Exploration of a Lost Tomb of Knowledge

 

This Week's Bad Decision Guild Adventurers

• Amok the Goliath Scouting Rogue (they/them)
• Nimrod Crowguile, esquire. a Corporate Lawyer of Kas Enterprises,
  a charismatic male Vuman warlock of Kas the Bloody Handed
• Gaffy the Blue, a female Vedalken Watcher Paladin
• Chumbawamba, the always loyal female pet wonder warg
• Nimbat/Nimowl, Nimrod's enthusiastic, ever-helpful bat/owl familiar
• Lucinda the female Twilight Cleric Tortle 
• Dormin, Nimrod's trusty shadow spirit
• Princess the Tressym -- a winged cat who rode Amok's shoulder and can impart poisonous scratches on her enemies
  
  

The party is currently at level 6.  They will reach level 7 after one more adventure.

The Adventure

Captain Sheila sailed her ship the Annabelle Lee with the the team aboard an island where there was a lost tomb of a long dead scholar wherein mystical knowledge was stored.   On the 4th day of voyage, there is a tremendous storm.  Eventually the storm stopped almost all at once and we can see a small flat island dominated by a tall stone pyramid in the style of the ancient River Builders culture.  (Nimrod had learned quite a lot about ancient pyramids of all sorts in his Ancient Real Estate Law course during his legal studies.)

The island had no natural harbor. Sheila's crew rowed the team ashore in a row boat. She gives the team a week to explore the tomb. But she and her crew did not dare set foot on the island. 

The island was in all senses a 'desert' island.  Cactuses were the only visible indigenous life on land.  Everyone felt there was strong feeling of magic and dread as soon as they set foot on the sand.  Nimrod was tempted to assume his dread form to escape the anxiety that mounted with every step he took toward the pyramidal tomb.  But everyone maintained their stiff upper lips, squared their shoulders, and stepped forward in lockstep with ramrod straight posture into the pyramid.

Shortly after entering the pyramid the team found themselves in a grand entrance way or preliminary court yard.  There was a statue of a humanoid next to a shallow pool of water.  There was inscription on the statue in an ancient language:

Ya'amket's tomb [or so they say]
Contains vast knowledge tucked away
The strong of mind
and brave of deed
will pass the trials and succeed
while those who search
for gold in vain
will only find his deep disdain

Even though this inscription was in an ancient language, any who cared to stare at it a few seconds could read it as it self-translated into the reader's native language.

There were 3 coins at the base of the statue.  They bore writing in different languages from different time periods. Nimrod examined them for 10 minutes and said they each asked ya'amket for wisdom and guidance.  So Gaffy used her tinkers tools and Amok assisted to make a coin asking for assistance.  The team's coin said "Please ya'amket give information to
kill flower people. Thank you".

The team went down many passages and explored many trapped rooms.  They met an invisible stalker early on which warned them not to steal anything after detected it and communicated with it.  It followed them to make sure they did not steal. 

At one point the team entered a tomb chamber and the ghost of Ya'amket rose out of its sarcophagus to yell at the team and tell them to go away.  It told them it could not help them decode the ledger fragment for information about the Golden Orchid Society.  Ya'amket's ghost told them it would destroy them if they took its treasure.  So the team left to explore other parts of the temple complex.

The team found and collected some statuettes during their explorations.  Then when they were in a room that had a sphinx statue, they realized the statuettes were needed to solve a puzzle.  They already had one batch of statuettes: a unicorn, a bird, a manticore, and a dragon.

Eventually they found 8 more statuettes in different parts of the temple.  They were a centaur, a harpy, a horse, a narwhal, a pegasus, a lion, a sphinx, and a human.

The Bad Decision Makers solved the puzzle using the statuettes.  This made a magical portal appear in a nearby wall.  After Gaffy used her divine sense to confirm the portal did not go to a hellish plane, the team passed through the portal into a large library in which a gynosphinx made its lair.

The gynosphinx told the group that portal would remain open for only a few hours -- much too short a time for the team to find the needed information on their own.  So the gynosphinx offered its help on the condition that the team defeat it in combat.  It reserved the right to kill team members but insisted the team's attacks be non-lethal.  This was a very ancient, formidable, and admirable foe that no one but Amok wanted to fight.  So Nimrod suggested to the gynosphinx that instead the team become its friends.  The gynosphinx gave this a lukewarm response at first.  But then Gaffy showed the gynosphinx a funny daguerreotype of humanoid Darwin Award winning antics mixed with adorable cat behavior.  This intrigued the gynosphinx enough for it to offer to take the team on as 'research assistants' with a mission to bring more daguerreotypes from a nearby island in exchange for the time and assistance needed to find the needed information about the Golden Orchid Society from the library.  Everyone except Amok favored this solution.  Amok believed beating the gynosphinx in combat would be faster and easier.   The gynosphinx said it would keep the portal open one week for the team to return with the daguerreotypes.

The gynosphinx also advised the team to seek out past defectors from the Golden Orchid Society leadership.  These defectors could help the team.