Session Twenty
The hardest part of curing Sharik’s curse was convincing the local cleric that there was something wrong with being friendly and pacific. Eventually the party was able to convince Daood the Wide that in the absence of magic Sharik was a heartless jerk, and the cleric reluctantly returned him to his natural state.
The next day, 18th of Juselen, the party visited Sheik Ramman, leader of Kirkuk, hoping to be able to buy the Barber’s now-empty villa. Ramman had warmed to them since they last met (after the debacle of the merchant caravans). He explained that the Barber’s family had held the villa and surrounding land since time immemorial, but that the Barber had died with no heirs, so the party was free to buy it. He also mentioned that since the Barber had disappeared, the Watchtower was no longer strangely warm, and asked if the party knew anything of these happenings. Sharik confessed the truth, and the Sheik seemed to accept the strange tale of evil cults and furnaces to the elemental plane.
On the 19th of Juselen, the Fated returned to their excavations of the tomb complex beneath Kirkuk. This foray led them to the tomb of Ymmu M’Kursa. Suad recognized the name as belonging to a vile Zaharan arcanist who had experimented in crossbreeding with both his minions and himself. Forcing their way into the tomb, the party accidentally breached an ancient seal, and awoke fifty horrific skeleton-zombies, each akin to a man but hideously crossed with a mule-like skull. Ymmu himself was of similar visage, wrapped in a ghastly burial shroud with an over-sized, glowing claw in place of his right arm, and he was surrounded by swirling phantoms who dealt death with each touch. Despite the grim situation, the Fated prevailed, largely because of their divine casters.
After slaying Ymmu and claiming his shroud and claw, the party advanced into his treasure room. There the Fated found numerous potions and scrolls, as well as a strange golden mirror which radiated magic. Sadly the mirror was cursed, and those who gazed upon it – Ethlyn, Sharik, Suad, and Celic – immediately began attacking their companions. Senef was able to dispel the effect. By now Several of the members were by now showing signs of infection with a pestilent rotting curse, however, so the party hastily claimed the treasure and retreated to the surface.
It took several days for the party to feel strong enough to return to the tomb complex. Senef took advantage of the down time to investigate certain curses he had detected on the Fated’s treasure. Through diligent divination, he learned that Mahmud, as wielder of Cyclone of Four Quarters, was cursed to endure the wrath of all genies, who would forever seek to destroy him and his friends for bearing the weapon. He also learned that the burial shroud of Ymmu caused harm to any who wore it, and prevented natural healing; and that the claw of Ymmu could be affixed to a wrist-stump, at the cost of natural healing being lost.
Sharik promptly donned the burial shroud and cut a vein in his arm. The blood refused to clot! He cackled with glee, for the terrible curse on the shroud simply convinced the mad alchemist that the shroud must have some other, greater, power to recompense. It was all the Fated could do to persuade him not to lop his own hand off to try out the claw.
Session Twenty One
On the 22nd of Juselen, the party returned to the tomb complex. Fighting their way through the bands of zombies that seemed to wander through the complex at unpredictable intervals, the party came upon a strange inscription on a fresco of a door: “Entry forward, message backwards”. Opposite the fresco they found a hidden panel, which a summoned berserker was used to push; sadly the panel triggered iron spikes, and the resulting impalement returned the berserker to the afterlife.
The party now peeled away the fresco, and discovered another hidden panel. A second berserker pressed this panel; sadly the panel triggered a 40’ floor pit, and the resulting impact 40’ below returned that berserker to the afterlife, too. Suad decided it might be time to divine for secret doors, and discovered one … at the bottom of the pit.
From the far side of the pit, the party could hear gongs, which they wrongly deduced to be alarms. They thus hastily prepared for battle. Volundr offered a rousing song in which heroic Jutlanders went on Viking expeditions against the weak brown peoples of Opelenea, but this did not seem to improve morale.
Passing through the secret door, the party was confronted with a resplendent tomb with magical ever-chiming gongs and ever-lit braziers. In the tomb’s center was erected a bizarre brass and gold cage, sinister in its complexity. In the center of the cage was a glass coffin, filled with smoky gas. Senef chanted a quick query to the spirits, auguring what was to come: “Too late to unlock the cage, already you have earned Ramm’s rage.” Even so, the smoke filtered from the glass coffer and took the form of a pale corpse-like figure in a scintillating cloak.
A fierce, but brief fight, ensued: Mahmud cut down Ramm with Cyclone of the Four Quarters, while a unicorn, summoned from Sharik’s marvelous bag, shattered the glass coffin with a charge of its horn. Ramm was reduced to smoky vapors that flitted about the tomb. Balen unleashed a series of fire spells that seemed to do little against the undead cloud, but did destroy his fabulous clothing. Senef consulted the local spirits, who advised that Ramm would never be able to coalesce again. Since the vapor was harmless as well as impossible to harm, the Fated set about the wearying task of deconstructing the valuable cage. Zoya demonstrated that she was as cunning as her earrings were big, quickly breaking the cage into its constituent parts and handing them off to the menfolk to carry upwards.
The trip upward was quick, though briefly interrupted by a scuffle with zombies .The mysterious undead cloud followed the party for a short while, but retreated back into the complex when daylight became visible. On the surface, the party deposited the cage in their shop, and rested.
The next day, they dispatched a band of mercenaries to head to Alakyrum to buy holy water, which was in short supply in Kirkuk. They then trekked back down into the tomb complex, where they broke into a series of individual tombs. One of these contained an undead warrior, Vordak the Dragon Knight; this foe was swiftly cut down and his black magical armor claimed by the Fated. The next tomb was named for Tanus Who is Three, but his huge sarcophagus was empty. The party was certain that a grotesque three-headed mummy was somewhere in the complex, and set out to find him.
Instead they found Vilstin, a fat and somewhat smarmy rogue trapped under a pile of skeletons. Vilstin claimed to be a henchman of the Swords of Imran, a famed adventuring company. Vilstin explained that he was leading his party into the Tower of the Worm on the far side of the Desert of Desolation when a magical trap teleported him to the bottom of this pit of bones. “But,” he explained, “Clearly the gods have smiled upon you, for you have rescued Vilstin!” The somewhat confused party escorted Vilstin to the surface and wished him good fortune in rejoining the Swords of Imran. They then returned to the pit where they had found the hapless thief, cleared out the bones from the pit and left ropes to its bottom, so that if they should ever, one day, be teleported to this very site, they could escape…
From here, the Fated turned to explore the tomb of Beristo the Godless, a mummy that quickly went down before Masamba. “My god is battle, and I bring HIM to the godless!” the gladiator shouted. They then proceeded to the adjoining tomb of Otogoster, Disciple of Kahil, god of madness.
This tomb was sealed with three glyphs of warding, which Senef dispelled, and the thing within had long since degenerated from any semblance of humanity into a horrific abomination of slime and disease. Thankfully, Mahmud was preserved from its vile power, and destroyed it.
The next tomb was labeled that of Kereth Rauta. Within the Fated were confronted by a wraith-like form reading from an ancient grimoire. The wraith was seemingly invulnerable to any attack, but Zoya was able to steal its book away, and the wraith vanished to oblivion. Zoya, happily, dropped the book before its curse manifested; Sharik’s berserkers were not so fortunate, and in turn each of them that touched the book began to chant its strange spells before vanishing into oblivion when the next in succession seized the tome. Eventually the party decided to leave the book behind, for now.
The last and final tomb was labeled Syrena, daughter of Gwylnin. It proved to be an unfinished tomb, its sarcophagus empty; but from the art work on the frescoed walls, it was evident that Syrena was the raven-haired beauty that the Fated had earlier discovered trapped in the translucent slab. The party decided to transport the slab to this tomb, thinking that might awaken the woman. Alas, this effort was to no avail. The slab simply lay, translucently slab-like, next to the sarcophagus.
As was his wont, Senef turned to the spirits for guidance. These advised “only the unerring force can break the unbreakable object.” These words left the group quite puzzled, until Zoya suggested that Balen try a magic missile. The beautiful thief again proved her cleverness, for this spell shattered the crystal and awoke Syrena.
The group immediately set upon the raven-haired woman, for they knew she was a chaotic Zaharan in league with darkness. She also had treasure. Syrena, shouting “Who are you people?” in ancient Zaharan, made a break for the exit. She was seconds from escape when Rakh tore her apart. And so ended Syrena’s thousand-year slumber. In a gesture of good taste, the group buried her in the conveniently located sarcophagus in her tomb.
They then turned their attention to her marvelous, marvelous treasure. Her shiny, skin-tight outfit, “a silk as strong as plate armor,” went to Zoya, as did Syrena’s crossbow, “a fire shooter that reloads itself”. Her “shimmering blade of fire” went to Ethlyn, while they split up the strange black discs, “the sources of power for the ancient marvels.”
Quite pleased at being the first adventurers in the known world to have a sexy female rogue in a shiny black catsuit in the party, the group proceeded to the surface.