A battle ensues between you, the crawling claws which leap up and try to attach to faces, the battle axe and crossbow wielding tomb dwarves and Withers. You emerge victorious, but Thazma is badly wounded. "You, turtle", she snaps at Besh, "Heal me now. What are you waiting for". Besh heals her, but you decide that you all need a chance to rest. By your reckoning it is probably heading towards the evening so you move the corpses out and rest the night in the laboratory of the tomb dwarves. Thazma takes the the skull amulet that Withers was wearing and it suits her ensemble. In amongst the shelves you find a ghost lantern, it's inhabitant being the spirit of a moon elf. Her memory is very patchy, but she remembers coming into the tomb with the Company of the Yellow Banner, and has some vague memories of Lord Brixton. Her name is The Starfallen, although it takes some time for her to remember this. During your rest you attune to some of the items you have found such as the ring of protection and the flaming longsword. The next morning you decide to move onwards, continuing further through this area. You feel that being 'backstage' as it were may be an advantage for avoiding traps. You find a cluttered office. A skeletal songbird rasps at you from a filthy cage in one corner. Other furnishing include a wooden writing desk and a tall-backed chair. Anatomical drawings sketched in charcoal hang on the wall behind the desk. Looking through the drawers and shelves you find that this is obviously Withers' office. You find many items of interest. His moldy journals track the history of Omu and the Tomb of the Nine Gods, and detail the arrival of the atropal and the construction of the Soulmonger. His spellbook is found and claimed by Thazma. In studying it she finds a name on the inside back cover, "Khomara Blackfire". This is a name none of you have heard. A manual of clay golems lies open on his desk. The desk drawer contains a translucent, fist-sized gray stone that radiates an aura of enchantment. One particular entry in his journal is of great interest: From there you decide to descend a circular staircase. On the next level down a door is found, while the stairs descend further. You open the door into a dark and dusty room. A hulking figure wearing a bucket helm stands to the west, with one hand on an iron lever set into the wall. The south wall is sloped and has a large rectangular window five feet wide by seven feet high. The window looks into a hallway, through a rectangular hole in the hallway floor, and farther down into a well-lit room shaped like a cylinder tipped on its side. You quickly defeat the tomb guardian and look with more detail into the cylinder shaped room. You see patches of strange purple mould in the room. As you examine it from afar a small eye on an eyestalk emerges, looks around and then returns into the mould. A very narrow opening is off to the left. It is far too narrow for Besh or Grizz to enter, but Grizz reduces his size and b'Urp and Grizz go down the tunnel to examine. A golden skull rests on a pedestal in the middle of this small, dusty room. You also find a secret door up a short stairway. b'Urp decides to examine the golden skull. He touches it and it suddenly flies up into the air. "Hey, hey", it says, "what's with all the poking? You haven't even paid for dinner yet". The skull examines b'Urp. "You remind me of my ex-wife", it says in an annoyingly loud voice, "not so much the look, but more the smell". A coversation ensues in which the skull says a lot. But it is mostly bad jokes and innuendo. You do find that the skulls name is Yakka, and he decides that he will explore with b'Urp. At this point he takes a position just near b'Urp and does not move far from him again. Grizz and b'Urp head back to the others with the skull laughing and joking all the way. You all decide to go further down the stairs, but the sound of the skull makes sneaking impossible. "What would make you quiet", asks Trayzeal. The skull replies "if I eat enough gems then I get sleepy. That's the only time I stop talking". Trayzeal feeds a gem to the skull. "It'll take a lot more than that". So instead, you push the skull into a bag and wrap it in a bedroll. This muffles it a little. You go down the circular staircase another level. The staircase goes down further, but you find a secret door and decide to investigate. Trayzeal peeks through the door and sees a vaulted chamber featuring a ten-foot-deep sunken floor surrounded by ledges without railings. Alcoves along the ledges hold painted wooden statues of hornet-headed humanoid warriors, each wearing a grass skirt and clutching a spear. A gruesome throne lashed together of bone and strips of skin stands atop the west ledge. A fearsome horned skull surmounts the throne, and small skulls are piled around it. The seat of the throne appears to be made of stretched skin and has a metal scepter resting on it. Shuffling about the sunken portion of the room are three gaunt humanoid figures in dusty robes draped in cobwebs, their eyes and mouths stitched shut. Armed with brushes and clay pots of pigment, they paint the walls and pillars with grim, poorly rendered illustrations. You note a skeleton with a hexagonal carving in it's skull that wanders around the chamber. It eventually wanders out of sight and you hear a grinding sound (as of a large stone door opening) followed by another grinding and a clunk. It soon becomes obvious that the zombies are oblivious to any outside influences so you all enter the chamber. The skeleton has gone. You look at what they are painting and noticing that they are painting images of you in various scenes of danger in the tomb. They are painting over older scenes, but all that now remains is an image of a human male choking on poisonous gas Trayzeal encourages Javlin to sit on the throne and after some gentle goading Javlin complies. Immediately a wild look enters his eyes and his muscles suddenly bulge. He leaps over down to the sunken floor and destroys one of the zombies. He then looks around for another target - any other target. As he is looking a tyrannosaurus zombie bursts up from a cavity beneath the floor and attacks, leaving a 20-foot diameter hole and shattered floor tiles behind. You all leap into action. b'Urp leaps onto the head of the beast, rips some of it's skull open and starts pulling brain matter out. Various spells and arrows fly, but the beast is felled when Javlin runs up the stairs and leaps into the open mouth of the brute, slashing and stabbing, and bursts out through the back of it's skull. He then slides down the back of the beast as it falls and lands in the middle of the chamber, looking for another target. Suddenly he comes back to himself. A beserk fury had come over him in which anything was a target, but he has managed to pull himself together. His muscles still bulge though, and there is an underlying rage that could come out at any time. You find various secret rooms in the chamber, along with a massive stone door with no apparent means of opening it. You decide to explore one of the secret doors. It leads to another chamber. The walls of this room are adorned with tile mosaics of a jungle city intermingled with frescoes of flowering plants, birds, insects, and humans wearing gold skirts and carrying spears and ornate jugs. The ceiling is painted to look like a clear blue sky. A small bejeweled cockroach rests atop a sarcophagus of black basalt in the middle of the room. A two-foot-diameter orb hanging from a chain above the sarcophagus is made of hammered gold to resemble a smiling sun.
