MAL Ep. 31

This session, the PCs succumbed to their temptation to best the fabled Tomb of Horrors, then manifested their animal selves and smashed another magical mirror. The party is now up to 14 years of bad luck and counting...

1) First, the party weathered the hellfire deathtrap they set off at the end of last session. Searching the chest cautiously, Bay evaded a needle trap and found a key on a magical chain. Aler located a secret door behind the chest which could be felt but not seen, and after some fumbling about, they opened it.

2) Zadkiel threw a coin into the black hole in the demon face. It disappeared without a trace into the darkness. At Khirg's suggestion, he next threw a rock with a piece of string tied to it into the hole, and was able to pull it back to himself without visible damage, suggesting that the hole is in fact a tunnel or chute rather than, say, a sphere of annihilation (as it was in the original module.) However, the party felt that crawling through a 3' diameter tunnel that a 58-HP blast of hellfire had just emerged from was too dangerous and opted to go through the invisible door instead.

3) They found another room which had a magic well with diamonds sparkling at the bottom of it, a chest, and an archway covered by a glittering forcefield with  concave depression in it.

4) Having thoroughly bought into the Wealth theme, the party immediately threw themselves into trying to recover the diamonds. Observing a mage hand they tried to stick in the water vanishing, they concluded the water had dispelling properties, and used a pair of tongs to extract a diamond. The well rumbled slightly as they did, and the party, concerned that taking all the diamonds might trigger another trap, decided to drop pebbles the same size as the diamonds into the well as they took each one, to offset the weight. Using this method they recovered all 8 diamonds, which Bay estimated at 150 gp value apiece.

5) Aler, Khirg and Bay were meanwhile checking the walls for arrow slits or other unpleasant surprises. They found none, but getting a closer look at the archway, noticed writing on it. Jon identified it as Draconic. Adriel came over to read it. It said "Know Thy Enemy." When she spoke these words aloud, Chavalk appeared in the room and attacked.

6) The ensuing fight was nasty, brutish, and short. It took Chavalk five rounds (30 seconds) to establish a TPK over the eight party members, using spelllike abilities the PCs identified as Blasphemy and Implosion, casting quickened Fireballs, and wielding a Vorpal longsword.

7) Paralyzed by the Blasphemy, Jon was unable to talk, but his dark hopeless thoughts apparently attracted the attention of Ralph the giant millipede, who stuck his head through the ceiling and admonished "Stop complaining and pay attention, you fool, you are getting a free Answer out of this!"

8) After the party was destroyed, they reappeared being spat out of the demon's mouth in the first Wealth room, without having taken any damage from the Chavalk fight (but with the spells they cast still gone.) Ralph commented "Anselm must like you, travelers."

9) A bone scroll with a taunting message signed by "Acererak" came shooting out of the demon's mouth. Jon recalled this as the name of the lich from the Tomb of Horrors legend, but also had believed this story was fictional--as in written by an author, not reported from history.

9) Zadkiel floated the idea of going back and grinding the Chavalk fight repeatedly till either the party figured out how to win or everyone leveled up. The others voted this idea down, partially because they had no actual proof that this plan would work without really killing them and partially because Adriel had had enough of Chavalk's face for one day.

10) The spellcasters were getting very low on spells, but decided to at least go back to the well room and see what was in the chest. The answer: deadly poison asps! Bay and Aler made their saving throws, avoiding some ugly consequences. Red used Wild Empathy on the snakes to stop them from attacking and Aler used Speak With Animals to coax them out of the chest to eat Angara's lunch, revealing a crystal lens beneath them.

11) Khirg used a bucket to slosh some of the dispelling water on the forcefield. It flickered, but did not dispel. Jon's after the fact insight is that water removed from a magical pool usually loses its magical properties or at least has them greatly reduced.

12) The party placed the lens into the depression on the forcefield, causing it to dissipate and revealing a hallway beyond. Jon recommended turning back at this point but was overruled.

13) Spotting a large wooden chest, the party headed towards it, ignoring visible silver wires on the ground, and triggered a sheet lightning trap. The chest also proved to be a mimic and mauled Bay and Khirg. The party took a stupid amount of damage from this setup and Jon advocated retreat, but Adriel was stuck in gambler's fallacy and determined to get something worthwhile out of this room after investing so much in getting here. Eventually Bay thought to cut the wire, disabling the electrical trap, and Aler and Khirg killed the mimic.

14) At the end of the hallway the party found a golden seal on the wall with a cross-shaped indentation in it and the name Acererak on it. The party argued for a while about whether to try opening this seal, the pro argument being that there might be a chalice behind it and the con argument being that if there was a lich trapped behind it it might be better to leave him there. The pros eventually won the argument, but Adriel's attempt to force the seal open didn't work.

15) Red then cast stone shape on the wall, trying to open a passage to the other side. As the wall cracked, blood began to cascade out of it like that scene in the Shining, doing necrotic damage every round it touched anyone. The party retreated from the hallway, but waited in the demon head room on the assumption that the blood would eventually be depleted and they could then pass through the hole. When they checked, the blood had actually started getting deeper instead.

16) Ignoring Jon's repeated suggestions that they leave, the party cast Resist Energy on Aler so that he could safely traverse the blood flow, and he pushed through to the seal. The stone shape had closed somewhat but there were still big cracks in the wall large enough for a person to squeeze into. So Aler squeezed in, but the stone was still contracting and trying to knit itself back together, and he took some crushing damage and barely extracted himself.

17) Finally, with reluctance, the group agreed with Jon's suggestion to leave. When they placed the sapphire back into the bowl, they reappeared back in the yard, where they slept and recovered spells without incident.

18) Vanima Kaimelar told Jon that she had been able to see the party jumping and running around while they were in the Wealth area.

19) Adriel and Zadkiel decided to go back to check on the blood levels in the hallway. As soon as they took a sapphire from the bowl, however, the whole party was once again transported to the dungeon. Jon tried to grab the sapphire away from Adriel, accusing her of holding him in the dungeon against his will. Meanwhile Zadkiel investigated the hallway, ascertaining that the blood had receded and the wall around the seal was intact again.

20) The party returned to the yard and decided to investigate the snowglobe in the gazebo instead. It seemed to have the image of a colorful pagoda inside it. When Adriel picked it up and shook it, they were suddenly transported to the pagoda--but in animal form (Red as dinosaur, Adriel as unicorn, Khirg as bull mastiff, Zadkiel as Percheron, Aler as eagle, Jon as cat, Bay as crow, Cartino as lion.) The party animals arrived in humanoid form (except for Vanima Kaimelar, who retained her own shape.)

21) The group was startled by a ghost fly-by. Zadkiel tried to turn the ghost, but was chagrined to recognize the ghost had the face of the naiad Essily. She flew through him, but it did no damage, and she disappeared into the pagoda rafters.

22) The inside of the pagoda was inscribed with the words "Ring The Changes." After Cherethites (the paladin's mount) explained to everyone this meant bell ringing, the group began to search for a third bell, since there were only two visible in the pagoda and a velvet rope leading to an empty crossbar in the rafters.

23) Adriel the unicorn began eating the fragrant moss in a copper bin outside the pagoda, revealing the end of a clapper. The bin was actually an upside down bell. The party managed to set it up and Jon demonstrated how to ring them.

24) Kadrin (Adriel's horse) turned out to be able to count, so the party used him to plan a peal of changes on the three bells, since none of them could talk.

25) The party successfully rung the changes, causing a huge mirror to swivel to face them at the far end of the pagoda. The mirror had three angles and was set in green lacquered wood with gold glyphs painted onto it and a crystal rod resting at its base.

26) Jon was able to decipher one of the glyphs as meaning "fear". As he did this he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and a monster called a Time Eater emerged from the mirror to fight him.

27) The party fought the Time Eater, hampered by their animal forms and the fact that the Time Eater was temporally displaced and thus difficult to hit. Its blows caused aging, and time seemed to distort in the area around it.

28) Panicked by the Time Eater, Jon somehow managed to cast the spell Shout despite his cat form, shattering the giant mirror and sending the Time Eater back where it had come from.

29) With the mirror destroyed, the party recovered the crystal rod but were unable to find anything else meaningful in the pagoda. Shaking the snow globe again, they returned to the yard, where they resumed their own shapes and Jon explained to them the powers of the Time Eater. The party found Ralph and asked him what day it was, but Ralph did not know.

And there we broke for the day. Onwards!

Laura