Post with 1 note S115 Journey Log: Tomb of Horrors: Men of Visage Grim This is an ongoing series, detailing the adventures and happenings of five players running through the classic Tomb of Horrors, from the 1st edition of Dungeon and Dragons, converted to 5th edition. Sadly, we were missing Otto from this final session, due to a last minute work delay, so I took her over as best I could until the last battle, wherein Ikbaldi controlled her.

Also, after writing this blog I discovered that Acerak’s name is spelt “Acererak” and is probably pronounced totally differently from how I have been saying it as a DM. Don’t know where I first heard it said as “Acerak,” but it stuck enough that I’ve been reading it that way for MONTHS despite literally seeing it written down correctly almost every day as I studied the Tomb of Horrors. Oops. If anyone was wondering why this post took so long to come out, it was because we had a nearly three week break during which I got married… with Geth as officiate. It literally says “fourteenth level rogue” on my marriage certificate.

Anyway, because of this break, we decided tonight we would play until the end, until the party was dead, or Acererak defeated. If it was to be an all nighter, so be it. We had missed too much time. It didn’t quite come to that. We last left the party (three weeks ago) at a stairway to a door they could not open. Geth has come back to life, his curses removed (yes, HIS curses. I gave the player the option of reverting to his old sex as part of the power of the potion, and he took it). I was afraid the party would linger in this room for quite some time, as they had trouble solving this puzzle last time. The trick to it is the door itself: The steps end before a pair of tall mithral doors joined together by a cup-shaped concavity with a keyhole in the middle of it. The doors have no visible handles, hinges, or other fixtures. Above them is written, in eld Elvish, “Only Lords of Gold May Pass Here.” Some parties will attack the door with magic. This was more prevalent as a tactic in 1st edition, when magic past fifth level was world-bending powerful and pretty much superseded bashing at things with swords (to its credit, that was how you survived to fifth level magic in the first place). DnD 5 Ed magic is still powerful, but more combat oriented and less world shaping. At least at the time of this writing. Who knows what future modules might bring. Anyway, attacking the door with magic is a terrible idea. It has fun effects like flooding the room with blood or creating a no-save instant-kill death gas. There is one way to cast a series of spells on the door to actually have it regurgitate all the souls of all the adventurers who have died here, and they will heal you and bless your party. But even with this, it is the WRONG way to go about opening the door. The right way is to use the scepter. The golden end opens the door. The silver end disintegrates the wielder (this is a change from the original, which teleports the character, naked, to the beginning of the tomb—in the interest of saving time and not splitting the party, I changed it). Ikbaldi figures this out almost immediately (thank god) and the door swings open… This imposing room has a silvered ceiling that reflects light in order to brighten its contents. The walls are of ivory with gold inlay. The floor is made of polished (but common) agate. In each corner stands a 9-foot-tall, black iron statue of fearsome visage. The northeast statue stands with a saw-toothed greatsword raised to strike; the northwest statue clutches a huge, spike-ended mace. The southwest statue brandishes a polearm, and the southeast statue readies a spiked morningstar. Against the south wall rests a granite sarcophagus flanked by two heavy iron chests. The name ACERERAK is spelled in glyphs on the sarcophagus lid. Resting at the foot of the sarcophagus isa bronze urn with gold filigree. A thin stream of smoke issues from a tiny vent in its brass stopper It wasn’t until I started reading it out loud, with the players oohing and aahing, especially when it comes to the description of the agate floor, that I realized it is actually quite a beautiful room. It is also lined with magic infused lead, which blocks ALL magic and magical effects within the room (curses still function). Otto has eyes for only one thing: she goes immediately to the sarcophagus and touches it with tears in her usually distant eyes, overwhelmed by the fact that she finally stands before the one whose remains she has so long sought. But soon she discovers something is amiss: the tomb is cracked in the back, and inside are shattered bones, torn robes, and a broken staff—all that remains of the ransacked coffin of Acererak. Of course, this is not what it seems. It is one of Acererak’s final tricks, a last trial to see if the players are worthy of his attention. The idea is to make them think that the tomb has been ransacked and Acererak is truly dead. Old school first edition gamers may have fallen for such a trick. Hidden around the room are gems and bags of coins (though enchanted to turn to granite by the time the players make it back to civilization). In old Dungeons and Dragons money was the point of an adventure, critically important to the gameplay. It was how you leveled, how you paid for your character’s lodging and food between games, how you bought retainers, how you picked up new magic items. All things which have a lesser import in DnD 5th Edition, and NO import in a one-shot dungeon crawl like this. Also, Geth remembers one of his favorite lines of the riddle: the men of visage grim are more than they seem. So the players are not surprised when they find a lever behind one of the statues. They pull it and the statue twists—it looks for a moment like the statue is going to attack them… but instead it moves a little forward and they see it was covering a hole, leading one final time downward. Before they go, one final thing of import happens. Geth notices that Taniya is wearing the talent pipes left by Chad. Geth demands them back, saying that he made a death pact to return them to the university from whence Chad stole them. Taniya vacillates, because she understands the nature of the pipes and know they need an hour of attunement or will be useless. Right now, she has been wearing them about a half hour. She knows the party cannot rest, because of the threat of the Harrower, but she figures it may be another half hour before they fight again—and by then, the pipes will be attuned, if she hasn’t removed them. Out of character, an argument ensues, wherein Taniya’s player claims he never stole the pipes in the first place. I won’t go into the details of the argument—it is not a heated one, and in the end Ikbaldi remembers things the way I do. Since that is a majority of the table, we go with the pipes being in Taniya’s keeping. As a GM, I see this as the better scenario anyway: it puts Taniya in an interesting place as both a player and character. As a player, Taniya wants to keep the pipes, so their power can be used during the final fight. As a character, she feels that she has to give in to Geth’s request. Ultimately, Taniya’s good nature wins out, and she returns the pipes—the decision will have consequences soon. The players jump down the hole, leaving a rope tied to the statue, as a way to get back up if needed. Left and Left My Tomb

The hole leads down to a dusty stone corridor. It is pitch black, and Geth uses his bullseye lantern to light the way along the cold corridor. I always thought the line in the riddle “You’ve left and left and found my tomb, and now your soul is mine” could refer to two different things. The classic interpretation is that it is a directional riddle, trying to point players to where the final secret door and Acererak’s true vault are hidden. If you ever look at a map of the tomb, you can see that if you face north in the “beautiful room,” then the statue blocking the way forward is to your left, and then once you go down the hole, the secret door is again on your left… NOT to the right, as the corridor twists.

But I think this is rather nebulous. “Left” can be any direction, depending on how you turn and face, and two lefts can be taken anywhere in the dungeon. It’s as good as saying “there is a hidden door somewhere in the dungeon. It’s to the left of something.” Useless.

I think, instead, that it is a clue to the false vaults. There are two false vaults and one true one in tomb of horrors. The first holds the Acererak zombie, with the silver mace. The second holds the ransacked sarcophagus. Both would cause players to leave the tomb (the first time with a treasure map, the second time with gems) thinking they’ve won, and to return later when they realize the deception. “Left and left and found my tomb.” Either way, after some searching, Geth finds a keyhole in a wall about twenty feet away from the chute they jumped down. He inserts the gold key and the wall opens. Beyond it is a short hallway to a dead end, a ten feet by twenty feet room filled with dust and the smell of decay. Stillness permeates the air. And in the center of the room, Geth locates a second keyhole, set in the floor. He inserts the golden key. The others jump as a flashbang of sound and light suddenly illuminate the small room, and Geth staggers back, brushing furiously at his face, which is burning with a hundred small sparks. He squints back at them, waving spots away from his eyes. “Wrong key,” he says.

Geth then tries the second key, the bronze key from the stair room. This time it works. A crypt rises from the floor, nearly filling the small room. Its doors are carved with hideous faces. Geth pulls them open and reveals a small crypt flooded with golden treasure. Coins cascade over ancient relics. Gems fill silver chalices. Hills and valleys in the piles of coin and gems suggest that more treasure, maybe magical in nature, may be buried underneath. A path clear of treasure leads straight from the door to a bench in the back of the crypt. Behind the bench looms a hideous tapestry, inset with glyphs and runes, and depicting nude demonic forms, many of them grotesquely childlike. On the bench sits a skull with two massive rubies set into its eye sockets, and with more rubies forming its ghastly smile. The skull rests atop a pile of chalky white bone dust. “Welcome,” I say, “To the final resting place of Acererak the Damned.”

“Avoid the treasure,” Geth hisses to the party. “It has to be trapped.” “I agree,” Taniya says, just as Otto brushes past her. Otto strides down the aisle and grabs the skull, mumbling something about this finally being her moment of glory. Seeing this, Geth calls out to Ikbaldi: “Don’t let her touch it! Cleave the skull in twain!” Ikbaldi runs up, and ignoring Otto’s fingers, aims a blow at the skull. Cue music. … And Now Your Soul is Mine GM: Roll attack!



Ikbaldi: I rolled a 12.



GM: Make a charisma save.



Ikbaldi: 18! Acererak has an AC of 20, so Ikbaldi’s blow ricochets off the skull, seeming to do nothing. And then Ikbaldi explodes. It is not a bloody explosion. It is more like every piece of Ikbaldi expands outwards, is torn in two, and then disappears—axe, clothing, body and all. “Oh fuck,” Geth says.

This is Trap Soul, the signature move of Acererak. I didn’t explain this to the players during the game, but what has happened here is that Ikbaldi’s body has been eradicated and her soul pulled into one of Acererak’s ruby eyes. It will stay there for a long time, slowly being devoured by Acererak to fuel his undeath. All the rubies in Acererak’s skull are part of a complex phylactery that he uses to continually power his unlife. This is the true reason for the existence of the Tomb of Horrors: Acererak needs to lure powerful souls here, to continue to feed himself, fueling his soul to continue its work on the other planes that it travels. The keys the players picked up act like alarms on the ethereal plane: using the gold key alerts Acererak to new adventurers in his tomb. Using the bronze key calls his soul back to the material plane, ready to do battle. In the classic Tomb of Horrors, Acererak only had two actions he could/would take, and trap soul was his main form of attack. In the original, it was unblockable and instantly destroyed whomever it targeted, basically giving the players as many rounds to defeat Acererak as they had players—and defeating Acererak was no joke in the old days. Fighters needed +5 magic weapons to hit him, thieves could throw gems at him, causing 1 hp of damage for every 10,000gp of value in the gem, clerics could dispel evil on him for 5hp of damage, and magic users had to be in the astral plane for any spells to affect it. After a couple turns, Acererak would use a second action: Vile Curse. It teleported anyone left alive 100-600 miles in a random direction and cursed them so that anyone that attacked them never misses (and they lose 2 points of charisma permanently if the curse is removed). The modern interpretation of Acererak as given in the 5th Edition Monster Manual is, honestly, more forgiving. And more fun to fight. Trap Soul is still there, but now there is a saving throw of 19 to avoid it (Ikbaldi missed the throw by a mere one point, but I told my players before we started that the dice would be allowed to fall “where they may” this session) and take necrotic damage instead. Vile curse is there, too, but it only curses with disadvantage and skips the teleportation nonsense completely. In short, the old version of Acererak was not meant to be fought. The new version is. Why? The reason has to do with gold. The old version of Acererak was a final trap in the tomb of horrors. Players could take the heaps of treasure around the skull and leave. Keep in mind what I said about gold earlier and its import to first edition DnD. Now combine that with the fact that Acererak was the first demi-lich ever to be used in DnD. Many players would be drawn by the jewel encrusted skull, clearly worth something, and few would suspect it was a powerful undead magic user. But my players are not here for gold. They are here to “beat” the dungeon. And that means killing Acererak. So for this encounter I used the Demi-Lich from the monster manual, but then toned him down somewhat from his CR 20 or whatever crazy high level it is. After all, this dungeon was designed for CR 14, and while Acererak should rightfully be the hardest thing in that dungeon, I didn’t want him to be unstoppable. I knew my players would want to fight him, and so I prepared the final fight to be just that—an actual fight, and not just a countdown to inevitable destruction. I cut some of his more powerful legendary actions, took away his lair actions entirely, and overall ended up with something closer to a CR 15 or 16. Still difficult, but because of the action economy (see the Harrower and Arrak’Tonya fights for a discussion of this) still doable depending on player choices. Phase One: Trap Soul

What Acererak sees/senses is a party of fairly strong adventurers, but poorly armed. He has destroyed the one who dared strike him, and feels in her soul quite a bit of rage and power. Acererak rightfully assumes this was the heavy hitter of the party, and decides these others probably cannot hurt him very quickly. He opens communication with one of them, urging this one to turn on the party. Otto turns, eyes clenched shut, with the skull still clutched in her skeletal hand and points it next at Taniya. Geth jumps into the room and uncorks his magical jar (remember that item?), splashing holy water over the skull. It smokes when it hits the skull, doing some decent radiant damage to Acererak. Taniya looks at Otto… Taniya: I want to cast remove curse on Otto, or dispel magic. Whatever I think will break the skull’s hold over her.



GM: Roll insight.



Taniya: 22.



GM: Right. Okay, so you think on the nature of curses and magics and come to the conclusion that what you are witnessing here is probably not magical in nature. Instead, Otto’s behavior seems more like that of a charm effect… or even of someone acting under her own volition. You begin to suspect that Acererak may be in communication with Otto, and she may be locked in a battle of wills. Your ability to affect this is limited. Indeed, what is playing out is a telepathic conversation I had pre-game with Otto’s missing player. Because of Otto’s lich-like arm and general evil demeanor, Acererak views her as a potential ally and offers her a place as his lieutenant on this world, acting out his bidding as he dictates it in return for eternal life and access to power she cannot imagine. Otto’s player said she would normally accept the offer, but a glimmer of light has been kindled in her heart for these foolish companions who helped her get this far. So she pretends to help for now, but will take the first opportunity to betray Acererak. If she can defeat the lich king, Otto figures, then she can take his power for herself and not be subservient to anyone. While this internal debate is going on, Acererak unleashes his next trap soul attack. Taniya rolls a 19 on her Charisma save and manages to avoid being decimated by Trap Soul. Instead, she feels a tremor run through her body as she realizes just how close she came to demise. Her very soul shivers as every muscle in her body tightens and recoils at the thought of what almost transpired (this translates to 7d6 damage). She moves forward and calls down the holy light of Sacred Flame, bathing both Otto and Acererak in a radiant fire. It is a decent strike, and one against which Acererak has no protection. He takes a fair amount of damage. Then it is Otto’s turn, and the moment for her backstab. Ikbaldi has her cast a 6th level Lightning Bolt spell. It is A LOT of dice. Eleven d6. Normally, Acererak has a high Dexterity save, and an ability to “legendarily save,” automatically passing up to three save checks a day. But as this is an unexpected backstab, and seeing as I described Otto as having held the skull in her hand, I deem that giving Acererak a saving throw is inappropriate. I do some quick calculations. If Otto can roll well on this strike, he could kill Acererak outright—or bring him within just a couple attacks of dying. This, I realize, is their chance to turn this fight to their favor. The blast fires. Acererak’s skull crackles with the force of the electricity. Lightning explodes through his mouth and out of the door of the crypt, surprising Geth, who quickly ducks to the side before he can be struck. Ikbaldi, playing Otto, rolls damage… And it is a mere 27 points of damage. A low roll, an average of 2.45 on each die. Enough to bloody Acererak, but not near what they needed to roll. Phase Two: Bloodied

The Acererak I’ve built has a reaction to becoming bloodied (one of the things I enjoy from 4th Edition): he lets out a vicious howl. This is normally a legendary action he can take every round in addition to his normal moves, but that is quite powerful, so I limited it to ONCE this entire battle. It requires a DC 15 Con save. Failures drop instantly to 0 hit points. Success still makes everyone frightened for the round. Everyone succeeds against it, so the party suddenly becomes frightened (except Otto, who I forget to have roll a saving throw, so she gets off free). Acererak surveys the battlefield. Geth has ducked out of the room, so he is safe from Acererak for now. It is a toss up then, between Otto and Taniya. Both have spells that can hurt Acererak. Taniya is weakened for a turn, so it would be better (strategically) for Acerak to target Otto as Taniya is not as much of a threat. But Acererak is arrogant. He wants to show Otto that she does not frighten him in the least. Also, he dislikes the feeling of purity pouring off the fat elf. So he makes the weaker decision and targets Taniya again, who also has a higher chance of passing her Charisma save. Only she doesn’t make it this time. Taniya explodes in much the same fashion that Ikbaldi does, and Acererak’s second ruby eye glows a bright red as it traps her soul. Otto now gets her second shot to take down Acererak. Her magic is powerful and the right spell rolled well here could turn the tide or even end the battle. But she chooses Lightning Bolt again. While Acererak took some intense damage from it last time, this was mostly because it was a free hit: I didn’t give him the chance to save against it. This time, Acererak gets his usual Dexterity save. Not only does he make it, but being a small skull he dodges the bolt completely and takes no damage—not even the usual half damage Lightning bolt does on a success. And that pretty much signals the end of Otto. She immediately fails her roll against Trap Soul. The players ask me to gloat a little in character, as I describe how Otto collapses to her knees, her skin slowly separating from her body, then muscle, then bone—all of it grinding to dust before being sucked up towards Acererak’s open mouth. “I AM ACERAK THE DAMNED. I OFFERED YOU ETERNAL LIFE AS MY SERVANT, BUT YOU HAVE CHOSEN DEATH.” Okay, so maybe not my best taunt. Hey, Acererak has been busy! He hasn’t had time to work on his supervillain speeches. This is as much as I can improvise on the spot, in the heat of battle. I later thought it might have been nice to add hints of what Acererak has been doing here. Then the speech may have gone something like this: “I AM ACERAK THE DAMNED. I OFFERED YOU ETERNAL LIFE AS MY SERVANT, BUT YOU HAVE CHOSEN DEATH.” “DID YOU REALLY THINK THAT YOU COULD CONTEND WITH MY WILL? I, WHO AM IN BATTLE WITH THE GODS THEMSELVES? AYE, THE GODS KNOW MY NAME THE WAY THEY KNOW FEAR—THE TWO ARE ONE IN THE SAME TO THEM. THEY SEND THEIR CHAMPIONS HERE, GIVING THE LAST OF THEIR POWER TO TRY AND STOP ME. ALL THEY DO IS FEED ME SOULS, AND MY STRENGTH GROWS AS THEIRS DWINDLES.”

“TWICE YOU HAD THE CHANCE TO LEAVE MY TOMB, BUT NOW YOUR SOUL IS MINE.” Phase Three: Desperate Stand

It is down to Acererak and Geth now. Acererak is beyond the half way point of his health, but he is not afraid of the rogue, nor does the rogue’s soul particularly interest him—it has neither the sweetness of good, nor the delight of evil. A true neutral bores Acererak. So he abandons his trap soul and decides that Geth will instead face desiccation and a slow death. Acererak has a legendary ability called energy drain—his only way to deal direct damage without the risk of outright killing the player. It is a constitution saving throw, DC 15, and failure reduces the target’s hit point maximum by 3d6. This is all Acererak uses now, once a round. It is a final display of arrogance, and one which may give Geth a chance to win this fight. Geth leads with an attack of his psychic dagger, “throwing” it at Acererak. But Acererak is a powerful intellectual being—now almost a being of pure intellect. He is immune to psychic damage. Geth felt a sudden heat in his mind and then something like a physical impact as his dagger disappeared into the floating skull. Laughter rang through the crypt. FOOL! I HAVE DESTROYED POWERS YOU CANNOT CONCIEVE OF. YOU THINK YOUR MIND STRONG ENOUGH TO CONQUER MY OWN? Geth ignored the taunt. He fought past his fear and tried to think. Acerak was immune to his psychic weapon. Figured. It had been given to him by one of the Lich’s minions—it made sense that they would not give him something that could harm their master. Taniya was dead. So were Otto and Ikbaldi. With them was gone their strength of arm, their magical ability. But Geth had survived just as much as any of them, maybe more, and he had never had command over magic, nor been particularly strong. He had survived on speed and stealth and cunning. And now he would do so again. He silently drew his rapier and waited, poised at the entrance of the crypt, for the skull to come after him. Acererak obliges Geth, floating out the door and opening himself up to an attack of opportunity. And here is where it is a shame Geth does not have a magical weapon, because Geth rolls a critical success—and then watches as his weapon shatters against Acererak’s skull. Acererak is immune to normal weapon damage, and I add in the shattering effect because I don’t want Geth wasting any more good rolls trying to strike him with things that won’t matter. Acererak unleashes the first of his energy drain. Geth fails the con roll, and his hit points are reduced by 16. His skin starts to itch and burn and his muscles begin to feel weaker. An incredble dryness seems to fill his mouth, and he coughs dust into the cold air of the tomb. Geth turns, and flees. He runs for the rope and begins to climb, making it back to the room of the iron men. He tries to reset the statue, but it refuses to budge. So he looks around instead, thinking fast. At first I think he will head for the jug pouring steam from its top—unknown to the players, there is an Efreeti inside that will help them fight Acererak—but he instead makes for the stairway room, and the golden scepter. “It is a magical item, right?” Geth asks me. He has figured out Acererak’s immunity, and plans on fighting the demi-lich with his own scepter, the scepter the party used along with the crown to solve the last few puzzles of the tomb. It is an excellent improvisational decision. Not a great weapon—I give it 1d6 of magical bludgeoning when thrown by Geth, and Acererak still has resistance to all weapon damage—but this actually could work. It is a battle of attrition now: the outcome of the battle is entirely reliant on the dice. Can Geth make good constitution saves? Working against him is a -4 for his recent resurrection, but it is not an insurmountable deficit. Can he make good attack and damage rolls? Acererak is low health and arrogant, and Geth has the ranged advantage. There is even a trick here, if Geth can see it, that will lead to an instant death against Acererak. But will Geth see it? Acererak floats silently into the room, and the final battle begins. Several rolls later, Geth lies on the floor, his voice turning to a low moan of despair, his body dissolving into dust, as Acererak cackles and gloats over his demise. Geth failed every constitution save, and missed one of his ranged attacks. It was too much to miss at this critical junction, and Acererak claims victory. Conclusion And that concludes our time in the Tomb of Horrors. We don’t draw out the ending. Normally, I like to plan and present a “if you all die” ending for the last session, to give some conclusion to the campaign in case of a TPK, but one of the players is not feeling well and bails pretty quick. Then Ikbaldi pulls out some homemade Tak tiles, and so we play Tak. If you don’t know what that is, you really need to check it out. For all that the ending lacks fanfare, the night ends on a strongly positive note. The players all agree it was a good time. Otto, though not there for the ending, has told us he loved the old-school feel of the dungeon. Geth appreciated the intelligence required of the players, to think through puzzles and plan out tactics for each fight. Ikbaldi loved the atmosphere. Taniya found the challenge engaging, despite being somewhat annoyed at not being able to defeat Acerak. And everyone had fun playing high level characters, a rarity in Dungeons and Dragons, where most campaigns start at level one and end around level ten. As for me, my thoughts on Tomb of Horrors have been given at length throughout this blog—much of it musings on the differences between old school and modern gaming. As a general overview, I think the campaign has a bad reputation as being mired in first edition design decisions, when really these crop up in only a few places and are easily removed or adjusted to fit a moden sensisbility. Also, everyone complains about that first Sphere of Annihilation. Really? If your entire party of players is so keen on crawling into a pit of infinite darkness inside a demon’s mouth, then just have a good laugh and start over, warning them you won’t be as forgiving next time. A good DM will see that the Tombs have good bones (ha ha), bones that can be fleshed out with more monsters to help the pacing, and that otherwise it is a dungeon with a surpising amount of versatility. Hardest dungeon ever? It is definitely a challenge, but not an unfair one if run with a little care, and the number of instant-death traps can be adjusted up or down to accommodate stronger or weaker parties. Honestly, a level ten party could beat this dungeon, if long rests were allowed inside of it (and the party wasn’t keen on actually antagonizing and defeating Acererak). In fact, the dungeon needs more adjustment the higher level the party gets, as they start gaining access to spells that can break its main attractions (traps and secret doors). As such this could be quite the fun dungeon to toss into a mid-level campaign as a side quest. The atmosphere is great, and even if a party leaves the dungeon early or doesn’t fight Acererak, it could provide a good hook for future adventures. What if their excursions in the tomb awaken Acererak and call his attentions more permanently back to the material plane? Suddenly the countryside may be plagued by undead, while players find themselves receiving the blame for awakening an ancient evil. They may also find they have become the target of that evil’s unwanted attentions. Lots of possibilities. As a post script to my campaign. while the fight against Acererak may have seemed hopeless, the truth is that Geth came within 20 hitpoints of defeating him. Some different rolls in that final fight may have turned the tide. There were also several missed opportunities throughout the dungeon, especially in the final session, that most likely would have given the players that little push they needed to overcome the odds. Things the Players Missed (That Might Have Saved Them) The Efreeti. Ikbaldi examined the urn in the middle of the Iron Men room, but then left it alone. Which means she missed uncorking it and releasing its prisoner: an Efreeti who will grant her three wishes. The wishes can’t do anything so powerful as kill Acererak, but they could give access to powerful weapons or secrets ABOUT killing Acererak. Or level them all to the next level. But the players miss this opportunity. Twice, actually. Had Geth opened the urn while Acererak was chasing him, the Efreeti would have joined forces with Geth against Acerak (who imprisoned him there). It may have been enough to turn the tide.

The Treasure Hoard. All that treasure in Acererak’s crypt hid tons of magic items. Scrolls, wands, staffs, potions, and weapons (including a +3 Vorpal Sword) are all located there and fairly easy to find. What’s more, Acererak doesn’t attack if the treasure is touched. The skull only reacts if someone is bold enough to touch the skull. The awesome treasure on the floor is protected, but only by a phantasm that will threaten, but can’t actually do anything unless the players attack it enough times to turn it into a specter—powerful, but not nearly as powerful as Acererak. Ironically, for smart first edition players, this phantasm was the original “boss” of the tomb, as it was the only thing standing between players and taking the treasure and fleeing for more survivable campaigns. I think Gary’s idea was that if the players were still in ‘touchy-touchy’ and 'hack-and-slash’ mode by the time they got this far, they got what they deserve when they went for the skull. And speaking of which… One of the big mistakes the party made was having Ikbaldi stride forward to strike the skull. It was wonderfully in keeping with Ikbaldi’s rash boldness, but that turned Acererak’s attention from passive to aggressive, and from Otto (whom he would have tried to communicate with before killing) to Ikbaldi—who with her power, would have been better suited to either wait outside the crypt for Acererak to fly out and be hit with attacks of opportunity or to go into Rage and aim for one good solid strike. If the party had gathered more magical weapons from the hoard before triggering Acererak, they may have considered using a bait tactic like this, and been more effective as a result. Suur’s Ire. One of the first rooms the players missed was through “the tormentor’s door” in the first hallway. In the old version of the dungeon, this is simply another way to get to the second hallway, more damage heavy and less tricky. It leads to a fight with a massive four-armed gargoyle and then a series of heavily trapped “cube” rooms, where you have to solve puzzles within a time limit or be hit by poison darts. I added some details here I’m sad they missed, basically the back story of Acerak that I gleaned from numerous modules: Each of these rooms is painted with the same scene that gets progressively worse: a beautiful woman lies in bed, the woman gets ravaged by a demon (a Balor, Otto notes), the woman gives birth to a demon child, soldiers come and murder the woman while the child hides under a bed, the child cradles his dead mother’s body. The final room is longer, and so it also shows the child growing up and leaving the room. The next room he is sloughing off his skin, and in the final room he has become Acerak the damned. There is also a pointless dead end if they go the wrong way, and in that dead end I decided to add a trap and weapon of my own. It was to be a multi-faceted trap involving a room quickly filling with sand and (secretly, under the sand) poison scorpions. There was a way to avoid this altogether, by not being greedy, and those who did so would be awarded with a flaming sword I created: Suur’s Ire. It was a fairly standard flaming sword, which is to say it kicked ass with +2 to hit and damage as well as fire damage on top of it (which Acererak is not resistant to). It was to be one of the most powerful weapons in the dungeon. I considered having it attract a demon during one of the long sleeps, to mix things up, but as they never got the sword, it didn’t matter. The Magic Arrows. Because they didn’t receive Suur’s Ire, I built in another magic weapon for the party, one they had a better chance of retrieving and one designed for the final fight. The magic arrows that Geth and Taniya spent time quibbling over were inspired by the Light Arrows of Legend of Zelda. Used by anyone, they were +3 magic arrows. Used by a good character against an evil creature, they gained more power: they ignored damage reduction, and did an additional 2d10 radiant damage per strike. They were designed for Taniya to use at range, since Acererak’s trap soul ability only extends out to 30 feet. The idea was that if Taniya could stay out of his range, she could keep firing these arrows. There were only four of them, but those four might have made all the difference. Chad’s Talent Pipes. Created to replace one of Chad’s most valuable abilities, the Pipes would have had a profound impact on the fight. Their ability to add to a player’s saving throw would have saved Ikbaldi and Taniya from Trap Soul (Otto was still screwed, she rolled poorly). To be fair, Acererak would have treated the presence of this powerful item like a fifth companion and played a little rougher, using his legendary actions to do additional damage in between trap soul, but having those extra turns for Ikbaldi and Taniya to do damage might have won the fight. Taniya taking them from Geth in the first place wasn’t the problem here. It was that she chose to give them back, when she easily could have said “I will return them after the final battle.” Still, it felt very in character for her to give them back as she did, and a TPK that happens because players are roleplaying is a better ending then one where they win by acting completely out of character. Lorelei. Lorelei was a powerful fey creature. Not powerful enough to really damage Acererak, I think he’s immune to most of her abilities and magic, but she does have an incredibly high Charisma save and if she managed to get Acererak’s attention, she could waste a lot of his turns while she defended against Trap Soul. The damage dealt on a success is not insignificant, and she would have most likely only withstood it for two or three rounds, but those rounds would have given the other players time to do more damage. And with the power of friendship, Acererak would be defeated! How very JRPG. The Potion. There is a bigger war going on behind the scenes in my version of Tomb of Horrors. I did a LOT of reading before running Tomb of Horrors, to try and understand Acererak’s motives and the reasons for the existence of the Tomb of Horrors. Everything I read pointed to one ultimate goal of Acererak: He wants to unseat a god and become a part of the pantheon. And from there, he wishes to defeat all of the gods and become the one true god. What’s frightening about Acererak is that this is not a lofty goal for him—he has nearly succeeded at it in several different modules. But at the time of my setting for Tomb of Horrors, he has just begun to wage war, by using his influence in the ethereal realm to raise an army of Jotuns to lure the Norse gods into a war, a war he knows will trigger their Ragnarok. It is, for now, the only way he knows to kill a god: let them kill themselves. And the Norse gods seem the weak point of the pantheon, as they already are bickering. Acererak intends to draw power from the deaths that are prophicied in their cataclysmic clash, using his trap soul ability to trap the souls of the Norse gods and feed on them.

Odin, all seeing, is aware of this plot, but sees no way to stop it himself, or indeed for any of his kin to stop it, for in present days their pantheon is split and fighting amongst themselves. His own blood brother, Loki… well, that is another story. In any case, Odin believes the only true weakness Acererak has is his phylactery, still residing on the material plane and left as a beacon to draw powerful souls to it. So Odin takes the shape of a phantom in the swamps of silence and uses some of his remaining power to craft an item to give to the next band of adventurers that seems they may stand a chance against Acererak. And thus the Fate Dial, and the potion residing within it. The potion is one of instant resurrection, a powerful item in its own right, but had it not been used to resurrect, then the one who carries it is immune to trap soul, and only takes half damage from the attack. Had the players not lost Geth to Arrak’Tonya, or had not taken as many rests as they did and thus could have had the time to ressurect him normally, they could have used this item to elongate the battle and deal more damage. And Finally, The Crown and the Scepter. This is my favorite method of destroying Acererak. After the module was first created, clever players came up with a number of ways to defeat Acererak using loopholes in Gary Gygax’s description of the rooms and items. Some people used the gem of cursed wishing (which blew up Otto), making a wish and dropping it next to Acererak’s skull, then bailing. This is dangerous, because no matter the wish you make it will, by design of the gem, attempt to hurt you—so wishing for strawberry cake may cause a giant cake to block the way out of the crypt, trapping you with the explosion. Others turned to the room of Iron Men, which has an anti-magic field in it (my players didn’t cast any spells or use spell-like abilities in here, so it didn’t really come into play). According to 1st edition rules, Acererak would cease to function in this room, simply falling to the ground as an angry skull. But the fifth edition rules are more lenient on this, and GMs are well within their rights to play Acererak’s abilities as more inherent to his pure force of will. I don’t think of his Trap Soul as a magic spell or spell-like ability. I think of it as his teeth and claws. It is as much a part of him as that damn smug grin. Another method is one my players actually toyed with: a wizard grabbing Acererak and teleporting out of the tombs. Surely the player will not survive long after the trip, but it does get rid of Acererak for the other players. This one is up to GM interpretation. The fifth edition monster manual takes care of this by specifically stating that a demi-lich’s lair is protected against Teleportation. I planned to handle it a little crueler: anyone who attempts to teleport from the inside of the tomb outside of it teleports instead directly to the Abyss. I like this, as it makes the whole tomb one big waiting trap, very in keeping with Acererak’s theme. Also, Acererak would LOVE to fight players on the Abysal plane. Sadly, Otto didn’t have enough juice left to cast the spell, so it was moot. But one method still holds water. It is one of the first official kills of Acererak, done at a very early Gen Con and approved by Gary himself in an official ruling. That is to use the crown. My players figured out the secret of removing the crown from their heads: use the silver end of the scepter. But they never tried the gold end of the scepter—which instantly disintegrates the wearer. This is a no-save instant kill, and that applies to Acererak as well. Force the crown on the skull’s head, tap it with the gold end of the scepter and PHWOOM Acererak is no more. I love this method of killing him as it is so poetic—use Acererak’s own trap against him. Amazing. It’s what I thought Geth was doing when he ran to the stairway room and grabbed the scepter. But unfortunately, the party had not experimented with trying the gold end of the scepter on one of Otto’s skeletons and thus didn’t know this little combo existed. And that is the end of this journey log, through the Tomb of Horrors. I hope you have enjoyed reading it, and if you are a DM thinking of running the Tomb of Horrors that it has given you some inspiration and ideas. Next week I will be starting a new DnD 5 campaign, based primarily on the Pathfinder module Red Hand of Doom, but with a lot of twists and original material. If I decide to blog it, it will be under the title Journey Log: Red Hand of Doom.

Post with 1 note S114 Journey Log: Tomb of Horrors: Harrowed This is an ongoing series, detailing the adventures and happenings of five players running through the classic Tomb of Horrors, from the 1st edition of Dungeon and Dragons, converted to 5th edition. We had one player missing from this session: Geth was still on a cruise ship. And dead for this session. So I guess that works out. When I sat down to redesign Tomb of Horrors for 5th Edition, before I even knew there was a base I could work off of, I knew I wanted to add a time limit to the dungeon. Around the same time, I kickstarted the Dark Souls board game. I loved playing Dark Souls and I adored the designs, but I never actually beat the video game or played any of the sequels. As a result, my first look at the Boreal Dancer was the model in the Kickstarter. Something about its lankiness and the lack of a discernible face unnerved me, and I started building a monster concept around it.

With that, I had my time limit. The Harrower would be my active time limit, not immediately ending the player’s game if they spent too much time in the tombs, but forcing them to move faster, taking away their rest options, and pushing them towards a finale. I came up with this description of the Harrower: Looks like a hunchbacked man whose eyes and mouth have been sewn shut haphazardly. His arms are eight feet long, the three fingered hands capped with sword-length blades that drag along the ground as he walks, making a scraping sound. Erupting from his ghoulish skin are black tentacles that whip about madly the closer they come to living flesh. They exude a gummy black fluid that smells like rotting meat. My players pointed out that he looks like Voldo from Soul Calibur. Huh. I guess he kinda does! I also came up with a back story: In his life, The Harrower was a worshipper and acolyte of Acerak who failed him: Acerak gave him immortality as a reward for his years of service, but twisted his form and cursed him for his failure. The Harrower thus serves as a grim reminder of Acerak’s twisted sense of justice and fairness. The Harrower haunts the Tomb, set there as a guardian against any who would linger overlong in its corridors, appearing only after a group of adventurers has stayed in the tomb for several nights. In this way, Acerak has aimed to prevent adventurers from setting up camp in his tomb and tackling its dangers methodically. The entire purpose of the Harrower is to rush adventurers into making poor or hasty decisions—thus, The Harrower was made horrifying to behold, and dangerous up close, in the hopes that he drives adventurers to flee directly into Acerak’s traps. When playing the Harrower, he should be used mostly to frighten, unless the adventurers tackle him head on—then he will unleash his full might, slicing into them with his blades and pressing them into corners where his tentacles can suck the life out of them. All bets are off after that. Preamble to Darkness Let’s back up a little bit. Where we left last time, the players are getting in position. They know The Harrower is coming and they have precious few seconds to spare before he attacks. Taniya rushes to Otto’s side and revives her with a cure spell. Then she goes to Ikbaldi and removes her blindness. Finally, she breaks open the fate dial to find out what its inner glow is. It turns out to be a vial of bluish white liquid. Lorelei takes a look, at Taniya’s behest, and can say only that it is “divine in nature.” Meanwhile, Otto heads for the crown (Ikbaldi took it off during the fight and discarded it near the sword-and-shield room), placing it on her head and using its powers to dispel the levitation on Ikbaldi. She also orders one of her skeletons to go grab Geth’s body and drag it to them. Now a quick discussion happens. Where to go next? Ikbaldi and Otto are all for running through the sword hallway, assuming that will take them further into the tombs and perhaps an avenue of escape from the Harrower. Lorelei is ready to follow Ikbaldi, whom she has grown attached to—she is also terrified of The Harrower and wishes nothing more but to flee it’s presence as soon as possible. Taniya is hesitant, though. She feels the crown must be a clue. She urges Otto instead to try sitting on the throne while wearing the crown. “There is a reason that engraving of the crown is on the throne,” she says.

Taniya casts her angelic guardian and her and the others gather around it—except Otto. While Taniya, Ikbaldi, and Lorelei (who is now openly weeping) prepare to stand their ground against the darkness, Otto rushes to the throne and sits down. Nothing happens. A moment later, the Harrower, all six feet of him, hunched over and dragging his claws on the ground, tears free from the darkness and lopes with shocking speed towards Ikbaldi, stopping only to rend apart Otto’s skeleton with a single blow. Geth’s lifeless corpse falls to the ground, no longer supported by the skeleton. Taniya and Otto scream at the sight of the creature as fear overtakes them. Ikbaldi roars and rushes forward, Lorelei begging him to come back. And so combat begins. There follows a mixture of good and bad decisions. Good Decision

Taniya has a sudden inspiration. “Otto!” she calls, regaining control of her senses. “The scepter takes off the crown, right? Try touching the scepter to the throne’s crown!” Across the room, Otto hears her. “Which end?” she asks desperately, panicking from the thought of the Harrower turning its attentions to her. The scepter has two ends, gold and silver. “Silver!” Taniya calls. “The same color as the inlay!” Otto listens and a warmth spreads up her skeletal arm. Then the throne shudders and lowers into the floor. Otto sobs in relief—she has never known a fear like this since she was a child in her father’s estate, hearing his voice call throughout the halls for her to come take her medicine….



The area she is now in is too small for the Harrower to fit in. A passage stretches behind her into darkness. She lights a torch and begins to explore a new hallway…





Taniya has a sudden inspiration. “Otto!” she calls, regaining control of her senses. “The scepter takes off the crown, right? Try touching the scepter to the throne’s crown!” Across the room, Otto hears her. “Which end?” she asks desperately, panicking from the thought of the Harrower turning its attentions to her. The scepter has two ends, gold and silver. “Silver!” Taniya calls. “The same color as the inlay!” Otto listens and a warmth spreads up her skeletal arm. Then the throne shudders and lowers into the floor. Otto sobs in relief—she has never known a fear like this since she was a child in her father’s estate, hearing his voice call throughout the halls for her to come take her medicine…. The area she is now in is too small for the Harrower to fit in. A passage stretches behind her into darkness. She lights a torch and begins to explore a new hallway… Bad Decision

Back in the pillar room, Ikbaldi closes with The Harrower. Her magical axe actually seems to hurt the creature, but such power comes with a price. As The Harrower rakes its claws across her face, she feels a sudden uncontrollable rage, different from her Barbarian rage. Her axe glows brighter, and her eyes follow suit. She turns with sudden malevolence to Lorelei, who puts a hand to her mouth and gasps in understanding of what’s happening. “The curse of the axe has taken her,” she shouts to Taniya. “You have to–”



She never gets to finish. Ikbaldi buries the axe in her chest with two quick chops of the axe. The fey creature, who survived centuries of confinement in the tombs, falls to the very people who orchestrated her rescue.



This is all an effect of the axe Ikbaldi carries. It is a berserker axe, more or less straight from the DMG guide. It activates after Ikbaldi has used it to kill something—from that point on, anytime she takes damage, she goes into a berseker’s rage, attacking the closest creature each round (at random, if there are more than one targets within range) with all her actions. This lasts until she cannot see or hear any viable targets. The other side of the curse is that from now on, Ikbaldi will use no other weapon than the axe.



Ikbaldi turns to Taniya next, grinning madly, finally giving in not only to her axe’s whim but also to her newly evil nature—gained back in the altar room. Behind her, The Harrower chuckles dryly as magical darkness begins to spread out from him, engulfing Ikbaldi and Taniya. The last thing Taniya sees are Ikbaldi’s glowing eyes.





Back in the pillar room, Ikbaldi closes with The Harrower. Her magical axe actually seems to hurt the creature, but such power comes with a price. As The Harrower rakes its claws across her face, she feels a sudden uncontrollable rage, different from her Barbarian rage. Her axe glows brighter, and her eyes follow suit. She turns with sudden malevolence to Lorelei, who puts a hand to her mouth and gasps in understanding of what’s happening. “The curse of the axe has taken her,” she shouts to Taniya. “You have to–” She never gets to finish. Ikbaldi buries the axe in her chest with two quick chops of the axe. The fey creature, who survived centuries of confinement in the tombs, falls to the very people who orchestrated her rescue. This is all an effect of the axe Ikbaldi carries. It is a berserker axe, more or less straight from the DMG guide. It activates after Ikbaldi has used it to kill something—from that point on, anytime she takes damage, she goes into a berseker’s rage, attacking the closest creature each round (at random, if there are more than one targets within range) with all her actions. This lasts until she cannot see or hear any viable targets. The other side of the curse is that from now on, Ikbaldi will use no other weapon than the axe. Ikbaldi turns to Taniya next, grinning madly, finally giving in not only to her axe’s whim but also to her newly evil nature—gained back in the altar room. Behind her, The Harrower chuckles dryly as magical darkness begins to spread out from him, engulfing Ikbaldi and Taniya. The last thing Taniya sees are Ikbaldi’s glowing eyes. Heroic Attempt

With darkness spreading around them, Taniya has this chance to run. But she waits instead, drinking a potion of Giant Strength. Then, with her newfound power, she searches briefly for Geth’s body and for Lorelei’s and, once she has them, begins to drag them from the shadows. Her potion allows her to drag both, but it is still at half speed. And that gives The Harrower time to catch up. She doesn’t see the creature, she just feels its tendrils wrap around her, pulling her back and sucking the life from her. She lets go of the bodies, and collapses into an even deeper darkness, unconscious.





With darkness spreading around them, Taniya has this chance to run. But she waits instead, drinking a potion of Giant Strength. Then, with her newfound power, she searches briefly for Geth’s body and for Lorelei’s and, once she has them, begins to drag them from the shadows. Her potion allows her to drag both, but it is still at half speed. And that gives The Harrower time to catch up. She doesn’t see the creature, she just feels its tendrils wrap around her, pulling her back and sucking the life from her. She lets go of the bodies, and collapses into an even deeper darkness, unconscious. Good Decision

With no one else around her that she can see or hear, Ikbaldi regains her senses. She notes, briefly, that she doesn’t seem to feel remorse for the fey creature she betrayed. Then, for maybe the first time in her life, Ikbaldi flees, tearing through the darkness in the direction she thinks the throne is. The moment looks like this: Ikbaldi bursts from the fog of darkness. Behind her, a half step later, the Harrower follows, trailing shadow. From behind the Harrower, Taniya’s Guardian reaches out with his blades, raking them down the Harrower’s back. It is just enough to slow the beast down and Ikbaldi dives down the opening left by the throne. A second later, the Harrower is at the opening. It cannot fit inside, so instead it reaches down with a claw. But it is not enough. Ikbaldi has escaped, though three of her companions have been left behind.





With no one else around her that she can see or hear, Ikbaldi regains her senses. She notes, briefly, that she doesn’t seem to feel remorse for the fey creature she betrayed. Then, for maybe the first time in her life, Ikbaldi flees, tearing through the darkness in the direction she thinks the throne is. The moment looks like this: Ikbaldi bursts from the fog of darkness. Behind her, a half step later, the Harrower follows, trailing shadow. From behind the Harrower, Taniya’s Guardian reaches out with his blades, raking them down the Harrower’s back. It is just enough to slow the beast down and Ikbaldi dives down the opening left by the throne. A second later, the Harrower is at the opening. It cannot fit inside, so instead it reaches down with a claw. But it is not enough. Ikbaldi has escaped, though three of her companions have been left behind. A Gamble

Otto and Ikbaldi crouch in the new hallway. It is an opulent room, connected to the lowered throne platform by a long but narrow passage. Then there is a ten foot climb up to the opening where they can hear the Harrower snuffling and scrabbling at the opening, worrying it like a dog digging at a mole hole.



“What happened up there?” Otto hisses. “Where is Taniya and the Siren?”



“Gone,” Ikbaldi says, after a brief hesitation. “That thing got them.”



There is a silence while they contemplate what to do next. The question hangs heavy in the air: can Otto and Ikbaldi complete this dungeon alone? Otto says she has a plan to get back the bodies of their comrades, but she doesn’t know if it will be successful. It involves casting her sphere spell to encase The Harrower, casting Jump on Ikbaldi so she can quickly leap out of the hole, and then Ikbaldi will retrieve the bodies while The Harrower is trapped. Hopefully, Taniya is stable enough to revive.



Speaking of which, I am secretly rolling dice for Taniya’s stablization. I roll an 8… that’s a failure. Then a 20… critical success! That counts as two successes. Then a 10… another failure. Now we are down to one roll. Whatever I roll will decide her fate—death or a chance to be saved. I roll one last time…. it’s a 17, and she stabilizes.



Ikbaldi loves the boldness of the plan, and they decide to go for it. They walk towards the hole, where the Harrower is peering down at them, and Otto works her magic. The Harrower is HIGHLY resistant to magic… but I fail the roll even with advantage and POOF a magical sphere encloses it.





Otto and Ikbaldi crouch in the new hallway. It is an opulent room, connected to the lowered throne platform by a long but narrow passage. Then there is a ten foot climb up to the opening where they can hear the Harrower snuffling and scrabbling at the opening, worrying it like a dog digging at a mole hole. “What happened up there?” Otto hisses. “Where is Taniya and the Siren?” “Gone,” Ikbaldi says, after a brief hesitation. “That thing got them.” There is a silence while they contemplate what to do next. The question hangs heavy in the air: can Otto and Ikbaldi complete this dungeon alone? Otto says she has a plan to get back the bodies of their comrades, but she doesn’t know if it will be successful. It involves casting her sphere spell to encase The Harrower, casting Jump on Ikbaldi so she can quickly leap out of the hole, and then Ikbaldi will retrieve the bodies while The Harrower is trapped. Hopefully, Taniya is stable enough to revive. Speaking of which, I am secretly rolling dice for Taniya’s stablization. I roll an 8… that’s a failure. Then a 20… critical success! That counts as two successes. Then a 10… another failure. Now we are down to one roll. Whatever I roll will decide her fate—death or a chance to be saved. I roll one last time…. it’s a 17, and she stabilizes. Ikbaldi loves the boldness of the plan, and they decide to go for it. They walk towards the hole, where the Harrower is peering down at them, and Otto works her magic. The Harrower is HIGHLY resistant to magic… but I fail the roll even with advantage and POOF a magical sphere encloses it. Terrible Decision

Ikbaldi leaps from the hole and quickly assesses the situation. She is strong enough to carry two bodies. Lorelei, she sees, has passed on—her cool blue eyes have gone black and dead. Geth, of course, is dead as well (her blonde hair turned white by the mummy’s curse, and black streaks running up and down her body). But Taniya still breathes shallowly. Ikbaldi decides to take the both of them. She is strong enough to drag them both, albeit slowly.



And this is where Ikbaldi makes a mistake. Otto is screaming for her to hurry. I surreptitiously describe how the magical sphere alarmingly makes a cracking sound as a big split appears in it. The Harrower, as I said, is extremely resistant to magic. One of his legendary actions he can take every turn is to try to break free of any magical effect (banishment, sphere, force shield, etc). It is difficult, though: he has to roll a 20 to break these effects before their time runs out.



I immediately roll a 20, first roll. But I decide this will just be a warning, since I like the boldness of this plan. So the magic sphere cracks. My goal is to scare Ikbaldi—I want to see her run. But instead she sits still, downing a magic potion, then pouring one down Taniya’s throat, then debating drinking another one. So I roll again. And I roll another 20. At this point I realize the gods want Ikbaldi to die, so The Harrower shatters the sphere and the party is officially fucked.





Ikbaldi leaps from the hole and quickly assesses the situation. She is strong enough to carry two bodies. Lorelei, she sees, has passed on—her cool blue eyes have gone black and dead. Geth, of course, is dead as well (her blonde hair turned white by the mummy’s curse, and black streaks running up and down her body). But Taniya still breathes shallowly. Ikbaldi decides to take the both of them. She is strong enough to drag them both, albeit slowly. And this is where Ikbaldi makes a mistake. Otto is screaming for her to hurry. I surreptitiously describe how the magical sphere alarmingly makes a cracking sound as a big split appears in it. The Harrower, as I said, is extremely resistant to magic. One of his legendary actions he can take every turn is to try to break free of any magical effect (banishment, sphere, force shield, etc). It is difficult, though: he has to roll a 20 to break these effects before their time runs out. I immediately roll a 20, first roll. But I decide this will just be a warning, since I like the boldness of this plan. So the magic sphere cracks. My goal is to scare Ikbaldi—I want to see her run. But instead she sits still, downing a magic potion, then pouring one down Taniya’s throat, then debating drinking another one. So I roll again. And I roll another 20. At this point I realize the gods want Ikbaldi to die, so The Harrower shatters the sphere and the party is officially fucked. More Heroics

Ikbaldi swears. Otto’s player laughs in disbelief and can’t believe that they wasted their whole plan to drink an extra healing potion. Then Ikbaldi leaps into action, rushing The Harrower. “At this point,” her player says, “I just want to distract the Harrower and let Taniya get out.” She rushes the Harrower and rolls a high enough hit that I rule The Harrower might be distracted. I roll a percentage die, then look at Taniya.



“Alright, he lets you go.”



Not pushing her luck, Taniya flees the battle, taking Geth’s body with her (she still retains her 23 strength from the potion). But Otto isn’t done. As soon as Taniya is down, Otto heads back up. He has a crazy plan. He wants to teleport Ikbaldi out of the fight—but it means getting within 10 feet of The Harrower. That’s within his reach. On the plus side, The Harrower is tearing Ikbaldi apart, meaning he’s a little distracted. I give Otto a 70% chance to get close without drawing attention… and he passes the check!



Just as The Harrower impales Ikbaldi on his claws, lifting him triumphantly into the air, Otto takes a running slide, sliding right up to the Harrower, and teleports herself and Ikbaldi’s unconscious body out.



There’s a thing with teleport, though. It has a chance to mishap. And failure with teleport, while sometimes humorous, in the wrong circumstances can be disastrous. It’s also left mostly up to DM determination, aside from a quick roll on a table to see if the spell mishaps.



Otto rolls, and it isn’t a very good roll—low enough, in fact, that the rules tell me to send them to a “similar” location as the one they are attempting to reach, but I have to ask myself the question… do I really want to send Otto and Ikbaldi to the wrong location? It’s nine pm, we are at the end of our session, and against all odds they have barely managed to escape The Harrower and regroup. At this point, separating the party means sending these two further back into the tombs—to then pass through rooms they’ve already cleared, or to fight some powerful monsters they left behind. And the whole while, Taniya’s player will be sitting around doing nothing. It’s just not a very appealing outcome.



So instead I have fun with it. “Your attempt fails,” I say. “You both appear on the raised throne only twenty feet away from the Harrower, staring at the spot where you were standing a moment ago. The Harrower turns to look at you…”



Really, this is just being played for humor and thrills. I tell them they have a free action available before the Harrower reaches them, and they of course use it to activate the throne with the scepter. The throne lowers just as bladed hands cut the air above their heads. Spite

Everyone is finally back together! Taniya celebrates the occasion by divesting Geth of some of her magical items. The magic arrows go to Taniya, and she takes Chad’s Talent Pipes, too. This last one has an immediate effect: no longer attuned to Geth, the Pipes lose their power again—until someone wears them for an hour, they will be useless. “That will teach you to take all the magic items,” Taniya says, with some smugness and a little spite.

Now Taniya prepares to cast resurrection on the dead thief. But there is a problem. The spell takes an hour. “Let’s rest here while I cast,” Taniya suggests, but Otto and Ikbaldi are skeptical. The Harrower can still be heard directly above them, scratching at the opening. “Who is to say,” Ikbaldi muses, “that there is not another way for that creature to get in here.”

In the end, Taniya decides to ask her goddess for direction. She casts the spell divination and asks for divine guidance. In the process, a long standing mystery about Taniya is revealed. Taniya has always smelled bad, and the characters assumed it was because she didn’t bathe. But now they discover that she keeps several jade cats on her person, each one filled with aromatic cat piss—her way of getting in touch with her goddess. She smashes one on the ground, and while everyone else covers their noses, she communicates with Freyja. “Oh wise Freyja,” Taniya says. “Can you tell me, is it safe to rest here for a time?” The answer comes back swiftly. “DEAR GODS AND BY ALL THAT IS HELD HOLY AND RIGHT IN THE WORLD, NO! DO NOT REST THERE. YOU WILL FIND DEATH! HOLY SHIT, WHY ARE YOU EVEN ASKING THIS, BY HEAVEN’S THUNDER, KEEP MOVING!”

Taniya turns to the rest of the group, rubbing her ears as if to clear them. “Yeah, I don’t think this is going to be a good place to rest. New plan.” The new plan turns out to be to pour the bluish-white liquid from the fate dial down Geth’s gullet and see what happens. What happens is that Geth coughs twice and gasps for air, as the wounds on her body mostly heal. The curse is lifted. Even her strength stats and previous permanent hit point damage restore themselves. Except for one caveat: One of Geth’s eyes goes white and dead and a scar opens over the eye. It is the same eye that was missing on the phantom who gave you the fate dial back in the swamps. Very mysterious. Mechanically, this has no effect. The effect of the potion is an instant raise dead spell (with the added benefits of the remove curse and stat loss). This means, though, that Geth is still at her -4 for most rolls. And she only heals 3d10 of damage. While Geth recovers from her untimely death, the others examine the new hallway. It is described as such by Gary Gygax: The narrow passage widens to a landing and steps that funnel out to the south as they ascend. The six steps are made of onyx, pink marble, lapis, black marble, serpentine (golden), and malachite, and upon the fourth step is a bronze key. The walls of the foyer are composed of untarnished and gleam-ing copper panels set between rare woods inlaid with ivory. The 30-foot-high ceiling is silver, formed so as to reflect and multiply light within the place. The steps end before a pair of tall mithral doors joined together by a cup-shaped concavity with a keyhole in the middle of it. The doors have no visible handles, hinges, or other fixtures. I’ve added one more detail. Above the door, there is writing in eld elvish: Only Lords of Gold May Pass. The players try a lot of different things, but nothing seems to open the door or reveal another way forward. No secret doors are found, the steps don’t seem to react to anything. The key is odd: Ikbaldi tries to pick it up and becomes terrified of it, but Otto has no trouble. Otto tries both keys in the door, and gets lightning bolted down the stairs (think Timmy flying off the fence in Jurassic Park) twice. They call it a night before too long. Aftermath This session taught me some things about designing a monster. For the most part, The Harrower achieved what I wanted him to, but I adjusted him mid-combat because my original design made him too difficult to play. There were too many moving parts, too many things to keep track of. What I found was that it is great for monsters to have a lot of actions, but not good for them to have a lot of continuous abilities. It’s just not fun to play. Think about it this way. If you are a player, what is more fun in combat? Having a lot of options to choose from each turn, or having a lot of statistics to add up and keep track of each turn? I’m assuming most of you answered the former. It’s exciting when a monster has lots of potential answers to situations, whether it is multiple ways to attack (a monster that can do both ranged and melee, for instance), or spells to cast, or spell-like abilities to buff them up at critical moments or give players the slip. Monsters that vary their tactics are great, too, especially if it is unusual tactics, like running from players while laying traps behind it, or climbing up walls and ceilings to literally get the drop on players. For the most part, The Harrower fit this mold. His abilities allowed him to do things like cast darkness over an area, then attack within that darkness. That is interesting to players because it makes them rethink their strategies. Even his ability to break free from magical imprisonment is an example of this, and it played out in the above fight perfectly, adding tension and forcing the players to improvise at a critical moment. But some of his abilities I had built before thinking about this. For instance, his tendrils. Those were supposed to act like an aura ability, hurting everyone within five feet of them each turn and regenerating The Harrower’s life by a certain amount based on this. But in addition to this, he also had standard regeneration and frightful presence (making players roll to save against fear of him each turn). That was too much for me to keep track of and ultimately didn’t add much to the fight. So I ignored the tentacle ability and made it a legendary action instead, giving him the opportunity to activate it in a tight spot and again giving me options, rather than things to keep track of. Not enough damage was ever dealt to him to make it matter, but for ease’s sake I would also have removed the tendril’s ability to heal him and would have left that up to basic regeneration. Again, just makes for easier accounting. Just a little lesson, but one that I’ll remember. I do a lot of monster building for campaigns, but never for monsters of this level. My next campaign (a mix of Rise of Tiamet and Red Hand of Doom) hopefully gets to this level, though, and I’ll take these lessons with me. Anyway, that brings us to the party’s current condition: everyone here and alive, and healed after a round of healing from the Cleric—but low on spells, and out of time to rest. Next session will lead them to one of several possible endings—most of them disastrous for the party. We’ll see what happens, in Men of Visage Grim.

Post with 1 note S113 Journey Log: Tomb of Horrors: Long Live the Queen This is an ongoing series, detailing the adventures and happenings of five players running through the classic Tomb of Horrors, from the 1st edition of Dungeon and Dragons, converted to 5th edition.

We had one player missing from this session: Geth was on a cruise ship, sipping Mimosas. So his character went to group control. And Chad, of course, is dead. Lorelei is an NPC, and Ikbaldi’s player has been controlling her, as he was willing to keep track of her stats. This session was almost purely combat, start to finish. The woman revealed in the room at the end of last session declares herself to be Arrak’tonya, mistress of Acerak. Conversation reveals her to be mildly insane. She was a long ago mistress of Acereak whom Acerak turned into a mummy lord at her request, to “be with him forever.” At one point he was truly fond of her, but the power and mysteries he has discovered beyond the veil have driven most thoughts of her out of his mind. She continues to linger in his tomb, sometimes sleeping for decades while awaiting the return of his affections. She has grown quite demented in the meantime and is often confused about the time and place she resides in. More often than not, she believes that they are still living in the days of the D’arakur Empire, where Acerak was considered a lord. She sends the players on a little fetch quest, to get her water from what she says is a magic fountain deeper into the tombs. She indicates it can be found past the sword hallway. This little side quest is abandoned when the swords attack the players. They flee the hallway rather than fight. Ikbaldi gets an idea, then. “I want the crown,” she says, referring to the crown they found on the throne last session, and which they gave to one of the skeletons to wear. But the skeleton wearing it cannot remove it from its head. It tries so hard to obey the order that it actually pulls its head off. Still the crown remains. Then someone gets a bright idea to have the skellie touch the scepter to the crown. It touches the gold end (this is important) to the crown and the crown pops off.

Ikbaldi retrieves it and puts it on. And WHAM all the secrets of the universe are revealed to her. Well, not really. But the room suddenly appears brightly lit, and she knows that the crown will only come off her head if touched by the scepter. She also has control over the pillars’ ability to force those who touch them to float. She can stop the power from taking effect. Ikbaldi returns to the chamber of Arrak’tonya. She finds she cannot see inside (the crown blinds the wearer outside of this room), but she hears a raspy scream of rage from Arrak’tonya: “How dare a slave wear the trappings of royalty?!” Roll initiative. The Action Economy Arrak’Tonya is a legendary Mummy Lord, the first time I’ve gotten a chance to run a legendary creature in D&D 5th edition. This means she gets to take additional special actions at the end of other player’s turns. Different from attacks of opportunity and other reactions, these legendary actions have a profound impact on the fight, doing things like repositioning her, breaking grapples, stunning or blinding players, and allowing her free unprovoked attacks. Overall, I was skeptical about these actions when I first read about them. Frankly, they seemed overpowered. But in practice, they not only were a lot of fun, but far more balanced than I thought they would be, and fixed an underlying issue of D&D’s action economy and big-bads. Basically, legendary actions are a move on Wizards of the Coasts’ part to try and bring BOSS MONSTERS back into Dungeons and Dragons. At least as far back as D&D 3rd Edition/Pathfinder, D&D has been a game about action economy. Simply put, this means that the winner of a combat is the side which gets more actions. Okay, so this isn’t always strictly true. A level 18 Fighter can probably take on ten or fifteen Kobolds—except, think about how many dice that is for the DM to roll each turn. On fifteen dice, you are bound to roll a decent hit—probably even a critical or two. Even if all you roll is a d6 or d8 for damage, it adds up. And if the GM is clever, those kobolds will try to grapple, or drag the hero prone, or in some way give them further advantage over him. The fighter will probably still win such a fight, depending on when it comes in his adventuring day—but you can begin to see how a group of the right enemies, even low level enemies, can challenge him or even kill him. Actions grant advantage more than hit dice, damage rolls, or even magic spells—simply because they allow for more damage rolls and magic spells. That said, now take three or four decent enemies (say, a troll, an ogre, a ranged Drow, and a spellcasting hag) with a diverse set of abilities, and pit them against one high level fighter. Suddenly that fighter’s chances don’t look nearly as good, even if he is a good five or six levels above any one of those enemies. This is the situation most boss monsters find themselves in. No matter how powerful, a Supervillain simply doesn’t get enough actions in a turn to deal with a well-balanced party. Sometimes Pathfinder solves this problem simply by giving bosses lots of minions, to distract the players and waylay them. But this can lead to ungainly combats, and removes the whole premise of a big-bad who can tackle multiple players at once. Another solution Pathfinder uses is to allow its big-bads to exploit the same feats and special classes as the players, to create gamebreaking combinations which give them tons of extra attacks and actions, or lots of passive actions which take the place of attacks. The problem with this though, is inherent—these gamebreakers are also available to players. The game, then, becomes “who can build the most OP character?” Pathfinder frankly encourages this, to the point where many modules assume players are doing it, and are punishingly difficult to newbies who may not understand how all 7,000 feats and magic spells potentially interact with each other. Fourth Edition D&D tried a different approach. Here, actions and classes were incredibly simplified, and getting extra actions was rare and very controlled. The idea was that if the players can’t do get more actions, it at least limits them to what they have. Then all bosses were boosted to have ridiculous hit points, sometimes in the thousands. Sure, players still had more actions than a boss, but that boss had seven times their hit points, so they could survive long enough to still make a battle against a single big-bad tough. Fifth editions fix is the legendary actions. They are nicely applied only to big-bads, and they serve as an elegant solution to loading an arena with minions or downsizing what players can do. By making these actions varied and useful, big-bads can now simulate a battle against multiple enemies. They don’t need hundred of hit points or confusing class builds. You simply design a handful of extra actions which seem to fit with their character and suddenly you’ve got a very deadly monster on your hand. All this was illustrated during the battle with Arrak’tonya. I’m not going to run through the entire combat. The players do eventually beat her, though not without taking heavy damage. Some of the cooler moments… Geth’s psychic critical, Arrak’tonya curses him

Geth is one of the first characters in the fight, charging Arrak’tonya alongside Otto’s skeletons. The blonde rogue’s first hit is a critical hit, with sneak attack (for the skeletons surrounding the queen). With that psychic dagger, that’s 6d10 on a crit, plus fourteen d6 for the sneak attack. This starts off the fight significantly in the adventurers’ favor, as Geth deals 76 damage to Arak’tonya, taking her immediately down to half life. Of course, now she’s pissed, and she spends her Legendary Action to immediately strike Geth hard, cursing her with Mummy Rot (she can’t heal hit points) and dealing tons of necrotic damage. Because Legendary Actions come at the end of player turns, it comes back to Arak’Tonya’s turn before Geth gets to go again, and she unleashes her full wrath on the rogue, killing her. It’s the first player death (not related to a player quitting).





Geth is one of the first characters in the fight, charging Arrak’tonya alongside Otto’s skeletons. The blonde rogue’s first hit is a critical hit, with sneak attack (for the skeletons surrounding the queen). With that psychic dagger, that’s 6d10 on a crit, plus fourteen d6 for the sneak attack. This starts off the fight significantly in the adventurers’ favor, as Geth deals 76 damage to Arak’tonya, taking her immediately down to half life. Of course, now she’s pissed, and she spends her Legendary Action to immediately strike Geth hard, cursing her with Mummy Rot (she can’t heal hit points) and dealing tons of necrotic damage. Because Legendary Actions come at the end of turns, it comes back to Arak’Tonya’s turn before Geth gets to go again, and she unleashes her full wrath on the rogue, killing her. It’s the first player death (not related to a player quitting). Scarabs blocking the entrance

Another fun thing about this fight is it’s the first time in a long time I’ve really had a mage to play around with. Mummy Lords have some nice spells, and I try to use as many as possible this fight. One cool one is insect swarm, which essentially acts as a damage dealing wall. I theme mine towards the mummy, and have a swarm of flesh-eating scarabs pour from the walls. Ikbaldi tries to get Lorelei in a position to attack the Queen of the Damned, and Lorelei takes quite a bit of damage as she is eaten alive.





Another fun thing about this fight is it’s the first time in a long time I’ve really had a mage to play around with. Mummy Lords have some nice spells, and I try to use as many as possible this fight. One cool one is insect swarm, which essentially acts as a damage dealing wall. I theme mine towards the mummy, and have a swarm of flesh-eating scarabs pour from the walls. Ikbaldi tries to get Lorelei in a position to attack the Queen of the Damned, and Lorelei takes quite a bit of damage as she is eaten alive. Ikbaladi grappling Arrak’tonya only to have her disappear

This one is fun for a couple reasons. First, Ikbaldi makes a brave run through the scarabs, barrels into Arrak’tonya, and successfully pulls off a grapple—which seconds later she uses a legendary action to escape, turning into sand and blowing past the scarabs to the middle of the pillared chamber.





This one is fun for a couple reasons. First, Ikbaldi makes a brave run through the scarabs, barrels into Arrak’tonya, and successfully pulls off a grapple—which seconds later she uses a legendary action to escape, turning into sand and blowing past the scarabs to the middle of the pillared chamber. The dog returns, Arak’tonya forces Otto and Taniya to kneel

One thing the players had forgotten about was that damn lich hound they still hadn’t killed. Since they had taken a long rest between now and the last time they fought it, I gave it some hit points back and had it charge them now, in the midst of the fight. It focused on Taniya, trying to pull her prone (which activates a special attack for it). Arrak’tonya decided to help out, using a low level spell (command) to force Taniya and Otto to kneel. Otto instantly ordered her skellies to gang-pile over her as an undead shield, but Taniya was left defenseless for the pup’s jaws. Lorelei helps keep her alive, by using her charm powers to stun the dog until Taniya can recover.





One thing the players had forgotten about was that damn lich hound they still hadn’t killed. Since they had taken a long rest between now and the last time they fought it, I gave it some hit points back and had it charge them now, in the midst of the fight. It focused on Taniya, trying to pull her prone (which activates a special attack for it). Arrak’tonya decided to help out, using a low level spell (command) to force Taniya and Otto to kneel. Otto instantly ordered her skellies to gang-pile over her as an undead shield, but Taniya was left defenseless for the pup’s jaws. Lorelei helps keep her alive, by using her charm powers to stun the dog until Taniya can recover. Arak’tonya is defeated by Ikbaldi, gives him a contagion

Ikbaldi ended up being the one to take Arak’tonya down, through a combination of extreme damage rolls and the clever use of Lorelei to give Ikbaldi flanking bonuses. But Arak’tonya, before disolving into a pile of ash and dust, got the last laugh: gripping Ikbaldi’s skull she pronounced the spell contagion, setting a disease of blindness upon the barbarian. Fire and Shadow The battle has some serious consequences, aside from Geth being dead and Ikbaldi blind. One thing I forgot to mention last post was that Ikbaldi asked Lorelei about the axe she retrieved from the trap. Lorelei told her only that it was evil, and looked away. Now that axe is glowing bright red in Ikbaldi’s hands, and her hands are stained blood red to the wrists—but not with actual blood. She does not want to let go of the axe. She stumbles around blindly with it, until she runs face first into a pillar and starts to float up towards the ceiling. Otto, inside her pile of skeletons, suddenly sees the glowing gem (still in the ribcage of one of the skeletons) close to her face and feels what Lorelei felt—it is a gem that grants wishes! Some awesome roleplaying happens here. Otto’s player is well aware this is most likely a vicious trap. But Otto, the character, would never give up an easy enticement for power. She reaches out and grabs the gem, then makes her wish: “I wish to have Acerak’s secrets of immortality.” There is a brief pause. Then Otto feels intense pain as the skin on the arm holding the gem begins to melt away, leaving the white bone skeleton of her hand and arm. It remains functional—she is still able to grip with it, and it doesn’t seem weaker then usual, but that isn’t the end. As soon as she lets go of the gem, I start to count down from 10… 9… 8… 7… Otto doesn’t understand. She asks if she has let go of the gem. I say yes. She hesitates. “I keep not touching it,” she says. “Great,” I says. “3… 2… 1…” There is an explosion like a small nuclear device has gone off. Well over a hundred damage is dealt to Otto and her skeletons as the gem bursts into a tall pillar of black flame. Taniya, just finishing killing the Lich Hound, feels the heat of the blast and throws up a hand to block her face. When she lowers them, she sees a dull glow and, where Otto once was, a familiar crater and pile of bones. Taniya thinks fast. She darts through the scarabs, which are just beginning to dissipate after their mistresses’ demise, and grabs the time turner from Geth’s pouch. She says the magic words (there is a brief moment of horror when I ask her what they are and she cannot remember… then I tell her it’s okay, we’ll assume the character remembers them) and time resets six seconds. The Lich Hound is about to leap at Taniya’s throat, Lorelei rushing to her aid. Ikbaldi is just slamming into a pillar. Otto is crouched in the circle of skeletons, just about to let go of the gem. 4… 3… 2… 1… Otto gives a sharp mental command to her skeletons to get off of her. Then she pulls free the gem from the ribcage and throws it… with her Strength stat of three (remember the poison gas she was weakened by in the altar room?) It bounces off a pillar and lands barely fifteen feet away. The explosion rocks the room and Otto only survives because the skeletons in front of her block her from the worst of the heat. But the necrotic shock wave of the blast knocks her flat on her ass, unconscious. Only one skeleton was outside the blast range, and it stares at her body impassively. Again Taniya kills the hound, and then stares at the fate dial as the phantom shadow on it touches midnight. The dial lets out a low gong and cracks—not quite in half, but enough that Taniya can see something glowing inside it. Before she can do more, there comes the sound of a deeper gong from somewhere in the tomb. At first Taniya thinks it is connected to the dial, but Lorelei lets out a low moan, her fully blue eyes (no pupils on this fey creature) turning a darker shade in her distress. “The Harrower comes,” she says. As if in response, shadow suddenly gathers at the entrance to the pillar room and they all hear a distinctive scraping sound, like blades being drawn across a stone floor. Next time, Harrowed. We are coming close to the end, now.

Post S112 Journey Log: Tomb of Horrors: Traps, Traps, Traps Part 3 This is an ongoing series, detailing the adventures and happenings of five players running through the classic Tomb of Horrors, from the 1st edition of Dungeon and Dragons, converted to 5th edition.

A quick note on this session—This is a three player session. Chad has left the group, and Otto’s decisions were played out by whomever called them out first. Also, this session was almost three times as long as our normal sessions, so I’ve broken things into three parts. The four female adventurers emerge from the dark tunnel onto another stairway. Charlie’s Angels descend it to make it to a hallway which branches off where four paths meet. The options are North, East, or South (West is the way they came). Geth is quick to discern there is a pit trap where the four paths converge, and they avoid it by hugging the wall and jumping past it at the corners. North is the first way they go. This takes them to a tricky combination of a fake door concealing a secret door in the wall. They figure it out after some genuine attention is spent on the matter and enter a new hallway. The floor of this hall is covered in mosaic triangles, creating a disorienting pattern of meaningless color. The mosaic pathway ends at the limit of your vision and changes direction suddenly, heading under a closed door. The hallway continues on past where it branches off, towards another door. This one has been torn from its hinges, and dried blood lines the ground where it once sat. Beyond it a stairway ascends into darkness. I spruced up this room a little bit from the original (the mosaic path is mine), but the basic idea is the same. If players go past the closed door, they find another hallway, ending this time in a set of double doors. Opening the double doors triggers what is maybe the most deadly trap in the dungeon, aside from the Demon Face at the beginning. A powerful sleep spell (Con save 16) hits all the players, and those who succumb to it cannot be shaken awake for 2d6 rounds. And while the players who avoided this are running around, trying to help their companions, they hear a loud crash coming from further down the hall. A round or two later, the source of the sound arrives: a behemoth statue of an elephant on rollers, which moves with inexorable purpose down the hall, crushing anything that passes underneath it for 600 damage, no save. The juggernaut (as it is named in the text) will chase the players throughout the dungeon, only stopping at staircases (which it cannot climb). It is intelligent enough to pull back behind a corner, though, and resume its chase as the heroes come down from the stairs. It has well over a thousand hitpoints, and an AC of 30 or something ridiculous. Essentially, it is immune to damage, though some spells may be able to stop it, change its form, or destroy it (though the GM could rule that it has some sort of deflection spell permanently cast on it, as I wouldn’t put that past Acerak). The most immediate way to defeat it is to lead it to a pit trap and lure it inside, trapping it. It cannot spider climb, thank the gods. My players examined the stairway first, probably because the journal they had found a few sessions ago had mentioned that the author was trapped in the staircase, while his wife was crushed to death by the “elephantine juggernaut” below. Sure enough, at the top of the stairs they find the body of the journalist. In his belt is a +2 adamantine longsword (non magical), and resting by his hand is a fine longbow with four Magical Light Arrows (+3 magic arrows that glow slightly when held by a non-evil aligned character, and which… well, we may get to it in a future session). He also was writing with blood on the wall: “The way forward is in the Floor.” He clasps a stone triangle in his hand that fits into a missing part of the mosaic. The party takes this little encounter a step further, by having Otto cast “speak with dead” on the body. With a sigh, the spirit of the adventurer (I’ll be damned if I can remember his name, but let’s call him “Trevor”) reenters the earthly domain and speaks. “What do you wish of me?”

They have three questions to ask before the magic fades. “Who were you, in life?” Geth asks. “I was and am Trevor. My soul cannot depart this plane because I was killed by the Harrower. I came here seeking secrets and found death.”

“Can you give us any advice on how to proceed?” Otto asks.

“Do not proceed. Turn back. Go home. Only death awaits you here.” “Is there something we can do for you?” Geth asks. “No… wait… yes… bring my wife’s body back to the surface. Free her soul from this prison.” There is a pause. “If you must go on in the tomb, there is a grotto to the East of the four-way hall. One lives there, a fey spirit, who can aid you. Beware the mistress of Acerak. I must rest now…” Geth and Taniya argue for a bit over the magic arrows. I mean, it’s a genuine argument. Geth currently has a psychic dagger, a magic jar, Chad’s talent pipes, and the time turner. Now he grabs the magic arrows, even though they mysteriously glow in Taniya’s hands. This pushes Taniya too far. “It doesn’t even make sense!” she complains. “They glow in my hands, they are clearly meant for me.” “You don’t know that,” Geth counters. “Maybe they will explode in your hands.”

Eventually, it ends up that Taniya gets the bow and two of the arrows. It is a tough compromise, one Taniya is not fully satisfied with, but you cannot argue treasure with a rogue. At this point, with the hint about the floor, and the triangle mosaic piece, I feel most parties would have ventured on through the closed door. My party is smarter: they do search the floor, and miss finding the place to put the triangle piece, but instead of pushing on through the door, they decide it may be a trap and go to explore another branch of the cross-roads hallway first. The Siren’s Sigh The party one by one leaps over the pit and proceeds east. The hallway turns a corner and enters a misty cavern, the fog so thick they cannot see more than five feet in front of them. Oddly, the beautiful sound of birdsong seems to come from inside the mist. “That’s not birdsong,” Geth mutters. “It’s celestial fey, the language of the fair folk.” He lets out a sound like a short tune on a pipe, and the birdsong stops. Then words pour from the mist, words only Geth can properly understand: Come to me.

“Wait here,” Geth says to Taniya and Otto. “Ikbaldi—you’re with me. Don’t let me out of your sight.” The two women venture into the mists. They are barely fifteen feet in when they become completely turned around, confused as to which way they were going, and which they had come from. “Here,” Geth says to Ikbaldi. “Tie this rope to your waist, and I’ll tie the other end to mine, so we don’t get separated.” Then she calls out to Taniya, asking her to throw in a grappling hook, and they will grab that to always be able to make their way back. They can’t see the fat elf, but they can her from beyond the mist’s reach as she gives the okay to the plan. A second later, they both completely forget what they are doing. The mists here have a special property of reducing a character’s intelligence score to 2, making them essentially idiots—in the most honest sense of the word. With barely any intelligence left to them, characters struck by this affliction act purely on instinct, barely able to make a basic decision between one course of action over another, and totally unable to bring any sort of reasoning or logic to bear on such a decision. So when the grappling hook lands at their feet, neither Ikbaldi or Geth have any desire to pick it up, or any notion of why it is in front of them in the first place. Instead, they follow the birdsong coming from a long ways off. They wander through the mists until they come to the entrance to a cave… The grotto is a small cave in the mists, about twenty feet deep. When entered, they see it is filled with a bio-luminiscent moss which gives the whole cave a glow as if hit by the light of a sunset. Growing from the moss is vegetation and flowers of all sort, so that the whole cave resembles a lush jungle. Wonderful smells of honeysuckle and rich pine scent fills your nostrils. Very near the entrance, under a large frond, sits two sacks, one large and one small, that seem tight to bursting with whatever their contents are. Near the back of the cave is a cool pool of water, across which lie several stepping stones leading to a small island, on which reclines a beautiful woman with fine features and jet black hair. Her eyes are fully and completely blue, with no pupils. She seems to startle as you enter, and she raises herself deftly from the water’s edge, but still maintaining the deliberate grace of a cat stretching. “Who are you?” she asks. “Have you come to rescue me?” This is all essentially from the original dungeon, just with some descriptive touches from me. The way the room works is that the Siren (the fey creature at water’s edge) is a good aligned Siren who will help the players if rescued. Rescuing her involves specifically asking her to join the party and follow them from the cave. At this point, the magic keeping her here weakens and she can go freely. In the meantime, though, she doesn’t know anything about why she is here or how to break the spell and will become confused if asked. Furthermore, if either of the sacks is touched before the Siren is led from the cave, she will disappear forever. The contents of the sack are not that great—clearly this was designed to touch rogues a lesson. Also, the Siren happens to be the only creature who can reverse the idiocy effect caused by the mists, as she has a “intelligence” touch that can cause or reverse lowered Intelligence. I was honestly not sure how this would play out. Geth is a little grabby—so there was a good chance she would go for the sacks. Then, too, there was every chance they would end up attacking or angering the Siren, leading to a battle with her. In either case, not only would the potential companion be lost but so would their opportunity to heal their intelligence scores, leaving them fairly useless for the rest of the dungeon and utterly defenseless against intelligence saves. So I was genuinely pleased when both Ikbaldi and Geth got into the roleplaying of the moment. They both played “dumb” well, only steering the conversation based on their basest observations, and eventually stumbling into the question of “will you come with us?” based solely off of their fascination with her beauty. The result was that she joined the group and restored their intelligence, then took them safely back through the fog. While all this is going on, Taniya is visited by an old friend: the Lich Hound they didn’t kill appears out of thin air and latches onto her neck, bringing her down to the ground. Otto quickly casts a spell, driving the beast off, but once again they fail to killed it, and Taniya is left badly wounded. So by the time Geth and Ikbaldi appear out of the mists with their new friend, Taniya is ready for a long rest. The party agrees to take what will be their last safe long rest in the tombs, spending eight hours healing up, regaining spells, and listening to the stories of the Siren. She remembers being kidnapped long long ago, centuries ago, and has been set in some version of the tombs ever since. A few times she has come close to escaping with a group of adventurers, but they always die before they can make it out, and Acerak places her back in her grotto. This time, she is determined things will go differently. She warns them of the juggernaut and tells them where the mosaic tile they have fits, which will lead them further into the tomb. She also fills them in on dangers and traps they’ve avoided thus far—just a fun way for me to tell my players what they missed. She tells them of a room with a four-armed gargoyle, and a trap which lures people to their death via a passage to the Elemental Plane of Fire. Ikbaldi also discovers that th