Here's some free DMing advice: if a player comes up with a clever or creative strategy, give it a chance to work. I almost forgot this.
So, back in the room with the vats. Blake thought Ghesh could try drinking the acid in the middle vat. I had to explain to him that the vat was made of stone, fixed to the floor, four feet high, and seven feet in diameter. He would need to drink a lot. And each drink would be doing some acid damage. Dragonborn are resistant, but not immune.
So they debated ways to poke a whole in the vat. Meanwhile, Remy and a few others, grabbed some of the empty vessels and started moving the acid into the empty vat. Finally, Tathora handed over her over-priced Barovian shovel, and they fished the magic item out, damaging the shovel. It turned out to be the other half of the golden key. They put them together and found they melded into a whole key.
They continued past that room through a corridor and down a set of stairs and to a 20-foot long, 10-foot, empty deep pit. They did spot a pressure plate on the last 5-feet of the pit and lots of spike holes (spoles?). They did some more wedging with pitons, and climbed out of the pit, coming to a 4-way intersection with another covered pit trap in the center. They wedged that one shut, then turned left, in this case going north.
Tathora (of course!) found another secret door and followed it down another hallway. This led to a door and corridor trapped with sleep gas. It knocked Tathora out, but Remy dragged her back and explored further. She found a stone juggernaut shaped a little like a steam roller, but with cool spikes on the big wheel covered in blood, gore, and bits of bone. They pulled back to the secret door. Dang it!
On the way Glawen spotted another secret door. This one in the floor.
It led to a narrow spiral staircase, down to a narrow corridor, which ended at a metal door with three slots in it, each perfectly-sized for sword blades. After some trepidation, they put three swords in, and the door opened into a pastel-colored hall filled with columns. Jornath, with an invocation granting detect magic up, saw that the columns were magic. So they avoided touching them. At one point Remy did wing a copper coin at one, and it levitated up to the ceiling, where a gentle breeze started pushing it to the northwest. Dang it!
They went to the south of the room where a black throne with skulls carved in it sat on a raised dais. A crown and scepter sat on the throne. The crown itself was gold. The scepter's shaft was electrum with a golden knob at one end and a silver cap on the other. Incidentally, electrum is an alloy of gold and silver. Jeff decided to do what Blake usually does and had Jornath put on the crown. It caused him to perceive the dungeon as if it were brightly lit by sunlight. He also intuited that he could take off the crown by touching it with the scepter. He examined it with detect magic, discovering the golden had an abjuration aura while the silver end had a necromantic one. He decided to touch the gold end to the crown, allowing him to take it off. Dang it!
Tathora spotted a crown symbol inlaid into the throne. Kyla, again, remembered a bit from the poem they found at the entry and touched the scepter to the crown, causing the throne and dais to lower, revealing a passage into a hall beyond.
It led to a set of stone steps, each step crafted of different materials resulting in a rainbow effect. The steps led up to a massive set of mithral doors. Sitting on the steps was a bronze key with an antipathy effect on it. After a few failed saves, Tathora used dispel magic to shut down the antipathy effect.
The examined the doors, and found a concave depression with a hole within. They tried their keys. Glawen used mage hand while Maveith just walked up and stuck the key in. In both cases, a shock traps activated and zapped the hand out of existence and Maveith had a few more hit points chipped off his tankish pile. They floundered for idea. At no point did anyone considering trying to break the doors open. Dang it!
Since games stalling sucks, I allowed another "get a clue" roll to realize the scepter might also work as a key here. The doors opened into a large square chamber. A large, smoking, bronze urn stood in the center. Massive statues holding wicked looking weapons poised to strike were in each corner. Along the far wall was a smashed open sarcophagus with ACERERAK written on it flanked by two iron chests. They left the urn alone. Dang it!
Jornath examined the sarcophagus, finding the inner coffin smashed open as well with some rotting bits of bone and and a broken staff of the magus within. Yves disabled the traps and opened the locks on the iron chests, finding a pile of valuable gems in one and a pile of platinum pieces in the other. Will had Yves "make it rain" Scrooge McDuck style.
Incidentally, Shannon is awesome. She was keep track of party treasure, so I passed her a note about a trick of the stuff they had just found. She kept it secret and out of character knowledge.
The rest of the party wasn't so convinced. They eventually spotted a pull ring behind one of the statues. Grom, Maveith, and Remy teamed up to move the sucker (it merely required a combined Strength total of 48 to move), and the opened it, revealing more corridors.
Tathora spotted a hidden keyhole on a wall just south of the secret door they had just emerged from.
Glawen set up a Leomund's tiny hut, so they could take a long rest before progressing. Jornath and Yves refrained, however, spending the time counting sweet loot.
They tried the first key, lowering a secret door made of stone-sheathed adamantine (because this dungeon is for filling out metal, minerals and alloys, mythical and real, bingo!), revealing an empty room with a small concavity in the floor. Searching there, they found another keyhole. They used the second key, and floor started to rise. Since these are savvy players, they got out of the way. Dang it!
In any case, they found a room with treasures and a skull on a low bench, the skull studded with gems in the eye sockets and teeth. They started examining the treasure, finding weapons, armor, potions, scrolls. A ghostly figure appeared and looked menacing, but disappeared. Then someone cast a spell at the skull.
Acererak had awoken. Hot dang I love a final boss battle: play for full effect. Acererak, like Strahd, has those handy Legendary and Lair actions. Plus a special soul devouring power. I missed a little something in the demilich stat block, however: their lair actions only go off on 11 or better on a d20. I ignored that on the first turn. It was a doozy.
A lair action makes it so that no one can recover hit points. The demilich has a "breath weapon," in D&D 4e and up terms, it has a recharge roll, called Howl. For a Con save, the victims are either at 0 hit points (failure) or frightened (success). I knocked out the healers with it. Finally!
I wasn't as effective with the Legendary actions, but Legendary resistance did come in handy. And my d20 refused to roll 11 or better on subsequent rounds to let him keep up the Lair action goodness. And Howl failed to recharge.
Grom did summon up those berserkers again. But their weapons aren't magical, so their attacks tickled Acererak. Plus he used an area of effect life draining action to injure them and heal himself, since he's also resistant to damage from magic weapons.
Then Alec got clever. Bastard! He had Glawen use telekinesis to put that crown on the demilich and then sent the scepter at him silver-end first.
Okay. Two options: Acererak is clever enough to make this trick not work on him. Fair enough. It was the first reaction I went for, having it laugh. Then I thought: or is he the kind of hubris-filled asshole that wouldn't expect that from puny adventurers. And the ghost of Gygax did whisper: reward clever and inventive players.
So, I had Acererak do bleached skull version of eye-widening instead, and dodged with a Dexterity save against Glawen's spell save DC. In any case, the PCs got a maniacal gleam that let's a DM know he's done his job: they're going to do this interesting!
The plan, such as it was, involved a portable hole from the treasure pile, trapping the skull, then hitting it with the scepter. Remy set up the hole, then used her monk powers to push Acererak into the hole. Then Maveith grabbed the scepter and thrust it at the skull. So it turned the skull, and those valuable, valuable gems, into a fetid powder.
Is Acererak dead? Who knows? The best bad guys always work by comic book rules and keep coming back. They found some awesome loot: a defender shortsword, some other cool weapons, some elven chain, and animated shield, adamantine full plate, a staff of the woodlands, and a lot more. Plus, because sometimes a GM needs to drop a golden apple saying "The Fairest" on it, they found a deck of many things. Adventure hook established!
I montaged a few other things. Like finding out that those valuable gems were basically bits of somewhat valuable glass and those platinum pieces were in fact copper. Plus a vrock came along and said, "Look, we could fight each other, but I just want to take the crown and scepter back to the tomb. I'll keep coming back from the Abyss until I do. Just do a brother a solid and let me have it."
So that's it for now. I get to take a hiatus while Alec runs the updated Sunless Citadel out of Tales from the Yawning Portal.
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