This session was honestly a blur. I didn't sleep the night before and we were all kinda goofy and exhausted. We're coming up on a 3 week break and I have some new schemes in the works for after the break that had me distracted (more on those later).
I think what happened was Kestrel scattered the menacing glass spiders with a successful wager using their sword cannon to make a weird pool noodle sound that terrified them deeply. The party continued trekking through the depths -- Gemini saw some smoldering yellow eyes staring them down from the depths of a dark chasm -- until they reached the room with the King's Crown. Kestrel poked the door in and looked inside, where 7 strange pastel rubbery foot-tall men-creatures were cavorting and chanting before the Crown, which was placed atop a ramshackle pedestal of sticky crystal.
The creatures immediately ceased and pointed at Kestrel and yelled in a strange rubbery indecipherable cadence, barring crystal fangs. Kestrel shut the door and the Company hatched a scheme. Upon reopening it Kestrel strode confidently toward the Crown and Gemini and the new slime girl deviant Thalice flanked them regally, posing as if they were their honor guard. In retrospect this was a pretty good scheme and I probably should have given them the win here, but I rolled a poor reaction on behalf of the critters and was sort of hungover and cranky so it didn't work out. A fatal call. When Kestrel lifted the crown up and placed it on their head, the creatures barred their fangs and pounced.
Kestrel slew two of the creatures handily with their hand cannon while Gemini and Thalice engaged another group of them. Three of the homunculi pounced on Kestrel and each rolled insanely well on its d4 damage die, and Kestrel was already at low health from the prism trap last session; they tore out Kestrel's robotic jugular and Kestrel died as they lived, seeking the King's Crown.
Gemini and Thalice slew several more tomb homunculi and the remaining creatures scattered, disappearing into crevices in the crystal. The party looted poor Kestrel's corpse and made for the surface with their 44,000cp worth of treasure in the massive crown, 3' in diameter, too large and heavy for any head to bear its weight.
They luckily picked their way back to the surface without issue, pushing through exhaustion, and hurrying their pace as a strange noise echoed from beneath their feet and the tomb's walls seemed to shake.
Surfacing from the tomb, they reunited with Murkvey and his goons. He asked about where Kestrel was, and if they had seen the orb of the King. Murkvey mused that at least Kestrel died doing what they loved. Slime girl claimed they had seen the orb but it was too heavy and so they had to put it back; Murkvey was whipped up into a frenzy by this and said that him and his boys were the toughest in the biz and they would happily provide the muscle to extract it. They whooped and hollered as they descended on ropes fireman-style back into the tomb, the night breeze picking up as the dying sun set red and gigantic in the west, Gemini and Thalice regaining their bearings and a mysterious stranger looming silhouetted on the horizon as the long dusk fell upon the land of deadSun -MAXIMAL-.