This week, an epic invasion of undead, our heroes get their first glimpse at Ras Nsi, and Martic finally plays his cards right.

When last we left our heroes, they had found The Order of the Gauntlet at a fortification called Camp Vengeance. The group has made a good impression with some people in the camp, but they’ve made a very bad impression with the Commandant, Templar Niles Breakbone. In fact, our group has been shanghaied into the Order and one of them is in jail for insolence. But it won’t matter, because Gwen has had a vision that soon she and the rest of camp will be slaughtered by the undead. At least, she didn’t have to wait long.

Just after midnight, our heroes are awoken by a call of alarm. “To arms! Movement detected at the northern treeline.” Captain Firebeard (who likes our heroes) comes before them, “One of our towers is underdefended. Will you help protect the fort?” Of course, they said yes, my players are quite accommodating. Firebeard leads them to the stockade and their incarcerated paladin. “Roland, if I release you, will you defend the Camp as best you can?” Roland agrees, and with a signal from Firebeard, the guards release him. “You four, go to the northeast tower and keep those accursed abominations from breaching the walls. Now move it!”

At least once in every campaign, I like to run a large-scale, high-stakes battle. Maybe it’s a village invasion, two armies on the battlefield, or in this case, the defense of an overwhelmed fort. Dungeon delving is great, but if the heroes fail, it’s usually just their own lives that are lost. But in these high-stakes scenarios, if the players fail, then a lot of innocent people are going to die. This shift in tone is immediately noticed, even if the players can’t quite identify why suddenly everything seems more significant. I especially wanted to hold my big battle here because in the written adventure there is actually nothing going on at this location.

A while back, I wrote a full post on How To Run a Fantasy Siege, you can check it out in the link. For that post, I detailed the goblin raid of the village Phandalin in my Lost Mine of Phandelver campaign. Today’s session is a little different but the basic rules still apply.

First, impress upon the player the chaos and carnage occurring all around them, but only focus on the battle before them. They may be surrounded by monsters, with explosions, burning buildings and destruction all around, people everywhere fighting, screaming and dying, but you only run the immediate combat. Second, divide the encounter into multiple scenarios or waves of monsters depending on the scene, each one worse than the last to ratchet up the danger and the tension.

Third, eliminate all damage rolls. We only roll the d20 dice (many, many d20s) to determine hits. This will speed up combat, further enhancing the momentum and tension of the encounter. Enemy hit points are reduced to the number of “hits” required to kill it. For my players, the average weapon strike is rounded up to 10 points, or 1 hit, enough to kill a skeleton in one blow. This allows your players to quickly decimate their foes, making them feel bad-ass, but then those enemies are replaced by seemingly endless reinforcements, making the players feel hopeless; the perfect rollercoaster of emotions you want for this type of scene.

For these scenarios I always create a Battle Chart. This keeps all the info I need on a single page, tracking monster and NPC stats, basic scenario synopsis, and most important, a checkbox for every enemy combatant so I can see at a glance how many monsters are still dead or alive. Or in this case, undead and really dead. The link to the Battle Chart PDF is here: ToA Camp Vengeance Battle Chart

As I said, for this battle, I decided that “1 hit” equals about 10 hit points. A normal skeleton has 13 hit points and a zombie has 22. Rounding that down a little means that a skeleton is destroyed with just a single hit and a zombie falls after 2. I kept the zombie Fortitude feature because it is always fun when a zombie refuses to die, and with so many on the field this guaranteed to happen at least a few times. Also noticed that I’ve already included the zombie’s constitution bonus to the challenge difficulty for this save. The less math done at the table the better.

On the flip side, notice that the zombies and skeletons only hit for ½ damage, or in this case, 5 points of damage. This gives an advantage to the players but that is immediately canceled out by the sheer number of forces the players will face here today. There are over 100 monsters in this session-long battle royale. That’s 25 to 1 against the players; not very good odds for their survival.

To further improve my players’ chances for survival, the colossal crocodile combat conducted last session finally pushed the PCs into 5^th level along with all the cool perks that come with that rank: More hit points, extra attacks, 3^rd level spells, added proficiency bonuses, the ability to destroy undead and thanks to our paladin’s oath, a devastating spell which I could not have plan for. They are going to need all these things just to make it out of this alive.

Of course, for an epic battle like this, you should have a battle mat and enough minis, tokens, or other markers to drop on that mat. The more minis or whatnot you have the more likely your players will comment, “Oh, man, I think we’re screwed here.” The map to Camp Vengeance is pretty big, so I kept the players confined to just the northeast corner of the camp. Don’t worry, there will be enough here to keep them occupied for the next three hours. Remember, you don’t need expesive minis to run these battles, pennies work just as well.

As for the minis, I already own a fair number of undead but for this I wanted something truly spectacular, so I broke down and bought some Warhammer sets. I love and hate Warhammer minis for a variety of reasons.

I love the diversity of sculpts you get with their boxed set. The mix & match nature of the set means that no two minis will look exactly the same. D&D minis on the other hand have only two distinct minis per monster; kinda dull. And since the Warhammer set is boxed set you get an instant army of 20 unique minis. And the price point per mini is usually lower that that of D&D; about $2.50 per Warhammer mini versus D&D’s $3.50. This only applies to medium sized minis, the price point for larger Warhammer minis is outrageously high.

But again, on the flip side, I hate that Warhammer minis are more fragile; the plastic is so, so brittle. That, and the fact that you have to cut, assemble and glue these minis means they are far more likely to break, especially when dropped off a table, which is a near-automatic occurrence for every mini at least once in its molded life. D&D minis bounce while Warhammer ones splatters. And although the price point is marginally lower, because they only come in sets 20 or more, be prepared to drop $50+ per set. I don’t mind spending $10 a week or so on what my wife calls “my dolls”, but to blow over a hundred dollars on a single combat session, which is way more than my wife’s coffee addiction budget, is nuts. But it was worth it. I’ll just tell her it was a business expense for my blog. She’ll believe that, right?

Regardless, no amount of maps or minis will matter without a compelling story for the players to play against, so here we go.

“As you settle into position on the watchtower, you join a mere four Gauntlet guards who are already at their post and they appear terrified. (Why just four? So each player can have another die to roll on the attack round, and I have some sacrificial cannon fodder.) There are ample spears, javelins, arrows, and stones for any ranged combat and this high ground gives you advantage for attacking any targets below you, while the tower will provide you with ½ cover (a +2 AC bonus). The jungle has been cut back to a 30-foot perimeter around the camp, providing no cover for any assault. But the tree line is shrouded in shadows and this inky, black void seems like a toothy, gaping maw surrounding the camp, ready to swallow it whole.

Suddenly, a humanoid figure stumbles from the tree line having tripped on a root or something and lays prone on the ground. But the figure is no man, or least, not a man any longer. Even in the gloom, there is no mistaking the ashen pallor of its skin and the sunken expression on it’s face. It is a zombie. But rather than lumber forward like the mindless brute it is, it retreats back into the jungle and waits. Focusing your eyes, you can now see dozens of shadows lurking just beyond the tree line, all waiting.”

Obviously, this is very unusual behavior for undead and my players were sufficiently creeped out because of it. The power of the unknown is a powerful tool, use it as often as possible. When you do, let it fester. Don’t explain it, don’t rush to the next moment. Let your players take their time blindly guessing what it could mean. They might even give you a greater idea than the one you were planning.

As it turned out, my players correctly guessed that something way more powerful than they were ready for was controlling them and they were waiting for some signal. They all assumed it was Ras Nsi, but they dared not say his name. Meanwhile, I had also guessed correctly that they would not wait for that signal and began firing blindly into the jungle.

For the next two rounds, I let them shoot wildly into the trees. Their high ground advantage was cancelled by the blind fire and the unknown enemies had +5AC for the 3/4 cover the jungle provided. They never even knew if they hit anything or not. They just told me their rolls and I made marks on my chart. They managed to hit three targets but they received no acknowledgement of success. The undead don’t speak and thus my group was only met with an eerie silence emanating from the jungle. Even the usual cacophony of birds, monkeys, and insects was quiet this night. They knew something wicked was coming.

“After two rounds, an ear-piercing horn blast is heard and a horde of undead bursts out from the jungle. Hundreds of skeletons and zombie surged toward the fort, coming from all directions. Cries of “Hold your position. Steady, men! Aim! Fire!” followed by the twang of arrows and the whistle of spears could be heard throughout the camp. There are at least 60 undead in your immediate area shambling toward your position. You guess it might take three, maybe four, rounds for the undead to reach the fort, and breach the walls. Pray you can slay them all before they do that.”

The fighters threw everything they had at the undead. There was only one miss in round one, which included two Natural 20s. I decreed that a critical hit counts as two hits, which can instantly kill one of the zombies. Then the Artificer cast Web, covering a twenty-foot square in sticky, gossamer strands. To move things along, I don’t roll saving throws, all enemies fail their save, and I allow that two rows of undead (a total of 8) are fully restrained for one full minute (10 rounds). They’ll have to deal with them eventually, but for now, they are out of the battle.

Unfortunately, these undead were driven by something supernatural. The remaining horde steered clear of this obstacle; again, this is not usual mindless undead behavior. Something sinister is at play here. By the end of round 1, our heroes had killed or incapacitated 15 undead, but that was just a fraction of the group charging them. Gwen wanted to use her Channel Divinity to destroy these unholy aberrations, but she could only use it once; she’ll need to wait until the perfect moment. That moment was not yet, so she cast support spells to aid her companions.

Round 2 was more of the same, another 15 undead were dispatched and Thames cast another Web which created a good choke point to funnel the remaining undead into a perfect kill zone. The party was feeling pretty good about themselves, racking up a big body count in this shooting gallery, laying waste to more enemies quicker than they ever had before. None of these undead had any range weapons, so no one in the group was even injured. With a little luck, our heroes just might be able to destroy them all without taking a single hit. Naturally, their luck has just run out.

“Just as the first wave reaches the fort and begins climbing the walls, another trumpet blast blares over of the din of battle. Scores of new skeletons step out of the jungle gloom. These skeletons are armored with what was once brilliant breastplate but is now rusted and pockmarked. One of them carries a frayed flag of Amn, the previous rulers of this land. A nearby guard gasps, “By the gods, it’s the Amnian Protectorate, the most feared archery division in the Realms. Before the revolution, a legion of them entered the jungle and never returned. We’re doomed.”  Each skeletal archer draws a jet-black bow and the night sky is made even darker by the shadow of a hundred arrows.”

For these epic battles, I bought a set of twenty d20 dice for rolling massive attacks like this. Rolling so many dice at one time is a great intimidation trick. Players know that more dice means more chances to die. This many dice at the same time virtually guarantees that someone is going to die. But by rolling the dice before choosing my targets allows me to select who get hit for the most dramatic effect. I usually spread the attacks among all targets so that everyone gets a little bit damaged, but if the squishy wizard gets too close to death, then I can focus fire on the fighters. And if way too many hit rolls succeed, I can target one of the NPC guards to take one for the team. And that’s what I did here.

“As the arrows descend upon your tiny perch, you realize that your “safe” location is completely undefended from air attacks and worse, there is no place to dodge. The barbed missiles rain down upon your heads and everyone is struck by at least one arrow. Martic is hit by two, but one of the poor guards is turned into a pincushion as six arrows pierce his flesh, killing him instantly.”

But now it was the players’ turn and they really stepped up their game. Thanks to all the webs, which Martic can now also cast somehow, the surging undead are in the perfect kill zone. Gwen calls upon her god, Kelemvor, to obliterate these unholy abominations. Miraculously, Kelemvor answers her prayers, and over 20 undead are disintegrated in holy fire. I expected and was prepared for this, but I was not prepared for what came next.

Our paladin had chosen Oath of the Ancients as his binding tenet. This gave him access to a very interesting and heretofore unused spell. With a prayer to Mielikki, the goddess of nature, a moonbeam of divine light bursts its radiance upon the battle field, right on the line of skeletal archers. I’ve always felt that undead should be vulnerable to radiant damage type, and Moonbeam deals radiant damage, so for this battle, I decide that this equals two hits of damage and the spell’s radius can target two archers per round. Even worse (for me), the paladin can move the beam to a new location every round. Every single round!

My elite squad of the Amnian Protectorate didn’t stand a chance. Each round, Roland moved the beam down the line of skeletons, automatically eradicating two of my premier archers every single turn, exponentially diminishing their effectiveness each time. Sure, I was able to get in a few more shots, reduce our heroes’ hit points a little bit more, and kill another cannon fodder guard. A few undead even made it over the wall, but they were quickly cut down by Martic, who with his Hunter’s Mark, double attacks, and dual wielding off-hand attack laid waste to these undead stragglers. The group was so effective that I had to move up my time line.

But first, the long-anticipated introduction of the primary antagonist of the adventure, or at least that’s how the book sets him up to be: Ras Nsi. Ras Nsi is an incredible foe to pit your players against, but the book does a horrible job with him. They nerf his powers, make him a duped lackey for the real villain, and hide him away until the third act of the story. I’ve done my best and, I think, succeeded to make Ras Nsi more menacing and brought him to the front of the story. I restored his ability to raise undead at will, they all bear his mark, and some even call out his name. He rules the tribe of Yuan-ti that are running a slaver network in the jungle, he has tried to assassinate our heroes, and our heroes even have a means to communicate with him via the Sending Stone found back in Session 14.

Let’s make the players even more afraid of this guy. I have my players roll Perception. Gwen and Thames succeed and spy a shadow of something slithering around among the pile of corpses outside the main gate. It appears to be a Yuan-ti malison. The shadowy figure stops, waves his hands in a magical gesture and suddenly a dozen new figures begin crawling out of this perfect source of raw materials for a nefarious necromancer. Thames exclaims, “It’s Ras Nsi! It has to be.” Gwen retorts, “Dammit! We told them to burn that pile of dead bodies!” They had, and the commandant ignored them. Now the Order will have to fight the zombie husks of their fallen comrades. I hope that doesn’t have any effect upon morale. It will.

While the surviving guards are revulsed at the thought of fighting their former friends, the party is more concerned about fighting Ras Nsi, whom my meta-gaming players know can probably kill them here and now if I so choose. Roland and Martic call out, “Ras Nsi is here? Where?” Gwen casts faerie fire which illuminates Ras Nsi and the massive mound of now moving corpses in an unearthly blue glow. Thames reassures them, “Don’t worry. He won’t be there long,” as he casts a fireball into the center of the undead mountain. The pile of zombies erupts in flame, incinerating most of them with a sickening smell of burnt rotted flesh.

As a reward for this quick action, another fireball was hurled right back at the players. Ras Nsi got some dope abilities too. The guard tower explodes in a hail of fire. The party was able to leap clear of the tower in time (my monsters might not roll saves, but the players do) but the two remaining guards do not and are immediately immolated and killed. This also had the effect of breaking concentration on the moonbeam and the faerie fire, allowing a few of the Amnian Protectorate to remain a nuisance and for Ras Nsi to escape undetected. Ras Nsi also could have cast counterspell, but I’ll save that bit of knowledge for now and preferred the dueling fireballs instead.

If I’m going to have the OP bad guy face off with the unprepared players, I like to have a plausible reason why the villain would leave the players alive and not just kill them out right. For my piece of mind, Ras Nsi did not expect to be damaged during this battle. The old-school original Ras Nsi has the ability to regenerate, but this current Ras Nsi is also afflicted with the Death Curse (not that my players know this. Yet.) The Death Curse negates regeneration and healing. This damage scared Ras Nsi (again, not that he’d ever admit this to the players) who then decided to retreat from the battle and leave his minions to finish the job. Speaking of which, back to the battle.

The actions of Ras Nsi were intended to activate Wave 4. Had my players done nothing to stop this wave, 30 more zombies would have joined the battle. However, the timely use of Thames’s fireball killed half of them. Most of Wave 1 was has been killed and about 1/3 of the Amnian Protectorate remains. I am overdue to unleash the big guns in Wave 3.

Just as the two fireballs are exploding around the camp, a third horn is heard. A deathly pale goliath of a man holding a trumpet and a huge sword exits the jungle surrounded by a small contingent of skeletons, zombies, and Amnian archers. For all intents, this brute is an orc wight. But that is the least of their worries. The party notices that all the guards defending the main gate have been killed. Suddenly, from the south charges a huge zombie stegosaurus being driven by a ghast and flanked by another wave of undead which converges with the group of zombies surging from the smoldering pile of corpses. Ras Nsi is nowhere to be seen. You’ve lost track of him in the chaos.

The stegosaurus smashes into the main gate, shattering it into kindling. The horde of undead swarms in through this gaping undefended hole. The fighting is still fierce between the Order and undead attempting to breach the outer walls. Most of the soldiers are unaware or too busy to have noticed that the gate is down and undead are pouring in. Having abandoned the smoking rubble that was their watchtower, our heroes stand before this veritable army of undead. Our heroes are the last line of defense to keep the entire camp from being overrun.

Each party member mobilized to take out a different threat. Roland called out the Orc Wight and his squad to fight only him. Gwen and Thames would take on the remaining undead horde. Meanwhile Martic would deal with the zombie stegosaurus and its ghast rider. This stegosaurus can easily rampage through the camp destroying everything in its path. It must be neutralized quickly. Fortunately, Martic has a plan. He is going to finally use the secret that he has been holding on to for over six months now.

James has played Martic as a man with many secrets. No one knows that he was a thief in his pre-adventuring days. No one has realized that his full name, Martic Ascendor, is a sly reference to Marty McFly from Back to the Future. And everyone has forgotten that he owns a major magic item and he’s had it since Session 2.

Back then, Martic was bequeathed a set of six picture cards that everyone assumed was just a child’s plaything. Well, they’re not. It is really a small Deck of Illusions that deal with water-based monsters. If a random card is thrown into a body of water, a powerful illusion bursts forth from the card. For months, I have been carrying a bag filled with unique minis on the off-chance that Martic might just pull a card from the deck. Well, tonight’s the night Martic finally plays his cards right…

And I completely drop the ball. Tonight is the one night that I forgot to bring my big bag of illusion minis. It’s sitting right on the table by my front door, but a fat lot of good it does me while playing over 20 miles away at the Hobbit Hole. Drawing blindly, Martic picks a card and throws it into a pool of stagnant water that is conveniently nearby. It’s the Mermaid card! An enormous, 30-foot-tall merman, equipped with a giant trident, springs forth out of the pool. You can feel the spray of water on your skin and smell the briny smell of salt water. The merman bellows a command, “All unholy landlubbers must die!” as it brandishes its trident toward the stegosaurus.

 

Now I could have my monsters roll to recognize this deception and I could have the ghast make an animal handling check to control his mount, but I would never risk ruining a player’s epic moment because of the dice. Dice are important, and dice impart a false sense of reality to this impossible game, but letting the players do ridiculously cool shit is way more important.

Sensing the enormous challenge to its left with its the walnut-sized brain, the  stegosaurus alters course and charges directly toward the giant merman. It charged toward and then directly through the giant merman, the hapless ghast hanging on for dear un-life. Once on the other side, the stegosaurus looks around in confusion, sees the merman directly behind it, turns around and charges again. The distraction allowed Martic to run up the stegosaurus’s spiny back, and engage the ghast in combat, all while the undead dinosaur runs back and forth.

Meanwhile, Roland has challenged the orc wight to solo combat with a cry of, “I’m gonna shove that horn so far up your…” We still question the lawful goodness of our resident paladin. His oath seems to teeter on an abjectly gray moral compass. With his obscenely high AC, Roland is able to fend of the attacks of the other undead and he was only hit once by the wight and still made his save to avoid losing points off his permanent hit point total. This is good because as tanky as Roland is, he kind of a glass tank ’cause he’s rolled really low hit points.

At the same time that this is going on, Gwen had a final trick up her sleeve that I also couldn’t have planned for. She cast Spirit Guardians and holy crap, is this a powerful spell against absolutely everything! I had to look it up. For the next ten minutes (10! That’s an eternity in D&D) spectral angels fly around the cleric like those ghosts at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark (Ha! Got another reference in). Every target that Gwen chooses within a 15’ radius take 3d8 radiant damage. And with my recently ruled vulnerability to radiant damage, that’s 3 hits per enemy, per round, enough to kill almost anyone in one shot. Gwen ran around the battlefield like a Tasmanian devil, killing every undead she could find. I started to feel bad for these unholy aberrations, they never stood a chance.

I had to do something extra just to split these guys up a bit. So, I had a few more undead breach the outer walls and run into the Medical and Command tents. Martic had already killed the ghast and now he and Thames were working on taking out the stegosaurus. Thames felt that Martic had things well in hand so he ran into the Medical tent to help Sister Cyas save the wounded soldiers. No one ran to help the Commandant. Screw that guy, he was a jerk to the players anyway. No one admitted it, but I think the group wanted him to die.

Thanks to Gwen, almost every undead inside the Camp was dead again. Together, she and Roland took down the Orc Wight. I expected the group to save the horn as a spoil of war, but I don’t think anyone wanted it after Roland kept his promise.

As a bit of future foreshadowing, I mention that during this part of the battle Gwen and Roland noticed that there were even more zombies that were slated to join the fight. These zombies are currently being decimated on the river bank by a couple of creatures that look like man-sized lobsters. The group didn’t know what they were, but the were glad they were on their side. My group has actually seen signs of these things several times before, and always when they were on the water; a glimpse of tentacle, or an eye stalk breaking the water’s surface, but this is the first time they have seen one in its full glory. But the mystery monsters didn’t stick around to introduce theselves. As soon as they took out the zombies on the beach, the lobstermen disappeared back into the swampy waters.

All that remained was the zombie stegosaurus. Every player had a hand in damaging this thing, but it was Roland who performed the coup-de-gras by saving his last smite for this twice dead dino. I really wanted this stegosaurus to utilize the undead fortitude feature but there was no way it was going to pass the DC32 saving throw it needed after the massive damage Roland slapped it with. I was very sad to see this resurrected stegosaurus shuffle of this mortal coil, again. By the way, its name was Steve.

After three grueling and exhilarating hours, the battle was over. All that remained was the denouncement. Our heroes and the Order of the Gauntlet were victorious. They had repelled an invading army of hundreds of foul undead. But the price was high. Dozens of valiant Order warriors were killed in the assault. As the remaining soldiers set about repairing the gate and removing the dead (and burning them this time), our heroes looked for more survivors. All the NPCs of their group had survived, as did Undril Silvertusk, their friend and ally. Undril was uninjured, but she did look sickly and ill, I hope she hasn’t fallen ill or contracted some disease. Or a particular death curse perhaps.

Unfortunately, the Commandant, Templar Miles Breakbone, also survived. The group was really hoping for a change in leadership. I had considered killing this guy, but I kept him alive for one reason. During their initial encounter, Roland inadvertently, yet publicly, insulted the commandant and questioned his ability to rule. Naturally, Breakbone hated these heroes and had Roland thrown in the stockade. But now that those heroes had saved the Camp and the Order, I wanted my players to enjoy this mea culpa moment from the arrogant lord.

“Templar Breakbone is in his command tent, wounded but alive, surrounded by the twice-dead corpses of a half dozen undead. “Firebeard and Sister Cyas tell me that you are responsible for saving the entire camp. You have my gratitude. I have misjudged you and I apologize. I release you from any prior orders given but I do have a favor to ask. Sister Undril tells me that you intend to head back to Port Nyanzaru. There are four soldiers here that need greater care than we can provide. If I could beseech you to deliver them and these communiques safely back to the Order chapter in Port, I would be in your debt. If your ever need supplies or aid, we are at your disposal.””

Roland pressed his luck and still tried to convince Breakbone that their mission is doomed to fail and that he is an idiot for not seeing it. Breakbone retorted, “On the contrary, by sending you to us tonight. Tyr has proven that we are truly blessed and the sacrifices we make further serve his glory. We shall double our efforts to stay and fight this scourge!” Man! Zealots are fun to play.

As a final coda, when the party exits the tent a shadow crosses in front of the moon. An enormous pterodactyl flies off to the south-east and on it sits a large man with an elongated tail, riding in a saddle. Ras Nsi will return.

Next week, a metallic god, a dinosaur king, and our heroes witness firsthand the devastation of the death curse.

As almost always, your players will come up with a brilliant solution, or they will die, and Game On!

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.