In this level 8+ adventure, the party is contacted by a mysterious, radiant being and asked to prevent the fulfillment of a dark prophecy. Can the group thwart the Yuan-Ti's plans to create an avatar to their dark god, Sseth, or will death's shadow cover the land and plunge the world into darkness?
This encounter is fully playable as presented using only the Player's Handbook and Monster Manual, but does include some alternative monsters for DMs who own copies of Volo's Guide to Monsters, and alternate spells for those with access to Xanathar's Guide to Everything. It also includes two new monsters: A Yuan-Ti Mind Whisperer/Abomination called a Chosen of Sseth, and a corrupted Couatl called a Darklight Couatl.
Each entry in the Monster Manual Encounters series is a setting-neutral (but Forgotten Realms friendly) encounter designed to be dropped into any ongoing campaign with a minimum of fuss. The encounters are self-contained "micro-adventures" intended to show off the featured monster in a unique way, rather than being just another random encounter. Many adventures leave a few dangling leads the party could choose to follow if they wished, to give the DM an easy starting point for a longer adventure.
I started this series as a just-for-fun project with the artist who does the covers, Vorpal Pen (you can and should follow him on Twitter). Originally I posted the encounters to Reddit, but as of 2019 all new entries will be posted to the DM's Guild. While Vorpal explores the monsters artistically, I paint each creature in words - as such, these encounters feature more boxed text than many standard adventures - I promise not to be offended if you choose to mine the important details and drop the exposition.
