With the start of school, the youth’s game had been fallow for a month but they had a great session to make up for it. The larger adventure and world is coming along and they are damned close to more to the ancient weapons of Cyndicia which they will hope to use against the demonic Zargon at some point.
They’ve been talking about what happens after this adventure is finished – and the consensus is to continue – but make the leap from B/X to Advanced. Going to get them all a PDF of the 1st edition player’s handbook in the near future and that’ll be the go to in about 5-7 more meetings from where I’m sitting.
Write up follows:
With the Crawler rearing back for another wave of tentacle infused assaults, Mark took a daring chance and lunged forward; Mace of Gorm upraised, and brought it crashing down on the beast. There was a flash of light and a concussive blast and when it was over, the Crawler’s head had been stove in and a line of smoke was curling up from the mace’s surface.
The situation now well in hand, there was the question of whether the Crawler’s paralytic goo was still effective. Mark dared to touch a tentacle and on feeling the numbing buzz; backed away and swiftly wiped his hand clean – yeah, still works.
So the group whacked one of the tentacle ends off and Safir lifted it with the hem of his cloak, positioning the tube like end into a cautiously held flask Vulcan was gripping – and squeezed. We were rewarded with the sound of the fluid tinkling into the flask. It took time, but we hacked off the other 7 tentacle pods and duplicated our efforts until we had about half a flask of this paralytic ichor.
It was time to open the coffin and a look inside showed us three pouches along with the mummified remains of a body. The first held a set of superior thieves tools which Safir happily took charge of, the second had 20 sapphires of good quality that we split evenly, and the last was a document declaring that the mummified individual had a deal to follow King Alexander and Queen Zenobia into the afterlife as the royal thief. We kept the treasures – and left the contract, shutting the coffin lid and then leaving the room.
Our internal map had now wrapped up every possible passage or room on the 4th level except or the central portion of the map that we had not been able to find our way to as of yet. There was the long corridor that led down to the 5th level still to investigate – it had continued beyond our original egress. So the group left the master thief’s room and began the long trek west through the dark passages, eyes peels and ears perked for anything to be found in the gloom.
As we were coming back around near where the shadows had been slain, we could hear a voice from a growing glow ahead hail us as aske who we were. They drew closer and we saw 7 silver masked robed members of the Cult of Usimagarus. The leader, Krantis, was rude and abrupt, identified us as followers of Gorm, and were on their up to the 3rd level to find out why Auriga was a few days late in checking in. Vulkan made the mistake of saying they knew of Auriga but then deflected it, saying that Pandora of the Madurans had mentioned him.
Krantis and his goons then charged the party 1 silver noble each to walk past and we paid it, to avoid an issue, being out numbered, and to save our fights for something else further on. After they had gone past, Mark bared down as hard as he could and blew wind in Krantis’ direction – but 5 days of rations had his digestive track not working right and sadly his passing of gas came out more liquid that he expected.
We waited while the cleric took off his armor, then his pants, then his underwear, wiped himself clean, put on a new set of hose and got dressed all over again. As he came back to the group with his underwear held in a ball, the party was yelling at him to “leave it, are you crazy?” Not like they’ve found the laundromat down here yet. So he dumped it in the hall, and then Vulkan used one of his graphite sticks to write an expletive to Usimagarus around the underwear and the party continued on their way, chuckling.
We came to the long hall and walked up until we arrived at the hole in the floor that would lead to the 5th level…and then kept going north. The passage ended a dozen or so paces later abruptly which had the group then search the wall…finding what was apparently a poorly designed secret door. We pressed shoulder to the door, slid it in some 3 inches, and then lifted it up and out of the way.
The corridor beyond went to the east in the dimly lit chamber, the floor covered in 2’x2’ checker boarded white and red tiles. From the dim recesses to the east, we could see the chamber ended at a passage that kept going, but was only 2’ in height.
We had Safir look for traps and the group came in after the scout. We decided to walk only on the white tiles and made our way east. After about 1/3rd the distance, there was a loud crackling sound and a weighted pendulum lurched out of the ceiling and arced across the floor, the edge sharpened like a massive axe and honed to a scintilling edge. He managed to jump back barely in time and we watched it arc across about half the width of the chamber twice before locking back into the ceiling and we presume, resetting.
Safir then went south and using Vulkan’s staff as a prodding rod, further checked out the area, noting it clear, and we kept going…until another pendulum arced down and across. This time the edge of the staff took the impact and 3” of it was cleanly sliced off. Vulkan grew furious but Safir ignored him as we waited for the 2nd pendulum to return to its resting position. Safir then led us to the northern part of the room again as we serpentine our way along and eventually to the end of the chamber.
It looked like a block of stone had been designed to fall here and seal off the passage but got hung up, leaving a 2’ tall gap, 10’ wide and 10’ deep. 6 tons of rock just hanging there. And we had to get under it. Vulkan volunteered and three times tried to crawl under the stone and three times had to back away terrified as the rock groaned and seemed to shudder as he was making his way beneath it. Finally, backpack off and shoved ahead, Vulkan shimmied his way beneath frantic and was safely through. Safir went next, also raining rock dust down, but no issue.
While Mark and Delsin were deciding who would go next, we heard angry voices coming down the long corridor and Krantis was berating the other Usimagarians that they “wanted to talk to those bastards and see what REALLY happened to Auriga!” Time to fly.
Mark dove under the stone and was hunching his way beneath, scraping the stone top and bottom with his platemail, the cleric panting in his efforts to get through, grit falling in his hair, down his collar, and getting in his face. As soon as the way was clear and Delsin was able to see the glow from the approaching wandering troupe, he kicked the candle he had been using for light under the stone and dove beneath; crab crawling and dragging himself along as quick as he could, ignoring the almost quivering rock over his head. Once on the other side he was helped up, pulled to the side, and Safir lowered the flame of the lantern and we waited.
Krantis was dimly heard cursing and others asking where we were. Thought was we went down to the 5th level or maybe Cyndicia and he was going to find us. Did they go to the tombs? Doubted it, but to be safe they pulled the secret door closed and were then gone from our hearing.
Whew.
We looked about the room we were in. There was a 7’ mound of rubbled rock ahead of us, testament that more of the stones that were to seal off this area failed on some level. We made our way slowly and methodically over the rubble until safely on the other side. Once there we beheld the last issue – more fallen stones to bar our way – but these 10’ blocks did not fall square, and now had 2’ gaps running between them. Safir went first with Delsin following.
But after half way through, even with packs off and dragged behind us, Delsin was stuck and had to go back and take his armor off as well. Safir kept going and would wait for us in what he said was “a clear area”.
So the party took off armor and then dragging packs and armor behind, inched their way through the stones until they arrived at a clear area, 20’ x 10’. A double set of ornate doors was ahead and there was Safir’s lantern on the ground. No Safir.
We grabbed the lantern and put our ear to the door. There was some sort of grunting coming from the other side, so we readied weapons and burst the door opened. It was a huge crypt – two golden sarcophagi, tons of chest, broken chariots, thrones, bones, and ruined art. And in the middle were two 400 lb albino apes, one of them holding up an unconscious Safir whose face and head was covered in bruises and bleeding.
The two apes hooted at us and Mark and Delsin ran in to do battle. The first ape lifted up Safir and HURLED him at the party, the scout hitting the ground with a bone jarring snap and then rolling towards us the rest of the way, his left arm flopping wildly and against the normal bend of his elbow.
Ouch!
As the battle was joined, Vulkan finished yelling out his own spells and a wave of black energy flowed out and hit the two apes – putting one to sleep. Delsin fired up Heatstroke and went toe to toe with Mark against the still awake ape while Vulkan charged to sleeping one and slit its throat with a single stroke of his dagger.
Delsin’s shield rang on the ape’s blows while his burning sword tore into and through the apes back and then again its chest. The primate would have taken enough damage to drop anyone in the group, and still it railed against the group until finally Delsin’s last blow drove 2’ of Heatstroke into its left lung and the albino ape fell over dead, right next to its companion.
We healed Safir and then helped him back to his feet once he regained consciousness. He was woozy but getting stronger. We felt pretty good at achieving our goal and decided to split up to open each sarcophagus at the same time. Safir was assured that neither was trapped and we took our knives and proceeded to slit the thin clay seals on each coffin.
That’s when Safir noticed we had a problem. His knife had slit the top of the golden coffin – but if it was gold, it wouldn’t have cut as cleanly or as deeply as the blade did. He and Vulkan tested it out and were sure the coffin was in fact gold painted wood. A quick check of the second one showed the same.
We opened them anyway – seeing a skeletal form, no mummy wrappings, and no ancient weapons of Cyndicia. Nothing. The party was not convinced these were the king and queen. We then opened one of the chests and took out a handful of golden coins, but Safir once more proved they were fake by scratching the pain off the lead slugs. All the chests were the same.
OK…what now? Vulkan suggested we look for secret doors in here and try to uncover the true lair.
It took 20 minutes to search two of the very long walls but the group did discover a secret door on the north wall near the west corner, and then a second secret door on the exact opposite wall – south wall, west corner.
On the count of three, both doors were opened and we looked. Each showed a dusty unused passage that went 20 paces off the main room and then turned west. The only decision now was do we head north or south?
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