Tomb of The Serpent Kings Part 9

After their last delve into the Tomb of The Serpent Kings, the party was flush with silver and confident that they had explored almost all of the long-forgotten underground complex. Yet after unintentionally releasing a succubus into the world, the party was not in any great rush to return.

Six months went by and winter had arrived at Bebbanburg Keep. The adventuring season was effectively over. But the costs of living in the Keep, and the party’s own excesses, had piled up quickly. The first snow of the year was on the ground and the party found itself in debt to the Merchant Guild Bank with no way of paying for food or rent in the coming weeks.

[DM Note: In previous sessions, we have been rolling on the WTF Did I Do Last Night carousing table collectively, but the first result sounded specifically personal so all six Players rolled individually this time. Maul the dwarf avoided contracting a venereal disease only by the grace of his dwarven fortitude, while Sister Cletus had a nonspecific but nonetheless disturbing romantic encounter with a pig. The halfling mage Belladonna awoke one morning in a stranger’s house wearing her gambison . . .and nothing else. The ranger/thief Farcaan spent three days in the stocks on a charge of drunk and disorderly, while both the mage JD and fighter Eefje found themselves paying steep fines for various run-ins with the authorities in charge of maintaining order in the Outer Baily.

There was also the mundane cost of living (10sp/week x Level), and a payoff to the father of Kit the lantern bearer who was cut to ribbons by a brutal blade trap.]

With no honest way of earning coin, the six adventurers set out one last time for the Tomb of The Serpent Kings. Not for fame and glory this time, but just to pay their bills.

Entering once again by way of the hidden path below the roots of a gnarled old tree they moved down into the Goblin Warrens. They spent some time sifting through the muck of the Goblin Farm where they recovered a handful of stinking coins and eventually had an encounter with the tentacled mushroom creatures they had fought the last time they were here. The creatures remembered the party well and backed off cautiously. The party decided to leave the area rather than pursue them. Mushroom monsters rarely yielded any treasure worth having. Before leaving though the two magic users gathered a sack full of the blue mushrooms know as dungeon cucumbers. The Witch had told them they were useful for curing paralysis and ordered them to recover some samples.

Heading north the party entered the Basilisk Hall as quietly as they could, ears alert for any sign of the creature that had been such a problem for them on previous visits. But the hall was unnaturally quiet. No heavy breathing in the dark. No clink of chains being dragged across the stone-flagged floor. Now more alert and paranoid than ever, the party hugged the south wall and scuttled westward.

A figure began to resolve itself at the edge of the party’s torchlight. It was broad-shouldered, wielded a heavily notched blade, and blocked the passage leading west. As it raised it’s head the veteran members of the party recognized their old adventuring companion, Alonzo Machete! The horrible wound that had ended his life, splitting him open from collar to crotch, had been crudely sewn closed with thick hempen twine as thick as a finger. On a chain around his neck hung a cold-iron key. Black ichor seeped from his ghastly wounds and an unearthly voice, like the howl of a tormented spirit, forced its way past his stiff and desiccated lips.

“YOOOUUUU . . .LEEEEFFFT. . .MEEEEEEEeeee!”

A great wind as from an unholy crypt swept through the hall creating a horizontal dust devil as a spooky light began to glow behind the party’s former comrade. The thing that had been Alonzo screamed like a banshee, the sound visibly distorting the air before it. The stone floor buckled and cracked as five skeletal warriors clawed their way out of the ground.

The party was dumbstruck but had the wherewithal to sheath their blades and those who had them unhitched maces from their belts. This was not their first skeleton dance. Apparently ready for anything, Farcaan launched her grapnel hook at the key around Alonzon’s neck and by some miracle [a Natural 20] snagged the key and ripped it from its chain. 

Undead Alonzo unleashed a flurry of blows upon Maul and Eefje, but the two warriors kept up a solid defense and emerged unscathed. Cletus moved out into the open wielding a holy relic and invoked her patron, St. Thomas. Three of the skeletons exploded instantly. Knowing that her elven bow was useless in this situation Farcaan readied her trusty shovel as the mages began preparing spells. 

Combat got crazy. Belladonna cast Summon Cube under Alonzo, dropping him into a deep pit while JD opened a portal to hell engulfing several of the skeletons in an acidic miasma that drove one of them into a killing frenzy against one of its own. Undead Alonzo clawed free of the pit and summoned more skeletons with his unearth howl. Another pit appeared beneath his feet. A Web spell was hurled at his face to stop him summoning more. Effje dispatched three skeletons at once in an explosion of violence that left the rest of the party stunned. 

Finally, as Undead Alonzo tore the sticky webbing from his face and began clawing his way out of the pit again, Maul, Effje, and Farcaan (armed with her trusty Spade of Smashing) dogpiled onto him and beat him to death. A second death. Killed him dead for sure again!

[DM Note: this fight was an inadvertent cakewalk for the party, though the Players were certainly freaked out by the reappearance of Alonzo and the drama it evoked at the table cannot be understated. So definitely a success on that count. The combination of clever spells and naked violence showed me that I will definitely have to up my DM Tactics game if I wish to inflict actual damage on the party in the future. A few skeletal archers or a couple of flying monsters would have dramatically changed how things worked out.]

The party was fairly certain that the key they had recovered from Undead Alonzo would open the locked treasure vault at the other side of the dungeon. But the unexplored territory was near to hand and they could not resist. Ahead of them lay two doors. A mundane stone door in the north wall and a door to the west carved to resemble a multitude of entwined snakes. One of the snakes was missing. JD had a small stone snake recovered several delves earlier in his pack. Without hesitating he fit the small carved serpent into the door which immediately became animated and slithered up into the ceiling, revealing a musty old throne room lit by eery purple lights. The walls were a red marble laced with gold and carved to resemble the scales of a snake. The throne was constructed for someone much larger than a human. 8 small mirrors of exquisite craftmanship were arrayed around the throne, reflecting and multiplying the purple light. Obviously, they stole these.

Perhaps unwisely, JD pulled himself up onto the throne despite the protests of some of the other party members. For a brief moment, he felt an unquenchable desire to rule over others and dominate all the land! In his mind’s eye, his trusted companions suddenly looked weak and malleable -potential minions to do his bidding. And then it passed.

[DM Note: save vs Mind Control or desire lordship or conquest.]

It did not take Farcaan long to discover a secret door in the north wall. It did take some time for Farcaan to muster the courage to open it, enter the small chamber behind the door, and then open another secret door leading to a large Ingredient Storage Room beyond.

Eventually, though, the brave Shovel Knight crept quietly into the storage room where she marveled at the wealth she saw represented before her. She also heard absent-minded humming coming from an adjacent room and froze in her tracks. The stealthy halfling Belladonna padded up to ask what was taking Farcaan so long and promptly knocked over a crate containing fragile glass vials. The noise was incredible. The humming stopped immediately.

The rest of the party rushed into the storage room to see what was happening just as a massive figure bent itself to enter from the adjacent room. It looked like a dried human corpse (with fangs) fused to a snake’s tail at the waist and wearing tattered ancient robes. His eyes were red pinpricks.

“Hello, bipeds,” said the eight-foot-tall immortal snake-man wizard. He then introduced himself as Xiximanter, Wizard Supreme to his Exalted Emminence, Emperor Xaxiss. 

While the party’s level of anxiety spiked back up to Undead Alonzo levels and stayed there the entire time, they quickly figured out that Xiximanter was nuts. As far as he was concerned the Snake-man Empire still flourished on the surface world and these bipeds were barbarians visiting from the provinces. He asked for news and yarn was spun by the non-snake-people about how well things were going for the Empire. He casually tried to buy the magic users from the party (for his immortality experiments) and offered to pay well for any humanoids they might bring him in the future. He showed them his fungal-goblin experiment and complained about what poor test subjects goblins made. 

The TRASH MOB MINI I used for Xiximanter

The actually scary AF image of Xiximanter by SCRAP PRINCESS

There was one very tense moment when Xiximanter insisted on “validating” the party’s passes. The party had found serpent amulets months earlier that apparently acted as permission to be in the Tombs. Passes to Disney, if you will. Unfortunately, they only had enough for half of the party. Before Xiximanter could devour those unfortunate enough to not possess an amulet the party went on at great lengths about something called a “Groupon” that was a new fad in the empire. It allowed two guests to share a single amulet.

Horrible death: Avoided.

After some more very awkward small talk, the party departed with promises to return bearing spell components and victims for Xiximanter and made their way unmolested to the locked treasure vault that had thwarted them so many times before to loot the last bits (?) of treasure from the Tomb of The Serpent Kings. 

[DM Note: And that was how we ended ToTSK! Many thanks to Skerples of Coins and Scrolls for writing ToTSK, and to James Young of Ten Foot Polemic for his excellent carousing and emergent backstory tables. You guys were instrumental in the fun we had at the gaming table these past months.

I will do a “Final Thoughts” and summary post shortly.]

Tomb of The Serpent Kings Part 8

Haco was dead -slain by the giant stone skeleton. So the party blamed him for burning down the Slumbering Giant. Naturally. Problem solved.

Maul had met a shifty elf named Farcaan at the feast thrown in Haco’s honor and the two of them set off together for the Tomb of The Serpent Kings. They were joined by the apprentices of the Witch of Bebbenburg -JD (whom Maul had fought the stone skeleton with) and a young Halfling named Belladonna.

Being an apprentice to the witch Elsbeth Dupree is not an enviable post. She spends her time on the upper floors of her tower ingesting psychotropic drugs and reading the inscrutable messages written in the stars by long-dead gods. Her apprentices are restricted to the lower levels of the tower, scrubbing chamber pots and dusting moldering tombs that they are not allowed to read. Dupree barks instructions and insults at her apprentices via a series of Magic Mouth spells. They both wear mage-locked anklets that the witch assures them will fold them inside-out if they ever betray her or her secrets.

So taking a few days to possibly get killed in a snake-man dungeon sounded pretty good.

Also in tow was the young village girl Kit who had signed a one-month contract to carry the party’s torch.

[DM Note: This session saw us transition from B/X (LoTFP) to my Knave hack, GLAIVE. It took about 30 minutes to translate JD and Maul to Glaive. Effje and Sister Cletus’ players had to miss our last game of 2019 due to the flu. Ramen’s player decided to roll up a new character and her fiance joined us for her first game of D&D ever. She did great and was awesome!]

Judging by their map, the adventurers felt confident that they had explored most of the dungeon. But there were two large gaps on the second and third levels. Returning to the secret entrance located in the twisted roots of a mighty tree they returned to the dungeon via the goblin warrens. Where they encountered hostile fungiods that had either moved in after the goblins left, or grew out of the muck in the old mushroom farm. Not sure which. Either way, there were lots of teeth and whipping tentacles when they encountered in a pair of the creatures in the southeastern passage of the old warren. Retreating back to the old Goblin Guard Room, Maul threw down his caltrops in the doorway and readied his great axe. 

The first fungoid came to a painful stop as the caltrops bit into its feet, but the second was not slowed. JD and Farcaan attacked with sling and bow to no effect. Not wanting to waste her precious few spells, Bell drew cold steel and hacked at the closer fungoid. Maul finished the job, splitting the creature in two with his axe. Seeing this, the remaining creature fled in terror and the party moved on to a Domed Hall where they found the goblin crook they had used to fend off a Skeleton Jelly on a previous visit. They scooped that up in anticipation of encountering more of the creatures.

Once more the locked iron door of the Treasure Room mocked the party as they moved eastward through the old Slave Room and up into a very obvious Pit Trap. Leading the party, Maul failed to notice the suspicious loose tiles on the floor and then failed to move fast enough as they collapsed inward like sand through an hourglass, taking the dwarf with them. Maul’s pack took the brunt of the damage and for a moment his heart stopped upon seeing several skeletons impaled on the spikes all around him. Luckily they were just victims of the trap and not skeleton jellies. He looted a gold ring from one of the skeletons while the party prepared a rope to haul him out of the trap.

To the east they discovered a Yawning Chasm and wanted nothing to do with it, so edged back around the pit trap and headed into a Hallway that sloped upwards to the north where they ran into an actual jelly coated skeleton. They had the improvised skeleton crook ready and forced the skeleton jelly up into an old Ceremonial Room. There was a stone door to the east that appeared to be barred from the far side. There was also a dry fountain surrounded by stone benches and evidence that something had been pried off the top of the fountain at some point. Maul retrieved a serpent idol from his pack and slotted it into the top of the fountain. Hidden mechanisms began working inside the walls and the stone door ground open revealing, once again, the yawning chasm that no one wanted to get too close to.

[DM Note: My wife has been lugging around this goofy serpent-man idol since the second or third session, convinced it was the key to...something. So finally I let her have a win. But it’s really just a random piece of loot. The Stone Door is a replica of the Hammer Trap door from the first level of the dungeon. Except that it hammers its victims out into the chasm.]

As the party pushed the skeleton jelly through the doorway the hammer trap activated and sent it flying out into the dark void. Rightfully proud of themselves, the party headed west down into the Guarded Hall where they found two incredibly life-like snake-man statues flanking the entrance to the hall. Clearly, this was a trap!

[DM Note: It was not. But 15 minutes of elaborate scheming later . . .]

A dramatic and detailed plan of action was devised and put into action. Maul dove through the gap between the statues bracing himself for the inevitable blows. Bell prepared to cast Summon Cube to destroy the earth below the definitely living snake-men statues the moment they struck.

Just pretend the snake guys are made of stone.

Nothing happened. Maul dusted himself off and the party looked around.

Discovering a Shrine Alcove just around the corner from the statues, Maul entered with Farcaan. There was a statue mounted on a round pedestal. There were two holes in the base large enough to fit a pair of humans arms. But not being complete dummies Maul and Farcaan stuck the crook and the elf’s shovel into the holes. Rotating the statue clockwise caused dozens of large gold coins to pour out of the base, some of them rolling out of the room and into the Blade Trap Hallway.

[DM Note: They got lucky. Turning it counter-clockwise would have filled the room with poison gas.]

The ceiling of the Blade Trap Hallway is ridged like the gullet of a snake. This instantly raised the hackles of the party. No other parts of the dungeon had thus far looked like it might eat the party. So they sent Kit the lantern bearer to fetch the coins that had rolled that way. In seconds Kit was sliced into a dozen pieces. Her lantern shattered on the floor, briefly lighting the hallway with a spreading pool of burning lamp oil before plunging the party into total darkness.

[DM Note: Okay, first of all -you should always have more than one light source lit at any given time. Because if you don’t the DM is going to say, “roll a d4 -that is how many Turns it takes for you to blindly grope through your pack for flint, steel, and a torch,” and then start rolling for Wandering Monsters.

I didn’t think sending Kit down the “ribbed for no one’s pleasure” hallway was very nice. Though it was funny. What are child labor/endangerment laws in D&D anyway? I made a Morale roll to see if she would follow the obviously sketchy order and one of the players made a roll to see if she could dodge the trap. She did, and then she did not. So my Murder Hobos have killed a child now. Hurray for D&D?]

It took 30 long and terrifying minutes to get a torch lit. As the light finally caught, Farcaan saw two massive skeletal hands coated in orange jelly close over her face and gave a muffled shout as the skeleton jelly began crushing her skull. 

The party flew into action and freed Farcaan before too much damage was done and quickly got the crook around the skeleton’s neck. Seeing what the Blade Trap Hallways had done to Kit, they manhandled the skeleton in that direction. Chopping blades met indestructible skeleton jelly and in short order the party had accidentally disabled the trapped hall. But they still had a skeleton jelly to deal with.

[DM Note: I imagine the effect was similar to tossing a large rock into a clothing dryer. If you’ve never seen this you should go to YouTube right now. I will wait.]  

What followed was a smash-cut montage that would have made Edgar Wright proud. Sloping hall, fountain, idol, gears and pulleys, doors opening, skeleton shoved through doorway, hammer trap, skeleton disappearing into the murky void of the chasm, back to the Guarded Hall.

The party considered their options. No more treasure in the Shrine Alcove. Obvious danger in the Blade Trap Hallway. And a door to the unknown in the south wall. They opened the door.

The Summoning Room is a long, narrow room with a huge pile of junk stacked at the entrance.

[DM Note: I think the junk is actually supposed to be piled outside the door, in the Guarded Hall but I’m not sure, and I didn’t describe it until the party opened the door anyway, so it was inside.]

A huge pile of junk blocked the entrance and I told the players it would take 30 minutes to clear it and it would probably make a lot of noise. Instead, Bell cast summon cube which allows her to create or banish several cubic meters of earth. It's basically the Minecraft spell. A trench opened under the junk and it filled the hole, allowing the party to just step over it.

At one end of the room was a small altar containing some golden bowls and a wavy dagger with a huge emerald in its pommel. (+1 magic dagger). At the other end of the room, Bell saw a very attractive halfling in ragged travel clothing who smiled unsettlingly at her. Her ankle was chained to the floor and she seemed very nonplussed to see the party. 

Instantly suspicious the party kept their distance and began asking questions. Who was she? How did she get here? Etc. She was captured by the goblins, she thought the party was them coming back to kill her.

[DM Note: The goblins were actually terrified of her and it was they who piled the junk in the doorway, hoping to keep her in the room. She is actually a succubus summoned thousands of years ago by snake-men priests.]

Not getting the answers they sought, Maul stepped forward menacingly with his great axe in an attempt to intimidate the halfling woman. In doing so, he crossed the summoning circle that bound her and the manacles around her leg turned to dust and blew away. She thanked him then with a “POP!” she teleported into the Guarded Hall. 

JD was at the back of the party and thus closest to the demon. She morphed into a gorgeous human woman before his eyes as she charmed him, then reached out to caress his face, preparing to deliver her deadly kiss to regain her strength with his life-force. 

A great axe and a shovel crashed into her before she could. The two mighty blows did little more than amuse her. Licking a small spot of blood from her lips the demon smiled saying, “That wasn’t very nice,” as her eyes turned black and opaque. She teleported again, this time beyond the light of the party’s lantern.

A minor panic ensued and it was decided to get out of the tomb as fast as possible and by the shortest route. This would take the party through the Basilisk Hall but it was a risk they were willing to take. 

Moving as quickly as they could they passed through the Blade Trap Hallway, through a Vestibule, and into the Basilisk Hall, making for the secret door that Maul knew was in the south wall. They were almost to the door when JD felt his limbs stiffen and his mind slow as he began to turn to stone before his companion’s eyes. Not even slowing, Maul scooped the mage up and started running, extolling the rest of the party to do the same.

As they reached the door the basilisk came crashing out of the darkness, lashing out at everyone with tooth and claw. JD regained the use of his limbs just as Farcaan took a blow to the face that dropped her to the ground unconscious. Bell cast night sphere and a 40’ globe of darkness appeared that blinded everyone (though they could all see the stars of a distant galaxy twinkling on its inner surface). The party used the confusion of the blinded basilisk to make its escape back to the surface where they tended to the Farcaan.

The elf survived but she was badly mauled, (-1 Charisma, permanent). Catching their breath at the spooky taxidermy shack, the adventurers then started back to Bebbenburg Keep for a much-needed drink.