LORE NOTES
This Article has 2 Sections.
- LORE NOTE 1 - Dendar the Night Serpent
- LORE NOTE 2 - No Matter Which Way They Go
- Ubtao vs Dendar
- Mezro & Ras Nsi
- Hags
- Omu
LORE NOTE 1- Dendar the Night Serpent
This adventure presents tons of lore (especially when you start reading blogs and old guidebooks) and it can get overwhelming. Focus on the problem of Dendar the Night Serpent. This will get your players pointed in the right direction, introduce them to the most relevant lore dumps, and sets up the Fane of the Night Serpent as the Dark Night of the Soul for ending Act 2 of this story.
Summary of the Dendar Problem: Ubtao's primary purpose in Faerun is keeping Dendar the Night Serpent imprisoned under the Peaks of Flames since -35000 DR (36,490 years ago) and fight it if it ever breaks from its prison so it doesn't eat the sun and destroy the world. NPCs who know lore will know about this myth. In Port Nyanzaru, they'd treat it as a fairy tale; those closer to Omu will have more faith.
LORE NOTE 2: No Matter Which Way They Go
Your characters need to pick up on the same lore and plot, no matter which path through Chult they take. Here's a list of key ideas that they need to be presented with and the order in which I would present them. Included are the likely NPCs who will share this on their way and how. Be sure to repeat these ideas often once they've been said. Players cannot remember things.
Chapter 1:
1. The Soulmonger: The Harper, Sindra Silvane, tells them it's the cause of the Death Curse at the beginning.
2. Acererak: the elephant in the room—he's on the cover. Best to address him early and directly: He's a lich who famously builds murder-dungeons for adventurers to get killed in. It amuses him. "You're on a quest, eh? I hope it doesn't end up in one of Acererak's madcap dungeons! Ha-ha!" Guides, adventurers, Volo, bartenders, etc. can mention him and his famous dungeon The Tomb of Horror.
Chapter 2:
3. Ubtao vs Dendar (see above). Any guide will have enough sense and lore-knowledge to do a prayer to Ubtao, maybe even upon the launch of the expedition. "These new gods are fine for the city, but we'll need to appease the primordial gods if we're going into the jungle!" Different guides will have different depths of knowledge about his legend, of course. As the characters move deeper, have each person in the jungle who could know about this lore, talk about it. If they know about the yuan-ti (except Salida), have them hypothesize that this death curse sounds like something they'd be behind. Probably a sign of the return of Dendar.
4. Mezro & Ras Nsi: Mezro is the most famous city in Chult and has been for millennia, not Port Nyanzaru and certainly not Omu. That it suddenly disappeared in the Spellplague (if your players don't know what the Spellplague is, stop and explain it to them out of game—their characters would know about it) is very strange. Most Chultans of any race will know that Ras Nsi was the outcast Bara of Mezro who disappeared after he laid siege to Mezro in 1385 DR (110 years ago) and that, since he disappeared, the abundance of undead has slowly declined. "Thank goodness Ras Nsi is gone! If we were out here ten years ago, we'd have faced TWICE as many zombies in that random encounter!"
5. Hags: hags collect souls in bags. Anyone with a good arcana score will probably know this and mention that the Death Curse seems similar...maybe some sort of SUPER-bag. If the characters kill a single sea-hag, though, it means the Sewn Sisters will be on to them—and start harassing them along the way in dreams, etc. Make them scary.
6. Omu: the barae of Mezro were the famous Tabaxi, but other cities had their own royalty. Denizens of Kir Sabal and Nangalore know the Omuan line lives on. They also likely know that yuan-ti have been coveting Omu for centuries and are probably behind the Death Curse.
This adventure presents tons of lore (especially when you start reading blogs and old guidebooks) and it can get overwhelming. Focus on the problem of Dendar the Night Serpent. This will get your players pointed in the right direction, introduce them to the most relevant lore dumps, and sets up the Fane of the Night Serpent as the Dark Night of the Soul for ending Act 2 of this story.
Summary of the Dendar Problem: Ubtao's primary purpose in Faerun is keeping Dendar the Night Serpent imprisoned under the Peaks of Flames since -35000 DR (36,490 years ago) and fight it if it ever breaks from its prison so it doesn't eat the sun and destroy the world. NPCs who know lore will know about this myth. In Port Nyanzaru, they'd treat it as a fairy tale; those closer to Omu will have more faith.
LORE NOTE 2: No Matter Which Way They Go
Your characters need to pick up on the same lore and plot, no matter which path through Chult they take. Here's a list of key ideas that they need to be presented with and the order in which I would present them. Included are the likely NPCs who will share this on their way and how. Be sure to repeat these ideas often once they've been said. Players cannot remember things.
Chapter 1:
1. The Soulmonger: The Harper, Sindra Silvane, tells them it's the cause of the Death Curse at the beginning.
2. Acererak: the elephant in the room—he's on the cover. Best to address him early and directly: He's a lich who famously builds murder-dungeons for adventurers to get killed in. It amuses him. "You're on a quest, eh? I hope it doesn't end up in one of Acererak's madcap dungeons! Ha-ha!" Guides, adventurers, Volo, bartenders, etc. can mention him and his famous dungeon The Tomb of Horror.
Chapter 2:
3. Ubtao vs Dendar (see above). Any guide will have enough sense and lore-knowledge to do a prayer to Ubtao, maybe even upon the launch of the expedition. "These new gods are fine for the city, but we'll need to appease the primordial gods if we're going into the jungle!" Different guides will have different depths of knowledge about his legend, of course. As the characters move deeper, have each person in the jungle who could know about this lore, talk about it. If they know about the yuan-ti (except Salida), have them hypothesize that this death curse sounds like something they'd be behind. Probably a sign of the return of Dendar.
4. Mezro & Ras Nsi: Mezro is the most famous city in Chult and has been for millennia, not Port Nyanzaru and certainly not Omu. That it suddenly disappeared in the Spellplague (if your players don't know what the Spellplague is, stop and explain it to them out of game—their characters would know about it) is very strange. Most Chultans of any race will know that Ras Nsi was the outcast Bara of Mezro who disappeared after he laid siege to Mezro in 1385 DR (110 years ago) and that, since he disappeared, the abundance of undead has slowly declined. "Thank goodness Ras Nsi is gone! If we were out here ten years ago, we'd have faced TWICE as many zombies in that random encounter!"
5. Hags: hags collect souls in bags. Anyone with a good arcana score will probably know this and mention that the Death Curse seems similar...maybe some sort of SUPER-bag. If the characters kill a single sea-hag, though, it means the Sewn Sisters will be on to them—and start harassing them along the way in dreams, etc. Make them scary.
6. Omu: the barae of Mezro were the famous Tabaxi, but other cities had their own royalty. Denizens of Kir Sabal and Nangalore know the Omuan line lives on. They also likely know that yuan-ti have been coveting Omu for centuries and are probably behind the Death Curse.