Plot Summary
This module expanded significantly upon the plot of the original Tomb of Horrors, revealing that the tomb of the first adventure was merely an antechamber to the lich Acererak'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 Moil in a pocket universe of eternal darkness and ice, and beyond that to Acererak's fortress hovering at the edge of the Negative Energy Plane itself.
Acererak is revealed in this publication to be near the completion of a multi-thousand-year project to achieve godhood, powered by souls consumed over the years. He now needs 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 resides in his phylactery. If the player characters fail to defeat Acererak in the course of the adventure they themselves could wind up serving in this role.
Read more about this topic: Return To The Tomb Of Horrors
Famous quotes containing the words plot and/or summary:
“There comes a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I have simplified my politics into an utter detestation of all existing governments; and, as it is the shortest and most agreeable and summary feeling imaginable, the first moment of an universal republic would convert me into an advocate for single and uncontradicted despotism. The fact is, riches are power, and poverty is slavery all over the earth, and one sort of establishment is no better, nor worse, for a people than another.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)