Tomb of Horrors
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S1ModuleCover.jpg
Tomb of Horrors is an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game adventure module, written by Gary Gygax in 1978. Numbered "S1," it was the original tournament dungeon used at the Origins 1 convention. This module was the first in the "S" (for "Special") series of modules. It was followed by S2: White Plume Mountain, the seminal S3: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks and S4: Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth.
The Tomb of Horrors is infamous among players of the game as a "killer dungeon," filled with all manner of extremely deadly traps and monsters that are capable of easily wiping out high-level parties of player characters. Indeed, some players consider Tomb of Horrors to be "unfair;" many of the traps within largely ignore game mechanics and story logic in their operation.
The plot of the original module, such as it was, was a simple dungeon crawl; the evil half-demon wizard Acererack was said to linger on in his ancient tomb in undead form, and the characters were to fight their way down through it to the demilich's inner sanctum to slay him once and for all.
Sequel
In 1999 a sequel was produced, Return to the Tomb of Horrors. This module expanded significantly upon the plot of the original; it revealed that the tomb of the first adventure was merely an antechamber to Acererack's true resting place, and the demilich "slain" in the first adventure was both decoy and key to proceeding further. The dust from the destroyed skull opened a way to the cursed city of Molia in a pocket universe of eternal darkness and ice, and beyond that to Acerack's fortress hovering at the edge of the Negative Material Plane itself.
Acerack is revealed to be near the completion of a multi-thousand-year project to achieve godhood, powered by souls consumed over the years. He now needed only three additional souls to complete the process, but they must be of exceptional purity and strength; to this end he constructed his tomb to serve as an ultimate challenge for heroes, hoping to winnow out all but the very best. He would then consume them when they reached the center of his fortress, where his own undead essence resided in his phylactery. If the player characters fail to defeat Acerack then they themselves would serve this role.
See also: List of Dungeons & Dragons modules
External links
- Wizards of the Coast's Tomb of Horrors page (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=products/ghnovel/885470000)
- The Acaem's page on the "S" D&D module series (http://www.acaeum.com/DDIndexes/ModPages/S.html)
- Pen & Paper's entry for S1 (http://www.pen-paper.net/rpgdb.php?op=showbook&bookid=1264)
- RPG Now's entry for S1 (http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=1095&)