Crocodile Tears - Tomb Thoughts #2

Classic Axebeak illustration...

As previously mentioned, I'm getting the chance to play in a 5th Edition D&D campaign for the first time in a while. Thomas is being kind enough to run Tomb of Annihilation and I'm chronicling my thoughts here in "Tomb Thoughts".

We had our second session and I continued to strive towards being the over-achieving player that as a DM I want to see out in the world. Continuing from my player notes from last time, I also added an inventory spreadsheet for the group as I compiled my notes from our second session. Taking notes as a player reminds me that I really do need to set up my tablet and bluetooth keyboard and practice at typing on that as the most painful thing about taking notes has been transcribing them from a notebook to the google document.

Spoilers ahoy in the rest of my thoughts on the session, so if you don't want to take a chance of any Tomb of Annihilation spoilers, do not read past the break...

...
...
...
You have been warned, spoilers follow...

Going to switch things up, with my session notes here and my thoughts after. So if you don't want to read poorly edited session notes, skip to the bottom.

Session 2 Notes

10th day of Tarsakh 
The party obtains 75gp from Undril, the money she would have spent on a horse if she was not travelling with them, and purchase supplies for their journey into the jungle, including a mule that Ordulin christens “Nosir”.

11th day of Tarsakh
The party leaves Port Nyanzaru for Camp Righteous, travelling along the Shoshenstar river. Kwilgok estimates it will take 10 days to reach the ruins of Camp Righteous and then another 3-4 from there to Camp Vengeance. It is an extremely hot day and Sirus, Thexidon and Undril all get a level of exhaustion.

12th Tarsakh
Heavy rains, but the party decides to push on instead of making camp as it is so early in their journey. Half-way through the day the party spots a bank of the blue mist they have been warned of and they carefully move around it.

13th Tarsakh
Day of travel, just a normal amount of hot.

14th Tarsakh
The party hears the sound of something large crashing through the jungle in the morning. Sirus sends his owl familiar, Hedwig, to investigate and reports back that it is something big and short crashing through the underbrush. Thexidon sneaks closer to investigate while the rest of the party backs up cautiously into the jungle. It turns out to be Lady Sindril, her guides Faroul and Gondolo and their flatulent Triceratops. They are clearly poorly equipped for jungle travel and after Sami offers Lady Sindril some insect repellent she tells her story. She and her brother hired the feckless guides, who gave them no instructions on proper equipment, to bring them and a few other companions to Camp Righteous. Once they arrived, they explored the Crocodile Shrine there and stumbled into a pit trap and then into a blade trap that slew all but Sindril, Faroul and Gondolo. They cremated the remains of the dead and left, as Sindril is eager to leave Chult. The party inquires as to how they have been travelling so quickly and Sindril tells them she has Seven League Boots. Sindril also tells the party they saw weird tigers with snakes on their shoulders.
 
15th Tarsakh
Uneventful day.

16th Tarsakh
While travelling the party sees the following in the river, in separate encounters of course--first they spot four dimetrodons sunning themselves on the river bank. Then, several hours later they see several plesiosaurs battling over the carcass of a giant octopus. The party feels better about their choice to walk along the river instead of canoeing on it.

17th Tarsakh
In the morning the party hears a droning, buzzing sound, Kwilgok tells everyone to to get down and they watch as giant wasps pass overhead. Then, near sunset, the party spots Terrorfolk, pterodactyl like creatures, circling above them and realize they are being tracked.

 18th Tarsakh
Heavy rain, so the party decides to take a long rest and swap stories. Undril tells of the temple she is from, a fortress of warrior priests of Helm. Ordulin relays the tale of his birth in Chult. Sami tells how she fled military service after refusing to carry out an evil order. Sirus tells the party he believes he will become the greatest mage since Elminster. Bernadette relays how she was once held prisoner by a black dragon for three months until adventurers came and slew the drake. Thexidon confesses that he was once married and is now a widower but refuses to say anything more about that. Kwilgok tells how three years ago he lived in the Tortle village of Ahoyhoy, but when a ship stopped in he traveled to Port Nyanzaru where he was a porter, a dock hand and then eventually a dinosaur jockey before decided to be a guide instead of racing Deadly Treasure.

19th Tarsakh
Comfortable and light day of travel. Toward the middle of the day, the party arrives at the burnt out remains of Camp Righteous. The most notable feature is a monumental statue of a man carrying a crocodile, Ordulin with his archaeologist training knows that it was built centuries ago by the Chultans to honor a story from the early days of the world:
Man stood on the river bank and was terrified of the crocodiles, so Crocodile offered to take Man across the river on his back as long as man agreed to do the same for him. Once Crocodile had carried Man across the river on his back, he demanded that Man carry him across the realm of humans. Man did so for many years, but since then, men and crocodiles have never been friends.

The party also spotted an animal pen containing a young Axebeak (ostrich sized, dangerous bird) that seemed as though it had been trapped there. They discussed what to do with it, but came to no conclusion, neither wanting to free it or to simply slay it so it would pose no danger.

They search the tents, but only find a single silver holy symbol of Torm in the burnt ruins of the Order of the Gauntlet shrine. In the latrine, they find a corpse with scale mail, warhammer and a pouch with 5 gemstones worth 10gp each. The scale mail falls apart, but the party takes the warhammer and gemstones. Examining the body, it is clear that the poor warrior died of dehydration in the latrine.

The party enters the shrine and Ordulin suggest they light torches because of all the WEBS. The party easily passes a concealed pit trap by moving slowly along the edges of the first room. Across the pit they find a corridor with cobwebs, disturbed by recent intrusions, with spots of dried blood. They determine that the blades are designed to hit creatures walking through and so crawl along the edge of the bottom of the wall and easily avoid the trap.

The corridor with the blade trap reaches ends in a 6ft wall that has a small landing on top before a drop where the corridor returns to ground level. Past the blockage there is a four by four pattern on the floor in tiles. This corridor again runs into a 6ft high wall, but on that landing there is a door that looks to have the same pattern. The tiles appear to be pressure sensitive. There is a faint glow from the door on the next landing, and one tile on the door is glowing. Sirus sends his owl familiar over again and is able to tell the party which tile on the door is glowing. Ordulin takes a leap of faith and steps onto the matching tile on the floor, once he does a new tile lights up on the door, and Ordulin steps on that space, which then lights a third tile on the floor and et cetra and the part is able to pass safely through the room to the next landing with the door. Examining the door, they spot a Glyph of Warning and determine that certain tiles need to be pressed in a certain order by certain people. Using the story of the Crocodile and the Man, the party decides that they will press the tiles in the reverse of the order they crossed the floor on, with Ordulin standing on Sami’s back to reach the upper tiles and they are able to open the door.

4
		3
			2
	1

Session 2 Thoughts

So, as you'll see from my session notes above, the last third of the session was dedicated to the start of our exploration of the Crocodile Shrine and specifically, carefully making our way past the traps. Since I've been reading and playing a fair amount of 1st and 2nd edition adventures, the traps in the Crocodile Shrine stood out as clever and well-done. Admittedly, we had forewarning from NPCs about the traps, but I'd also like to think that if we had missed that encounter, we would have potentially fallen into the first pit trap and realized then that we needed to be careful and check for traps.

The pit trap was fine, the blade trap hallway was nice, in that it was easy to avoid if you were careful and thought things through, but it was really the last two traps we encountered, with the tile patterns that really stood out to me. It was really engaging in the moment to have to puzzle them out as a party, to be able to piece together how each correct step on the floor illuminated the tile on the door that matched the next safe step.

Then having the key, as it were, to opening the door without setting off the glyph of warding be tied to the story of the shrine was also great. It's the kind of thing where if we had not gotten it correct and found out afterward that we should have done it with two people re-enacting the myth it would have be an "ah-hah" moment instead of a "how would we have ever have figured that out moment."

As I look forward to next session, I'm looking forward to encountering more clever traps like these and as I think about running upcoming games, I'm going to remind myself to try and emulate what these traps have done well.