Written by the Almighty DM

After a long rest in Withers’ office the party follows another secret door to the Grand Balcony on the 2nd level. There written on the wall is Acererak’s 2nd Warning:
 

“The ring is a path to another tomb. The dead abhor sunlight. Only a jewel can tame the frog. Bow as the dead god intoned. Into darkness descend”

Below the warning is a skeleton walking on the balcony. Its skull is shaped like a square in the back, and when it notices the party it tries to run away. [title redacted] dart around the balcony and skillfully smash the skeleton into parts. Sensing that this unique skull might be valuable later, they hold onto it. 

There is a large door with three zombies pushing their heads out of three holes. They are harnessed, have bits in their mouths, and are snarling and trying to attack the party. Kanye clobbers one of the zombies to dust, then realizes that there might have been some kind of puzzle to solve regarding the zombies and the door. Nor, Kanye, and Zyldi simply brute force the door open and dispatch the other two zombies. Puzzle solved!

They enter a large room with a golden chariot heaped with treasure in the center. On the chariot is a gilded sarcophagus with imagery of Papazotl the Eblis. Along the walls are 6 large pots filled with human bones, and at the far end of the room are 4 statues and a giant shield. The shield depicts a Chultan archer, and the statues are of Chultan warriors each holding different weapons. The statue on the far left is missing its face. Written on the wall is the command “Bow Before No One”.

Kulu approaches the chariot and grabs some of the treasure which causes the room trap to spring into action! Twelve skeletons climb out of the giant pots and begin to attack the party. Sophitia holds up her holy symbol and calls upon the gods who blast most of the skeletons into dust. 

“Well that escalated quickly!”

The Chultan Archer drawn onto the shield springs to life and blasts a force arrow into Nor. Elgard holds out his hand and arcs a powerful lightning bolt into the shield. The loud sound echoes loudly in the room but the shield is undamaged. More skeletons begin to pour out of the pots on the side of the room when Zyldi has the idea to bow before the faceless statue. The shield archer ignores Zyldi and fires another arrow at Kanye, smashing into him with great force. 

The rest of the party bows before the faceless statue, causing the shield archer to deactivate and the giant pots to stop creating skeletons. Now that the fight is over Kulu approaches Papazotl’s casket and takes the items upon it: lots of fine decorative jewelry and a big amulet next to some bird bones. 

When Kulu touches the amulet the voice of Papazotl calls out in her head “You will do as I command!” Papazotl is selfish and bossy, and convinces Kulu to keep all of the treasure for herself. 

After searching the tomb for a few moments, the party finds a secret door right as they hear a large creature moving about on the Grand Balcony. A quick peek outside the door shows a huge golem with fire coming out of his head, smoke issuing from the seams between his armor plates, and instead of hands there are small jets of flame pouring out of his arms. 

“Artist Rendering”

 

As this Fire Golem walks past the room the party pulls the heavy stone door up, and Kanye and Nor rush out and tackle this large golem off the edge of the balcony! They watch it fall down several stories and crash into the 4th floor. It stands up and walks away down on level 4. 

The secret door leads to a small chamber with a dusty bottle on a table. Inside this bottle is Keshma Al-Wazir, a trapped Dao (earth elemental genie). She wields a huge hammer and is imposing even when trapped in this bottle, wearing a hateful expression, jewels braided into her dark hair, and fine clothes ending in a magical swirl. Acererak imprisoned her in the bottle centuries ago, and she begins to negotiate her release with the party. Despite her insults and demands the party is able to negotiate that they will free her on the condition that she help them 3 times in battle – 3 times of the party’s choosing. She is not super happy with this arrangement but accepts it, and the party takes her bottle with them. 

The next room has a giant salt pentagram on the floor surrounding a sarcophagus decorated with the froggy image of Nangnang. Kanye approaches and is attacked by an invisible Grey Slaad! 

Walls of fire and general party aggression cause the Slaad to retreat back into a small hallway that ends in…wine? It dies from its many wounds and Kanye dives into the wine.

“Cowabunga!”

Elgard reaches into the sarcophagus at Nor’s urging. As he reaches toward the Pearl within he hears loud, discordant percussive music in his head, and cannot resist dancing to the awful sounds. The sounds are so loud and abrasive that they begin to suck Elgard’s life away! 

No one else in the party can hear this music, but can see Elgard’s sick dance moves. He collapses in a heap on the floor but his body is still twitching, and Sophitia kneels down beside him and casts some powerful healing magic on him to keep him alive.

Kanye swims forward in the wine pool and finds  the inside of a valve. Not knowing what to do with this, he goes back up for air and swims down again, this time finding a giant reservoir tank filled with wine. Not seeing anywhere else to explore, he returns to the hallway.

Elgard awakens but continues to dance. He tries to get the music out of his head but fails – the magical music is just too powerful. He collapses again but this time his body stops twitching. Sophitia checks his body and finds he is still alive. They heal him again and take a rest. Kanye reports back what he found in the wine, and [title redacted] decide to leave Nangnang’s sarcophagus alone.

Written by the Almighty DM

After a short rest our heroes explore the final Level 1 area. At the end of a long hallway stands a statue of a knight holding a big shield forward with exploded piles of rust all around the shield. Sophitia tosses a small metal bolt into the room, and it whizzes by Kanye’s head like a bullet and explodes into a pile of rust as it strikes the shield! Kanye is impressed by Sophitia’s throwing ability and tries to throw like she did, but his stone hammers don’t fly through the air with magical magnetism. 

Sophitia removes her metal armor and weapons and enters the room. A small room beyond has a fountain with magical water in it. They decide very quickly not to drink any strange magic water in the Tomb of Annihilation. A second smaller hallway appears to be a dead end.

Upon inspecting the dead end they find two secret doors: the first is a side entrance to Obo’laka’s tomb, the second is a secret stairway going down to the second level. After retrieving Sophitia’s gear and going round through Obo’laka’s tomb, they descend to the lower level.

They enter an active workshop: Albino Undead Tomb Dwarves are working at a large Iron Maiden contraption with pistons and tubes running into it. There are wooden workbenches and schematics all around the workshop. Our heroes decide aggression is the way forward, and Elgard looses a powerful Fireball in the room!

The workbenches go up in flames and the dwarves at the Iron Maiden quickly pull a lever to release another Plate Golem Guardian! Kanye runs past them and tackles the golem back into the maiden. Zyldi transforms into a bear and begins to harass some of the other dwarves. Sophitia begins throwing holy spells and Elgard lets loose with another huge fireball, burning up the rest of the dwarves, blowing up the final remnants of the workshop, and damaging the golem. The golem tries to pull itself free of Kanye’s grapple, but is unable to hurt anybody as the party finishes him off. 

As they explore the wreckage of the workshop, they find an undamaged lantern. Looking inside the lantern reveals a ghostly spirit named the Starfallen. She is a Moon Elf Warlock who died over 1,000 years ago, and the Company of the Yellow Banner was seeking the Eye of Zaltec to bring her back to life. They tracked the Eye to the Tomb of the Nine Gods, where they all perished. The body of Seward, one of the Company members, was taken apart and used for the latest golem that the party just fought in the workshop.

The Starfallen is friendly but has only hazy memories of her life, and can only offer general help in the Tomb. The gang takes the Starfallen with them. 

Outside the workshop there is a spiral staircase going deeper into the dungeon, a secret door, and a very nice wooden door. They go through the secret door and find a stone font filled with water inside a small room. 

Kanye looks into the water and the water ripples as he sees through the eyes of a tomb guardian wandering through a lower level. After watching this scene for a few moments the guardian stops walking, looks up, and reaches a strong arm up through the water, grabbing Kanye! A giant golem covered in chains pulls itself out of the font and attacks the party!

Kanye tries to pull it back through the water but quickly finds it was a one way street: the chain golem slams Kanye’s head into the font and begins trying to drown him. Kanye rolls his head to the side, shifts his weight, and is able to burst out of the water and wrap the chains around the golem, grappling him in place.

The golem is able to use his chains to break the grapple and knock Zyldi down before he is destroyed by our heroes. After the battle, Kanye uses what he has decided is a “Magic Toilet”. 

After a potty break [title redacted] moves into the room with the nice wooden door. Inside is a nice office with candles burning, disembodied hands crawling all over the floor, a skeletal parrot in a cage, and sitting at a nice desk covered in books, blueprints, and journals, is a wight. This gaunt figure wears long black robes, a scowling gold mask on his face, and a black skull amulet around his neck with glowing red eyes. He turns to face the heroes and says “Ah, you found my office. I assume you were the ruckus I heard in the workshop then? What news of the outside world do you bring me?”

“………….”

“Oh please don’t be rude, it’s been too long since we’ve had visitors”

 

The party looks at each other, and Sophitia holds up her hand and calls upon holy forces to DESTROY UNDEAD. The crawling hands and parrot are instantly blasted into piles of dust, and the wight runs to the corner of his office. Kanye and Zyldi quickly bind his hands, feet, and mouth. 

Once the wight calms down he begins to try to negotiate his freedom by grunting through his mouth binding. [title redacted] decide they don’t want to take any chances with this spooky dude, and Kanye smashes him with his hammer. 

They discover this wight was Withers the Tomb Custodian. Acererak left him in charge to run the day to day operations of this dungeon, to reset the traps and recast any magic hexes that required maintenance. 
In the office they find:

• A Manual of Clay Golems
• Wither’s Spellbook with a name written on the back cover “Khomara Blackfire”
• A mysterious fist sized magic stone
• The Black Skull Amulet 
• His bronze Mask is worth 25gp
• They find an entry from Withers’ journal that describes the dead god remnant that Acererak found floating in the Astral Sea, and how he contracted the Sewn Sisters to help him build the Soulmonger to glut this being on souls *cue ominous music*

Knowing the true purpose of the Soulmonger, [title redacted] rests and heals up in Withers’ office before delving deeper into this dark dungeon.