Session Nineteen
The adventurers, who had taken to calling themselves “The Fated,” began exploring the tomb-complex in Kirkuk on the 17th of Juselen. Unsealing the ancient magical portal, they descended down a long, narrow staircase to a stone hewn chamber with an ancient slab, labeled in Zaharan “The Tomb of Crypts”. Masamba and Mahmud thought the slab might conceal a vault and lifted it up, only to be assaulted by skeletal hands grasping and clutching at them. There was a vault below, but it was filled with thousands of bones, all animated. The group hastily slammed shut the vault. “There might be treasure down there!” said Sharik. “That’s the treasure’s problem,” said Balen.
The so-called “Tomb of Crypts” was just the antechamber of what proved to be a vast underground complex. The party initially headed north, but progress in that direction was halted by a trapped and locked iron door. Zoya was able to disarm the trap by triggering it, but the lock proved more resistant to her methods. Sharik had no spell available to unseal the portal, so the party turned south instead.
They were almost immediately assailed by wraith-like Zaharan warriors who radiated palpable evil, but Masamba and Rakh quickly destroyed these fiends. Soon the Fated came to a particularly old part of the complex, built with great cyclopean blocks. Over an arched entryway was a blood-stained name carved in Zaharan hieroglyphs: Fanaure.
The party marched cautiously into the cyclopean hall. Their lantern light fell upon a huge 20’ stone statue, scarred and stained, seated upon an equally huge stone throne. Before the throne was a sacrificial pit, grated with iron. The statue spoke: “Worshippers…long has it been since I have been attended. Hurl your sacrifices to the pit below and pay homage to Great Fanaure!”
Mahmud instantly realized this was one of the foul stone idols of the ancients, a pseudo-god made strong with blood and terror. He nodded at Sharik. Sharik smiled. “We have your tribute right here,” he said, tossing a treant figurine. Battle was joined. Fanaure proved virtually invulnerable, only the most powerful magical weapons doing him any harm. Fanaure bellowed and raged and with each blow might have slain an adventurer, but fortunately most of his blows were aimed at the well-protected Mahmud. The tide turned when Sharik’s treant managed to knock Fanaure down into the sacrificial pit. While the stone idol made its way out of the pit, the party formed a battle line and cut it down.
Fanaure proved to have little treasure. The sinister imp that plagued Ethlyn encouraged her to send her friends down into the sacrificial pit to seek loot, but Ethlyn demurred. Instead Balen sent a summoned hero, who returned with a valuable gold bracelet. The hero died shortly thereafter, afflicted with some hideous wasting plague!
Leaving the cyclopean chambers of the broken idol, the party made its way into a sinister set of tunnels filled with mummified bodies in wall niches. While these bodies never animated, their mere presence left the party in a state of alarm. Past these halls of the mummified dead, the party confronted a score of skeletons guarding a curiously abrupt tunnel. Suad, ever-wise, called upon his powers of divination and revealed a set of secret doors allowing further progress. The second secret door Suad discovered was blocked by a mold-covered skeleton, sickly and yellow, so Senef used his shamanic fire to burn this away before the Fated advanced.
What awaited them beyond the secret doors shocked even these jaded adventurers: A raven-haired beauty in strange red and black clothing like glossy liquid, suspended in a slab of translucent crystal. The woman was clutching a blade-less hilt and had a belt-pouch with a crossbow hilt sticking up out of it. The crystal slab which imprisoned proved invulnerable to sword and fire, but was almost weightless.
The party surmised this might be the mysterious witch Navana, who had created the Carnelian Idol. Senef called upon the genies of the land for answers. “Is the woman in the crystal slab aligned with chaos?” “Yes!” “Is it within our power to free her?” Yes! “Is there great reward if we destroy her?” Yes! Despite this divination, the Fated could find no way of destroying the slab, and they were concerned as to the possible threat they might face if they did so. With regret, they left the strange slab and its occupant behind and headed back into the tomb complex proper.
They soon came upon another sealed vault, as in the entrance chamber to the complex, this one labeled “Tomb of the Winds”. Zoya’s keen ears could pick up great rushing and whistling from within, and the adventurers decided not to open it. Instead they proceeded through a rusted iron door labeled “The Tomb of Kuth, Merchant of Toil.” This sinister portal led to a set of crypts wherein dwelled Kuth, his wives, and his servants, all in mummified deathlessness. Ethlyn made short work of Kuth with her magical daggers, while Mahmud dealt with their wives. Rakh had been badly damaged in the battle, being laden with the terrible curse of mummy rot, but Senef’s shamanic magic was able to cure him.
The party was unable to progress past Kuth’s tomb due to another sealed portal, so it circled back southward again, past the Tomb of Winds, and down a side corridor. Here they came upon a locked door of iron and brass, grimly labeled as “The Tomb of Yliaster, Accursed Sorcerer.” Zoya picked the lock, and – perhaps unwisely – entered. Within, the thief quickly spied a strange black prism, not dissimilar to the crystal prism that Sharik carried but had not yet identified. Gazing into the black prism, she saw fleeting movement and an infinite sea of stars – a moment later, a shadowy wraith had emerged. Yliaster!
What threat Yliaster might have posed is unknown, for Suad produced a potion that gave him control of the specter. “Master…I submit,” said Yliaster. Under intense questioning (in ancient Zaharan), the undead sorcerer explained that he had attempted to seize the Carnelian Idol from his rival Navana. In defeat, he had been slain and his soul imprisoned in the prism, a magical device which had served him as a sort of spellbook. Yliaster recognized the crystal prism the Fated carried as a wand of illusion, although he did not know its command word, and bragged that he himself was a master of phantasm and illusion. He offered to teach his magic in exchange for his freedom, but the party prevented Sharik from accepting this offer.
Instead, the party decided to verify its theory that the raven-haired woman in the crystal slab was Navana. They brought the specter to her hidden room to see if he recognized her. Unfortunately, he did not. “I know not this woman,” said Yliaster, “though she carries many marvels of the forgotten age that preceded Zahar and Thrassia.” Puzzled as to who she might be, the group was now even more cautious about freeing her – or Yliaster. Suad ordered the specter to return to the black prism, and then hid that evil relic away.
It was nearly time for the party to exit the complex, but before they left, the Fated decided to investigate a strange green statue of a lamb they had noticed earlier. Sharik saw that the base of the statue was inscribed with many Zaharan hieroglyphs, perhaps a spell of some sort, and crouched down to read them. It was, indeed, a spell, a powerful charm, but the act of reading them caused Sharik to become cursed!
The cursed warlock turned on his companions and before they could stop him, summoned his mujahedeen. The faithful berserkers appeared, and Sharik began tearfully apologizing for all the awful things that he had asked of them. For such was the curse: The warlock’s previous sociopathy and ruthless devotion to power and wealth were replaced by a gentle pacifism and love for all living things.
This was clearly an intolerable situation, and the party hastened out of the tomb complex in order to get this dreadful curse lifted before their friend had to suffer any further.