Mandras shook his head at his stupidity in the heat of action. The party was still in the sarcophagi room, Alf was still paralysed and everyone was staring at a huge chest against the wall… Trying to make up for his possible error, Mandras volunteered to try to open the chest. Everyone stepped aside. No go… Arnd joined him – still no luck. Some time had passed and Alf was coming to. The party gave up on the chest and moved back to the main corridor to take on the bricked-up door leading to the North. Koko and Mandras went to work chipping away at the bricks. After two turns and with Alf fully awake, Bruce, Koko’s dog, started to bark at the back of the party.
Reacting quickly to the approaching light, the adventurers took up position for a fight. Eight Fire Beetles came up the corridor and charged mindlessly. After a short struggle, all were killed, Mandras accounting for two – the party has lost no members.
Back to working on the bricked-up door. After a few minutes Koko and Mandras broke through. What a sight!! A large room with an intricate open lidded sarcophagus lay in the centre, two huge statues, male and female flanked it at the back of the room, and all around were objects of long weathered and rotted luxury. Konrad, true to his suicidal nature rushed in ahead of the group. A booming laughter echoed forth: “Rendar Salouk awaits you and you will never leave here” (or words to that effect). A dark figure had appeared at the head of the sarcophagus. Konrad had leapt onto the sarcophagus to engage it, accompanied by Alf, Koko and Mandras. Marko shot an arrow at the apparition, uselessly, but some rebound spell reduced him to a quivering mass of mental distress. Alf and Mandras noticed that the open sarcophagus contained treasure, but also 4 dark urns. They shattered two urns and the creature staggered back slightly – Eureka, an easy kill? The creature threw out its arms, muttering enchantments and the two statues lurched off their pedestals to attack the party.
Mandras leapt left to take on a golem, hitting it with his spear and chipping stone off of it. As he did so, he felt a tinge of paralysis flowing up his spear, but managed to shake it off. A general melee ensued. Koko successfully cast silence on the combat and Rarder landed a great blow on Rendar. The evil creature backhanded Konrad, incapacitating him with a loss of abilities. The rest of the party kept chipping away at the golems when suddenly a joyous shout erupted from Rarder, who had killed the dark master. Meanwhile Alf badly damaged his sentient sword Bonifacia on a Golem and Mandras managed such a blow on his opponent that he had trouble withdrawing the cursed spear he carried.
The golems eventually died and the party found loot such as they had never seen. A magic staff. Shield and ring , scrolls, a hoard/horde ard of gold. It would take more than one trip to emprty this.
Best of all, Alf used his rod of cancellation to relieve Mandras of the cursed spear. He could now revert to his beloved axe.
The party returned to the surface and back to Redwood Keep to have their treasure identified. They would soon return to the barrowmaze to relieve Alf of his geas.