The Dweredell Project aims to expand the city-state of Dweredell, which originally appeared as a brief gazetteer you can find here, into a tri-crawl featuring a hexcrawl, megadungeon, and urbancrawl. I’m not ready to officially launch the Dweredell Project. This isn’t even really a sneak peek. But I had a request to share the gods from my campaign world, so I’m pulling this material out now.

THE PANTHEON

The pantheon of the Western Lands consists of the Nine Gods.

• Athor, the Father
• Crissa, the Mother
• Itor, God of War
• Itehl, The Trickster / God of Craft and Civilization
• Sarathyn, the Virgin Goddess / Goddess of the Void
• Sayl, the Sun Goddess / Goddess of Life and Sexuality
• Tohlen, God of Nature / God of the Harvest
• Bahl, God of the Dead
• Vehthyl, God of the Enigma / God of Knowledge (Magic and the Unknown)

The gods are commonly arranged into dualities:

• Athor and Crissa, Husband and Wife / Mother and Father. The head of the Pantheon.
• Itor and Itehl, the Twin Brothers. They have an antagonistic relationship. Sarathyn often intercedes to protect Itor from the machinations of his mischievous brother.
• Sarathyn and Sayl, the Twin Sisters. They represent the twin sides of love (chastity and sexuality).
• Bahl and Tohlen, Gods of the Climes and Seasons. Maintainers of the natural orders.
• Vehthyl, the Lone God. He set in contrast to the rest of the Pantheon.

In some teachings, alternative dualities are given. (Sarathyn andTohlen, for example, are seen as gods of ultimate negation, while Sayl and Bahl are, in some tales, locked in a forbidden love.)

Another common grouping are the Four Children (Itor, Itehl, Sarathyn, and Sayl).

PATRON ANIMALS

• Athor: Eagle
• Crissa: Hawk
• Itor: Stag
• Itehl: Snake
• Sarathyn: Dolphin
• Sayl: Wolf
• Tohlen: Bear
• Bahl: Owl
• Vehthyl: Cat

HOLY SYMBOLS

Athor – Cross. Also known as the Cross of the Father or the Knight’s Cross, Athor’s Cross is the standard badge of Pantheon worship. It is also used dominantly in many Barundian heraldries.

Crissa – Ankh. Also known as the Arms of the Mother, Crissa’s Ankh is a symbol of motherhood and compassion.

Itor – Sword and Chalice. Itor’s primary holy symbol is a sword, but when Itor’s Sword is inverted it becomes Itor’s Chalice. As the sword it’s a symbol of martial prowess. As the chalice it’s a symbol of comradery and friendship. The two symbols are often joined as one (a symbol known as the “hourglass”) in heraldry.

Itehl – Daggered Cross. More formally known as the daggered cross, Itehl’s Dagger is a symbol of practical thought and logic. It is also the symbol of betrayal.

Sayl – Sunburst. Also known as the Wheel of Light, the sunburst is a symbol of life, sexuality, and fertility.

Sarathyn – Starwheel. Also known as the Wheel of Night, the starwheel represents purity and perfection.

Bahl – Heart of the Diamond / Eye of the Veil. Although Bahl only has a singly holy symbol, it is known by two names: the Heart of the Diamond and the Eye of the Veil. It is more commonly known as the latter, with the former being an archaic usage.

Tohlen – Crescent Moon. Also referred to as Tohlen’s Scythe, the crescent moon is a harvest symbol.

Vehthyl – Silver Serpent. Vehthyl’s holy symbol is the silver serpent. It takes several forms, including the serpent doubled, the serpent rearing, the serpent crawling, the serpent winged, and ouroborus.

SAINTS & AVATARS

The Saintly Orders consist of the Living Saints who have served the Nine Gods throughout history. Each of the nine gods have a separate order. Also known as the Chosen, these devout among the faithful serve as powerful conduits for the gods to channel their influence into the world.

The saints are also thought by some to be reincarnated, or at least their portfolio of service is passed on.

The Avatars worshipped as divine heroes in the Five Empires. They are sometimes described as the first saints; sometimes as saints who served the Pantheon as the whole (instead of being chosen by individual gods). In some tales each is associated with one of the gods, making them more like other saints (and also giving rise to the legend of the Lost Two or Lost Twins, who are supposedly the missing eighth and ninth avatars).

• Taran, the King
• Khazel, the Warrior
• Dorien, the Mage
• Ratuul, the Guide
• Massahl, the Rogue
• Arathan, the Pure
• Oruk, the Barbarian

At one point the Imperial Church incorporated the stories of the Avatars into its orthodoxies, but over time a number of heresy cults came to worship the Avatars as gods themselves. In an attempt to root out these heresies during the Time of Reflection, the Church sought to sever all ties between the Avatars and the Pantheon. Once the Time of Reflection came to an end, however, this position eventually softened. The Avatars are now generally seen as servants of the Holy Order. (Although, of course, there are those who keep alive the Old Beliefs.)

THE IMPERIAL CHURCH

During the time of the Dominion, and the years of darkness which followed it, man’s memories of the gods grew dim. But the Pantheon was never truly forgotten: The power of the Nine could not be denied by even the strongest of dictators, nor their light quenched by the deepest of shadows. The old beliefs survived in rural cults and backwater rituals.

The origins of the Imperial Church lie in the tumultuous time of consolidation which followed the Wars of Empire. Hundreds of disparate fiefdoms had been roughly forged into new empires, and it remained to be seen whether they could be drawn together into a new society. Pockets of rebellion and resistance began to arise, and among the most dangerous of these were the resurgent Pantheon cults.

The resolution of this emerging crisis came during the reign of Atal the Second. Upon his deathbed, the Seer of Aldoreil, secret Master of the Crimson Cult of Vehtyhl, had prophesied the coming of the One Who Would Follow – a divine messenger from the gods who would bring form to their voiceless words. The Second Emperor, who was also a secret member of the Crimson Cult and followed the Seer as its master, formed the Council of Vehthyl and charged them with finding the One Who Would Follow.

The Council of Vehtyhl spent long years in their search before finally discovering the newborn One Who Would Follow. Atal the Second proclaimed the newborn babe Novarch, the Living Voice of the Nine Gods.

In the Novarch’s name, nine Councils were convened – one for each of the nine gods. These councils were made up of the greatest prophets, messiahs, and religious leaders of the age. Each council refined their teachings and rituals into a scripture, and at a grand Council of Councils these disparate scriptures were unified into the True Teachings of the Holy Order. Those who had refused to participate found their teachings ignored and, in many cases, deliberately suppressed. The Church, with the Emperor’s support, had declared itself the mortal will of the Holy Order upon the Many Worlds.

The next several decades saw the Church consolidate its power within the Seyrunian Empire: Countless trinity churches were built. The ranks of the priesthood swelled. The remaining Pantheon cults were ruthlessly stamped out for their heretical teachings. (It was also during this time that many of the druidic orders were forced to leave the Empire, either fleeing through the Imperial Pass or up into the barbarous lands of the north.)

Then, in 103 YD, at the dawn of the Second Imperial Century, three Merchant Princes of Arathia traveled to Seyrun in the guise of common merchant captains. They presented themselves before the Novarch and for three days they listened to his teachings. At the end of the three days, they had become faithful followers of the Imperial Church. It was the beginning of the Great Conversion.

The Imperial Church spread like wildfire through the Arathian lands. Within the decade every Arathian merchant caravan carried with it at least one priest of the Church — missionaries who spread the true teachings to every corner of the known world.

Barund’s outer lands had already become home to a significant number of the Church’s followers as a result of frequent travel beyond the Pythian. Now, with the Arathian merchants as a focal point, the faith was spreading through Barund’s inner lands as well. In 127 YD, at the request of the King, the Novarch came to Barund. After several weeks of discussion, the King, along with the entire royal family, officially converted to the true teachings of the Imperial Church. The Novarch then performed the Holy Coronation, anointing the King with his holy blood. The Line of Kings, like the Atalian Dynasty, was now recognized as a divine bloodright.

CHURCH HIERARCHY:

Robes:

• White with Blue Bands: Novitiates
• White: Priests
• Purple: Prelates
• Purple with Gold: Prelates of Barund
• Silver: Silver Fatar
• Gold: Gold Fatar
• Red: Novarch

Priests: Priests are also referred to as Fathers/Mothers, while Lesser Priests are known as Brothers/Sisters.

Chapels: Chapels are minor places of worship. They are watched over by Lesser Priests and typically dedicated to a particular saint.

Trinity Churches: Also known as the “lesser churches”, each trinity church is organized around a trinity of the gods. They are watched over by Priests or (in the case of more important churches) Prelates.

Solitary Churches: Unlike the trinity churches, the solitary churches (or cathedrals) are each dedicated to the worship of a single god. There are only nine solitary churches for each of the nine gods (for a total of eighty-one cathedrals). There is a solitary church for each god in each of the Seven Imperial Provinces, one within the city of Seyrun itself, and one beyond the borders of the Imperial Provinces. These last nine churches are also known as the Outer Churches, and although the original intent was to bring in an influence from beyond the heart of the empire, in practice the Outer Churches are viewed as the least among equals. The solitary churches in Seyrun itself are also known as the Imperial Cathedrals.

The Prelate of Barund: The Prelate of Barund is ostensibly the head of the Church in Barund, answerable only to the Council of Councils and the Novarch himself. However, as a result of the Twenty Year War, there are – in fact – two Prelates of Barund, one appointed by the Church; the other appointed by the King of Barund.

Nine Councils: The nine councils represent the third tier of the Church’s leadership. Each of the Solitary Churches is watched over by a Silver Fatar, and the nine Silver Fatars for each of the gods forms a council.

Council of Councils: Each of the nine councils is headed by a Gold Fatar, and the nine Gold Fatars make up the Council of Councils.

Novarch: The leader of the Church. The Living Voice of the Nine Gods.

VENNOC REFORMISTS

In 742 the King of Astalia accused the priests of the Imperial Church of espionage. After a quick trial and political stand-off, the priests were banished and the religious practices of the Church were outlawed. The charges were probably a pretense. One month later, the king issued the Reformist Proclamation, declaring that the Imperial Church had lost its way and become an instrument of Seyrun rather than the gods they were meant to serve. The Reformist Church of the Holy Order was formed shortly thereafter.

Quickly declared a heresy by the Imperial Church and banned in Seyrun, Barund, and Hyrtan, the Reformist Church nevertheless found great acceptance in Vennoc. Within a handful of years a number of other “reformist churches” had sprung up throughout the Protectorates – some seeking to “recapture” the “true meaning” of the Reformist movement, others simply seeking to reach out to the Pantheon in their own way.

Outside the Vennoc Protectorates, the Reformists were initially rebuffed – even in Arathia, although the Arathian government never banned their practices. In 751, however, after the outbreak of the Twenty Year War, Barund lifted its ban on the Reformists. Although the Barundians were still resistant to the Reformist beliefs, this meant that the end of the Twenty Year War opened a gateway to the Borderlands for the movement.

During the Twenty Year War, the Reformist movement had slowly grown strong in Vennoc. Now, in the Borderlands, as in Vennoc, the Reformists were able to take root. As the movement grew in the Borderlands, it also began to spread back into Arathia as Arathian merchants brought the movement back with them.

In recent years, the movement has even found adherents among the lands of the Hyrtanian Alliance, and Hyrtan’s outright ban on the Reformist churches has been weakened to a set of strict mandates. Only in Seyrun does the ban on the Reformists remain absolute, and even there the Reformists have been making inroads. Secret inroads, but inroads nonetheless.

EXAMPLE REFORMIST CHURCHES

Reformist Church of the Holy Order: There are no less than a half dozen churches known as the Reformist Church of the Holy Order. Many state-backed Reformist Churches were created by the rulers of the various Protectorates in the early days of the movement – either as a personal means of severing their ties to the Imperial Church, or as a direct response to Astalia’s actions. Many of these have faded away. Others became independent entities, and most of those have since joined with the original Reformist Church, still based in Astalia.

The People’s Councils: A recent creation of the Reformist movement are the People’s Councils. The People’s Councils believe that the Nine Councils should be true democracies, with all of the faithful participating in each decision. Although popular to some extent, the movement has currently stagnated on logistical problems: They can’t figure out how to organize themselves into anything other than a local group without sacrificing their tenets.

Reformist Church of the Mother and the Father: One of the earliest of the Reformist churches, the Reformist Church of the Mother and the Father believes that Athor and Crissa hold a pre-eminent place within the Holy Order. They believe that the only true means of reaching out to the gods is through the Mother and the Father.

Church of the Three Trinities: Believes that Athor/Crissa/Itor, Sarathyn/Sayl/Bahl, and Itehl/Vehthyl/Tohlen are each individual gods. The doctrine of the Church is confused, but since the religious practices include massive weekly orgies, it’s proven to be quite popular among certain segments of the population. It’s generally laughed at and ignored by the other churches (although the Imperial Church, of course, frowns on it particularly).

Church of the Twin Sisters: Worships Sarathyn and Sayl. Extremely matriarchal.

EXAMPLE REFORMIST CULTS

Order of the Oak: The Order of the Oak worships Sarathyn and Tohlen as harvest gods. (Their interpretation of Sarathyn is… odd.) The Order of the Oak is primarily known among the agricultural villages of Amsyr.

The Cult of Jade: The worship of the Cult of Jade revolves around tiny jade miniature of the nine gods. The cult recognizes nine different types of jade, and each of the nine gods is said to possess “nine faces” – the Nine Faces of the Nine Gods – each represented by a different type of jade. (Crimson Jade, Black Jade, Green Jade, Gold Jade, White Jade, Blue Jade, Violet Jade, Silver Jade, and Diamond Jade)

HOLY BOOKS

The first Council of Councils organized the scripture of the Pantheon into nine texts, each named after one of the gods: the Book of Athor, Book of Crissa, and so forth.

Design Note: By and large, I have intentionally left large swaths of these holy books as terra incognito, giving myself — and others now! — plenty of room to insert whatever we need. A good example of this is when the time came for me to flesh out the Orders of Knighthood.

ORDERS OF KNIGHTHOOD

Any order of knighthood has three things in common:

1. They follow the Code of Law as laid down in the Book of Athor.
2. They adhere to the Martial Code as laid down in the Book of Itor.
3. They honor the Seven Compassions as laid down in the Book of Crissa.

The Code of Law is your bedrock “thou shalt not” stuff: Don’t murder, steal, enslave your brother, and so forth.

The Martial Code is essentially your standard chivalric ideal: Face your opponent fairly and honorably.

The Seven Compassions are a bit more philosophically complex, and are also referred to in some commentaries as the Seven Cares. The compassions are of the self, the companion, the stranger, the task, the thought, the memory, and the true. In other words, care for yourself, for your companions, and for stranger. Take care with what you do and what you think, and it shall be remembered. And if you can do all of that, then you will know true compassion. (For most people, the Seven Compassions boil down to “be nice to people” and “think before your act.”)

Collectively these are also known as the Way of Knighthood.

THE DEEDS OF HONOR: Although not an official part of the Way of Knighthood, the Deeds of Honor are intimately tied to the popular conception of “what it means to be a knight.”

The Deeds of Honor, as written in the Book of Itor, are a collection of legendary tales of valor, honor, bravery, and faith. In some ways they serve as a kind of “scorecard” or exemplar of heroic actions. “He lives his life by the deeds of honor” is a common saying.

At the beginning of Legacy of the Crystal Shard, there is an encounter with a crag cat. At some length, here is how that encounter is presented:

These hills are hunting grounds for crag cats, a cold-weather breed of tiger that is notorious for hunting humans as prey (a job to which it is uniquely suited thanks to its natural immunity to all forms of detection magic). Normally these predators stalk lone travelers, but the crag cats have recently taken to ambushing even large, well-armed companies due to the growing influence of the Ice Witch. One such creature lies in wait near an outcropping of boulders near the trail that the caravan is passing. It waits until most of the wagons have passed, attacking the last band in the train.

Ask the players what part of the train their characters are guarding. In addition, if any of the players have indicated that their characters are watching for danger, allow them to make a DC 20 Wisdom check to notice the crag cat.

If the heroes spot the crag cat, read:

As the caravan steers around the base of one hill, you notice movement in a nearby outcropping of boulders. Through the flurries of snow, you can make out the form of a great sabertooth cat creeping forward, ready to pounce.

The encounter begins with a surprise round. Only the crag cat and any characters who succeeded at spotting the cat roll initiative. If a character attacks the crag cat before it acts, the crag cat attempts to target that character when it takes its turn. If the character is out of reach, or if no one attacks the crag cat, it attacks one of the caravan guards instead, hitting automatically and knocking the guard unconscious. In either event, the crag cat’s appearance scares a team of nearby draft animals, causing one of the wagons to crash on its side as the beasts attempt to flee.

After the surprise round, have the rest of the characters roll for initiative and continue with the encounter.

If the heroes do not spot the crag cat, read:

As the caravan steers around the base of one hill, you suddenly hear the cream of horses and the shouting of riders coming from the back of the train. Through the snow, you can make out the figure of giant saber-toothed cat looming over a caravan guard, who is weaponless and pinned to the ground. The teamster of a nearby wagon fights to regain control of his panicked horses, but the beasts pull wildly at their harnesses as they attempt to flee, and with a lurch the wagon tips and crashes to the ground.

Starting Locations: Have the players roll for initiative and describe their characters’ response to the attack. No tactical map is provided for this encounter, so you will need to use your judgment in deciding whether the players’ desired actions are feasible. As a guideline, any characters near the back of the train can close to melee with the crag cat during the first round of combat, while characters in the front of the train must either use ranged attacks or spend a round moving in order to join the melee during the second round of combat. The snowfall is light enough that it does not hamper visibility or ranged attacks.

Meanwhile, Beorne Steelstrike, Helda Silverstream, and the other three caravan guards try to calm the animals while keeping an eye out for more cats.

Crag Cat Tactics: If ever on the crag cat’s turn it has no one engaging it in melee, it performs a coup de grace and kills the fallen guard. The creature then attempts to drag the body back to the outcropping of boulders. Otherwise, the crag cat stands its ground, attacking anyone who engages it in melee. It shows no interest in attacking the draft animals or any non-humanoid prey, and prefers to target small or lightly armored foes. Once reduced to a quarter of its hit points, the crag cat attempts to flee.

So that’s one way of prepping this encounter.

Here’s a different way of prepping the same encounter:

A crag cat attacks the caravan.

… that’s it.

ON THE SPECTRUM

To be clear, what I’m saying is that BOTH of these encounters – despite the radically different approaches to prep – can ultimately play out in exactly the same way at the gaming table. In fact, these are not  different encounters at all. They are the SAME encounter, prepped in different ways.

Which one would you rather prep?

Which one would you rather run at the table?

In thinking about these questions, however, we should recognize that this is not a dichotomy. These two versions of the crag cat encounter exist on extreme opposite ends of a spectrum of prep, ranging from lots of details being laid down on the page to virtually no details being prepped. And the latter, let us say “minimalist,” version of the encounter is one which can only come fully and smoothly to life in the hands of an experienced GM.

To be clear, while my own predilections are usually closer to the minimalist approach, it’s not actually how I would typically prep this encounter. For example, a tool I’d like in my prep notes would be the crag cat’s stat block, so that I’d have that information at my fingertips while running the encounter.

That’s really what this is about: What information do you need/want to have when you’re running your prep?

As such, this is a practical example of one of the central principles of Smart Prep: Don’t duplicate in your prep what you can improvise at the table.

The reason the minimalist presentation of the crag cat encounter can work is because so much of the lengthier presentation can be trivially intuited by a GM who is actively playing the crag cat at the table.

• “The crag cat will attempt to ambush the caravan.” This seems like essential framing, but answering the questions, “How would this encounter start?” or, more specifically, “How would a crag cat choose to attack?” is clearly something a GM can do during play. (And the nature of the crag cat likely to suggest an ambush approach.)
• “The encounter begins with a surprise round.” This is simply a reminder of how the mechanics of the game work. Nothing wrong with this. If you’re still learning the rules of a game and need mechanical reminders, it’s a great idea to put them in your prep notes. But obviously an experienced GM who has learned these rules wouldn’t need to repeat them in their prep notes.
• “If ever on the crag cat’s turn it has no one engaging it in melee, it performs a coup de grace and kills the fallen guard.” This is a tactical option. These can, once again, be useful, but are obviously not needed in order to run an encounter. (For the same reason that, for example, the players don’t need a list of tactical options before going into combat: The GM can actively play their NPCs the same way that the players actively play their PCs.)
• “The crag cat’s appearance scares a team of nearby draft animals, causing one of the wagons to crash on its side as the beasts attempt to flee.” This is a cool idea for something that could happen during the encounter. Such cool ideas can obviously be improvised, but jotting down particularly cool ideas that occur to you during prep can make a lot of sense.

And so forth.

Something else I talk about in Smart Prep is the hierarchy of reference: The rules you know and what you can effectively improvise will change over time, depending on both circumstance and your level of skill. Which means that what you need to prep and put into your notes will also change over time.

For example, if you’re running D&D for the first time, maybe you need to remind yourself how surprise works:

Surprise. Wisdom (Perception) vs. Dexterity (Stealth). Surprised characters can’t move, take action, or take reaction until end of 1^st turn. (Determine individually, not by group.)

Later you’ve mastered the rules for stealth and some other aspects of surprise, but you’re always forgetting exactly what a surprised character can and cannot do. So the next crag cat-like encounter you run includes a much shorter note:

Surprised = No move, action, reaction.

And then, eventually, you realize that you’ve learned this rule, too, and you no longer need to include that reminder in your crag cat encounters.

The same principle applies more abstractly to other facets of prep, too. Maybe you struggle to describe battlefields that aren’t just featureless plains, so it makes sense to fully prep what the encounter area looks like. Later you may find you only need to jot down one or two ideas.

(Of course, there are also other factors to identifying high-value prep. For example, if you’re using a virtual tabletop with battlemaps, you’ll obviously want to prep the encounter area for that. You’re generally not going to be able to improvise that in the middle of a session.)

ADD WHAT YOU NEED

Even as we consciously choose to avoid over-prepping and move towards the minimalist end of the spectrum of prep, I think there’s still a temptation to start with EVERYTHING THERE IS TO KNOW. That in order to prep an encounter, for example, you must start by fully actualizing the encounter and then identify which elements of that completely realized encounter need to be written down as some kind of mnemonic for remembering the rest of it.

This can seem super-logical, in particular, if you’re already over-prepping: You look at what you typically do and think, “What can I get rid of?

What I’d suggest is that you may be better off starting with nothing more than, “A crag cat attacks the caravan,” and then really trying to focus exclusively on the high-value information that it’s useful to add.

Often even the element you’re adding doesn’t have to be fully fleshed out. You only need to take the idea to the point where your improvisation can bring it to life. I’ve found that using bullet points can be a great way of keeping your thoughts brief. (Plus it often makes it easier to find and use the information during play.)

For example:

Crag Cat Ambush:

• Frightens draft animals.

• Attacks unarmored caravan members first.

• Drags first dead foe away to eat.

Each of these is a distinct idea, but you can also think of each as a seed that will grow to fruition when you plant it into the game during actual play.

Something to note here (and which can almost be used as a check to see whether or not you’re prepping too much) is that, because each idea is waiting to discover its final form during actual play, you have much greater flexibility in how each idea can be used (and, as a result, what its final form will be).

For example, consider the idea that the crag cat “frightens draft animals.” This might play out with the crag cat causing a specific animal to panic and tip over a wagon (as described in the heavily prepped version of this encounter). But it might also cause an animal to panic and throw a PC. Or panic and race off across the icy tundra. You could even reach in and grab this idea when the PCs make their Wisdom (Perception) checks: On a success, you might describe that as noticing that their axebeak has gotten suddenly skittish, causing them to look up in time to spot the crag cat getting ready to pounce. Or on a near miss, you might describe a partial failure by simply mentioning that the axebeak has gotten skittish (leaving it to the players to try to figure out what might be wrong).

Not only does this result in varied outcomes, but, as we’ve seen here, it often means that a single idea can be used multiple times to different effect.

In other words, as you begin experimenting with minimalist prep, you’ll probably find that you’re also naturally moving away from specific, pre-scripted ideas and towards fun toys that can be used in lots of different ways to respond to the evolving situation that develops at your table during actual play.

There are lots of short adventures available for RPGs like D&D, Feng Shui, Shadowrun, and Magical Kitties Save the Day. But if you want to do something more than the purely episodic, how can you take those adventures and weave them all together into a cohesive campaign?

This video is the first in what I’m hoping will be a new video production pipeline, featuring a dedicated editor other than myself. If all goes well, this should significantly speed up the production of new videos and let me get back to making regular video releases again. (To put things in perspective, I’ve had the raw footage for this video and three others just moldering away on my hard drive since the end of June without being able to dedicate the time necessary to get them ready for prime time.)

Good gaming! I’ll see you at the table!

Go to Table of Contents

As previously discussed in the Remix, there are at least two things the PCs might gain by raiding Zariel’s flying fortress:

• Zariel’s half of Bellandi’s contract (which can be destroyed if brought together with the other half)
• Access to the control room for the Dock of Fallen Cities (which they can use to detach the chains holding Elturel if the pact has been broken)

It’s also quite possible that the PCs might come up with any number of other plans, like sneaking in with a Bel-sponsored strike team to assassinate Zariel. Or they might be captured by Zariel’s forces, thrown into the fortress’ brig, and then need to escape.

There are two flying fortresses presented in Descent Into Avernus – Zariel’s flying fortress (p. 130) and a wrecked flying fortress (p. 118). The presentations of both are severely restricted by the limitations of their design. The wrecked flying fortress, for example, crams everything into the command deck so that it can be presented as a single, small dungeon map. Zariel’s fortress, on the other hand, would be impossible to tackle as a clear-the-dungeon style adventure with its vast legions of hell troops, so an implausible railroad sees the ship abandoned by all but a skeleton crew of twenty-two devils.

To avoid these problems, we’ll use an alternative structure. A Death Star Raid is designed for exactly this type of scenario. It’s discussed in more detail here, but we’ll look at the essential elements below. The adventure features:

• A toolkit of situational obstacles, including both active and passive defensive measures that can be found in the flying fortress.
• Entrances to the flying fortress, including the obstacles which will try to prevent the PCs from using them (if any).
• A flowchart map of significant locations within the fortress, including obstacles and objectives placed within some of these locations.

RUNNING THE RAID

This should give the PCs enough structure to make meaningful choices (without getting bogged down in navigating every corridor) and give you the tools to flexibly run the scenario (without micromanaging every imp).

As noted in the article on Raiding the Death Star:

Don’t feel trapped by your prep. Remember that what you’re designing are tools: If they’re in the brig and they blow their Bluff check, send in some stormtrooper squads. If they feel trapped, don’t think they can fight their way out, and they say, “There must be another way out of here! Can we get out through the vents?” think for a moment and then say, “Sure. That works. You can blast a hole in the wall over there and drop down onto the garbage disposal level.” You didn’t prep a garbage disposal level, but it makes sense that a space station would have one, right?

Since the garbage disposal feels like a significant location, you might want to add an obstacle to it. You could add stormtroopers here, too, but since the whole point was to get away from the stormtroopers (and who would bother guarding garbage anyway?) it might make more sense to add a passive defensive measure. Perhaps a magnetically sealed door?

Use this same combination of logic and rulings when running Zariel’s fortress and you should be in good shape.

RAID PREP

If the PCs want to get information about the layout, defenses, and other features of Zariel’s fortress before initiating their raid, there are several options:

• Explore the wrecked flying fortress in Hex H6. The layout may not be precisely identical, but will be broadly so.
• Detailed blueprints of the flying fortress can be found in the archives of Bel’s Forge in Hex H2.
• Questioning captured devils of the 5^th Legion (or making soul bargains for the information) can also reveal many details.

THE 5th LEGION

Zariel’s flying fortress is the mobile base of operations for the 5^th Legion, which is composed of the:

• 3^rd Aerial Cohort, composed of spined devils
• 7^th Infantry Cohort, composed of bearded devils
• 9^th Cavalry Auxiliary, consisting of several dozen war machines.

See The Ranks of Hell for more details on the organization of Avernian legions. The command structure of the 3/5 and 7/5 is a little unusual, with the flying fortress having two rotating officer corps:

• The Horned Devil corps, under the command of Signifier Uxtarthas, is currently out of favor and are stuck leading the 7^th
• The Erinyes corps, under the command of Principia Hathastus, currently have dominion and are leading the prestigious 3^rd

Each officer corps consists of an independent cadre of prima, triarii, and their Princeps. They are kept in competition with each other, creating a fierce rivalry for supremacy in Zariel’s esteem. This drives them to fiendish heights, but also creates the opportunity for clever PCs to sow discord and distrust between the ranks.

The 9^th Cavalry maintains its own, independent command structure under the command of Principia Vastarxes. They are not responsible for internal security on the fortress and, therefore, will be not be significantly featured here.

Legate Siccatrax Augustus, a pit fiend, is the commanding officer of the 5^th Legion. She is also unlikely to directly appear in this adventure unless the PCs seek her out.

Homework: The 9^th might be field-testing an experimental war machine. (Mobile Suit Avernus?) Or perhaps their war machines are simply significantly superior to the outdated crap the warlords are driving around in. Either way, pulling a heist to steal one or more of the 9^th’s war machines might be the price demanded by a warlord for their assistance.

OBSTACLES: DEVILS

The 3^rd and 7^th Cohorts are not intermixed in most regions of the ship and are never on patrol together. However, consider staging scenes or encounters featuring members of each squabbling with each other (their rivalry echoing those of their commanding officers).

Security Patrols: Your basic security patrol. Also the ones standing around guarding the random location the PCs need to pass through. Or the poor devils who respond to a minor alarm to “check things out.”

• 2-4 spined devils
• 2-4 bearded devils

Optio Squads: A full squad led by an optio. Use the alternate stat blocks from Enhanced Devils to make the officer distinct from the other devils in the squad.

• 4-6 spined devils (including optio)
• 4-6 bearded devils (including optio)

Primus Squad: A squad led by a primus.

• 4-6 spined devils + 1 erinyes
• 4-6 bearded devils + 1 horned devil

Design Note: Assuming the players are higher than 10^th level by the time they’re mounting a raid on Zariel’s fortress, Security Patrols should be an Easy encounter for them. (They will likely be able to take them out before they have a chance to raise an alarm with minimal difficulty.) Optio Squads are slightly more difficult, varying from Easy to Medium challenges. The PCs should still have no problems dispatching them in combat, but the risk of the alarm being raised and additional reinforcements arriving is higher. A Primus Squad is a very serious threat, posing a Hard to Deadly challenge.

Barlguran Slaves: These deckswabs are captured demons who perform menial tasks. Their actions are controlled through experimental cyber-technomantic helms (with lots of strange metal protuberances and glass tubes imbedded into their skulls). Some of the older models are attached to a kind of “mobile slave platform” that they wheel around with them (6d6 psychic damage if you sever the connection), but newer models pack all the gear into the demon’s skull.

Thavius Kreeg: If the PCs killed Kreeg on the Material Plane, his soul was damned to Hell… and immediately rewarded for his exemplary service to Zariel. Wreathed in a perpetual cloak of fire and given the rank of Triarius, the devil Thavius serves in a position of honor onboard Zariel’s fortress. He is constantly accompanied by his “honor guard.”

• Thavius Kreeg: magugon (The Book of Fiends, p. 170)
• 2 gladiatrix (The Book of Fiends, p. 160)
• 2 pain mistresses (The Book of Fiends, p. 175)

Design Note: What about Zariel? The Archduchess is unlikely to go swooping around her ship dealing with internal problems. She literally has an entire legion to do that for her. (To use the Death Star analogy: Vader comes looking for the PCs. Tarkin deos not.) If the PCs want to confront Zariel, they will probably need to seek her out. In other words, she’s an objective, not an obstacle. (Your mileage may vary.)

OBSTACLES: PASSIVE DEFENSES

Security Gates: Doors on the fortress iris open and close. They have razor-sharp edges and can be quite dangerous when shutting unexpectedly (DC 15 Dexterity save or suffer 4d6 damage).

Security gates use infernal technology and can be opened only with a password or physical contact by authorized personnel (or a DC 18 Thieves’ Tools check).

Scourge Ooze Doors: Some vital compartments and passages on the fortress are protected with “doors” formed from a thin layer of gray-black ooze. Known as a scourge ooze, devils can simply walk through these oozes (with a slight popping sound). Mortal flesh, however, is scourged away, dealing 10d6 damage.

Scourge oozes can be easily destroyed with holy water (simply melting away if splashed with such).

Demon-Detectors: These are unlikely to bother most PCs, but there are demon-detectors located throughout Zariel’s fortress. These take the form of brass eyeballs protruding (sometimes obtrusively, sometimes less so) from the walls. The eyeballs spin back and forth. Using magic, they can detect demons in line of sight within 100 feet with a Passive Perception score of 25. If a demon is detected, an alarm-type spell triggers alerts on the bridge.

Ioun Turrets: These technomantic constructions have 1d4+2 specialized ioun stones whirring around their top. They are operated by a soul trapped within a soul coin which is placed in a slot at the top of the turret. The souls can also speak through the turret and have a Passive Perception score of 18. (Souls who serve well within a turret are given an opportunity to advance in the ranks of Hell.)

The ioun stones cannot operate independently of the turret. Each ioun stone contains one stored spell. These are usually offensive in nature (fireball, lightning bolt, finger of death, and power word pain are quite common), although some may also be loaded with divinations useful for security (zone of truth, detect evil and good, or true seeing, for example).

Go to Part 7D-B: Fortress Raid Map

Go to Part 1

FINDING THE RIGHT STRUCTURE

You can get a lot of mileage out of node-based scenario design, but it’s not a cure-all. The goal here is not “make everything node-based.” The goal is identifying (or, in some cases, creating) the structure best-suited to running the scenario.

This also means that the more scenario structures you have in your toolkit, the more often you’ll see ways to crack needless railroads into meaningful gameplay or give purpose to meandering scenarios that are desperately trying to empower the players, but don’t know how.

In addition to mysteries and node-based scenario design, structures we’ve discussed here on the Alexandrian include:

• Raids
• Heists
• Hexcrawls
• McGuffin Keep-Away
• Party-Planning
• Sector Crawls
• Festivals
• Urbancrawls
• Tactical Hacking
• Between the Stars (Interstellar Trade)

That might seem like a big reading list. But here’s the thing: Any one of these game structures is the key to unlocking an infinite number of new adventures for you and your players. That’s exciting!

XANDERING DUNGEONS: Another place where I’ll look for opportunities to break up linear design are dungeon maps.

As with other forms of linear design, there are situations in which linear dungeons make sense. But, when it comes to published scenarios, most linear dungeons are just the result of lazy design (or designers who don’t know any better) and I will seize the opportunity to fix them.

I’m not going to belabor the techniques for doing this here, because I wrote a whole article diving deep into this specific topic called Xandering the Dungeon. The short version is that linear dungeons strip strategic play and meaningful decision-making out of dungeon scenarios, resulting in flat, simplistic play that frequently deprotagonizes the PCs.

Here’s one specific tip, though, when doing a dungeon remix: Add windows!

Obviously this doesn’t apply to subterranean labyrinths (usually), but there are plenty of “dungeons” which are just warehouses, slavers’ enclaves, or the mansions of nefarious nobles. A surprising number of these lack windows in published adventures, forcing the PCs to enter them through the one-and-only-door.

In addition to being terrible fire hazards, these buildings don’t really make a lot of sense when we think about how buildings actually work. You can usually fix them pretty quickly by jotting in a few lines indicating the locations of windows, instantly adding a ton of dynamic interest to the scenario by allowing the PCs to choose how they’re going to infiltrate or assault the building. (Or run away when things go poorly at the Fortress of Black Night.)

In addition to the examples given in Xandering the Dungeon, there’s also a practical example of this in the Dungeon of the Dead Three in Remixing Avernus.

PLAY- AND PLAYER-FOCUSED MATERIAL

The other thing I’ll look for in published adventures is material that has no mechanism for bringing it to the table.

This is surprisingly common in published adventures. You’ll read all kinds of nifty stuff, only to realize that there’s no way for the players to ever learn about it. This usually takes the form of cool background material, but sometimes you’ll find vast, Machiavellian struggles being carried out between NPCs without the PCs ever knowing any of it is happening.

It’s top secret, right? So, logically, the PCs shouldn’t know about it!

But if an amazing secret falls in the forest and there’s no one around to see it, does it make a sound anyone care?

Once you identify an element like this you can figure out how to bring that lore into the game:

• Make it a revelation and seed clues that allow the PCs to learn about it.
• Work it into conversations with NPCs. (If it’s an NPC’s dark secret, this conversation may or may not be with them.)
• Have the “secret” actions reverberate throughout the campaign world, creating ripples in the form of rumors, jobs, and other opportunities for the PCs.

There are exceptions to this, and it’s not unusual for an adventure to have a “hidden” elements that exist only to provide context for your rulings.

But if it’s awesome, let the players see it.

On a similar note, make sure that the PCs are the protagonists of the scenario.

Any place where the adventure says, “And then an NPC does something awesome!” think long and hard about how you could redesign that moment so that the PCs are doing the awesome thing.

Any place where the adventure has an NPC tell the PCs what they need to do next, figure out if there’s a way to let the PCs figure that out for themselves.

Failing that, try to make sure that quest-givers are observing the Czege Principle:

When one person is the author of both the character’s adversity and its resolution, play isn’t fun.

Specifically, in this case, structure things so that the quest-giver tells the PCs what the adversity is, but then the players need to figure out how to solve that. This is the difference between, “We need you to get Lord Cleverpants’ technobabble widget!” and “You will sneak into Lord Cleverpants’ castle through the sewers and steal his technobabble widget.” By posing a problem and then letting the players figure out how to solve it, you are giving them agency and the space to actively engage with the scenario.

(The quest-giver who gives them a list of everything they need, instead of parceling them out as sequential quests, is another example of how to do this.)

CONCLUSION

To briefly sum up the heart of a successful remix: Identify cool stuff. Add more cool stuff. Figure out how to reveal that cool stuff to your players and give them the space and structure to play with it.

And have fun!