Tomb of Horrors Part 5

Wow...it has been a while since I updated.  We are going to get back on track though, got some good articles coming up, some about class roles in Dungeons and Dragons, as well as some more original short stories by me.  But for today, another edition of Tomb of Horrors.

Alright, so we were kind of stuck at this point and willing to try out various things to figure out what to do next.  The only two things we hadn't really explored at this point was a) the four armed gargoyle statue and b) the altar room.  Before starting all that though there was the problem of Ophelia.  Naked and not very useful, we all agreed to let her phase out and bring in her brother, Laertes.  So, new rogue in the party!

So the party decided to stop off at the room with the four-armed gargoyle again and crush the final gem.

And as we crush the last gem it said, "Your sacrifice is not in vain, look to the fourth to find your gain."  So we look to the fourth broken arm and find that there is an oval invisible thing there.  We clean off the (what we assumed at least) invisibility oil to reveal a large oval diamond.  After that we decided to go back to the altar room.

This was one of the last rooms...we had to find something interesting here or else we might as well pack it up and go home.  Luckily, Laertes searched around the room and found in the corner where the bloodmist swarm came from was a small hole with an O above it.  We figured this harkened back to the script from the beginning:

"If  shades of red stand for blood the wise
will not need sacrifice aught but a loop of
magical metal—you’re well along your march."

So we stuck the magic ring from the crystal case into the hole.  It was quickly destroyed but a secret door was also opened!  Yay, we found a way to continue.  We followed this new hallway which led to a door.  Tordak tried to force it open, but was unable to muscle it open.  Sainrith then cast Knock and we found another short hallway with an open pit right behind the door.  This repeated three more times, though the second time I thought it rather funny as Tordak did succeed in bashing the door down...then falling through into the next room and into the pit.

At this time, my cohort and I did our thing of me detecting for magic in the pits while he cast Detect Secret Doors.  We managed to find a hidden door, but Laertes, Tordak and Lightfoot were much more interested in the big obvious door at the end of the last hallway.  So we decided to explore that.  We reached the end, which was a very large locked door.  Laertes managed to hear music and laughing behind the other door and decided to open it.  After managing to unlock the door, the singing stopped, followed by a clattering and a commotion.

Confession time.  I knew what was coming.  I have used this trap a couple of times in other dungeons that I've run (modified a bit) but I remember this set up.  So I was staying very quiet during this part, though I did urge a little bit we should ignore this and go after the hidden door instead.  Well, Tordak, Laertes and Lightfoot entered the room to explore and the trap went off.

Now I'll have you know, that I was determined to ignore this trap.  If others went in and got killed, I was just going to let it happen.  Because it is Tomb of Horrors.  If you want to survive it, you have to play it as the Tomb of Horrors, which means not really letting role playing get in the way and play it like you would a video game or something like that.  I however, am an idiot and regularly don't listen to my own advice.

Now, I will say this about our DM, he was nice enough to break the events down into initiative so we would have a chance to save our friends or let them save themselves.  Lightfoot managed to have a potion of levitate, but that was about it for the "oh shit" provisions.  Laertes and Tordak were rapidly falling to their doom.  While all this exploring was happening, myself and Sainrith were back at the end of the 170 foot hallway.  So trap goes off, we hear yelling and see the torchlight drop down and we take off running.

I had a potion of Fly, so I drank that and flew down the slide to save someone.  In the meantime as we were running, however, Tordak and Laertes had both slid down enough to find that at the end of the slide was a pit of lava.  Tordak took it like a champ, but Laertes slid down and died in pretty much two rounds.  Lightfoot was making an attempt to save them by lowering a rope, but it wasn't long enough.  My cohort tied his rope to the other and they attempted to use that, however the rope was just burning away when it was getting near the lava.

Now at this point I should have just walked away.  Thrown my hands up and said, "Well, better to just lose the Barbarian and the Rogue then to lose the Cleric as well."  Note the "should have".  I flew in like Superman and tried to save Tordak though.

This crappy photo-shop job shows what this may have looked like.

The problem with my plan was I just didn't have enough hit points.  That and lava hurts.  A lot.  See, I got a hold of Tordak, but took heat damage doing so.  Heat damage which left me at 1 hit point.  And lava...well, it continues to burn the hell out of you.  As I'm flying out of the pit, I maneuvered to the rope that was dangling and told Tordak to grab a hold of the rope.  Problem is, he also continued to take damage and fell unconscious, as did I.  So we fell to our deaths, melting away into lava.

Finger licking, I say, Finger licking good, son!

So, ends the life of my cleric, Landring Carter.  Time to re-roll another cleric.  Though this time I think I'll skip the Aasimar part and just roll up a regular human so I get that extra level of cleric.

See you next time, in which I'll have my new cleric, and two old friends of mine (possibly) will be joining us to play!