How I Learned to Carry Wooden Stakes

Having somehow survived the near resurrection of the Temple of Elemental Evil and the god whatever his name even was, Gurrik, loyal cleric of Vecna, reflected somewhat lazily on the recent adventures of his group, currently delving into the tomb of the long dead wizard Acerak. If not for his seemingly irrational ability to shift his entire body to a pocket of the astral plane kept stable by his deity, he too may have fallen to the unholy and most intriguing forces behind the rest of the party's transformations. As it was, his lengthy trips to the astral plane had left a permanent mark on his body, imbuing it with magical energies and resistances.

Reappearing in the primal material plane next to his companions, Gurrik found himself in a great city of undeath and necromancers. The center of the city, dominated by a giant earth-forged skull in fact housed a great school of necromancy and the entrance to Acerak's tomb, often called the Tomb of Horrors. After sorting out various information spewed at him by his less-than-human and less-than-intelligent companions, Gurrik discovered they had come into possession of a journal written by a man calling himself Desatysso.

Studying the journal, unimaginatively being called the Journal of Tomb, Gurrik found himself understanding little of the grand plan of this Acerak who had apparently ascended to lichdom and then fled the prime material plane to a demiplane where used to dwell the city of Moil. According to other information, the city of Moil was cursed in some manner by some folly of dumb people and is now known as the City That Waits. What Acerak intends to do in or with the city is a complete mystery, even to the gods as Gurrik later found out while communing with Vecna.

But like all great scholars, Gurrik found himself driven to understand what he could not extrapolate and continued into the tomb with his now undead companions. The vampires he understood as he had met a very charming vampire during the jaunt through the Temple of Elemental Evil, but the paladin-cum-blackguard was still a mystery. One possibly solvable at a later date as the Acerak mystery was currently precedent in his mind.

In the two days of exploring the tomb of Acerak, they had encountered all manner of puzzles, riddles and traps. Secret doors seemed a matter of obligation to Acerak as every passage sported at least one and sometimes more. At one point the entire party traveled from within a small room through an orangish gateway that brought them back to the beginning of their journey, sans gear. Fortunately the gnome rogue was feeling benevolent and wished it all back.

Another puzzle, illusory colored spheres concealing secret doors or small crawlspaces took several hours of the party's time but did prove ultimately fruitful. A shifting weight trap nearly ended Gurrik's dungeoneering career, but fast thinking let him cast a spell to shift out of the prime material plane and into the ethereal. What he saw there wasn't exactly heart-warming, but it did give him a general overview of the elaborate layout of the tomb.

A brief encounter with a brain in a jar, some potent creation of some evil person (possibly Acerak himself) nearly found him a vampire at the hands of others in the group. Hopefully the realization that he would become far more powerful than any of them could hope to deal with dissuaded them, but for how long this could remain so is unsure. Another trap later found him waking up with the group staring down at him, a faint glimmer of hunger in their eyes. Quite disturbing in its own way.

Eventually Gurrik realized a combination of spells would help them accelerate their search for the remains of Acerak and in short order, they had indeed found them. The wizard, thinking to protect the party from the skull noted as slaying half of Desatysso's party, instantly disintegrated it with a powerful spell, assuming it to be the phylactery of Acerak. Shortly thereafter, communion with Vecna disproved this, but confirmed the dust and bone fragments with the skull were indeed Acerak's actual remains. Further discussion with Vecna led to the confirmation of the green skulls found earlier in their journeys would lead them to Desatysso's goal of the City That Waits, so long as they carried with them a fragment of Acerak's body.

Having also found an amulet that according to the group matched an amulet worn by someone at the school encompassing the tomb's entrance, they briefly discussed returning to retrieve the other half or using a wish or other similarly powerful spell to summon the other half from its current owner. This discussion turned out to be ultimately useless however and the party decided to enter the demiplane of the City of Moil.

If the City That Waits had once been the location of some great wizardry place of learning, it certainly stood so no more. Towers, often lined with great cracks or other signs of destruction and erosion, grew out of an eternal blackness below and showed no signs of inhabitation. Silver streaks of lightning offered little more than outlines of more towers in the distance, connected by snaking bridges.

Gurrik, being the only living member of the group left, had to quickly cast a simple spell to protect himself from the biting cold of the demiplane in which the city resided. By all accounts of the group's wizard, the pocket plane must be very close to the negative energy plane to show such characteristics. Fortunately for the undead members of the party, this not only posed little threat, but could in fact increase their effectiveness as combatants. Gurrik would have to make do on his own, though he felt that if he were to utilize his skills at undead creation, they could be very powerful creatures compared to prime material versions.

Before the group stood an immense monolith, inscribed with a great riddle, seemingly carved or otherwise manufactured by Acerak as a test to subjects or adventurers seeking to find him. The mysteries of this riddle yet unraveled and the group's destination in this dark and forbidding city remain unknown, but driven by the notion of appeasing Vecna with lore as yet undiscovered, Gurrik planned to forge ahead by whatever means necessary. He knew that whatever quests drove the rest of the group, they would follow suit if for no other reason than closure of the great adventure they had undertaken.