The Lords' Tomb

The Lords' Tomb is an innovation of the previous century, occurring when the city nobles realized that civilization had progressed to the point where they no longer had to be buried with the common people.

Though the catacombs here are not as extensive as those of the common crypt, they are nonetheless adequate to cause all but the most careful of explorers to become hopelessly lost.

The graves and crypts here are much grander than those of the commoners. Of course, their defenses are inherently more potent as well.

Intruders here stand the normal chance of encountering the creatures of the Undercity. In addition, characters have a 10% per tum chance of encounter ing one of the true defenders of the Lords' Tomb, listed here:

Lords'	Tomb Guardians
D6 Roll	Encounter
1	1 Mummy
2	1 Vampire
3	1d6 Spectres
4	1d3 Vampires
5	1d4 Ghosts
6	1 Lich (M19)

Of course, DMs should feel free (and are encouraged!) to design lairs and encounters for these NPCs rather than simply have them harass the PCs now and then. A good way to balance a PC vs. undead encounter is to choose an undead that the highest level priest can turn only on a very lucky roll.

These crypts, naturally, have more treasure than those of the common crypt area. Any attempt to break into a tomb, however, triples the chance of encountering a tomb guardian. In addition, tombs are protected with 1d4 locks each, with each lock 50% likely to be trapped.

Common traps include stabbing blades, trap doors into pits, falling blocks, and alarm bells (guaranteed to bring one or two types of guardians).

A tomb is only 25% likely to contain treasure, though they are all locked. If the plunderer is lucky, the riches found might equal 1d8 x 1,000 gp per tomb, with a minor magical item. If the percentile roll was 10% or less. the tomb contains a fairly powerful magical item. At the DM's option, he could allow a roll of 01 to yield an artifact, but the plundering of that tomb should then kick off a whole series of future adventures.