Been wanting to play this game for a good long while, and we finally managed it. Also it was my son Cael's first time playing a GMless dirty hippie indie game, so that was cool.
Our tomb is a great cruciform building, with the sarcophagus of Lord Rais the Valiant at the cross point. The "top" of the cross is to the east. At the end of the crossbar to the north, a jade tree sits in front of a disused altar. On the south end, a mosaic depicting a great tree with a blue bird in its branches. At the far eastern end, above the sarcophagus, a fresco of a tree with a golden monkey in its branches.
Along the southern wall of the long end of the cross are seven tombs, each with depictions of its inhabitant. The names are visible for many of them: Aldina. Fria. Mabish. Baethe.
Four skeletons guard the tomb. One is headless, and sits on the altar, holding a rusty mace. One wears a silver torc and carries a sword, and stands at the head of the sarcophagus. One wears a tattered cloak and carries a broadsword, and lies in front of the tomb of Fria. The last is bent and stooped like no human should be, and clings to the ceiling, a knife strapped to its fleshless leg.
And the four of them wait, until one night they are called to arise.
A tomb robber enters, an amateur, dressed in rags, clumsy, afraid. He walks in as far as Fria's tomb, and the skeleton wearing the cloak steps forward. He panics, and runs further into the tomb, only to have the crawler skeleton land on him from above. Screaming, he flings the creature off in a burst of adrenaline, and runs blindly to the north.
The headless skeleton stands, and swings his mace, striking the man hard enough to break the weapon. The tomb robber collapses dead to the floor. The skeleton with the silver torc barely stirs.
The cloaked skeleton remembers that she loved Fria, the woman interred in the tomb along the wall. The torc skeleton remembers that Alaric, also interred there, was her brother - perhaps she remembers this as the cloaked skeleton stirs amongst those seven tombs. The headless skeleton remembers that he was called the Great Priest amongst his people, while the crawler remembers that he spent his life bent and hunched because of an injury he sustained as a child (his back was broken when he was thrown from a horse). But these memories do not lead to more, as the skeletons return to their posts and wait.
A week passes.
Huge rats invade the tomb, drawn by the smell of rotting flesh. The skitter in from holes far too small for people to notice, but the skeletons feel them, and arise. The crawler chases the rodents and bites their heads from their bodies, and remembers that when he lived others called him Ratcatcher, for exactly this reason. The headless and cloaked skeletons see this rat-slaughter and both have their own flashes of memory. The cloaked remembers war, living in the filthy fields of battle, surrounded by uncountable rats. The headless, though, sees the rats' heads tumbling from the crawler's empty rib cage and remembers that a priest of a rival religion took his head.
The torc skeleton wakes with a chime. She raises her sword and releases a blast of magic. It suffuses the room and burns away the rats, and the skeletons return to their posts. She remembers that in life, she was called the Shining.
The skeletons have no time to rest, however, before a new group of intruders arrive. This time it is a family - a mother, a teenage son, and a baby. They enter the tomb, drawn by the light that the Shining created, but they get no further than Fria's tomb before the cloaked skeleton rises and blocks their path. The Great Priest charges from the back of the tomb, brandishing the sharp handle of his broken mace, and the Ratcatcher skitters along the ceiling, ready to kill the intruders, but the Shining stops them. These people are not a threat, and they will not stay. They turn and leave, the mother screaming to her son, "Pelvet, run! Run, Pelvet!"
Pelvet. The Ratcatcher remembers. That was his name, but no one but his mother used it. The cloaked skeleton, too, remembers her name: Ellyn. The Shining remembers that she, too, protects something she loved - she was the lover of Rais the Valiant, now interred here in the sarcophagus. The Great Priest remembers something far darker. Beneath the sarcophagus is a pit, in which members of his religion once sacrificed people to the flames.
A year passes.
The door to the tomb was never closed, and now two tomb robbers enter. They are not clumsy amateurs like the last hapless sod who came here looking for treasure. These are professionals. One is a thief, and carries tools to pick locks, break barriers, and steal gold and jewels. The other is a cleric, carrying the trappings of the new religion, the Cross religion, the one that drove the Great Priest to death. The skeletons arise, but the cleric casts them back. The Shining, awakening with the gentle chime, summons up her light, but all it does is make the tomb robbers look at for a second.
But a second is all Pelvet the Ratcatcher needs. He works at the rocks in the ceiling and drops them onto the cleric, crushing his body beneath them. The Great Priest rushes at the thief, knocks him, and stabs him to death with the handle of his mace. This is a descendant of the priest that took his head, he realizes. The cleric is immobilized, and can do nothing but scream as the skeletons return to their posts.
Pelvet the Ratcatcher realizes that the rocks he dropped have damaged the sarcophagus, and revealed the firepit beneath. He remembers that his mother died there when he was young, and burns with hate for that pit.
Ellyn realizes that she cannot approach the sarcophagus - the magic that animates her does not let her get close. Pelvet the Ratcatcher and the Great Priest realizes this magic also blocks them. Only the Shining stands near it, and she remembers that a mob came for Lord Rais' remains and she stood strong to guard it - and that was her end.
A century passes. The colors in the mosaic and the fresco faded, going grey. Iron rusts, gold and silver, including the Shining's torc, lose their luster.
A group of treasure hunters, following a map once drawn by the child of Rais and the Shining, enter the tomb. They are here following rumors of their family's wealth or history, perhaps. It doesn't matter. The skeletons arise.
Pelvet the Ratcatcher drops on one, the spitting image of Rais himself, and stabs him in the chest. The Great Priest rushes from the shadows and tackles another, stabbing him in the neck until his head comes away. Ellyn - she was called the Strongarm in life, she now recalls - runs another through.
The Shining leaves her post and grabs Pelvet the Ratcatcher, flinging him off her descendant. The man flees, wounded but alive, and the skeletons return to their stations...but the Shining cannot. Now that she has left the sarcophagus, the magic affects her as well, and she cannot approach. The torc tumbles from her head and lands among the bodies of the ill-fated adventurers. Pelvet the Ratcatcher reflects that while his undead state is horrific, at least it frees him from regret, fear, and pain.
An epoch, untold centuries long, passes. The ceiling above the sarcophagus crumbles further, smashing it open. The body of Lord Rais tumbles out, along with the gold torc that he wore, matching the Shining's. Somewhere in the eons, another tomb-robber sneaks in and steals both torcs, but the Shining cannot muster the energy to stop him. The magic animating her is fading. The others do not care. Spiders weave webs over the tomb, obscuring the ceiling, the mosaic, the fresco, the alter, the tree.
Eventually, more people arrive. They carry weapons that spit fire and lead, lights that don't burn hot, and they are led by a man who has heard of the jade tree. As they step over the body of Thenar the Shining, the sword glimmers and a tiny, nearly inaudible chime rings. She no longer has the energy to rise.
The others do, however. Ellyn the Strongarm stands in defense of Fria's tomb. She was away on campaign when Fria died, and will not abandon her again, for all the good it does. The man scatter her bones, crack open Fria's tomb and all the others, and loot them of anything valuable.
The Great Priest stands in defense of his sacred firepit, killing half a dozen of the intruders and throwing their bodies into the dark. He remembers that he had no name. He was a baby left alone, and when he was grown he formed his own brutal faith and cast his parents into the fire. But the men are too many now, and too well-disciplined. They fight past him and the instant one steps close to the firepit, the Great Priest crumbles to dust.
Pelvet the Ratcatcher, on the ceiling, fights through the webs, working to join the battle. He remembers again that his mother died in the firepit, the only person Pelvet ever loved. He might intend to prevent the Great Priest from casting more people into that pit, or he might still intend to kill the intruders as his magic bids him. But the webs are so thick, and built up so much, that he only manages to get through as the magic fades. He, too, falls to dust, and his dagger tumbles from above and sticks into the ground, unnoticed.
The men loot the tomb, and leave, the bodies of guardian and thief alike left forever in the now-gutted tomb.
