Session Three.
When the party reached the sanctuary of the Magi, Aytollah expressed sympathies for their loss, but urged them not to abandon the quest for the scepter. “The Staff and the Crescent!” cried the travelers, swearing they would find it.
As a thank you for their efforts on behalf of the Magi, Aytollah gave them a gift of a Thrassian slave. The lizardman had been found wandering in the desert a few days earlier, manacled to a locked chest. While dehydrated and famished, the Thrassian was powerfully built, with razor-sharp claws, rippling muscles, and more than a few sword-scars. In halting common, the creature, Rakh, explained that it was an arena champion being shipped to Alakyrum to do battle in the coliseums there. It had been separated from its caravan during a sandstorm. Surmising that this must have been the same caravan and same sandstorm that had brought the party together in the first place, Mahmoud saw the Instrument of Fate at work, and claimed Rakh as a warrior-companion. The Thrassian, failing to understand that it was free, vowed to serve Mahmoud loyally. [Paul’s PC, Tor, was dead. He had rolled up Rakh, a 1st level Thrassian Gladiator, as his replacement.]
While Rakh was meeting the rest of the travelers, the mumble-mouthed Ethlyn tried to find an associate of her own. Fortunately her lisping voice was still attractive, and the faceless mask of Istanul concealed her disfigurement, so she was able to recruit a young mage, Majid, to join her.
After several days of rest, the travelers – now with Rakh and Majid in their company – felt confident enough to sortie again. Making their way back to the fourth tier, they found themselves face-to-face with another war party from the Brotherhood of Orn, ever-intent on revenge. Filled with hatred for the Brothers, Majid unleashed a cone of fire from his hands that left the Brothers badly burned. Those still capable of fighting were caught in the slippery sands summoned by Sharik, and soon dispatched.
Not long after fighting off the Brothers, the travelers found the burial room of a former high priest. This august chamber was the lair of a pack flesh-eating ghuls, but Fate smiled on the travelers again and the fight was speedily won.
From the high priest’s tomb, the travelers began exploring a long, twisting corridor. Their progress was halted by the dreadful appearance of long dead Iskander and Zenobia, the lost monarchs of Cynidicea, warning them to turn back or face certain doom. Many of the party members decided to head this advice and fled in panic, and it took almost thirty minutes for them to re-organize to continue their exploration.
Senef, wise in the way of spirits, deduced that the presence of the apparitions suggested that Iskander and Zenobia’s tombs must be nearby. He decided to commune with the jinn. After an exotic ritual involving much hissing and dancing, the shaman announced that a secret door was to be found on the south wall of the passage. Even armed with this knowledge, it took the travelers nearly an hour to locate the door; already they missed their fallen friend Tor, whose knowledge of stone mechanisms had been unparalleled.
Past the secret door found a long gallery with a floor marked in red and white checkerboard tiles. At the far end of the gallery, a narrow gap cut across the east wall, where the falling stone of some long-triggered trap had only partly sealed off the exit. Raziel was certain the room was heavily trapped, but trusting to Kalefa, led the way. Progress was slow, for at each tile he stopped to prod it with a spear before proceeding forward. All told it took almost two hours to traverse the room, but by being so careful the party was able to avoid the three dreadful scythes that might have otherwise sent them to their next life. They then cautiously scuttled through the narrow gap into what they assumed would be the tomb of the Cynidicean monarchs.
It turned out to be a false tomb, used to mislead tomb robbers. The travelers were not fooled, quickly ascertaining that the jewels were paste and rock, the coins counterfeit. They felt confident that the real tombs had to be close by, and commenced a thorough search of the false tomb. Still lacking anyone with skill at searching, it was a ponderous process, but they did eventually locate two secret doors, one on the north and one on the south wall.
They decided to traverse the southern door, and in this, they chose poorly. The tomb they came upon was none other than the resting place of King Iskander, who lingered in this world as a macabre spirit. As the ghostly king chanted lays of death, all of the adventurers felt their vital energies slipping away. Most fled immediately; only Mahmoud, Rakh, and Raziel stayed to fight. Mahmoud’s falcon-scimitar cut swathes of energy from the spirit, but Rakh and Raziel’s non-magical weapons couldn’t even harm the ghostly king. With their life energy beginning to ebb under the king’s chanting, Rakh and Raziel pried open the king’s sarcophagus and seized his ancient, gleaming blade, turning the ghostly king’s own scimitar against him.
At this moment, Mahmoud realized his vital energy was about to give away completely, and he turned to run. His knees buckled, and he pitched forward, his head smacking onto the edge of the sarcophagus. The grotesque angle the impact left his head in could only mean his spine had snapped. There was no time for pity or compassion: Rakh snatched up Mahmoud’s sword and he and Raziel continued to strike at the ghostly king.
A moment later the king chanted out a word of death, and Raziel and Rakh both fell stricken, their flesh blackening with necrosis. The chanting ended. In the next room, Ethlyn realized that her comrades had fallen, and resolved to avenge them. Chanting with all the elan her shattered mouth could muster, she charged into the king’s tomb, picked up the fallen magic swords, and struck. With a wail, King Iskander vanished! Rakh and Raziel were dead, however, and Mahmoud was paralyzed from the neck down. “Imran,” the paladin wailed. “Why did you not grant me the glory of death in battle?”
The survivors gathered up the bodies of the fallen and the treasures of Iskander and retreated to the sanctuary of Istanul once again.