The Barrows Hunger - The Tomb of the Cursed, and Getting Chomped
The Cursed
The tomb of the Cursed is unassuming, apart from the recently-built door secured with a modern padlock. A freshly painted yellow sign hangs from it. It reads: “This tomb is not a place of honor. No highly esteemed monarch is commemorated here. Nothing valued has been interred here. The Curse is still present in your time, as it was in hers. This place is best left shunned.”
This tomb is unique in that it’s an actual mound of earth. The dying head has grown weak, and shrunk away from the entrance.
Filbert holds the key to the door. He will not lend it willingly.
A short passage downward leads to a roughly shaped earthen room. There is no decoration here, apart from a stone sarcophagus. It’s bisected lengthwise, along with the rest of the chamber, by a line of enormous teeth that emerge from grayish gums embedded in the floor.
Further investigation shows a space directly in front of the teeth packed down in the earth. This is where Filbert sits nightly, desperately trying to nurse the head back to health. He has offered magic, alchemical solutions, meat alive and dead. The head has accepted them all, and continued to waste away regardless.
The hydra will not respond to any interaction with its teeth. Any touch to its gums causes it to suddenly, reflexively open its maw a few feet, raining dirt down from above. The maw stays cracked for 1d4 minutes, then snaps shut again without warning.
Just inside the teeth, stuck in the gumline are a few leavings from previous meals.
3d20 gold pieces, each die of a different coinage.
A single pauldron of shining steel, engraved with a rampant horse. The wearer can serve as a steed for anyone of lesser weight, moving at their normal traveling speed with no penalty or fatigue while carrying them piggyback.
A scroll of Corrupt Food and Drink
- If the tomb is investigated through the broken side while the maw is open, or if the top slab is broken, half of a saliva-clay corpse lies within. It is obviously not a geniune corpse, and looks far too fresh to belong here anyway, resembling a mostly intact, well-scarred woman with short-cropped hair. If the missing half of the corpse is sculpted out of saliva-clay, it animates. The resulting Clay Golem is capable of speech, and has fully-formed memories of her life as the last queen of the non-existent kingdom of Lernaea.
So what happens if they do get swallowed? Here are some options:
They die, obviously.
They somehow, miraculously survive the plunge into the Hydra's main stomach. They are fished out of the acid by a frail looking group of adventurers of various ages. They've been surviving down here on a float made of whatever dirt and flora and saliva-clay tumbles down here when the heads do some remodeling above. They live off of rot grubs and small tubers grown in their own excrement. They have no idea how to escape.
They are cast through a portal to another place that a desperate magic user conjured as they fell, a century ago. This is the real reason why the hydra is dying off - it's being starved as everything is swallows is stolen from it right before it enters its stomach. The portal leads to…
The moon
Purgatory, leaving the characters questioning whether they survived the fall at all
Very, very high in the clear blue sky. A sky pirate dirigible floats nearby, and a pair of corsairs on the backs of clockwork dragonflies come swooping their way to determine whether the unfortunates are worth robbing or ransoming. Can they convince the pirates to rescue them while they free fall toward the earth below?
The dreaming mind of an ancient serpent, forever slumbering deep beneath the sea. She dreams of a utopian city as it was millennia ago, before it was swallowed by the waves. She was its protector-patron. Awakening the serpent is the only way to escape. This deposits the party back into the waking world, at the bottom of the deepest abyss in the ocean.
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