I was trying to avoid doing this, but as with Elturel, I ended up doing a fairly deep dive into Zariel’s background as I was working on the Remix. After digging into sources from across multiple editions of the game, I thought it might be interesting to share the results. Perhaps more importantly, a lot of this material will influence Part 6D: Lulu’s Memories, but I don’t want to weigh that material down by trying to discuss all of this there.
In addition to Zariel herself, this textual history will also briefly look at adjacent topics (primarily how the rulership of Avernus shifted both diegetically and non-diegetically over time).
DESCENT INTO AVERNUS (2019)
Let’s start by looking at the version of events laid out in Descent Into Avernus itself. Or rather, as we’ll see, the many versions of those events. (The continuity is rather tangled.)
TO BEGIN WITH: Zariel and Lulu, her hollyphant warmount, were friends for centuries.
GENERATIONS BEFORE THE 14th CENTURY: In response to a prayer to Lathander, Zariel is sent to the village of Idyllglen in the Fields of the Dead to drive off a gnoll invasion.
13?? DR – ZARIEL’S CRUSADE: Zariel leaves Mount Celestia with Lulu. She goes to Elturel and creates the order of knights which would become the Hellriders.
- The knights swear a personal oath to Zariel that binds them to her service even after death.
- General Yael was Zariel’s most loyal general.
- General Olanthius was in love with Yael. (It’s unclear if this was reciprocated.)
- General Haruman
- Among the knights was Jander Sunstar, a reformed vampire.
Note: I find the use of “General” (and the fact that the Crusade had so many of them) curious. It would seem to suggest that Zariel managed to raise an army of thousands or even tens of thousands.
The Crusade is referred to as such only twice (and in lower case). But I think it’s a useful term. And referring to Zariel’s knights as crusaders is probably a useful bit of nomenclature.
135? DR – IDYLLGLEN: Yeenoghu personally leads an attack on the village of Idyllglen. Zariel leads the Hellriders to repel the attack.
There is an implication that Yeenoghu fled to Avernus, leaving the portal open behind him and that the Riders immediately followed him on the Charge (see below): “As Zariel prepares to send her forces through the portal into Avernus…” (DIA, p. 144)
But this is a continuity error because the boxed text earlier on the same page reads: “The angel slashes her sword across Yeenoghu’s chest and utters a spell. A portal opens behind the demon lord as the mammoth rams its head into Yeenoghu. The demon lord is sent tumbling through the portal, which quickly closes behind him.”
Note: This material also contradicts how the Hellriders got their name – i.e., for riding into Hell – because they’re referred to as such before doing so.
1354 DR – THE CHARGE OF THE HELLRIDERS: Zariel leads the Elturian knights into Avernus.
Some of the knights panic, ride back through the gate, and seal it. They become the first Hellriders, telling a false tale of their “glorious” achievements.
- VERSION 2: The future Hellriders didn’t flee until the middle of the battle. (Lulu says, “Victory was within our grasp until some of the Hellriders betrayed us. They retreated through the gate and sealed it behind them.”
Note: This is also inconsistent with how the Hellriders got their name, once again suggesting they were known as such before and/or during the Ride and not just after it.
- Jander Sunstar was among those who fled back through the portal. It’s implied on p. 93 that he was the one to actually seal the portal.
Note: It’s possible he was also a general and actually led or triggered the retreat back through the portal, but it’s vague. I don’t think he was a general (see below), but my personal head canon is that he was the highest ranking officer among those who betrayed Zariel and he subsequently became the first High Rider of the Hellriders. (Partly I like the poetry of both the first and last High Rider having been vampires.)
The rest of Zariel’s army fights to utter destruction.
If the memories Lulu recovers in Fort Knucklebones are real (which they probably aren’t), then at some point during the fighting Zariel and Lulu are both knocked unconscious.
Zariel’s hand holding her Sword is cut off. As it falls towards the ground, she orders General Yael to take the Sword and hide it. Lulu goes with Yael and they hide the Sword.
- VERSION 2: Zariel ordered Lulu (not Yael) to hide the Sword and Yael went with Lulu.
- VERSION 3: Zariel ordered Yael to hide the Sword and also ordered Lulu to help Yael do it.
Note: These seem like subtle differences, but thematically there’s actually quite a bit of weight to exactly who was charged to do what in those final moments.
Olanthius, Haruman, and Zariel are captured and sent to Nessus, the lowest of the Nine Hells.
- VERSION 2: Asmodeus appeared in front of Zariel on the Avernian battlefield and immediately offered her command of the Blood Legions in exchange for her fealty. In this version, Yael and Lulu are there to witness Asmodeus make the offer, but flee with Zariel’s Sword before Zariel accepts and becomes an archdevil.
1354 DR – LULU AND YAEL HIDE THE SWORD OF ZARIEL.
Lulu and Yael blundered into a group of demons led by Yeenoghu, but narrowly escaped.
Note: This probably makes more sense if we assume they crossed the Styx in an effort to escape Avernus with the Sword, only to be forced back across the River when they encountered Yeenoghu’s legions.
Crokek’toeck, a demon follower of Yeenoghu, chased them across the Avernian plains.
Just before Crokek’toeck could catch them, Yael plunged the Sword into a rock and Lulu “made a trumpet sound” with her trunk before pouring “every ounce of her celestial being into it,” causing a fortress or alabaster palace to spring up around the sword “hedging out evil.”
- VERSION 2: Lulu “gave up [her] magic and memories, and Yael gave her life” to construct the palace.
Lulu flew up into the sky and watched as a bloody scab grew from the ground to engulf the palace and the enormous demon.
Lulu became disoriented and flew away, leaving Yael behind.
1354 DR – ZARIEL’S FALL: Asmodeus immediately offers Zariel rulership of Avernus, replacing Bel. She accepts. (This either happens on the battlefield in Avernus or in Nessus, see variants above.)
General Haruman joined Zariel in swearing fealty to Asmodeus and became a devil. He ends up watching over Haruman’s Hill.
General Olanthius commits suicide. He’s raised as a death knight and ends up watching over the Crypt of the Hellriders.
Note: This is described as “most of her generals fell to evil.” This would suggest there were only three generals in her army – Haruman, Olanthius, and Yael – and two of them fell to evil.
1354 DR – LULU WANDERS AVERNUS: For “several months.”
Lulu goes to Fort Knucklebones and meets two kenku named Chukka and Clonk who were working on an infernal war machine.
Lulu goes to the Wandering Emporium, where she is “befriended” by a rakshasa named Mahadi.
Mahadi splashes Lulu with water from the River Styx, stripping her memory and her spellcasting.
Note: This contradicts the version of events in which Lulu sacrificed her memories to make the alabaster fortress. See above.
Mahadi gives Lulu to a group of devils who take her to Zariel as a gift. “Zariel had Lulu sent back to Faerun with her mental faculties restored. Unfortunately, the damage to Lulu’s memories was not so easy to repair.”
Note: No idea what “with her mental faculties restored” is supposed to mean. Neither her memories nor her spellcasting abilities were restored to her.
Zariel’s last words to her were: “This is who I am. When demons die, they cry out my name in terror.”
1444 DR – THE PACT OF THE COMPANION: Zariel makes the Pact of the Companion with Thavius Kreeg.
149? DR – SYLVIRA FINDS LULU: Sylvira finds Lulu near a portal to the Nine Hells in the Fields of the Dead west of Elturel.
Note: So did Lulu spend 140-ish years just floating around the portal she came back through? Was this originally meant to be the portal that the Hellriders used (even though we’re told that it was “sealed” elsewhere)? If not, then… what was this portal? Why was Lulu there? Is it still open? Where in Hell does it lead, exactly?
1494 DR – TODAY.
Is there any explanation given for why a demon lord would flee to Hell rather than the Abyss?
No.
I’ve literally spent months scratching my head on this one, but the book just kind of presents this as if it’s perfectly logical to seek revenge against demon attacks from the Abyss by invading the Nine Hells.
There’s the one reference to Zariel pursuing Yeenoghu through the portal he escaped through, but even that is contradicted on the very same page. (Where Zariel opens the portal and then closes it before preparing to… go through it? Makes no sense.)
This has been one of the major impediments to moving the Remix towards conclusion, because the Zariel/Lulu timeline stuff has to get sorted out.
My current working theory, though, is to grab that reference to Zariel pursuing Yeenoghu through the portal and rebuild around it:
– Yeenoghu learns that Zariel has raised a huge mortal army and is planning to invade the Abyss and create a second front in the Blood War. (Zariel believes that if she can establish a flanking beachhead that other disaffected angelic warriors from Mount Celestia will rally to the cause.)
– Yeenoghu tricks her. He starts razing settlements in the Fields of the Dead. Zariel rides out with her army to put an end to the demonic invasion.
– Yeenoghu “flees” through a portal, leaving it open behind him.
– In the zeal of battle, Zariel shouts, “We have the demon lord on the run! Charge!” and the army plunges through the portal into Avernus.
Here it kind of falls apart, because it feels as if the celestial Zariel should pretty quickly recognize Avernus. But the Abyss is infinite and has volcanic portions, so maybe she makes a mistake. Or maybe Yeenoghu has a small army waiting on the other side that rapidly engages her so she doesn’t have time to realize her error.
Either way, Zariel arrays her crusaders for battle.
Which is when Bel’s devil armies march over the horizon. (Perhaps lured by Yeenoghu’s army that has been holding Zariel?) Jander Sunstar panics (“We can’t fight both Hell and the Abyss!”) and a chunk of the army routs back through the portal, which Yeenoghu then closes. Maybe it all goes down there. Maybe Zariel goes on a Xenophon-style march, trying to reach the front lines of the Blood War and salvage her plan.
But it’s all gone wrong. Yeenoghu has tricked Zariel into spending her glorious army fighting devils instead of demons, turning what could have been a disaster for the Abyss into a huge advantage instead.
The other question I have to answer is what year I want this to take place in. I’m heavily biased towards pushing it farther back in history than 1354 DR. The question is how far.
Is it actually important that Zariel be pursuing Yeenoghu, or could he just be replaced with a devil (Bel or whoever)? Breaks with canon, but its a lot cleaner. Or is having it be part of a cunning Blood War maneuver cooler, even if it’s a bit tangled?
@kalyptein: That was my original plan, actually. I actually thought I’d streamline it down by losing the Idyllglen encounters; let Zariel just lead a charge into Hell and put the flashback focus there.
But then you get to the Bleeding Citadel and it’s crawling with followers of Yeenoghu and the demon Crokek’toeck (who’s connected to Yeenoghu is also there). So do you try to fix the Yeenoghu connection in the back story or do you heavily revise the Citadel to finish expurgating Yeenoghu from the narrative?
On the other hand, the fact that the Bleeding Citadel is crawling with people doesn’t make a lot of sense. But it doesn’t make sense as part of a broader logic failure in the adventure — the location of the Sword is a mystery and no one can find it, but multiple major players know exactly where it is and it’s crawling with their agents and spies? — so does it make sense to just do that revision? (I mean, we’ve already restructured the scenario to eliminate the “people already know where it is so that they can tell the PCs” thing.)
But maybe, like you say, the Yeenoghu intrigue is cool enough that we should do that even if we simplify the Bleeding Citadel and make it a secret again?
WRT the continuity snarl around the Hellrider name, is it possible that the name is being applied retroactively? I.e., the knights didn’t call themselves Hellriders at the time, but people narrating the story in the future after they acquire the name use it? I haven’t actually read this story so I’m not sure if that’s an option.
Your revised narrative gave me an idea for putting a spin on Zariel’s fall which ties in neatly with your version of events. (You may have had the same idea already; it’s not a particularly original idea.) Perhaps the reason that Zariel gave in so quickly to Asmodeus’ offer was because it afforded her the opportunity and resources to continue her campaign against Yeenoghu’s demons. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” and so forth. IIRC, Planescape established that it’s not unheard of for LG celestials to ally with devils against demons.
Is it possible that she wanted to invade Avernus all along? It says in the beginning of Descent that she wanted to stop the Blood War, and Avernus is a major front with both demon and devil armies. Maybe she thought she was a good enough fighter or her cause was holy enough that she could hold both armies until the angels noticed and came to her aid?
She also could have joined Asmodeus because she believed that as ruler of Avernus she could end the Blood War, she hated demons personally after her encounters with Yeenoghu, and she hated the angels for “abandoning” her when she needed them most.
@Aeshdan: Generally, yes. But, IIRC, there’s at least one instance where the reference is in the flashback scene itself. I think the question to figure out and make clear to the players is what the pre-Hellrider identity was of this army?
Were they the Riders of Elturel? Did that pre-exist Zariel or did she co-opt an existing organization? Did they know the plan was to invade the Abyss/Avernus? Or was that a purely spur-of-the-moment decision?
@Wyvern: Yes. I think this approach can definitely give Asmodeus a much stronger sales pitch and a far more rational reason for Zariel to accept. He’s selling her what she wants and she could even fool herself into thinking that, once she’s dealt with the Abyss, she’ll be able to turn on Asmodeus himself and save Hell from itself.
It makes a lot more sense than, “I see you’ve invaded Hell… but wouldn’t you rather fight demons?” And Zariel being like, “Eh… Sure. Whatever.”
It could also explain why Asmodeus was like, “Bel, GTFO.” The legions of Hell never should have attacked Zariel’s army. Bel let himself be manipulated by Yeenoghu and blew a golden opportunity. Despite centuries of playing it safe, he still lacks… subtlety.
(Although I think I’m leaning more towards the idea of Zariel starting off as one of the Dark Eight and then rapidly ousting Bel on her own initiative.)
This is history. History is messy. For example, most of what we know about Alfred the Great comes from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle which a) has 3 contradictory versions and b) is a propaganda piece written for the House of Wessex – Alfred’s family so, lo and behold, we have to piece together the bad things from the silences in the record.
The facts are largely incidental to history. Was Napoleon famously short or was he average height for the time and our impression is a result of successful British propaganda? The Founding Fathers of the USA were paragons of liberty and freedom or were they the Massachusetts drug (tea) cartel who chaffed under lawful authority that was getting a bit too efficient at putting the squeeze on local organised crime? The European possession of Australia was a result of hardy pioneers struggling against an unforgiving and alien landscape or a series of brutal frontier wars between invaders and the indigenous population that got rewritten in the late 19th century because no one likes to think of their grandfather as a murderer?
Embrace the inconsistencies – those that weren’t there have to rely on what those who were there said or wrote and those that were there al have agendas.
As for the name “Hellriders” , as Aeshdan says its a back construction. You know the Vikings who ravaged Europe in the early Middle Ages? Would it surprise you to learn the word “Viking” only dates from the 19th Century?
@Dale It’s true that history is messy. What that means is that people who live later do not know exactly what happened. However, an impartial observer living at the time would not have observed any inconsistencies.
As a DM, you are not one of the people who lived later. Instead, you are responsible for running the world. Including running characters like Lulu or Zariel, who both were present when it happened.
Having inconsistencies in what happened according to various NPC’s can be incredibly realistic. But as a DM, it really helps if you know which of those NPC’s are wrong, and how.
@Dale: Uh huh.
Except we’re talking about an adventure in which:
1. “Is Napoleon short?” is positioned as a central mystery which must be solved.
2. Napoleon is standing in front of you.
If this was a deliberately designed Rashomon where all of these characters have different memories (or, at least, different stories they’re telling), that could be cool. But, unfortunately, that’s not the case.
@Sableheart I completely disagree that your contemporary “impartial observer” would not have observed inconsistencies – I have been in many meetings where what I remember is completely different from what others remember; even on the matters where I am impartial.
And that’s without questioning whether there is such a thing as an “impartial observer” anyway; everyone carries a set of unconscious bias and preconceptions as a result of all their experiences up to that point and all their rationalisations and memory edits afterward. If you are talking about a hypothetical impartial observer (who would also need to be omniscient and omnicognizant) then … maybe but that’s just another way of saying “God knows”.
Further, any realistically limited contemporary observer can only witness what they witnessed; subsequent analysis allows synthesis of many witness accounts to provide a more comprehensive view than any one witness has. For example, when Chamberlain left the Munich conference he was convinced there would be no war in Europe because Hitler wouldn’t start one. Hitler was equally convinced that there would be no war in Europe because the UK and France would not obstruct his territorial ambitions. Both men were witnesses to the same events and both were wrong about what they saw.
@Justin fair enough. For the purposes of playing a D&D pre-written adventure, I agree that it’s the author’s role to be clear to a DM reader about what is and is not objectively true OR to be clear about the ambiguity and make things much more fun and allow the players (DM included) to reconcile them as best they can.
What if you tweak the Idyllglen lore, to something along the lines of:
1. Yael gets pulled into Avernus with Yeenoghu during a desperate abjuration/Yeenoghu captures Yael and retreats to Avernus to lure Zariel into a 3 way war.
2. As Zariel’s most trusted General and Olanthius’ love focus they override the objections of Haruman and follow after.
3. They realise the extent of their error and try to fight to a holding position.
4. Yael dies, Olanthius goes mad, Zariel in a moment of revelation realises her pride (before a fall) has led them to destruction instructs Lulu to hide the sword.
5. Jandar goes *fuck this* (vampire) and retreats through the portal.
6. The Remaining crusading army is split and mopped up.
7. Zariel, Olanthius, Haruman, spend time being tortured into insanity in Nessus, this corrupt Zariel. Her self perceived pride/flaw is twisted into her “being betrayed”.
@Dale it seems you were looking for a philosophical debate when you made your original comment. If I had been interested in such a debate, I would have been far more careful when chosing my words. However, my main interest was discussing the consequences for DMing. If I’d realized you were looking to discuss philosophy, I would not have responded in the first place.
Sorry for wasting your time.
The DMG says this about the River Styx:
“Any creature other than a fiend that tastes or touches the water is affected by a feeblemind spell. The DC of the Intelligence saving throw to resist the effect is 15.”
I figure Zariel is clearing the feeblemind effect, which reduces Lulu’s intelligence and charisma to 1. The check to clear the effect happens every 30 days and it’s an Int save.
“Note: This material also contradicts how the Hellriders got their name – i.e., for riding into Hell – because they’re referred to as such before doing so.”
Wait, are they actually referred to as such before doing so OR are people after they did so referring to them as such when describing events from before they did so. Because the latter involves no contradiction at all and is quite common. Like calling someone Grand Champion So and So when describing their childhood before they won the championship.
@shikomekidomi: That’s true for some references, but others are flashbacks to events taking place before they went to Hell.
Thank you for making this combobulated storyline into something more organized. I tackled the Lulu-problem a bit differently…
Instead of having Lulu “wander around for 140ish years,” whether in Avernus or on the Material Plane, I had her get stuck in the Astral Sea when she tried to go back through the portal; using Elminster’s Candlekeep Companion to build up the story of the portal proper – it never closed properly and Lulu’s essence kept anything from passing through, until eventually she was pulled free by the adventurers.
I find this also does a better explanation of her fussed memories than “being sprinkled with some Styx water,” following your recommendation to just drop the whole Lulu-Mahadi relationship.