Ghosts of Saltmarsh: Chapter 6 - The Final Enemy

Mar 15

The alliance is almost ready. The forces of the humans, lizardfolk, and merfolk are gathering and preparing to strike the sahuagin. All that is needed is a group brave and resourceful enough to breach the enemy’s fortress to map out its layout and count their forces.

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The Final Enemy is the final chapter in the original trilogy of adventures that is the spine of Ghosts of Saltmarsh. Originally published in 1983 and created by Dave J. Brown and Don Turnbull. It has been updated for 5e Dungeons & Dragons in Ghosts of Saltmarsh. There is a new section written for Ghosts of Saltmarsh and that is the final battle to take the sahuagin fortress which gives the adventure a strong finish.

In the main part of the adventure, the party must slip inside the fortress and learn as much as they can. They have to estimate the size of the sahuagin force, map out the interior of the fortress, learn the layout of the defenses, and see how far along the sahuagin are in their war plans. There are a couple of opportunities for combat, but the main focus of this part of the adventure is exploration.

The first level of the fortress is above the water, and once the party has made it past the guards at the main door, is mostly empty. There are two other clusters of sahuagin and if the party is smart, they can either be avoided or taken care of quickly and quietly. The two lower levels are full of sahuagin and flooded with seawater. The party will be wise to be discrete and not start any fighting while they explore these lower levels.

After the party has completed their recon mission and delivered their intel to the council in Saltmarsh, then the final battle can start. The party is to be the elite strike force that opens the way for the alliance to take the sahuagin fortress. They then have thirty turns to accomplish as much as they can before the main assault commences. As the DM, you will keep track of the party’s success using a point system that determines the overall outcome of the battle.

This adventure is heavily focused on exploration and combat and a little bit of role-playing sprinkled in for color. The stealthy elements of your party will have plenty of opportunities to shine and will be well supported by the combat arm of the party. If you take the time to understand how the defenses of the fortress work and give your party plenty of time to strategize, then this can be a really fun adventure. The stakes are high and most of the story that has been told thus far in the campaign has led the party to this key moment.

This adventure packs a punch as a part of the campaign and should not be run as a stand-alone. The sahuagin have been a standing menace that finally can be taken care of. If you have used them as combat encounters while the characters have sailed the Azure Sea then that will increase the tension of this adventure. This is a very good milestone in the Saltmarsh campaign that still has two more adventures. To keep the story going you will have to have sewn seeds of other plotlines if you are interested in creating a cohesive storyline. The next two adventures are very good and are well worth keeping the campaign going.

How it Played

There are two rules to be very aware of as you proceed to this adventure, they are Underwater Combat (Player’s Handbook p. 198) and Suffocating (Player’s Handbook p. 183). I printed out these rules and discussed them with the players before starting The Final Enemy. It is important for the players to understand the difficulty of fighting underwater and to have contingency plans for surviving the worst-case scenario. I did not want to surprise the players with the consequences if their magic or natural abilities failed.

The party used trickery to get past the guards at the main door. Two players, using spells, disguised themselves as sahuagin, another one was invisible, and the remaining were their prisoners. They continued their ruse past the second group of Sahuagin and ended up adding their prisoners to the work group being watched by the third group of sahuagin.

While some of the party were prisoners, the others continued to explore the first level of the lair. My two treasure hounds found the horde of treasure on the first level (it is amazing to me how some players just seem to find the magic items and treasure so easily). The players that were the prisoners finally had enough and forced the rest of the party to free them by killing the guards.

The party then ambushed the last group of sahuagin to clear the first level. They found Elmo and before they wasted resources on the man, I made sure to let them know that nothing would save him.

I had detailed notes of all the sahuagin in the fortress, the table on page 115 was very helpful. Just like at Danger at Dunwater, if the party enters the fortress with the idea that they will kill all the inhabitants, then they have failed. There are so many sahuagin in the fortress that the party would be quickly overwhelmed.

It took several sessions to scout out the whole lair. They even had to <gasp> split the party. Urgag’s player was unable to make the first session of this adventure. Since I knew that Urgag was not going to be there, I came up with a plan to keep Urgag with the party but to make him ineffectual. I shrunk him to six inches tall with a potion thrown at him in the first combat. This actually became an advantage when they sent Urgag and an invisible Amar down into the second level to look around. Mac entered the lowest level of the lair by himself through a secret passage. I had a session with just Mac’s player and another player to run the NPCs he found.

Between the recon mission and the final battle, I did not have the party go back to Saltmarsh. The forces of the alliance were already gathering at the lizardfolk lair at the mouth of the Dunwater River. The party then returned to the fortress to be the spearhead of the attack. I let the party know that they had thirty rounds to do as much damage as they could. The ticking clock added to the tension since the party had goals that went beyond what was being asked of them.

What I Changed

I changed very little of the actual adventure since it worked so well. My biggest changes were to elements that kept my overarching storyline progressing.

I removed the causeway from the land to the fortress island. It made no sense that the sahuagin would use a land bridge when they are sea creatures. When you add in the fact that the island has been sunk by the priestesses, how would the causeway still be standing? The causeway is probably another remnant of the original version when players did not have the option to make characters that have the ability to swim and breathe underwater. This change is superficial, but I thought added to the internal logic of the fortress.

The orcs that were prisoners were part of Urgag’s mom’s tribe. They recognized Urgag as a son of Donivald. Urgag’s player had been given the option to be a son of Donivald when he first joined the campaign but had declined since he did not know what that meant. By the time the party had gotten to The Final Enemy, Urgag’s player had changed his mind and wanted to be part of this storyline.

I also used Elmo’s ill-fated party as a means to further the Donivald storyline. The party learned that Elmo was sent by the Sea princes and their leader was a half-elf and son of their leader Donivald Seaspray. The party later found the bones of the half-elf and collected them to bury later on. I really like Elmo’s inclusion in the adventure because he offers further plot threads to push whatever greater narrative you are telling.

I changed the loot found on level one to include a folding boat because I thought it would be cool, which became useful when the party left the fortress with slaves they had freed. I had the party chased once they left the lair by what I called the patrol from hell. One reason was that the sahuagin wave shapers had never had an opportunity to use their whirlpool power. The party was able to keep just ahead of the patrol and eventually escaped from them on Monkey’s Carnage. This was a complex encounter that had to account for the distances between the party, the sahuagin, and Monkey’s Carnage. My players helped keep track of some of the distances which was a big help. One of the characters had charged ahead to try and alert the crew on Monkey’s Carnage and he took it upon himself to keep track of the distance.

Never pull your punches. I had a priestess cast Hold Person on an NPC instead of one of the player characters. I thought it was a death sentence, but it was not. The players were able to rescue the NPC before he ever came to harm. It would have been more dramatic if it had been Tidal and not some NPC. Live and learn, I guess.

For the final battle, I moved it from the top of the stairs on level one to the temple on level two. I also added the Sunset’s Eye necklace in this location. The players were drawn to the temple since they had seen the Sunset’s Eye when they had been exploring that level earlier. The fight started with the priestesses and the Maw of Sekolah. Just as the players thought that the fight was about over the doors at the end of the room burst open and Baron Kepmak and his champions rushed in. If I had timed it slightly better (by one round), it would have felt more desperate, but my players did say that it was intense. They did not know how few hit points the remaining opponents had when Kepmak made his entrance, so I can see why they were worried.

Aftermath

I should have made the connective tissue between this adventure and the next one stronger. I had made the decision to swap the next two adventures and the clues pointed the players to head toward Tammeraut’s Fate and not to The Styes. After the fact, I could see how I could have created a better story, but in the moment, I was stumped. Remember that your players have agency and might not see the story the way you do.

The characters headed back to Saltmarsh with the Sunset’s Eye and took it to Keledek the Unspoken. I should have had Keledek tell them that he did not know what it was, but that he knew a guy in the Styes named Master Refrum that could help them. This was what I should have done. Instead, I told them that when the Sunset’s Eye was washed in blood it would glow when aimed out to sea. The players naturally wanted to investigate and I don’t blame them. I had thought that they would take it to Rylapay and question her on what it did. They wanted to investigate where it led to rather than give this item of the Chained God to a potential enemy. Solid thinking on the players’ part (poor planning on the DMs part). I ended up coxing the players to head to the Styes first.

Not my best moment DMing, but sometimes I get so enamored with the story in my head I forget to lay the clues properly. D&D is not a railroad, but it is not a complete sandbox. You need to give players agency without making every session a free form jazz session. Just remember that sandboxes have edges and railroads have junctions. I like to string together sandboxes along a particular route and I’m not interested in improvising every session. There is too much that I’m responsible for as DM to be able to pivot every two seconds based on the whims of the players. You have to be prepared to react to left-field party decisions, but there is still a story that you are trying to tell. There are only so many hours in the day to prepare for every contingency and you should not have to. I usually spend 2 to 4 hours of prep time for every session and that is all the free time I can devote to it.

Eventually, the party restocked Monkey’s Carnage and set sail for the Styes unsure of what they would find there…