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The Avernian hex key is going to be one of the “hands on” sections of the Remix: We’re going to set up the scaffold here, but there’ll be some finishing work you’ll probably want to do before running it.

To stock the Avernian hexcrawl, I will be:

• drawing locations from Descent Into Avernus,
• pulling material from a variety of Avernus-related supplements on the DMs Guild, and
• creating original content.

Most of the locations in Descent Into Avernus were originally and primarily designed to be part of the Choose Your Railroad structure that the campaign is built around. The key below assumes that you’ll have access to the Descent Into Avernus book, but will be providing notes focused on how these locations should be adapted in the absence of this railroad.

In cases where I’m using material from the DMs Guild, you will similarly need to either obtain the original supplement or swap those hexes out for your own creations. The notes below, once again, focus primarily on how you can adapt the published material to good effect. (Harvesting published scenarios like this is something I almost always do when stocking hexcrawls.)

Original content is also unlikely to be a in a play-ready state, but should be sufficiently detailed that you’ll be able to flesh out the details.

Throughout these locations we will be seeding:

• The four components required to repair the dream machine.
• Clues related to Lulu’s memory mystery.
• Clues related to the Avernian Quest.

INDEX

Hexes A1 thru B6
Hexes C1 thru D6
Hexes E1 thru F6
Hexes G1 thru H6
Hexes I1 thru J6

A1. AVERNIAN TARPIT

A vast tarpit several hundred feet across. The is hot enough to burn (1d6 fire damage) and it is constantly bubbling. Dangers include:

• A large gas bubble explodes, spattering those within 10 feet with hot tar. DC 12 Dexterity saving throw or 1d6 fire damage.
• Getting stuck in the tar. (It counts as difficult terrain and requires a DC 14 Strength check to pass safely or a DC 18 Strength check to escape once stuck. If stuck, the victim will slowly sink into the tar, becoming submerged 3d6 rounds later.)
• Jets of flame spontaneously erupt from particularly strong outgassing.
• The gas itself can be toxic, requiring a DC 16 Constitution saving throw. On a failure, characters are affected as per a confusion spell, rolling on the custom table below once per minute to determine their actions. At the end of each minute, they can attempt another saving throw.

There are several small outcroppings of rock and solid-ish land dotted throughout the tarpit. On one of these is a giant boulder of gold that gleams in the strange, reddish light of Avernus. (The boulder is actually pyrite; fool’s gold.)

A2. OBELISK OF UBBALUX

• Descent Into Avernus, p. 98.

A set of astral pistons within the obelisk are intrinsic to Ubbalux’ prison. The pistons can only be accessed if Ubbalux is freed.

FREEING UBBALUX:

• As described in Descent Into Avernus, Ubbalux has heard of the Mirror of Mephistar (Hex I1) and believes Mephistopheles can unravel the riddle.
• Bel built the prison and could free him. Ubbalux can also point them towards Bel’s Forge (Hex H2). (If it seems reasonable, Ubbalux might still be under the impression that Bel is the Archduke of Hell.)
• You can also solve Bel’s original “riddle” (see below).

INVESTIGATING THE STONES: Bel told Ubbalux that the secret to escaping the prison was hidden in the arcane runes etched across the standing stones. The trick is that crucial information is located on the outside of the stones, where Ubbalux can’t see it.

• A DC 12 Intelligence (Arcana) check indicates that each of the outer standing stones is associated with one of the schools of magic.
• A character who speaks Infernal or succeeds on a DC 18 Intelligence (Arcana) check will notice that each standing stone has a cartouche containing two syllables, one of which is either the first or second syllable of the associated school of magic in Infernal and the other appears to be a nonsense syllable.
• A similar cartouche appear on the inside of the stone (where Ubbalux can see it, although you can also look across the circle and see them from outside) with a similar pairing of the first or second syllable of the associated school of magic in Infernal (whichever one isn’t on the outside) and a nonsense syllable.

SOLVING THE RIDDLE: Combining the two “nonsense” syllables on each stone forms a command word associated with that stone. You can intuit the correct order of the syllables by looking at the matched syllable from the school of magic. (So the syllable in the cartouche with the first syllable of the school of magic should be the first syllable of the command word and the second syllable should be the second.)

To release Ubbalux, you need to place your hand on each stone and speak the associated command word (suffering the effect described on pg. 98 of Decent Into Avernus). Once this has been done with all eight stones, the energy field drops: Ubbalux is freed and the central obelisk can be accessed.

A3. OOZE HARVESTERS

• Pit of Shummrath
• Map by Dyson Logos

Treacherous stone steps are carved into the cliff face surrounding the Pit of Shummrath, leading down to a miserable village which has been built upon a shelf of rock that thrusts out into the green ooze.

A pair of piscoloths and a gaggle of sahuagin overseers dominate a population of enslaved half-fiend goblins who dredge sludge from the Pit and bottle it. These are shipped to the piscolothian cities in the dark waters beneath the ice of Stygia, where the oil-slick-like telepathic emanations of the sludge are a kind of delicacy used to spice food.

Asmodean Cavern: The mouth of a cave at the base of the cliffs in the goblin village leads to several chambers containing ancient fiendish pillars. The four faces of each pillar are covered with worn runes in an archaic form of Infernal and the bas reliefs of various devil faces. Touching the runes causes the devil faces on the matching pillar to animate and recite them. Collectively they tell of the Trial of Asmodeus and the rights given to Asmodeus under the First Law by the ruling of Primus, Lord of the Modrons. This site is recorded as being one of sixty-six such memorials erected to record this epochal event.

The goblins lived in these caverns, but several years ago they were flooded by a sudden undulation of the Pit. Shummrathian ooze still lingers in the depths of the cave, creating a hostile environment for the goblins who still squat here.

A4. ARCHES OF ULLOCH

• Descent Into Avernus, p. 103

The Arches of Ulloch allow the mass transport of entire armies, but they require the use of a tuned keystone (similar to the planar tuning fork required for a plane shift spell) to align them with a particular plane of existence.

One of the arches currently has an ancient Avernian keystone, allowing teleportation to anywhere within Avernus.

Creating a new tuned keystone requires:

• Either the original plans (located in Bel’s Fortress, Hex H2) or a DC 20 Intelligence (Arcana) check to reverse engineer the existing keystone.
• 50 soul coins worth of raw materials.
• An appropriate workshop (such as those located in Bel’s Fortress, Fort Knucklebones, or other Warlord armories).

Note: There is an unkeyed keystone in the Dump (Hex H1).

A5. WARLORD LAIR: THE LOST GOLGARI

• Warlords of Avernus, p. 8
• Map by Dyson Logos

This is the lair of Kolasiah, the Infernal Medusa, and the Lost Golgari, who have come to Avernus from Ravnica. Kolasiah seeks a way of returning home and would value any news of a powerful spellcaster not allied with Zariel.

Entrance Ramp: Infernal war machines come roaring down the ramp and are parked in a cluster around the central stone pillar.

Forge: In the central pillar of the rock at the bottom of the entrance ramp there is a forge and garage run by Malargan the Oni. See Forges of Avernus, p. 4. A set of astral pistons can be found here.

For more details on the Avernian warlords, see Part 7E of the Remix.

Design Note: As written in Warlords of Avernus, the Lost Golgari have been reduced to a fraction of their former strength. You can either lean into that (with chunks of their base here being deserted) or I would potentially go the other way and bolster her to have a larger number of infernal machines and riders.

A6. WARLORD LAIR: BITTER BREATH’S MARAUDERS

• Bitter Rivals, p. 5
• Descent Into Avernus, p. 90

For more details on the Avernian warlords, see Part 7E of the Remix.

B1. ARKHAN’S TOWER

• Descent Into Avernus, p. 110

For Arkhan’s Tower, we would like to prep:

• A complete map of the tower.
• An adversary roster of the denizens. (Descent Into Avernus, p. 110-11 does provide a comprehensive list of creatures to add to the roster.)

For the map, I will recommend PogS’ excellent original cartography.

B2a. FERRYMAN’S PORTS

• On River

There are charonadaemon ferry stations on both shores of the Styx here. There are commissions available for travel up- and downriver, but most regular travel simply crosses the river to the other station.

Sudok’s Mart: The station on the contra-Dis side of the river is larger and contains a small market overseen by a yugoloth named Sudok.

B2b. ALVSKRAEMA CARAVANSERAI

• Map by Dyson Logos
• On Bridge (Across Pit of Shummrath)

The Alvskraema caravanserai is located next to the bridge which crosses the Pit of Shummrath. It is jointly operated by Brarumoch, Haskari, and Meltrus.

Brarumoch: Operates the common room and runs the kitchen. The caravanserai’s specialty is elf meat. Brarumoch has a supplier who hunts and butchers elves on the Material Plane; here they are considered an expensive delicacy known as alvskraema.

(This doesn’t mean that any elf walking through the door will be set upon and butchered. That’s not the sort of thing you do to a customer.)

Haskari: Operates a weapons forge. He specializes in creating cacophonous weapons, which allow those wielding them to speak and understand Abyssal. (See Forges of Avernus.)

Meltrus: Specializes in repairing and building infernal machines. He and Haskari are constantly squabbling over shop space.

Design Note: Note that the name Alvskraema is more or less “Elfscream” in Old Norse. It’s designed to echo the Elfsong Tavern from Baldur’s Gate. Thanks to Flallen from my Twitch chat for the suggestion of Elfscream Tavern.

B3. WITCH-QUEEN’S ABODE

• Dance of Deathless Frost

Tasha keeps a summer home in Avernus, as described in Dance of Deathless Frost. She is aware of Kostchtchie’s phylactery, knows that Baba Yaga knows its resting place, and is able to summon Baba Yaga’s hut.

B4. RED RUTH’S LAIR

• Descent Into Avernus, p. 107

Red Ruth has a heartstone.

B5. BONE CRATER

A large meteor impact crater formed by a huge skull (more than ten feet across) that’s partially embedded at the center of the crater.

B6. WARLORD LAIR: SOUL COLLECTORS

• Warlords of Avernus, p. 2
• Map by Dyson Logos

This is the lair of the warlord Algoran and his gang, the Soul Collectors.

Shrine to Eskarna: Algoran discovered an ancient shrine dedicated to the demon Eskarna. It was built countless aeons ago at a time during which the demons had pushed the front lines of the Blood War deep into Avernus. Long abandoned and forgotten, it was discovered by Algoran and converted into a gladiatorial arena.

Gladiatorial Arena: Watched over by the well-worn statue of Eskarna, Algoran hosts gladiatorial competitions here which attract a varied crowd of visitors and competitors.

Cogbox: Algoran recently acquired a modron slave as a wager during the gladiatorial fights. The modron has a Nirvanan cogbox. The modron might be willing to trade it for anyone who can help them gain their freedom; alternatively, if Algoran learns its value, he will seize it and try to make a deal (or wager) himself.

Shaaksuraar’s Armory: A “mountain of a sahuagin-werebear” called Shaaksuraar oversees a productive weapons forge for Algoran. This is located in the river cavern; Shaaksuraar goes on swims through the subterranean river and also quenches his fresh-forged weapons in the waters here. See Forges of Avernus, p. 3.

For more details on the Avernian warlords, see Part 7E of the Remix.

Design Note: The concept of Eskarna comes from Dyson’s original key for this map, although we have reduced it to an ancient ruin here. In Forges of Avernus, Shaaksuraar manages the Goregut Armory, but the Goreguts’ lair (Hex J3) in the Remix has been destroyed by Princeps Kovik (Hex J5). I’ve reassigned Shaaksuraar to Algoran, but you could also make this part of his backstory: That he worked for Raggadragga until his forge was destroyed by Kovik. (To add extra drama, perhaps Shaaksuraar betrayed Raggadragga to Kovik for a large payment of soul coins before transferring his services to his new forge here.)

Go to Hexes C1 thru D6

Go to Part 1

Let’s consider the Nine Hells as an exemplar and object lesson in how the Outer Planes make use of mortal souls.

Asmodeus is the original architect of Hell’s soul engines, having constructed a massive engine for waging the Blood War and containing the existential threat of the tanar’ri. However, Asmodeus himself is no longer engaged in the soul trade: He merely imposes a quota upon the Archdukes and Archduchesses who rule the other eight layers of Hell (and, by the extension of a fiendish feudalism, all of the devils who serve beneath them).

Zariel, Archduchess of Avernus, is perhaps the most direct example of Asmodeus’ war machine: Evil souls crawl out of the Styx into Avernus as lemures; they are then raised as devils to serve as troops on the front lines of the Blood War.

Dispater, Archduke of Dis, seeks secrets and covets souls which possess them. Having gained these secrets from the souls he controls, he uses those secrets as a temptation to corrupt mortals who, like him, crave secrets. (Or, in other instances, blackmail them into performing evil acts.) For Dispater and the devils of dis, souls are a memetic web of corrupt lore, the acquisition of which fuels its own growth.

Mammon, Archduke of Minauros, is the financier of Hell, profiting from the trade of souls in Hell. His soul-mongers “harvest” unencumbered souls from the Styx and see them either sold through the soul markets of the Sinking City (little different from the slave markets of the Material Plane) or forged into soul coins, the most literal manifestation of the soul economy of the Outer Planes. The regulations and valuations of the soul-monger guilds are managed through The Accounting and Valuation of All Things, a vast mass of ever-shifting regulations which govern the trade of all souls within Hell (and often beyond it).

Fierna and Belial oversee the pleasure places of Phelegethos, where their servitor souls are used as brothel stock, satisfying the terrible perversions of Hell with dark delights.

Levistus, the imprisoned prince of Stygia, is an example of what happens when a scion of the Outer Planes is unable to pay their debts. Levistus has a very limited portfolio of potential souls he can attempt to recruit, having been blocked from more lucrative markets by the decrees of Asmodeus. He is a prime example of how quickly a god’s fortunes can wane if their access to the soul-wells is cut off.

Glasya, Archduchess of Malbolge, is the warden of Hell’s prisons. Here Devils who have broken Asmodeus’ laws or Mammon’s regulations are sent for punishment. Thus the feudalism of Hell is enforced. (Glasya also secretly operates the Coin Legions, which are the thieves’ guilds of Hell.)

Baalzebul, Archduke of Maladomini, oversees Hell’s courts. Here devils are convicted and sent to Glasya’s prisons, but, more importantly, this is where all contracts forged between fiends and mortals are recorded, copied, and filed. If Minauros is the slave market, then Maladomini is the stock market.

Mephistopheles, the Philosopher King of Cania, maintains vast storehouses of lore and focuses his acquisition of souls on those arcanists who can help his laboratories delve deep into the mysteries of the multiverse. What is less known is that Cania is also home to the vast arcane machineries which ensure that the Nine Hells remain aligned with the soul-wells which form the foundation of Hell’s existence.

THE LORE OF LATTER DAYS

You may have noticed that much of what we have built here is based on lore developed in the earliest days of D&D. This lore remained largely self-consistent up until the end of 3^rd Edition.

So what about 4^th Edition and 5^th Edition?

The 4^th Edition of D&D fundamentally overhauled a lot of the game’s lore and metaphysics. The biggest change is the introduction of the Shadowfell, which, according to the 4^th Edition Manual of the Planes (2008), was “the definition of soul loosed from their bodies. It is the domain of the dead, the final stage of the soul’s journey before moving onto the unknown.” Souls linger for a time in the Shadowfell before passing through the Raven Queen’s maelstrom and the “final veil beyond which nothing is known.

… except there were also a bunch of souls scattered all around what were once the Outer Planes. Plus damned souls in Hell. And also damned and exalted souls in the Astral Sea. And also… Well, there wasn’t really a coherent metaphysic here.

In 5^th Edition, what we find (as we often do) is mostly just a tattered palimpsest of the lore which came before. The concept of drift is reiterated in the Dungeon Master’s Guide and the Monster Manual contains the familiar lemure and larvae as entry-level souls in the lower planes. The Monster Manual also suggests that will o’ wisps and a number of other creatures are mortal souls which have “failed to leave the Material Plane.”

Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes (2018) actually contains quite a bit of planar lore. Some of this is contradictory (for example, demons “generally have no regard for mortal souls and do not solicit them,” but elsewhere we find that exactly the opposite is true), but there are also some interesting tidbits:

• With the Shadowfell no longer serving as the domain of the dead, the Raven Queen has been revamped: She now kidnaps souls from other planes, bringing them back to the Shadowfell to serve various purposes. (This rather delightfully ties into our vision of planar power resting upon the soul engine, with the Raven Queen as the mischievous robber baroness of the planes.)
• Elves have a cycle of reincarnation, harkening back to the original soul vs. spirit cosmology.
• Abishai are specifically identified as souls which have been transformed into servitors of Tiamat: “Each abishai was once a mortal who some how won Tiamat’s favor and, as a reward, found its soul transformed into a hideous devil to serve at her pleasure.” This is superficially similar to the lore of abishai in previous editions, but can be tantalizingly interpreted as Tiamat having a personal channel of souls separate from those normally employed by Hell. Is it possible that there is a soul-well housed within her citadel?

In any case, the cosmology of 5^th Edition is broadly compatible with D&D’s original cosmology, and fits in quite snugly with what we’ve created here.

This post was requested by Alexandrian patron Glenn Rollins.

Go to Part 1

Deities & Demi-Gods is, in fact, the more or less definitive treatment of what happens after death in D&D.

AD&D assumes that the anima, that force which gives life and distinct existence to thinking beings, is one of two sorts: soul or spirit. Humans, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, and half-elves (those beings which can have a raise dead or resurrection spell cast upon them) all have souls; all other beings that worship deities have spirits.

The term “anima” didn’t catch on and the split between soul and spirit didn’t last much longer. (It’s somewhat present in the original Manual of the Planes (1987), but by the time Planescape (1994) rolled around in 2^nd Edition the terms “soul” and “spirit” were being used interchangeably.)

Upon death, both souls and spirits travel through the Astral Plane and are drawn towards either the plane associated with their alignment or the plane in which their chosen god resides. (If these are not the same thing, Deities & Demi-Gods and the Manual of the Planes are, at best, vague and contradictory about which one takes precedence. There are also other considerations to consider, like soul-selling contracts signed with devils.) In the 3^rd Edition Manual of the Planes (2001) this process became known as “drift” – the soul drifts towards their aligned Outer Plane.

Drift is not instantaneous. It takes days or weeks for the soul to arrive, and this is the reason raise dead can only work on the recently deceased for a period which increases as the cleric gains levels (1 day per level in 1^st Edition): the more powerful the cleric, the farther they can reach through the Astral Plane to pull back the dead soul.

The powerful resurrection spell, by contrast, can reach all the way to the Outer Planes and pluck the soul back from its “final” resting place. This can anger the gods from whom these souls are “stolen.” For example, there is a 20% chance that Anubis will force an offending cleric to perform a quest, a 1% chance that Tuoni will actually show up in person and forcibly claim the raised person’s soul, and so forth.

What is this journey actually like? According to Deities & Demi-Gods:

The road through the Astral Plane to their destination is clearly marked for the dead, but it is not free of peril. Some monsters roam the ethereal and astral planes at will, which is why burial chambers often include weapons, treasure, and even bodyguards to protect the soul on its journey.

To simplify this, you could perhaps say that souls drift through the Astral Plane in a state of quiescence, which is why characters returned to life with a raise dead spell have no memory of events after their death.  We could formalize this as:

• Souls take 3d10 days to drift from the Material Plane to the Outer Plane they are aligned with (either by their personal alignment or the god they keep faith with). Only souls still traveling through the Astral Plane can be affected by a raise dead
• Souls are not necessarily safe in their journey. Disturbed souls will be roused from their quiescence and able to defend themselves against Githyanki soul-marauders and similar threats with the equipment they carried with them in death and also any resources found in a properly sanctified burial chamber. (Let’s say a 1% chance of an adventurers’ soul being so accosted.)
• Once a soul arrives in the Outer Planes, it can only be returned to life by means of a resurrection Such an individual will carry back with them the memories of what they experienced in the Outer Planes.

If you wanted a more traditional “journey of the dead” to reach the afterlife, then you might have the spirits of the dead arrive through the soul-wells of the plane of Concordant Opposition (also known as the Outlands or Godslands). The soul’s drift will have carried them towards the soul-wells near or controlled by their intended plane of destination.

At some of these soul-wells, gods like Yen-Wang-Sheh catalog and sort the spirits, sending them to their final destinations. In other cases, the dead must continue their journey towards the afterlife (the Egyptian Book of the Dead was basically a how-to guide for this journey). Around others, fiends patrol, capturing the evil souls who emerge near the Abyss or Nine Hells or Grey Wastes and shepherding them to their final punishment.

You can imagine that some souls emerging through the soul-wells instead escape or find themselves diverted from their “intended” destination, perhaps traveling across the Outlands to the legendary city of Sigil or even fighting all the way back to the Material Plane. (If your group has suffered an unfortunate TPK, maybe they find themselves crawling out of an ill-used and little known soul-well, ready to begin the next chapter of their adventure.)

BEYOND THE FINAL FRONTIER

According to Deities & Demi-Gods, the key difference between a soul and a spirit is that the soul will remain in the Outer Planes for the rest of eternity, but a spirit will eventually be sent back to the Material Plane and reincarnated. This is rather difficult to square with other aspects of the cosmology, though, so it probably makes sense to follow the official product line’s lead here and just ignore it.

So what does happen to a soul when it arrives in the Outer Planes?

It’s reincarnated into an extraplanar entity.

We’ve seen this already with demons, devils, and archons. As Deities & Demi-Gods says, “The servants, functionaries, and minions of some deities (demons, devils, couatl, ki-rin, titans, and others) are actually spirits put into those forms for the purposes of the diety.”

Some of these entities closely resemble their mortal forms, like the einheriar of Valhalla and similar “eternal warriors” or those enjoying the changeless paradise of Elysium as a reward for their good deeds on the Material Plane. Others, of course, are completely transformed.

As we’ve seen, these servants, minions, and even the deities themselves can be slain in their home planes, in which case their souls are permanently lost and cannot be restored or raised by any means.

Thus we discover the fundamental soul cycle: The soul lives a mortal life on the Material Plane, then passes to the Outer Planes and lives a second life, which usually features the ability to ascend through many different forms. When that second life is complete (one way or another), the soul either comes to an end or passes on to some other form of existence utterly beyond our ken.

What about the other end of things? Where do souls come from in the first place?

Well, there are a few references to gods “creating” the souls of their worshippers. Moradin’s soul forge, for example, supposedly creates dwarven souls. But even if these tales are true, they don’t appear to be the primary source for the creation of new souls. Perhaps they are a wholly natural creation. Or perhaps the Inner Planes have been created as a vast engine specifically designed for the creation of mortal souls, funneling elemental, positive, and negative energy into the matrix formed through the procreation of mortal life.

Because if we read between the lines here, we can intuit (create) the great hidden truth of the multiverse: The gods are not in control.

THE SOUL ENGINE

Gods are, in fact, merely mortal souls which have ascended. They occupy the highest rungs of the hierarchy to which all beings of the Outer Planes belong, but they are still part of that hierarchy, not separate from it. This is rather brazenly understood in the lower planes – where lemures and larvae ascend to ever higher ranks of devils and demons – but it appears to be true in all of the other planes, too, even when its form is obscured in practice.

Once you understand this, it becomes clear that the economy of the Outer Planes are built entirely around the soul engine: Mortal souls pass from the Inner Planes, across the Astral Plane, and arrive in the Outer Planes. In the Outer Planes they drive towards primordial, ideological compass points — like shards of metal which have been “magnetized” towards those ideological poles by their actions in life.

As these mortal souls arrive in the Outer Planes, they are transformed into servitors or harvested for their power. Once again this is seen most clearly in the lower planes, where souls are transformed into the vast, endless armies of the Blood War and gods like Urdlen, the Crawler Below, eat the souls of its gnome followers when they arrive at its feet. But, once again, the same truth underlies the strength of the upper planes. What difference is there, really, between the devilish soul markets of the Sinking City of Minauros and the Exchequer of Souls in Yetsira the Heavenly City where the virtues of every archon are carefully weighed in a vast bureaucracy which controls the elevation and demotion of the heavenly ranks?

Souls are the labor and fuel of the Outer Planes. In some places they are literally the currency itself. They are the foundation of all immortal power.

Which means that the gods who control the flow of souls into the Outer Planes control that power.

From this, it follows that souls are not cosmologically drawn to dimensional coordinates because the planes are there; rather the planes are there because that’s where the souls are drawn.

Go far enough back in history and you’ll discover an epoch in which the Outer Planes were a primordial morass of demi-planes and proto-planes. As these planes (and the deities which controlled these planes) struggled for dominance, they warred one upon another.

How do you win a war? With soldiers.

And how do you get soldiers in the Outer Planes?

By controlling the soul-wells through which mortal souls are reincarnated.

Each of the eight major soul-well fields became the focal points for conflict. As the wars raged on, the winners slowly grew larger and more powerful. And as they grew, the nature of the conflict began to shift: Whereas previously there were a cluster of planes and powers primarily struggling over the Lawful Good soul-wells, another cluster of planes and powers struggling over the Lawful Evil soul-wells, and so forth, now some of the larger planes began launching assaults on more “distant” soul-wells.

This is, ultimately, why the major planes are aligned into layers today. This is not the result of some natural order: They are the result of planes and powers with like interests forming alliances of mutual interest against the other major powers of the cosmos.

Why layers? Well, each of the major planes is “aligned” with clusters of soul-wells that make up their base of power. Once upon a time, a soul-well could only “belong” to a single plane. By aligning into layers, however, the flow of souls could be directed through all of the aligned planes together. The soul-wells themselves are also the binding agent, which tends to weave them into the fabric of the planes themselves in disparate ways – thus, for example, souls flow into the Nine Hells via the Styx.

Mount Celestia, the Nine Hells, and Mechanus all claim to have been the first to master the cosmological complexities of aligning planes into layers, although some scholars suggest that it was based on lore first perfected by the baatorians, or possibly some antecedent civilization which gave rise to the baatorians.

The Averniad tells one tale from towards the end of this era of history, in which the final major planes were being aligned with one power or another and the Great Wheel as we know it was taking form.

Go to Part 3: On the Use of Souls

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