Discovering a "New" Tomb (1st of Jevar'Kiev)

Borrowed from Tomb Raider

OOC: This adventure was based off of the Wayfarer adventure Trouble at Niven's Creek

Sar'Mar, the 1st of Jevar'Kiev in the year 14063.
Lucky has decided that the adventuring life is not for him and decides to learn the family trade as a Thatcher. The party, now down to three, meets up at their usual watering hole for drinks to discuss their future plans. It is a pretty normal night. Some Gnome Titans are in town enjoying a little R&R and a couple of locals are drinking it up. One human, a logger named Ansen, is really going to town on the cheap booze. He drinks all alone and doesn't want any company. The party tries to engage him, but leaves well enough alone. This party plans on making this their last night in town before heading out. They are just about broke and nobody wants to log, hunt, or farm for a meager living. Nobody but Anise who has a good thing going with her transcription work.

Moon:

Arlora is 2nd Quarter Waning
Bardra'Kar is Full Moon
Shadara is 2nd Quarter Waxing
Light level: Bright




Tu'Mar, the 2nd of Jevar'Kiev in the year 14063.
The party meets up at the Dark Titan Taproom for a quick breakfast before heading out looking for adventure from the next town down the road. "Nobody" has ever been there, but it has to be more exciting than Badger Falls. Their meal is interrupted by a young boy who was sent by Elder Foxhorn to fetch them. Everyone finishes up, grabs their gear, and heads on over to the Elder's home.

As they approach the Elder's residence they find him placating a small crowd of folks. The Elder is able to dismiss the assembly once he sees the party so they are unable to discern anything that is going on.....yet. The Elder thanks the group for responding so quickly and being outfitted for travel. They are invited into the Elder's home and he lays out the town's current predicament. Evidently one of the logging teams stumbled upon a structure in the woods and decided to check it out. Of the six man team, only one returned....Ansen, and he didn't check in with anyone. He was spotted getting drunk last night and hasn't been seen since. Elder Foxhorn wants the party to go and see if they can find out what happened to the other men and report back to him. He won't know what this job pays until he knows what is going on, but the party has his assurances they will be taken care of appropriately.

The party takes the Elder at his word and inquires where the logging party was working the day before. The best the Elder can do is give them a general location on a map and tell them which path out of town is best to take.

The party immediately heads out of town on the appropriate trail and starts looking for tracks around the distance they expect the logging group to have headed off. They quickly encounter one of the other work crews and ask for some clarification on where the other missing group was working the day before. With this help they are able to quickly identify where the loggers were working when they disappeared OOC: This may be a nothing thing, but I thought it smart that the party sought out the other logging group for assistance instead of just trying to scout out on their own. The party scans the area and comes across a roughly pyramid shaped dome of rock outcropping that has a big hole smashed into the side.

Heading on up to the rock, they see a rough 2' hole that had been bashed in along with a discarded ax. Since it is too dark in the hole they light a torch and drop it inside. The party can make out a small rectangular-shaped pool of water below that seems to have a tiled border surrounding it. The water is brackish and they cannot see the far end of the room. There is some discussion as how to proceed. A closer examination of the area surrounding the hole reveals some bits and pieces of rope. It appears that someone had tied a rope around the ax and used it as an anchor to lower themselves inside.

The party follows suit, lowering themselves into the hole one by one. Once inside they figure the pool is maybe 20'x 30' with a generous 5' walkway. They can see an open door and a close door on either side of the pool. As soon as they start moving a flurry of activity erupts as a couple of Giant Boring Beetles scuttle down the walkways, closely followed by some Giant Centipedes. The fighter-types split up to engage the creatures on two fronts, one on each side of the pool. Voskkal, the Ranger, takes some big hits, but manages to deliver some bigger hits. The centipedes have no qualms about scurrying over the beetles and the party to tray and bite. Voskkal manages to avoid getting bitten, but Myka get bit repeatedly, leaving a series of nice welts, but doing little damage otherwise. Once Voskkal finishes his foes he runs around the far end of the pool and engages the beetle from behind. It goes down in a nasty pile of goo (critical hit) which sends Voskkal flying when he slips in the beast's gooey guts. Luckily he doesn't land in the nasty water. Once the foes are dispatched they are shuffled off into the murky depths of the pool.

The party finds the half-eaten body of one of the missing loggers in the corner of the room. At the far end there are two small alcoves, both of which have rather large and heavy ossuary or small and heavy sarcophagus. One has been pulled away from it's niche and set on the floor. On both sides of the room are some disturbing frescoes showing children with golden eyes and skull caps either being operated on or frolicking about. The party takes the body and places it underneath their exit before moving on into the open room.

That room is somewhat odd. There is an exit on the far wall flanked by two large granite statues. The center of this small (maybe 10' x 20') room is dominated by a stone basin with a drain. Two more half-eaten bodies are located near the statues. These two are dragged over to the growing pile of corpses for extraction. The party checks out the basin and the statues, but doesn't think there is anything particularly special about them. The door on the far wall is ajar. The door itself is fairly thick and appears to be made out of the same heavy stone as the statues. The group tries to see what they can in the next room before moving on.

All they can see is a edge of a large stone structure that fills the center of the small room. They can see a small exit off to the left, but it appears to be submerged as they can make out light dancing upon some water below a first step down. There are frescoes on the walls in here too, but they cannot be made out very well.

They push open the door, which takes a bit of effort, but is easily accomplished. Once the door is open they can make out the frescoes and see that the stone structure is an opened crypt of some type. As the trio approaches, two Massive Centipedes spring out of the crypt's opening, rear up on hundreds of hind legs, and tries to bite at them. A couple more painful welts are delivered before the pair is put down, but the party prevails relatively unscathed. Once that matter is concluded they can take a look at the crypt and the frescoes, but they choose to ignore a brass urn hanging a couple of feet down from the tall sloped ceiling. When they go to look at the crypt a sudden puff of greyish smoke rises from within and continues up, and through, the ceiling. Inside the crypt is a big cocoon filled with some vile looking black sludge. The party doesn't want to search the crypt further and proceeds to examine the walls. Four more frescoes depict some sort of life and times of an insectoid-man hybrid, a human woman, and those same children from the earlier frescoes. The group finds this rather creepy and declines going down into the water.

Back out in the pool room they decide to take a second look at the stone ossuaries. They get the covers off of the one on the ground already and find the preserved skeleton of a child, sans head. The other cover comes off more easily and the contents are similar, but this one has it's head. The skull is wearing a bronze skullcap and had two bronze orbs stuffed into the eye sockets. One orb falls out of the skull and rolls into the pool before anyone can stop it.

The party leaves the skeletons as they found them and tries to open the closed door. There isn't a handle to be found and the door has only a little give when pushed. The party cannot seem to open the door and gets a little frustrated. They really want to find the bodies of the last two loggers and they assume there might be some answers on the other side of this door. They search around the pool for some clues but the best they can do is find some scratches on the bottom of the door. The conclude that maybe the door slides instead of swings and they use one of the logger's axes they found earlier as a pry tool. They manage to get the door to slide up, but they end up setting off some sort of trap. Glass vials fall from above the door somewhere and smash upon the floor. They let out some noxious vapors that cause the Half-Elf Anise to pass out cold. She comes too soon enough, but is very weak and pale.

Voskkal and Myka give the door another go and manage to finally get it open and use the same ax to prop it open. The room beyond the door doesn't look like the other rooms they've encountered so far. It is smaller at maybe 10' by 15' and appears to have been painted a vibrant orange. The air in here is expectantly damp and the walls & ceiling are covered in a thick mucous mold or slime. There is another crypt in the center of the room and a small pile of metal, mostly coins and a belt buckle, in a small pile of sorts on the floor next to the crypt. Voskkal takes the lead to check out the room and almost as soon as he steps in a large glop of the slime falls form the ceiling, landing on his arm. The slime quickly eats into his armor and starts to burn into his arm. Voskkal runs to the pool and sticks his arm under water, to no avail. Discarding the torch he uses his free arm to draw steel and tries scraping the slime off. Anise and Myka try to help, but it is too late as Voskkal succumbs to the combination of the slime and previous wounds.

Anise and Myka do scrape off the remaining slime and fling it into the water. After cleaning their blades they drag Voskkal's body over to the other three and climb out out of the hole. Between the two of them they cannot get Voskkal's corpse back to town, much less the other three. The pair makes a bee-line for the other logging group and enlists their help to recover the bodies and return to town.

The party is now down to two, having lost a pair of Ranger brothers within weeks of each other.

NPCs Introduced:
Ansen Redblack (Human Male: Logger)