Dragons of Blackminster

ToA 05 - The Bird-man of AlkaTRAPS

At nightfall, as they lie resting, the entire Tomb re-sets. The Pit trap re-forms, the scything blades, the cobwebs and dust and all the pressure plates!
The blades scythe down.
Juma and Grey press themselves flat beneath them. Ariel is badly cut as he was meditating but escapes in beast form, leaping out over the pit as a giant toad.
Ront trapped in the newly-refreshed Pit struggles to climb out.

Outside, in a deep oubliette, a Kenku, prisoner of the goblins, finally manages to peck his way out.
The crow-man approaches the entrance and hears the others shouting. Eventually, with the crow-man’s help, they get Ront out and Juma and Grey slither out past the blades.

Then they extract the metal spikes from the pit and Ront uses them to block a blade, while Grey then jams another into the mechanism. Rince and repeat for the second blade.

Ariel manages to clamber up using spider form to the next trap, gets blasted by magical flames but realises the safe path is indicated by panels on a door at the next level — too high to be seen by anyone under about 7 feet tall.

They work out (by standing on each others’ shoulders) that the panel changes as they slowly cross and get to the far side. The door on the next level seems to need four hands (2 top and 2 bottom) so they do the on-the-shoulders thing again and the door opens. Perhaps this on-the-shoulders thing is important? Maybe it refers to the great statue of the monster on the shoulders of a man, and the story of how the man could not be harmed while he had the monster on his shoulders.

Any way, they get to the final chamber and locate the Mask of KooBAHzan (the Froghemoth, trickster god). There are a few more traps, but they get the hang of it and retrieve the mask and learn its magical properties.

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