Session Thirty-Four
The party was on the verge of attacking the Malatath. Suad suggested before they plunge into battle that they explore the crypt one last time, whilst his divination magic was active to detect secret doors. For twenty minutes the party marched to and fro within the crypt, exploring every crevice and corridor, to no avail.
They might have reverted to their foolhardy attack on the massed undead had Shikra not asked Barnabas for ideas. The bat-like familiar had a different spatial sense of the crypt because of its aerial echolocation. “Have you looked up the endless tunnels?” it squeaked. With his spell soon to expire, Suad raced from pit to pit, in each one spotting a secret door above. “There’s an entire level above us!” he cried. Getting to one of those secret doors would be no easy task, though, for the wind whipping through the tunnels was prone to hurl debris onto climbers at high velocity. After brief deliberation, they decided to try for the secret door at the top of the southern pit, which seemed to have the least dangerous debris. Zoya led the expedition, scaling upwards with a rope belayed behind her. The rest of the party followed successfully, though few escaped damage from debris and falling objects.
At the top, they confronted a room filled with the scintillating glimmer of a million beams of light. Visibility was merely a foot, as the beams were so bright as to burn the eyes of those who gazed at them for too long. Wary of traps, Shikra summoned her berserkers to lead the way forward. Each berserker took a different route. The first of these was burned alive. The second was disintegrated. The third was frozen. The fourth was teleported behind them, down the endless pit. The party realized that some, but not all, of the beams of light were deadly – and so began a terrible process of trial and error, with every error sending a summoned soul back to the darkness. Eventually the party concluded that the way ahead would demand low-crawling fifteen feet forward and right; standing up and advancing to where the walls angled inward; jumping to clear a beam 1’ high; then laying back down and low-crawling forward another 20’ to ancient stone steps that ascended from t he chamber.
Zoya was the first person to make it through alive. Dripping with sweat, she crawled up the steps – and stopped in horror. The Efreeti Pasha waited beyond, his gigantic figure looming down as if waiting to see if any foolish adventurers would survive his terrible trap. In his hand he clutched a stoppered bottle – the very bottle that their crystal ball had shown holding Shadalah! She fell back to warn her friends. Knowing that the efreeti pasha could hurl devastating area-of-effect spells at will, they decided they had to split the party. The first wave would be led by Mahmud, who was immune to the efreeti’s powers because of Cyclone of the Four Quarters. His attack would be supported by Suad and Zoya, both invisible. Ethlyn, Rakh, Sapphira, Senef, and Androcles would be in the second wave, while Umar, Ceara, Dornethan, Shikra, and Balen would be in the third wave.
Complications immediately ensued. When Mahmud reached the top of the steps, the Efreeti Pasha had vanished, and a dozen wraiths and spectres loomed there instead. Mahmud’s charge came to a screeching halt – where was his foe? Cyclone of the Four Quarters continued to roar in Mahmud’s hand, and he decided to press on! A moment later Suad’s magic dispelled the illusion that hung over the room, causing the undead to vanish and the evil genie to be revealed. Seeing only a pair of foes, the genie raised its hand and brought down a ball of flame into the scintillating room where the second wave was waiting. Ethlyn, Rakh, Sapphira, Senef, and Androcles went down.
Mahmud began striking at the Efreeti, but its huge size and magical protection made it hard to hurt. The Efreeti forcibly fought back with its great fists. As the genie struck each blow, the sheik’s amulet around the paladin’s neck began to glow and deal damage back to the monster. As the creature winced in pain, Suad knocked the bottle in its hand open, freeing princess Shadalah! She crawled towards the exit in terror. The enraged Efreeti incinerated Suad with a pillar of fire. Then the genie slammed Mahmud again. This time his amulet could not protect him. He went flying backwards, on the verge of death (1hp). Balen rushed forward, surrounded by the protection of a ward against genies, and gave Mahmud a chance to get back on his feet and lay on hands. While Mahmud was recuperating, Zoya stabbed the creature from behind, sprayings its hot ichor everywhere. Before she could escape it pounded her into the ground, then sent a ball of flame onto Umar and Ceara.
Mahmud steeled himself for one final charge. “Even if you could strike me down, I shall only be sent back to my home plane,” taunted the Efreeti Prophet. “Even your Prophet could not destroy me!”
“The Prophet didn’t have Cyclone of the Four Quarters!” shouted Mahmud. He charged, leaping upward and bringing the magical blade in a 360-spinning arc. Wind, fire, earth, and sea combined to cleave into the genie. The Pasha howled and vanished in smoke and sulfur. Victory was theirs! But at such terrible cost! Rakh died of his wounds, praying to Imran next to his friend Mahmud. Umar and Ceara had taken grievous injuries and died in agony. Zoya, too, bled out from agonizing wounds. Androcles was dead before the party got to him; only a torso even remained, his legs having burned off. Of Sapphira, there was merely mangled bones and burned flesh; of Ethlyn, a red stain and bone shards. Senef might have been able to use the miracle scroll to save everyone, but his eyes had been burned out by the fireball, and he could not see to read it. He died with no one able to heal him.
There was no way to get the bodies of the fallen through the beams of light and down the endless pit, so the party left the bodies of their friends behind to take Princess Shadalah to the Oasis of the White Palm. Their upward passage stirred the interest of some terrible creatures in the well beneath the amphitheater. Shikra calmly reached into her bag of fantastic creatures and dropped a sea serpent into the well. This solved the problem. “We don’t have time for this right now,” she muttered.
During the trek, they noted a curious fact: By placing Mahmud’s amulet on Shadalah’s palm-glyph, a curious message became visible: “city of the phoenix over the house of set where sleeps salvation there speak atmopryeetno”. Suad recognized the former as the city that Al-Sindor had founded in Opelenea, and the latter as the name of his djinni vizier.
A day later, overwhelmed with mixed emotions, the Fated reached the Oasis and presented the Princess to the Sheik and his son, Hassan. The betrothed were tearfully reunited and the grateful Sheik poured out gold and silver and silks in reward. His most treasured gift, however, was ordering his cleric, Nadron, to read from the miracle scroll: “I beseech you, Imran, to return the Fated to us here in the White Palm, spiritually and physically whole.” Imran’s purposes were well-served by this, and the fallen of the Fated appeared, there in the shade of the White Palm which Al-Sindor himself had planted.
Alas, greed ever grips the heart of men, and the Fated could not help but recall that Badr al-Mosak was said to have been the greediest man who ever lived. Where was his fabled treasure? Clearly it must lay beyond the Efreeti’s chambers! The Fated set out to the Crypt again, arriving on the evening of the 7th of Innelen. By 6:30pm they had gotten back to the chamber of scintillating beams. Here, Balen and Androcles proved the value of Imperial siege craft, cunningly rigging a set of pullies with enough strength to carry a sack of gold on rope across the room of beams. The ceiling, it turned out, was not guarded by any deathly lights!
Advancing past the Efreeti’s chambers, the Fated came upon what they had sought: the fabulous treasures of Badr al-Mosak. Hundreds of pounds of silver, gold, and platinum. Ornamental masks, magical weapons of crystal and armor of golden chain, gems, and jewels… And the Star Gem of Shah-Pelar on a pedestal in the center. The way in was heavily trapped – much of the floor was an illusion that gave way to a pit of acid. Careful prodding finally led a pair of berserkers to the pedestal. They lifted the fabled Star Gem from its pedestal – the pedestal rose an inch as the weight of the gem was lifted – and beams of power filled the room. Instantly the berserkers within were petrified. The Fated nearly fainted with shock; had any of them been in the room… Wazir, the most accurate member of the party, quickly made a bundle of coins about the same weight as a star gem and tossed it into the room. His aim was perfect; it landed on the pedestal and pushed it back down, turning off the deadly beams.
That was the last of the traps that the Fated encountered in the Crypt of Badr al-Mosak. Soon they were buried in their body weights in coin, showering in silver, playing in platinum. They were rich! Moreover, some of what Badr al-Mosak had entombed were fabulous items from legend. Suad unrolled a beautifully woven Opelenean carpet and, speaking the word “soar” in Old Opelenean, began to glide about the room. It was a flying carpet! He also claimed a marvelous wand capable of detecting traps. Shikra found an obsidian wand tipped with a skull, a wand of ear, and a brass ring stamped with the symbol of elemental air – a fabled ring of djinni summoning!
Laden with treasures from the ages, the party made the trek back to the Oasis of the White Palm.