You strut into the entryway of the tomb and let off a burst of flame, igniting the silent, dark lamps across the chamber.
"Awaken, wretch!" you call out in the old Ophidian tongue. "You may have thought yourself victorious before, but I will have satisfaction! I challenge you to combat, in the ways of old!"
Stone grinds as caskets are slid aside, the ancient honour guard crawling from their macabre repose, ancient curved swords (
khopesh, your memories provide) in hand. They assemble before a sarcophagus raised upon a dais. The silver-masked guardian slithers out of her tomb, bow readied, quiver strapped to her hip. It seems her long centuries of mummification did not preserve her tongue as it did Prince Narsis. She speaks no words, but salutes you with her bow in accordance with an ancient form. You incline your head in turn. There is a drawn out moment of silence, then everybody bursts into action.
Mummies: 20hp, +1 Combat Skill, 1 damage on hit.
Guardian Mummy: 3hp, Armour 1, Personal Combat Ranged +2 (1 damage, Range 2), Melee +2 (1 damage).
Dragon: 3hp, Armour 1, Mass Combat Melee +4 (3 damage), Ranged +3 (3 damage, Range 1); Personal Combat Melee +4 (6 damage), Ranged +3 (1 damage).
3, 3
The guardian whips up her bow and fires three shots at you in quick succession - you hastily snap back a breath of flame, incinerating the arrows and throwing them off course so that they shatter harmlessly against your scales. Here in her own tomb, the guardian doesn't have the range advantage she did in the outer complex. However, this distracts you enough for the mummies to mob you. You aren't too worried, until you realise that they are acting with unusual and unexpected co-ordination! Wrapping their thick meaty tails around your limbs, several of the mummies grip hold of nearby columns, using their own strength and the surroundings to hold you in place!
7, 8
The guardian moves to get a better shot, firing off another as she goes, but you catch her with a blast of fire! Her armour stops her from falling from it, but many of her dry wrappings catch and she staggers unsteadily from the damage. You struggle, unable to dislodge the mummies holding you in place, but you wrench one of your forelimbs free, battering several mummies to the ground with your wings and snapping their spines with tooth and claw.
8!, 3
The archer lines up for a shot against your weak spot, but you hurl one of the broken mummies into her - it causes her to lose her 'footing' and slip on her tail, bringing her down before we can reach cover. It's all the gap you need - a dead shot with another flamestrike sets her completely alight. She struggles and writhes as she burns away. However, more of the mummies pile atop you, nearly all of those remaining, dragging you down and starting to crush you with weight alone!
2, 4, 2, 7!
The mummies pile, wrapping around you, pulling you tighter to the ground, trying to break your bones and muscles through constriction alone in a rather python-like manner, one squeezing your windpipe, cutting off your breath (both normal and fire). The weight piles on and on until you can feel darkness closing in all around you -
- bursting up through the hundreds of crawling, stabbing ant-folk, you scattered them hundreds of feet away, laying waste to them with fire and fury, your gaze locking on their queen -- and find strength surging from within, breaking through their ancient, mummified tails, scattering them and tearing them asunder! One last blast of fire does for the handful of stragglers and you emerge victorious!
You ancestors are pleased.You take the time to loot this whole tomb complex, and you are not disappointed by your findings! Each of the outer tombs had various grave goods left in the sarcophagi, including a large amount of copper jewellery (
5000 silver coins), burial masks (
3000 silver coins), small items of statuary and other trinkets (
7000 silver coins) and in one filled pot buried with the guardian mummy, 3000 actual silver coins.
On top of this, you collect the guardian mummy's bow, which appears to be a composite shortbow in surprisingly good condition for its age. You value it at
2000 silver coins and would reckon in the hands of a Hero or favoured servant it would do well (+1 to Ranged skill and damage). You collect around a third of the weapons from the various mummies which you judge actually serviceable in combat, in case you ever want to equip an army, and drag them upstairs to add them to the arms pile (
800 silver coins).
You also take the time to study the carvings in this layer of the tomb. They mostly share details with those found above, but provide a little more detail about the necropolis itself, some of which seems to have been part of the original detailing here, and some of which was added by the later crypt-dwelling civilisation post-dating the fall of the Ophidian Empire. It seems this necropolis has seven layers (of which this is the second), divided according to the relative rank and honour of the various interred denizens. The oldest and most powerful were interred in the deepest layers, of course, along with their most valuable treasures. Naturally.
Of even more interest is that apparently the earthquake Fortuona sent to ravage the land completely toppled the empire but left the physical structure of her own temple intact - but not the ground immediately beneath it. The temple plunged down to the seventh layer, where it remains to this day, untouched on account of the horrendously dangerous guardians above it. The carvings suggest that not only was it furnished with the most valuable items in the empire in glory of Fortuona, but many would make pilgrimages there to receive the goddess' own blessing.
Of course, to get there you would have to fight your way through at least 4 more layers of necropolis, but it's something to consider. You also find the passage leading down to the third layer. What now?
A) We have glory and treasure, let's sleep for a while and see what the ancestors have in store for us.
B) The next layer of tombs, eh? We're ready for a challenge, let's get digging!
C) Let's head back up to the swamp and try out a challenge up there instead.
D) Let's head back up and hunt for a bit or do some decorating, kill time until Gugujib reports back.
E) Let's head back up and fuck with some more kobolds.
F) Something else?
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Topic: SPAMDRAGON: Swamp Baron (Read 36660 times)