S10E09 - The Cursed Golden Skull

The episode starts with the heroes fighting the flesh golems they found chained at the ankles. On their next turn, Krariak and Silas successfully hurl the flesh golem nearest to the staircase down the hole. The other flesh golem follows its companion thanks to gravity, and both guardians end up impaled on one of four four-armed gargoyles at the base of the stairs. The gargoyle doesn’t appreciate this and fights back.

While the monsters fight each other, Sophi spots an eyestalk emerging from the strange purple moss that covers much of this level. Not liking it, she kicks and destroys it. Seconds later, another eyestalk emerges, shoots a magic ray at Sophi, and telekinetically hurls her into the hole in the staircase. With quick reflexes, the elven rogue fey-steps back to solid ground mid-fall, narrowly avoiding a several-story drop.

After this, the heroes explore the room behind the double doors at the end of the corridor. Krariak opens them and sees a series of three massive wall-to-wall tapestries that the party walks through one by one, each depicting increasingly hardcore scenes from Omu’s past: a feast, then the feast devolving into fighting, orgies, and vomit, and finally cannibalism. Beyond the final tapestry, Krariak sees the massive roasted boar head from the entrance carvings hanging from the wall. He suddenly feels an overwhelming urge to put his head inside the boar’s mouth. As soon as he does, the boar’s mouth snaps shut, and Krariak starts screaming from the pain—but he’s magically charmed and unable to free himself.

The rest of the party arrives one by one to help, and first Silas, then Ellie, then Avilos become charmed. Avilos cuts the queue and tries to get his head into the boar’s mouth, but Chos, who has resisted the charm, prevents it. After a few chaotic rounds, the boar attempts to decapitate various heroes while the charmed party members fight among themselves for access to its mouth. The party eventually breaks free thanks to their uncharmed companions hurting them just enough to snap them out of it. Chos and Krariak, thoroughly pissed off by the turn of events, destroy the boar’s head and find treasure inside. Krariak becomes fascinated with a gemstone-studded eyepatch and tries to attune to it, but the patch isn’t magical.

Sophi, who got scared out of the room during the chaos, discovers a secret door and, inside, a golden skull. When she touches it, the skull starts talking incessantly, introduces itself as Yggoth, demands tons of gems, and then begins following Sophi everywhere. Krariak grabs some of the purple moss to feed the flying skull, but as soon as he does, he gets hit by another eyestalk ray that brings the barbarian to within one hit point of complete vaporization.

Fionghan reaches the group, and upon seeing the skull, he recognizes it and reveals that it’s cursed. He explains that when he came to the tomb years ago with Seaoirse and a man named Damoran, Damoran touched the skull, and only Damoran’s death ended the curse. After a few insufferable rounds of Yggoth’s incessant demands, Chos, who still has a Remove Curse scroll, uses it to free Sophi and the rest of the party from the incredibly annoying and bombastic skull.

After this, the party explores another corridor and finds a room with a sarcophagus, large frescoes, and a shrine. The heroes figure out what they need to do to open the sarcophagus, but miss one critical step: sacrificing a living creature in front of the shrine. Missing that step, and with Ellie unwilling to summon an animal just to have it decapitated, they decide to explore the remaining corridors.

Next, they find another tomb that appears to belong to I’jin, with a golden sarcophagus resting atop a small canoe surrounded by sphinx statues. In the final corridor, they discover a network of passages leading to three different areas: one very narrow corridor protected by a minotaur-masked wall that leads to a room with a hole opening to yet another chamber below, a second narrow crawlway that they don’t explore yet, and a third, much larger corridor that leads to a puddled area with a magical water curtain in the middle and wall paintings with weapons jutting out.