Tomb of AnnihilationThe Jungle and the Tomb
Part two: eighteen months of hexcrawl, a dead city at Christmas, six levels of Acererak's dungeon, and everything the edition change broke on the way.
Where Part One Left Them
Five months in, level 5, and in possession of a jungle they had no idea how to cross.
I ran the whole campaign on the 2024 rules (5.5e), with a module written for the 2014 ones. Any advice or comment about that is in a box like this one, and the full conversion guide for DMs is at the end of this post.
In part one the party buried a man called Kevin, sailed to Chult, and spent three sessions in Port Nyanzaru earning a reputation, a charter and an enemy.
The short version. They protected a racing dinosaur and were thanked for it by Kwayothé, a merchant prince who turned out to be dealing with the yuan-ti. They cleared the House of the Crocodile, a dungeon built around a fable about carrying your partner, and Ubtao gave them the ruined camp above it as a bastion. They went to a ball, saved the prince who was hosting it, and came away with a letter that proved what Kwayothé was. Then they took her to trial and won, and she escaped the same week.
Six characters who arrived worshipping six different gods now all worshipped Ubtao, which I had not planned and did not ask for.
This is the rest of it. Eighteen months, a hexcrawl, a dead city at Christmas, six levels of somebody else's tomb, and a full account at the end of what the 2024 rules did to a module written in 2017.
A Frog King and a Tower on Fire
May 2025. Two stops up the river, run mostly as written.
Not everything got rewritten. The first two stops up the river, the grung village of Dungrunglung and the pterafolk tower at Firefinger, I ran mostly as the book has them.
In Dungrunglung, King Groak is a gold grung who is desperate to summon the frog goddess Nangnang and marry her. His priest, Krr'ook, is sure the Great Ritual will fail and that she will get the blame, so she quietly asks the party to help her fake the goddess on the night. Getting in at all means a thorn maze that rearranges itself every minute: six DC 15 Survival checks, with an encounter roll between each one.
Firefinger is an old Chultan signal tower with a magical flame on top and a flock of pterafolk living inside. I ran it on the table screen using a digital map of the top and the sides of the tower.
At Firefinger the team freed an aarakocra called Nephyr, who the pterafolk had tied up in their nest. He carried their story home to Kir Sabal, and that paid off five months later. They also came away with a Mask of the Beast.
In Dungrunglung, they faked Nangnang for Krr'ook. Akira played the goddess, of course, and King Groak was totally smitten.
The Golden Drake
May to June 2025. A borrowed galley, naval rules from our last campaign, and a cove full of pirates.
Pirates raided the Port Nyanzaru docks and carried off two dozen dockworkers. Zhanthi couldn't spare the city's fleet, so she lent the team her own galley, the Golden Drake, and offered 2,000 gold for every pirate ship they caught and 500 for every captain.
"I trust your skill on sea and land… I cannot spare Port Nyanzaru's fleet without crippling trade, but I will lend you my galley."
Life on board
Between fights, the ship had things to do.
| Activity | Check | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Knot-tying contest | Sleight of Hand DC 12 | Fastest success gets Inspiration and +1 to the next ship manoeuvre |
| Deck target practice | Perception DC 10, or a ranged attack | Extra rations, or a "grape shot" for the next sea fight |
| Shanty show | Performance DC 13 | Everyone who joins in gets temporary hit points, and the ship is 5 feet faster for an hour |
| Fishing and forage | Survival DC 11 | Fresh food. A natural 20 lands a kelp pearl |
| Maintenance relay | Athletics or tools DC 12 | Done in under ten minutes, the ship gains a knot for two hours |
Each dawn, a d20 decides what the sea brings: dolphins (an Inspiration), a squall that could wash the rations overboard, ghost lights in the mist, or a chest drifting past with a pirate token in it.
Ship to ship
The naval rules came from our last campaign, Rime of the Frostmaiden. I wrote them because the official ship rules are either too detailed or too boring, and I wanted everyone at the table to have something to do. I brought them back for the pirates.
- The sea sets a DC
- I roll a d20 at the start of the round. That's the Conditions DC.
- The captain gives the orders
- Whoever is holding the ship's character sheet is captain for that round. They say what the ship does and roll a d10: the base Ship Score.
- Everyone works their station
- Each player rolls a d20 for their job on the ship. Beat the Conditions DC and you add +2 to the Ship Score.
- Move
- If the total beats the Conditions DC, the ship goes where the captain wanted. If not, it drifts off in a random direction, towards whatever it can hit, or sits dead in the water.
- Fire
- If the total beats the enemy's Ship DC and you are in range, the shot lands.
- Grapple and ram
- A ballista can grapple at 50 feet. (The chain has AC 15 and 30 hit points, if anyone wants to cut it.) A ship with a naval ram can ram for 100 damage, and everyone standing makes a DC 15 Dexterity save, with +2 if they describe how they brace.
- Damage
- Drop below half hull points, or take three hits in a round, and roll on the Critical Ship Table: a lost sail, fire on board, a crewman down, the hull holed. At zero, the ship makes death saves. Fail three and everyone is in the rowing boats.
- Boarding
- Once the ships are locked together, we switch to a boarding map and the minis come out.
Basho's Naval Combat Rules
The full rules I wrote for Rime of the Frostmaiden and brought back for the pirates: the combat round, ship actions, a sailing template, the ship roles, ship stat blocks, the Critical Ship Table, NPC crew, pirate captains, a giant squid boss, and loot and upgrades.
Download the naval rules PDF · 14 pages · 6.3 MBFor the chase and the run-in, the session plan also split the distance into range bands, so the team always knew what they could do from where they were.
| Band | Distance | What you can do |
|---|---|---|
| Long | 1 mile to half a mile | Spot the enemy (Perception DC 15), ready the cannons |
| Medium | Half a mile to 300 feet | Fire ship weapons, throw harpoons, get ready to board |
| Close | 300 to 50 feet | Ram, grapple, run out the boarding planks |
| Grappling | 50 feet or less | Board |
Jahaka Anchorage
A sending stone in a captured captain's cabin was twinned with one belonging to Liara Portyr, the commander at Fort Beluarian. Use it, and the reply whispers "between the dragon's tooth and the serpent's coil": the twin stone columns at the mouth of the pirates' cove.
Inside, the channels are full of submerged rocks, and the prisoners are kept in a waterlogged cell above a pool of reef sharks. Knocking the pins out of the bars takes a DC 15 Dexterity check, or four rounds of very noisy hammering. A control rod in the ceiling drops a beam on the sharks, if someone thinks to look for it (Investigation DC 12).
The three captains each got a tougher stat block, a catchphrase, and lair actions on initiative count 20.
| Captain | Catchphrase | The trick |
|---|---|---|
| Elok Jaharwon | "Blood and tusks!" | A wereboar mutineer. When one of his crew drops, he charges and gores, and once per rest he refuses to drop below 1 hit point. |
| Zaroum Al-Saryak | "By the sparkle in me blade!" | A gem in his empty eye socket lets him see invisible things. His poisoned dagger does 4d6 poison on top. |
| Laskilar | "Plot twist, matey!" | A showman. Misty step at will, smoke bombs, and illusory pirates that give his side advantage. |
And in the cage, among the prisoners, was an albino dwarf called Musharib. He took one look at the Soultracer Scale on a pack and made the team an offer.
"Free my clan at the forge of Hrakhamar, and I shall swear allegiance to do the rest and get you to Omu."
The catch: the Scale only points the way once it has been charged in the spring at the Heart of Ubtao.
The sea fights went really well, and the boarding actions were a lot of fun. Then the team took Jahaka Anchorage, and the pirates' cove became their own forward base. And they took Musharib's deal.
Musharib's Jungle School
June 2025. A guide who teaches, ten things the jungle does to you, and something following the team.
The module's hexcrawl is mostly random encounter rolls. For the walk from the pirates' cove to Hrakhamar, I gave Musharib the job of teaching the team how to survive the jungle instead.
I played him as Muldoon from Jurassic Park: gruff, dry, and fairly sure you are all about to die. He reads the ground, points out the ambush spots, barks orders, and respects anyone who shows some initiative.
- A hazard a day
- Each day of travel, I roll or choose a hazard from the table below and read its description.
- Pick a lead
- Each hazard has a recommended character who makes the main check.
- Helpers
- Another player describes how they help. If it's clever and plausible, the lead gets advantage or +2.
- Learn from Musharib
- If the lead fails, the helper can step in with a related skill at DC +2 to rescue it.
- Musharib always comments
- Praise when it goes well, a lesson when it doesn't.
- Jungle-hardened
- Beat, or rescue, eight or more hazards on the trek and the team becomes jungle-hardened.
I wrote the hazards for our party, so each one names who should lead and who should back them up.
| d10 | Hazard | Lead, then backup | Musharib, on a pass / a fail |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Quicksand | Zagorath, Athletics 13. Johnathan, Strength 13 | "Muscles like a triceratops! Good pull." / "Test the ground next time." |
| 2 | Poisonous thorns | Cesca, Acrobatics 12. Phoenix, Perception 13 | "Light-footed as a grung. Impressive." / "Thorns don't care how fast you are." |
| 3 | Insect swarm | Zagorath, Survival 13 or fire breath. Akira, Nature 12 or fire magic | "Fire solves most problems." / "Cover your mouth! Cleric, burn them!" |
| 4 | Downpour and flood | Akira, Survival 12. Johnathan, Athletics 13 | "You've got a nose for dry land." / "Soaked to the bone? Paladin, haul them out!" |
| 5 | Venomous snake | Fate, Animal Handling 12. Phoenix, Stealth 12 | "Calm as a stone. The snake respects that." / "Freeze next time. Rogue, distract it quietly!" |
| 6 | Falling branch or fruit | Cesca, Dexterity save 12. Phoenix, Sleight of Hand 12 | "Fast reflexes! That's how you survive." / "Heads up means heads up, rookie." |
| 7 | Leeches | Akira, Medicine 13. Fate, Lay on Hands or Medicine 12 | "You've got a healer's touch." / "Leeches'll drain you dry. Paladin, cleanse the wounds!" |
| 8 | Jungle fever | Zagorath, Survival 14. Akira, Medicine 13 | "Covered up smart. Mosquitoes hate discipline." / "You'll be feverish by dawn. Cleric, brew a remedy!" |
| 9 | Hidden animal trap | Phoenix, Investigation 13. Zagorath, Strength 12 | "Sharp eyes. You'd make a decent poacher." / "Traps don't discriminate. Fighter, smash it!" |
| 10 | Monkey troop | Johnathan, Intimidation 13. Cesca, Acrobatics 12 | "That glare could scare a T-rex." / "Monkeys stole your lunch? Monk, outrun them!" |
1 · Quicksand
2 · Poisonous thorns
3 · Insect swarm
4 · Downpour and flood
5 · Venomous snake
6 · Falling branch or fruit
7 · Leeches
8 · Jungle fever
9 · Hidden animal trap
10 · Monkey troop- Survival
- Proficiency in Survival in Chult's jungles, if you don't already have it.
- A daily reroll
- Once a day, reroll a failed Survival, Nature or Perception check in the jungle.
- Talking shop
- Advantage on Persuasion with guides and porters when the subject is jungle travel.
Something is following us
The trek has a stalker. Within an hour the birds go quiet, and then Musharib kneels in the mud, traces a print as wide as a shield, and says they are being tracked.
The King of Feathers stalks them, and every clue they can find is also a weakness. Each one is a handout.
| Clue | What it gives away |
|---|---|
| Three-toed tracks, wide as a shield | It is heavy. Pits and snares will stop it. |
| Iridescent feathers snagged on thorns | The feathers are an illusion, and it is fraying. |
| Purple berries in a dead boar | The berries make it sick. Feed it some and it throws up whatever it has swallowed. |
| Broken branches, trampled undergrowth | It is far too big to sneak. Noise traps will catch it coming. |
| The jungle goes silent | It is close. Get ready. |
Three-toed tracks
Iridescent feathers
Purple berries
Broken branches
The silence
And what it left: the skullMusharib offers three places to make a stand (a riverbank with crocodiles in it, a rocky outcrop, or a thicket), and the team has a few hours before dark to build a camp and set traps: pits, noose snares, and bait that needs a DC 13 Survival or Nature check to make irresistible.
A tyrannosaurus zombie at CR 12 with 225 hit points, AC 15 and three Legendary Resistances. It looks like a feathered tyrannosaurus until a round or two into the fight, when the illusion peels away.
- Swallow
- Its bite can swallow a creature whole (DC 18 Strength). Inside, you are blinded, restrained and taking 6d6 necrotic a turn. Do 30 damage from inside in one turn and it has to make a DC 18 Constitution save or throw everyone back up.
- Zombie Surge
- A legendary action. It throws up 1d4 zombies from its stomach, who join the fight straight away.
They made jungle-hardened, though a lot of low rolls on the way had Musharib shaking his head.
The King of Feathers swallowed James Paws whole. The team read the clues (the feathers, the purple berries, the silence), built their camp, set their traps, and forced it to vomit him up.
When they finally brought it down, it was a zombie tyrannosaurus wearing an illusion of feathers. Somebody had made it, and that was the first sign of Thay. They came away with the Feathered Cloak, a zombie dinosaur tooth, feathers, a map fragment pointing to Omu, and the tyrannosaurus skull, which later became the Helm of the Tyrant King.
Everything Musharib taught on the trek came back at the Heart of Ubtao, where the old priests' trial path uses the same lead-and-helper roles. He even says so as they set off up it: "Everything we learned on the trek… we'll need it now."
Making Weapons Out of Dinosaurs
August to October 2025. The forge, the villain comes back, and a lich gets to the Heart of Ubtao first.
Hrakhamar is the old dwarven forge that the firenewts took over for Imix. I reimagined it with the Slag-Maw Bridge over venting steam pipes, a flame-priest's ritual at the altar-anvil, a trial of dwarven runes at the treasury, and a Molten Guardian with lair actions at the end. Every trap comes with a clue, as a vision from Ubtao.
The Slag-Maw Bridge
The flame-priest, with Imix's Branding Iron
The trial of runes
The Molten Guardian
The Heart of the Forge
The dwarves in chainsThen the Dinosaur Forge, back at Camp Righteous. Trophies become recipes. The T-rex skull they took off the fake King of Feathers became the Helm of the Tyrant King. There were Raptor's Talons, a Pteranodon's Veil, the Wraps of the Unstoppable Herd. Every item has a Jungle Attunement property that works in the jungle, and an Ubtao's Synergy property that switches on when you stand near an ally carrying another Forge item.
Helm of the Tyrant King
The Raptor's Talons
Pteranodon's Veil
Wraps of the Stamping Herd
Greataxe of the Savage Bite
The Tyrant's Fang
Bulwark of the Behemoth
Maul of the Frill-BreakerThen Kwayothé came back at CR 7, brought yuan-ti assassins through the party's own Labyrinthine Defenses, and raided their home.
The laser rifle
This stretch ends at the wreck of the Star Goddess, a Halruaan skyship down in the canopy, where the party rescued the crew. And somewhere along the way, I gave Phoenix, our drow assassin, a laser rifle.
- Damage
- 3d8 radiant.
- Shots
- Four per day.
- The price
- On a natural 1, it explodes: the rifle breaks, and whoever is holding it takes damage.
The Dungeon Master's Guide version runs on a thirty-shot energy cell with reloads. Mine is simpler: four shots a day, and on a natural 1 it explodes.
Phoenix used it as her ranged weapon right to the end. In the finale, her shot at Acererak is what proved he was invulnerable.
The Heart of Ubtao
First, though, there is the trial path the old priests of Ubtao built to keep the unworthy out. Musharib runs a hand over the mossy stone and says it: "Everything we learned on the trek… we'll need it now."
Three stages, run with the same lead-and-helper roles as the trek.
- The Choking Thicket
- A pathfinder threads the thorns (Acrobatics or Stealth DC 12), a spotter finds the hidden pits (Perception or Investigation DC 11), and a survivalist finds herbs to keep the insects off (Survival or Nature DC 11). A good helper gives each of them advantage. Pass, and everyone gets a Jungle Blessing token to reroll one failed save.
- The Serpent's Spine
- A sixty-foot petrified log over a chasm, monkeys throwing fruit from the far side, and leeches in the mist below. One character crosses first with the rope (Acrobatics DC 12), one braces it (Athletics DC 11, which gives everyone else advantage), and one deals with the monkeys (Intimidation DC 11, or Animal Handling DC 10 with food). Fall, and it's 3d6 and a lot of leeches. Pass, and everyone gets a Chultan healing salve.
- The Watcher's Offering
- A huge jade-green snake guarding a statue. It doesn't want a fight. Soothe it (Animal Handling DC 12), slip an offering past it (Stealth DC 12), or work out what tribute it wants (Survival or Nature DC 11). Pass, and Ubtao's Blessing gives advantage against poison and disease for seven days.
The Choking Thicket
The Serpent's Spine
The Watcher's OfferingThe Heart of Ubtao is a heart-shaped earthmote floating two hundred feet up, and Valindra Shadowmantle got there first. The module has her invite the party up for a chat. In mine, they have to open the door themselves.
Speak the lifeblood, and the Heart shall open.
The cave mouth is sealed behind a wall of force with that inscription glowing on it in Primordial. It is not a password. The petrified roots at the base of the earthmote drip red, iron-rich water, and one central root has a channel carved into it running up towards the entrance. The lifeblood has to be pumped.
Three flat-topped stone drums at the base of the island, sixty feet apart in a triangle. Each has a symbol carved on it: a Maze, a Girallon, and the Sun. Strike them in the right order and the Heart beats, the red water climbs the root channel, and the barrier dissolves.
The order is Sun, Girallon, Maze. The sun gives life to the beasts, who then roam the jungle's maze. A DC 14 Intelligence check with History or Religion recalls the Chultan proverb that gives it away: from the light comes strength, and strength is lost in the maze.
A struck drum hums for ten seconds, which is just over one round. All three have to be humming at the same time. Sixty feet apart means the party physically cannot do it from one place. They have to split up, agree an order, and count down out loud.
Wrong order and a pulse of dissonance goes off: 2d6 thunder to everyone within ten feet of a drum, and DC 13 Constitution or deafened for a minute. Which is funny, because now they cannot hear the countdown.
One player can't solve it alone. It needs the whole team, shouting a countdown across a clearing.
Valindra, Heart-Drinker
Inside, past two water weirds stained red by the iron, she was waiting in the teleportation chamber with Dragonbait in a cage.
"You solved the little riddle of the priests. Clever. But their dead god cannot protect you here. This Heart now beats for me, and its power will be more than enough to unmake you."
She is a lich with her hit points pushed up to 165, her cantrips doing an extra die inside the Heart, and lair actions on initiative count 20: a petrified root grabbing somebody at DC 16, the iron water animating to drain three people at DC 15 and heal her for half, the floor shaking at DC 15 to knock everyone prone.
And she has one big attack.
On her turn Valindra can start channelling. She raises her staff, and a twenty-foot circle on the ceiling above the party lights up with angry red runes.
Nothing happens that round. You describe it instead: the very stone above you groans and cracks, glowing with malevolent energy, and you have a terrible feeling about what is coming next.
At the start of her next turn, a superheated chunk of petrified rock and iron ore comes down. Twenty-foot radius, DC 17 Dexterity, 8d10 bludgeoning and fire, half on a success.
They get one full round to get out of the way. It's devastating, but fair.
At half health she cracks the teleportation circle, screams about being a vessel of Szass Tam, and the fight changes: a necrotic burst at DC 16 for 4d8 and a level of exhaustion, plus two points of AC for the rest of the combat and one of her Legendary Resistances back.
Then she escaped through her circle, which counts as a win for everybody. They got the Heart. Johnathan got the Fang of Ubtao, because Dragonbait gave it up for him.
As experienced players, they knew when to search, and they found Valindra's research folio, with her notes on the Soulmonger, Omu and the Death Curse.
The drums were easy for them, and they played real instruments at the table.
Valindra's research folio
Dragonbait, in his cage
The Fang of UbtaoValindra is a good example of how I upgraded bosses: the published lich, with more hit points, one big telegraphed attack, and a change at half health. There's more on that in the DM section at the end.
The Harvest and the Horde
October 2025. A ghost festival at Camp Righteous, then a death fog, a run over the mountains, and a ship out of the sky.
Our Halloween session came in two halves: a party, and then the end of the world.
After the fight with Valindra, the team are sent home to Camp Righteous and find it transformed. Glowing jack-o'-lanterns hang from the tents, friendly Chultan spirits drift about offering drinks in hollow gourds, and even the Labyrinthine Defenses have swapped their thorns for pumpkin vines. It is the Hallowed Harvest, the one night when the good spirits of Chult celebrate the living.
The Hallowed Harvest
There are fairground games for small prizes: raptor ring toss onto a spectral triceratops skull, guessing the weight of a giant gourd, and cracking a painted coconut with one swing of a mallet. Then four bigger events.
Raptor ring toss
Guess the gourd
Crack the coconutFate's Greataxe of the Savage Bite had eaten a piece of Valindra's essence and gone hungry and unstable. A spectral smith at the Dinosaur Forge sends the paladin into the axe's own spirit hunt, in three phases.
- The Stalk
- Track a spectral styracosaurus while the axe screams at you to charge. Stealth DC 14, or it vanishes and you start again.
- The Chase
- Ignore the happy festival spirits trying to lure you into a feast. Wisdom save DC 14, or 1d8 psychic damage.
- The Pact
- The beast bows its head and offers itself. Give it a clean, respectful end rather than the savage kill the axe wants. Wisdom save DC 13.
Pass, and the axe's voice becomes a partner: "We hunt… together." Fail, and the power is still yours, but the voice is smug: "Yes… This is how it will be."
The Man and Crocodile fable from Camp Righteous, one last time. A spectral rope bridge appears over the shrine floor, and one player has to carry another across it. Spectral hands reach up, illusory treasure chests appear just off the edge, and voices whisper: "Drop your partner! The treasure is for you alone!" The carrier makes a DC 15 Wisdom save to keep their promise.
The prize is a cursed ring: a crocodile swallowing its own tail. Break a serious promise or act selfishly at someone else's expense and you make a DC 15 Wisdom save, or slide a stage further into "the Tyrant's Guise": first a predator's mind, then scaled hide and a bite, then a full crocodile hybrid. Once per long rest you can press the stone on its head and use your current stage on purpose for a minute. And at the end comes a final test of the fable. Choose yourself and you are stuck as the crocodile. Keep a hard promise, and you master the change for good.
Then Old Man Yemba, a portly spirit brewmaster, needs six pairs of living hands to make a batch of cider.
Six stations, one player each. Every success adds a quality point to the brew.
| Station | The job | Check |
|---|---|---|
| The Gourd Mill | Crush the enchanted skull-pumpkins | Athletics DC 13 |
| The Spirit-Sieve | Pick out only the laughing fungi | Nature or Investigation DC 14 |
| The Flame-Dance | Add powdered raptor bone the moment the fire flashes blue | Sleight of Hand DC 13 |
| The Great Churn | Stir the fumes without getting dizzy | Constitution save DC 14 |
| The Harmonizing | Chant the Song of the Harvest correctly | Performance or Arcana DC 13 |
| The Final Infusion | Add exactly the right drop of sunrise nectar | Medicine or alchemist's supplies DC 14 |
The cider gives temporary hit points by quality, from 1d4 for a cloudy batch to 1d12 + 5 for a perfect one, and every flask comes with a d6 of harmless side effects for an hour: glowing skin, a spectral bat, a monster voice, a pumpkin-spice smell, green hair, or hovering.
Old Man Yemba
The Gourd Mill
The Spirit-Sieve
The Flame-Dance
The Great Churn
The Harmonizing
The Final Infusion
The spectral infernoAnd the cider has two more uses. Poured over a dinosaur egg on the warm hearth of the forge, it hatches a Gourdling: a chicken-sized compsognathus with a pumpkin-patterned back, ember eyes, and a chirp like a flute. Poured onto the forge itself, it sends up a thirty-foot spectral inferno, and the smith remakes the team's dinosaur items in it, stronger than before.
The egg
Hatching
The GourdlingThe Harvest Lord
That night the music stops and the lights go out. A twenty-foot golem of dead vines and rotting pumpkins stands in the middle of the camp and asks three riddles, all from the shrine under Camp Righteous.
"I am one when alone, but stronger in pairs; with many, I can move mountains. What am I?"
"I have two keys, but neither can open a door without the other. Together, they unlock the path ahead. What are we?"
"I am heavy when held alone, but lighter when shared. Without me, progress halts. What am I?"
A team. Trust and communication. Responsibility. Solve two and he warns them: "A cold rot comes. A broken cycle. The death-fog… it is not of my harvest. Flee this place. Flee south." Get them wrong, and the team has to fight its way out of its own bastion.
The run for the mountains
Then an aarakocra crashes into the camp, feathers matted with black blood. Port Nyanzaru is sealed. A fog of death is rolling across the jungle with a silent, endless army inside it, led by wraiths that show in the fog at night as swarms of pink lights. The road to Omu is cut. The only way left is over the mountains to the aarakocra at Kir Sabal.
Six successes before three failures, over three days of running.
- Day one: the frantic pace
- A group Constitution save (DC 12) for the forced march, with a level of exhaustion for everyone who fails. Survival DC 14 to chart a route. Stealth or Perception DC 13 to scout for wraith patrols, and if nobody spots them, a DC 10 Wisdom save that night or no long rest from the fear.
- Day two: dwindling supplies
- Survival DC 15 to forage in a jungle the rot is killing. Arcana or Nature DC 13 to work out what the fog is and what the wraiths are doing. Investigation or Persuasion DC 13 to keep the gear and the team's spirits together. Then a DC 12 Constitution save for everyone against exhaustion.
- Day three: the breaking point
- A group Stealth check (DC 14) to move fast and quiet, a group Constitution save (DC 13) against the rot itself, and Perception or Survival DC 14 to find shelter before the fog arrives.
- Fear
- Fail the Stealth check, or pile up two failures, and everyone makes a DC 12 Wisdom save or is frightened of the fog and the lights for a day.
There's a clue the hunter can find on day two. A sounder of boar tracks runs south in a panic, then stops, turns round, and walks calmly back north into the fog. The wraiths are charming the animals and herding them in.
Shelter, when they found it, was a cave full of grungs who had fled the fog too, and were not sharing.
The climb
Kir Sabal sits at the top of a five-hundred-foot cliff path, and the first of the horde reaches the bottom as the team starts up it.
- The goal
- Five progress points gets you to the monastery's landing.
- On your turn
- Athletics to climb round a gap, Acrobatics along a rotten beam, or Perception to find the safe stones, all DC 15. A 20 or more is two points. 15 to 19 is one. 10 to 14 gets you nowhere. 9 or lower and you fall: 3d6 and lose a point, or take a level of exhaustion instead.
- The horde
- It acts on initiative 0 and gains one progress point every turn.
- The danger zone
- If your points are equal to or less than the horde's, the undead can grab you.
- Teamwork
- Give up your own progress after a good Perception check to give the next two climbers advantage, or hold a rope for one of them.
Near the top, the aarakocra on the balconies recognise the team ("It's them! The ones Nephyr spoke of!"), dive down, and lift them the rest of the way.
Kir Sabal, and the Aliens finale
At the top is Asharra, the old aarakocra the others call the Teacher, along with Princess Mwaxanaré, who is seventeen, insists on being called queen, and wants the team to fetch the Skull Chalice of Ch'gakare from Omu. Her six-year-old brother Na peeks out from behind her in an aarakocra costume.
Then the siege. The wraiths ignore the cliff altogether and drift straight through the stone walls, turning the aarakocra defenders into new enemies, while Asharra holds the balconies with wind and lightning until her spells run out.
The last part of my plan was called the Aliens finale, and if you have seen the film you'll know the scene. Pushed back into the prayer hall, with specters in the rafters and zombies in the doorway, the team hear engines. A searchlight cuts through the hall, and the Star Goddess, the crashed skyship whose crew they had rescued earlier, comes down out of the sky with its hatch open.
"Get to the landing! We're not leaving you! Go, go, go!"
It is a twenty-foot jump to the hatch (Athletics DC 15 to 20, or something clever with a spell or a rope), with Asharra, Mwaxanaré and Na to get across too.
Fate went through the Trial of the Predator and tamed his axe. The Crocodile's Bridge won the team the Ring of the River's Bargain. They brewed the cider with Old Man Yemba, the dinosaur egg hatched in the green flame of the forge, and the forge remade their dinosaur gear.
The Harvest Lord came back with the riddles from the shrine and warned them of a cold rot. Then the fog came out of Port Nyanzaru, and they ran. A multi-day run over the mountains, a grung ambush in the caves, and a frantic climb up to Kir Sabal, where the aarakocra took them in because of Nephyr. They met Asharra, Mwaxanaré and Na.
Johnathan had been carrying the egg, so the Gourdling became his pet dinosaur.
And then the Star Goddess came down out of the sky, the team leapt aboard, and everyone flew south to Omu. Nobody missed the jump, but it was very close for the characters who can't fly.
Freeing Nephyr at Firefinger back in May paid off here. The aarakocra knew who the team were, and in the plan every Charisma check at Kir Sabal is made with advantage because of what he told them.
The three-day chase is also where the 2024 exhaustion rules bite. Every level is minus two on every d20 test, so a bad day on the march is felt in the very next fight.
A Christmas Special in a Dead City
December 2025. Party level 8. Survival horror, then holiday heroics.
Our Christmas session was the one where the team finally reached Omu. It started as survival horror and ended with presents in the snow.
The Screaming Skies
Omu sits at the bottom of a sunken valley. The book puts a gargoyle on the cliff edge every hundred feet or so, and they attack anything that flies over. The team arrived on the Star Goddess. The gargoyles attacked the ship over the cliffs, and a skill challenge decided how hard it came down.
At ground zero, the team had a vision of Omu as it was in its glory. Then they met two of the city's tabaxi hunters: Copper Bell, and Hooded Lantern, an old hunter who wants to die fighting the King of Feathers. And they had to choose where to camp, which meant either a yuan-ti malison ambush or rescuing Orvex Ocrammas, a scribe for the Red Wizards of Thay, left dying of thirst under a fallen wall.
The shrines
Then the heart of the book's Omu chapter: the shrines of the nine trickster gods, and the puzzle cubes hidden in them. Ours took in Kubazan's froghemoth, Shagambi's gladiator pit, the grung prince Imbok tied up for sacrifice by vegepygmies at the lava rift, the Court of the Golden Frog at Nangnang's shrine, Bag of Nails (a mad old tabaxi sniper) and his poisoned drink, and a kamadan.
Kubazan's froghemoth
Shagambi's gladiator pit
Imbok at the lava rift
The Court of the Golden Frog
Bag of Nails
The kamadanThe Christmas special
Because it was December, Grandfather Winter's sleigh had come down in the jungle too.
Two Red Wizards, Yamoch and Thazma, had the real King of Feathers: the actual tyrannosaurus that the thing in the jungle had been pretending to be. They had it in a ruby collar, and they used it to capture the team for a solstice ritual in Omu's old amphitheatre. Their plan was to kill Grandfather Winter and bring back Auril, the Frostmaiden, to kill Acererak. This team had already beaten Auril once, in Rime of the Frostmaiden, by dropping the Tarrasque on her.
The team got out, and Cesca broke the collar with some seriously impressive monk acrobatics and some very good rolls. They set the King of Feathers free, and sparing it completed Johnathan's Dinosaur Wrangler quest. And Grandfather Winter handed out presents in the snow.
Gifts at a special event, like Grandfather Winter's, are always single-use and themed.
I made the players a real Christmas card, too. It just said "Have a GREAT Christmas!", signed DM Basho.
Grandfather Winter
Yamoch
Thazma
The King of FeathersFeed me
Then, as they slept, Acererak turned up in a nightmare and said two words.
"Feed me."
The crash challenge worked well, though it was never a serious threat. They chose to rescue Orvex rather than face the malison ambush.
Grandfather Winter gave them Christmas-themed gifts. It was the second time this group has saved Santa.
This is where the Thay thread from the jungle comes together. The King of Feathers that hunted the team in June was a zombie wearing an illusion of feathers, and somebody had made it. The real one was here in Omu, in a Thayan collar. Valindra's notes at the Heart of Ubtao pointed the same way, and Orvex works for the same Red Wizards.
Banished to the ExCeL Centre
February 2026. Level 9. The yuan-ti temple, and then London Comic Con.
The Fane of the Night Serpent is the yuan-ti temple under Omu, and it is Ras Nsi's home.
Ours had a coup in it. Fenthaza, one of Ras Nsi's priestesses, wanted him gone, and the team had to prove their worth to her through slave labour, with "white feather" as the passphrase to the armoury. There was an evil oracle pool, an uprising in the slave grotto, and Ras Nsi's hydra.
Then, in his throne room, the team finally cornered Ras Nsi. And he was in no state for a straight fight.
"You come to me seeking blood? I have little left to spill. You seek to play the hero? Then go… go to the realm where everyone plays the hero, where greatness is nothing but a costume and a painted mask!"
He crushed the Amulet of False Realities in his fist and banished all six of them to London Comic Con, at the ExCeL Centre.
In the convention, the rules of our own world take over.
- Foam physics
- Weapons do no damage. A greataxe bounces off. A hit still pushes the target back five feet and earns Style Points.
- Magic as special effects
- Spells do no damage either. Fireball is a burst of glitter and dry-ice fog. Thunderwave is a bass drop from hidden speakers.
- But spells still matter
- A well-timed fog cloud still blinds people, and hold person might just snag a rival's costume on the scenery. Use a spell cleverly to get in a rival's way and you get advantage, or they get disadvantage.
- No healing
- Healing magic fizzles into stage smoke. Whatever happens here, you carry it home.
- Your kit becomes props
- A bag of holding is a bottomless tote of merch. An immovable rod is a selfie stick that will not collapse.
- Style becomes Hype
- Style Points are just for show on the convention floor, but in the final tournament they become Hype, the only "damage" that counts.
Side quests won them a Tactical Visor, some Gamer Grip Gel and a Spoilers Cheat Sheet. Then came the Tri-Fandom Tournament against Team Rules Lawyer, across three zones: a blaster run, an arcade with a dance machine and a strength hammer, and a lore panel. The final was a battle for Hype, judged by Lord Vader.
Tactical Visor
Gamer Grip Gel
Spoilers Cheat Sheet
The tournament map
The Grand Prize
The module, written up
"Impressive. Most impressive."
When they got home, a weary Ras Nsi handed over the puzzle cubes and told them who the real enemy was: Acererak.
I wrote the Comic Con up properly afterwards as a standalone level 9 interlude you can drop into any campaign, with the rivals, the side quests, the tournament and all the handouts. It is Convention Chronicles #1: The Realm of the False Heroes, and it is free.
The Comic Con was our first session back after the holidays. It was a lot of fun, and several of us have been to a comic con, so we got all the jokes.
Acererak Invents TikTok Challenges
April to August 2026. Acererak's dungeon, run as a comedy.
The Tomb of the Nine Gods is Acererak's dungeon, in the spirit of his original Tomb of Horrors: read carefully, or die. Teens need action and wild humour, so I didn't fight it.
Two ideas ran through every Tomb session.
- Fail Forward
- A failed roll never stops the story. It costs something else instead.
- Momentum over minutiae
- I'm an easy-going DM, but if something takes too long, I move it along. I don't stop the game for a rules argument.
The nine gods
In the module, the trickster gods possess the characters and make them bicker. To make that playable for teenagers, each god got a pop-culture archetype, a voice and a catchphrase for the possessed player to perform.
| God | The vibe | Catchphrase |
|---|---|---|
| I'jin | The TikToker with no attention span. Agree to the plan, then do the opposite. | "Okay guys here's the plan, SQUIRREL, no wait, let's touch that glowing skull instead." |
| Kubazan | Hold-my-Redbull frat bro. Suggest the most physically dangerous solution to everything. | "YOLO, BROS! I'm gonna suplex that gargoyle!" |
| Moa | Brutally honest, zero filter, physically incapable of lying. Overshare everything. | "No offence Mr Acererak, but your dungeon smells like old feet." |
| Nangnang | Goblin-mode hoarder. Pocket everything. Hiss when asked to share. | "What do you mean we found a magic sword?" |
| Obo'laka | The anxious hall monitor. Calculate the odds of death for every action. | "We don't have our permission slips signed for this!" |
| Papazotl | Toxic Discord mod. Refer to the rest of the party as your minions. | "Minion, go step on that pressure plate so I may safely cross." |
| Shagambi | Anime protagonist. Monologue about justice. Strike a pose at end of turn. | "Taste my blade, foul… uh… treasure chest!" |
| Unkh | Cannot make a decision. Needs five more minutes. Always. | "Left is cool, but right is also, like, a direction." |
| Wongo | Feral gremlin. Extreme violence solves all puzzles. Encourage friendly fire. | "HAHAHA! YES! PUSH HIM IN THE LAVA!" |
Unkh has no rival among the other eight, which is why her statue stands alone at the end of the gallery. The rivalries can be read off the Gallery of Tricksters, where each god's statue faces its rival's.
A corridor
A puzzle door
A shaft
A fountain
A blade trap
A mimicCounting down out loud
Early on there is a door with a stone skull above it, and when you reach the middle of the hall the skull's jaws open and a skeletal hand holds out an hourglass. The module says the characters have until the sand runs out to pull the lever.
Rather than describe the countdown, my plan was to count down from ten, out loud, at the table. It costs nothing. And pulling the lever is its own trap: the floor between the two doors splits open and drops everyone standing on it into a pit of poisoned spikes.
They panicked. I had warned them through an NPC that the Tomb was very deadly.
Withers wants a hand
In the book, Withers is an undead engineer you mostly just talk to. I made him an absent-minded professor who mistakes the party for the interns Acererak promised to send him.
"Finally. The boss said he was sending some interns to give me a hand. Don't just stand there gawking, the necrotic stabiliser is overheating. You, the scaly one, go vent the copper still."
If they announce they are here to kill Acererak, he assumes it is sarcasm. "Yes, yes, we all want to kill the boss. Get in line. Now put these safety goggles on, they only have a little blood on them."
Then a skill challenge at three stations, three successes before three failures, with funny fail-forward consequences. Blow the valve and your eyebrows are gone and your nose is permanently glowing pink. Sneeze in the spores and your voice goes squeaky and you levitate one inch off the ground. Get the arcane maths wrong and the formula draws the energy out of your brain, your hair stands on end, and you forget your own name and refer to yourself only as The Intern.
Fate became The Intern, and lost his eyebrows.
Then the potion is finished, Withers thanks them warmly, offers them a permanent position, kicks a pedal under his desk, and a blood-stained guillotine pops out of the floor. "Right at the wrist will do. My crawling claws have been complaining about being understaffed."
Refuse, and he sighs, adjusts his bronze mask, says "nobody wants to work these days", and it is time for initiative.
A golden sarcophagus
Then the blood
And more blood
Stepping stones
A golden skull
A glowing pool
A sun on a chain
A boulder
A crystal coffin
A clock
A painting
A zombie tyrannosaurusBelchorzh, in three stages
The beholder at the bottom of level three got three phases named after the three people you meet online: The Camper, Sweaty Try-Hard and Rage Quit.
Waiting
Eye rays
The fightThey came out of it with a +1 Shield of the Cringe Demon, a jar of beholder eye-snot, the Chad Coronet and the Amulet of the Toxic Troll.
Gears of Hate
Level five is three rotating cog rooms driven from a control room, and I put a two-minute real-time timer on it. Instructions have to be shouted across the rooms against the clock. A Trend Treant in the Cog of Rot. A nycaloth on Gehenna Support in the Cog of Blood. Then G'lyh'rul the aboleth swinging dangling dwarves at anyone who tried to fly, a pinball Stone Juggernaut, and a dogfight on the Mechanus Chain.
The Trend Treant
The nycaloth on Gehenna Support
G'lyh'rul's poolOver the top of all of it, Acererak heckling. "Ratio. Also, Dex save."
In the Tomb, Akira drank from a pool that changed his gender. He went in a tiefling cleric in a ball gown, and she came out a woman, still in the gown.
Nobody died in the Tomb. A few people got down to single-digit hit points, but we had too many healers.
The Part I Threw Away
Level 6, the Cradle of the Death God, and a finale I rebuilt from scratch.
The book ends in the Cradle of the Death God, with the atropal and the Soulmonger. I kept that, and then I kept going.
After the Soulmonger, the team fell. Time froze, and a devil offered a bargain. Then a final arena: a zerg rush, a shadow rising for each of them to face alone, and Acererak himself, with three guards summoned out of his phylacteries and a sphere of annihilation loose on the floor. At the end, a portal to the realm of the gods, a boon for every hero, and an ending for every corner of Chult they had touched.
We played it in October 2026, and it went really well.
The finale gets its own write-up, the way Rime of the Frostmaiden's did, so this one stops here. The last thing the team saw was a flying ship under attack by dragons, up in the clouds.
… and … scene!
Running a 2017 Module on the 2024 Rules
What changed, and what I did about it.
The 2024 rules work fine with a 2017 module, but the balance shifts. Here's what changed at our table, and what I did about it.
We used the new Monster Manual throughout. The 2024 revision is generally reckoned to match a monster's power to its CR more closely than the 2014 book did, so it's the better place to start.
Even so, I upgraded most of the monsters I ran, mainly their health and their features. A 2017 encounter was written for 2014 characters. My DM guide for the Tomb put it plainly: the book's level 5 assumes about five characters of level 8 or 9, already bruised, and I had six fresh, optimised level 10s. So everything went through one table.
| Lever | Adjustment |
|---|---|
| Trap and hazard DCs | +4 (15 becomes 19, 20 becomes 24) |
| "Save for half" damage | ×2, then +2d10 if they still look bored |
| Minion hit points | ×2 |
| Boss hit points | ×2.5 |
| Action economy | If four or more characters are standing and smug after round 2, spawn a second wave: funny first, lethal second |
| Off-ramps | Every set piece has a social, stupid or skill exit |
My guides tagged every enemy with a job. A minion exists to be deleted in one round, so the players get to feel great. An elite costs real actions: it's a round-two problem. A boss is a set piece with legendary actions, where I slow down and narrate.
Sometimes fewer, tougher pieces work better. Withers comes with seven crawling claws at 2 hit points each. In my version they became two swarms of 60 hit points that grab people and hold them in place.
More hit points. Withers went from 45 to 110, Valindra to 165, and the King of Feathers to 225, with three Legendary Resistances.
A change at half health. Valindra cracks the teleport circle and gains two AC. The yuan-ti infiltrator's fangs start dripping paralytic venom. I announce when a monster is Bloodied, so the players know something is about to change.
A weakness they can find out about. The King of Feathers is undead under an illusion, and its own bones are in the bone piles, so radiant damage gets past its Undead Fortitude. A party that investigates gets a shorter fight.
Weapon mastery gives martial characters a rider on their attacks: Vex hands out advantage on the next attack, and Topple and Push move your monsters around. With advantage that easy to get, a high armour class protects a boss less than it used to. Legendary Resistances, and features that punish getting close, hold up better.
The 2014 rules gave a successful ambusher a free round. The 2024 rules give the ambushed creature disadvantage on initiative and nothing else, and a rogue with a good Dexterity will frequently just go first anyway.
An adventure built around jungle ambushes loses a lot of its tension that way. At my table, creatures that spring an ambush can often start the fight and go first. I also run surprise rounds: before combat starts, everyone gets ten seconds to decide what they are doing.
The 2014 track gave you disadvantage on ability checks at one level and did not touch your combat ability until the third. The 2024 track gives a flat minus two to every d20 test per level, stacking, so the very first level of exhaustion immediately degrades attacks and saving throws. On the other hand it never halves your hit point maximum, which 2014 did at level four.
In a survival module, that means exhaustion hurts in the very next fight. It just never gets as deadly as the 2014 version.
Valindra's Heart's Ruin gives a full round of warning: she spends a turn charging it, the ceiling lights up, and the damage lands at the start of her next turn. The players get one round to get out of the way. It's devastating, but fair, because they were warned.
At my table, monsters that are losing run away. It ends a fight once the result is obvious, and it costs nothing. If the party is stronger than the book expected, the monsters can notice that and leave.
Because my monsters die when the scene is done, I could run most fights by feel. For the big set pieces, like the finale, I worked out what the party actually does in a round and built against that.
Worked out properly from the six character sheets, the party at level 10 was putting out around 183 damage in a round.
More on how that played out in the finale write-up.
One extra trap, which I avoided by using the new book. The 2024 design dropped the old resistance to nonmagical bludgeoning, piercing and slashing from most creatures and compensated with higher hit points. Community testing puts the swap at somewhere around nine to thirty per cent more hit points depending on the creature. If I were converting an old statblock and stripping that resistance to match the new feel, I'd add the extra hit points too.
What Twenty-Two Months Actually Taught Me
Twenty-eight sessions, and what I'd pass on.
Would I run it again?
No. I want to move on to the next big campaign.
The best bit
The ball. It was the encounter I invented, and it was very funny to run.
What I'd change
I'd balance the team better. Ours was very tank heavy: two paladins, a fighter, and a cleric in half plate at AC 18.
Running it for teenagers
Teens need action, wild humour and gross-out moments. They will always have wild ideas, and as a DM you have to roll with them.
This crew had already played Rime of the Frostmaiden with me before we started.
The kit
None of it was wasted effort: the table screen, the slide decks, Dynamic Dungeons, the minis and the crit decks. Most of it I've been using for years.
Prep
One evening to build a session, deck and all. But several evenings of thinking about it before that.
One piece of advice
Change the jungle crawl into something much quicker and more fun. There are a lot of locations in Chult, so you don't need to worry about running out of things to do. That's what Musharib's jungle school was for.
What's next
Vampires in Ravenloft, I suspect.
Thanks for reading!
Basho
Tomb of Annihilation ran from January 2025 to October 2026, over twenty-eight sessions, for six players.
