"Now I am become carbs, destroyer of waistlines."
The following is a campaign journal where I, the referee, lead my friends in a game of Lamentations of the Flame Princess. For all of us, this is our first venture down the Old School Renaissance style of tabletop roleplaying. Enjoy!
(SPOILERS for Tomb of the Serpent Kings by Skerples)
EPISODE 2: Let's Do It Right This Time
The adventure continues, and as Zanzibar and Hal flee back to town with Waffles the mule, three other adventurers step off of the boat. The party now consists of:
Zanzibar the Magician: a magic user who has a secret past with snakes. Level 1
Harold "Hal" Fling: a halfling that bad guys can't touch. Level 1
Sister Cage: a cleric who may or may not be a demon. Level 1
McDoogle: a fighter with +5 bonus to making things worse. Level 1
Jarvey: a specialist who put every point into search. Level 1
Hal, Cage, Jarvey, Zanzibar, McDoogle
The three new adventurers meet up in Narakib under the cover of midnight. Zanzibar and Hal are terrified, and when questioned about what happened to their three dead companions, Hal offers up Professor Mallet's bloody mirror. Sister Cage licks it and confirms that the blood on it is in fact Mallet's. Everyone is scared of Sister Cage now. McDoogle then attempts to obtain more starting gear than he really has by expressing anger that "Klar" stole "his" cart. When asked how the party wants to communicate with the town, they decide not to tell NPC's what happened to their dead friends.
Needing rest, Zanzibar sleeps back at the Knave and Riddle. When Nisil the sphinx proprietor of the Knave and Riddle asks where the other party members are, Zanzibar tells her that they are sleeping back at the tomb. Hal sleeps on the Codfather. Jarvey gets drunk and sleeps at the bar. Nobody knows where McDoogle is. Sister Cage sleeps at the Knave and Riddle as well and begins writing a poem to "the Ancestors." Everyone is still scared of Sister Cage.
They wake up and go to the Tomb of the Serpent Kings. Jarvey and McDoogle find a set of women's bootprints leading into the cave. Entering the tomb, the adventurers expect to find the three dead bodies from the hammer trap. The bodies are gone. Sister Cage is still freakin' weird and licks the blood where the bodies used to be.
"Yep, tastes like old character sheet."
The party finds the three coffins from before. The coffins have piles of rocks on them, keeping the lids closed. Everyone searches the room and they find a statue of a curvy serpent deity that Hal recognizes as Pretzel-Couatl. The statue has been disturbed recently, and a secret staircase is beneath it. The party debates how to deal with the coffins that have already been dealt with. They fear smoke inhalation, so they don't burn them. They decide to remove the rocks individually from one little coffin and put them on the big coffin. Eventually a snake zombie arm reaches out. Zanzibar discovers he speaks Snake-Latin and hears the snake zombie shouting for everyone to flee or die. Sister Cage shoves a sword into the coffin and chops up the zombie. McDoogle tries hacking the zombie with his axe but rolls a nat 1 and instead hits the larger coffin, freeing the snake zombie inside. Everyone tries to shoot it. Everyone misses. Sister Cage casts turn undead and keeps the zombie from escaping. Zanzibar talks mad shit and kills the snake with his staff. Zanzibar then tells Jarvey not to shit talk him. McDoogle chops open the last coffin since that's the only thing he can hit. Sister Cage starts turning undead near the final zombie and it escapes out the back of the coffin, but Sister Cage then stabs the zombie in the face and chants the poem she wrote the night before while under the cascading disco lights of her holy symbol:
"All we ever hear from you is
blah blah blah blah"
--Sister Cage
The party then goes down the secret passage under the statue. While down there, they discover a hallway with six stone snake statues, one of them being out of alignment. The party debates hitting the statue with a sling bullet, then they ask Zanzibar to speak to the snake statue in Snake-Latin, so Zanzibar asks the statue if it is Pretzel-Coatl. It doesn't respond. McDoogle emblazons the symbol of Pretzel-Coatl on his shield. The party then wraps a rope around the statue and realigns it (all while realizing "wrap a rope around" is a bit of a tongue twister). The rotated statue opens a secret room with a silver icon of a serpent king and two ancient polearms. McDoogle and Jarvey take the polearms. Zanzibar takes the icon.
"So I then this sphinx shows up out of NO-where!"
The party follows the hall into an octagonal room with several doors interspersed by snake statues. A ten-foot diameter pool of dark water rests in the center of the room. They search the room, and as Jarvey and Sister Cage approach the pool, two severed mummified hands leap out and attack. Hal dispatches both of them with a flurry of attacks after both hands critically fail attack rolls against him. Zanzibar reads the Snake-Latin labels on the doors and finds one labeled "Franzibar." Everyone considers the possibility that Zanzibar may be a snake. They open the Franzibar room and discover a giant stone coffin. They tie a rope to the coffin lid and pull the lid off, releasing a giant, sludgy, ooze monster.
Loot obtained: 8 gp, 60 sp
3 gold amulets (1 gp each)
silver icon (worth 5 gp)
two serpent polearms (worth 30 sp each)
Materials and Supplements used:
Tomb of the Serpent Kings (main dungeon)
DonJon Fantasy Town Generator (for creating Narakib)
Vornheim (generating NPC's and town amenities)
Lamentations of the Flame Princess (main rule set)