Before the PCs arrive in Elturel, we need to talk about the current state of the city, because there are some basic issues that should be addressed.
First, the city is broadly described as if the Fall of Elturel just happened. There’s one reference to a family’s supplies running out (although not how many supplies they had to start with), but other than that pretty much everything in Chapter 2 is described as if the city were still in the earliest hours and confusion of the crisis.
Except this isn’t true: It would take at least ten days for the first refugees to reach Baldur’s Gate. Even if we assume the gates were immediately closed (although that’s an iffy reading of the text), the PCs still need at least a couple of days to investigate the murders. Then it’s four days to Candlekeep. So Elturel was actually taken at least 15-20 days ago by the time the PCs show up.
On the flip side, when the PCs are done in Elturel they’re going to head out on a quest to find the Sword of Zariel. As they leave, they must suspect that they will be gone for at least days. In point of fact, it’s likely that they will be gone for weeks before they can return to save the city.
The problem is that nothing about the current situation in Elturel makes it seem plausible that there will be anything worth saving by the time the PCs get back: Demons and devils are freely roaming the streets of the city, more or less systematically slaughtering people in their homes. There’s no organized resistance and no reasonable expectation that there’s going to be one. (Ravengard supposedly “organized a defense,” but has actually just spent 2+ weeks cowering in a basement and now his meager retinue of guards has been wiped out.)
This creates a situation where the PCs need to do X in order to save the city, but have no reasonable expectation that they can actually achieve X in time to save the city. The result is not a sense of urgency, but rather a conclusion that the plan can’t work. A plan that doesn’t work, of course, will be discarded, and the PCs will end up looking for a different solution: They might stay in Elturel and try to spearhead a defense themselves. Or they might abandon the entire idea of “saving the city” and look for other alternatives, like simply escaping themselves or organizing some kind of inter-planar evacuation for as many people as possible.
Of course, you could use an NPC to say, “I promise you, as the Dungeon Master, that you’re supposed to go on this quest and I guarantee that the city will not fall and a bunch of people won’t be slaughtered in a devilish genocide while you’re gone.”
The result, however, still won’t be urgency: The players will probably go and do the thing, but Elturel will lose any sense of reality for them and the “crisis” will lose all meaning. Like a video game where the world remains frozen in a state of status quo until you hit the button labeled Next Plot Point, the world will be reduced to two-dimensional cardboard cut-outs.
So what we need are two things:
- A clear understanding of what’s been happening in the city in the fortnight since it was sent to Hell, and what the current situation is when the PCs arrive.
- Some form of status quo in which the city seems secure enough that the PCs can leave, do their quest, and have a reasonable expectation that there’ll still be a city to save when they come back.
However, we don’t want the status quo to feel too safe. The city is in Hell and being dragged to its destruction in the River Styx. There’s a very fine line that needs to be walked here between the PCs feeling that Elturel will still exist if they can hurry up and save it and the PCs feeling like there’s nothing to worry about.
For similar reasons, although we can easily imagine a scenario in which the status quo has already been firmly established by the time the PCs arrive (most likely some variant of Ravengard actually securing the city), that’s probably also the wrong direction to go: The PCs are walking into Hell. We want them to feel that; not enjoy some weird Pax Elturian.
WHERE ARE THE LEADERS? In the adventure as written, the highest surviving authority of Elturgard is supposedly a lone acolyte named Pherria Jynks. Descent Into Avernus tries to explain this with a meteor that fell out of the sky and destroyed most of the High Hall.
But that still doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it? Even in a Designated Survivor situation where the “entire” government is in a meeting that explodes, you still have the vast majority of the military and civilian infrastructure and chain of command intact. You don’t end up in a situation where the entire government is just one DMV clerk.
WHERE ARE THE DEVILS? Descent Into Avernus tries to explain why the legions of Avernus haven’t overrun the city already with the Battle of Elturel. At the very moment that Elturel popped in, a huge army of demons crossed the Styx and attacked the assembled legions. A huge battle broke out.
The battle has continued, without change, for 15-20 days.
It will continue, without any change, for the next several weeks.
Despite this, the battle is incredibly isolated: No reinforcements are arriving. No one in the area even seems to be aware of it.
In short, the Battle of Elturel is a valiant effort to explain why Elturel remains largely unmolested, but it actually contributes greatly to the sense that Elturel can’t possibly survive long enough for the PCs to save it. Yes, we know that the battle is just a permanent, unchanging video game instance with the same actions playing on an endless loop, but if you accept the situation at face value, then it would seem as if the battle would certainly conclude shortly and the city would be overrun.
THE PHYSICAL & METAPHYSICAL
The Companion now hangs low and large in the sky, basically on a level with the High Hall. It emits a strange, purplish-black light that mixes kaleidoscopically with the reddish light of Hell itself. Thunder from the lightning crackling across its surface intermittently cascades across the city.
Elturel is floating in the sky above the Avernian plains, connected to the Dock of Fallen Cities by huge chains.
THE CHAINS: The chains obviously have a physical reality, but they are also a metaphysical construct. They both represent the corruption of the city and are operant upon it. They are not just physically dragging Elturel down into Hell, they are also dragging down the souls of everyone in the city.
This is possible due to the influence of the Companion and the Writ of the Pact. To be clear, this process doesn’t mind control the people in the city or somehow make them evil. It’s subtler than that; a contamination of the city’s collective souls with something akin to original sin. Conversely the city remains afloat because the souls of the city are fighting against this taint.
As described in “The Metaphysics of Elturel’s Fall” (Part 4B), the final stroke comes when the city completes its descent into both sin and the Styx: The population drowns not only in the waters of the river, but in their own sin at the very moment that their minds are wiped clean and the Pact completes.
DOCK OF FALLEN CITIES: Elturel is not the first city to suffer this fate. It is actually tethered to an ancient facility known as the Dock of Fallen Cities. The chains are connected to huge pillars that rise out of the Avernian plains. Between and around these pillars are the overlapping layers of countless cities which have been pulled down and drowned in the Styx. The river still floods their broken and forgotten streets.
These cities are most likely drawn from across the multiverse, so when the PCs pick their way through the ruins you should feel empowered to get romantic with your descriptions of the melancholic, cyclopean ruins. They are most likely haunted by strange will o’ wisps, which are perhaps related to the Many Colours Out of Space that are here the spiritual detritus left behind by a dozen dead civilizations.
WHERE ARE THE DEVILS? The Dock of Fallen Cities here takes the place of the Battle of Elturel: There was no demonic invasion. There is no endless, looping confrontation.
So why hasn’t Zariel sent her legions into Elturel to pacify the city?
Largely because she doesn’t need to. With a few key exceptions (described below), killing the population before they can drown in the Styx is actually contradictory to her goals. There are some devils stationed around the pillars to make sure no one messes with the chains (not that there’s actually anything the PCs or anyone else in Elturel can do to the chains without a lot of help, see Part 6), but they honestly don’t care if a few people manage to “escape” the city.
HOSTILES
Even though Zariel isn’t motivated to stage an invasion of a city she’s already conquered, that doesn’t mean that the city is in any way safe.
ZARIEL CULTISTS: Zarielites from across Faerun had learned what was coming and made the city a sort of pilgrimage site in the final days before its Fall. (They knew it was going to Hell and they hitched a ride.)
Once they arrived in Hell, groups of these jubilant cultists emerged onto the streets in a millenarian orgy of sin and destruction. Many have indiscriminately pillaged and burned. Others have set up little gangland fiefs of oppression and misery. Regardless, they all know the party ends when the city hits the Styx, and they’re mostly okay with that (believing that in the moment of the Pact’s completion they will be exalted as powerful devils).
In addition, while many members of the Cult of the Companion (see Part 3B and Part 4B) fled the city before its Fall (much like Thavius Kreeg), others remained. Many of those became Hell Knights (see below), but others remain as a sort of fifth column. (Adding such a fifth columnist to the refugees in the High Hall is an obvious choice.)
Devil cultists have the shadows of devils here. Those in the former group tend to delight in this; those in the fifth column will obviously take efforts to hide it.
HELL KNIGHTS: Before the Fall, the High Knights were the upper echelons of the Elturian government. The term originally applied to those who could lead (or had led) a grand expedition of the Hellriders, including the High Rider and the High Watcher of Helm’s Shieldhall. The use of the title formalized and then expanded over time until essentially every senior member of the government was a High Knight (along with a fair number of lower positions as well).
By the time Thavius Kreeg became High Observer, many of the High Knights were already Zarielites, and Kreeg made sure that most of the remaining High Knights were also replaced by cultists. By the time of the Fall, the High Knights were largely synonymous with the inner circle of the cult. These cultists had sworn special oaths above and beyond the Creed Resolute, and as Elturel was pulled into Hell they immediately transformed into devils, becoming Hell Knights.
These Hell Knights had two immediate goals: First, they began slaughtering the other knights under their command. As noted previously, any Elturian knights who had sworn the Creed Resolute and were killed after Elturel was sent to Hell had their souls immediately claimed by the Pact. Here in Hell itself, this meant that any knight killed was immediately transformed into another Hell Knight.
Second, as their ranks swelled with devils, the Hell Knights targeted wizards, clerics, and other high-level or important characters who might pose a threat. Most of their targets were eliminated within the first few hours of chaos, and the Hell Knights continue hunting for those who escaped the initial purge.
(You can use any devil stats for a Hell Knight, with specific recommendations being given in Part 7G. They generally still wear the armor of their former orders.)
DEVIL RAIDERS & DEMON INVADERS: Although Zariel is not sending in her legions, Elturel is not free from devils. Small groups of devil raiders from the Avernian plains have snuck into the city to loot and rend what they can before the city’s final destruction. (Would you sell your soul to escape Hell? They can offer that, too.)
In addition, a lieutenant of Yeenoghu named Liashandra has led a platoon of demonic troops into the floating city. They’re perhaps the most immediately dangerous to the common people of the city, reveling in wanton destruction as is their demonic wont. However, Liashandra’s primary mission is to sabotage the Fall of Elturel if she can and prevent Zariel from recruiting the entire city into the ranks of her legions.
This means that all of these hostile factions (Zarielites, devil raiders, and the demonic incursion) are as likely to be fighting each other as anyone else. Liashandra might also be an unexpected ally in saving the city.
THE VAMPIRE LORD: When the Companion first appeared in the sky above Elturel, the vampire lord High Rider Ikaia was not destroyed. He fled into the vast cavernworks beneath the city and lurked there for decades. Now the Companion is gone and the High Rider has emerged.
He does not, however, command a slavering horde of vampires. He and a select few “sons and daughters” are actually a bastion in the northeast of the city: Elturgard maintained vast storehouses in the caverns beneath the city, with supplies that could support hundreds of thousands of people for months if the surrounding farmlands had to be evacuated into the city and a heavy siege were laid. Ikaia has secured some of these storehouses that were scooped up along with the rest of the city and is now distributing them to people in need (see Part 5C).
A STABLE ELTUREL
Last but not least, what needs to happen for the situation in Elturel to feel stable enough that the PCs will feel comfortable leaving?
Well, to some extent I think we’ve tweaked things enough so that the city still feels like a warzone without feeling like such a genocidal horror that the PCs would reasonably expect everyone to be dead within a week. So it’s possible that you’ll just glide past this point without the PCs thinking about it.
Failing that, there’s also the clear cosmological deadline of the city being drawn down into the Styx. Yes, you could help here, but it’s all meaningless unless someone can get the sword and save the day!
But it’s quite possible that the players will still feel it necessary to help stabilize the situation in Elturel. Or maybe you’re just interested in exploring that idea.
Unless you want to radically expand this section of the campaign, what you’ll want is a Grand Gesture That Turns the Tide; i.e., one big thing that the PCs can do (or help do) that can be framed as essentially putting things on the right track. Possibilities might include:
- Joining the east and west sides of the city. This might be leading attacks on the bridges, clearing them of demon infestation, and helping Ravengard set up garrisons there.
- Forging alliances between the surviving enclaves. This would send the PCs around the city essentially as ambassadors.
- Securing the supplies necessary for survival. Ravengard, for example, might know that somebody on the east side of the city has a cache of supplies. When the PCs investigate, they find High Rider Ikaia. They might negotiate with him for access to the supplies; or they might track Ikaia’s people back to the cache they’ve secured and then clear them out.
- Some sort of mass combat (most likely with Ravengard and his men). That might be leading a siege on Helm’s Shieldhall and shattering the stronghold of the Hell Knights. Or returning to the cemetery and cleaning it out.
I’d recommend following the players’ lead here: They’re unlikely to just say, “We need to secure the city… but how?!” Rather, they’ll have some specific problem that they’re looking to solve (the population is starving, Ravengard doesn’t have enough soldiers, etc.). They might even have a plan. You just need to make sure to give them the opportunity to carry out that plan and then frame the outcome as the city turning a corner in its struggle for survival. “This has made all the difference. Now go get that sword!” says Ravengard (or whoever).
If you DO want to radically expand this section of the campaign, then you’ll want to provide a structure for the PCs’ efforts. This will most likely consist of specific needs that the city has and flexible options for how those needs can be achieved. Off the top of my head:
- Food & Water. Seizing or gaining access to Ikaia’s storehouse. Finding alternative storehouses. A magical fountain. Organizing rationing.
- Security. Eliminating specific threats. Forming alliances. Restoring one of the demonseals which once protected the major citadels of the city by scavenging components from each.
- Shelter. Forming neighborhood patrols. Securing citadels which can house refugees in safety away from the demon-infested streets.
Once again, be flexible in responding to and empowering ideas the PCs come up with to fulfill these needs. I would go so far as to track these needs with specific gauges; i.e., put hard numbers on this and let the PCs’ schemes score points towards filling those gauges. (And, conversely, allow enemy factions to damage the gauges.)
THE RETURN TO ELTUREL
Later in the campaign, the PCs will return to Elturel. What do they find when they come back? How has the situation developed?
To a large degree, the answer to this should be extremely idiosyncratic and heavily based on what the PCs did: The version of Elturel where the city ended up divided between Ravengard in the west and Ikaia in the east is very different than one where the PCs managed to form a Council of the Resistance which included Liashandra as a prominent member.
If we’re talking about a baseline situation where the PCs did very little to shift the status quo in Elturel, then here’s what I’d suggest:
- High Rider Ikaia has secured the eastern side of the town. Citizens have volunteered to become vampires in order to have the strength to defend themselves and their fellow citizens, and these Vampire Riders run regular patrols and control the bridges.
- Things are much worse in the west. The Hell Knights have mustered their forces and laid siege to Ravengard in the High Hall.
This does open up a minor plot hole of its own, or an apparent one: If this has been used so many times, why does the enshieldified devil not have any of those to his name yet?
I discussed this briefly in Part 3B, actually. It’s possible that Gargauth IS reponsible for the previous cities. Or perhaps they’re the results of some other agent. Or they might predate Zariel entirely. Or some mixture of all those things.
About the only thing I’d avoid is having Elturel be the LAST city on Gargauth’s tab. That probably over-simplifies his motivations (see this addendum).
Ahhhh… well done! The metaphysical aspect of the chains is not something if considered, but it’s perfect. No battle raging below, also perfect.
I’m adding a few things in, motivations of outer planes denizens and why they’re concerned with mortal souls. In my campaign’s outer planes, if a being kills another being, the deceased’s soul reawakens in the killer’s home plane, as a servant to that killer. In the lower planes, that translates to soldiers for the blood war or (in Avernus) soul coins, make the devil or demon richer and more powerful. Free will of mortals is delicious to Devils in particular because there’s no risk to them, and they can negotiate to have a higher level devil under their command, or a more valuable soul coin. In the upper planes, what marks them different from the lower planes, the denizens prefer submission under free will, so their servants/soldiers are willing and committed participants, though they will make martyrs at times when someone presents significant potential for their cause. Lawful denizens will strike deals and bargains (prayers, supplications, contracts), whereas chaotic denizens will prefer free will and then freedom (for Good denizens) or just death and submission by force (evil denizens), and care a lot less about how many servants/soldiers they have under them except as a means to an end, like defeating a rival or a devil. Mortal sin translates to being reawakened after death as a devil or a demon, with zero freedom of will after that, forever. I’d imagine demons would tempt mortals with things like addiction, sloth, and gluttony. Devils would tempt mortals with power on the material plane and possibly power in Hell, depending on their value to the devil.
I really needed to work this out for this campaign, as alignment has bothered me for years, so I avoided outer planes scenarios as a result. Hope this is helpful to someone else out there.
Thanks for your remix! It’s very well done and I’m waiting with bated breath for every new post!
Hi, and thanks for your write-ups of this campaign, I’ve been very much enjoying them. I’m not sure I entirely agree with your assessment of the problems of Hellturel though, and I think a slight shift in viewpoint might allow for a less drastic re-write of some parts. Specifically I wanted to address the battle and the survival of citizens after Elturel is captured.
Fundamentally Zariel is a highly disciplined and strategic military thinker engaged in a war currently at stalemate. Her side depends entirely on the flow of souls into hell for troop numbers, and generally speaking that is constant which prevents significant increases in the size of her armies and means that Hell have limited surge capacity in their war. She would be well able to work out that obtaining tens of thousands of new troops quickly has the potential to genuinely shift the needle in her war, and that Prime Material cities represent an excellent potential source for those souls, but only if they can be captured for Hell.
The problem is of course that if the mortals in Hellturel are simply slaughtered indiscriminately (as you’re concerned about) then their souls will fly to their Deities’ realms and be lost. What Zariel needs is a captive city and some time to completely harvest as many souls as possible. Eventually the city will sink into the Styx, but she needs the delay before that to be relatively stable so that her devil underlings can systematically work through the city ensuring that the majority of the population give their souls to Zariel’s army. How? Well, the simplest course is for even lowly imps to go house to house and present the citizens with easy deals: “I will not kill your family slowly in front of your eyes if you promise your soul to me in this contract. In fact I can protect you and your whole neighborhood if you all sign here…” Or even: “I’ll stop torturing you and let you live in peace if you sign your soul to me when you die.” Doing this over tens of thousands takes time, and needs a citizenry who are cowed and scared but not suicidal…
Meanwhile the Demons are chaotic, but not stupid. They see a massive plate of souls arrive in Avernus and it takes a few minutes of thought for a high-level Demon to consider the reports and work out Zariel’s plan. Now this could be a disaster for the Abyss, and a counter-strike is needed immediately. So the Demons mount a massive incursion in an attempt to deny the Devils the potential prize of a new army. Zariel will have foreseen that and has defensive plans in place, but that ties up much of her force in defense rather than swift subjugation of the city. Now we’re in a situation where the Demons are willing to throw huge numbers at this problem, and Zariel needs to keep defending for as long as it takes to win the most souls possible from the city. She’s not counter-attacking, just bunkering down and stopping the Demons from entering the city – after all the whole place will be gone in a month or two! Consequently there are relatively few Devils on the street – and those that are there are more concerned with systematically taking souls than in wanton destruction, and the Demons that do get through are desparate to disrupt that work – or at least kill as many Devils and mortals as they can.
In my view that solves a couple of the big issues you mention: where are the devils? they’re either defending the city from Demon incursions or making contracts house-by-house and what’s the urgency? The urgency is clear – every day more souls are taken, and the city is sinking further.
I completely agree about the leadership: in my own campaign the PCs have the sigil sequence for a permanent TP circle in the Temple of Gond (I have a Gondian cleric in the party) and the mages of Candlekeep allow the party a single use of their attuned Cubic Gate to reach that temple. Inside they find the clergy (a few cleric, one of a decent level) and their congregation of a few hundred. The clerics have food and water supplies, but they’re dwindling as even the casting of Create F&W can’t keep up with demand indefinitely. The clerics have held the door against the few attempts to get in so far – after all the devils can find easier souls elsewhere. All of the temples have a similar scenrio being played out, and the party will be trying to unite them all asap. Meanwhile there are analogous groups throughout the city representing a significant proportion of the population – trade guilds, professional organisations, fraternities, even drinking societies who have gathered their friends, neighbours etc into defensive groups. These groups won’t last long once the Devils have mopped up those who stayed home or who have no-one to band together with. So again, more urgency, and some potential lower-level leaders to interact with. Finally though most of the leadership were corrupted and are hostiles, the ones who haven’t have started a pseudo-resistance which is trying to gather as many people as possible in safe locations and collect all the food, water etc they can…
Sorry – longer than I intended! Anyway, good luck with the rest – can’t wait to see it…
Citizens volunteer to become vampires? Don’t they die before becoming vampires? And if they die, their souls are claimed by the Pact… Am I missing anything?
Good stuff, everybody!
@Francesco: In the remix, broadly speaking, only knights are bound by the Creed Resolute.
@steve .. door-to-door salesmen .. how evil =)
Hi What kind of Demon is Liashandra? A Balor?
What would happen if a Hellrider is converted into an undead? I’m planning to use Hellturel in my campaing and in Dragoneye Dockhouse there is Mairisima, a Hellrider converted in a Spawn Vampire, could this be possible? Shound’t she transform in a Hell Knight?
A problem that I have with everything in Avernus is how the passage of time is measured. I have not read anywhere that there is a rising and setting of a sun. The devils and demons present in Avernus don’t really care about time. And, Avernus being on an entirely different plane, there really isn’t any reason to think that the passage of time on the Material plane (i.e., the number of days since the fall of Elturel) corresponds in any way to the apparent time experienced by the mortal citizens of Elturel that are trying to deal with the crisis in an up-front and very personal way. Things may have happened in Elturel since the fall, and the citizens have some experience of the passage of time – they get hungry, they need to sleep, but those are disconnected from the 24 hour night-day cycle of the Material plane. The impact of this is that we don’t need to be as concerned about the initial passage of Elturel time as discussed at the beginning of this section. Locally, however many sleep/wake cycles of the mortals have passed since the fall as the DM needs to make the story hang together. In fact, given that the spatial characteristic of Avernus distorts (distance traveled between given points changes each time the PCs want to go somewhere), there isn’t any reason to think that time stays fixed equally throughout Avernus. That helps deal with the dichotomy of the PCs feeling the urgency to get something done and the PCs feeling like it is pointless to do anything because they cannot do fast enough to affect the remaining mortals. The PCs can accomplish what needs to be done in sufficient time for there to be use in doing it. But then, we need to find a way to track the time periods the PCs experience so they can take their long rests at appropriate intervals (can’t gain the benefit of a long rest more than once in a 24hr period).
Maybe the local distortion of time is a tool that DMs can use as needed to satisfy the elements of the adventure. Maybe the awareness that time in Avernus is distorted compared to the Material plane needs to be introduced to the PCs early after their arrival in Avernus. Perhaps one of the mortals they meet early references a time since the fall that differs significantly from the time the PCs experience back on the Material plane.
I don’t think this changes Amanda’s point, but DiA p 78 does say “There are no ‘days’ or ‘nights’ in Avernus, but time should still be tracked in hour increments. Thus, the characters can take long and short rests as they do normally.”
It seems to me that for time distortion to work as a story element and not just arbitrary plot convenience, the players have to have some way to know it’s happening. The only way I can really think of would be for NPCs they meet at least twice, to mention things like “hey, back already?” or “you guys were gone so long, didn’t think you were coming back.”
But would that actually help the story, or does it just confuse and distract? I am inclined to think Avernus is already an alien enough environment the players are going to have to work to understand. There’s a ton of weird metaphysics they need to learn in order to feel like they understand how the city was stolen and how to get it back. Adding time dilation effects feels to see like it risks making everything seem pointless and random, and it doesn’t seem necessary.
One of my character found a solution for that, he uses mage armor and he knows when 8 hours already pass when he feels the effects of the armor is gone. He uses it twice per day and a line ready uses 8 hours
Ok, time dilation effects that mess with the durations of spells could potentially be fun.
Also, it occurs to me that I want the High Hall in Hellturel to still have functioning bells, as a symbolic lingering tie to the prime world and normal society.
How *fast* do you think the sequence [Hellrider dies ➔ Hell Knight rises] takes place? It would could be a snowballing TPK in some encounters, like Helm’s Shieldhall in the Hellturel supplement.
I’m trying to decide if it’s better to limit the Hellrider➔Hell Knight conversion so that the PCs can fight beside surviving Hellriders without feeling the need to lock them up like werewolves; or if it’s better to limit the number of Hellriders so they can erupt without accidentally wiping the party.
It would also be pretty horrifying to have to kill Reya as a Hell Knight. I think I may have to make sure that doesn’t happen, so we can keep playing D&D instead of Unknown Armies.
I guess the simplest answer would be to have the new Hell Knight be created somewhere *different* than where their mortal form dies. Curious how others have handled this issue, though.
What vampires drink? Whose blood? Elturans? So why Elturans want food from them? Rather they gather and kill vampires and after that take their food.
I want to second what Steve said (nearly a year ago!) about the situation in Helturel. I think having the Blood War raging below is important as a thematic and plot backdrop, and it seems (IMHO) cooler and easier to grok than the dock of fallen cities – and requires less modification and addition to the book’s content. The stalemate below makes sense, and I think it does a perfectly serviceable job of explaining the lack of devil incursion above.
Steve’s critical insight is that the gradual corruption of Elturel provides the urgency. As the goodness of the city fades, it slowly falls into the river below. A few good clues to that (Three Clues Rule?) should communicate that. Perhaps the PCs witness a deal being stuck as Steve describes, and they feel the ground drop an inch under their feet. (It would be interesting, if complicated, if the two halves of the city were independent with respect to this effect, so that the devils, if they were clever, could cut them off from each other by focusing their efforts on corrupting one of the city fragments more than the other.) The Easter egg you suggest of finding the holy artifact in the floating fragment of the High Hall tower, and it falling when the item is removed. The Hellwasp Nest functions by the same metaphysics – the bodies of dead angels embedded in the nest’s matrix hold it almost, even to the point that it has chains just like Elturel has – so increasing the salience of that effect would be a small tweak that would reinforce that concept. (Lulu seems like the sort of creature that would increase a nest’s buoyancy.) If that encounter is run early while Elturel is fresh in the players’ minds, possibly even on the way to Fort Knucklebone, they should hopefully make that connection.
@Tim: I agree with all your thematic points about the city rising/falling based on the souls within, which is why I created those elements for the Remix.
From a structural standpoint, the far bigger problem is that there’s no logical way for 7th level PCs to fight their way through an entire battlefield filled with demons and devils. The published adventure just kind of handwaves this. I experimented with different ways for the PCs to bypass or sneak past the fight (things like including an experimental hot air balloon in Elturel), but none of it seemed to work very well.
So, this is all great and has been of wonderful use – both the article and the discussion. But, now onto a more mechanical issue:
What are hell knights? Are they Narzugons? Are they merrogons? Are they something new/different? If we want to use these appropriately, we want to stat them appropriately.
@Nick:
Simplest thing is to have them turn into the type of devil that killed them, or you could do it by NPC level – the higher their level, the more powerful a devil they become.
In my game, Reya just died (level 5) fighting a chain devil while crossing Torm’s Blade, so I had her immediately rise as a chain devil. The players were shocked, and horrified at having to kill her. Now they know they really need to work to keep their Hellrider PC alive.
Why did you introduce Ikaia as a faction here? The fact that he was not destroyed by the Companion brings into question whether Zariel did in fact honor the contract. Sure, you can word it so she technically did and devils twisting the wording is a trope for a reason, I find it more satisfactory if she did fulfil the spirit as well as the letter of the contract in this case.
Moreover, his presence means that the campaign will probably need a “coda” to deal with him once Elturel will return to the Material plane and Hellturel already has an “evil” faction interested in saving the citizens (the demons) which I’d rather have used.
I know I don’t have to use this aspect and can easily remove it from my campaign but I’m interested in the motivation of your choice here.
What kind of a demon is Liashandra? I cant seem to find it anywhere.
@Dagur, whatever type you want! Given the Baphomet-association I’m leaning towards an enhanced Bulezau or a Tanarukk (who aren’t in the adventure, so here’s a chance to include them!)
My take on the situation when the PCs arrive is that the ritual of descent has been delayed / slowed because the PCs did not kill Thavius Kreeg, but obsconded with him (and Thalamra’s hoard) to Candlekeep. An emissary from Baphomet arrived at Candlekeep to try to take Thavius to keep him safe, somehow knowing that Thavius’s presence in Helturel was a required part of the ritual of descent, maybe his people witnessing him bend the knee would break their spirits and complete the metaphysical deacent of the populace. That “somehow” in my campaign was that an active Cult of Baphomet in Elturel still had presence there and they were able to convey that information to their demon lord and reopen their portal in the graveyard that Gideon had closed long before. The leader of the Baphomet cult was the father of a PC, who became a vengeance paladin after Gideon rescued him, sending him to Baldur’s Gate as an “orphan”, from his cultist father who had married an elf for the purposes of fathering a child and sacrificing both for Baphomet’s favor. Despite Gideon’s recent transformation, they allied with him to gain access to the Helm, and, surprise, had to fight his warlock father leading a profane ritual to desecrate the Helm. Back to my point, without Thavius in Elturel, the chains stalled, and what should have been a quick descent became a weeks long affair. The PCs arrive before the hoards of demons can muster, and seeing her ritual of descent stalled, Zariel has to leave to muster her armies to defend the chains against the demon hoard she knows will eventually arrive. As the PCs explore for the memory machine parts they hear more and more about demon incursions, devils conscripting warlord vehicles to send to keep the demons boxed in at Elturel, etc. By the time the PCs return the chains are surrounded by demons as described.