Back in Cedar Combe, after letting my father settle in, we receive an urgent letter from Baron Jacob Dorthana indicating that there’s a beholder (definitely for real this time) in the mansion that he wants us to deal with. We head over with haste and consult with him and Gordon and formulate a plan. The Baron confirms that multiple men have seen that beholder and that it has 12 eyestalks. We agree that Tittlin will use his stealth and scout ahead, Momen will use the wand of binding to attempt to restrain it, and then we’ll whale on it.
I’m not comfortable being in the presence of a beholder anymore but I guess this is my job - we head in to the secret passage indicated.
Tittlin moves ahead to investigate while Momen and I sit back in the incredibly dim light. Tittlin returns and gives us a summary of what he saw - ornate sarcophogi, a giant obvious landmine, a gelatinous cube, and what seems to be the beholder with its eyestalks spanning an entire room additionally guarded by two minotaur skeletons. Momen and I attempt to quietly creep forward but my boots are much squeakier than usual which makes me extremely anxious. I follow behind Momen as we move into the sarcophogus room. This giant gold beholder sculpture at the end of the room is really giving me the heeby jeebies.
Momen and I discuss a bit about the sarcophogi - Momen believes that it’s a false tomb meant to distract thieves from where the actual treasure and graves are. Tittlin returns, still invisible, and scares the shit out of me. He hands over a bunch of items to Momen including a flask of holy water, a spellbook, and a priest’s robes that he apparently lifted from one of the chambers. As we move towards the next room, Momen notices a small golden chicken statuette on top of the southwest sarcophogus that wasn’t there before…
I follow him and then look back over my shoulder, and the stauette is gone once again. I back into a corner in this new room with Momen and Tittlin and keep my head on a swivel between the several closed entryways. Momen flips through a book in the room and mutters a name, somebody who is interned in the crypt. Eornthryth Touchet. It’s his sword that is in a locked case in this room.
Momen claims that the beholder is dreaming, causing distortions in reality such as the statuette…
We retreat to the hallway at the entrance and decide to deal with the gelatinous cube to remove it from the equation. We make quick work of it and Tittlin points into one of the scary rooms with purple tentacles. He enters and shows Momen a magical crystal that apparently lets the user speak with the dead present in the crypt. They agree to attempt to contact Eornthryth Touchet and ask him some questions about himself and the beholder. The glowing crystal asks for an administrative password, to which I shout out “beholder”, and it apparently patches them through to Eornthryth who they begin to question.
The beholder was magically summoned as a sort of guard dog for the crypt, it SHOULD be magically bound to the crypt such that it can’t roam freely or affect reality outside of the tomb. WIth some information obtained from him, Momen offers to provide information since his death. He instead asks us to relocate his sword back to his sarcophogus, which is in the north and has the statue of a warrior near it.
We realize that his sarcophogus is in the grand crypt on the first floor - somewhere down below. This requires us to go through the BIG scary tentacle room with the minotaurs which I am not happy about. Tittlin sets up next to the side door as I kick in the main door, but one of the minotaurs simply rushes up and slams the door in my face. I once again bash the door open and begin smacking the minotaur, and make quick work of it between Momen and I.
Tittlin ties a rope around his waist and tosses the other end to me, and I hold onto it for dear life while standing just outside the room as he begins to wade into the goopy tentacles to secure some loot. Momen determines that this is a chapel dedicated to Hades, the god of the underworld, but doesn’t know the proper ritual for this alter.
We move into the next room and find a room full of urns, and in the next find the room where they likely prepared the cadavres. Tittlin rolls into the cremation oven and retrieves a small piece of paper that says “look at your reflection”, after which he sprints back towards the mirror in the false tomb.
Apparently his reflection was not him…
We investigate some other doors, finding a storage room containing a Bodak that we simply shut and lock, and then encounter a larger tomb room with a Sorrowsworn in it. Tittlin takes a quick shot at it, but then it rushes up and grabs me, seemingly attempting to crush me with all its might and whispering spooky things into my ear. Tittlin smartly lights up his bullseye lantern and the Sorrowsworn lets out a screech as it gets skewered by another arrow and collapses to the ground.
We find the sarcophogus with the statue of a warrior above it, and Tittlin replaces the sword. We hear a rumbling from the west and notice that a portion of the wall has opened up. Behind it appears to be a trapped chest after investigation by Tittlin which he disarms with ease, revealing an absurd amount of platinum as well as a vial of acid used for the trap.