Well this was a pleasant surprise, a reasonable undead magus rather than the usual cackling madman.

I made a pretence of thinking his offer through carefully but in truth, there was only really one sensible option. Minotaurs have settled their disputes down through the ages in one of two ways, either a month long debate followed by a series of voting rounds using all kinds of convoluted rules about supporting nominatinos and tie-breaks that more often than not resulted in an option never ever first considered winning out, or a poetry writing contest and I wasn't sure the rest of the Furious Five were in the mood for lengthy discourse.

I took my pipe and smokeweed out of my pack, charged the bowl, lit up and inhaled a lungfull of sweet smelling smoke.

"Why my dear fellow, we shall settle this like gentlemen. A poetry composition contest. We all write one, five of you write one, they go head to head at random, best of five wins. If we win you shall submit to our superiority and go back to being dead. If you win we shall turn around, walk straight back out of here and pretend we never met. Reasonable?

We will need an impartial judge of course and I propose that as the person here with the least to gain or lose from either outcome, we have Howard here perform the duty."

I wasn't convinced that if we lost the rest of the lads would indeed walk calmly from the room like nothing had happened, I had a sneaking suspicion that Slim would almost certainly "accidentally" hit one of the skeletons in the face on the way past but if there was even a chance of a peacefull resolution to this then I was happy to take it.

I blinked at what was transpiring, slowly lowering my crossbow. I muttered under my breath to Murray.

"I think this just became the best lich fight ever."

Since it was my idea, I thought I should probably take the lead.

I cleared my throat and more or less off the top of my head, recanted our tale thus far in epic poetic fashion

Now gather all you gentles near
And listen to my story
Of warriors bold and their hunt for a liche
(Don't worry, it's not too gory)

Five were they, our fearless troop
Adventuring as they ought'a
Three of them were average height
The other two, much shorter

The Sage's sent them underground
Into the mausoleum's halls
They started as they meant to go on
By smashing up the walls

A riddle of sorts they came across
To tell them where to go
And did they pay it any heed?
Of course they didn't, no

The entrance hall was far from safe
Deep pits they were abundant
But strangely they found no living foes
Their weapons might prove redundant

Upon an empty room they came
But trickery was afoot
A baffling puzzle room it was
The prize? Some decent loot

Their next encounter, for a change
Didn't feature any traps
A pair of gentle elven folk
Both thoroughly nice chaps

Next up was a watery pit
For a ladder they were wishing
While the others jumped from plinth to plinth
Slim did a spot of fishing

Once past the fish they found a hall
With artwork on the wall
The lads weren't sure which held the secrets
Some they just took down them all

Sam explored a side passage
Seemed he was in a hurry
A minor fight they won with ease
And that's when they met Murray

Through a chapel, down a hall
A hop, a skip and jump
Sam could not quite clear the gap
(He's perhaps a little plump)

But what was this behind the door?
A party in a tomb?
They knocked on the door and sauntered in
Peering through the gloom

You might have thought the boys would learn
From each successive mishap
But apparently this was not the case
They'd walked into a trap

A desperate scamble thus ensued
To avoid a fiery death
It ended with an uphill sprint
That left them out of breath

Puzzled as to which way next
Slim looked into a hole
And smashed apart the bottom
Using GFZ strapped to a pole

And that, my friends is all but it
The rest we take as read
A magic mace, a secret door
And a bunch of walking dead

These mighty warriors stand fast
In search of death or glory
Churlish indeed to stop them here
And not let them finish the story

So Howard dear, my favourite goose
I hope I've entertained you
(And bear in mind that without my help
These skeletons might have maimed you!)

Finished, I paused for applause before taking a deep bow.

Slim walks up to the magus and begins wildly gesticulating while screaming in the style of his peoples greatest Orators.

Look AT me HOAKE HOGAN!
This IS Seven SYLLABLES!
YEAH beefcake BEEFCAKE!

SKRONK!

intimidating poem yes?

My fingers ran across the brim of my hat, adjusting it down over my eyes as I soft-shoed my way down the hallway towards the lich. Hands disappeared under the shadow cast across my face, a spark and a puff of smoke the only hint of the cigarette lighting before I flicked the match in the direction of a nearby skeleton. I adjusted Murray to my palm, giving a nice visual to my words.

Your time has past. Your time is done.
Your bony feet have stirred dirt for too long.
Hiding in your crypt, afraid of sky and sun
Cowering here, behind your bony throng

I skipped past another wave of skeletons, smirking to myself while Murray cackled in my hand. I spun him deftly, distraction of movement on top of distraction of sound.

Bony fingers clutching life tight
long after it should have flown away.
Clutching at the last remnants of might
But the end comes, with no more delay.

I know you're weary, lay down your head
There will be peace when this is done.
Quick and quiet, no words need be said
Trapped already in the web we've spun.

I slipped away from another skeleton, approaching the lich directly as my undead friend chortled and danced from hand to hand, the practiced ease of a lifetime of sleight of hand.

You needn't suffer, the hurt can end.
No more running, stop, breathe deep,
Father time has no moments left to lend
You've no need to pray, no soul to keep.

You built these walls to keep you safe
Like a child hiding under covers when abed,
But the truth is bound to truly chafe,
For the damned will soon be simply dead.

I flicked the catch on my sheath open, ready to draw it the moment I'd unloaded the bolts in my crossbow. I'd used some sleight of hand and distraction to get myself close enough, and if I saw this verbal fight wasn't going in our direction, I was ready to cut down the skeletal minions and put the blade through this thing's cold, black heart.

No man was ever meant to hear his elegy
So accept this final fact to be as rote
Perhaps the next world will grant you clemency
But all I can offer is a swift slit of throat.

Big ol' 10 for Insight.

Slightly more inspiring 28 for thievery

Well, they say you should write about what you are familiar with, and Garold had a particular lesson in mind that he had learned in this very tomb.

As he recited his poem he summoned spectral insects for visual aid.

The next time you should see
an insect buzzing on the wing
If you'd care to avoid a sting
make sure that it's a bee.

For bees will only defend
their royal queen and hive
A vow to lay down their lives
for in attack they meet their end.

But wasps can strike as they please
so beware or be sure they will
sting and sting and sting you still
while suffering no unease.

And while nectar into honey bees do mix
prey and foes only do wasps seek out
And that is why without a doubt
bees are bros, and wasps are dicks.

29 insight
21 nature

The majority of the Five present excellent verse, and Slim's pure physical intensity is more than adequate to convey the emotional turmoil of his feelings. No one in the room doubts his enthusiasm for beefcake.

Beefi 36, GFZ 36, Slim 56, Sam 43, Garold 55; Furious Five Total 226

The Magus seems impressed with the unexpected show of talent, and confers with four of his minions. It's Paolo that steps forward first.

Dry
Tomb air
A spear trap!
It has pierced my
lungs.

A second skeleton steps forward.

Here stand the bones of Arthur Slag
'twas slaughtered by an ooze
Hid all the treasures in his bag
And surely paid his dues
'tis in the nature of a thief
To take more than his score
But Arthur's but a fallen leaf
And robs no one anymore.

And a third steps forward, perhaps a bit shorter and stockier than the rest.

Axefist's crew were the best
The finest swords in the west
Down came the stones
and shattered their bones
Here's Axe at the end of his quest.

A fourth, slightly taller than the rest and still clad in a few rags of his mortal clothing.

Bard
paid well
to observe
to see and sing
of the victories
of the dwarf Axefist.
Seven we were, and bold
Separated by portals
Axefist triggered a juggernaut!
Mowed down underneath, I and the rest
I find no rest, and the lich pays nothing.

The magus smiles, his leathery hands pattering together in a dry clap for his troupe.

Never tarry
in a tomb
For what is buried
spells your doom
Cursed you are
and hexed, and pox'd
If doors unbar
If opened locks
Yet all will come
for greed, for glory
My tomb, the end
to all their stories.

The magus pauses briefly before finishing, taking a long drag from a pipe of his own. The smoke trickles freely out of the many holes in his torso.

Burma Shave.

Skeleton 1 33, Skeleton 2 49, Skeleton 3 36, Skeleton 4 29, Magus 63; Magus Troupe Total 210

Despite the fine poetry of the dead, Howard remains firmly in place atop Beefi's pack. The goose has clearly chosen a winner in this contest. The magus snarls and retires to his couch.

"Goose, I disagree strongly with your assessment but the terms were clear. Stand down, my legions. These fools may go about their business with no further interference from us."

"I blame the bard", mutters Axefist, already collapsing back into the bone pile. "What was that bullshit, you poncy elf? It didn't even rhyme!" The bard just sighs.

Victory! 2150 XP (430 each)

"What?!" shouts the mace, practically rattling around in Beefi's grip. "Rather than crush evil, you talk it to sleep?! Cowardice, friend, pure cowardice."

Mace concordance -2

"I just want you guys to know", Murray interjects, "that was the fruitiest goddamn thing I've ever seen. And I once worked for a druid who made golems entirely out of strawberries."

After a vigorous bout of pelvic thrusting at the various piles of defeated bones Slim finally stops to remove the javelins from his torso.
Finding himself woozy from various ailments and blood loss he collapses face first into a pile of femurs.

I'mma lay down now.

extended rest

Aha, victory to the Furious Five, as if it were ever in doubt. St Cuthbert seemed a little upset but unjustly so I felt, we had after all vanquished the undead, even if we hadn't technically smashed them to bits. I had a feeling that the mace wasn't going to enjoy it's time in my keeping one bit if it wasn't a fan of non-violent conflict resolution. I had got this far in life without getting into any fights, I wasn't about to start now.

With the undead back in their more natural state of just dead and Slim looking like he needed a breather, I had a good look around the chamber to see what secrets these recently poetic bones were hiding.

Search the room for anything at all of interest; Doors, treasure, traps, whatever.

The immediate danger at an end, Slim promptly collapses to the floor for a well-earned rest and most of the Five follow his lead (Sam carefully keeping Murray well away from the skeletons). Beefi takes a moment to peruse the room while its guardians were in a dormant state. Many of the deceased adventurers now in the employ of the magus still had some small treasures in their possession, though it's now a tricky business trying to pry them out of the jumble of bones.

Beefi leaves the question of whether it would be best to take the items 'til he's rested, and the Five spend an uncomfortable night aside the bones. As they break camp the next morning, many of their ailments seem to have cleared up — though the halfling still seems a touch red and sweaty.

Found: 2 vials Battle Mind potion, 1 vial Psychic Resistance potion, 450 GP, bag of ritual scrolls (Remove Affliction, Steal The Voice, Skull Watch, Aces High. Will detail the effects & etc later.)

Diseases: All cured save Sam's Filth Fever.

Slim climbs to his feet rubbing the sleep from his eyes and a tibia from his forehead.

I feel great! Now to see about them nachos THE BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS!

grab the potions and take fifty gold splitting the rest amongst the party.

wander over to cheese door.

Slim handed me some of the coins I had found. I pocketed them, resolving to drop them into a collection box should we ever end up in a church again. The scrolls I ignored, nothing good could come of messing with strange incantations you found in a tomb.

I followed Slim over to the not so secret door. He looked much better for his rest, I pitied whatever monsters or beasties attacked us next.

Garold stretched and got to his feet. Not the most comfortable night of sleep he'd ever had, but still refreshing. Seeing everyone else wander off to the other door, he decided to follow along. No point waiting around and risking the dead things changing their mind and becoming undead again.

Uxig returns to the now-open secret room, looking at it in conditions other than pitch darkness for the first time. Most of the group follows (Gra-fa-zut is a heavy sleeper, and the group is hesitant to interrupt his unconscious mutterings about rare umbrellas).

This hidden chamber is by far the messiest so far of the tomb. Two tables are strewn with a dizzying array of alchemical tools, reagents, and manuals — much of the glassware, however, has been shattered on the floor. In the south of the room stand three massive cauldrons, the one nearest to the door still bubbling away though no source of heat is immediately apparent. The contents are yellow and somewhat curdled — this is probably the source of the appetizing cheese scent.

In the north of the room stands a table apparently dedicated to some form of war planning. Tiny tin ramparts have been erected over a sheet of green wool, and an assortment of little iron soldiers are on the attack. An impossibly thick manual lies open next to the miniatures, but the war planners evidently left in a hurry; all the chairs by this table are smashed upon the floor.

In the northeast corner of the room, a half-butchered corpse lies in a pool of blood next to a bucket full of its viscera. The entirety of the poor man's skin seems to be absent.

The secret door remains in hiding in the room's northwest, doing its absolute best to be inconspicuous.

At last the molten cheesy goodness is mine!

Walk over to cauldron and give the contents a taste test. Attempt to be perceptive while I'm at it.

Exciting thought the new room seemed, I was reminded of the riddle on the floor in the entrance hall and made a quick trip back to the undead room to check the throne out. I recalled something about a columned hall and a throne and this room did after all have both, although that would mean we'd skipped a bit of the riddle.

Go and give the throne a once over then rejoin the others

Remembering a throne being present in the hall of the corpse magus, Beefi wanders back in that direction. But there never was a throne there; merely a couch. It's a very nice couch, festooned with gold and jewels, but it is decidedly not a throne. Moreover, the magus (pretending to be asleep) clearly has one eye open and is giving Beefi a dirty look.

Uxig jumps as high as he can to reach the lip of the cauldron, attempting to get a handful of the delicious-smelling cheesy goop. He doesn't notice anything untoward from his slightly-higher vantage point. The goo does indeed taste like it smells; a fine sharp cheddar. Despite being a liquid, however, the cheese is only slightly warm to the touch. There is a brief gassy sensation in Slim's gut after a moment, but it passes.

Having at last taken care of his cravings it was time for Slim to get down to business. First things first though we seemed to be missing someone.

Go back and grab the scrolls ,Also grab GFZ by the feet and drag him to the cheese room.

Quick he seems to be having one of his spells again! Somebody do something!

Begin waving him vigorously at the various implements trying to shake an arcana check out of him.

Garold decides to pass on the undead fondue and opts to investigate the war planning table, looking for any traps as he walks over.

As he looks down on the tiny men on the table, a strange sensation hits him. For a moment he feels that just as the iron figures are pawns whose fate are determined by men, he and the rest of the five are being controlled by greater beings who percieve them in the same way. They are just tiny miniatures to be moved around a table in someone's game. It is a very discomforting thought, but fortunately fleeting.

Garold then resumes his investigation of the table and the manual, hoping to find any insight into what the wargamers were planning before they left in such a hurry.

Garold examines the miniature war-game, but learns little. It scarcely seems like a battle worth planning for — if the schemers expected to be on the attack, it would surely be a simple matter; their numbers dwarfed the two defenders remaining within. If they themselves were the defenders, no amount of planning would save their hides. They'd be better off fleeing for their lives rather than plotting some doomed scheme to hold what looked to be a largely empty fort.

Hoping for more insight, Garold leafs through the heavy manual. The bulk of its hundreds of pages are dedicated to an absurd variety of incoherent charts on exceeding petty or preposterous subjects. Garold snorts at chart 239-D; Likely Locations of Arrow Wounds. An arrow, the chart informed him, was roughly as likely to hit someone in the arm as in the leg, and scarcely ever hit anyone in the head. Garold knew better, of course: arrows largely wounded whatever part of the body an archer happened to be aiming at. On a lark, he supposes that this theoretical arrow hits an enemy in the hand, and 239-D advises him to see chart 239-J; Severity of Hand Wounds Via Arrow. There was a 5% chance, it seemed, that firing an arrow into someone's hand would either cause it to explode or simply to make the enemy drop his weapon. The second result, Garold supposed, was an inevitable consequence of the first, and not worth mentioning twice.

Several sheets of loose paper are tucked into the manual, all of them adorned with small, hand-drawn portraits of burly, under-dressed men. Each of these men are identified with little labels above their portraits; they bear names like "Bob the Fighter" and "Zappo II, Son of Zappo". Beneath the portraits, each sheet is crowded with another generous array of charts and statistics.

Arching an eyebrow, Garold carefully shuts the book to get a good look at the cover. A tiny but quite detailed little scene has been painted onto the front of the tome; several of the burly men from the looseleaf sheets were engaged in battle with an army of orcs. The book identifies itself as follows:

Since knowledge is failing to shake out of the swordmages head in a timely manner Slim starts getting bored. Dropping GFZ face first on the ground he goes and checks out the Eviscerated fella.

I think this mage is defective I say we check his warranty next time we hit town.

I approached the cauldron of green stuff, hoping to get an idea of vaguely what was in it without getting too close to inhale any vapours that might be coming off it. After that, I did the same with the blue one. With no other obvious routes onwards, there had to be some kind of mechanism in this room somewhere.

Slim approaches the eviscerated corpse, leaving Gra-fa-zut rocking back and forth on his heels. Other than its sorry state, there's nothing particularly remarkable about the corpse. It is still awfully fresh, Slim supposes, relative to the dusty, abandoned mess that is the rest of the room. An extremely dull silver longknife (a shortsword, really, by Slim's standards) is tucked beneath the dead man's skinless arse.

Beefi peers into the other two cauldrons. The green stuff, to all appearances, is just more algae-clotted brackish water. The blue goo is of more uncertain provenance. The texture looks vaguely like jelly, if it were not for the relative unlikelihood of such a thing being blue. Unfortunately, the nostril-searing acidic stink that comes off the sludge fairly rules out its being edible.