Into the Tomb Lands, a #Dungeon23 Project. Introduction, and Level 1: The Tomb of the Guardian (Patreon)

"Into the Tomb Lands" is a #Dungeon23 project I'm launching today, Jan 1st, 2023.

So, what is #Dungeon23? Well, let me link to this excellent article about it on IO9. 

Each day I'll be writing just a couple of sentences about a single encounter area (mostly dungeon rooms, at least to start, but things may get more varied later in the year), and by the end of the year that'll be 365 encounters sketched out for you to adapt to your fantasy ttRPG of choice.

This page serves as the repository for all of Level One, and will have links to future levels as we get to them in the coming months. The Introduction offers some general set up and Encounter 1 is a much-longer description to handle getting the Player Characters on the path to adventure.

Background:

"Into the Tomb Lands" is a series of connected dungeons that lead to, then explore part of, the Tomb Lands.

Long believed an entirely mythical place, the Tomb Lands are mentioned in the myths of nearly every culture. A vast kingdom underground, they are dedicated to the dead, the dying, memorials to the lost, guardians of the grave, eaters of dead things, mummers, mourners, funerary attendants, and perhaps even the undead. Fathers warn their children not to walk too far into the shadows lest they find themselves in the Tomb Lands, and those who are lost without a corpse to bury are said to be lost into them forever.

There are 1,000 stories about how the Tomb Lands came to be, and most are mutually exclusive. All that is agreed upon is that they are vast, cold, filled with burial offerings and gifts for the fallen... and sealed off from mortal man forever.

But, in truth, they have only been sealed away for a few dozen centuries, and now their ancient entrances are opening once again. The recent quakes are a sign of one such entrance forcing itself to be accessible to the mortal world once more. The truth of how the Tomb Lands came to be may not be answered within 365 encounters, but the nature of what it has become should slowly become clear.

Introduction:

A few days ago, massive Earthquakes shook the Basalt Mountains and the plains and forests around them. The quakes lasted for long, horrifying minutes, and numerous aftershocks followed. Buildings collapsed, rivers changes courses, and whole lakes drained away into the cracks that opened in the earth beneath them.

But all has been quiet for many days now. Surely, it's now safe to travel through the mountains?

Encounters

1: Summary - The PCs find a zombie in a mountain pass. He found a passage to the entrance to the Tomb Lands, which opened during the earthquake, grabbed a funeral offering, fled, got his leg pinned, wrote about what he had seen in his journal, cut his leg off, bled to death, and because a zombie. 

The first encounter takes place in a mountain pass, just a couple of days after the earthquakes described in the Introduction. After this encounter happens once, what is left of it depends on the PC's actions.

The PCs are traveling along a narrow pass through the Basalt Mountains. Perhaps they wish to avoid the tolls (or tax inspectors, or spies, or enemy adventurers). 

They encounter a rockfall, where the side of a mountain appears to have recently fallen away and exposed a long, narrow passage that travels deep into the mountain.

But more immediately obvious is the corpse laying in the pass, missing one leg, a long bloody trail showing where the leg was left behind under a huge jagged boulder that is part of the rockfall. A bloody dagger sits next to the pinned leg's stump (as the poor corpse realized he'd never move the pinning rock, and cut off his leg in a desperate bid for survival before bleeding to death).

The corpse is a zombie, though it does react to anything until someone tries to take away the clay jar it is holding with a limp arm, or the satchel it has over one shoulder. 

Treasure: The clay jar contains ancient bronze coins, each with a tiny disk of gold at the center (same value as 1 gp). They do not match any coinage used in the modern world.

The satchel has the zombie's journal, where he sketches out a map to the "Entrance to the Tomb Lands," and extensively writes about the vast wealth he'll reap by raiding the endless series of tombs, graves, and sepulchers. 

2: The new passage into the mountains is narrow and it's easy to slip on shale or get caught on sharp basalt and have gear or flesh be cut, but such mishaps cause only minor injuries -- the risks of major rockfalls is past (in part, triggered by the explorer who became the zombie in Encounter 1).

The passage leads up into flat, open area within the mountain, a square 102 feet on a side much too even and smooth to be a natural gulch or ravine. The ground is hard basalt with numerous hairline cracks, and several trickles of water run down the sides of the mountains that rise hundreds of feet on every side, forming small pools that drain into the cracks in the stone.

 Across from the passage's entrance into this square area is an archway of worked stone, 10 feet wide and 8 feet tall. The words "Doom If You Are The First To Disturb the Peace of a Tomb" is written over and over on the archway, in dozens of ancient languages.

Beyond the archway is a small landing, and then stairs descending down into the darkness of the mountain's depths.

3: Stairs lead down at a steep angle to a landing, 10 feet wide and 5 feet deep, and then continue on. There are no light sources within the stairwell, and no natural light from the doorway reaches beyond the first landing. There is a thin layer of dust on the steps and landing (from sentiment disturbed during the earthquake), and footprints are visible in them.

An alcove, 5 feet wide, 5 feet deep, and 8 feet tall, sits to the left of the landing. Seven claw jars sit within it, each with a linen lid sealed with wax. One clay jar is missing (and is the jar that was found with the zombie in Encounter 1). The wax and linen seals on all the jars have been cracked open. They contain:

1. Honey. It's still edible, and if used on a wound gives a bonus against diseases and poisons related to the wound.

2. Salt. Still safe to eat, and with a rich flavor that grants a small bonus to cooking and preservation skills checks.

3. Mummified wasps. Several hundred of them. And if someone comes up with a use for mummified wasps, these are of the highest quality and would give a slight bonus to such tasks.

4. Powdered violet ochre. A rich, still-vibrant color, grants a small bonus to artistic efforts using it.

5. Ancient, desiccated loaves of bread. Each is a flat bread roughly the size of a human's palm, and each has an image that was toasted into it when it was made of some household or farm good (chairs, plows, a hearth, pieces of clothing, and so on). The loaves are still edible and contain twice the food value per pound of typical preserved rations, but consuming them doubles your needed water intake per day.

6. Boardgames. Cloth playing mats and simple stone-playing pieces and dice that look to over several different games, each vaguely similar to games the PCs would be familiar with. There are no rules, but the games seem similar to early forms of chess, go, mancala, and backgammon. Though not magical, the pieces are soaked in history and meaning, and grant a slight bonus to predictive divination magic that uses them (such as efforts to read the future or past).

Anyone skilled in tracking can see that whoever made the footprints came down the steps, cracked the seals on all the pots, took one, and left. There's no traps or negative consequences for PCs who manipulate, damage, or take any of the pots or their contents.

4. The physical setup of this alcove is the same as Area 3. However, no light from the entrance reaches down this far, the footsteps in the dust don't reach this far, and there are 7 undisturbed clay pots here.

Six pots contain the same goods as listed in Area 3. One has the same number and type of coins as Area 1. 

The first person to move, damage, or break the seal on one of these pots is subject to a powerful curse. The curse causes them to be doomed (if the game actually has a doomed condition, it applies. Otherwise, they take damage from curses that are directed at them until they atone, and are at a penalty to save against future curses). Cursed PCs are also Tomb-Marked: some traps and NPCs in the future of the Tomb Lands react differently to the Tomb-Marked (and not always for the worse).

If the game allows a chance for characters to resist curses (such as a saving throw), characters who resist this curse are not Tomb-Marked, but do take a small penalty to all future saving throws against curses in the Tomb Lands. This penalty cannot get worse as a result of anything in Level 1, though cursed items in lower levels may be able to.

Atoning for disturbing the grave goods in this alcove includes replacing them all with items that have double the total value, but it's not as simple as that. The replaced offerings must be created with effort from the character atoning (made by their hand, researched using their own time, or some similar actual effort on their part), and placed in a custom ceremony (which requires a successful skill tied to religion, burials, or performing arts).

Once someone has been both cursed and atones, they are immune to all further curses on this level, and gain a small bonus to all attacks and skill checks made on this level.

After the first person is exposed to a given encounter's curse, other characters are free to disturb the goods and creatures in that area without being cursed.

5. The landing here looks like any other. but if a character is Tomb-Marked, it is as slick as if it had been covered in a magic lair of grease. Non-Tomb-Marked characters not only don't have this issue, they are at massive penalties to try to detect the magical trap, as it literally does not exist for them.

6. This landing and alcove look like the others on the stairway down, but it has seven clay pots that have had their seals broken and contents removed. and one that looks untouched, but leathery, sunken in, and cracked.

The seventh pot is a zombie mimic. Mimics are living creatures that can take the form of small and medium inanimate objects. This mimic did that, taking the form of a burial offering, but when no one came by for thousands of years it starved to death and, dying of frustration and hunger, became a zombie.

7. At the bottom of the stairs is a stretch of smooth floor with large granite tiles set tightly and levelly together. There is the smell of fresh water, and sound of a small waterfall and creek.

Particularly perceptive PCs (skill check called for) notice additional smells (rich earth and mushroom-like scents, see area 17), any that sound they make echoes, suggesting there is a cavern ceiling well about them (it's 150 feet up, much higher than they descended down the stairs since it's up within the mountains).

Anyone who is Tomb-Marked can sense that there are further burial-related spaces off the right (area 8) and left (area 23), and that the large space in front of them may be part of the Tomb Lands, but it's not part of anyone's specific tomb. They'll also realize this means that now that they are Tomb-Marked, they can sense if a space is an active burial ground, or not.

8. Tomb-Marked: You can sense that this space is an active burial ground.A 4-foot wide, 8-foot tall stone door with no apparent lock, hinge, or handle blocks this doorway. The door is marked as "Trapped" and "Tomb Door" in dozens of ancient languages. Opening the door without damaging it requires successful, difficult engineering or Strength checks. The door can be smashed in, time, but an ancient slime monster is trapped inside it, and leaks out if the stone is cracked.

Within the chamber are a half-dozen mummified servants (though mummified, they are only as tough as a typical zombie or skeleton and don't have weapons), who were buried alive so they could serve the lord of this level in his afterlife (see Area 23). They've long since gone mad in their conscious undeath, and attack once the door is opened.

This area otherwise looks like a low-rent bronze age break room, with a few tables and stools to sit on, a dart board, the moldy remains of a few decks of cards, and a few scrolls of recreational reading in a long-lost, dead language. Of course, since these things are thousands of years old they have significant value as relics, and aren't considered burial goods, so looting them does not result in a curse or being Tomb-Marked.

Once all the mummified servants are destroyed, a Tomb-Marked character can tell this area is no longer an active burial ground.

9. Tomb-Marked: If you reach the back of the water channel, within 5 feet of the dropoff, you can sense active burial grounds below you. ... THOUSANDS of active burial grounds.

The water from the Silty Pool (see Area 10) is sucked swiftly into a water channel five feet wide and five feet deep, with just a few inches of air between the top of the water and roof of the channel. Once within 5 feet of the channel mouth, it takes a modest Swimming (or major Strength) check to not get sucked in, and the check is higher once you are in the channel itself. A series of 5 rings and pullies are worked into the roof of the channel (and characters swept uncontrolled down it may smack their heads into these protrusions), made of brass with thin silver plating (to prevent corrosions over thousand of years of exposure to the water). The ring-and-pully mounts have some value based on their metal content, but are extremely difficult to get loose.

10. The Silty Pool has dirty, but potable water, which flows in from the breakers (see Area 12) to the water channel (see area 9). The water is cold (though not dangerously so), gritty, and visibility is a few inches at best.

A small water elemental lies in the pool. It ignores anyone just swimming, cleaning, or wading in the water, but attacks anyone who casts spells that affect the water.

The bottom of the pool has several feet of soft silt, and thousands of copper coins scattered over the whole area. It's possible to dredge up the coins, but doing so has the same rate of return as getting an average job in a city.

11. The Fungal Ladder is an inclined wall 20 feet wide and 15 feet tall. It's covered in densely-packed clay earth, which if examined is clearly runoff from a river of some kind, with bits of plant life, crushed bugs, and other detritus mixed into it. On the right hand side as viewed from the bottom, there is a series of stout, semicircular fungal growths growing in the runoff from Area 16. These can hold hundreds of pounds of weight, and form a natural ladder

Climbing the fungal ladder is easy, though it released glow spores (see below). Climbing the clay wall without the ladder is difficult-footholds are slippery, pitons slip out, grappling hooks thrown at the top are pulled free when any weight it put on them, and so on. However, while falling down the soft wall makes a PC extremely dirty, it doesn't do any damage (though they might fall on something sharp in the Runoff, see Area 12).

Touching the Fungal Ladder causes the giant mushroom disks to release glow spores, tiny motes of fungal life that float in the air and glow like tiny rushlights. The glow spores are harmless, and clever PCs could gather them and place them in lanterns or similar containers for bright, heatless light. The Fungal Ladder has enough spores to make 6 lanterns (though poor skill checks on any plan to collect them could reduce the number gathered), and is then out of spores. It grows 1 lantern worth of spores each month.

If just jarred and ignored, the spores glow for a month before fading. However, a successful skill related to nature, underground life, or gardening/farming allows a PC to feed the spores a few drops of water and crumbs of food every week, so they glow perpetually. 

12. The Runoff is an area between the Fungal ladder (Area 11) and the Silty Pool (Area 10). A very thin layer of water flows from the ladder to the pool, less than a 16th of an inch thick, and the area is so muddy movement is at half rate when walking through it. Characters that stand it in for a long time find they very slowly sink into it. It would take two or three hours to sink down completely, but the Runoff mud is 10 feet thick, so most characters could completely disappear. Once a character has sunk in for a few minutes stepping out of the Runoff takes a round, and a character must make a Dexterity-themed skill check or saving throw or lose a boot, but there's no chance of failing to get out unless a character slides down to waste depth or more.

Searching through the Runoff has a 10% chance per minute of finding something. 99% of the time it's a minor price of starting equipment (a bag, a dagger, a candleholder, and so on), but these items remain preserved and functional if cleaned. Searching for an hour finds 30 such items, at which point everything that can be recovered without dredging the whole area has been. Each item has a 1% chance to be a single magic boot (which is too low in the silt to be detected by abilities that detect magical things), until the one boot is found, or if all 30 items are found and another 10 minutes is spent searching the boot is found automatically if it hadn't been yet.

While most pairs of magic boots don't work if you only have 1 of them, this lone, preserved boot in the Runoff is an exception. One part of a pair of Boots of Running and Jumping and Climbing and Swimming (or RAJ-CAS boots), not it has much less power than half of what it once was... but not none. Once per day, at any point during their turn, the wearer of this boot can take one additional move of the walk/climb/jump/swim category, and gain a significant bonus (+4 on a d20, +20% on %, roll twice and keep the best result for other systems). Also, the lone Raj-Cas boot morphs to look like any other footware worn at the same time as it. But the raj-Cas boot does not work if another magic boot is worn, or the wearer has benefited from magic footware that day.

It may be alone, but Raj-Cas has standards.

13. The Ladder Down is an apparently all-basalt ladder, with roughly one rung in 12 cracked or broken, going down into the darkness. If you can see *while* you climb using both hands and feet (so holding a lantern doesn't cut it), climbing down it is easy. Otherwise, it takes an easy skill check to not slip, though only a critical failure results in falling.

The Ladder goes down 50 feet in a 10 ft. x 10 ft. shaft, then stops at a clearly magical locked trap door. The key is in Area 23. Without it, low-level characters aren't getting through.

14. The Cutout is an area roughly 20 feet wide and 10 feet deep where work has clearly been done to expand the natural chamber it is located within, but work seems to have just stopped. A set of ancient bronze, bone, and obsidian stoneworking tools sit to one side of the cutout, as if they had been left for lunch, rather than put down thousands of years ago. Though nonmagical, these are rugged, expert tools, which grant a bonus to stoneworking skill checks made with them, and they have the value of a major low-level treasure.

15. The 5-foot wide rough-hewn, uneven stone stairs leading up to the First Landing are irregular, unusually tall (nearly a foot up on each step) and narrow (each run a little less that five inches deep). Moving up them at half speed is easy enough, but there is risk of falling if going faster, though a character can always safely use climbing instead.

The stairwell is open on the side near the Silty Pool, and the First Landing is open on all sides that don't have stairs. It's five ft. x 5 ft., and very slightly angled so anything that flows or rolls gets dumped off of it onto the Runnoff (Area 12). The ground of the First Landing is covered in ancient red ochre pigment illustrating the runs on the Rune Wall in Area 19. A typical torch or hooded lantern can't illustrate these runes from the First Landing, but a bullseye lantern or more powerful light could.

16. A Slick Slope separates the top of the Fungal Ladder from the flat area of the Mushroom Grove (Area 17). It's wet and soft like the Runoff (area 12), but it a solid piece of a vast single fungus rather than packed silt, and can't easily be dug through. The fungus can be gouged out, but fills itself in within minutes. It's too wet to burn by anything bust high-powered magics or vast amounts of fuel, and won't hold any weight if pitons or grappling hooks are stuck into it. It's actually easier to reach area 17 by lowering yourself down from areas 20 or 21.   

A grappling hook thrown around the righthand corner of the area with the Crawer's Cave (Area 18) might hook on the rock wall and allow characters to climb up the Slick Slope, but it would definitely awaken the crawler, which would be likely to come attack.

From here the ceiling of the cavern is 60 feet up.

17. The Mushroom Grove is a rough natural cavern with an uneven floor roughly 24 feet x 25 feet. Water seeps from cracks in the walls all around it, forming a constant thin stream that runs down The Fungal Ladder (Area 11) and across the Runnoff (Area 12) into the Silty Pool (Area 10). It has a 50-foot high ceiling and is open to the Rune Wall (Area 19), though unless a character has the ability to see in total darkness or shines a light on the Rune Wall it's not obvious from here.

The center of the area is dominated by a 10 foot x 10 foot area that is densely packed with a wide variety of fungus, ranging from small edible whitecaps to 10-foot tall screaming fungus that shrieks if touched. Each time characters investigate the fungus, roll on the table below to see what they interact with.

1. Shrieking fungus. Screams extremely loudly if touched, and attracts the Crawler from Area 18.2. Glow fungus. Identical to the Fungal Ladder (Area 11) except is it mildly poisonous to touch, and may sicken characters that collect it.3. Poisonpuff fungus. Emits a cloud of fungal spores if disturbed, causing characters who have not taken precautions to cover their mouths to have to save or be fatigued until they are cured of disease. The spores grow in the lungs, and once per day an infected character can breathe out spores in an attempt to infect adjacent character.4. Edible fungus. Can produce enough food for 1-6 people every day.5. Tomb fungus. If planted on a corpse, that corpse cannot become an undead. Can be harvested and kept alive in the same way as the glow fungus from Fungal Ladder (Area 11), and then can be transplanted onto 1-4 corpses per day. Only dead, helpless, inert corpses can be infected.6. Inert fungus: Doesn't taste good, isn't poisonous, has no nutritional value, doesn't do anything. It is kinda pretty rippling pink and azure waves, though.

18. The Crawler's Cave is a rough natural cave, roughly 15 feet deep and ten feet wide, with a 15-foot high ceiling. Movement is difficult, and characters risk tripping if they go above half speed. 

This is the dwelling of the Crawler, which is a large spiderlike creature the size of a horse that can climb walls. It does not spin webs, but instead has a long scorpionlike tail that can paralyze those it hits. The tail is treated as its own creature, moving and attacking on its own turn and being able to be targeted and killed separately from the Crawler. If severed and taken, the long stinger on the tail acts as a minor magical dagger that can hold up to 4 doses of poison the wielder can inject in any order, one injection per successful attack.

Possessing at-best animal intelligence, the Crawler attacks anyone that it notices messing with the fungus in the Mushroom Grove (Area 17), as that is its primary food source, as well as anyone that enters its cave or attacks it.

19. The Rune Wall is written in dozens of ancient and lost languages, but also numerous older languages still spoken by dwarves, dragons, fey beings, and genies. Languages are collected into sets of geometric shapes that graph out their relationship to one another. (For example, the ancient Primordial Speech is in a loop that then goes to Draconic, then Dwarven, then overlaps with the Elemental Speech that evolved into Fey, and where the two overlap it is written in Gnomish.) 

The writing all states, over and over, "The Guardian of the Tomb. The Tomb of the Guardian. You have acted in this place. This place shall act on you." 

While the letters and runes are carved into the wall in letters 6 inches deep, they are not particularly easy to read (though some of the runes are already written on the First Landing, Area 15). But if someone does manage to record all the writing, they have an amazing tool for translating ancient languages. The information could be sold to a linguist for the same value as a major low-level treasure item... but only if the PCs promise not to sell it to anyone else. Nothing stops them from breaking this promise, but if they keep selling it, they eventually attract the attention of numerous sects and cults that believe some of the languages this can translate are too dangerous to allow mortals access to, and those sects attempt to kill the PCs and destroy any written materials they have.

20. Tomb-Marked: The first time a Tomb-Marked character gets this close to the runes on the Rune Wall while on the stairs, they become extremely dizzy. A moderate saving throw or skill check is required to not lose their balance and fall down onto Area 17. The landing zone is 20 feet down, but it wet, soft earth that cuts the falling damage in half.

The Second Landing is 5 feet x 5 feet, and slightly slanted so any fluid or round object dropped here ends up dumped into the Mushroom Garden (Area 17).

21. The Third Landing is 5 feet x 5 feet, and has a series of bronze rings bolted onto the edge that leads to the Rune Wall (Area 19). This makes is an easy skill check for a character with ropes to lower themselves down in front of the Rune Wall, and record all the various writing on it. This takes 8 hours of work, though a skill check can make this 1 hour faster for every successful plan and check the players come up with (for example a Moderate skill check to lower 2 people over reduces time by 1 hour, an easy Scrivener check to use charcoal rubbings rather than sketch out the runes saves 1 hour, and so on).

It's 30 feet from the Third Landing down to the Mushroom Garden (Area 17).

22. The Crossway at the top of the stairs has two stone doors (one to the right from the stairway, and one straight ahead), and a corridor off to the left. No light from anywhere further than the Third Landing (Area 21) can reach into this space, and nothing beyond it is lit. 

The stone door to the right has no handle or apparent hinges, and is sealed with lead around the edges making it airtight and watertight... almost. A Difficult perception check (or an Easy one if someone specifically investigates the lead seal, or tries to open the door) has a tiny crack in it. If observed for a long period of time, a tiny wisp of black vapor can be seen leaking out of it. This is a bit of the Guardian's essence, and is magical and necromantic (see Area 23).

The door is Very Difficult to open with skill or subtly, and Difficult to open with brute force (which still takes time and makes a lot of noise). A Tomb-Marked character senses an active tomb beyond it. 

The stone door straight ahead has no apparent hinges. Four small stone blocks are worked into niches in the door and the doorframe. If they are removed, the door swings easily and silently open on a concealed counterweight pivot. This is an easy task for a trained thief or engineer, and Moderate for anyone else.

Down the corridor to the left come the sounds of running water, and the strong smell of mint.

Once the PCs reach here, the GM should read Area 23 before going on, whether the PCs try to get into it or not.

23. The Tomb of the Guardian, the Guardian of the Tomb.

Tomb-Marked: This is an active tomb.

The door into this area is described in Area 22, the Crossway.

This is the Tomb of the Guardian who is, well, the Guardian of the Tomb. Specifically, he is the Guardian of this entrance to the Tomb Lands, and sworn to protect it from any invasion by the living, with the exception of those here to give their respects to the dead, mourn, carry out burials, and prepare or repair tombs. If the PCs have entered The Crossway at any point, and they don't breach The Guardian's Tomb, he eventually seeks them out (3% cumulative chance each hour until it happens) and attacks them in anger for them not facing him.

Treasure

The Guardian has one moderate low-level treasure appropriate for each PC. These are pretty basic (most minor magic weapon, shield, armor, tools, wand, or staff, or similar utilitarian items), but they also increase in power as the PCs gain levels (so they always function as an appropriate low-level treasure based on the PCs' level). In his Tomb are one major low-level treasure appropriate for each PC. These are more flavorful and odd. Possible examples include a small statue that becomes a companion animal or familiar for 1 hour per day; an eyepatch you can move to the other eye, allowing your first eye to see illusions for 5 minutes, recharging after being over an eye for an hour; a hat that is actually a living creature that normally eats peoples heads but has gone vegetarian, and if you feed it and wear it, the hat warns you of backstabs and people sneaking up on you even when you sleep; a weapon sheath that gives you a big boost to your defenses in combat as long as all your weapons are sheathed and you make no attacks (resetting after 4 hours of making no attacks); a horseshoe that can summon an angelic (or demonic, based on the PC) steed that you can put away when not in steed-friendly areas; a tiara that allows you to completely change costumes and armor (among clothing and armor you have on you) as easily as you can draw a weapon; gloves that can crawl off your hands and duplicate you finger movements allowing you to attempt to pick pockets, open locks, or disarm traps from about 30 feet away; a war-horn you can use 1/day to encourage allies or demoralize foes; a magic cloak that flutters in its own breeze and both protects you like a shield and keeps you rom being knocked prone; a set of bronze spider legs hooked to a harness that let you climb like a spider and make dagger attacks as if wielding 2 daggers without you needing to hold daggers; a spellbook that gives you access to one randomly-determined extra spell each day; a floating stein you can pour a potion into, then have it feed them to you in combat without taking an action; armbands that can project long claws allowing you to climb better and make claw attacks; boots with spring heels allowing you once an hour to leap a great distance or kick someone or something as if you were a giant; a very comfortable chair that floats just off the ground, can carry you your gear and that much weight over again and when you sit in it can go anywhere you could go if you were up and active; a sarcastic "devil's advocate" imp that is under contract to give you scholarly and legal advice, including translating written materials (but not peaking around a corner and telling you wants there).  

It also has the key to the ladder descending from Area 13. The key is in the shape of a skull with a long spine, its ribs forming the tine. It is magical, in that if damaged it grows back over the course of a lunar month. It'll be used lower in the Tomb Lands, as well.

The Guardian

The Guardian was, 2,000 years ago when the Tomb Lands were last sealed off, a powerful undead able to defeat the most powerful invades. However, he entered torpor when the Tomb Lands were sealed off, with a lead-sealed tomb that was supposed to keep all his undead essence sealed in his room.

It has a leak.

Now, he is a minor undead only powerful enough to be a major encounter for the PCs when they first encounter him. If defeated, he waves his hand expansively at the treasure in the room and declares it is their rightful spoils of war. (If encountered not in this room, he waves towards the area and says the same about "the spoils within his tomb." Then he turns into vapor, and seeps through cracks in the stone and, yeah, the PCs will see him again.

24. The Mourner's Chamber is where the death attendants who prepared the Tomb of the Guardian, and the rest of this upper level of the Tomb Lands, for actual burial. It has numerous cabinets, tables, chairs, alchemical tools, and an oven to allow preparation for mummification, cremation, embalming, death masks, death casts, and dressing and painting of corpses. It's all worth two major low-level treasures, and can be used as a place to cook, repair armor, weapons, or tools, or do medicinal or alchemical work.

It also holds two Mummer Elves -- a brother and sister named Caelyndron and Celyndra. They are natives of the Long Quiet, a small family residence where the descendants of the gravetakers of the Guardian's Tomb still reside (found down the waterfall at Area 9). 

Mummer Elves are connected to concepts of death and the grave the way some fairies are tied to nature and the woods. Within the Tomb Lands, they need not eat or drink and few of the creatures that dwell here attack them without first being attacked (the Crawler in Area 18 ignores them unless they damage it, for example). 

Caelyndron and Celyndra's family normally visit the Guardian's Tomb once per decade, but their visit here was brought on by rumblings deep within the Tomb Lands, and their father, a Death Seer, foresaw that a great plague of death and desolation had broken out of one of the deepest tombs in the Tomb Lands, and it being free put all of reality at risk. Caelyndron and Celyndra came days ago to see if the tomb Guardian could ensure the Rogue Death could be kept from leaving the Tomb Lands, but the Guardian is much weakened and refused to help. It also demanded they wait, here, until it or another force that might prevent the Rogue Death's escape

(Art by warmtail)

Caelyndron and Celyndra would, very much, like to convince the PCs to agree to help, so they can leave this room. They are skilled artisans, crafters, and healers, and have a mystic knack called the Stiltz, which allows them to literally hammer, bake, spin, and sew valuable metals and stones into food, cloth, and equipment. If the PCs are friendly to them, they can severe the place of a general store, taking PC treasure and turning it into bespoke gear and magic items appropriate to your game system. 

They are fascinated to meet people from outside the Tomb lands, and particularly intrigued by anyone who is Tomb Marked, who they sense have a great destiny within the Empire of Graves... which they have never seen, but are sure exists down in the Tomb Lands somewhere.

However, as Mummer Elves of the tomb lands, they will not (and due to geases, literally cannot) reveal anything they know about rooms, fight anything native to the Tomb Lands that does not attack them, or help anyone overcome any threats or challenges here. They are happy to travel with the PCs, but at the minimum always hang back, and prefer to step up a small campsite within a level for the PCs to operate out of.

25. Red Marrow of the Earth is a kind of cross between slime and fungus that leaks out of the cracks at the far end of the corridor. It has only appeared since the Tomb Land rose to the surface (which can be discovered with an easy underground Lore, Dungeoneering, or Spelunking check, whatever the game system has), or the Mummer Elves in Area 24 can confirm it's not original to the level.

The material covers all of one section of the wall, and some of the floor and ceiling. It looks like crusty old boils with tiny waving bright crimson tendrils. it can move, but only at a rate of 9 or so inches an hour (5 feet per 8 hours). Anyone gnome or halfling-sized can move through this section with no risk of touching it, humans must make an Easy agility check, bigger folk a Hard agility check.

If touched the Red Marrow Mold causes you to bleed, and to have to succeed at an Easy mental resistance check or try to touch another living creature with the infected part of your skin. The bleed is slow at first, but speeds up over time. It can be cured with a moderate healing or herbalism check, or the mummer elves in Area 24 can do it (but want the PCs to promise to help stop the Rogue Death if they haven't already).

The Red Marrow Mold is too wet to burn. It does dry out with smoke or if scraped off the stone, though either process takes an hour and risks exposure to the material regardless of a creature's size. 

Treasure: If the moss is cleared, a magic pickaxe "Gravebreaker," is found. It does additional damage to rock and earth, including creatures made of rock or earth, and can be used by anyone proficient in axes or other short-hafted weapons. If the mummer elves in Area 24 are shown this pick, they do not recognize the style of its crafting, and are horrified anyone would name anything Gravebreaker within the Tomb Lands.

26. The wetway is a rushing waterfall down a rough rock chute. Traveling along it is a Very Hard check. However, like Area 9 is has brass rings and pullies set along it. Unlike Area 9, they are currently rigged with sturdy silken ropes set with rings, clamps, and loops. This is a Shaft Rig, designed to travel along the flooded  water chutes of the Tomb lands, and is how Caelyndron and Celyndra got up from their dwelling down below Area 9, and how they got up from Area 14 9as they avoided the stairs). They can detach it from the bottom or top, show Pcs how to use it, and traveling that way is an Easy check.

27. The Upper Runoff is essentially the same at the Runoff (Area 12), except there's no major magic item to be found here.

28. The Pool of Offerings is one of the places the River Dōrophoreō enters into the Tomb Lands. A hard ancient history or lore check (or an easy check for anyone with death-related skills, such as priest of a death god, or an executioner) reveals this is the river of death goods, the supernatural route that anything offered to the departed takes to reach the souls of those it is meant for. Most such offerings become a clear, glittering fluid and flow directly to the souls they are meant for. But if that soul is beyond reach (such as some locked in Hell and other punishment realms), or the offering ritual was not performed correctly, or the soul does not want the offering (such as offerings given as bribes or apologies to souls uninterested in such), then the gifts can take physical forms from time to time. 

The River Dōrophoreō is one of the primary sources of goods into the Tomb Lands. The mummer elves in Area 24 can show PCs how to fish here in the Pool of Offerings, which can produce basic goods (at random, but focusing on things the fisher can actually use right now, like food if needed) at at rate equal to what unskilled labor could earn them. A character who increases their skill in fishing can instead produce items as quickly as a skilled working at the same level of mastery could earn such things.

The mummer elves in Area 24 can also tell PCs that the River Dōrophoreō flows into the Gomos Sea, much deeper in the Tomb lands, where the Free Towns of Floatsom and Jetsome can be located, along with the largest settlement within the Tomb Lands, Gravelight. While only minor items can be finished out of the river this high up, much more valuable items can be drawn out of the Gomos Sea by those with the skill to do so.