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There are three different versions of the High Hall depicted in Descent Into Avernus. The first is the fantastic graphical image above.

The second is depicted on the city map of Elturel:

You can immediately see that the map and image don’t line up.

The third version of High Hall is the one mapped on p. 61-62 of the book:

Now, if you kind of squint (and ignore the windows and compass rose), you could probably make the map of High Hall roughly match this bit of the Elturel city map:

But if that’s the case, then what’s going on with these bits:

What’s going on in those towers?

For me, personally, the most interesting version of High Hall is almost certainly the image: All those floating bits of wreckage held aloft by some strange magical interaction between the holy temple, the meteor, the ritual, and possibly just the strange nature of Avernus itself are tantalizing and unique.

I bring this up mostly because we’re going to be talking, in part, about stuff we’d like to add to the High Hall, and you can seize any or all of this inconsistency as opportunity, inspiration, or both when figuring out how to slot that stuff in.

ABUSING SECRET DOORS

In Part 3F of the Remix, we talked about why putting a Must Have Encounter™ on the opposite side of a secret door is a bad idea.

The basic structure of the scenario here is that the PCs need to go to High Hall and, once there, speak with Pherria Jynks, who will send them on a quest to find Grand Duke Ravengard (who has gone to the Grand Cemetery to retrieve the Helm of Torm’s Sight).

And, yup, they’ve got Pherria behind another secret door:

I thought this secret door might exist because the designers were trying to justify why Jynks and the refugees she’s protecting haven’t been killed by devils yet (because the devils haven’t found the secret door), but that’s not it: The catacombs are already crawling with devils.

As we discussed in Part 3F, the easiest solution for this sort of thing is usually to just remove the secret door. I’d basically do the same thing here, but with a twist: We’re going to leave the existing secret door in place, but have it lead directly to Area H16 where Jynks and the refugees are:

Finding the secret door is now a reward for the PCs: If you find it, you can skip the devil-infested catacombs.

Meanwhile, back up on the top level there are actually TWO altars: The one in H6 has been desecrated by devils.

So what we can do is make “stairways hidden in altars” a design feature of the High Hall. The secret door in the desecrated altar has been ripped open by the devils (it’s no longer secret and actually serves as a clue that there might be stairs hidden in the other altar) and leads down to the ORIGINAL stairs on the map of the catacombs:

We now know how the devils got into the catacombs and we’ve eliminated the secret door chokepoint.

FIXING SECRET DOORS:

• Secret door at H3 leads to H16.
• Add “secret” door (ripped open) to H6, leading to the stairs west of H15.

GRAND DUKE RAVENGARD

As noted, in the adventure as published Grand Duke Ravengard has left the High Hall and gone to the Grand Cemetery to retrieve the Helm of Torm’s Sight. Pherria Jynks tells the PCs where he’s gone. They follow him and find him having a metaphysical fit with the helmet on his head. They bring him back to Pherria, she performs a ritual which cures the metaphysical ailment, and Ravengard tells them about the cool vision the helmet gave him.

The net effect of all this is to needlessly deprotagonize the PCs: Instead of getting to be the awesome heroes who fetch the artifact and receive a cool divine vision, they’re the ones who get to go pick up the hero and then hear about the cool vision he got.

This can be fixed by simply NOT having Ravengard go to get the Helm of Torm’s Sight. Instead, Ravengard is still in the High Hall when the PCs arrive. He and/or Pherria Jynks know about the Helm of Torm’s Sight, but they haven’t been able to spare the resources to retrieve it. Oh, hey! PCs!

(This notably requires almost no changes to the Grand Cemetery except to ignore the descriptions of Ravengard and his men. We’ll look at this in more detail in Part 5E.)

THE RAVENGARD SITUATION: Ravengard came to Elturel on a diplomatic mission to discuss the rise of cultists in the Fields of the Dead. (This includes the Cult of the Dead Three and Tiamat’s Cult of the Dragon.) When Elturel was sucked into Hell, the wary Ravengard managed to rally his men and cut his way out of an ambush by the newly erupted Hell Knights. Gathering a motley band of lower-ranking hellriders and paladins who had not been immediately transformed, Ravengard managed to secure the High Hall in the confusion following a meteor strike that wiped out a third of the fortress.

Ravengard came to Elturel with twenty men. Only twelve of them survive, but his ranks have been strengthened with Elturian knights. His current force – which has come to be known as Ravengard’s Peacekeepers — numbers slightly over forty, but most of them are out in the city (gathering supplies, seeking additional allies, trying to secure the city and bring succor its citizens). At the moment only six other knights are with him here in the High Hall.

Ravengard actually stretched his forces too thin. When a group of devils assaulted the High Hall, he realized he didn’t have the strength to repel them and retreated into the crypts (Area H16). He’s waiting for some of the peacekeepers out in the city to return in enough strength to drive the devils out… but, hey, the PCs work, too.

Design Note: The devils can be either a force of Hell Knights or a surprisingly large group of Avernian raiders. Mechanically, it doesn’t make any difference.

Alternatively, skip the whole thing and just have Ravengard and his peacekeepers firmly in control of the High Hall when the PCs arrive.

RAVENGARD’S COUNCIL: Ravengard has rallied what local leadership he can (although between the meteor and the eruption of the Hell Knights, it’s pretty thin):

• Pherria Jynks is effectively the highest ranking member of the Church of Torm in Elturel. She’s the spiritual bedrock for her people right now. Some have talked about making her High Observer, but she’s quashed those discussions. She knows that High Observer Kreeg had left the city shortly before its fall and hopes that he will somehow return to them with aid. (Note that Pherria carries the Tome of the Creed Resolute, as described in Part 4B, with her everywhere she goes. “Recall the Creed,” she says, as a bedrock of certainty in horrifically uncertain times.)
• Wöbaer Triest was an undersecretary of the Elturian treasury. Now self-billed as the Acting Secretary, he’s more or less the civilian government of Elturel.
• Lor Ryken was the Elturian ambassador for Iriaebor. He’d returned to Elturel to deliver a recently negotiated trade treaty. Ryken has been handling a lot of the logistics in terms of supplies for the peacekeepers.
• Hilde Kaas is the highest ranking Elturian knight to have survived the cataclysm. There are some who question why Ravengard, a foreigner, should be in charge. Hilde isn’t one of them, and her staunch, unwavering support helps to hold the peacekeepers together.

WHAT THEY KNOW:

• The High Knights became the Hell Knights when the Companion was transformed. They also know that when Elturian knights are killed, they transform into devils, but that Ravengard’s men do not. (Many of them actually saw the knights erupt into devils. They don’t know why.)
• Elturel is hovering above the Styx and seems to be slowly sinking. There are huge chains attached around the perimeter of the city. (However, they don’t know the full truth of how or why Elturel fell.)
• There’s somebody organizing supplies in the east out of Shiarra’s Market. (They don’t know it’s High Rider Ikaia, or even that it’s vampiric.)
• There are devils wandering the streets, but they don’t seem particularly organized.
• Ravengard has gotten enough reports of Zarielite cultists that he suspects a vast fifth column has infiltrated the city and is probably somehow responsible for their current predicament.

They do NOT know about Liashandra’s Demons.

DEVILS AT THE BARRICADES: Add barricades to the two hallways leading into Area H16. If the PCs didn’t wipe out all the devils on their way in, have them launch an assault on the barricades while the PCs are in the middle of speaking with Ravengard and his council.

ZARIEL CULTIST IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING: One of the refugees is actually a Zarielite cultist. Choose an opportune/dramatic moment for them to reveal themselves. Options include:

• When the devils attack the barricades, they take advantage of the confusion to attempt to assassinate Ravengard.
• They secretly poison the water supplies. Refugees get sick, but between Pherria and the PCs it’s likely no one dies. However, they need to secure a new supply of water.
• They attempt to steal or destroy the Helm of Torm’s Sight. Or perhaps seek to disrupt the ritual to free the wearer.

NEW LOCATIONS

As you’re fleshing out your version of the High Hall, here are a few things you might think about adding.

The Secret Exit. Area H17 of the High Hall is an escape tunnel that goes… nowhere. It currently dead ends at the edge of the earthmote that Elturel is floating on. Couple thoughts:

• You could re-characterize this as having originally led down into the Maze.
• It could still lead into the Maze.
• It could be a legitimate escape tunnel leading to a secret entrance near the West Docks. This would add a hidden route to the Elturel pointcrawl.

Thavius Kreeg’s Office. Kreeg probably destroyed or took with him anything meaningful or incriminating here. But perhaps not if there’s a revelation that the PCs are still struggling to figure out. Either way, this will provide a nice bit of direct connection to the Baldur’s Gate portion of the adventure. Details might include Kreeg’s portrait on the wall, perhaps arrayed with portraits of the previous High Observers.

Sanctum of the Cult of the Companion. It would be nice to have a secret sanctum where Zarielites in Elturel’s government held secret religious rites. I recommend adding secret doors to Area H14 and putting it there. (Move the Council Chambers upstairs or to one of the surviving outer towers.)

Supply Cache. The peacekeepers have been collecting supplies, both for the refugees housed at the High Hall and for distribution throughout the city. They may have converted one of the surviving towers to this purpose, in which case it would be demesne of Ambassador Ryken.

Floating Shrine. Going back to the picture of High Hall, I’m drawn to the idea of having a shrine to Torm located in the floating cupola. (Perhaps that’s why it’s floating! The holinesss of Torm’s shrine resisting the corruption and draw of Avernus.) You could place another holy artifact of Torm up here to reward PCs who go exploring. (And if it is the holiness of the shrine + artifact that’s keeping the place afloat, as soon as the PCs grab the artifact the whole thing is going to come crashing down!)

Go to Part 5E: The Grand Cemetery

The first sanity mechanics appear in Call of Cthulhu in 1981 and, in many ways, it remains the definitive mechanical model: The character is confronted by something unnatural, stressful, or terrifying. They make a check using their Sanity attribute. If the check succeeds, everything is fine. If the check fails, they take damage to their Sanity attribute based on the severity of the event that triggered the check. If the damage is sufficiently large (either immediately or in aggregate), they suffer some form of temporary or indefinite insanity. These insanities often force a particular action on the character (fainting, fleeing in panic, physical hysterics, etc.).

We can identify three distinct elements in these mechanics:

• The trigger which requires a sanity check.
• The check to see if the trigger causes harm to the character’s sanity.
• The reaction of the character to the trigger (usually due to a failed check).

This is a fortune at the beginning mechanic: You make the sanity check and THEN determine what your character does based on the outcome of the check. It is also a reactive mechanic, by which we mean that it is used in response to a triggering circumstance rather than resolving a statement of intention.

(Thought experiment: What would a non-reactive sanity check look like? It would probably be part of a wider array of personality mechanics which the player could use to interrogate their character’s state of a mind; a very non-traditional form of player expertise activating character expertise, with the player essentially “asking” their character whether they’re scared or aroused by Lady Chatworth or tempted by the devil’s offer. But I digress.)

RESOLUTION SEQUENCE

In my experience, most GMs resolve sanity checks in the same sequence listed above: they describe the trigger, make the check, and then determine the reaction.

GM: A tentacular thing comes slithering out of the closet! Make a sanity check!

Player: (rolls dice) I failed!

GM: You take (rolls dice) 3 points of Sanity loss! What do you do?

Player: Bertram screams and runs out of the room!

In this, they are usually mirroring how the mechanic is described in the rulebook: this is what this rule is for (the trigger), here is how the mechanic works (the check), and here is the outcome of the mechanic (the reaction).

This all makes sense.

But in my experience, it’s not the most effective way to run sanity checks. Instead, you usually want to invert the check and trigger, like so:

Player: Bertram very carefully turns the handle and eases open the closet door.

GM: Peering into he closet… There’s… Yes! There’s something moving in there! Give me a sanity check!

Player: (rolls dice) I fail!

GM: A tentacular thing comes slithering out of the closet! You take 3 points of Sanity loss! What do you do?

Player: Bertram screams and runs out of the room!

It’s a subtle distinction. What difference does it make?

First, the mechanical resolution now functions as foreshadowing: While the check is being made, tension builds at the table as the players anticipate whatever horrific thing might be triggering the check. (What’s in the closet?!)

Second, by resolving the check before describing the trigger, you allow the players to have an immediate, immersive response to your description of the trigger.

Which makes sense, right? When Bertram sees the tentacular thing he immediately wants to scream and run in terror. He doesn’t want to wait a minute while dice are being rolled.

So, in short, you heighten the emotional engagement of the moment both coming and going.

In my experience, the exception to this is when the trigger for the sanity check is generated by a different mechanical interaction. (For example, watching your friend’s brains get sprayed across the wall by a sniper’s bullet.) This is more a matter of practicality than effectiveness (unlike the tentacular horror slithering out of the closet, the GM doesn’t know whether or not the bullet will hit their friend until it does, and the whole table often learns that simultaneously), but does serve as a reminder that the “proper” ruling in an RPG is rarely a simple black-and-white affair.

TRAIL OF CTHULHU – LIMITS OF SANITY

In Call of Cthulhu, PCs start with a fairly large amount of Sanity and usually lose fairly small quantities in each session of play. There’s generally no way to recover lost Sanity, so over the course of a campaign, their Sanity is slowly eroded away by the horrors which they’ve seen, until final the last few points are taken away and they are left permanently mad and broken by their experiences.

This is very effective at evoking the slow, inexorable destruction of Lovecraftian fiction. But, like hit points in D&D, you generally don’t feel actual risk until near the end of the process. There are some mitigating factors, but this can easily have the effect of reducing the impact of Sanity losses.

In Trail of Cthulhu, Kenneth Hite does a very clever tweak on this system by splitting it into two separate tracks: Sanity and Stability.

As in Call of Cthulhu, Sanity generally can’t be restored once lost. However, you also don’t lose it directly. Instead, you usually only lose Sanity as a result of your Stability meter hitting 0.

The Stability meter CAN be restored when depleted, but it’s limited enough that it can easily be wiped out in a single session (which would result in Sanity getting hit).

This allows the system to create a mechanical sense of risk that builds over the course of each session (as Stability is depleted), while ALSO capturing the long, slow, inexorable, and irreversible destruction of a character’s psyche (as Sanity is depleted). It allows characters to brush up against madness without being permanently broken.

If you’re a Call of Cthulhu GM coming to Trail of Cthulhu to the first time, you’ll want consider how the hard limits in each system are different. This will affect both scenario design and the pacing of individual sessions. In some ways Trail of Cthulhu is more forgiving (because Sanity is “shielded” behind Stability), but in other ways it is considerably less forgiving (because it’s relatively easy to completely blast through Stability in a single session).

The game is fairly well-tuned so that in a typical scenario some or all of the PCs are likely to feel the risk of running out of Stability, but it won’t actually happen in every single session. (Which is also good, because if it’s getting hammered so hard that it IS happening like clockwork every single session, that also deflates tension.) But this is something you’ll want to monitor and adjust in your scenario design and rulings: If their Stability is rarely or never at risk of running out, check to see if you’re not calling for Stability tests as often as you should. If their Stability is being sand-blasted away, see what you can tweak to get a more balanced result.

UNKNOWN ARMIES – A MULTITUDE OF MADNESS

Unknown Armies by John Tynes and Greg Stolze has several more features in its sanity system (which, in the first edition, was called the madness meter and was resolved using stress checks).

First, instead of having a single track, the system has five separate meters, one for each type of psychological stress the character might experience:

• Helplessness (unable to take action you feel is necessary)
• Isolation (when you’re cut off from society or loved ones)
• Violence (pain, injury, death)
• Unnatural (challenges to your perception of reality)
• Self (violations of your deepest beliefs)

This paints a more evocative picture of a character’s psychological state. It also allows the game to track separate effects for each type of trauma, while still measuring overall psychological stability across all the meters.

Having these separate meters also allows Unknown Armies characters to become hardened: Each stress check adds a hardened notch to the associated meter. Each trigger is rated by its severity, and if character has a number of hardened notches in a meter equal to or higher than the rating of the trigger, then they don’t need to make the stress check. (They’ve seen so much Violence, for example, that someone being punched in the face no longer has a psychological impact on them.)

Systems that harden you against tests can suffer from a “plateau effect” where you reach a certain level equivalent to whatever style of play you prefer and then stop rolling checks (see Katanas & Trenchcoats). This also happens in Unknown Armies, but it sidesteps the problem by having the five different meters: You can plateau in one, but the character will remain vulnerable in the other meters (and realistically can’t plateau in all of them because there are cumulative psychological consequences based on the total number of hardened notches the character has).

Unknown Armies also does something interesting with the reaction phase of the resolution: If the PC fails a stress check, they have to choose fight, flight, or freeze – in other words, is the character’s reaction to furiously attack the source of psychological stress, flee from it in a panic, or simply lock-up in indecision, terror, or a “deer-in-headlights” effect.

The cool thing about this mechanic is that, although the failed check constrains the available options, the player still remains in control of their character. Conversely, even succeeding on the check gives a roleplaying cue (because becoming psychologically hardened is meaningful) that the player can pick up and run with.

SANITY CHECKS FOR NPCs

Something which many games with sanity mechanics miss (and which, in my experience, many GMs ignore even in the games which do include support for it) is to also make sanity checks for the NPCs.

If you aren’t already doing this, it’s well worth exploring. It can really push the narrative in cool and unexpected directions.

It can also emphasize how dangerous and unusual the PCs’ lives are (and, therefore, how extraordinary and meaningful their actions are). It can also remind them why they need to be the ones to solve the problem and that it may be a very, very bad idea to call in people who aren’t prepared to deal with it.

On that note, remember that NPCs will generally only have a fraction of the screen time that the PCs do, and, therefore, will only have a fraction of the opportunities to make sanity checks. Don’t load ‘em all up with the default maximum Sanity ratings for starting PCs. Seed in a broad range of Sanity ratings, from those who are fairly robust (at least to begin with) to those who are already psychologically unsound.

A DIGRESSION ON MYTHOS MADNESS

So it turns out that there are aliens. And some of them have visited Earth. Maybe they’ve even been involved in genetically engineering human beings.

… why is this driving me insane again?

As Unknown Armies demonstrates, sanity mechanics are not ineluctably linked to the Mythos. But they did originate there, and so pervasive is the influence of Call of Cthulhu that any Mythos-based game seems almost incomplete without them. So this feels like an appropriate time for a brief digression on why Mythos-inspired madness exists.

Partly this is just cultural dissonance: At the time Lovecraft was writing, these things were not part of pop culture, so it was possible to believe that people would find their existence unsettling to their settled views of the way the world worked. The understanding of how insanity worked was also different in some key ways. And, of course, Lovecraft was a huge racist and had a plethora of mental issues himself, so there is some projection of his own preexisting mental infirmities into the mental state of his characters.

So, to a certain extent, it’s like wondering why women faint all the time in Victorian literature.

On the other hand, there’s a bit more to it in terms of the time when the “Stars Are Right,” which suggests a fundamental reordering of the laws of the physical universe. The creatures of the Mythos literally belong to a universe incompatible with the universe we think we live in. To put it another way: We live in a little tiny pocket of abnormality which uniquely makes it possible for human life and consciousness to exist and/or prosper. The idea that at some point the Earth will leave our zone of grace, the stars will right themselves, and our little epoch of abnormality will come to an end can be rather unsettling in a way that “there are aliens” isn’t.

But more than that: The creatures of the Mythos are a living connection to the way the universe is supposed to work… and the way the universe is supposed to work is inimical to humanity. At extreme levels it can be like trying to run COBOL programming through a C++ compiler. At lower levels it’s more like trying to run a program through a buggy emulator. It’s not just “that monster is kind of creepy,” it’s “that monster has connected my brain to a place where my brain doesn’t work right.” (This idea also works in reverse: Mythos creatures are operating in a semi-insane state within this period of abnormality. That’s why Cthulhu is lying in an induced coma below R’lyeh… he’s trying to minimize the damage.)

But even more than that: The damage being done to your mind is actually a direct result of the mind desperately trying to rewrite itself to cope with the true nature of reality. Mythos-induced insanity? That’s not the mind breaking. That’s the mind trying to fix itself. It just looks like insanity to us because we’re all broken.

Back to the Art of Rulings – NEXT: Traps

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LOCATIONS IN ELTUREL

This is a brief overview of the points on our point-map. As indicated, some of these are sourced from Hellturel by James Introcaso and The Hellriders’ Keep by Carter VanHuss from the Dungeon Masters Guild. You’ll want to flesh these out or, as with the random encounters, adapt them to the new lore of Elturel. (This is one of the places in the Remix where, as I mentioned at the beginning, a little homework is required.)

As you’re fleshing these locations out, I recommend adding leads that point to other locations. I’ve indicated a few of these below, but as you’re fleshing out the locations look for opportunities to add more. Keep in mind that this is a ‘crawl, so just like you don’t need three clues pointing to every room in a dungeon, you don’t need three clues pointing to every point in a pointcrawl. Basic navigation carries some of the load here. This also means that leads to locations that are multiple points away pack more punch than adjacent points, because the PCs will travel through multiple points to get there.

You’ll also want to think about stocking the pointcrawl with clues to the current situation in Elturel. Your revelation list here is going to be largely congruent to the list of factions (above), and I’d probably add the Creed Resolute, too. And for these, you will want to adhere to the Three Clue Rule.

1. ARRIVAL POINT: The PCs arrive at a nondescript point in the Dock District. Streetcrawling will flesh out this area.

2. SHIARRA’S MARKET: Shiarra was the near-legendary first High Rider of Elturel. It’s said that the market is located on the very spot where she called a concord of the local lordlings after driving the Ogre Lord out of the crude stone bastion which then stood atop the tor. (Some tales tell that the Ogre had taken her son. Others that it had stolen her sword.) These lordlings pledged fealty to each other and formed the Riders of Elturel (they wouldn’t become the Hellriders for many more years).

Shiarra’s Market is lined by marble-faced banks and austere slate-gray trading houses and, before the city’s fall, was crammed with busy market stalls. Below the Market there’s access to subterranean storehouses that are part of the Maze.

The market is now where High Rider Ikaia holds court. He’s able to bring supplies up through the Market’s access to the Maze and distribute them. There’s a soup kitchen running more or less 24/7, and the market stalls are slowly being converted into a tent city for those who have nowhere else to go. Ikaia is also beginning to organize armed patrols (most accompanied by a vampiric Son or Daughter) to distribute supplies to those who can’t reach the Market.

3. DRAGONEYE DOCKS: The main docks of Elturel. In addition to the Dragoneye Coster that the docks take their names from (see below), there were a number of other costers active here, including the Thousand-Heads Trading Coster and a regional house maintained by the Seven Suns Coster (which is based out of Baldur’s Gate). One of the six-wagon ferries that used to cross the river here was flipped upside down onto the Dockside Trot when Elturel was sucked into Hell.

4. DRAGONEYE DEALING COSTER. The Dragoneye Coster has dominated trade in Elturel for centuries. They have an entire walled compound in the city’s docks, which has been commandeered by Liashandra’s demon platoon.

5. THE DOCK HOUSE. The estate of Marisima Rathanda, a former Hellrider and the harbormaster who ran the Dragoneye Docks. This location is described in Hellturel.

6. LAVA DOCKS. A river of lava pours through the canals on the east side of town. Most of the Canal Docks have been destroyed by fire.

7. KEEP OF THE TWIN SUNS. The Dusk Road, which runs northeast from Elturel to Triel, entered the city through the Dusk Gate. The stronghold of the Keep of the Twin Suns was built directly on the opposite side of the canal from Dusk Gate, and actually arched above the Dusk Road, acting almost like a second gatehouse.

The Keep was badly damaged during the initial fighting after Elturel’s fall (when Hell Knights erupted and began slaughtering their comrades) and by the canal-side fires that followed. A small band of knights from the Order of the Companion have holed up inside the west tower. They’re scared, confused, and leaderless.

8. A PAIR OF BLACK ANTLERS. Located on the west side of Maidensbridge Street, just south of where it swings westward to cross first Torm’s Bridges and then the Maidens Bridge. This was the best-known of Elturel’s taverns. A dimly lit, wood-paneled place adorned with a pair of stag’s antlers fully twenty feet across, along with many adventurers’ relics and paraphernalia.

The tavern was described in Volo’s Guide to the Sword Coast. There’s also a version in Hellturel, in which a group of besieging devils have trapped a group of demons inside. If you use this version, I recommend making the devils outside Hell Knights. The demons inside belong to Liashandra’s mission and were out scouting when they got cornered here.

9. TORM’S BRIDGES. These bridges are described in Descent Into Avernus (p. 58). The ravine which they cross was created during the Spellplague.

Your choice whether the devils here are Hell Knights (seeking to keep the city divided) or a group of Avernian devil raiders (charging a steep toll; perhaps even demanding soul coins). Or both. Different factions could control each bridge. The factions controlling each bridge could even change over time (perhaps with assistance from the PCs).

Note that Torm’s Blade goes from the Dock Districts directly to the top of the bluff, so the angle of the bridge must be incredibly steep.

10. MAIDEN’S BRIDGE: Not far from where the waters of Maiden’s Leap plunge into the canals of the Dock District, the Maiden’s Bridge crosses the canal. The canal is now filled with lava, but the bridge still stands, joining the western and eastern halves of the city.

Note: Although this is visually confusing on the Hellturel poster map, you can’t simply walk up into the Gardens from the north. You have to cross at Torm’s Blade from the east or work your way up the switchback in the west.

11. HELM’S SHIELDHALL: Helm’s Shieldhall is a fortress temple dedicated to the god Helm and the citadel of the Hellriders. It has been completely taken over by the Hell Knights and serves as their base of operations in Elturel.

The Shieldhall is also another opportunity to highlight the history of the city and, importantly, the Hellriders themselves. Much of this will be the publicly known history of the famous Hellride (see the tale told in Part 4A: The Road to Candlekeep), but you can build on that knowledge now with more specifics. (For example, you might include a few statues of famous knights known to have perished on the ride — i.e., those they’ll meet later who are now damned to Hell.) Hiding away a Secret History of the Knights of Elturel that confirms Lulu’s memories of Zariel leading the knights is also an option.

12. WEST GATE: The West Gate used to lead to Skulbask Road, heading northwest into the Fields of the Dead. Now it looks out almost directly onto one of the chains dragging Elturel down towards the Styx.

13. OWLBEAR BUTCHER SHOP: Cultists of Zariel have taken over an exotic meats butcher shop. This location is detailed in Hellturel.

14. TOWER OF BÈR NÖLMIEN: This is a ruined wizard’s tower that belonged to Bèr Nölmien. Iolanthe Oshrat — whose brother, Wembra Oshrat, was murdered in Baldur’s Gate — was Nölmien’s apprentice. The remains of the teleportation circle Nölmien was using to evacuate people during Elturel’s fall can still be found in the ruins. Nölmien’s body can also be found here. Hell Knights assaulted the tower and killed him.

This is one of several sites where powerful spellcasters were targeted and killed. It also provides the other side of Iolanthe’s story if the PCs spoke with her.

15. GRAND CEMETERY: Described in Descent Into Avernus (p. 64) and Part 5E.

16. WEST DOCKS: The West Docks are smaller and separately managed from the Dragoneye Docks. As noted above, most travelers arriving at the city via the river came in through the West Docks, so they’re surrounded by a lot of inns and travelhouses. The Redeye Costers unofficially ran the West Docks. They weren’t actually a proper coster; it’s an ironic name for an organized crime group. The docks themselves were almost completely destroyed, having split off from the mass of Elturel and plummeted into the Dock of Fallen Cities below.

17. WESTERN SWITCHBACK: To reach the High District from Westerly, you have to take a switchback road up the western face of the tor.

18. THE GARDENS: As you can see on the map, the Gardens run the entire length of the bluff. Their design emphasizes dark-leafed bowers; a touch of the natural in the heart of the city. At night, the soft glimmer of glow-lilies that curl liana-like around the tree-trunks filled the Gardens. A stream erupted from the cliff-face beneath the High Hall, sending a bubbling brook down the middle of the Gardens to eventually plunge over the Maiden’s Leap.

All of that is gone now: The spring beneath High Hall has been transformed by the trip to Hell and now belches forth a stream of lava. The natural growth has wilted beneath the strange skies of Avernus or been burnt away by the lava.

There is a procession of statues dedicated to the High Observers through the park:

• Naja Bellandi’s statue stands near the Maiden’s Leap (at the spot where she leapt on the Night of the Red Coup).
• Cathasach Restat’s statue is found near the midpoint of the Gardens.
• Thavius Kreeg’s statue stands on a rocky outcropping in the middle of the stream near the spring of its headwaters. Now it’s surrounded by lava, its features basking in a demonic red light.

19. MAIDEN’S LEAP: The Maiden’s Leap is a cascade at the north end of the Gardens atop the bluff. A spectacular series of falls plunge down the face of the bluff and into the canals below. Both the cascade and the canals are now lava.

20. SYMBRIL’S HOUSE: A small, cozy inn near Maiden’s Leap in the High District. It overlooks (and opens into) the Garden. A Zarielite cult had rented rooms here to ride Elturel into Hell, and now they’ve taken over the joint. They might waylay travelers in the Gardens and/or be plotting to sabotage Ravengard’s efforts in the High Hall in some way.

Note: This location is taken from Forgotten Realms Adventures, but it’s a very brief entry and there’s no additional details beyond what I’ve provided here.

21. OLD HIGH HARVEST HOME: High Harvest Home was once a temple dedicated to Chauntea. During the High Harvest Slaughter, High Rider Ikaia’s vampires broke into the temple and murdered the entire congregation which had taken refuge there. Hundreds were killed and Chauntea worship in the city was virtually wiped out.

Old High Harvest Home was converted into administrative offices, eventually housing the Imperial Commission (which managed the administration of the other cities of Elturgard). The old sanctuary, however, became a memorial to the Slaughter. It contains hundreds of featureless, life-size statues of white ash, each representing one of those killed here.

Every floor of the building has a huge balcony/patio looking on the western face of the building, looking out over the lower city.

There are currently a number of dead bodies in the upstairs offices: A Hell Knight erupted here and killed a number of people in the initial chaos.

22. THE HIGH HALL: Described in Descent Into Avernus (p. 58) and Part 5D.

UNUSED LOCATIONS

These are canonical locations in Elturel that I chose not to use for the pointcrawl. Most of these locations were last described in the 14^th century (in 2^nd Edition products) and there’s no particular reason to think that they’d still exist. But they might!

• Hondarkar’s House, a large inn in the heart of the High District. (Forgotten Realms Adventures)
• Gallowglar’s Inn, a warm but well-worn, low-beamed place that sprawls amid the aromatic stockyards. (Forgotten Realms Adventures)
• The Oar and Wagon Wheel Inn, a raucous, drafty barn of a place, always crowded and never quiet. (Forgotten Realms Adventures)
• The Bent Helm, a dockside establishment favored by smugglers and other shady sorts, and often visited by 20-storng Hellrider foot patrols, called in to quell yet another brawl. (Forgotten Realms Adventures / Volo’s Guide to the Sword Coast)
• Gallowgar’s Inn, a ramshackle, well-worn inn in the middle of the dockside stockyards. (Volo’s Guide to the Sword Coast)
• Phontyr’s Unicorn, a converted former factory, which is ramshackle, eccentric, and friendly, the scene of shady deals and much late-night business. (Forgotten Realms Adventures) Or a pleasure palace built on the site where Phontyr’s house burned down and dedicated to a unicorn who was once Phontyr’s companion and is now seen in furtive sightings around the inn. (Volo’s Guide to the Sword Coast)

There used to be shrines to Ilmater, Tempus, Tymora, and Lliira in the city, and these may or may not still exist (Forgotten Realms Adventures). More recently the city has venerated Lathander, Torm, Helm, Tyr, and (possibly) Amaunator. (Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide)

Go to Part 5D: The High Hall

Go to Part 1

I’ve been asked for this enough times that I finally just bit the bullet and did it: Here are versions of the Stone of Golorr with one, two, and none of its eyes.

I ended up commissioning a physical prop of the Stone of Golorr when I ran Dragon Heist, so this wasn’t a high priority for me. But, as I say, it’s been heavily requested. I am by no means a master of Photoshop, but I thought this turned out well enough that others might find value in it.

Go to Table of Contents

NEIGHBORHOODS

High District: Located on the bluff above the city, stretching away from the High Hall. Filled with tall, narrow houses festooned with balconies. There was a time when only nobles were allowed to live in the High District. This prohibition was long ago weakened and then abolished entirely, but the High District remains the demesne of Elturgard’s richest citizens.

Dock District: Below the bluff, the east side of Elturel is the Dock District. This was the oldest part of the lower city, the edge of which was once marked by the Short Loop River (which began from the spring beneath High Hall and ran down the length of the bluff before plunging over the Maiden’s Leap to an incredibly short tributary that looped around to the Chionthar). The river is now more or less gone, having been transformed into the modern canal system which radically expanded the Elturian docks.

In the 14^th century, the Dock District was “all dirt, business, and utilitarian buildings” (Forgotten Realms Adventures). The businesses are still here, but a century of empire-building has brought great wealth into the city and classed the joint up a bit. Most notably, all the streets have been cobbled with the same pale cream stone as the High District. (Despite this, the lower class in Elturel is still known as “mucksuckers,” a nickname which originally referred to their boots getting stuck in the thick mud of the Dock District streets.)

Westerly: The west side of the city began gentrifying in the late-14^th century and became home to Elturel’s burgeoning middle class. It has more two- and three-story houses than the Dock District, and it tends to eschew the “smellier” businesses (like tanneries) that remain east of the gorge. The small West Docks became slightly preferred by travelers and this was even briefly ensconced into Elturian law, resulting in a lot of inns and travelhouses sprouting up in the southern end of Westerly.

THE MAZE

The bluff on which the High Hall stands is basically a honeycomb of subterranean passages and vaults. This vast labyrinth extends under the streets of the lower city, too. Parts of this complex consist of natural caverns (the full extent of which have never been mapped and which most likely connected to the Underdark before the city was scooped into Hell), but there’s also been extensive tunneling and construction over the last few hundred years.

Stuff down here includes:

• Warehouses hewn out of the solid rock, holding food and supplies that would allow Elturel’s population to swell with refugees to more than half a million and nevertheless support them for at least three months in the case of a siege.
• Armories, some of them secret.
• The Dungeon of the Inquisitor, a subterranean maze which served as Elturgard’s prison.
• Mines, most of which were worked by prisoners from the Dungeon of the Inquisitor.
• Behemoth’s Run, a deep section of the Maze beneath the Dock District which appears to have been tunneled out by huge creatures. Some prisoners claim that you can sometimes hear the vicious roars of the behemoths echoing.
• Smugglers dens, some of which originally had tunnels running out the city (and which would now abruptly open out in mid-air about the Dock of Fallen Cities).

LOCAL COLOR

Unity Tributes, as described in Part 4B, are small sculptures of the Companion or depictions of the twin sun heraldry of the Order of the Companion. Many of these shrines are now surrounded by effigies as Elturians leave small idols depicting themselves in the hope of receiving good fortune.

Driftglobes are small, glowing ball of magical light that float through the air. They are referred to as “little companions,” although their use in Elturel actually predates the Companion by at least a century. They’re relatively expensive, but rather popular with Elturians. They also basically last forever, so Elturel has slowly accumulated a lot of them over the years. They can be found lighting homes, businesses, and so forth. PCs might find them drifting forlornly in the middle of the street or floating in the middle of burnt wreckage. Or they might pop out surprisingly intact as they’re digging through rubble.

Gallops, Canters, and Trots. Elturians often use these riding terms as synonyms for “street.” So rather than, say, Dockside Way or Market Road, there’s the Dockside Trot and Market Gallop. Most thoroughfares still use “street” (like Maidensbridge Street), but here and there you’ll see this bit of local color.

“Recall the Creed.” Even Elturians who haven’t sworn the oath to uphold the Creed Resolute will often say things like “recall the Creed” to invoke actions that are ethically or morally right (even if they’re difficult).

Taverns and Inns. By ancient statute, no inn was allowed to serve food or drink in Elturel. Nor could they share the same building as a tavern.

RANDOM ENCOUNTERS

For random encounters in Elturel (whether streetcrawling or pointcrawling), we’re going to use the encounters from Descent Into Avernus and also Encounters in Avernus (from the DMs Guild). Here’s a unified encounter table, which I’ve fleshed out with a few encounters with various factions in the city:

NECROMANTIC MIST: See DIA p. 68. In this encounter necromantic mist has filled a street and/or building, transforming the corpses within it into undead creations.

Because we’ve implemented some significant changes to the lore of Elturel (see Part 5), you’ll want to re-contextualize many of these encounters to be consistent with the new vision of the city. For example:

• In “Hellrider Uprising,” swap out the generic demons for Hell Knights fighting their former comrades.
• In “Keeper of the Keys,” make the chain devil a devil raider (who’s come to town to loot the plentiful source of new keys for his collection).
• The dead master or parent of the “Kid Warlock” could have been a victim of the Zarielite purge of Elturian wizards.
• The vrock from “Vrock Philosophy” can pontificate on the metaphysics of Elturel’s current predicament: He loves watching cities sink into the Dock of Fallen Cities. The moment when the souls are quenched en masse in the waters of the Styx is a rare wonder of ultimate beauty.

I think these changes would be fairly easy to make on the fly, but your mileage may vary and it wouldn’t take much effort to preflight these. Either way, I recommend frequently thinking about how the encounters could potentially feature one or more of the factions active in the city. These are described at the beginning of Part 5, but a pertinent review:

• Devil Raiders: Opportunistic, independent devils raiding Elturel before its ultimate destruction could be independent operators (like the chain devil described above) or used as foreshadowing of the Avernian Warlords (see Part 7E).
• Hell Knights: These encounters can establish that the High Knights transformed into the Hell Knights; the destruction of high-level spellcasters; and/or the continued corruption of the Hellriders and Order of the Companion. (Recommendations for Hell Knight stats are given in Part 7G.)
• Zarielite Cultists: Highlight that many of these cultists came to Elturel as a sort of pilgrimage AND that the Elturian government has been riddled with Zarielites for decades. They’re mostly just reveling now, but questioning them can fill in a lot of gaps about how Elturel fell and also what’s been happening here since the city arrived in Hell.
• Ikaia’s Followers: Not all of whom need be his Sons or Daughters; there are a number of humans who have more less pledged fealty to someone who they feel can protect them in the midst of all this insanity. These encounters are most likely to happen in the east side of the city.
• Ravengard’s Peacekeepers: Should probably give the sense that they are overwhelmed, but trying hard. More likely to be encountered in the west side of the city, but if encountered in the east are likely to be overwhelmed (cut off from their comrades when Torm’s Bridges were taken).
• Liashandra’s Demons: This faction primarily exists to justify using demon stat blocks in Hell, but you do have some opportunity to establish the larger planar-political situation of the Blood War and the motives behind Zariel’s Elturian recruitment drive. There’s also a slim opportunity for some enemy-of-my-enemy action, as Liashandra’s primary mission is to sabotage the Fall of Elturel, so feel free to tack in that direction for demonic encounters.

Tip: You can use the street generator, random business table, and floor plan generator from the Streetcrawling Tools to quickly contextualize these encounters as needed. Try not to pause the action for this. Frequently you can start the encounter and then multitask, using the generators in the background.

Go to Part 5C-C: Elturel Locations