They had been exploring some hidden tombs filled with sarcophagi. Wisely, they had looted only a pair of them earlier in their delve and turned instead to mapping the complex. A small side passage had tempted them in. The first character had triggered a scything blade upon stepping into the passage but they were undeterred:
The passage turns north and opens to a 3-yard square chamber with a single sarcophagus upright on the north wall. It is painted with the image of a tall pale figure in a black robe edged with yellow flames. He has a tall red hat with three lightning-like flashes coming from the top and his eyes appear to glow with a malevolent red.
Jumping over the pressure plate, they had crept down the bone-covered passage floor and turned into the small 3-yard square chamber. As the session came to a close, they were hesitating and the question was left to hang: would the PCs open the sarcophagus?
Here’s my question: if they do open it, what’s inside? Suggestions below, please.
Game on!
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i would go with a wight wearing jewelry.
use the Wight template from GURPS fantasy and add Injury Tolerance to non silver or magic weapons (so mundane attacks would do 1/2 damage, but as the wight template is strapped on to the skeletal dead one, they take 2x damage from crushing… stxks and stones as it were!)
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A well-wrapped and prepared mummy rests inside, adorned with beautiful (but cosmetic) jewelry.
Behind the mummy (a misdirection), is a secret door leading down to the (viciously trapped) real burial chamber (for an impressively mummified and authentically bedecked with jewels, woman), wealth, equipment for the next world, and more dramatically, a glimmering octagonal sheet of ice hanging vertically in the air. Dimly through the thin sheet of ice, another world can be seen.
Can they access that world? Should they? If so, how? Who was this woman? Who is the figure painted on the lid of the false sarcophagus upstairs?
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Rot grubs! Assuming that your players are mature enough to handle it (maybe not for the school club) and you don’t mind killing off a character, they’re a delicious package combining body horror, panic and a really tense skill check.
If the players can survive and come up with a way to get rid of them, you can also put some fun treasure in there. Obviously there could be grave goods, or perhaps another party lost someone to the grubs and resealed the sarcophagus with the body inside, or something that isn’t susceptible to the grubs has placed something unusual here for them to “guard”…
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[…] on from yesterday’s post, today the player characters in my School Fellmyr game found out what was in the sarcophagus. Of course, opening it proved a very bad idea. In fact, of the four players and two non-playing […]
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