Tomb of the Dragon Wizard
At last Lozol met his newly discovered sister, Lilith. The siblings could hardly be more different from each other in some respects. Lilith whispered a quick warning to her brother to be careful of the eladrin wizard and his strange prophesy. But in all it was a happy reunion, as Lozol was happy to see his childhood friend, Tlaloc, and his more recent friend, Hyksos the dragonborn.
The gnome and his lackeys had been defeated, and Lozol and Lilith’s adoptive father, Douvan Staul, had been rescued. After searching the gnome and his guards and finding some gold and silver, the heroes were urged on by Douvan Staul to search the passage into the burial tomb. But first the heroes decided to sleep at the burial site through the night.
As Xandir and Rafanel kept watch (Xandir used his eladrin ability to sit alert, in a waking trance), they saw a storm gather over the foothills of the mountains beyond the town of Winterhaven, over the location of the old Keep of Shadows. The thunder and lighting were ominous in those dark clouds but the storm unnaturally hovered over the foothills of the Shadow Keep for hours, never moving throughout the night. At dawn, the storm was gone, but a thin fog settled down from the mountains over the valley, even to the burial site where the heroes awoke from their rest.
Lozol, perhaps eager to prove himself useful to make up for getting captured, offered to lead the way into the dank and dark tunnel that descended into the earth. The winding path allowed only one person at a time to descend. At the end of the tunnel, a hole had been dug even deeper below the floor level, revealing an unearthed sarcophagus made of granite. But as Lozol reached out to open it, a fluttering sound was heard through the darkness, and something the size of a large rat flitted through the air to land right at Lozol’s neck. The creature looked like a cross between a bat and a giant mosquito! It latched onto Lozol with grasping hook-like claws, and, before Lozol could react, the thing slipped its piercing proboscis right between the plates of Lozol’s armor, into the tender flesh of his neck.
“It’s a stirge!” yelled out Xandir and Rafanel in unison. Rafanel knew such creatures from his woodcraft, while Xandir had studied them in the Creature Compendiums of his wizard school.
Lilith focused her eyebite power on the creature’s small mind. The creature reeled, but clung on. Xandir blasted it with a carefully placed magic missile. Then Lozol tried to pry off the creature. Feeling a new connection with his sister, he tried to look at the creature with the same focus that she used. To his own amazement, he was able to reproduce the same magical effect she did, hurting the creature mentally with the psychic damage of an eybite. The little monster squealed and popped off of Lozol’s neck, releasing its grabbing claws, and falling rigid and dead on the cavern floor.
Lozol, now calm again, began trying to open the sarcophagus once more. On the surface of the sarcophagus, the group read the inscriptions written there in Common and Draconic. The inscriptions revealed that here lay the body of a Dragon Wizard of Nareth, apprentice to the silver dragon Haracasterix the Radiant. Also engraved was a warning: “Let the gate of the demon lord of undeath remain shut forever.”
Lozol struggled to remove the sarcophagus lid. It was not easy, but with help from Hyskos, the hulking dragonborn, the lid of the sarcophagus was removed. Inside lay the mummified remains of a humanoid body, probably human or elf. At his feet was a wand, and in his prune-like dry hands was clutched a scroll.
The group read the scroll, which contained a testament from the Dragon Wizard, offering use of his beloved magical wand, Orthrax, against any who oppose the evil demonic cult of the undead, and warning that the Cursed Scrolls of the Fallen Flesh, also buried in this tomb, must never fall into the wrong hands. Alas, it appears the evil gnome had already found those scrolls and delivered them into the very, very wrong hands of the goblin Irontooth and his kobold minions.
Also in the sarcophagus was a locked chest. Tlaloc easily picked the lock, and Hyksos began counting the gold coins within. But this apparently activated an ancient trap in the tomb, setting off a cave collapse. As the floor trembled and pebbles and dust began to shake loose from the ceiling, the heroes ran for their lives out to the exit to the outside. Most of the heroes left the cave before the collapse. But Lozol, being deepest in the cave, barely escaped before the rocks began to fall, sealing the tomb again.
Xandir claimed the magic wand for his own use, just as Lilith had claimed the magic Amulet of Health taken from the gnome. Rafanel and Lozol refused to take a share of the gold, finding it improper to partake in what they saw as graverobbing, but Hyksos, Tlaloc and Lilith shared in the gold, vowing to use it to purchase weapons to use against evil.
The heroes decided to head back to town to rest and purchase equipment. After an uneventful journey, they found the town looking much the same as before, except everyone seemed unusually quiet and sullen. Upon arriving in the town’s market, the heroes found it largely empty, except for some peasants buying their daily necessities. At the market, they were approached by a dark-haired elf huntress, Ninaran. She seemed to be acquainted with Lozol, and to know much about the heroes’ quest and the prophesy concerning Lozol and Lilith. Lozol, under questioning by the rest of the group, admitted he met the elf woman in his earlier passage through town before he was captured. This time, however, instead of engaging the elf woman in conversation, sent her away, accusing her of foul play and ill motives.
