session recap, 1/5/2020

CAST
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Pai Mei the Wu-Jen (7)
Biff the Fighter (6)
Clint the Duelist (4)
Assorted Henchpersons / Temporary PCs:  JoJo the Healer (5), Phil the Healer (5), Mary Lou the Entertainer (Acrobat) (5)

Pai Mei, Biff, Jojo, and Phil opened the secret door.  Beyond, a corridor headed east then south, opened a door, and entered an ancient laboratory.  The walls were lined with shelves of dusty jars, and tables were covered with perfumes and bones, and there were many small coffers scattered over the floor.  Three large vats sat in the middle of the room, each 7' across and 3' tall.  The first had filthy water, the second had clear water with half of a golden key at the bottom, and the third was filled with a gray pudding-like substance.  JoJo pulled Mary Lou's head out of his sack and resurrected her, as someone was needed to test the vats.  Her body reformed and Pai Mei gave her his cloak and a 10' pole.  "Thanks guys!  You're the best!  You'll never let me die in here!"

Mary Lou prodded the filthy water with the pole - it was just what it looked like, dirty water.  She then stuck the pole into the second vat of clear water, and it dissolved before her eyes - the second vat was filled with acid!  Pai Mei used his Ring of Stranger Things to levitate the key-half out of the vat and wiped it dry.

Mary Lou then poked the third vat with the remains of the pole - and the gray matter lurched out of the vat, reaching pseudopods towards her.  The party unleashed bows, laser rifles, and spells at the gray blob, and decimated it in short order.  In the bottom of the now-vacated vat was a second gold half-key.  Pai Mei levitated it out, connected the halves together, and they fused into a single key.

The party turned their attention to the various coffers.  They opened a few, getting small change and some cheap gems, and upon opening the third discovered it was full of poisonous snakes!  The snakes tried to bite Biff but missed, and JoJo and Phil's arrows soon took care of the thread.  They shook the rest of the coffers before opening, ignoring the ones that sounded snake-y, and gathered the remaining coins and cubic zirconiums within.

The party followed another corridor out of the room and down a set of stairs.  Mary Lou used a different 10' pole to probe ahead and discovered a 20' long pit trap, the pit bottom lined with spikes.  Pai Mei used the monocle of true seeing, and saw that the far end of the pit trap had a pressure plate.  He used the Ring of Stranger Things to pressure the plate downwards, and the spikes began shooting up at the ceiling, bouncing back down into the pit.  As each spike was fired, another took its place.  He continued to exert pressure until the pit began filling with spikes - eventually the weight of the spikes collecting on the floor was enough to keep the pressure plate held down.  The spikes slowly rose, filling the pit to near-floor-level before motion mostly stopped.  The party then walked across the spent spikes to the other side.

The corridor dead-ended.  Pai Mei once again used the monocle of true seeing, and found a secret door in the wall.  They opened it, and entered a room with a door on the wall and two large tapestries hanging from the ceiling.  Mary Lou used the pole to lift the tapestries, and saw nothing behind them.  She then opened the door, revealing a stone wall and a small hole - from which shot a spear, skewering her!  It was just a flesh wound, but as she pulled herself off the spear, the entire room began to vibrate, and the party fell to the floor.

Worried that the room was going to collapse, the party ran back outside.  Pai Mei paused to grab one of the tapestries and yank it down as he was running - and as soon as he gave it a firm yank, it liquefied into green slime, collapsing on top of him.  He was entirely dissolved in an instant, with not so much as a hair left behind to use for resurrection.  The only item that didn't dissolve was the crystal monocle of true seeing - JoJo carefully prodded it out of the mass of slime without getting on himself.

Mary Lou used the pole to lift the remaining tapestry as JoJo used the monocle to scan the room - there was a secret door behind it.  They quickly ran through, into a hallway, and down a flight of stairs.  At the end of the stairs the corridor made a crossroads, with corridors heading north, south, and east.  They explored east - it ended at a door, beyond which was a cavern filled with gold and silver mists.  They could only see a few feet in, due to the thickness of the mists.

They re-read the riddle, and couldn't find any reference to mists, so they returned to the crossroads and headed south.  It ended at another false door with a spear trap, which they handily avoided.  They then headed north, and the door there was real.  A corridor beyond headed north until it reached a door set in the east wall, and a stairway heading up.  They decided to investigate the door - behind, a corridor headed east, and ended at a set of double doors.

JoJo opened the double doors, and gas flooded into the corridor - the entire party fell unconscious in an instant.  They awoke a few minutes later, and stared in horror at the corridor beyond - a giant stone elephant on wheels had stopped only 10' from their location.  With a little more momentum, they would all have been squashed flat.  At a loss for where to go next, the party clambered over the elephant (nothing beyond but an empty room), and up the stairs (ended abruptly at a blank wall).

Unsure of what to do, the party reviewed the riddle, and as they did so a man rounded the corner - a duelist by the name of Clint, wearing a poncho and cowboy hat.  Mary Lou shouted "He should be one of my bosses!".  With no further discussion, Clint was a full party member.

The party went back to the misty room, and Clint walked into the mists.  In the center of the room was a crystalline grotto, and a woman stood in its center, with two sacks of stuff laying at her feet.

Clint:  "Hey... do you live here?"
Woman: "Maybe.  It's possible."
Clint:  "So you work for Acererak?"
Woman: "Oh, I don't think so."
Clint:  "What's in the sacks?"
Woman:  "I couldn't say."

From outside the room, JoJo shouted "Why don't you come with us?"  The woman said, "Oh thank goodness, an invitation.  Let's blow this place."  As she headed out of the room, the sacks dissolved into nothingness, disappointing Clint greatly.

Clint:  "So what's your name?  Misty?"
Misty:  "It is now!  I'm a siren.  I got tricked into sitting in that room for two thousand years.  I was on a blind date with Acererak, and blammo, stuck in a tomb."
JoJo:  "Do you want to come with us? We're exploring this place."
Misty:  "Oh hell yeah, you guys are my besties now."

They then returned to the door in the northward corridor, and Biff used the monocle to see what he could - there was a secret trap door in the floor right after the doorway.  He opened it, and they dropped down into a rough-hewn tunnel that led over one hundred feet to an iron door with three slots cut into it.

JoJo shone light through one of the slots, and peered through another, and saw a room full of stone pillars beyond.  Biff tried putting a dagger in one of the slots - the slot was a little bigger than the dagger's blade, and rattled around.  He then stuck his sword in - it was a perfect fit.  JoJo and Phil put their swords through as well, and the door slid open.  They retrieved their swords and walked into the room.

The room was enormous, and the ceiling was held up by dozens of pillars.  There were three doors in the north wall, the two on the sides glowing with blue light, and the one in the center glowing with violet light.  In the northwest corner of the room was a green devil face with a black opening for a mouth.  In the northeast was another devil face, this one with a bluish tinge.  Against the south wall was a silver throne on an ebony dais with a crown and scepter sitting on the seat.

The party opened the northwest door - inside was a table with a wooden sarcophagus atop it.  They opened the coffin, and a mummy lay inside, with a large amethyst jammed into its skull-wrappings.  JoJo grabbed the amethyst, and the mummy arose!  Once again, lasers and magic lay waste to the foe.

They then headed to the central violet door - beyond was a 10' by 10' room with a door opposite.  The walls were lined with paired swords and shields.  Mary Lou walked in, and a pair of swords and a shield flew off the wall, slicing her head off again.  Both head and body fell forward into the room, out of reach, and the weapons returned to their wall hangers.  With no way to retrieve her, the party bid farewell to her corpse, and turned their attention to the throne.

The crown was made of gold, the scepter of electrum with a large gold sphere on one end and a small silver sphere on the other, and the throne was covered with skull-pictures, with the exception of a silver crown carving on the lower front panel.

Clint put the crown on his head, and the room was lit up like the middle of the day for him.  He tried removing the crown, but it was stuck.  As he fiddled with the crown, Biff picked up the scepter and touched the silver end to the silver crown carving on the throne - the floor began sinking down, revealing a passage heading south as it did so.

The party headed south down the passage - as soon as Clint did so, he went blind - he could only see in the throne room itself!  He took the scepter, and touched the silver end to the crown, believing it was the key to safely removing the crown, just as silver-end-on-throne lowered the floor.  He was mistaken, and instantly crumbled into fetid powder.  The crown and scepter clattered to the floor, and Biff retrieved them.

The corridor headed south and up a set of stairs, ending at large mithril double doors.  A cylindrical bronze key sat on the stairs, and JoJo picked it up.  The mithril doors had a hemispherical depression with a keyhole in the center - JoJo put the golden key from the vat room in the keyhole, and was electrocuted for his efforts, falling back down the stairs.  He then put the bronze key in the keyhole, and was once again electrocuted.  Biff then looked at the gold sphere on the scepter, and saw that it was the same size as the hemispherical depression - he placed the sphere in the depression, and the doors swung open.

Beyond the mithril doors was a room with a silver ceiling and ivory walls inlaid with gold.  In the center of the room was a large gold filigreed bronze urn, against the south wall was a granite sarcophagus with the name ACERERAK inscribed on it in platinum, and two massive iron chests sat on either side of the sarcophagus.

In each corner was a 9' tall statue of black iron:

Northeast - holding a saw-toothed two-handed sword raised to strike
Northwest - holding a huge, spike-ended mace
Southeast - holding a wickedly spiked morning star
Southwest - holding a voulge (please consult your Pocket Guide to Medieval Pole-Arms)

The three survivors, Biff and the henchmen JoJo and Phil, consulted the riddle's last stanza - "The iron men of visage grim do more than meets the viewers eye. You've left and left and found my Tomb and now your soul will die." and decided to wait until the next session to figure out this new puzzle.

Gains:  gold key, 440 pp, 2 snake-filled coffers, 90 gp in cheap gems, amethyst worth 5000 gp, scepter worth 12,500 gp, crown worth 25,000 gp, bronze key
Kills:  gray-colored ochre jelly, small poisonous snake
Losses:  Pai Mei, Mary Lou, Clint