Tomb of Annihilation: Episode 22
Embracing roleplaying takes some time. Your players might not be accustomed to building a character and then acting as them in all these strange circumstances. Which is why you’ll find that having their characters get inhabited by the spirits actually makes it easier for them to adopt some roleplaying. Providing a new twist for their characters gives them the freedom to try new things. It’s a clever gimmick, and you can allow them to be a little silly when their characters get off-track.
The Party:
(Jon) Zorel, inhabited by Obo’laka — Aasimar Paladin
(Terry) Harden, inhabited by Nangnang— Dwarf Barbarian
(Matt) Hexton — Gnome Wizard
(Stacy) Torven, inhabited by Wongo — Lizardfolk Monk/Druid
The Path:
Tomb of the Nine Gods —Vault of Reflection
“Not everything the eye sees should be spoken by the mouth.”
Marlon James — Black Leopard, Red Wolf
The party was still becoming accustomed to the trickster gods inhabiting them. Having new powers was a boon, but the changes in personality were starting to grate others. Harden in particular was acting utterly strange. Zorel’s timid spirit, Obo’laka, had grown to like Harden. But where Harden was kind before with Moa, he was now cruel and nasty with Nangnang.
Harden fiercely shouted at Zorel. They attempted to discuss their predicament and how they should approach the dangers now that they had regrouped. Soon, they weren’t even arguing about anything in particular. With their obstinate gods by their sides, they couldn’t help but clash. Hexton and Torven watched awkwardly as Zorel did his best to stand up for himself. It was a pitiful display. Watching such a bold, broad-shoulder hero reduced to a stuttering, hunched-over mess was disheartening for all. Especially Zorel. Finally, Harden led the group down to the floor below as Zorel traipsed along.
This new area was remarkably different from the last two floors. A purple alien growth permeated the stonework across this level of the tomb. The purple mold sprouted from the floors, walls, and ceilings. It smelled like rotting corpses, and occasionally released clouds of spores. They moved further down the staircase as Torven eyed it suspiciously. A pair of tiny eyeballs emerged near where he was scrutinizing, and Wongo yelped, demanding that Torven smash it. Torven hastily whipped out his tambo stick and beat the mold into oblivion.
In return, another eye stalk popped out a few feet away and shot a ray at Torven. He dodged it and Hexton blasted it with a Fire Bolt spell. This time the mold disintegrated, leaving an atrocious smell behind.
At the landing of the grand staircase were hallways leading off to the north, south, and west. To the east was another bronze plaque with Acererak’s warning. Torven hustled over to it, and read it aloud.
The group discussed its murky meaning, and where to go first. They strode north as it looked like a short, simple hallway. They could see a huge carving of a snarling jackal’s head protruding from the wall at the end of the corridor. Harden peered through the gaps in its fangs and could see the chamber beyond. Four torches illuminated stone sphinxes crouched in the corners of a fifteen-foot-high room. The torches cast flickering light across hieroglyphs carved into the tiled floor. At the center of the room, a gold-inlaid funeral barge stood atop a three-foot-tall stone dais. Resting on the deck of the barge was a small golden sarcophagus decorated with horned rabbits. A dark shaft opened in the ceiling directly above the barge.
Nangnang nudged Harden’s mind. This was I’jin the almiraj’s tomb. Harden asked if I’jin was powerful, but before Nangnang could get into detail, a grinding sound coming from that chamber stole their attention. A slab of wall suddenly moved upward, and a dwarf wearing a turban and chain mail crept into the tomb. He brandished a shield in front of him as he tread cautiously across the floor.
Harden called out to the dwarf. The others could see Harden looking into the jackal’s mouth and calling for someone, trying to get a look for themselves. The dwarf paid Harden no heed, as if he did not hear him. He continued further into the tomb.
A loud click sounded out as the dwarf stepped onto one of the floor tiles. Then a deafening buzzing rose as locusts poured out from the mouths of the sphinx statues, quickly engulfing him. He tried to fight them off, to no avail. When the cloud of insects vanished, nothing of the dwarf remained except its bones and gear.
Harden grimaced at the sight and moved to the side. Torven moved in so he could see. He told them he saw another dwarf coming in. The same fate befell that dwarf. Then again it happened. Hexton realized what was going on. They were seeing a repeating vision of what had happened in the past.
Zorel debated using a Misty Step spell to head into the tomb, but Hexton thought it was too dangerous. They didn’t yet know how to bypass its traps. Without any way to move past the jackal’s head, they backed up and headed south.
The hallway went off to the east and west. Hexton and Torven examined a small crawlway to the west, while Harden and Zorel bickered as they moved to the eastern passage.
The purple growth dissipated as Harden stepped into a large foyer, Zorel by his side. Still puddles of water covered the floor of this fifteen-foot-wide hallway. The walls were slick with moisture and set with murals showing animal-headed humanoids in armor, most of which appeared to brandish real weapons hanging on the walls. A three-foot-high crawlway in the east wall was flush with the floor. At the far end of the hall, a rippling, transparent curtain of water filled a stone archway. Beyond the curtain, they saw another hallway that looked similar to the one in which they stood.
They exchanged peculiar looks, and recalled Acererak’s warning. “Walk through water with weapon in hand.” Did that mean any weapon, Zorel wondered. Perhaps some of the weapons in this room, Harden offered. The murals had humanoids with the heads of storks, lizards, panthers, hawks, goats, and frogs, holding handaxes, maces, blowguns, nothing, sickles, and tridents respectively. Beside Harden was the stork with a handaxe. He lifted it up and took it by his side, slowly making his way toward the curtain of water. Zorel followed, examining the murals carefully. As he got to the hawk-woman holding nothing, he discovered that surface was an illusion. He dipped into a small alcove containing a plinth bearing a pale purple crystal eyeball. He stashed it in his pocket and returned to the hallway, with Harden none-the-wiser. Zorel figured he would tell him only if necessary.
“EVERYTHING NOT FORBIDDEN IS COMPULSORY.”
T.H. White — The Sword in the Stone
Torven felt comfortable in the crawlway, as it reminded him of his sewer-dwelling days. Hexton, while a small gnome, was less than enthused to be there but remained positive. They moved westward, until Torven stopped. Ahead of him, the face of a snarling minotaur was etched into a sheet of iron that bisected the crawlway. Its eyes had been cut out, letting them see through the sheet, beyond which the tunnel continued onward. This seemed far too ominous, so they rushed out and met back up with Zorel and Harden in the hall with the water curtain. But Hexton found a small alcove of his own that seemed promising. He bade Torven to follow and crawled through it, finally popping out onto a gigantic room.
Hexton dropped onto a balcony that stood over a vast pit, facing another balcony one hundred feet to the west. Between the balconies hovered five wooden platforms, each one a disk ten feet across. A single torch burned above each balcony. On the balcony where Hexton stood was a rough-hewn statue of a hulking fiend with furled wings and clenched fists.
Hexton could see a skeleton key jumping from the last wooden platform onto the far balcony, and scrambling up some stairs. He shouted to Torven to hurry up, and began to figure out how to cross the hall safely.
A fierce wave of water erupted, slamming Harden and Zorel downward. It seemed that they had chosen the wrong weapon to take through the curtain, but they trudged on. A small tunnel went east, while a larger passage turned west. Harden led the way into the tunnel, with Zorel following far behind. As Harden got to the midpoint of the tunnel though, a mechanism was released. With a loud grinding noise, the section Harden was in began to rotate, instantly cutting off the exists ahead and behind him. He could feel the passage sink about five feet as it turned. After a few seconds, it came to a stop and the grinding abated.
Zorel peered forward and called out for Harden, but received no answer. Zorel looked around, but couldn’t find his companion. Even worse, as he backed up, he realized he couldn’t find anyone else in his party. Obo’laka tried to keep Zorel calm, but that only caused him to panic further, as he ran back to the grand staircase alone.
Torven and Hexton looked out at the five floating platforms standing between them and the far balcony. Hexton would have liked to cast Dimension Door, but Torven said that the last time they tried that it ended badly. Neither of them were very athletic, and didn’t like their chances just jumping for it. But Torven had his Wild Shape ability. They debated which animal to go with, and settled on a tiger. Torven transformed into a tiger, which Hexton hopped on top of, and they leapt to the first platform. It bobbed slightly as they landed, but the ploy seemed to work, and they made it safely to the far balcony without falling.
There was a rusty lever in the wall, and stairs going up. Hexton climbed off of Torven, who turned back into his lizardfolk form, and searched the stairs for clues of the skeleton key. He found a secret door at the top of the stairs, and carefully opened it.
Inside was a small room, but no skeleton key. He and Torven walked in and looked around. A deep pit dominated this chamber. At the bottom of the pit, an eight-foot-tall clay figure stood motionless beside a stone treasure chest. A silver key hung from a cord around the figure’s neck.
Two tall statues stood atop plinths on either side of the pit. A third plinth against the south wall stood empty. One of the statues depicted a hooded and bearded male figure with his left hand held high, index finger pointed up. The other portrayed an armoured male knight with his gauntleted right hand extended, its palm facing inward toward the knight.
Hexton smugly smiled towards Torven and cast Mage Hand. He directed the magical appendage toward the silver key, but discovered that the top of the pit was blocked by some invisible force. He dispelled the Mage Hand, and walked off to find something else to do as he muttered to himself.
There were only two other ways to go, a door north or a corridor to the west. They turned down the corridor, which was filled with more of the purple alien growth. Ignoring it, they continued on, until the corridor ended at a large door. The door had a round mirror set into its surface. Ten circular indentations, each about an inch across, surrounded the mirror. Hexton and Torven examined it closely, but left having no idea what to do with it.
The party was now largely separated from each other. Harden was trapped in a tunnel. Zorel was running aimlessly around. While Torven and Hexton had hit a dead end. They’d each need to push past their obstacles to get deeper into the Tomb of the Nine Gods.
Previous: Episode 21
Next: Episode 23
