We make a radical change to the campaign during a fake jungle trek filled with lizardfolk, illusions, and a hidden shrine guarded by an unexpected foe.

When last we left our heroes, they had been hired to sneak around the Flaming Fist outpost at Fort Belaurian. The Flaming Fist is the military wing of Baldur’s Gate, a city-state similar to Waterdeep, thousands of miles away on the Sword Coast. As such a remote outpost, The Flaming Fist leader, Blaze Liara Portyr, is basically a dictator, acting with impunity, so long as the money still flows to Baldur’s Gate. Our heroes are looking for evidence that this leader is in league with a band of pirates terrorizing the shipping lanes of Port Nyanzaru. She is.

During the course of the mission, the group took part in a joust, hired a new minion, Benedict, and a new guide, Kawasha, and finally got introduced to the guy they rescued way back in Session 4. Turns out this guy is Blaze Portyr’s boss and he would gladly put a stop to Portyr’s evil doings if the group can show him some proof of such acts. The problem is this guy is totally blind, after some hags ripped his eyeballs from their sockets. The hags are dead (Session 21), but this doesn’t solve the problem of restoring their friend’s sight. Ironically, our heroes have seen both of his eyes in various places around Chult, although they did not realize their importance at the time. Even more ironic is the man’s name: Sir Miles Farsight.

In another cruel twist of fate, our heroes found the evidence they need to accuse Liara Portyr, but they couldn’t use it. Since Sir Farsight is still blind, Portyr would deny everything, and if they took the evidence with them, Portyr would know about it and warn the pirates. Our heroes had to leave the evidence where they found it. But using this newly gained knowledge, they hatched a daring plan. They would report back to the leaders at Port Nyanzaru, create a fake shipping ledger for a treasure laden ship and allow the ledger to be stolen. When pirates inevitably attack the ship, instead of treasure, it will have onboard our heroes and the Chultan militia, who will capture the pirate ship and her captain, who will then reveal the location of their hidden base. There’s no way this plan can fail.

The only snag is that they can’t head back to Port Nyanzaru right away. They had told Blaze Portyr that they were adventuring into the jungle, even bought a charter to keep up the ruse, and promised the Blaze that they would seek out the ghouls and giants that roamed south of here, far away from Port Nyanzaru. The group assumes that they will be followed from the Fort and can’t just take the first trail back to Port Nyanzaru. To keep up appearances, the group will head south, pretending to explore, then turn west and run back to Port. No, no, no. I don’t want them to do this.

I’ve got a ton of stuff set up in this area of the jungle, some of which (like my 14-page ToA Journal Alucius Alphonse) I’ve had prepared since Session 1. I already know that my players want to do it all, but to go all the way back to Port, just to come right back here again wastes so many in-game days. Now that the Death Curse is active, the clock is ticking; we don’t have the time to just walk around. Let’s move people! This is why I created my Death List of people dying from the Curse, to get them motivated to stop it. But they’re hyper-focused on doing this pirate sub-plot. Worse, they don’t even need to go back to town. Just cast Sending to Zindar, message him to set up your pirate trap, and be done with it.

Plus, we had just run a big batch of urban adventures, from the investigative mystery of the Yuan-ti induced plague, to unlocking yet another player home, to all the jousting and heisting the group just did in Fort Belaurian. But I am told that the Precious Players get to dictate the direction of the story, and they really wanna go back to town. Fine. I’ll just roll up some random encounters and see if I can steer them further into the jungle. But first, we made a major change in the campaign that needs to be mentioned.

At the time I started this campaign, I didn’t have a steady group to play with. My local hobby store, Battleground, always needs DMs for their Thursday Night D&D groups. I signed up, put out a call for players, got six explorers looking for adventure, and off we went. We lost two along the way, but the core group of four stayed solid. It was good, but I never really enjoyed the game store atmosphere. Don’t get me wrong, the store was great and very welcoming, but Thursdays never really fit my schedule, I hated lugging all my D&D stuff around, and I found that the room was too noisy to play the intimate, personal game I prefer. My group agreed with me, so after almost a year of playing at the Hobbit Hole (my wife’s nickname for the store), we moved our game to a home campaign.

I’m so glad we did this; it has changed the whole campaign for the better. No more crating bags of books, maps, and minis. I don’t have the claustrophobic feel I had tucked in the corner of the game store. No more late starts because the session before us went long and now we can play as long as we want. No more cutting a session short or rushing through an encounter because the store is closing. But the best part is the freedom. Freedom to be loud when it’s impactful, and freedom to be quiet and still be heard. We can be silly, or serious, and more thoughtful and deliberate in our roleplaying. I do feel bad that everyone has to drive to my house, but then again, I don’t charge them the $5 per session that the store did. Also, when my group was paying for the privilege to play, I felt a lot of pressure to perform at a certain level and I was crushed when that didn’t happen or when some players left the campaign. But now I have the freedom to have a crappy session. Like this one. Okay, it wasn’t total crap, but it wasn’t my best.

For today’s trek back to town, the dice were vindictive today. According to the dice, I rolled 10 random encounters just to get back. That’s over 3 session’s worth of random, not-driving-the-story-forward, irrelevant encounters. We’re never gonna get to town at this rate. I eliminated most of them, leaving encounters with lizardfolk, flail snails, eblis, stegosaurs, and vegepygmies, five creatures that my group has yet to encounter properly. At the start of the adventure, it was fine to have each monster be part of its own encounter. But at this stage, to make things more interesting, I combined the first two and the last three together. And, I get to use some brand new equipment I picked up.

Wizards of the Coast has not been having a good year, but their loss is our gain. They had to short sell their entire line of battle mats and NPC token sets to a national wholesaler, Ollie’s. Originally, these sets were $50 each, but Ollie’s was selling them for just $5. I bought four of each. I would have bought more, but the store only had four battle mat sets left. Check around to see if your local store still has any left. On to the encounters.

The first scenario involved our group stumbling across a strange glistening trail of slime meandering through the jungle. This slime trail shimmers like an iridescent kaleidoscope. The trail leads to a clearing where a dozen lizard men are attacking two enormous snails with scintillating rainbow-colored shells. Suddenly one of the snails collapses and the color fades from its shell. The remaining snail lets out a harrowing wail as the shell seems to vibrate and brilliant color burst forth from the living snail in waves, knocking out… (rolls dice) three of the lizard folk. I like some scenarios where I can show off a creature’s cool ability but not necessarily attack the party with it.

With zero context, our heroes rushed to the aid of the “good” snails by attacking the “evil” lizards. The battle was fun, if uninspired, with a couple of shamans and a Lizard Queen to make things challenging. After the fight, the druid explained that these colorful creatures are flail snails, that they are very rare and noble creatures, and are the embodiment of the trickster god, Unhk. He also mentions that the slime and shells are very valuable and useful in making magic items, specifically Spellguard shields. Let’s scoop up that slime, drag that carcass onto the wagon, and coerce the other one into a cage with Roland’s Speak with Animals spell. And don’t forget the turtle shell shields and some other knick-knacks that the lizardfolk carried. That chump back in Waterdeep will pay top dollar for this crap.

Done. In hindsight, I wish that after the fight, the party learned that the snails were the evil ones who had recently trashed the lizard folk village and murdered a few of their young. The lizard folk could have been defending themselves. Teach my players a lesson about monster morality. Oh well, maybe next time. Moving on.

The next encounter finds the group traversing a mucky swamp that shouldn’t be here. The druid explains that this area is normally lush jungle, not brackish swamp, but it has been over a month since Qawasha last came by this area. Even stranger, this marsh water is cold to the touch. My players assume (correctly) that whomever caused the Thunder Falls waterfall to freeze over in Session 10 must have been in this area recently and the wintery chaos they created has just recently melted. Of more immediate concern, this swamp makes traveling slow to a crawl as the group probes for sinkholes and divots along a water-covered path that is currently leading them away from Port Nyanzaru. I’ll teach you to want to head right back to town.

Suddenly, my group comes upon a large wooden chest just sitting directly in the middle of this swampy path. It is an obvious trap, but Roland threw caution to the wind and blithely walked toward it. Where he was immediately swallowed by some fast-acting quicksand, or more accurately quick mud. As the rest of the group scrambles to rescue their friend, they can hear a dozen birds cackling in the trees. Qawasha clues them in again. Eblis.

The eblis is another animal unique to Chult and an avatar for the trickster god, Papazotyl. I’m trying to get encounters with as many Chult specific monsters as possible and specifically the nine that also act as the embodiments for the Trickster Gods of Chult. These gods don’t have a huge bearing on the plot, but they do have an interesting role in Chapter 3 of the adventure, so I want to give my players some experience with all these creatures before that time.

The eblis by themselves are not very lethal in combat so they rely on trickery to lure victims to their doom. They have the ability to manifest illusions which is a very tricky game mechanic for any DM to play effectively. Illusion magic is a great “film” effect, but it never plays that way at the table. If the illusion is too fantastic, like Tiamat suddenly swooping out of the sky to kill them, the players won’t believe it is real, no matter how much you convince them it is. If it is too mundane, such an imaginary floor covering a pit, you have to allow some sort of character perception (either passive or rolled) to perceive the ruse lest you be considered a dick DM. Illusion magic just doesn’t function properly in an RPG. Simply put, it has to rely on the players willing to “play along” and get fooled by the illusion. Always a risky endevour.

Fortunately, Roland played nice and got caught in my bird-brained trap. It took some doing, but eventually the group was able to drag Roland out of the bog, all while the birds hooted and jeered that these humans were ruining their fun. Thames catapulted some rocks at these foul fowl, but he missed and they flew away in disgust. Of course, there was no chest or any treasure, but the real reward came when they turned a bend in the bog and discovered a herd of stegosaurs who had been tricked by these evil eblis.

Most of the dinos were dead but one was still alive and struggling to stay above water. With a combination of misty step, speak with animals, and some other spell I can’t remember, our heroes were able to save the noble beast and induct it into the ranks of their menagerie as another pack animal and companion to Zongo, the stolen triceratops. Just as the group was hitching the beast to the wagons, a tribe of walking weeds arrived, drawn by the wailing cries of the distressed dino. These are vegepygmies.

Thanks again to the druid, our group already has one of these plant people in their group as the guide’s companion. In an absolutely insane “conversation” where the native plants spoke to the domesticated one in plant speak, who then spoke to the druid in a different tongue, who then translated that into common for our players and back again, the topic of enormous strangers lurking about came up.

“Why yes, we have seen some huge creature in the area. It looked and walked like a man, but it was enormous, as big as the biggest dinosaur, and it was covered in heavy fur coats that must be sweltering in this heat, but we did not stick around to find out if it was friendly.” “Of course we can tell you where it was. It was near the Chultan shrine located at the base of the Phoenix Horn Mountains, less that one day from here, due east.” That’s right, you just keep moving further and further away from Port. I’ll get you to go where I want.

I added this lost Chultan Shrine to give my group their first glimpse at their final destination, The Lost City of Omu. In the book, there is no real mention of this place up until the players are ordered to go here. But I like to have at least a little build up to such a momentous location. The players debated and incredibly they decided to make this side trek to the shrine and investigate these mysterious monstrosities which they already know is the frost giants. They are not ready to take on a proper frost giant, but I got something else in my bag of tricks.

As I’ve said before, a huge drawback to running this overland sandbox is that there is no good way to dwindle the player’s resources because they can rest every day. Even with my modified rest rules, I just can’t make my players truly afraid of the jungle. But I can whittle them down a little bit just before a major encounter, so I roll for another random encounter, this time getting trolls.

I don’t know if I agree with trolls being present here in the steamy jungle of Chult, but screw it, I rolled trolls, so they’re getting trolls. I run upstairs to get my troll minis, which is something I could not do if we still played at the hobby store. I quickly decide that these monsters would not attempt to attack the players directly, they just want food. Instead, they will attempt a smash and grab targeting the weakest link in the expedition: the oxen pulling the wagons. This thrown together encounter proved to be the most exciting one of both sessions. Oh yeah, this is another two session mash-up. Enjoy.

Everyone failed their perception rolls, so the trolls were able to dash in, grab an ox, and run back toward the jungle before the players could react. Fortunately, one of the trolls failed its athletics check and wasn’t able to slash the ropes tied to the wagon, slowing it down and dragging the wagon ten feet and jamming it onto a fallen log. The players won initiative, but before they attacked there was an interesting debate about whether or not their characters knew about the troll’s well-known weakness to fire.

There was some interesting discussion, as each player decided if their backstory would have involved experience with or knowledge gained about trolls. Oddly, in almost every campaign I’ve run with different players, it is always trolls that sparks this debate. You could call it reverse meta-gaming when players pretend to not know something that should be common knowledge. Part of the fun of D&D is fighting new monsters and discovering their abilities and weaknesses. We have been spoiled with Tomb of Annihilation since so many monsters are unique to the campaign, so it felt weird that players always insist on not knowing about a troll’s weakness to fire (and acid). As for the discussion, I stayed out of it. As the DM, I’m fine with either result and don’t want to sway my players actions. In the end, two players decreed that they knew about the weakness while the other two were clueless.

Unfortunately, the ones who “knew” about this weakness, kept missing their initial attacks, and thus could not “prove” this fire advantage for several rounds. This made the combat lasts longer than expected, but it allowed me a few extra swipes at our heroes knocking down their hit points and burning extra spell slots. Which is good, because it is always best to have the players weakened before a final battle, to add to the tension. Ultimately, our heroes prevailed and the trolls lay dead, their corpses smoldering (’cause of the fire, of course.) The oxen were killed as well, but the stegosaur didn’t mind repaying our heroes for saving its life by being their pack mule. Once they were under way again, it was an easy matter to find this lost Chultan shrine, although there wasn’t any sign of any giants anywhere. That can’t be good.

The purpose of this shrine is to tease some info about Mezro, in an attempt to pique their curiosity and convince my players to head there first, before heading back to Port. This will also give them the first mention of the lost city of Omu, their final destination. For good measure, I threw in some info about Ras Nsi, the giants, and Artus Cimber. The circular shrine is built right into the base of the mountain, with a large cave grotto at the back of the shrine. It is built in such a way that you cannot access the cave without walking across the shrine floor first. My group was immediately suspicious. As well they should be.

They refused to enter the shrine, and spent a long time observing it from their position. Piles of rubble surrounded the outer edge of the shrine and into the cavern, presumably collapsed pillars and such. The center of the floor had a three-pointed crown made of inlayed red tile. This crown was surrounded by seven statues standing in a semi-circle around the crown. The players immediately recognized this as the same crest used by Port Nyanzaru. It doesn’t mean much; just that this Seal of Mezro was co-opted by Port Nyanzaru, but it was a nice bit of continuity. They also notice a faint blue line in the shape of a triangle that encompasses the shrine. My players know all too well that this is the symbol of Ras Nsi. From this distance, the group cannot make out any details of the statues nor can they read the plaques on their bases. They’re gonna have to go inside the shrine.

They really didn’t want to go inside. They checked for traps. None. They poked the rubble with sticks. Nothing. They threw rocks onto the floor. Nothing activated. They cast detect magic and learned that the shrine is affected by evocation and necromancy. Then the paladin uses his Divine Sense and learned that the shrine has been desecrated and is now unholy ground. I never looked up the spell hallow, I only made this an unholy shrine for one reason as we’ll learn in a minute, but my players imagined all sorts of evil, nasty stuff that I hadn’t even considered, maybe next time.

Finally, they decided to send someone in by tying a 50’ rope around their waist, ready to be yanked back at the first sign of trouble. I found this hilarious, because I also have something tied up to a long chain at the back of the shrine. This could be interesting. Hopefully, I can get these players tangled up with all this rope. The tethered players reach the first statues. Nothing kills them yet and they learn that these statues are the seven Barae of the ancient city of Mezro.

Now, I’ve dropped several hints about the missing city of Mezro and her mysterious leaders. But this is the first time they’ve been given the full list of barae. Convenient, since they are due to meet their first bara in a few weeks. Mezro is run by seven Barae, or Chosen, who act as Paladin Princes and servants of Ubtao. Each bara is blessed with great power, near-immortality, and control over some natural element or other unique ability. The chart above lists each bara and what their statue looks like, including age, gender, race, style of dress, and the distinct base that the statue stands on, giving a hint at their unique power. Each statue also has a plaque with their name and their title written in Chultan. Some entries need extra explaination.

Under Age there are two numbers. The first is how old they (and their statues) look and the second is how old they are. Osaw the First became a Bara at age 85 and that is what is still looks like, but he is actually over 1600 years old. I did not reveal the true age of the bara, just what the statue depicts. Ras Nsi is actually the oldest bara and is the last surviving of the original seven. Barae are immortal but they can be killed in battle.

Most of the bases that the bara stand upon are self-explanatory and the power they represent is written in italics (I also did not explain each power to my players, let them make their own assumptions). Ras Nsi stands on a pile of skulls because he can control undead. Osaw’s power is his perfect memory and can recall every detail of everything he’s seen and learned during his very long life. Dhalmass stands upon thousands of carved alphabet letters in every language, from ABC to Greek, Chinese Hanzi, Hieroglyphs, Cuniform and a dozen languages the players don’t recognize. His power is the ability to communicate in every language. As for the Chultan titles, they are a combination of titles from the Ring of Winter novel and Swahili. The English translation is not on the plaque, but the druid guide speaks Chultan and could translate.

As the group investigated each statue, they had to move further and further toward the back of the shrine. And the further the group crept into the shrine the more certain they were that something was going to jump out at them. The dread was delicious.

Eventually, they ran out of rope and they had to give up on their safety lines. With great trepidation the whole party entered the shrine proper, although everyone refused to step onto the center crown. There is no trap there, but the players were convinced there was. Fear of the unknown is a powerful tool; I wish we could use it more often. As the group was investigating the statue of Ras Nsi, defiled with graffiti like “Traitor” and “Exile”, I sprung my “trap”. One of the rubble piles begins to move near the back cavern. A humungous mound of bones, wearing torn leather, a Viking helm, and wielding an enormous axe, rises out of the rubble and charges. It’s a Frost Giant Skeleton!

As soon as I decided that I was going to run Tomb of Annihilation, this was the first new mini that I bought for that campaign, and he’s not even a monster in the adventure. The mini is actually made for the Icewind Dale campaign. But Chult is swarming with undead and there are frost giants too? You know I’m gonna find a way to squeeze this guy in. His Challenge Rating is higher than by player’s level, but not by much and I never worry about that stuff anyway. Plus, I modified the condition in other ways. The shrine is desecrated just so that the cleric’s turn undead ability won’t work; they’re gonna have to fight this chump. But this giant is also chained to the back wall, so that he can’t wander off and the players can run away if need be. Somebody (I wonder who) really wants to keep people out of that back chamber. This fight is gonna be awesome!

Except it wasn’t. It was an immediate disaster for me and my monster, all due to one inconsequential spell and me being too lazy to look up the rules. Stupid spells!

The spell in question? Web. Roland the Paladin recently acquired this spell, cause that’s a thing paladins should be able to do, and he’s been dying to try it out. The giant rushed forward, got one good attack in, then was instantly incapacitated by Spider-Man over here. Like all area spells, the giant got a Dexterity saving throw, which he naturally failed since he rolls with a -1 penalty (the undead are not known for their agility). My bad-ass bad guy was stuck, permanently. I asked the player what the conditions of the spell were. (I don’t look up spells unless I plan to use them, that’s the player’s job). He said that the creature is restrained until he makes his saving throw. Which I assumed (incorrectly) to be another DEX saving throw. This ruined the whole combat for me.

First, it didn’t seem right that this Huge monster should be incapacitated in this manner. Large and smaller, sure, but not this behemoth. And it didn’t make sense that he needs to dodge out of something he’s already trapped by. It’s not; it’s a Strength check (with a Giant’s +6 advantage) to break free. But I don’t like looking stuff up in combat. It breaks up the flow and I can usually rely on Roland and Ian to know any rules I forgot. So, I’ll just make a ruling and move on, And if that ruling goes against my DM game, then so be.

I spent the first two rounds trying in vain to “dodge” free while the party hammered away at me without consequence. I gave up on freedom and just started swinging. At disadvantage of course. I got two more hits in and was at least able to use the skeleton’s cool Freezing Stare ability (once!), before the party chopped the giant back down into a pile of splintered bones. So much for my awesome encounter design. But don’t worry, this giant will have his revenge in a couple of weeks.

As a reward, my players got a sweet axe and a neat Viking helmet, both of which are too big for anyone to use. Ha ha! Even better, Gwen got another ridiculous skull to add to her morbid collection. We made need to have an intervention. She is addicted to skulls! They also found another Wanted poster with Artus Cimber’s face on it. This time, the message on the back gave some more tantalizing clues about this whole giant affair: “Zelor, kill this man and anyone with him. Bring this man and all his possessions and I will allow you to be my consort. The Hvalspyd will moor here south of the Horn for two full then head to Refuge – Drufi”

As with most of my clues, this led to more questions than answers. Who is Drufi? Where is Refuge? Why do the giants want this man so bad? What does “two full” mean? How long has this monster been here if he’s already turned into a skeleton? That one I answered. “The jungle animals ate the meat off his bones before Ras Nsi found him.” But I refused to answer the other questions. Those answers will be revealed later. For now, let’s check out what this thing was guarding.

The group was disappointed that there was no treasure, just an enormous mural depicting the competing stories of two ancient jungle cities and their eventual demise. My group knows of the first city, Mezro, but they had never heard of the second, Omu. My players again assumed correctly that Ras Nsi must not want people to even discover the existance of the city of Omu. But why? The story of Mezro begins on the left side of the mural, Omu on the right, until both stories merge in the center. Golden Plaques below the paintings tell this Tale of Two Cities.

Next week, we return to Port, make new allies and new enemies and the adventure officially begins.

As always, never let a rules mistake ruin your fun, and Game On!

I know it’s a trap, my character doesn’t care. I’m touching it. – The sweetest words a DM will ever hear. Thanks, Roland.

And 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.