Our valiant expedition hits a snag when they stumble around an ancient temple and suffer a glorious, rejuvenating TPK!

When last we left our heroes, they had taken a slight detour during their jungle trek to check out the rumors of a lost ancient temple. The detour turned into the road trip from hell as the guide got lost and lost and lost, for five days in a row! Inconceivably, the guide, River Mist, led them in a giant circle, and on the fifth day they chanced upon a series of ruins. Could this be the same temple they were looking for all along? It has to be, right? It is, but they could never be certain.

My purpose for this home-brewed dungeon was to introduce the Yuan-ti as a major threat early in the adventure. This despicable race of snake-men makes for phenomenal villains, but they are woefully under-represented in the main adventure. By the time they appear in the published story, the party is well on their way to finding the final dungeon and these guys come off as an annoying distraction. This is a shame because the Yuan-ti are awesome.

I really wanted to explore the nuances, the culture and the lore of this grotesquely fascinating race. And I want my players to uncover the connection between the hordes of undead and the Yuan-ti that is plaguing the Land of Chult. But first, it’s time for some more research.

Even if you are just running the Yuan-ti as written in the book, you should get a copy of Volo’s Guide to Monsters. First off, Volo is an actual NPC in this adventure and he spends much of it promoting this very book to anyone interested. For me, this is an in-game book and can be read by the fictional characters. More importantly, the real book is filled with new character races (7+) for your players, and over 125 new monsters to kill those players with. Most importantly, the book dives deep into the ecology, lore, and society of nine major monster groups. Nine! This includes beholders, giants, gnolls, goblins, hags (also useful for this story), kobolds, mind flayers, orcs, and today’s focus, the Yuan-ti. There is so much great content here that this book will enhance every campaign you ever run.

Volo’s Guide gives great insight into the objectives and goals of Yuan-ti society. They consider themselves a superior race and actively seek to conquer the world. They are ruthless, vain, sadistic, devoid of any emotion or empathy, and they will use any means to achieve their goals, including sacrifice, torture, cannibalism, and slavery. Their society is a strict hierarchy with the highest ruler being the most snake like. The book gives a lot of detail describing the various forms and their functions in Yuan-ti culture.

 

Of highest importance,  there are the Anathemas and Abominations, the supreme commanders of the Yuan-ti whom aren’t even in the official Tomb of Annihilation story (I might change that). Next are the Malisons, half man – half snake, often the tribal leaders and they can have a number of intriguing specialties, including mind whisperers, and nightmare speakers. The secondary villain, Ras Nsi, whom has already tried to kill the party, is a Malison. Filling out the third rank, the oddly named Purebloods appear humanlike with some minor serpentine trait, like slitted eyes, forked tongue or scaly skin. They are used as agents and spies secretly scheming within human settlements. There is one such spy already written into this adventure, but I’ve added a whole spy network subplot into her story, stay tuned. Lastly the Broodguards are mindless, obedient servants, created by force-feeding a magical elixir to captured humanoid slaves. Another subplot we’ll explore shortly.

Furthermore, Volo’s Guide provides some descriptions of the Yuan-ti gods, especially Dendar, who will play a potential major role in my adventure. (Read my Explorer’s Guide to Chult for more on that.) Volo’s includes several tables and charts about the varied Yuan-ti descriptions, ideas about playing a Yuan-ti as a player character, random monster tables for stocking a Yuan-ti dungeon, and a list of unique Yuan-ti names (I used almost all of them). But the most important feature that I used was the depiction of a Yuan-ti Temple, including an awesome original map.

Yuan-ti architecture is strongly based upon Mayan culture, with step pyramids similar to those found in sites like Tikal and Chichen Itza. A few years back, I was fortunate enough to travel to the Mayan ruin of Altun-Ha in Belize. Altun-Ha is famous for being the location of the largest Mayan jade sculpture ever discovered and consists of three major pyramids with more waiting to be discovered. I couldn’t wait to combine my memories of this fascinating location with my new knowledge of Yuan-ti culture and mash it all together into a thrilling RPG experience. There was just one problem. Me.

I haven’t mentioned it in the last few session recaps, but I was still reeling from the fallout that occurred when Jane left the campaign (Session 7). For weeks, and especially during each sessions, I have been plagued by self-doubt, frustration, confusion, and even anger. I just couldn’t get past my conflicting emotions over her departure and my role in it. I seriously considered ending the campaign. Here I had all these ideas, plans, and aspirations and I didn’t care about any of it. I just wanted to walk away.

But I owed it to my players to soldier on. Still, in spite of all my preparations, I expected this session to be rather dull. I had a few cool complications and some rooms with interesting lore and backstories, but no way to entice my players to explore the entire temple and discover them all. I expected my group to get into complex, investigate a couple of rooms, kill a few uninspired snakemen and hear more blather about Dendar and the end of the world and leave. Oh, how wrong I was. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

First things first, in my campaign, this was not originally a Yuan-ti temple. A thousand years ago, this was a temple to Ubtao, the primordial creator god of Chult. When the full-scale worship of Ubtao stopped, the temple was abandoned and overgrown by the jungle. When the explorer Alucius Alphonse (whom the players have been following via his journal) discovered it, 100 years ago, it was overrun by snakes. Currently, the Yuan-ti are using it as a holding facility for incoming slaves from Port Nyanzaru. The Yuan-ti have defaced, altered or boarded up all references to the temple’s previous purpose and now perform their own dark rituals on this once hallowed ground.

Originally, I kept the layout of the temple the same as found in Volo’s Guide except for a few minor changes. I removed all the secret doors on the second and third level. I left the secret doors on the fourth level, but they could only be opened from the inside as an escape plan for the Yuan-ti boss. I expected the group to find the doors on the first level and proceed from there. There were a couple of Broodguard sentries and the lower temple had few Pureblood acolytes and one Malison with a human body, snake head as a priest. I had no real plan for the shrine on that level, except that it is unused by the current Yuan-ti.

As I said, since I knew the real Mayan ruin of Altun-Ha as well as I did, I decided to use the entire complex as my inspiration. Instead of just one lone pyramid with no real function or purpose, I wanted to imply that the whole area was once a thriving jungle community.

Altun-Ha consists of twelve major structures that surround two large squares or quads. Seven of the structures have been uncovered and consist of three intact ceremonial stone pyramids each over 40 feet tall and four additional foundation ruins that once supported wooded buildings likely used for housing. The remaining locations are overgrown grassy mounds that indicate more structures hidden by the jungle soil. One of the mounds is an enormous 60-foot hill, making it the tallest object in the complex. Who knows what treasures lay buried beneath?

I considered keeping my Yuan-ti complex identical to Altun-Ha in terms of excavated buildings. But I decided to keep the focus on just one major structure with the remainder still buried, waiting to be uncovered. As the party observed the area from the safety of the jungle tree line, they discussed how to reconnoiter the area. Thames wanted to send his flying griffon homunculus to do all the dangerous work, but I wouldn’t allow it, because while the griffon can understand instructions, it doesn’t speak or have telepathy and thus can’t relay any info back. So, they resorted to the old-fashioned way, sending the sneakiest character into danger alone.

This should have been the official rogue of the party, Miche, but unfortunately Miche’s player got roped into being the DM at a different game that found itself without someone to run it. This brought the party down to just four players and it would remain this way for the semi-permanent time being. His absence was explained by a mild bout of DM-induced disease that left him bedridden back at camp. So, the second sneakiest character, Martic the ranger, had to go skulking about, gathering intel. He got the lay of the land and passed all his stealth rolls to avoid being seen, but failed all his perception rolls that could have saved them from their impending doom.

They knew where the main pyramid was and the fact that the mound opposite had signs of recent excavation that exposed the top level of another pyramid. Beyond the fact that the two quads were filled with hundreds of snakes, they knew nothing else. So, they climbed up the nearest mound to get a better viewpoint. This was the beginning of the end for this group. Of course, I had placed a sentry at the top of each hill and the temple pyramid and the guards have a special ability that the players had no way of knowing about that was supposed to open up a little mystery. Not bring about their destruction.

Each sentry was a Yuan-ti malison that remained hidden at the top of the hill. Malisons have the ability to transform into a medium (anaconda) sized snake at will and back again. Each sentry was equipped with a scimitar, long bow, and three blue tipped arrows. But when a Yuan-ti turns into a snake, it can’t carry any equipment. Thus, when the group arrived at the top of the hill, they only found these random items and no explanation how they got there. This is intended to confuse them and make them discuss possible reasons for this conundrum.

Of course, the first time the group eventually witnesses a Yuan-ti transformation, this mystery would be resolved. Had Martic passed his perception rolls, he would have seen a shadowy figure up on the hill. But for now, they had no way of knowing that the Yuan-ti guard had seen them climbing the hill, then he turned into a snake, and went off to warn the others. Being good little pack rats, my players collected all the mystery equipment they found. They were also unaware of the nature of the blue tipped arrows that they discovered. The arrows were tipped in a thick blue goo that was clearly poisonous and they didn’t want to go experimenting with unknown toxins without their resident Poisons expert, Miche, present. They proceeded to climb down this hill and straight into oblivion.

I had each player roll an Athletics check to climb down the difficult terrain hill without tripping. The DC was a mere 5, but it didn’t matter, because Gwen rolled a Natural 1. She tumbled down the hill, taking a measly (rolls d4) one point of damage, but landing on her back surrounded by (rolls d6) five angry snakes! I asked the player what Gwen would do, basically giving her the option to sneak away (requiring a stealth roll) or attack. The player, Ian, took it upon himself to make the situation even more difficult, giving Gwen a 50/50 shot whether she would remain calm or panic. He rolled his dice, and Gwen freaked out, screaming bloody murder and thrashing about.

This set off a chain of events that led to one the greatest moments any of us had ever experienced in a combined 50+ years of roleplaying. And there was no way that I could have ever set it up. As a DM I will rarely (although apparently more frequently than I should) alter a character’s actions. Usually by not allowing a totally unreasonable action. But I can never dictate how a character can feel emotionally about a situation. That is the sole purview of the player. And when a player opts to have a character react in a way that is detrimental (i.e. not badass and awesome in every circumstance) then just appreciate the moment (and the player) and play along. And I usually reward that player with a point of inspiration.

So, Gwen is on her back panicking and flopping around like a fish. The five angry snakes surrounding her naturally attack. I made four of them poisonous, especially since they have hardly any hit points and poisonous animal attacks are ridiculously weak in 5e, while the last snake is a constrictor to maybe grapple a character for a few rounds. The real issue was Gwen’s screaming, which alerted the two other Yuan-ti guards and their blue tipped arrows.

As I’ve mentioned, with this adventure I wanted to explore the often unused poison and madness rules and give the Yuan-ti something special and memorable. Their stat block already gives them poisoned arrows as part of their arsenal, but I made that even more (perhaps too much) deadly. I created Yuan-ti Blue. The Yuan-ti have discovered a way to harness the Blue Mist that plagues this land and combine it with their venom.

On a failed save, Blue Mist induces a random indefinite madness on its victim, creating all sorts of interesting consequences to vex your players with. That is too harsh for a combat scenario, so this new Yuan-ti Blue inflicts a short-term madness, that causes maximum chaos in the battle. And in practice was still too harsh. As written, a short-term madness lasts 1d10 minutes, an eternity in combat. Some of the random effects are humorous such as hallucinations and incoherent babbling, but some are debilitating and are a death blow to any party, as we are about to witness. In the future, my Yuan-ti Blue poison will only last 1d10 rounds, still a potentially crippling length of time, but much more reasonable.

For now, the party is concerned with running down the hill, saving their companion and making her shut up. Except Thames. Despite his reptilian ancestry, he has no desire to run down and muck around with a bunch of snakes. He has his crossbow and can fire upon the scaly beasts right here from the safety of this hill, thank you very much. He has a higher chance of hitting his alleged friend too, but that’s a risk he’s willing to take. Little does he know that the hill provides him with no safety and he will be the first to fall.

I gave the group two rounds before the Yuan-ti responded from their hiding spots on the other hills. Not that it helped them because everyone rolled abysmally. Gwen was of course, grappled by the constrictor snake and bit by a number of others. Roland and Martic ran down the hill successfully but were unable to hit a single snake. Thames couldn’t hit one either but was at least able to avoid putting a bolt in his partner. Then I had Thames roll a Constitution save and it all went downhill from here.

The Yuan-ti had arrived and seen the lone target on the hill. One fired an arrow that hit home, wounding Thames with piercing damage, poison damage, and a potentially debilitating madness. Thames failed his roll, and was stunned for a catastrophic (roll 1d10) six minutes. Now the rules state that the player can reroll this save every minute. But this was irrelevant since the entire battle lasted less than sixty seconds. It took over an hour to play, but in game time, we only played for nine rounds (54 seconds!) In the future, I will allow a reroll at the end of each combat round, not minute; a single minute is an insane about of time in D&D.

Even worse, none of the characters, including Thames, knew what had happened. As soon as he was hit, and before I rolled damage, I had Thames roll his Constitution save. After he failed, then I informed him that he took damage and was stunned, but didn’t tell him what caused it. He never saw it coming. And his companions never saw him fall. Obviously, the players knew that Wes’s Thames was down and out and they were concerned, but the characters were oblivious.

I was not concerned at this time. The group has often had moments when one member would go down, but the others had always managed to rally back and save the day. The next round, Gwen managed to get to her feet and a few snakes had been dispatched. But on the very next round, the Yuan-ti targeted the two fighters, Roland and Martic. Martic dodged, but Roland was hit with piercing and poison damage, and after a badly failed save, seven minutes of paralysis! Here the party officially realized that two Yuan-ti archers had entered the fray. And here I knew they were screwed and were going to die.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. All they had to do was walk to the temple and explore a few boring rooms. But no, they were going to die here, defeated by two simple Yuan-ti and five measly snakes. Sure, my home brewed poison tipped arrows are over powered, but not beyond the realm of something the Yuan-ti would do. They just happened to get hit with the two most devastating penalties and I hadn’t even used their innate spell casting ability yet. My mind was giddy, racing with the prospect of a Total Party Kill, the infamous TPK. But not yet, there was still a glimmer of hope.

Gwen and Martic fought valiantly to fend off the Yuan-ti onslaught. Two more snakes were killed, only the constrictor was left, and they had dropped one Yuan-ti to half his hit points (they have a staggering 66, pretty high for a CR3 monster). But it was all for naught. Gwen was knocked to zero hit points and dying. Martic had to waste an action pouring a health potion down her throat. Then Martic went down and Gwen had to save him in turn with cure wounds. Outmatched and in dire straits, our two heroes, choose an outlandish tactic…

Gwen and Martic managed to disengage from the conflict and ran back toward the hopeful safety of camp and their NPC allies. They followed their carefully laid out rope trail back toward camp and even blew their here-to-fore unused whistles which they bought way back in Waterdeep. Of course, the Yuan-ti are perfectly capable of following ropes and whistles, so our heroes just exposed where their camp was. But it didn’t matter. They never got there.

Each Yuan-ti had one arrow left. I had only given them three each, and thus far Martic has avoided succumbing to their poison. But here their luck ran out. Gwen was knocked down below 0 hit points just from the damage of the arrow. Her player insisted on rolling a Constitution save, but passed. “Well, you’re not insane, you’re just dying.” Meanwhile Martic survived the arrow damage, but failed his madness roll. His random infliction forced him to obey all commands for the next six minutes. The Yuan-ti ordered Martic to pick up his unconscious companion and follow his captor, thus ending the encounter in utter defeat.

It is no exaggeration to say that we were all stunned by this turn of events. None of us had ever experienced a TPK like that before. This was James’s, Wes’s, and my first ever. A few had had a party get killed in a grossly outnumbered combat against vastly overpowered foes, but nothing like this. They should have beaten these guys. Yes, they had OP arrows, but no one held that against me. They blamed it on themselves and bad planning because they had made none. They didn’t properly scout the area, and they ran in too soon, heedless of the danger. And they paid the ultimate price.

Incredibly, this is the best TPK of all because it didn’t end the campaign. The Yuan-ti are slavers. They don’t fight to kill; they fight to capture. Every DM dreams of the prison break scenario but they are impossible to pull off. Unless you start a campaign with one like Out of the Abyss does, you can never capture a party because no self-respecting player will ever surrender. They will always fight to the death, and if you just flat out tell them, “Yeah, well too bad, you’re all captured,” they will hate you because you took away their autonomy, and rightly so.

I had just stumbled upon the holy grail of TPKs and I was completely unprepared for it. And we still had almost an hour left until the end of the session. I sat there at the table with my jaw agape and four anxious players staring at me in anticipation. Ian suggested we take a ten-minute break, which I gladly accepted as I frantically tried to come up with some suitably epic prisoner scenarios. I was determined to split the party as well, giving them each a solo adventure as they struggle to find out where they are and each other.

When we reconvened, we started with the last to fall, Gwen, who also had the fewest hit points, that is zero. You wake up about an hour later. This short rest heals one hit dice of health, roll high please. (He does.) You are on the hard stone floor of some rotting cell. You are stripped of all your possessions and are wearing only your breeches and undershirt. You don’t have darkvison and there is no light in the room. Feeling around in the dark, you guess that the cell is about ten feet square, sealed by three rough fieldstone walls. The fourth wall is comprised of rusty iron bars and an iron gate locked with a smooth iron lock. The floor is covered in fetid straw and there is a putrid bucket in one corner and a plate with some sort of rancid meat on it. “I eat the plate of meat,” Gwen informs me.

Okay. It tastes disgusting, kind of like spoiled chicken, but you manage to choke it down and you didn’t die. As your eyes grow accustomed to the dark, you can tell that you are trapped in a row of cells in some kind of prison wing. Other cells line the opposite wall to the left and the right but you can’t tell how far down each way goes. You can just barely see that a man is sitting on the floor in the cell opposite you. You get the feeling that he is looking at you intently.

Gwen calls out, “Hey, you. Where are we? How do we get out of here?” The strange man says nothing, but you hear a few soft, muted clicking vocals. Gwen raises her voice a little, “Hey, can you hear me? Where are we?” The dark man remains silent, but a new voice whispers from the next cell over. “Shh. Be quiet, new girl. Don’t alert the guards or they’ll beat you senseless. He is a native Chultan from the interior and doesn’t speak common. I am Gondolo from Port Nyanzaru, and like you we are all slaves of the Yuan-ti until we die or worse. Oh, and don’t eat any meat they give you. These guys are cannibals.” Gwen spent the next few minutes vomiting, while we moved on.

Moving on to Martic, the third to fall but with at least a few hit points enough to survive the next few rounds. You come to your senses in a large well-lit room. Torches line the walls of the room which is at least forty feet by sixty. But you can’t see the room clearly because you are strapped to a table in the middle of the room.

Your feet are lashed tight on one end while your hands are tied above your head, attached to a massive spoked wheel at the head of the table. You are tied to a rack in the middle of a large torture chamber. You can see an iron maiden in the corner, open and filled with lethal spikes, a table holds dozens of horrific curved and spined blades, and a man hangs, slumped over, on an X-shaped whipping post. Whether he is dead or unconscious, you cannot tell.

A human man wearing a bronze breastplate and a ceremonial helmet that looks like the open jaws of a snake enters from a room to the south. He appears fully human but when he opens his mouth to speak, you can see that he has the long, forked tongue of a snake.  He is a Pureblood Yuan-ti. “Excccelent. You are awake. At lassst we can proccceed.”

The torturer walks over to the table and picks up a wicked looking dagger and several loose pages from some sort of journal. It is the journal you carry of Alucius Alphonse that led you here to this temple. The forked-tongued man glides the tip of the blade over your body, until it rests on your face just below your eyeball. “You will tellsss me what I wantsss to know, or I will probe eachhh of your organsss with this blade until you die in agony. Now, who do you worksss for? How did you find thisss place? Where did you getsss thisss journal?”

With nothing to hide, Martic told the truth about all these things and then rolled a horrible persuasion check. “Liar!” the Pureblood torturer yelled, as he turned the crank on the rack for a single point of damage. “I’ll asssk again. Where did you get thisss?” Martic told the same truth and got the same response; another crank on the rack and another point of stretching damage. The sadistic Yuan-ti walked over to his table of weapons. “I’m glad you’ve decccided to be difficult. Thisss will be much more sssatisssfying,” as he picked up a wicked looking spear with a decorative snake coiled up the shaft. Next!

On to the next victim. Roland, you wake up strapped to a table. As with the rest, all your possessions are gone, but you are only wearing a loin cloth. Two Yuan-ti snake men are busy anointing your body with perfumes, oils, and paint while chanting in a language you recognized as draconic but do not speak. Roland’s player, Theo, cried out, “Aw, damn it. I’m the sacrifice!” (Yes, yes, you’re very smart.) The room is well lit and you get a good look at your captors. They have the legs, torso, and arms of a man, but the head and neck are pure snake. The scaly skin drifts down into the shoulders to merge with their human skin.

You see that there is another man, a Chultan native, in the same predicament as you. He is tied to a different table and is being similarly prepared for some ritual by two different Yuant-ti cultists. Roland askes, “Ís my mouth gagged?” No, it’s not. “I whisper to the other man, “What are they going to do to us?”” The other man does not reply or even look at you. Looking closer you can see that the man has been beaten and tortured into submission.

But one of the Yuan-ti responds. The snakeman yells at you, “Shut your mouth, you filthy duthrael (yuan-ti for Unclean or a non-yuan-ti),” as he punches you in the face for two points of damage.

“I bite him as soon as he punches me.” Roland rolls a Natural 20. As you absorb the blow, you clamp down on his fist with your teeth. As he pulls away in pain, you manage to bite off one of his fingers. “I spit it back in his face.” The Yuan-ti punches you again with his bloody stump for three points of damage as his partner begins to gag you with a muzzle. “Worth it,” Roland mutters as the gag is applied.

Last but not least, we move on to Thames. He has spent the longest time unable to do anything since he was the first to fall. After hearing about his three companions, he dreaded what fate would befall him. A hood is removed from Thames’s head and you find yourself in a luxuriously appointed room. It is the bedchamber of a clearly important person. The four-poster bed is draped in delicate silk curtains. An elegant writing desk sits in the corner covered in papers and scrolls, and you notice all of your various tinker’s tools and artisan kits. The invaluable map of Chult you received from Riandon is also on the table.

You are tied to an ornate chair by your arms and feet. You are stripped of your possessions except your underclothes. You are also muzzled with a solid leather strap that clenches your mouth shut. You cannot get a full breath to use your breath weapon, you cannot cast spells with a verbal component, and even speaking is in a low mumble. Just then a large snake-man slithers into the room but he is unlike any others you have seen so far. This one has the head, arms and torso of a muscular man, but the waist and legs are that of an enormous snake. He slithers into the room and coils himself around one of the posts of his bed surrounding himself in silks. “Good evening, dragonkin. My name is Maztil, the leader of this temple that you and your brethren had tried to plunder. There is no need for further loss of life, especially your own, if you’d be willing to answer a few questions.”

“Take off this muzzle, and I’ll tell you what you want,” Thames mumbled.

“No, I don’t believe I will. I can hear you just fine. And I am well aware of your species and I don’t desire a face full of ice, if I’m not mistaken about your breed. Plus, I can see you are trained in magic but I’ve not seen your kind of sorcerer before. So, you’ll remain gagged for now. Now tell me, what brings you to my home and what makes you think that I would let you steal from us?”

Thames also chose to be honest. “We followed the book of an ancient explorer who stumbled on this site ages ago. We are just explorers. We thought this place was an abandoned ruin. We didn’t know it was occupied.”

“I see. That all seems reasonable enough. Now your friends were not so lucky, but I’ve decided to give you the choice. There are only three outcomes for the duthrael in this temple; death, slavery, or indoctrination. Which do you choose?”

Thames thought a moment before responding, “Slavery.”

“Pity. You would have been a welcome addition into our ranks. Perhaps a few days of squalor and suffering will change you mind. We’ll speak again.” Maztil calls to two people behind you. “Otleh. Talash. Take him to the pens.” Suddenly, the hood was thrust back over his head and Thames was dragged backward out of the room.

Next week, Naked, alone, and afraid, our heroes have to escape a Yuan-ti prison. They have to find a way out, find each other, and find all their shit.

As always, expect the unexpected, and Game On!

No one expects the TPK! – More python puns

Don’t forget to check out my Tomb of Annihilation Resources Page, filled with all the stuff I use to make this epic campaign even more epicier: My full Campaign Diary, plus Handouts, Maps, Charts, PDFs, Images, and more to use, abuse, or ignore at your peril.

And written specifically for this adventure, read my Explorer’s Guide to Chult to delve into all the legands, lore, history, religion, and culture that I used to bring even more life to this adventure.