14 September 2025 - Tomb of Horrors

THANK YOU THANK YOU for the DM t-shirt and mug, I love them! You are all so nice :)

History

Before we started I showed the Original 1975 Tournament Module again. I mentioned that in this book, there is an even earlier version called "The Tomb of Ra-Hotep" created by Alan Lucien, it was much shorter and Alan provided it to Gary Gygax, who used it as inspiration for Tomb of Horrors.

I showed one piece of art from the inside, of the entrance corridor. It gave me the idea that I should show artwork from both versions, so here are some from the August session:

The entrance hallway (Illustration #3 in the 1978 version):
The jackal figures holding the chest (Illustration #4 in the 1978 version):
The misty arch: (Illustration #5 in the 1978 version):
The green devil face: (Illustration #6 in the 1978 version):
The hall of spheres: (Illustration #10 in the 1978 version):
The trapped false door: (Illustration #12 in the 1978 version):

Gameplay

To start us off, I repeated the description for the temple area where we ended last session:

They will see what is obviously some form of temple area. There are scenes of normal life painted on the walls, but the people have rotting flesh, skeletal hands, worms eating them, etc. Yet there are also depicted various religious symbols of good alignment. What a puzzle! Could the demi-lich actually have been of good alignment? There is a mosaic path leading to the altar, and to either side great wooden pews face the worship area. A wooden railing divides the room, and south of it is the altar, a tiered dais with a wooden chair (nicely carved and padded), 2 large brass candelabra holding 5 white candles each, and in each corner a large white pottery urn stoppered with a brass and wood plug. A human skeleton in black chain mail (badly rusted and torn) points to an archway, similar to the others previously encountered. However, the mist in this archway is filled with luminous orange vapors of an exciting hue.

The party cautiously followed the mosaic path, tapping the floor ahead to try to detect pit traps. None were found.

Approaching the altar, The Holiest. decided to cast a "Find Traps" spell. The front row of pews, the altar, and the archway glowed to her sight, indicating that they were trapped.

MZC (played by Steve this session for Grace) then decided to attept to Disarm the trap on the altar. Unfortunately, he failed, setting off the trap. A 40 foot long and 8 foot wide lightning bolt shot from the altar, directly up the aisle. Every party member happened to be in it's path, so everyone was hurt. Everyone did get an attempted Save vs. Spell. those who succeeded took 20 points of damage, those who failed took 40! MZC and Darkhammer failed, Old Man From Scene 24, Pippen, and The Holiest. succeeded.

Afterward, some (very minor) healing spells were cast (+1 hp and +3 hp) but I didn't write down who was healed. The altar changed appearance, now glowing a fiery blue-red color. Everyone was careful not to touch it from then on.

The party spread out, searching the room carefully. MZC found bags of 4,000 silver pieces hidden under the last row of pews. Splitting those amongst the whole party, each person left with 800 silver pieces each.

Old Man from Scene 24 then cast Dispel Magic on the archway, which continued to glow and the mists remained. The party then walked through the archway, finding a small room beyond. Searching for secret doors, no one was able to find them or anything else beyond the archway.

SPOILER: In a moment of weakness, I let the group know that they had barely escaped the archway when the magic of the archway overcame the Dispel Magic spell. The spell description and the module both use a rule where the DM counts silently to a number, and "things change" when I get to a specific number. In this case, the last person stated they left the room literally about 1 second before I counted to the number for the collapse of the Dispel Magic spell.

The team continued to search for secret doors, but did not find any. The party returned to the hall of spheres, and this time explored the tunnel behind the red sphere. Finding that it ended after not traveling far, they searched for secret doors there, unsuccessfully. Returning to the hall of spheres again, they inspected the misty arch at the end of the hall. This arch had stones that glowed when pushed like the one in the entrance corridor, the colors were OLIVE, RUSSET, and CITRON. You tried all possible combinations, but nothing appeared to happen. Even pushing and holding the stones (long-click!) or pushing them twice in different combinations resulted in nothing visible.

Someone tossed a coin in while Pippen cast Clairvoyance beyond the arch, but he heard nothing, just silence. The Holiest. tossed one end of her rope through the archway. Unlike the other archway in the entrance hall, nothing attempted to pull the rope from her grasp. Pulling the rope back, it was intact.

Meanwhile, MZC finally found the secret door at the end of the short passage beyond the red sphere. Unfortunately, it was a rock that when pushed on, gave way suddenly, and MZC fell into the room beyond, and the floor was 10 feet below, resulting in 4 hp of damage.

The room had 3 chests in it, one wood, one silver, and one gold, each about 4 feet long, 2 feet wide, and 3 feet tall. The Holiest. cast another "Find Traps" spell, which indicated that all 3 chests were trapped. Old Man From Scene 24 cast a Dispel Magic spell, which was only effective on the middle, silver chest.

Old Man From Scene 24 then came up with a plan to use a Monster Summoning spell to summon some monsters to use to explore the arch and to use to open the chests/set off the traps. He ended up summoning 4 Kobolds. The first he tied the rope to and sent it through the archway while holding the rope. The rope immediately went slack, pulling it back, it was clear the rope had been severed.

The other 3 kobolds were sent to open chests quickly enough to see what was in them, then close them. The first opened the wood chest, out of which sprung a skeleton of giant. It immediately attacked and killed the kobold in front of it. The second opened and closed the silver chest, the party glimpsed a clear glass or crystal box inside. The third opened the chest to see that there were snakes (asps) inside. One escaped before the kobold could close it again.

SPOILER: The trap in the silver chest was a magic dart trap that was disarmed by the Dispel Magic spell, but is shown in illustration 13c.

Combat commenced, the surviving kobold was instructed to re-open the chest to allow the rest of the asps out. It included Old Man From Scene 24 casting Web on them, then casting Fireball. The end result was that the Giant Skeleton, all 3 kobolds, and all 12 asps were dead, with no damage to anyone in the party.

Inspecting the chests, the wood chest (Giant Skeleton) and gold chest (12 asps) were empty. The silver chest contained a small crystal box with a ring inside of it.

That's where we ended this session. There was some discussion on available exits, at this point the only known available exit is the misty arch in the hall of spheres, or you've missed something hidden or secret somewhere else.

There was also talk about playing our next session during SaintCon October 20th-24th when some of us will be in-person again.