A DnD Tale: Tomb of Annihilation - Quest for Cubes (part 6)

 

The Dangerous Snail!

The quest continues in search for the cubes to enter the tomb of Annihilation. To speed everything along I again tell them the shrines as scouted out by the other companions that aren't main characters. First is the shrine for the eblis god guarded by crocodiles. They skip the fight by using an arcane gate... I might think they have to many powerful artefacts for these battles. They enter the shrine and stumble upon a chamber with six statues and a pedestal. They find a text written below the pedestal which contains a riddle, Immeral at once knows that it is shadows so they put up a light spell at the centre and can see that one of the statutes have a hidden corridor behind it that only appears when a shadow is cast there. They follow it and find a grid... and here they get stuck since they can't get that they should put the riddle in the grid. So I have to spell out that the grid has the same amount of bricks as the letters in the riddle so they begin jotting them down and sees that certain bricks are darkened, as if they are in shadows. Those letters form the words Cover The Eyes... so they stand a minute covering their eyes until Immeral points out that maybe it's the statues in the room prior that needs to be covered. They go back and Freya wonders how they are gonna be able to cover the eyes of the six statues when they are only four which makes Hope stare at her and just say we can use blindfolds. They do and the cube appears,

On the way back they can't use the arcane gate since they only can use it once a day so Destinova uses a lightning bolt that that kills all four. They wade into the water on the way with Freya carrying Destinova since he otherwise have the water up to his neck. Of course this have angered the mother of the crocodiles so they get attacked by a giant crocodile. It doesn't have time to do anything when the others just kills it, Destinova finishing it off with a magic missile and they head for the next shrine, the shrine of the su-monster (some kinda monster monkey). The shrine have 5 entrances and using light they see that the middle one seems to go to a middle room in the shrine so they enter. They find a statue of a su-monster and four masks that they can gaze into corridors so they realise that the other entrances goes into the others side. They go to the other sides of the mask and I'm able to lure each and everyone to look into different masks and in them they see a blue ray of light fall on different arms and legs and together with small riddles they get that they have to figure out which mask tells the truth. It's a basic logic puzzle and Freya had it from the beginning, but they begin overthinking it so they almost ends up with the lion, until they go back to it again. They figure it out, Freya pour water on the statue and a voice gives her a choice, either directly take the cube and be cursed or wait and fight some monkeys. I'm once again able to manipulate them into taking the cube directly and the curse take effect, all fail their constitution saving throw and Freya is turned into a lion, Hope into a boar, Immeral into a zebra and Destinova into a vulture. I'm so happy!

I allow them to be able to communicate with each other, but not the other companions if they headed back to the camp (maybe Eku would have understood them, but since they avoided the others that never played out) so with that they decide to see what the water crossing hides since everyone avoids it since they have seen a shadow on the roofs. They notice a very confused tabaxi, but decide to ignore him for the moment, they find yet another shrine, this one belong to a flail snail. They look in the side room and find a lot of keys, but figure out that the key they need probably is hinted about in the shrine itself. They shove open the door and enters the shrine. They find a statue of a snail and six keys hanging around the room and a keyhole. Freya argues that she should be able to pick the lock of the keyhole since she has claws as a lion and we have all seen cartoons where they do... so I agree to that, they fail and the trap is activated causing the statue to shine with light which burns Destinova and Immeral, which breaks the polymorph spell which allows Destinova to dispel the magic on the others. Hope begins pick the lock, that also fails and the statue shines yet again. Freya begin using healing on Destinova that only have 8 HP. Hope during that time tried to pick the lock again causing huge distress in the other characters, but she succeed this time and they can get yet another cube. What you were supposed to do was take the 6 keys and put them together to get the shape of a certain key that you then would have found in the work shop. But this worked as well. The 6th cube gotten, 3 more left.

Now back in their humanoid forms they decide to take care of the tabaxi. Destinova uses an invisibility spell that turns them all invisible so they are able to sneak up upon him. They intend to cast sleep on him so that they can tie him up, but the spell fails and he attack Destinova that appears before him and makes a lot of damage. The others attacks until he is bloodied and he gives up. He invites them to eat soup with him and they agree. The intent was to poison them, but since Immeral just pushed the wine canteen they got from the Amber temple that turns poisoned liquids to sweet wine. So I changed it on the spot. The tabaxi is named Bag of Nails and talks about the Naval of the Moon, a treasure, and how he is gonna use it to find his son, which we name Hammer of Nails since it doesn't appear to be here. The gang tells him if they find the treasure he can have it. I probably gonna kill him off of screen with the poison if they return to him. 

And that was that for this session. A lot happened and we are on the door step of the Tomb itself. We have one more session in 2024 and we might get all cubes, but in 2025 we will probably have problems with getting together since my far-away sister have less time since her kids are getting older and have their own friends and things to go to. And my youngest sister is moving from town so there is changes happening that might affect the game forward. But at the moment it will continue. Really looking forward to the shrine with the trap door into the green slime pit (which they can solve with Hope's sun sword).