S10E10 - Skeleton Key and Howling Winds

After gathering this room’s key, the heroes go back to the long corridor with the magical waterfall inside. Krariak crosses the waterfall, triggering a trap and getting slammed by a torrent of water against the north wall. Chos then grabs a mace from one of the paintings and tries to cross the waterfall with it, but he also activates the trap and gets pushed by the torrent against the opposite wall. After that, while the rest of the heroes are considering all crossing together, Fionghan remembers being in the room and tells them to pass while carrying the trident, which they then do and safely get to the other side of the room.

In the corridor revealed after that, they find an unlocked door. Avilos peeks inside, followed by Chos, and they see a shadowy figure with its back towards them. After a little bit of testing and arcana, and religion checks, they get scared of the strange creature and leave the room as is.

At the end of the corridor, they find a dead end with a painting of a jackal and a golden medallion where a hieroglyph is visible. Sophi inspects it, finds a hole, but is afraid of doing anything about it. Avilos, feeling more adventurous, casts Mage Hand and uses the hand to activate it. The wall with the painting slides down, and they come across the tomb with the canoe and the small golden sarcophagus, and the floor made of hieroglyphs.

Krariak steps inside, walking into a vulture tile. Following the party’s instructions, he then jumps to another vulture tile, but something clicks, and the stone wall rises back up, locking him in and causing the gynosphinxes inside to spew clouds of locusts that fly to Krariak dealing massive damage. The heroes trigger the stone block again, then Sophi walks inside, but as soon as she steps on the first tile, while Krariak is on another tile, the room’s trap triggers again, and the first swarm of locusts magically disappears while another one forms around Sophi, dealing her massive damage. Sophi jumps over to Krariak’s back and, luckily, the locusts don’t follow him.

The barbarian and bard duo now jump into the canoe. They first try to open the sarcophagus, but it’s closed. They then try to grab it, given that it looks pretty expensive, and manage to, but translucent walls of force pop up blocking them in. They respectfully leave the sarcophagus back on the floor, and the walls of force disappear.

Unable to open it, they think and come up with a plan with the rest of the party, whom they can apparently communicate with via a magic means, and they realize that the golden medallion dial changes every time they step on a tile, starting with the vulture one, revealing the next tile. They follow the sequence and unlock the sarcophagus, where they find I’jin’s remains and a horn that ends up possessing Ellie. While resting, Sophi loots the body of the dead dwarf that lies in the room, grabs a diamond and two crystal eyeballs. However, she freaks out about the eyeballs, which look like the eyeball that is stalking them from the moss, and gives them to Avilos, who has no issues keeping them.

After the tomb, as they are walking back through the waterfall area, Sophi finds a rat that immediately bonds with her. Sophi adopts him, naming him “Remi”, making Falkor grow distant from him.

As the party is walking to Kubazan’s tomb, with barely any resources left, they find another rat, but this one looks more feral, and Sophi has no issues grabbing it for the ritual.

When they reach the tomb, they put on the masks they initially found there, they approach the shrine inside, and they perform the ritual that they inferred from the frescos: donate coins, lit a candle, eat an insect, and decapitate the rat. Avilos and Krariak then head to the sarcophagus, open it, and Avilos grabs the bracers he finds inside and becomes inhabited by the spirit of Kubazan. The halfling bard now has more strength than the party’s goliath barbarian.

Completely out of resources, the heroes decide to set up camp in the tomb itself, go into their tiny hut, and take a long rest.

During the night, Fionghan has wet dreams with his old girlfriend, Seoirse, and, when Sophi wakes him up, he tries to make out with her, but the elf refuses. Sophi also notices that his new pet, Remi, has eaten all the nice monkey meat she had prepared a few days ago in the jungle as well as most of her rations. The rat has trouble moving and has left rat poop all over the place.

Once the rest of the party finishes waking up, they all head to the fourth and last level reachable via stairs, where they saw the four pillars with the four-armed gargoyles on top. Krariak and Avilos sprint forward and hit one of the pillars, immediately waking the gargoyles up.

Combat ensues, and the episode ends after the first round of combat, with Avilos is unconscious and Krariak’s hit points are down to less than half.