Tomb of Horrors Part 1 (Crimson Reprieve Finale adventure)

 

DM note: Yes, that Tomb of Horrors, that notorious bogeyman. Among its other issues, there is a big "why" and how to translate player interest in tackling a challenge to character motivations.

My solutions: Ravenloft's "Ship of Horror" as a prelude. One of Acereak's construction contractors has been roaming the seas for centuries. With the party's help, the basic requirements of lifting a curse have been lifted, but given everything he's gone through, Captain Hu wants to follow through and destroy the demi-lich. The party, based on what they've heard, are also committed, and have a few clues about what to do to destroy Acererak.

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Captain Hu left the Crimson Reprieve under his First Mate’s command and joined Bo-Jing’s magical folding boat as a company of roughly two dozen made their way upriver toward the buried tomb of Acererak. With Bo-Jing, Salt, and Bangqiu traveled their retainers, Lao Ren and Ma Tzu, members of the Peacock Society, and a contingent of sailors and marines from the Reprieve.

They arrived in the early afternoon. Captain Hu explained that the tomb—once a great stone mausoleum—had long since sunk into silt, leaving only a leering skull-face of standing stones visible above the riverbank. At Salt’s direction, sailors began excavating the northwest corner of the burial mound.

Lao Ren then proposed an elegant alternative to blind exploration. He possessed a ritual of vision, which—when empowered by a magical gem that would be destroyed—could allow himself and three others to enter a shared prophetic vision of the tomb. Pain and fear would be real, but death would simply end the vision. It would answer one question above all others: What would happen if?

The ritual was shared with Bangqiu, Salt, and Bo-Jing.

Within the vision, they entered a cobweb-choked tunnel and opened the doors at its end—triggering a rockfall that nearly crushed them, a shocking reminder of how dangerous this place was, and what a precious opportunity Lao-Ren's vision gem had offered them. 

Beyond the doors was only a blank wall. Impatient, Bangqiu urged a bold escalation: access the Ethereal Plane.

Through a strange pairing of spells—phase door to cut an ethereal tunnel through stone, followed by passwall to breach the membrane itself—they slipped into the Ethereal, trusting a crude map recovered from Ma Tzu’s library. The gamble paid off. They emerged in a small chamber containing a three-armed gargoyle statue. 

Still ethereal, they followed a nearby tunnel and emerged into a brightly painted hall filled with strange disk-bearing figures. Their arrival attracted hostile creatures from the lower planes—mostly nuisances, until a massive ape with tusks and vestigial bat-wings appeared. Salt and Bangqiu destroyed it instantly with magic missiles.

Knowing further attacks were inevitable and their resources finite, they pressed on, bypassing the colored disks and charging through a glowing arch.

They were teleported into another painted chamber with a mosaic floor.

Only their ethereal bodies.

All weapons, armor, clothing, and equipment were left behind.

Still in the Ethereal plane, they could see they were now close to the tomb’s true entrance—the correct path. They could pass through the mud and stone in their current state, but they could not re-equip themselves from the material world.

Naked, unarmed, and stripped of every hard-won magical treasure, they chose to continue the vision anyway.