Session 40 - "The Restless Dead" Report

Venen 11, 1247

We come in, still exploring the tomb of the Cactsian architect, Narmer. The Fate-Steppers have just cleared out the catacombs, and Foenix notices an iron door on the western wall. He unlocks the door deftly, and the party peers down the dark hallway.

It looks empty, with low-relief sculptures along the walls. Foenix takes the lead, with Ambrose, then Jacob, H011-3 , and Thais Argyri taking up the back.

Olena is the one to notice a raised stone in the hallway's cobble paving. She points it out to Foenix, who runs his hand over the wall. His fingers catch on alcoves in the walls - slots for something to protrude from the walls and execute any intruders.

After sending the rest of the party back to the catacombs for safety, he kneels down and uses his thieves' tools to pry up the pressure plate and disable the mechanisms of the trap. Then they continue on, but unfortunately come to a dead end.

They return to the catacombs and continue down the southeast hallway, eventually coming to a room that the Cacstians recognize as an honor chamber: a stained glass window depicting Narmer (a black dragonborn) with a place for a candle to be set behind it to illuminate it with a small alcove that holds a book of Narmer's deeds.

Holly picks it up and flips through it at rapid speed, her eyes taking in the information at rapid speed. She reports after she comes back that Narmer:

• Advised Solon Marcia Urseius on the construction of the ports at Honestas .
• This puts his lifetime somewhere around 800s to 1100s. He moved out Valorum to live out his twilight years away from the hustle and bustle.
• Designed the temples of Bellatan , Engenii , Silencia and Zelentium at Valorum

Unfortunatley, the honor chamber is not without signs of the tomb's defiled nature. It stinks of rotting flesh, and Ambrose notices a corpse in the corner of the chamber. It is newer than the others that they have found in the tomb so far, but it is weathered and far more leathery than it should be - as if the life had been sucked out of it instead of slowly drying out. He also notices a wooden amulet around the neck of the corpse, but he determines it to be nothing but a trinket and disregards it.

Further down the way, Thais steps into a storage room. Inside, she finds three crates of steel ingots, a broken cage, a crate of dried meat, a crate of embalming tools, and a crate with a coat of arms on it: a black lion rearing back on its hind paws. She cracks open the crate, revealing a small treasure trove inside.

Various treasures are piled haphazardly beneath a luxurious green-and-red leather military saddle, stitched with green floral patterns and fitted with ornately carved stirrups. A dark green saddle blanket is tied around the saddle's pommel and fringed with colorful rattles.

A well-made pair of leather riding boots, complete with brass spurs in the shape of wildflowers, rests under the saddle.

A pair of spears with dark wood hafts and points of silver are half-concealed by the other items. A pair of green silk riding gloves trimmed with ermine are under the boots. Beneath the gloves, she finds a plush, gray, rabbit-fur coat adorned with gold epaulets and honor-braid. In one of the coat's pockets, you find an unusual military medal a burgundy ribbon with a single tiny platinum star set at the center (Thais identifies this as an award for civil service to the empire).

The pocket also holds a pair of heart-shaped gold earrings on wide loops. A dark blue officer's tunic trimmed with gray hides a belt made from various gold and silver coins. At the bottom of the stack is a blue glass bowl so full of gold and silver coins that they spill out onto the floor.

Everything is quickly scooped into the bag of holding, and the party continues on, coming to a burial chamber - the last room before a dead end.

At first, it's assumed this was Narmer's sarcophagus on a raised platform, but Ambrose notices that the sarcophagus's mask depicts a human, not a dragonborn, and that the decorative floor tiles places around the resting place create a wall of force spell to be enacted on a trigger - what, he doesn't know, but the party backs off, deciding to explore the rest of the tomb for finding out more about this room.

They cross back over to the western hallway, and pass an unlocked door. Foenix, ever paranoid, takes the time to lock it himself before the Fate-Steppers enter into a new room.

It is a workshop with a solid table on it, a smaller table sits along the back wall with folded linens, boxes, small jars, and rolls of leather tied shut. Jars line the wall underneath the table. Ambrose recognizes it as an embalming room, and steps in to get a closer look at the jars. His toe hits a barely-visible wire, triggering a shallow troph built into the ceiling to dump acid all over him, Foenix, Olena, and Thais. Everyone dodges away, taking minimal damage, but Foenix is evasive enough to get completely out of the away, and Thais absorbs Ambrose's damage magically, so he is also unharmed.

Ambrose apologizes sheepishly, and after Foenix grumpily checks the rest of the room and declares it clear does he finally check out the supply tables. The boxes are full of salt, the jars on top of the table sweet smelling spices, and the rolls of leather a set of embalming tools. Nothing of great import.

The party now exits the embalming room and after Foenix unlocks it, enter into a room with a series of four cots with moth-eaten linens sit, each one with a chest at the feet of the bed. Each one contains a series of robes, but also personal items.

In the first chest they find a silver necklace and a bottle with clear red liquid that has tiny bubbles of light in it; in the second chest a smooth worry stone, a key made of bone, and a bottle with a glowing purple liquid smells of sugar and plum; in the third there is a quill, a ruby circlet, and a illustrated book on fish; and the fourth has five silver pieces, an emerald bracelet, a small mystic symbol made of twine (that Ambrose identifies as being associated with necromancy), and a spell scroll.

The key in the second chest also has a tag tied around it that Foenix reads to the group:

My glow, it is warm, but for warmth you don’t want me. I live and die, but no tear is shed for me. But I’ll see you anon, when you resurrect me.

They puzzle over it for some time, but Olena is the one to figure out the riddle. She goes to one of the side tables, where a candle sits. She lights it, and the flame burns purple. The light itself reveals the outline of a vault hidden in the wall.

Foenix backs everyone out of the room, then uses mage hand to slot the key into the vault. When there is no trap triggered, the party approaches. Inside, they find a suit of black studded leather armor with a slight red sheen, a creepy looking staff carved from ivory in the shape of a totem pole, a suit of armor designed to look like leaves (or perhaps scales) with tiny specks of fey light sometimes drifting from it, and gem-studded, silver knitting needles. When Foenix touches the leaf-armor, he gets a slight static shock. Grimacing, he uses his cloak to scoop everything into his bag of holding.

The party then heads into the final room off the western hallway: a columned hallway leading back towards a set of iron doors, which Foenix at first struggles to open, but eventually unlocks.

Inside is a small chapel with four statues of deities in alcoves: Bellatan , Engenii , Silencia and Zelentium. There are no benches or pews - simply flat stones that have a few offerings upon them. Bellatan's has three gold pieces and two bottles of wine on it; Engenii's has two platinum pieces and three copper pieces; Silencia's has a parchment manuscript and a collection of 12 letters; and Zelentium a set of firewood and four gold pieces. Everything is covered in dust and clearly has not been visited in a while.

As Thais leaves two gold pieces on Bellatan's altar, Ambrose picks up the manuscript. It reads A Meditation on the Planes, and as he reads it it becomes clear that it must be referring to the orb now sitting in Holly's chest. The Celestial Orb piques the interest of the party, but there's nothing else to be down about it until they leave the tomb.

Meanwhile, as the party discusses, Ambrose takes the coins off Zelentium's altar.

Finally, the Fate-Steppers enter the last unexplored path: the southwest hallway. They enter into a gallery of items left by friends and family - or by the deceased himself.

The octagonal room has alcoves set into each wall (one per side), with two smaller alcoves on each side of the doorway. Unlit iron sconces are affixed between each alcove. The alcoves contain: an ornamental, silver-cast sword replica, a gold rouge compact, an ornately detailed scroll case is mounted into a heavy stone base carved to resemble a humanoid hand, a tiara, a set of decorative, bronze bracers and greaves, inlaid with precious stones, a chest, and soot-stained, black, leather flask, firmly corked, and capped with a stud of black quartz.

The party quickly loots the entire place, and when the entire room is plunged into darkness. Foenix quickly gathers everyone into the hallway, and waits to see what happens. After a while, the darkness disappates, and they are able to complete their sweep of the gallery (the chest, for the record, held 28 gp, 30 sp, and 2 cp and a key).