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

A few things to keep in mind:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Grade: D

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

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

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

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

• Grade: D

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

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

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

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

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

• Grade: D+

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

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

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

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

There’s a bunch of cool Avernian terrain features:

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

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

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

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

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

• Grade: B-

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

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

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

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

From this practical standpoint, there are several key questions:

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

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

A SOULFUL RETROSPECTIVE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A TANGENT ABOUT LICHES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A PLANAR COSMOLOGY

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

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

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

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

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

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

But what are the Outer Planes?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Go to Part 2: The Final Frontier

There are two places where tracks (along with the associated concept of tracking) can be found in the Alexandrian Hexcrawl: First, there is the Tracker watch action, in which characters can actively search for and follow tracks.

Second, the encounter system is designed to generate random encounters, lairs, and tracks.

Random encounters provide immediate obstacles and interludes while traveling, lairs spontaneously generate new locations in the hexcrawl (organically building up material along well-traveled routes as the campaign develops), and tracks are a trail that can be followed to a point of interest.

Thinking in terms of “tracks” seem to commonly conjure up the image of hoof prints in the sod, but we shouldn’t limit ourselves to that. In the wilderness exploration of the hexcrawl that sort of physical spoor is most likely very common, but the concept of “tracks” can really be generalized to “clue.”

For example, if we generated a result of “tracks” for bandits, that might mean footprints in the forest. But it could just as easily include a merchant caravan in panicked disarray due to their latest highway robbery; the dead body of a bandit that was critically wounded and abandoned; a bolt-hole containing documents implicating the mayor of a local village in collusion with the bandits; and so forth.

TYPES OF TRACKS

Spoor: What can be thought of as the “classic” tracks we commonly think of. This includes both physical prints and scents (particularly if you have a hound for a familiar or live life as a werewolf). Following a spoor path usually also means looking for and encountering other signs (like broken foliage) that are described below.

Spoor paths can include trails, which are paths used frequently repeatedly by a create. The common image here is the worn rut of a deer or fox path. Runs are similar to trails, but are less frequently used.

Subsurface trails are tunnels. In the real world, trackers frequently look for where small tunnels re-emerge (and will use the diameter of tunnels to identify creatures). In a fantasy world, it’s quite possible the tunnel will be more than large enough for adventurers to follow the spoor path right inside. (Tunnels created by one creature may also be used by other creatures.)

Sounds: The howl of a wolf, the roar of a dragon, the screech of a griffon, or the distant sound of a fireball exploding. Sounds emanating from nearby can be used as an encounter trigger, but distant sounds can (often ominously) indicate the presence (and direction) of creatures.

Smells: The zombie stench of putrefacting flesh, the lingering ozone odor of a beholder’s rays, the sulfurous stench of a hell hound, or the distinctive musk of more mundane creatures can linger in the air long after they have passed.

Moulting: Anything shed by a creature, such as feathers and fur. This can also include skin (like a snake) or an exoskeleton (like a crab, spider, or insect). Some lizards will actually lose their entire tails (a process known as “caudal autotomy”) in order to evade predators, and you could imagine similarly fantastical abilities. Perhaps there are creatures which, when threatened, will spontaneously generate a cloned copy of their “corpse” and leave it behind to slowly decompose into ectoplasmic residue.

Other creatures use parts of their bodies as weapons, which could be left behind in their victims or embedded in the environment, like the spines of a barbed devil being left in a tree.

On a similar theme, there might be body parts lost by animals due to hazard rather than nature (like a dismembered limb or pool of blood).

Food: This might include food that’s been stored (whether squirrels hiding nuts or a cache of the local rangers), but is probably more commonly partially consumed meals. This can include carcasses (including human corpses depending on which predators are active in the area), but also plants or area of foliage which have been grazed by herbivores.

Also consider pellets, which are masses regurgitated by hawks and the like. These include trace remnants of food, but are primarily made up of indigestible remnants from their meals (bones, exoskeletons, fur, feathers, bills, teeth, etc.).

Fewmets: The other end of the digestive track, specifically scat and excrement. Urine is also an option. Don’t be afraid to embrace the fantastical here, ranging from the well-known scale of triceratops poop to, say, the scorching phosphorescence of hell hound pee.

Kill Sites: This includes carcasses, but may just be signs (like blood spatter) left from a kill which a predator later dragged from the site (or consumed whole). This category is also worth calling out specifically because far more dramatic kill sites are frequently left by intelligent creatures (victims of goblin raiders or the rotting corpses left by poachers).

Glyphs: Intentional markings left by intelligent creatures. These might include navigational signs carved into trees, strange runic carvings, odd fetish sculptures, demonic graffiti, or simply a discarded note.

Sleeping Areas: Many sleeping areas will actually be generated as lairs, but there are also transit beds and lays, which are used as less frequent or irregular resting areas. For animals, this often takes the form of crushed vegetation. Intelligent creatures may leave a wide variety of signs (remnants of a campfire, a latrine, discarded food remnants, miscellaneous refuse, etc.).

Marring: The activities of beasts and monsters will often damage or leave their mark on the natural environment. Rubs are produced by an animal rubbing against trees or rocks. Gnaws and chews can give clear indication of the size of a creature’s teeth. (You might similarly find a place where intelligent creatures were practicing with their weapons or using a machete to chop through thick overgrowth.) Scratchings can be both intentional (sharpening your claws or digging for grubs) and unintentional (signs left from climbing or scampering over terrain).

In the realm of fantasy we might add to this things like burns (fire or acid), phase marks (distinct traces left by incorporeal creatures passing through physical objects), ectoplasm, and the like.

Tip: When imagining tracks and other signs, don’t get fixated on the ground. Remember verticality! In the real world, woodpeckers drill in trees above your head. In fantasy, bloated stirges can leave smears of blood up there, too.

SCALE OF TRACKS

Something else to consider is that tracks can vary from the obvious to the almost impossibly obscure. You can use this to provide varied flavor to tracking sequences, or to reward particularly good Wisdom (Perception) or Wisdom (Survival) checks.

Large scale tracks are significant and obvious. You might not automatically notice them, but even untrained people will likely recognize clear pawprints in mud, well-worn trails, significant damage to foliage, big animal carcasses, and the like.

Medium scale tracks are perhaps the most common (being left almost constantly by anyone or anything not intentionally covering their tracks), but are more difficult to notice or may only be significant to those with training. This can be stuff like gnaws and chews, pellets, and subtle vegetation breaks. It can also include more obvious tracks which have been obscured by the passage of time.

Small scale tracks usually require a sharp eye, special training, or both. They include many of the same signs as previous categories, but are subtler, sometimes as the result of extreme age. These are faint pawprints on hard ground, a handful of partially buried bones left from a months-old kill, or an orcish arrowhead buried deep in a tree trunk.

Ghost scale tracks almost certainly require training and experience to spot and interpret. They also frequently disappear quickly. This can include dullings (in which a creature passing through the morning dew leaves a “dull” area by brushing the water off foliage), shinings (later in the day, creatures walking through the grass press it down, revealing its shiny side), and other incredibly subtle tracks (like leaf depressions).

Back to 5E Hexcrawls

Go to Part 1

Rhodarin Press has published five supplements fleshing out Avernus, presenting a unique vision of the first layer of Hell. The first of these I stumbled across was Tyrants of the Purple City, a brief gazetteer describing an entire infernal city that lies somewhere along the Styx.

TYRANTS OF THE PURPLE CITY: The city is primarily presented through a number of distinct factions, each of which has a barebones quest/job that they want accomplished. This is an interesting lens for viewing the setting, but seems very practical, resulting in a lot of bang for your buck in a relatively short supplement.

The biggest shortcoming of Tyrants of the Purple City is the appalling proofreading. (Although the malapropism of “portuary ward” is almost delightfully evocative.) This is a problem which unfortunately persists throughout the Rhodarin supplements.

• Grade: B-

CHARON’S DROWNED SHRINE: Charon’s Drowned Shrine presents another Avernian city lying along the Styx, but this one was utterly destroyed in a flood forty years ago.

I will just never understand paragraphs like this:

Characters will most likely approach the city through the main course of the river. If they traverse the town to the Temple they should come across the districts in the order Outskirts, New Harbor, Eastern Gate, and then the Inner City, where the Temple resides, but through magic means or other strategies, they might be able to circumvent some wards.

First, there’s a map, so this is immediately obvious and the text is irrelevant. Second, stop trying to force non-linear environments into being linear, plotted experiences. Third, the phrase “if the PCs figure out how to do something, then they can do something” seems to be the #1 favorite way for RPG authors to write “I feel a need to write something, but have absolutely nothing to actually say.”

With that grumpy pet peeve out of the way, the biggest problem Charon’s Drowned Shrine has is that Orinxis, the ruined city, is… mundane. Absurdly so given that it is a CITY IN HELL ITSELF.

For example, the first keyed location is the Old Water Mill. Oooh… A mill churned by the cursed waters of the Styx itself! What alien and infernal purpose could it have been built for?

Grinding flour.

In similar fashion, the adventure just kind of blithely assumes that the PCs will be casually wading (and even diving!) into the waters of the Styx. The whole thing just feels like an adventure designed for the Material Plane that has been awkwardly copy-pasted to Avernus.

This one just doesn’t do it for me.

• Grade: D

ESCAPE FROM THE BLOOD FORTRESS: Originally written as a one-shot that could also be potentially used as part of a longer campaign to bring the PCs to Avernus for the first time (by having them kidnapped and then locked in an infernal prison from which they must escape), the author has hypothetically retrofitted Escape from the Blood Fortress to be used as part of a Descent Into Avernus campaign (although, as far as I can tell, no actual effort has been put towards achieving this goal).

The dungeon from which the PCs are escaping is painfully linear, which is made worse because options ARE given.. it just turns out they’re designed to murder you if you’re stupid enough to take them. For example:

Exiting through this exit is highly inadvisable, as it would probably mean a very complex encounter and almost certainly incarceration or death.

So go back to the Preapproved Exit™ you dummies.

Other design problems include encounters which are… vague. For example:

The denizens of this kitchen are mainly imps and quasits following the orders of Jakll, a blind and very old tiefling (non-combatant) with excellent cooking skills.

How many imps? How many quasits? No idea.

The aforementioned “gonna kill you dummies for picking the wrong door” encounter is similarly undefined. There’s just, like, so many devils out there!

Eventually the PCs follow the linear dungeon up high enough that they can look out a different window and see a huge cut-scene play out which is, despite them having no agency in it whatsoever, the “climactic moment in the adventure.” Oddly, the adventure then continues.

This one is a miss for me, too.

• Grade: F

THE ADMIRAL’S SUCCESS – A GUIDE ON SAILING THE STYX: This supplement consists of two parts. First, a set of alternative mechanics for handling exposure to the Styx designed to moderate the consequences of doing so.

Second, ten scripted random encounters designed for groups traveling along the Styx. These encounters are mostly serviceable, but also fairly pedestrian.

Unfortunately, several of them once again suffer from the “I forgot to put combat stats in this combat encounter” problem seen in Escape From Blood Fortress, which is fairly crippling in a product pretty much exclusively designed to provide ready-to-use encounters.

• Grade: D

VYSIANTER’S GUIDE TO THE RED WASTES OF AVERNUS: This is an example of what I mean when I talk about GMs lacking scenario structures. The author’s concept here is a blasted swath of Avernian wilderness called the Red Wastes, but the only scenario structure he knows is “linear plot.” And so the trackless waste through which the PCs are supposed to “roam” is presented as… a road.

With a sequence of programmed encounters that play out as the PCs walk down the road.

Once again, several of these encounters are vague, with some basically consisting of the author saying, “Here’s an idea for an encounter that might work. Maybe. I dunno.”

The typos also remain on point with this one, producing “bad-reliefs” and a temple to “Armodeus” (who I’m assuming is Asmodeus’ n’er-do-well cousin who’s also a frat boy).

The book is rounded out with the Lost Temple of Dak-Thrael. This dungeon is very atmospheric and evocatively packed with a ton of lore about the Queen of Lilies (who once ruled over the verdant paradise which preceded the Red Wastes). I find the key to be a little muddy – with boxed text that violates the “don’t tell the players what their characters are doing” rule and a presentation primarily based on theorizing about things the PCs might do (instead of just clearly describing the room so that I can run the game) – but it’s serviceable.

If you’re looking to add a little enigma to your version of Avernus – a reminder that its history stretches back through countless aeons beyond human comprehension and its wastes are filled with the lost palimpsest of unknowable epochs – Vysianter’s Guide to the Red Wastes might be worth snagging for Dak-Thrael alone (to which I’d give a grade of C-).

• Grade: D+

After stumbling into Tyrants of the Purple City and being pleasantly surprised, I was really excited to discover that Rhodarin Press had done a whole slate of Avernus-focused supplements. Unfortunately, I was pretty consistently disappointed by the rest of the line. With that being said, I see a lot of potential here, and will be keeping an eye on Rhodarin in the future to see how they develop.

One last thing to note, which may not have been immediately clear from the above, is that all of Rhodarin’s Avernus products are loosely bound together, forming a shared continuity. Each book stands on its own, but they’re also designed to work with each other.

Go to the Avernus Remix

Go to Part 1

As we discussed in Part 2, this system is designed to be modular, including a large number of advanced rules and supplemental tools that can be optionally used or discarded depending on your personal taste and the specific needs of a particular hexcrawl.

When you’ve decided which options you want to use, you’ll want to create a clean resolution sequence to make running the hexcrawl at the table silky smooth.

Below you’ll find three examples of such resolution sequences: one for an ultra-stripped down version of the rules, a basic version with all four modules implemented in a basic form, and a third loaded up with a lot (but not all) of the bells and whistles. (Not all of the optional rules are compatible with each other, so it’s not possible to have a version with everything we’ve laid out.)

BASIC HEXCRAWL PROCEDURE

During each watch, do the following:

1. DETERMINE THE DIRECTION OF TRAVEL. Ask the players what direction they want to travel.

2. ENCOUNTER CHECK. Roll 1d12. On a roll of 1, roll on the wandering encounter table. On a roll of 12, the location keyed to the hex has been encountered.

3. HEX PROGRESS. The characters move 12 miles per watch, or 6 miles in difficult terrain.

• It takes 12 miles of progress to exit one of the hex’s 3 far faces.
• It takes 6 miles of progress to exit one of the hex’s 2 near faces.
• Changing direction within a hex will result in the loss of 2 miles of progress.
• If characters double back, reduce progress until they exit the hex. If they leave the hex by any other route, it requires an additional 1d6-1 miles of progress to exit the hex.

LEAVING A HEX. Determine the new hex (based on direction of travel) and reset progress.

FULL HEXCRAWL PROCEDURE

1. DIRECTION & TRAVEL PACE.

• Determine the expedition’s navigator.
• Navigator determines intended direction and travel pace.

2. ENCOUNTER CHECK. Roll 1d12. On a roll of 12, the location keyed to the hex has been encountered. On a roll of 1:

• If in a border hex, check to see which encounter table should be used.
• Roll on the wandering encounter table.
• Check % Tracks.
• Check % Lair.
• If it’s a wandering encounter or lair, make an encounter reaction check.

3. WATCH ACTIONS. Resolve all watch actions.

4. ARE THEY LOST?

• If they are not following a landmark or trail, make a Navigation check.
• If they are lost, determine veer. If they are already lost, veer can be increased but not decreased.

5. HEX PROGRESS

• It takes 12 miles of progress to exit one of the hex’s 3 far faces.
• It takes 6 miles of progress to exit one of the hex’s 2 near faces.
• Changing direction within a hex will result in the loss of 2 miles of progress.
• If characters double back, reduce progress until they exit the hex. If they leave the hex by any other route, it requires an additional 1d6-1 miles of progress to exit the hex.

LEAVING A HEX:

• Determine new hex (by applying current veer to the expedition’s direction of travel).
• If they were lost, make a Navigation check to see if they recognize it. If they do, they can attempt to reorient. If they do not, veer accumulates. (Note: Using a compass automatically resets veer at the hex border even if they don’t recognize they were off course.)

ADVANCED HEXCRAWL PROCEDURE

1. DIRECTION & TRAVEL PACE.

• Determine the expedition’s navigator.
• Navigator determines intended direction and travel pace.
• Modify expedition’s speed by terrain and travel conditions.

2. ENCOUNTER CHECK. Roll 1d8. On a roll of 1, roll on the wandering encounter table. On a roll of 8, the location keyed to the hex has been encountered.

3. WATCH ACTIONS. Resolve all watch actions.

4. ARE THEY LOST?

• If they are not following a landmark or trail, make a Navigation check.
• If they are lost, determine veer. If they are already lost, veer can be increased but not decreased.

5. DETERMINE ACTUAL DISTANCE TRAVELED

• Roll 2d6+3 x 10% x Average Distance.
• Make a Wisdom (Survival) check to see if they accurately estimated their distance traveled.
• TIP: If their progress would cause them to leave a hex during a watch and that would cause their terrain type to change, calculate progress by hour. When they reach the hex edge, note how many hours are left. Then you can reference the new hex, calculate the new average distance, and continue marking progress.

6. HEX PROGRESS

• It takes 12 miles of progress to exit one of the hex’s 3 far faces.
• It takes 6 miles of progress to exit one of the hex’s 2 near faces.
• Changing direction within a hex will result in the loss of 2 miles of progress.
• If characters double back, reduce progress until they exit the hex. If they leave the hex by any other route, it requires an additional 1d6-1 miles of progress to exit the hex.

LEAVING A HEX:

• Determine new hex (by applying current veer to the expedition’s direction of travel).
• If they were lost, make a Navigation check to see if they recognize it. If they do, they can attempt to reorient. If they do not, veer accumulates. (Note: Using a compass automatically resets veer at the hex border even if they don’t recognize they were off course.)

Go to Part 7: Hex Exploration