Session 26: Hunt for the Throne Pt.1 Report

The Rat Pack leaves Chult with Crucelia as they return to the Spelljammer Academy to reclaim their ship. From there, she would help guide Glebnor to Maztica. Camping in a clearing near the Shrine of Tamoachan, Crucelia offers her services as a thief and Maztican translator to the party for 500 GP. The party considers it to be a good investment and hires her.

Hiking Towards the Ruins

It was an hour-long hike through the jungle to get to a smaller clearing leading up to the ruins. The ruins could be seen up ahead as a three-tiered step pyramid with a temple placed on top. Crucelia said that the Throne of the Gods would be at the top of the pyramid in the temple, which they could reach by taking the stairs on the side of the pyramid.
 Crucelia was surprised to see some statues as they walked further down the path. She said they were new, and the party quickly started investigating them. They were draconic but not Dragonborn. Glebnor found some footprints nearby that were walking toward the pyramid, and the tracks seemed to match the feet of the statue. Azid tried to detect magic from them, but they were plain stone. Stinkbreath heard a growl nearby, so they decided to keep moving.
Soon, the path changed from grass and roots to a flagstone road. This made for an easier march to the pyramid. It was easier until the road collapsed, and everyone fell deep underground.

The Vault of Chicomoztoc

The party came about in an underground room. Their best guess was that part of the pyramid ran underground. Azid began investigating the room and found an amber gas lurking near the room's ceiling. He also found recesses carved into the walls depicting different scenes. Crucelia also began checking the room and determined that there was no way for them to dig their way out of the cave-in. Their only way forward was through the locked doors.
Glebnor, feeling clever, oozed their way out through a crack at the top of the door. They managed to force the door open from the other side, freeing everyone inside.

The Hall of Thrashing Canes

Crucelia led the party down the corridor and completely missed a pressure plate. As the tiefling activated the trap, a pile of logs fell from the ceiling and landed on her. She was pushed forward in the corridor while everyone else was trapped on the other side. It took some time for the party to clear the debris enough to squeeze through and rejoin Crucelia on the other side. The thief was embarrassed but no worse for wear.

The Giant Crayfish

The next room the party moved into hosted a large boulder in the center of the room with a giant crayfish next to it. Glebnor moved towards it, and the crayfish began moving aggressively towards them, snapping its claws and speaking in a foreign language. Crucelia translated that a guardian was ordering them to stay away. The group hugged the wall and made their way to the eastern side of the room, where they left through another set of double doors and into another corridor.

Tomb Stone and Wet Lime

They moved along a wet limestone wall in this new corridor. Azid detected the outline of what looked like a door in the wall. They pushed it until it gave and led them into a new room that appeared to be a foyer with sealed urns inside. A door stood before them.

The Sepulcher of Tloques-Popolocas

Azid started to detect magic coming from the other side of the door. However, before anyone could open it, Stinkbreath saw that something was off about the door. They decided to have Crucelia go over it carefully with her tools. Sure enough, the door was locked and trapped, and she disarmed it. On the other side, Azid picked up three glass orbs with a swirling green gas inside. They appeared very fragile, but he put them in his pack nonetheless.
Inside the room, they saw glyphs carved into the floor and a warning to those that would be graverobbers. In the center of the room was a large sarcophagus belonging to Tloques-Popolocas with the date of his death on it. There was also a glyph of warding on the cover. Then on the far wall was a bronze axe driven into the wall.
Azid determined they could safely open the sarcophagus by standing on the glyphs in the correct sequence. Sure enough, they did so, and the coffin's top split down the center and fell off, revealing an ornately dressed pile of bones. Azid decided then to reanimate the corpse to join his undead.
Dust swirled around the corpse as it sat up and began to pull its bones in to be sewn back together. As this happened, two giant vampire bats flew down from the ceiling to attack them. As the party dealt with the bats, they completely ignored the reanimated corpse as it jumped out of its coffin and went to the wall where the axe was. It pulled out the axe and cut down Jeremiah in one blow before going up to Glebnor and savagely attacking them.
Stinkbreath began shooting it with his crossbow, but the party was horrified to see it begin to regenerate from its wounds. The whole party had to team up to bring the undead down.

The Loot

With the corpse destroyed, the party did not waste time looting it. They found various pieces of valuable jewelry. Azid identified the ax as The Axe of Tloques-Popolocas and gave it to Glebnor. He also identified some jaded bracelets as bracers of defense. They also decided to wait to identify two magic rings and an elixir that they found.   The session stopped at 8:30 am on the first day in the Shrine.