The Crypts of Gluttony, Part 2 (Kuthona (XII) 10th, 4712 AR)

The heroes continued their exploration.

Chamber. The walls of this room have been plated in iron, each plate of which bears a single rune — the upside-down, hooked “U” shape. What appear to be two ten-foot-tall smooth crystal pylons stand in the middle of the room. A rippling curtain of blackness shimmers between these crystals. On the opposite side of each crystal, strange tendrils of black energy—reverse lightning crackling in extreme slow-motion — extend out from the crystals into spheres of roiling blackness in circular caverns to the left and right of the entrance. The air in the room is shockingly cold.

A portal is open in this chamber. The portal itself manifests as the curtain of black energy between the two crystal pylons.

Abattoir. The scene in this room is appalling — dozens of brutally savaged human bodies (most of them identical looking) lie sprawled about the place. A good number of the bodies seem to have had limbs or organs removed.

There are 88 bodies here. The bodies themselves look fresh. When the heroes examined the bodies they recognized the work of a skilled necromancer in the patterns and methods of missing limbs and organs.

Research Room. This chamber appears to be some sort of laboratory. Tables made of stacked sarcophagi support alchemical apparatuses, books, carved bones, scrolls, and various pieces of anatomy that have been dissected and preserved in dozens of ways.

This is a well-stocked research room. The supplies remain fresh.

An alchemist’s lab sits atop one table. The books are both interesting and horrifying in their subject matter of the dead, and the collection grants a +2 circumstance bonus on a Knowledge (religion) check made about undead. The collection is worth 200 gp and weighs 100 pounds.

This room is inhabited by an undead monster. The monster attacked Gryxxa. It fought until destroyed.

Laboratory. The bookshelf-lined walls of this room contained a large collection of dog-eared tomes, manuals, and scrolls, as well as jars of fluid in which float humanoid organs and bits of flesh. A dissected human torso sits atop the room’s stone table.

The various lenses and magnifying glasses built into the contraption around the examination table are worth 50 gp each — there are 10 lenses in all. The research books are worth a total of 10,000 gp. They detail various experiments, summoning rituals, chemical concoctions, and steps that Runelord Zutha’s minions followed to attain their various states of undeath. They provide a +5 circumstance bonus on all Knowledge (arcana) and Knowledge (religion) checks made regarding necromancy and undead creatures.

Crypt Guardians. Numerous five-foot-wide burial niches line the inner walls of this “U” shaped catacomb. Each niche contains a stone burial urn, large enough to contain a crouching human body within the ancient stone container.

The hall of the crypt was not empty. Another six Thassilonian mummies stood guard here, and attacked the intruders. The narrow confines of this crypt forced the mummies to fight foes one at a time, so any mummy without a target aided with the defense of any adjacent mummy in combat.

The heroes then spent time resting and searching this Wing of Runeforge. The sarcophagus of Lord Mankray is empty. The urns in the crypt are also all empty.

When the heroes spent at least a few hours looking through the laboratory books they quickly came across a fairly significant section detailing Runelord Zutha’s final task for the Ravenous Crypts — the development of a place and method for him to retreat from the world into stasis, should Thassilon come to a sudden end. Zutha asked his agents in Runeforge to develop a way to split his phylactery, a book entitled The Gluttonous Tome, into three pieces, which could then be hidden in the world far from Thassilon. Then, after the dust of the empire’s fall had settled, these three fragments could be brought back together to call him back from the beyond. That the necromancers accomplished this goal is recorded, but no indication of where the three parts of the phylactery were sent can be found.