5 Things You Didn't Know About Tomb of Annihilation - D&D

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move annihilation and wish to know what else was out there that not even their DMS might have known that being said there will be major spoilers for the adventure so if you haven't played it and you're interested in doing so please refrain from watching this video to motivation is in my opinion the second best adventure in fifth edition so I wouldn't want to spoil it for you now let's start right away with five things and you probably didn't know about demonisation number one let's start strong a CEREC is the villain of this adventure an incredibly powerful cambian lich who travels the multiverse he has an obsession with puzzles and deadly trials and constructs dedicated dungeons all around the universe with these features in order to attract adventures and kill them just that he can steal their souls for his phylactery what's so cool about this guy is that he is quite famous indeed understand dragons mythos he has been a main iconic D&D villain since the original tomb of Horrors about 40 years ago he even appears in the Dungeon Master's guidebook for fifth edition that's that's him right there what you might not know however is that this Asura is actually not the real one in fact he is a fake Albani very powerful fake via CEREC that you see in the cover of the dunya masters guide and that appears in Tomb of annihilation is actually the result of a powerful simulacrum spell cast by the real a CEREC the realest eric was a demolition not a normal lich he obtained this more powerful form on purpose in order to defeat his ancient rival the Paladin serpent evil a saint of the god pail or serpent evil had defeated the original a CEREC a long time ago in a duel which messed up his plans and as such he waited and planned and schemed his revenge he turned himself into a powerful demolition used his newfound powers to kidnap serpent evil and imprison him in a tower in the negative energy plain after spending years and years torturing the saint he grew bored of this and instead fashioned a simulacrum of himself that would torture the Paladin forever while himself the realest eric would go and continue to further his own plans somewhere else well eventually the events of the Tomb of Horrors transpired in the module to map orders the adventurers find the resting place of this demolition not just slay him but they go so far us to destroy his phylactery making sure that he died permanently after hundreds of years the simulacrum of a CEREC realized that his master was never going to come back and that he was probably dead and as such the simulacrum started to find ways to attempt to leave the tower that he was bound to with little success in the tower he found that his master was doing experiment with Souls he found that the tower itself was like a foundry that could grind Souls and use that as energy after studying his master's papers on this experiment he developed it further and assigned a way to grind the souls of the dead in the plan of death in order to fuse them and recreate a new soul for him to use and after experimenting on this for hundreds of years he finally succeeded the simulacrum literally created a soul for itself while still holding the cambian lich body that his master had magically formed for him and the such since he looked just like his master he named himself a CEREC and used the sinister and universe wide reputation of his master to his advantage adventurers would then go on to assault the tower in order to free serpent Abel but the Lich would survive and he would go on to perfect this magical ability to manipulate and use Souls as energy which would eventually lead him into the tomb of annihilation where he would use this very exact technology in order to create the soul monger and attempt to rejuvenate a dead stillborn God number two in the book the grand ain't powerful city of Mesirow is severely overlooked we get a few paragraphs that explain what happened to it but nothing in particular that the players would be able to enjoy it basically we're told that the beret the immortal demigod defenders of the city transported the city away into a magical deme plane and that maybe one day it will return we're also told that the ruins that exist there are actually fake the people of Chauth believe that during the spell plague the river along completely destroyed the city killing everyone when in reality the ruins are magically created in the city itself lies safely in a paradise deme plain now the city of Mastro is very important not just to the Charlton's but to the story as well and there is also a lot to do in that city and the book doesn't tell you any of it here is a cannon picture of how the ruins of Mesirow actually look the place is swarming with members of the flaming fist from fort delorean but there are still many places within that hold riches and secrets for example in the city there is actually a big settlement call to promise this place houses 98 flaming fist soldiers the place is big enough that it even has a tavern the leader an evil Goliath captain cold gondola broken barrel her cathy has gold sickness and is attempting to collect all of the treasure of the ancient city for herself other than our December and such a new Vasa from this Goliath captain is basically one of the few in short that actually knows the true secret of misro that it is still out there somewhere but now more importantly the city actually houses the heretics called children of the crocodile this is a ragtag group of about 50 cultists who venerate an enormous prophetic magma a mud ma is like a crocodile except that it has tentacles protruding from its mouth this enormous magma creates ripples in the water around its lair whenever it dreams the ripples taken the shape of visions that tell the future using these prophetic dreams the cultists have foretold the events of horde the dragon Queen from Kings Thunder and to moment elation they kneel of the rise of dragons of the rise of giants and of the upcoming death curse because they foretold the coming of the flaming fist they have managed to hide from them in the water clogged houses of mass room but what's important is that the magma has foreseen the coming of a new God or rather the birth of a new God and not just that but they actually know who that God is hear me out here these cultists are actually the only group in existence that actually know what is the real identity of the a trepal that a CEREC is trying to revive in the tomb of annihilation the giant mod MA has dreamed that this is the birth of what they call before se caen one see there's a story attached to this baby a triple the story goes that Lyra the goddess of illusions tricked the God's avarice by making him believe that there was a prophecy protecting his death this forced the God Savas to explore the multiverse to search for information regarding his doom the goddess Leia made it up so that she could then sneak into the celestial Palace of sabra's and steal his powerful orb of prophecy now eventually sovereigns figured it out and started concocting a plan of revenge sabra's had the God mask shadows help him infiltrate layer as domain so that he could then steal back his orb of prophecy now mask hid sabra's in a different form so that the goddess lair wouldn't recognize him in a such he infiltrated her domain and things took a turn however when both lira and the disguised savvas fell in love with one another they laid with each other and then Lyra got pregnant the stories say that the heart of sovereigns grew heavy by the deception and as such he confessed to Lyra that he was savage all along and that his plan was to take the orb furious and heartbroken layer at tore the unborn child from her womb and casted adrift into a starlit pool then she forever turned her back on sovereigns in despair sabra's smashed his orb and swore never to deceive again this story is called the heresy of the Forsaken one and it is considered heresy for both followers of Sarrus and Lyra for they reject the story the heretics who claim this story to be true say that the stillborn child thrown into the pool yet lives and will one day arise to seize his parents place in the heavens well the prophetic mod Maw has foretold that the Forsaken one the stillborn baby from Cerberus and Lyra is indeed the a trepal that a CEREC is attempting to revive isn't that cool even the case I don't really have the time to go in depth about master especially its past even though it is so so important child wouldn't be told without its capital in fact it was Mesirow the city that OOP Tao literally built with his own hands when he used to walk the earth this is a literal canon representation of him building the city block by block OOP Tao used to sit on the throne of Mesirow in the flesh as a god it was opt out from this seat of power that made Russ to see a demigod and the one that granted him the power to raise any corpse within chould into undeath it is also interesting that the story of Mesirow says that Rasmus II didn't actually create the horde of undead and Scholte for revenge or for evil in fact he raised the undead in order to defend Mesirow against its enemies and he actually did a long time ago after OOP tail left but before the spell plague master was being attacked by an army of baterry goblins that would have destroyed the city if not for residency who used his undead to defend the city and saved it man I wish I had more time to talk about Mastro but I just can't number 3 OOP tau is a very lonely god and not a particularly social one in fact they say that he literally only has one friend and that is third har the god of jungle survival and hunting in the dwarvish Pantheon he's basically the patron god of the wild dwarves the jungle dwarves now you can in fact see this dwarvish God in the picture of OOP tau watching him build the city of mess room because OOP tower was such a powerful God but also a very solitary one and the one that actually enjoyed walking the very lands of the prime material realm something that most gods don't do he was granted a grand task the deal was that he was going to be given the entirety of cult literally just for himself no other God would be able to get in there with the condition that he pooped out protected the peaks of flame see there is this grand prophecy that denned are the night serpent will come out from the peaks of flame in order to start the end of the world and the prophecy says that only a Grand Guardian one who protects the mountain could stop the serpent in its tracks this is the job that was given to up towel to protect the peaks of flame and in exchange he was given full and complete dominion over jolt OOP Tao however grew tired of his people begging him for power and magic begging him to solve their problems and as such he literally just laughs his whole shtick has always been that you should solve the mace of life yourself and that only those that go through it and succeed are worthy and as such while he left or at least that's what people think the reality is that OOP Tao didn't actually fully leave he actually broke himself into multiple pieces though it is unsure if that was done on purpose or on accident his essence fragmented into spirits that sort of reflected parts and pieces of his personality what I'm trying to say is the primal spirits of child are uptown avatars or aspects of uptown these spirits can take on any shape some take on the shape of elements while something in the shape of animals many times the shapes they take reflect their personalities and whatever attributable Tao they are supposed to represent so a spirit that represents the chaos within OOP Taos heart might take on the shape of a tornado whereas a spirit that represents nervousness might take on an animal that shares on that attribute Shar the goddess of Darkness broke the sacred covenant between the gods and nuketown and actually entered Scholte in order to absorb one of the aspects of OOP Tao the aspect that represented shadow fear cowardice and destruction because she broke the Covenant the lore states that it is unknown now whether or not Hope tale will hold his end of the bargain and protect the world from dendara number four the story of art December runs perpendicularly with that of Tomb of annihilation that being while the adventurers are out there trying to solve the death curse our December is also out there but doing his own thing the problem with the adventure book is that you're not actually told at all what exactly is it that artist is actively doing the book basically tells you that artist is trying to figure out how to bring the real mess row back and it gives you all of these different locations where you might find artist and his companion dragon bait because saga knew Vasa in oral Unga tales are December that measure will not come back until residency is dead artists will want to join the party in order to get to all more and kill him or if the party doesn't find him in the jungle then it is instead very likely that they will find him in amo hunting residency this will prompt him very likely to continue following the party in order to destroy the death curse the question is however what the hell was artists exactly doing before the party meets him art December and dragon bait have been in the jungle for a very long time actively trying to bring Mastro back so what exactly did they do and where exactly did they go here's the answer artist was actually trying to find the source of the magic that feels chould because he figured that if he could tap from that magic he might be able to follow it to the real messroom the ancient Chilton's used to speak of a power called the dai Jovi Sangha which translates to the heart of the wild essentially the actual literal heart of cult where it's magic came from the sages of cult and his research led him towards the mystic live mountains towards the beginning of the river Taff in here he found a temple owned by a dedicated old line of ancient guardians the actual temple that houses the heart of the wild in this temple at the very center of it there was a water basin a beautiful and pristine water basin and by bringing a specific key into it the water would open a portal into the deme plain where the heart of cult was located the deme plain was a beautiful golden jungle with a massive gorgeous tree that houses a beautiful gem it was this gem a crystal that was the heart of the wild the crystal had a literal piece of poop Taos soul inside of it and it was this gem that gave choltitz magic it did this by being a form of link between children the fairy while so all the magic that suffuses showed is actually powerful fairy wild energies problem was a powerful wizard beguiled his way into the ancient order of guardians and stole the heart of the wild which is why child has been decaying all this I'm so rapidly and why it's been so magically unprotected this wizard corrupted the heart of the wild and release its corrupted powers upon the jungle creating an entire section of the jungle that was dark shadowy and dead the area of the jungle was so dangerous that the line of guardians couldn't get the crystal back because the crystal had formed itself into a massive dark wood tree that would use deadly vines to defend itself artists accompanied the Guardians and using his powers he got inside of the tree and got the heart of the wild back then they put the heart back on his Demi plain where it belongs so the child could begin to heal as they thanks their Guardians communed with the Peace of OOP now inside of the crystal in order to ask it about mashrou and the spirit inside of the heart of the wild responded by telling artists that Mara was out there and that it could be brought back but that the corruption of the land needed to be cleansed first and that's why artists was seeking the counsel of the Nagas in oral Unga to figure out what he needed to do in order to fix the land so that Metro could be brought back so there you go if you ever wondered what the hell was artists doing this entire time well the party was slaying goblins and talking to her Icarus and slaying witches and now you know that it was actually doing some high-level questing of his own as well number 5 here's the map of cult as portrayed in - moment elation as you can see there are tons of objectives tons of things to do in and around the peninsula all around except for one suspicious area this area for some reason we got things to do literally everywhere except for this empty region in fact we don't even got a name for it folks might think this section here might just be part of the valley of dread but you would actually be wrong in fact this entire section is called the chalten gar you might not know that the place itself is known to be the home of one of the largest settlements of Terra folk in the entire jungles of colt though these Terra Foulke have Naga rulers these powerful spirit Nagas gather annually in a great Conclave of spirits held in the depths of the choking gar and allegedly led by a powerful trio of superior Nagas it's interesting that the lower states that fill golos the bronze dragon Jimmy Dean Strom King stander is actually one of the only two that I've ever seen this Conclave of spirits alive and survive but there is something even more interesting happening in this area though this suspicious patch of land right here surrounded by mountains is actually home to one of the more treacherous and deadly places in all of colt in here you can find what we call a dread domain a dread domain is a plain in the shadow fell completely covered in mist that prevents escape a domain owned by the powers that created it a Dark Lord much like in curse astride where straddle Tsarevich is the Dark Lord of barodia and so is here the Arch Druid for Terry the Dark Lord of this region called the Baku Mora if you get anywhere near close this region you will start to encounter the mists and if you get completely surrounded by them and you will be then forever stuck inside of the mists not being able to leave no wish spell can take you out no teleport or astral projection or plane shift can save you you are stuck inside of the domain of dread forever or until the Dark Lord for Terry is killed once again much like in curse astride the powers are the same because it is the same if you were actually curious about what art December did after the events of Timon elation then well you don't have to be curious anymore he actually goes here into the back Mora in order to get a couple of mysterious rooms deciphered rooms that he thinks will lead him towards the real mess room unfortunately the entirety of this dread domain is covered in wild magic so any spell cast while inside of this area has unforeseen consequences in the case of art December and Dragon Bay - an artist attempted to use his magical ring he and dragon bait actually got in case block of eyes this would actually had been the end of art December and dragon bait and their adventures unless they were to be saved by adventurers whoo all right guys thank you so much for watching this video if you are interested at all in any of the sources that I use for this video I think in particular this video might attract a lot of attention from you guys you might want to see where all this information is coming from I always have my sources in the description below I would like to personally thank my patron supporters sack bowel Repetto fan berry mask and 5e magic shop Daniel Umar doctor cowbell Rasta rain Morgan Johnson biotech no frag Daniel Luna cause bein doc feeder brat Salazar the great Cody knee Terry Kolb Morgan McCormick major failed gaming fi red soul night Baracus law and Omega scales for supporting me on patreon at the $25 level he would like to support me as well then please head on over to patreon comm slash mr. Rex to support guys once again one last time thank you so much for watching and make sure to go ahead and watch the playlist where you can see all of the D&D videos that I have created if you like this video I promise you you're going to like the other ones too in any case thank you once again and I'll see you guys next time bye bye

Channel: MrRhexx

Views: 361,270

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Id: fNiq8gr7jrE

Length: 23min 31sec (1411 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 14 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Donutsthemighty]

This video made me want to run the game more than anything! It also gave me the in depth lore I needed to change things for my world and it still feel right. I was just watching Mr Rhexx's newest video when this went up too lol.

[u/Orbax]

Mr. Rhexx is awesome! Ive watched all his D&D stuff and he pulls from all versions and published magazines and stuff. It has been super helpful making in-game decisions and transferring ideas and stuff. very cool stuff!

[u/DarkGamer]

A lot of the info in this video is from adventurer's league and dmsguild adventures, all built and ready to play.

[u/Pintlers]

Fascinating stuff. Makes me want to run it again, and flesh out the story more. It’s the only full campaign I’ve run, but I don’t know if I could find a story/setting that tops this one.