Demon Bees on the High Seas - Rewriting Salvage Operation from Ghosts of Saltmarsh

[Devcon1]

Greetings, fellow Dungeon Masters.

I have come to ask of the forum's help in altering the module Salvage Operation from the new Ghosts of Saltmarsh book. Instead of using the Lolth and spider-motifs used in the book, I decided to harken back to the original and have the demon lord Tharzax be the influence behind the goings-on aboard the boat. Instead of spiders and webs, I have chosen to use bees and hives; rather than being choked with webs, the boat is drowned in honey and infested with honeycombs.

I am to be running this for a party of four 5th-level PCs: a goblin bard/druid, a dwarf paladin, a human fighter/beastmaster, and a half-drow favored soul/hexblade. Do any of you have potential suggestions for encounters as the party descends through the decks?

[Fable Wright]

Bees are a remarkably fascinating species. I can certainly imagine...

Swarms of Demonic Mites. One of the most common beekeeping problems are small parasitic mites that attach to the colony, and they can be left to fester. A good beekeeper will keep a mesh at the bottom of the hive to keep them out, so they can fall down but not crawl back into the colony. So the lower levels of the ship should have a few swarms of demonic mites (treat as Swarm of Poisonous Snakes).

Foulbrood Drone Bees. To add ambience, imagine enormous demonic bees that are... harmless. Drones do nothing but gorge themselves on honey and mate once in their life; they couldn't even sting you if they wanted. But just imagine how much they would freak parties out being surrounded by these giant insects, just sitting and staring at them intently. These drones are infected with a Foulbrood variant, though, so when you kill them, they unleash deadly poisonous spores.

Propolis Traps. Sprinkle these throughout encounters in lieu of webs; bees make this sticky, foul-smelling substance for hive cleanliness, which these bees definitely need. (See foulbrood drones and demonic mites). Treat like the terrain generated by Transmute Rock; quadruple movement to go through, strength save or be restrained, action to get back out.

The Hive Entrance. Guard bees, and the heaviest presence. However, it's quite possible that the PCs aren't the ONLY ones attracted to the hive, and they might see two strands of bees fighting, or a bear or similar distracting some of the guards—they could sneak or fight through once with little difficulty, but getting back out that way will be difficult.

The Nursery. These Giant Bees are feeding Demonic Jelly to small larvae, though some of the older brood are ready for the flesh of the living. Treat the Demonic Royal Jelly as Black Pudding or Ocre Jelly, and add Giant Wasp-stat bees and Swarm of Centipede-stat larvae to taste.

Honey Production. This entire room is filled with worker bees fanning honey with their wings. Treat as a Control Winds effect that the bees use to their advantage. Perhaps the smell in this room is so sickeningly sweet that it causes saves against Confusion effects, and use standard Giant Wasp statblocks. Combined with propolis traps and perhaps pollen traps that cause save vs daze for some variety to the fight, or unfortunate capped Foulbrood cells, which deal poison damage in an AoE when stepped on.

The Queen Bee. Depending on how the party can level up in this time, I'd repurpose or modify an Aboleth statblock. The pheromones can Enslave, and it has enough cunning intelligence to communicate with the party. The tentacle's rider effect is the queen laying eggs within the character's body; the mucous cloud begins transforming them into bees, or abeil if you want to port those from another edition. You can foreshadow this, in fact, with the former crewmember being transformed into enslaved, half-bee things, possibly with some of the weapon skills or spellcasting that the module would normally put on the drow. Some powerful ones should at least be guarding the entrance, and some wandering the halls.

In fact, the Lair is obviously the boat, and the regional effects could well include the Queen seeing through the eyes of the regular CR 1/2 giant bees, letting you add some ME-2 Harbinger type shenanigans if the players seem to be getting bored/fights getting too easy. This alien intelligence communicating with them constantly throughout the salvage, learning their desires, and trying to get them to give up, or join the hive...