Lamentations in Niðwundor 02: The Zappening

My players are still exploring the Tomb of the Serpent Kings. We've delved a little deeper and discovered some interesting facts about the eldritch idiot savant. When the session ended I really didn't feel very good about it. We ended the session and began making replacement characters about 2 and half hours into the session. I'm not sure if that was my usual anxiety. Later on I let up a bit on myself. Hopefully my players are going to be much, much more paranoid about traps. Maybe someone will bring a ten foot pole.

My map got a little bigger and I redrew the rivers (so now they don't defy physics).

PCs

• Dave, rogue
• Gaewyn Verdect, fighter
• Goldie, eldritch idiot savant
• Jerry, tinkerer
• Loradiel, elf

Rations Used: 3 Goldie, 1 everyone else

Light sources used: Flask of lamp oil, 1 candle's turn (11 turns remaining).

Treasure Recovered: A Silver Icon of a scowling snakeman (50sp) and two decorative/functional Polearms (30sp each).

Our heroes return to town and picked up some stalwart adventurers from the Noxious Delights tavern. They travel over the hills to the Tomb and spend the night outside the tomb uneventfully. In the morning they investigate the wooden caskets they'd found. After finding nothing in the caskets and remarking on the five dead bodies spread between the false king's tomb and the shrine to the snakemen's god, they continue down the passage beneath the statue.

Gaewyn crawls down underneath the statue first and notices figures standing beyond in the dim light. He confers with his comrades and moves forward. Entering a hallway lined with six statues of snakemen warriors, they note that the second statue in the line is tilted. Jerry investigates the tilted statue and finds that it is connected to a secret door. They turn the statue and open up a secret door which leads into another room. In said secret room they find grody rotting furniture, two polearms, and a delightful silver icon of an angry snake-man worth 50sp (Room 10).

With their newfound loot in tow, they check out where the hallway led. They find an octagonal room with a well in the center and find a passageway leading out to their right. Gaewyn approaches the well and a crawling claw mummy fragment leaps out at him. Loradiel runs over to help him and another mummy fragment manages to leap out onto him. A combat ensues with people attempting to wrench the mummy fragments off of themselves or off of each other or trying to slice, sunder, and stab the mummy forearms. One mummy fragment is eventually battered and broken on the floor between Dave's feet. While the other manages a choke-hold on Gaewyn (dealing him 4 damage). The last one is finally wrenched away by Loradiel and thrown to the well while Jerry sliced it with his polearm. The fragment sinks into the well, lifting its middle finger towards the heroes as its farewell (100xp/5).

After the excitement, the party examines the room full of clay statues that leads from the octagonal room. Jerry methodically smashes statue each statue until he comes to the last one. When he breaks the final statue, he notices with unease that its tiles weren't steady. Upon examination, however, he realizes that it is a trap door (rather than his swift death).

Loradiel, Gaewyn, and Jerry venture down into the trap door and discover a secret passage to another room. They open the door and see a very large room supported by pillars. They can see to the other side of the room, but the ends of the room to the left and right remain in darkness. They can hear the bats roosting above in the dark ceiling. They see on the floor broken bits of shaped stone. Suddenly, they hear the dragging of a heavy chain across the stone floor. Spooked, Jerry closes the door.

Curious, Goldie asks about going into the room. His comrades equip him with a candle and shove him out the door, informing him his doom is on the other side. (Worth noting that Goldie had no spells and no weapon -- only his candle) He walks into the room and hears the rattling chain and comes face to face with a large lizard's head. Staring into the eyes of the beast, he feels pinpricks all over his body, his eyes glaze over, and his blood rushes in his head feeling a pressure change. However, he manages to shrug off whatever was affecting him (by rolling a 20 on his save). Disconcerted, the basilisk leaves him alone. Goldie begins searching throughout the room carrying his candle, calling out to the others what he sees. Intricate and life-like statues of goblins, humans (?), spiders, and bats. In his searches throughout the room, he finds the basilisk's tail and attempts to stroke it. The basilisk, however, isn't feeling it. The basilisk slaps Goldie to the ground, but Goldie is only bruised (minimum damage). The basilisk turns to glare at him once more, but Goldie simply gets up to leave (another natural 20 on his Save vs Paralyze).

Goldie rejoins the party as the luckiest man alive. Dave enters into the basilisk chamber and sneaks along the wall to his right through the darkness past the edge of the room and discovers two doors and a stairwell. One of the door is made of many stone snakes with no clear means of opening or entrance. He then comes back and reports his findings to the party.

The party returns to the octagonal chamber (Tomb Atrium) and decides to begin opening doors clockwise around the atrium. They begin with the first door to the left of the hall they'd first entered from (Room 12). Jerry checks the door for traps and finds none. Gaewyn opens the door and the party sees an electrum disc (they might estimate is worth quite a bit) set above a stone coffin. They begin walking through the passage way and halfway through Gaewyn steps on a pressure plate, triggering a trap. A bolt of lighting from the electrum disc zaps all the party, except Goldie who's nursing his bruises in the atrium, killing all of them. Goldie drags the party away from the dungeon and back to town over the next few days.

Nearly all of the party is dead within three and a half hours of entering the dungeon.


Supplemental Reflective Notes that are obvious but I felt were worth repeating:

• Constantly be refreshing your memory of what lies ahead, even if you've already read it twice.
• Know marching order, PC positions, what they're doing and what's in their hands.
• Be prepared to maim and kill characters.
• Always consider NPC motives & wants