During your reading of the book, you could not help but notice that each page began as blank parchment, but as you read each word, the next appeared as if it were writing itself just as you were reading it...writing each word only slightly faster than your ability to read. Odd.
As you read the last lines of the tale, you close the book and look around. For the first time in several hours, you take your eyes off the book. So totally engrossed were you in the reading that many things are different, and disturbing. The table that you were sitting at is now pooled in blood. Where did it come from? You notice that the leathery looking book cover seems more livid now...it no longer looks like dried leather, but more like human skin and it's alive and it's...bleeding??! That's a LOT of blood to come out of a book.
As you look around the room after closing the book, you see a large haversack and explore it's contents, but where did it come from? It was not there when you began your reading. You continue to explore the ruined study that was once part of Rualiss' tower and you see small, 3 toed foot prints in blood over everything! The floor, walls, ceilings, the table upon which you read. What made them!? Are these creatures the ones that brought the treasure from your story? How did you not see them? They were walking everywhere! What foulness does this book contain?
As you ponder these things you once again look at all the names of those that fell in the tomb. Names continue to be added at the bottom of the list, but you notice something else. During your reading of the story, only the first names of those adventurers were listed, but in the back of the book, their last names appear as well and you recognize several of them. They are members of your family from many generations back, both the ones that lived and those that died. This horrid tomb is part of the legacy of your family!
As you ponder the meaning and implications of this new discovery, a figure coalesces and steps from the shadows. "Congratulations to those of you that survived my tomb and thanks to those that did not for their souls fuel my grand designs.", he says with a bow.
As you get a better look at this figure, he appears to be human, but ancient...pale skin, and would make a good corpse, if he weren't alive and talking to you.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/77719/SFV%20Game/Tomb%20of%20Horrors/Acererack.JPG
"You do not know, but like so many before you, your thoughts guided those of your family members to their doom. The book remains unwritten until is is read and it is the reader, and not the adventurer within the tale, that decides the actions and fates of the ones within the story. You drove your family to their dooms. MMUUAAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
"I have the eye and with it am all powerful! Your souls have been touched by my tomb, and you are mine forever! Come for me!"
With that he vanishes in a burst of shadow and all you are left with are his cryptic words and his cackling laughter fading into silence....
