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The next two adventures  — Fang and Claw and Where Devils Fear to Tread – form the Red Hunt series and the conclusion of Season 9 of the Adventurers League.

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FANG AND CLAW (DDAL 09-19): The Red Hunt duology is about the PCs hunting down Commander Rotger’s corpse. Or possibly his soul? (The authors seem collectively a little confused about this.) In any case, this is essential, because the Bloody Hooves have absolutely no chain of command, so without Commander Rotger they are completely incapable of doing anything. (No wonder the Hellriders got utterly wrecked on the battlefield.)

The usual litany of senseless continuity errors aside, Fang and Claw gets off to a good start. The PCs are ambushed while receiving their mission briefing, and the encounter is given a unique flair because the bad guys can make the PCs’ allies’ heads explode. Will Doyle provides a random table of Exploding Head Effects (splatters of brain, shrapnel shards of skull, and so forth) to provide a memorable, cool, and totally gross experience.

Doyle continues to deliver the awesome when the interrupted mission briefing resumes and the PCs are told they need to stage a raid on a mobile, quadrupedal colossus built from the corpses of devils and demons slain during the Blood War and piloted by followers of Yeenoghu (who have intercepted the Commander’s corpse).

The interior of the colossus is a three-dimensional dungeon (which, blessedly, has a properly keyed map), studded with memorable locations chock full of devilish flavor as the PCs worm their way into the heart of the machine.

• Grade: B+

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WHERE DEVILS FEAR TO TREAD (DDAL 09-20): Fang and Claw ends with the PCs staring into a portal into the Abyss, through which Commander Rotger has been hurled. Leaping through it themselves, they arrive in the Death Dells, where Yeenoghu is now hunting Commander Rotger for sport.

(Commander Rotger, however, is a floating ball of light that is completely defenseless, so I’m a little unclear on what “sport” is to be had here.)

The structure in Where Devils Fear to Tread for hunting down Commander Rotger is rather well done:

• There are multiple methods of potentially tracking Rotger, some being generally applicable and others being specific to the individual scenes along the way (which are triggered as random encounters).
• If the PCs are following a good path, they get an Advancing encounter.
• If they are not following a good path, they get a Delaying encounter.
• The situation they encounter at the end of the trail depends on how many Advancing or Delaying encounters were done, dynamically responding to the PCs’ success (or failure).

The confrontation with Yeenoghu is weighty with purpose: With the Commander as unwitting bait, Yeenoghu has been lured into a confrontation on his home plane. If he’s destroyed here, the multiverse will shift. (It’s even possible for one of the PCs to end up as a new Demon Prince.)

The PCs then return to Avernus and discover that a huge battle has broken out around the colossus and its Abyssal portal. Using all of the allies and resources they’ve gained over the course of Season 9, they now have the power to turn the course of the Blood War.

This all adds up to a fairly satisfying finale, but there are two major Chekhov’s Guns left curiously unfired and a squandered opportunity:

• In the last adventure, the PCs have the opportunity to learn how to control the quadrupedal colossus. As they stand on top of the colossus’ head and gaze out at the raging battle between demon and devil, it curiously never occurs to anyone that the PCs might just take control of the giant demon mecha.
• I don’t understand why Season 9 framed itself as, “Save the Hellriders, save Elturel,” knowing that it was absolutely, positively not going to deliver on the “save Elturel” part of that equation (since that was reserved for the Descent Into Avernus campaign). As a result this final adventure just kind of goes… “Gee, I really don’t know why you did all of this.” Even Dara, who has ostensibly been on a holy mission this whole time, literally just shrugs her shoulders.
• Where Devils Fear to Tread also struggles to explain WHY this battle is of such crucial importance in the balance of the Blood War. But the answer is right there just waiting for someone to pick it up and run with it: Zariel has disappeared, leaving Avernus’ forces disorganized and vulnerable to the sudden demonic assault.

Regardless, despite the overall disjointed and discordant mess which is the totality of Season 9, both halves of this final adventure do an admirable job of delivering a satisfying and momentous conclusion.

• Grade: B-

REMIXING SEASON 9

As I just mentioned, Season 9 is inconsistent at the best of times. Large chunks of it are, sadly, utterly useless. So what are we to make of it? What can be salvaged from it?

I think the first step is to cut away the cancerous material and assess what’s left.

The first chunk of the season consists of the PCs leading a refugee caravan into Baldur’s Gate and then getting tangled up in a second-rate carbon copy of the Zarielite murder investigation from Descent Into Avernus. The refugee caravan scenario is passable, but the rest of this is (a) poorly conceived and (b) poorly executed. So my first suggestion is to cut it:

• Escape From Elturgard (DDAL 09-01): The PCs help defend a refugee caravan from the ruins of Elturel to Baldur’s Gate. Twist this up so that the murder victim is a Hellrider, establishing that the Hellriders are being targeted At the end of the adventure, Dara, the leader of the caravan, reveals that she is actually the Chosen of Ilmater and has been approached by two celestials with a holy mission. She was impressed by the PCs’ deeds of heroism and asks them to accompany her.

At the beginning of the next scenario (picking up from that exact same moment), Fai Chen appears, kneels before Dara, and says, “Milady, I have awaited your coming and am in your service. What would you have me do?”

And then Dara says, “We must journey to Avernus to save the souls of those Hellriders wrongfully imprisoned there. Can you take us to a place of safety within the burning fires of Hell?”

And Fai Chen smiles and says, “I know just the place.”

This sets us up at Mahadi’s Wandering Emporium. You’ll want to cull the disparate references to the caravan and its denizens from across Descent Into Avernus and the Season 9 adventures to give yourself an authoritative reference. It might also be useful to:

• Use a long-term party-planning or Tavern Time™ structure to bring the Emporium to life.
• Develop a more coherent motivation for Mahadi’s interest in Dara, preferably with some sort of conclusion or, at least, intended endgame.

Now ensconced at the Emporium and running missions for Dara, let’s simply pull out the adventures that are worth keeping:

• Faces of Fortune (DDAL 09-05): PCs arrive at Mahadi’s Emporium.
• Infernal Insurgency (DDAL 09-06): PCs raid a munitions dump.
• The Diabolical Dive (DDAL 09-07): PCs raid Plagueshield Point and get the Bloody Hooves’ battleplan.
• Ruined Prospects (DDAL 09-09): PCs raid Weatherstone Keep to save a Hellrider.
• The Breath of Life (DDAL 09-12): PCs perform a heist at a devil’s party to steal an angel’s skull.
• The Swarmed Heist (DDAL 09-13): PCs invade a hellwasp nest to save another dead angel.

But now we run into a problem, because hypothetically all of this has been leading up to rescuing the Bloody Hooves, but those adventures are garbage.

What we can do is reach over to our copy of Descent Into Avernus and grab Haruman’s Hill and the Crypt of the Hellriders. To do this, we just swap a couple McGuffins:

• In The Diabolical Dive, instead of retrieving nonsensical “battleplans,” what the PCs instead recover is information indicating that the souls of Hellriders taken during the Fall of Elturel and the subsequent murders in the refugee caravans and Baldur’s Gate are being taken to Haruman’s Hill.
• In Ruined Prospects, the Hellrider in suspended animation is one who fled with Jander Sunstar during the Charge of the Hellriders, but later returned with an expedition who attempted to rescue their former companions. They discovered that those who remained loyal to Zariel until the end had their souls bound to the Crypt of the Hellriders and they attempted to rescue them, but ultimately failed.

Okay, so now the PCs know that the Hellrider souls they’ve come to save are at Haruman’s Hill and the Crypt of the Hellriders. What about the angels? Well, Dara needs those powerful allies to form a triad that can perform the ritual at both locations which will free the Hellriders.

(Throughout this section you could also have Dara uttering cryptic prophecies alluding to the ongoing events of Descent Into Avernus. For example: “The Tome of the Creed has been destroyed, clearing the path of salvation for these false-damned souls.”)

With all the pieces in place, the PCs mount raids on both the Hill and Crypt. The Hellriders are freed.

Honestly, this is probably a pretty solid campaign and you could easily have a big, satisfying conclusion right here.

But the last two scenarios in Season 9 are quite good. Is there some way we could incorporate them?

• Fang and Claw (DDAL 09-19): The PCs infiltrate a demonic mecha to save the Commander of the Bloody Hooves.
• Where Devils Fear to Tread (DDAL 09-20): The PCs pursue the Commander’s soul to the Abyss and then return, only to find themselves in the middle of a giant battle that will determine the future course of the Blood War.

Here’s my suggestion: While the PCs are mounting their raids on Haruman’s Hill and the Crypt of the Hellriders, a demonic strike team raids Mahadi’s Emporium and kidnaps Dara! Dara takes the role of the kidnapped Commander and the PCs have to go rescue her.

A few things:

• Structure the mecha raid so that the spectral Hellriders the PCs just freed can help. For example, the Hellriders can engage the demonic outriders defending the mecha while the PCs sneak onboard.
• Information onboard the mecha reveals why Dara was kidnapped: Demonic divinations have revealed that recent events in Avernus may soon leave the Stygian defenses vulnerable. To bolster their forces, the local demonic commanders have kidnapped Dara in order to offer her as a hunting sport to Yeenoghu in exchange for troops. Lots and lots of troops. (You might leave this mysterious for the moment and then later reveal that the “recent events” are the death and/or redemption of Zariel; or you might just spill the beans here.)
• When the PCs get back with Dara and look out over the battlefield, have Dara say something like, “I thought our purpose was to save Elturel. But I see now that task belonged to others. We stand here upon the brink, and I see with divine clarity that we have gathered the strength to turn the demonic tide. If we are brave enough to use it.”

Finding opportunities to lace this concept – that without the eternal vigil of Hell’s fiends, the multiverse would be overrun by demonic hordes – into the rest of the adventure (Zarielite cultists prattling Asmodean ideology; devils discussing Blood War logistics at the party; additional strategy documents found at the munitions dump or Plagueshield Point; etc.) will help sell this ending.

And then the PCs lead the Second Charge of the Hellriders while piloting a demonic mecha.

Go to the Avernus Remix