Over the past couple decades, a design concept that has become fairly entrenched in D&D culture is that the PCs need to face X encounters of Y difficulty per day. The general idea being that the game is balanced (either intentionally or unintentionally) around their resources being chewed up across multiple encounters: If they face fewer encounters, there’s no challenge because (a) they will still have lots of resources left at the end of the day (thus suffering no risk) and/or (b) they burn up LOTS of resources per encounter (making those encounters too easy).

There is obviously a kernel of truth here, but there are also, frankly speaking, A LOT of problems with this design ideology. But that’s somewhat beyond the scope of this article. What I’m mostly interested in focusing on today is one specific element of game play that becomes a really problematic dilemma when combined with this design ideology:

Wilderness encounters.

See, the basic assumption is that the design of Dungeons & Dragons should be finetuned around X encounters of Y difficulty per day in which the value of X reflects the number of encounters in a typical dungeon. There are some problems with this idea that dungeons should be designed as a one day excursion, but laying that aside, this makes a lot of sense: The dungeon is the assumed primary mode of D&D play; therefore the game should be balanced around dungeon adventures.

But, of course, the density of encounters in a dungeon is inherently much higher than the density of encounters in a vast wilderness. Furthermore, even if you increased the density of wilderness encounters, the result would be to turn every wilderness journey into an interminable slog. If you assume that

X = a dungeon’s worth of encounters = one day’s worth of encounters

then a wilderness journey that took ten days would “logically” have ten times the number of encounters in a typical dungeon.

You don’t want to do that, so you make one wandering monster check per day in the wilderness: The players know that they’ll have at most one “dangerous” encounter per day, so they just nova all of their most powerful abilities and render the encounter pointlessly easy.

So what do you do?

Do you just strip wilderness encounters out of the game entirely? They’re pointless, right? But to delete an entire aspect of game play (and something that routinely crops up in the fantasy fiction that inspires D&D) feels unsatisfactory.

Perhaps you could artificially pack one particular day of wilderness travel with X encounters, turning that one day into a challenging gauntlet for the PCs. But that’s really hard to justify on a regular basis AND it still has a tendency to turn wilderness travel into a slog.

For awhile there was a vogue for trying to solve the problem mechanically, primarily by treating rest in the dungeon differently from rest in the wilderness. In other words, you just sort of mechanically treat one day in the dungeon as being mechanically equivalent to ten days (or whatever) in the wilderness. The massive dissociation of such mechanics, however, could obviously never be resolved.

Long story short, the dynamic which has generally emerged is for wilderness encounters to be REALLY TOUGH: Since the PCs can nova their most powerful abilities when facing them and there is no long-term depletion of party resources (including hit points), it follows that you need to really ramp up the difficulty of the encounter to provide a meaningful challenge.

In other words, dungeons are built on attrition while wilderness encounters are deadly one-offs.

There are several problems with this, however.

First, it creates a really weird dynamic: Instead of being seen as dangerous pits in the earth, dungeons are where you go to take a breather from all the terrible things wandering the world above. That doesn’t seem right, does it?

Second, the risk posed by these deadly one-off wilderness encounters is unsatisfying. In a properly designed dungeon, players can strategically mitigate risk (by scouting, retreating, gathering intel, etc.). This is usually not true of wilderness encounters due to them being placed either randomly (i.e., roll on a table) and/or arbitrarily (“on the way to Cairwoth, the PCs will encounter Y”).

(A robustly designed hexcrawl can mitigate this, but only to some extent.)

Finally, this methodology – like any “one true way” – results in a very flat design: Every wilderness encounter needs to push the PCs to their limits and thus every wilderness encounter ends up feeling the same.

So what’s the solution?

THE FALSE DILEMMA

The unexamined premise in these attrition vs. big deadly encounters vs. skip overland travel debates is often the idea that challenging combat is the only way to create interesting gameplay.

Partly this is the assumption that all random encounters have to be fights (and that’s a big assumption all by itself). But it’s also the assumption that if the players easily dispatch a group of foes that means nothing interesting has happened because the fight wasn’t challenging.

Neither of these assumptions is true.

Let’s back up for a second.

You’ll often hear people say that they don’t like running random encounters because they’re just distractions from the campaign.

Those people are doing random encounters wrong.

The “random” in “random encounter” refers to the fact that they’re procedurally generated. It doesn’t mean that they’re capricious or disconnected from their environment. I talk about this in greater detail in Breathing Life Into the Wandering Monster, but when you roll a random encounter you need to contextualize that content; you need to connect it to the environment.

And because the encounter is connected to the environment, it’s meaningful to the PCs: Creatures can be tracked. They can be questioned. They can be recruited. They can be deceived. The mere existence of the encounter may actually provide crucial information about what’s happening in the region.

Random encounters — particularly in exploration scenarios — are often more important as CLUES than they are as fisticuffs.

They can also be roleplaying opportunities, exposition, dramatic cruxes, and basically any other type of interesting scene you can have in a roleplaying game. As such, when you roll a random encounter, you should frame it the same you would any other scene: Understand the agenda. Create a strong bang. Fill the frame.

Once you recognize the false dilemma here, the problem basically just disappears. If the PCs have camped for the night and a group of orcs approaches and asks if they can share their campfire… do I even care what their challenge rating is?

If I roll up the same encounter and:

• The PCs subdue and enslave the orcs.
• The PCs rescue the slaves the orcs were transporting.
• The PCs discover the orcs were carrying ancient dwarven coins from the Greatfall Armories, raising the question of how they got them.
• The PCs follow the orcs’ tracks back to the Caverns of Thraka Doom.

Does it matter that the PCs steamrolled the orcs in combat?

I’m not saying that combat encounters should never be challenging. I’m just saying that mechanically challenging combat isn’t the be-all and end-all of what happens at a D&D table. And once you let go of the false need to make every encounter a mechanically challenging combat, I think you will find the result incredibly liberating in what it makes possible in your game.

Go to Part 1

Once I came to see scenes as an emergent property of game play (rather than something that’s prepared), I began to realize that scenario prep is almost entirely about designing tools. Or, perhaps more accurately, toys. Running an RPG is about picking up these toys and actively playing with them, just like the players are actively playing their PCs.

In creating these tools you’re still thinking about how they’ll be used at the table. But it’s more like designing a hammer (“I know this tool will be useful for hammering nails”) than it is writing an IKEA instruction manual (“here is how the scene with Diego will work”).

At the table, players are going to say things like, “Let’s build a chair!” And the GM will be thinking, “Great! I’ve got a hammer, a bunch of wood, and some… screws? Well, let’s make it work.”

It may only reflect my predilections as a GM, but I’ve found over time that node-based scenario design seems to inherently lend itself to a naturalistic form of prep. I’m not sure if that’s the ethos of active play pushing node-based design in a particular direction or if it’s that node-based design has naturally fostered active play. Or both.

But, in short, the more comfortable I become with node-based scenario design, the more I find that the design arises out of the diegetic organization of the game world itself.

For example, when I’m designing something like the Lytekkas hypercorp, the nodes I design (and how those nodes are organized) overwhelmingly tends to mirror the organization of Lytekkas in the game world. (You can see this in the earlier examples, which were based on things like the geography of the game world or the corporate divisions of Lytekkas.)

When I’m struggling with node-based design, a trick I’ve learned is to pick an NPC and ask, “How would they see this stuff? How would they use it? How would they interact with it?” Whether that’s a hypercorp CEO in an orbital penthouse or a Triad 49er on the rough streets of Hong Kong, the in-game perspective is almost always illuminating.

Of course, this makes sense, doesn’t it?

If node-based scenario design is based on the flow of information – if the structure of a node-based scenario is made up of the paths formed by the information – then it follows logically that node-based scenarios will mirror how that information naturally flows through the game world. And, of course, that flow will be determined by the actual relationships between people, places, organizations, and events in the game world. In how the nodes are related to each other.

Thus, as you design your scenarios, you naturally break the game world apart into discrete chunks. Each chunk (or node) is either a toy or a collection of toys that you can pick up and play with, while the connections between nodes show how those toys are related to other toys, making it easy for them to be endlessly combined and recombined in actual play.

And that’s node-based scenario design.

FURTHER READING
Using Revelation Lists
Game Structures
Hexcrawls
5 Node Mystery
Gamemastery 101

Go to Table of Contents

LEGEND OF THE HELLRIDERS

Now that we’ve established the definitive truth of these events, let’s take a moment to look at how the story has been passed down to the modern day. How are the Hellriders remembered in Elturel and on the Sword Coast?

This material will be useful if any of the PCs are playing Hellriders (or, really, any Elturian characters). Or when they hear the legend at some point in the pre-Avernus  part of the campaign (e.g., when speaking with Reya Mantlemorn or another Hellrider). I’ve included some additional notes in square brackets that can be used to expand the basic version of the legend if the PCs decide to do some detailed research into the legend (in Candlekeep, for example).

THE FIRST HIGH RIDER: Before humans came to Elturel, the site was ruled by an Ogre Lord in a crude stone bastion atop the tor where now stands the High Hall. The Ogre Lord captured the son of Lady Shiarra, a local noblewoman. Lady Shiarra, seeking vengeance against the Ogre Lord, drove him out of the bastion. [Other versions of the story claim that the Ogre had stolen Lady Shiarra’s sword or horse. One version says the Ogre was her son. If you asked a sufficiently erudite ogre about the matter, they’d probably have different opinions about the legitimacy of Lady Shiarra’s actions in general.]

After the Ogre Lord was defeated, Lady Shiarra called a concord of local lordlings to the site where Shiarra’s Market now stands (see Part 5C). These lordlings pledged fealty to each other and formed the Riders of Elturel, with Lady Shiarra as the first High Rider.

OTHER TALES OF THE RIDERS OF ELTUREL: There are a variety of chivalric stories featuring the early Riders of Elturel. The most common themes include:

• A lone Rider heads out from the city and faces evil. (Pick any monster from the Monster Manual.) Sometimes they are seeking that evil. Other times they stumble upon it in unexpectedly idyllic places.
• Romantic tourneys in which Riders (often with a mixture of foreign knights) face each other in various games of martial skill while sexual tension kindles between rivals. These tales usually feature a shapeshifter posing as a knight or otherwise confusing identities.
• Minor crusades, in which troops of Riders sally forth to save an entire community (usually in response to a plea for help). [These tales are generally told and have been shaped to support Elturel’s role as “protector” of the surrounding lands.]

THE CHARGE OF THE HELLRIDERS:

• Olanthius, the High Rider of Elturel, was often away from the High Hall, for the frontiers in those days were sore-pressed by warbands passing over the Sunset Mountains from the Goblin Marches. Fields were despoiled, livestock slaughtered, homes razed, and people dragged off to terrible fates. [When, exactly, Olanthius ruled Elturel is uncertain, but generally agreed to be the 9^th or 10^th century, although some claim it’s as far back as the 8^th. Some of the early chronicles say that the trouble actually originated from the Trollclaws and not the Goblin Marches, although some loremasters argue that both might be true.]
• While Olanthius was away, a Prince of Devils came to Elturel. Cloaked in a handsome form, he insinuated himself into the High Hall as Nothius, a Lord of Iriaebor. Over time, he enslaved the soul of Olanthius’ love, the Lady Yael. [The early-14^th century poet Aternicus wrote “The Lay of the Lady Yael,” a now-classic masterpiece which weaves this story into a romantic seduction.]
• As winter fell upon another year, Olanthius returned from campaign over fresh-fallen snow to discover that his lady love had been stolen away. Alack! If only he had returned a few hours earlier, Lady Yael might have been saved! [In some versions of the story, Olanthius is now visited by a nameless angel who guides the Riders to where Yael is being held prisoner.]
• Olanthius led the Riders of Elturel in a frenzied chase. [Maatal’s Chronicle instead describes a search of eighteen months – in some versions, eighteen years – in which the Riders of Elturel scatter across Toril, seeking the hiding place where Prince Nothius has concealed Lady Yael. Various tales have accumulated to individual knights, some of whom journeyed to distant Zakhara and even Maztica.]
• When the Riders caught up with Lord Nothius, the devil revealed his true form. A great battle then commenced, which ended when Nothius opened a gateway to Hell itself and, with a cackling laugh, carried Lady Yael through it! [Several chronicles also ascribe the goblin or troll invasions as being part of Nothius’ schemes; these usually feature a ferocious battle as Olanthius and the Riders try to fight their way through to Nothius. In other versions, Nothius has carried Lady Yael to a citadel in the Sunset Mountains – sometimes identified as Darkhold – and the Riders must lay siege to it.]
• The Riders of Elturel did not hesitate! They plunged through the gate, pursuing the devil into Hell itself! [Some versions of the story have the Riders pursue the devil Nothius through all nine of the Hells. In these, Nothius is often revealed to be Asmodeus himself. These are generally agreed by serious historians to be exaggerations.]
• The pursuit of Nothius now continued across the blasted plains of Avernus itself. At last, the Riders of Elturel met the armies of Hell! The Riders defeated one of the fabled blood legions and Yael was reunited with Olanthius, but as they rode back towards the portal home a second and even larger legion threatened to cut them off.
• Olanthius knew the only hope of escape was if this legion was delayed. He asked for volunteers to accompany him… and all the Riders did so. Therefore lots were drawn to determine the lucky few who would ride one last time at the side of their lord. Olanthius begged Yael to fly to safety, but she, too, chose to ride into battle at his side.
• In the face of the Riders’ charge, the legion of Avernus trembled and buckled… but did not break. Olanthius and Yael perished on the Avernian plains. It is said that where they fell in a final, martial embrace, a spring of holy water sprung up that was poison to the devils of that land.
• Their sacrifice, however, bought the time the other Riders needed to escape from Hell. Overcome with grief at the loss of their glorious leader and his love, they returned to the city. Their valor was never forgotten, and from that day forward the Riders of Elturel were known as the Hellriders.

As you can see here, much of the true history has been lost. Or, rather, distorted through a storied tradition — a golden age of Elturian chivalry which has been artificially extended back to the founding of the city to culminate triumphantly in the great tale of the Charge of the Hellriders. Thus the earliest Lords of Elturel (including Lady Shiarra) have become retroactively identified as High Riders.

Design Note: This sort of thing isn’t without precedent in the real world. See, for example, how the “Roman Emperors” would have been contemporaneously identified as Imperator, Augustus, and/or Caesar. Or the Arthurian tradition, in which history becomes encrusted with literary invention.

If the PCs decide to do some deep investigation along these lines, you could certainly hint at the uncertainty of the historical record here. Although even these hints wouldn’t necessarily be accurate: For example, you might discuss how the loremaster Alice Messier of Iriaebor has recently done a study of “Jander Sunstar.” Supposedly the High Rider who led the Riders of Elturel out of Hell, Messier has found references to another “Jander Sunstar” as a folk hero in the Dalelands whose stories were later merged with a set of vampiric myths arising from the infestation of vampires that led to Merrydale becoming Daggerdale. The obvious conclusion, of course, is that “Jander Sunstar” never actually existed, and the Dalelands folk hero was simply incorporated into the chivalric cycle of Elturel.

If you want to get ambitious, you could develop some lore books along these lines and perhaps distribute them in likely places in Elturel and/or Candlekeep.

LORE OF ZARIEL

Once the PCs become aware that they’re dealing with Zarielite cultists in Baldur’s Gate, they may want to do some research into who Zariel is. This might also be true in Candlekeep after Lulu’s revelation that Zariel was involved in the Charge of the Hellriders. So it’s worthwhile to briefly consider what they’ll find in the history books.

You can also use this information to inform Intelligence (History) and Intelligence (Religion) checks.

Design Note: The general theory of my approach here is that (a) Hell exists, but (b) it is very, very far away from the Material Plane. Thus the loremaster’s understanding of Hell is akin to a scholar of Medieval Europe’s understanding of the fine details of Japanese history (i.e., incredibly poor bordering on the mythical). The history of Hell also stretches back across aeons unimaginable to human history. Plus the entire place is inhabited entirely with gifted liars whose interactions with humans are usually based entirely around deceiving them.

AVERNIAD & THE TRIAL OF ASMODEUS: These early events in planar history are known to mortal scholars, but are mostly obscured through a haze of confusing legendry. Zariel’s name is not associated with them, although the incident in which a nameless angel started a deific brawl during the Trial of Asmodeus might crop up.

It’s up to you how much chaff you want to throw up around the “true history of Asmodeus and/or Hell” if the PCs start looking into it. We’re greatly aided in this, however, because D&D itself has published a bunch of contradictory versions of this continuity:

• Serpents of Law: Asmodeus, then known as Ahriman, and Jazirian arose from the primal chaos as powerful serpent gods. The two serpents bit each others’ tails and formed a great circle whose turning transformed chaos into the order of the Great Wheel. The two serpents quarreled, stripping each other of god-stuff. The diminished Asmodeus, a wingless serpent, crashed into Nessus, the First Hell, while the winged Jazirian rose to Mount Celestia.
• Angelic Fall: When the first gods grew weary of fighting demons, they created angels to continue the battle for them. The first of these angels was Asmodeus. Over time, Asmodeus assumed more and more control of the war, with the gods formalizing more and more of his authority in the form of pacts. There came a time when the gods realized that Asmodeus had created a vast and horrific infrastructure for torturing mortal souls (i.e., Hell) and transforming them into foot soldiers (i.e., devils) – call it the military-infernal complex. Asmodeus was put on trial, but he simply pointed to the tangled web of pacts and declared that the gods had authorized all of it. Primus of the Modrons, who acted as the trial’s judge, ruled in Asmodeus’ favor, and the collection of pacts became known as the Pact Primeval. It remains the bedrock of celestial law.
• He Who Was: Asmodeus was once an exarch serving He Who Was. (Asmodeus would later go to considerable lengths to wipe out all record of the god’s name, leaving only the enigmatic title.) He Who Was was the ultimate god of law. To preserve a perfect order, He Who Was controlled every single aspect of reality, down to the smallest details. In his demesne, the mortal races did not yet have free will – they were automatons going through the motions of civilization. Asmodeus was no different, until he was corrupted by the demon lord Pazuzu. With the scales fallen from his eyes, Asmodeus saw clearly the tyranny of the Law according to He Who Was. After a quiet resistance (that may have lasted for centuries and also ties into the Dawn War waged against Tharizdun), Asmodeus journeyed to the bottom of the Abyss and found there the shard of freedom (which some “fools” have named the shard of evil) and crafted from it his Ruby Rod. The rod’s existence shattered the control of He Who Was (and, in some heretical texts, is claimed to be the basis for all mortal consciousness). Asmodeus slew He Who Was.

Note: Some gnostic cults claim that the breaking of the Perfect Order is much more recent than one would suspect: Some claim it only happened a few short years ago. Others cite the Spellplague or the Sundering. For esoteric reasons, the date of 1358 DR is frequently given – the Year of Shadows in which mortals ceased to be mere shadows and became fully realized and autonomous spirits. In any case, according to the gnostics, all recorded history before that point was merely acted out according to the whim of He Who Was; the historical personages not truly possessed of what modern mortals understand as consciousness.

CHARGE OF THE HELLRIDERS: Zariel’s name is also not associated with the Charge of the Hellriders in any way (see above).

ZARIEL – WHAT IS KNOWN:

• Zariel was one of the Dark Eight, the council of generals who lead Hell’s legions in the Blood War.
• She is believed to be a fallen angel, likely one of those who first followed Asmodeus to Hell, making her one of the oldest and probably most powerful devils.
• During the Reckoning – the War in Hell that turned Lords of Hell against each in the 13^th century – Zariel initiated hostilities by forming an alliance with Tiamat and leading an army to besiege Dis, the second layer of the Nine Hells.
• Near the end of the Reckoning, Tiamat betrayed Zariel and the siege on Dis was broken. Zariel was imprisoned in Tiamat’s citadel.
• At the beginning of the 15^th century, Avernus – the first layer of Hell – was in a state of tumult. The Blood War was going poorly. Zariel escaped from Tiamat’s prison, raised an army, and turned the tide. To reward her, Asmodeus deposed Bel – who had been the Archduke of Avernus – and raised Zariel in his place.
• Zariel has been the Archduchess of Avernus ever since. A cruel and brutally effective military leader.

Note: It’s possible that the inner mysteries of some Zarielite cults would preserve the knowledge that Zariel led the Charge of the Hellriders. From a practical standpoint, however, the PCs should not be able to learn this from the cultists in Baldur’s Gate. (The knowledge should drop in Candlekeep, as described in Part 4C.) If you want to add this sort of deep lore to the Zarielites, I’d recommend confining it to the revelation that she was a fallen angel and perhaps very early events pertaining to the Averniad and the Trial of Asmodeus.

WHAT DOES GARGAUTH KNOW? If the PCs get the Shield of Hidden Truth and question Gargauth, he can provide a lot more detail. (These same general guidelines can probably be used for other denizens of Hell, other than those with personal first-hand knowledge.)

• Gargauth is not familiar with Zariel’s role in the Charge of the Hellriders, but he knows that she was an angel who fell comparatively recently (within the last few centuries).
• Having been active in Elturel for decades, he’s familiar with the Legend of the Hellriders (and can probably provide an account of many of its variations and details).
• He can provide detailed accounts of the Averniad and the Trial of Asmodeus. (He even knows that Zariel sparked a brawl during the trial.) However, it might amuse him to muddle things up with false tales (like those described above).
• He knows the Reckoning and the Rift War in detail.

Go to Part 6D-E: Lulu’s Memory Mystery

Go to Table of Contents

THE FALL OF ZARIEL

• When the battle at last came to an end, Baalzephon was astonished to see Asmodeus himself arrive.
• They found Zariel beneath a mound of devils she had slain. She was badly injured, but still lived. As she awoke, Asmodeus knelt beside her in the dust of Avernus. He spoke to her in a soft voice.

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.

• In truth, the two conversed on many different planes of thought. And, in the end, Zariel accepted Asmodeus’ offer, swearing fealty to him and accepting his commission as one of Bel’s generals. Perhaps Asmodeus was right. Or perhaps she had been right to fear her weakness. Or perhaps in her pride, she convinced herself that, once she had dealt with the Abyss, she would be able to turn on Asmodeus and save Hell from itself.
• But Zariel had fallen.
• Haruman willingly followed Zariel in swearing allegiance to Asmodeus. Olanthius chose to commit suicide instead, but even in death discovered that he was bound by his oath to “crush the evil of the Abyss under the guidance of Zariel” and was raised as a death knight in her thrall.

Note: Once again, kids, examine the fine print of your oaths.

LULU: HIDING THE SWORD

• Yael and Lulu did not have any method for immediately fleeing the Outer Planes. In fact, they were essentially lost: Lulu had never been to Avernus before and the Zarielites had been preparing for an invasion of the Abyss, not the Nine Hells. However, part of those preparations had included learning the location of a number of pan-dimensional bolt-holes in the Abyss.
• Their plan, therefore, was to reach the Styx and use the river to travel into the Abyss and – if they got extremely lucky – find a way out. (If the plan failed, then perhaps they could throw the Sword of Zariel into the Styx to keep it out of Hell’s hands.)
• Lulu knew there would be Avernian watchposts along the length of the Styx. Penetrating that defensive line would be difficult. But Yeenoghu’s army must have crossed it somewhere and somehow, so they decided to backtrack his army and hope to duplicate his success.
• The plan worked: They discovered that Yeenoghu’s army had taken out three of the Styxian watchposts, leaving a gaping hole in the defensive line. They managed to cross the Styx and then commandeer an infernal ferry from a charonadaemon.

Note: At this time during the Blood War, the demons of the Abyss had successfully captured the far shore of the Styx. Their war palaces were bastions of war and the heavily fortified banks of the Styx were a muddy mire of endless, bloody war that extended into astral trenches.

• What they didn’t know was that Yeenoghu was tracking the Sword of Zariel. A war party waylaid them. With their ferry sinking, Yael and Lulu were forced back into Avernus.
• Pursued by Yeenoghu and with the forces of Hell closing in as well, Yael and Lulu realized that there was no escape. Yael plunged the Sword of Zariel into a rock and called for divine intervention. Lulu poured her own celestial essence into the call, the sympathetic resonance of her trumpet echoing across the Avernian plains as she drove Yael’s plea across the planes. Even so, the gods could wield little power in Avernus, but Lathander gave them an opportunity. Yael sacrificed herself, pouring her life force into what Lathander offered, raising an alabaster fortress around the Sword to protect it.
• The skein of Avernus itself rebelled at this holy touch, however, and a bloody cyst engulfed the fortress, Yael’s corpse, and Lulu.

ZARIEL IN HELL

Zariel became one of the Dark Eight, a general serving Archduke Bel. She frequently rebelled against Bel’s commands, however, pursuing far more aggressive strategies. Her Blood Legion was preternaturally successful, sacking numerous daemonic war palaces and establishing a beachhead on the far side of the Styx.

THE RECKONING (13^th Century DR): The Reckoning was a tri-partite conspiracy masterminded by Glasya, daughter of Asmodeus. She managed to convince half the Lords of Hell that the other half were planning a rebellion and vice versa. The third conspiracy consisted of Glasya, Zariel, and Malagard the Hag Countess (who was a councilor to Moloch, Lord of the Sixth), who believed they could seize considerable power for themselves as the Lords warred against each other. (Glasya even had aspirations of overthrowing her father and claiming Hell for herself.)

• The trigger point for the Reckoning came when Bel was targeted by a demonic assassin. The attack failed, leaving Bel in a magical coma. Evidence pointed to Dispater, Archduke of Dis, the second level of Hell. (In reality, the “assassination” was actually arranged by Glasya and had exactly the intended effect.)
• Zariel, having forged an alliance with Tiamat, laid siege to Dis. (Tiamat not only gave Zariel safe passage to the second level of Hell, but also threw her own draconic legions into the fray.)
• The full details of the Reckoning are beyond the scope of this project. Zariel spent almost the entire war engaged in the siege of Dis.
• Near the end of the Reckoning, Tiamat betrayed Zariel. The siege of Dis was broken and Zariel ended up being held a prisoner in Tiamat’s dungeons.
• Glasya and Malagard had convinced Moloch, Lord of Malbolge, to pursue a scheme to use the chaos of the Reckoning to dethrone Asmodeus. It failed, but Glasya was able to use this as a framework to frame Moloch as the “mastermind” behind many of her own schemes. Moloch was deposed by Asmodeus and Malagard raised in his place. (Malagard herself was recently killed by Glasya, who has become Archduchess of Malbolge herself.)

Design Note: Placing the Reckoning in the 13^th century and ending it with Zariel as Tiamat’s prisoner allows us to preserve a lot of pre-DIA continuity that DIA’s retcons had wiped out. For example, all of Bel’s pre-DIA continuity remains intact (except that he now supplants Gargauth, not Zariel, to become Lord of Avernus). Zariel still gets to besiege Dis to begin the Reckoning. And the imprisonment of Zariel by Tiamat (as described in Rise of Tiamat) is also slotted into place.

THE RIFT WAR (15^th Century DR): The surface of Avernus is periodically rent with massive rifts. Similar to rift valleys of the Material Plane, they are formed by the surface of Avernus pulling itself apart. But while some proceed with a glacial pace, others can appear with terrifying, convulsive speed.

There are many metaphysical theories about the nature of these rifts: Perhaps Avernus is like a “cap” which Asmodeus placed upon the Nine Hells, but Hell keeps trying to expand, trying to push its way through the planar substrate. Or Avernus itself is constantly expanding like a cancerous tumor, with the rifts either being where that new growth pushes out new planar material and/or where Avernus is trying to break apart, “budding” off new planes. Or they’re manifestations of demi-planes, either attaching themselves like parasites to Avernus or being forcibly scooped up by Hell’s vortex. Some even postulate they could be the spirits of evil living demi-planes that have died and are manifesting, lemure-like, in Hell. Or perhaps they are simply another hellish expression of Avernus’ corrupt landscape.

Whatever the case, in the early 15^th century a rift of unprecedented size rapidly opened on the contested side of the Styx.

And it was seething with baatorians.

Baatorians were the original inhabitants of Hell. They had a unique life cycle: Their larval state (known as nupperibo) were spontaneously generated out of the substance of Hell itself as a sort of tubercular reaction to the arrival of an evil soul. As Hell expanded, this strange property seemed to extend to each new level. Over time, the nupperibo could ascend into higher forms (in a process referred to as “molting”). For untold aeons, they were the factious rulers of Hell.

The ultimate fate of the baatorians has been lost to legends older than mortal civilization: Some claim that the entire species ultimately ascended into forms of pure energy – stories speak of “strange lights” and “malevolent shadows” – leaving Hell uninhabited when Ahriman arrived. Others claim that Ahriman conquered the baatorians and wiped them out in a genocide of colossal proportions.

Whatever the case may be, it seems fairly certain that Ahriman fundamentally reworked the cosmology of Hell, somehow adapting the baatorian ecology to instead generate lemures, the larval state of the baatezu devils. (It’s possible this is somehow connected to the rerouting or creation of the River Styx, a transport mechanism for mortal souls from which many lemure emerge.) Nupperibo are still known to manifest from the firmament of Hell, but they are usually ruthlessly hunted down and destroyed by the devils before they can molt into the more advanced forms of their species.

Now, however, an entire army of baatorians boiled out of the rift – some strange redoubt or primeval throwback of the ancient race – and invaded Avernus.

• Bel blew it. He had left most of the war palaces Zariel had conquered vacant and the baatorians were able to seize them for their own use. The defensive lines of the blood legions, having been thoroughly disrupted, collapsed and were routed. Watchtowers along the Styx were overrun and destroyed. For the first time in centuries, the Avernian frontiers were in utter disarray. Although no alliance was formed between the baatorians and demons, armies of both races freely crossed the Styx.
• With the “Avernian situation” rapidly deteriorating, Glasya saw an opportunity. She journeyed to Tiamat’s citadel and arranged for Zariel’s release. (There are several stories of how she accomplished this: A secret deal with Tiamat. Delivery of an edict from Asmodeus himself. A daring jailbreak heist.)
• Zariel’s Second Avernian March: For a second time, Zariel began a march across Avernus. This time, rather than fleeing, Zariel was gathering the scattered, routed units of the blood legions. As Bel retreated, Zariel attacked. She forded the Styx, re-sacked the war palaces she had first claimed two centuries earlier, and broke the baatorian supply lines. Then she turned around, marched back to the Styx, and intercepted the baatorians’ main army as it was attempting to cross the river. In the bloody, muddy Battle of Lost Memories, the baatorians’ strength was broken.
• The Rift Siege: After the Battle of Lost Memories, Zariel was able to link up with Dagos and Furcas, two of the Dark Eight whose armies had been cut off, and re-established the defensive watchposts along the Styx. While Dagos and Furcas held the river, effectively dividing the remaining baatorian forces in half, Zariel led her army to lay siege to the Rift. Once the Rift fell, the war was essentially over.
• The Archduchess: Asmodeus punished Bel for his failure by demoting him back to the ranks of the Dark Eight. In Bel’s place, he elevated Zariel as the new Archduchess of Hell.

Note: This history covers the broad strokes of Zariel’s life after her fall. For additional events directly relevant to Descent Into Avernus, refer to the “Lore of Gargauth” in Part 3B and “The History of Elturel’s Fall” in Part 4B.

LULU LEAVES HELL

• Although Lulu had been caught inside the bloody cyst, over the intervening centuries she had been slowly getting pushed out – like a sliver from your foot. She awoke – dazed and confused – upon the scabrous surface of the cyst and wandered away. (This was most likely during the time that Zariel was imprisoned in Tiamat’s dungeons.)
• During her wanderings, she visited Fort Knucklebones. [You could potentially insert other memories of Avernian landmarks here.]
• Lulu encountered the Wandering Emporium. There she was tricked by a rakshasa named Mahadi, who splashed her with water from the river Styx. Keeping her thus in a constant stupor, he kept her imprisoned. (A hollyphant’s tusks can be ground into a magical powder that transforms water or wine into an elixir of health. Mahadi kept her essentially drugged and senseless so that he could repeatedly grind down her tusks.)
• When Zariel became the new Archduchess of Avernus, Mahadi brought Lulu to her court and presented her as a gift. Zariel was disappointed to discover that Lulu was suffering from Styxian memory loss, for she wanted to recover her Sword, but had fond memories of her old friend. She gave orders that Lulu should be returned to Mount Celestia and dispatched a small party of devils to see it done.
• While crossing Avernus to an appropriate gate, Lulu’s devil escorts were ambushed by the warlord L’zeth (DIA, p. 90). Lulu, still in a Styxian befuddlement, wandered away from the scene of the ambush.
• Some time later, the effects of the water of the Styx finally wore off. (This is the beginning of Lulu’s memories.) She came to the River Styx shortly thereafter and followed it out of Avernus, journeying through the Outer Planes and having many adventures along the way.
• She eventually ended up in the Nexus (see Book of Eldritch Might III) and passed through a portal which took her to the city of Neverwinter in 1488 DR. From there she made her way south, returning to the area around Elturel. There she either becomes a PC (as described in Part 2) or met Sylvira (as described in Part 4C).

Go to Part 6D-D: The Legend of the Hellriders

DISCUSSING:
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 22C: Workings of the Chaos Cult

Tee, meanwhile, had discovered that one of the wood panels on the floor was loose. Prying it up revealed a small cache containing two books and a gold ring bearing the device of a broken square. Ranthir was immediately distracted by the books. Eagerly taking them from Tee’s hands he began flipping through them.

In this session we see a couple examples of what I refer to as lore books. These are generally one page handouts (although it’s fine if they end up being longer) that are given to the players when the PCs discover a book with significant information:

If you want to see a particularly large number of examples, check out the Books of the Los Angeles Cult and Savitree’s Research from the Alexandrian Remix of Eternal Lies. (I produced a, frankly speaking, ludicrous number of these for that campaign. To rather good effect in actual play, but I wouldn’t recommend it as an example of my standard practice.)

In practice, these handouts more or less serve as an executive summary for a book that doesn’t actually exist. (If you’re not familiar with these, they really do exist: People pay services to read books – usually business-related books – and produce brief summaries that can be quickly digested without reading the full book. This didn’t make a lot of sense to me until I realized just how much endless, repetitive blather can be found in these books. Although I’m always curious if this is because the authors of these books know that they’re just going to get boiled down to a set of highlights… But I digress. The nice advantage to this is that you can find any number of resources on line about how to write effective executive summaries.)

One significant divergence between my technique and the writing of an executive summary is that I will usually also discuss the actual physical interaction with the book. For example:

This slim, peculiar volume purports to be “a dream woven from the true and factual accounts of many diverse peoples of the world,” but it is rather difficult to separate what is meant to be scholarship from fancy. It is perhaps notable that the author’s name has been savagely crossed out on every page on which it would normally appear with a thick, dark ink, making its recovery utterly impossible. The volume’s only other distinguishing mark is an imprimatur placing its publication in Shanghai.

Or:

This slim folder of supple hide, clasped shut with a length of emerald green ribbon, contains a dozen or so individual sheets of parchment. Written in an archaic – almost alien – form of the common tongue, they tell a sad and cautionary tale.

The idea, of course, is to communicate the sensation of actually reading the book to the player.

“Why not just write the entire book and give it to them as a handbout?” …you’re adorable. But, seriously, I get asked this with surprising frequency, despite the answer seeming to be blindingly obvious: Writing a 50,000 or 100,000 word book as a handout is not necessarily out of the question (if it were to be a centerpiece of an entire campaign, for example), but is certainly not an endeavor to be undertaken trivially. And even if I were to write such a thing, pausing the campaign to allow the player(s) to read book-length confabulism would be to change one recreational activity into a fundamentally different one.

Conversely, though, why not forego the entire exercise and simply give the players the pertinent clue?

First, this is a variation of the Matryoshka search technique: Simply telling the players what they find is a less engaging and less entertaining experience than the players actually plucking the information out of the “book” (even if it is just a summary).

Second, these lore books can be densely packed with information: Not just the clue (or clues) that can lead the PCs to a new revelation, but also deeper lore about the game world that can provide a broader context for the merely procedural action. (It’s significant that a lore book inherently hits on several of the techniques discussed in Random GM Tips: Getting the Players to Care.)

Third, it’s easier to hide clues in the full text of a lore book. It’s deeply unsatisfying for the players when the GM says something like, “Oh my gosh! You remember reading something about this in the Unaussprechlichen Kulten!” Conversely, it’s VERY satisfying when a player suddenly shouts out, “Oh my god! We read about this! Hang on, let me grab the book!”

(In a similar fashion, lore books also offer the opportunity to present puzzles which must be solved. Sometimes this “puzzle” is cross-referencing information across several lorebooks obtained over time.)

Fourth, the physical handout makes it easier for players to reference the key information from the book and to refresh their memory whenever they choose. (This goes beyond merely lore books, but if there’s particularly crucial information – or information that will be relevant across many different sessions – putting it in the form of a handout is a very good idea.)

Fifth, it’s frankly just a more immersive experience for the players. They may not actually be reading the book, but it feels like it. Plus, a book that you just describe verbally is a transient experience. But a book that’s physically at the table – even if it’s just in the form of a piece of paper – really and truly exists. Just the act of players saying things like, “Who has the Fragments of Bal-Sagoth? I want to check what it has to say about Gol-Goroth,” or “Remember when we read The Book of Mrathrach?” is significant.

TIPS & TRICKS

Writing a lore book is more art than science, but here are a few things to keep in mind.

I almost always try to include a picture. In the case of the chaos lorebooks from In the Shadow of the Spire, that was frequently a cult sigil or the image of a chaos creature that was the subject of the book. In the case of Eternal Lies this was almost always the cover of the book. (These days it’s trivial to find scanned images of antique books online that can be repurposed with little or no image manipulation.) Visuals are nice in any case, but there’s also a base utility here: The image makes the handout distinct, not only in the players’ memories, but also when they need to find it again among their various notes and handouts in the future.

To establish the style of the book or to capture the enigmatical nature of the “source” text, include quotations. These can be short fragments or lengthy passages, depending on both your inspiration and need. For example:

The last few pages of the book appear to be a prophetic rambling of sorts, beginning with the words, “In the days before the Night of Dissolution shall come, our pretenses shall drop like rotted flies. In those days the Church shall be broken, and we shall call our true god by an open name.”

Here the lengthier passage captures the unique quality (and also vaguery) of the religious imagery. Conversely:

A closer reading quickly reveals that these deformities – referred to as “the touch of the ebon hand” – are venerated by the writers as the living personification of chaos incarnate.

In this case, I could have just as easily dropped the quotation marks. But including them presents a little “window” into the full text through which the player can project themselves.

As I mentioned before, describe the experience of reading the book. This can be the physicality of the book itself, but you can also relate the sequencing or revelation of knowledge (e.g., “a closer reading quickly reveals” or “on the final pages”).

You can prepare multiple versions of the text, with different versions being “unlocked” under certain circumstances. For example, you might have one handout that describes the physical characteristics of a drow lore book, and another which only becomes available once the PCs are able to read the drow language. A particular insight might require the character to have a particular skill, or a skill of a high enough level. Or there might be a hidden puzzle in the initial handout which, if the player can solve it, will allow them to discover additional layers of meaning in the text (provided in an additional or expanded handout).

You can combine (and expand) these last two ideas by presenting different editions of the same book. This is a common conceit with Mythos texts, for example. Thus the players can find an expurgated or damaged copy of a book early in the campaign, and then find a more complete copy (or one with an alternate ending) later. Marginalia can also be used to distinguish individual copies of a book.

Books can also cross-reference other books. Usually these cross-references don’t really “exist” (there’s not a lore book prepped for them), but in other cases these additional sources (often ripe with deeper information) will crop up later in the campaign. If you’re running a game in the real world, it can sometimes be fun to cross-reference real books.

WRITING THE BOOK

In terms of figuring out what information should be in a lore book, the process is basically part and parcel with plotting out the revelations of a scenario or campaign.

A key insight, however, is that the book should generally not just blandly state the conclusion you want the PCs to make. Instead of writing the conclusion, you are writing the clue which will let the players figure out the conclusion. It’s a subtle difference, but a meaningful one. Often I achieve this effect by presenting the information in an oblique or mythic manner. (For an example of how complicated and interwoven this can be, you might trace the references – both direct and oblique – to Azathoth in the Eternal Lies lore books.)

Along the same lines, it is often useful if the key information is not what the book is primarily about. Or, to think of it in a different way, the primary goal of the fictional author of the book is not to communicate the key information. Write the lore book as a description of what the book is – a scholastic study of Byzantine emperors, a 19^th century poetry collection, a manual describing elven funeral practices – and then drop the campaign-relevant information as an aside or one detail among many or an example serving a purpose in the text distinct from that to which the PCs will put it (or interpret it).

(This is not universally true. It can often be just fine to have a book whose primary function is to tell people about the very thing that the PCs need to know. This is particularly true if the lore book is being used to convey a great deal of pertinent information. I often think of these as a “briefing documents,” and the two lore books in the current session – Truth of the Hidden God and Touch of the Ebon Hand – are of this nature.)

Lore books don’t have to be just about clues, either. I often build mechanical benefits or character advancement opportunities into lore books.

• GUMSHOE games have a great mechanic for this in the form of dedicated pool points, so that if a player has the book with them it can mechanically benefit their investigations. This also has the nice effect of procedurally adding additional content to the book beyond the initial summary in response to player-initiated actions.)
• D&D spell books are an easy example. Relatively simple handouts containing the spell lists from captured spell books can offer a surprisingly rich amount of game play.

This is a great way to introduce homebrew or supplementary content into a campaign, particularly for players who aren’t typically interested in that sort of thing. I’ve used lore books to introduce new feats, new spells, new class features, and even whole new mechanical sub-systems.

My last piece of advice is this: Get specific. Lore books with a narrow focus are often more interesting than general cyclopedias. But even as you’re writing out a broad summary of what the book is about, pepper it with specific examples. Instead of having a book that’s “about haunted houses,” give examples of specific haunted houses. That specificity is what will make the lore book come alive.

NEXT:
Campaign Journal: Session 23A – Running the Campaign: Cliffhangers
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index