Tomb of Horros Part 5 (All the Keys)

On what felt like their third visit to the throne room—though by now “third” was an unreliable category—the party acted decisively.

They left the crown untouched and took only the scepter.

Noting the small silver symbol set into the throne itself, Salt directed her unseen servant to touch the silver end of the scepter to it. The result was immediate and mechanical: the obsidian throne sank smoothly into the floor, revealing once more the passage to the multicolored stairway below.

They descended, retrieved the bronze key, and returned to the mithril doors. This time, Salt used the golden end of the scepter. The doors opened without protest.

Inside the anti-magic funerary chamber, Bo-Jing once again opened the bronze urn.

The efreeti emerged, as before—contained, intelligent, and apparently resigned to the strange rhythms of this place. Bo-Jing wished first for a new map of the tomb. The efreeti obliged. Then for a complete list of all magic items in the tomb.

From this list, the party learned something critical: access to Acererak’s true tomb required two keys—the bronze key they already possessed, and a gold key divided into two parts.

For the third wish, they asked for Acererak’s real name.

The efreeti gave it.

It was Acererak.

Stepping back out of the anti-magic chamber onto the multicolored stairway, Lao Ren attempted something bold and very nearly catastrophic. Using the “real name,” he attempted to gate Acererak directly into the room, hoping to end the matter immediately.

A gate opened. . .

. . . and they saw a small chamber overflowing with gems and magic items. Funeral biers stood empty save for dust. At their center lay a skull with rubies set in its eyes and diamonds for teeth.

The skull rose, drifted toward the gate, and spoke a single blasphemous insult.

The gate snapped shut.

Shaken but alive, the party retreated to the funerary room.

Frustration now gave way to brute force. Bo-Jing, nearly giving himself a hernia, managed to knock over one of the massive iron statues, revealing a secret tunnel behind it. At the end of the passage lay a hallway that, according to the efreeti’s map, led toward Acererak’s true resting place.

There was a keyhole.

They had no way to open it—except with the gold key.

Using the map, they began a systematic search.

They navigated pit-filled corridors, passed through a natural grotto veiled in silvery mist where a beautiful woman spoke freely but knew little, and eventually located the laboratory: three large vats exactly as described by the efreeti’s list.

One vat contained acid.
One held muddy water.
The third churned with half-sentient goo.

In the acid vat, an unseen servant retrieved one half of the gold key without difficulty.

According to the list, the second half was supposed to be found in a spiked pit outside the laboratory.

It wasn’t.

They searched carefully: the pit, the surrounding corridors, the nearby library cluttered with rubbery green-brown tapestries that Bo-Jing nearly tore from the floor. Nothing.

Finally, Bo-Jing suggested the unthinkable: the efreeti’s list might be wrong.

Or incomplete.

They returned to the vats. Acting on a hunch, they poured a potion of invisibility into the vat of goo. The liquid vanished from sight, revealing at the bottom the second half of the key.

Bangqiu polymorphed the goo into a flounder. The unseen servant retrieved the key.

With both halves joined, they attempted to teleport back to the sealed hallway—and instead found themselves outside in the muggy swamp, on top of the tomb, far above the ground.

Too high.

They used passwall, straight down.

This time, they arrived exactly where they intended.

The bronze key went into the first lock. The slab of stone descended into the floor.

Behind it waited another door.

They opened it.