Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Day 4: Chalmaber's Crypt

Gnaurm finds the party sleeping in the sarcophagus room, wakes them up, and after some discussion, agrees to join and help them, for the time being.

In the morning, the party explores a room containing a basin full of water and four altars. Six larvae are sleeping in the basin. They awaken and attack the party. Injured, Gwindle drinks the potion they found in the furniture room, and it heals him.

The party opens a set of iron double doors and finds a tall, hairy, skeletal creature with a horned serpentine head inside, sealed within a triangle drawn on the ground in powder. He implores Utter and Gwindle to release him, but his manner of mental speech confuses them and they fail to strike a bargain. They close the doors on the demon and leave him there.

Searching the sarcophagus, the party finds four linen bundles and a jar. They open the jar and pour out a small octopus preserved in embalming fluid.

Unsure where to go next, the party searches the burnt-out furniture room again, and finds needle hidden by illusion that opens a secret door when Grabathor pricks his finger on it. Beyond the door is a hallway covered, floor and walls, with a thick, toxic carpet of black mold. Utter pokes at the mold with Darren's staff, and the mold swiftly destroys it, but not before they discover a halfling skull and some of the purloined goods from the furniture room hidden beneath the mold. Eventually, the party decides to wrap their boots in pieces of their cloaks and run across the mold as fast as they can.

Past the moldy hallway, the party descends more stairs and comes to a circular chamber with a labyrinth pattern on the floor, surrounding a small pit containing a skeleton. There is a man with a strange head injury next to the pit, and a wraith tracing the path of the labyrinth. Chumsalt soon discovers that trying to walk across the room without staying on the labyrinth path results in a violent blow from an invisible force. Strangely, the wraith approaches Chumsalt and casts Cure Light Wounds on him.

Identifying the wounded, incoherent man as Torvir's friend, the party has Darren cast Unseen Servant to snare him in a lasso. They try to drag him to the door, but the invisible force strikes him several times. The wraith heals him, but he's no longer conscious. When they leave the room with the body, the wraith screams and pursues them. Grabathor tries to fight the wraith with the dagger they found (now understood to be enchanted), but the wraith flies directly for Chumsalt, carrying the body. Utter races back to the pit to smash the skeleton, in the hopes that will stop the wraith, but it doesn't. Chumsalt throws the body into the mold, where its flesh is quickly consumed. Once the body is dead the wraith loses interest in it and floats back to its labyrinth.

Gwindle fetches an urn from the furniture room to keep the moldy bones in. Despite some mishaps, the party makes it to the hallway with the cursed ledge and the spike pit. Gnaurm falls into the pit when he attempts to cross, and Grabathor falls in after him in a botched rescue attempt, grievously injuring himself. The party waits until Gnaurm can heal him.

When Chumsalt tries to cross with the urn tied to his back, he slips, and the urn falls into the spike pit, shattering. Utter descends into the pit, avoiding the pressure plate gas trap, and collects as many of the bones as he can, along with the identifying necklace and bracers.

At long last, the party emerges from beneath the Tumulus of Chalmaber and follows Gnaurm back to Thantry, where they receive food and shelter, along with clothes, packs and boots to replace what was destroyed by mold, by Gnaurm's missionary friends. Darren identifies the necklace and bracers as magical items.

Accounting:
The party recovers most of the bones of Torvir's friend, along with his engraved bracers and silver necklace, and carries them in a large urn of negligible value.
The party identifies the bronze dagger they found as a dagger +1, and the liquid in the vial as a potion of healing, which Gwindle consumes.
Gwindle gains 1,369 XP.
Utter gains 1,069 XP and uses 1 bandage.
Grabathor gains 969 XP and loses 1 arrow and 1 token of Balder experimenting in the labyrinth room.
Gnaurm gains 869 XP and gives 5 of his torches to Darren, who uses them up.
Darren gains 869 XP.
Chumsalt gains 869 XP.
The party leaves one rope behind in the tomb.

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