Here we are, the final chapter of Tales From The Plunderbund’s Tomb of Annihilation campaign. I will give my closing thoughts after the chapter. My name is Kent, and I write up these previews and post videos from YouTube while Eric does all of the hard work in writing up the chapters. This week, I have so many notes, but if I told you that there would be Golem roller derby, a devil army, some sweet calamari love, an El-Mitzva, a SMUFG, and a lake of fire, would you not be Kentertained? Exactly, we have your interest. Of course, the obvious song choice this week for me is one of my all-time favorite songs, and I prefer Nirvana’s version.
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Tomb of Annihilation
Chapter 24 – Fin
Upon entering the fifth floor, they found it smelled like a damp basement. The stench of mildew hung in the air. The room was large and round, with an exit on the other side. Not finding anything of interest in this room, they entered the next room, which was also round with another exit on the other end.
What made this room different than the last was that the room was decorated to look like a roller rink, and two teams of flesh golems were engaged in a roller derby competition. While still unable to speak, Padre knew that roller derby was yet another form of female heresy, and he responded by throwing 1,000 ball bearings onto the track. Note expecting such an attack, half the golems were immediately taken out and sustained grievous ankle injuries.
Enraged that these humanoids would interrupt their scrimmage, the remaining roller-golems skated towards the party. Their leader shoulder tackled Padre, slamming him into a wall and knocking him out cold. This left the rest of the party to clean up Padre’s mess.
Luckily, as a monk, Tempest had a natural affinity to roller sports. As such, she threw on an extra pair of skates and ordered the rest of the party to retreat into the previous room. She then proceeded to skate around the rink and use her Staff of Striking to break the ankles and legs of the remaining Roller-Golems.
Once the Roller-Golems were dealt with, Hertz went over and healed Padre, as he was doing so, Hertz noticed a hidden button, which he used Padre’s arm to press. Upon the button being hit, a secret door opened leading to a room with a bunch of gears and levers.
Being “the smart one,” Xilix took it upon himself to figure out what the gears controlled. After only accidentally filling the control room full of acid once, Xilix figured out that the fifth floor was composed of three rooms that were in the shape of gears. When you properly manipulated the controls, the “gears” would rotate and change what was in the rooms.
After calling everyone into the room, Xilix put the room into the next position. As the party went out to explore the new configuration, Compassion heard a whispering in his ear that directed him to come to the room on the right by himself. Somehow succeeding on a stealth roll despite being in plate armor, Compassion went through the door and came upon a room that was now replaced with a lake! Even more concerning, the lake appeared to be full of tentacles.
Not wanting to disturb whatever was lying in Lake Tentikrul, Compassion tried to leave the room. As he turned, he once again heard the seductive voice of a woman whispering in his ear, “please come down and see me, I’m ever so lonely.” Before he could think to himself that he couldn’t swim, was wearing heavy armor, and couldn’t breathe underwater, Compassion found himself walking into the lake under the effects of some sort of mind controlling magic. Luckily, the monster at the bottom of the lake cast a water breathing spell on Compassion so he could safely come visit her.
Upon reaching the bottom of the lake, Compassion came face-to-face with Annie the Abolith, basically a giant, psychic, squid-monster. While Annie was planning to eat Compassion, as she rarely had the chance to converse with intelligent creatures, she decided to snack on fish appetizers while Compassion regaled her with stories of his adventures.
Over the next hour, Compassion told a number of heroic tales, most of which involved saving puppies as a Purple Dragon Knight, while the rest of the party was trying to solve the puzzle of the gear floor. At one point the rest of the party met with and defeated a Shambling Mound (basically a lawn-clipping monster), that managed to eat Gryff IX prior to Xilix setting it on fire.
Upon hearing Compassion’s stories, the once hungry Annie fell hopelessly in love with Compassion. This, in turn, caused Compassion to fall in love with Annie thanks to the mind control magic still being in effect. Knowing that Azerack would kill Compassion if he was found within the dungeon, Annie came to the sad realization that she would have to let her love continue his journey. Saddened, Annie told Compassion the correct gear configuration to find the sixth and final floor, and she also provided Compassion with a two-way mirror that would allow them to converse over great distances.
After promising to call on a regular basis, Compassion left the lake and met up with the rest of the party. Compassion shared with them the solution to the gear rooms, but did not tell them that the solution was given to him by his calamari love. Upon arranging the rooms in the proper order, a new secret room opened. Prior to entering the secret room, Tempest pointed out that there were at least two more gods whose coffins hadn’t been found. The rest of the party told her to shut the hell up, they just wanted to destroy the soul monger and get the hell out.
Upon entering the secret room they were met with a barred gate leading to the stairs down. It appeared that the room they were in was a dressing room, as there were nine closets. Curious, Hertz opened one of the closets and was greeted by a painting of Avernus, one of the 9 layers of hell. To Hertz’s surprise, a bone devil jumped out of the portrait and began wailing on him. Just as the bone devil was about to use a pointy bone to stab Hertz through the chest, Padre ran over and smited it to death with holy power. Upon the bone devil dying, one of nine lights turned on over the gate.
Figuring out what needed to be done and being sick of the dungeon, Hertz quickly opened the other nine closets, which, of course, turned out to be portals to the other eight layers of hell. This resulted in the party fighting a devil army in the middle of a dressing room. While the party sustain significant wounds and spent many spells in the process, the party emerged victorious and the gate bars receded upon all nine lights being lit. Additionally, Xilix found the octagonal skull hidden in one of the closets.
Upon descending the stairs the party found themselves in a moderate sized room with a giant, ornate door on the other side. Inlaid on the door were five slots, with each one having a geometric shape drawn above the slot. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that the shape skulls found on the other floors were intended to fit in these slots.
As Xilix had the skull bag, Compassion asked him to open the door. Xilix, who was now almost entirely a woman, revealed that during the journey he/she had reached the age of elvan maturity, and he/she wished for Padre to perform an Elf-Mitzva, the ancient ceremony welcoming an elf into adulthood. As Padre still could not speak, he worked out a system with Hertz in which Padre did all the showy ceremonial stuff, while Hertz took care of the talking bits.
Upon the completion of the ceremony, Xilix took on the new adult name of Xilixxilix. As the party needed to rest before what was presumably the final battle, they decided to break out the wine and have a mini-party in Xilixxilix’s honor. While much fun was had by all, things took a turn for the worse when Tempest danced her way onto a hidden pressure plate, which exposed a “Fizzy Lifting Drink” trap hidden in the ceiling. As the party was being sucked up into the ceiling by the giant fan of death, each member was able to either grab onto furniture or another party member. After thinking things through, Xilixxilix was able to determine how to stop the fan. Before he could act, however, Orvex, the party’s translator who has not appeared for a number of episodes, lost his grasp and was sent flying into the fan, sending a spray of blood and guts all over the room. “Luckily” Orvex’s bones were able to jam the fan mechanism and shut down the trap.
With the mood killed by Orvex’s death, the party decided that it was time to end the Elf-Mitzva and finish their long journey. Inserting the geometric skulls into the ornate door, the party waited with baited breath as the large door opened. Upon the door sliding out of place, the party saw a giant stone statue that looked exactly like Death sitting on a ledge in the middle of the room. Below the statute, a lake of lava covered most of the room.
A continuous beam of blue light came down from the ceiling and into the scythe. Hertz was able to determine that the scythe of the Death statue was pulling in the souls of the recently deceased; this was obviously the Soulmonger. However, before they could act on that knowledge, a purple laser shot out from the Soulmonger, struck Tempest, and began draining her soul. Padre called upon the powers of Sigmar to shield the party of the life-draining effect.
As the party started to make their way to the Soulmonger under the protection of Padre, a new horror appeared. An Atropal emerged from the lake of fire. For those who don’t know, when a pregnant goddess has a miscarriage, sometimes the fetus becomes an undead monstrosity. It quickly became apparent to the party that Acerack was using the Soulmonger to feed the Atropal and turn it into a Super Miscarried Undead Fetus God.
Knowing they were in a lot of trouble, Compassion pulled out his maul and began hammering at the Soulmonger while Padre continued to protect the party from the statue’s life-draining lasers. Xilixxilix (Xilix for short) began casting all of his/her remaining spells at the Atropal, while Hertz kept the party healed with the power of Talos. Tempest used her advanced monk grappling abilities to keep the Atropal from being able to knock the party into the lava with its umbilical cord attack.
As the fight with the Atropal raged on, everyone in the cavern soon heard the sound of Compassion breaking the Soulmonger into many little pieces with his maul. Unfortunately, despite their efforts, Hertz, Tempest, and Xilix took significant amounts of damage and expended many resources during the fight with the Atropal. Even with the Soulmonger gone and Compassion and Padre able to enter the fight, it certainly appeared that death was near.
Just as the party was becoming resigned to their fates, the party heard someone yell, “keep your hands off my man!” The two-way mirror that Compassion was carrying shattered, as Annie the Aboleth, who was actually larger than the Atropal, emerged from the mirror and attacked. Seeing this as their opportunity to escape, the party ran for what appeared to be a portal on the other side of the room. As the party went through the portal, Compassion looked back and saw both Annie and the Atropal descending into the lava. Entering the portal Compassion heard in the back of his mind, “goodbye my love.”
Confident that the threat of the Soulmonger was gone and they would soon be out of the dungeon, the party’s hopes died as they exited the portal and came face to face with the lich Acerack. “You destroyed my Soulmonger and killed by Atropal, prepare to die scum!” shouted the lich. Before the party could even react, Acerack emitted a terrifying aura that froze Compassion in his tracks. Acerack followed it up by casting a mind control spell on Hertz, who began attacking Padre with all his might.
With three of the party members incapacitated, Tempest ran in to engage Acerack in kung-fu while Xilix proceeded to cast what few remaining spells he possessed. Alas, while Tempest’s martial arts were formidable, Acerack had numerous defensive spells cast which deflected every blow. Likewise, Xilix’s remaining spells were of such low level that Acerack could easily counter each one. While the party had succeeded in their mission, it was looking like they would not live to celebrate their victory.
That was until, the mind-controlled Hertz misjudged the casting of a thunder spell and temporarily knocked himself out. No longer distracted by Hertz’s assault, Padre knew what he had to do. Praying to Sigmar, Padre asked that all his remaining holy power, and his remaining life force, be channeled into his great sword. Glowing with a brilliance never before seen, Padre raised the holy sword above his head and charged Acerack. Despite all of Acerack’s magical protections, Padre’s strength of will was too strong, and both Padre and Acerack were destroyed in a blaze of holy light. Coming to his senses, Hertz saw that massive explosion of holy energy, and he prayed to Talos to use that energy to perform a miracle.
Beaten and battered, the four remaining party members found the pool of teleportation in the next room and prepared to return to the surface. However, laying in the pool was a beautiful tiefling girl. Upon being jostled awake by Compassion, the woman open her eyes and screamed, “my love,” and hugged Compassion tightly.
What the party did not know was that Hertz’s prayer had been heard by Talos, who intended to bring Padre back to life. However, Padre insisted that he was an old man and that it would be a much better use of the god’s power to reincarnate Annie the Abolith as Annie the Tiefling. Seeing the newly resurrected Annie hugging Compassion, Padre smiled and passed on to the next life.
As the party attempted to collect their thoughts on how they were going to survive a month-long trek through the jungle to return to Port Ninzaro, a wondrous sight befell them. An entire regiment of Purple Dragon Knights appeared over the ridge. The message Compassion sent to them many weeks ago had paid off. As the Knights had brought a wizard with them, the wizard teleported the party straight back to Port Ninzaro.
Upon arriving at the city the party headed straight for the home of their long ailing patron, Syldra Silvane. Much to their delight, Syldra had held onto her soul and had not been devoured by the Soul Monger. Each party member received their promised rewards and her thanks.
In the weeks and years that followed the party went on their separate ways. Compassion, who eventually took over leadership of the Purple Dragon Knights, and Annie settled down and had a number of psychically and physically gifted children. Tempest purchased her own boat and put together a fine pirate crew. She sailed the seas for many years until she grew bored, to which point she opened a monastery on a secluded tropical island. Thanks to Hertz’s efforts, Talos worship became much more accepted and has spread far and wide. What this means for the other gods and the future of world remain to be seen. Xilixxilix continued to do a lot of drugs and he continued his quest to recover his lost memories. He also had remove curse cast on him so he was no longer a woman.
Finally, nobody, anywhere, at any time, tried to resurrect Padre. The end.
To our dozens of fans, thank you for reading and I hoped you enjoyed the Tomb of Annihilation campaign. Starting in the next few weeks Tales will be moving to a monthly basis as we start a new monthly campaign under a new game system. I hope you will join us then for Tales from the Plunderbund Consortium: Numenera
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I must admit, the past month or so was a very slow burn to the finale, we are here, it’s done, and it was well worth the wait, in my opinion. I have to be honest here and note my disdain for Padre’s death. Of course Padre had to be the one to die. I don’t think I have said this before in the blog, but Padre was my favorite character in the story, so it seemed natural that him and 9 Gryff’s would all get got. I want to thank Eric for writing all of this stuff up. I think the new monthly format will result in better quality chapters moving forward. You readers probably don’t realize that this can get tedious and time consuming really fast, and sometimes it goes from being a fun project to a chore. So I think the once a month approach is the way to go. I hope that you all enjoyed reading these. Leave a comment to let Eric know that he did a good job or to insult me. Both are fine. With that being said, I dedicate these next 3 videos to Padre, 2 of them are from John Carpenter’s Vampires. The other is a little song from Pantera.
The official Pantera video is just them at a concert, so I thought this was more visually appealing.
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