March 21, 2026
The transcript for this session (March 21) picks up mid-battle, already inside the Sepulchre of the Servant with Nebta-Khufre on his platform. I have enough context from the transcript and module knowledge to write the session before the two already told — this is the entry into that final fight, where the party first encounters the setup. Here is the tale:
As told by a wandering bard at the Inn of the Desert Winds, Tephu, to a table that has stopped pretending to eat their supper
You want to know how they got there.
You have heard about the obsidian floor, about the ball lightning, about the bat and the grapple and the dying wizard throwing daggers with the desperate sincerity of a man who has forgotten he is supposed to be frightening. You have heard about Lishka going down and Smashy Smashy following her. But every battle has a door you walk through before everything goes wrong, and this tale begins at that door.
The door to the Sepulchre of the Servant.
Wati was still sick when they found it.
The undead uprising had been going on for days by then — the Ka Pulse radiating from somewhere deep in the necropolis, raising the dead in their hundreds, sending them shambling toward the living quarter with the patient inevitability of a tide. Sebti the Crocodile and Ptemenib had been directing what defenses the city could muster. The party had been fighting their way through the dead city block by block, clue by clue, following the trail of Nebta-Khufre — the necromancer who had stolen the Mask of the Forgotten Pharaoh from the Sanctum of the Erudite Eye and used it to tear a hole in the boundary between the living and the dead.
They found the Sepulchre of the Servant not because it was well marked or obvious, but because they had been doing the work of investigators for days: questioning survivors, reading ancient inscriptions, following the logic of a man who needed a place to work his terrible magic in peace. The sepulchre was that place. Old. Deep. Tucked beneath a building whose name meant nothing to anyone alive.
Nebta-Khufre was inside. They knew that before they opened the door. What they did not know was what he had done to it.
He had been ready for them.
This is the thing that Iverson would say afterward, sitting in the temple of Thoth in Tephu with a cup of something warm in his hands and the look of a man reviewing decisions: he was ready for us. Not surprised. Not interrupted in the middle of his work. He had known, or guessed, or simply been the kind of necromancer who assumes that eventually someone capable will come looking, and had prepared accordingly.
The room itself was a sanctum built for ritual, with a raised stone pyramid at its center — ten feet high, flat-topped, the kind of thing that exists in ancient buildings and immediately makes everyone who enters think that is where the villain is going to stand. And Nebta-Khufre was indeed standing on top of it, twenty feet above the floor, wearing the Mask of the Forgotten Pharaoh and surrounded by the particular aura of a man who has been waiting.
Around the room’s upper walkway — a fifty-foot ledge running the perimeter, accessible by steep stairs on each side — two of his mummies were already positioned. Two more were on the floor. The ball lightning had not been deployed yet; that would come later, once the party was committed and could not easily withdraw. He had haste on himself. He had temporary hit points layered like armor. He had a wand of Enervation ready in one hand and several very specific spells prepared for very specific targets.
He had, in short, done his homework.
Iverson cast Haste before they crossed the threshold. This was the right call, possibly the call that kept everyone alive, and it bears saying so plainly because the things that save you in a fight are rarely the dramatic ones — they are the sensible ones, made before the blood starts flowing. Iverson looked at what was ahead of them, calculated, and gave everyone in the party an extra action per round for the next several minutes. Then he stepped in.
Blade stepped in behind him, which is what Blade does, because Blade is the kind of person for whom step in is a complete tactical philosophy.
Rochelle Martham took position in the doorway with her bow, which turned out to be a more defensible location than she knew, since the ball lightning would later develop a strong preference for people standing in the open wearing metal armor, and a doorframe offered at least the psychological comfort of a wall nearby even if it did not technically stop crackling electricity.
Shavrak Asha came in with Striaka Fandar beside him, the Eidolon moving with that particular fluid wrongness that Eidolons have, all strength and summoned purpose. Lishka entered with Smashy Smashy at her side, the stegosaurus moving through the ancient doorway with the quiet dignity of an animal that has learned to navigate spaces built for creatures half its size.
Xander Zeltz came in knowing things were about to go badly and hoping his fireball would be the first meaningful event of the evening.
It was not.
Nebta-Khufre acted before half the party had found their footing.
He spoke a command in ancient Osiriani — the language of pharaohs and tomb inscriptions and things that were old when Wati was young — and the mummies moved. All four of them at once, stepping off their positions with the coordinated purpose of soldiers who have been waiting for exactly this order. Mummy 1 and Mummy 4 came from the upper walkway. Mummy 2 and Mummy 3 were already at ground level, moving to intercept.
Mummies, it should be said, are not fast. They do not need to be fast. A mummy’s power is not in its speed but in what it carries: the strength of something that does not tire, does not feel pain, does not negotiate, and brings with every strike the possibility of Mummy Rot — a curse and disease together, a thing that eats constitution and charisma over days, that requires both Remove Curse and Remove Disease to clear, that turns the strongest fighter gaunt and grey if left untended. The mummies moved toward the party with the calm certainty of a natural disaster that has decided to become personal.
Xander Zeltz threw his fireball. The explosion bloomed at the base of the pyramid in a sphere of fire that caught two mummies in its radius — mummies who were, usefully, vulnerable to fire, who took half again the normal damage, who staggered visibly even through the flames. It was a good fireball. It reduced several of the mummies’ hit point totals by meaningful amounts. It was not enough to kill any of them.
Blade understood this and adjusted accordingly, which is to say he charged the nearest mummy with Power Attack active and hit it so hard that the resulting number could be used to illustrate a point about the upper limits of two-handed weapon damage at this level.
Nebta-Khufre pointed his wand at Shavrak Asha.
The Enervation hit. Two negative levels. Shavrak Asha felt the life drain out of him in a way that is difficult to describe to someone who has not experienced it — not pain exactly, but a sudden wrongness, as if someone had reached inside him and turned down the volume on everything he was. He could still function. He could still act. But the options available to him had contracted, and the power behind them had diminished.
Striaka Fandar fought on. Eidolons do not take negative levels on behalf of their summoners. This was cold comfort but comfort nonetheless.
The mummies reached the party.
Mummy 2 swung at Iverson. Iverson was, as it happened, immune to paralysis through his Liberation domain, a fact he had mentioned to the party at some point and which was now proving to be one of the most quietly important abilities anyone in the room possessed. He was hit. He was hurt. He was not paralyzed, and he kept casting, and that matters because without Iverson casting there are no heals and no Spiritual Weapon and no Prayer and no party.
Mummy 3 reached Blade and hit him, and Blade had to save against the mummy’s paralyzing touch, and Blade made it, and then hit the mummy back because Blade regards a saving throw as permission to continue fighting rather than as a cause for reflection.
Mummy 4 came down the stairs from the walkway toward the cluster of party members who were trying to manage the room’s geometry, and Smashy Smashy moved to intercept, because Smashy Smashy had opinions about things that came toward Lishka, and those opinions were expressed entirely in bludgeoning damage.
Rochelle Martham put arrows into Nebta-Khufre from the doorway. She hit. She hit again. The temporary hit points absorbed it. She was hasted and got an extra attack. That one also hit. The temporary hit points continued absorbing. It was like shooting at a man who is standing in front of someone else’s wall and watching the arrows bury themselves in the wall. She kept shooting because what else do you do, and every arrow that hit was one more step toward the point where the wall ran out.
Iverson cast Spiritual Weapon and sent it toward Mummy 2, the floating force construct swinging at the mummy with the tireless dedication of divine will given shape. He moved the weapon with his move action each round, steering it through the battlefield to wherever it was needed, a scalpel of sanctified force that ignored armor and cared nothing for positioning.
Lishka summoned a Hyena. This is the kind of decision that looks prosaic from the outside but represents real tactical thinking: the party needed more bodies in the room, and a hyena arrives in the next round, which is better than nothing arriving at all. She also healed Smashy Smashy when the need arose, because a living dinosaur is considerably more useful than a dying one.
Shavrak Asha, operating now with two negative levels and the slightly hollow expression of someone who has had things taken from them that they did not know they were carrying, summoned a large Ape and directed it toward Mummy 1 on the upper walkway. The ape was large. The ape was strong. The ape missed. The ape missed again. The ape attempted to project confidence through body language and did not entirely succeed.
Then Nebta-Khufre pointed at Shavrak Asha again.
The second Enervation was a critical hit.
Five negative levels at once. The room changed. Shavrak Asha was, in the space of one action, reduced to something approaching the combat effectiveness of a well-meaning apprentice. He was still there. He was still alive. He was still directing the ape and the bat that would later arrive and the invisible positioning that would eventually matter enormously. But the summoner who had entered the Sepulchre of the Servant was not the summoner who was standing in it now, and the difference was measured in the sudden quiet of possibilities no longer available.
The ball lightning appeared. One orbiting toward Rochelle Martham and her mithril shirt. One drifting toward Blade and his scale mail. The room acquired the particular quality of a room that has too many things in it that want to kill you, and not enough space between them.
Then the floor melted.
And that is where the other tale begins — the one you have already heard, about the obsidian and the entangling and Xander Zeltz losing his mind to Feeblemind and Lishka going down and Smashy Smashy following her.
But I wanted you to understand the door first.
I wanted you to understand that they walked in knowing it was dangerous, knowing Nebta-Khufre was there, knowing that four mummies and a prepared necromancer represented something that could kill all of them — and they walked in anyway. Because Wati was behind them. Because Sebti the Crocodile was behind them. Because the Ka Pulse was still radiating and people were still dying and someone had to be the ones who went through the door.
The bard pauses.
Someone at the table asks: were they afraid?
The bard thinks about this for a moment.
She says: Smashy Smashy went first. Make of that what you will.
She says: Blade was second.
She says: they were all afraid, and they went through the door anyway, which is the only kind of courage that counts.