SESSION 24D: THE SECOND HOUND OF GHUL

June 21st, 2008
The 12th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

A few minutes later, the dog was following Agnarr and the others down the hall towards the far side of the first level. (After a brief discussion they had decided to break through the crudely blockaded hallway they had discovered near the fountain decorated with the statues of three strange-looking hounds, and thus finish their explorations of this upper level.) Agnarr was busily trying out different names for his new dog.

With a wry grin and a wink at Ranthir, Tee said, “What about an elvish name?”

“I’d like that!” Agnarr said.

“Well, C-A-T is the elvish word for ‘faithful companion’.”

And Agnarr promptly named his dog Seeaeti.

The blockade was formed from large chunks of rock, furniture, shelving, and the like. It had all been stacked in a great, jumbled heap – completely blocking the corridor and clearly designed to either keep something out… or keep it in.

Looking at it again, a fresh debate arose about whether this was a good idea. But, ultimately, their desire to completely explore every nook and cranny of the complex decided the issue for them.

It took Agnarr and Tor, working together, the better part of an hour to clear a crawlspace. After considering its narrow expanse – and thinking back to the disastrous rope-induced bottleneck in Morbion’s oozy lair – they spent another hour widening it so that two of them could go through it together (which would hopefully speed any necessary retreat).

Tee was the first one to crawl through. As she emerged into the hall beyond, she suddenly became very aware of the dim light pouring through the narrow opening behind her… and the dark, impenetrable shadows that lay beyond its reach.

Agnarr squeezed through behind her, and his flaming sword extended the light’s reach, but Tee was already moving down a side corridor that lay almost immediately to her left. (She wanted to make sure that any side chambers had been cleared before they pushed down the length of the main hall.)

The corridor emptied into a small, empty room. Another narrow hallway left this room and paralleled the main hall that she had left behind. There were tiny pieces of debris scattered thickly across the floor.

Tee stooped low. Tor was coming up the hall behind her now, and by the light of the torch that he carried she realized that she was looking at fragments of furniture and other fixtures… all smashed almost to the point where they had become indistinguishable.

She straightened suddenly and whirled, looking down the length of the second hall: Something had moved down there, just at the limit of her elven sight and heading towards the main corridor. Something large.

Back at the crawlspace, Seeaeti began to growl – his hackles rising even higher and his long neck bunching tautly. Elestra, just pulling herself through the barricade, hissed at Agnarr to keep the dog quiet. But all of Agnarr’s focus had followed the hound’s. His grip tightened on the hilt of his longsword as his gaze attempted to pierce the shadowy depths of the corridor.

Tee, meanwhile, had motioned Tor to silence and headed back down the side passage towards the others. But she had barely opened her mouth to whisper what she had seen than her head whipped around: A heavy, tapping, clacking noise had echoed ever-so-softly and ever-so-distinctly down the hall.

Everyone fell silent. Impossibly, the shadows seemed to deepen. And then, out of the darkness, the second hound of Ghul appeared: It was a bony, undead thing. At its shoulder, it stood nearly twice as tall as Agnarr. Four interlocking, razor-sharp sabered fangs punctuated a jaw of jagged teeth. Its claws were nearly as large. Its bones were thick and at the end of a long, sinuous tail was a bulbous ball of bone twice the size of a grown man’s skull.

“By the gods…” Elestra murmured, utterly taken aback.

With a roar, Agnarr charged. But the hound’s tail lashed out and the bulb of bone smashed into his side, hurling him into the wall. With a groan, Agnarr slid to a crouch on the floor, trying to find his bearings.

Tee and Tor came running around the corner, skidding to a halt at the sight of the skeletal hound. Elestra fumbled for her crossbow. But the creature was drawing closer to Agnarr now; its maw gaping wide; its fangs reaching out for the throat of the staggering barbarian—

“STOP!”

They all turned to look at Ranthir – perched halfway through the crawlspace with one hand stretched out towards the skeletal hound… which had now frozen in mid-stride. There was a moment of perfect silence, and then Ranthir lowered his hand and scrambled the rest of the way out of the crawlspace.

While the others watched with some mixture of amazement, confusion, and bemusement, Ranthir walked down the length of the hall and stopped near the creature, examining it closely. “Hmm… Interesting!”

“What did you do?” Elestra asked.

“Hmm?” Ranthir turned to look at them. “Oh! Well, it’s a rather simple necromantic creation. It’s mindless… or nearly so, at any rate. So I simply took control of its ley lacings and—”

“What is it?”

“It’s the skeleton of a ghulworg. Or, at least, I think it is. They have long been thought to be either extinct or legendary. They were either related to the worgs, created from worgs, or the ancestors of modern worgs… the lineage is rather confused. If this creature were still living, the blood in its veins would be boiling hot – protecting it from fire and making it immune to cold. It is even said that the blood could scald attackers who were foolish enough to attack it. But if you look here–” Ranthir gestured lightly and the ghulworg skeleton snapped its jaws shut and lowered its head to him. “You can see that it’s bones have been laced with adamantine. That could only have been done after death.”

RAMPAGING THROUGH THE LABYRINTH

“We should kill it now!” Elestra said.

“Wait a minute,” Tee said with a thoughtful look. “Let’s not be hasty. How long can you keep this thing under control, Ranthir?”

“At least a day,” Ranthir said. “And I could always prepare the same spell again tomorrow.”

“So you could keep it under your control indefinitely?”

Ranthir nodded.

“Do you think that’s a good idea?” Dominic said, eyeing the ghulworg warily.

They thought it was a great idea.

Just down the hall there was a door that even Agnarr’s stout shoulder couldn’t open. They had the ghulworg smash it open. Inside they discovered nearly a half dozen orc corpses and the half-rotted remains of a barricade.

“They must have locked themselves in here to escape the ghulworg,” Agnarr said, moving between the skeletal remains with his sword drawn.

When the undead orcs began to rise up from the floor a few moments later, they beat a hasty retreat and sent the ghulworg in to smash them to sepulchral dust.

Around the corner they found a large room filled with a shallow pool of blackish, brackish liquid. After a brief examination, Ranthir determined the liquid was the diluted remains of necromantic fluid. Although the pool still radiated with the faint traces of necromantic energy – and would have once been a powerful tool for creating undead – it was now no more than a curiosity.

There was a side-chamber overlooking the pool which proved of little interest, but everyone’s attention was immediately arrested when Tee discovered a secret passage leading away from the pool room.

The ghulworg was barely able to squeeze into the passage, but with Tee and Ranthir leading the way it followed loyally behind.

Halfway down the passage, they found the broken remains of a black centurion hanging from its rack of machinery. The centurion didn’t stir at Tee’s approach, but they all had dark memories of their last encounter with these constructs. Just to be safe, they used the ghulworg to batter it to pieces.

The far end of the passage ended in what appeared to be the back side of another secret door… but Tee wasn’t able to figure out any way of opening it. With a shrug, she had Ranthir bring the ghulworg forward and smash through it.

The door opened into the chamber where, a couple weeks earlier, they had discovered a chamber rigged with dozens of arrows that fired automatically. They had been somewhat puzzled to discover that the arrows would strike everything in the chamber except the person who had triggered the trap, but now Tee was able to unravel the mystery: One of the arrows was designed to hang loosely out of the wall and pulling that arrow would have opened the secret door. She theorized that the trap must have been built as an escape route: Someone fleeing down the hallway could trigger the trap, kill their most immediate pursuers, and then escape through the secret door.

“Does anyone else find it disturbing that someone felt there was a serious chance they might need to run away?” Tor asked.

“Given what I’ve seen, I want to run away,” Elestra said.

Ranthir had the ghulworg squeeze his way out into the hallway and the rest of them circled up to discuss their next option. They briefly considered the idea of taking the ghulworg down to the lower level and using it to smash open the sealed vault. (“And then we could take it and smash open the Hammersong Vaults!” Elestra joked.) But they eventually decided it was too risky… the ghulworg might be destroyed by the lightning rods!

Instead they returned to the construct laboratories on the second level and used the ghulworg to haul up the heavy loot they had been forced to leave behind – the adamantine-edged Drill of the Banewarrens; the workshop tools; and the construct elements.

They stacked all of this material just inside the bluesteel door leading back to the bloodwight complex. (If nothing else, Tee was more comfortable with the idea of having hired laborers potentially lugging it up to the surface from there, rather than trying to lead them deeper into the dangerous and unpredictable complex.)

Although the ghulworg had made moving the material possible, all of them had taken part in the labor one way or another and now they were beginning to feel their exhaustion. They discussed returning to the surface, but Elestra thought she might have a better option: Turning to the nearest wall she sung softly under her voice, calling on the Spirit of the City to open one of the hidden ways to her.

The bricks of the wall turned upon themselves and twisted back to form an open arch. Beyond the arch there lay a circular chamber of worn stone, furnished with a variety of couches and chairs in the center of the room and curtain-veiled beds around its circumference.

NEXT:
Running the Campaign: Magic Item Wish Lists – Campaign Journal: Session 25A
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

Magical Kitties Save the Day is the new roleplaying game from Atlas Games. The first edition was created by Matthew J. Hanson and published as a PDF-only release on DriveThruRPG. Michelle Nephew, one of the co-owners of Atlas, encountered the game at a local game convention, immediately bought a copy, and began running a multi-year campaign for her kids. It was an incredibly fun game, and back in 2018 we realized that Atlas was perfectly positioned to bring the game to a much larger audience.

Michelle, Matthew, and I began work on the game’s second edition, which would be designed for print and worldwide distribution.

But I wanted to do more than just print a copy of the game as it already existed: Not only had we all learned a lot from running and playing the game, we also had the opportunity to create a truly unique game for all-ages that would not only introduce roleplaying games to new players, but also teach new players how to become game masters for the first time.

I’ll probably talk more about those features at a future date. For today, I’d like to take a peek at the Magical Powers in Magical Kitties.

See, in Magical Kitties Save the Day you play a magical kitty. Every magical kitty has a human. And every human has a Problem. You need to use your Magical Powers to solve those Problems and save the day. (The trick, though, is that kitties and humans all live in hometowns which also have Problems — things like vampires, time-traveling dinosaurs, and alien invasions. These hometown Problems make human Problems worse, so if you want to help your human solve their Problems, you’ll need to solve their hometown Problems, too.)

The first edition of Magical Kitties Save the Day featured eighteen Magical Powers for the kitties. For the second edition, I wanted to expand this to thirty-six powers.

Why thirty-six?

This was primarily determined by two of our design goals:

First, I wanted a fast method of character creation, which meant a default method featuring random generation. (I talk more about why this is important in On the Importance of Character Creation, but the short version is that nothing hooks a new player like actually creating their character; it gets them thinking about all the cool things they’re going to do with their magical kitty. But for this to work well with new players, character generation should be quick, fun, and comprehensible.)

Second, we wanted the game to only use six-sided dice. I’m a big fan of the polyhedrons, but limiting the dice to just one type would (a) allow us to provide dice in the boxed set for a relatively low cost (so we could invest more in other features) and (b) provide a more familiar experience to players in our core target audience six to twelve year-olds.

As a result, during character generation you roll two six-sided dice and read them like percentile dice, generating thirty-six results from 11 to 66, to determine your Magical Power.

Some of you might be balking at this: The core audience is six to twelve year-olds and you want them to understand how to read non-standard percentile dice?

I shared those concerns. But then I did some research. It turns out that educational studies have not only indicated that kids in this age range can mentally comprehend these concepts, but understanding two-digit place value is part of the Common Core math standard for 1^st graders (i.e., six-year-olds).

So if you’re pushing out of the core range and play with four- or five-year-olds, you’ll probably need to help them out a bit. (You might also consider using the optional Kitty Cards, that not only serve as fully illustrated references during play, but allow you to create a new character mostly by just dealing out a hand of cards.) But beyond that, it will be at worst a great learning opportunity.

POWER BALANCE

When it came to actually developing and playtesting the new Magical Powers, however, I found it to be a more unique challenge than I’d anticipated. Because each kitty has a unique Magical Power (before unlocking additional powers as they gain levels), the game inherently lacked some of the balancing elements that often find in other RPGs featuring powers. I couldn’t, for example, make one power Level 1 and another power Level 3 to reflect a difference in their strength or utility as I would in D&D; nor assign them different point values like I’d do in a game like Hero.

This meant that some powers that I initially thought would be really cool ultimately needed to be tossed out because they just couldn’t be given enough oomph to stand on equal ground with other powers in the game. In other cases, limitations needed to be found to pull back a concept that would otherwise be too powerful.

A further complication came in the form of Bonus Features. As a special effort, magical kitties can add a Bonus Feature to their power, making it more potent than usual. As they level up, they can also permanently add these Bonus Features to their powers. It was not only important that the Powers remain balanced with each other as Bonus Features were added, but essential that a Power could have awesome Bonus Features for kitties to unlock. (This meant that some powers that were fine in their basic form didn’t make the cut because there wasn’t a suitable upgrade path for them.)

I developed a couple rules of thumb:

First, no Magical Power could completely overlap another Magical Power. If both powers were being played by different kitties in the same session, I didn’t want one of the kitties to rendered obsolete. Bonus Features could “nibble” a bit on another power’s uniqueness, but the Bonus Features of the other power needed to give it a unique upgrade path.

For example, Super Strength lets a kitty pick up anything weighing as much as a horse or less. With the Bonus Feature of Heavy, Telekinesis can do the same thing (and better since you can lift it from a distance). But the kitty with Super Strength will have Bonus Features allowing them to eventually Pick Up a Whale and, later, Pick Up Anything. Telekinesis can never lift anything larger than a Horse, but has its own unique upgrade path allowing multiple objects to be manipulated simultaneously.

(Most powers don’t even get this close to each other. It’s an extreme example.)

Second, a Magical Power should have an active use: Part of the fun of the game is for players to think up creative and crazy ways that they can use their powers. Players shouldn’t have to passively wait for the GM to cue them.

There are two exceptions to this: Energy Deflection and Force Field. These are both kind of iconic powers that players wanted, but they’re innately passive. To some extent this is OK because adventures tend to bring threats from which protection is desired (so you’re unlikely to end up in a situation where the GM just fails to ever cue up your power). But we also made these work by making sure their Bonus Features unlocked active powers: Thus, Energy Deflection allows you to target things with the deflected energy. And Force Field can be used to create things like invisible bridges.

As you can see, limiting Magical Powers so that they all needed to be in balance with each other came with some sacrifices and some tough design challenges. But the advantage of this approach was a robust, streamlined simplicity: Players don’t need to spend a point budget or juggle powers of different tiers or whatever.

This also allows character creation to easily manage different levels of mastery: A completely new player can rapidly roll up a new kitty in just a couple minutes, but those who familiar with the game can skip the random generation and design just the kitty they want by simply making choices at each step of character creation.

Go to Table of Contents

ZARIEL’S SPARK

The last of our four memory dives comes at the moment when the Archduchess of Avernus touches the Sword of Zariel. As we’ve now established, Zariel placed a small shard of her soul into the Sword of Zariel before giving it Yael. This spark of Zariel’s former self is what provides Zariel with a chance for redemption.

Here’s how that plays out:

• The Archduchess and the PCs are drawn into a memory dive.
• The events of Zariel’s Fall (see above) play out once more.
• But this time, the “Zariel” of the past has the appearance of the Archduchess of Avernus. She’s living out her own memory of what happened.
• The PCs are also present in the scene (although only Zariel can see or hear them).

The key here is that the spark within the Sword basically gives Zariel a chance to relive this pivotal moment and (most importantly!) make a different choice when the ultimate moment arrives.

If Zariel rejects Asmodeus’ offer, that obviously doesn’t actually change the past. This is a memory dive, not time travel. But it is her chance for redemption: The vision ends, the PCs return to the real world to find that no time has passed, but Zariel’s devilish form melts away as she is returned to her angelic form (see Descent Into Avernus, p. 148).

INFLUENCING ZARIEL: The PCs can attempt to influence Zariel’s choice. They might counter Asmodeus’s arguments, remind Zariel of events from her own past, or perhaps even make an emotional appeal (which could be particularly effective coming from Lulu).

Resolve this as a special group check, calling for skill or ability checks at DC 15. Give them advantage on this check if they invoke something they’ve learned about Zariel’s past. If at least half of the group makes a successful check (even if not everyone in the group makes a check), then they succeed: Zariel makes a different choice and is redeemed.

On a failure, they still grant advantage to Zariel’s Wisdom save (see below).

BEARING SILENT WITNESS: If the PCs don’t intervene or fail the group check, then Zariel makes a DC 22 Wisdom save. On a success, she makes a different choice and is redeemed. On a failure, she rejects redemption and destroys the Sword (along with the spark of goodness within it).

ON THE MATTER OF REDEMPTION

This is a semi-controversial point in Descent Into Avernus: Zariel has spent centuries as a devil, doing countless evil acts on a scope probably beyond mortal comprehension (of her own free will!), and now she just waves her hand and is redeemed?! What the hell?!

(If you’ll pardon the pun.)

You can see similar arguments around Darth Vader’s redemption in Return of the Jedi.

What seems to trip people up here is the idea that redemption means Zariel or Vader should be automatically forgiven for the things they did or should be immune from facing consequences for those actions. There are ethical structures in which this is true, but it’s not intrinsically linked to the act of redemption itself.

Redemption isn’t about how other people treat you or should treat you. It’s about your fundamental identity and the type of person you are (which will determine the actions you will take in the future). You can choose to be a better person starting RIGHT NOW, but ultimately no one else needs to change their behavior because of that until your actions give them cause to do so.

In Christianity, for example, the only person who “needs” to do anything differently because you’re redeemed is God. Who is, notably, omniscient and can, therefore, “see” redemption without the need for action.

(The meaning of the word “redemption” is actually based on the Christian God’s omniscience: Only He can redeem your sin – i.e., declare it a debt no longer owed — because only He can see your “ledger.”)

This same thing applies to the Star Wars universe: Force magic allows you to “see” a person’s fundamental identity and the fact that Anakin is able to manifest as a Force Ghost is evidence of how he was “aligned” as a person, regardless of the actions he had taken previously (and which would have demonstrated that prior personal alignment).

And we see the same thing in the metaphysics of Descent Into Avernus: Zariel is a supernatural being and if the fundamental alignment of the cosmos recognizes her as an angel… well, it means she has, in fact, fundamentally changed. She has rejected sin and found redemption.

In the real world, we could similarly hypothesize the ability to have this knowledge: Like, if we could take 100% accurate brain scans and were able to analyze a person’s “code” to see what type of person they were, we’d be able to know whether or not someone had truly become redeemed — had fundamentally changed and become the type of person who does good things.

Once we have that technology, the ethics of crime and punishment will need to change (but will almost certainly take decades or centuries to adjust). But until we have that technology (if we ever do), then it’s just a fantasy that can be fun to think about.

Go to Part 6D-L: Questioning the Hellriders

Go to Table of Contents

CLAIMING THE SWORD

In the larger structure of the campaign, this memory dive more or less replaces the Idyllglen visions from Descent Into Avernus, p. 140. Its presentation and function, however, are different.

In the published campaign, the Idyllglen vision is triggered by Lulu’s memories being restored in a burst of magical light. In the Remix, that doesn’t really happen. We’ve put large structures in place for Lulu (and the other PCs) to slowly piece together what was taken from her, but there is no finale where it all magically comes back to her.

This memory dive is instead triggered when a PC moves to claim the Sword of Zariel. Within the Sword is Zariel’s Spark, and this memory dive is basically the Spark showing the PCs’ the long path to the Fall of Zariel.

Structurally it’s more or less doing the same thing for the players: We’re setting up the path to Zariel’s Fall because that’s also the path to her Redemption — if the PCs choose to take that path. (If they don’t, then this simply completes Zariel’s story and reveals the origin of her evil.)

So, a PC reaches for the Sword, there’s a flash of golden light and…

SNIPPET – THE LEGIONS OF HEAVEN: A legion of solars stand at attention, flaming swords held point-down before them. Before them – inspecting them – is another angel. He rides a golden, winged lion. His face shares the fierce, leonid beauty of his mount.

Zariel is there — somehow younger in her timeless beauty. An innocence around her eyes? A naivete? An eagerness?

The mounted angel stops. He speaks, but not to Zariel. To an angel just a little further down the line.

Celestial Marshal: What’s your name?

Chazaqiel: Chazaqiel, Celestial Marshal, of the ninth legion.

Celestial Marshal: Do you know why you are here, young one?

Chazaqiel: Elysium seeks to claim the Avernian paradise!

Celestial Marshal: Thank you, young one.

The winged lion spreads its wings and soars into the sky.

Celestial Marshal (addressing the whole assembly): To glory, my angels! To the emerald plains we’ll soar, and there forge our destiny! The Legions of Heaven shall secure the Eighth Heaven!

A great, golden light grows around the mounted figure, suddenly pulsing with blinding intensity. And then…

GM Note: The Celestial Marhsal is Ashmedai, who shall become Asmodeus.

VISION – THE GREAT BETRAYAL: You find yourselves… flying? Yes, flying on feathered wings through a jungle at night. Somewhere nearby the forest is on fire — a wall of blue flame which sends strange shadows dancing through the writhing foliage. The air is hazed with purple smoke. You’re following another angel, your commanding officer.

“Zariel!”

Another small squad of angels swoops out of the night, led by Chazaqiel. Your commanding officer — who your realize is Zariel —pulls up in midair.

Zariel: Kentarch Chazaqiel! Thank the Heavens! Have you heard from Princeps Sanniel?

Chazaqiel: Sanniel is no longer in command. I am Princeps now.

Zariel: What do you mean? Was she killed in the planar upheaval?

Chazaqiel: No. She turned against the Celestial Marshal.

Zariel: Against Ashmedai? What are you talking about?

Chazaqiel: Things are changing, Hecaton. We are no longer going to be a the plaything dangled between Elysium and Celestia. Ashmedai has claimed Avernus for himself. The great work has just begun. We ride paradise into the jaws of battle!

Zariel: Where?

Chazaqiel: To Hell.

Zariel: This is treason!

Chazaqiel: Don’t be a fool, Zariel! You swore an oath to the Celestial Marshal! Now obey him! Obey us!

Zariel: I swore an oath to Heaven, Chazaqiel. To Heaven above all.

Zariel abruptly draws her sword and attacks! Chazaqiel beats his wings and flies back just out of reach.

[Roll initiative.]

Angelic Rebellion: The PCs are currently solars under Zariel’s command. They use their own stat blocks, but have the hit points, AC, and other abilities of a solar (MM, p. 18).

• Zariel and Chazaqiel both command an equal number of solars. (The PCs are free to choose which side of the conflict to side with.)
• After 3 rounds, there are trumpets from reinforcements nearby. Zariel orders those loyal to her to cut their way free and flee!

The Flight of Blue Fire. Use the rules for chases (DMG, p. 253). Even if the PCs are captured or cut down, Zariel is fated to escape with a small band of other loyalists.

Homework: Develop a chase complications table that features the after effects of the planar upheaval as Avernus plunges through the multiverse.

When the chase comes to an end (either because the PCs have been captured or they have escaped with Zariel), there is a flash of golden light. A voice cries out, “The demon lord flees!” And then…

SNIPPET – FIRST VISIT TO IDYLLGLEN: Zariel is mounted upon Lulu in her golden war mammoth form. A small force of planetars and other celestials are arrayed behind and above them. Across a recent battlefield of torn mud and blood, they are glowering at a deviless mounted upon a dire hellhound and surrounded by a motley gang of demons.

The devil has coppery skin, dark hair, and two curving ram’s horns upon her head. Her lips are curled in a sultry smile that doesn’t touch her tawny eyes.

Zariel: What has brought you to the mortal plane, demon?

Glasya: It seems the same as you, angel. We pursued the demon lord Yeenoghu and followed the foul beast here to his butchery among the humans.

Zariel: And your name?

Glasya: I am Glasya, daughter of Asmodeus.

Several of the planetars surged forward with a strong beat of their wings. Zariel raises her hand to keep them at peace.

Glasya: And yours?

Zariel: Zariel. What are your intentions?

Glasya: Completed, I think. Yeenoghu has slipped through our snare. He has most likely slunk back to the Abyss with his tail tucked between his legs. [she looks up at the planetars] Will we need to tuck yours, too?

Planetar 1: She’ll only have a tail once she’s ripped it off of you!

Glasya (laughs): Come, Zariel. Leash your dogs and I’ll leash mine. I would speak with you without our voices being drowned by the rattling of sabers.

Zariel gestures towards a small grove off to one side. Glasya considers it, then nods her head and dismounts. Zariel follows suit, leaving Lulu and the others behind as she moves off to parlay with the devil.

Glasya’s hellhound edges closer to Lulu and sniffs. Lulu recoils. The hellhound reaches up… and licks her trunk.

Glasya and Zariel return. Zariel announces that they have both agreed to leave the fields of Idyllglen in peace, having “fought to common purpose.”

There’s a flash of golden light. And then…

SNIPPET – ZARIEL’S FALL: As your vision clears, you’re standing on a field of battle beneath the blood red sky of Avernus. A huge mound of devils lies dead. Other devils, still living, are hauling bodies off the mound, chittering amongst themselves.

All the way at the bottom of the mound, as one last corpse is pinioned on a pitchfork and flung to one side, the body of an angel is revealed. A blood-stained Zariel.

The devils draw back. Some of them are cackling, but then one glances back over their shoulder and suddenly drops prostrate to the ground. Others, too, following the first’s gaze, throw themselves to the ground.

A tall devil with skin of maroon and crimson, dressed in robes of black and gold, strides in amongst the scattered corpses. He is possessed of a leonid beauty, with two almost impossibly long, dark horns curving gracefully from his forehead.

You recognize this face. It is the face of Ashmedai, once Celestial Marshal of the Legions of Heaven.

The devil’s eyes smolder as he looks down at the angel. In a smooth voice of elegance and grace he asks, “Where is her Sword?”

“Gone.” Zariel chokes out of the word. “Asmodeus.”

“Fetch her some water,” Asmodeus says.

They wait. Simply gazing at each other. A few minutes later, the water is brought in a chalice of ivory-and-gold. Asmodeus takes the cup and offers it to Zariel.

Zariel smacks his hand aside, spilling the cup into the dust and blood.

Asmodeus smiles:

I look at you and I see that you are in despair. You thought you could make a difference. That you could end the Blood War. But here you are on a field of dead friends.

You look at me and I know you see malevolence. You see Evil. You see an antithesis. You see betrayal. But I did make a difference. And I will end the Blood War.

All those aeons ago, at my trial, when I looked you in the eye and laughed. Do you think I mocked you? No. I laughed because I saw you standing where I had stood before. I knew we walked the same road and you were just a few steps behind me.

Look around you. Look at the dead. Piled high. Do you really think this to be Good? Do you think this butchery to be worthwhile because it was done in a noble cause? You know as well as I do that as long as this continues, as long as the dead are nothing but tallies in the ledgers of complacent gods, Good is derelict. It is meaningless. It is feathery cupids cavorting on a celestial isle while suffering boils forth across the multiverse.

I know you came here to kill demons. You think you have failed. I think you have barely begun.

Which of us do you think sees more clearly?

What I offer you is simple: A chance to continue our fight. You have killed Terza’reg. I offer you his place on the Dark Eight and command of a Blood Legion. Serve me and your Crusade can still boil across the Abyss and turn the Great Wheel into a new epoch.

As Asmodeus speaks, you sense that this is but one truth among many: That Zariel and Asmodeus converse upon many different planes of thought. That this is but a mortal reflection of a myriad complexity beyond your grasp.

But when it is done, Zariel gazes upon Asmodeus for a long moment. An eternal moment.

And then she reaches out her hand.

“I accept.”

As their hands clasp, they explode with a blinding, golden light. And then…

SNIPPET – ZARIEL’S REQUEST, REDUX: You are elsewhere on the Avernian field of battle. Zariel is kneeling in the dust. Lady Yael, arrayed for battle in battered, bloody, dust-covered armor kneels on the ground next her. Zariel is pushing her glowing sword into Lady Yael’s hands.

Yael: I refuse. Do not ask me of this.

Zariel (smiling sadly): I must. I do. Look beyond this forsaken day. One last time, I need you to dream a little bigger.

Yael weeps and then, unable to speak, nods, taking Zariel’s sword.

But the moment shifts, and you see that in the moment Zariel passes over the Sword, she passes something else, too: A part of herself. A spark. A shard of her eternal, celestial soul.

I am the memory of Zariel that was and who can be again.

I am the Sword of her will and the Blade of her soul.

Zariel continues to speak to Yael, but she turns her head and her blazing eyes bore into you: “This is the last thing I will ever ask of you.”

Go to Part 6D-K: Zariel’s Spark

When using a location-crawl structure (of which a dungeoncrawl is obviously the most well known example), the PCs explore an area room by room. You can see this clearly in the default action of the ‘crawl: If a PC is standing in a room and there’s nothing interesting for them to do in that room, then they should pick an exit and go to the next room.

This structure works well when designing an area that has a high density of interesting stuff in it. Not every room in a dungeon, for example, needs to be filled with interesting stuff, but probably at least half of them do, otherwise the pacing of the scenario collapses as the players robotically churn through empty rooms.

So what can you do when the scenario calls for a crawl-type exploration of a large area with only a few points of interest?

To some extent, of course, we’re talking about a fictional world and you can simply choose to design it differently: Shrink the scope of the area to sync up with the desired points of interest. (Or, alternatively, increase the number of points of interest to match the scope of the area.)

But this is not always desirable or even possible. For example, if the PCs are heading to an abandoned skyscraper in the post-apocalyptic urban wastelands, changing the skyscraper into a duplex is to fundamentally alter the nature of the scenario. And simply filling the skyscraper to the brim with various encounters would be inconsistent with the general premise that Downtown is a thinly populated desert. (It could also quite easily bloat the skyscraper exploration out of proportion to its importance in the scenario.)

Which, of course, brings us to the sector crawl. Like other crawls — location-crawls, hexcrawls, urbancrawls, etc. — it features keyed locations, geographic movement, and an exploration-based default goal. But while superficially similar to a location-crawl, the sector crawl is designed to handle low density areas. It consists of sectors, connections, and encounters.

SECTORS

You’ll start prepping your sector crawl by identifying your sectors. Basically, you’re breaking your scenario’s area into large chunks. Ideally you want these sectors to:

1. Broadly map to the characters’ understanding of the environment.
2. Generally have one point of interest per sector.

In fact, one way of designing a sector crawl is to list your points of interest — hive of mutants, cache of medical supplies, sarcophagus of the seer, etc. — and then figure out what “sector” each point of interest is in. It’s okay to have a few sectors with multiple points of interest, but if you end up with LOTS of sectors like that, you’ll probably want to think about breaking that part of your scenario down into smaller sectors. On the other hand, sectors without a point of interest should generally be very rare (or not used at all).

For example, each floor in our post-apocalyptic skyscraper might be a separate sector. Or perhaps the skyscraper is broken into three sectors – the Lower Floors (1-10), the Middle Floors (11-46), and the Upper Floors (47-69). Or maybe it’s the Ground Floor, Lower Floors, Upper Floors, and Penthouse.

The scale of these sectors, as you can see, will vary depending on the scenario, but you want them to flow naturally from the logic of the campaign world (as opposed to being arbitrary divisions) so that the players can choose how to navigate through the area. (Ideally the players won’t even know you’re running a sector crawl because their navigation decisions will flow naturally from a completely in-character point of view.)

CONNECTIONS

That brings us to the connections between sectors, which is the second thing you’ll want to prepare for your sector crawl.

By default, however, a sector crawl isn’t about the paths between sectors. You can generally access any sector from any other sector, although that navigation might be chokepointed through, for example, a central hub or elevator.

This open access might, in some cases, be only conceptual in nature. If you actually followed every step the PCs take, for example, you might discover that getting from the Lower Floors to the Penthouse is, technically speaking, only possibly by passing through the Middle and Upper Floors. But conceptually, players on the 5^th Floor can say, “Let’s take the elevator up to the Penthouse,” and they can just do that.

This open-access doesn’t mean that the PCs aren’t exploring the location. It just means that the meaningful choices will be ones of sequence and priority rather than geographical navigation.

(If this is making you uneasy, think about how node-based scenario design routinely gives PCs a slate of clues that effectively give them a menu of places to go next. An open-access sector crawl basically does the same thing.)

To support this, as you’re thinking about how your sectors are related to each other, you’ll usually want to avoid sector structures that only make sense after the characters have already explored them. Looking at a post-apocalyptic skyscraper, for example, the players can immediately intuit that it’s made up of various floor and they can go to various floors by going up or down through the skyscraper.

Conversely, if they arrive at the Great Gate of an abandoned dwarven city, they might have no idea what other sectors exist, which will make it difficult for them to make sector selections. If the PCs can’t get an immediate overview of a location when they arrive there, you may need to provide that information in some other form — maps, local guides, skill checks, divine visions, etc.

Tip: The overview might be provided as the point of interest for the Arrival sector. In other words, the PCs arrive at the Great Gate, and when they explore that sector you can tell them about the Grand Promenade, the Lower Galleries, and the seven Dwarven Minarets.

Sometimes, though, you’ll want a mysterious sector for the PCs to discover. These are sectors that are connected to (or hidden within) a specific sector, and can only be discovered or unlocked when the PCs explore that sector.

In most cases, once a mysterious sector has been revealed or accessed, it will become part of the sector crawl’s open access. (Meaning that it can be freely selected like any other sector in the future.) But it’s also possible for some sectors to act as chokepoints: In order to get from a sector on one side of the chokepoint to a sector on the other side of the chokepoint, you do, in fact, have to pass through the chokepoint sector.

Chokepoints can be used to create isolated sectors, but in other configurations you can actually think of them as the connection point between two different sector crawls.

A similar type of sector is the hub sector: If you’re in the hub, you can access any of the sectors connected to the hub. Conversely, you’ll need to pass through the hub to reach any of the sectors connected to it.

Hubs can be a useful way of conceptualizing particularly large sector crawls. Instead of needing to provide an overview of every single sector in the entire complex, you only need to provide an overview of the sectors connected to the hub and any “neighboring” hubs. It’s only when the PCs go to a new hub sector that you’ll need to overview the sectors connected to that hub.

The Great Gate of the dwarven city, for example, can serve as the hub for nearby features within the city (e.g., the Lower Galleries and the Dwarven Minarets), while also providing access to the Grand Promenade which is another hub.

A final key thing to understand is that the more chokepoints, hubs, and mysterious sectors you add to your sector, the more specific you are making the connections between your sectors. The more you increase that specificity, the more your sector crawl will begin blurring into a pointcrawl. This will become even more true if your sectors begin shrinking towards single points of interest.

Which is not necessarily a bad thing, of course, but it’s useful to be aware of what you’re doing.

ENCOUNTERS

A sector crawl doesn’t need encounters, but they’ll usually enhance the scenario and make the area feel like a dynamic, living environment. The specific encounter methods generally resemble those in other ‘crawl structures (like hexcrawls and dungeoncrawls) — they might be random or programmed; keyed to specific sectors or the entire scenario; and so forth.

RUNNING THE SECTOR CRAWL

Running a sector crawl largely consists of going to a new sector or exploring the current sector. Each time the PCs do one of these things, trigger or check for an encounter.

Exploring the sector will turn up:

• Its “identity” (if this was not already known);
• Its point of interest (i.e., the content keyed to the sector); and
• Any secret connections to other sectors (if you’re using mysterious sectors).

If a sector has multiple things to discover, the PCs might find all of them through a single exploration action or find them one at a time (requiring more exploration actions in order to find additional stuff).

And that’s it! Running a sector crawl is actually quite straightforward.

A SECTOR OF ONE

I’ve found it occasionally useful to conceptually think of some locations as a “sector of one” when running them.

For example, in a mystery scenario there might be a house which contains exactly one clue. The players, perhaps conditioned by the ubiquitous location-crawls found in RPG scenario design, might decide to start searching the house one room at a time – essentially treating it like a dungeoncrawl.

Knowing that it’s a rather large house and they’ll spend most of their time not finding stuff that isn’t there, I might push them into a sector crawl and frame their actions appropriately: They say they’re going to search the kitchen, but I simply handle the resolution of the action as searching the whole house (i.e., the house is a single “sector” and they’re performing an exploration action there).

Note: I’m not saying this is the one-true-way of handling this situation. I can think of a half dozen different reasons why you might want to handle the house search as a location-crawl even though there’s only one clue to be found.

This can also be a good thought experiment for how you run a sector crawl, particularly if you’re finding yourself defaulting back into treating the area as a location-crawl. Unless the players are aware of the sector crawl structure (and it’s a structure that doesn’t always lend itself to that), you’ll often be figuring out how to interpret the players’ declared actions within the context of the structure.

For example, they may not explicitly say, “I’m exploring this sector.” But they might say that they’re looking for a place to sleep. Or are searching one section of the sector. Or are looking for medical supplies. All of those can be treated as exploring the sector (and trigger the sector’s discoveries and encounter).

The same thing will be true of navigation, where you’ll need to figure out if certain actions are just moving around inside their current sector or if it’s actually moving to a different sector (and, if so, which one).

UNTESTED: MEGADUNGEON SECTORS

This is something I haven’t had a chance to actually test yet: Converting sections of a megadungeon into sectors.

I’m not talking about designing a megadungeon-like scenario as a sector crawl. (Although you can easily do that, as demonstrated with the example of an abandoned dwarven city above.) What I mean is running a megadungeon as a dungeoncrawl, but when the PCs have “cleared” a particular section of the megadungeon (akin to clearing hexes in a hexcrawl) you convert that section of the megadungeon into a sector.

This would hypothetically allow the players to quickly move through cleared sections of the megadungeon. If you’ve run large dungeons or megadungeons before, you’ve probably already done something akin to this in a purely informal way. (Skipping the boring stuff and getting to the interesting bits, right?) What I find interesting about formalizing this into a sector crawl is that it would still provide a structure for triggering encounters there or even exploring to discover hidden secrets the PCs had previously missed.

It would also give a convenient structure for handling restocking the dungeon – i.e., unclearing the area as new monsters migrate in. For more details on that sort of thing, check out (Re-)Running the Megadungeon.

If you’d like to see a sector crawl in action, there’s one in the upcoming Apeworld on Fire! adventure for the Feng Shui roleplaying game. Designed by Paul Stefko, we used a small sector crawl for a section of the adventure in which the PCs are exploring an abandoned arcanowave laboratory while being hunted by a nanostock demon!