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Maybe the Ba'etith had a stronghold in Chult. Some of the early work that went into the Nether Scrolls was done in this area. In fact, this work could be why this is one of the few areas in the Realms to have dinosaurs -- perhaps some proof-of-concept experimentation was bringing back/recreating various species of dinosaurs.

And then one or more of the Ba'etith went rogue, because of something they found... Something ancient and evil that predated even the sarrukh. The remainder of the Chultan Ba'etith destroyed the rogues, sealed away whatever the object (or entity) of evil was, and then turned their old stronghold into a deathtrap to keep it all safely contained. Then they headed back north, joined with the rest of the Ba'etith, and made the Nether Scrolls.

Meanwhile, the ancient evil doohickey proved to be only imperfectly sealed off. It raised one of the fallen rogue Ba'etith, one Ash'r'rahkk, and made him a unique form of lich. This ancient evil later corrupted one of Ubtao's nature spirits, turning it into the shadow giant Eshowdow.

The first non-Ba'etith who ever penetrated this hidden stronghold was a powerful human wizard, whose original name has been lost to the sands of time... Encountering the sarrukh lich Ash'r'rahkk and the evil force backing it, this wizard realized too late that his very mind was being overwhelmed by what he had found. He fled, eventually journeying to another sphere entirely, in a vain attempt to hold onto his own personality. In the end, though, his strength was not enough, and he became another extension of that ancient evil doohickey.

Forgetting his own name, he chose a new one from his fragmentary and shattered memories: Acererak. He sealed himself away in his own cunningly-designed deathtrap, intending to contain the evil that had consumed him.

This did weaken the ancient doohickey, though, because now its own essence was sundered. It's still powerful, and still rather evil, but it is no longer the threat it once was... And it's not cool with that.

In the millennia since then, the Ba'etith stronghold has remained forgotten and sealed away... Until the chaos of the Spellplague and the Sundering brought one of the entrances back into the sunlight....

As for that ancient evil doohickey... I have previously suggested that there was some horrible evil that all the gods had to get together to defeat, and even their combined might could only shatter this evil. I suggested that it could have been one of the shards of this evil that made Cyric get so crazy, and another could be imprisoned under and contained by the Wall of the Faithless. Maybe that's what the Chultan Ba'etith found.

Or maybe a simpler explanation could be something like a spawn of Dendar... Or perhaps at some point, Dendar herself was in the Realms. Someone, perhaps Ubtao battled and wounded her, driving her from the Prime and into the Fugue Plane. And when she was wounded, some of her blood splashed on and corrupted some native creature, granting it power beyond that of mortals, but still shy of the true Elder Evils of the Realms.

This spins the whole thing into something new, built on existing Realmslore, but still keeping the ridiculous connection to the Tomb of Horrors. With the similar names and nature of the dungeons, it'd not be unlikely for someone who knew of the Tomb of Horrors to hear about this place and assume they were one in the same.

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Originally posted by Zeromaru X

Not only that. There is already a Tomb of Horrors conversion for 5e as well, as compiled in Tales from the Yawning Portal (the product released right before to Tomb of Annihilation).

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