Category DND Blog: EFK Saga

After awakening in the ‘control room’, the party is afflicted by an insidious drain of abilities. Every hour spent within the mine leeches a point from the primary attribute of the character. A full day of rest is required to restore each point lost. However, Dalliance bends time to her will and causes each hour to pass as six. Within a trio of days the party is refreshed and ready to return to the control room.
There Barada discovers other traps are yet unleashed and the controls for said traps are here. The controls to raise and lower the elevator platforms are likewise found within, as well as ‘seeing tubes’ that allow the viewer to see the view from the ceiling in each monitored area...

Flush with cash, the group spends a brace of years to train Dalliance, instill Barada and Dalliance as the latest two members of the Lords of Waterdeep. Bud visits his hobbit community. Lubbitch and Thad of Thudheim spend time training, while Reza acts as Dalliance’s personal bodyguard while in Waterdeep.

Evil seems to be laying low, and eventually the group gets ready enough to go visit the beholder-guarded dwarven gem mine. Once found, it seems like it is long-abandoned. The party already knows it is stuffed chock-full of traps. Once the main mine doors are opened, it is one trap after another: explosives, spears, steel posts, pit traps, glyphs and the like. After a say or so, the group is three-quarters of the way around a main loop when an illusory wall is detected.
Beyond the wall, m...

Returning to the desert in search of the missing dwarven gem mine, the group is headed northward along the abandoned caravan road just beyond the goat-cheese making village, While the group plods through the desert sands, Bud and Barada scout about in bird form. Early one morning Barada spots the now familiar sight of a fez wearing figure shuffling along through the desert. “Tis Mr. Slippers! A brief debate is held about whether to fight or run, but in the end Dalliance opines that it might be better to take him on here and now as opposed to having him turn up later at a more inconvenient time.

Plans are laid: Lubbitch and Barada will soften him up with a few rounds of arrow fire...

Gathering around the golden sarcophagus, the party begins poking, prodding, prying. Lubbitch’s xray eye is brought to bear and stymied.
Finally, the ram is produced and as Reza stands ready with the Mace of Disruption, Barada and Lubbitch try to open the lid. Varying degrees of success are achieved when a crack opens along one side and it is seem that it is sheets of lead, gold and iron over stone. When the crack opens, a column of fire roars out of the ceiling, but the party members avoid most of the damage by springing aside, or standing far in the back of the party. On the heels of the fire column, a ring of blue fire encircles the sarcophagus, prompting the party to fall back and begin dithering...

The next four or so days pass while the group does a fair amount of head-scratching and investigating. It seems that all passageways have been bricked over (it is a tomb after all) and the talents of Bud Feaster are in great demand. The hobbit opens a number of doorways using Stoneshape, until Dalliance fashions a battering ram and the group whiles away the hours knocking down walls, making a hellacious amount of noise, and raising a cloud of dust. The good part about lurking out in the middle of the wilderness is that no one complains about the noise. Four of the doorways are marked with the elemental symbols. Air opens into a dank and musty room, Fire releases a cloud of methane gas – no open flames in the party supplies at the time.
Earth turns Lubbitch to stone, and Water opens a ‘pit...