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As the PCs leave Elturel, I think the time has come to take a step back and look at the big picture: They’re in Avernus now. So what are they trying to do, exactly?

This post takes a close look at how the adventure is currently structured (and the problems I have with that structure). Then the rest of Part 6 is going to present the big picture of how we’re going to remix this structure. We’ll want this big picture to get us oriented in Part 7: Exploring Avernus and keep us pointed in the right direction as we wrap things up in Part 8: The End.

QUICK SUMMARY: THE ORIGINAL CAMPAIGN

1. The PCs indirectly get a vision from Torm which reveals that (a) Lulu helped hide the Sword of Zariel before she lost her memories and (b) she talked to a couple of kenku at some point after doing so. (The NPCs are all convinced the Sword of Zariel will save Elturel, although it is not explained how or why.)
2. Lulu remembers that she met the kenku at Fort Knucklebones, so the PCs go there.
3. Lulu remembers that the Sword of Zariel was at Haruman’s Hill, so the PCs go there. (It isn’t.)
4. Lulu remembers two other locations that will lead to the Sword of Zariel, so the PCs choose one of them and go there.
5. Each location is the starting point of a different linear railroad. If the PCs follow the railroad they’ve selected, they eventually get the Sword of Zariel.

THE PROBLEM WITH LULU’S MEMORIES

As you can see above, recovering/following Lulu’s memories is the key to the entire adventure.

When the PCs first meet Lulu and she starts tagging along with them, we’re given the back story of what actually happened (DIA, p. 51) and a little table of random memories that she can intermittently recover during the adventure. This is clever, giving the DM a simple tool for keeping this central theme/plot gimmick consistently in focus as the campaign progresses.

Having made Lulu’s memories the central plot gimmick of Descent Into Avernus, however, you might conclude that the designers would make sure that her back story is crystal clear to the DM, ensuring that this absolutely vital continuity is easily handled without error.

You would be wrong.

In fact, Lulu’s back story doesn’t even make sense. For example, the vision from Torm says, “The elephant knows! After hiding the Sword she met some kenku!” And Lulu says: “I remember! The kenku live at Fort Knucklebones! Let’s go!”

But:

1. If you flip back to the summary of Lulu’s story (DIA, p. 51), neither the kenku nor Fort Knucklebones appears. This is an egregious oversight. However, you can eventually conclude that her visit there MUST have happened when “Lulu wandered Avernus for months” after Zariel’s fall.
2. Those kenku, although still alive, should definitely be dead. Zariel’s fall happened in 1354 DR and Lulu “wandered Avernus for months.” That means she met the kenku 140 years ago. Kenku only live for 60 years.
3. The kenku are at Fort Knucklebones because they work for Mad Maggie. But when Mad Maggie first came to Avernus (and before going to Knucklebones), “she “found pieces of a beautiful tapestry that chronicled the fall of Zariel.”

So within a few months of Zariel’s fall:

• Someone made a tapestry;
• The tapestry was ripped to shreds;
• Mad Maggie found the tapestry;
• Mad Maggie founded Fort Knucklebones; and then
• Lulu came to Fort Knucklebones (meeting some kenku who are, I guess, immortal).

You can kind of shuffle things around so that this makes sense (change it so that Maggie didn’t find the tapestry and become interested in Zariel lore until recently, long after founding Fort Knucklebones; which also explains why she didn’t pump Lulu for all the information she knows about Zariel the FIRST time she met Lulu), but it’s still a massive continuity glitch sitting right in the middle of a crucial scenario hook in the middle of the campaign.

And this is just one example! Lulu’s timeline is filled with contradictions and inconsistencies!

Descent Into Avernus positions this as THE central mystery of the campaign, but then it basically doesn’t have a coherent solution to the mystery. It’s like a murder mystery that can’t quite make up its mind about who committed the murder.

DIA: You MUST figure this out!

Players: Yes! We NEED to find the answers to this!

DIA: Find the answers to what now?

We’ll be sorting this out in Part 6D: Lulu’s Memories.

THE KENKU PROBLEM

Remember those kenku?

Descent Into Avernus says, “Find the kenku! They knew Lulu back in Ye Olde Days! They’ll have valuable information that will help you to find the Sword!”

So the PCs go to Fort Knucklebones. They find the kenku. The adventure says, “The kenku Chukka and Clonk instantly recognize Lulu, since they’ve met her previously.” And then… nothing.

Literally nothing.

The kenku remembering Lulu is, as far as I can tell, never mentioned again. And if the players decide to push the issue and try to get the valuable information they were promised, there’s absolutely nothing for the DM to give them.

This isn’t just a dead end either: Remember that the kenku DO remember Lulu. Even if they don’t have any vital information, there’s still a story to be told here — a lost fragment of Lulu’s memories to recover in a scenario which has been explicitly positioned as being about recovering Lulu’s memories. It’s not that Descent Into Avernus says “nothing to find here”; it’s that Descent Into Avernus just completely forgets the reason the PCs came to Fort Knucklebones.

It was almost incomprehensible to me that such an egregious oversight could have made it into print… until I took a step back and tried to understand the designers’ mental paradigm.

What we are, in fact, talking about here is the scenario structure. I’ve talked in the past about the fact that D&D (and RPGs in general) do a pretty terrible job of teaching scenario structures to new DMs. In fact, they’ve historically only taught one (dungeoncrawling), and in 5^th Edition they’ve even failed to do that. (5^th Edition notably doesn’t teach a new DM how to key a map — or even provide an example of a keyed map! — let alone teach them how to use it in play.)

Without primary sources, new DMs are largely learning their scenario structures from published examples. But it’s been decades now and the communal knowledgebase is atrophying. It’s gotten so bad that even a lot of professional designers don’t know how scenarios are supposed to be structured, so even the published examples that DMs used to be able to learn from are degenerating.

Which brings us to Descent Into Avernus: The designers don’t actually have a functional scenario structure. They’ve instead flailed themselves into a sort of malformed scenario structure which consists entirely of:

1. An NPC tells the PCs where to go.
2. The PCs go there.

The entire campaign is just this one “structure” repeated infinitely: An NPC tells you where to go. You go there and you find another NPC who tells you where to go.

So when it comes to the kenku, the designers aren’t designing a situation; they aren’t thinking of the game world as a real place. They aren’t even thinking about what the players’ actual experience will be (what they’ll be thinking, what they’ll want, etc.). They’re thinking of the kenku strictly as another McGuffin in a long string of McGuffins: They needed a mechanism to move the PCs from Elturel to Fort Knucklebones. The kenku were that device. The PCs are now at the Fort. Therefore, the kenku are done.

And, thus, the kenku are immediately dropped.

Furthermore, because this malformed structure is apparently ALL THEY HAVE, it seems to have become a kind of cargo cult for them:  They know that NPC A has to give some sort of “explanation” for why the PCs need to go to NPC B, but they frankly don’t care what the explanation is.

And they assume the players won’t care either. The presumption is that the players are onboard; that the players share their understanding that “the NPC tells me where to go and then I go there” is the one and only way that things work.

The designers expect that players to immediately transition to the “make Mad Maggie happy” mini-game they’ve designed without ever questioning the kenku about the thing they came here to question the kenku about because they literally never gave a shit about the ostensible reason the PCs were looking for the kenku.

I call this the Kenku Problem. And once you’ve seen it, you really can’t unsee it. It explains A LOT of the problems Descent Into Avernus has:

• Why do they keep putting Must Have Encounters™ behind secret doors? Because if the PCs haven’t found the NPC to tell them where to go next, clearly the players will know to keep looking until they find them!
• Why are the PCs told to go talk to people without being given any reason for doing so? Because the REASON is irrelevant. It’s white noise surrounding the operative phrase of “go talk to <insert name>.”
• Why are the PCs told what will be inside the puzzlebox by the same guy who tells them to “go talk to <insert name> to have the puzzlebox opened” (thus murdering the pay-off for doing so)? Because they don’t care about the mystery and they don’t think you’ll care either. The only reason the “mystery” exists is so that you’ll go talk to <insert name>.
• Why does the adventure assume the PCs will simply plane shift to Hell without having any reason to do so? Because an NPC told them to! (Why not have the NPC give them a coherent reason? Because it doesn’t matter!)

This superficially makes it seem as if the NPCs are all-important! But, ironically, they’re not. They’re just cogs in the machine; their sole function to point you to the next cog. This is why the adventure doesn’t care enough about Kreeg’s history to make it consistent. Nor Zariel’s. Nor Lulu’s. Nor Ravengard’s. Nor the kenku. Nor… well, anybody.

Ravengard tells you to talk to the kenku. The kenku tell you to talk to Mad Maggie.

Nothing else matters.

Note: There are twenty-nine (!) writers credited in Descent Into Avernus. It is quite plausible that when I’m ascribing creative decisions to the “designers” here what I’m actually doing is anthropomorphizing artifacts from whatever development process was used to create and stitch together all of those contributions. By the same token, the book still managed to get to press without anybody saying, “Hey… What do those kenku know about Lulu? Isn’t that the whole reason the PCs came here?” And it won’t stop a DM from getting wrong-footed by the adventure-as-written in actual play.

THE KNUCKLEBONES PROBLEM

Fort Knucklebones itself suffers from a common problem I see in adventure design: Interstitial content that’s not supported by the main line of activity.

The fort is filled with encounters that all start with some variation of, “While the PCs are here…”

• “At some point during their visit, the characters see the kenku…”
• “Characters who witness this can…”
• “As events play out in Fort Knucklebone, the characters notice…”

And so forth.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with interstitial content: The world should not be strictly reactive (the PCs do something and the world reacts); it should also be proactive (stuff happens in the world and the PCs can react to it).

But for interstitial content to work, there MUST be enough stuff for the PCs to actively engage with so that there’s enough time for the interstitial encounters to be triggered. And this is not the case here. Instead, as soon as the PCs enter Fort Knucklebones this happens:

They immediately meet Mad Maggie. They tell her what they want. She immediately takes them to a dream machine and recovers Lulu’s memories. Lulu immediately declares she knows where the Sword is. The PCs will then immediately leave. (Why wouldn’t they?)

No narrative space is given for the PCs to just hang out at Fort Knucklebone, which means that all of the “hanging out at Fort Knucklebone” encounters will never happen.

It’s possible that the fort was originally intended to be some sort of hub or home base for the PCs so that these interstitial encounters would play out over the course of several visits, but as written it isn’t. In any case, the encounters as written are supposed to play out before Maggie gives them supplies (because their outcome is supposed to influence that), even though there’s a continual stream of uninterrupted interaction with Maggie from the moment they enter the base until she gives them the supplies.

You can kind of half-ass a solution by simply injecting extra time into the main line of Maggie’s activities. For example:

• Instead of immediately meeting the kenku and having them immediately bring Maggie to the PCs, the PCs have to find the kenku and then go to Maggie (so that they explore the fort a bit and meet some of the people there before meeting her).
• It will take Maggie some time to assemble the dream machine. Probably a few hours should suffice, during which time the PCs can do all the other things.

If you want to full-ass a solution, though, you’ll want to figure out some sort of active agenda the PCs could be pursuing at the fort while waiting for Maggie to finish the machine. Otherwise they’re just twiddling their thumbs. Instead of Maggie automatically giving them supplies, for example, maybe they need to get properly outfitted for Avernus here.

As described in Part 6C: Quest of the Dream Machine, the Remix will, in fact, make Fort Knucklebones a de facto hub that the PCs are likely to make their homebase and return to multiple times.

THE CHOOSE YOUR RAILROAD PROBLEM

Let’s be blunt: Choose Your Railroad is a terrible scenario structure.

It’s almost an oxymoron. You recognize that choice is important, but then you immediately discard it in favor of a long string of Kenku Problem interactions lightly spiced with meaningless fetch quests.

(A quick digression on fetch quests: A fetch quest is any time an NPC tells a PC to get a Plot Coupon and return it to them; or, vice versa, when the NPC gives the PC a Plot Coupon and tells them to take it some place else. A meaningful fetch quest is one where the PCs care about the Plot Coupon and its disposition. A meaningless fetch quest is one where only the NPC cares about the Plot Coupon and the only reason the PCs are delivering it is because they want the NPC to do something else for them; as a result, the actual Plot Coupon and what you’re doing with it is inconsequential and could easily be swapped out for any other arbitrary items/locations.)

This is very much a variation of the broken Choose Your Own Adventure design technique, and it’s particularly painful here because Descent Into Avernus actually promises to deliver this incredible, open-ended exploration of Avernus before yanking it away.

But the problems with the adventure’s Choose Your Railroad go much deeper than the fact that it’s just a bad idea in principle. It’s actually difficult to explain how poorly this is done.

So the PCs have Mad Maggie use her dream machine on Lulu. Lulu wakes up and says, “The sword! The sword! I know where it is!”

(Spoilers: She doesn’t.)

Her “dreams lead the characters on a wild goose chase to Haruman’s Hill.”

First: There’s no clear reason given for why Lulu thinks Haruman’s Hill is where the sword is.

Second: Given the timeline, it’s fairly clear that Haruman’s Hill did not and could not exist when Lulu was in Avernus.

But, OK. Fine. This thing that makes no sense happens. The PCs go adventuring at Haruman’s Hill for a little while, they figure out that Lulu took them to the wrong place, and Lulu says:

“I’m so sorry! My memory is a little hazier than I thought! Having pondered my dreams further, I think there are two sites in Avernus that are important to finding the sword! Choose between a place where demons manifest and one where demons are destroyed.”

These are, of course, the two railroads.

But, once again, there’s no reason given for why Lulu thinks either of these locations have anything to do with the Sword.

And that’s because they don’t.

They have nothing to do with the Sword. They have nothing to do with Lulu’s memories.

THERE IS NO REASON FOR LULU TO SAY YOU SHOULD GO TO THESE TWO LOCATIONS.

And this becomes abundantly clear as soon as the PCs go to them.

The first one is a harvesting station for abyssal chickens. Four (presumably redneck) devils are harvesting the chickens and bullying another devil who is mentally impaired. These guys explicitly know absolutely nothing about what the PCs are trying to do, but if the PCs bribe them they can tell them where to find a guy who MIGHT know something that can help them.

Okay. What about the other location?

Here the PCs meet a devil who knows absolutely nothing about what they’re trying to do, but if they go on a meaningless fetch quest for him he’ll give them a letter of introduction to another guy who MIGHT help them do a thing that they’re NOT doing.

So to briefly recap here:

1. Lulu takes you to the wrong location.
2. Lulu tells you two more locations to go to, but can give no reason why you should.
3. If you go to those locations, it is immediately clear that there’s no coherent reason for you to be there.

So Lulu:

1. Demonstrates she can’t be trusted to give accurate directions.
2. Fails to give accurate directions AGAIN.
3. Descent Into Avernus than assumes the PCs will just continue along the “Path” they’ve “chosen,” even though there’s no discernible reason for them to do so.

And obviously this is a “reasonable” assumption because there are, after all, NPCs telling the PCs where to go and this is a Kenku Problem.

Fixing this was non-trivial. I wasn’t sure there WAS a fix without starting over from scratch, because the adventure had really backed itself into a corner here.

If I hadn’t solved it, of course, then we wouldn’t be doing this Remix at all.

The actual railroads themselves are filled with a plethora of problems (as railroads always are), but since we’re defenestrating the whole structure there’s not a lot of value in breaking it down point by point. Our alternative structure will be laid out in Part 6C: Quest of the Dream Machine, and Part 7: Exploring Avernus will look at how to run Avernus as a true exploration campaign.

Go to Part 6B: The Avernian Quest

Go to Part 1

NODE 4: HARRIET TUBMAN’S ASYLUM FOR COLORED ORPHANS

• During Jim Crow era, major orphanages would not accept black children.
• In 1905, two Quaker sisters named Anna and Hannah Glass opened Harriet Tubman’s Asylum for Colored Orphans.
• Located in a formerly abandoned hotel in the Rondo neighborhood west of downtown St. Paul.
• Anna died of typhoid in 1913, the same year that Minneapolis finally acknowledge that their municipal water was the source of the typhoid outbreaks and opened a water purification plant to solve the problem.
• There are currently 47 children.
• Small staff of female attendants (of which Perlie Coleman is representative). Marcus Washington serves as a maintenance man and is now the best thing they have to a security guard.

TANIT CULTIST ACTIVITIES

• 5 kids have been kidnapped from the asylum by Tanit cultists. (They’re taken to Node 7: Harris Chemical Plant.)
• St. Paul Police have taken cursory reports, but have concluded that the kids are just run-aways.
• The staff has been similarly unable to get the local press interested.
• If either of those things were to change, the Tanit cultists would back off and leave the other children in the asylum alone. (They assume this will happen at some point, but aren’t surprised it hasn’t yet: They picked an asylum for black children for a reason.)

INVESTIGATING

• Evidence Collection: New locks have recently been placed on the windows.
• Evidence Collection: There’s a chemical residue on the carpet Alex Griffin’s bedroom.
  • Chemistry: It’s a patented polysaccharide created by a Minneapolis company called Harris Chemical (see Node 7: Harris Chemical Plant).
• Streetwise: Canvassing the neighborhood will discover that a Harris Chemical Plant truck has been seen parked near the orphanage during the time of each disappearance. (See Node 7: Harris Chemical Plant.)

MISSING KIDS (DATE TAKEN)

• Thomas Young (August 30^th) – missing from his bed, window unlocked (staff did, in fact, assume he was run-away)
• Millie Clark (September 8^th) – snatched from the street
• Edward Robinson (October 10^th) – was missing during a headcount following a recess period
• Frances Allen (October 31^st) – missing from her bed, cheap old lock had been jimmied (staff replaced the locks on all the windows after this)
• Alex Griffin (November 11^th) – missing from his bed, window was broken, other kids in his room were slow to wake up (Medicine: they were gassed)

HANNAH GLASS

APPEARANCE:

• Prop: Photo of Hannah Glass

ROLEPLAYING NOTES

• Weary; in body, spirit, and voice
• Clasps her hands and wrings them with very small movements
• Fervently protective of the children

BACKGROUND

• Grew up in Pennsylvania. Her father was a frequent pastor in a “programmed” branch of Quakerism.
• She and her sister, Anna, became disillusioned with the program, believing fervently in the non-hierarchical structures of the faith. This estranged them from their father.
• In 1905, they opened the asylum.
• Anna died of typhoid in 1913, the same year that Minneapolis finally acknowledged that their municipal water was the source of the typhoid outbreaks and opened a water purification plant to solve the problem.
• She intends for Perlie Coleman to take over the asylum.

CLUES

• Knows the names and dates of the missing kids. (Very angry about the police and press being dismissive of it.)
• Can introduce PCs to Perlie Coleman and Marcus Washington.
• Reassurance 1: To get access to the kids.

HANNAH GLASS: Accounting 1, Bureaucracy 2, Oral History 4, Reassurance 6, Theology 5, Health 4
Alertness Modifier: +0
Stealth Modifier: +0
Weapons: fists (-2)

PERLIE COLEMAN

APPEARANCE:

• Prop: Photo of Perlie Coleman

ROLEPLAYING NOTES

• If all the investigators are white, she will be painstakingly polite until reassured that they don’t pose a danger. (This deferential self-defense also means that the PCs won’t get anything useful from her.)
• Always keeping one eye on the kids; will randomly shout out cautions to them or a kid might run up and she’ll scoop them up.
• An incredibly warm smile if she trusts you.

BACKGROUND

• Perlie is an African Methodist Episcopalian.
• She grew up in Duluth.
• Her father was lynched by a white mob when she was seven years old. Her mother immediately took Perlie and her three sisters and moved to Minneapolis.
• Her mother has gone mostly blind and can’t work any more. Perlie depends on her job here at the asylum to support her.
• She is a caretaker and teacher for the children.

CLUES

• She discovered that Alex Griffin was missing. She remembers a sort of chemical smell that was lingering in the air.

PERLIE COLEMAN: Assess Honesty 5, First Aid 5, Library Use 5, Reassurance 8, Health 4
Alertness Modifier: +0
Stealth Modifier: +0
Weapons: fists (-2)

MARCUS WASHINGTON

APPEARANCE:

• Prop: Photo of Marcus Washington

ROLEPLAYING NOTES

• Very protective of Hannah Glass and her reputation.
• Slow, powerful movements.
• A voice that sounds like a quiet river.

BACKGROUND

• An African Methodist Episcopalian.
• Began working for “the Missuses Glass” in 1906, so he’s been with the asylum almost from the beginning.
• He lives in the Rondo neighborhood. He usually walks six blocks to work.
• He’s been staying at the asylum overnight since Frances Allen was taken, acting as a sort of security guard to try to keep the kids safe. He’s incredibly angry with himself for not being able to stop Alex Griffin from being taken. He feels like he’s failed the children and Hannah.

KEY INFO

• Leveraged Clue: If the name “Harris Chemicals” is mentioned, he’ll say that there’s been a Harris Chemicals truck parked in the neighborhood recently. (He doesn’t think it’s significant and hasn’t connected it to the kidnappings, which is why he doesn’t mention it otherwise.)

MARCUS WASHINGTON: Assess Honesty 2, Athletics 5, Fleeing 2, Oral History 4, Scuffling 8, Sense Trouble 5, Streetwise 4, Health 6
Alertness Modifier: +1 (on edge)
Stealth Modifier: +0
Weapons: fists (-2)

Go to Node 5: Fatima’s Shrine

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When you’re remixing published material you are, of course, deviating from the original version of the material: Some stuff will be thrown out. Some stuff will be changed. Some stuff will be added.

In addition to changes in the text (which are easy enough to do), this can also impact the graphical elements of the scenario. For example, the Alexandrian Remix of Dragon Heist added the idea that the Stone of Golorr would be missing its three eyes when the PCs discover it. Since this wasn’t the case in the original adventure, all the published images of the Stone naturally featured it having all three of its Eyes.

This can, obviously, also affect maps: Once you start adding new locations or moving locations around, the map is, ipso facto, changing.

When this is GM-facing material, this is relatively trivial to deal with: Just jot a quick note or scribble something onto the map to remind yourself of the change. For example, when I sketched up the point-map of Elturel, I didn’t worry too much about places where the published map had minor deviations from the Remix material. It was close enough for the GM to use it without any confusion.

When it comes to player-facing material, on the other hand, you may want to make a greater effort to seamlessly align what they’re seeing with what you’re describing. For example, you might Photoshop the image of the Stone of Golorr to show it in its blinded state so that you can use it as a handout for the players without having to say, “It looks like this, except it’s missing these bits.”

THE MAP OF ELTUREL

In the case of Elturel, we’re planning on handing the PCs a beautiful poster map of Elturel. We’re also adding a bunch of new material to the city. How can we align those things?

First, when adding locations to the city you can scan the map and try to identify existing buildings that are close enough to the location you’re adding. For example, I knew that Symbril’s House fronted the Garden, so I just looked along the edge of the Garden until I found a building that “fit” my image of Symbril’s House. Similarly, I wanted Helm’s Shieldhall to be located in the northwest section of the city. So I scanned the whole region until I found a compound that I felt was close enough to what I wanted.

Finding buildings on a beautifully detailed map like Jared Blando’s map of Elturel can also feed back into the location itself. For example, the look and location of the building I identified for the Old High Harvest Home inspired my vision of the old temple having a huge balcony/patio on every floor looking out over the lower city.

But sometimes that can only take you so far. That’s when you either need to:

• Simply say something like, “You won’t see this on the map, but…” or “This is a little bit different than what the map shows…” (And this is frequently just fine. Players are flexible and they recognize that the map is not the territory.)
• Fire up good ol’ Photoshop.

If you recall, we did this previously with the Poisoned Poseidon in Baldur’s Gate. Now we’re going to do it again with a handful of locations in Elturel.

USING THE PATCHES

For obvious ethical and legal reasons, I’m not going to present a high-resolution version of the full Elturel map with these changes made to it. Instead, I’m going to offer small patches that can be easily added to your copy of the map using any image manipulation program.

To make this process as seamless as possible, you should buy a digital copy of Jared Blando’s map from his online store. The patches I present below maintain the same resolution, so you should be able to align them onto the image with just a few seconds of work.

(You can get versions of the map at considerably lower resolutions through various VTT packages, but it will be harder to seamlessly apply the patch.)

KEEP OF THE TWIN SUNS

Let’s start with the Keep of the Twin Suns. I placed this just inside the Dusk Gate on the east side of the city and described it as arching above the street to act almost like a second gatehouse.

You can see here how I simply expanded the existing buildings to make structure more explicit.

MAIDEN’S LEAP

If you look at the older reference material for Elturel, you’ll discover references to the Maidens’ Leap or Maiden’s Leap: A waterfall at the north end of the High District that cascades down into a lake below that flow into the city’s canals. I thought this was cool and actually worked that image of High Watcher Bellandi leaping from the Maiden’s Leap into the Night of the Red Coup before belatedly noticing that the cliff face had been eliminated from the new map.

If you look at the digital version of the map WotC scanned from Forgotten Realms Adventures, it’s pretty easy to see how this happened:

Although the falls are keyed (#3), it does sort of look as if you could just walk around the lake and up into the Gardens. The Forgotten Realms Interactive Atlas makes it clear, however, that this is not the case:

(A version of Elturel where the Gardens actually DO slope down through the High District bluff, with cliff walls to either side of the Gardens getting higher and higher the father north you go is also potentially cool. But the Hellturel map doesn’t really depict that, either.)

In any case, this patch should be sufficient to make it clear to the players that their PCs can’t just walk up into the High District from the north side (without climbing a sheer cliff).

THE CANAL

A key question for me looking at the map of Hellturel was, “Where is the lava coming from?” I decided to answer that question by postulating that the spring beneath the High Hall had been fiendishly transformed by the transition to Avernus so that it now spewed lava instead.

However, the original map depicted lava pouring into the rift from both sides, thus negating the explanation for how lava was reaching the east side of the city.

This was my solution: The rift must have been created during the Spellplague (for reasons previously discussed in the Remix), and it follows logically that the Elturians must have built a canal bridge spanning the rift in order to keep water flowing into the canals. Ergo, the lava could just cross this same canal bridge and continue into the Dock District canals.

Someone with better Photoshop skills than I could probably make this idea more explicitly clear on the map itself. But this patch is enough for my purposes.

THE RIVER OF FIRE

Speaking of the lava spring beneath the High Hall, I wanted to add the river of lava running down the center of the Garden because… well… it’s awesome.

The Maiden’s Leap is included in this patch. I present it separately above for anyone who wants to keep the cliff face but is indifferent to the river of fire.

THE DOCK WALLS

Finally, here’s something that I decided to just leave alone.

See those rivers of lava? They really shouldn’t be rivers of lava.

If you look at the original maps of Elturel, it’s once again not hard to see what happened:

Those blue lines were interpreted as water. But they’re not: Those are the walls around the Dragoneye Dealing Coster. That bright blue color is used throughout the Forgotten Realms Adventures to denote walled compounds and major structures (that’s why the buildings are also bright blue). You can see a similar example on the map of Daerlun a few pages earlier, for example:

Why not fix it?

Several reasons:

• I felt the amount of work required to revise the map outweighed any potential gain.
• I don’t think my Photoshop skills are good enough to make the alteration aesthetically seamless. (I would compromise the quality of the map.)
• I don’t think it matters that much. Whether it’s lava canals or a wall, the place is geographically distinct and somewhat fortified. This isn’t a major focus of the scenario for me.
• I, personally, think the walled Dragoneye Coster compound is probably about two times larger than it should be compared to the rest of the docks. (I want room for there to be some other coster companies, too, plus some independent operators.) I’d be happier with something like this (where the Dragoneye still have personal access to the Market, but they don’t chew up the entire dock front):

Your mileage might vary on any of these, of course.

Go to the Avernus Remix

Go to Table of Contents

We only have a few minor tweaks for the Grand Cemetery.

THE ABYSSAL PORTAL

The abyssal portal in Area G12 (described on page 65 of Descent Into Avernus) is how Liashandra’s Demons were inserted into Elturel.

GIDEON LIGHTWARD

Lightward serves Zariel and he wants the demonic incursion stopped. He may be quite willing to negotiate with the PCs and use them as his pawns to do so.

If the PCs don’t destroy Lightward, then he could develop into an emerging faction in Elturel on future visits: They return to find that his undead have laid siege to the High Hall. Or that the Zariel cults have unified under his leadership. The PCs might discover that Ravengard’s forces have been pushed up into the High District (where they are starving from lack of supplies), while the lower city is divided between the undead horde of Westerly and the vampiric servants of the Dock District.

THREE CLUE RULE TO THE CEMETERY

In the adventure as written, the PCs are funneled towards the High Hall and from there are directed to the Grand Cemetery. But this isn’t a necessary structure. In addition to the PCs simply navigating to the Grand Cemetery on their own through the Elturel pointcrawl, you could seed the scenario with additional clues that could pull them in that direction independently.

Any or all of the following could be used:

• Grand Duke Ravengard sends them.
• Liashandra’s demons come from here. Other factions may know that, or clues could be followed from the Dragoneye Dealing Coster.
• Alternatively, a random encounter with Liashandra’s demons could be a new group of reinforcements traveling from the cemetery to the coster. Perhaps they are carrying a map drawn by Ophurkh (DIA, p. 69) to show them the way?
• A group of Hell Knights the PCs wipe out are carrying written orders to destroy the portal beneath the chapel.
• Before they leave for Elturel, Traxigor mentions that he once worked with a priest of Lathander named Gideon Lightward who now works at the chapel in the Grand Cemetery.

REMOVING RAVENGARD

As noted in Part 5D, Ravengard never mounts an expedition to retrieve the Helm of Torm’s Sight. Removing all traces of this expedition has surprisingly little effect on the location and can probably be done on-the-fly. But here’s a quick guide to the changes:

• Area G7: Remove tracks.
• Area G11: Remove tracks. The golden Helm of Torm’s Sight still rests on the statue here.
• Area G12: Remove Ravengard and the bodies of the fallen guards. (I also like the imagery of the portal being placed under the rotating pool with demons emerging up through its surface, their bodies gleaming with steaming water. But I digress.)

RITUAL OF RETURNING: If a PC puts on the Helm of Torm’s Sight, they’ll be afflicted just as Ravengard is in the adventure. As written, the group will need to return to Pherria to perform the Ritual of Returning. Ophurkh might suggest Liashandra could also help them. (Which may or may not be true.)

We’ll discuss the precise vision the PC wearing the helm receives as part of the general discussion of Lulu’s memories in Part 6D.

THE COLLAPSED TUNNEL

In the ossuary beneath the chapel, there is a secret, collapsed tunnel described as going “To the Cathedral.” This is odd because:

• There is no matching tunnel at the High Hall Cathedral.
• The High Hall Cathedral is nowhere nearby and also in the opposite direction.

I think this is actually an abortive attempt at a video game-style quick exit from the dungeon. (The text now separately recommends that you don’t have any encounters back to High Hall, which is advice I recommend ignoring.) Or possibly they originally intended for the cemetery (which did not previously appear in maps of Elturel) to be placed directly next to the High Hall, but changed their minds at the last minute?

My recommendation is that this tunnel provides a potential exit from the city: It leads west, under the wall, and hits the edge of the earthmote that Elturel is floating on. Directly in front of the tunnel’s end, one of the large chains descends to the Dock of Fallen Cities below.

GIDEON’S TESTAMENT

This book is a testament written by a man named Gideon Lightward. It is written in three overlapping parts. The first part describes a series holy visions sent to him from “a divinity beyond divinity.” The second part is a series of transcribed dialogues between Gideon and another individual called the Woman in White. In the beginning, it seems as if the woman is a pupil who has come to Gideon for religious guidance. Over time, however, their roles seem to invert and now it is Gideon who seems to be seeking guidance from her regarding the visions he has been receiving and, eventually, deeper questions of metaphysical and philosophical import. The third part of the text is Gideon’s own philosophical ruminations upon his experiences and the conclusions he has drawn.

The overwhelming theme of the book regards the evils of demons:

The Woman: Tell me, O Master, of what is the greatest evil.

Gideon: It is that of the Abyss. It is the teemless horde of chaos which seeks to rip down civilization.

The Woman: And why should civilization be not destroyed?

Gideon: Civilization is that which gives life meaning. It is the font of morality and thought. Of art and of science.

Great praises are heaped upon those divinities which stand stalwart against this demonic threat.

It is the gods’ place to stand between Man and Chaos. It is their aegis which is their ultimate purpose, for behind their shield we create greatness and dedicate it to their honor.

One night, however, Gideon awakens from a strange and formless dream and sees a disturbing vision in his bedchamber:

There I beheld her. Her beauty was so great it seemed to burn my eyes. And yet through my blindness I could see her with greater clarity than any other sight that I have ever beheld.

Two great wings of white she had. And a sword of celestial steel so sharp that I could hear the hum of its edge. A weapon made to cleave the division between soul and mind.

But then I saw this essence of perfection cast away her sword. Her wings turned black. Her eyes turned to pits of fire. And a great and terrible purpose furrowed her brow.

The next day he speaks with the Woman in White, who tells him that she, too, has had a vision of this angelic being, and that its name is Zariel.

Gideon: But why should she have turned from the light?

The Woman: She turned from the light because it blinded her.

Gideon: Does not the light let us see?

The Woman: That is the lie of the light. We think only of what it illuminates, but not of what it conceals from us.

Gideon realizes that the Great Blindness – the Great Lie — is that the gods protect man from chaos.

… but it is not so! Helm? Torm? Tyr? Lathander? None of them battle the Abyss. They claim the glory of that war, but shed no blood in it!

This is why Zariel turned from Heaven. She saw the truth of her holy purpose; the Great Need to stand against Chaos. And she saw that her “holy” power was powerless because her gods had willed it so. Thus she allied herself with Hell! For it is Hell who fights chaos! It is Hell which sacrifices itself in the Blood War! Hell which fights eternal so that we poor mortals may eke out a few years of freedom upon the mortal plane!

Zariel is, thus, the inordinate exemplar of both sacrifice and service. Gideon has nothing but praise for her, for the choice she made, and for the great work which she does in the service not only of the mortal races, but for the balance of the entire multiverse.

Without her, all would become Chaos. And all those who do not stand with her are servants and abettors of Chaos, though they know it not.

Go to Part 6: The Rest of the Remix

Sometimes you want to use your weapon or your martial arts skill to do something more than just lethally incapacitate a target. For example, maybe you want to knock the White Witch’s wand out of her hands. Or shoot a fleeing nobleman in the leg to slow them down.

1. Define the effect you want to achieve with your called shot.
2. The DM determines a penalty which will be applied to your attack roll (usually -2 or -4).
3. If your attack roll is successful, you deal damage normally and the target must make an appropriate saving throw (DC 5 + the margin of success on your attack roll) or suffer the desired effect.

GUIDELINES

Here’s some guidance for DMs making rulings with these rules.

STUFF YOU SHOULD VETO: This system is not designed to bypass the normal rules for combat.

I want to shoot them in the head! The effect you’re looking to achieve here is killing the target. We have a specialized set of rules designed just for that: It’s called “making a normal attack.”

I want to gouge out their eyes and permanently blind them! Like killing the target, permanent maiming in D&D doesn’t happen until you run out of hit points (and usually not even then). You can kick sand in their face or give them a cut that causes blood to run down into their eyes and temporarily blind them, but this system isn’t about inflicting permanent damage or disfigurement.

I want to paralyze them so that they can’t take any actions! This is probably too strong. You might make an exception if the PC is taking advantage of some specific environmental factor (e.g., making them fall backwards into a vat filled with sticky ethereal goo); this shouldn’t be something that characters can just automatically do without special equipment or a special ability.

Similarly, anything that would normally be handled by the Grapple mechanics should be handled through the Grapple mechanics.

EFFECT MECHANICS: There are a number of conditions which are appropriate for a called shot effect — Blinded, Deafened, Frightened, Prone, Restrained. Other effects could include the target being disarmed, distracted, or having their speed reduced. Lots of stuff can be mechanically modeled by giving the target disadvantage or another character advantage against the target.

THE PENALTY: In determining the size of the penalty, think about whether the desired effect is mild (-2) or significant (-4). Anything that requires the target to spend an action to remove the effect should probably be considered significant.

Circumstances can also affect the penalty. For example, trying to blind a beholder is probably a lot more difficult than blinding a cyclops. Alternatively, give the target advantage on their saving throw if appropriate.

DURATION: How long should the effect last for? As mentioned above, avoid permanent effects. If in doubt, go with 1d4 rounds or until the target takes an action to resolve the problem.

DESIGN NOTES

Why let the attacker deal damage normally AND create the effect? The goal of this system is to make combat more interesting by encouraging players to think outside of the “I hit it with my sword / I hit it with my sword again” box. By allowing them to both do damage and do something interesting, you eliminate the action cost penalty where players avoid doing interesting things because their best option is always to deal as much damage as possible and end the combat as quickly as possible.

Why a penalty? Because otherwise PCs would need to make called shots on every single attack. Which, if the goal is to make combat more interesting, might seem like a great idea. In practice, however, thinking up the called shot when circumstances don’t call for one or where you’re not inspired by a cool idea becomes a mechanical chore. And chores are boring.

Why not use disadvantage on the attack instead of a penalty? Whenever a character had disadvantage from another source, they would be mechanically incentivized to make a called shot every single time… which leads us back to the same problem above, only it’s more ridiculous. (“We’re fighting in the dark? Guess I should be making exclusively called shots to the knee.”) The problems associated with hard-coded advantage/disadvantage are discussed more in Untested 5^th Edition: Situational Advantage.

What about the existing mechanics for Shoving (PHB, p. 195) or Disarm (DMG, p. 271)? You can still use those mechanics in concert with called shots. Taking the Disarm action, for example, should make it more likely that you successfully disarm your target, but the cost is that you’re focusing your whole action on that.

I also generally recommend that DMs look at the “Contests in Combat” sidebar on p. 195 of the PHB and spend more time empowering and encouraging players to come up with cool uses for contests; which is more or less the same philosophy as this called shot system but with the PC spending their full action to accomplish the desired effect. I suspect that using these called shot rules will, ironically, ALSO result in the players forgoing their attack more often to focus on a contest. (Once you get players thinking outside of the box, they tend to continue thinking outside of the box.)

What about the Battle Master? The Battle Master’s Disarming Attack ability is mechanically similar to a called shot, but completely superior (pun intended): They suffer no penalty to their attack roll AND can add their superiority die to the attack’s damage roll. The DC of the target’s saving throw is calculated differently, but should generally be higher than a generic called shot with a disarm effect.

(I actually dropped the DC for called shots from DC 8 + margin of success to DC 5 + margin of success to help make sure the Battle Master’s mechanical edge was well protected here. Playing around with that value to make sure that called shots feel worthwhile, but without becoming more likely to succeed than the Battle Master’s maneuvers is probably the key thing to watch out for from a playtest standpoint. In a pinch, get the called shot DC right and then just give the Battle Master the option of using that DC if it would be better than their flat DC.)