Game Night Nov 12th - Tomb of Horrors - Part 2

The Great Hall of Spheres

The party had just burst through yet another in a long gauntlet of difficult to navigate secret doors, only instead of an empty 10×10 chamber, this round door opens into a long wide hall similar to the entry hall. The walls are painte with scenes of humanoids holding, throwing, dribbling, batting, dunking, and sitting on various colors of spheres. The secret door through which they just entered the chamber was painted to look like a multi-limbed gargoyle clutching a large silver sphere.

Hexamelian Stabsencursen, first to poke anything, anywhere, anytime, unleashed a spear-trap that flew across the room and turned to mist as it struck the far wall, narrowly missing him. The next poke discovered an illusory sphere leading into a 5′ crawl-way, as did the third inspection. The final search revealed a narrow slot holding a scroll of Remove Affliction.

Thokk and Sharia decided to inspect one crawlspace, while Ria and Poppy checked out the other. Hex and Felipe kept watch in the great Hall, ready to help Thokk and Sharia followed a winding corridor that eventually led to a dead end. A search revealed nothing. A wild attack against the wall wedged the edge of thokks jagged axe into the concealed seam of a hidden door, and thusly, was the team able to gain entrance into the strange chapel of good. Trouble was brewing behind them, however, and Sharia insisted they return to help their comrades. It was a good thing she did. (Rule number 0.01 Never split the party.)

With Poppy in the lead, and Ria supporting, the pair crawled through their own space, and came to a room empty save three ornate chests. one was bound in gold, the next in silver, while the third was of wood and bronze. Ria waited patiently in the corner as Poppy chose between the three. As she lifted the lid of the chest she ultimately chose, a skeleton with wildly spinning scimitars burst forth and attacked. Poppy and the skeleton traded blows, but the spinning blades knocked her back, and the skeleton pushed her into the next chest, whiched sprang open, peppering her with a fusillade of magic black darts. Soon the final chest burst open when Ria was too close, and a swarm o tiny poisonous snakes began swarming up around her ankles.

Luckily Hex and Felip arrived on the scene. Hex cursed the skeleton and Felipe tried to block the darts, then took out the snakes. Poppy went down, but was healed by the cleric – then Ria wet down as the skeleton flew into a barrage of spinning blades and caught her in its attack. She went down, unconscious from the continuing poison of the snakes and the blades of the skeleton. Luckily Sharia and Thokk showed up in time for Sharia to lay her hands upon the cleric, healing her. Thokk meanwhile, charged the skeleton and with three now around the mighty skeleton, it was only a matter of time before its bones were crushed beneath the might of the Enemies of of the lich.

After they had defeated the skeleton and disabled the magic dart trap, they found a crystal ox containing a magic ring. Hex took the ring and the party decided to make camp right there in the room for the night. They also discovered a secret door in the floor of the chamber, which led back to one of the pits in the First Hall. After camping, they discovered they were low on water. At half rations, they could only camp once more before adverse affects set in.

The Chapel of Good seemed the next logical location to explore, so Thokk led them back to the entrance, and the party filed into the room, somehow unable to detect any over-riding feeling of good or evil, perhaps due to their unfamiliarity with the natural energies flowing through the world of D Erte at the end of time. Whatever the case, Ria and Sharia recognized the glowing blue altar at the front of the chamber was covered in symbols of deities of good. Later, after unleashing a charge of lightning by trying to loot the candlesticks, did Poppy notice the symbols were upside down.

By this time, Poppy and Felipe had opened the seats of the pews along each row and discovered literally thousands in gold and silver. At just this time Hex was poking his finger into an orange mist filled doorway. He pulled his finger back to find that the nail had been pruned and colored with metallic red paint, and even coated in an enamel hardener in a very professional manner. Even his finger itself seemed somehow younger, slender, more, dare I say it? – feminine than before. In other words, he could almost pass for a hand model ,should adventuring not wok out.

Thokk waited impatiently by the exit as Sharia set off a lightning trap, and Poppy and Felipe set off a gas attack by opening a pew too many, and Hex detected the evil aura of a curse in the misty doorway. They all suffered from the gas, though holding their breath may have saved a few from the debilitating gas. Each of them also got to scoop up 1d600 gold pieces from the open pew as they ran through. The party stood outside the door, watching the gas continue to spew forth from the front row of pews, filling the chapel – though not spilling into the crawlspace from which the watched and waited, wondering…