We meet some Judas Priest wannabe dwarves this week, along with an iron maiden, a possessed lantern, and witness a sex change. Oh, and one of our beloved characters may or may not die this week. Okay, they do, so keep reading to find out who. If you’ve been reading all along, you will not be surprised in the least about this. Thank you to Eric for writing this up. My name is Kent, and it is my task to write this paragraph and add YouTube videos that I feel compliment what you are about to read. The obvious choice here is to go with Judas Priest, so let’s kick it off with them. Okay, I lied. I would rather hear this kick ass song featuring Rob Halford. Rest assured, you’ll get your Judas Priest later on. If you don’t get pumped by this song, like what the fuck are you doing with your life?
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Tomb of Annihilation
Chapter 21 – A Conglomerate of Flesh, Inc.
As the party continued to investigate the dungeon, they eventually came to a mysterious magic-radiating fountain. Xilix informed the party that the Bear-God in his head was warning them that the fountain was dangerous and they should avoid drinking from or bathing in the fountain. Padre, using Padre logic, took this to mean that the fountain was full of holy water that would cast the evil god from Xilix if he was baptized by the flowing water.
While the rest of the party turned around to explore more of the dungeon, Padre grabbed Xilix by the robe and dunked his head into the fountain, causing Xilix to drink some of the water. Padre loudly exclaimed, “You are now free from evil,” and then left the room. Unfortunately, the only thing the fountain freed Xilix from was a Y chromosome, as it soon became obvious that the magical fountain water was turning Xilix into a woman. Upon this discovery, Xilix snuck back into the fountain room and filled an empty vial with the water.
Next, the party came upon a room filled with dwarves, who were dressed like band members from Judas Priest, in an industrial smelter room with an iron maiden at the other end. Upon seeing the party intrude upon their heavy metal sanctum, the leather dwarves attacked the party. As they were just dwarves, leather or not, they were no match for this experienced adventuring team and quickly died.
As the last leather dwarf was bleeding out from a stab wound caused by Padre, the leather dwarf used the last of his life to leap forward and pull a lever stationed next to the iron maiden. Upon the leaver being pulled, the room filled with steampunk-like sounds and the iron maiden began to open. Upon opening, an armored Flesh Golem emerged which looked exactly like Zombie Mountain from Game of Thrones.
Not-Zombie Mountain slowly shuffled towards the party, shrugging off their spells and weapon blows. Using its giant fists, the flesh golem began to pummel Compassion, Padre, and Tempest. As the flesh golem knocked down Padre and prepared to cave his head in, Padre took his great sword and shoved it into the flesh golem’s chest. Feeling nothing, Not-Zombie Mountain laughed. That was, until, Padre informed the flesh golem that the sword was made out of adamantite and covered in silver. Not-Zombie Mountain then remembered that flesh golems such as himself are deathly allergic to adamantite swords, especially when they have been dipped in silver. The flesh golem went into anaphylaxis shock and died horribly.
After killing Not-Zombie Mountain, Padre decided to search the iron maiden from whence it came. Hanging on a hook in the back of the iron maiden was a lantern casting off an eerie blue light. Padre grabbed the lantern and a voice emanated from it. “Oh thank you for rescuing me, please let me come with you, I’m ever so lonely.” Freaked out, Padre was about to smash the lantern on the ground when the voice pleaded with him to stop.
The voice introduced herself as Starfallen the elf, whose spirit was bound to the lantern a millennium ago. If the party agreed to bring her with them, she could perform all manner of tricks and be very helpful. As Padre was feeling lonely these days, he took ownership of the Starfallen lantern and promised to keep her company. Soon after Starfallen was quoted as saying that she wished she was still trapped in the iron maiden.
With their new talking lantern in tow, the party continued to investigate the dungeon. During that time they encountered many strange sights, including creepy statues, a chalice, 8 emaciated green skin creatures chained to a wall, and a dude wearing a devil mask.
Eventually the party came upon a room with a sarcophagus and three chests, one blue, one rust colored, and one black. Inside of each chest was a key. Upon experimenting, the party figured out that to solve the puzzle each key had to be turned at the same time while the chest lid was closed. Tempest got into the blue chest, Padre entered the black chest, and Hertz took his chances with the rust colored chest.
Upon closing the chest and turning the keys, Tempest’s chest was filled with a cold, damaging wind. Tempest used her monk breathing techniques to breath in the cold air and turn it into monk power. Padre was hit with a ray of disintegration, however, recognizing the spell, he quickly prayed to his god Sigmar and the spell energy dissipated. Hertz was not so lucky, after a sickening flash of yellow light he found that all metal equipment on his person, including his armor, war hammer, and holy symbol, rusted into nothingness. Meanwhile, the sarcophagus in the room unlocked upon the keys being turned.
Exiting from the chest it was obvious Hertz was extremely mad. Walking over to the sarcophagus Hertz saw that it contained a nice looking mace. As he no longer had his war hammer, Hertz reached in and took the mace. He was immediately possessed by the evil monkey god Wongu.
Beaten and bruised the party decided to turn in for the night. While they were cooking dinner, Padre offered Hertz his old set of Scale Mail armor. While the armor smelled like old man, having no other choice, Hertz accepted the offer.
While Padre slept that night, Xilix enacted his (now her) plan for revenge against Padre for turning him (her?) into a woman. As Padre slept, Xilix poured the fountain water that had been placed into a vial down Padre’s throat. When Padre awoke the next morning he found that he could no longer speak.
Heading to the next area of the first floor of the dungeon, the party came upon a doorway that was actually just a giant carved skull with a giant open mouth. In the room beyond the mouth they could see yet another sarcophagus. Looking at the room’s various carvings, they could tell that this room was dedicated to the pelican god Moa, who is the mortal enemy of the monkey god Wongu. Hoping the two gods would kill themselves in a battle within his head, Hertz insisted that the party go into the room.
The party noticed that each eye socket in the giant skull had a fire burning. When Hertz entered the room the fire in the left eye socket went out. When Compassion next entered the room the fire in the right eye socket went out. Unsure what would happen when a third person went through now that the fires were out, Xilix sent Gryff V through. It was then the party learned that a third person entering the skull caused a trap to trigger in which the mouth of the skull slammed shut. This was particularly bad for Gryff V, who was quickly crushed to death in the giant skull’s teeth. After grieving for an appropriate amount of time, Xilix brought forth his new companion, Gryff VI.
After taking appropriate precautions the rest of the party was able to enter the Moa room, at which point a regular-sized, jewel-encrusted, skull emerged from a crystal container and began fireballing the shit out of the party. While the party sustained heavy damage, being a mere skull, the party easily smashed it into skull bits. With tiny skull defeated, Hertz threw open the sarcophagus and invited Moa in. While Moa was able to cast out Wongu from Hertz’s head, the two gods did not kill each other off, and Hertz remained possessed by the much friendlier pelican god.
As the party continued to explore, Tempest scouted ahead and found a treasure chest sitting upon a high cliff. Tempest used her levitating powers to investigate the chest, which she soon found out was actually a Mimic monster. She ran away and didn’t even bother informing the rest of the party of the monster’s existence. Later Tempest found yet another chest that was obviously a dangerous puzzle trap. Rather than trying to solve the puzzle, Xilixina just firebolted the chest until it exploded and showered the party in gold.
During their investigation the party found a hidden door leading into an office. Sitting behind the desk was an obviously undead individual wearing an awesome metal mask. Conversing with the undead humanoid, the party learned that he was Flesh Golum Maker Withers, and that he was very busy with Flesh Golum related matters. He asked that they exit his office post haste. When the party informed Withers that they would only leave if he stopped making Flesh Golums, Withers attacked . . . and quickly was beaten down by the party.
With Withers subdued, the party took possession of his Book of Making Awesome Flesh Golum Thingies and interrogated him. Having been subdued, and not wanting to die, Withers was very helpful. The most important things learned by the party were 1) that the soulmonger was on the bottom floor of the dungeon; 2) that the bottom level of the dungeon also contains a teleportation pool, which is the only way out of the dungeon; and 3) Azerack sometimes leaves the dungeon to hit the nightclubs on the surface world.
The party was thankful for Withers’s information and, as such, they didn’t want to outright murder him. However, they also didn’t want Withers betraying them to Azerack later. As such, they agreed the best course of action was to cut off Withers’s legs and hide them somewhere in the dungeon so that he would have to spend the next few days crawling around the dungeon looking for them.
Leaving Withers to his leg search, the party continued their dungeon journey, eventually finding the room of the bird god. In the room was the usual sarcophagus, six giant glass cylinders, and a golden pimp shield with an engraving of a dude with a spear on the front. Finding the shield to be dope as hell, Tempest went over and took it off the wall. As she admired its beauty, the spear dude suddenly moved and thrust its spear out of the shield trying to kill Tempest.
As Tempest wrestled with the now living shield, hundreds of skeletons began pouring out of the tops of the giant glass cylinders. Hertz used his turn undead ability granted by Talos to hold the skeleton army at bay while the other party members not engaging in lucha with a living shield tried to figure out how to stop the skeletons from pouring forth.
When no obvious answer presented itself, and it looked like the party would soon be swallowed up in a tidal wave of skeletons, Compassion chose to open the sarcophagus and allowed himself to be possessed by the evil bird-god, Papazotl. Once Papazotl had settled within Compassion’s mind, he asked the bird-god how to stop the skeletons from pouring forth. Papazotl said, “smash the damn cylinders you idiot.” Armed with that information, Compassion and Padre pulled out their mauls and smashed the glass cylinders into sand.
What gods will possess Tempest and Padre? Will the party be lucky enough to have Azerack outside the Tomb of the Nine Gods when they finally sack up and descend to the sixth floor? Maybe you will find out next time on Tales from the Plunderbund Consortium!
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As promised, here’s some Judas Priest.
I came across this video of Rob with In This Moment and I quite enjoyed it.
Of course, Iron Maiden was mentioned, so let’s please those fans as well.
Jesus, I love this job at times. Watch great videos and share them.
Finally, here’s a video game trailer for Deep Rock Galactic which features dwarves. I plan on getting it later this month. Contact myself or Eric if you have interest in playing.
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