So just a heads up before I get into the video There are some mild spoilers for the tomb of annihilation coming up in this video Be warned. So if you're gonna be playing it you might not watch it. I don't know. It's up to you. In this dungeons and dragons story the players were mulling their way through the tomb of annihilation Toward the bottom where Acererak and his soul monger was. The place was a mega dungeon, and we were going through it at a rate of three sessions per floor So, we hit the 13th week and they just made it to the fifth floor normally with most modules the well-written ones At least I can kind of flip through them a little bit ahead of time and then just sort of wing it as we're going Along with the session. I think it's unrealistic to expect people to memorize all the information recited perfectly from memory Like it's an open book test the good modules. You can just glance down Flip through a room and a second or two describe it without interrupting the flow of the game That being said there's no way I could do that for level 5 of the tomb of annihilation not because it was badly written No, no, no, no. No, it was well-made It's just because level 5 was probably the most complex puzzle I've ever had to run. In the puzzle it involves these rooms They're in the shape of Pentagons and they're attached to each other and affixed to Gears And when one of the rooms rotates the other one rotates as well opening ups and closing certain paths the only way I could wrap my head around how it worked was a printout tiled Pentagons and Just lay them out there on the sheet just to simulate the puzzle. Now, I know sound surprising but I actually went into the session not knowing how to solve it. But I knew that I have smart and intelligent players that would be able to figure this out Because I certainly can't. Getting to that level the group had traveled down a long spiral staircase to a cave that burrowed even deeper under the ground like a grave As one of the characters made his way to the landing. I had him roll a die. Inside of his head, he heard a voice say (Menacingly)Hmm... Interesting It's been a long, long while and then it goes silent and he has this feeling like there's something down here Something dark. It's watching him Wandering through the dungeon the group started getting assaulted by haunting images and phantoms Eventually, they establish a telepathic link with this entity. Why, hello there young one Hello, we're just passing through to get to the next floor. Oh, that might be a little Difficult. You see, you have entered into my lair. I am The Guardian that is here to stop you from attacking the soul monger. I am looking forward to crushing you under my flabby tentacle, for you see one day Myself and my kind will rise up and defeat even the gods. but until all the pieces are in place, We wait in darkness Over time they discover that they are dealing with an aboleth an aboleth is a very very ancient Evil from a time the world forgot. A powerful monster and one of my favorite villains in D&D These creatures existed before the arrival of the gods at the primordial earth and were worshipped by mortals They enslaved the races of olds until the gods arrived and drove them away into the dark dark depths of the oceans and caves beneath the earth each aboleth has the memories of its ancestors that came before it and whenever they eat someone they absorbed their memories as well So it is a hyper-intelligent creature with the collective minds of thousands of people. In an aboleth's layer they can scry through any water within a mile and manifest phantom illusions to attack the players. They can also read their subjects minds find out what they want and taunt them with giving it which is how they made worshippers on the surface of old in addition they're nearly impossible to kill because when they die They travel to the elemental plane of water. Where a new body reforms Also if players encounter its viscous ooze They run the risk of being charmed and become enslaved by it After all the encounters the group decided that they had to take this aboleth down once and for all they traveled out to the underground lake where it dwelt they cast their buff spells and prepared what they needed. And for no reason in particular. I heard one of the players make a roll looked at it and said under my breath. Oh my god they're gonna be so pissed off. What? Oh Nothing. Nothing it's fine. Everything's Fine So the players take the boats out onto the black water stretching out in all directions below and above and beyond is the darkness As they travel out there is something, a colossal creature that moves under the surface Buffeting the boats backwards it forwards in its wake rising out from the depths this massive figure its tentacle raises up and it Starts waving to you guys. "Hey guys, how's it going? Yeah, I don't really get a lot of new friends down here How how is your day going?" Uh pretty good pretty good No complaints were looking for um, uh an aboleth right now "Oh, you you were looking for me. Well, how convenient dat I'm uh me here." Uh yeah, we came down cuz we heard there was a monster down here that we had to fight. "Oh no a monster das terrible" The by the way, are there like, you know? Another aboleth down here by any chance "Nope, that's just me by myself. I'm all alone. With no one here They call me Wimzie." Insite check several of them shout and the players role insite When they do that I pick the book up and I start reading it to them The aboleth that guards level five of the dungeon is not actually quite right up in the head and has a split personality One personality is aggressive and combative the other personality Is that of a small curious child every time they interacted with the aboleth I had them role chance and it was a 50/50 shot if they were going to get nice aboleth or murderer aboleth This entire time I was building up this big fight for the aboleth going like "rawr, I will crush you" whenever they talk to it through telepathy. I had them roll. They got the evil one but now when it came time to the big fight They got lucky or unlucky and rolled the other personality. You're coming out here. You fight a scary monster? Wow you guys are really cool So is there anything else in the waters we need to be careful about? hmm well I mean, I've heard people talking about how they sometimes he something in these waters with really big with sharp Teeth and tentacles that sounds really really scary Is he just describing himself? Yap, he's just talking about rumors he's heard of himself. Hey uh, Wimzie, do you think you could help us out with this gear puzzle over here? Well sure. Yeah I just love helping people out. Also, here's some treasure I found. Hope it helps. Alright, thanks wimzie - do you think we should fight it? No, no, we're not. No. Well, you might try and kill us later splish splish splish splish splish sploosh sploosh splish splish Bip boop bip boop No, no, he's...precious all other players know, you know, honestly I thought you guys would just might encounter the evil one the entire time and not even know about his other personality They told me You know, that could have gone over so much worse if we had had the reverse and met the nice aboleth The whole time and then at the last minute switch over to murder aboleth. Wow I'm having so much fun talking with you guys. You should come out on the lake. We could have a lot of fun Murder So did we get an experience points for defeating the aboleth? I don't really know about that Technically you guys didn't really defeat it. If anything Wimzie successfully charmed everyone in the party So I think he should get the experience points for defeating you guys. Oh well, look at that. He leveled up. That's nice But the players ultimately decided not to fight him leaving him alone on level five of the tomb So there he is waiting in the darkness for his next victim. Or friend
