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Merric Blackman
Australia
Waubra
Victoria
Ramping up my reviewing.
Happily playing games for many, many years.
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We were missing Nathaniel for this session, but we pressed on regardless. Three PCs could handle the Tomb of Horrors, right? At least they were only in the Garden of Graves, not that they knew it was called that.
So, in the party we had Martin, playing Gillaine the dwarf druid, Richard, playing Drakult the human paladin, and Adam, playing Max, the half-elf bard. They're basically about level 11, with 12 just around the corner.
We'd finished last session with the PCs defeating an animated camp trap and an obelisk of sleep. Looking about, they could see a strange building to the east: sixty feet high and supported on stilts, with a staircase spiralling up to its top. From it, twin rope bridges led to the cliff tops on either side of a great waterfall. Nothing else looked promising: just the garden and the forest beyond, so the group proceeded up the stairway.
They found, within, a map with a model of the garden upon it: the cliff-top to the left being filled with cairns, and another building on the cliff to the right. The building was otherwise empty, and they soon left it, travelling across the bridge to the right of the waterfall. This proved troublesome: whilst Drakult was athletic enough to cross without fear, both Max and Gillaine were far less confident; Gillaine indeed fell off the bridge (twice), but a rope she'd tied around her middle stopped her from falling too far, although the sudden stop caused by the rope did inflict a minor amount of damage on her.
There was not much space between the cliff's edge and the building they'd crossed to: a mere five feet (which made Gillaine vertiginous all over again), so they quickly crossed into the building. A long hallway stretched in front of them, and a door to a side chamber was on their left. The chose the door, and found a room with a pool that overflowed, sending little rivulets to the side walls where they disappeared into gaps in the floor. Within the pool was a key, but when Max tried to use mage hand to retrieve hit, he missed and a water snake appeared and struck - Max was teleported away, leaving the other two wondering where he'd gone.
Gillaine then threw a stone into the pool; the snake appeared again and struck at Drakult (who was standing closer to it). He too was teleported away! Gillaine then heard splashing and shouts for aid from outside - the two had been transported into the river outside, and were being swept towards the waterfall. Gillaine arrived as both managed to drag themselves out of the river: Drakult with ease, Max with a little more difficulty.
Max used his prestidigitation cantrip to dry himself and then Drakult, and then the three reentered the building by a side door. They found themselves in a strange chamber of oddly-placed walls, with a sundial in one corner, illuminated by a burning brazier hanging from the ceiling and slowly revolving around the sundial, so as to illuminate it from each possible angle.
As they went to move towards that, they heard a cry for help from an eladrin maiden apparently chained to a wall, but the deceiver was soon spotted by Drakult, and the group was ready as she attacked - for she actually was a lamia, a horrid beetle-creature only assuming the form of an elf. She attacked with dazing bursts and to great effect, with Drakult and Gillaine taking the brunt of her fury, but after a hard-fought combat the heroes were victorious. They returned to examining the sundial and discovered that the brazier could be manually manipulated: it could be sped up, slowed down or stopped altogether, but otherwise would keep revolving around the sundial at a constant rate. Further inquiries revealed that energy from the device was being fed somewhere else, but the specifics were beyond the party. Seeing nothing else to explore, they left the building and headed over a more stable bridge to the other side of the river.
There they discovered, not cairns, as the map in the first building had indicated, but many long, strangely-shaped buildings. It was obvious to them that the cairns had been dismantled to create these buildings, and the paths indicated on the map were long gone.
A doorway into one building was near them, so they entered, and found a great hallway of tapestries depicting many strange and disturbing scenes. One tapestry covered the opening to another chamber, and upon seeing this, they proceeded onwards. Noticing the chamber wasn't particularly hard as (a) I'd already drawn the extra room on my map and (b) there are some very good Perception checks in the group.
Within the new chamber they found a staff in the ground, with a flame burning from its tip. On one long, curved wall were two sets of numbers from 1-12, one set in gleaming brass, the other set in dark iron. After musing on this situation for a while, and noticing that their shadows were cast significantly darker on that wall, Gillaine moved to cast her shadow on a particular number - the brass 3, as I recall.
It was the wrong number. From the number, three shadowy wraiths emerged and attacked the group. It was a long, painful combat for the heroes, as the wraiths were all maddened and their insane chattering caused the heroes themselves to be dazed... thus negating a lot of the healing ability of Max and causing Gillaine and Drakult to be rarely able to properly manoeuvre to good effect: too often they were one-on-one with the wraiths. They eventually discovered that radiant damage would stop the insane whispers of the wraiths, but as only Drakult could inflict radiant damage (and only to one wraith at a time), it rarely was of help, although it did allow Max to get a few full turns where he could both heal and attack.
With that experience behind them, the group determined that the numbers must have something to do with *time*. And so they worked out what the current time was and then Drakult threw his shadow on that number.
It proved to be the wrong choice: three more wraiths appeared, and the subsequent combat was even harder than the first. By its end, Drakult was on 1 hit point and with no healing surges left, and Max was on 0 hit points and with only a single healing surge remaining! (In contrast, Gillaine was fine).
What would they do next? Well, it was time to rest, so they returned to the tapestry chamber and used it as their bedchamber. Perhaps next session, with the insights accorded to them by Nathaniel's PC returning, they might fare better. Assuming they don't die from some monster encountering them during the night...
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Si von Otterdecker
United Kingdom
Norwich
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Re: The Garden of Graves, part 2 (spoilers)
Your campaign sounds awesome.
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Merric Blackman
Australia
Waubra
Victoria
Ramping up my reviewing.
Happily playing games for many, many years.
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Re: The Garden of Graves, part 2 (spoilers)
Thank you. It's helped in part by this adventure- which is really interesting. I wonder if my players think so?  (After the Garden of Graves, we'll be back to some self-generated adventures).
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Ramping up my reviewing.
