hrexandro

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Me out here trying to get people to look at this old stuff (Adventurer 2, June/July 1986)  I think staff artist Robin Parry did these column headers

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The tomb of Marcus Vergilius Eurysaces, Rome, date unknown.

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“Game time is of utmost importance.  Failure to keep careful track of time expenditure by player characters will result in many anomalies in the game.  YOU CAN NOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE NOT KEPT.”  (Jeff Easley illus from The World of Greyhawk, TSR, 1983, with ivy border probably by Dᴀʀʟᴇɴᴇ; quote from Gary Gygax’s AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide, 1979)

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Belit, Queen of the Black Coast, as described by Robert E Howard …

Belit sprang before the blacks, beating down their spears. She turned toward Conan, her bosom heaving, her eyes flashing. Fierce fingers of wonder caught at his heart. She was slender, yet formed like a goddess: at once lithe and voluptuous. Her only garment was a broad silken girdle. Her white ivory limbs and the ivory globes of her breasts drove a beat of fierce passion through the Cimmerian’s pulse, even in the panting fury of battle. Her rich black hair, black as a Stygian night, fell in rippling burnished clusters down her supple back. Her dark eyes burned on the Cimmerian.

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Zion National Park, Angel’s Landing, Utah [4000x5000][OC][Edited] - Author: 72Y16 on reddit

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18 80 be8955ed 7442 4a10 a069 4f5fb6c84740 by anthony jones Spectrum 13: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art

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An absolutely stunning axe, probably used for hunting, Sicily, Italy, ca. 16th century, housed at the Waddesdon Manor Art Collection. [1500x1200]

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Portrait of Wincenty Rapacki as Hamlet (1870) by Karol Miller (Polish, 1835-1920)

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Gerald Brom

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Kiko Capile, Morphine

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[hrexandro]

OSR session 3

1st day of the second month of spring, Year of the Rat

Tomb of the Serpent Kings, ran with OSE, this time, I had no opportunity to use the Death & Dismemberment Table from GLOG.

Player characters:

Lonya, Thief

Valbona, Fighter

Ziemko, Fighter

Hirelings:

Radzimir

The adventurers, approached by the innkeeper with two eager volunteers, previously arranged for a venture with a different group of fortune-seekers (RIP), entered into negotiations with the two and settled at a payment rate of 1 gold piece per week plus one share of the loot for each of the two: the fighter Ziemko and his buddy Radzimir.

They ventured forth in the early morning and had to spend the night in the wilderness on their way to the tomb. The party tried to camouflage and fortify their encampment the best that they could. Each kept their watch diligently throughout the night.

During Lonya’s watch in the early morning, they were awoken by a mounted group passing nearby, engaging in foreign-sounding talk and clanking with armour. The adventurers managed to coax Radzimir into trying to catch a peek.

Soon enough, they heard loud shouting from the direction he went. Lonya and Valbona were less than eager to risk their skin, but Ziemko didn’t want to hear anything about abandoning his friend. The armed group turned out to be Sarentian knights returning home from a holy mission to the Community. They were easily convinced that the party were not, in fact, bandits, despite Radzimir’s appearance and sneaky ways. They conversed for a bit. The knights mentioned that they will be visiting the Dorian King’s court in Kindzhyl-Altariy on their way East. Ziemko was enamoured by their tales about Sarent, the “biggest city in the world” and seemed to be interested in joining them in their travels, but was kept back by his current obligations.

Upon reaching the entrance to the tomb, the party encountered a pack of wolves that appeared to have made the first empty chambers their home. Using torches, they managed to scare the animals into one of the rooms and anxiously continued down, making sure that their rear guard keeps a lit torch in case the wolves followed them.

Upon descending into the tomb, they found the octagonal room with the pool smeared with rotting blood and fragments of meat, a bloody human skull was lying on the floor, together with three wet torches, and the mummified hand was in a different place than they have seen it the last time. The pool had notably less water than before.

They continued down, walking on the stone ledge, ignoring the barred stone door on their way to enter the first open corridor to the right. They also ignored the next turn to the left, which ended with a door with a visible metal lock and entered a square room. They immediately noticed that one of the floor tiles was missing, with darkness visible below. Lonya rashly decided to investigate and ended up almost falling into the pit trap. Afterwards, she used her crowbar to smash the surrounding tiles, dropping some, and uncovering that it is safe to pass, as long as you stick close to the wall. She made a lot of noise doing that. The party heard thrashing of what sounded like a chain in the distance.

For some reason they did not continue in that direction, instead they backtracked to the corridor leading South and had Radzimir open the door, which he accomplished easily - the lock was old and terribly rusted. The room beyond was filled with hot, foul air, had chipped and bloodstained stone walls and a pair of manacles on the floor. When Valbona was passing through the room, the manacles grasped her ankles, but she was able to easily free herself. The party throroughly demolished the corroded manacles.

Radzimir started to become anxious by the fact that he was the one who had to open all the doors, but was happily silenced by the promise of increasing his weekly wage to two gold pieces and convinced to open the door to the West. They heard a hissing sound from that direction.

The next room had a domed ceiling covered with images of proud snake-men and doors on each of the walls. They first investigated the Northern route, inside they found a fiery pit that seemed to be the source of the hot air and hissing sounds. The pit was surrounded by a stone ledge that lead to another door in the North-western corner.

Then, they had Radzimir open the Western door of the domed chamber. A broomstick suddenly sprung out and tried to push him back. He cut through it with his axe, some wet sounds were heard from beyond the door, followed by another broomstick emerging. Forcing their way inside they found a small humanoid on the other side of the broom. It looked sticky and dirty and mouldy, like a rotten potato. When Ziemko attempted to parlay, it told them to follow the way to “the King” and did not look back, despite their shouts. They passed near rows of cutlery-based pole-arms and entered the dirty earthly caverns, stepping over beetle shells and other detritus. They were lead to a place where eight other “potato-people” surrounded an enthroned figure dressed in leather armour, it had a seemingly-alive snake-man head affixed to its neck with sticks, on its neck hanged a broken cross, a straw emerged from above its sternum, its left hand grasped a dagger and the right had three silver rings on its fingers. The “King” had a crown of cutlery and trash. A golden snake-man statue was standing in the corner of the room.

The King

The broom-guardian climbed on the King’s lap and blew into the straw that stuck out of his neck. The airflow enabled the snake-man head to “speak”, it seemed to be complete gibberish, but the guardian “translated”. The party learned that the creatures were assailed by what they called “the goo”, which was apparently unkillable. They impressed the potato-people when they told them that they killed one already (meaning the black pudding). The adventurers impressed them even more with the idea of throwing “the goo” into the fiery pit to destroy it.

The party inquired on the exact number of “goos” inhabiting the dungeon, but the potato-people seemed to be arithmetically challenged. They determined that there were less goos than potato-people, at least. In the meantime, most of the creatures lost interest, some started using the golden statue as a backscratcher. Upon enquiry on other creatures living in the vicinity, the potato-people got agitated again and mentioned “the monstrum”, which “turned to stone”. Despite troubled communication, they ascertained that it was not the stone cobra-guardian, but possibly some sort of basilisk. The party managed to negotiate a deal: they would slay “the monstrum” and leave it to be eaten by their “translator” in exchange for the golden backscratcher.

The adventurers also asked about the origin of the King - they learned that he was found in a pond above. They speculated that perhaps the pond itself was the source of this strange people.

The broom-guardian showed them the way to the “monstrum”. Past some haphazard farms, up some dirty stairs lied a stone door. Recalling old-wives tales about basilisks, they prepared a small mirror to reflect any petrifying effects and opened the door into a large hall filled with columns and shadows, inside they heard faint breathing and saw realistic stone figures of spiders, bats, and potato-people in various states of fragmentation. After the party scrambled into the room, hiding behind the columns, and made sure to look down on the ground, Ziemko started feeling slow and heavy, so the entire party escaped in much haste.

They experimented a bit by tying Ziemko with a rope and having him bring petrified creatures outside of the room, dragging him back as soon as he stopped moving, speculating that perhaps the room itself had a petrifying effect and the breathing could have come from magical nostrils on the wall or something. However, bringing the petrified creatures out of the room did not, in fact, de-petrify them. During the investigation, Ziemko managed to catch a glimpse of a giant lizard with a crocodilian head, some kind of visor and collar attached with a chain to the chamber’s ceiling.

The party decided to go back to town, perhaps to stock up on oil to burn the entire chamber with the creature in it. On their way out they cursorily investigated the room  to the West of the fiery pit but found nothing flammable within to use in their plans. They also considered the barred stone door next to the chasm, but abandoned it as well, wary of activating any traps so close the abyss. The wolves inhabiting the first chambers of the dungeon apparently left, as there was no sign of them.

On their way back to Tor’s Field, the party spent their night in Beaverton, one of the villages on the way. They were gladly given hospitality by one of the peasants, Tom, together with his wife Jadzia, in exchange for company and tale. The adventurers were wary not to disclose too much of their exploits and in turn inquired about any monsters known to exist in  the vicinity, especially of the petrifying type. Apparently the area has been plagued by attacks of troglodytes, but these did not match the description o anything that the party encountered, despite their suspicions about the potato-people. They learned that the troglodytes can use natural camouflage to blend in with their surroundings but emit a nasty oily smell, thus are often first smelt, rather than seen. They also apparently were incapable or unwilling to engage in any negotiation and would attack people on sight, using primitive weapons (non-cutlery based). The local ruler, Horka Gabriel, was known to offer the prize of 5 silver pieces per troglodyte head to curb this menace.

The party also inquired about the general area, which, they learned, used to be covered with Swardonian realms, until all of them were conquered by the Onioner invasion (the Onioners being known, of course, for their prominent, onion-shaped headdress).

Hrexandrian note: The session was unfortunately cut short by real-life considerations. I rule that any party that does not make their way back to civilisation on the end of the session shall be considered lost in the wilderness and probably dead, so the players had to leave the dungeon sooner than they might have done otherwise (if there was more real-life time to continue, that is).

[hrexandro]

OSR session 2

19th day of the first month of spring, Year of the Rat

Tomb of the Serpent Kings, ran with OSE, using the Death & Dismemberment Table from GLOG.

Player characters:

Lonya, Thief

Urpert, Thief

Valbona, Fighter

Another group of adventurers, having been sold a supposed treasure map from a mysterious old man, prepared to venture out of the town of Tor’s Field.

Having asked around town, the party learned of a previous group of miscreants who, after venturing into the same general area, returned with various cryptic items, before meeting various abrupt and violent ends. Prior to dying however, they seem to have enlisted the help of an acolyte (still living), who, in the end, did not decide to pursue the same adventuring lifestyle. They met him outside of the palisade of the decaying town, in the surrounding fields and orchards, peppered with ruins of the town’s former… mediocrity. Beside a collapsed church, in the town’s cemetery, the acolyte was busy burying the remains of two adventurers. He relayed their story and gifted the party what looked like the map of the inside of a tomb, before immersing himself in prayer for these poor souls.

They arrived there the next day, finding a set of ransacked rooms, and a smashed stone door with a stone slab lying on the floor. Upon entering further, into a large chamber filled with rotten grave goods and scattered bones they saw a clay statue of a snake-man, surrounded by fragments of clay, to his left, laid a snake-man skeleton. Lonya disturbed the remains by trying to scatter the bones with her foot, in an attempt to prevent it from being animated later on and endangering their rear. The attempt animated the skeleton, leading to a quick fight, from which the party survived unscathed, while the snake-man ended scattered.

Not willing to leave any possible accursed dead undisturbed, Valbona knocked on the remaining statue, which erupted in a rain of clay fragments, unsurprisingly revealing another skeleton inside. The party escaped into the outlying corridor, hoping that the blessed light of day may have an adverse effect for the enemy. That did not seem to prove true. In the ensuing scuffle, they did, however, manage to lodge a grappling hook into his ribcage and pulled him down to the ground, leading to his demise.

Disappointed at the apparent lack of treasure, the group ventured deeper, encountering a vile statue, that they investigated thoroughly. Founding no way to interact with it, they dove into the hole at its base and entered a corridor flanked with statues of snake-men warriors. Remembering that they’ve been informed that one of these statues was moveable, they decided not to investigate it further.

They entered an octagonal chamber with exits on every side, multiple snake-men statues bearing various implements, a pool of black water in the middle, and a smashed mummified hand near the pool (unfortunately I forgot to mention the blood that must have been there, since that is where Priest bled out to death during the previous session). They carefully approached the pool, but nothing emerged from within.

Then the party started investigating the surrounding doors, starting with the wooden ones to the Southeast. Inside they found a small room with rotten beds, shelves, piles of scrolls in an unknown language and a gold and emerald icon depicting a Snakeoid figure. They quickly pocketed the icon and some of the scrolls.

Next, they investigated a stone door to the North, which they moved without much hassle using Lonya’s crowbar. Inside they found collapsed rubble, with a small hole which might have enabled them entry, if it weren’t for a furious snake-man skeleton aggressively trying to attack anything that came close. They decided to forego this route for now and sighed with relief when the skeleton stopped making noise after losing “sight” of them. They attempted to make sense of the various implements that the statues around the octagonal room are holding regarding the rooms and their contents, but they find no logic or reason connecting the two.

Opening the elaborately carved doors to the East and seeing ominous-looking stars leading down, and walls covered in reliefs of snakes “performing indeterminate movement between the sky and the ground”, they decided not to venture deeper just yet.

Then they decided to enter the room to the Northwest. Inside, on the wall, a circular shape glittered with the light of their torch. Upon noticing a raised tile on the floor, they apprehensively rolled a large stone from the collapsed corridor on the floor towards it and hid outside. With a deafening sound, a bolt of lightning shot from the room, destroying the wooden door to the Southeast. They entered the room, crawling on the floor and avoiding the pressed tile and stone. The adventurers expressed worry that the dungeon seemed to be causing them to behave like snake-men. Inside the room they stuck close to the walls, waiting for another lightning to shoot, it did not. Then they carefully took the electrum disk from the wall, being careful not to touch it with their skin, and only manipulating it through a bag. They expressed heavy disappointment that the sarcophagus in the room is empty.

Next, they entered the crudely carved room to the Northeast, and upon hearing squelching sounds from the stone coffin, prepared a plan ofaction. After a lengthy deliberation on the possibility of baiting the potential enemy to be zapped by the lightning trap from the Northwestern room, they abandoned that idea and instead poured oil around the sarcophagus, Valbona braced to push the lid off and Lonya stood with a torch prepared to burn whatever emerged. As soon as it opened a bit, a black pseudopod shot out, grabbing Valbona’s hand. She managed to break her hand out, but not without sustaining painful burns. The adventurers hastily exited the room after Lonya threw the torch on the oil. A blob of black jelly pursued them, emitting a horrific sound while passing through the flames. They did, however, have the advantage of speed, Lonya and Urpert escaped to the upper level, while Valbona remained, trying to bait in to fall into the black pool. She succeeded and rising black water washed over her boots as the creature fell. She called for the rest of the party to come back down. As they were descending to join Valbona, the monstrous jelly emerged out of the water but was promptly put down by the steel of her axe. They investigated the scorched room from which the jelly originated but found only clay jars and copies of goods.

When investigating the Southern room, they found only an unfinished chamber with various mining and masonry tools scattered around. They took the tools to the Northern room and threw them through the hole at the unruly skeleton until he stopped moving, then used the remaining tools to clear their path. Inside, they found various golden funeral trinkets, Urpert also took the axe previously wielded by the animated skeleton.

The party then entered the corridor to the Southwest and smashed one of the clay snake-men warriors standing there. Finding neither treasure nor foe, they left the rest undisturbed.

Having apparently exhausted all other routes, the party decided to venture down the stone stairs, without performing any prior investigation. Upon stepping on the third stair, Valbona activated the trap – the stairs turned into a smooth ramp, and she slided down into spikes below, somehow managing to survive with only a flesh wound. She found herself in another octagonal room, this one had a huge stone statue of a humanoid figure with a cobra-like head wielding a huge sword, the walls were covered in various old and mostly decayed shields. The thief was shocked upon seeing that the stone figure started to approach her but managed to escape it into a narrow path overlooking a dark chasm on the other side of the room. She heard a swooping sound but did not look back and managed to avoid falling off the slippery stone ledge. She heard the statue stomping away (the ledge was too arrow for it to follow) and sat down in the dark, shaking with fear.

Meanwhile her comrades tried to fix a rope to safely descend down the ramp to aid her. The ramp, however, soon turned back into stairs, so Urpert tied the rope around Lonya’s waist instead and had her walk down the stairs (avoiding the third), while she carefully prodded the stairs in front of her. No other stairs turned out to be trapped.

As soon as the cobra guardian, now also bearing a shield, noticed them, he approached, but they were able to easily avoid him, as he did not fit up the stairs. Shouting over the foe, hoping he did not understand Common, the adventurers coordinated a plan to bait him to approach the slippery stone edge of the chasm and throw him down there using ropes. Shenanigans ensued. Valbona narrowly escaped doom while running on the slippery ledge multiple times. They did not manage to do it exactly how they planned, the guardian turned out to be too heavy to push/pull him. However, when the statue leaped near the ledge to attack Valbona, who was taunting him and throwing stones, he did slip and fall into the chasm. Valbona escaped the same fate, but her ribs got cracked by the impact of the stone guardian’s leap.

The party decided to recuperate in the octagonal room formerly occupied by the cobra-golem. They dragged down the beds from one of the rooms above to start a fire and get comfortable. Before they managed to do that, they were startled by chittering sounds and creepy laughter coming from the direction of the chasm. They ruled to rest in town instead.

The travel back was uneventful, in town, they found callers roaming the streets with handbells, and people gathering at the chapels. It was the day of Resurrection.

Lonya went straight to the local wizard and, upon introducing herself as “Tulia Rostfhausen”, tried to sell him the emerald snake icon, he was interested and greedy, but suspicious. She was unwilling to name the source of the treasure, so the wizard brushed her off, openly citing fear of the local ruler as the reason for his unwillingness to make business before being aware of exactly the kind of risk he is taking. She then roamed the streets, saw wanted notices promising 500 gold pieces for the head of a local bandit leader, named as “Bloody Henry”. She inquired a bit about this figure (she learned that they call him Henry-who-does-not-close-his-eyes) and about the local ruler also.

Valbona also visited the wizard and paid him to have the scrolls translated.

They waited for a week, until Valbona’s ribs healed and for the wizard to translate the scrolls. They turned out to be mad ravings of dead kings, desperately calling to their descendants, describing visions of dark eternity. One name seemed to pop up throughout the texts, “Baltoplat”, described only as “the demon of the deep”.

[hrexandro]

OSR session 1

4th day of the first month of spring, Year of the Rat

Tomb of the Serpent Kings, ran with OSE, using the Death & Dismemberment Table from GLOG.

Player characters:

Pier, Magic-User

Jessica, Thief

Priest, Cleric

The adventurers, lured by the prospect of buried riches, followed a map bought by Priest from an old wanderer and ventured a day’s travel distance from the town of Torsfeld, into the hilly wilderness to the Northeast.

They arrived in the early evening. Upon entering the dungeon’s corridor, they investigated the first room to the right. The party huddled around a clay statue depicting a snake-man. Priest decided to do what came naturally to him, as an Iconoclastic zealot, and promptly smashed the monstrous image with his warhammer. As they were placed around pretty tightly, none escaped the toxic poison gas exploding from within. Pier became sickly from the toxin. Jessica, however, was hit hardest – the poison ravaged her body, her left leg and right eye became numb and useless.

The party brought her out and stabilized her. Afterwards, Priest scoured the remains, recovering a golden amulet and smashing the skeletal remains within the pile. They decided to hole up in the chamber to spend the next day to recuperate, after gathering enough firewood to keep them with ample light and warmth, and scattering dry wood around the corridor to warn them of anyone who might be approaching. They discuss whether to cut off Jessica’s numb leg, which remained useless, making it necessary for the party to assist her in movement, but decide against it.

The next day (evening) they cursorily investigated the other rooms branching from the corridor and approached the Sorcerer’s Tomb, containing another clay statue with the image of a snake-man sorcerer. Priest wanted to pry off a silver ring from the figure’s finger. Wary of poison gas, he carefully used a crowbar to remove the item, whilst being tied with a rope and held by the others to pull him out at the first sign of poison gas. They succeeded.

After that they used a sling to destroy the statues in the remaining two rooms, removing their amulets and smashing the snake-men bones within. Moving on to the barred door at the end of the corridor, when they figured two of them weren’t strong enough to lift the stone bar blocking the entrance, they decided to move it sideways. After the bar moved past one of the iron pegs on which it rested, it clicked and moved upwards. Upon noticing that, they ran away immediately. Causing the bar to partly fall to the side. However it still partly weighted down on the other peg, so the hammer trap hiding in the ceiling remained unsprung.

Then they tied a rope to the bar and working in unison, pulled it off the peg from a safe distance. Activating the hammer trap and smashing the stone door. They entered a large chamber  with another three clay statues to the North, an exit to the South, and piles of rotten grave goods in the middle. After having the limping Jessica check the walls of the room, they pierced the leftmost statue with a sling shot. A skeletal hand appeared in the hole. When they enlarged the hole with another shot, a skeletal Snakeoid head emerged, which was quickly blown off with Pier’s magic missile spell, the skeleton still pursued them, however, but they managed to quickly defeat it. It yielded them no treasure.

After that they went back to the chamber they spent the last day in, and slept the night, enabling Pier to regenerate his spell. They moved on to smash the rightmost statue. The emerging skeleton was promptly turned by Priest’s holy symbol. The skeleton escaped deeper into the tomb. The party heard various loud and intriguing sounds from the direction it went and decided to follow it, ignoring the remaining middle coffin.

The next small room had a statue of a horrid snake-man god (“resembling a cross between a toad, a heap of intestines, and a melted candle”) and a hole in the floor, eroded by flowing water. They investigated the statue and the hole, tied a rope to the statue and ventured down.

The corridor below was filled with six statues of snake-men warriors, upon noticing that one of them was out of alignment, they moved it so that it stood straight. When that did nothing, they moved it back the way it was, but no further, then abandoned it and moved on.

The corridor led to an octagonal chamber with a black pond in the middle, and a stone door on each wall, except the SE one, that had a wooden door, and the SW one, that had an open corridor. Each of the doors had a pair of snake-men statues on each side, each wielding various instruments of war, torture, agriculture or science. They diligently noted what each of the statues was holding and Pier threw a dagger into the pond (from a safe distance), figuring that one of the statues held a dagger, perhaps throwing a dagger would cause the stone door next to it to open.

When Priest approached the pond, a mummified hand crawled out of it, but was immediately smashed by Priest’s hammer. However, a second hand emerged from the pond and scratched his leg, before being zapped by Pier’s magic missile. While they were trying to patch-up bleeding and screaming Priest, the turned skeletal snake-man crawled out of the pond and escaped to the SW corridor.

They did not manage to stabilize Priest, he bled out from his leg and died. Jessica and Pier took some of his equipment, including the silver ring and golden amulet, then threw his body into the pond. They were disappointed that this “sacrifice” did not cause any of the doors (which they did not investigate, even cursorily) to open.

Priest’s body was thrown into the pond still bearing his, backpack, waterskin, tinderbox, rations, holy symbol, 12 torches, oil, hammer, dagger, sling, leather armor, 20 pieces of gold, and notably, the map that led them to the dungeon.

Jessica and Pier decide to return to town. The journey lasts notably longer due to Jessica’s limp. On their way they meet an Acolyte (random encounter), lost in the woods after avoiding a marauding tribe of troglodytes. They talk with him a bit, but remain suspicious.

Finally they reach the town of Torsfeld. Jessica buys a salve to treat her leg, paying with one of the golden amulets, but sees no immediate improvement. Pier makes use of a bathhouse, then leaves the remaining amulets and silver ring to the local wizard, Antymon, to identify whether they are magical. The wizard can keep one of the amulets as payment for the service. The turns out to be magical, the amulets, not.

They wait in town until Pier’s sickness comes to an end. Jessica puts on the silver ring, her finger becomes longer, her nail turns into a bifurcated claw. She is unable to remove the ring. At that moment, Jessica has a blind right eye, numb left leg and a double-clawed right ring finger. The next day they recruit a fighter found in a dark alley, he calls himself Swordsman. While they are talking, the ring’s poison takes effect. Jessica panics and demand Swordsman to quickly cut off the finger, he obliges. While she is suffering from the poison and bleeding from the amputation, Pier and Swordsman prove unable to stabilize her, made worse by the fact that they spent one round on cutting the finger off. Jessica dies. Pier and Swordsman take all her stuff and leave her dead in the dark alley where she bled out.

They attempt to sell the silver ring to dwarven cloth merchants staying at the local tavern, but they’re not happy with the price offered. Swordsman takes the ring to Antymon and manages to sell it, after divulging the magical properties of the cursed ring, that he himself was witness to.

They find the Acolyte that they met earlier to join them on an adventure for their next venture into the Tomb. His name is Bogumił. Pier visits the bathhouse again, while Swordsman stays at the tavern. Swordsman is approached by five men-at-arms and brought to the local Horka (baron). He is interrogated on the dead girl and answers truthfully, that the death was not his doing, but caused by a cursed ring. However, he admitted to taking Jessica’s belongings, and during interrogation mentioned that he is not a Christian. He is disarmed, stripped naked, and brought to a dungeon. Meanwhile Pier returns to the tavern, and after learning from the innkeeper that Swordsman was taken by the Horka’s men, goes to the noble’s residence, where he is also promptly arrested, tied, interrogated (he corroborates the Swordsman’s story), then stripped naked and imprisoned.

After an undisclosed period of time, Swordsman is brought out and offered baptism, to which he agrees. He is baptized, then brought back to the dungeon.

Both characters are taken to the Horka, he states that the local wizard Antymon confirmed what they said about the cursed ring. However, for the crime of robbing a dead person, they are sentenced to have both their hands cut off and then lashed 50 times.

Pier perished during the lashing.

Swordsman perished during the amputation, then was lashed post-mortem.

Bogumił, not knowing the way to the Tomb, as all the adventurers who have ventured there ended up dead, and not having a map (which was left with Priest’s body), decides to forego adventuring, for now.

Entries into the Book of the Dead:

†Priest, killed by a demonic hand in the Serpent Tomb.

†Jessica, perished from poison and blood loss In a dark alley of Torsfeld

†Pier, perished whilst being lashed for robbing a deceased person

†Swordsman, perished while having his hands amputated for robbing a deceased person