Enlil-Zi-Shagal's Sky Tomb: Episode 101

Cast

• Hburdshur (level 2 dwarf fighter)
• Lydia (level 2 human bard)
• Raynor (level 2 god eater-class thing)

Session Highlights

Having passed through the now-vanished portal, the party found themselves standing on a stone disc, connected to a much larger, weathered structure by a narrow bridge. The entirety was seemingly suspended in an endless blue sky, obscured here and there by the occasional mass of clouds or floating stone.

It was of only slight comfort that the disc and bridge were surrounded by a mostly intact iron cage.

The bridge led to what they assumed was a circular door. Three concentric rings each featured the same three symbols, and at the center was a stone handle. The symbols were lined up so that they matched, and the party deduced that it was another puzzle lock. Fortunately Baraz knew what each symbol meant: man, woman, and child. When lined up that way from the outermost to the innermost ring, with a pull of the handle the door noisily descended into the floor.

Ambient light revealed part of a wide hall. Large, empty glass tubes stretched from the floor to the ceiling, and the walls to either side were covered in elaborate paintings. One displayed humans following a sort of priest carrying a staff and wearing a golden bird mask, and on the other winged humanoids descended from the sky to slaughter monstrous worms.

They lit a few torches and proceeded through the hall. At an intersection, bereft of any meaningful features or signs chose to go left. This brought them to a square doorway, flanked by a pair of stelae carved with incomprehensible pictographs and featuring more winged humanoids.

For some reason Hburdshur returned to the first hall and smashed one of the glass tubes. He immediately started choking and coughing, but after about a minute began breathing normally and seemed to be completely fine. They didn't have much time to wonder what had happened (or if Hburdshur was going to eventually die from poison), as a pair of spindly stone humanoids suddenly lumbered into the hall, hacking at them with stone sword-arms.

Lydia's short sword obviously didn't do much (and it was a miracle it remained intact despite her efforts), but her song magic shattered them fairly easily. Hburdshur's mace and Raynor's bullets also proved to be effective, and soon the stone guardians were reduced to fragments and dust. Amidst the remains were a pair of glittering gemstones, which Lydia pocketed: if they made it home she could see if they were magical, or at least try and sell them.

When they returned to the doorway the stelae were gone, so they made a note to be wary of and destroy any stelae they encountered in the future. Continuing through the door, they found themselves in a small chamber with two sealed doors. Neither had a puzzle lock, so they chose one at random.

It opened into a partially flooded and completely dilapidated burial chamber. Amid rotted furnishings, faded paintings, and rusted weapons and armor were a handful of silver figurines. A gold sarcophagus lay next to a crack in one of the walls, wide enough for them to file through and revealing the endless sky beyond.

After gathering up the figurines, Hburdshur opened the sarcophagus, and was greeted by a wildly flapping and squawking skeleton that was something between a man and bird, with a grotesque mantle of tattered feathers running down its back. It pecked at him with its half beak, but he was able to keep it at bay until Raynor drew its attention with a few well-placed shots from his god arc.

Raynor transformed his god arc into a blade, but a lack of flesh and organs rendered his attacks largely ineffective. Lydia's, too. The birdman-skeleton crashed into Raynor, toppling them both to the floor as it tore through his armor and into his flesh. He fell unconscious just before Hburdshur shattered the creature's misshapen skull with his mace: its remains clattered to the floor, and slowly shriveled into a headless, much more humanoid skeleton wearing a resplendent cape of white feathers.

While Hburdshur administered their only mending potion to Raynor, Lydia examined the cape. She couldn't tell if it was magical, but a now-conscious Raynor cautioned against handling the cape because he assumed it was cursed. So, of course Lydia donned it and transformed into a small bird. This seemingly affirmed Raynor's suspicions, but after a few minutes of hopping and clumsily flapping about Lydia reverted to her original form.

Raynor still didn't trust it.

Design & Development

In terms of the actual adventure, so far so good. Curious to see what they do with the feather cape. It does other things but I don't want to spoil it, here.

Adam wanted to playtest a class he's working on (based on the god eaters from, well, God Eater), so I let him swap out Taverick for Raynor. One of his friends wanted to play, so we swapped out Helga for...drumroll...another dwarf fighter!

Melissa finally did a bard thing this session. Worked out alright, but her melee is horrible and I think I'm going to let her choose to play music for a longer to make it deal more damage. Probably something like +2d8 damage for every additional round.

Announcements

It look a lot longer than expected, but we finally released The Jinni. As with our other monstrous classes, this one is more faithful to the mythology (so don't go in expecting elemental-themed jinn).

After putting it to a vote, the next couple of classes on the docket are the warden (think 4E D&D warden) and apothecary (gotta go see what they're all about).

Dwarven Vault is our sixth 10+ Treasures volume. If you're interested in thirty dwarven magic items (including an eye that lets you shoot lasers) and nearly a dozen new bits of dungeon gear, check it out!

Just released our second adventure for A Sundered World, The Golden Spiral. If a snail-themed dungeon crawl is your oddly-specific thing, check it out!

By fan demand, we've mashed all of our 10+ Treasure volumes into one big magic item book, making it cheaper and more convenient to buy in print (which you can now do).