Tomb of Annihilation: Episode 5
Tomb of Annihilation’s Chapter 2 is a lot like Chapter 4 in Storm King’s Thunder. It’s filled with a cacophony of interesting locations that players could encounter, but of which they will never get to completely experience. There’s simply too much to uncover. But whereas SKT had over 150 locations (10 being detailed encounters), ToA goes with quality over quantity. It has around 40 locations and nearly half have full maps with compelling interactions. Combining this with the random hex crawl provides for a much more fruitful journey.
The Party:
(Jon) Alathar — Half-elf Bard
(Terry) Harden — Dwarf Barbarian
(Matt) Illiyum — Gnome Illusionist
(Stacy) Torven — Lizardfolk Monk
The Path:
River Soshenstar, Camp Righteous, Yellyark
To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub.
William Shakespeare — Hamlet
The party had survived their meeting with a Night Hag. But they were eager to continue canoeing down the River Soshenstar and find more clues about the Death Curse. And they seemed excited about finding Vorn, and gaining a powerful spellbook for Illiyum.
I established a rule for the random hex crawl encounters in the jungle to make things a little more dangerous. Usually characters can “long rest” at the end of each day and regain all of their health. But since characters were unlikely to encounter more than one battle in one day, that meant they would essentially have full health and powers for each combat. I wanted to heighten the urgency of these fights. I made it so the characters could only gain the benefits of a “short rest” while travelling the jungle. Except when they were at a named location, they could hunker down safely. This was a little tougher for spellcasters, who were already weak at early levels, but I felt in the long run it would achieve some memorable moments.
The hex crawl means the party will stumble into lots of the new monsters found in Tomb of Annihilation. But unless the party is absolutely loving the travel, then there is just no way they are going to get to see all of these monsters in a meaningful way. One of the first new ones they came across was the Yellow Musk Creeper — a flower that entices naive adventurers with its scent, then kills them and turns them into mindless plant zombies. The party battled a wave of albino dwarves who’d been turned into these zombies and one of the powerful flowers itself.
Harden’s player had put in a solid story hook for the character to go off on his own personal side quest — he was looking for his lost clan brother who had been ambushed by dinosaurs. I love when players provide something like this, especially when there’s enough specificity to make it interesting. But it’s vague enough for me to sculpt it for this particular adventure. So when the party came across a band of ghouls with blue triangles on their foreheads, I said that Harden realized he’d seen that symbol before. The ambushers who wiped out his clan of Axe-Grinders before the adventure wore that blue triangle. It wasn’t enough to go off of for clues yet, but it was a breadcrumb I’d dropped that could pay off later.
This was a good time for some of the fun non-combat encounters. There was a statue of Ubtao where they solved a maze and it bestowed a free Find the Path spell upon the party. Qawasha showed them some rare plants that had healing properties. They came across some dead explorers who met their ends in grizzly ways, like a human who’d been stuffed into a hollow tree, or a half-orc who was spiked by the broken-off horn of a triceratops. Finally, they found various caches and treasure drops with goodies like extra insect repellent, potions of healing, and a mask inlaid with nine exquisite gemstones.
[Goblins] make no beautiful things, but they make many clever ones.
JRR Tolkien — The Hobbit
The party was on the hunt for Vorn. The way they saw it, they got to find a big metal sidekick, and receive a potent spellbook for their troubles. They hunted in the general area, and used Investigation and Nature checks to get closer. They stumbled upon Camp Righteous, an abandoned fort that once housed the Order of the Gauntlet, but was now torn apart by all manner of jungle terrors. They hardly even lingered. I liked that they didn’t explore just because there was a fancy map. Illiyum used Perception to survey some of the destruction, and Alathar found a penned up Axe Beak bird that was trapped in an enclosure. He used Speak with Animals, got some dire warnings from the beast about invaders, and the party decided it was best to leave immediately. They missed out on the interesting puzzle for now, but maybe I could prod them to make their way back here later.
They continued exploring, and found evidence of nomadic tribes of goblin, grung and vegepygmy activity. Qawasha said that Kupalué had heard of vegepygmy tribes who revere a god-like creature in the jungle. Harden eventually had an interesting idea. He said they should split into three different groups of two, search for any evidence of the guardian, then meet back up in a couple days at this spot. It was risky, but it would let them cover more ground. Torven went north, and his Survival check told them that they’d stumbled into something of a “neutral zone” where it appeared to have much less evidence of violence than was usually seen. The groups all picked different directions. Illiyum and Kupalué made it dangerously close to Vorn, but at this stage of the adventure, I figured sticking to the actual map was beneficial. In the future, I think I would fudge it, and have them find what they were looking for.
In any case, Torven’s findings seemed the best, so they followed. It took them to Yellyark, home of the Biting Ant tribe of Batiri goblins. They wore stylized wooden masks and marked their territory with the heads and skulls of their enemies. They venerated the shield guardian as a god-like protector, and by chance their leader, Queen Grabstab, wore the control amulet for it. But the goblins had no idea that the bronze and adamantine medallion had any relation to “Vorn” at all.
The tribes protected themselves from giant carnivores by rigging a net to a heavy, bent-over tree that could act like a spring and send the village flying a thousand yards away to safety at a moment’s notice.
The party slowly made their way to some canoes pulled up by the bank of the stream outside the tribe’s huts. They could see about 10 goblins outside, and could estimate maybe three times as many inside the huts. There were large ant hills, a wooden cage nearby, and a separate hut away from the rest. Alathar spotted some tripwires, and cautiously began removing the traps without the goblins seeing them. Torven then noticed the launching mechanism.
The characters were low on resources. They’d had some encounters on the way over, used a lot of spells, and weren’t at full health. I’d given them the stipulation that they could rest at designated locations, and Yellyark was indeed one of them.
Illiyum created a distraction with his Illusion magic as Alathar crept along the outskirts of the village to the launching mechanism and began hacking away. It took a couple whacks, but Illiyum’s distraction turned out to be very convincing. After a couple seconds, the thick vine holding the tribe in place was cut, and all of them were cast a thousand yards to the east, control amulet included. Usually the goblins use this launch mechanism while not still being inside the huts, as being hurled a thousand yards tends to end in their deaths. But the party wasn’t bothered by this.
Harden was happy to get some rest as he surveyed the area. Illiyum began to memorize his spells, as Torven found a dark spot to sleep in. Alathar, however, was still feeling the adrenaline of succesfully defeating a whole tribe of goblins, and decided to take a victorious piss onto one of the ant hills. The players heartily laughed, but I smiled for a different reason. The book says that damaging or destroying the ant hills causes two ant swarms to erupt from their hill. While Alathar carelessly peed, both swarms crawled up the half-elf and bit him so many times, he dropped his HP to -2.
Harden ran over and stabilized Alathar before he actually died — but he came close, and learned a valuable lesson: the jungle is dangerous. It would continue to ramp up in how dangerous it was as the players took the next steps of their journey.
