The party members, minus unconscious Simon, crowd into the crumbling burial chamber behind the throne room and look around expectantly for the treasure chest. Instead they find a sarcophagus and a classic statue of Selûne’s Starry Eyes. A decorative rug adorning the chamber’s sarcophagus entices Barrin to touch it. It leaps to smother Meega who holds her breath the six seconds it takes her compatriots to roll up the rug.
Over the objections of no one, Allana and Barrin eagerly attempt to open the engraved tomb of King Solomon Petrikov, but the heavy lid resists until Meega obliges with a mighty shove. A silver-bladed longsword with a glass hilt encasing an orange strand draws Allana’s attention, but Barrin yoinks the sword from the skeletal remains. At first Allana settles for the consolation Bag O’ Family Biscuits, but she soon persuades Barrin to yield the Sword O’ Psychosis as well, leading to an awkwardly one-sided conversation with someone she calls Opeth.
Argyle gathers King Simon’s languid form and the Order of the Graverobbers adjourns with their newly acquired boar cart and horses back to town. The opportunistic Rumplestiltskin predictably intercepts them immediately upon return, ungratefully falling to pieces over the lost boar. Allana reunites the undeserving Rumplestiltskin with his cart and horses.
Back at the Swinging Sword the night passes uneventfully and, to everyone’s vast relief, King Simon awakes in the morning. Pointing to the word “Family”, he claims the Bag O’ Family Biscuits and, pressed by Rollen, reluctantly reveals his surname is Petrikov. A Selûne acolyte at All Faiths imparts that the late Solomon Petrikov, king of a peculiar nearby barony, begat two sons: Sherman and Simon. Simon denies any relation owing to a slightly different pronunciation of the identically-spelled names, but Rollen’s suspicious mind carefully tallies these coincidences for later.
Next on the agenda is the pressing issue of Vallivoe’s kidnapping by the Lord of Lance Rock. Although this title implies a feudalism, everyone in Red Larch knows that Lance Rock is merely a huge rock slab, entirely devoid of a governable populace. Jalessa, renown briner of fine hams, reconciles the puzzle: “Yes, Oi know ov this self-appointed Lord of Lance Rock: tetched in the ‘ead,’e is.”
A quick consultation with the constable turns ugly as he and King Simon each suggest the other should be incarcerated for the good of society. Allana narrowly diffuses the volatile confrontation and the party quickly ushers the king out of town toward Lance Rock, a short walk southwest. Along the way, up in a tree, Simon spies a “bird” comprising a black arrow pinning a skull and a note deep into the trunk. Portending the remainder of his filthy day, Barrin removes the assembly, abundantly handling what turns out to be a human skull and a grammatically ambiguous missive written on human parchment: “The last laugh you’ll be next Valklondar.” Barrin wipes his hands on the grass, Rollen horks the arrow, and the march continues.
Lance Rock, a massive monolith of grey granite protruding vertically and angling east, stands where, according to legend and evidenced by the gouges in the smooth stone, a dragon dropped it. Nearby a nearby sign warns, “Come no closer lest you catch the plague that afflicts me,” at the entrance of a brush-choked ravine. Blameless pushes bravely to the front courtesy of plague-averse Rollen, but it is Barrin who discovers the body rotting in a cave entrance.
“Hey look, guys, it’s a body.” As though fulfilling some hidden cosmic desire, Barrin pokes the zombie into angry animation. A brief but fierce fight ends when the zombie explodes putrid guts and ichor on Barrin and Rollen. Meega ducks. Blameless, proficient with medicinal herbology, satisfies himself, if not Rollen, that this zombie undied of natural causes unrelated to plague.
Barrin, perhaps distracted by the stench, wanders into a boulder ambush effected by suspiciously well-organized and patient zombies inside the cave’s first chamber. The dungeoneers develop a rhythm for effectively subduing the undead and briefly consider activating a storeroom full of standby zombies to test their methodology, but elect instead to press deeper into the cavern.
Rounding a corner the party finds a small, star-shaped chamber wherein a bear, a maiden, and a jester sway idly, unconcerned with the interlopers. Simon casts a distraction down an opposite passage while Blameless dashes through the chamber experimentally, instigating a macabre dance of exceeding creepiness. As happens too often, dancing degrades into a melee that costs Simon his precious consciousness and the festivities end with stabs to the costumed zombies. As Argyle feeds Simon his hourly healing potion, Barrin and Rollen make good use of an oatmeal-free trickle of water to clean up.
Moving along with restored determination and hygiene, the party glimpses a large chamber where a hooded figure stitches together sundry body parts on stone slabs with a bone needle and dark thread. Retreating out of earshot, the group crafts a cunning plan to run in and injure the zombie necromancer by any means available. The plan executes perfectly each time he regenerates and the commotion attracts the attention of four animated skeletons at the opposite end of the chamber. Despite the skeletons’ innovative use of ranged weapons, the fellowship, in top fighting form, methodically reduces them to bone meal in short order.
Wasting no time to determine where skeletons might carry loot, the party charges across the chamber in pursuit of a fleeing perp observed early in the fight. The chase traverses two entirely unique passages that appear to reconverge ahead. Allana musters her concentration to study this redundant topology and determines the single crucial difference: the left path is on the left and the right path is on the right.
In the center of the boss dog chamber, a pedestal of arms holds aloft a crystal sphere projecting an Elder Elemental Evil Eye. Allana begins another one-sided conversation while Meega, sauntering up to the E4, enrages a wizard, presumably the Lord of Lance Rock, who emerges from behind the curtain and hurls magic at Meega. Reacting, Meega launches a couple of hand axes back at him. Rollen aims his longbow at the offending wand but tags the LoLR’s magicking elbow instead. The LoLR foolishly teleports next to Barrin who critically sticks him with the pointy end and he crumples, unconscious.
The eye chamber is quickly ransacked before the LoLR regains his senses and the party finds 99.32% of Endrith Vallivoe who urges the immediate termination of the LoLR. Blameless obliges the request. Simon, observing Vallivoe minus one hand, removes a suitable replacement from the LoLR. Rollen picks up a journal and the party makes its way back to Red Larch while Simon tries out material for his new scroll, 101 Japes for the Maimed.
Back in town Vallivoe’s urchin fan club turns out to welcome him back and everyone gets a good night’s rest. When Vallivoe feels up to it, the gang carts the King’s Mattress out to Lance Rock for final assembly of what is later determined to be an Elven portal. Vallivoe’s configuration requires that the mattress stack upright upon Lance Rock and, although the group assembles the project within specifications, the device does not power on self test after several days of failed attempts. Still and all, the project is a welcome change from the death and destruction of the preceding weeks.