The Chronicle of Thraxx – Episode 10 – The Tomb of Horrors Pt. 3

Written by Flamereptile

Written: 03/02/2026

The Chronicle of Thraxx – Episode 10 – The Tomb of Horrors Pt. 3

Recap: Last week we continued the Tomb of Horrors… It continued to be horrible, but still so much fun.

This week’s tale continues, once again, within the Tomb of Horrors, and will again be a shorter set of highlights rather than a full short story.

We began this session with some nice banter, and by making a decision that during much of the month of March, and during baseball season we may need to take a little break from this campaign for our GM to coach baseball. I will be sad to not play during that time, but will have many other things to work on to fill the void.

This session picked up in the throne room with a ton of pillars. It took us quite some time to figure out the pillar traps, open the many doors, disarm the traps, and figure out the throne/crown/scepter. We were visited by the “Liberty Mutual Death Saving Throw Insurance Agency”, a mustached man and his Axe Beak named Doug. We had a short interaction with them, where I believe the GM adjusted some power scaling from earlier in the campaign.

Thraxx took the man, and the Axe Beak, through a few rooms of the dungeon to make him test some of the traps. Was it the most kind thing to do? No. No it wasn’t. He did not end up making it through the throne/crown/scepter testing…

Our rogue/warlock had a little meltdown in frustration about the many doors, and the general demeanor of this dungeon, but our druid kept a calm head and made a decision: to conjure a familiar and poke around. I actually was wondering the whole dungeon why the owls he summoned weren’t scouting better, or why he wasn’t seeing through them… turns out I was mistaking Conjure Animals and Conjure Familiar.

We discovered that both of the faces on the ceiling were portals, both of which went nearby. We opened the door with the animated swords… then immediately closed it. The rogue/warlock cast meat grinder, I mean Spirit Guardians, in the room, making short work of the swords. We proceeded beyond into the next room which was supposedly a trap, but we managed to remove the door and disarm the trap.

Next we tested the portal to the next room. Gracefully said. The owls, conjured by the druid, fiddled with the key and were instantly killed. Running out of options, the rogue/warlock gave Thraxx a Death Ward and sent him in. The trap did not even chew through Thraxx’s temporary hit points before he figured it out, but when he did, the floor began moving upwards to try to crush him.

With his quick reflexes, Thraxx rolled forwards and into the next room. This room was, apparently, a treasure room filled with gold and with a sarcophagus inside. Now Thraxx isn’t interested in gold, but he was interested in what was within the sarcophagus: a jewel encrusted skull.

Now I would be lying to you if I told you I didn’t know what this was. The Demilich Acererak. But I’ll be darned if Thraxx wouldn’t want to claim the skull of the dungeon anyways. But Thaxx is no fool. He would claim the skull, but knew most things in the dungeon are trapped. He took his Bag of Holding and tried to slip it over the skull. He did not succeed.

The Demilich awoke and attacked Thraxx. Fortunately, he beat its 16 Initiative roll with a 23 of his own. Making two attacks, then performing an Action Surge, Thraxx managed to burn through 3/4 of the Demilich’s Legendary Resistances (against being shoved in the bag), but that left the Demilich a turn. Fortunately again, the Demilich failed to harm Thraxx. On his second turn he failed to hit at all… Another opportunity for the Demilich to do him in but again it failed to harm him. On his third turn, Thraxx finally managed to bag the Demilich.

Now this is where the dungeon differs a bit from the module. The vast majority of things, closer to 99%, was as written in the original module (except for perhaps a bit of flavor), but we weren’t here for Acererak… we were here for two Arch Hags.

Thraxx activated a switch, allowing his party to pass the floor trap, and the session ended as we prepared to engage in combat against the Arch Hags beyond the treasure room.

Retrospective: Tonight was another shorter game, but it seemed like we accomplished quite a bit, and we surely had a ton of fun. I am eager to finish this dungeon, because it’s still bull, but I’m thankful to have been given the opportunity to play through it. Thank you again to Keith for running another great game for us, and I look forward to reading through this module afterwards. Maybe I’ll even get to torture my players with it some day?