Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen - The Knight's Tomb (Part II)

Spoilers follow for the adventure…

The skeletons certainly shocked the adventurers, but they quickly turned them back to inanimate bones. With the threat past and the evidence of necromatic energy present, Asterius found himself more morally flexible, and the adventures found some treasure amongst the dead.

Next, Gringle spied a hidden door, which led to a lower chamber dominated by a still pool of water. As the adventures moved into the chamber, the water formed into an elemental creature, angry at its long imprisonment. Though the angry elemental fought hard, the adventurers soon defeated it. 

The party then spent the next hour or two searching for secret doors because they had yet to encounter the mummies that the preparatory materials indicated was in the tomb.

Eventually they found secret door in the stairwell from the front entrance, and through it entered an inner crypt. Within they fought three sarcophagi. The adventurers attempted to open one and awoke three wights. Asterius’ armored form helped block most of the wights attacks, and the spellcasters blasted down the undead knights.

At last they opened the secret door to another inner crypt, and were confronted by the awakened mummy of the leader of the knights of the tomb. He demanded that they leave and explained that the dead could not rest here because of the treachery of the master of Daargard Keep to the West. The foul energy of this betrayal had kept these knights’ spirits from departing, and they had slowly gone mad from their time in the tomb. The party attacked the knight after discovering all this…

GM Reflections

While I like the map I used for this tomb, it illustrated one issue Justin Alexander has also called out—placing essential story or rewards behind a secret door halts story progression. I will heed the warning better next time. This dungeon is so small though that it feels a bit sad not to use the entire thing. Next time though I’ll put the required reward in a place not blocked by a secret door and then have greater rewards for the secret area that are nonessential to the story.