Go to Table of Contents

THE FALL OF ZARIEL

• When the battle at last came to an end, Baalzephon was astonished to see Asmodeus himself arrive.
• They found Zariel beneath a mound of devils she had slain. She was badly injured, but still lived. As she awoke, Asmodeus knelt beside her in the dust of Avernus. He spoke to her in a soft voice.

I look at you and I see that you are in despair. You thought you could make a difference. That you could end the Blood War. But here you are on a field of dead friends.

You look at me and I know you see malevolence. You see Evil. You see an antithesis. You see betrayal. But I did make a difference. And I will end the Blood War.

All those aeons ago, at my trial, when I looked you in the eye and laughed. Do you think I mocked you? No. I laughed because I saw you standing where I had stood before. I knew we walked the same road and you were just a few steps behind me.

Look around you. Look at the dead. Piled high. Do you really think this to be Good? Do you think this butchery to be worthwhile because it was done in a noble cause? You know as well as I do that as long as this continues, as long as the dead are nothing but tallies in the ledgers of complacent gods, Good is derelict. It is meaningless. It is feathery cupids cavorting on a celestial isle while suffering boils forth across the multiverse.

I know you came here to kill demons. You think you have failed. I think you have barely begun.

Which of us do you think sees more clearly?

What I offer you is simple: A chance to continue our fight. You have killed Terza’reg. I offer you his place on the Dark Eight and command of a Blood Legion. Serve me and your Crusade can still boil across the Abyss and turn the Great Wheel into a new epoch.

• In truth, the two conversed on many different planes of thought. And, in the end, Zariel accepted Asmodeus’ offer, swearing fealty to him and accepting his commission as one of Bel’s generals. Perhaps Asmodeus was right. Or perhaps she had been right to fear her weakness. Or perhaps in her pride, she convinced herself that, once she had dealt with the Abyss, she would be able to turn on Asmodeus and save Hell from itself.
• But Zariel had fallen.
• Haruman willingly followed Zariel in swearing allegiance to Asmodeus. Olanthius chose to commit suicide instead, but even in death discovered that he was bound by his oath to “crush the evil of the Abyss under the guidance of Zariel” and was raised as a death knight in her thrall.

Note: Once again, kids, examine the fine print of your oaths.

LULU: HIDING THE SWORD

• Yael and Lulu did not have any method for immediately fleeing the Outer Planes. In fact, they were essentially lost: Lulu had never been to Avernus before and the Zarielites had been preparing for an invasion of the Abyss, not the Nine Hells. However, part of those preparations had included learning the location of a number of pan-dimensional bolt-holes in the Abyss.
• Their plan, therefore, was to reach the Styx and use the river to travel into the Abyss and – if they got extremely lucky – find a way out. (If the plan failed, then perhaps they could throw the Sword of Zariel into the Styx to keep it out of Hell’s hands.)
• Lulu knew there would be Avernian watchposts along the length of the Styx. Penetrating that defensive line would be difficult. But Yeenoghu’s army must have crossed it somewhere and somehow, so they decided to backtrack his army and hope to duplicate his success.
• The plan worked: They discovered that Yeenoghu’s army had taken out three of the Styxian watchposts, leaving a gaping hole in the defensive line. They managed to cross the Styx and then commandeer an infernal ferry from a charonadaemon.

Note: At this time during the Blood War, the demons of the Abyss had successfully captured the far shore of the Styx. Their war palaces were bastions of war and the heavily fortified banks of the Styx were a muddy mire of endless, bloody war that extended into astral trenches.

• What they didn’t know was that Yeenoghu was tracking the Sword of Zariel. A war party waylaid them. With their ferry sinking, Yael and Lulu were forced back into Avernus.
• Pursued by Yeenoghu and with the forces of Hell closing in as well, Yael and Lulu realized that there was no escape. Yael plunged the Sword of Zariel into a rock and called for divine intervention. Lulu poured her own celestial essence into the call, the sympathetic resonance of her trumpet echoing across the Avernian plains as she drove Yael’s plea across the planes. Even so, the gods could wield little power in Avernus, but Lathander gave them an opportunity. Yael sacrificed herself, pouring her life force into what Lathander offered, raising an alabaster fortress around the Sword to protect it.
• The skein of Avernus itself rebelled at this holy touch, however, and a bloody cyst engulfed the fortress, Yael’s corpse, and Lulu.

ZARIEL IN HELL

Zariel became one of the Dark Eight, a general serving Archduke Bel. She frequently rebelled against Bel’s commands, however, pursuing far more aggressive strategies. Her Blood Legion was preternaturally successful, sacking numerous daemonic war palaces and establishing a beachhead on the far side of the Styx.

THE RECKONING (13^th Century DR): The Reckoning was a tri-partite conspiracy masterminded by Glasya, daughter of Asmodeus. She managed to convince half the Lords of Hell that the other half were planning a rebellion and vice versa. The third conspiracy consisted of Glasya, Zariel, and Malagard the Hag Countess (who was a councilor to Moloch, Lord of the Sixth), who believed they could seize considerable power for themselves as the Lords warred against each other. (Glasya even had aspirations of overthrowing her father and claiming Hell for herself.)

• The trigger point for the Reckoning came when Bel was targeted by a demonic assassin. The attack failed, leaving Bel in a magical coma. Evidence pointed to Dispater, Archduke of Dis, the second level of Hell. (In reality, the “assassination” was actually arranged by Glasya and had exactly the intended effect.)
• Zariel, having forged an alliance with Tiamat, laid siege to Dis. (Tiamat not only gave Zariel safe passage to the second level of Hell, but also threw her own draconic legions into the fray.)
• The full details of the Reckoning are beyond the scope of this project. Zariel spent almost the entire war engaged in the siege of Dis.
• Near the end of the Reckoning, Tiamat betrayed Zariel. The siege of Dis was broken and Zariel ended up being held a prisoner in Tiamat’s dungeons.
• Glasya and Malagard had convinced Moloch, Lord of Malbolge, to pursue a scheme to use the chaos of the Reckoning to dethrone Asmodeus. It failed, but Glasya was able to use this as a framework to frame Moloch as the “mastermind” behind many of her own schemes. Moloch was deposed by Asmodeus and Malagard raised in his place. (Malagard herself was recently killed by Glasya, who has become Archduchess of Malbolge herself.)

Design Note: Placing the Reckoning in the 13^th century and ending it with Zariel as Tiamat’s prisoner allows us to preserve a lot of pre-DIA continuity that DIA’s retcons had wiped out. For example, all of Bel’s pre-DIA continuity remains intact (except that he now supplants Gargauth, not Zariel, to become Lord of Avernus). Zariel still gets to besiege Dis to begin the Reckoning. And the imprisonment of Zariel by Tiamat (as described in Rise of Tiamat) is also slotted into place.

THE RIFT WAR (15^th Century DR): The surface of Avernus is periodically rent with massive rifts. Similar to rift valleys of the Material Plane, they are formed by the surface of Avernus pulling itself apart. But while some proceed with a glacial pace, others can appear with terrifying, convulsive speed.

There are many metaphysical theories about the nature of these rifts: Perhaps Avernus is like a “cap” which Asmodeus placed upon the Nine Hells, but Hell keeps trying to expand, trying to push its way through the planar substrate. Or Avernus itself is constantly expanding like a cancerous tumor, with the rifts either being where that new growth pushes out new planar material and/or where Avernus is trying to break apart, “budding” off new planes. Or they’re manifestations of demi-planes, either attaching themselves like parasites to Avernus or being forcibly scooped up by Hell’s vortex. Some even postulate they could be the spirits of evil living demi-planes that have died and are manifesting, lemure-like, in Hell. Or perhaps they are simply another hellish expression of Avernus’ corrupt landscape.

Whatever the case, in the early 15^th century a rift of unprecedented size rapidly opened on the contested side of the Styx.

And it was seething with baatorians.

Baatorians were the original inhabitants of Hell. They had a unique life cycle: Their larval state (known as nupperibo) were spontaneously generated out of the substance of Hell itself as a sort of tubercular reaction to the arrival of an evil soul. As Hell expanded, this strange property seemed to extend to each new level. Over time, the nupperibo could ascend into higher forms (in a process referred to as “molting”). For untold aeons, they were the factious rulers of Hell.

The ultimate fate of the baatorians has been lost to legends older than mortal civilization: Some claim that the entire species ultimately ascended into forms of pure energy – stories speak of “strange lights” and “malevolent shadows” – leaving Hell uninhabited when Ahriman arrived. Others claim that Ahriman conquered the baatorians and wiped them out in a genocide of colossal proportions.

Whatever the case may be, it seems fairly certain that Ahriman fundamentally reworked the cosmology of Hell, somehow adapting the baatorian ecology to instead generate lemures, the larval state of the baatezu devils. (It’s possible this is somehow connected to the rerouting or creation of the River Styx, a transport mechanism for mortal souls from which many lemure emerge.) Nupperibo are still known to manifest from the firmament of Hell, but they are usually ruthlessly hunted down and destroyed by the devils before they can molt into the more advanced forms of their species.

Now, however, an entire army of baatorians boiled out of the rift – some strange redoubt or primeval throwback of the ancient race – and invaded Avernus.

• Bel blew it. He had left most of the war palaces Zariel had conquered vacant and the baatorians were able to seize them for their own use. The defensive lines of the blood legions, having been thoroughly disrupted, collapsed and were routed. Watchtowers along the Styx were overrun and destroyed. For the first time in centuries, the Avernian frontiers were in utter disarray. Although no alliance was formed between the baatorians and demons, armies of both races freely crossed the Styx.
• With the “Avernian situation” rapidly deteriorating, Glasya saw an opportunity. She journeyed to Tiamat’s citadel and arranged for Zariel’s release. (There are several stories of how she accomplished this: A secret deal with Tiamat. Delivery of an edict from Asmodeus himself. A daring jailbreak heist.)
• Zariel’s Second Avernian March: For a second time, Zariel began a march across Avernus. This time, rather than fleeing, Zariel was gathering the scattered, routed units of the blood legions. As Bel retreated, Zariel attacked. She forded the Styx, re-sacked the war palaces she had first claimed two centuries earlier, and broke the baatorian supply lines. Then she turned around, marched back to the Styx, and intercepted the baatorians’ main army as it was attempting to cross the river. In the bloody, muddy Battle of Lost Memories, the baatorians’ strength was broken.
• The Rift Siege: After the Battle of Lost Memories, Zariel was able to link up with Dagos and Furcas, two of the Dark Eight whose armies had been cut off, and re-established the defensive watchposts along the Styx. While Dagos and Furcas held the river, effectively dividing the remaining baatorian forces in half, Zariel led her army to lay siege to the Rift. Once the Rift fell, the war was essentially over.
• The Archduchess: Asmodeus punished Bel for his failure by demoting him back to the ranks of the Dark Eight. In Bel’s place, he elevated Zariel as the new Archduchess of Hell.

Note: This history covers the broad strokes of Zariel’s life after her fall. For additional events directly relevant to Descent Into Avernus, refer to the “Lore of Gargauth” in Part 3B and “The History of Elturel’s Fall” in Part 4B.

LULU LEAVES HELL

• Although Lulu had been caught inside the bloody cyst, over the intervening centuries she had been slowly getting pushed out – like a sliver from your foot. She awoke – dazed and confused – upon the scabrous surface of the cyst and wandered away. (This was most likely during the time that Zariel was imprisoned in Tiamat’s dungeons.)
• During her wanderings, she visited Fort Knucklebones. [You could potentially insert other memories of Avernian landmarks here.]
• Lulu encountered the Wandering Emporium. There she was tricked by a rakshasa named Mahadi, who splashed her with water from the river Styx. Keeping her thus in a constant stupor, he kept her imprisoned. (A hollyphant’s tusks can be ground into a magical powder that transforms water or wine into an elixir of health. Mahadi kept her essentially drugged and senseless so that he could repeatedly grind down her tusks.)
• When Zariel became the new Archduchess of Avernus, Mahadi brought Lulu to her court and presented her as a gift. Zariel was disappointed to discover that Lulu was suffering from Styxian memory loss, for she wanted to recover her Sword, but had fond memories of her old friend. She gave orders that Lulu should be returned to Mount Celestia and dispatched a small party of devils to see it done.
• While crossing Avernus to an appropriate gate, Lulu’s devil escorts were ambushed by the warlord L’zeth (DIA, p. 90). Lulu, still in a Styxian befuddlement, wandered away from the scene of the ambush.
• Some time later, the effects of the water of the Styx finally wore off. (This is the beginning of Lulu’s memories.) She came to the River Styx shortly thereafter and followed it out of Avernus, journeying through the Outer Planes and having many adventures along the way.
• She eventually ended up in the Nexus (see Book of Eldritch Might III) and passed through a portal which took her to the city of Neverwinter in 1488 DR. From there she made her way south, returning to the area around Elturel. There she either becomes a PC (as described in Part 2) or met Sylvira (as described in Part 4C).

Go to Part 6D-D: The Legend of the Hellriders

DISCUSSING:
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 22C: Workings of the Chaos Cult

Tee, meanwhile, had discovered that one of the wood panels on the floor was loose. Prying it up revealed a small cache containing two books and a gold ring bearing the device of a broken square. Ranthir was immediately distracted by the books. Eagerly taking them from Tee’s hands he began flipping through them.

In this session we see a couple examples of what I refer to as lore books. These are generally one page handouts (although it’s fine if they end up being longer) that are given to the players when the PCs discover a book with significant information:

If you want to see a particularly large number of examples, check out the Books of the Los Angeles Cult and Savitree’s Research from the Alexandrian Remix of Eternal Lies. (I produced a, frankly speaking, ludicrous number of these for that campaign. To rather good effect in actual play, but I wouldn’t recommend it as an example of my standard practice.)

In practice, these handouts more or less serve as an executive summary for a book that doesn’t actually exist. (If you’re not familiar with these, they really do exist: People pay services to read books – usually business-related books – and produce brief summaries that can be quickly digested without reading the full book. This didn’t make a lot of sense to me until I realized just how much endless, repetitive blather can be found in these books. Although I’m always curious if this is because the authors of these books know that they’re just going to get boiled down to a set of highlights… But I digress. The nice advantage to this is that you can find any number of resources on line about how to write effective executive summaries.)

One significant divergence between my technique and the writing of an executive summary is that I will usually also discuss the actual physical interaction with the book. For example:

This slim, peculiar volume purports to be “a dream woven from the true and factual accounts of many diverse peoples of the world,” but it is rather difficult to separate what is meant to be scholarship from fancy. It is perhaps notable that the author’s name has been savagely crossed out on every page on which it would normally appear with a thick, dark ink, making its recovery utterly impossible. The volume’s only other distinguishing mark is an imprimatur placing its publication in Shanghai.

Or:

This slim folder of supple hide, clasped shut with a length of emerald green ribbon, contains a dozen or so individual sheets of parchment. Written in an archaic – almost alien – form of the common tongue, they tell a sad and cautionary tale.

The idea, of course, is to communicate the sensation of actually reading the book to the player.

“Why not just write the entire book and give it to them as a handbout?” …you’re adorable. But, seriously, I get asked this with surprising frequency, despite the answer seeming to be blindingly obvious: Writing a 50,000 or 100,000 word book as a handout is not necessarily out of the question (if it were to be a centerpiece of an entire campaign, for example), but is certainly not an endeavor to be undertaken trivially. And even if I were to write such a thing, pausing the campaign to allow the player(s) to read book-length confabulism would be to change one recreational activity into a fundamentally different one.

Conversely, though, why not forego the entire exercise and simply give the players the pertinent clue?

First, this is a variation of the Matryoshka search technique: Simply telling the players what they find is a less engaging and less entertaining experience than the players actually plucking the information out of the “book” (even if it is just a summary).

Second, these lore books can be densely packed with information: Not just the clue (or clues) that can lead the PCs to a new revelation, but also deeper lore about the game world that can provide a broader context for the merely procedural action. (It’s significant that a lore book inherently hits on several of the techniques discussed in Random GM Tips: Getting the Players to Care.)

Third, it’s easier to hide clues in the full text of a lore book. It’s deeply unsatisfying for the players when the GM says something like, “Oh my gosh! You remember reading something about this in the Unaussprechlichen Kulten!” Conversely, it’s VERY satisfying when a player suddenly shouts out, “Oh my god! We read about this! Hang on, let me grab the book!”

(In a similar fashion, lore books also offer the opportunity to present puzzles which must be solved. Sometimes this “puzzle” is cross-referencing information across several lorebooks obtained over time.)

Fourth, the physical handout makes it easier for players to reference the key information from the book and to refresh their memory whenever they choose. (This goes beyond merely lore books, but if there’s particularly crucial information – or information that will be relevant across many different sessions – putting it in the form of a handout is a very good idea.)

Fifth, it’s frankly just a more immersive experience for the players. They may not actually be reading the book, but it feels like it. Plus, a book that you just describe verbally is a transient experience. But a book that’s physically at the table – even if it’s just in the form of a piece of paper – really and truly exists. Just the act of players saying things like, “Who has the Fragments of Bal-Sagoth? I want to check what it has to say about Gol-Goroth,” or “Remember when we read The Book of Mrathrach?” is significant.

TIPS & TRICKS

Writing a lore book is more art than science, but here are a few things to keep in mind.

I almost always try to include a picture. In the case of the chaos lorebooks from In the Shadow of the Spire, that was frequently a cult sigil or the image of a chaos creature that was the subject of the book. In the case of Eternal Lies this was almost always the cover of the book. (These days it’s trivial to find scanned images of antique books online that can be repurposed with little or no image manipulation.) Visuals are nice in any case, but there’s also a base utility here: The image makes the handout distinct, not only in the players’ memories, but also when they need to find it again among their various notes and handouts in the future.

To establish the style of the book or to capture the enigmatical nature of the “source” text, include quotations. These can be short fragments or lengthy passages, depending on both your inspiration and need. For example:

The last few pages of the book appear to be a prophetic rambling of sorts, beginning with the words, “In the days before the Night of Dissolution shall come, our pretenses shall drop like rotted flies. In those days the Church shall be broken, and we shall call our true god by an open name.”

Here the lengthier passage captures the unique quality (and also vaguery) of the religious imagery. Conversely:

A closer reading quickly reveals that these deformities – referred to as “the touch of the ebon hand” – are venerated by the writers as the living personification of chaos incarnate.

In this case, I could have just as easily dropped the quotation marks. But including them presents a little “window” into the full text through which the player can project themselves.

As I mentioned before, describe the experience of reading the book. This can be the physicality of the book itself, but you can also relate the sequencing or revelation of knowledge (e.g., “a closer reading quickly reveals” or “on the final pages”).

You can prepare multiple versions of the text, with different versions being “unlocked” under certain circumstances. For example, you might have one handout that describes the physical characteristics of a drow lore book, and another which only becomes available once the PCs are able to read the drow language. A particular insight might require the character to have a particular skill, or a skill of a high enough level. Or there might be a hidden puzzle in the initial handout which, if the player can solve it, will allow them to discover additional layers of meaning in the text (provided in an additional or expanded handout).

You can combine (and expand) these last two ideas by presenting different editions of the same book. This is a common conceit with Mythos texts, for example. Thus the players can find an expurgated or damaged copy of a book early in the campaign, and then find a more complete copy (or one with an alternate ending) later. Marginalia can also be used to distinguish individual copies of a book.

Books can also cross-reference other books. Usually these cross-references don’t really “exist” (there’s not a lore book prepped for them), but in other cases these additional sources (often ripe with deeper information) will crop up later in the campaign. If you’re running a game in the real world, it can sometimes be fun to cross-reference real books.

WRITING THE BOOK

In terms of figuring out what information should be in a lore book, the process is basically part and parcel with plotting out the revelations of a scenario or campaign.

A key insight, however, is that the book should generally not just blandly state the conclusion you want the PCs to make. Instead of writing the conclusion, you are writing the clue which will let the players figure out the conclusion. It’s a subtle difference, but a meaningful one. Often I achieve this effect by presenting the information in an oblique or mythic manner. (For an example of how complicated and interwoven this can be, you might trace the references – both direct and oblique – to Azathoth in the Eternal Lies lore books.)

Along the same lines, it is often useful if the key information is not what the book is primarily about. Or, to think of it in a different way, the primary goal of the fictional author of the book is not to communicate the key information. Write the lore book as a description of what the book is – a scholastic study of Byzantine emperors, a 19^th century poetry collection, a manual describing elven funeral practices – and then drop the campaign-relevant information as an aside or one detail among many or an example serving a purpose in the text distinct from that to which the PCs will put it (or interpret it).

(This is not universally true. It can often be just fine to have a book whose primary function is to tell people about the very thing that the PCs need to know. This is particularly true if the lore book is being used to convey a great deal of pertinent information. I often think of these as a “briefing documents,” and the two lore books in the current session – Truth of the Hidden God and Touch of the Ebon Hand – are of this nature.)

Lore books don’t have to be just about clues, either. I often build mechanical benefits or character advancement opportunities into lore books.

• GUMSHOE games have a great mechanic for this in the form of dedicated pool points, so that if a player has the book with them it can mechanically benefit their investigations. This also has the nice effect of procedurally adding additional content to the book beyond the initial summary in response to player-initiated actions.)
• D&D spell books are an easy example. Relatively simple handouts containing the spell lists from captured spell books can offer a surprisingly rich amount of game play.

This is a great way to introduce homebrew or supplementary content into a campaign, particularly for players who aren’t typically interested in that sort of thing. I’ve used lore books to introduce new feats, new spells, new class features, and even whole new mechanical sub-systems.

My last piece of advice is this: Get specific. Lore books with a narrow focus are often more interesting than general cyclopedias. But even as you’re writing out a broad summary of what the book is about, pepper it with specific examples. Instead of having a book that’s “about haunted houses,” give examples of specific haunted houses. That specificity is what will make the lore book come alive.

NEXT:
Campaign Journal: Session 23A – Running the Campaign: Cliffhangers
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

SESSION 22C: WORKINGS OF THE CHAOS CULTS

May 18th, 2008
The 10th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

The walls, floor, and ceiling of the room were covered in a haphazard array of magical circles, symbols, and strange characters. The sight was almost dizzying. After little more than a glance, Tee called out for Ranthir to join her.

Ranthir quickly identified the symbols as belonging to a variety of rites, although none were immediately known to him. He did note that many of them bore a more than superficial resemblance to the rites performed by the Seyrunian demon-binding cults of the previous century. And others seemed to have something to do with the creation and binding of energy. Some simply seemed to be mad scribblings to which Ranthir could not ascribe any immediate sense. One particular section of the wall had been completely covered in charcoal, and then written upon in chalk:

Tee, meanwhile, had discovered that one of the wood panels on the floor was loose. Prying it up revealed a small cache containing two books and a gold ring bearing the device of a broken square:

Ranthir was immediately distracted by the books. Eagerly taking them from Tee’s hands he began flipping through them.

TRUTH OF THE HIDDEN GOD

What appears, at first, to be a copy of the Book of Athor is nothing of the sort: The pages inside are covered with scrawled diagrams and heretical desecrations of the Nine Gods.

A closer reading reveals this to be a cult manual for the “Brotherhood of the Blooded Knife”. The cult venerates chaos in all its forms, focusing their blasphemous rituals around the practice of human sacrifice. These sacrifices are given to a Galchutt named Abhoth, who they venerate as the “Source of All Filth” and the “Lord of the Zaug”.

Disturbingly, much of the book is given over to material designed to mock the holy rituals of the Church. It appears that the cult establishes itself secretly in society by posing as other religious orders. Actual followers of the deity may choose to join them, usually to their dismay – either they come to join the cult itself or they die beneath the cult’s “blooded knife”.

In other cases, a few cultists will infiltrate another religion and use force, blackmail, magic, or simple persuasion to sway its members into secretly worshipping chaos. This process can take years, but eventually the cult eats the other religion from the inside out, consuming it until the temple is entirely a front for the altars of the Brotherhood hidden in their subterranean complexes.

The last few pages of the book appear to be a prophetic rambling of sorts, beginning with the words: “In the days before the Night of Dissolution shall come, our pretenses shall drop like rotted flies. In those days the Church shall be broken, and we shall call our true god by an open name.” The remainder of this section is a description of the faux religious practices for a fanciful “Rat God”, with the apparent intention being that a church could be openly established for this “god”. Eventually, the prophecies, say even this “last pretense” will be abolished and “Abhoth shall be worshipped by all who are not blooded by the knife”.

TOUCH OF THE EBON HAND

The pages of this volume are filled with disturbing and highly detailed diagrams of the most horrible physical deformities and mutations. A closer reading quickly reveals that these deformities – referred to as “the touch of the ebon hand” – are venerated by the writers as the living personification of chaos incarnate. Particularly prized are those functional mutations – an extra eye or oversized arms, for example.

The rest of the book describes horrid rites which make it clear that the Brotherhood of the Ebon Hand not only idolizes deformity and mutation, but seek to inflict it and spread it as well: Ritual scarring. Magical alteration. Alchemical experimentation. Chaositech-induced mutation.

Members of the cult have no distinctive garb, but they usually bear the symbol of a black hand in some form: A tattoo. A charm. A small embroidery on their clothes. Or so forth. Of course, most of them are also marked by their mutations.

THE COBBLED MAN

As Tee continued searching, Elestra also came into the room. Looking over Ranthir’s shoulder she pointed at the charcoal wall: “We’ve seen three of these symbols now. The hand, the knife, and the broken square.”

“I wonder what the others could mean.”

“Something to do with the cults, I guess.”

They continued chatting quietly as Tee probed at the walls and the floor.

Dominic, in the tower outside, stood looking in at them. And then pain rushed through his body as a heavy blow landed across the back of his skull.

Stumbling forward he felt a horrible wave of nausea rip through his body. Turning he saw a horrific, monstrous man: A second head had been awkwardly attached to its shoulder, and the muscles of its arms and legs were grotesquely over-developed. The hair on both of its heads was greasy, lanky, and sparse. The eyes on one of the heads was shut, but the eyes of the other were filled with rage. In its right hand it clenched a silvery rod.

“WHY ARE YOU IN WUNTAD’S ROOM?”

Its voice was a dull boom. Its words sullen.

Tor, reacting almost instantly, rushed up the stairs from below. Emerging into the cramped base of the tower, he was clipped nastily along the side of his head. Like Dominic, he felt a nauseous wave pass over him. Shaking it off, he swung his sword – opening a vicious gash in the creature’s arm.

Ranthir rushed out, as well. “Can’t we just work this out?” But his voice was drowned out in the sudden chaos of the melee.

But then Tee shoved her way past him and her voice carried a greater authority: “Stop it! Wuntad sent us! Stop it now!”

The creature froze, its massive hand hovering to deliver a devastating blow on Tor. “Wuntad sent you?”

“Yes,” Tee lied, putting as much earnestness into her voice as she could. “He sent us.”

“He’s been gone so long. I’ve been alone for so long…” The dimwitted voice was filled with painful sorrow.

Tee softened. “Are you the Cobbledman?”

“… someone called me that. Once. They left too. A long time ago.” The Cobbledman clutched absently at the rags on his chest. “They left me all alone… Do you have any food?”

Ranthir fumbled at one of his pouches and then held out an iron ration. “Why didn’t you leave?”

“Can’t leave.”

“Why can’t you leave?”

“Wuntad put something in my brain. Make me loyal. Make it hurt to leave. Can’t leave until Wuntad say I can leave.”

Ranthir had a sickly certainty that this was a betrayal of the flesh. He could see telltale lumps beneath the Cobbledman’s skin – tubes and… other things.

“What happened to Wuntad?” Tee asked.

“Don’t know. The angry men in the metal suits came. There was lots of angry noise. I hid in my tower. And then everyone left… You’ll leave me, too, won’t you?”

No one had an answer for that.

“Cobbledman,” Tee said carefully. “Do you have a piece of metal that looks like a spiral?”

A look of something very like panic entered the Cobbledman’s eyes. “Yes.”

“Could we have it?”

“No! No! My friend gave it to me! I have to keep it safe! She said so!” His hand groped against the rags on his chest, clutching something beneath them.

“I understand,” Tee said gently. “But if we promised to bring it back, do you think we could borrow it? You could even come with us.”

“Maybe…” The Cobbledman seemed to be losing focus. “Do you have any more food?”

Ranthir gave him some more and the Cobbledman chewed it absentmindedly. “I’m going to go to sleep now. So very hungry…”

He began shambling back across the bridge and disappeared into this tower. They watched him go, sadness and pity filling their hearts.

“Well,” Tee said. “At least we know where one part of the spiral key is. Now we just need to find out where Radanna hid hers.”

NEXT CAMPAIGN JOURNAL

Go to Table of Contents

ZARIEL’S CRUSADE

• Zariel’s experiences at Idyllglen refocused her. Although she had served in Heaven’s armies, the conflict had always been somewhat abstract to her; or, at least, an affair of the Outer Planes where the conflict had long been relegated in most realms to a Cold War where the borders between realms had been long-settled. Now she had seen firsthand how the evils of the Abyss seeped out into the wider planes, inflicting untold horrors upon the multiverse.
• Zariel began advocating for a more belligerent military policy. Some called her a warmonger, but Zariel disagreed: The war already existed, whether the angelic legions chose to fight in it or not.
• Others said that it should be left to the Blood War: Let Evil annihilate itself. There was no need for Heaven to spend itself in the conflict. But this, Zariel argued, made Heaven complicit in the system that corrupted mortal souls to fight in that war; and turned a blind eye to the demonic miseries suffered by untold millions. The stalemate of the Blood War did not keep Evil in check; it perpetuated it. And it was Heaven’s duty to end it.

THE SECOND VISIT TO IDYLLGLEN

• Following Zariel’s intercession against Yeenoghu, Idyllglen had erected a shrine honoring the angel who had saved their village. In the early 10^th century DR, Idyllglen’s existence was once again threatened, this time by a marauding band of ogres led by a warlord named Irontusk.
• Zariel answered the prayers of the villagers, journeying to the Material Plane with Lulu to aid them.
• When they arrived, they met a young woman named Yael who had managed to organize the younger villagers into a defensive militia of sorts. Yael gladly yielded command of the militia to Zariel, who taught them much of the arts of war and forged them into a band of steadfast companions. The three of them – Zariel, Lulu, and Yael – became fast friends. With each new challenge they faced, Yael would smile and say, “We just need to dream a little bigger.” Soon Zariel and Lulu were saying it, too.
• In a campaign that lasted for several months – during which the ranks of the militia swelled as it attracted recruits from other nearby settlements south of the Winding Water – Zariel defeated Irontusk’s warbands. Yael herself killed Irontusk in the climactic battle, and the remnants of the warband fled back across the Sunset Mountains and into the Goblin Marches to the east.

DAWN OF THE HELLRIDERS

• Zariel returned to Mount Celestia, but the lust of battle still smoldered in her blood. Having tasted the fleeting, fast-paced passion of the mortals, she became even more frustrated with the glacial pace of change in the celestial realms. Her thoughts turned again and again to Yael and her other comrades in arms. Dream a little bigger.
• One night on the silver, starlit beaches of Mercuria, Zariel and Lulu hatched their plan: They would return to the Material Plane and raise a mortal army. The army would invade the Abyss, creating a second front in the Blood War. Zariel believed that, if she could establish a flanking beachhead, other disaffected angelic warriors from Mount Celestia would rally to their cause. They didn’t have to win. They just had to upset the balance of the Blood War so that it would no longer be a stalemate.
• Yael’s Zarielites: When they returned to the Material Plane, Zariel and Lulu discovered that Yael had turned their militia into a regional peacekeeping force. (The ogres had not returned, but there’d been a spot of trouble with trolls out of the Trollclaws. Mostly they secured travel between the Winding Water settlements.) Known as the Zarielites, they wore a badge with twin suns, representing Zariel and Lulu as their angelic saviors.

Note: This informal heraldry would be forgotten by the later Hellriders, but not by Zariel, who took a grim satisfaction in the irony of having her followers revive it as the heraldry of the Order of the Companion centuries later.

• Yael’s response when she heard Zariel’s plan? Let’s dream a little bigger.
• Olanthius, Lord of Elturel: Word of Zariel’s return spread and recruitment swelled. Yael became an ambassador of sorts, spreading the good word of Zariel’s Crusade. Lulu often accompanied her on these journeys, including arguably the most important of them all, when Yael went south to Elturel. Olanthius was impressed with Yael’s courage and righteousness, and pledged his service to the Crusade. (Olanthius and Yael would later fall in love.)
• The Elturian Crusade: With Olanthius joining the cause, Zariel moved the headquarters of the Crusade south to Elturel.
• Haruman, Lord Knight of the Far Hills: Another major recruit to the Crusade was the Lord Knight of the Far Hills. Haruman had once been known as the Boy Warlord, rising from obscurity as a slave in the Goblin Marches to conquer Farkeep (the citadel which would later become known as Darkhold) at the age of thirteen. Hearing of Zariel’s holy cause, he rode down to Elturel from the Sunset Mountains and pledged all of his knights to her service.
• The Three Generals: Yael, Olanthius, and Haruman became known as the Three Generals, swearing fealty to the holy cause of the Crusade — to crush the evil of the Abyss under the guidance of Zariel.

Note: Jander Sunstar was a knight-banneret in Haruman’s service. He was the one who first learned of the Crusade and converted Haruman to the cause. If you’re looking to place these events in Jander’s personal timeline – as related in Christie Golden’s Vampire of the Mists and various short stories – they occur between the time that Jander leaves the Dalelands and arrives in Waterdeep.

THE CHARGE OF THE HELLRIDERS

While preparations continued to be made for their invasion of the Abyss, the crusaders were not quiescent. They secured the lands around Elturel and undertook a number of goodwill actions. They also went on a number of quests to secure the supplies necessary for waging war against demonic hordes.

YEENOGHU’S GAMBIT

• Yeenoghu learned that Zariel was raising a huge mortal army and planned to invade the Abyss with it.
• In response, Yeenoghu returned to the Material Plane at the head of a small demonic force. Once again recruiting an army of gnolls, he began razing the Winding Water settlements. Zariel responded, as Yeenoghu had known she would, by leading the Three Armies north.

THE THIRD VISIT TO IDYLLGLEN

• The two forces met at Idyllglen. It seemed fated to the crusaders, but was actually according to Yeenoghu’s design: He wanted to manipulate the emotional connection Yael and Zariel had to the village.
• During the battle, Yeenoghu detached a portion of his force and personally led a raid towards the village. General Yael responded almost immediately, moving her army out of position in pursuit.
• While Zariel, Olanthius, and Haruman sought to rearrange their own lines of battle to account for the chaos that ensued, Yeenoghu’s force abruptly shifted direction. Casting off the illusions that had made them appear to be ordinary gnolls, the demons sliced their way through Yael’s command.
• Neither Yael nor her knights were to be underestimated, however. This was, after all, the fight they had been preparing for. She stymied Yeenoghu’s counterattack.
• Meanwhile, the bulk of the gnoll army – having lost their demonic commanders when Yeenoghu peeled them off – were routed by Zariel, Olanthius, and Haruman.
• As the rest of the crusader army rounded on his flank, Yeenoghu abruptly abandoned pretense and led an assault directly on General Yael’s position. Slicing through her troops and cutting down her banner, Yeenoghu seized Yael, opened a portal, and leapt through it.

THE AVERNIAN AMBUSH

• Zariel, leading her own charge atop Lulu, was only a couple dozen feet away as Yeenoghu vanished. “The demon lord flees before our wrath!” she cried. “And he has taken one of our own! To rescue and to salvation! Charge!”
• The Three Armies plunged through the portal. But rather than emerging in the Abyss as they had expected, the portal led to the fire-blasted plains of Avernus. Worse yet, Yeenoghu had a small demonic army — which had crossed the Styx and penetrated deep into Hell itself — waiting on the other side.
• Zariel arrayed her crusaders for battle, but her rear echelons were still passing through the portal when Yeenoghu’s army moved rapidly to engage.

THE BATTLE OF AVERNUS

• There were a number of glorious deeds that day, among them Yael freeing herself from captivity and fighting her way to Olanthius’ side. Yeenoghu’s army had made retreat impossible, but the crusaders had withstood the initial assault and now the second and third armies had passed through the portal and were marshalling their strength. They vastly outnumbered Yeenoghu’s force, and there was a real chance that the demon lord would be destroyed, dealing the crusade’s first blow against the Abyss.
• That’s when an army of devils, under the command of Terza’reg of the Dark Eight and lured to the area by Yeenoghu’s army, marched over the horizon.
• Jander Sunstar panicked. (“We can’t fight both Hell and the Abyss!”) Under his leadership, a large chunk of the army routed back through the portal… which then slammed shut. (The crusaders who remained in Avernus believed the deserters had sealed it behind them. It’s possible Yeenoghu seized the moment to shut down the portal he had opened. Or perhaps arcanists in the advancing devil army were responsible for closing it.)

Note: Jander’s fate is somewhat beyond the scope of this reference, but worth establishing. He was the highest ranking officer among the crusaders who fled Avernus. The deserters became known as the Hellriders, their acts of infamy instead being told as deeds of glory, and Jander became the first High Rider of Elturel. He changed the Riders’ heraldry from the twin stars of the Zarielite Crusade to a horse rampant in flames. Eventually, sickened by his betrayal of both Zariel and Haruman, he left Elturel and headed to Waterdeep.

BATTLE’S END

• The three-way battle that ensued was pure chaos. The best we can do here is to highlight a few moments.
• Olanthius and Haruman were able to pincer the remnants of Yeenoghu’s army and finish them off, while Zariel and Yael wheeled her command about to meet Terza’reg’s army.
• Yeenoghu escaped triumphant, having tricked Zariel into spending her glorious army fighting devils instead of demons and turning what could have been a disaster for the Abyss into a huge advantage instead.
• Zariel led the flying cavalry squadron (featuring primarily pegasi) into the air to meet the flying devils that swarmed over the battlefield.
• Zariel and Lulu engaged in an aerial duel with Terza’reg, which ended when Terza’reg cut off Zariel’s right hand (still clutching her sword). Zariel leapt off of Lulu and dove after sword and hand, with Terza’reg in hot pursuit. At the last possible moment, Zariel snatched her sword from the air, reversed her flight, and plunged it through Terza’reg’s breast. A huge explosion rocked the battlefield as the devil general died, clouding the affair in a haze of red dust.
• Despite her dreadful injury and the ensuing chaos, after Terza’reg’s death it was possible that Zariel and her generals might have been able to rally. But then a second army under the command of Baalzephon arrived.
• To their credit, the remaining crusaders fought to the last warrior. (Although some, including Olanthius and Haruman, were captured after being struck down in battle.)
• Yael had joined Zariel and Lulu. As Baalzephon tightened the noose around their necks, the three old friends fought side by side. As the devils closed in, Zariel knew what would come and feared her own weakness. She took a shard of her angelic essence – a spark of goodness – and placed it within her sword. She asked Yael to take the sword and make certain it was not captured by the forces of Hell. Yael refused. Zariel smiled sadly. “Look beyond this forsaken day. One last time, I need you to dream a little bigger.”
• With tears in her eyes, Yael accepted.
• Zariel then turned to Lulu, said goodbye to her old friend, and asked her to go with Yael and keep her safe.
• The devils’ aerial forces had been decimated, and so Yael – having concealed the sword within her cloak – was able to escape through their depleted ranks upon Lulu’s back.

Go to Part 6D-C: Lulu’s Memories (Zariel in Hell)

Go to Part 1

NODES & THE CAMPAIGN STATUS DOCUMENT

Campaign status documents are something I discuss in more detail in Part 4 of Smart Prep. The short version is that the campaign status document collects all of your notes on the current, evolving situation of the game. There are a number of cool ways you can use the campaign status document, but the most pertinent one for our discussion here is the scenario updates: Rather than attaching notes like “they killed all the kobolds in Area 3” or “Benny is angry with them” to a bunch of different scenarios, so that they’re scattered hither and yon, you collect all of these notes in the campaign status document for easy reference and upkeep.

The key insight here is that properly organized node-based scenarios make it REALLY easy to assemble and maintain your campaign status document. In the status document for In the Shadow of the Spire, for example, I can just place “NOD6” at the top of a section (remember those alphanumeric codes?) and drop stuff relevant to that scenario into that section. When the PCs go to NOD6, I can just flip to that page in the status document and have it available for easy reference.

We’ve also talked about meta-scenarios. Something I’ll do is pull upcoming or pertinent details from a campaign’s meta-scenarios and drop them into my campaign status document. When the players in my Eternal Lies campaign would go to a new city, for example, I would look at the Act II floating scenes (which operate as a very loose meta-scenario), grab a handful that I thought were likely to be appropriate, and drop a list of them onto the first page of my campaign status document. It gave me a kind of mini-menu that I could quickly consult without trying to process or remember the entirety of the meta-scenario in the middle of a session.

In some cases I’ll also drop “active” revelation lists into the campaign status document to keep track of them, but for these I’ll usually just mark up the master copy in the scenario itself. (That’s what it’s there for after all.)

NODES AREN’T EVERYTHING

With all of this being said, node-based scenario design is not the be-all and end-all of scenario design. Beyond obvious stuff like dungeon crawls and hexcrawls, I’ve already discussed lots of other scenario structures here at the Alexandrian. There are also a lot of tools that will be useful to you as a GM in node-based scenarios which aren’t nodes themselves.

Let’s take another look at my Bangkok prep notes for Eternal Lies and break them down. There’s five nodes in there, but there’s also a bunch of other stuff. What’s it all doing in there?

First, you’ve got the revelation lists and the trigger list for proactive nodes. These are obviously part of node-based scenario design, but they’re also basically the table of contents for the scenario. They show the whole scenario structure and can act as a quick reference for your nodes/tools. So I’ll usually have this in the first couple pages of my prep notes.

And then we come to the tools. One thing to note is that these are usually designed to be picked up in combination with one of the nodes. 95% of the time, this will be stuff that might be used in multiple nodes (like an NPC who could show up in multiple locations).

The other thing to note is that there’s nothing magical about these particular tools. I don’t use them for every scenario I prep and there are a lot of other tools you could potentially include depending on the nature of the scenario and game.

CITY MOOD BEATS: This is a cool tool from the published Eternal Lies campaign. These small beats (e.g., “birdsong drifts out of an open apartment window”) are designed to be dropped into any scene to provide local color/theme.

NPC NAMES: A list of locally appropriate names to be used when improvising NPCs (which could obviously happen almost anywhere in the scenario).

(These two tools usurp the usual place of honor for the revelation lists and are the first page of my prep notes for the city nodes in Eternal Lies. When the PCs went to a city, I would generally grab this sheet out of the binder and place it on the table off to one side for easy use.)

REFERENCE: I use a reference sheet to encode broad background data for the scenario that doesn’t belong to a particular node. In this case, it’s a timeline for the Emporium of Bangkok Antiquities. (This timeline could come up while questioning Daniel Lowman at his townhouse, questioning Savitree at Ko Kruk Island, or while looking at research notes found at the Estate. So it’s really clear how this has cross-node applicability.)

RESEARCH: In Trail of Cthulhu it’s not unusual for the PCs to head to the local library or newspaper morgue and do general research on leads they’ve found. This is material that doesn’t really belong to any of the nodes, so it gets split out.

NPCs: At the back of my prep notes I present major NPCs, including the Universal Roleplaying Template and other key information. Some of these NPCs are treated as nodes (and will be found indexed on the revelation list) while others can be used in multiple nodes, but for practical reasons I’ll usually include any NPC that takes up a lot of space to declutter the individual nodes. I also just generally find that giving each major NPC a full, dedicated sheet is useful. When roleplaying them, I can just grab and focus on the pertinent sheet. If it’s a combat situation, I can also grab the sheets for everyone participating for easier reference.

STAT SHEET FOR BANGKOK: But when a system’s stat blocks are short enough (as in Trail of Cthulhu), I will also drop all the stat blocks for a scenario onto a single sheet to make running combat SUPER EASY (at least when it comes to referencing stats). Some scenarios might require multiple stat sheets, which I will generally organize according to action group or node.

As I say, these tools are not the be-all or end-all of node-enhancing elements you can include in your scenario and campaign design. But they should give you a pretty good sense of the types of tools I’ll develop and use.

Go to Part 5: Naturalistic Node Design