Tomb of Annihilation: Episode 29
Some puzzles leave a lot of room for interpretation into whether players truly solved them. Seeing your players find new ways of solving these puzzles that you never would have thought of yourself are some of the best moments as a DM. You have to encourage experimentation and weird ideas so that they feel comfortable trying things that maybe don’t make sense at first glance, but have the opportunity to lead to fortuitous discoveries.
The Party:
(Jon) Alathar, inhabited by Shagambi — Half-Elf Bard
(Terry) Harden, inhabited by Unkh — Dwarf Barbarian
(Matt) Hexton, inhabited by I’jin — Gnome Wizard
(Stacy) Torven, inhabited by Wongo — Lizardfolk Monk/Druid
The Path:
Tomb of the Nine Gods — Cradle of the Death God
“A witch never gets caught. Don’t forget that she has magic in her fingers and devilry dancing in her blood.”
Roald Dahl — The Witches
Standing in the lair of the Sewn Sisters gave some hope to the party. They could feel how close they were to the Soulmonger and the completion of the adventure.
Blocking their progress was the Skeleton Gate. This twelve-foot-high, ten-foot-wide door was made of green stone, its surface carved with grinning skeletons. A belt of smooth stone spanned the door at a height of four feet, set with five gold symbols in a row: a triangle, a square, a pentagon, a hexagon, and an octagon. Each symbol was engraved on a recessed circular seal.
Hexton paced back and forth, muttering about how there were always more trials to be completed, and that Acererak was crazy. Alathar was much less despondent; he was eager to face more challenges. He marched up the balcony to one of the five doors with a corresponding geometric shape and proposed to the party to follow him. He opened the octagon door to a simple room. Inside, a leather-backed tome rested open atop a wooden lectern bolted to the floor. Set into the wall behind the lectern were eight human skeletons, arranged so that they appeared to be falling and screaming.
The rest of the party followed behind Alathar, as he examined the room. Hexton still had his True Seeing spell on, which showed him any secret doors. He tapped Alathar’s shoulder and pointed out that there was a secret compartment hidden in the leg of the lectern. The party wisely decided against trying to pry it open, realizing they’d be better off completing whatever test was in the room. They still didn’t know what the test was though. Torven and Harden began investigating the skeletons.
Alathar glanced at the leather-bound book. It was open, with a strange rhyme printed on it. Hexton and Alathar began perusing the book. It had only eight pages, with a single on each page. It read:
Backward, backward, eight to one.
Speak the rhyme until it’s done.
Keep the spider locked away.
See the lever, clear as day.
Spin, spin, iron spider.
Turn their flesh and bones to cider.
Speak the rhyme and meet your fate.
Forward, forward, one to eight.
As Hexton and Alathar debated what it meant, Torven’s keen eyes made him realize this whole floor contained a hidden pit trap. Everyone raced out, except for Alathar. The team talked about what to do and eventually figured out that reading the rhyme backward made the most sense. Alathar did so, and the hidden compartment revealed itself, with a brass lever inside. Alathar pulled it, and the octagon seal on the skeleton gate rolled aside.
The party cheered, praising each other’s ingenuity and continued. They clambered up to the square door and opened it. Inside was a room filled with flying sheets of parchment, with writing on the pages visible as they fluttered by. A metal plate bolted onto the far wall was set with a ghostly lever. Hexton’s True Seeing once again came in handy as he could see the ghostly lever was in fact in the ethereal plane. As Torven grabbed a couple floating pages — which had spells on them — Alathar cast Etherealness and pulled the lever successfully. Another trial complete.
Hexton’s True Seeing spell only lasted an hour, so they were trying to complete the tasks in all five rooms before that time was up. They raced to the trial of the triangle, where they saw a five-foot-wide floor-to-ceiling glass cylinder near the back wall of the room, filled with light. A tiny triangular hole was cut through the glass, five feet above the floor. Inside the cylinder, an iron lever was set into a metal plate on the floor.
They’d have to find some way to move the lever while bypassing the cylinder. Hexton tried a Mage Hand spell to get the lever to budge, but it was too heavy. The small hole could let something through, so the team discussed what might be helpful. With Torven’s weaving skills, they fashioned a sort of rope/hook device that they wiggled through the hole, and with the help of the Mage Hand to guide it, it was good enough to pull the lever.
Harden was getting anxious and wanted to keep an eye on the main room, in case the hags surprised them. The other three entered the pentagon room. The delicious aroma of spiced meat greeted them. At the end of a twenty-foot-long corridor, a room opened up with red tapestries covering the walls. A feast was spread out on three tables, consisting of roast boar, squash stew, and a tray of iced cakes. Flagons of frothy beer completed the banquet.
A gaunt human male in a dusty black suit quietly arranged the items on the cake table, taking notice of the party’s intrusion. Without a word, he gestured for them to come forward and sample the feast.
Alathar instantly took a dislike to the whole situation. He tried to speak with the gaunt man, but the man’s responses were strange and silent. Hexton brushed past them and began surveying the room, especially the tapestries. Each was made up of pentagonal patches stitched together. In one of the tapestries, however, he found a subliminal devil’s face cleverly hidden in the design. Hexton bade Torven over, and the two of them examined it. It looked extra-dimensional. Torven reached his arm into the devil’s mouth and found that he could feel his hand grasping a lever. He pulled it, and Harden shouted out their success.
The three of them left and instantly felt dreadful hunger pangs. Torven didn’t since Clay No-Face made him no longer desire food, but he was still suspicious of what was going on. They walked back into the room, and Alathar began yelling at the gaunt man. The man again motioned toward the feast. Torven tried some of the frothy beer and said it was rich and sumptuous. Hexton tried sampled some squash stew, and his hunger pangs evaporated as well. He felt even healthier than normal, said Hexton. He was given an advantage on Constitution saving throws.
It appeared they were somehow cursed if they didn’t try the food, beneficial though it may be. This angered Alathar. He grabbed one of the iced cakes, devoured it, and dramatically bumped into the gaunt man. The man recoiled but didn’t attack. Alathar had enough anyway. He sliced at the man with his rapier. It turned out the man was Mister Threadneedle, a scarecrow in the employ of the Sewn Sisters. The two of them fought to the scarecrow’s quick death, and Alathar pocketed a strange lustrous black marble from the scarecrow’s corpse.
Finally, the entered the trial of the hexagon. A large, cracked, six-sided mirror was mounted above a stone shelf protruding from the opposite wall. Five unlit candles stood on the shelf, each made of yellow wax and covered with tiny black sigils. Scrawled on the wall above the mirror in dried blood were the words “PIGGY PIGGY PIGGY.”
The group played around with the candles and mirror for a bit. Eventually, they found that if they lit the five candles and said piggy three times, they could see a lever reflected in the mirror on the south wall. They pulled where it would be, and out from the mirror sprung three insane wereboars who fought them ferociously. The party tried to conserve spells so they’d be able to handle the Sewn Sisters, so Harden did a lot of the heavy lifting. He bashed wereboars in their skulls and took a few of their swipes, but the group managed to slay the enemies. But the lever had not revealed the pentagon on the skeleton gate. The pulled it again, to no effect.
They were missing something. Hexton’s True Seeing was running out, but they couldn’t figure out the puzzle of this room. They hadn’t put together yet how the shapes of the rooms related to the puzzles, and that a pentagon room should not have just five candles. Hexton’s spell soon ran out. Without the aid of magic, they would have to use their eyes and brains to figure this out.
This was a blessing in disguise, as Alathar wandered over to the shelf and began searching it. Tucked out of sight, he found the sixth candle, and the group realized what the problem was. They lit the candle, and now the mirror revealed a lever on the north wall. They pulled it and collectively gulped. They’d completed all the trials. The Sewn Sisters were surely next.
The party burst the door open and saw the Sewn Sisters awaiting them below. All three of them cackled and the battle began. The sisters were a frightful lot. Widow Groat had tarnished gold coins covering her eyes and ants nesting in her skull. Peggy Deadbells wore a string of chattering children’s teeth and thumped about on a heavy peg leg. Baggy Nanna had a squirming leather sack sewn over her head, which also held a cockerel, a viper, and a terrier.
Torven and Harden jumped down to face them in melee combat, while Alathar and Hexton would provide spell support from above. But they discovered this was easier said than done. As a hag coven, the Sewn Sisters were more powerful than a night hag found on her own. They had powerful spells. They Counterspelled Hexton and Alathar’s initial assault and Widow Groat cast a Bestow Curse on Harden.
Torven aimed to use his psychic blast granted to him by his trickster god Wongo but found the ability wouldn’t work. The frothy beer he’d taken had cursed him. Hexton and Alathar were also cursed, gaining disadvantage against Peggy and Baggy, respectively.
This made the combat much more difficult. The hags blasted the party with Rays of Enfeeblement, and Hold Person spells. Instead of focusing on the weakest members, they simply blocked the spellcasting abilities with their Counterspells and began hacking away at Harden. Combined with an ability to slip in the Ethereal Plane and sneak up on other party members and cast a devastating Lightning Bolt, they soon found Harden and Alathar near death.
But the Sewn Sisters cursed luck eventually ran out, as did their ability to cast Counterspell. Hexton finally got an Evard’s Black Tentacles cast, holding a couple of sisters in place while Torven eviscerated one. Some quick healing brought Harden back who finished off another. Now only Peggy Deadbells was left, and she soon gave up, offering her life for information on the final test that awaited them.
She bargained with them, saying her information could ensure their survival, though they would have to swear on their mortal souls not to harm her. The party looked at each other. Harden shook his head. The others agreed. Harden lifted his maul high, and as the hag screamed for her life, he smashed her head to bits.
This was it. The skeleton gate awaited them. They’d made it to what was to be the final test of Acererak’s Tomb of the Nine Gods. They were a little worse for wear but had proved themselves a hardy group. It was time for them to meet their destiny. It was time to face Acererak.
Previous: Episode 28
Next: Final Episode
