Shrouded in clouds an island in the Azure Sea defies logic and constantly moves through the waves. No one can easily find it. Few even know it exists. Even fewer leave it unscathed.

The Ghosts of Saltmarsh lacks a consistent thread that weaves its way through the whole campaign. There is no central bad guy that consumes the players’ time and energy. The Scarlet Brotherhood has potential, but in the end, they can only open a window to a greater landscape. There are plenty of disparate threads throughout the book that can be tied together to create a unique campaign for you and your players. This is what happened in ours.

The Island of the Chained God is the culmination of the Ghosts of Saltmarsh for my campaign. The characters had been drawn to the island from clues found throughout the campaign and by a special necklace. The main enemy of my campaign was Donivald Seaspary. Donivald was born out of a few die rolls and the imaginations of my players. He became a sinister element that haunted many of the player characters. Four of the six players that made it to the end of the campaign were children of the man.

The Set-Ups

I had been setting up the Island of the Chained God from the beginning of the campaign. Most of the characters had a connection to Donivald and had a vested interest in meeting and killing him. Donivald can be anyone in your campaign, but he should be someone that the players know or have some sort of connection with.

In my campaign, Donivald had been manipulating the Scarlet Brotherhood and the Sea Princes to open the portal to where Tharizdun has been chained. Donivald believes that he will be rewarded by the god for all he has done to rescue him. He will sacrifice the mothers of his children to open the portal and wants to have his children join him in his new world order.

The mothers can be replaced with anyone else that works for your campaign, but the captives have to be people that the characters will want to rescue.

The Connections to the Adventures

Saltmarsh – Scarlet Brotherhood: Donivald is manipulating the cult. Their goal to sow chaos and fear dovetails nicely with Donivald’s goals. The lower levels of the Brotherhood may be interested in restoring the old Suloise nobles, but the leaders are devoted to Tharizdun.

Salvage Operation – The Emperor of the Waves has been to the Island of the Chained God. I had one of the player characters be a former crewman of the ship and he had a vested interest in finding out what happened to his old ship and crewmates. Several of the crewmembers are still on the island. I replaced the kraken with Hood’s Gloom, who will make another appearance later in the campaign. After the party completed the adventure, they went to Fire Watch Island (the location of Tammeraut’s Fate). They did this in an attempt to help one of their party members and I was hoping to create motivation for the party to investigate the island later in the campaign.

Isle of the Abbey – In the old abbey is another bastion of the cult that worships the Chained God. This is more for color than any strong attachment to the main plot of the adventure. Just before this adventure, I had an NPC ask the players to keep a lookout for the Sunset’s Eye. The Sunset’s eye is a necklace with one of the 333 Gems of Tharizdun. It glows when washed with the blood of an aberration and pointed in the direction of the Island of the Chained God.

The Final Enemy – The Sunset’s Eye is kept in the Temple (Room 37) and can be found by the characters either while scouting out the sahuagin lair or during the final battle.

The Styes – The NPC that hired the player characters to find the necklace is actually a double agent. She works for Thornwell and is pretending to be a loyal servant of Mr. Dory. She is discovered by Mr. Dory and is the last victim of the Lantern Ghost. Mr. Dory is working with Donivald and if he survives this adventure will show up on the Island of the Chained God. The Whisperer has created and is growing Hood’s Gloom. It will attack the player characters as they make their way to the Island of the Chained God. The character that deals the killing blow to Hood’s Gloom becomes infected with the creature’s soul.

The Approach of the Island of the Chained God

Once the players have defeated Hood’s Gloom then they will complete their journey to the island. Read the following:

The gem leads toward a towering wall of fog. As the ship goes through the fog you each feel a momentary lurch in your stomach as if you were suddenly dropped. The ship emerges from the fog and you find yourselves in strange water. The sky is a bruised purple that occasionally flashes with lightning that never strikes the ground. Out of the sky hangs a giant taut chain that is anchored on an island that lies ahead of you. The chain appears to originate from the top of a volcano and reaches up to a blood-red spot in the sky that appears in a ragged spiral pattern.

As you get closer there appears to be the body of a giant humanoid creature lying on the side of the volcano with its motionless outreached hand just grasping the edge of the volcano’s crater. The cliffs of the island stand defiantly against the ocean waves. A low spot hosts a single structure that appears to be a lighthouse surrounded by marble statues.

Ahead is a large flotilla of ships all connected and centered around one large ship. All of the ships are tied together and have planks that connect them. You can see humanoids scrambling to launch small boats from off the flotilla and are sailing straight for your boat.

Elements of the Island

The Sea Shanty – The Sea Shanty is a collection of ships and survivors that have found themselves in the waters of the Island of the Chained God. The central ship of the flotsam of ships is the Tammeraut. This is an opportunity to have the players find people and ships that have disappeared during their time in the campaign or from their backstories. The players should want to help the survivors.

The Tammeraut – Anchored and abandoned off the coast of the Island of the Chained God, this ship’s troubled past has clues to what the players will be facing soon.

Kraken Priests – Have been used by Donivald. He manipulated them to get the soul of the kraken that they worship, which was used to create Hood’s Glom (a more controllable version of the kraken). They want the soul of their god back and they know who has it. They live in the ruins of their fallen city.

The Lighthouse – Was an abandoned feature of the island until recently. Now its inhabitants keep those of the Sea Shanty from landing on the island.

Warthakeel Ruins – The city that slid beneath the waves as gods fought to control the portal above the island. I used the additional adventure in the back of the book as a template for this adventure.

The Stone Giant – The proxy of Procan is kept in stone to protect the portal. A powerful entity of the Chained God is poisoning its heart.

Donivald’s Tower – Is the scene of the final battle to end the campaign.

This is just a template for what you can do in your own campaign. It is important to lay the groundwork for whatever you choose to do early.