About a month ago, I started playing Skerples' Tomb of the Serpent Kings and I've decided to write down what happens (and my opinion on why it happens) both as a reference for other DMs and a set of notes for my future self, in case I decide to run this dungeon again. You can find the first entry of this series here.
This post will obviously contain spoilers from the adventure module
Game recap
The first session ended, due to time reason, one room short of the second level entrance. They already had cleared the false tombs, but the fight with the king had shaken them, so they decided to stop and sleep before going on. They didn't check the statue room before sleeping, but I decided not to be that kind of DM and let them sleep without incidents.
So the game begins with them waking up, safe and refreshened. And realizing they had not bought enough food to continue down without starving. So they made their way back to the village they are using as operational base, where they sold whatever they savaged from the false tombs. I took the chance to introduce them to LotFP's experience system. The Elf didn't like how much it will take to bring her to level two, but they started putting away money as experience. It wasn't much, but everybody has to start somewhere. They bought four days worth of food each and the Specialist decided to buy some more light, so they bought a flask of lantern oil and five candles each, in addition to what they already carried. If they are careful, they should be able to reach down the Goblin Warrens, where I plan to allow them to buy more food and light (but not to put away any money for experience).
After refurnishing, they went back into the dungeon and checked the last room. They obviously found the passage under the big statue and after a quick discussion they decided to get down. At this point the Specialist realized that the archeologists cannot have entered from the False Tomb, but they decided to keep exploring. Once in the corridor with the statues they decided it hid a trap and spent a lot of time trying to decide what kind of trap it was and how to disable it. After a long discussion, the Specialist decided to walk down the corridor anyway and take the risk. When nothing happened to him, the rest of the party followed. They entered the tomb hall, and found more statues, which meant more discussion. The Halfing wanted to attack the statues, because she was persuaded they could animate. The Elf and the Cleric, instead, decided to search the statues for signs that they could animate, so they went back in to the corridor and started checking for runes and magic scripts over them. With a simple check, she found out that the statue leading to the secret room was slightly out of alignment with the others, so they started pushing it and found a way to move it. While afraid of traps, they decided to enter the secret room and looted it. The Mage dumped her staff for one of the halberds, and the Specialist took the other, but he doesn't seem interested in using it at the moment. They took some time to study the idol, searching for traps, and studied it some more time before deciding to take it. They seem really convinced that anything can be cursed. Then they thought to take a look at the other statues, searching for other passages.
Since there weren't any more secret rooms, they came back to the hall, and concentrated on the water. The Cleric guessed it was somehow toxic (which was easy to spot), but they couldn't find any obvious trap. After fiddling around with the statues in the hall, the Elf decided to look into the pool of water. The Mummy Fragments jumped out and attacked her. She failed every check to avoid being caught by surprise and one of the hands managed to claw her, nearly one-shotting her, while the other missed. Here they experienced the first tense combat, with a PC really risking her life (after the first attack she was down to 3 HP). They made short work of the other hand without troubles, but the one still attached to the Elf's throat was more of an issue. The Elf tried to stab it with the poisoned dagger-finger the magic ring from the Fake Tomb gave her, but missed twice. The cleric decided to cure her, but the hand had another turn to do more damage. It was a nicely panicked scene, expecially when nobody could pull the hand away. In the end, the Halfling decided to risk everything and shoot an arrow at the hand. The dices were in her favour, rolling a natural 20 for hitting a full damage. The hand was thus one-shotted.
After the fight, they regarded the water differently and decided not to look in it anymore (thus leaving in the pool a lot of valuables). Turning their attention to the rooms, starting by Priest room. Again, they expected far more trouble than they got, and this nearly led them to set the room on fire, just to be sure. Once they decided it was safe, they quickly looted it and the Elf and the Mage spent some time looking at the parchment fragments. I hoped they would figure out a way to make money out of them, but they left them (for the moment, at least, they plan on coming back). Then they moved to the unfinished room, from which they took the working instruments, because they could be useful in the future. Next was the room with the statues, which they decided to smash (they really hate statues), revealing the passage to the Basilisk's Room. They listened and didn't like what they heard, so they left the room and closed the door behind them.
This left the three tombs up north to be explored. They started with Franbinzar, but quickly left the tomb as soon as they heard him thrasing in his coffin. Smart guys. More than a bit afraid of the undeads, the decided to try their luck with Sparamantur and, again, they locked the door as soon as they heard him moving. Did I say they are smart?
So, the only locked door remaining was the one leading to Xisor's tomb (and to really deadly trap right inside the passage). The specialist spotted the trap easily, but was afraid of disarming it, so they decided to trigger it first, to study it. They placed themself really carefully, both avoiding the door (in case anything got out of it) and preparing themselves to fight the statues. When the trap was triggered, it was easy for me to determine that none of them was in its line of fire. They looted the tomb, and found a poison-themed Magic Missile scroll.
Tired and battered (expecially the Elf), they decided to go back on the surface, to heal, sell what they got and, most important, study the scroll. They decided to spend days away from the tomb, to allow the Mage to transcribe the scroll on her grimoire, than to create a copy and handle it to the Elf, so she might learn the spell too.
We stopped here, and the next session will begin with their descent on Level 3, with a lot more damage magic than what they had before.
Some considerations
I really don't get where the problem with animating statues comes from, given that not only they never met one in this adventure, I never used an animating statues while playing with them. Not even once. I have been following the module for most of the time, but I think I will play with their expectations in one of the following sessions. Stay tuned, it's going to be fun.
Statues aside, I was pretty much satisfied of how this session went. The fight wasn't that hard, but it was dense. One of the PCs was risking her life and there was very little they could do, since trying to hit her attacker also meant risking to hit her. I could feel the tension building up at the table, with every player thinking of a strategy and quickly discarding it, until the Halfling called the shot. To get there I simply had to put a lot of emphasis on how small and quick those hands were (and wave my hand as if it was about to attack them a couple of times). What followed was mostly them trying to cope with the risks they had just taken and finding a moment of closure in which get back and heal their poor friend.
I am not used to like sessions so much defined by a single fight, but this was really fun. I hope I get at least another encounter like that before the end.
Images:
No matter how much I'd like for somebody else to take the blame for my poor drawing skills, that drawing is mine. The map is, obviously, the (partial) map of the Tomb.
Say hello to my hand. The photo is mine.