Return to the Tomb of Horrors finally gets a Story Hour!

[Mathew_Freeman]

Congratulations on a great story so far! Keep going!

It's making me itch to roll up some high level characters and get blasting stuff...!

 

[James McMurray]

Well, Cleveland isn't too far. We play every Sunday.

 

[James McMurray]

The remainder of the party begins to explore the floor where the Lord High Exultant lived. They find very little of worth, but a strange meditation mat does draw their attention. William sits upon it and begins a prayer to Heironious. He gets two words into it when a feeling of dread makes him get up and leave the stand.

The party travels onward and finds themselves in another tower. This one is empty of floors or internal walls, and would be completely empty but for the mass of glowing green webs as thick as a man’s arm.

Fokurt begins to work his way down the wall to investigate, but comes back up when he hers an arachnid chittering from below. As he rejoins the group topside, 4 horse-sized jet black spiders come up through the webbing and shoot out glowing emerald cords as strong as iron. William and Oskar are caught and dragged downward towards the waiting spiders.

The group flies into action and the battle is joined. The spiders soon begin to take the worst of the exchange, except that two party members have been bitten and weakened by their negative energy essence, while Galrond has managed to get himself cocooned.

Just as things are about to end in the party’s victory, the mother shows up. She is a massive beast the size of a house, who skitters forward and bites Oskar. The battle again shifts in the favor of the spiders. That is, until William casts a Mass Heal. The massive beast gets a few more good bites in, but it is no match for the combined might of a high-level party.

The party regroups and send Fokurt back in to investigate, as the riddle earlier had mentioned that a riddle box was hanging beneath emerald webs. Sure enough, Fokurt finds beneath the mesh a huge black metal cube hanging from a tree-thick cord of webbing. He works his way around it to try to find a riddle and is surprised by the Winter Wight that moves around the corner and attacks him.

The beast’s claws tear into him and set him alight with the dreaded Blackfire. Luckily the force of the blows kills his body, freeing his soul before the blackfire could snuff it out. The party, not having heard from Fokurt, head down to investigate.

As William rounds the corner of the box, he too is surprised by the beast. The party fights for a few short seconds before they decide they cannot hope to defeat this thing when they are already weakened. Just as William is noticing that his wounds are healing on their own, and that his Mass Heal had no effect upon them, the group dives through a gate held open by Galrond, and into the shores of Celestia.

As William steps into the surf, his legs begin to smoke as the water around them boils. Incredible pain shoots through him and the light of the eternal Sun sears his eyes. Mere microseconds before he is completely snuffed out he plane shifts to the sewers of Lopolla.

 

[Tzarevitch]

The Lord High Exultant is one of my favorite baddies in a module full of great baddies. He's tough, he's smart, and - he cheats! The party does't have to abide by the so-called rules of the fight, but the Exultant states them with such a commanding tone that they likely will.

I imagine that a bit less lawfully aligned group would take one look at the huge, undead warrior demanding single combat, then another look, then say, "Screw you!" and bum rush him.



Bah, drat that Mace of Disruption; it takes all the fun out of undead. Although it does allow the party to get back at Mr. Exultant's cheating through some cheating of their own.

Finally, where was the Vestige during this fight? It didn't show up for a visit? *shiver*

Yeah. When we played it (in 2e) our lawful party didn't even think about stepping in. Even when the Lord High Exultant started cheating we figured that there was something in the rules that we didn't know. Eventually our champion (a 21st level 2e fighter with a girdle of fire giant strength) put him down despite his cheating but it hurt her a lot.

Honestly, Return to the Tomb of Horrors is one of my favorite adventures of all time. We had fits with the Winter Wights and the Moilean Zombies. We has less of a problem with the Vestige because we (with the help of an NPC wizardess) destroyed it pretty early after coming to Moil using Wish and Limited Wish spells to make it vulnerable to our other spells and attacks.

I love reading this Story Hour because it is cool seeing how another group reacted to the same challenges.

Tzarevitch

 

[James McMurray]

I guess I'm unfamiliar with 2e (played it a little long ago), so I'm amazed that you managed to destroy the Vestige. I certainly wouldn't allow Limited Wish to remove its defenses, although Wish might work (for a round or two at most).

And of course, when I converted it to 3E I used the Abomination info from the ELH. I gave it regeneration requiring a weapon forged in a dream to get past.

 

[Tzarevitch]

I guess I'm unfamiliar with 2e (played it a little long ago), so I'm amazed that you managed to destroy the Vestige. I certainly wouldn't allow Limited Wish to remove its defenses, although Wish might work (for a round or two at most).

And of course, when I converted it to 3E I used the Abomination info from the ELH. I gave it regeneration requiring a weapon forged in a dream to get past.

I don't remember the exact sequence but it involved Wishes to lower the defenses for a round whereupon the spellcasters piled the damage spells on at longest possible range. We then repeated the process for 3 or so rounds using limited wishes as nevessary to simulate other damage spells like Cones of Cold or Chain Lightning. I think it took 3-4 Wishes a Limited Wish or Two, several Delayed-Blast fireballs, Flamestrikes, Meteorswarms and lower level damage spells over about 3-4 rounds before it died. We never did get its resistances completely down, we just reduced them enough that massive amounts of damage could get though and eventually kill it.

In all fairness, our 2e party consisted of a 15/16 Mystic of Nog(from Al-Qadim)/Priest, a 11/13/15 (Rogue/Priest/Sha'ir(from Al-Qadim)), a 21st level fire-genasi fighter with a Girdle of Fire Giant Strenth and a +5 sword, a 9/12 paladin/priest with a semi-artifact level Holy Avenger, an 19th lvl Wu-Jen (using the kit from the Complete Wizard's Handbook), and a 20th lvl Necromancer (an NPC ally who we'd picked up in an earlier adventure), plus an efreet, a marid and an Al-Qadim slayer genie with Max HP and a +5 Sword of Mortal Slaying. We had been playing these characters for 5 years or so of real-time and we had accumulated a LOT of stuff and knew how to use it.

My rogue/priest/sha-ir alone carried a Wish spell stored in a tattoo on his chest, a Wish spell stored in his staff, and another stored in memory. I could also call on a Wish from the Efreet once per year and an Alter Reality (1st edition spell similar to a Wish) from the Marid. The NPC 20th level necromancer also carried 3-4 Wish spells on scrolls and one or two in memory.

Note, despite our firepower, the Vestige surprised us and routed us the first time we fought it and forced us to Teleport without Error back to Al-Qadim. The second time we loaded ourselves for bear and came looking for it and provoked a fight on our terms. As I recall, we also used divination spells and Wishes before the fight to try and figure out what it was and what might work against it. (This didn't work very well so we settled on using the Wish spells to drop whatever resistances or immunities it had and then just pouring the damage on.) Even then, it didn't go down quietly. It's just that at that point we knew that it was there and we had a pretty good idea how to kill it.

That all said, despite our levels, the adventure was tough. We had deaths aplenty (I will avoid specifics so as not to tip off your players.) We lost a PC to the Winter Wight under the Puzzle Box. We lost another to another Winter Wight somewhere else in the City. We lost a couple when we accidentally cast Delayed Blast Fireballs into an ice corridor filled with Moilean Zombies. One PC was killed by the Executioner, one PC was killed when we shattered the mirror of life-trapping (we forgot that you needed to dispel it), one was maimed by playing the game of chance, and another was killed by the dragon. Finally, all but one of us died again in the final fight when we forgot what we were supposed to do to end the Devourerer's menace forever. The last guy remembered it in time for us to pull victory out.

As I said before, Return to the Tomb of Horrors is one of my favorite adventures of all time. I love the way you are running it and I check weekly for new installments to the saga.

Tzarevitch

 

[James McMurray]

Sounds cool. Damn that's a lot of wishes!

I was hoping the party would drop fireballs in the ice cavern too.

 

[Joshua Randall]

*bump* so that James will update!

 

[James McMurray]

Sorry, things have been a bit hectic and I'm in the process of starting up a PBeM, so time has been short. I promise I'll get another update out before this weekend's game. I may not be able to get the story completely up to date, but I'll get as much as I can out for it.

 

[James McMurray]

The party is left wondering what the heck happened to William, but without the resources available to find out. They rest and recuperate from their battles. Meanwhile the priest of heironious finds himself in a bad position. He is beset by an unearthly hunger, and the mere scent of a nearby rat coupled with the sounds of its tiny heartbeat send him over the edge. He lashes out with preternatural speed and snatches the squeaking thing, making a short mean of it. When the flesh turns in his stomach and comes back up, he realizes that somehow he has become a vampire.

Thinking back through the events of the day, he comes to the conclusion that the only thing he did that noone else had done was to meditate upon the mat in the Tower of Test. Apparently the negative energy flow that kept the Master of the Tower moving for centuries had snuffed out his lifeforce and replaced it with something much more malevolent.

He vowed not to take his own life, and that he would fight through the condition for the greater glory of Heironious. The next night he awoke and cast Commune. He learned that calling forth a Miracle would cure him of his ills, but that he was not prepared for it yet.

The party meanwhile received a sending from him. They were informed that he was in Lopolla, and they went to meet them him there. a bit taken aback when he stepped out of the shadows in the attic of Amastacia's home, they soon decided that they had to trust their friend. the group then headed back to Moil to continue the hunt for Acererak.

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Sorry. I know it isn't much, but things have gotten a bit more busy than I had though t they would, and so I'm afraid this is all I can get out this week.