ADVENTURE LOG: April 12, 2019

This adventure log concludes The Sheltering Sky, a stand-alone adventure inspired by classic DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, particularly by Gary Gygax's Tomb of Horrors. The opening narrative of this adventure (Parts One and Two) incorporated story elements from The Lost City.

Rippling Shadows
Ascending the stairs from the lower level of the Orcus complex, the adventurers emerge into a cavernous underground space that is as perplexing to their minds as it is physically disorienting. Before them is a mad assemblage of meandering staircases leading nowhere, of gargantuan pillars and archways that serve no conceivable purpose, and parapets and bridges that extend out over the gulf only to terminate in midair. At the center of this illogical 3-D labyrinth stands the Round Tower, which seems almost to beckon to the adventurers from the subterranean gloom. But attempts to reach it only lead the adventurers deeper into the labyrinth—and no nearer to the tower than they were before. The adventurers will think they are heading straight for it only to find that they have somehow gone off course and are headed in the wrong direction. The more they try to go toward the tower, the more unreachable it seems. The party members come to realize that the labyrinth is under an enchantment. Indeed, the Round Tower is like a mirage. It seems almost to shimmer like ripples on the face of a dark pool, or like the ripples of shifting desert sands. The party members recall the words engraved over the archway leading into the Orcus complex on the lower level: HOW BEAUTIFUL ARE THE SHADOWS OF THE RIPPLES OF THE SAND.

While attempting to reach the Round Tower, Korric and Sant'oka succumb to a peculiar form of madness induced by the enchanted labyrinth. Korric is overwhelmed by an insatiable bloodlust and shoots Nik out of the air with his Colt revolvers, killing her. Ven revives the tiefling with a cleric's spell. Sant'oka, meanwhile, grows convinced that the labyrinth is his alone to rule, and separates from the party in his madness. He transforms into a brown bear and attacks his companions when they try to restrain him.

Korric and Sant'oka regain their senses with the help of Ven and Nik, and the party discovers the solution to the enchanted labyrinth. In the same way that pursuing the Round Tower causes it to recede, moving away from it draws it closer. By turning their backs on it and proceeding in the opposite direction, the party finally reaches the tower.

The Man in the Upper Room
The interior of the Round Tower is a lofty silo that extends many stories up into the hazy murk overhead. Stone steps spiral up the circular walls. The crumbling steps are barely wide enough for the party to ascend in single file. In the center of the floor is an overflowing pool, but the overflowing water doesn't spill across the floor as it should. Instead, it trickles upward in tenuous rivulets and drips as though drawn by whatever is up there at the top of the spiral steps. the pool exudes a tangibly gloomy feeling. In it is a metal key. When Nik lifts it out of the water, the party is set upon by malevolent water spirits that coalesce out of the upward-dripping water. Each time one is killed, another takes shape from the water. The adventurers race up the stairs with the key, battling the water spirits as they ascend. At the top of the stairs is a locked door. Nik opens it with the key, and the assault by the water spirits abruptly ceases.

Behind the door is a room. A young man stands at a window, gazing out on the 3-D labyrinth of nonsensical staircases and bridges. Behind him are the stairs leading out of the Orcus complex. When the party enters the room, the man confronts them, his face a mask of confusion and rage. "What is this place? Why am I here? Who am I?" The man's questioning is a test, the final trial that stands between them and the stairs back to the surface. Nik solves the riddle when she recalls the graffiti scratched into the ceiling around the oculus leading up into the complex. One of the messages read: Remember my name. My name was SAMAEL. Nik says to the young man, "You are Samael," breaking the spell that has entrapped him in the labyrinth. Upon hearing his name, the young man slowly begins to remember. When he was still a mortal, he foolishly entered into a fiendish pact with the King of the Sacred Grove over some long-ago land dispute with his brother, but the King of the Sacred Grove tricked Samael, imprisoning him in the enchanted labyrinth, with Samael's only hope for release being if some wayward adventurer solved the riddle of his identity. With the riddle now solved and the enchantment broken, Samael and the other souls ensnared by the labyrinth are liberated. As the adventurers ascend the stairs back to the surface, the spirits pour out all around them.

A Tomb of Horrors
The adventures emerge from the Orcus mouth to the astonishment of de Grimston and his followers. The liberated spirits take flight and disperse into the jungle canopy, shimmering in the foliage like faerie lights. De Grimston begs for mercy. Under questioning, the cult leader reveals that the "King of the Sacred Grove" is none other than the demilich Acererak, and that the labyrinth the adventurers just escaped from is one of Acererak's infamous and diabolical tombs. Nik compels de Grimston to recount his story.

The Orcus Connection
De Grimston entered into a gentleman's agreement of sorts with Acererak when he first discovered the Orcus mouth in the remote jungles of the feywild. The former soldier had deserted his post and ended up lost for days in the jungle, feverish with feywild sickness, until he stumbled upon the ancient grove. The demilich saved the cowardly de Grimston's life and granted him a modicum of power over what would grow to become his following of deluded, drug-addled nature children. In exchange, de Grimston agreed to keep Acererak's tomb fed with souls.

It is said that prior to attaining his lichdom, Acererak professed to being a follower of Orcus and used the cult's resources to construct a number of lairs and tombs—the most legendary of which would become known as the Tomb of Horrors. Some sources claim that Acererak was merely using Orcus's disciples to complete his own schemes, and that he felt no true loyalty to the demon prince. He ceased paying homage to Orcus once he became a lich, lending credence to the notion that his worship had never been more than a means to an end. The Orcus mouth dates the construction of this particular tomb to the period when Acererak had not yet attained lichdom—long before the Tomb of Horrors was constructed—though Acererak clearly kept an interest in the feywild site after becoming a demilich, as attested to by his agreement with de Grimston and the Greening doomsday cult.

When de Grimston finishes with his story, Nik smiles coyly and then incinerates him with eldritch blast. Now without a leader, his followers bow in worship before the four adventurers, whom they revere as divine beings. A great banquet is held, during which Nik samples the blue flower and trips her face off throughout the night. Ven and Sant'oka draft a set of precepts for the cult to live by now that de Grimston is no more, and in the morning the adventures leave the commune, slipping away into the jungle at first light.

On the Guild Road to Pike's Crossing
Traveling in the feywild that day, they meet up again with Baron Angel's caravan. The baron invites the party to rejoin his clan and travel the guild road with his people. Baron Angel tells the party that the clan is bound for the commune of Pike's Crossing, a river town on the outskirts of the feywild, to trade in the clan's medicines, tinctures, and narcotics. The commune is a four week journey from the interior.

While guests of the baron's clan, Korric strikes up a friendship with one of the clan's seer women, who teaches him about the medicinal properties of the various plant species that grow in the jungle canopy and schools him in the stellar sorcery of the Seven Caravans.

Sant'oka grows increasingly heartsick for his home world and expresses a desire to find a portal somewhere on the continent. One morning, the party awakens to find the druid standing silently at the edge of the Baron's encampment, gazing off into the jungle. Turning to look back at his companions, he transforms into a majestic stag, leaps into the brushwood, and is gone.