The Danger Gang Notices a Theme In The Tomb Of Phillip One Eye
After a comperatively quiet night griping about Ramble's cowardice, the Danger Gang is ready to hack the tomb of Phillip Monopthalmus. Strength, Detect Traps, and Mirror Image are all cast on those that would benefit from them, then the doors are bust open. There is another small flight of stairs, like the last which lead up to a small tunnel. After a little fretting about the nature of this tunnel, Tobin takes matters into his own hands and crawls through to find it leads to the sculpture of a giant mouth. "Who builds a sculpture for the benefit of those inside the tomb?" they wonder, but there is little time for wondering; spells are burning. They head east and soon come to a door. Arben gives a quick listen, hearing metal scraping on stone. Everyone takes a deep breath and they burst in. On the other side of the door they find an eight foot tall skeleton with one, centralized eye socket and a large metal club. A battle ensues, and soon Vjk Skullhammer deals the mighty blow, defeating the big lug. Everyone gives the little guy a big pat on the back.
They press on to another room, where they find, not one, but two of these cyclopean skeletons. They are also soon defeated, but now everyone feels ready to take a rest. Martialis stone shapes one of the doors in the room, then everyone drags the metal clubs infront of the other door so they can rest in peace. This rest was not meant to be, however. Soon three of these one eyed skeletons burst open the door blocked by the clubs. Karp tries to turn them, but it seems his bizarro god of light can reach into the dark depths of this tomb. Can quickly casts Hold Portal on the door, trapping the skeletons outside. Martialis Stone Shapes this door as well. Now that they're trapped inside, the Danger Gang can finally get some rest.
After a few hours, it seems the skeletons are still banging away on what used to be a door. Martialis lays down some rope, then casts Trip. "This is going to be hilarious," he promises. He Stone Shapes the door back open, and the skeletons run into the room. They all fall and everyone laughs at them because they're so stupid. The fighting commences, and the Danger Gang (plus 3) soon emerges victorious. But now they need a little more rest.
After said rest, the emerge, ready to fight some more of these skeletons. However, in the next room, they find no such skeletons, but instead a very frightening Beholder. Everyone decides to run away. They run back to the previous room to rest up, so that Arben can memorize Gaze Reflection, their best hope for fighting this dude. Unfortunately, their rest is interupted by yet another random encounter; this with a Vampiric Mist that came pouring out of Martialis' magic cup. It soon starts draining blood out of Vjk. Arben whips a volley of Magic Missiles at it, but they end up hurting Vjk as well. Soon Vjk slips into unconsciousness, but the Mist is rapidly defeated soon thereafter. Now they really need to rest.
After this rest period, they're ready to go again. They head down the hallway and Arben casts Gaze Reflection. Before they bust in there, guns blazing, Arben wants to try to reason with this guy. "Excuse me, you in there, do you speak Greek?"
"I Suggest you leave" the Beholder Suggests. However, Arben makes his save and enters the room to talk to the Eye Tyrant face to face. He and the Beholder start to talking, and it seems he is a quite reasonable chap. Arben successfully influences his reaction, and the Beholder becomes quite friendly. He apparently used to play board games with the now dead Homunculus, and has agreed to guard what was on the other side of the room. Specifically, he agreed to not let anyone pass through the room that he is in or take anything out of the other room he is guarding. It is not against his agreement to tell Arben what is in the other room, however. He says there's a coffin and some gold boxes and a corpse wearing magic bronze platemale and lots of other neat stuff that everybody wants. Arben suggests that he and his friends dig a tunnel around the room, then go look at the stuff in the other room without taking any of it, and then return back through the tunnel. The Beholder almost buys it, but it seems everyone else is interested in a more direct course of action. Really quick, Arben asks if the Beholder knows anything about octopuses, but he does not. With that, everyone bursts into the door and starts fighting. The Beholder seems miffed at this. Arben apologizes that it came to this and joins in the fray. It's large central eye is soon smashed open, oozing viscous ooze down the tyrants body. They go for the other eyes, but the Eye Tyrant makes Karp and Vjk dissappear. This freaks everyone out. Then Tobin gets paralyzed, and only three are left to face this scourge. Can Color Sprays the beast, stunning it, and the gang rips out its eye stalks. The orb dissappears, but what about their friends?
Is this the end of Karp and Vjk?
Arben pens a Letter to B in the hopes of smoothing things over. They hear some booming coming from behind them, so they double back, hoping it is something good. However, they soon run across the door the Martialis Stone Shaped shut. They need to rest so that he can rememorize the spell. After six hours, he can open the door and head down the other hallway. As they head down the hallway, they hear a flapping noise and a low groan. They soon find a pit filled with spikes with a platform running across it. Vjk is laying at the bottom, barely alive. A tail-less Eyewing floats above him. Arben is excited, because this is the perfect opportunity to unleash his new Monster Summoning I spell. Boom: two Giant Ants appear from nowhere. One goes down to grab Vjk while the other distracts the Eyewing. Some of the guys head down to the platform to fight the Eyewing, but another one pops up from underneath the platform. They get a little overwhelmed, so they cut out of there.
They take Vjk back to another room to find out what happened to Karp. Vjk claims that they were teleported to a different part of the dungeon where they soon encountered a one-eyed skeleton that claimed it wanted to purify them and could shoot fire. He was a little overwhelmed; most of what he said didn't make much sense. Well, unfortunately, they're in no shape to go up against a one-eyed fire shooting skeleton, so they rest a few more hours. Unfortunately, Tobin is still paralyzed from the Beholder. They leave Vjk to guard him. Martialis tries to build a forge so that Vjk can whip a golden sickle. Unfortunately, Martialis doesn't know too much about making forges, so it doesn't pan out.
Now, Arben wants to go to the room that the Beholder was guarding. Martialis is sure that there's going to be some kind of bad news undead in there, but figures that maybe there's a back way to the other part of the dungeon so that they can sneak up on old firey one-eyed skeleton from behind. They head over that way and bust open the door. On the other side they find a falling apart old couch and a twenty foot long marble sarcophagus. No sign of undead monsters here...yet. Arben casts Levitate on the lid; still nothing. Can approaches the sarcophagus and sees two golden coffins inside, one slightly smaller than the other. He taps on the lid with his quarterstaff, denting it. However, nothing springs to life. Can and Martialis pull the smaller coffin out of the sarcophagus, but the bottom falls out, dumping old bones all over the floor. How...mortifying? They open the other coffin and inside find a skeleton decked out in rich stuff. Martialis had cast Detect Magic, and it is pinging all over the skeleton's plate mail and shield. Arben recalls that the shield was reputed to have the ability to drain from magic weapons that struck it and use that magic for the bearer's protection. The skeleton also carries a worn out old spear and sword as well as an awesome looking crown. Arben calls dibs. Still, there are no other doors in this room; they'll have to go back again to look for Karp. They drop the armor and shield off with Vyk and Tobin, since no one in the party can use them, then head back to the pit with the Eyewings. Can casts Mirror Image and hops down to the platform. An Eyewing pops out from beneath the platform and starts fighting. Martialis comes down and joins the fight. A second Eyewing comes out from under the platform. Arben summons a group of Gremlins to fight the Eyewings, causing more Eyewings, in turn, to come out from under the platform. Can soon gets knocked into the pit, as does Martialis. Arben tries to sneak through the group of Gremlins, hoping to avoid trouble. Martialis keeps chucking a spear at the Eyewings, doing some damage. One cries it's acidic tears on him. Can stabs one that fell onto a spike with another spike. Arben makes his way to the room at the other end of the platform. He tosses a rope down to his compatriots, so that they can free themselves from the spikey pit. As soon as they're up, they slam the door behind them.
They notice that there is a mysterious slab of meat in the room with them, a slab of meat with a piece of spine in it wrapped in studded leather. Despite this disturbing decoration, everyone is pretty tired and ready for some rest.
