Session Two.
Aytollah gave the travelers instructions how to reach the fourth tier of the ziggurat. Following these instructions led them back through the rotating passageway, and then rightward, down a sliding floor. They dropped down into the curious tomb of a jester, and amused themselves for a time with the tricks and marvels the long-dead clown had left behind. Mahmoud and the other Faithful left coin in respect, and the party exited to explore the fourth tier.
They soon encountered a half-dozen beastmen who uttered fierce war-cries of “Zargon!” and attacked. Only now did the heretofore unassuming sha’ir Sharik reveal his power. As the beastmen charged forward, the very ground beneath their feet became as slippery as the shifting sands. Losing their balance, the beastmen fell in disarray and were soon dispatched.
Pressing past the corpses, the travelers came upon the sealed tomb of some long-dead warrior. While the warrior’s mummy lay in eternal rest, his skeletal guardians did not, and had to be dispatched through force of arms. After the leaving the warrior’s tomb, the travelers circled eastward to a tomb with eternal flames flitting from brass jars. The jars were immovable, but in searching near the jars the party found a map indicating there was some sort of trap door in the tier. They didn’t recognize the location on the map, so they decided further exploration was warranted.
As the party exited the tomb of flaming jars, they heard the thunderous sound of stone crashing on stone. Their torchlight revealed a granite boulder rolling down the corridor towards them, giving them barely enough time to duck back into the tomb and avoid being crushed. The dwarf, Tor, advised that he was an expert at finding traps, and offered to search the doors more thoroughly to avoid such incidents going forward.
In the next room they visited, the travelers were alerted to a lair of giant rats by the horrendous croaks of alarm coming from Barnabas, Sharik’s toad-jinn. There were almost a dozen of the foul rodents, and many of the party took fierce bites. Ethlyn, however, fought particularly well, impressing even grim Mahmoud, who shared his water with her afterwards. Sharik then asked Barnabas to explore the lair, prompting a series of croaks: “Oh, most investigatory and delegatory of masters, your humble servant thanks you for the opportunity to expose his tender skin to the pestilence these rodents litter their lair with.” There was, however, 300 gp and 4 golden topazes scattered in the lair, the rats having a penchant for collecting small shiny things.
The travelers were by now quite exhausted and laden with several wounds, so they decided to seal themselves up in the warrior’s tomb to rest. There was little rest to be had, however. Not more than an hour after they settled down, Brothers of Orn burst in upon them. The Brotherhood had been searching for the party ever since they stole the treasure from the bee-hive – as that was actually the Brotherhood’s treasure vault. In the Brotherhood’s eyes, this was a shocking betrayal from people they had given guest-rights to. Worse, the party had since joined the Magi of Istanul! Such treachery could only be repaid with cold steel. The fight with the Brothers was savage. Only fierce swordplay by Mahmoud and Ethlyn turned the tide, but Raziel, Tor, and Sharik were all incapacitated. Raziel and Tor proved only to be have been dazed, but Sharik took a shield-smash to his hip which left him lamed.
The travelers found themselves in yet more need of rest. This time they took the precaution of spiking the doors shut, and maintaining noise and light discipline. They were disturbed during the night to hear a strange wolf-like howling and shuffling, but their precautions held. The next day, the party re-mapped some of the areas around the warrior’s tomb, connecting up various tunnels and passageways to create a clearer representation of the fourth tier.
With the north-eastern portion of the fourth tier mapped, the travelers headed westward. The hall ended in a nobleman’s burial room. The nobleman’s tomb had become the lair of two savage white apes, who unleashed a barrage of hurled rocks at the party. Senef, the shaman, was struck down by stone to the groin; his immediate unconsciousness spared him the horror of knowing he’d been castrated. The beautiful singer Ethlyn took a rock to the face that reduced her teeth to porridge. Mahmoud, Raziel, and Tor charged in to melee with the creatures, but the carnivorous primates were even more fearsome in melee. Raziel managed to dispatch one ape, but was then struck down, his left eye a torn and bleeding maw, by its mate. The surviving ape then pounced on Tor, tearing his arms off. The machinist’s slender fingers were still twitching with finely-tuned muscle memory as he died in screaming agony a few feet away. Mahmoud, filled with the rage of Imran, finished the final ape off, but it was hard to call the battle a victory. The one consolation was a marvellous scimitar with a golden hilt carved in the shape of a falcon, its pattern-welded blade seeming untouched by the years. Mahmoud claimed the blade as his own.
After catching their breath and doing what they could for the injured and fallen, the battered adventurers decided they had no choice but to return to the Magi of Istanul and report that they had failed to find the scepter of Zenobia.