Campaign catch-up I: The temple in the sands

It has been a very long time since I first posted about my campaign.  Despite my absence from the blog, I'm happy to report that the game hasn't died - although one character did.  As I'm summarising a few months of play, these catch-up episodes will be a little sketchy.

Further investigations of the temple in the sands revealed a good many secrets and some fair share of treasure.  The riddle of the altar was finally revealed when the characters traced the path of the sun, opening up a hidden compartment filled with treasure. (1) Excavation showed that there was a great trap door before the altar, leading to a bizarre crypt.

The crypt - if that was its purpose - was a series of broad corridors marked by imposing statues of creatures akin to the charioteer portrayed on the altar.  Investigating these statues showed that they all had a space at the belt for a rod to slot, but no rod present.  The party found ten of these statues in all. Poking around in the chambers adjoining the corridors turned up a range of oddities.  Eighteen great glass cubes, taller than even the half-ogre Hulk, baffled the party's imagination. (2)  A collection of eighteen metallic scarabs were discovered stuffed into urns and sacks, including one that emitted an intermittent buzzing.  Kweeth decided to adopt the buzzing jewelry, naming it "Buzzy" and hanging it on a string in the hope that the buzzing would prove to detect something or other. (3)  Finally, more readily understood, were a set of ten black bronze rods.  The party decided to place these in the niches of the statues to see what would happen. (4)

What happened was that seventeen of scarabs animated and flew about, attacking the party with beams of light.  The exception was "Buzzy", which had defective circuitry.  After hastening back to the surface to regroup, the party was able to dispatch the scarabs and found that the rods had also caused a section of wall to dissolve, showing the way deeper - perhaps to more danger and reward? (5)

1.  Every time I described the altar I'd say that it showed the path of the sun and swing my arm in a semi-circle to illustrate.  I think I did it about a dozen times before one of the players caught on that the motion might be significant.
2.  In more than one way.  They wondered a lot about the purpose of the cubes, and also how they might retrieve the glass.
3.  There were a lot of questions about the buzzing.  The players initially feared that the scarabs would be full of insects.  When they shook Buzzy, I explained that this made no difference to the sound, but this did not allay their suspicions.  As the players later learned, they were suspicious of the wrong scarab.
4.  I did manage to keep a straight face through all of this.  They were actually expecting the statues to attack, which was not unreasonable.
5.  There were a lot of Star Gate references by this stage in the game.  I will admit that I was going to the same well as the makers of that show, but deny that it was a direct influence.