Now what sort of dragon doesn't protect its hard-looted treasure, hm?
3
You scramble for the walls and try to scrabble up the elaborate bas-reliefs to give yourself a better position. Unfortunately, you end up losing your grip and falling back to the floor - not hard, and before the mummies get to you. Still, there are half a dozen out of their coffins already and swarming towards your position, hands raised like claws.
1, 4
You breathe a few quick gouts of flame, but you misjudge the distance and barely singe their wrappings before you need to gulp back a breath and let the gas bubbles in your stomach build back up - you will that indigestion to happen as quickly as you can! Soon enough the first couple of mummies make dashes for you, trying to grab hold of you while the rest form a semicircle around where you're backed against the wall. You leap up and use your hind claws to slash out the tendons of the muscles where the humanoid torso connects with the complex musculature of the serpentine tail, leaping up to the next and driving your wing-claws like a blade through its spine. The ring of mummies hesitate for a moment, giving you space to leap away from the paralysed mummy and its compatriot wriggling on the floor with only the rear half of its tail able to contract and relax. You feel a burbling in your stomach and inhale, feeling bright flowers in your throat.
6, 6
You hold the gas for a moment, feeling your throat scream with pain, then let it all out in one massive belch just as the ring of mummies slither forward to pound you into paste. Every single mummy is coated in the thick ruddy flames and their wrappings go up like overheated candles. You can see another round of mummies freshly emerged from their caskets closing in behind them, but the ring of fire holds them back and you leap past the flames and begin tearing apart their flesh, cutting their muscles so that they fall into the fire and severing spines at the neck or back before they can so much as lay a finger on you. You are a swift spectre of death amongst them.
3, 6
Another ten mummies slither up to you, and these ones are trying to move between the twitching or flaming bodies of the fallen. One of them has picked up some sort of ceremonial staff and tries to use the reach to brain you, but you desperately let out a quick burst of flame to drive it back. Your stomach complains, empty of gas for the moment, and so you just leap onto the staff, slide down the shaft and break the mummy's wrist with a claw strike to disarm it. You kick off the mummy's chest, pushing it backwards into a flaming compatriot, and just as the last group of mummies form up into a group to rush you, you kick the nearby lamp pedestal and knock several pints of flaming oil all over them. The last untouched survivor you polish off by simply shattering its spine.
You breathe raggedly, adrenaline running like venom through your veins, and realise that no more mummies are coming to attack you. You look around at the dome and see three dozen opened caskets, patches of flame and a multitude of broken or charred corpses, some still ineffectively twitching and trying to fight. You glance back at your own body; untouched, save for a few burnt scales and soot marks. You twinge a bit; your scales are naturally resistant to fire, but are not thick enough to survive direct contact with your own flames without injury. Still, you are all but untouched and your foes are slain.
How Glorious!You spend the next few minutes rolling weakly protesting mummy corpses into the impromptu pyres and wait until they have all been damaged enough to stop moving. Then you examine the rest of the caskets for treasure.
Including the earlier loot, you find bulky ceramic tableware and palm ivory statuettes to the tune of {
2000 silver coins}, jewellery, jade statuettes and silverware to the tune of {
1500 silver coins} and collecting all their masks together bronze masks worth {
1750 silver coins} and one silver mask worth {
200 silver coins}. The final piece of the collection is a beautiful if slightly impractical ceremonial staff in ebony encircled with gold bands and geometric designs in silver {
750 silver coins}.
A) Put as many portable treasures as will fit in your satchel for now and head back to the pyramid room to look for the way out you used before.
B) Leave the treasure so you aren't burdened and head to the pyramid chamber. You're spoiling for another fight.
!C) Leave the treasure so you aren't burdened and head to the long chamber. You're spoiling for another fight.
!D) Something Else.
[Fun fact: I decided that new mummies would spawn each round, so that the Numbers situation could potentially get worse, except that you just kept killing them as soon as they turned up.]
Author
Topic: SPAMDRAGON: Swamp Baron (Read 39510 times)