Following 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 observers, five of them were screaming: “Don’t open it!”

Blueshort ignored them. The Elf opened the sarcophagus. Only one of the PCs made it out alive.

What was particularly amusing to me was the circumstances leading up to Blueshort’s decision. In short, they were examining the chamber and the sarcophagus.

• The floor of the tunnel leading in was covered in the bones of thousands of giant rats.
• There were clear marks on the floor showing the sarcophagus lid had been opened and scraped the stone.
• They had just been visited by a ghostly apparition that told them to leave the tombs and not desecrate them.
• The spirit had thrown three PCs against the walls and they had opted to negotiate.
• The party had told the spirit they would leave and it had relented.

But Blueshort still opened the sarcophagus.

The good news is that creating three new 62 point characters was made easy by deploying Delvers To Grow from Gaming Ballistic. We did that in about 15 minutes, creating a Druid and two Wizards… although the player of Blueshort decided he wanted to be an Elf again, which slowed us a little.

There is the question of what happened to the bodies of the old characters. One was killed and died, failing the Health roll at -11 HP. But two were left unconscious and alone. The fourth character ran away, perhaps not quite screaming but certainly leaving their friends behind. This was the newest player showing they understood when to run.

I described one of them having an out of body experience, being taken down into the earth to a place of fire where there were monsters who tore at the flesh. The other player said he was happy if Blueshort died… but this one player would love to have Joseph Skyfell rescued. Perhaps his wizardly master will have a dream and send help. Who can say?

But the moral of the story? Don’t open the sarcophagus.

Game on!