Reaping 27, 594 CY
A desert temple
We probably should have headed outside after the run-in with the undead guards, but we didn’t. Instead, we wandered around following Fash, and eventually found a room, empty save for a well in the corner. As Holli peered over the side, Fash decided to check it for critters by tossing a rock in, nearly hitting Holli in the process (he did yell “move!” first). She, in return, stormed past him and gave him a pretty good slap. I ran after her to see if I could explain Fash’s lack of, well, tact, and found out that she’d heard a splash at the bottom— I took a bucket from my pack for Fash to fill with water. We then caught up with Keth who was in a room with two altars and many wall carvings of humanoids with animal heads. We also found some weird wax-sealed jars, wax, and the strangest “surgical” tools I’d ever seen. I was discussing the possibility of an ancient dog-headed race with Keth when I heard Holli and Fash screaming different things— turns out Fash had set off a trap on a door, which in turn had sprayed him in the face with acid. Ugh— he was already somewhat painful to look at. Things got worse quickly as a bandaged creature, which I’m told is a “mummy” wandered out from the now-opened door. Fash and Keth were momentarily frozen in place, and I managed to shake off a feeling of dread long enough to grab the torch from Keth’s unmoving hand and throw it at the mummy. I put a flask of oil in Keth’s hand, hoping he’d snap out of it and throw the oil, which he did. All we had to do was keep away from the mummy until it fell into a pile of ash, but unfortunately it managed to touch Fash and me.
I’m not feeling well, and I’m told I’m not looking well either. Fash looks absolutely terrible— if we wrapped some bandages around him, he could probably pass for a mummy.
We decided to rest, and so went into the room beyond the acid-spewing doors. There were three sarcophagi in the room, one of which was open. We found a small red clay box in the open one (presumably where the mummy had rested). It contained some gold and gems, a scroll in a bone case, and a vial of black liquid. Holli said the scroll is a spell to hide from undead— how useful!
We rested for quite a while, but I actually feel worse, and judging by Fash’s appearance, we’ve managed to get some sort of disease or curse from that mummy. I have a bad feeling about that. I hope I have more time with these three— as awful as things are right now, I have a strange feeling that I’m where I’m supposed to be, and the more we compare backgrounds, the more we all suspect that we share a common history.
After our uneasy rest, we learned that Fash should probably not be checking stuff over for traps— he just doesn’t have an eye for that sort of thing. We did learn that the two other sarcophagi contained plain old dead skeletons, but after opening one, the chamber’s doors slammed shut, and after the other, the ceiling started to come down. As luck would have it, we found a staircase inside the one sarcophagus though, so we quickly descended through that.
We found ourselves in a new room with four stone statues and a door that we simply could not open. I suggested that we attempt to turn the statues. Of course, the first time we did it, the door we came in banged shut (which hardly mattered since the room above us was crushed!). After many, many attempts, we had the statues in the specific order that apparently was required to open the next door out. As the door swung open though, we could see the outline of a bandaged figure shambling toward us….