The adventure continues in the emperor’s pyramid in the
desert. Just after the group discovers a
secret door out of the wives’ room (12), the paladin Titanus appears. She has been teleported in by Zambo’s order
to give him an urgent message to return, and gives him a Teleport scroll he is
to use. Zambo reads the scroll - not realizing
it has an area effect meant to bring Titanus back with him - and Zambo,
Trinity, and Thelieth all disappear (leaving the paladin behind). Titanus decides to continue on with the group
for a short while before heading back through the desert (after all, what could
go wrong?)
Behind the secret door is a short hallway (12h) that leads to a
dead end, which is quickly determined to have another secret door. The group enters that door into a room that is clearly the emperor’s room (18) – lots of loot, fancy sarcophagus and coffin, hieroglyphs, the emperor himself
(somewhat mummified although still in pretty good shape after 8,000 years), and
a mummified sphinx pet.
Lacking anyone with high Charisma (ahem), Remy does his best
to butter up the pharaoh (there is some unknown magic involved that allows
translation), but things do not go so well.
The pharaoh demands they prostrate themselves before “the Immortal God”,
and a certain cleric will have none of it (“There’s no reasoning with the
undead”). Having identified Remy as the
first person to enter the pyramid, the emperor has his pet mummy sphinx attack.
A battle ensues and after some hijinxes (which include
eagles crashing to the ground in fright and the paladin simultaneously taking
massive damage, being cursed, and contracting a disease), the sphinx and
emperor are killed. The emperor turns to
dust, leaving behind a Hand of Glory with a Ring of Translation (Osirian) on
it, and amongst what turns out to be several thousands of GP worth of various
types of loot (including a cursed periapt, and a hieroglyph summoning statue), is a
journal written by the emperor (Sekh-Ma-Pefer III).
In the journal is a description of waking after his burial, the
realization that his memory of the process for eternal life is completely fried
from the mummification process, and then lots of rage towards the living – a rage
so strong that it actually animates all of the dead that were buried with him
to accompany him in the afterlife. So
the quest itself was basically set up for failure from the start. Remy has the idea that the group can give the
journal to Ang’s father, but charge him up the wazoo for the Ring of
Translation. (This conversation happens out of Ang’s hearing.)
The group decides that due to the massive amount of loot
(much of which is heavy), as well as the historical significance of the pyramid,
they’re just going to call in the Pathfinders to clean up after them.
There is a massive door to the east that is locked and no
one seems to be able to force it or pick it (ahem), so they head back around to
the long hallway heading north (16). A secret
door is found about halfway down the west wall, with 5 different sphinxes on
buttons on it. The group determines that
the right order needs to be pressed to open the door, with the wrong order
activating a trap. They decide to keep
moving north for now.
There is a door a little further up the west wall that leads
into a room (15) with 4 obelisks near each corner and a golden circle inscribed on
the floor. They are able to determine
from clues in the room that each obelisk is tied to an elemental type (fire,
water, air, and earth), and also find a panel in the back of the fire
obelisk. When the fire obelisk is
touched to open the panel (which contains a 1-time use gem of summoning a fire
elemental), a fire elemental appears in the circle.
The elemental seems to treat the circle as a
container at first, but after a little prodding at the edges realizes that any containment
magic the circle might have one had is now gone and he attacks. The group eventually defeats him, but they
get pretty beaten up, and decide touching any other obelisks is a bad idea. (The
complete opposite becomes true a little later…)
They head back north in the long hallway and come to a T
with a door to the west and a room to the east (13), where they can see several
skeleton archers in a couple of chariots who are thankfully all looking in the
wrong direction.
The group decides they’re
just too beaten up and head back to Sekh-Pa-Mefer’s tomb room to camp for the
night. Thanks to a couple of droughts of
Potion of Restoration, the Periapt of Healing, and some healing skill and spell
use, Titanus is brought back to tip-top shape.
When they wake in the morning, they discover the 4-armed
bloody skeleton has been reanimated and they have to beat him up again.
They do so, and continue back to the room
with the skeleton archers (who are still looking in the wrong direction). Desna lets fly a Channel Energy spell that
drops them all in one fell swoop, and Titanus decides at this point he’s
dallied too long and heads back out into the desert.
The group enters the room to the west (14), where they encounter
the emperor’s Huntsman and his pet mummified leopard.
(I couldn't find a mummified leopard, so I settled for a mummified cougar)
They drop these 2 quickly and head back
through the chariot room, and down the subsequent hallway, which leads to the
northern concealed door they found in the very beginning. They go into that room (6) and start heading to
the open doorway to the west.
This room (7) is a sanctuary with lots of hieroglyphs, small
rooms (8) to the north and south with statues of Ra and Set (in the base of the Ra
statue they find a scroll of Searing Light), and a huge fake granite door to
the west with lots of hieroglyphs on it.
Using the Ring of Translation they are able to tell that most of these
represent prayers for the emperor’s journey to the afterlife, but there is one
section that functions as a Remove Curse scroll. (If only they’d have walked through that open
door at the beginning...)
They also discover that the fake door actually conceals a
secret door. After they go through it (9),
they are attacked by a mummy that is supposed to look an awful lot like the
emperor (in a room that is supposed to look an awful lot like the emperor’s
burial chamber.
The group realizes that
this whole setup was supposed to trick tomb robbers). He is ultimately defeated, but not before he
drops Remy to the ground for the count.
Desna patches up Remy and the group discovers most of the loot in the
room is just gold-plated nonsense (and very heavy) and probably not worth a
whole lot (again, a job for the Pathfinders).
They do discover that the mummy was wearing an Amulet of Mighty Fists,
which clearly played a part in the massive damage done to Remy in just a couple
of rounds.
Of note on the back of the false granite door is a series of
5 different animals, which correspond to the sphinxes on the secret door
buttons found earlier. (If only they’d
have walked through that open door at the beginning...) The group heads back there (16) and presses the
buttons in the correct order, opening the secret door.
Inside (17) is a narrow but long room with the big door that they
couldn't get open from the emperor’s room, and 2 statues of Anubis that
promptly attack them.
The group hits the
statues several times and rolls lots of damage – none of which seem to effect the
statues, so running is deemed a good idea (especially since Florence has cast a
grease spell in front of the door that buys them some time).
Remy and Desna decide the best course of action is to run
into the elemental room (15), and if followed by the statues, start hitting the
obelisks to summon the three remaining elementals that will then kill the
statues. Miraculously, this plan works,
although slightly differently than planned as only one elemental may be summoned
at a time (even though the same elemental type can be summoned over and over).
So basically the group hides behind the obelisks and eat
popcorn while Desna slaps the Earth obelisk over and over, watching the 2 Anubis statues fight a series of Earth elementals.
The third Earth elemental is able to finish off the statues, but is hurt
enough that the group can finish him off easily and leave the room.
Having determined they've cleared out the pyramid, the group
heads back through the desert (leaving behind only a recently reanimated
4-armed bloody skeleton). They exit the
desert and start heading back to Dexin to give Assint the bad news. One night after camping, the group wakes to
find Ang is missing. Near where he was
on watch, they find the word “box” scrawled in the dirt.
A large discussion ensues; at first the group thinks Ang has
run off, but nothing is missing (and in fact his stuff is still there), so they
realize he has been kidnapped. They
decide the word “box” must be referring to Yarafad’s Box. Ideas thrown out as possibilities are
Rhalabhast of Many-Eyes (deemed not likely), Nekros the Grotesque (reasonable
possibility), the Order of Choranus (they did declare themselves enemies, after
all), and even whatever was in the box (maybe Rhalabhast didn’t feed it
properly and it escaped? But why would
it take Ang?) In any case, the group
decides to head back to Assint and tell him both about their lack of
information on Eternal Life and the kidnapping of his son.
Desna is especially torn up about telling Ang’s father of
the kidnapping – “Now we can't pull the trick about the journal and the translation
ring, cuz that would be tacky".
To be continued…
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