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NODE 4: HARRIET TUBMAN’S ASYLUM FOR COLORED ORPHANS

• During Jim Crow era, major orphanages would not accept black children.
• In 1905, two Quaker sisters named Anna and Hannah Glass opened Harriet Tubman’s Asylum for Colored Orphans.
• Located in a formerly abandoned hotel in the Rondo neighborhood west of downtown St. Paul.
• Anna died of typhoid in 1913, the same year that Minneapolis finally acknowledge that their municipal water was the source of the typhoid outbreaks and opened a water purification plant to solve the problem.
• There are currently 47 children.
• Small staff of female attendants (of which Perlie Coleman is representative). Marcus Washington serves as a maintenance man and is now the best thing they have to a security guard.

TANIT CULTIST ACTIVITIES

• 5 kids have been kidnapped from the asylum by Tanit cultists. (They’re taken to Node 7: Harris Chemical Plant.)
• St. Paul Police have taken cursory reports, but have concluded that the kids are just run-aways.
• The staff has been similarly unable to get the local press interested.
• If either of those things were to change, the Tanit cultists would back off and leave the other children in the asylum alone. (They assume this will happen at some point, but aren’t surprised it hasn’t yet: They picked an asylum for black children for a reason.)

INVESTIGATING

• Evidence Collection: New locks have recently been placed on the windows.
• Evidence Collection: There’s a chemical residue on the carpet Alex Griffin’s bedroom.
  • Chemistry: It’s a patented polysaccharide created by a Minneapolis company called Harris Chemical (see Node 7: Harris Chemical Plant).
• Streetwise: Canvassing the neighborhood will discover that a Harris Chemical Plant truck has been seen parked near the orphanage during the time of each disappearance. (See Node 7: Harris Chemical Plant.)

MISSING KIDS (DATE TAKEN)

• Thomas Young (August 30^th) – missing from his bed, window unlocked (staff did, in fact, assume he was run-away)
• Millie Clark (September 8^th) – snatched from the street
• Edward Robinson (October 10^th) – was missing during a headcount following a recess period
• Frances Allen (October 31^st) – missing from her bed, cheap old lock had been jimmied (staff replaced the locks on all the windows after this)
• Alex Griffin (November 11^th) – missing from his bed, window was broken, other kids in his room were slow to wake up (Medicine: they were gassed)

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HANNAH GLASS

APPEARANCE:

• Prop: Photo of Hannah Glass

ROLEPLAYING NOTES

• Weary; in body, spirit, and voice
• Clasps her hands and wrings them with very small movements
• Fervently protective of the children

BACKGROUND

• Grew up in Pennsylvania. Her father was a frequent pastor in a “programmed” branch of Quakerism.
• She and her sister, Anna, became disillusioned with the program, believing fervently in the non-hierarchical structures of the faith. This estranged them from their father.
• In 1905, they opened the asylum.
• Anna died of typhoid in 1913, the same year that Minneapolis finally acknowledged that their municipal water was the source of the typhoid outbreaks and opened a water purification plant to solve the problem.
• She intends for Perlie Coleman to take over the asylum.

CLUES

• Knows the names and dates of the missing kids. (Very angry about the police and press being dismissive of it.)
• Can introduce PCs to Perlie Coleman and Marcus Washington.
• Reassurance 1: To get access to the kids.

HANNAH GLASS: Accounting 1, Bureaucracy 2, Oral History 4, Reassurance 6, Theology 5, Health 4
Alertness Modifier: +0
Stealth Modifier: +0
Weapons: fists (-2)

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PERLIE COLEMAN

APPEARANCE:

• Prop: Photo of Perlie Coleman

ROLEPLAYING NOTES

• If all the investigators are white, she will be painstakingly polite until reassured that they don’t pose a danger. (This deferential self-defense also means that the PCs won’t get anything useful from her.)
• Always keeping one eye on the kids; will randomly shout out cautions to them or a kid might run up and she’ll scoop them up.
• An incredibly warm smile if she trusts you.

BACKGROUND

• Perlie is an African Methodist Episcopalian.
• She grew up in Duluth.
• Her father was lynched by a white mob when she was seven years old. Her mother immediately took Perlie and her three sisters and moved to Minneapolis.
• Her mother has gone mostly blind and can’t work any more. Perlie depends on her job here at the asylum to support her.
• She is a caretaker and teacher for the children.

CLUES

• She discovered that Alex Griffin was missing. She remembers a sort of chemical smell that was lingering in the air.

PERLIE COLEMAN: Assess Honesty 5, First Aid 5, Library Use 5, Reassurance 8, Health 4
Alertness Modifier: +0
Stealth Modifier: +0
Weapons: fists (-2)

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MARCUS WASHINGTON

APPEARANCE:

• Prop: Photo of Marcus Washington

ROLEPLAYING NOTES

• Very protective of Hannah Glass and her reputation.
• Slow, powerful movements.
• A voice that sounds like a quiet river.

BACKGROUND

• An African Methodist Episcopalian.
• Began working for “the Missuses Glass” in 1906, so he’s been with the asylum almost from the beginning.
• He lives in the Rondo neighborhood. He usually walks six blocks to work.
• He’s been staying at the asylum overnight since Frances Allen was taken, acting as a sort of security guard to try to keep the kids safe. He’s incredibly angry with himself for not being able to stop Alex Griffin from being taken. He feels like he’s failed the children and Hannah.

KEY INFO

• Leveraged Clue: If the name “Harris Chemicals” is mentioned, he’ll say that there’s been a Harris Chemicals truck parked in the neighborhood recently. (He doesn’t think it’s significant and hasn’t connected it to the kidnappings, which is why he doesn’t mention it otherwise.)

MARCUS WASHINGTON: Assess Honesty 2, Athletics 5, Fleeing 2, Oral History 4, Scuffling 8, Sense Trouble 5, Streetwise 4, Health 6
Alertness Modifier: +1 (on edge)
Stealth Modifier: +0
Weapons: fists (-2)

Go to Node 5: Fatima’s Shrine

Go to Table of Contents

When you’re remixing published material you are, of course, deviating from the original version of the material: Some stuff will be thrown out. Some stuff will be changed. Some stuff will be added.

In addition to changes in the text (which are easy enough to do), this can also impact the graphical elements of the scenario. For example, the Alexandrian Remix of Dragon Heist added the idea that the Stone of Golorr would be missing its three eyes when the PCs discover it. Since this wasn’t the case in the original adventure, all the published images of the Stone naturally featured it having all three of its Eyes.

This can, obviously, also affect maps: Once you start adding new locations or moving locations around, the map is, ipso facto, changing.

When this is GM-facing material, this is relatively trivial to deal with: Just jot a quick note or scribble something onto the map to remind yourself of the change. For example, when I sketched up the point-map of Elturel, I didn’t worry too much about places where the published map had minor deviations from the Remix material. It was close enough for the GM to use it without any confusion.

When it comes to player-facing material, on the other hand, you may want to make a greater effort to seamlessly align what they’re seeing with what you’re describing. For example, you might Photoshop the image of the Stone of Golorr to show it in its blinded state so that you can use it as a handout for the players without having to say, “It looks like this, except it’s missing these bits.”

THE MAP OF ELTUREL

In the case of Elturel, we’re planning on handing the PCs a beautiful poster map of Elturel. We’re also adding a bunch of new material to the city. How can we align those things?

First, when adding locations to the city you can scan the map and try to identify existing buildings that are close enough to the location you’re adding. For example, I knew that Symbril’s House fronted the Garden, so I just looked along the edge of the Garden until I found a building that “fit” my image of Symbril’s House. Similarly, I wanted Helm’s Shieldhall to be located in the northwest section of the city. So I scanned the whole region until I found a compound that I felt was close enough to what I wanted.

Finding buildings on a beautifully detailed map like Jared Blando’s map of Elturel can also feed back into the location itself. For example, the look and location of the building I identified for the Old High Harvest Home inspired my vision of the old temple having a huge balcony/patio on every floor looking out over the lower city.

But sometimes that can only take you so far. That’s when you either need to:

• Simply say something like, “You won’t see this on the map, but…” or “This is a little bit different than what the map shows…” (And this is frequently just fine. Players are flexible and they recognize that the map is not the territory.)
• Fire up good ol’ Photoshop.

If you recall, we did this previously with the Poisoned Poseidon in Baldur’s Gate. Now we’re going to do it again with a handful of locations in Elturel.

USING THE PATCHES

For obvious ethical and legal reasons, I’m not going to present a high-resolution version of the full Elturel map with these changes made to it. Instead, I’m going to offer small patches that can be easily added to your copy of the map using any image manipulation program.

To make this process as seamless as possible, you should buy a digital copy of Jared Blando’s map from his online store. The patches I present below maintain the same resolution, so you should be able to align them onto the image with just a few seconds of work.

(You can get versions of the map at considerably lower resolutions through various VTT packages, but it will be harder to seamlessly apply the patch.)

KEEP OF THE TWIN SUNS

Let’s start with the Keep of the Twin Suns. I placed this just inside the Dusk Gate on the east side of the city and described it as arching above the street to act almost like a second gatehouse.

You can see here how I simply expanded the existing buildings to make structure more explicit.

MAIDEN’S LEAP

If you look at the older reference material for Elturel, you’ll discover references to the Maidens’ Leap or Maiden’s Leap: A waterfall at the north end of the High District that cascades down into a lake below that flow into the city’s canals. I thought this was cool and actually worked that image of High Watcher Bellandi leaping from the Maiden’s Leap into the Night of the Red Coup before belatedly noticing that the cliff face had been eliminated from the new map.

If you look at the digital version of the map WotC scanned from Forgotten Realms Adventures, it’s pretty easy to see how this happened:

Although the falls are keyed (#3), it does sort of look as if you could just walk around the lake and up into the Gardens. The Forgotten Realms Interactive Atlas makes it clear, however, that this is not the case:

(A version of Elturel where the Gardens actually DO slope down through the High District bluff, with cliff walls to either side of the Gardens getting higher and higher the father north you go is also potentially cool. But the Hellturel map doesn’t really depict that, either.)

In any case, this patch should be sufficient to make it clear to the players that their PCs can’t just walk up into the High District from the north side (without climbing a sheer cliff).

THE CANAL

A key question for me looking at the map of Hellturel was, “Where is the lava coming from?” I decided to answer that question by postulating that the spring beneath the High Hall had been fiendishly transformed by the transition to Avernus so that it now spewed lava instead.

However, the original map depicted lava pouring into the rift from both sides, thus negating the explanation for how lava was reaching the east side of the city.

This was my solution: The rift must have been created during the Spellplague (for reasons previously discussed in the Remix), and it follows logically that the Elturians must have built a canal bridge spanning the rift in order to keep water flowing into the canals. Ergo, the lava could just cross this same canal bridge and continue into the Dock District canals.

Someone with better Photoshop skills than I could probably make this idea more explicitly clear on the map itself. But this patch is enough for my purposes.

THE RIVER OF FIRE

Speaking of the lava spring beneath the High Hall, I wanted to add the river of lava running down the center of the Garden because… well… it’s awesome.

The Maiden’s Leap is included in this patch. I present it separately above for anyone who wants to keep the cliff face but is indifferent to the river of fire.

THE DOCK WALLS

Finally, here’s something that I decided to just leave alone.

See those rivers of lava? They really shouldn’t be rivers of lava.

If you look at the original maps of Elturel, it’s once again not hard to see what happened:

Those blue lines were interpreted as water. But they’re not: Those are the walls around the Dragoneye Dealing Coster. That bright blue color is used throughout the Forgotten Realms Adventures to denote walled compounds and major structures (that’s why the buildings are also bright blue). You can see a similar example on the map of Daerlun a few pages earlier, for example:

Why not fix it?

Several reasons:

• I felt the amount of work required to revise the map outweighed any potential gain.
• I don’t think my Photoshop skills are good enough to make the alteration aesthetically seamless. (I would compromise the quality of the map.)
• I don’t think it matters that much. Whether it’s lava canals or a wall, the place is geographically distinct and somewhat fortified. This isn’t a major focus of the scenario for me.
• I, personally, think the walled Dragoneye Coster compound is probably about two times larger than it should be compared to the rest of the docks. (I want room for there to be some other coster companies, too, plus some independent operators.) I’d be happier with something like this (where the Dragoneye still have personal access to the Market, but they don’t chew up the entire dock front):

Your mileage might vary on any of these, of course.

 

Go to the Avernus Remix

Go to Table of Contents

We only have a few minor tweaks for the Grand Cemetery.

THE ABYSSAL PORTAL

The abyssal portal in Area G12 (described on page 65 of Descent Into Avernus) is how Liashandra’s Demons were inserted into Elturel.

GIDEON LIGHTWARD

Lightward serves Zariel and he wants the demonic incursion stopped. He may be quite willing to negotiate with the PCs and use them as his pawns to do so.

If the PCs don’t destroy Lightward, then he could develop into an emerging faction in Elturel on future visits: They return to find that his undead have laid siege to the High Hall. Or that the Zariel cults have unified under his leadership. The PCs might discover that Ravengard’s forces have been pushed up into the High District (where they are starving from lack of supplies), while the lower city is divided between the undead horde of Westerly and the vampiric servants of the Dock District.

THREE CLUE RULE TO THE CEMETERY

In the adventure as written, the PCs are funneled towards the High Hall and from there are directed to the Grand Cemetery. But this isn’t a necessary structure. In addition to the PCs simply navigating to the Grand Cemetery on their own through the Elturel pointcrawl, you could seed the scenario with additional clues that could pull them in that direction independently.

Any or all of the following could be used:

• Grand Duke Ravengard sends them.
• Liashandra’s demons come from here. Other factions may know that, or clues could be followed from the Dragoneye Dealing Coster.
• Alternatively, a random encounter with Liashandra’s demons could be a new group of reinforcements traveling from the cemetery to the coster. Perhaps they are carrying a map drawn by Ophurkh (DIA, p. 69) to show them the way?
• A group of Hell Knights the PCs wipe out are carrying written orders to destroy the portal beneath the chapel.
• Before they leave for Elturel, Traxigor mentions that he once worked with a priest of Lathander named Gideon Lightward who now works at the chapel in the Grand Cemetery.

REMOVING RAVENGARD

As noted in Part 5D, Ravengard never mounts an expedition to retrieve the Helm of Torm’s Sight. Removing all traces of this expedition has surprisingly little effect on the location and can probably be done on-the-fly. But here’s a quick guide to the changes:

• Area G7: Remove tracks.
• Area G11: Remove tracks. The golden Helm of Torm’s Sight still rests on the statue here.
• Area G12: Remove Ravengard and the bodies of the fallen guards. (I also like the imagery of the portal being placed under the rotating pool with demons emerging up through its surface, their bodies gleaming with steaming water. But I digress.)

RITUAL OF RETURNING: If a PC puts on the Helm of Torm’s Sight, they’ll be afflicted just as Ravengard is in the adventure. As written, the group will need to return to Pherria to perform the Ritual of Returning. Ophurkh might suggest Liashandra could also help them. (Which may or may not be true.)

We’ll discuss the precise vision the PC wearing the helm receives as part of the general discussion of Lulu’s memories in Part 6D.

THE COLLAPSED TUNNEL

In the ossuary beneath the chapel, there is a secret, collapsed tunnel described as going “To the Cathedral.” This is odd because:

• There is no matching tunnel at the High Hall Cathedral.
• The High Hall Cathedral is nowhere nearby and also in the opposite direction.

I think this is actually an abortive attempt at a video game-style quick exit from the dungeon. (The text now separately recommends that you don’t have any encounters back to High Hall, which is advice I recommend ignoring.) Or possibly they originally intended for the cemetery (which did not previously appear in maps of Elturel) to be placed directly next to the High Hall, but changed their minds at the last minute?

My recommendation is that this tunnel provides a potential exit from the city: It leads west, under the wall, and hits the edge of the earthmote that Elturel is floating on. Directly in front of the tunnel’s end, one of the large chains descends to the Dock of Fallen Cities below.

GIDEON’S TESTAMENT

This book is a testament written by a man named Gideon Lightward. It is written in three overlapping parts. The first part describes a series holy visions sent to him from “a divinity beyond divinity.” The second part is a series of transcribed dialogues between Gideon and another individual called the Woman in White. In the beginning, it seems as if the woman is a pupil who has come to Gideon for religious guidance. Over time, however, their roles seem to invert and now it is Gideon who seems to be seeking guidance from her regarding the visions he has been receiving and, eventually, deeper questions of metaphysical and philosophical import. The third part of the text is Gideon’s own philosophical ruminations upon his experiences and the conclusions he has drawn.

The overwhelming theme of the book regards the evils of demons:

The Woman: Tell me, O Master, of what is the greatest evil.

Gideon: It is that of the Abyss. It is the teemless horde of chaos which seeks to rip down civilization.

The Woman: And why should civilization be not destroyed?

Gideon: Civilization is that which gives life meaning. It is the font of morality and thought. Of art and of science.

Great praises are heaped upon those divinities which stand stalwart against this demonic threat.

It is the gods’ place to stand between Man and Chaos. It is their aegis which is their ultimate purpose, for behind their shield we create greatness and dedicate it to their honor.

One night, however, Gideon awakens from a strange and formless dream and sees a disturbing vision in his bedchamber:

There I beheld her. Her beauty was so great it seemed to burn my eyes. And yet through my blindness I could see her with greater clarity than any other sight that I have ever beheld.

Two great wings of white she had. And a sword of celestial steel so sharp that I could hear the hum of its edge. A weapon made to cleave the division between soul and mind.

But then I saw this essence of perfection cast away her sword. Her wings turned black. Her eyes turned to pits of fire. And a great and terrible purpose furrowed her brow.

The next day he speaks with the Woman in White, who tells him that she, too, has had a vision of this angelic being, and that its name is Zariel.

Gideon: But why should she have turned from the light?

The Woman: She turned from the light because it blinded her.

Gideon: Does not the light let us see?

The Woman: That is the lie of the light. We think only of what it illuminates, but not of what it conceals from us.

Gideon realizes that the Great Blindness – the Great Lie — is that the gods protect man from chaos.

… but it is not so! Helm? Torm? Tyr? Lathander? None of them battle the Abyss. They claim the glory of that war, but shed no blood in it!

This is why Zariel turned from Heaven. She saw the truth of her holy purpose; the Great Need to stand against Chaos. And she saw that her “holy” power was powerless because her gods had willed it so. Thus she allied herself with Hell! For it is Hell who fights chaos! It is Hell which sacrifices itself in the Blood War! Hell which fights eternal so that we poor mortals may eke out a few years of freedom upon the mortal plane!

Zariel is, thus, the inordinate exemplar of both sacrifice and service. Gideon has nothing but praise for her, for the choice she made, and for the great work which she does in the service not only of the mortal races, but for the balance of the entire multiverse.

Without her, all would become Chaos. And all those who do not stand with her are servants and abettors of Chaos, though they know it not.

Go to Part 6: The Rest of the Remix

Sometimes you want to use your weapon or your martial arts skill to do something more than just lethally incapacitate a target. For example, maybe you want to knock the White Witch’s wand out of her hands. Or shoot a fleeing nobleman in the leg to slow them down.

1. Define the effect you want to achieve with your called shot.
2. The DM determines a penalty which will be applied to your attack roll (usually -2 or -4).
3. If your attack roll is successful, you deal damage normally and the target must make an appropriate saving throw (DC 5 + the margin of success on your attack roll) or suffer the desired effect.

GUIDELINES

Here’s some guidance for DMs making rulings with these rules.

STUFF YOU SHOULD VETO: This system is not designed to bypass the normal rules for combat.

I want to shoot them in the head! The effect you’re looking to achieve here is killing the target. We have a specialized set of rules designed just for that: It’s called “making a normal attack.”

I want to gouge out their eyes and permanently blind them! Like killing the target, permanent maiming in D&D doesn’t happen until you run out of hit points (and usually not even then). You can kick sand in their face or give them a cut that causes blood to run down into their eyes and temporarily blind them, but this system isn’t about inflicting permanent damage or disfigurement.

I want to paralyze them so that they can’t take any actions! This is probably too strong. You might make an exception if the PC is taking advantage of some specific environmental factor (e.g., making them fall backwards into a vat filled with sticky ethereal goo); this shouldn’t be something that characters can just automatically do without special equipment or a special ability.

Similarly, anything that would normally be handled by the Grapple mechanics should be handled through the Grapple mechanics.

EFFECT MECHANICS: There are a number of conditions which are appropriate for a called shot effect — Blinded, Deafened, Frightened, Prone, Restrained. Other effects could include the target being disarmed, distracted, or having their speed reduced. Lots of stuff can be mechanically modeled by giving the target disadvantage or another character advantage against the target.

THE PENALTY: In determining the size of the penalty, think about whether the desired effect is mild (-2) or significant (-4). Anything that requires the target to spend an action to remove the effect should probably be considered significant.

Circumstances can also affect the penalty. For example, trying to blind a beholder is probably a lot more difficult than blinding a cyclops. Alternatively, give the target advantage on their saving throw if appropriate.

DURATION: How long should the effect last for? As mentioned above, avoid permanent effects. If in doubt, go with 1d4 rounds or until the target takes an action to resolve the problem.

DESIGN NOTES

Why let the attacker deal damage normally AND create the effect? The goal of this system is to make combat more interesting by encouraging players to think outside of the “I hit it with my sword / I hit it with my sword again” box. By allowing them to both do damage and do something interesting, you eliminate the action cost penalty where players avoid doing interesting things because their best option is always to deal as much damage as possible and end the combat as quickly as possible.

Why a penalty? Because otherwise PCs would need to make called shots on every single attack. Which, if the goal is to make combat more interesting, might seem like a great idea. In practice, however, thinking up the called shot when circumstances don’t call for one or where you’re not inspired by a cool idea becomes a mechanical chore. And chores are boring.

Why not use disadvantage on the attack instead of a penalty? Whenever a character had disadvantage from another source, they would be mechanically incentivized to make a called shot every single time… which leads us back to the same problem above, only it’s more ridiculous. (“We’re fighting in the dark? Guess I should be making exclusively called shots to the knee.”) The problems associated with hard-coded advantage/disadvantage are discussed more in Untested 5^th Edition: Situational Advantage.

What about the existing mechanics for Shoving (PHB, p. 195) or Disarm (DMG, p. 271)? You can still use those mechanics in concert with called shots. Taking the Disarm action, for example, should make it more likely that you successfully disarm your target, but the cost is that you’re focusing your whole action on that.

I also generally recommend that DMs look at the “Contests in Combat” sidebar on p. 195 of the PHB and spend more time empowering and encouraging players to come up with cool uses for contests; which is more or less the same philosophy as this called shot system but with the PC spending their full action to accomplish the desired effect. I suspect that using these called shot rules will, ironically, ALSO result in the players forgoing their attack more often to focus on a contest. (Once you get players thinking outside of the box, they tend to continue thinking outside of the box.)

What about the Battle Master? The Battle Master’s Disarming Attack ability is mechanically similar to a called shot, but completely superior (pun intended): They suffer no penalty to their attack roll AND can add their superiority die to the attack’s damage roll. The DC of the target’s saving throw is calculated differently, but should generally be higher than a generic called shot with a disarm effect.

(I actually dropped the DC for called shots from DC 8 + margin of success to DC 5 + margin of success to help make sure the Battle Master’s mechanical edge was well protected here. Playing around with that value to make sure that called shots feel worthwhile, but without becoming more likely to succeed than the Battle Master’s maneuvers is probably the key thing to watch out for from a playtest standpoint. In a pinch, get the called shot DC right and then just give the Battle Master the option of using that DC if it would be better than their flat DC.)

Go to Table of Contents

There are three different versions of the High Hall depicted in Descent Into Avernus. The first is the fantastic graphical image above.

The second is depicted on the city map of Elturel:

You can immediately see that the map and image don’t line up.

The third version of High Hall is the one mapped on p. 61-62 of the book:

Now, if you kind of squint (and ignore the windows and compass rose), you could probably make the map of High Hall roughly match this bit of the Elturel city map:

But if that’s the case, then what’s going on with these bits:

What’s going on in those towers?

For me, personally, the most interesting version of High Hall is almost certainly the image: All those floating bits of wreckage held aloft by some strange magical interaction between the holy temple, the meteor, the ritual, and possibly just the strange nature of Avernus itself are tantalizing and unique.

I bring this up mostly because we’re going to be talking, in part, about stuff we’d like to add to the High Hall, and you can seize any or all of this inconsistency as opportunity, inspiration, or both when figuring out how to slot that stuff in.

ABUSING SECRET DOORS

In Part 3F of the Remix, we talked about why putting a Must Have Encounter™ on the opposite side of a secret door is a bad idea.

The basic structure of the scenario here is that the PCs need to go to High Hall and, once there, speak with Pherria Jynks, who will send them on a quest to find Grand Duke Ravengard (who has gone to the Grand Cemetery to retrieve the Helm of Torm’s Sight).

And, yup, they’ve got Pherria behind another secret door:

I thought this secret door might exist because the designers were trying to justify why Jynks and the refugees she’s protecting haven’t been killed by devils yet (because the devils haven’t found the secret door), but that’s not it: The catacombs are already crawling with devils.

As we discussed in Part 3F, the easiest solution for this sort of thing is usually to just remove the secret door. I’d basically do the same thing here, but with a twist: We’re going to leave the existing secret door in place, but have it lead directly to Area H16 where Jynks and the refugees are:

Finding the secret door is now a reward for the PCs: If you find it, you can skip the devil-infested catacombs.

Meanwhile, back up on the top level there are actually TWO altars: The one in H6 has been desecrated by devils.

So what we can do is make “stairways hidden in altars” a design feature of the High Hall. The secret door in the desecrated altar has been ripped open by the devils (it’s no longer secret and actually serves as a clue that there might be stairs hidden in the other altar) and leads down to the ORIGINAL stairs on the map of the catacombs:

We now know how the devils got into the catacombs and we’ve eliminated the secret door chokepoint.

FIXING SECRET DOORS:

• Secret door at H3 leads to H16.
• Add “secret” door (ripped open) to H6, leading to the stairs west of H15.

GRAND DUKE RAVENGARD

As noted, in the adventure as published Grand Duke Ravengard has left the High Hall and gone to the Grand Cemetery to retrieve the Helm of Torm’s Sight. Pherria Jynks tells the PCs where he’s gone. They follow him and find him having a metaphysical fit with the helmet on his head. They bring him back to Pherria, she performs a ritual which cures the metaphysical ailment, and Ravengard tells them about the cool vision the helmet gave him.

The net effect of all this is to needlessly deprotagonize the PCs: Instead of getting to be the awesome heroes who fetch the artifact and receive a cool divine vision, they’re the ones who get to go pick up the hero and then hear about the cool vision he got.

This can be fixed by simply NOT having Ravengard go to get the Helm of Torm’s Sight. Instead, Ravengard is still in the High Hall when the PCs arrive. He and/or Pherria Jynks know about the Helm of Torm’s Sight, but they haven’t been able to spare the resources to retrieve it. Oh, hey! PCs!

(This notably requires almost no changes to the Grand Cemetery except to ignore the descriptions of Ravengard and his men. We’ll look at this in more detail in Part 5E.)

THE RAVENGARD SITUATION: Ravengard came to Elturel on a diplomatic mission to discuss the rise of cultists in the Fields of the Dead. (This includes the Cult of the Dead Three and Tiamat’s Cult of the Dragon.) When Elturel was sucked into Hell, the wary Ravengard managed to rally his men and cut his way out of an ambush by the newly erupted Hell Knights. Gathering a motley band of lower-ranking hellriders and paladins who had not been immediately transformed, Ravengard managed to secure the High Hall in the confusion following a meteor strike that wiped out a third of the fortress.

Ravengard came to Elturel with twenty men. Only twelve of them survive, but his ranks have been strengthened with Elturian knights. His current force – which has come to be known as Ravengard’s Peacekeepers — numbers slightly over forty, but most of them are out in the city (gathering supplies, seeking additional allies, trying to secure the city and bring succor its citizens). At the moment only six other knights are with him here in the High Hall.

Ravengard actually stretched his forces too thin. When a group of devils assaulted the High Hall, he realized he didn’t have the strength to repel them and retreated into the crypts (Area H16). He’s waiting for some of the peacekeepers out in the city to return in enough strength to drive the devils out… but, hey, the PCs work, too.

Design Note: The devils can be either a force of Hell Knights or a surprisingly large group of Avernian raiders. Mechanically, it doesn’t make any difference.

Alternatively, skip the whole thing and just have Ravengard and his peacekeepers firmly in control of the High Hall when the PCs arrive.

RAVENGARD’S COUNCIL: Ravengard has rallied what local leadership he can (although between the meteor and the eruption of the Hell Knights, it’s pretty thin):

• Pherria Jynks is effectively the highest ranking member of the Church of Torm in Elturel. She’s the spiritual bedrock for her people right now. Some have talked about making her High Observer, but she’s quashed those discussions. She knows that High Observer Kreeg had left the city shortly before its fall and hopes that he will somehow return to them with aid. (Note that Pherria carries the Tome of the Creed Resolute, as described in Part 4B, with her everywhere she goes. “Recall the Creed,” she says, as a bedrock of certainty in horrifically uncertain times.)
• Wöbaer Triest was an undersecretary of the Elturian treasury. Now self-billed as the Acting Secretary, he’s more or less the civilian government of Elturel.
• Lor Ryken was the Elturian ambassador for Iriaebor. He’d returned to Elturel to deliver a recently negotiated trade treaty. Ryken has been handling a lot of the logistics in terms of supplies for the peacekeepers.
• Hilde Kaas is the highest ranking Elturian knight to have survived the cataclysm. There are some who question why Ravengard, a foreigner, should be in charge. Hilde isn’t one of them, and her staunch, unwavering support helps to hold the peacekeepers together.

WHAT THEY KNOW:

• The High Knights became the Hell Knights when the Companion was transformed. They also know that when Elturian knights are killed, they transform into devils, but that Ravengard’s men do not. (Many of them actually saw the knights erupt into devils. They don’t know why.)
• Elturel is hovering above the Styx and seems to be slowly sinking. There are huge chains attached around the perimeter of the city. (However, they don’t know the full truth of how or why Elturel fell.)
• There’s somebody organizing supplies in the east out of Shiarra’s Market. (They don’t know it’s High Rider Ikaia, or even that it’s vampiric.)
• There are devils wandering the streets, but they don’t seem particularly organized.
• Ravengard has gotten enough reports of Zarielite cultists that he suspects a vast fifth column has infiltrated the city and is probably somehow responsible for their current predicament.

They do NOT know about Liashandra’s Demons.

DEVILS AT THE BARRICADES: Add barricades to the two hallways leading into Area H16. If the PCs didn’t wipe out all the devils on their way in, have them launch an assault on the barricades while the PCs are in the middle of speaking with Ravengard and his council.

ZARIEL CULTIST IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING: One of the refugees is actually a Zarielite cultist. Choose an opportune/dramatic moment for them to reveal themselves. Options include:

• When the devils attack the barricades, they take advantage of the confusion to attempt to assassinate Ravengard.
• They secretly poison the water supplies. Refugees get sick, but between Pherria and the PCs it’s likely no one dies. However, they need to secure a new supply of water.
• They attempt to steal or destroy the Helm of Torm’s Sight. Or perhaps seek to disrupt the ritual to free the wearer.

NEW LOCATIONS

As you’re fleshing out your version of the High Hall, here are a few things you might think about adding.

The Secret Exit. Area H17 of the High Hall is an escape tunnel that goes… nowhere. It currently dead ends at the edge of the earthmote that Elturel is floating on. Couple thoughts:

• You could re-characterize this as having originally led down into the Maze.
• It could still lead into the Maze.
• It could be a legitimate escape tunnel leading to a secret entrance near the West Docks. This would add a hidden route to the Elturel pointcrawl.

Thavius Kreeg’s Office. Kreeg probably destroyed or took with him anything meaningful or incriminating here. But perhaps not if there’s a revelation that the PCs are still struggling to figure out. Either way, this will provide a nice bit of direct connection to the Baldur’s Gate portion of the adventure. Details might include Kreeg’s portrait on the wall, perhaps arrayed with portraits of the previous High Observers.

Sanctum of the Cult of the Companion. It would be nice to have a secret sanctum where Zarielites in Elturel’s government held secret religious rites. I recommend adding secret doors to Area H14 and putting it there. (Move the Council Chambers upstairs or to one of the surviving outer towers.)

Supply Cache. The peacekeepers have been collecting supplies, both for the refugees housed at the High Hall and for distribution throughout the city. They may have converted one of the surviving towers to this purpose, in which case it would be demesne of Ambassador Ryken.

Floating Shrine. Going back to the picture of High Hall, I’m drawn to the idea of having a shrine to Torm located in the floating cupola. (Perhaps that’s why it’s floating! The holinesss of Torm’s shrine resisting the corruption and draw of Avernus.) You could place another holy artifact of Torm up here to reward PCs who go exploring. (And if it is the holiness of the shrine + artifact that’s keeping the place afloat, as soon as the PCs grab the artifact the whole thing is going to come crashing down!)

Go to Part 5E: The Grand Cemetery