D&D 5E Tomb of Annihilation - Moral Question

[Quickleaf]

Reading through the Tomb of Annihilation and several thoughts occurred to me beyond general thoughts about the overall design of the module.

1. Rich getting richer - Overall this module is about savings the 1% and helping them stay the 1%. Even in a magic heavy world like the Forgotten Realms it is really only 1% of the top 1% that benefit from resurrection magic. So the party is not doing anything noble or brave. They are helping Elon Musk and Bill Gates get even richer.

2. Wrong Goal - At some point the party should figure out that the Soulmonger is also depriving Lich's of the souls they need to feed their jars which is necessary to stay "unalive". Now other than a very small number of previous edition Elf Lich the Lich is a universally evil and dangerous "race" of beings. Their complete destruction would absolutely be a positive to the Realms as a whole.

Now the souls are being used to create a new evil god. Not that big a deal really , the Realms are dirty with gods both big and small. One more god created by the Soulmonger is not going to shift the balance of power in the Outer Planes.

So what happens if a party decides to heck with stopping the Soulmonger but instead decide to protect it and keep it running until every Lich in the Realm drops dead permanently. Sure it means a certain number of resurrected people will die, but the destruction of every Lich from Sass on down is a far greater triumph and well worth the death of people who should already be dead.

Opinions? The module is of course written with the thought that of course the device must be destroyed. The conclusion gives no other options and even confirms how the party did not really do anything heroic that saved the world as the rewards gained are rich elites granting them gifts and laurels for saving them from the death they had already avoided at least once.

I'm struggling to figure out how to run Tomb of Annihilation now – there are *great* scenes in ToA, but figuring out how to connect them all with better narrative is quite a challenge. While part of this challenge is about the book's organization (or the lack thereof), I think part of it comes from the paper-thin backstory.

For example: I noticed that the adventure doesn't pay much attention to what would happen if the dead didn't go to their afterlife / eternal reward. I'd imagine in a D&D world with magic like speak with dead and, presumably, some characters visiting the Outer Planes, that this would have implications for anyone of faith. If recently deceased can't be contacted with speak with dead, that suggests court proceedings regarding admission of "dead testimony" might change. While some religions do focus on the here-and-now, there is usually an aspect of faith concerned with the ultimate destination of the soul. If one's righteous/wicked deeds didn't matter in an eschatological sense...if you end up just *gone* regardless...would people behave differently? This is huge in a world where the divine is manifest! I'd imagine there might be a minority of thuggish types who use this to justify all manner of evils. Not to mention clergy/faithful suffering a crisis of faith.

Another example: Why does Acererak want to create an evil god? What is the atropal's identity? And why is it's "completion" considered *worse* than the destruction of all liches? These questions seem tied together, but the book is silent on them. "Because he's evil!" "It doesn't matter - it's *bad*!" seem to be the only answers I extract from the book. Knowing my inquisitive players, these are questions they will ask at some point, so I'm looking for good answers in older D&D sources that mention Acererak, atropals, and Chult...

 

[Warmaster Horus]

I'm struggling to figure out how to run Tomb of Annihilation now – there are *great* scenes in ToA, but figuring out how to connect them all with better narrative is quite a challenge. While part of this challenge is about the book's organization (or the lack thereof), I think part of it comes from the paper-thin backstory.
...

I noted something similar in one of posts in the Enhancing ToA thread. Connecting everything up while keeping a good narrative and keeping a careful eye on party progression vs anticipated challenge level is really a juggling act.

As for starving liches, I assume there are souls-a-plenty for the taking (or at least bargaining) in the lower planes.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Letting the Soulmonger take its course in order to destroy the liches of Faerun means dooming hundreds, if not thousands, to a wasting, horrid death, and denial of their final rest. And not just the wealthy 1%. That means the dead peasant that a traveling cleric raised out of pure kindness. Every paladin that stumbled briefly in their fight against the darkness. The child that died of disease or malnutrition, but got a second chance due to the kindness of an adventurer. They all suffer and die even worse than before.

Are those lives worth it to destroy the likes of Szass Tam? When you throw in the creation of a new evil god (and look at the chaos and disruption that occurred as a result of Cyric’s ascendancy), this starts to look awfully like an evil act.

All that being said, if this was my group, my job would be to make things interesting if that’s what they wanted to do. They’d have to defend the Soulmonger from adventurers and liches alike. A part might break down, and they’d need to hurry to find a replacement. But I wouldn’t let them off the hook for the consequences of their actions. They’d see the innocents dying as a result of their actions, their souls ripped apart. And the new evil god that rises, well, maybe that’s the final boss battle of the campaign.

 

[GameOgre]

Why everyone should be throwing themselves at this adventure? Because DC15 saves instead of 10 mean a LOT more PC's are going to die.

 

[Pauper]

I'm struggling to figure out how to run Tomb of Annihilation now – there are *great* scenes in ToA, but figuring out how to connect them all with better narrative is quite a challenge. While part of this challenge is about the book's organization (or the lack thereof), I think part of it comes from the paper-thin backstory.

I have to agree -- for a team of creatives who are lauded for their ability to craft a good story, there's not a whole lot of actual story going on here. It's not just Tomb, either; if you boil down 'Curse of Strahd' to its story elements, you basically just get a bunch of adventurers who get thrown into Barovia and have to wander around encountering nostalgia ("hey, isn't that Mordenkainen?") until they figure out how to leave. There's no real sense that the NPCs have any independent motivation or goals; it's not as if Rictavio, for example, is going to befall a horrific fate unless the PCs intervene, he's just sitting there waiting to be discovered (and maybe have his secret revealed).

For example: I noticed that the adventure doesn't pay much attention to what would happen if the dead didn't go to their afterlife / eternal reward. I'd imagine in a D&D world with magic like speak with dead and, presumably, some characters visiting the Outer Planes, that this would have implications for anyone of faith. If recently deceased can't be contacted with speak with dead, that suggests court proceedings regarding admission of "dead testimony" might change.

Good point in general, but mechanically, there's no reason why speak with dead wouldn't work on someone affected by the Death Curse -- the spell doesn't let you speak with a soul, but a corpse, and its description explicitly notes that "[t]his spell doesn't return the creature's soul to its body..." It's not really clear what spell, if any, you'd use to contact a specific mortal soul in the afterworld -- contact other plane specifies that the contacted entity is "a demigod, the spirit of a long-dead sage, or some other mysterious entity", and while you could probably do it with a wish, the wording of wish suggests both that such a casting is very likely to go wrong ("the greater the wish, the greater the likelihood that something goes wrong"), as well as be very rarely used for such a purpose (not only do you take stress for casting wish in this manner, but there's a 1-in-3 chance that anyone casting wish will never be able to do so again).

While some religions do focus on the here-and-now, there is usually an aspect of faith concerned with the ultimate destination of the soul. If one's righteous/wicked deeds didn't matter in an eschatological sense...if you end up just *gone* regardless...would people behave differently? This is huge in a world where the divine is manifest! I'd imagine there might be a minority of thuggish types who use this to justify all manner of evils. Not to mention clergy/faithful suffering a crisis of faith.

This is a great idea for a stand-alone campaign that splits off from the kinds of episodic gaming represented by Adventurers League and the various streaming games. The actual adventure, I suspect, was driven more by a desire to shoehorn in a bunch more nostalgia references to things that WotC owns the IP for, and every time the players get bored or confused, have some dinosaurs attack.

Another example: Why does Acererak want to create an evil god? What is the atropal's identity? And why is it's "completion" considered *worse* than the destruction of all liches? These questions seem tied together, but the book is silent on them. "Because he's evil!" "It doesn't matter - it's *bad*!" seem to be the only answers I extract from the book. Knowing my inquisitive players, these are questions they will ask at some point, so I'm looking for good answers in older D&D sources that mention Acererak, atropals, and Chult...

One option -- Dungeon #153 published a stand-alone adventure called "Prisoner of the Castle Perilous", in which one of Acererak's simulacra attempts to gain individual personhood by manipulating a pair of adventuring parties (one PCs, one NPCs); this adventure's narrative weirdness can be effectively short-circuited with the idea that, instead of the true Acererak, this Acererak is yet another simulacrum and that reviving the atropal is just a side-effect of the purpose of achieving full personhood.

Hope that helps!

--
Pauper

 

[JacktheRabbit]

Letting the Soulmonger take its course in order to destroy the liches of Faerun means dooming hundreds, if not thousands, to a wasting, horrid death, and denial of their final rest. And not just the wealthy 1%. That means the dead peasant that a traveling cleric raised out of pure kindness. Every paladin that stumbled briefly in their fight against the darkness. The child that died of disease or malnutrition, but got a second chance due to the kindness of an adventurer. They all suffer and die even worse than before.

Or they just die......

I might have missed the point where the module says the Soulmonger horribly tortures each soul as it rips each soul apart and feeds it to the god being created.

 

[JacktheRabbit]

Another example: Why does Acererak want to create an evil god?

I get the impression that the reason given is nothing more than "for the LULZ".

Acererak is basically the epitome of everything. He is an almost unkillable Lich AND if you succeed in killing him he reforms where his hidden jar is and the module straight out states the Jar is so well hidden that no mortal of god can find it.

So at this point he may just exist to travel around and entertain himself across the multiverse.

 

[Warmaster Horus]

Or they just die......

I might have missed the point where the module says the Soulmonger horribly tortures each soul as it rips each soul apart and feeds it to the god being created.

Check ToA, pp.6-7. The Soulmonger creates a wasting disease on those who have benefited from magical resurrection magic in the past, with them losing 1hp/day until they die. The souls of any humanoid that dies during the Death Curse is stored in the Soulmonger and cannot progress to the afterlife or be raised from the dead, though they may as soon as the Soulmonger is destroyed (ToA p.185). There is a 1:20 chance per day that any given soul in the Soulmonger is devoured and irrevocably destroyed.

 

[JacktheRabbit]

Check ToA, pp.6-7. The Soulmonger creates a wasting disease on those who have benefited from magical resurrection magic in the past, with them losing 1hp/day until they die. The souls of any humanoid that dies during the Death Curse is stored in the Soulmonger and cannot progress to the afterlife or be raised from the dead, though they may as soon as the Soulmonger is destroyed (ToA p.185). There is a 1:20 chance per day that any given soul in the Soulmonger is devoured and irrevocably destroyed.

Apples oranges mistake here I think. You quoted what it does to resurrected people and I was talking about what happens to all the souls of people who just die every day and dont get to go to the afterlife.

 

[Caliburn101]

Yes there is that, but honestly it is a HUGE hole in the story. You are telling me an insanely powerful archlich shows up and starts up a device that devours and destroys the immortal soul of every single person that dies and not a single deity of death cares in the least?

Besides someone could make the break some eggs to make an omelette argument that destroying some souls now in the process of destroying all Lich will save more over time as Lich have to feed on souls to survive.

I just find this to be interesting in the moral gray areas that can exist in this module more than any other Wizards has released for 5E. Everything else has been a straightforward see evil kill evil.

I'd be tempted to just get on the phone to Asmodeus who'd teleport in EVERY ONE of his cultists from across the globe and storm the place.

Job done...