Several weeks ago, you each received an anonymously delivered scroll inviting you to Sothis and suggesting that great riches could be found in the Contemptible Crypts. As with any family, even the line of Osirian pharaohs had secrets to hide. Whatever the reason for their dishonour, undesirable members of the Osirian royal family were interred in a series of secure, secret burial chambers within Sothis’s Necropolis of the Faithful known as the Contemptible Crypts.
Whatever the motivation for your response, wealth, curiosity or theological, it is through invitations, audiences and no small amount of bribery, you find yourselves at the imposing doors of the Contemptible Crypts in the Necropolis of the Faithful at Sothis...a small group of like minded individuals each with the same scroll...
The large, sandstone double doors into the crypts are unmarked and possess no clear locking mechanism. The doors are magically sealed to prevent both escape from within and unauthorized access from without — a specially keyed scarab medallion must be held against the doors to open them. Fortuitously you were able to obtain such a medallion from within the upper echelons of Pharasma’s clergy in the Necropolis of the Faithful.
...and, placing the scarab against the doors, there is a tumultuous crack and the doors open inwards slightly...stale air whistles out through the gap...all is dark within...
"Well then all, no sense in waitin' outside." Akadi tries to push the doors open further, shed some light on the interior.
Sir Alfred Stone gestures Tana to wait before pushing the doors open. My good lad, lets not be too hasty shall we. This is, after all, an Osirian crypt. The first misstep could well be your last.
Sir Stone carefully inspects the door before Tana can recklessly push it open.
"It'll be fine. What's the worst that can happen?"
The half-orc that refers to himself as camel is covered in a thin sheet of ice, which is so far completely resistant to the desert sun. He stares at the door as it begins to open as well.
Sir Stone examines the door, the glaring light of the sun almost blinding the man whilst he gazes at the bleached stone of the tomb...if there is anything untoward with the doors, he fails to see it though and eventually he has to concede that you may as well open the doors further...
Pushing the doors further open is a surprisingly easy task for such oversized masonry...the mechanical clunks and clicks whilst you push at the doors suggesting that an elaborate system of counterweights is assisting you...in no time, you have opened the doors wide enough that you may enter almost four abreast. The light of the sun penetrates the gloom, picking out motes of dust as the movement of air disturbs the resting place of the dead...
The antechamber is quite large and beyond the elaborately decorated door ahead of you, adorned with the scarab of the Osirian Pharaohs, the key feature of this room are the eight black sarcophagi. A brief examination confirms that the sarcophagi have not merely been painted black, they are in fact constructed from midnight black marble...and have a positively chilling aspect...
Pointing at the sarcophagi: "Those don't scream trap at all, now do they?"
Peering around the room, Sir Alfred nods in agreement, Not at all. I concur with your sentiments of a few minutes ago. What is the worst that can happen.
Sir Alfred slowly advances into the room, looking for anything out of place as he proceeds.
Beyond the black sarcophagi and the elaborate double doors opposite the entrance to the tomb, this room is strangely featureless. A small amount of sand covers the floor, an inevitability when building within the desert…and it is this sand that first suggests all is not as it seems, a vague trace of footprints leading from the entrance to an apparently blank section of the wall in the east of the room…Sir Alfred Stone and Camel examine this anomaly together…and discover a hairline crack in the wall…door-shaped, it appears that there is a concealed exit from this room…
Meanwhile Ezekiel’s look into the ether for magical auras reveals nothing of import…the room seems terribly mundane…
Camel will try to find the way to open the secret door.
As Camel examines the door, he becomes increasingly frustrated by he lack of obvious openings...no handle, no key, no obvious loose brick...
His frustration is somewhat put into perspective though when the lids of the sarcophagi start to slide from their caskets...and bandaged arms start to reach outwards...
Watching the sarcophogi slide open, Sir Alfred buttresses Camels mind with his own.
Camel thrusts his arm out and some of the condensation that surrounds him goes flying into the sarcophagus. "Good morning" says Camel as the ice attacks what he can not see.
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The formerly expressionless young man's face breaks into a grin. "To arms!" he cries, imbuing his shout with a fraction of his psychic influence.
With an effortless thought, he calls to mind the mental image of a refracted self as he steps back, rapier at the ready to strike as the creatures rise from their resting places.
Camel's ice blast cracks into one of the unseen corpses...an unearthly shriek follows...yet the attacked mummy still advances...
One by one, bandage-wrapped, desert dry hands appear at the side of the sarcophagi...and pull their long dead torsos erect..creaking with stiffness, the animated corpses step from their tombs and move to attack.
Akadi is assaulted by mummies from all sides and is barely left standing, murmuring thanks to the Desert Akadi staggers backwards pulling a potion from her belt and quickly quaffing it.
Taking a step back, Sir Alfred fixes the closest mummy with his stare (-2 to-hit, -2 damage) before casting Oppressive Boredom.
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As the shambling corpse swings at Ezekiel, he raises his rapier, swatting aside the bandaged arm with ease before thrusting his blade at the creature's head.
He tries to recall any facts he's learned in his studies of the undead, but he can't recall any details in the heat of battle.
Zeke affixes the mummy who attacked him with his stare as thrusts at it with his rapier.
Camel will backpedal then pour more cold into the mummy that attacked him, drawing upon his own lifeforce to augment the lethality of the attack.
As the psychic energy within the room bounces and reverberates from the walls, the more decrepit looking undead crumble…falling to the floor in heaps of dust, bonemeal and decayed hessian wraps.
The mummified corpse attacking Ezekiel is clumsy in it’s attack and, lumbering towards the sword carrying mesmerist, is slashed at, not once but twice . It staggers stupidly from the ferocity of the attack…but maintains it’s single minded assault. Meanwhile, Camel’s ice blast snaps against his increasingly frost covered attacker…frozen chunks start to fall from the mummy as it teeters on the edge of it’s undeath.
One of the mummies that had been attacking Sir Alfred Stone suddenly stops dead in it’s tracks…unable to muster the willpower to continue it’s attack…
The remaining three mummies press their attack…
Camel will move past the two mummies in an effort to get some breathing room, doing is best to avoid their blows as he goes. Once he has some breathing room, he will look to the most defensive target and attack it with more cold.
Akadi falls back, trying to get some breathing room.
"Hold fast friends, I'll be aiding you in a moment"
As Camel rushes across the room, he is thumped mightily by one of the mummies…
…standing clear of them, a blast of ice snakes around and detonates the frailest of the mummies into shards of ice…
Meanwhile, Ezekiel’s blade sings as it cuts and slices the mummy attacking him…
Fixing his stare on the nearest mummy, Sir Alfred orders it to kill its ally.
Reaching into whatever mental psyche still remains in the mummy, Sir Alfred Stone somehow bends it’s will and it’s motivations so far that it turns and slams against the nearest mummy…which remains immobile and strangely disinterested…
The last remaining mummy, staggering as Ezekiel cuts it to ribbons, slams against him yet again…
Camel will spin water from around him into an orb, and send it flying at the one attacking Ezekiel.
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His swing to deflect the attack falls barely an inch short, and his eyes narrow as he concentrates, releasing the mental trigger imbued within his psyche. His image seems to shatter, splitting into three copies.
The bandaged arm connects... with empty air. The mirage-like image of the swordsman vanishes in a shimmer as he steps forward, pressing the assault.
Akadi surges forwards, striking at the Mummy (assuming it still stands) with her spear, before retreating back (Spring Attack)
Camel's water orb smashes the mummy that had been attacking Ezekiel... and, seeing his partners edging out of the tomb, Ezekiel moves to attack the mummies that seem to be forcing them backwards...
With the tide of combat turning, Sir Alfred takes careful aim and fires his crossbow at a mummy, but misses.
As the tide of battle moves towards the final two mummies, the accuracy and effectiveness of the group suddenly seems to drop, Ezekiel, Sir Alfred Stone and Akadi all missing their targets.
One of the mummies remains curiously ambivalent towards the fight raging around it...
...whilst the other turns and slams against Ezekiel
Camel will send more towards #3.
Akadi continues to dance in and out of range of the creature, stabbing with her spear.
Sir Alfred loads his crossbow.
Camel and Ezekiel both land telling blows on the moving mummy whilst, amazingly, the stationary mummy remains distracted whilst the battle rages around it...
...the moving mummy, barely standing, continues to slam against Ezekiel
And again Akadi continues to leap in and out of combat. Lashing out and falling back before the creature has chance to react.
Camel slams more cold into it, hoping to finish it.
Akadi, followed by Camel, finish the active Mummy off whilst the other one descends further into torpor...
Sir Alfred fires into the mummy with his crossbow,
for
With the last remaining mummy seemingly fascinated by whatever is occupying it's undead mind, the group finish it off quickly... Whatever provoked the mummies to attack may remain forever a mystery as their cadavers quickly crumble to dust, sand and hessian.
As Akadi moves close to the door, scarab in her pocket, cracks starter to appear in the wall...mere moments later, with a massive inrush of hot air from outside, the door swings open. Beyond the door, a corridor that heads to the north, past a eastern leading door, into a large chamber...
...and the sound of shuffling...
...as the whistling of fresh air into the newly revealed corridor subsides, the sound of shuffling grows nearer...accompanied by a 'tap, tap, tap' sound...
...waiting at the doorway, you don't tarry for long before the shuffling noise and the 'tapping' reveals itself to be a shambling skeleton. A thick tangle of discolored entrails clings to this lurching skeleton’s torso and winds upward to loll from its jaw like a clawed tongue. Seeing you, silhouetted in the doorway, it reaches out at you...mouth flapping wordlessly...