DFE 11 Notes (Laura)

In this session the party explored the tomb of the Pharaoh Akhentare, parlayed with him, and traversed a magical crystal landscape in search of Namanda's key.

1) At the end of last session, the party had agreed to leave Akhentare's tomb and return to it later, after meeting the Skaven king. However, in this session, the tomb began to glow insistently and succeeded at luring us inside after all.

2) In the antechamber, the group found the grave of an entombed cat and a coffin they at first mistook for a desk. The cat emerged from its tomb, where Jaicinteleq used animal empathy on it, Deucalion established a telepathic link with it, and it decided to come along with the party, selecting Aegeia as its new person. Wakinyan, who had originally been reluctant to enter the room, rejoined the party after the cat told Deucalion that the man buried in this room would not mind his presence.

3) Meanwhile, Leonus and Merkha were examining the "desk" and when they looked at a magic mirror sitting on top of it, something attempted to mind control them. Leonus managed to use his nullpsi powers to break free, suggesting that the compulsion was probably psionic in nature. Merkha, possessed, opened a door to the south and went through, alerting the rest of the party to the problem. Merkha was successfully immobilized and exorcised of the mind dominating his, but without learning who that had been (the man in the coffin, the Pharaoh, the One Who Came Down From The Mountain?)

3) The party decided to enter the burial chamber, which Wakinyan agreed to after Merkha said an Egyptian prayer and the Sobek guards ellpitically said our entry "would not disturb the dead." (We'd later come to realize that is probably because the Pharaoh never died!) Wakinyan first used his shamanic power to intimidate Eekam about the perils of stealing from Egyptian graves.

4) The party entered the burial chamber, which the archaeologer thought looked unused. There was an expensive but uncarved sarcophagus lying on its side with the lid loose, but nothing else in the room appeared disturbed except for one doorway that was buried in rubble (the rest of the room wasn't even dusty.)

5) Jaicinteleq began searching for keys, finding and taking one that was hidden at the bottom of a fountain tucked into an alcove.

6) Leonus found a golden ram's horn on an oversized chariot in the middle of the room. He determined that Dan and Rachel both knew how to play such an instrument, but they did not attempt it at this time.

7) Merkha and Wakinyan turned the sarcophagus right-side up, finding it was indeed empty. While doing this, they knocked over an urn, causing a hawk-headed man to materialize on one side of the room and an ibis-headed man on the other. They began magically fighting with each other across the room. The party attempted to stay out of this fight.

8) The cat ran to a statue of Bast. Jaicinteleq examined it and found a grooved lapis key hanging around its neck. When she had Deucalion ask the cat if she could take it, it hissed, but when he asked if we could use it, it purred. Jaicinteleq found a notched slot in the statue's nostril and inserted the key there, causing it to animate as a magic panther and attack the ibis-headed man.

9) Meanwhile, both the ibis and hawk guy were summoning more of their kind. Merkha told the party that Horus was the enemy of Set, so the party decided to side with the Horus guys and the cats. Leonus joined formation with the Horus fighters, Wakinyan approached the ibis warrior but was knocked back across the room, and Jaicinteleq scored three critical arrow shots on one of the ibis men, incapacitating him.

10) Then the other ibis man set his downed cohort on fire. The cat exhorted Aegeia to drag him to the pool to put the fire out, burning her hands. Loic ran over to help her. The fires extinguished themselves, leaving the man apparently dead. Loic and Aegeia threw him into the pool as the cat had urged. Meanwhile the big cat finished off the other ibis guy.

11) William played a plot twist card and a ghoul appeared. Instead of attacking us, the ghoul went up to the dais and the Pharaoh appeared there, demanding to know who was in his domain and why. For some reason we ALL forgot to tell/ask him about who had been mind controlling Merkha to come in here. (I mean, if it was the Pharaoh, that sounds like a him problem. If it was his eviller enemy who Came Down From The Mountain, that would have been pretty valuable to know. Alas.)

12) We parlayed with the Pharaoh. He was mollified when we agreed to give him the Staff Of Striking What Came Down From The Mountain. Jaicinteleq remembered that Namanda knew him and the longer form of her name, Ananda Na'ama, and told the Pharaoh we were searching for her key. He showed us a large ring of keys, none of which were Namanda's. The Pharaoh also told us that the sarcophagus we had righted was meant to be his, but since he had never died, it was never used. When we asked about the name of the doorman, he said it was Menarthil.

13) Then he kidnapped Leonus, telling the party we could have him back after we agreed to fetch some items for him and left his domain. Merkha informed the party this kind of hostage taking was typical in Ancient Egyptian society, but the party wasn't having it and prepared to fight him. Wakinyan succeeded at a diplomacy check demanding our leader back before we would even consider doing anything to help Akhentare, and the Pharaoh blinked and gave in, so the party did not attack.

14) The party then agreed to help Akhentare, who provided them with directions to the objects he needed and where he also suspected Namanda's key was located. He told us not to take anything else along the way, and we left, accompanied by both of the Egyptian cats.

15) Once we were out of the Pharaoh's earshot, Eekam showed us all the magical coins he had stolen from beneath the dais, each of which was enchanted with a cantrip. Wakinyan declared that although robbing from the dead was a great sin, the pharaoh was clearly not dead, so good job, Eekam!  XD  We divvied the coins evenly up among ourselves including giving Eekam a share (even though the coins are magical.)

16) The party followed the Pharaoh's directions through a beautiful, mysterious crystalline landscape. I did not take any notes here because the lights were off. Some of the walkways were invisible and we had to walk across the air. Eventually we reached a platform where there was an icy fire with a sword and dagger on top of it, inscribed in a very ancient language of Aesira about which even Jaicinteleq, who has a specialty in the ancient history of Aesira, knew nothing. There were two symbols there which Kakra recognized as meaning "kill" and "guard," however. The weapons tempted people to take them, but we resisted. Eventually Ademar decided to take them anyway. Nothing noticeably ill befell him.

17) At the end of the walkway the party reached a white marble library of some sort. Leonus disassembled a weird looking technomantic light device to figure out how it worked, while Jaicinteleq and Eekam tried to open a trapped cabinet and set off the traps, spraying Jaicinteleq in the face with acid. Gwen neutralized the acid, and nothing was found inside the cabinet for their troubles but cleaning supplies. Friezes on the wall depicted troops and civilians moving back and forth across hills and between step pyramids, and Merkha identified the style as the same as the one from the pillars we saw earlier inscribed with the name of "He Who Came Down From The Mountain." (Out of game knowledge, this is probably Nahuatl/Aztec, but none of our players know that yet.) There seemed to be a lot of wet scrolls and books under restoration in this library.

18) Meanwhile, Dan and Rachel saw a scroll with a picture of what sounds like the Ark of the Covenant on it and gasped, but refused to tell us anything about it and argued with each other sotto voce in Hebrew. Then we found a modern style flip notebook written in Hebrew, and Dan *physically snatched it away from the party leader* and refused to let him see it again. The PCs are starting to get frustrated with these two, who are supposed to actually be part of the same military discipline under Leonus' command that the rest of us had to agree to. Eekam found another notebook and showed it to Jaicinteleq, who didn't tell the Israelis about it and instead gave it to Kakra to translate. This was at the very end of the session and I didn't get what the result was.

19) Finally we met the Curator, a young man who said the library had been suffering from flooding and he was trying to restore the texts. Leonus helped him by using his Dragonmark to repair one of the damaged scrolls, earning his gratitude.

And there we broke off for the session. According to the Pharaoh's directions, we are looking for a "room of maps" in this complex, which is what we will search for next.

Game on!