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Message: <blockquote data-quote="StalkingBlue" data-source="post: 1229815" data-attributes="member: 645">Gutheron’s TombCho drops down the shaft and lands in a double puff of dust.  Leo’s Prying Eyes swarm down around her and flit into the dark tunnel ahead, past frescoes of funeral processions with beast-headed gods.  Nothing else moves.  The monk picks up the magically lit coin and follows as behind her the others start sliding down the rope.  They are in:  this is the first bit that Astragard, still startling in his new young man’s shape, says he has not explored before.  ***They arrived at the tomb the night before and found an Aryptian trap-finder, Garak, already camped in front of the sand dune half drowning a pyramid with a female stone head of enormous size.  Garak appeared to have been waiting for another group of explorers who, however, never turned up.  He accepted an offer to accompany the party into the tomb for a share in the gains.  At this point Saphie and Sigurd were informed that they were urgently required in Gaxmoor and were promptly teleported away.  The party asked for Red Ivy to be sent instead to reinforce their fighting arm.  A tense moment followed when another Aryptian approached, who introduced himself as Ramu Khan, a leaderless warrior who also wished to join and was asked by Leo to demonstrate his fighting skills first.  Dark with anger, Ramu threw down his weapons and stepped out:  more a challenge than acceptance of the proposition to spar with Cho.  The tall Aryptian showed himself trained to some extent in unarmed fighting and focussed on the attack, if sometimes quick to sacrifice defence.  Another tense moment followed later that evening.  At Leo’s insistent questioning Astragard finally admitted a number of facts he had previously kept secret from the party, admitting that he was the son of a certain desert demon, was about five thousand years old and had come to the tomb to recover an idol that might give him much power over Thunder-of-the-Mountain, another demon and his father’s ancient deadly enemy.  He showed himself in what he said to be his true form, that of a young man of almost unearthly beauty.  (Someone mused that Aos should be here to see this.)  At this point Ramu started making cutting remarks and vague threats, finally admitting that he was an Avenger of Horus and sent to stop Astragard from “doing evil”.  Astragard shrugged this off, merely insisting that the two Aryptians spend the night outside the party’s Rope Trick.  The next morning the party, now reinforced by the two Aryptians and by Red Ivy from Gaxmoor, headed into the tomb.  Astragard led them past a colonnade and through a secret tunnel into an inner chamber where he had destroyed a wraith and then been forced to withdraw, a millennium and a half ago.  Leo and Ramu took a moment to hunt down and kill a tiny invisible creature, which Astragard said was a Gremlin and a bringer of bad luck.  They went on into the former wraith’s chamber without further incident and found the shaft leading down into the tunnel system below.  ***And here they are.  Tunnels, and more tunnels, weaving and leading back into one another.  Some have side chambers with gleaming gold and sparkling gems in them, some angle around on themselves or lead into dead ends.  The party passes the treasure chambers by, wary of traps and intending to come back for loot only after they have penetrated into the heart of the tomb and found the idol Astragard seeks.  After much searching and mapping they find their way into a chamber with a shaft leading into it from above and a pentagram with a bell with sun symbols in its centre.  Another tunnel slopes down from the chamber, walled with mirrors on both sides and with a mirror above the door at the far end.  Learned discussion follows and a scroll describing certain features of the tomb is brought out and studied again – without notable results.  The party decides to wait a while until sunlight creeps down the shaft and slowly walks across the pentagram.  Nothing.  Finally the party decides to head down the mirrored tunnel.  Garak goes first searching for traps, with Cho close behind him in case of other threats.  Traps they find none, but without warning black clawed demons swarm through the mirrors all around them.  Garak immediately runs back into the pentagram chamber, leaving Cho to deal with the threat.  In the ensuing fight, short but bloody, a Searing Light spell from Tarquin is reflected off onto the monk.  After a slight delay for healing, during which Ramu demonstrates that he is able to cure wounds to some extent, the party heads down the mirrored tunnel.  They take a moment to explore a side chamber and recover a suit of armour displayed beyond a chasm filled with smoke, hoping that this will be Gutheron’s legendary suit of Harmonic Armour.  They still have to find Astragard’s idol and the helm.  The hall beyond the door at the end of the mirrored tunnel seethes with thousands of poisonous snakes.  A fire elemental called by Astragard takes care of those of them in its reach and an Ice Storm or two from a wand dispatch the ones hanging down from the ceiling.  The party moves on along yet another tunnel that begins high up in the wall and leads steeply up into a room layered deeply with human bones and a throne at the far end.  A mist swirls in the centre of the throne room as a demon forms.  Astragard warns that this specimen may have a breath weapon and the party scatters.  About two dozen skeletons rise from the layer of bones and are quickly dispatched, together with the demon that has had time to breathe but once and without catching any of the party.  The throne bears an ancient inscription warning that no one but Gutheron may sit in it and promising “death to the usurper”.  Experiments with dead snakes from the other chamber demonstrate that sufficient weight on the throne will cause it to rotate together with a portion of dais, to be replaced by an identical copy from beyond the wall.  Dull thuds turn out to be impacts of three javelins into the throne.  The next rotation does not bring any more javelins, so on the third turn the party decides to trust themselves to the mechanism.  Which brings them into a tunnel again.  Over the next hour or so Ramu and Cho narrowly avoid getting squashed by a sliding stone slab in an upwards-leading tunnel, everyone is somewhat debilitated by magic frescoes of various desert beasts on a tunnel wall, Astragard takes the idol from Gutheron’s animated body and teleports away, and Garak contracts mummy rot before Tarquin has had time to turn Gutheron.  And that is all.  Cold night air drifts in through four openings made by more sliding slabs of stone.  It has been a long day.  The party returns to their camp outside the sand dune – only to find in the morning that Garak has quietly slipped away on his own during the night.  Having lost their only trap-finder, they decide against going back into the tunnels for more loot.  Instead they will teleport to Gaxmoor to sell the Harmonic Armour they have retrieved from Gutheron’s tomb.</blockquote>

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