Published in 2013, Legacy of the Crystal Shard was created as part of the D&D Next playtest which bridged the 4^th Edition and 5^th Edition eras. It was designed by R.A. Salvatore with Jeffrey Ludwig, James Wyatt, and Matthew Sernett, and originally sold as a bundle including a 64-page setting book, 32-page adventure book, and four-panel DM screen, supplemented with downloadable PDFs which contained all the stat blocks necessary to run the adventure with 3^rd Edition, 4^th Edition, or the D&D Next Playtest rules (which are now “close enough” compatible with 5^th Edition). It’s now available as a print-on-demand title from the DMs Guild, combining all of these elements plus a micro-prequel adventure that was released during the D&D Encounters Launch Weekend.

I grabbed a copy of Legacy to see if the material could be adapted to flesh out the sandbox of Rime of the Frostmaiden, and this review will be embracing that and, at least in part, assessing Legacy’s value to a Rime DM.

The first thing to note is that large chunks of Rime of the Frostmaiden’s text was actually lifted directly from Legacy of the Crystal Shard. For example, here’s the first couple paragraphs of the “Life Off the Lakes” section of Rime of the Frostmaiden:

Most of the ten towns except Bryn Shander are built on the shores of three big lakes. The largest population of knucklehead trout is in Maer Dualdon, the deepest of the lakes. Redwaters, the shallowest lake, almost completely freezes in winter, making the fishing there difficult. Lac Dinneshere catches the worst of the winds blowing off the Raghed Glacier to the east and thus has the roughest waters. Small thermal vents at the bottom of these lakes keep them from freezing completely, even in the coldest winters.

Ten-Towns fishing boats are simple affairs. The smallest are rowboats and single-masted skiffs that require careful handling to avoid capsizing. Larger, twin-masted cogs and keelboats with single decks handle the wind and waves better. These ships fly the flags of their towns and provide fish for the whole community, not for any individual fisher.

And here’s the “Life Off the Lake” section from Legacy of the Crystal Shard:

Except for Bryn Shander, each of the ten towns is built on the shore of one of the three lakes where knucklehead trout swim, surrounding the mountain of Kelvin’s Cairn. The largest population is in Maer Dualdon, the deepest of the lakes.

Ten-Towns fishing boats are generally simple affairs. The smallest are one-masted skiffs, which are rowed as often as oared – not least because the harsh winds of the dale can capsize each small craft. Larger, two-masted cogs with single decks handle the wind better, and their crews exemplify the neighborly cooperation that makes Ten-Towns function. These ships fly the flags of their towns and provide fish for the whole community, not for any individual fisher.

Rime of a Frostmaiden (1489 DR) canonically takes place a few years after Legacy of the Crystal Shard (1485 DR), so there are a few minor changes. But for the most part, Rime of the Frostmaiden largely assumes that the events of Legacy of the Crystal Shard will have had no meaningful impact on the Dale, and thus large swaths of text are either directly copied or lightly rewritten like a fraternity bro trying to dodge a plagiarism detector.

However, the material in Rime of the Frostmaiden is notably incomplete in several regards. So there’s still value to be had in scooping up the Legacy campaign guide. In particular, Legacy has sizable entries given for the Reghed tribes, Kelvin’s Cairn, the Arcane Brotherhood, and, strangely (given Rime’s titular focus), the worshippers of Auril, the Frostmaiden that are absent from Rime of the Frostmaiden.

THE ADVENTURE

As noted above, the current version of Legacy of the Crystal Shard includes a Launch Day micro-adventure that takes place immediately before the primary adventure kicks off. It takes place while the PCs are traveling to Icewind Dale as part of a caravan, but despite being sixteen pages long, it consists almost entirely of a single, notably overwritten, combat encounter with a crag cat. Its usefulness, therefore, is almost nonexistent.

The primary adventure begins as the PCs’ caravan arrives in Bryn Shander and is ambushed by yetis. This encounter is quite cleverly framed, forcing the PCs to make interesting choices about what to defend and how to strategically split up their efforts.

In the immediate aftermath of the encounter, the PCs are presented with three adventure hooks, each one pointing to a different crisis which is developing in the Dale:

• A member of the Arcane Brotherhood named Vaelish Gant is attempting to establish a mafia in order to seize political power.
• An Ice Witch in the service of the Frostmaiden seeks to bring frozen devastation to the people of Ten-Towns and the Raghed tribes.
• The undead Akar Kessel has escaped from his icy prison and is corrupting the Dale with black ice created from the ruins of the legendary Crystal Shard.

If you’re a long-time reader of the Alexandrian, you might immediately identify that as the textbook introduction to a node-based scenario. Unfortunately, Legacy of the Crystal Shard doesn’t quite follow through on that promise. While the scenario is obviously striving to be open and dynamic, the book struggles to clearly present it as such using largely linear techniques.

You can see this uncertainty and confusion manifest in several ways, but perhaps the most notable is the overall structure of the campaign. In trying to grapple with the diverse and divergent continuities possible with three villainous agendas and PCs free to choose which to confront, Legacy frequently becomes mired in contingency planning, but it crucially attempts to rise about this by implementing two incompatible approaches.

First, there is a timeline of how events will play out unless the PCs get involved. This is a venerable technique, although the execution here is a little problematic: The pace at which things happen on this timeline, combined with the stated travel times in Icewind Dale, makes it exceedingly unlikely that any of the plotted adventure material in the book will be usable as written.

Second, there is an alternative structure in which (a) the PCs get to pursue two of the three threats facing Icewind Dale in Act I and then (b) whichever threat they didn’t deal with advances their schemes in an Interlude before Act II begins. This is another solid way of presenting material like this (particularly in a published adventure), but the specific execution here is once again a little sloppy, with the primary problem being that the continuity of the villains’ schemes in the Interlude don’t consistently carry through into Act II.

The discord between these two approaches combined with the awkward, reflexive use of plotted scenario techniques in an adventure desperately crying out for non-linear design results in a number of weird continuity glitches throughout the text, the most notable of which is almost certainly the rather forced “finale” in which two of the villains are revealed to have been secretly teamed up with each other the whole time in a way which makes absolutely no sense until you realize that they’d probably run out of page count and couldn’t squeeze in a proper conclusion for all three threads of the adventure.

CONCLUSION

Laying all these caveats aside, Legacy of the Crystal Shard is a really good mini-campaign. The three independent crises, mixed with the rich setting of Icewind Dale, creates a really compelling premise, which is then stocked with individual scenarios which are delightfully varied and chock full of vividly creative material: mafioso protection schemes, corrupted ice pirates, undead dragons, dwarven zombies — it’s all the stuff that gets you excited when you think about running it for your players.

If you’re getting ready to run Rime of the Frostmaiden, these scenarios can be almost seamlessly dropped into the campaign, adding some really dynamic elements that will enrich the Icewind Dale sandbox. (The only thing you’ll need to tweak, as far as I can tell, is the “Behind Bars” scenario hook on p. 104 of Rime of the Frostmaiden, which features one of the villains from Legacy of the Crystal Shard. There will almost certainly also be ways in which you’ll want to tie the villains of Legacy to the ongoing events of Rime.)

In short, I recommend Legacy of the Crystal Shard for any D&D fans. And I strongly recommend it for those DMing Rime.

Style: 4
Substance: 4

Author: R.A. Salvatore with Jeffrey Ludwig, James Wyatt, and Matthew Sernett
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
Cost: $14.99 (PDF) or $19.99 (POD)
Page Count: 112

Go to Icewind Dale Index

This post contains material which will be added to Part 6C of the Avernus Remix.

In addition briefing the PCs on the parts she needs, Mad Maggie can provide them with some initial leads on where they may be able to find some of them. The alphanumeric hex references below are map coordinates from the hex map in Part 7B, which you can use to quickly identify where these leads can potentially take the PCs.

Astral Pistons: She’s heard that an oni named Malargan — the forgemaster of Kolasiah, a local warlord — has a set of astral pistons in his forge. (Hex A5)

Astral Pistons: Uldrak the Tinker, whose shop is based out of a titanic helmet located in the western end of the Plains of Fire, had a set of astral pistons in stock a few years back when one of Maggie’s riders (now dead) needed repairs for an antique warmachine. It’s possible he might still have a supply. (Hex D5)

Heartstone: Mad Maggie and Red Ruth (Hex B4) were part of a coven along with a third night hag named Gaunt Gella. Mad Maggie believes that Red Ruth killed Gella and stole her heartstone. Maggie suspects that Red Ruth is still located somewhere in Avernus, but she doesn’t know where. However, she has heard rumors that Red Ruth has been seen at Mahadi’s Emporium from time to time, and the PCs might check there for a lead to Red Ruth’s current location.

Note: “Gella” means “the one with the golden hair.” Consider having a quiet, emotional moment for Mad Maggie where she remembers the beautiful hair of her fallen friend. It’s up to you whether or not Red Ruth was actually responsible for Gella’s death.

Alternatively, Gaunt Gella was bald, but collected the heads of blonde mortals.

Nirvanan Cogbox: Nirvanan cogboxes are a modronic technomancy. Maggie has heard that a modron ship crashed on the shores of the Styx contra-Dis from Fort Knucklebones. (The ship is located in Hex H5, but it’s actually an elemental galleon from Eberron and does not have a cogbox.)

Design Note: At least three instances of each component have been seeded into the Avernian hexcrawl. (The Three Clue Rule waves hello.) In Part 7I: Avernian Rumor Tables, you will find additional rumors that can lead the PCs to these disparate sources.

Mad Maggie gives four leads, and she should give them all at once. She gives two different sources for one component, one possible source for a second component (although she doesn’t exactly know how to track that source down), and an incorrect location for the fourth component.

This spreads four experiences across these leads:

For one component, the PCs have two leads and can choose one. (Establishing the idea that they have multiple options for finding the components.)

For another, they’ll have to follow up their lead to figure out where they can actually find the component. (Establishing the idea that they’ll need to actively investigate to find these components.)

For the third component, they’ll discover a dead end and need to find a different way.

For the fourth component, they’ll have no lead at all. (Establishing the idea that this isn’t just a “do what Mad Maggie tells you” fetch quest; instead, they’ll be in the driver’s seat for figuring out how to obtain these components.)

With no additional explanation, simply receiving these four leads from Mad Maggie will teach the players a lot about the form, structure, and expectations of the Avernian hexcrawl.

Go to Remixing Avernus

Go to Table of Contents

As previously discussed in the Remix, there are at least two things the PCs might gain by raiding Zariel’s flying fortress:

• Zariel’s half of Bellandi’s contract (which can be destroyed if brought together with the other half)
• Access to the control room for the Dock of Fallen Cities (which they can use to detach the chains holding Elturel if the pact has been broken)

It’s also quite possible that the PCs might come up with any number of other plans, like sneaking in with a Bel-sponsored strike team to assassinate Zariel. Or they might be captured by Zariel’s forces, thrown into the fortress’ brig, and then need to escape.

There are two flying fortresses presented in Descent Into Avernus – Zariel’s flying fortress (p. 130) and a wrecked flying fortress (p. 118). The presentations of both are severely restricted by the limitations of their design. The wrecked flying fortress, for example, crams everything into the command deck so that it can be presented as a single, small dungeon map. Zariel’s fortress, on the other hand, would be impossible to tackle as a clear-the-dungeon style adventure with its vast legions of hell troops, so an implausible railroad sees the ship abandoned by all but a skeleton crew of twenty-two devils.

To avoid these problems, we’ll use an alternative structure. A Death Star Raid is designed for exactly this type of scenario. It’s discussed in more detail here, but we’ll look at the essential elements below. The adventure features:

• A toolkit of situational obstacles, including both active and passive defensive measures that can be found in the flying fortress.
• Entrances to the flying fortress, including the obstacles which will try to prevent the PCs from using them (if any).
• A flowchart map of significant locations within the fortress, including obstacles and objectives placed within some of these locations.

RUNNING THE RAID

This should give the PCs enough structure to make meaningful choices (without getting bogged down in navigating every corridor) and give you the tools to flexibly run the scenario (without micromanaging every imp).

As noted in the article on Raiding the Death Star:

Don’t feel trapped by your prep. Remember that what you’re designing are tools: If they’re in the brig and they blow their Bluff check, send in some stormtrooper squads. If they feel trapped, don’t think they can fight their way out, and they say, “There must be another way out of here! Can we get out through the vents?” think for a moment and then say, “Sure. That works. You can blast a hole in the wall over there and drop down onto the garbage disposal level.” You didn’t prep a garbage disposal level, but it makes sense that a space station would have one, right?

Since the garbage disposal feels like a significant location, you might want to add an obstacle to it. You could add stormtroopers here, too, but since the whole point was to get away from the stormtroopers (and who would bother guarding garbage anyway?) it might make more sense to add a passive defensive measure. Perhaps a magnetically sealed door?

Use this same combination of logic and rulings when running Zariel’s fortress and you should be in good shape.

RAID PREP

If the PCs want to get information about the layout, defenses, and other features of Zariel’s fortress before initiating their raid, there are several options:

• Explore the wrecked flying fortress in Hex H6. The layout may not be precisely identical, but will be broadly so.
• Detailed blueprints of the flying fortress can be found in the archives of Bel’s Forge in Hex H2.
• Questioning captured devils of the 5^th Legion (or making soul bargains for the information) can also reveal many details.

THE 5th LEGION

Zariel’s flying fortress is the mobile base of operations for the 5^th Legion, which is composed of the:

• 3^rd Aerial Cohort, composed of spined devils
• 7^th Infantry Cohort, composed of bearded devils
• 9^th Cavalry Auxiliary, consisting of several dozen war machines.

See The Ranks of Hell for more details on the organization of Avernian legions. The command structure of the 3/5 and 7/5 is a little unusual, with the flying fortress having two rotating officer corps:

• The Horned Devil corps, under the command of Signifier Uxtarthas, is currently out of favor and are stuck leading the 7^th
• The Erinyes corps, under the command of Principia Hathastus, currently have dominion and are leading the prestigious 3^rd

Each officer corps consists of an independent cadre of prima, triarii, and their Princeps. They are kept in competition with each other, creating a fierce rivalry for supremacy in Zariel’s esteem. This drives them to fiendish heights, but also creates the opportunity for clever PCs to sow discord and distrust between the ranks.

The 9^th Cavalry maintains its own, independent command structure under the command of Principia Vastarxes. They are not responsible for internal security on the fortress and, therefore, will be not be significantly featured here.

Legate Siccatrax Augustus, a pit fiend, is the commanding officer of the 5^th Legion. She is also unlikely to directly appear in this adventure unless the PCs seek her out.

Homework: The 9^th might be field-testing an experimental war machine. (Mobile Suit Avernus?) Or perhaps their war machines are simply significantly superior to the outdated crap the warlords are driving around in. Either way, pulling a heist to steal one or more of the 9^th’s war machines might be the price demanded by a warlord for their assistance.

OBSTACLES: DEVILS

The 3^rd and 7^th Cohorts are not intermixed in most regions of the ship and are never on patrol together. However, consider staging scenes or encounters featuring members of each squabbling with each other (their rivalry echoing those of their commanding officers).

Security Patrols: Your basic security patrol. Also the ones standing around guarding the random location the PCs need to pass through. Or the poor devils who respond to a minor alarm to “check things out.”

• 2-4 spined devils
• 2-4 bearded devils

Optio Squads: A full squad led by an optio. Use the alternate stat blocks from Enhanced Devils to make the officer distinct from the other devils in the squad.

• 4-6 spined devils (including optio)
• 4-6 bearded devils (including optio)

Primus Squad: A squad led by a primus.

• 4-6 spined devils + 1 erinyes
• 4-6 bearded devils + 1 horned devil

Design Note: Assuming the players are higher than 10^th level by the time they’re mounting a raid on Zariel’s fortress, Security Patrols should be an Easy encounter for them. (They will likely be able to take them out before they have a chance to raise an alarm with minimal difficulty.) Optio Squads are slightly more difficult, varying from Easy to Medium challenges. The PCs should still have no problems dispatching them in combat, but the risk of the alarm being raised and additional reinforcements arriving is higher. A Primus Squad is a very serious threat, posing a Hard to Deadly challenge.

Barlguran Slaves: These deckswabs are captured demons who perform menial tasks. Their actions are controlled through experimental cyber-technomantic helms (with lots of strange metal protuberances and glass tubes imbedded into their skulls). Some of the older models are attached to a kind of “mobile slave platform” that they wheel around with them (6d6 psychic damage if you sever the connection), but newer models pack all the gear into the demon’s skull.

Thavius Kreeg: If the PCs killed Kreeg on the Material Plane, his soul was damned to Hell… and immediately rewarded for his exemplary service to Zariel. Wreathed in a perpetual cloak of fire and given the rank of Triarius, the devil Thavius serves in a position of honor onboard Zariel’s fortress. He is constantly accompanied by his “honor guard.”

• Thavius Kreeg: magugon (The Book of Fiends, p. 170)
• 2 gladiatrix (The Book of Fiends, p. 160)
• 2 pain mistresses (The Book of Fiends, p. 175)

Design Note: What about Zariel? The Archduchess is unlikely to go swooping around her ship dealing with internal problems. She literally has an entire legion to do that for her. (To use the Death Star analogy: Vader comes looking for the PCs. Tarkin deos not.) If the PCs want to confront Zariel, they will probably need to seek her out. In other words, she’s an objective, not an obstacle. (Your mileage may vary.)

OBSTACLES: PASSIVE DEFENSES

Security Gates: Doors on the fortress iris open and close. They have razor-sharp edges and can be quite dangerous when shutting unexpectedly (DC 15 Dexterity save or suffer 4d6 damage).

Security gates use infernal technology and can be opened only with a password or physical contact by authorized personnel (or a DC 18 Thieves’ Tools check).

Scourge Ooze Doors: Some vital compartments and passages on the fortress are protected with “doors” formed from a thin layer of gray-black ooze. Known as a scourge ooze, devils can simply walk through these oozes (with a slight popping sound). Mortal flesh, however, is scourged away, dealing 10d6 damage.

Scourge oozes can be easily destroyed with holy water (simply melting away if splashed with such).

Demon-Detectors: These are unlikely to bother most PCs, but there are demon-detectors located throughout Zariel’s fortress. These take the form of brass eyeballs protruding (sometimes obtrusively, sometimes less so) from the walls. The eyeballs spin back and forth. Using magic, they can detect demons in line of sight within 100 feet with a Passive Perception score of 25. If a demon is detected, an alarm-type spell triggers alerts on the bridge.

Ioun Turrets: These technomantic constructions have 1d4+2 specialized ioun stones whirring around their top. They are operated by a soul trapped within a soul coin which is placed in a slot at the top of the turret. The souls can also speak through the turret and have a Passive Perception score of 18. (Souls who serve well within a turret are given an opportunity to advance in the ranks of Hell.)

The ioun stones cannot operate independently of the turret. Each ioun stone contains one stored spell. These are usually offensive in nature (fireball, lightning bolt, finger of death, and power word pain are quite common), although some may also be loaded with divinations useful for security (zone of truth, detect evil and good, or true seeing, for example).

Go to Part 7D-B: Fortress Raid Map

The 5^th Edition of D&D identified Three Pillars of Adventure:

• Exploration
• Social Interaction
• Combat

Of these, nobody seems to have been particularly confused by social interaction (those are the talky-talky bits) or combat (there’s a whole combat system hardwired to an action economy, tactical movement, and hit point depletion).

Exploration, though?

Rivers of digital ink have been metaphorically spilt over it. So let’s take a moment to summarize two key points from all that discussion:

Yes, exploration is the least mechanically supported pillar. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say it is the least structurally supported pillar. Combat has that whole combat system we mentioned and an entire core rulebook dedicated to monsters you can fight. Social interaction is naturally supported by the fundamental structure of an RPG as a conversation of meaningful choices. Exploration simply lacks those clear, core structures.

Second: No, the “exploration” pillar is not just about wilderness exploration. Exploration is much more than that and – like the other pillars – should ideally permeate every facet of your D&D experience. Exploration is about discovering your environment, analyzing what you’ve learned about it, and then enjoying the pay-off of using that knowledge.

I was initially baffled by why so many people make the false assumption that “exploration = wilderness exploration,” because the pervasive nature of the pillar seems very clearly explained in the core rulebook (PHB, p. 8). But I think the problem goes back to the lack of structure: Exploration doesn’t have a clear-cut structure in the core rulebooks. D&D used to have a very clear-cut structure for wilderness exploration (the hexcrawl). If D&D still had that clear-cut structure, it would solve the problem! Therefore, wilderness exploration would solve the problem of the missing exploration pillar, which means that the exploration pillar is wilderness exploration.

But here’s the thing. Even when groups reach out, grab that structure, and plug it back into 5^th Edition, they often find that there’s something missing. They’re running the hexcrawl, but it doesn’t feel as if they’re exploring the world.

So there’s something more fundamentally amiss here. What does it really mean to be an explorer? And how can we capture that experience at the game table?

EXPLORING EXPLORATION

Exploration takes place in an environment. That environment might be a vast wilderness, a dungeon, or a specific room within that dungeon — it’s a fractal concept that can (and should!) apply to the game world at all scales – but regardless of the environment being explored, there are, broadly speaking, a few different kinds of exploration.

• Curiosity: You’re just randomly looking around to see what you can find in an area.
• Searching: You’re trying to find something specific that you know or suspect is in a particular area.
• Trailblazing: You’re figuring out how to get between two known locations. (Think Northwest Passage, but this can also apply metaphorically to non-geographic exploration.)

There are probably other broad categories I’m overlooking here, but this is a good start.

One key thing to take away from this list, though, is that travel is NOT exploration. I wrote an article called Thinking About Wilderness Travel which looks at the issue of wilderness travel specifically, but what it boils down to is this: In travel, you know the route. In exploration, you’re trying to figure out the route.

Using the word “travel” sort of narrows our scope to moving from one location to another, but the same principle applies more broadly. For example, visiting and exploration aren’t the same thing, either. When the PCs visit a tavern, for example, you usually won’t run that the same way you’d run a dungeon. Even if they’ve never been to a particular inn before, when they go up to their rooms for the night, you don’t break out the battlemaps or have them start navigating hallway by hallway.

When you’re going along a known route to a known place – either literally or metaphorically – that’s travel; not exploration.

(Vague treasure maps totally count, though. “Okay, the map says head south from the mountain.” But which mountain? That’s not really a known route. You still need to find the route, and that’s either searching or trailblazing or both. The same basic principle applies to a mystery scenario, for example.)

DISCOVERING EXPLORATION

Okay, but how do you make it FEEL like exploration? Well, if we describe it in terms of a hexcrawl, there are three core requirements:

First, you have to give the players a structure in which they can make meaningful navigational choices.

Second, it has to be possible for the players to FAIL to find something they’re looking for.

Third, the players have to either have information or be able to get information about an area so that the choices they make aren’t just random.

The first of these is generally not a problem in true wilderness exploration (although navigational systems can sometimes be a little anemic), but what will kill it dead as a doornail is any kind of linear plot.

I’m not just talking about railroading. (That’s always bad.) In this case, it’s any linear plotting that kills exploration dead. If you imagine the beginning of an adventure as Point A and the end of the adventure as a known Point B with a linear sequence of planned events connecting those two points, then what you’re imagining, from a structural point of view, is a road. It’s a known route that the PCs are traveling along, and that’s why the linear plot is antithetical to exploration.

(If you’d like to explore how to prep adventures that aren’t based on linear plots, check out Don’t Prep Plots.)

What about our second requirement? How can that one go awry? Returning to a hexcrawl, for example, it’s not unusual to see systems in which players choose which hex to enter and then automatically find whatever is in the hex. That can be OK (they can still fail to go to the right hex, so there’s a little bit of exploration there), but it’s pretty weak. It’s kind of like a dungeon with no secret doors in which the boxed text for every room completely describes everything in the room, with further investigation or examination never revealing anything more. The players simply move through the dungeon and the DM reads each room description to them. And that’s it. It should hopefully be pretty obvious why that would make for a lackluster dungeon experience.

When it comes to failure in exploration, explorers can also:

• Fail to look in the right place.
• Get lost (and possibly only think they’re looking in the right place).
• Be prevented by danger from reaching their goal (being captured or killed or forced to flee).
• Be forced to withdraw due to limited logistics. (The logistics of a wilderness expedition, for example, creates a time limit: Can you find it / what can you find / how much can you find before you need to return home?)

Another way of looking at this is that if you want to feel as if you’ve truly accomplished something, then you must be challenged in accomplishing it. And if the challenge is to be meaningful, then failure has to be possible (even if it’s only a temporary failure or a cost you didn’t want to pay).

(We’re kind of dancing around a broader principle here: It’s not just combat where the players should feel challenged by the game. All three Pillars of Adventure are made meaningful by overcoming challenges! That includes both exploration and social interactions.)

It’s really our third requirement, though, where I think things can often go wrong even when it seems like we’re doing everything right.

It’s all right to wander aimlessly and just kind of randomly look for something interesting. That’s curiosity. It counts as exploration. But it’s a shallow experience; it’s not going to engage the players, so they won’t FEEL like they’re exploring.

Once the players start getting information, though, they can start making meaningful choices.

So where does that meaningful information come from? Well, once again limiting ourselves specifically to hexcrawls, we can consider specific techniques like:

• Information in one keyed location can indicate other keyed locations, giving the PCs the opportunity to seek those locations out. (This changes curiosity into searching. See Hexcrawl Addendum: Connecting Your Hexes.)
• Treasure maps can be discovered. (A specific variant of the same technique.)
• Rumors can be gleaned from tavern talks, befriended NPCs, interrogated enemies, and the like. (See Hexcrawl Tool: Rumors.)
• Tracks or similar “monster sign” can be followed, as described in Hexcrawl Tool: Tracks. (This changes curiosity into a form of trailblazing.)

And so forth.

The more general principles here, of course, aren’t just limited to wilderness exploration. In other forms of adventure, for example, clues can often be pursued (see the Three Clue Rule), similarly changing curiosity into trailblazing.

SUMMING UP

Exploration requires freedom. It also requires an environment or a structure of play in which players can make meaningful choices in order to navigate, inspect, and take action in their surroundings.

At the most basic level, players should be able to satisfy their curiosity. This becomes a kind of default action. In a dungeon it’s examining and interacting with a room. In a mystery, it’s investigating a crime scene. In the wilderness it’s venturing forth into the unknown.

But because exploration at random is a shallow experience, that default action of random exploration should ideally provide information which allows the players to set goals and then make meaningful choices to pursue those goals though exploration – either by seeking something specific (searching) or figuring out how to get from where they are to where they want to be (trailblazing).

These can be quite literal (searching a room or a dungeon or a forest; seeking a physical path from one point to another), but can also be thought of as principles for guiding exploration in other contexts: Figuring out how the Mad Alchemist hid the key to his cypher in the statuary; how to prove that Old Man Roberts murdered his wife; or how to bypass a particularly nefarious trap.

There are many ways you can leverage simple curiosity into deeper exploration experiences in your scenario design (placing treasure maps, clues, node-based scenario design, etc.), but you can also use matryoshka techniques (like matryoshka searches and matryoshka hexes) to easily do this at the table during actual play, too: Instead of framing the resolution of curiosity-driven actions to an answer, simply frame those actions to the method (or methods) the PCs might choose to find their answers.

Hopefully this article has whetted your curiosity when it comes to exploration-based play. Good luck in searching out your own answers for how to incorporate exploration into your adventures, and I wish you the greatest success in blazing a trail into exciting new styles of play!

(You see what I did there?)

Go to Table of Contents

With Zariel’s story at the heart of Descent Into Darkness, the legions of Hell play a significant part in the campaign. In designing the Remix, I eventually reached the point where it felt necessary to actually nail down some of the details of how Hell’s military is organized.

My goal with these notes is not to be hyper-detailed or encyclopedic. In reality, any military with have dozens of minute distinctions within and countless exceptions to systems like this. And this is Hell itself — a fiendish bureaucracy with a legacy of aeons. Random Worldbuilding: Creating Noble Titles suggested a three-step process that will probably be useful to remember here:

1. Create a system that makes perfect sense.
2. Create two exceptions: One grandfathered in from some other system. Another that’s newfangled and recent.
3. Whenever the current system doesn’t quite work right for your current adventure… add an exception.

What I’m looking to establish here is a broad framework that will keep us oriented and consistent, while providing clear guideposts for improvising during play.

In my personal canon, the Legions of Hell are logically descended from the Legions of Heaven (because Asmodeus brought that military command with him when he betrayed Heaven to conquer Hell), which is why you’ll see broadly similar ranks in, for example, flashbacks to the Averniad.

Design Note: Our org-chart here takes inspiration from the legions of Rome, primarily because it provides a Latinate patina that feels stylistically appropriate for Heaven and Hell. Rome’s own military was reorganized countless times during its hundreds of years of history, and we’re not trying to accurately model the Roman military in any case. But if you’re looking to expand upon these ideas, you might look there for further inspiration.

If you want to add a lot of byzantine complexity, you might hypothesize that different blood legions use different org-charts (in, say, the fashion of the United States Army and Navy). In which case you could literally go Byzantine, by drawing inspiration from Byzantine military titles and the like.

BLOOD LEGIONS

There are eight blood legions – cruor legio – each commanded by one of the Dark Eight, the generals who serve the Archduke of Avernus.

Each blood legion is made up of an incredibly large number of individual legions. Some scholars cite a specific number (one hundred or one thousand or six hundred and sixty-six are popular choices); others claim there are hundreds, thousands, or even an infinite number of legions. (Thus the elven poet Suntithis famously describes the legions of Hell as the “eight infinities,” which may have inspired Aternicus to describe the apotheosis of Asmodeus as the “infinite betrayal, born eight times in blood.”) Let’s simply say “countless legions” and you can decide how much hyperbole is involved with that, if any.

There is presumably a High Command that serves as an interface between the Dark Eight and the individual legion commanders, but this strata of the military hierarchy is not particularly in our focus. If necessary, we can refer to these officers as Tribunes, with the understanding that there are many different types and gradations of the tribuni. (Members of the tribunate are perhaps further denoted by tiered honorifics that appear after their name, like augusta – e.g., Hastati Betrazalel Augusta is a devil named Betrazalel with the tribuni rank of Hastrati in the class of Augusta.)

Each legion is made up of cohorts, both of which are numbered, with cohorts (particularly cohorts on detached duty) often being identified by their number followed by the number of their legion. (For example, the 9^th Cohort of the 497^th Infantry Legion, also referred to as the 9/497.) Specific legions or cohorts may also have specific titles or nicknames, with varying degrees of “official” recognition. These can denote or be based on elements such as:

• Founding officers or notable historic leaders (e.g., the Belum legions founded by Archduke Bel, although some legions are also known as Belum or Belum Veterana because they are or were directly command by Bel)
• Important historic accomplishments (e.g. the Conquerors of Athalka)
• Awarded honorifics (e.g. triumphantes or perpessio)
• Descriptors of the legion (e.g., the Stygii legions of the fifth layer of Hell or barbazii legions made up entirely of bearded devils)

In other cases, or in addition to these elements, they can also just be adopted as cool names (e.g. Terror Incarnate).

Cohorts are specialized for specific roles or battlefields:

• Infantry
• Aerial
• Cavalry
• Aerial Cavalry
• Aquatic
• Subterrene

Most legions are formed from uniform cohorts and will be referred to similarly (e.g., the 497^th Infantry Legion), although some special legions will have diverse cohorts (for example, Zariel’s 5^th Legion is composed of the 3^rd Aerial Cohort, 7^th Infantry Cohort, and 9^th Cavalry Auxilary.)

Auxiliaries are similar to cohorts, but are either smaller in size, more limited in utility, or both. (Some auxiliaries will be highly specialized, veteran troops with extremely unique skills. Others are essentially trainee cohorts.)

KEY MILITARY RANKS

Optio (pl. optiones): Field officers who command small troop units.

Primus (pl. prima): Roughly equivalent to a lieutenant. They will either be in command of slightly larger troop units and/or have several optios reporting to them.

Triarius (pl. triarii): The commanding officer to which prima report to, and who reports to the leader of the cohort.

Signifier (pl. signifiers): A lesser leader of a cohort or auxiliary; a junior princeps.

Princeps (pl. principia): The leader of a cohort.

Legate (pl. legates): The commander of a legion. This title is sometimes translated as “General” in the Common tongue.

THINKING IN RANKS

As a practical, but completely non-binding, design guideline, I’m going to think of these ranks in the following terms at the table:

• An encounter with a couple of devil soldiers probably doesn’t feature a commanding officer.
• When encountering a squad made up uniformly of one type of devil (e.g., 6 bearded devils), I’ll generally have them led by an optio.
• A primus will generally be a slightly more powerful devil leading a squad of less powerful devils. (For example, you might have a chain devil primus leading a squad of 6 bearded devils.) Alternatively, you might use an alternative stat block from the Enhanced Devils supplement, which are handily designed not to make devils more powerful, but to make them more varied. (For example, you might have a bearded devil squadron led by a bearded devil primus with innate spellcasting.)
• A triarius is usually going to be a significant CR bump above whatever the baseline troops are. If you’ve got an infantry legion of bearded devils, then perhaps the triarius is an erinyes or horned devil. Conversely, if it’s a legion of lemures or imps, then the bearded devils might be triarii.

Legates, Princeps, and Signifiers are probably all significant characters that you would be placing with some care and thought. It would be in no way inappropriate to see pit fiend legates, although less powerful (i.e., slayable) legates are quite possible.

Go to the Avernus Remix