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S05E17 - Dungeon Crawl Classics - The Veiled Vaults of the Onyx Queen - Episode Two
Having awoken deep within the mausoleum of the Onyx Queen's opulent palace, can our survivors unravel the so-called merciful monarch’s horrible dark secret?
Spoiler alert: our final episode of 2024 is just under 30 minutes long.
Apologies in advance for some minor audio issues during this episode.
- Duration:
- 30m
- Broadcast on:
- 01 Jan 2025
- Audio Format:
- other
A.C.C. Onyx queen. Now we're sharing the same dream. There's the blurb. I should probably give you a quick refresher. You all got invited to the Merciful Queen Yaras' Onyx Jubilee and you were all chosen due to your fine talents in whatever talents you were supposed to have. And then you all conked out and woke up with no memory of how you got there, basically entombed with several others among piles of dead bodies in this elaborate mausoleum, which was populated with these purple robed silver skeleton mask wearing cultists who you overpowered and stole all of their stuff. And when you did overpower them and you took their masks off, you noticed that they were sort of these half human, half canine mutated hybrid things rather than just people. And so you've been moving around this mausoleum exploring. And most of you are disguised as these cultists, the rest of you posing, the rest of you posing as prisoners. You ran into another bunch of these cultists and also killed them and took their stuff. You have found lots of naked corpses being ferried by these cultists and you did not know where. Oh, you went to the front doors in the lower halls where some statues began crying and killed some of you and the rest of you fled. Then you were exploring the upper halls where you were attacked by a giant alligator hippopotamus beast thing, which you disposed of. So you are here in these upper halls and there is a massive rotunda. Massive rotunda looms before you. Its white stone walls are marred in chaotic symbols and disturbing hieroglyphs that seem to shimmer with a malignant evil. A solid silver door similarly blighted with foul iconography stands barred with a heavy red metal lock and chain. Then you did go into this chamber here, which is here is the vault of the fallen prince. And it had walls decorated with life-size paintings of a serf-sate scholar and soldier and an ornate marble sarcophagus. And you solved the riddle there and you were given the elves talon, which was a elheaded lockpick rot of pure gold. A sacred magical item besowed to the followers of the hidden lord god of secrets. It allows anyone who uses it the ability to pick locks as a first level thief. In the hands of an experienced thief, the magical lockpick allows the user to perform the pick lock skill as if they were one level higher. Nice. And then you also found in there a slip of parchment, which basically said, well what did it say? He said, "Verily I fear that my worst things are true. The queen mother, my beloved aunt, is not what she claims to be. Often I have seen her skulking into the royal burial place or the royal burial palace by night," which is where you are. "A company by strange figures bearing oblong boxes whose contents I should have to imagine. But worst of all, she does not age. What nameless evil has granted her such powers and have what cost. I know I am not long for this world. Already she gazes upon me with vile contempt. For surely she has realized I alone know her secret. I hope and pride pray to the hidden lord god of secrets that this letter finds the hands of someone who may have ench me, for I grow too sickly and weak to save my own soul so that the living may remember Prince Ameral." What a whiner. So, yeah, no one should kill him. I want to kill him. So then, oh bugger, so then you explored a bit further and then you checked out these alcoves here in the northern section of the upper floors and you found a thick wooden platform resting in an open alcove along the stone wall. Peering in, you can see a vertical stone shaft along with the simple rope and pulley mechanism used to operate it. And one of you, I believe it was one of Rob's characters, was examining these dumb wares and you could detect a strong odor of decay wafting upwards and you could also hear a foul chanting coming from somewhere far below and we left it right there. So, we've got this magic lock pick, we could have a go at trying to get into the central rotunda or we could keep examining the outer periphery rooms up here. I don't think we need to charge down to the chanting yet but what do you think Cara? Clear the level. Let's go around the corner and see what we can see to run into. So, there's a door I see to the north between those two alcoves. Oh, that's right. Was that one that had foiled us as yet or have we just not tried at it? Just don't think you tried it. Okay. Well, we're standing right there. All right. I just feel so good to ping. All right. I know, I could just, I could just ping the map like do we even need a game? We do. All right. So, I don't know why you, I don't know why you need tokens. Guys, I think pinging is much more rewarding. Aralu. Oh, so now who was it Damon or Jenny playing with us last time? Jenny was Jenny. So, we don't have her characters. I've got pretty good agility. So, I might be able to try at least a decent lock pick against some of these things. Okay. So, yeah, let's just check out that door then. Let's just see if this might not even be locked. So, Aralu will try opening it up. The door opens easily. The ponderous door opens to an amazing site. A massive oak tree grows from the center of this vault. Its leafy branches are heavy with acorns and stretch to the ceiling before curving down along the walls in a defiant play of life within such a daisy place. Dude, free acorns. Wow, that's these up and sell them to villagers. I'm going to try and search the room and see if there's anything else or try and kind of look up in the tree a little bit with some of my guys to just see if there's anything up in there. Give me a look check. Sure. 18. Through the mighty oak's heavy branches, you catch sight of bright colored frescoes upon the wall. Depicting a floral queen crowning garland. She sits in a lush garden surrounded by gentle creatures of the forest. Seems like a really happy room for such a weird place. Hey, Aralu is an elven forester. Can he try? He's going to try, is it climbable here? Can he climb up the tree and get a closer look at the fresco? See if there's anything to see up there up close. Absolutely, and if he could also give me an intelligence roll. Okay, he's mediocre on intelligence. Here it comes. D20 plus nothing. But a 16. We're on fire until our first count. Excellent. So, yeah, he knows that interred within this vault is the gentle nature loving queen suma. Known for her diplomacy and goodwill, queen suma was a passionate nature lover who much preferred spending time in the forest rather than the throne room. Despite her dying wish to be buried in the palace gardens, she was interred here instead as royal custom dictated. So, hmm, kind of seems like she's got to help us or this has got to be something beneficial for us. We can find anything else on the walls. Yeah, let's examine frescoes more close like. The frescoes just depict the queen. She's crowned in garland. She's in a lush garden surrounded by gentle creatures of the forest. And she appears to be holding acorns in her hand that she's giving to them. That's okay. I'll take some acorns and put them in a bag or just put them back at. All right. Does it seem like anything again to my oven forest or anything unique or odd about the acorns? Other than the fact that they look unusually healthy considering that you are inside on the ground here. And there is no natural light. Yeah. And the base of the tree are the remains of a shattered stone sarcophagus. Oh, so that was okay. I was going to ask where she was buried here because there must be something. Yeah, the tree, this huge thriving oak just seems to have grown out of this sarcophagus. Maybe there's another royal buried up here too. It was the prince and the queen. Yeah. There's no like random magic items just sort of like loose in the sarcophagus like there was for the prince. Gimme a look check. Okay, who's the lucky? Oh yeah, Raul is the one looking and he's my luckiest. So d20 plus no there's a 13. Hey man, just to find a silver funeral plaque bearing the name queen suma. Yeah. And that's worth about 30 gold pieces. Other than that, you can just, you find some what appear to be arm bones, maybe the bones of a lower arm forearm and a hand. Hmm. Throw those in the pot heated up for a while. We got a stew. Nice. Are the acorns larger than normal? Oh, they just look very, very healthy. Could they be used as a sling bullet? Oh, probably. Okay. Yeah. One of my guys is gonna like load up so that he's got plays. Basically, just taking, finding anything to truck in his sling. He was chucking his coins before. Now he's got acorns. So these could actually be somehow magically acorns or we could be really fixating on what are just some like really good acorns. Maybe, but it's, let's let's try them with flour and bake with them and see if it's special at all. Well, we need a lot of them. So we'll just hoard some. Yeah, we'll gather some acorns. All right. Let's, let's move on. Yes. Um, so let's see, just kind of appear around the corner. See if anybody's pooping down that way. Bumbo, bumbo in the boys are going to kind of peek down around the corner and just one all four of the hands are just going to like, boop, boop, boop, pop out around and see what they can see. Yeah, you can see that midway down. You can see another door here to the right and another door to the left. Okay. So we'll go with the one on the left on the exterior and see if this theme continues where it's other royal people. Okay, agreed. Again, the door opens readily. You enter the vault of a time forgotten king. Its walls are covered in murals depicting bloody conquest. Each scene shows the same armor-clad warrior king at the fore, leading his troops into battle with a massive sword held high. In the center of the vault rests an iron sarcophagus that is as cold and grim as a weapon of war. Hmm. I wonder if the big sword is in the sarcophagus. Is there any writing on the sarcophagus? Um, my guys are going to get close and go up and examine it if they can. The heavy sarcophagus is wrought of black iron and it dominates the center of the vault. Its lid is carved with the image of an armor-clad warrior, clutching a massive sword to his breast. A large silver funeral plaque reads "King Raelgar" and marks his death more than 1,000 years ago. Yeah. Oh. Hmm. Do you need an obvious way to open the sarcophagus? It's just sitting on top. It appears to just be resting on top. Okay. Um, I got a couple of guys with strength 16 and 17. Could they work in conjunction? I got a 15. I got a 15 and 11 I get thrown in there too. Okay, yeah. If we get four one on each corner. Yeah. Is that everybody? Not. I mean, it leaves a couple of people. No, I've got, uh, yeah. I've got two other guys standing back. Yeah. You're able to move it somewhat, but it's still too heavy for you. All right. Can we slide in enough to look inside? I think it's going to take some more help. Seems like he's trying to line us up to all get killed at once. Fair enough, okay. Yeah. Me too. Well, my crew is in. Okay. Bumble jenny's dudes help too. In fact, they're standing in front. All right. Yeah. With your combined strength, the lid begins to budge and shift and then slides to the left and falls, crashing to the floor with a resounding clang. Yay. Rising from the sarcophagus is black embrace like a nightmare is a near seven foot tall skeleton clad in black chainmail. It rears up with the sickening creek of grave rotted bones, lifting a massive black bladed sword on high roll for initiative. Dude, we just wanted to store it. We're not like trying to hurt anybody here. Okay. Initiative. Roll your highest. Yeah. So that's a plus zero. I got 14. I also got a 14. All right. I've got, well, what do you get? I got a 13. Yes. I got a 15 for my turn. You want it? Yeah, you can go first. You can go first. No, you can go first. All right. Go for it. I wouldn't even need to do anything. You're just going to finish this guy. I hope so. You got a good feeling. We're just going to, we're just going to try and stop slaying for the fences here. Great. So yeah, I'm going to start slinging some bullets at this thing just to try and track one. One of my guys are going to try and track one way and try and catch his attention. So that's a nope. I rolled a six. That's all. That's all it's going to be for that one. But he's going to move that way. And then great. I'm going to go with a roll cutting tin with his hand axe. He's going to go in and try and attack this. No, it's a four. I ain't going to do it. And Joe Barb is going to come and try and then give him a nice clean close. Hey, 18. Now 17. 17 hits. So that's going to be three hit points of damage. All right. And then Bumbo is going to take a shot with his close. Sorry, what did you attack with for those three hit points? It was a razor used as a dagger. So it would have been an edged weapon. Okay, that's going to be that's just going to be one hit point of damage. Sure. Sure. Okay, dudes, that's all my dudes. Just one hit point. Okay. My litter was stocked with a vial of holy water from the beginning. I tried and also they're carrying scissors as a dagger. So that's going to not too much damage. Can I try splashing holy water on this thing and see if it doesn't be good? Just going to do a shot of it and then spit it out at him. Now I'll just try to smash it on him. I mean, I wouldn't go two knots because my agility sucks. So I assume it's going to be D 20 plus agility to hit. It's a hand plate by a holy water and it's like 24 damage to any undead creature as well as the seven demons and devils. Thank you very much. I have to roll. Do I just do the damage? Do I have to roll the hit? I'm just trying to splash them basically. No, it doesn't say anything like that. I guess it all depends on whether you use it as well. I guess you have to break it somehow or you're going to try and what essentially get up on it. I would imagine you just splashing it from a bottle. And I would think if you were like, you know, going like, you know, Max Von Seidow in the Exorcist and just splashing that you would have a good chance of hitting it. So I will allow it. And you said a D4, Garrett? Right. Correct. Twink. Two holy water points. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Isn't that finished him off? Luma burning steam rises from it and the skeleton hisses in apparent pain. But no, he has not finished enough. All right. God, I've got the worst weapons here for this. We did. We picked up some stuff before. I thought we picked up a pitchfork and a spear. That's still pointy. Well, I mean, you can try it. It's a it's a bigger die. Yeah. Oh, I rather you got that spear. He's going to go for it. It's going to be half damage. If I hit, which is a man. If damage is damage, man. Yeah. 11. 11 is not quite there. Oh, wow. He hasn't got any luck yet. You can burn some luck. Do I know how much I'd have to burn? How much are you thinking? Two. Two is not going to do it. Okay, that's much luck to burn. Lock who's going to attack? Ooh, strength plus two, but it's a dagger. So 20 plus two. That's three. Yeah, he's not going to burn luck either. Hey, that is all of my dudes. Oh, please. Bum, please. Okay. Roll the wind, didn't you? Let's have a one. The skeleton turns its attention to carrots. Ooh, and he did roll a one. How many? How many do you many? Oh, I see that was the D2 to see who he had. Yeah, I've got four characters. Okay, so just do them one to four, whichever way you want them. And it's going to go. It's going to attack character number one. One, it's a fumble. Dream off. So the skeleton raises the sword in both hands above its head and swings. Okay, now he's rolled twice. 10 and 11. That will hit all of my characters. It's the 10. So the 10 is hitting. Is it is it Marie? Heidi. Yep. And let me see. Okay, two columns going to start typing the damage rule. Oh, you better. I got four hit points, baby. So if you actually kill the cave bear back in the day, do you think you'd be able to get enough like strong hay and other stuff dried out? You have to shove into it and make like a pretty cool couch out of it? Like using the whole thing. Yeah, the whole hide. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I would see why not you'd want to get a tan first, of course. Of course. Yeah, you know, but I mean, if you really put in the work, you'd have enough materials to make a pretty cool couch. Oh, yeah. Even use some of the bones and stuff like that, give a little structure. Yeah. I still feel like if you're in a time where you have to personally kill cave bears, you're probably going to go more with like clothing and belts and tool straps and things like that before you go for the couch. The couch is kind of like, oh, no, this is like the last chief before, like they all got wiped out by a clan of cave bears because they like killed like three to make these couches. I think then you'd be using the hide to make a cave bear disguise and like have two people on each other's shoulders trying to like, yeah, fool the actual cave bears. Go that way. We're cave bears. Hey fellow, greetings fellow cave bear. I mean, oh man, I want to work out pretty good. Yeah. Let's replace all your furniture with just a bear. Hey bear, maybe some elk, you know, moose if you're lucky. Try to get moose down here back in the day. Oh, I think so. You never know. He rolled a five. Dude's dead. Oh, here I am. Yeah. Five. Dead. Wow. Okay. Yeah. Okay. You can hear me now again. Fine. Sorry, we're just having bad internet connections here. Has it only got one attack? No wish. It says each time king, each time King Rellgar slays an enemy with his blade, he automatically receives another attack against the creature in meta-arrange. And so he's going to lash out again at one of Rob's. How many characters do you have Rob? Three for now. You have three, so it is going to be character number two. Okay. Lock move. Okay. Well, lock move. The elven sage. Once again, once again, he slashes with his sword for 17. I'm a team. Yeah. That'll be hit. Yeah. Oh. Shave him. Shave him. Two points of damage. He had one hit point. Excellent. Okay. So he is he is cleft in twain. And yeah, the skeleton swings again. And this time turns towards oh, whoever you've got left, you've got two characters left. It's going to be character number one. A Ralu. No, not a Ralu. A Ralu. And he the skeleton attacks with a 19. It's a 22 and inflicts four hit points of damage for Ralu's down. Whose idea was it to open this thing? Yeah, I don't know. Ralu is down. And then it, you've only got one character level zero. Okay. So it swings around again. That's um, Garrett's characters. Going for character number three. Got it. Earl Cuddington. Earl Cuddington. Got the use of weapons. Again. For oh my god. It's in that 20. Oh, fuck. That's 20. I'm not even going to bother to see what the to see what the bonus will be. I mean, have four hit points. What's six? What's the point of having crit tables if we don't use them? I have to march. I have to march back downstairs for like three. That's okay. He's more than dead. Okay. Um, so you've got two characters left. That is correct. That is correct. He's saying, yeah, this skeleton and his sword are just bathed in blood and gore at this point. And it just keeps, it just keeps swinging. And it's going for your last two remaining characters, Garrett. Or do you only have one? I have two left. Okay. So it's going for character number two. Yo, Barbara. Oh, no, not yo, Barbara. Okay. And it's going to be a close shave. It's going to swing for an 11. That's as I see. Damn it. An 11 hits. Oh, my. That is going to be nine points of damage. You got it. You got it. Okay. Then we are back to your both down to one character piece. Hold on. Who's it going to be? Rob. That's my Lita. A halfling haberdasher. You're halfling haberdasher. Well, you got a halfling left too. For a 20 for a 20 not for long unless you roll the one. Nope. No. Well, I got a chance. Okay. Good point. I got a chance. Who's the last one? Who's the last one? Bumbo stink foot. Bumbo stink foot for a 12. All right, that hits. And for. You got four. Oh, he's got four. Okay. It's your. It's your turn. Fuck. Fuck. All right, man. We're all pulling for you from beyond the grave. Yeah. No. Bumbo's on the way out. He's just going to try and cut bait and run. What? Well, he has no strength. He has a club. That's full damage. Okay. Gonna have to take an attack of opportunity here. Shit. You might know. Okay. He wouldn't. I would know that. All right. No, I'm going to hit him. Gonna hit him with a club. No, I'm not. That's a three. That's a three. Oh, no. That is, that is not going to do it. All right. This thing, these thing raises its sword again for 12. Damn it. Yep. That's for, for a full 10 hit points of damage. Oh, yeah. He's done. He's done. Done. Wow. Council point out that we did way better in Tomb of Horrors than we just did. Though we did have some extra gear in Tomb of Horrors. You don't fight that much in Tomb of Horrors. And we were way more cautious too, I think. Yeah, we were supercharged. It's such, such a shame you. It's such a shame you lost out here. And it's such an evil ability for level zero characters to like, attack again every time you kill somebody. But the thing is, the other group I played with beat him. Wow. They actually beat them. And then one of their characters had that sword. Yeah, that would have been great to have the sword. Oh, it's really good to have the sword, except that when it runs out of enemies, if it's still killing it, you randomly start attacking your allies. Oh shit. And it will just keep going until, until it doesn't kill somebody. Wow. Oh, should I do this sword? Okay. Oh, I thought you'd do better than that. Oh, well. That was, that was, that was a short game. It's only a 20. Yeah, I actually think this is our first total party. Total party, yeah. I think we have two more horrors. We have a lone survivor. Yes, it did. Yes, it did. He had a cotton run. Oh, wow. That's good. Oh, man. Yeah, been a while. It's, but I mean that normally have funnels go for me. It's like, have I just died? Yeah. So I will say, I'm starting to get the idea that the onyx queen isn't like a good person. Probably not. Probably not. [Music]
Having awoken deep within the mausoleum of the Onyx Queen's opulent palace, can our survivors unravel the so-called merciful monarch’s horrible dark secret?
Spoiler alert: our final episode of 2024 is just under 30 minutes long.
Apologies in advance for some minor audio issues during this episode.