Into the Barrow…
11 High Sun - late afternoon
Within the tomb’s antechamber, the party prepared to venture into the dark. Lighting a torch, they edged forward. It seemed they were not the only outsiders here, as they discovered the semi-mummified body of an orcish grave robber trapped beneath a metal portcullis that had been torn from a nearby doorway. Through the portal, the room was illuminated by an unearthly blue light. In the soft light, the party saw a pair of stone sarcophagi, each with a roughly hewn effigy of a hobgoblin soldier on its lid. There were words in Goblin script engraved on the sarcophagi: one read Kezrek Balphagus, the other, Malfine Goobhatch.
Featherfew transformed into a rat, skittering forward into the dark. He noticed that the ceiling sagged, the weight of the earth above pressing down on the passageway. At some point, someone had attempted to prop the roof up with two thin timber props on either side of the passageway. Featherfew detected a poorly concealed tripwire - a trap!
Den attempted to shift the lid off a sarcophagus, as Burley looked on skeptically. Pebbles came to assist, but as the two halflings braced themselves, a spectre drifted out of the wall, looming over Burley. The insubstantial revenant of Xalik cul Zhan opened its phantom mouth unnaturally wide, draining essential life-force from the Goliath. Burley swung wildly, his arm passing through the ghost, causing its form to ripple but swiftly reform, before it drifted back through the wall. Meanwhile, Pebbles, unassisted by a hesitant Den, managed to single-handedly shift the lid of the sarcophagus, revealing a strange, carefully constructed tunnel.
Out in the corridor, Ilyad deactivated the tripwire. Looking beyond this crude trap, the party detected a far more nefarious hazard: a pit concealed beneath a spray of dried straw. Leaving these dangers behind, the party all moved together through the tunnel beneath the coffin.
Burley tossed the cover to one side, as the party emerged into another chamber, lit by a similar pale blue light and containing four sepulchres. The way out of this room was blocked by an intact metal portcullis. Choosing not to disturb the other resting places, the party experimented with following the directions of the parchment that they found in the tomb’s antechamber, ‘to name and praise the dead.’ Reading the names off the sarcophagi, they invented appropriately macabre and gory compliments for the lingering souls, causing the gates sealing the room to swing open.
As the party filed out of the chamber, the spectre of Xailk again emerged from the wall, draining more precious life force before again retreating, its incorporeal form dissolving into the architecture.
Creeping further through the dark, the party followed the curving passageway. An enormous burrow had been dug into one of the walls of the passageway, down which they glimpsed another gaping hole in the ground and strange, slightly luminescent fluid filled orbs clinging to the burrow’s walls. Avoiding this distraction, the party continued on as the passage curved around into an apex, before turning away again to the south.
On the north wall was another tattered tapestry. This one seemed to depict Xalik being laid to rest. The drawing had a kind of strange perspective, seeming to depict the space as though seen from above. Xalik’s body lay in state, between two burning braziers; above him sat an immense stone throne, flanked on either side by figures clad in full plate armour, holding swords in two hands, with the blades pointing up. At the uppermost part of the tapestry, behind the throne, there was an open portal leading to chamber, filled with gold, jewels, and other riches.
On the south wall, a large goblinoid face was carved into the rock, and from a hole where the mouth should be tricklesd an odd, dimly glowing green fluid. It collected in a shallow pool. Burley dipped his whip into the mysterious liquid and tasted the tiniest amount: it tasted of aniseed and strong liquor.
Around the corner, Pebbles, holding the rat Featherfew, peered into another chamber sealed by metal gates. Looming above two sarcophagi in the corner of the room, was an immense mass of fungus. Tendril like fronds drifted off its subtly undulating form, wafting gently in the currents of air. Pebbles praised the dead and the gates swung open, but an impatient Den, itching for a fight, raced past him and struck the fungus. He felt a wave of nausea wash over him as his arm sunk up to its elbow in the soft mass of the creature. Shaking this off, he launched himself into the air and tore the mass apart with a devastating two-fisted strike. The fungus promptly exploded, filling the chamber in a choking cloud of iridescent yellow spores. Den and Pebbles managed to avoid inhaling any, but Featherfew was not so lucky: he immediately felt a pernicious poison course through his system.
Within this chamber was another concealed tunnel, which the party used to move into another chamber, thus avoiding a cave-in that had sealed the path ahead of them. As Burley blithely tossed the coffin lid aside to emerge from the tunnel, he inadvertently disturbed a mass of white, fluid-filled sacs, which burst with a fetid stink. These strange globules coated the walls in this new chamber and were clearly the eggs laid by the gigantuan insectoid creature that nested here. A pitched battle ensued, but the monster was blindsided and swiftly despatched.
Den raced ahead, passing by a strange doorway in the passage. He saw a door of solid stones, perfectly fitted into the cavern wall, with a tiny hole at its centre, as though for a fine key.
At the end of the corridor lay a final set of metal gates, beyond which the party could see a large chamber suffused in a pale blue glow. In the centre of the room was an immense throne, seemingly assembled from great slabs of stone, upon which sat a tall skeleton, its posture uncannily erect. As they watched, ribbons of coruscating energy swirled about the skeleton, causing sinuous strands of ectoplasmic flesh to cohere, its body seeming to regenerate before their eyes. On the skeleton’s left index finger is a silver ring, set with a blood red jewel…