Before getting to the less interesting lower 5 levels of the ziggurat, the two big showdown fights are with wight in Queen Zenobia’s tomb, and the Darius/Demetrius fight with the Cyndician/Zargonite supporters. I have had people wipe on the wight fight, I have also had no one find the tomb, and I’ve have people do well on it.
For this fight, the dice were so in the youth’s favor that everything they did worked out for them and they managed to flee with the scepter/rod. Trust me, I TRIED to hit them with the wight, but at no point were they in any danger from Queen Zenobia's terrible rolls.
Write up follows:
We decided that we’d go up the northern passage, assuming that it was Queen Zenobia’s tomb we’d be going to since her false tomb was also on the northern end of the chamber. However, before going down, Vulkan was feeling a bit unsure and wanted us to pause while he studied the Web spell in his book. Having recently become more confident in his skills, he felt he could add a 2nd level spell to his repertoire and if things were not going to go well for us, it’d be nice to have more firepower at our fingertips.
So we waited an hour, and during that time, Mark and Delsin heard goblinoid voices getting closer from the other side of the door. Unsure of what was being said; they instead moved themselves in front of the door and quietly braced it with their backs, Safir joining the two men. It was good that they did so because the goblinoids were trying to push on the door and realizing it was lock/stuck/held, bitched and moaned a bit before giving up and heading back the way they came. Delsin didn’t trust the situation and had everyone wait a few moments when they felt the door tested AGAIN.
It seemed the goblinoids left one of their members behind to try and trick anyone on the inside but since the party hadn’t moved or changed anything, the last one got up and left, heading back down the irregular sized passage where we caught it calling out to the others and then all the voices faded.
No other issues occurred and by 1:30 or so, the group of four made their way to the northern secret passage. The floor was thick with dust and spider webs hung low in curtains. We had Safir go first, the scout making small clouds with each step but he went the 20 paces to the corner, looked around and headed back. Passage turned to the left, went another 20 plus paces and ended at a door on the left.
Delsin took point and the party travelled along until arriving at the heavy portal. There was a clay seal on the door covered in old Cyndician script. Mark studied his book of Gorm and the script and let us know it was seals of protection for the dead within – and that it shouldn’t be disturbed.
So we took hammer to clay and beat the seal apart, chunks of thick clay falling to the floor in dried flakey clumps. As they broke the seal, there was a brief flash of a sickly olive green light from the jamb…and then nothing.
Hand on the handle, Delsin put his weight to the door and pushed in and to the right.
It was a fairly decent sized chamber with a 7’x3’x3’ stone box in the center of the room with a flat slab cover upon it. We wanted to check it out, but Vulkan was uncomfortable and Mark wanted the group to be on alert. Safir stood by the door, bow out and arrow loaded, Vulkan right next to him nervously twisting his fingers. Delsin had Heatstroke out and Mark kept the Mace of Gorm in his grip as he braced his hands under the slab cover and pushed.
The lid popped up and slid a good 2 feet across the top of the sarcophagus, sitting upright was the dried out and very dead form of Queen Zenobia. Her crown was twisted in place by her matter hair and baleful greenish glow was coming from her eyes and blackened snarling slack jawed mouth. She lunged to grab Mark but Safir’s arrow shot out – striking her in the shoulder and then bouncing harmlessly away.
Mark and Delsin rocked back as Vulkan shouted out his arcanic words and strands of cloying sticking webs blew from his fingertips and fell around the undead form of Queen Zenobia.
Who literally dodged to the side and tore the webs to shreds as they passed around her.
Delsin slammed his sword forward, hitting her in the stomach, but even Heatstroke’s enchanted edge couldn’t penetrate her skin; instead running along her midsection and raising a black torn gash in her side which did nothing to deter her flailing arms. Mark howled for Gorm to help turn this evil beast but even as his holy symbol began to flare blue and white, Queen Zenobia ducked under the influence and her eyes burst green light – breaking the turning glow before it even hit her.
She swept out wildly, getting to her knees and then standing in the coffin, snarling and ripping at the two front line guys, raising sparks on their shield but not actually hitting anyone. Her off hand held a scepter of some weight which she slammed down like a cudgel, trying to beat Delsin in the head with it.
Safir fired again, and another arrow hit the queen but blunted and broke upon contact. Vulkan meanwhile was ripping out Auriga’s copy of his spellbook, flipping the pages and yelling to “watch out! Watch out!” Finding the page he wanted, he read the spell right from the book, the page turning to fire and then ash – and fired a 2nd Web right at the Queen. This time she was unable to deflect it and it surrounded her, trapping her under the layers of webbing and preventing her from hitting the party.
“Get the scepter! Get it!” Vulkan tossed a pair of knives at Mark and Delsin who stood as close to the furious queen and slashed at the webbing over and around her scepter. The edges of the knives quickly grew duller but the strands slashed apart and eventually her arm with the scepter was free. She tried to smash Mark with it and he danced back. Safir stood right over the queen and fired and arrow into her face under the web – and it broke on her forehead.
Vulkan was holding her arm, feeling cold as he tried to grip the arm in place, while Mark twisted and pulled the scepter about, breaking her grasp and retreating with the prize. Vulkan backed up, just missing getting swiped by the queens flailing clawlike hand. The web was being torn apart from the ground as we made to run from the room. Just outside the door, Vulkan again ripped through the spellbook until he found another spell he wanted, shouting for the party to “go go go”.
Once everyone was outside the chamber, the sound of the webbing snapping apart inside and the Queen howling and screaming, Vulkan finished reading the page from the book and the paper turned to fire and the spell shot off – surrounding the door and frame in tight green and yellow runes and holding it in place – preventing it from being opened for some time.
We jogged back to the main chamber where we shut the secret passage to Queen Zenobia’ s chamber and then dragged the false sarcophagus in front of the door to further confound it from being opened and the undead from getting out to attack us.
The scepter was black, flanged, lightly jeweled and according to Vulkan, radiated magic. He had seen things like this before and suspected it would hold spells, a few of them, for the mage – beyond what he normally was able to memorize in a given day.
We then wanted to go to King Alexander’s chamber – this time more away of what we were going to find and hopefully be done in there before the Queen escaped the held chamber and came out to find us.
The passage was similar to the other side, from the dust to the webs to the door and also the clay seals. We took hammer to seals and during the beating of them, we didn’t see a flash of green – but instead a brief whining high pitched cry. Not wanting to be caught off guard and using the whine as a warning, we took out a few candled, heated up the wax and molded it until it could fit in our ears, deadening our hearing for now.
We drew weapons and as one, opened the door and peered in. Room was similar to Queen Zenobia’s, except this time there was a baleful spirit hovering over the King’s sarcophagus, red tears for eyes and a ragged hole for a mouth. It merely stared at us. No one wanted to walk in. So we talked to it. Explained who we were, what we were doing, talking about Cyndicia and how it had fallen and how Zargon is polluting it all. We needed the ancient king’s sword to help defeat the beast and wanted the spirit to know that King Alexander would feel the same way.
Whether it was the pleading, the connection to King Alexander, or who knows what – but the spirit did come over to the door and we showed it the Scepter of Zenobia with the markings of Usimagarius, and the Mace of Gorm with the Gormian runes. All that was missing was the Sword of King Alexander and we’d have one of each weapon from the ancient Cyndician gods and be able to take the fight to Zargon himself.
The spirit went back to the sarcophagus, disappeared within, and came out with King Alexander’s sword. Delsin was instructed to remove Heatstroke – and the two weapons swapped places. He now held the wide bladed 4’ long rune encrusted sword which read on one side: Sword of Delsin, and the other: Knight of Cyndicia. Taking it reverently, he also had his king’s guard platemail swapped out for the enchanted platemail that King Alexander had been buried in.
We left the room humbled and decided to head our way down to the 5th level and hole up again in the secret room with the chest, rest, eat, study, pray, and heal our wounds. We made our way out of the tombs, through the rocks until we arrived at the section where we had to crawl underneath the standing stone. Once through we kicked the rock repeatedly until it finally settled down in place – hopefully sealing the tombs and possible escape of the undead creature Queen Zenobia turned out to be.
We then went to leave, making our way through the swinging pendulum axe blade traps, until we arrived back at the secret door which we lifted up and…came face to face with 4 rock baboons. Mark stepped forward confidently, talking to the baboons, hooting and pantomiming with them, even peeing when they did – the same as he had done days ago when we first faced them. They were pleased to remember Mark and we swapped food, and they wanted to explore the new now open room. So we let them, and made our way down the ladder in the middle of the hall to the 5th level.
We emerged back into Darius’ chamber and then went to the north west corner where we opened the secret chamber, shuffled in, and shut it behind us. From here we rested and awoke the next day feeling much better. Spells were studied and prayed for and then we emerged, heading our way through the bedroom south to the next door.
It was here that we saw the kitchen and dining room – the two big snakes that had been in here were not seen – but we ran across the chamber to the next room south and opened the door there. Two metal statues, low divans and a door on the east. Oh yeah, they remembered this. We dragged Vulkan across the room who was convinced that this time he had a good idea on how to take care of the statues, ignoring his pleas as we hit the eastern corridor and shut the door behind us.
We passed the remains of the gargoyle, made our way to the large carpeted office with the desk, and decided to look the room over again. We looked in the drawers and found some silver coins, a handful or topaz gems, and a potion in a drawer where the label had fallen off but the drawer had two labels in it: Potion of Healing and Potion of Death.
What? How did we know what this was?
The decision was made to find one of the many mice in the tomb and feed it a few drops of the potion. Which we did, and the mouse died. Ok – potion of death! Got it!
From here we left the office north, back to the hallway where the pit trap had been identified, and decided to head back to the waystation of Gorm on the west side of this floor to ask the priests there if they knew of where Demetrius might be so we could take care of him.
The walk was uneventful and in no time we passed through the wards and had some words on where to go. The east side of the floor past the great room, Demetrius could be found surrounded by the Cyndician followers of Zargon. So that was where we were going to go.
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