Spoilers below for some of the more notable parts of Tomb of the Serpent Kings by Skerples.
Doors of the Serpent Kings
.jpg "Brown Snake, Purple Door; Rod Waddington, CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons")
Brown Snake, Purple Door; Rod Waddington, CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons
In my review of Tomb of the Serpent Kings, I wrote:
I’d read the hammer trap a dozen times and thought I’d figured it out. But as soon as I tried to run it, it escaped me, my descriptions were inadequate, and the players spent more time being frustrated than they should have. It really wants a rough diagram and just a couple clarifications (which way do the doors open, which side are the hinges on, that type of thing).
(Tomb of the Serpent Kings (Review), me)
I thought I’d try my hand at providing this information for any future GMs who might need it. Starting with a survey of what we know about these doors:
A long corridor with four open rooms, two on either side. The hallway ends at a large, barred door made of stone, leading to 6: FALSE KING’S TOMB.
(TotSK, p. 4)
A large door, barred with a lengthy piece of stone hung on two iron pegs set into either side of the doorframe. […] When the bar is lifted, the iron pegs begin to rise. When the bar is fully removed a trap is activated. A huge stone hammer swings down from the ceiling, aiming straight for the backs of the now-trapped PCs. […] This trap can be identified by examining the door or pegs, by noticing that the iron pegs slowly rise as the bar is lifted, or by checking the ceiling. If the bar is quickly replaced, if the pegs are held down, or if the trap mechanism in the ceiling is damaged, the trap will not activate. […] After firing, the hammer slowly retracts into the ceiling unless blocked. It can be reactivated by lifting up the iron pegs, either by hand or by a rope. Its first activation knocks open the stone doors leading to 6: FALSE KING’S TOMB.
(TotSK, p. 5)
Recessed 5’ into the wall and held closed by a heavy stone bar. The door is barred on the side facing the chasm. If approached from the other side, it cannot be opened without demolishing most of the door. It contains the same type of hammer trap as 5: DOOR/HAMMER TRAP, but the hammer swings away from the door, rather than towards it.
(TotSK, p.9)
Some observations:
- It would seem that this is in fact a single door, not a pair of double-doors. (Although later it is described as “doors” plural.)
- The doors and bar are themselves stone, an unusually heavy material for such moving parts.
- The hammer knocks the door(s) open, so it must open away from area 5 and into area 6. Possibly, this is implied to destroy the doors in the process, but I do not read it this way.
- The iron pegs are definitely in the frame and not in the door itself. There are only two of them.
- The trap resets indefinitely, implying a power source.
- The only way to open the door from the un-barred side is to demolish (or dismantle) it.
- Where are the hinges located, and what is their construction?
- They could be barrel hinges of metal, but these would need to be of significant construction to support the weight. (This would be like most door hinges in your house.) Then, in order to open away from the barred side, the hinges would need to protrude on the un-barred side of the door. Exposing the barrels and pintles and fasteners and so on does open up new avenues to interact with the door, albeit slowly.
- They could be pivot hinges, continuous parts of the stone doors that extend up and down into holes in the frame. (This would be more like a LEGO door hinge.) I think this seems simplest.
- The mechanism can be reset indefinitely.
Photo of a pivot hinge by Audrius Meskauskas, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
As described, there is no reason to lift the bar at all! You should be able to push the door open and simply crawl under the bar. I think, if this is your and your players’ understanding of the door, then this is a perfectly acceptable solution. But we could take some liberties and make it a little more like I’d imagined at first:
- Double doors. This change is aesthetic.
- “Pegs” are clarified to be “hooks” that hold the bar in place horizontally. This is more like the usual shape of a drop-bar latch.
- Additional hooks are installed, one on each door face. These hooks prevent the door opening until the bar is removed, but they lack the lifting mechanism of the two in the frame.
I sketched a few door designs while working this out.
We can also think a little about the mechanism. Not enough to fully model or build it, but enough to offer a description or explanation as it’s investigated.
- The reset is perpetual, but it is non-magical. Perhaps there is a somewhat distant underground stream that drives it with a ratchet.
- The reset is slow, so perhaps the hammer is lifted by a ratcheting mechanism. Lifting the pins disengages the ratchet, causing the drop.
- This behavior is slightly different than described, as it would require replacing the bar before a reset is possible.
- We can take the reset behavior as a given, and assume that it works as described.
Sketches of partial possible reset mechanisms.
Alien Qualities of the Serpent Kings
The initial solution, that removing the bar is unnecessary, could be made into part of something larger. A later trap occurs on the stairs:
The third stair from the top is slightly loose and has left very faint scratches on the walls. If any weight is put on it, the stairs tip to become a smooth stone ramp.
(TotSK, p.8)
Which, while classic in presentation, doesn’t offer the same foreshadowing as the hammer traps, and others in the dungeon. Worse, it doesn’t even make sense: snakes can’t skip stairs! But what if that itself were a clue? There is another path downwards, a smooth-floored secret passage. If snakes don’t need to remove the bar from the hammer-trapped door (they simply slither under it), perhaps snakes don’t need stairs either. There is something compelling to exploring a space built for an alien mindset, and I don’t think Tomb of the Serpent Kings is quite there, but it might be remixable…
Snake Doors by CGP Grey, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.