The Vault of Reflection was the third level of the Tomb of the Nine Gods.1 It held the tombs of the Trickster Gods I’jin and Kubazan and the vault of the beholder Belchorzh, whose door opened only to ten crystal eyes found about the level.234 The party crossed it on the fourteenth of Eleasis, 1492 DR, and returned the next day to kill Belchorzh.15
Acererak's third warning, read by the party in the main corridors of the level
“Walk through water with weapon in hand.
Slake your shadow at the font.
The vulture is the first step.
Right the gods.
The walls of history tell all.”6
Description
The level lay between the second level of the Tomb and the fourth. The party reached it by dropping through the Devil Pit, the last room of the second level, and landed inside I’jin’s tomb.1 A spiral staircase joined it to the fourth level.3 The level had main corridors, on which Acererak had left his third warning, and narrow crawlways.26
Ten crystal eyeballs, each of a different color, lay in its rooms and on its dead. They were not magical. All ten were set into the door of the vault to open it.24
Inhabitants
Belchorzh, called the Unseen, was an ancient beholder who lived in the vault. He spoke in the rich, cultured voice of an elderly scholar and was a devotee of Acererak. By the account of the lich Withers he had been an administrative nuisance for 395 years.4
Two Tomb Guardians, large armored flesh golems, lay in wait in one of the level’s rooms.6 Withers’s contract with the party promised that his constructs would not attack it on the level.4
Two members of The Company of the Yellow Banner had died on the level before the party came. Bravus Boulderborn, a Gold Dwarf cleric of Moradin, lay in I’jin’s tomb, and Sephirius, a Dragonborn paladin of Bahamut, lay in the rotating crawlway.2
The spirits of two Trickster Gods rested in the level’s tombs, I’jin in the Wand of Wonder and Kubazan in a pair of bracers of archery.23
Notable locations
- I’jin’s tomb, whose floor was a puzzle of tiles that killed anyone who stepped on them in the wrong order. A statue in the tomb held a dial.2
- The Chamber of Opposition, where a shadow figure mimicked and opposed the movements of whoever entered.2
- The Reflected Hall, off which ran the rotating crawlway, a cylinder that turned and sealed a crawler inside without air.2
- A magical curtain of water.6
- The room in which the Tomb Guardians waited.6
- Kubazan’s tomb, which held clues to a rite and the sarcophagus of the god.3
- The Veils of Fear, a room divided by thick tapestry curtains. Each showed the same feast at a later stage: feasting, then carnal chaos, then cannibalism and a laughing roast boar. The last curtain carried an enchantment that frightened those who looked at it. Behind it hung the severed, rotting head of a giant boar, the Lord of the Feast, whose magic was mesmerizing.3
- The Winds of Pandemonium, a room of hazardous winds.4
- The Golem Pit.4
- The Vault of the Beholder, a fifty-foot domed chamber piled with centuries of hoarded treasure, closed by the door of the ten eyes. It held a pristine shrine to Acererak.45
- The spiral staircase to the fourth level.3
History
I’jin’s tomb
On the morning of the fourteenth of Eleasis, Taenae, Vogal, Vonara, Glade, Inete and the Human rogue Ersklan Ghostfang, called Fang, dropped through the Devil Pit and landed in I’jin’s tomb.1 At midday Inete directed the party’s path across the tiles, and Glade drew the dial out of the statue with telekinesis, so that no one had to reach for it. The body of Bravus Boulderborn lay on a tile carved with the hieroglyph of a foot. He had died by stepping on the tiles in the wrong order. From him the party took a diamond and a peridot, each worth 500 gold pieces, a shield, and two crystal eyeballs, one dark blue and one vibrant purple. The party then took I’jin’s artifact, the Wand of Wonder, an alabaster almiraj. They put it in a bag without letting it touch bare skin, which kept I’jin’s spirit dormant, and stashed it.2
Inete had lost her eyes to the Beggar King. She pressed the dark blue crystal eyeball into one of her empty sockets. It was rigidly cold and did not warm. When it clicked into place she heard the high-pitched whine of the Atropal and tasted old copper and blood. For a fraction of a second she saw a cold, measured, blue geometric grid with herself at its center, viewed from above, and heard the ticking of a clock. The vision faded and left her blind in that eye, with the scent of ozone on her face and blood running from her nose. Taenae pried the eye out again without harming her.2
The Chamber of Opposition and the rotating crawlway
Taenae went first into the Chamber of Opposition. She sensed an unsettling presence, saw the shadow figure, backed out at once and refused to engage with the room. The party moved on.2
In the Reflected Hall, Taenae crawled into a narrow space to investigate while the others waited. The cylinder turned and sealed her in, and she began to suffocate. When the party realized that she was missing and unresponsive, Vonara crawled in after her and set off the trap a second time on purpose to reach her. Inside she found Taenae and the body of Sephirius, who had suffocated there. Vonara took from the body a red crystal eyeball, a holy symbol of Bahamut, an ivory back scratcher shaped like a dinosaur’s claw, a dungeoneer’s pack and eight gold pieces. The trap could not be breached from inside and the air was running out. Vonara took hold of Taenae and cast dimension door, which returned them both to the party.2
Late that afternoon Taenae led the party back into the Chamber of Opposition to solve its puzzle. After some trial and error they made the shadow figure turn around. The shifting shadows then showed Vogal, Inete and Taenae visions of their own deaths. Inete saw herself decapitated. Vogal saw himself hurled into a lake of boiling lava. Taenae saw herself consumed by a burst of necrotic magic. Taenae alone did not withstand the vision, and the shock of it struck her down. The visions were premonitions of the party’s later fight with Takhesis Calva and the Atropal in the Cradle.6 Two days later Takhesis beheaded Inete there.7
Taenae was revived with healing magic and at once tried to reach Alice with her sending stone. The Tomb’s interference swallowed the message, and the stone returned only silence. The party dispelled an illusion of soup in the room and took from it an incandescent orange crystal eyeball.6
The water curtain and the Tomb Guardians
Vogal went through the Tomb naked by his own choice and called his exposed anatomy the “all-night star.” Avoiding the crawlways, the party came to the curtain of water and cleared it with dispel magic. Exploring further, they found two more crystal eyeballs, one pale purple and one bright green. Back in the main corridors they found and read Acererak’s third warning.6
The party then entered the room of the Tomb Guardians and was ambushed. Inete struck first with a fireball that caught the constructs off guard. The Guardians battered the party’s front line and struck Fang down before the party destroyed them. Fang was stabilized.6
Kubazan’s tomb
That evening the party found Kubazan’s tomb, worked out its clues and performed the rite together. Taenae lit a candle, Vogal gave precious gems, Fang offered maggots as a snack for the spirit, and Glade sacrificed a mouse. When the rite was complete the whole party felt a wave of euphoric joy, as if all their dreams had come true at once. It faded quickly, and sadness and paranoia returned.3
Glade then claimed Kubazan’s artifact, the bracers of archery. As he touched them they glowed with rippling, watery light, the stench of a swamp filled the room, and a tentacled shadow rose from the sarcophagus. A rumbling voice said, “You are brave to summon me. Together, we will crush the undying one!” From then on Kubazan inhabited Glade, and gave him fearless bravado and great physical strength. Glade said that he “felt like the strongest tree in the Forest, as the forest is fed by the water.”3
The Veils of Fear
In the Veils of Fear the party drew the curtains one after another. Behind the last, the Lord of the Feast charmed Taenae. She walked up to the head and put her own head inside its jaws, and it bit down and cut large wounds into her head and scalp. Fang struck the rotting head and destroyed it before the jaws could close fully, which broke the charm. He recovered what was lodged in the boar’s teeth: a bent pair of gold spectacles, a leather eye patch set with a bloodstone and a platinum hair pin. Taenae pulled down the tapestry curtains and took them with her.3
The party then found the spiral staircase and went down to the fourth level.3 It had six of the ten crystal eyes.6 The level’s Skeleton Key was still in the vault.8 Fang was killed on the fourth level that evening,9 and the Goliath monk Raiketsu joined the party there that night.10
The return with Withers
In the early morning of the fifteenth of Eleasis, on the fourth level, Withers offered the party a contract. He wanted Belchorzh dead. In exchange he offered an undisturbed rest, safe passage through the third and fourth levels, and everything in the beholder’s hoard. The party signed in blood and rested. Withers then guided Taenae, Vogal, Vonara, Glade, Inete and Raiketsu back up to the third level and pointed out the rooms they had not visited, which held the remaining eyes. In the Winds of Pandemonium, Glade used telekinesis to bypass the winds and secured a scarlet and a pearl white crystal eyeball. The party cleared the Golem Pit without major incident and recovered the last two, one pale green and one pink. They set the ten eyes into the vault door. Withers remained outside, unwilling to spoil the surprise or to engage Belchorzh directly.4
Belchorzh
Belchorzh was floating in the center of the vault, waiting for the party. He praised Acererak, saying “Praise be his unholiness!”, and instead of attacking he made a counter-offer: “Withers wants me removed. I will offer you the opposite arrangement. Kill Withers for me. I will give you my hoard and the secrets to surviving the lower levels.”4
The party let him talk on. He told them that a Mirror of Life Trapping stood on the fourth level and that the Paladin, Savriel Tirinath, was trapped inside it.5 She was the companion whom Fang had meant to rescue.1 The party then rejected the offer. Belchorzh took them for heretics against Acererak’s design and attacked.5
The party had rested, and the fight still tested it severely. Glade spent telekinesis, draconic spirit and sunbeam against the beholder. Vogal took the brunt of the eye rays and several times narrowly avoided disintegration and death.5 A sleep ray put Glade to sleep.8 As he was brought down, Belchorzh spoke his last words with reverence. He likened the party to midwives and said that their interference in the Tomb was helping to bring something unholy into the world. The words unsettled the party. Takhesis Calva was at that time being prepared in the Cradle below for his ascension.5
The hoard
Searching the vault, the party found the shrine to Acererak. Withers had warned them not to touch it, and they left it undisturbed.5
In the hoard Vogal found the Belt of Orckind, an old, worn leather belt studded with iron and dark bronze. Its inscription, in Orcish, told the wearer that he was not an Orc and that the belt had been made so that the world might see him as he saw himself. It ended, “Wear it. Walk as one of us. The tusks will come.” When Vogal attuned to the belt he saw the murder of his Goblin family and his rescue and upbringing by the Bloodfang tribe of Orcs, and he saw that the Sewn Sisters had winked the Bloodfang out of existence. He wept. The belt darkened his skin, broadened his shoulders and brought tusks from his jaw, and he became a runt Orc. From then on his ancestral guardian spirits appeared as the fallen Bloodfang. Taenae congratulated him.5
The hoard also held a ring of the watching eye, which Inete claimed, the Liar’s Compass, which pointed to the first lie spoken near it, the Drowned Lord’s Cloak, which let its wearer breathe and swim under water, and a pair of bracers of defense that no one claimed.5 The party took the Pentagon Skeleton Key, the third of the Skeleton Keys it held, and a cache of superior healing potions, one for each member and two for Taenae. It also took a painting inscribed “A Trapped Watcher,” which Taenae later connected to the woman in the Mirror of Life Trapping.8 Raiketsu took a potion of greater healing, with which he later revived Taenae on the fifth level.11
Glade woke from the sleep ray with a sudden, frantic cry of “The Forest!” The party took a short rest among the treasure and admired Vogal’s transformation. At midday it went back down to the fourth level.8
Destruction
No later visit to the level is recorded. It was destroyed with the rest of the Tomb before dawn on the seventeenth of Eleasis, when Omu sank and became a caldera.712
Appendix
Appearances
Session 71 to Session 74 · Session 77 to Session 79
Mentioned in Session 76 and Session 86.