominated by a stone sarcophagus that shows signs of already having been smashed open. Some chests and a quartet of iron golems – no, just statues – line the walls. The group is puzzled and returns to the main hall to investigate some additional doors. One door leads to a partially mummified body, another leads to a trashed embalming chamber and the third leads to a trapped room filled with swords and shields that animate and begin attacking.

They prove to be little more than a nuisance and the group passes through the room to find a large chamber adorned with a message announcing doom. Bodies and ruined equipment litter the floor.

The cleric opines that these unfortunates must have been teleported into the room and were faced with the choice of fighting the animated blades or starving to death. Either way, there is nothing of interest here, so the group returns to gaze at the room with the sarcophagus – which also boasts a smoking urn and a pair of large iron chests that show as traps. An unseen servant returns with a leg bone and a few scraps of cloth that might be mummy wrapping material.

Has this tomb already been plundered? Is this just another false lead like the last crypt they encountered? Was there an undiscovered door somewhere they they bypassed? Should they enter the room and investigate? So…many…questions!

Leave a reply

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>