Go to Part 1

Let’s consider the Nine Hells as an exemplar and object lesson in how the Outer Planes make use of mortal souls.

Asmodeus is the original architect of Hell’s soul engines, having constructed a massive engine for waging the Blood War and containing the existential threat of the tanar’ri. However, Asmodeus himself is no longer engaged in the soul trade: He merely imposes a quota upon the Archdukes and Archduchesses who rule the other eight layers of Hell (and, by the extension of a fiendish feudalism, all of the devils who serve beneath them).

Zariel, Archduchess of Avernus, is perhaps the most direct example of Asmodeus’ war machine: Evil souls crawl out of the Styx into Avernus as lemures; they are then raised as devils to serve as troops on the front lines of the Blood War.

Dispater, Archduke of Dis, seeks secrets and covets souls which possess them. Having gained these secrets from the souls he controls, he uses those secrets as a temptation to corrupt mortals who, like him, crave secrets. (Or, in other instances, blackmail them into performing evil acts.) For Dispater and the devils of dis, souls are a memetic web of corrupt lore, the acquisition of which fuels its own growth.

Mammon, Archduke of Minauros, is the financier of Hell, profiting from the trade of souls in Hell. His soul-mongers “harvest” unencumbered souls from the Styx and see them either sold through the soul markets of the Sinking City (little different from the slave markets of the Material Plane) or forged into soul coins, the most literal manifestation of the soul economy of the Outer Planes. The regulations and valuations of the soul-monger guilds are managed through The Accounting and Valuation of All Things, a vast mass of ever-shifting regulations which govern the trade of all souls within Hell (and often beyond it).

Fierna and Belial oversee the pleasure places of Phelegethos, where their servitor souls are used as brothel stock, satisfying the terrible perversions of Hell with dark delights.

Levistus, the imprisoned prince of Stygia, is an example of what happens when a scion of the Outer Planes is unable to pay their debts. Levistus has a very limited portfolio of potential souls he can attempt to recruit, having been blocked from more lucrative markets by the decrees of Asmodeus. He is a prime example of how quickly a god’s fortunes can wane if their access to the soul-wells is cut off.

Glasya, Archduchess of Malbolge, is the warden of Hell’s prisons. Here Devils who have broken Asmodeus’ laws or Mammon’s regulations are sent for punishment. Thus the feudalism of Hell is enforced. (Glasya also secretly operates the Coin Legions, which are the thieves’ guilds of Hell.)

Baalzebul, Archduke of Maladomini, oversees Hell’s courts. Here devils are convicted and sent to Glasya’s prisons, but, more importantly, this is where all contracts forged between fiends and mortals are recorded, copied, and filed. If Minauros is the slave market, then Maladomini is the stock market.

Mephistopheles, the Philosopher King of Cania, maintains vast storehouses of lore and focuses his acquisition of souls on those arcanists who can help his laboratories delve deep into the mysteries of the multiverse. What is less known is that Cania is also home to the vast arcane machineries which ensure that the Nine Hells remain aligned with the soul-wells which form the foundation of Hell’s existence.

THE LORE OF LATTER DAYS

You may have noticed that much of what we have built here is based on lore developed in the earliest days of D&D. This lore remained largely self-consistent up until the end of 3^rd Edition.

So what about 4^th Edition and 5^th Edition?

The 4^th Edition of D&D fundamentally overhauled a lot of the game’s lore and metaphysics. The biggest change is the introduction of the Shadowfell, which, according to the 4^th Edition Manual of the Planes (2008), was “the definition of soul loosed from their bodies. It is the domain of the dead, the final stage of the soul’s journey before moving onto the unknown.” Souls linger for a time in the Shadowfell before passing through the Raven Queen’s maelstrom and the “final veil beyond which nothing is known.

… except there were also a bunch of souls scattered all around what were once the Outer Planes. Plus damned souls in Hell. And also damned and exalted souls in the Astral Sea. And also… Well, there wasn’t really a coherent metaphysic here.

In 5^th Edition, what we find (as we often do) is mostly just a tattered palimpsest of the lore which came before. The concept of drift is reiterated in the Dungeon Master’s Guide and the Monster Manual contains the familiar lemure and larvae as entry-level souls in the lower planes. The Monster Manual also suggests that will o’ wisps and a number of other creatures are mortal souls which have “failed to leave the Material Plane.”

Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes (2018) actually contains quite a bit of planar lore. Some of this is contradictory (for example, demons “generally have no regard for mortal souls and do not solicit them,” but elsewhere we find that exactly the opposite is true), but there are also some interesting tidbits:

• With the Shadowfell no longer serving as the domain of the dead, the Raven Queen has been revamped: She now kidnaps souls from other planes, bringing them back to the Shadowfell to serve various purposes. (This rather delightfully ties into our vision of planar power resting upon the soul engine, with the Raven Queen as the mischievous robber baroness of the planes.)
• Elves have a cycle of reincarnation, harkening back to the original soul vs. spirit cosmology.
• Abishai are specifically identified as souls which have been transformed into servitors of Tiamat: “Each abishai was once a mortal who some how won Tiamat’s favor and, as a reward, found its soul transformed into a hideous devil to serve at her pleasure.” This is superficially similar to the lore of abishai in previous editions, but can be tantalizingly interpreted as Tiamat having a personal channel of souls separate from those normally employed by Hell. Is it possible that there is a soul-well housed within her citadel?

In any case, the cosmology of 5^th Edition is broadly compatible with D&D’s original cosmology, and fits in quite snugly with what we’ve created here.

This post was requested by Alexandrian patron Glenn Rollins.

Go to Part 1

Deities & Demi-Gods is, in fact, the more or less definitive treatment of what happens after death in D&D.

AD&D assumes that the anima, that force which gives life and distinct existence to thinking beings, is one of two sorts: soul or spirit. Humans, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, and half-elves (those beings which can have a raise dead or resurrection spell cast upon them) all have souls; all other beings that worship deities have spirits.

The term “anima” didn’t catch on and the split between soul and spirit didn’t last much longer. (It’s somewhat present in the original Manual of the Planes (1987), but by the time Planescape (1994) rolled around in 2^nd Edition the terms “soul” and “spirit” were being used interchangeably.)

Upon death, both souls and spirits travel through the Astral Plane and are drawn towards either the plane associated with their alignment or the plane in which their chosen god resides. (If these are not the same thing, Deities & Demi-Gods and the Manual of the Planes are, at best, vague and contradictory about which one takes precedence. There are also other considerations to consider, like soul-selling contracts signed with devils.) In the 3^rd Edition Manual of the Planes (2001) this process became known as “drift” – the soul drifts towards their aligned Outer Plane.

Drift is not instantaneous. It takes days or weeks for the soul to arrive, and this is the reason raise dead can only work on the recently deceased for a period which increases as the cleric gains levels (1 day per level in 1^st Edition): the more powerful the cleric, the farther they can reach through the Astral Plane to pull back the dead soul.

The powerful resurrection spell, by contrast, can reach all the way to the Outer Planes and pluck the soul back from its “final” resting place. This can anger the gods from whom these souls are “stolen.” For example, there is a 20% chance that Anubis will force an offending cleric to perform a quest, a 1% chance that Tuoni will actually show up in person and forcibly claim the raised person’s soul, and so forth.

What is this journey actually like? According to Deities & Demi-Gods:

The road through the Astral Plane to their destination is clearly marked for the dead, but it is not free of peril. Some monsters roam the ethereal and astral planes at will, which is why burial chambers often include weapons, treasure, and even bodyguards to protect the soul on its journey.

To simplify this, you could perhaps say that souls drift through the Astral Plane in a state of quiescence, which is why characters returned to life with a raise dead spell have no memory of events after their death.  We could formalize this as:

• Souls take 3d10 days to drift from the Material Plane to the Outer Plane they are aligned with (either by their personal alignment or the god they keep faith with). Only souls still traveling through the Astral Plane can be affected by a raise dead
• Souls are not necessarily safe in their journey. Disturbed souls will be roused from their quiescence and able to defend themselves against Githyanki soul-marauders and similar threats with the equipment they carried with them in death and also any resources found in a properly sanctified burial chamber. (Let’s say a 1% chance of an adventurers’ soul being so accosted.)
• Once a soul arrives in the Outer Planes, it can only be returned to life by means of a resurrection Such an individual will carry back with them the memories of what they experienced in the Outer Planes.

If you wanted a more traditional “journey of the dead” to reach the afterlife, then you might have the spirits of the dead arrive through the soul-wells of the plane of Concordant Opposition (also known as the Outlands or Godslands). The soul’s drift will have carried them towards the soul-wells near or controlled by their intended plane of destination.

At some of these soul-wells, gods like Yen-Wang-Sheh catalog and sort the spirits, sending them to their final destinations. In other cases, the dead must continue their journey towards the afterlife (the Egyptian Book of the Dead was basically a how-to guide for this journey). Around others, fiends patrol, capturing the evil souls who emerge near the Abyss or Nine Hells or Grey Wastes and shepherding them to their final punishment.

You can imagine that some souls emerging through the soul-wells instead escape or find themselves diverted from their “intended” destination, perhaps traveling across the Outlands to the legendary city of Sigil or even fighting all the way back to the Material Plane. (If your group has suffered an unfortunate TPK, maybe they find themselves crawling out of an ill-used and little known soul-well, ready to begin the next chapter of their adventure.)

BEYOND THE FINAL FRONTIER

According to Deities & Demi-Gods, the key difference between a soul and a spirit is that the soul will remain in the Outer Planes for the rest of eternity, but a spirit will eventually be sent back to the Material Plane and reincarnated. This is rather difficult to square with other aspects of the cosmology, though, so it probably makes sense to follow the official product line’s lead here and just ignore it.

So what does happen to a soul when it arrives in the Outer Planes?

It’s reincarnated into an extraplanar entity.

We’ve seen this already with demons, devils, and archons. As Deities & Demi-Gods says, “The servants, functionaries, and minions of some deities (demons, devils, couatl, ki-rin, titans, and others) are actually spirits put into those forms for the purposes of the diety.”

Some of these entities closely resemble their mortal forms, like the einheriar of Valhalla and similar “eternal warriors” or those enjoying the changeless paradise of Elysium as a reward for their good deeds on the Material Plane. Others, of course, are completely transformed.

As we’ve seen, these servants, minions, and even the deities themselves can be slain in their home planes, in which case their souls are permanently lost and cannot be restored or raised by any means.

Thus we discover the fundamental soul cycle: The soul lives a mortal life on the Material Plane, then passes to the Outer Planes and lives a second life, which usually features the ability to ascend through many different forms. When that second life is complete (one way or another), the soul either comes to an end or passes on to some other form of existence utterly beyond our ken.

What about the other end of things? Where do souls come from in the first place?

Well, there are a few references to gods “creating” the souls of their worshippers. Moradin’s soul forge, for example, supposedly creates dwarven souls. But even if these tales are true, they don’t appear to be the primary source for the creation of new souls. Perhaps they are a wholly natural creation. Or perhaps the Inner Planes have been created as a vast engine specifically designed for the creation of mortal souls, funneling elemental, positive, and negative energy into the matrix formed through the procreation of mortal life.

Because if we read between the lines here, we can intuit (create) the great hidden truth of the multiverse: The gods are not in control.

THE SOUL ENGINE

Gods are, in fact, merely mortal souls which have ascended. They occupy the highest rungs of the hierarchy to which all beings of the Outer Planes belong, but they are still part of that hierarchy, not separate from it. This is rather brazenly understood in the lower planes – where lemures and larvae ascend to ever higher ranks of devils and demons – but it appears to be true in all of the other planes, too, even when its form is obscured in practice.

Once you understand this, it becomes clear that the economy of the Outer Planes are built entirely around the soul engine: Mortal souls pass from the Inner Planes, across the Astral Plane, and arrive in the Outer Planes. In the Outer Planes they drive towards primordial, ideological compass points — like shards of metal which have been “magnetized” towards those ideological poles by their actions in life.

As these mortal souls arrive in the Outer Planes, they are transformed into servitors or harvested for their power. Once again this is seen most clearly in the lower planes, where souls are transformed into the vast, endless armies of the Blood War and gods like Urdlen, the Crawler Below, eat the souls of its gnome followers when they arrive at its feet. But, once again, the same truth underlies the strength of the upper planes. What difference is there, really, between the devilish soul markets of the Sinking City of Minauros and the Exchequer of Souls in Yetsira the Heavenly City where the virtues of every archon are carefully weighed in a vast bureaucracy which controls the elevation and demotion of the heavenly ranks?

Souls are the labor and fuel of the Outer Planes. In some places they are literally the currency itself. They are the foundation of all immortal power.

Which means that the gods who control the flow of souls into the Outer Planes control that power.

From this, it follows that souls are not cosmologically drawn to dimensional coordinates because the planes are there; rather the planes are there because that’s where the souls are drawn.

Go far enough back in history and you’ll discover an epoch in which the Outer Planes were a primordial morass of demi-planes and proto-planes. As these planes (and the deities which controlled these planes) struggled for dominance, they warred one upon another.

How do you win a war? With soldiers.

And how do you get soldiers in the Outer Planes?

By controlling the soul-wells through which mortal souls are reincarnated.

Each of the eight major soul-well fields became the focal points for conflict. As the wars raged on, the winners slowly grew larger and more powerful. And as they grew, the nature of the conflict began to shift: Whereas previously there were a cluster of planes and powers primarily struggling over the Lawful Good soul-wells, another cluster of planes and powers struggling over the Lawful Evil soul-wells, and so forth, now some of the larger planes began launching assaults on more “distant” soul-wells.

This is, ultimately, why the major planes are aligned into layers today. This is not the result of some natural order: They are the result of planes and powers with like interests forming alliances of mutual interest against the other major powers of the cosmos.

Why layers? Well, each of the major planes is “aligned” with clusters of soul-wells that make up their base of power. Once upon a time, a soul-well could only “belong” to a single plane. By aligning into layers, however, the flow of souls could be directed through all of the aligned planes together. The soul-wells themselves are also the binding agent, which tends to weave them into the fabric of the planes themselves in disparate ways – thus, for example, souls flow into the Nine Hells via the Styx.

Mount Celestia, the Nine Hells, and Mechanus all claim to have been the first to master the cosmological complexities of aligning planes into layers, although some scholars suggest that it was based on lore first perfected by the baatorians, or possibly some antecedent civilization which gave rise to the baatorians.

The Averniad tells one tale from towards the end of this era of history, in which the final major planes were being aligned with one power or another and the Great Wheel as we know it was taking form.

Go to Part 3: On the Use of Souls

Avernus Rising, the ninth season of the Adventurers League, featured a bunch of Avernus-related adventures and content. As with my reviews of Avernus-related DMs Guild products, I thought it would be worthwhile to do a survey of these adventures and see what might be useful for the remix. I’ve also written up my impressions in these short capsule reviews.

A few things to keep in mind:

• I was reading these adventures with a specific question in mind: Can I use this in the Remix? That’s not what they were designed for, and although my reviews here are aiming for a wider perspective, it’s probably a good idea to keep in mind my POV here.
• Unless otherwise noted, these are not playtest reviews.
• There’s a guide to how I use letter grades here at the Alexandrian: 90% of everything is crap, and the crap gets sorted into the F category. All the other letter grades are an assessment of how good the non-crap stuff is. Anything from A+ to C- is worth checking out if the material sounds interesting to you. If I give something a D, it’s pretty shaky. And anything with an F, in my opinion, should be avoided.

For better or worse, I also won’t be reviewing these as Adventurers League adventures, per se. I don’t have a lot of AL experience and my primary interest is in home tabletop play, so that’ll be my primary focus.

REVIEW INDEX
Part 2: Betrayal in Blood
Part 3: Behind Infernal Lines
Part 4: Interlude at Mahadi’s
Part 5: Doors and Corners
Part 6: Red Hunt & Season 9 Remix

INFERNAL ENCOUNTERS (DDAL00-12): As with Baldur’s Gate: City Encounters (see my review over here), Infernal Encounters features a bunch of “encounters” which are actually scenario hooks. Bizarrely, several of these do not even remotely resemble an encounter. For example:

An eccentric merchant commissioned the construction of a keep within the Nine Hells and when he died, none of his beneficiaries were willing to claim it. It’s now fallen to one of the characters – his last living relative. If they think that getting to the keep is difficult, wait until they’re forced to clear out the devils that are trying to claim squatters’ rights.

This excerpt also highlights another “feature” of these encounters: Although ostensibly designed as random encounters for use in the Nine Hells (including a table distributing them throughout the Nine Hells), a baffling number of them are clearly designed to be used on the Material Plane and bring people to the Nine Hells. For example:

A local madman claims that his cat is a portal to the Nine Hells.

This largely renders the random encounters unusable, although there are a handful of encounters that can be salvaged (and which I’m using in the encounter tables for the Remix).

Of more use are the Random Devils in Chapter 2, which provide a lot of customization options for making individual devils distinct characters. There’s also the Impaler, a new infernal war machine that you can use to help vary those, too.

The book is rounded out with four “expanded encounters” which are various side quests. These are associated with some of the random encounters (although, bizarrely, NOT the encounters which are structured as scenario hooks). They are something of a mixed bag: One is a pretty decent raid scenario based on a Dyson Logos map, but another, for example, consists entirely of the PCs “distracting” some bad guys by engaging in fifty rounds(!) of combat while standing on a featureless hilltop. A third is a heist without a map (which is problematic, but it’s a micro-heist on a target with only two rooms, so it mostly works).

Overall, there’s some value to be found here, but it’s very inconsistent. You’ll need to sift a lot of chaff to find scant wheat.

• Grade: D

Note: The following epic adventures were sent to me by a patron who thought they might be useful and that they should be included in my reviews here. Unlike the other Adventurers League books we’ll be looking at, they are non-trivial to obtain copies of, so I won’t be directly incorporating elements from them in the Remix.

INFERNAL PURSUITS (DDEP09-01): This is a multi-table event, designed to be run by multiple GMs simultaneously for four or more groups of PCs. I’ve had a great deal of fun with such events in the past, and there are certainly compromises that have to be made in order to make events like this work. But Infernal Pursuits seems particularly stilted, with PCs not even being given the vaguest semblance of meaningful agency as they’re arbitrarily shoved from one combat encounter directly into the next.

Something else I’ve noticed in my (admittedly brief) experience with Adventurers League adventures is that (a) they’re clearly designed to tie in with the current adventure path release, but (b) the “tie-ins” seem to have been written on the basis of someone describing a conversation about the adventure path that they overheard in a noisy bar. So here, for example, characters like Mad Maggie are not so much off-model as they are completely different people with almost unrecognizable motivations and personalities.

There are some interesting resources here: Infernal Pursuits provides a different set of mechanics for handling war machines, including rules for stuff like rams and sideswipes that aren’t found in Descent Into Avernus. There are also two new war machines in the form of the Earth Ripper and Soul Reaper.

• Grade: D

HELLFIRE REQUIEM (DDEP09-02): This is another multi-table event that takes place in the village of Torm’s Hand, an otherwise unknown settlement supposedly “on the outskirts of Baldur’s Gate.” Here the recently deceased paladin Klysandral is being laid to rest and his mortal remains transformed into holy relics. Asmodeus is unamused and has sent agents to suck the whole temple into Avernus so that Klysandral’s remains can be corrupted.

(Grand Duke Ravengard is also in attendance, and frankly I’m going to stop going to places he’s visiting. Get sucked into Hell once, shame on Asmodeus. Get sucked into Hell twice, shame on you.)

Compared to Infernal Pursuits, the interactive elements between the tables are handled quite well and look to be very interesting and dynamic in actual play. The adventure itself, unfortunately, is a fairly mediocre rehash of Monte Cook’s A Paladin in Hell. It is also plagued with sloppy design and confusing continuity. For example:

• The adventure opens with the PCs clearing out Asmodean cultists.
• But then it turns out that the REAL cultists working for Asmodeus are the Cult of the Dragon!
• But not all of the Cult of the Dragon! Some of the Cult of the Dragon are supposed to be your allies!
• There is absolutely no way of telling them apart! But it is mandatory that you rescue some and slay others, with no clear instructions for which are which!
• And then, despite having killed dozens of cultists, it turns out there is only ONE bad cultist! And it was one of the ones you rescued! Oh no! (I mean, the other ones want to free Tiamat from Avernus and bring an age of terror and flame to the world, but… I guess that doesn’t count for some reason?)

One of the weirder elements of this adventure is Grand Duke Ravengard making the PCs honorary Hellriders… which is a little like Queen Elizabeth declaring someone an honorary member of the U.S. Marine Corps. (I’m kind of baffled this adventure wasn’t set in a principality of Elturel. It would take little more than a few name swaps to make this true. Then just ditch all the weird and pointless Cult of the Dragon continuity and you’d have an eminently playable adventure.)

• Grade: D+

FORGED IN FIRE (DDOPEN2019): Forged in Fire is a tournament scenario with pregenerated characters. Three warlocks stole a puzzlebox from Thavius Kreeg. They have been captured by three paladins. But before the paladins can deliver them to justice, they all get sucked into Hell.

(Running into these three paladins and warlocks in Avernus could make for a fun random encounter. They could also be used as new or replacement PCs should the need arise.)

This is an exceedingly well-organized and well-presented adventure. Events are clear, information is presented when and where you need it, and the protocols for running the tournament are clearly communicated. The railroad is a little fragile (potentially being derailed if a single player doesn’t understand a clue or proves obstinate), but mostly serviceable as such things go. Reading this immediately after Infernal Pursuits and Hellfire Requiem was a night-and-day experience.

The opening scene is real humdinger: The characters are literally plummeting out of the sky above Avernus and, if they can’t figure out how to slow down, they’re going to go SPLAT! in the middle of the Blood War.

There’s a bunch of cool Avernian terrain features:

• Craters filled with bones
• Ichor bogs
• Weeping salt flats (the thin layer of salty water is formed from the tears of the damned and filled with howling, ghostly faces).
• Tar pit plains

And if you’re looking for locations to flesh out your hexcrawl, you have:

• Xalzair’s Library (featuring, among other things, a swarm of vampiric tomes!)
• Falgrath’s Forge (built in the middle of one of those tar pit plains)
• Bragacon’s Menagerie (featuring riddles and mazes built into a titanic sword)
• Yaltomec (a volcano formed from the petrified souls of the damned)

The first three are the abodes of the pit fiend patrons of the pregenerated warlock PCs (a quite clever device), but all are quite easy to plug-and-play in any campaign.

In short, Forged in Fire is a truly vivid and memorable tour of some truly unique and creative vistas of Hell. Well worth checking out if you can figure out how to get your hands on a copy of it.

• Grade: B-

Note: Because Forged in the Fire is not widely available, I have not incorporated these locations or terrain features into the Remix. But if you’re lucky enough to have a copy, I encourage you to do so.

Go to the Avernus Remix – Go to Part 2: Betrayal in the Blood

Souls objectively exist in D&D. They’re quantifiable, observable, and even consumable.

This turns the question of “soul” from a matter of abstract philosophy to absolute practicality; and one which is of particular importance to D&D adventurers, whether in the form of undead, raise dead spells, or interplanar adventures.

From this practical standpoint, there are several key questions:

• Where do souls come from?
• How can the souls of the living be interacted with?
• Where do souls go after you’re dead?
• And, given the answer to the previous question, what is the actual experience of being raised from the dead?

Over the past few decades, some of these questions have been given clear answers, others have been given partial answers, and some have been largely ignored.

A SOULFUL RETROSPECTIVE

Let’s start by taking a look at how the “soul” (and its disposition) in D&D have developed over the years.

Going back to the original edition of D&D in 1974, we will discover that souls are not explicitly discussed. However, there is the magic jar spell:

By means of this device the Magic-User houses his life force in some inanimate object (even a rock) and attempts to possess the body of another creature within 12” of his Magic Jar.

In Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry (1976) we find the first explicit reference to a “soul” in a similar context:

Demon Princes maintain their vital essences in small containers – their souls, so to speak, are thus at once protected and yet vulnerable if some enterprising character should gain the amulet.

In the original AD&D Player’s Handbook (1978) these became known as “soul objects” and the exorcise spell could be used to force souls within those objects to inhabit the nearest material body. (As a random bit of lore, in the Dungeon Masters Guide (1979) we are told that jet is a suitable material for making soul objects.)

These references may seem quite slight, but they actually tell us several important things: First, the soul objectively exists and, although it exists within a mortal body, it is separate from that body. Furthermore, magic can be used to control and even physically move a soul.

This theme is developed through the trap the soul spell, which is “similar to magic jar, except that the trap the soul spell forces the subject creature’s life force (and its material body, if any) into a special prison magicked by the spell caster.” This is referred to as a “soul prison,” and notably implies that souls can exist entirely separate from any material form or container (“material body, if any”).

Meanwhile, the mind blank spell and amulets of life protection will guard their users against trap the soul, fleshing out the vision of a magical struggle over souls. The Void card from the Deck of Many Things indicates that the “body functions, but soul is trapped elsewhere,” revealing that animate bodies can continue to function in a soulless state. Undead are similarly defined as “soulless monsters.”

One last mention of the soul in the Dungeon Master’s Guide indicates that an artifact or relic can be destroyed by causing “it to be seared by the odious flames of Geryon’s destroyed soul.” From this we learn that souls are not necessarily eternal; they can be destroyed.

These scant references to the soul, you may note, do not include any of the various magical spells and effects which can return the dead to life. These spells do not, in fact, discuss the soul’s role in this. The closest we get to such a discussion is the reincarnate spell, which doesn’t explicitly mentions souls, but does say:

Druids have the capability of bringing back the dead in another body if death occurred no more than a week before the casting of the spell.

The new body is created randomly by the spell, but the key insight in all this is that a person’s entire personality and memories are housed in their soul. Who you are as a person? That is absolutely and completely your soul. Your body is just a meat shell that houses it.

Similar material along these lines can be found in the early monster books. (For example, in the Monster Manual II (1983) nereids have shawls which contain their souls.) But we also find that phantoms are “soulless shells left behind,” which means that even ghost-type undead are soulless, not disembodied souls, and also reminds us that undead often retain the memories and (often warped) personalities of their mortal selves, even though the soul is gone.

So is there also some form of “memory” in the flesh that is separate from the soul? As a non-undead example, shades have “traded their souls or spirits for the essence of shadowstuff,” which is metaphysically fascinating: Did the soul get displaced? Destroyed? Transformed? It’s rather vague.

A TANGENT ABOUT LICHES

In terms of monsters, liches are particularly interesting when it comes to analyzing souls.

These days, the more or less defining trait of a lich is that they have a phylactery, which houses their soul, and they can only be permanently killed if their phylactery is destroyed. But this was not originally the case.

When liches first appeared in Supplement I: Greyhawk (1975) they didn’t have phylacteries at all, and this appears to have remained true in Basic D&D.

In AD&D, the Monster Manual (1977) says, “The lich passes from a state of humanity to a non-human, non-living existence through force of will. It retains this status by certain conjurations, enchantments, and a phylactery.”

But the exact function of the phylactery is not detailed and no mention of it holding the lich’s soul (or preserving their immortality until its destruction) is made. The Dungeon Masters Guide actually defines a “phylactery” as “an arm wrapping with a container holding religious writings, thus a form of amulet or charm,” and there are other phylacteries given in the list of magical items: A phylactery of faithfulness will alert the wearer of actions that would violate its alignment; a phylactery of long years slows the aging process; and a phylactery of monstrous attention is a cursed item which draws supernatural creatures to its wearer.

I’m not completely certain when our modern understanding of the lich’s phylactery was introduced, although it appears as such in the 2^nd Edition Monstrous Compendium (1989).

In the Monster Manual II, the lore of the lich is also developed into the demilich:

[The lich] has taken the steps necessary to preserve its life force after death. Ultimately, even the undead life force of a lich begins to wane. Over centuries the lich form decays, and the evil soul roams strange planes unknown to even the wisest sages. This remaining soul is a demilich.

Note that this means that a lich, unlike other forms of 1^st Edition undead, has a soul.

The demilich also has a trap the soul ability, but it can notably use those souls as fuel to create magical effects. This also permanently destroys the soul. (We’ve seen a brief reference to souls being destroyed before, but here we learn that it can be done through magical means and also that souls can be used as a resource.)

In the Fiend Folio (1981) there are also skeleton warriors, which were “forced into a lich-like state ages ago by a powerful and evil demi-god who trapped each of their souls in a golden circlet. A skeleton warrior’s sole reason for remaining on this plane is to search for and regain the circlet which contains its soul.”

A PLANAR COSMOLOGY

Other references in the early monster books begin to hint at what happens to a soul after death. For example, in the Monster Manual “larvae are the most selfishly evil of all souls who sink to lower planes after death” and quasits are “larva turned into a minor demon form.” We also learn that quasits who are deemed worthy can advance into type I or II demons.

One of the ways in which quasits can prove their worth is by stealing souls from the Material Plane. Similar motivations are ascribed to Erinyes (who are sent forth to “garner more souls”) and, from the Fiend Folio, styx fiends (who search for souls to take back to Geryon).

Devils have a similar progression, with lowly lemures potentially advancing to become spectres or wraiths. (This would later shift to the lemures becoming higher forms of devils.)

Demons are often described as stealing souls by murdering them, but for devils “it also typically requires a contract for the soul of the creature commanding the infernal power to obey.” Notably, chaotic evil quasits are described as targeting lawful evil mortals for destruction, stealing souls which would otherwise be claimed by the devils.

From this we learn that in the Outer Planes there is some form of competition over mortal souls.

Nor is this limited to demons and devils. From the Manual of the Planes we learn that lanterns are “the lowest form of archons. They are the spirits of the newly dead (the equivalents of larvae in the lower planes).”

But what are the Outer Planes?

In July 1977, Gary Gygax published the article “Concepts of Spatial, Temporal, and Physical Relationships in D&D” in Dragon #8. No information is given in this article about souls (either their movements or their final fate), but it’s significant because it lays out a rudimentary version of the Great Wheel cosmology for the first time.

For those unfamiliar with the Great Wheel cosmology, here’s the quick version:

• The mortal world is the Prime Material Plane. (There are generally understood to be an infinite number of these existing as parallel realities.)
• The Prime Material Plane is surrounded by the Ethereal Plane and various elemental planes, collectively known as the Inner Planes.
• The Inner Planes are connected, via the Astral Plane, to the Outer Planes.
• The Outer Planes are associated with the nine alignments – Lawful Good, Lawful Neutral, Lawful Evil, Neutral Good, Neutral, Neutral Evil, Chaotic Good, Chaotic Neutral, and Chaotic Evil. (Most of these planes are composed of multiple layers – for example, the Nine Hells have nine layers, one for each of the Hells – and there are usually a number of intermediary planes, too.)

In the AD&D Players Handbook, a revised version of this article with improved diagrams was included as “Appendix IV: The Known Planes of Existence.” It notably provided the definitive list of Inner and Outer Planes that would dominate D&D cosmology for most of its history.

The 1977 article also suggests that creatures which have immunity to non-magical weapons have the immunity because they simultaneously exist on multiple planes of existence and only weapons which similarly exist on multiple planes of existence can affect all their forms simultaneously. Some creatures exist not just on two different planes, but three or four (requiring +2 or +3 weapons, respectively). By similar logic, magical weapons can strike creatures on the Ethereal or Astral Planes because the weapon is co-linear with those planes. There’s also a suggestion that special materials (silver, cold iron, etc.) can also strike in both planes simultaneously (and I was struck by the idea that each such material could be associated with a specific plane).

This idea was dropped, but I think it’s rather interesting. It probably has a minimal impact on the subject of souls, although if we were to combine it with the concept that the soul and body are separable, we could certainly postulate that Outer Planar creatures who are summoned to the Material Plane only appear there in the form of their physical body; with their soul remaining safely in the Outer Planes. We could further refine this idea by suggesting that the magical weapons do not actually strike all the way to the Outer Planes, but rather can affect the connection between the Outer Planar entity’s manifestation and their soul (something akin to the silver cord which connects mortal souls to their bodies when traveling through the Astral Plane).

This would provide a more detailed metaphysical principle for why, as described in Deities & Demi-Gods (1980), gods, demons, and so forth cannot be permanently slain on the Material Plane:

If any servant or minion of a deity (or even the deity itself) is slain on its home plane, that being is absolutely and irrevocably dead. No power in the multiverse can restore that being, including action by other deities. In one’s own plane a being is figuratively backed into a corner, with nowhere for the spirit to go upon death.

Go to Part 2: The Final Frontier

We’ve reached the end of combat and the last bad guy is down to the dregs of his hit points. One of the players makes an attack roll… He hits!

And the Game Master says, “Don’t bother rolling damage! He’s dead!”

Don’t do this.

Before we delve into why this is a bad idea, let’s first talk about why the impulse exists: The combat is clearly coming to a conclusion and the remaining combatant poses no meaningful threat to the PCs, so there’s no longer any tension or meaningful stakes in the scene; it’s been reduced to a rote resolution. Heck! The bad guy might only have one or two hit points left, so the outcome really IS predetermined here, so why bother rolling the damage dice?

This is pointless! Let’s wrap it up!

This impulse is not necessarily wrong. It’s just mistimed.

The key thing here is the ownership of the win. When a player rolls a successful attack, deals damage, and the bad guy dies, that’s something that THEY did. They own that moment.

If you, as the GM, interrupt that process, and declare a fiat success, you take that moment away from them: They didn’t kill the monster; you did.

It’s a subtle distinction, and it won’t always result in the moment getting deflated, but it’ll happen often enough that it’s worth steering clear of this technique. Particularly since the benefit you’re getting is so minor: You’re saving… what? Fifteen seconds by having them skip the damage roll?

OTHER OPTIONS

The obvious alternative it to just let them roll the damage and then announce the result.

That works if the damage kills the bad guy anyways. But what if the attack doesn’t quite deal enough damage to finish the job? This fight is boring! It’s time to be done with it!

First, double-check to make sure that’s actually true. As the GM, the fight has become boring because you can see the numbers and the outcome has become certain. In your role of playing the bad guys, you have lost meaningful agency and that’s boring. But your experience here may not mirror the players: they haven’t lost agency. In fact, they’re about to reap the rewards of their agency! They’re going to win! Winning is exciting!

Second, if it IS time for the fight to be done, the next easiest option is to fudge the bad guy’s hit points. I’m generally not a big fan of fudging, but it’s probably just fine here. You aren’t actually changing the ultimate outcome here (which is where all the various problems with fudging come from); you’re just speeding it up.

Another option is to not initiate the attack roll. When the player says, “I attack the monster with my sword!” you immediately assume they have successfully done that and describe the outcome. This is, in fact, in keeping with the Art of Rulings: The player has announced an intention to kill the monster. You know that this will definitely succeed. So the appropriate ruling is actually default to yes.

You might not think this would make a difference. It seems virtually indistinguishable from interrupting the damage roll! And there is still some risk here (from the declaration of intention, the player has a mental momentum reinforced by the rhythms of the combat system that’s driving them towards the attack roll, and interrupting that momentum can be disruptive), but in my experience it’s much less likely to cause a problem.

And you can enhance this technique by empowering the player’s agency: When they say, “I attack the monster with my sword!” you can ask the players to describe the coup de grace. “Agnarr’s mighty blow finishes off the goblin! What does that look like?”

Another alternative, if the combat is lagging and you’re concerned the current PC’s attack may not deal enough damage to end it if they roll poorly on the damage dice, is to tell them how many hit points the monster has left before they roll the damage dice. This is almost the exact opposite of fudging the monster’s remaining hit points, effectively blocking you from using that technique.

The reason this works is that knowing the damage needed puts the table’s intense focus on the damage roll: Everyone knows exactly what needs to be rolled, the tension will build as the dice are picked up, and then explosively release (either in triumph or failure) as the result is revealed. If the bad guy dies: Great! You’ve injected that moment with a little extra oomph!

If the bad guy doesn’t die? That’s okay! You’ve still clearly framed that this is the Final Countdown (so to speak) and that focus will tend to carry forward to the next player’s attack.

Yet another option is to remove the moment entirely by training your players to roll attack and damage simultaneously (as described in Fistfuls of Dice).

END IT EARLIER

Taking a step back, it can also be useful to consider how we got to this specific moment: How could we have avoided getting to the point where a combat encounter is ending on a whimper?

The obvious answer here is to end the combat sooner.

One option is to have the bad guys run away! The PCs take out the Big Boss and that’s the sign for the all the mooks to hightail it! Or, alternatively, the PCs take out a bunch of mooks and the Bandit King decides discretion is the better part of valor.

(Check out The Principles of RPG Villainy for a lengthier discussion of how and why having your bad guys run away is a good idea in any case.)

Surrender is another option, although that can have its own issues.

Alternatively, pursue the Default to Yes solution more aggressively: You don’t have to get down to the very last bad guy’s very last hit points to recognize that the encounter has reached its conclusion (and the end of the fight is now foreordained)! At that moment, a nice, clean option is to ask each player to describe what they do finish things up. (You can do this in initiative order to provide a little structure if that’s useful.)

A key thing here, though, is to make sure that there has actually been a conclusion! And that the players can feel ownership of that conclusion! (The example of the PCs taking down the Bandit King and then the mooks panicking is a good example: The combat ending is a clear result of the PCs doing something decisive and significant.)

I discuss this a bit in GM Don’t List #5, but a GM prematurely ending combats because they routinely get bored with the fights they set up creates a number of other problems:

• Characters built to enjoy their spotlight time during combat are being punished.
• Strategically clever players often spend the first few rounds of combat setting up an advantageous situation, and it’s frustrating if that gets prematurely negated.
• If players feel that encounters are being summarily dismissed (in a way that isn’t affected by their agency), their uncertainty about which encounters are actually being determined by their actions will make it difficult for them to determine when and how to spend limited resources. (Burning a one-use potion or once-per-day ability only to have its use become irrelevant is incredibly frustrating. If the use of that ability is what effectively ends the threat of the combat, make sure you emphasize that in framing the end of the scene so that the player’s agency is given its due.)

And, as I mentioned in that earlier essay, “All of these problems only get worse when the GM defines ‘boring’ as ‘the PCs are winning,’ while remaining fully engaged and excited as long as his bad guys have the upper hand.”

With those words of caution in mind, though, the art of knowing when a combat encounter is effectively done (or, perhaps, when a combat encounter is done being effective) is a really important part of your skill set as a GM.

(For a wider discussion of how to effectively end scenes, see The Art of Pacing.)

The key thing is to make sure that the players feel ownership over what happens: That THEY were the ones who won the fight.

If in doubt, have the bad guys run away and let it play out. Player agency can persist through that decision, so you have a much wider margin of error.