For the first roll in this chapter, I broke my "roll everything" rule. I didn't for the doors (which I'm rolling randomly); it's just that the really low rolls the gang's been getting so far have been replaced with really high ones.


"Not magical?" Mercury asked.

"So, we're not getting our bonus from it," Roman said.

"Hold on, how is it not magical?"

"Could just be Dust," Adam pointed out. "Dust isn't magic."

"There is no Dust in Greyhawk!"

"This is Greyhawk?" Emerald asked. "Still, Merc's right. There's no Dust."

"So how is it not magical?"

"Make a Knowledge (arcana) roll."

Cinder rolled. "Twenty-four."

"You don't have a fucking clue. Who has ranks in Common Sense?"

"I get it," Mercury said, "we need to ask the NPC. Well, there's time for that later. What's the way out of the room?"

"There's another door in the north wall, one in the east, and one to the south."

"The south one's farthest to the right," Roman said. "Might as well choose it." No one argued.

"It's another maze of twisty little passages, all alike."

"Damn," Mercury said. "Follow the right wall?"

"That's our rule of thumb," Roman said. "It's worked well so far."

"Right. After...five, six, seven dead ends, mostly short ones with a coffin or a couple—"

"Empty?"

"No, there's the dust from centuries-old bodies and such in them. After that, you come across a door to the right."

"Soverliss will open it," Adam said.

"It's locked."

"Who's got the Open Lock skill?" Mercury asked. There was no response. "Dust dammit. Roman, take a level of rogue."

"Why me?"

"I literally can't multiclass. Neo and Adam—"

"Soverliss."

"—are primary casters, they can't lose a level of spellcasting. And that leaves you and Adam, and something tells me that Drizzel Da'Cloen isn't interested in breaking his character build."

"...Do you mean Soverliss?"

"I was trying for the stealth gig," Roman said. "And...well, rogues find traps, too?"

"Yep. Until then, who has the best Improvise Lockpick skill?" Silence. "Strength score."

"Soverliss," Adam said.

"Right, good thing you're point."

"Fourteen."

"Not enough. Soverliss slams into the door, but it holds steady."

"Why are the doors all locked or stuck?" Roman asked. "Seems like an inconvenience to anyone living here."

"It's a crypt," Adam said. "Things are...expected to not work so well anymore."

Mercury frowned. "Wait a second, if the crypt's old enough that all the bodies and such are dust and even metal things crumbled, why are the doors still fine?"

Emerald opened her mouth a few times before saying, "They're darkwood. Resistant to decay."

"So, a wizard did it?" Roman asked.

"Druid, I think. Isn't darkwood worth, like, five gold per pound?"

"No, it's..." Emerald opened the Dungeon Master's Guide and flipped to the back. "...ten."

"And we're allowed anything we find in the crypt..." Roman smiled. "I like this plan. How much do doors weigh?"

Emerald groaned and put her face in her hands.

"I dunno...twenty pounds, maybe? Hey, Neo, you brought your Scroll, right? Can you look this up? We could be rich!"

Neo frowned.

"In the game."

Neo nodded, then took out her Scroll and began a search.

"Do you even have any tools for taking doors off of their hinges?"

"Sunder the hinges," Mercury said. "Adam does seven to sixteen damage with his sword, and I don't think you're going to say the hinges are adamantine just to stop us. Not your style, especially when adamantine's worth so much."

"Just...argh! I miss the old gang. It's like I've got two Mercuries now."

"That's a problem?" Mercury asked.

"Soverliss kicks the door down," Adam said. "...Natural one."

"Right. You bounce off the door and run into Mercury. Next."

"I'll help him this time," Mercury said. "Fifteen."

"With his help, I rolled a fifteen as well," Adam said.

"The two of you losers finally break down the door. It's a room full of tables and chairs improvised from stone pieces that probably used to be coffins and caskets. It's bigger than the workshop. You came in at the southeastern corner, there's an iron door in the northwestern corner and another iron one in the east wall. Choose."

"Um...east?"

"Right. Locked."

"...Yeah, don't think Soviet Lass can break that one," Mercury said.

"You're not even trying," Adam grumbled.

"North door?"

"Stuck."

"Now you're just being petty," Mercury said.

"Says it's stuck in my notes."

"Right, right. Let's go on," Roman said. "Right wall? Right wall."

"You reach a dead end and turn around. One dead end later, there's an iron door on the right. Locked."

"That's it," Roman said. "Open Lock's a skill you can do untrained, right?"

"Yup," Mercury said. "Dex."

"And Adam and Cinder have the highest Dexterities. So get to it."

"You do not give orders, Roman," Cinder said coolly. She paused. "Adam, unlock the door. I'll help. Twenty to help."

"Twenty before help," Adam said.

"You unlock the door...but trigger a trap. A rock rolls out of the wall..." Emerald rolled. "...and hits Cinder. Four damage."

"Some puny rock," Mercury said.

"I'm at one hit point!"

"A real boulder worthy of rolling out at you would have squashed you flat."

"Right, room?" Roman asked.

"You see what might have once been a facsimile of an opulent throne room, all done in exquisite stone sculpture. An empty stone throne sits at the end of a stone carpet, surrounded by silent stone guards. On the walls—"

"Monsters?" Mercury asked. "Treasure?"

"None you can see."

"Ghosts?" Roman guessed.

"Or stone golems," Mercury said.

"Or ghost golems?" Cinder asked.

Mercury and Emerald stared at Cinder.

"...Right. Nothing to see here."

Editor's note: The group continued on and discovered nothing else in that corner of the dungeon. Returning to the lab, they went through the last door to a bedroom. Two skeletons fell out of the ceiling. Cinder won initiative and cast burning hands on them and Mercury. The skeletons made their saves, Mercury didn't. Neo turned the skeletons, and Adam cut both of them in half...but not before Roman's arrow and Cinder's javelin (which was thrown into melee without taking the penalty to make sure it didn't hit an ally) discovered that skeletons take less damage from non-bludgeoning weapons. Quips were made, action was had, and XP was distributed.

Then I tried to save it and FF.n didn't. So you get this instead.

"Right," Roman said, "now to loot the room."

"It's on fire."

"...Damn. Any spells that might help?"

"I cast acid splash on the fire!" Cinder said.

"A little bit of the fire is doused. The stuff that was burning dissolves a little."

"I cast it again!"

"The fire is still raging."

"That's it. Adam, you've got a lot of hit points, grab the tapestry!"

He paused, then said "Life is more important than cloth."

"Neo has a spell to fix a little fire damage. She doesn't have a spell to replace expensive tapestries! Hurry!"

"...Fine. Soverliss will do so."

"Take...six fire damage. Soverliss grabs the tapestry and runs. The fire is spreading out of the bedroom."

"Run!" Mercury said. "We're in a lab of some kind!"

The others looked around.

"We run," Cinder said.

"Yeah," Roman said. "Know when to fold 'em."

"Which way?"

"North."

Emerald smiled, then rolled a d20. "Oh. That sucks for you. The laboratory begins burning, and hissing. You're in the pseudodragon room. Two doors left, one ahead, an arch to the right."

"Arch!" Cinder barked.

"You're about a third of the way up a long, narrow room with a very high ceiling and smooth walls."

"No monsters?" Mercury asked.

"No treasure?" Roman asked.

"No coffins?" Adam asked.

"No, no, and no. Just the sounds of hissing behind you, and a couple of archways in the other wall. One just the other side of the middle, the other at the far end."

"Run for the far end," Cinder said.

"You couldn't have asked for a worse time to come into this room," Emerald said. "Everyone make a DC 15 Reflex save, Betsy included."

"Damn, fourteen," Mercury said.

"Seventeen," Adam said.

"I got eighteen," Cinder said, "and Neo got seventeen."

"Twenty-one for me. Betsy rolled a twelve, though," Roman said.

"Luckily, she has plus four," Emerald said. "Everyone except the monk notices the floor starting to shift beneath their feet. The floor is on a pivot, tilting with your weight. With Merc running forward, it's started to tilt that way." Emerald grinned. "And then the explosion comes, blowing the floor up more."

"Well...fuck," Roman said. "The floor's broken?"

"Well, no. Just tilted a lot more. Maybe forty-five, sixty degrees?"

"No way a mule can stand like that," Adam said. "Most likely, we'll all be knocked down the slope enough to cause it to tilt more, and more..."

"...Damn," Emerald said. "Um, DC 15 Balance checks."

"Don't forget armor check penalties," Mercury said. "I got none. Seventeen, unless I get a penalty for having not noticed."

"Nine," Cinder said.

"Twelve," grumbled Adam.

"I got thirteen," Roman said. "Betsy rolled a nineteen."

Neo pointed to her d20. Fourteen.

"Well...crap. You're all tumbling down the floor."

Mercury groaned. "Great, what's under this room?"

"I don't know, I didn't expect you to fuck up this badly..."


And neither did I.