Sat, 18 Apr 2026 09:49:24 +0200

2026-04-13 AAR: Vaults of Vaarn

I ran The Tomb of Nassak An-Rah last year at the local public library. As a thank you to everyone on the Vaults of Vaarn Discord who helped me with tips and rules questions, I wrote up a short Play Report of the session. This is the (slightly) revised version of that report. Spoilers ahead. Obviously.

Preperation

The setup was that the group was part of a caravan. Their scout (Trixie, a New-Cat on a guzzeline powered trike1) had discovered the tomb in the distance and now the PC have to scout it out. I randomly rolled the type of caravan using the preview copy of Vaults of Vaarn 2e and got Armoured Crawler, awesome.

First encounter

We rolled up characters, which took about 45 minutes for five players, including me giving a short intro to the setting.

Based on a suggestion by the author himself, I added an additional encounter on the way to the Tomb to fill up 2.5 to 3.0 h. I decided for an encounter with 8 Bandits, also randomly rolled. The dice said Ghouls attacking from an ambush. Cool. So I came up with the idea of a small water hole with a single beautiful tree. To add some counterweight to Silas the mystic, which the group would encouter later in the Tomb, I added Xander the natural scientist, who was busy cataloguing everything on Vaarn before the sun died. The group had a nice short chat with them before the bandits attacked. Feeling a bit overwhelmed the group tried to talk their way out and our Mycomorph suggested playing a game (with the loaded dice they got during character generation). I rolled for reaction and the Bandits were in on it. While the Bandits were distracted, our New-Gorilla used his gift Addictive Sands to send the 8 Bandits into a drug-induced slumber so the group could escape (not before they took the Bandits revolvers with them). Great stuff.

Arriving at the Tomb

Finally arriving at the Tomb, the group used a hand mirror (also randomly rolled up during character generation) to direct sunlight into both entrances for better vision. This triggered the bats but no encounter. Too bad. They decided to try the other entrance anyway and entered the Tomb via the Helmed Warrior entrance. They took note of the mummies in the plexiglass burial cylinders but decided to leave them be. From this room they peeked into the Hall of Hounds but did not find that interesting enough to take a closer look yet.

Next, they made their way to Silas with whom they had a nice, short chat, in which they learned that this is the Tomb of Nassak An-Rah. Our Synth thought about interfacing with the memory crystal but since Silas was already weeks in, I decided that this was not possible in the short span of the adventure (which is perhaps the one decission I was a bit unhappy about). Still not interested in entering the Hall of Youth the group made their way up to the Canopic Jars where they were promptly attacked by The Spawn, which was triggered by The Head. The fight was short (despite me going up from 4 to 5 HP per level as suggested for stronger groups), since the group correctly deduced that the Brain is the more dangerous enemy after it almost controlled our True-Kin. They also correctly guessed that the Brain once belonged to Nassak An-Rah and our Mycomorph asked if he could eat it to learn more. Yes? Absolutely!2 After a successful DEX save I narrated three short vignettes from Nassak An-Rah’s life: Witnessing the start of an Aurum Star Ship as a young boy, him wrestling with a fellow Autarky warrior3, and Nassak An-Rah sitting in a throne room, the dogs peacefully at his feet.

The final resting place of Nassak An-Rah

The seal to Nassak An-Rah’s final resting place proved to be challenging. My group never solved the puzzle. They did, however, have some great ideas what might open the seal. My favorite was using a Black Heart to reanimate one of the Dogs from the Hall of Hounds and using it as the key. They never came around doing this, but, heck yes! What an idea. Instead, our New Gorilla climbed up the Tomb, where he found the Ossified Corpse and the other entrance to the Burial Sphere. The group followed. Our Cacogen used his Levitation gift, which badly injured him. The rest climbed up using the Invulnerable Net of our Synth as a climbing net, unharmed. After burning away some of the fungal growth at the Chimney and protecting themselves from the spores, our New-Gorilla climbed down. The True-Kin jumped after him, and so the two were the first to engage with the Fungal Horror. The following fight was also pretty short (4 rounds), since the group made good use of the gifts and mutations. Our Cacogen4 froze half of the Fungal Horror in the first round using his gift of Cryokinesis (I ruled this to make 1d10 damage, since mushrooms are mostly water). The rest was handled using the revolvers and melee weapons. Unfortunately, our New-Gorilla died from the Acid Spray because the dice were not in his favor. Time was running out at this point (we had played 2.5 hours so far), and I decided to cut the rest short. They looted the Tomb, revived the New-Gorilla using the Black Heart, and went back with two new Exotica.

1. No doubt inspired by Leo Hunt’s Bandit Cat illustration.

2. I had not read Book of the New Sun back then. But I get it now.

3. I had, however, read books 16-20 of Diodorus’ “The Library” about the conquests of Alexander the Great.

4. This is a scribal error. It could not have been the Cacogen, as I am fairly certain they had the gift of Levitation. But I cannot say who used Cryokinesis to cut the fight short anymore.