Enlil-Zi-Shagal's Sky Tomb: Episodes 103

Cast

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

Session Highlights

The party ends up having to fight the prismatic spider that Raynor inadvertently summoned.

Since Melissa is back to playing Lydia-the-human-bard (in the previous session we all thought she was playing a kobold cleric), she uses her Thunderwave talent, which proves to be incredibly effective against the spider's crystalline body.

It explodes upon death, and Hburdshur picks through the fragments. He pockets a few that are still shimmering, figuring they might be worth something.

They head back up to the first floor, and check out the other half of the tomb. There are two doors, same as the other side. They're both covered in carvings of worms, and Baraz roughly translates a keep-out warning above one of them. They try the other door, and inside is a gallery of slimy robes, fleshy masks, wicked blades, tapestries depicting worms emerging from the ground to eat people, and books and scrolls bound in chains.

Raynor gets a bad vibe and hangs out near the entrance, while Lydia and Hburdshur explore the room, smashing cases and breaking chains where necessary to examine some of the items and literature. Unfortunately the writing is unlike anything they've seen thus far: each page just looks like someone dropped a bunch of worms on the ground and did their best to copy the pattern.

The only other room, besides the one with the cryptic warning that Raynor wants nothing to do with, is sealed by a pair of double doors that they'd walked past a few times. Each door has a pair of levers, spaced out such that in order to pull them all in unison you'd need four people; in hindsight it was good that they brought the ghoul along.

The door opens into a vast chamber that reeks of death, and sprawled across a dais at the center of the room is the source: it looks like a shriveled lion, just with a human face and ragged, feathered wings. Behind it is a large stele surrounded by countless boxes, jars, and baskets: many of them are empty, and those that aren't are filled with rotten food.

When they approach the corpse suddenly jerks to life. In a hollow voice it greets them, and instructs them to complete some sort of ceremonial mantra before leaving any offerings before the stele. Unsure what to do they attempt to question and barter with the guardian, eventually provoking it to attack.

Raynor ends up chopping off its head, and is surprised to find that it can still talk. Looking about the room they spot four obelisks, identical in size and shape to the ones on the tower. Raynor recalls seeing a map of the tower that numbered each obelisk, and suggests activating them in the same sequence: this seems to satisfy the guardian, and it asks them if they wish to visit the "true tomb".

Of course they want to, but when a stone elevator descends from the ceiling, it gets stuck for a bit before plummeting into the floor, revealing a hidden pit that contains a nest of what the guardian refers to as viscera wasps: human-sized, insect like creatures draped with bones and rotten flesh, all glued to it with dried blood. The party flees to the worm gallery, where they hide until they think the wasps are gone.

Since the guardian head can still talk and read, they return to the basement level and have it translate a bunch of writing on the scrolls and cylinder seals. This is about when Raynor gets another idea: he grabs a prismatic spider summoning plate, traps one, and tosses into the room with the viscera wasps. Hopefully the spider would take out most of the wasps before being destroyed, or it would be severely weakened after killing all of them.

Design & Development

From what I can remember the bard's pretty useful (even though her area-effect spells take a few rounds to cast), and I think Adam's God Eater-esque class is working as intended. Doesn't seem broken on my end at any rate. Dwarf fighter is, as expected, fucking bad ass.

Was gonna post some viscera wasp or zombie lammasu art, but here's art from a mystery project I'm working on:

Announcements

You can now get a physical copy of Dungeons & Delvers: Black Book in whatever format you want!

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).