The Saturday Game 7/13/19 – Murder Hoboes Solve Puzzles Edition

Note: We finished this remix of the classic Tomb of Horrors adventure written by Gary Gygax during the session.

The party is back at the beginning of this seemingly infinite loop. The Druid manipulates the stones on the archway at the end of the first hall. By pressing the proper sequence, he discovers a portal to the broken arm gargoyle room. Manipulating the stones on the other archway in the hall of orbs does nothing.  Since we remember what worked the last time in this Groundhog Day nightmare, we skip to the chest room, open the silver chest and take the gold ring. Go to the other gargoyle room and kill him to get his collar containing the stones. We advance to the altar room and place the Blood Golem ring in the O-shaped indentation in the wall. The wall moves and a passage appears; this is where time ran out on the last run so everything from here on is new. The Paper Merchant searches carefully for traps throughout the passages and we safely navigate through three doors disarming traps as we go.

The Wizard, Paper Merchant and Cleric enter a room that glows orange while the remainder of the party falls back. Suddenly, the door shuts as the floor tilts sliding them down into an inferno. Hijinks ensue as the trio attempts to escape their fate. The Cleric casts sleet storm to try to douse the flames resulting in the floor becoming slippery ice. The Paper Merchant leaps to the door. The Wizard tries to leap to the door only to slam into the wall. The Luchador, upon hearing their screams and seeing steam rise from under the door, kicks it open. The Druid casts web to attach the Wizard to the wall. With a fireball aimed at the inferno, the Wizard blows himself back to the door slamming the Cleric back with him in the process. Only dignities are injured!

We backtrack and the Paper Merchant searches the pits he had discovered earlier. A secret door is in the third pit. Behind the door, stairs lead down. A secret door is to the left, but we cannot open it. A cloudy corridor is down more stairs with a door heading south. The Cleric casts a gust of wind to blow the clouds away. A room appears filled with rotting furniture covered in spider webs. The Druid casts flame which burns the webs away. On the far wall, a skeletal lich sits on a solid gold couch, a gold crown on his head. An iron mace inlaid with silver is on the floor. As soon as we approach, the lich reanimates. In the fight, we try both magical and physical damage; nothing seems to hit the lich. In exasperation, the Cleric picks up the iron mace and bonks the lich who bellows in pain. Taking the mace, the Luchador hits the lich which disintegrates to dust. The room shakes as the ceiling begins to collapse. The party grabs the gold crown, a jade coffer and a small bag. As we run from the area, the scene fades to black. We have run out of time once more.

We awaken and quickly run through the puzzles. In the broken armed gargoyle room, the Druid puts the collar stones into the hands of the gargoyle which crushes them. When the last stone is crushed, we examine the hands. In the broken arm, we find an invisible octagonal gem that the Wizard identifies as a gem of seeing that will allow one to see through illusions. When we cycle back to the lich room, we grab the jade coffer and the small bag which contains money, gems, spell scrolls and a map showing rich treasure in a distant land. The coffer contains six potions. The party heads to the secret door in the hall. The Bard dispels magic on it and the door opens to a room containing three vats of liquids. One is water, one is acid and the last has a thick grey ooze. On the bottom of one is half of a key. The Druid fires up a flaming sword, sticks it in the acid and ooze vats thereby boiling the substances away. He then retrieves both halves of the key and they snap together easily.

After wandering through more secret doors while avoiding traps including a fey lady trapped in a mist that renders a person clueless, we find ourselves before a door with three slots. The Bard summons two swords from her scabbard of endless blades and places them and her own sword in the slots. A block swings open revealing a room filled with columns. The Druid quickly finds out that touching a column causes him to float to the ceiling. In the room is a dais with a throne. Various party members mess around with the gold crown and a silver scepter until a passage opens to the south when everything fades to black.

We need a montage through everything to get back to the columned room. Steps approach two mithril doors. On one of the steps is a cylindrical object. The gold orb of the scepter fits a keyhole in the doors which swing open. We enter a room with four large iron statues of men with weapons. The Luchador moves one of the statues aside to reveal a chamber with a depression in the floor. The cylindrical key fits and opens a mithril vault containing a bench with a pile of treasure, an hourglass and a human skull. After a series of missteps that includes the skull reanimating a lich and a needless battle with an efreeti, we use the hourglass repeatedly to reset the adventure. Finally, the Cleric mends the hourglass which breaks the cycle. Grabbing what treasure we can, we flee Acererak’s Tomb of Horrors forever!

Obligatory Montage: