Power Score

Gary Gygax 1938-2008

This is the fifth entry in my series on the greatest dungeon masters of all time, and it features perhaps the most legendary name in RPG history: Gary Gygax.

In this article, I will go over the basics of Gary's campaign and then in the second half I will offer up some stories from the original Castle Greyhawk campaign, some of which were taken from Gary's dragon magazine articles, others taken from online posts by Gary and his former players.

I am no expert on Gary Gygax. Most of this information came to me while I was planning out a Castle Greyhawk campaign that I never actually ran a few years ago. So please forgive me if I've overlooked something or made an error on a detail.

Back in the early 70's, Dave Arneson got the ball rolling on the whole concept of role playing games with Castle Blackmoor, and once Gary Gygax got wind of Arneson's game he rolled up his sleeves and refined it with his own Castle Greyhawk.

Both men were members of a miniatures wargame society, so the game's rules grew from those. Gygax's Castle Greyhawk campaign refined and defined the rules of the game that would become Dungeons & Dragons.

Gary's players were people he played miniature wargames with, as well as his neighbors and his kids. Many of the characters in his campaigns have become a part of D&D lore, with many of their names stamped on a spell or magic item.

Jon Peterson wrote a fantastic article on how Gygax lost control of his own company here. Basically, TSR had a lot of money coming in during the early 80's and made some bad choices (buying a needlepoint company being the most infamous). Gary and the Blumes had a hard time managing a company that expanded at an insanely swift rate. Tensions boiled over and shares were sold.

My focus in these columns is on the work of the DM rather than their life or style. This is a blog about Dungeon Masters, and there is nothing more fun or insightful than hearing about a great DM's games, especially when it is a game that literally shaped Dungeons & Dragons and role playing games as a whole.

The Campaign World

Greyhawk is just south of Nyr Dyv

The world map was based on the real world Lake Geneva region. The planet was known as "Oerth", which a lot of people pronounced similar to "Earth". Apparently Gary actually pronounced it: "OY-TH".

Mapping

His games featured a lot of mapping of dungeons. As the heroes explored, one player had to draw what Gary described on graph paper. Part of the game was trying to figure out when a passage was gently sloping. Ideas like pouring some water on the ground and seeing where it trickled help, until Gary started having water seeping into the floor's many cracks. It was up to the players to get it right based off of Gary's descriptions. Getting lost in Castle Greyhawk was a very real possibility.

How Gary Ran His Games

According to a former player named Mike Mornard, they played in Gary's office. Gary would open cabinets and drawers so that the players could not see him, just hear him. One player was the designated "caller" - he'd announce what the group did. The other players weren't supposed to talk or chatter among themselves. Doing so was tantamount to character suicide. Apparently it was a very tense experience. I don't think Gary ran his games "behind a curtain" for long, but apparently he did do this for a period.

Also, kobolds were no joke. They had a habit of keeping the magic items of the characters they killed. How cool is that? Due to the regular influx of characters into the dungeon who died, the kobolds had considerable loot to use against future PCs.

Castle Greyhawk was run in a very interesting way. There was a pool of about 30 players, and whoever showed up to play that day went in the dungeon. Usually a group consisted of 12-20 players, although it eventually became "cool" to play solo.

Player Skill

Here's a great anecdote from the Blog of Holding:

"As Mike Mornard DMed us through a brown-book OD&D dungeon crawl, he told us a little about player skill. Apparently, among the original Greyhawk players, Rob Kuntz was good at D&D. He was good enough to adventure solo, not even bringing henchmen, and survive threats that would threaten whole parties of less skilled players. Once Kuntz started going on solo dungeon delves, it became the thing to do, even among other players who didn't have Kuntz's player skill.

Mike told us the story of one of Gary's lesser players who decided to go adventuring alone. He encountered a room filled with gems. Apparently, he didn't suspect that Gary was trying anything devious: he ran into the room and started reveling in his treasure. 'It's great!' said Gary (from behind his file cabinet, presumably). 'You're in gems up to your ankles!'

The player showered himself with gems like Daffy Duck. 'I'm independently wealthy!' (As a one-time recipient of a cache of random gems, I can relate to the player's joy.) 'It's great!' said Gary. 'You're in gems up to your knees!' The player shoveled gems into his pack. 'It's great!' said Gary. 'You're in gems up to your waist!' I'm sure you can see where this story is going. When the player tried to leave, he found out that he was sinking in quicksand covered with three inches of gems."

Castle Greyhawk, the Greatest Adventure That Never Was

People have always wanted Gary to publish Castle Greyhawk as an official D&D product. There were a number of efforts:

Castle Greyhawk: Published by TSR in 1985 just after Gygax was ousted from his own company. This adventure was a parody, featuring stuff like The Pillsbury Dough Golem and The Amazing Drider Man. Some believe this was an intentional slap to the face to Gary, while others believe it was just a really stupid idea.
Greyhawk Ruins: This was a dense boxed set published for AD&D second edition by Blake Mobley. This is an adventure that some enjoy and others feel is pretty dull.
Expedition to Castle Greyhawk: This is a 3rd edition version featuring some great maps that many think quite highly of. The dungeon is not complete, this book just details certain sections. I personally love the detail on the city of Greyhawk.
Castle Zagyg: Before Gary passed away, he began publishing his dungeon with the serial numbers filed off. Sadly, he passed away before it could be completed.
Gord the Rogue: Gary wrote a series of novels featuring Gord the Rogue, which is set in Greyhawk. You get quite a few details on Castle Greyhawk and all sorts of other D&D-related stuff that Gary had intended to make material for, including the Shadowland (Gary apparently had given Skip Williams notes to make a Shadowland adventure to be published by TSR, but it never happened.)
Bottle City: Rob Kuntz was the co-DM of Castle Greyhawk. He has published a few versions of his areas of the dungeon. Bottle City is a pretty awesome old school adventure.

Gary's Characters

Mordenkainen

Gary himself ran characters when Rob Kuntz would DM. Rob would sometimes run Castle Greyhawk and also his own dungeon, El Raja Key, set in his world of Kalibruhn. Rob's castle was immortalized in the official published D&D adventure "Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure". A revised/expanded version of the castle was published in issues of Dungeon Magazine as "Maure Castle".

Gary's most famous character is the magic-user Mordenkainen. His henchmen included: Zigby (a dwarf), Rigby (a cleric), Sigby Griggbyson (a fighter), Nigby (Bigby's apprentice) and Digby.

Gary had his characters and NPCs form a group known as "The Circle of Eight". In official D&D products, there is a Circle of Eight, but there are different members. The real life Gary Gygax Circle of Eight (+1) includes: Mordenkainen (who owns two red dragons named "Gorky" and "Porky"), Bigby, Yrag (A fighter, Gary's first character), Riggby, Felnorith (A fighter who collects swords), Sigby Grigbyson (fighter), Ziggby (the leader of Mordenkainen's 300 dwarf followers), Vin & Vram (elf twins). They lived in a place made of obsidian called the "Citadel of Eight". This information was gleaned from dragonsfoot.

The Heroes of Castle Greyhawk

Lord Robilar

Many of these names are very recognizable and have been featured in all sorts of different official products. This is a partial list of some of the more famous names. They started out as regular old characters just like yours or mine:

Erac's Cousin (Ernie Gygax)
Melf Brightflame (Luke Gygax) Leader of the Knights of Luna. Likeable, naive, loves ladies.
Lord Robilar (Rob Kuntz) Claims to fear nothing and no one.
Terik (Terry Kuntz) Robilar's brother, enemy of Mordenkainen.
Murlynd (Don Kaye) A wizard who ended up taking a trip to the old west
Tenser (Ernie Gygax) Likes melee combat.
Ayelerach (A Mark Ratner) Fighter, companion of Erac's Cousin, accidentally helped to free Fraz-Urb'luu.
Monk with No Name (Terry Kuntz) - Burns and steals for greed, has squirrel messengers. Had an elaborate blackmail scheme going against Ayelerach.
Lessnard (Mike Mornard)
Rary - (Brian Blume) On the Dragonsfoot forums, Gary Gygax wrote: "Rary was a low-level PC of Brian Blume. He wanted him to make "Medium," so he could be Medium Rary. That's how the character was played...if one can call it that."
Leomund (Len Lakofka)
Drawmij (Jim Ward)

The Dungeons in Castle Greyhawk

Old Greyhawk Castle had 13 levels, and many side or sub-levels:

Level One: A simple dungeon full of introductory rooms.

Level Two: Had two special locations, a nixie pool and a fountain of snakes.
Level Three: A prison with torture chambers.
Level Four: Crypts and undead.
Level Five: Lots of gargoyles and a font of black fire.
Level Six: A repeating maze full of wild hogs (???). Also, wereboars.
Level Seven: A labyrinth and a massive street full of ogres.
Levels Eight-Ten: Caves and caverns with trolls, giant bugs and a teleport nexus guarded by an evil wizard.
Level Eleven: The most powerful wizard in Castle Greyhawk lived here. He had balrog servants. There were also lots of white apes from Mars (the Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars).
Level Twelve: Full of dragons!
Level Thirteen: This is the bottom of the dungeon which has a very amusing slide in it. In later products, this area has a "god-trap" that a mad wizard named Zagyg used to siphon power off of deities with.

Obmi the Dwarf

Gary wrote about Obmi in Dragon Magazine #287. Obmi was a villain, a dwarf with boots of speed and a dwarven thrower. He also had this machine that shot a beam of light that forced those struck with it to run in the opposite direction. The heroes came after him and were repelled twice. The third time, they destroyed his machine but were enraged when he used his boots of speed to flee.

The heroes swore to hunt him down, and he became Castle Greyhawk's first arch-villain. Gary would end up using Obmi in his Gord the Rogue books and in the "Against the Giants" module series.

The Jeweled Man

Sometimes the heroes would run into this man made of gold, encrusted with gems. He was clearly worth a fortune. And don't forget - in this version of the game, gold gave you experience points! Treasure could literally make you gain levels!

The greedy players would hunt down and chase the mysterious man, but inevitably would be led into a trap or a horde of monsters. The heroes started to get paranoid and possessive:

"To reflect the attitudes of the PCs, it was natural to use innuendo to suggest one or another character was planning to capture the Jeweled Man alone. Solo adventures among the most able players were rare thereafter, as their peers were loathe to allow one of their number a chance to catch the Jeweled Man alone."

Erac's Cousin

First there was Erac, a wizard who ended up trapped alone in a room in the dungeon. There were no exits. The ceiling was painted like a starry sky. He never figured out how to get out, and died of starvation.

The player then made a new character, Erac's cousin. He never told anyone his real name. He looted his cousin's corpse and figured out the room (secret words in the stars). He'd later be tricked by a fellow PC named Bombadil into handing over powerful magic items.

Back in Castle Greyhawk, he fell through a portal to Wonderland. He traded Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum some stuff in exchange for the first D&D vorpal sword. He ended up finding a second vorpal sword in Castle Greyhawk. From then on, his strategy was to summon monsters, fire off some ranged spells, and then wade into melee with his dual-wielded vorpal swords.

Gary finally had enough of this and concocted an elaborate scheme to get rid of these powerful magic items. The demon lord Fraz'ub'luu tricked the heroes into freeing him. The adventurers summoned Zeus.. yes, ZEUS.. to help them fight the demon lord. But to their dismay, Zeus ignored them. Fraz'ur'bluu took them to a prison, drained the magic from the swords and tortured them until they somehow escaped.

He is maybe most famous for going to Mars. At the time, Gary wanted to test out some sci fi rules. Erac's Cousin found that magic didn't work there, so he started gaining levels as a fighter as he battled cannibals and green martian. He was most dismayed when he returned to Oerth naked, with none of the awesome treasure he'd obtained on Mars. Once he returned to adventuring in Castle Greyhawk, he'd declare whether he was adventuring as a fighter or a magic-user and use those rules.

The Slide to China

The God-Trap

So what's at the bottom of Castle Greyhawk? A slide that brings you to the other side of the world - China! Don't ask me. Only three characters reached the bottom level - Robilar, Tenser and Terik. They had to travel back from China (which may have been re-named "Cathay") via the "outdoor adventure" rules. Gary talked a bit about this here:

"Hoist by my own petard! These three, separately, had attained the nadir (pinnacle in terms of success) of the dungeons, and thanks to Zagig were sent "clean through the earth" to a distant land. Having sown the seeds of my own undoing, how could I complain? So I was faced with major works of improvisation as one after another of these PCs (for the record Robilar, Tenser, and Terik) made their separate ways around the globe, seeking to reunite as they quested for their own homeland. While I was

pleased with their enjoyment of the adventuring fare, it was less palatable to the DM. As it happened, each character decided on a different route for their trek. My capacity to invent interesting, different, and exciting material on the spot was stretched to the limit by a long series of one-character adventures, and I determined never to go through such a trial again. So as the triumphant trio of PCs who had penetrated to the lowest level of Castle Greyhawk and survived being sent as far from there as the world allowed received their well-earned laurels from their less enterprising fellows, as DM, more world building was feverishly in progress."

Rob Kuntz says:

"Robilar was one of the first to make it around the Oerth. By entering the lowest level in Greyhawk Castle, he was propelled by a magical slide to what would be modern day "China." Teric and Tenser followed, as they missed his return to the first level of the Castle, which, as a team, this trio held sway over. They caught up with him by scrying and they finished the adventure together. They all split later - Teric visited the southeast area around the Sea Barons (he was looking for Voodoo-type areas), Tenser went home, and Robilar trudged down into the southern jungles, far past the reach of Sea Prince slavers."

The Temple of Elemental Evil

When Gary was writing the classic adventure "Temple of Elemental Evil", he invited Rob Kuntz over to playtest it. Rob's character Lord Robilar was pretty high level, and he thoroughly destroyed the monsters in the dungeon, to Gary's dismay. Gary apparently got revenge by sending out a massive army chasing after Robilar, who fled to the desert.

Rob wrote about this in Oerth Journal #7:

"In CY 575, Robilar traveled with his henchmen Quij and Otto the Mage to the Temple of Elemental Evil. Robilar traveled on his flying carpet and Quij and Otto followed on griffons. Robilar entered the temple complex with Otto, leaving Quij behind to guard the griffons and flying carpet.

While other adventurers raided the temple and then withdrew, Robilar entered the temple and fought his way through it. For two days he slew all he encountered. Eventually Robilar freed the demoness Zuggtmoy, who was imprisoned beneath the temple complex. (Artifact of Evil states that Mordenkainen was present and purposefully assisted in "freeing" Zuggtmoy in some scheme designed to preserve the Balance. This was a later literary addition by E. Gary Gygax.)

Zuggtmoy

Why did Robilar free Zuggtmoy? Robilar purposefully released the demoness, because too much good was going on around the place. In a manner, to balance the proceedings. Alerted by the "freeing" of the demoness, a Force of Good rushed to the temple complex in an attempt to recapture the demoness and to punish her liberators. Tenser and his associates arrived, with Burne, Rufus, Otis and a great force of elves, paladins and unicorns. Upon seeing the destruction of her temple complex and the gathering Force of Good, Zuggtmoy departed in great haste. Robilar and Otto fled back to his castle, with the Force of Good in hot pursuit. The druid Jaroo, in falcon form, followed Robilar and Otto over 200 miles back to Robilar's castle. After they were informed of his whereabouts, the good war party eventually rallied outside of Robilar's castle. Robilar and Otto abandoned the castle and it fell to the Forces of Good."

Campaign Outline

This is Rob Kuntz's remembering of when the major events happened in the original campaign, as reposted on the canonfire forums:

Adventures into Greyhawk Castle by Teric, Robilar, Murlynd, Tenser, and Elise Gygax's cleric (whose name has been forgotten)
The Wight Adventure--all a dream--by Tenser and Robilar
Other adventures--Otto Captured by Tenser (Otto was a denizen of the castle that would eventually join the heroes)
561 CY Mordenkainen and Bigby lay the foundation of the Citadel of Eight.
The Orc Level of Greyhawk Battles: Quij Slays a Troll and is raised in level (Quij was Robilar's favored NPC henchman)
Otto joins Robilar out of distaste for his captor
The first level of the dungeon is sealed and fortified by the same three. "Building of the "three" 3 Keeps (the three towers are part of official D&D lore, noted even in Expedition to Castle Greyhawk).
The Solo Adventures of Robilar.
Robilar in the Troll Dens.
Robilar and a gargoyle against a black dragon and Purple worm in level 6 of the dungeon.
Robilar goes to "China".
Teric and Tenser follow Robilar to China. All 3 heroes had ended up wandering down a sloping corridor right to the bottom of the dungeon, to Gary's shock. Gary wrote about this in Dragon Magazine #295.
Trip back homeward. Journey to the City of Brass with flying carpets, rocs and the gems
Three different routes: Tenser heads home, Teric looks for forces of voodoo in the southern isles and Robilar adventures into modern day Hepmonaland where he is captured and his +1 bow left behind when he escapes.
Solo Adventures by Teric into Castle.
Heavy outdoor adventures begin.
Tenser Acquires red dragons.
Teric acquires a black dragon.
Robilar acquires three green dragons but loses his efreeti doing so.
City of Greyhawk has grown 4 fold with wealth flowing out of castle.
The White Dragon and the Wizard of the Tower Adventure by Robilar.
569 CY Battle of Emridy Meadows, Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure.
570 CY Loosing of the "Nine" by Robilar in GH castle (Robilar stumbled on a magic prison containing nine demigods, each trapped on a different magic platform. Robilar tried to free the most powerful-looking one to kill it, but things went horribly wrong).
Strange Way and Odd Alley adventures by Robilar, finds a ring of spell turning.
Tenser finds the Magic-User's Crown.
Robilar turns evil and kills some of his retainers, but one escapes to tell the tale.
571 CY Robilar completes the Tomb of Horrors. Gary constructed the dungeon to challenge and kill his high-level characters, but grew increasingly frustrated as Robilar survived. Robilar used his orc henchmen as canon fodder to survive the opening death traps. He did not fight Acererak the demi-lich. He stole Acererak's treasure and fled! Rob says: ""Robilar went with his equipment as per the Rogues Gallery. Plus 5 orcs, no more, no less. One orc refused my order to enter the entry corridor that I was suspicious of. So I immediately killed him, which warmed the other orcs to obeying similar orders forthcoming." Tenser and Terik fled the dungeon. Jim Ward had a character named Ren o' the Blade survive as well.
572 CY Erac's Cousin turns to evil after being tormented into swearing a pact with Baalzebul.
579 CY Sacking of the Temple of Elemental Evil by Robilar.
Robilar's castle is sacked by the forces of good. He goes into hiding.
Adventure to the City of the Gods, Robilar and Mordenkainen (I believe Dave Arneson himself ran Gary and Rob through this published adventure.)

Other Sources

There's a lot of fun sources for Greyhawk stories out there:

Grodog has a perfect list of Gary's columns in Dragon Magazine here on Grodog's site.
Robert Kuntz seems to have a fantastic memory and has told a lot of great Castle Greyhawk stories.
Dragonsfoot has a lot of great stuff, including stories from sessions of Castle Greyhawk that Gary ran in 2005.

Check out my articles on the other Greatest Dungeon Masters of All Time:

Dave Arneson
Ed Greenwood
Chris Perkins
Monte Cook

After writing an article about Gary Gygax and the original Castle Greyhawk campaign, I again got the urge to try to run a campaign in the ruins of the castle on my own.

I had visions of heroes making excursions into a dark and deadly dungeon, fearfully listening at doors, and returning to the city of Greyhawk to sell their treasure and celebrate in drunken splendor at the Green Dragon Inn, while mysterious wizards play three-tiered games of dragonchess.

I'm not actually going to run this, so I figured I'd scratch the itch and cook up a column that details rooms and encounters from Gary Gygax's actual Castle Greyhawk sessions. This could be useful to you in a number of ways. Maybe it will have an encounter for you to use. Or, if you have a session coming up and you're drawing a blank, you could cook up a whole castle greyhawk-inspired dungeon which would make for a really fun and interesting evening of gaming. There is something about these Castle Greyhawk scenarios that captures the essence of D&D.

I decided to use art by Jeff Easley for this column, as in my opinion his work is very symbolic of "old school" D&D art to me. I think he is somewhat under-appreciated. There was something about the way he painted that made him the perfect D&D cover artist.

If you need a dungeon map, I'd suggest using the one in the Dungeon Master's Guide on page 311. I believe it is an updated version of the generic dungeon in the AD&D 1st edition DMG.

It should be noted that Joe Bloch, who has spent a great deal of time researching Greyhawk, has already made an entire megadungeon that is based on what is known about Castle Greyhawk. Check out Castle of the Mad Archmage here.

These encounters and concepts have been gleaned from forum posts of Gary's Castle Greyhawk campaign from about ten years ago.

You should definitely use some of the stuff I talked about in the Gygax column. Particularly:

The Jeweled Man: A mysterious man man of gold and gems who flees when spotted. Adventurers often chase him, and he leads them into a trap or horde of monsters. Magic doesn't seem to affect him normally.
The Pit of Gems: The heroes come upon a room with a pit full of gems. The idea here is that the heroes climb in to loot them, only to find that the pit is actually full of quicksand with a few layers of gems on top.
Obmi the Dwarf: A sinister dwarf mage who wears boots of speed and has a weird device on wheels that fires a magic ray that causes adventurers to run at full speed in the opposite direction. He was one of the most hated villains in Castle Greyhawk, and would make a good "final boss" for this little mini-dungeon.

The "Uber" Old Guard Kobolds

The kobolds here have slain many adventurers and are extremely well-armed. They have plate mail and shields, and even magic items. They have powerful chieftans and sub-chieftans leading them.

There kobolds have some rooms protected by sturdy doors with a sliding panel for viewing and holes for javelins to stab through.

The Rumbling Room

The heroes come upon a room with a message on it that states:"The whole party must enter to find the treasure". Once all of the heroes enter, the door shuts and the room starts to rumble. The rumbling lasts for a round, then stops. In Gary's game, the PCs then tried the door, and it opened. They never figured out what the deal was with that room. But there's this charming quote from a player: "After that, we knew something wasn't right. One, because the hallway wasn't the same anymore, and, secondly, Gary had a smirk on his face and was humming - which usually means he's enjoying himself."

The hallway wasn't the same. Had the room swiveled and connected to a different hallway? Or had it been like an elevator, descending to another level down?

The Empty Chest

Our heroes find an old, rusty, iron chest. It opens with no problem. It's empty. But wait, there's a secret compartment... which is trapped with a poison needle. The poison does some damage. In the secret compartment is 6 gems.

Pit Traps Within Pit Traps

Throughout the dungeon, the heroes should encounter pit traps of increasing complexity. It should go roughly like this:

A pit trap, 10 feet deep, maybe with spikes
A pit trap that has a secret door in the bottom, containing a room with some treasure
A pit trap with a secret door in the bottom, that leads to another trapped room!
Obviously, an amusing idea is to have a pit trap with a secret door that leads to another pit trap with a trapped secret door.

A Magic-User

There's a secret door that leads to the lair of an "evil magic-user" (actually, there's multiple instances of this in the dungeon). In general, evil wizards try to charm powerful PCs and turn them against the party!

In his or her lair is furniture and 3 spell books. There was a spell book of level 1 spells, a spellbook of level 2 spells, and a spellbook of level 3 spells. There was also a locked chest (the lock is apparently very difficult to pick) whose key is actually hidden in the cover of one of the spell books.

The chest is protected by a dart trap. Inside is a live toad (which is poisonous!), 2 scroll cases, 2 potions, and a small wooden box. The box is a puzzle box that, if figured out, has 8 gems in it.

The Evil Fighter

A fighter in plate mail has 13 orc henchmen. On him is a map that describes how to get to a room on this level of the dungeon. Following the map, the heroes will have to deal with an ochre jelly (which can be split into two smaller versions of itself with physical attacks). The heroes will also have to figure out that the map leads to a secret door. Finding the secret door is up to them.

The secret door leads to a room with two sets of elven cloaks and boots, a +1 good-aligned sword, a quiver of +1 arrows, and a tube with a wizard scroll in it. Now sure why the fighter wouldn't have armed himself or his henchmen with this stuff..? Maybe he knew it was there but couldn't get past the ochre jelly?

The Nixie Pool

This is once of the most notable locations on the second level. There's a large pool of water with nixies swimming in it.

I looked up the AD&D Nixie:

They are "slim and comely", with pale green skin, dark green hair and wide silver eyes. They wear tight-fitting wraps woven from seaweed.
They can breathe water and air.
They can charm people. They charm people and keep them a slave for one full year, forcing them to do heavy labor. A water-breathing spell is cast on the charmed person. They have to re-cast the charm spell each day.
Nixies fear fire and bright lights.

The nixies will try to charm and "keep" some of the PCs. Other PCs can trade or barter to get their friends back (or attack, of course).

In the nixie pool is treasure - a magic sword (+1 flame sword that is neutrally aligned, is also +2 vs. trolls and +3 vs. undead) and a ring. Remember that swimming while wearing armor is not easy in any edition!

In a dry section of the room is a bronze urn . It's trapped with a magic lightning trap. Inside is a scroll with three magic-user spells on it.

Evil Wizards Wearing Pointy Hats

Wandering the dungeon are "six robed men who wear pointy hats with symbols on them". They are a sinister band of low-level magic-users! I find this very amusing. Why are they roaming the dungeon? Looking for treasure, I guess. It's rare to have to fight 6 spellcasters, it's a really fun idea. These wizards seem to have tried to charm the heroes. Imagine that, the entire party charmed by these guys and used as trap bait!

The Hallway Trap

The heroes are walking down a hallway, and a trap is triggered (by a lever in a nearby secret room). Metal gates fall from the ceiling in front of and behind the heroes, trapping them in the hallway. Then a side door opens, and a fighter and his smelly ogre buddy attack!

In their room are two beds, a table and chairs. There's a lever that lowers and raises the gates.

I love the monster pairings. Why are this ogre and fighter hanging out? Did they become fast friends or something?

The Three Toads

This room is 20 feet by 20 feet and has a medium-sized wooden statue of three toads (in the positions of see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil). If you hack a statue open, 3 real giant toads hop out and attack.

In this room also are small malachite versions of the three toads. It turns out that if you place the small statues near the big ones and say "see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil" out loud, the malachite toads come to life (and grow?). The heroes couldn't figure out how to control the toads. I like the idea of these magic toads being usable as mounts or to carry loot in their mouths.

Also in this room is the corpse of an adventurer. If it is bothered, it attacks as a leather-skinned zombie that is not able to be turned by clerics (?). The zombie is wearing a cloak that may be magic.

The Well

The heroes come upon a room with a well that is 20 feet in diameter. It looks as if the well is empty. If PCs lower themselves down with a light source (the heroes in Gary's game used a flying potion), they will find faces carved into the walls and strange markings. 50 feet down is a landing and a hallway that proceeds south. The well drops to 130 feet total, and has no water in it.

The purpose of the faces and markings is never revealed.

The Network of Teleportation Statues

This is a major, mysterious scenario which unfortunately is never fully revealed. Your best bet is to use what you like and make it your own. These statues seem to be a major feature in the third level of Castle Greyhawk.

There is a 30 foot by 30 foot room. In it is a statue of a jester on a plinth that is in the center of a pool of clear water. If you touch the statue, the water turns murky and the jester statue "becomes" a nymph statue. The PCs eventually surmised that touching the statue actually teleported them to a room with another statue in it, as they came upon another room with a statue of a lion on a plinth in the center of a pool of clear water. They found rooms with other statues, including an oliphant, a wizard and a female shepherd.

A secret door in one of these rooms led to another room with a plinth in a pool. But on the plinth was not a statue but rather a real, live gorgon! Seeing that a gorgon turns people to stone, maybe this means all of the statues were once living people.

In the gorgon room are double doors. When opened, sunlight shines through and may momentarily blind the PCs. The area beyond is a 30 foot by 10 foot room with tall grass and magical sunlight. Searching the grass reveals three potions, all stone to flesh. Maybe these potions were meant to be used on the statues?

The heroes later found a thief statue with a pool of murky water. The pool is full of pirahnas! Worse, when touched, the statue came to life and attacked the group.

The central idea is that to touch a statue, you need to get in the pool. The pools with murky water obviously may conceal a danger. I wonder why some pools are murky and some are clear?

The Rescue of Erac

The notes for the next session are the last. The player said that his group had figured out the way out of the teleporting statue area, but Gary didn't want the players to post it online. Maybe this was a concept he planned to use in a future published adventure?

Here's another crazy bit. Remember in my Gary Gygax column how I talked about how Erac got trapped in a room with stars painted on the ceiling and that he couldn't figure out how to escape and died of starvation? Check out what happened in the last recorded session of the 2005 excursions into Castle Greyhawk:

"...But, I will say this. We knew it was Erac's remains because he had written a message on the wall. It indicated that he could not find a way out and that if others were successful in doing so, to take his remains along and have him resurrected.

We did so and were greatly rewarded!!"

"...Erac belonged to Ernie Gygax!

And yes, he was resurrected! His character is alive and well (after a 25 year nap!). So, who knows what might happen in the future!!"

Monsters in Level One: Kobolds, goblins, swarm of rats.

Monsters in Level Two: Hobgoblins, carrion crawler, giant scorpion, orcs lead by a fighter in plate mail, ochre jelly, zombies, gnolls, giant spiders (wit a skeleton collection), giant lizard (with gems in his innards),

Monsters in Level Three: A wight wearing a gold chain with gems (worth 16,000 gold!), a hill giant with a bag of 5,000 gold, ogres

Things To Consider
Here are a few observations of how Gary did things when he ran Castle Greyhawk:

Often, the sounds of combat attracts more monsters nearby. The kobolds on level 1 came in waves of about 10 each. On level 2, a battle with 8 gnolls attracted a band of 6 more gnolls.
When the PCs spend money in town, the people of the town use that money in a way that the PCs notice. For example, the PCs would go to a church and pay for spells and healing. The church used this money to build a new wing, which included... a jacuzzi.
Charming NPCs in the dungeon to use as henchmen seems to be a pretty common tactic in the dungeon. The heroes were attacked by three fighters in plate mail. They charmed one and were quite pleased to learn he was 5th level, possibly higher level than the PCs themselves. Remember some evil wizards may try to do the same to the heroes.
I found this very amusing: "Starting down the stairs to level three, one of our fighters forgot that there was a trap in the floor landing and promptly fell in. So, after dragging him back up, we proceeded down."
There are plenty of hallways that have dead ends. Many of them have secret doors.
A PC refused to believe there was no treasure in a room. He eventually found a secret compartment in a hill giant's club that had as scroll tube. I kind of wonder if Gary just made this up on the spot. It's a cool idea, regardless.

I'll end this here with my favorite Gygaxian quote:

"It is certain that both vast treasure and horrible death await, so you must gain the one while cheating the other."

When I was preparing Rise of Tiamat, I originally skimmed chapter three and I thought it looked awful. It appeared to be a boring dungeon with a bunch of yuan-ti in it. I have always found yuan-ti to be pretty lame monsters. I disliked this so much that I planned on actually running the Sea of Moving Ice section first because I thought that the tomb would be a flat opening to Rise of Tiamat.

But then I thoroughly read the whole thing. It is an awesome dungeon! There's magic statues that ask questions and an insanely great boulder trap where the boulder is made of skeletons that swallows up PCs that fail their saves.

We had a lot to do today, and as always my group was on time or early!

Blagothkus

Finishing Skyreach Castle

We started off by wrapping up Hoard. The heroes befriended Blagothkus and decided to let him keep Skyreach Castle.

I ruled that the red wizard Azbara Jos had escaped while the PCs had taken a long rest. They locked him in a room. He used a fireball to blow the door open, invisibly crept back to his room, and had his gargoyle fly him to freedom.

After a few days of eating delicious meals cooked by Blagothkus' 24 kobold chefs, a raven brought a message to the heroes. Their buddy Leosin the monk wanted them to return to Waterdeep to meet with a special faction council. Enclosed were two scrolls of teleport.

The Sounding of the Draakhorn

When the heroes arrived in Waterdeep, the draakhorn sounded for the first time. The draakhorn is a big part of this adventure. It's a magic horn that calls all chromatic dragons to fly to the well of dragons, where the cult will be summoning Tiamat. The horn's effect isn't necessarily immediate. Over the course of a few months, the heroes will spot dragons in the distance.

The Draakhorn

Our group has a baby black dragon. So when the horn sounded, he perked up and looked to the sky. The heroes asked "Sparky" to explain what was going on. He'd never talked before, but was able to indicate that something was calling him "home".

The Council

These council meetings are quite tricky to wrangle. The information is all over the place in the book. Basically, the factions (Harpers, Emerald Enclave, etc.) gather to discuss the cult of the dragon. Many members aren't certain if the cult is truly a threat.

The point of these council meetings is for the heroes to gain or lose favor with them. Throughout this adventure, I track the heroes deeds on a scorecard and this affects their scores with the various factions. At the end, if you've scored high enough with a certain faction, you gain the aid of their army in the final epic battle against the cult and their many dragons.

The detail on this is incredible

A nice way to help guide you in how to run the council meetings is by just looking at the scorecard and using those topics in the discussion at the meeting. You can also have factions make it clear how they feel about certain deeds.

Emphasizing the Factions

I had the heroes' factions meet with them separately at The Yawning Portal (a bar in Waterdeep) prior to the council meeting. My group is part of three factions:

Ontharr Frume

The Harpers: Remallia Haventree asked Dark if she would consider ransoming her baby dragon to the cult. Dark of course yelled out: "Never!" (Dark's player is a 4th grader who loves her dragon).

Order of the Gauntlet: Ontharr urged the heroes to kill the baby black dragon. He compared it to having a pet scorpion. "Eventually, it's going to sting you".

Zhentarim: Rian Nightshade met them in a back alley. She told the heroes that the council was full of idiots, and that one of her agents - Jamna Gleamsilver from Hoard episode 4 - as closing in on the white dragon mask.

The First Council Meeting

Then we had the actual council meeting, where Lord Neverember sipped wine and arrogantly oversaw the proceedings. The council was very unhappy that a baby black dragon was right there in the Lord's Palace.

I asked one PC to speak for the group. Dark immediately volunteered. I had her roll a charisma check to see how eloquent she was, and of course she rolled a 19.

Her character ran down what the heroes had done so far. The council stopped her to argue about the dragon and again to talk about Castle Skyreach. Connerad Brawnanvil of the Lord's Alliance was very angry that the place had been given to the giants.

I did a thing where Lord Neverember asked who had actually slain Rezmir. It was the party paladin, who had teleported past the rug of smothering and stabbed her in the back. The council held the paladin in awe and he is considered a hero now (I want to drive home the point to the players that their actions matter). The paladin is a member of the Order of the Gauntlet, so I had Ontharr Frume beam proudly and boast to the council. Lord Neverember asked him to come train his guards in Neverwinter (Neverember is a manipulative schemer, so I figure he just wants to buddy up to a "celebrity").

The council gave the PCs a writ, granting them investigative powers and access to the council's resources (I figure that's stuff like horses, mundane gear, and a place to sleep).

Sir Isteval

Then the council asked the heroes to go find Varram the White, who is apparently in the Serpent Hills. This is the hook for episode 3.

On the way out, Sir Isteval (yes, the NPC from Scourge of the Sword Coast is in this) pulled a PC aside. Isteval is part of the council, and he has a permanent limp from an injury he sustained in a fight with a green dragon. He urged the PC to kill the black dragon before it grew up. He showed the PC his wound from the green dragon and warned that black dragons were even worse.

So, I created a bunch of tension over Sparky, the black dragon. I did this primarily just because it felt like what the NPCs would do . I counteracted this with a new fun gimmick. Sparky is starting to make his own treasure hoard. He finds stuff and puts it in a sack that Dark carries. Dark has been casting greater invisibility on him a lot to keep him out of trouble, which is a perfect cover for him to steal stuff like cups and shiny pieces of metal.

Journey to the Serpent Hills

Our heroes traveled south (yep, back down the road they took on that long caravan journey in episode 4 of Hoard) to Boareskyr Bridge.

Along the way, I threw in one of the "additional encounters" meant to be spread throughout the book. I had a bunch of cultists shaking down a caravan.

A fight broke out. Their leader was a dragonsoul, a cultist who could fly in short bursts and had an orb that shot beams of acid three times a day.

He ended up in a tree shooting beams from his orb at the heroes. Dark spider-climbed onto a cart, jumped off of it onto the dragonsoul and knocked him to the ground.

The cultists were questioned and then killed.

The heroes headed to Boareskyr Bridge and the tent city there. They learned that Varram was in the Serpent Hills. The adventurers followed a trail in the hills. They encountered a pair of hill giants eating an antelope. The heroes didn't want to fight them, so they tricked the giants by asking them "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" The giants ended up fighting each other over the answer as the adventurers laughed and fled.

The Tomb of Diderius

They arrived at a tomb entrance, which is very Indiana Jones-y. I love this dungeon. The heroes saw signs of a camp made recently. The entrance was flanked by two statues that ask a question (which the heroes answered correctly).

Inside they came upon a hallway lined with statues of cowled wizards. The deal here is that the statues turn and look at you. If you look into the cowls, you have to make a saving throw or go insane for one minute.

Dark received a magic clue about the statues thanks to giving the correct answer back at the entrance. She ignored the clue and looked right into the cowls. The DC for the save was a 15. Of course, she made it. Everyone else followed her and didn't look at the cowls.

Then they came upon a room where they fought a manticore made of tiles. Honestly, the manticore wasn't challenging enough. Part of it was that the PCs were super-cautious and thus weren't surprised by the creature.

It ended up perched on a ledge 15 feet up, ready to breathe fire. Dark threw the gnome thief at it (she rolled a 19, her dice were on fire today). The gnome had a shovel and went to town on the "tilemera".

We had gotten exactly as far as I wanted them to. They will get to a room I am really excited about next time. So far Rise of Tiamat is fun, though it has been much more time-consuming to prepare.

This is one of my favorite D&D paintings

After running the big dragon fight at the end of Hoard of the Dragon Queen, one of my players was telling me about a very cool idea - a black and gold dragon. I immediately had a vision of a black dragon with veins of gold spread out all over it's body, like cracks in molten rock.

That got me thinking about dragon encounters. I really like the 5e concept of lair actions. Attacking a dragon in it's lair is a big deal. The lair itself can harm the invaders!

I noticed that the dragon in Hoard doesn't have lair actions, and neither does Arauthator in The Rise of Tiamat. I wonder if that is because the adventures were written before lair actions became an official thing?

I decided to read up on some "famous" Dungeons & Dragons dragon lairs to get a feel for how they're done and to satisfy my curiosity. I'll stick to stuff from 3rd edition and back, though I implore you to check out the 4e Draconomicon books. They are full of cool lairs, treasure advice and fantastic maps!

This article will contain major spoilers for some pretty prominent adventures. As it turns out, almost all of the dragons in this article are red dragons.

Flame (Dungeon Magazine #1: "Into the Fire")

Flame

I am going to start with Flame, a red dragon that first appeared in Dungeon Magazine #1. I believe Flame has appeared in 2 or 3 more Dungeon Magazine adventures as well. We're just going to look at the original as written by Grant and David Boucher

A prince vanished 15 years ago (his ship.. the entire ship!.. was stolen by the red dragon known as Flame). The prince's necklace was recently found in some snowy mountains. The heroes are to head there and find out what happened to the prince

Flame's lair is protected against scrying by an amulet of proof against detection and location.

Random Encounters: Along the way the heroes might have the misfortune of running into 20 ogres led by an ogre mage, or a lone grey elf looking for shelter and "some companionship" (well!). There's fire giants out there too, and an avalanche, and a volcano has a 10% chance of erupting. There's even a wolfwere that tries to join the party to steal their magic items.

The Fallen Tower: The dragon lives in a crater at the top of a long-dormant volcano. The crater contains a lake filled with magma-heated water rising from old lava vents. Long ago a wizard had built a tower in the crater, with the lake acting as a moat. Flame tipped it over and killed the wizard!

Flame's Trap: Flame is ready for interlopers. As PCs wander down his hallucinatory corridor, it hits the fan:

A portcullis drops, possibly splitting the party and impaling someone on the sharp gate as it plummets.
A pit opens up under the feet of the rear of the party, which drops them about 20 feet.
Flame breathes down the corridor. The fire hits everyone in it, though the people in the pit take half damage (the corridor was designed for this effect).
The idea here is that only the PCs in the front of the portcullis can fight the dragon. Flame hovers over a huge open cavern. The PCs will have to either walk out onto a side ledge or jump down 30 feet to engage Flame.
Flame casts haste on himself!

Flame can see invisible, polymorph other, has a necklace of frost resistance and an ioun stone which allows Flame to not need to breathe!

Flame's Escape Plan: Flame will flee if he has to. There's this cool note that he'll probably fly right through the party to get out, giving each PC a free attack at +2 to hit.

Once Flame is dead, the heroes get to search his lair for his mighty horde

Flame's Sleeping Chamber: Great flavor for his sleeping chamber: "You enter the chamber to see what was obviously the sleeping chamber for the great dragon. Tons of assorted clothes, furs, and cloth lie heaped on the ground, fully 20 feet thick at its deepest point. You can't help but think about all the beings that have been slain just to make this beast's bed. A large headboard, that appears to be made from the outer wall of a house, has the word "Flame" crudely burned into it."

The Treasure Hoard: This is the perfect flavor text for a dragon hoard:

"At last, you see the treasure of treasures, the dragon's hoard. The ransom of a king pales in comparison. The incredible might and ancient age of the dragon becomes apparent as you try to drink in the hundreds of contrasting period pieces. An imperial coach rests atop a massive pile of coins, its strong box precariously balanced on the roof. Even from this distance, you can see a pile of jewelry within.

Now your eye catches a silver-tipped beam of wood jutting away from you. You follow it back to its source and see the entire hull of a merchants' ship on one side of the cave. Scarred and battered, it lies tilted toward you with its masts broken off. Out of the ruptured hull spill the jewels of a thousand royal houses. Hundreds of similarly interesting artifacts duel for your attention. For a few moments, the sheer immensity of wealth holds you in a trance."

There's some awesome loot:

A pot of gold with a pile of little bones (yes, Flame killed a leprechaun and stole his pot of gold)
A large platinum chess set. The pieces are shaped in the forms of various creatures of good and evil.
A royal carriage made of oak with a tiara in it (maybe he killed Cinderella?!).
The boat! A "slightly crushed" merchant ship.
Chunks of adamantite stolen from a dwarven mine.

To me, this is a perfect "classic" dragon lair. It's unique, the dragon has a plan, the dragon is dangerous, and the treasure hoard is awesome.

Utreshimon (Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil)

Utreshimon

This is pretty interesting. This adventure is a sort of sequel to the Gary Gygax/Frank Mentzer classic adventure "Temple of Elemental Evil"written by the great Monte Cook himself! There's more trouble afoot and so our heroes go to the moathouse (the site of the dungeon in Village of Hommlet, the prequel to the Temple).

In the original Village of Hommlet adventure, there's a bunch of giant frogs outside the moathouse and a dude named Lareth the Beautiful lurking in the dungeons below.

This time, yeah there's a cult down below, but a young blue dragon showed up and decided to live in the moathouse, and it's eating cultists and heroes alike.

Utreshimon's Plan: He lives in the courtyard. When a fight breaks out, he uses his wings to fill the air with dust, blinding the party and making spellcasting difficult. He flies up onto a tower and breathes lightning.

This is an encounter for 4th level characters, so this is a young dragon with very little treasure. It's just setting up shop, so to speak. I can imagine this being quite shocking. I haven't seen too many adventures that actually start off with a dragon fight.

Farcluun (Greyhawk Ruins)

Farcluun

I wrote so much about the actual Castle Greyhawk that I thought it would be cool to check out the dragon in "Greyhawk Ruins", a version of Castle Greyhawk published after Gary Gygax left TSR. This dragon's lair isn't exactly given the deluxe treatment.

Tricky Entrance: You get to Farcluun's lair through a sinkhole in an underground river. It's a large cavern with stalactites and stalagmites and a huge pit full of treasure.

Sometimes He's a Bird: Farcluun is an ancient red dragon who sometimes turns himself into a wren so he can fly around incognito.

His Clever Scheme: Here's how he deals with adventurers: He pretends to be asleep and then breathes fire on them. It's a classic trope, I guess.

The Hoard: His treasure hoard is gigantic (120,000 gp plus a slew of magic items). None of the magic items have any fun gimmicks. There is a wand of fireballs and a shield +5 among many other things. Not too shabby.

This is by far the worst of the dragon lairs that I have read. Not awe-inspiring or creative in the least.

Dragotha (Dungeon Magazine #134: "Into the Wormcrawl Fissure")

Fabulous Riches!

Dragotha was originally just a little drawing by the great Erol Otus on the map of the classic d&d adventure "White Plume Mountain". Back when Paizo was completely on fire pumping out awesome issues of Dungeon magazine, they created an adventure path that featured all sorts of D&D stuff that had been mentioned in passing in old products but never given the spotlight. These things included the Wind Dukes of Aaqa, Kyuss the worm god, and Dragotha the undead dragon!

Greyhawk With Some Serial Numbers Filed Off: Dragotha is a big part of the Age of Worms adventure path. This path is very highly regarded. It was set in Greyhawk, but due to certain legal issues, certain characters had to be re-named. I believe Tenser was code-named "Manzorian" and the City of Greyhawk was referred to as "The Free City".

Why doesn't Eva Widermann do more D&D art?

The Phylactery: The heroes had found and destroyed Dragotha's phylactery in the previous adventure, "Citadel of the Weeping Dragon". Now, in issue 134 of Dungeon Magazine, your 19th level characters can go into the Wormcrawl fissure and find the three parts of the soul of Balakarde (Bucknard - of "Bucknard's everfull purse" fame). Bucknard will help give the PCs power to defeat Dragotha.

Bucknard's soul can bounce from PC to PC and give them stuff like:

Immunity to fire
The ability to overcome spell resistance
A +10 to attack rolls (!)

Dragotha's Lair: Dragotha lurks in the Tabernacle of Worms, a temple of Kyuss deep in a dungeon. The green walls can actually heal themselves if damaged and will spew a spray of Kyuss worms, infesting the PC's body with worms! The doors are writhing sheets of Kyuss worms. A knock spell will discorporate the worms and allow heroes to pass through.

Dragotha's lair is inside, past a mini-dungeon

If you die in this place, your body is immediately infested with ghostly green worms that consume your mortal shell in a single round.

The room that Dragotha resides in is a "vast cavern lit by the undulant green glow of a huge ziggurat built of worm-infested stone." There's a hole in the top of the ziggurat. Green liquid gushes from it, "cascading down the front stairs of the ziggurat in a chain of miniature waterfalls."

There's two ledges, one of which has massive piles of treasure.

Dragotha

Each round a PC spends in here, they take 2d6+6 damage (undead heal this amount). Bucknard's soul protects the bonded PC.

Dragotha is Arrogant: When the PCs arrive, Dragotha is atop the ziggurat. He roars. He mocks the PCs, calling them "lapdogs".

Dragotha's Many, Many Powers: Dragotha is ridiculously powerful. He has an AC of 58! He can cast spells of up to 8th level, including dominate person and forcecage.

He has two breath weapons. One does fire, and the other is a "death wind". He has a paralyzing gaze, paralyzing all within 40 feet, and all of his physical attacks paralyze as well.

Dragotha's Treasure: Dragotha's Hoard takes up a full page.

He has 2.5 million copper pieces.
A dinosaur skull inscribed with brand new druid spells of your own making.
7 paintings of deities being tortured and dismembered.
A "scandalous dress of scarlet silk" worth 3,500 gp.
Then there's a pile of magic items that includes a sun blade, a folding boat, Daern's instant fortress, a staff of the magi and an apparatus of Kwalish (I believe in 5th edition, there is only one apparatus in existence).

This lair is fantastic. Paizo is so great. Is there any chance they could start making Dungeon and Dragon magazines for 5th edition? How do we make that happen?

Infyrana (Dragon Mountain)

Infyrana

Dragon Mountain was a boxed set adventure made for AD&D 2nd edition. Yes, it is an entire boxed set devoted to a dragon's lair! The red dragon known as Infyrana lives in Dragon Mountain with her kobold army. The mountain shifts to a different plane every two months.

So the set-up is simple. Dragon Mountain appears in your world. Cue adventure music.

Not So Great: We sat down to play this in high school and It was a major let-down. I had visions of all sorts of exciting dragon encounters, but it turns out that this dungeon is all about kobolds. We quit after one or two sessions because the adventure was such a disappointment - and we almost never quit any module (except Vecna Lives, but that is because of the stupidest inter-party squabbles of all time).

Infyrana by DiTerlizzi

One of my favorite artists, Tony DiTerlizzi, did all of the interior art in this adventure. He did an excellent black and white depiction of the dragon, and from what I can tell some of this art ended up in the Monstrous Compendium Annual.

The Encounters: After braving endless waves of kobolds (there's something like 12 different clans) through three 64-page booklets, you finally fight the dragon.

Along the way there is a trapped room that fills with boiling water. There's almost no way to escape this one. The water does 6d6! But mostly your heroes will spend many hours coming upon lots and lots of thrilling storage rooms, studies, chambers and multiple barns (?).

Infyrana's Lair: Her lair in Dragon Mountain is in a cavern that glows red. Treasure is piled into huge hills. "Atop this sea of wonders, this desert of valuables amid the dunes of minted treasure, lies a beast."

Portion of a 2e poster map of Infyrana's lair

Infyrana's Really Messed Up Plan: This is brutal. Again, major spoiler warning. This is one of the most devious plans I've ever seen in a published module. Your players are in big trouble.

When the heroes enter, they see a red dragon sleeping. They think it's Infyrana, but it's not Infyrana. It's a kobold who drank a potion of polymorph self and a potion of invulnerability (immune to non-magic weapons). Seriously.

The actual dragon has polymorphed herself into a kobold. Her plan is to have the PCs waste resources on the polymorphed kobold/dragon. She has some items on her, including a potion of human control and a wand of paralyzation. Those poor, poor PCs. Clan Wyrmguard, elite kobolds, will be firing arrows at our heroes, too.

These are just the potions!

Infyrana's Treasure: Her hoard is epic! The list of potions alone is a meaty paragraph in and of itself.

There's a magic elven sword +3 called Anduvar.
There's a melted pile of steel - the remains of a dragon slaying sword! What a great detail.

That is one nasty final encounter. It is certainly a worthy dragon lair.

When researching this article, I found a few good inspiring stuff on dragons and dragon lairs that I thought I'd share:

The Magic Tree has a list of famous dragons from Dragonlance, Greyhawk and The Forgotten Realms.

There was a great thread on RPG.net a few years ago where people shared their crazy stories about fighting dragons in their lairs. Some really awesome, funny stuff.

It was extremely cold here in New York today. I figured that meant that nobody would be at the game store and that we'd have a nice quiet session of D&D. Who wants to go out and brave the cold, right?

It turns out that everybody does. The store was packed with giddy players. It was a bit rowdier than usual tonight, both in the store and at my table. Nothing too bad, but I didn't expect it.

We had a visit from an old player. You may remember Hack and Slash Guy from D&D Next fame. He showed up to play, but the tables are full. This is an ongoing problem with the encounters program. There needs to be a "newb" table going in the store at all times, in my opinion. The problem is that players hate stopping at level 4 and starting over at level 1, so all of the tables are high level and deep into Hoard. We need one more DM to show up and to be ready to run for new people.

Here's where the other tables are after about 18 sessions:

One table is in Hoard episode 3. I assume they are doing only one encounter a week? My players were stunned when they found out about this.
Another table is in Hoard episode 4. The DM is creating side adventures on the caravan journey.
The table run by the store owner is in Hoard episode 6.

I don't like going slow. I don't like it as a player or as a DM. I want to get through all of Tyranny of Dragons by the time the new season hits.

Our heroes are on the trail of one of the 5 wyrmspeakers. He's an evil dwarf with the White Dragon Mask. He may have lost the mask. Our heroes have tracked him to an Indiana Jones D&D location called the Tomb of Diderius.

5. Well Chamber

This room didn't have much in it. Mostly it has a mechanism that brings water to the room with the magic divination pool in it. The heroes were ultra-cautious in here. In fact, they were super-cautious in the whole dungeon tonight. They played very smart. I bet they'd even have excelled in Gary Gygax's Castle Greyhawk playing the way they did tonight.

4. Mosaic Chamber

Back in the room where the tile-chimera was, they tried some double doors and triggered a collapse. They were smart and pulled the doors open from a distance with a rope, so they took no damage at all.

6. Hallway

This was one I was very excited about! It's a downward-sloping hallway with a pressure plate. When the plate is stepped on, a boulder made of skeletons rolls down from behind the party. PCs are not only squashed, but if they fail their save they are also pulled into the boulder! It crashes at the bottom, doing more damage. Unlucky PCs will take a total of 64 damage!

As they checked out the hallway, Dark the dragon sorceress peered in, looking for traps. The DC for the plate is a 22. She rolled a natural 20, but she has a -1 on the check. There was literally no way for her to make the check. I am often very lenient, and in many cases I'd just have her succeed when she rolled a natural 20. But in this instance, the trap was too awesome. I couldn't throw this encounter in the garbage!

So they went down the hall and the paladin, the gnome rogue and poor Dark all got gobbled up by the boulder and crashes at the bottom. Dark was nearly killed instantly. A PC healed her to consciousness and looked around. They were in room 7...

7. Throne Room Antechamber

This room has tapestries and smells like incense. Behind the tapestries are 6 alcoves with mummies in them! The mummies only attack in the PCs poke them, or if the PCs don't open a set of double doors in the room in a certain way.

I kept mentioning the tapestries, and nobody would investigate or look behind them. They focused on the door and figuring out the clue to it. They did a great job with it and were successful.

8. Throne Room

This room is fantastic. A 12 foot tall man with a white beard is sitting on a throne with a pile of treasure at his feet. He demands that the PCs pay tribute! In reality, it's a clay golem with an illusion and a magic mouth on it. He will attack if tribute is not paid.

First of all, I am doing this gimmick where their pet baby black dragon Sparky is amassing his own treasure hoard. Sparky got one look at the treasure pile and lunged at it! Dark grabbed him and stopped him.

The PCs decided to pay tribute. The text says the value of the tribute must be "more than a clay cup". The PCs don't know this, though. Each of them placed 100 gold on the pile! The giant man was incredibly pleased, grabbed his belly and let out a hearty, mirthful laugh.

I felt like they deserve some extra reward for this, but I don't know what.

9. Study and Library

There's a ghost in here who is upset that books have been stolen. I had her use her fright power as part of her flavor-moan. The heroes didn't attack her, but weren't sure what to make of this.

Dark, played by a 4th grader, was all over it. She began asking the ghost all the right questions. The ghost knows tons of lore. She even found out the name of the book the ghost most wants returned.

The gnome thief got a little lippy and asked the ghost what it was like to be dead. The Ghost tried to possess him so he could feel what it was like. This alarmed everyone and they got the heck out of there.

10. Dining Hall

This is a weird one. 5 bearded devils sit at a table, doing nothing. They are Varram's devils, and they've been ordered to kill people who come from room 11. Our PCs came from 8. So the devils don't care (There's a devil-may-care joke in here somewhere).

The paladin has the oath of the ancients. That means he doesn't turn undead, he turns fiends! He rushed in and turned the devils. Dark twinned greater invisibility, meaning she cast it on herself and a rogue. It's a concentration spell, which means that if she is hit, she has to make a saving throw or lose the spell. But because she's invisible, there's little chance of her getting hit! This means that the rogue was able to be invisible and attack for a full minute.

The devils were slaughtered.

12. Divination Pool

This is where the magic pool is. It has no water in it. I tried to give hints that the water mechanism was back in room 5, but they didn't pick up on it.

They were more interested in the dead body and the arrows. The yuan-ti had fought the cultists in here. The dead cultist was actually stabbed in the back (by Varram!) with a special magic item - the dragontooth dagger. I accidentally declared: "It's a dagger made from a dagger's tooth" which amused the group greatly.

13. Crypt of Diderius

This is where Diderius' body is. Because the PCs answered the question at the beginning of the dungeon correctly, Diderius spoke to them. He told them that yuan-ti had taken Varram, and even opens a secret door to room 14, giving the PCs a surprise round...

14. Entryway

The adventurers raced through and jumped a bunch of lizardfolk guards. The guards only have 22 hit points each so they were done for.

We ran out of time here, which is too bad. The next encounter is he one I like the most. It's a narrow stone bridge over a chasm covered in slippery moss. I'd cleverly declared earlier that the baby black dragon had injured his wing when the boulder hit him, so they couldn't use his flight to cross.

If the heroes fall off of this bridge, it's about 120 feet! That's 12d6!

We're playing again this Sunday, so we'll find out what happens soon enough.

This article is about other people's experiences fighting the white dragon in Hoard of the Dragon Queen. First I will look at how the encounter went down for different people and discuss them a bit. Then I am going to talk about misreading the adventure text and how it affects people's campaigns.

I wanted to use D&D art depicting dragons for this column. I started off by digging up art from my favorites, like Caldwell and DiTerlizzi. But then I started looking at the digital covers from the 4th edition era and realized that I barely even remembered them. This art is almost like a "secret", as I think many people either didn't read them or barely glanced at them. I figured it might be fun to use dragon art from those covers for the most part in this column.

The White Dragon

I have been reading online about Hoard of the Dragon Queen. There's been quite a bit of discussion about the final battle against the white dragon, Glazhael the Cloudchaser. Is the dragon too difficult? Are you supposed to use the dragon's lair actions? The lair actions are not mentioned in the text but then again, neither are the monster's stats. In the online supplement, the dragon's stats include legendary actions but not lair actions.

The fight is in a massive cavern. The dragon begins the battle hanging upside down on the ceiling. Glazhael has an INT of 8 and sees people with food as "friends" and people without food as "enemies". It demands tribute and will flee when reduced to 40 hit points (It has 200 hit points total).

Here are people's experiences:

In Merric Blackman's group, a PC who loves dragons befriended Glazhael and rode him around in the sky (!). The heroes ended up teaming up with the storm giant to take out the dragon. The PC distracted and flattered the dragon as the rest of the heroes moved into position and killed it with the help of Blagothkus, the giant.
In another group, the dragon killed the entire party with three dragon breaths, which recharged every round (dragons roll a d6 on the start of their turn - if they roll a 5 or 6, they can use their breath weapon again).
In a different campaign, a ranger cast "pass without a trace", which allowed the party to sneak into Glazhael's lair and get a surprise round on him. The dragon breathed and almost killed them, but the party unloaded with fireballs and defeated the dragon.
This group had an interesting strategy: A wizard cast fly on a barbarian who was wielding the powerful magic sword Hazirawn, who flew up and hacked into Glazhael. The barbarian had damage resistance, which kept him going. The rest of the party spread out so the dragon's breath wouldn't hit them all at once. The dragon breathed twice but each blast only hit a few PCs. They took the dragon down.
A rogue lured the angry dragon into a side tunnel (the module explains that the dragon is dumb and will follow PCs into the cramped tunnels, and has disadvantage on melee attacks when it does so). The group got hit with one breath weapon in the tunnel that nearly killed them, but they took Glazhael down thanks to critical hits and smiting. Many PCs were reduced to 10 HP or less.
The author of Save Versus wrote about how his group used some kobolds to trick the dragon into wasting it's breath weapon (what an utterly fantastic idea) before the fight even started. The breath weapon never recharged as the PCs attacked. The DM gave the dragon it's lair actions and still Glazhael went down in two rounds.

Dungeon Masters Going "Off Script"

While reading up on other people's experiences with Hoard of the Dragon Queen, I noticed a number of things:

In one of the above games, the party grabbed the black dragon mask from Glazhael's hoard. The black dragon mask doesn't teleport to Glazhael's hoard, it teleports to the Well of Dragons many miles away.
People calling NPCs or the dragon by a different name (I accidentally do this fairly often, mispronouncing names).
A DM gave Hazirawn an amusing, friendly personality (this is a sentient, evil sword).
I also found an insightful post by a guy who seemed less than enthusiastic about his group of players. He didn't seem overly familiar with what he was running.

One idea I really liked from one of these campaigns was the idea of giving Pharblex two black dragon wyrmlings. I think I would have given a wyrmling to a different NPC, though. Frulam Mondath? Rezmir? Maybe give Talis the White a white dragon wyrmling? The wyrmling could live on the roof of the lodge instead of those perytons.

I also noticed that despite the Adventurer's League rules, the majority of DMs added encounters and altered the adventure in ways that technically make the game "illegal" for in-store play. Two things that jumped out at me while reading all of this stuff:

Every DM tweaks an adventure to run it in his or her own style
It is extremely easy to forget one of the many, many details in an adventure while running a game.

Is All of This in Place to Prevent Cheating and Powergaming?

I know that the Adventurer's League rules are in place so that players don't bring "broken" characters to conventions or other game stores. I think that Wizards of the Coast would be better off just declaring that PCs can have "x" amount of magic items per tier, and their stats cannot add up to more than a certain number per tier. If a PC has more items than the stated amount, they can' t access or use them in convention play.

Really the point of all of these rules and restrictions seems like it comes down to trying to stop cheaters and powergamers from ruining public games for everyone else. In my opinion, an easier thing to do is to just kick those people out if they don't understand or accept the spirit of the game being played.

I can't tell you how many cool people over the years that have been repelled from RPGs as a whole due to one powergamer running roughshod in a public game, desperately exploiting rules even though it violates intent and common sense. I have been running public games since 2008, and I have seen it happen over and over.

I should point out that when I say "powergamer", I don't mean someone taking optimal character options. If I make a fighter, I want an 18 strength and a high constitution.

I am talking about the people who spend a great deal of time and effort looking for the cracks in the system. They want to exploit the rules to do - what else? - massive damage. They are looking for a video game "cheat code" for a tabletop RPG. Often these people don't know or care that they are being annoying. To them, you are stupid for not doing it.

Nobody wants to sit at a table where your character does 40 points of damage per round when everyone else does 7 points. Everybody else might as well just go home, because you, the powergamer, is all that matters.

Then, when the DM tries to counteract the situation by exploiting your "broken" character's weaknesses (perhaps by throwing a band of NPCs at you using the same extra-attack exploit that you are using), you get angry and bitter. Why, you are being punished for being clever! That's not fair! You loudly complain, and everyone gets uncomfortable. Now they really want to go home. They came here to have a fun time. You came here to "break" the game. Well, you broke it all right.

Maybe a separate league should be created for the powergamers to play in. Is that what the 4th edition Lair Assaults were for? These players could have their own league where they can min/max and exploit rules together to their hearts' content. But here is the really funny thing:

When the powergamers who I have played with decide to DM a game of their own, they don't want powergaming in their game, either! They actively try to stop it, and when they can't, they quit DMing and go back to being a player. I have seen this happen over and over again. None of their campaigns last more than a handful of sessions. The most fascinating thing about this is that when they go back to playing, they have learned nothing and continue to powergame.

Reading Comprehension

Reading about other DMs making mistakes comes as a great relief to me. I have always had trouble with reading comprehension, all the way back to these tests I had to take in first grade. I was even given an A.D.D. test, which I passed.

A lot of times when I read a book, I just see a wall of text. I'll end up reading the same sentence over and over while having great difficulty focusing my mind.

This may sound like a medical condition, but the weird thing is that when I read something that I am truly interested in, I devour it with no problem. Despite my love for D&D, I hate reading modules, rulebooks and fantasy novels. I find them very boring.

Stuff I Like to Read

For a time, my father owned a used bookstore. I would sit behind the counter and ring people up. It was a quiet place with classical music pumped over the speakers. The store was almost never busy, which meant I spent my days reading any of the thousands of books we had available. Despite the fact that we had a massive section of fantasy and sci fi books, my choice was to read autobiographies, true crime and stories of real life peril. I have very fond memories of reading these books:

Adrift: 76 Days Lost at SeaSharks rubbed up against his raft and by gawd, he drank his own urine.
Star Trek Memories by William Shatner I don't even like Star Trek, but I loved Shatner's stories about how the cast would race each other to the cafeteria, and the time he paid people to suspend Leonard Nimoy's bike up in the air so Spock couldn't "cheat" to get to the cafeteria first.
My favorite book of all, one I have read over and over: The Clothes Have No EmporerA hilarious book about the 80's and the scary idea that "an actor is playing the president".

Being a Dungeon Master Is a Multi-Tasking Nightmare

What I am trying to say is that I have always been frustrated with myself when I realize that I missed something when running a D&D session.

For example, despite the fact that I read the adventure, wrote a freaking guide to it, took hand-written notes that I reviewed just prior to running it, I still forgot about the collapsing door/rubble trap in the Tomb of Diderius. I almost had my PCs walk right into the divination pool room and skip over many of the coolest rooms in the dungeon!

I caught it and made up some B.S. second door that collapsed and the group was none the wiser, but I was still flabbergasted that I'd made the mistake.

Through the reading of all of these other blogs (and I think we really need a site that lists all Encounters blogs, as they are very hard to find or stumble on) I am able to see that almost nobody runs an adventure as written. There is no mythical "perfect session" of Hoard going on (though if there is one, Chris Perkins is probably running it).

The very nature of a module having so much detail is inevitably going to lead to oversights and omissions by the Dungeon Master.

When you run a game, you have five people all trying to talk to you at once. While you are answering a question, two more are being asked. And while that is happening, you're reminding yourself not to ignore the quiet player and trying to make sure everyone is engaged. At the same time, you are trying to check your notes and making sure you're running it correctly.

It is impossible to multi-task to this degree. This is why some DMs are progressing more slowly through the adventure. They take the time to look up anything that needs looking up, to answer each player completely, and to look down and check the book and read over every detail.

As I have said before, as a player I do not like sitting at the table in silence. I am there to play. Let's keep it moving! But now I understand that the drawback to a maniacal pace is that things are going to go a little wonky sometimes.

I am fine with that. I hope more people write online about their experiences playing and running Hoard and Rise, because I greatly enjoy reading them.

Varram

We got in another special "bonus session" of The Rise of Tiamat yesterday at the store as part of my intense quest to get the adventure finished by March. We went three hours instead of two, in what turned out to be a bit of a slog through the Tomb of Diderius.

The heroes are looking for a dwarf named Varram the White. He is one of the five wyrmspeakers of the cult. Apparently he got himself into some trouble with yuan-ti while looking for his stolen white dragon mask.

I've been reading up more on rules and what my PCs can do so I am prepared for questions (I still had a major flub or two, though). The paladin took oath of the ancients. I asked him who his god was, and it turns out he never picked one. Today he told me it was Mielikki, the Forest Queen. I am going to look this god up and add in a little stuff here and there in upcoming sessions so his character feels more fleshed out. It seems obvious that the Emerald Enclave would want him to defect from the Order of the Gauntlet.

For the sake of clarity I am going to list the party here along with their faction:

(Harper) Elf Rogue: In real life, played by Dark's dad.
(Zhentarim) Gnome Rogue: Middle Schooler. We joke that his character lives in a garbage can.
(Zhentarim) Elf Rogue: Middle Schooler. Often does "combo moves" with the gnome, throwing him at stuff to get Inspiration.
(Order of the Gauntlet) Half-Elf Paladin: Middle Schooler. Oath of the Ancients.
(Order of the Gauntlet) Half-Elf Fighter: The player is about 25 years old, knows the rules pretty well.
(Harper) Elf Sorceress: The player is in 4th grade and she loves her little black dragon, "Sparky".

Almost an entire party of elves! I've never run a group where all the members have darkvision. They never light torches.

15. Bridge

We had left off on a mossy bridge that spanned over a cavern (a 120 foot drop). When crossing it, you need to make DEX checks or you might fall in. Worse, there's lizardfolk and yuan ti waiting to ambush the adventurers.

What followed was a drawn-out conflict with the heroes very carefully advancing on the bad guys across the bridge. To speed things up, I had a few lizardfolk try to cross to engage the heroes in melee. They fell in.

19. Hatchery

This room is a pit full of newly hatched snakes (one giant swarm/monster). Some yuan-ti watch over them. Our stealthy heroes did some sneaking and then got the jump on these monsters.

When the gnome rogue was hit with a fear spell, he dropped his dagger of venom into the pit! Snakes swarmed all over it. Ever-helpful, Dark the dragon sorceress turned invisible, went down and retrieved it. The gnome was cured of his fear by the paladin (his real-life brother) with a heroism spell.

These encounters would have been pretty dull if not for these fun little moments. I tried to bring them to life but it didn't quite click like I wanted it to. Too many combat encounters! Also, I just never liked yuan-ti, so it's hard for me to get into it.

17. Yuan-Ti Quarters

This room has a pressure plate in it. If stepped on, a dart trap goes off hitting everyone. There's a few bad guys in here, who were getting thrashed.

It's starting to become an issue where the bad guy's plus to hit is too low. +3 to hit isn't too useful vs. the paladin, who has an AC of 18 or 19. And further, the party has three rogues who each have multiple abilities to minimize damage. While I don't want to penalize them for good tactics, I do feel the need to start running my monsters in a more clever manner.

On top of that... my dice were really cold tonight. In the end, a lizardman purposely stepped on the plate and triggered the dart trap and only one PC got his by the darts, and he was able to nullify the damage.

Each room in this place has at least some kind of gimmick, but after getting through the tomb, the yuan-ti stuff feels tacked-on and really just kind of odd.

A player noted that this dungeon is very Indiana Jones-y, almost explicitly. There's a rolling boulder trap, entrance similar to the exterior of the grail locale in Last Crusade, an "only the penitent shall pass" type trap, and a room full of snakes. He's right! It is pretty blatant.

I don't mind.. I love Indiana Jones. They made this tomb different enough that it works as a D&D dungeon.

22. Temple

The heroes came upon the final area. The leader of the yuan-ti has the dwarf (Varram the White) tied up on an altar. The adventure says that the yuan-ti will try to trade the PCs Varram in exchange for goods and services.

But the heroes never got the chance. They peered in and saw the set-up. Their plan: Have Dark twin-cast Greater Invisibility and cast it twice, thus making 4 of the 6 members of the party invisible.

I made a mistake here, and realized it while driving home. Greater Invisibility is a concentration spell. You can only have one of those going at the same time. I don't think a single caster can have two Greater Invisibilities running concurrently.

I wasn't too concerned because we were just about out of time and I wanted to get the room done. I did not want another long, boring fight with yuan-ti. Plus, I wanted to see this play out. I'll look it up and talk to them about concentration next time we play.

The invisible rogues moved into position and just stabbed away, killing the yuan-ti before she even knew what was happening. Then the paladin strode in from the entrance.

From the other yuan-ti's perspective, they just saw their leader die a bloody death out of nowhere, and then a paladin confidently marched into the room.

They wanted no part of this paladin and his incredible powers, so they surrendered. The heroes removed Varram from the altar.

The Fate of Varram the White

The PCs have Varram. It turns out that he lost the white dragon mask (one of the lamer things about Tyranny of Dragons is that the PCs spend a lot of time chasing after dragon masks that they can't actually obtain).

The group healed Varram, questioned him, and then argued about what to do with him. Dark's real life dad wanted to kill Varram. Dark vehemently objected, and made a very heartfelt plea to the group to keep him alive. She actually asked, "Are we a bunch of murderers?"

The gnome agreed with her. But her dad and the other rogue just went ahead and slit Varram's throat.

If I was a player in this group and that 4th grader made that speech, there is no way on God's green earth that Varram is dying and my character would fight any PC that tried to kill him.

It was a bit of a bummer. She was legit upset when this happened. She actually made a comment about quitting the group.

She was back to normal a few minutes later. Her dad bought her a My Little Pony doll and it seemed like the whole thing had been forgotten.

Player Art

Dark throwing a gnome.

Dark and the gnome do drawings in a notebook when it's not their turn. Sometimes they give me drawings to keep at the end of a session. Above is an image that the player Dark drew. It depicts Dark throwing the gnome rogue at a bad guy, a situation that happened in a previous session (I think it was in the fight with the tile chimera from last session. The chimera was on a ledge ten feet up so Dark chucked him up there). I asked the player of the gnome to make me one, hopefully I can post it here in a week or two.

The heroes found two protection scrolls as treasure. In 2nd edition AD&D, as a kid, I never understood protection scrolls. Any PC can cast them, apparently. I'd better read up on them.

They also found the Dragontooth Dagger, or as we call it, the Daggertooth Dagger - The dagger made from the tooth of a dagger.

This Wednesday, the heroes are going to go to the Sea of Moving Ice. But prior to that, they're going to deal with the first of the three assassin encounters in the book. I cooked up a pretty epic encounter, if I do say so myself.

In this article, I am going to examine one of my favorite monsters in D&D - the githyanki. The point of this is to have all the lore in one place, so that if you want to use the githyanki in your campaign, the basic material is all right here at your fingertips. You can pick and choose the stuff that fits your game.

The Githyanki are gaunt, psionic escaped slaves who wander the astral sea hunting mind flayers (their former slave-masters) and warring with their "cousin" race, the githzerai.

I'm not going to discuss the githzerai much. All you need to know is that the githzerai and the githyanki were once the same race (the gith forerunners) but now they hate each other and have opposing philosophies.

There's so much material on the githyanki, I had to pick and choose what to write about. I don't even mention the pirates of gith from Spelljammer, or the gith in Dark Sun in this article. I am focusing on the core material. Otherwise I don't think this would ever be finished!

This blog has a nice list of most of the githyanki appearances in D&D products. It's interesting to me how many people just shun 4e completely. They are missing out on a lot of awesome art and lore, as you will see.

Real Life Origin

Githyanki actually first appeared in White Dwarf Magazine, and were part of the Fiend Folio (a product full of White Dwarf content published by TSR known for it's bizarre monsters, such as the Flail Snail). The creator of the D&D monster, Charles Stross, took the actual name "githyanki" from a novel written by George R. R. Martin. Yep. The Game of Thrones guy. How weird is that?

AD&D 1st Edition

The githyanki were originally "evil humans" enslaved by mind flayers. For centuries, their descendents served the mind flayers. They evolved into the race known as the githyanki, developing psychic powers in secret. Under the leadership of a woman named Gith they fought their way to freedom.

Since that time, they have lived in the astral plane in huge castles. They worship a "...lich-queen said to have powers at the 24th level of magic-use.."

They have a pact with red dragons. The agreement goes like this: Red dragons will act as their steeds when the githynki travel to the prime material plane, and in exchange the githyanki give the dragons shelter, food and treasure in the astral plane.

A 7th level githyanki kight always has a silver sword.

Githyanki Silver Sword

A +3 two-handed sword.
Has a 20% chance of cutting the silver cord (basically it kicks you out of the astral plane altogether).
The swords are sentient, with an INT of 8 and it has "appropriate powers".
If a silver sword is stolen, a very powerful raiding party of githyanki will stop at nothing to get it back.

Dragon Magazine #67 - Fedifensor

I didn't even know this adventure existed. It's only about 5 pages, but they packed a lot into it. It has a gigantic backstory. Basically, a monster army attacked a church (of some god named "Amphabese"). A priest sent the magic sword known as Fedifensor into the Astral Plane so it didn't get claimed by the horde. Our heroes have been hired to retrieve it.

Fedifensor can only be wielded by lawful good people. It is a +5 (!) weapon that gives the wielder 50% magic resistance, can dispel magic at will, and does extra damage against demons. Wow.

The heroes search the astral plane for a while. They may encounter a band of githyanki on a void cruiser - a sailing ship with no masts and batwing-shaped sails on either side of the hull.

Eventually they find a githyanki outpost. The sword is here. The githyanki have great names such as: Okemocik, Mimhanok, Perrasourp, Morikemoe and 'Gish' Quazmo.

They have a "net of matter transmission". If the net is thrown on PCs (it is ten feet in diameter), it teleports them to a prison cell called a "suspension cell".

Suspension cells: Prison cells with a magic effect that allows jailers to pass things through the glass.

It's a pretty standard githyanki outpost.

Tales of the Outer Planes

When I was a kid, I saw this adventure in a book store (Walden Books, I think). I wanted this so bad, but I didn't have the money. A few years ago, I finally got it. I started to read it. Major disappointment!

This book is full of "mini-modules" and lairs for DMs to insert into their campaigns. It's all linked together with this "World Serpent Inn" (a "multi-dimensional tavern that exists on every plane") and the godlike bartender named.... Mitchifer. He is basically Santa Claus as a bartender, complete with helper elves who serve the booze.

TSR was so jokey in this era. They put out that Castle Greyhawk parody module, and every year Dragon Magazine would have an April fool's issue which for me was a publication that might as well go straight into the garbage can. What a waste of time and resources! It's one thing to put in a jokey article in each April issue. But to devote an entire magazine every year to Looney Tunes D&D humor is just not my thing

To get in to the World Serpent Inn, you have to knock in the air on an imaginary door and invoke the name of a god. Inside are all sorts of weird creatures, and some of them are gods in disguise "...relaxing safely in the protection of the Inn's powerful magic".

There's an adventure where the PCs go to the astral plane to rescue a wizard. They have to break into a githyanki fortress. Some cool stuff:

These githyanki ride nightmares
The githyanki play a game called "gith-flay", a game involving small black and white stones, a cup and a sharp knife.
The wizard is trapped in a magic gem.

The lair in the back of the book is a short, kind of ridiculous adventure where there's a cave. In the cave are 4 githyanki studying a red dragon egg. A mind flayer pops out of the egg and attacks them. I am not making this up. That is the adventure.

"The conduit in the egg dissipates into the earth along with the yolk once the shell is broken. However, the broken shell pieces are worth up to 2,500 gp to a collector." I am so glad young me never bought this adventure.

AD&D 2nd Edition

Some details and lore have changed from 1st edition:

"Gleaming black eyes that betray their inhumanness"
They speak their own tongue, and no others.
Githyanki knights serve the mysterious lich-queen and have anti-paladin powers (detect good, command undead, etc.)
The silver sword has a 5% chance of cutting a cord, now.
Once a githyanki hits 12th level, the lich-queen devours their life-force.
Githyanki never fight each other.

There's some cool information on Githyanki society. There's different cultural groups:

G'lathk: Fungus farmers (there's no sunlight in the astral plane). Sometimes they have massive water-gardens.
Mlar: Spellcasters who specialize in architecture and construction.
Hr'a'cknir: They collect the weird energies that exist in the astral plane...? OK. Needs more detail!

Dungeon Magazine #43 - Into the Silver Realm

The author of this adventure, Steve Kurtz, wrote so much great stuff for 2nd edition. His work is very lively and smart. This scenario uses a lot of material from the 2e Complete Psionics Handbook, a book which had a profound impact on my campaigns way back when.

This is set in the Forgotten Realms, which is so weird. It is located just north of Waterdeep, the place where The Rise of Tiamat is. I've never been a realms guy, but it is cool to look at this map from 20 years ago and understand what is located just south of it.

I almost don't want to spoil this. Basically, the PCs think they're out to kill a red dragon, but they're actually being chucked into the middle of a dispute between a very clever githzerai and a band of githyanki.

Steve Kurtz does an epic job of using the spells and powers of the game in a logical way:

Spell-casting prisoners are kept feebleminded.
The person who hired the PCs checks in with them once per day with her crystal ball and uses it's telepathic ability.
An NPC scouted out the githyanki lair by polymorphing into an insect.

The heroes find out that the githyanki are working on making a permanent portal to the world. The heroes will need to go through, kill the githyanki, and shut the portal down.

D&D 3rd Edition

This is around the time when, in my opinion, Wayne Reynolds' art got scary-good. He was on fire drawing these githyanki. Even though I am more of a Clyde Caldwell/Larry Elmore guy, to me it is pretty clear that Wayne Reynolds is the ultimate D&D artist.

Anyway, let's see the changes made to the githyanki in 3rd edition:

They now know Common and Draconic, in addition to their own secret language.
Githyanki wizards are called warlocks and multiclassed githyanki are called gish.
They have defined psionic powers that includes blur 3 times a day. Higher level githyanki can use dimension door, telekinesis and plane shift.
They have spell resistance.
The lich-queen now devours the essence of any githyanki that rises above 16th level.

Silver Swords

Now they are +1.
"When drawn, the silver sword transforms into a column of silvery liquid, altering the weapon's balance round by round as the blade's shape flows and shimmers." Awesome.
If hit by a silver sword, a target must save or lose any psionic abilities for d4 rounds (!).

Dragon Magazine #309 - Incursion

The last 30 pages of this issue of Dragon is devoted to an outline for an entire campaign involving a githyanki invasion. It's pretty epic. That said, the whole thing is sort of vague and overloaded with massive statblocks. The githyanki airships are too sci-fi for my liking (and I am a Spelljammer fan). Here's the gist of it:

Levels 1-3: The heroes encounter the githyanki scouts here and there.
Levels 4-6: The lich-queen's scouts look for military targets. They raid caravans, cause scandals in temples, sow strife among knightly orders.
Levels 7-9: The lich-queen starts sending ships through a gate, assaulting and taking control of a kingdom.
Levels 10-12: The githyanki army marches on a larger kingdom.
Levels 13-15: The lich-queen names her new Material Plane kingdom "Krr'a'gith'farak".
Level 16: Our heroes must go to the astral plane to kill the lich-queen in the adventure called "The Lich-Queen's Beloved".

Dungeon Magazine #100 - The Lich Queen's Beloved

...written by the mighty Chris Perkins! There is a lot going on in this, with major additions to the lore. Let's break it down as best we can.

This adventure is about Vlaakith (a descendent of the original lich-queen. There have been many Vlaakiths). She devours githyanki souls with an artifact called the crown of corruption, tuning them into undead servants:

Tl'aikith: Incorporeal githyanki knights wielding spectral swords.
Kr'y'izoth: Former warlocks and gish, now entities of flickering black flame in tattered robes.

Vlaakith is now creating new creatures, her "children":

Duthka'giths: Brutal githyanki shock troops with red dragon blood. Other githyanki resent these creatures and think Vlaakith has strayed from what Gith wanted.

There's also some new factions within the race:

Sha'sal Kohu: Radical githyanki and githzerai who want to re-unify the race! Their greatest ally is a githyanki warlord named Zetch'r'r (we'll see him again in 4th edition).
Ch'r'ai: Githyanki spellcasters who think Vlaakith is going to become a god. They want to be her clerics. They are led by a warlock named Xam'kras.

This adventure takes place on Tu'narath, the githyanki city built on a dead god. Dragon put out a web enhancement for it in conjunction with this adventure. I am going to discuss the 4th edition version a little further down.

Vlaakith has been casting wish spells for 1,000 years, trying to steal the dead god's divine spark and transfer it to herself.

Dessakrul

This adventure is a gigantic, epic assault on her palace. Her phylactery is guarded by a two-headed red dragon named Dessakrul.

D&D 4th Edition

Check out that githyanki art by Michael Komarck. I figured that nobody would be able to match or top Wayne Reynolds, but Komarck did it, in my estimation.

The 4e githyanki are broken into a few different types/classes:

Githyanki Warrior: Has a silver sword, can use telekinesis to immobilize people, and can make telekinetic leaps up to 25 feet.
Githyanki Mindslicer: Can make a ranged psychic "mindslice" attack, can make telekinetic leaps and can cause a psychic barrage of damage in an area burst.
Githyanki Gish: This elite warrior gets multiple attacks (up to 4 in a round!), can fire off force bolts and can teleport up to 30 feet every round.

They sail the Astral Sea in astral ships, looking for debris of dead gods and shattered realms to add to their own fortresses and hoards. They don't have families, they have military training groups called cadres. The githyanki usually don't know the names of their parents or siblings. The most important thing in their life is their weapon.

Dragon Magazine #377 - Tu'narath, City of Death

This is a large article that details the githyanki city with some awesome art. This is extremely useful to use in conjunction with the adventure "Tyranny of Souls". Tu'narath is the biggest githyanki city, built on the body of a dead god. I don't have much to say about the city details, I just had to include this artistic rendering. Really, really great.

Dungeon Magazine #168 - Tyranny of Souls

This adventure assumes that Vlaakith was killed in Lich Queen's beloved, and that Zetch'r'r now rules. It is part of the Scales of War adventure path. The githyanki are pretty much Tiamat's soldiers throughout the paragon tier. It culminates in this adventure.

To rule Tu'Narath, Zetch'r'r needed Tiamat's help. Tiamat agreed under the condition that he swore loyalty to her.

Zetch'r'r is a puppet of Tiamat and the pact with the red dragons has been broken. Red dragons no longer have to act as mounts of githyanki. With the pact broken, the soul of Gith is free of the grip of the devil Dispater! Gith's spirit enters into the body of a young githyanki, and she wants to lead a rebellion to overthrow Zetch'r'r.

This adventure has some of the best encounters in all of 4th edition. Zetch'r'r transformed the lich-queen's spine into a sort of demi-lich. Vlaakith's Spine killed my entire party! The session report of it is here.

Sheesh... 2010! Hard to believe it's been 5 years.

D&D 5th Edition

I didn't think the art could top 4th edition, but somehow they did it. This is a fantastic depiction of a githyanki.

There's two types of githyanki, Warriors and Knights. Their "psionic powers" are pretty much just spells from the PH labeled as "innate spellcasting". Warriors have misty step, while knights have misty step, plane shift and telekinesis.

They go on raids, leaving "...shattered survivors enough food and resources to weakly endure".
Gith perished way back when, and the githyanki are now ruled by Gith's undead advisor, Vlaakith. Vlaakith forbids worship of all beings except herself. So basically, Scales of War never happened. How annoying.
Silver Swords are +3 weapons.
The bond with red dragons was through some shady deal Gith and Vlaakith made with Tiamat. They actually met with Tiamat in her lair in the Nine Hells (from our good pal Fires of Dis).
This is cool: Creatures on the astral plane don't age. So githyanki young are raised in the prime material in military academies. When a githyanki grows up and slays a mind flayer, only then are they allowed to go to the Astral Plane.

And that's where we're at! I know there's a lot more material out there, but I think this covers the basics of what the githyanki are all about.

What is a succubus? It's a demon babe. She lures you in and kisses you until you die. One of the most classic D&D tropes in existence is when your heroes are exploring a dungeon and they find a poor, beautiful gal in a prison cell. You free her and before you know it, she is draining the life out of you via level-draining kiss.

The intent of this article is to take a comprehensive look at a cool monster and to collect all of the main lore in one place. In D&D, so much information is spread out in so many hard-to-find sources that I think it is handy for DMs to be able to have a nice outline to start with. This should help us run these monsters more effectively.

I've also listed many official succubus NPCs that might be handy to use in a campaign. I'm sure I've missed some obvious ones, but I tried my best.

This is sort of a companion to my other succubus article, where I focus on Malcanthet and Nocticula (the awesome Pathfinder succubus queen). The main relevant info is in the Malcanthet section, detailing the "War of Ripe Flesh" (from Dragon Magazine #353).

Scandalous Content

I have tried my best to keep this column from getting too explicit, but there is a lot of art depicting half-naked ladies in here. There's no nipples, but wow, we get real close. So click away if that is not something you want to see! Googling succubus art is a slippery slope, let me tell you.

It is interesting to see that in the early days of D&D, there's a lot of official D&D art that includes topless succubi. As time goes on,the art has become less explicit. Mike Mearls discussed this a bit in an interview with The Escapist. Here's a quote:

"Mearls mentioned that the development team - including an art team consisting almost entirely of women - decided early on that they were going to avoid bare midriffs, cleavage, and other common gaming tropes. 'We only use those if a specific character would actually dress that way,' such as the demonic incubus and his six-pack abs."

Are they Demons or Devils?

I used to have a hard time keeping this straight. Here is my mantra:

Demons (Tanar'ri) are chaotic and come from The Abyss
Devils (Baatezu) are lawful and come from Hell

They are clearly demons in 1e, 2e and 3e.

AD&D 1st Edition

They are beautiful human women with bat wings.
Can only be harmed by magic weapons.
70% magic resistance.
Their kiss drains the victim of one level (no save!).
They have all sorts of at-will powers: Charm Person, ESP, Suggestion, Shape Change (same height and weight).
They can gate in other demons! 70% chance it's a Nalfeshnee. 25% chance it's a Balor (!!). 5% chance it is a demon lord. A demon lord!

Belgos and Silussa

The original artist Jeff Dee re-drew this image in 2013. Check it out here.

Silussa appears in a classic adventure - Gary Gygax's Vault of the Drow. The adventurers step out of a tunnel mouth. There's a starry sky overhead. They're in a garden and a lovely grotto that has a "rose-surrounded statue of alabaster". It's a nude sculpture of a human female.

There are birds twittering in the trees. The PCs start to hear voices in their mind, sowing dissension. The heroes will start to be charmed one by one.

The statue is Silussa the succubus. The whole area is an illusion. The birds are bats and rats. Silussa's lover, the vampire Belgos, lurks nearby. This amuses me greatly: He is a master of rats and bats. They do his very bidding!

If our heroes survive this encounter, they can find a secret entrance to the couple's lair. In it is a charmed deep gnome, their servant. Their lair is overloaded with treasure, including:

Erotic sculptures!
A beautifully-wrought coffin.
A poisonous cloak.
Pipes of the Sewers (?).

What a great duo of NPCs. You could run them as villains utterly devoted to each other. That could be their weakness that the PCs can exploit. Or, they could secretly loathe each other, and do really cruel things to one another and then make up later. A villainous dysfunctional relationship.

AD&D 2nd Edition

Egad. Baxa really went to town with this drawing.

My, my, this descriptive text. Perfect figures! Smooth, milky skin. "They all share one thing with each other, though: uncommon loveliness."
Ho, ho! Get a load of this. They lure men into "activities of passion" and drain the life from them. The heat of the moment is so strong that the poor sap might not even notice he is being level drained (wisdom check -4 penalty).
They can plane shift once per round.
40% chance of summoning a balor.
Immune to fire, never surprised, hit by +2 weapons or better.

Chiryn

Well of Worlds is a book full of Planescape adventures. I ran most of these way back when, and they were awesome. "Love Letter" is an adventure about a devil named Kas'rarlin who is in love with a succubus (demon).

The two met when the devil led a raid into the Abyss. Kas'rarlin fell in love with her instantly. His subordinates tried to kill her, so he defended her and killed them.

Kas'rarlin sends her one love letter a year. Our heroes are hired to deliver this year's letter.

This adventure features what became a mega-popular NPC in my game: a talking skull on a pike. My PCs "kept" him and he endured over several campaigns, outliving many characters.

Chiryn puts a special perfume on her return note. If the PCs steal stuff from her tower (which as a lot of cool encounters in it) she neglects to put the perfume on it. When he PCs give Kas'rarlin the return note without the perfume, he assumes it's a fake and tries to kill the PCs.

Karylin

Succubi are horrible mothers. Horrible! This NPC appeared in Dungeon Magazine #55, in the gigantic Chris Perkins-penned adventure "Umbra".

Karylin is a succubus who lives in Curst, a town right on the edge of the plane of Carceri. She charmed a fellow who was a member of the Harmonium (a faction devoted to order) to make a baby due to "...an irresistable desire which maternal succubi refer to as 'The Urge'". Six months later, she gave birth to an alu-fiend named Umbra.

Karylin found out that there's a demon lord named Kalphazor who resides on an Abyssal plane called Phurnis. Kalphazor has an "insatiable desire for alu-fiend slaves". Kalphazor was known to give chunks of his realm over to those who brought him alu-fiends.

So, yeah, this adventure is about Karylin trying to sell her daughter, Umbra, to a demon lord. Making things more complicated, Umbra might be destined to become a great god, according to a prophesy.

Fall-From-Grace

This NPC, I believe, first appeared in the popular "Planescape: Torment" computer game and has since been referred to in official D&D RPG lore.

Fall-From-Grace is a lawful neutral succubus whose demon mother (Red Shroud, detailed below) sold her to devils. Fall-From-Grace earned her freedom by challenging a devil to a game of improvisation (?) and won.

She fled to the city of Sigil and joined the Society of Sensation. She runs the Brothel of Slaking Intellectual Lusts, where the staff offers intellectual and emotional stimulation, rather than physical.

Her kiss is allegedly fatal.

D&D 3rd Edition

Check out this flavor: "This creature is stunning, statuesque, and extraordinarily beautiful, with flawless skin and raven hair. Her form, so tempting, also has an otherworldly side. Large bat wings unfurl from her back, and her eyes glow with sinister desire."

Now they have telepathy.
They can polymorph into humanoid forms, stay that way indefinitely.
The kiss comes with a suggestion effect. A PC must make a hefty Will save or continue making out with her.
Charm Monster.
30% chance to summon a vrock (far cry from a balor).
She has a permanent tongues effect - she can speak any language.

Red Shroud

Red Shroud is detailed in Dungeon Magazine #146. She is the daughter of two demon lords - Malcanthet and Pazuzu. She rules a place in the first layer of the Abyss known as Broken Reach, which is a small commnity built around several crumbling towers.

She has crimson hair and large bat wings. She has four hezrou bodyguards. She loves poison, especially slow-acting poison that make people more susceptible to her charms.

She is sought out often when information is needed and is a powerful spellcaster, able to cast up to 7th level spells. And yeah, it actually says in the text that she sold off her daughter, Fall-From-Grace.

Eludecia the Succubus Paladin

I had no idea this NPC existed until I started working on this article. In 2005, Wizards of the Coast did a monster tournament where fans voted on who was the best. The victor won out over a gelatinous cube, a warforged ninja, and the tarrasque (!!). The winner: succubus paladin.

The Paladin's stats were posted online. Her name was Eludecia. She was a succubus that fell in love with an angel. The angel taught her how to be good over the course of years. Now she is a full-fledged paladin, fighting back her evil nature every day.

Wizards published an adventure about her called Legend of the Silver Skeleton. It's pretty crazy. An enemy of Eludecia captured her and threw her in a gelatinous cube. See the attached image. Good gawd.

What a great NPC!

D&D 4th Edition

A strange choice in 4e: Succubi are now devils.

Their kiss is now a charming kiss. You can't attack her, and if someone else does, the charmed person jumps in the way to take the hit. She can also dominate targets at will (which is a nasty effect in 4e). Most of the other old abilities are gone.

I am sitting here wracking my brain and I can't think of any named succubi to appear in a 4e product. There's one in Dungeon #197 in a Shadowghast Manor adventure, but she's just a monster in a room.

One place that comes to mind is one of my favorite planar locations - the city of Hestavar.

Hestavar is detailed in Dragon Magazine #371. It is a city in the astral sea founded by Pelor (God of the Sun) Erathis (Goddess of Civilization) and Ioun (Goddess of Magic). The city is populated by angels, exalted souls, devas and... devils. Devils are allowed to live in Hestavar under a special pact. The idea is to try to enlighten the devils and change their ways.

Naberius Sain

Naberius Sain is a gregarius and charming succubus who runs the embassy of the Nine Hells in Hestavar. She often mingles with the angels and the exalted. Naberius is referred to as a 'sometimes male', but to me, that's an incubus and there's a picture of what looks like a female and it is too good to go to waste - eh who knows, run it how you want!

Naberius Sain pulls off some diabolical plots in Hestavar, but is able to keep from getting caught. She answers to Glasya of the Nine Hells.

Dragon Magazine #417 - Ecology of the Succubus

Finally! It only took four editions. In the beginning, there were these Angels of Love. "With a single chaste kiss, an angel of love fulfilled all mortal desires..". The archangel Asmodeus had been chosen by the gods to guard the prison of the Chained God Tharizdun. Asmodeus convinced the angels to join him and rebel against the gods.

The rebellion failed and they fled to Hell. The angels were transformed into succubi. "They suffer under an acute physical addiction - a sustained, insatiable desire for the touch of flesh that only a kiss will ameliorate."

Those kissed by a succubus experience immortal emptiness.

Two of the first succubi both wanted to be Asmodeus' consort. They were Lilith and Malcanthet. Asmodeus played them off of each other. These days Lilith is a devil a consort to Baalzebul in the 7th layer of Hell.

Malcanthet led a band of devils into the Abyss and took control of an Abyssal Layer. She named it Shendilavri and transformed it into a paradise. She declared herself the Queen of the succubi. She has gone on to become a full-fledged demon lord.

There's your explanation

This somewhat contradicts Dragon Magazine #353, where it is told that Malcanthet won "The War of Ripe Flesh". I think you can reconcile all of it with a little tweaking.

A succubus can redeem herself by walking a path of atonement, living a chaste and virtuous life and countering each bad deed with seven good deeds.

One succubus has done this: Fall-From-Grace. Says so right in the text. I love continuity.

The author of this article had a little more to say in his blog here.

D&D 5th Edition

A Succubus is now neither a devil or a demon. They work for both sides. Some work for the devil Asmodeus, and others work for the demon Graz'zt.
Apparently they can shift into an Incubus (male) form at will.
They corrupt their victims by making them commit three betrayals: of thought, word and deed.
The more virtuous the victim, the more rewarding it is for the succubus.
When they reproduce with a mortal, the child is a cambion.
Their kiss is painful. It doesn't drain a level (I don't think there is such a thing in this edition). Instead, it does 32 points of damage and reduces the victim's hit point max by that amount until a long rest.
They can charm people. The charm lasts a day. The succubus can telepathically communicate with them, even from another plane.

Really great lore for the 5th edition version!

Pencheska

Pencheska appears in the "D&D Next" adventure Scourge of the Sword Coast as well as in Dead in Thay. Pencheska somehow survived everything in my game at the store, and apparently is still running around out there in the Forgotten Realms somewhere.

Pencheska is bound to a Red Wizard named Tarul Var. In this adventure, she seduces NPCs and wreaks havoc in the town of Daggerford. She is also an ally of another villain, a pit fiend spirit. She is actually OK with being killed, because she will appear back in her home plane and is no longer bound to Tarul Var.

I found Penchska to be a very dull NPC, especially considering she's a succubus.

Further Reading on The Succubus

Tim Brannan wrote a very helpful 3 part blog on the succubus here.
Here's a list of named D&D succubi. I didn't know there was an actual succubus website.

It is still extremely cold out in New York, and once again that meant that the game store was quite crowded and extremely loud.

It is astonishing how successful this edition is. Three new people came in to play tonight. They were able to squeeze in at the owner's table.

I Am Running Another Table

I am officially starting a second session of Hoard of the Dragon Queen on Thursdays. The group will be comprised of an amusing mix of some of my D&D Next players (starring Hack and Slash Guy), some 20-something newbies and a couple of teenaged females.

It feels sort of redundant to write session reports of these, but I might do it anyway if it seems fun. I get to implement the things I have learned from running it the first time around. Maybe I'll go ahead and run that duel in episode one this time. I can better foreshadow Frulam and Rezmir. I can put a ballista on the wall during the blue dragon encounter.

I'll also hopefully get to see some different PC classes in action. As you may be aware, my group has 3 rogues, a sorcerer, a paladin and a fighter. I'd like to see more casters in actual play.

I was wrong about something last week. Dark's dad is a member of the zhentarim. My group has three Zhent rogues.

The Party

(Zhentarim) Elf Rogue: In real life, played by Dark's dad.
(Zhentarim) Gnome Rogue: Middle Schooler. We joke that his character lives in a garbage can.
(Zhentarim) Elf Rogue: Middle Schooler. Often does "combo moves" with the gnome, throwing him at stuff to get Inspiration.
(Order of the Gauntlet) Half-Elf Paladin: Middle Schooler. Oath of the Ancients.
(Order of the Gauntlet) Half-Elf Fighter: The player is about 25 years old, knows the rules pretty well.
(Harper) Elf Sorceress: The player is in 4th grade and she loves her little black dragon, "Sparky".

Rules Notes and PC Backgrounds

As we got underway, I went over some stuff:

Mielikki's symbol

I explained the concentration rules (One caster can't have two twinned greater invisibilities going at the same time), and made sure Dark knows she has to spend a sorcery point per spell level.
I also told the paladin a bit about his god, Mielikki (pronounced "MY-lee-kee").
I explained how scrolls of protection work (the heroes got two scrolls of protection of undead last week) as well as how scrolls work.
I also told the players about the castle of Darkhold, a Zhent fortress located very close to the Well of Dragons. It's not part of the official adventure, but it's on the map and I read up on it and it is very cool.
Lastly, I told the heroes about the Misty Forest and how it might be a good place to say they came from. King Melandrach rules it, and Episode 4 is all about the Misty Forest so I figured it might be nice to tie some of them into it. Pretty much the entire party liked it and said that's where they are from.

Azbara Jos

Assassination Time

With all of that out of the way, we got into the first assassination encounter. I detailed my plans for it in my guide. Basically, the heroes party in the tent community at Boareskyr Bridge. A few cultists place some explosive barrels in there, and then a red dragon ridden by the red wizard Azbara Jos swoops down out of the sky and breathes fire, igniting the barrels and causing a massive explosion.

To foreshadow this, I had the heroes spot the red dragon in the sky during the trip from the tomb to Boareskyr. I also had the heroes find the scorched corpse of Jamna Gleamsilver, the NPC from Hoard episode 4. They correctly deduced that she'd stolen the white dragon mask and had been killed by a dragon. The cult had taken the mask back.

I was hoping they'd take her body back to Waterdeep to get raised, but they didn't do it.

In Bolo's Tentside Inn at Boareskyr, the paladin was recognized as the slayer of Rezmir. The poor citizens told their stories of losing their homes due to the cult attacks. Dark and the gnome felt sorry for them, and gave them each piles of gold.

The heroes gambled, they drank, and they had a good time. Thankfully, Dark's dad declared he was sitting back and keeping an eye on everything. Thus, he noticed the trap being set. The barrels were delivered and the dragon was swooping down from the sky!

The NPCs fled the tent. The heroes ran outside. To my horror, the gnome decided to climb onto the roof of Bolo's! Azbara Jos fired off a fireball spell, blowing up Bolo's and injuring a few PCs greatly. Dark was down, and other heroes covered Sparky and took his damage. The poor gnome rogue was all messed up, lying in the burning wreckage.

Someone revived Dark, and she angrily cast a cloudkill spell up at Azbara and the dragon, which did 25 points to the red wizard (he has 39 total). I was ready to cast counterspell, but the range on it is 60 feet and he and the dragon was 90 feet up!

The dragon swooped down and breathed fire, doing 56 points and gravely injuring some of the party. The heroes took aim with missile attacks and targeted Azbara... rolling two criticals! The gnome and the fighter took down Azbara.

The dragon took one last bite at a PC, and flew off with Azbara's corpse in hand. The dragon swore that this was just the beginning.

Interestingly, the book suggests leveling the PCs after each assassination encounter. I am not doing that. The encounter took, at most, an hour.

In retrospect, I gave the heroes too much lead time. I have been treating them with kid gloves (partly because some of them are kids) and I think they can handle more of a challenge. I will make the dragon's second assassination attempt more devious. I'll also have to look into whether the cult would raise dead on Azbara or just replace him with some cultists.

Heading Back to Waterdeep

Our heroes almost decided to try and trace the dragon back to the Well of Dragons but instead they decided to head back to Waterdeep. They followed the road north and came to Daggerford. Sir Isteval was there. He's the guy on the council who injured his leg in the fight with a green dragon, and has a cane made from the bones of a green dragon.

He invited the heroes to have dinner with Duke Maldwyn and his sister (NPCs from Scourge of the Sword Coast!). The heroes had a lavish meal. The Duke bragged about his collection of magic items - Lawflame, Blackrazor, Whelm and Wave, all stuff that happened back in the D&D Next games.

Sir Isteval hates the black dragon and after some arguing with the PCs, was allowed to cast detect evil on Sparky. To his surprise, Sparky was not evil. He was taken aback.

The heroes were able to use a teleportation circle in Daggerford to return to Waterdeep.

The Mysterious Noble

Waterdeep, City of Splendors

Various members of the factions met with the PCs and tried to influence them. The harpers were mad that Varram had been killed, the Zhents were unhappy that the heroes had left Jamna's corpse behind, and I introduced them to King Melandrach's son Alagarthas to try and set up the story to episode 4.

The heroes met the Waterdhavian noble Dala Silmerhelve, who has boxed text on many different pages. She told the heroes to go to the Sea of Moving Ice to rescue Maccath the Crimson. She's a wizard who knows about the draakhorn. She may be a prisoner of a white dragon called Arauthator!

The heroes smartly asked her how she knew all this. She gave evasive answers, and for some reason they didn't press her.

The Sea of Moving Ice

The heroes took a boat called Frostskimmer to the Sea of Moving Ice and searched for Arauthator's home.

A few days in, a few merrows came up under the ship and tried to make it lurch. This was interesting. The water is freezing (PCs who fall in must make a save or start on the exhaustion track in the PH page 291). Nobody wanted to dive in to fight them, but what choice did they have?

The underwater combat rules favor rogues. The heroes were able to drive the merrows off. It was getting really loud in the store and my players got a little over-excited at this point.

The heroes rescued an ice hunter from a polar bear, and he gave them directions to Arauthator's place - Oyaviggaton.

The adventurers went there, and tried to explore the village up on the top of the glacier/plateau. The nervous clan of ice hunters wanted them to leave, but the PCs protested.

The clan decided that one PC would fight their champion - Orcaheart! No magic, no magic items. Any assistance, magic or otherwise, would cause you to forfeit. If the PC won, the heroes could stay. If the PC lost, the group would have to give up some of their "fine steel".

Dark's dad, the rogue, volunteered for the duel. Orcaheart is very tough: 112 hit points and three attacks per round. The rogue was getting pummeled!

But, the fighter was smart. He was watching the ice hunters, keeping his eyes peeled for cheaters. He saw their shaman subtly casting a spell. The fighter rolled low on his skill check to spot this stuff. For me though, sometimes I ignore the roll. If he says he's looking, that's all I need.

Similarly, most times in a dungeon if a PC says they are looking for a secret door, I just have them find it. To me, it is enough that they thought to bring it up. I want to reward the players who think and I don't like the idea of the dice getting in the way of this (though there are plenty of times when there are exceptions).

The fighter exposed those cheating Ice Hunters. The clan grumbled and allowed the heroes to stay. The heroes were lead to a dumpy storage building and were going to be given a delicious meal. The heroes would be allowed to talk with the clan leaders on the following day....

We didn't get nearly as far as I wanted. I was hoping to get well into the dungeon, but there was too much other stuff to get through.

In this article, I am going to do my best to run down what is known about Tiamat, the five-headed dragon. I have gone through many different Dungeons & Dragons products and can now present to you a pretty definitive, basic look at one of the most popular villains in the game.

I'm sure I've missed some stuff, but this should give Dungeon Masters a solid foundation of knowledge to help them run Tiamat effectively.

First I'm going to go over a few miscellaneous things about Tiamat. Then I will run down details about Tiamat from each edition of Dungeons & Dragons.

Tiamat Is Not Takhisis?

Takhisis

In the Dragonlance setting, there is a goddess named Takhisis who is very similar to Tiamat. Different products say different things about what the deal is with these two. Some suggest that they are the same being, others say that they are aspects of each other.

Apparently, the Planescape supplement On Hallowed Ground presents them as completely separate entities. In Tiamat's Monster Mythology entry, there is a vague notation:

Basically, just do whatever works for your game. As far as I can see, there is no official ruling on this.

Tiamat from the Dungeons & Dragons Animated Series

Tiamat on the cartoon is this sort of other-villain, a force of nature that hates the heroes and their enemy Venger, alike. Tiamat is shown to have multiple lairs. She often dwells in this weird demiplane known as the Dragon's Graveyard, a place where magic items are more powerful.

I am usually not one to advocate for Wizards of the Coast to use material from the cheesy 80's cartoon, but I'd love to see the dragon's graveyard worked in to official lore. It's much cooler than a lot of the stuff Tiamat is involved with in the D&D game. It feels "special", like it should.

Tiamat Miniatures

There's two Tiamat miniatures made for the game. The old one shows Tiamat on her feet, while the new one shows her flying in the air. They're both expensive, but very cool to own.

AD&D 1st Edition

Tiamat is listed under "Chromatic Dragon", which is odd. From what I understand, in the original D&D white box, Tiamat is called "The Chromatic Dragon". We learn that:

She rules the first plane of the Nine Hells where she spawns all of evil dragonkind.
Her heads can cast spells, use breath weapons, or bite.
She can only use each breath weapon once per day.
Each head can cast two spells. The blue head casts 4th level spells, the red head casts 5th level spells.
If a head is cut off (it only takes 16 points of damage to do so) it grows back the next day.
She has five consorts in her lair.
If her body takes 48 points of damage, she is sent back to hell.

Dragon Magazine #38

Tiamat has a few spells

Lenard Lakofka strongly advises that Tiamat be made a deity. He offers a revised stat block, changing her AC from 0 to -3 (in old editions, a low AC is good). He submits that she is an arch devil and has a slew of at-will spells like Animate Dead and Teleportation. +2 or better weapon to hit her. Vorpal blades will not sever a head (!?) unless a natural 20 is rolled.

He lists her consorts and says that they can cast spells and that Tiamat gets rid of them when they get old. How shallow! He further notes that protection from evil/devil just plain do not work in hell.

I appreciate Lenard's zeal here. He is really trying to make sure Tiamat is a big deal. I also love the idea of a party of heroes fighting five dragons, one of each type, at the same time!

Dragon Magazine #75

I've covered this legendary Ed Greenwood "Nine Hells" article previously, but for the sake of completion... Her lair in hell is known as "The Dragonspawn Pits". When she mates, it is in a protective ring formed by the other four. Hmm.

She bears litters of 1-4 "mewlings" (I love Ed Greenwood). It says that most of her offspring are regular dragons, but any newborn spawn who are multi-headed are eaten by her!

Tiamat loves finding new 1st to 5th level spells.

Throne of Bloodstone

This is a really insane adventure for impossibly-high level PCs: "For Character Levels 18-100". The heroes learn that they can destroy the Wand of Orcus by dipping it in the blood from Tiamat's heart and bringing it to Bahamut, god of good dragons.

Bahamut himself teleports our heroes right to Tiamat's Den, and the heroes immediately battle Tiamat and her 5 consorts (one chromatic dragon of each color) in a combat arena.

If the PCs fail and flee, Bahamut is not happy. He teleports them back to Tiamat's Den, still wounded, and battle the bad guys again. Of course, Tiamat and her 5 consorts are fully healed.

AD&D 2nd Edition

Monster Mythology

I love this book. In fact, I love most of these blue DM reference books from 2e.

This book talks a bit about Bahamut (the good guy dragon god) and Io, the supreme god of dragons. The flavor for Io is beyond Epic. "Io is the creator of all dragonkind, father of the Sleeping Deep Dragons whose spirits lie at the core of many worlds still, the whose blood, thoughts, and life force established the ground for creation and sustain it still"

In 4th edition, they altered this a bit. Io was cut in half by a primordial, and the two halves became Bahamut and Tiamat. There is an epic destiny that allows a PC to unite Tiamat and Bahamut to re-form Io. It happened in my Scales of War campaign.

This is Io about to be cut in half by a primordial

Tiamat is a nasty lady: "...she enjoys such wretched pastimes as torture, bickering, and fighting among her consorts, as well as destroying valuables and treasures which her avatars bring to her.."
Her avatars bring her treasure? I don't get that. Isn't an avatar just a projection of herself?

Her stats are different:

Her AC got bumped to a -12!
Each of her heads can use their breath weapons three times per day
Immune to all spells under 5th level
The Blue head's breath weapon does 14d12+14! Can you imagine rolling 14 d12's at once? They'd roll all over the place.

The author did a fantastic job of fitting tons of info into a single page

Planescape - Fires of Dis

I went over this ad nauseum here. Part of this adventure details Tiamat's lair in Hell, except that the author declares that the heroes have no chance of battling the dragons or obtaining the treasure, so it is not detailed! There's cursed treasure, a wisdom-draining lake, super-hot gold, and a door to Dispater's realm that you have to crawl through.

Dragon Magazine 260

This is pretty awesome. An article on children of Tiamat!

An-Ur

An-Ur, The Wandering Death: He lives in the ethertal plane eating concentrated ethereal mist. He doesn't like fighting. He can summon ether cyclones that send you to some other plane. Eh.

Dhrakoth the Corrupter: A black dragon with scarred, oozing, membranous wings. This creature is the pinnacle of undeath. It breathes "pure decay", doing 10d8 damage and corrupting living tissue reducing a character's Charisma by d4 points! Wow. He also has an energy-drain breath weapon that drains 2 levels in one shot. Because he feeds on life energy, anyone slain by Dhrakoth cannot be raised or even wished back to life!

He can animate dead and commands a legion. Tiamat apparently created Dhrakoth by fusing his essence (he was a thing in the negative energy plane) with a dragon. While he works with Tiamat, his ultimate goal is to slay all living things.

Mordukhavar

Mordukhavar the Reaver: The spawn of Tiamat and a Pit Fiend (one of the Dark Eight, the generals of the Blood War). OK, that's just awesome. It has six attacks a round, all of them cause a save vs. poison. If you fail, you're in a coma for d4 rounds.

Breath Weapon #1: Hellfire! It does 22d10 damage.
Breath Weapon #2: Corrosive acid. 20d8 damage. If you fail your save, it may destroy your items!

Mordukhavar serves Tiamat and travels Hell doing her bidding. He also commands a legion and aspires to become one of the Dark Eight.

D&D 3rd Edition

Deities and Demigods

AC: 69! You need a +4 weapon to hit her. She has blindsight for 10 miles. Each breath recharges in d4 rounds.

They even list her magic items. She's got a portable hole, an amulet of the planes, a cloak of displacement... all sorts of stuff.

The Red Hand of Doom

This adventure is considered by many to be one of the best adventures of the modern era. It is set in the generic Elsir Vale, a place revisited in the 4th edition semi-sequel Scales of War adventure path.

This adventure is about The Red Hand, a tribe of hobgoblins and monsters who worship Tiamat. One of their allies is a blue dragon named Tyrgaron. The heroes do all sorts of cool stuff in this adventure, like trying to recruit an elf army to battle The Red Hand. In the end, they must go to The Fane of Tiamat to take out the leader, Azarr Kul.

Azarr Kul

I feel very conflicted about giving spoilers to the end of this adventure, so look away if there's any chance of you playing The Red Hand of Doom. You're ruining it for yourself..

Once Azarr Kul is slain, Tiamat tears the roof off and swallows his corpse. The heroes must battle an aspect of Tiamat.

If has an AC of 25 and 174 hit points. Each head can breathe every d4 rounds (doing 12d8 each!).

D&D 4th Edition

Draconomicon: Chromatic Dragons

On page 158, there is a truly epic Tiamat trap. All five heads breathe. It nearly killed my entire party.

This trap is part of a mini-adventure called The Regnant Fane. The fane was created by none other than Azarr Kul before he was slain. Tiamat laid some eggs in here..! My heroes kept the eggs and raised the dragons as pets (this seems to happen a lot in my games).

Tiamat gets a full entry starting on page 244. "A nightmarish synthesis of hatred, rage and draconic might embodied in the form of a five-headed dragon."

She's the evil goddess of wealth. greed and envy.
All evil dragons pay homage to her.
She is rumored to have the ability to take the form of a dark-haired female mage.
In 4e, she lives in the Astral Sea, on a floating island called Tytherion. It's a place of gloom and lightless terror. This is a clean break from Tiamat being trapped in Hell, and I'm not sure why they did this. What's weird is that in the 4e cosmology, Hell is in the Astral Sea.
Her stats are crazy. She rolls initiative 5 times! One for each head. She can have all five heads breath at the same time, doing ongoing 25 acid/cold/fire/lightning/poison.
There's a few sidebars detailing deity discorporation and suggestions on how to slay Tiamat for good.

They still kept the Maggot Pit from Fires of Dis, though.

Dungeon Magazine #172 - Legacy of Io

This is one of my favorite adventures of all time. It is part of the Scales of War adventure path, which is about Tiamat's evil schemes from start to finish. Rather than list each adventure in the path, I'm just going to discuss the two most directly relevant to Tiamat herself.

The plot of this adventure is that Tiamat has killed Bahamut. What our heroes don't know is that Bahamut had placed a portion of his essence in a deva named Amyria, an NPC who's been a part of our heroes for a very long time in the path. Amyria can be used to bring Bahamut back to life.

To stop Tiamat's schemes and to resurrect Bahamut, the must find an artifact known as The Arrow of Fate, a spear made of Io's blood. Way back in the Dawn War, Io was cut in two by a primordial. The two halves became Bahamut and Tiamat. The little leftover blood became the Arrow of Fate.

Dungeon Magazine #175 - Last Breath of the Dragon Queen

This is a fantastic adventure, the culmination of the Scales of War adventure path. Our heroes go into Tiamat's lair and kill her! I highly recommend that you take this lair and stick it in hell, over top of the "Fires of Dis" version.

Tiamat's lair is on Tytherion in an area known as Azharul. Her lair itself is known as the Caverns of Fiery Splendor. Bahamut gives our heroes canaries which can transform into gold dragon mounts to help them battle her.

Tiamat is on this platform way up in the air, held aloft by a twisting column of lava. At the base, there's five statues. If the PCs try to fly up to her, the statues fire disintegrator beams which pretty much just instantly kill you. Each of these statues is linked to an ancient dragon lurking in the lair. Killing the five ancient dragons deactivates the statues.

These five dragons are ancient brood mothers.

This is another odd thing about the 4e Tiamat. It says that "For all her power, Tiamat is unique among dragonkind and cannot lay eggs herself."

This not only contradicts lots of previous lore, it also contradicts the 4e Draconomicon.

Red Dragon Brood Mother: Lurks on islands in a vast pool of magma. She's pregnant with dragon eggs!
Green Dragon Brood Mother: She lurks in a a pool of water with many floating logs. She is attended two by a pair of dragonborn vampires.
White Dragon Brood Mother: She lurks in ice and water. Her eggs aren't hatching, so she tried using necrotic energy on them.
Black Dragon Brood Mother: She's in a forest of twisted trees.
Blue Dragon Brood Mother: She is in a dusty room with mini-cyclones flying about.

The final fight with Tiamat is beyond epic. When I ran this in 2010, I had to adjust the brood mother stats, as the 4e monster math often erred on the side of too many hit points, not enough damage. But the Tiamat fight went perfectly. This battle was the culmination of 114 sessions of D&D.

D&D 5th Edition

The Rise of Tiamat

The entire first storyline of 5th edition i about a cult trying to bring Tiamat out of Hell and into the world. So the whole "Tytherion" thing has been forgotten.

The plot culminates in the final episode, where two armies wage war as the cult tries to bring Tiamat through a portal. The heroes may only have to shut the portal off as she comes through, or they may have to battle her for the fate of the Forgotten Realms.

People online have complained that no party of 15th level PCs could kill her. I have no idea if this is true. I should find out in a few months when my party plays through this.

She has a lot of hit points but her AC isn't too high. My level 8 party fighter can hit her right now, though he has to roll pretty high.

She can cast Divine Word, which kills anyone with 20 hit points or less instantly!

Her legendary actions involve her 5 heads and the breath weapons. She can breathe twice per round, more or less. I wish they'd given her a combined breath weapon attack.

That's what we have so far! Thanks for reading.

Today I'm going to try and take a comprehensive look at one of the coolest D&D Monsters - the pit fiend.

A pit fiend is an extremely power devil (or baatezu). They are the top of the food chain in Hell (Baator). Pit fiends are meant to be one of the most threatening and deadly monsters in Dungeons & Dragons. You need to be a high level character to hope to survive an encounter with them.

There is a fantastic list of pit fiend NPCs that appeared in D&D products here.

Intent

The goal of this article is to try to collect all of the relevant lore in one place so that if you decide to use them in your campaign, you don't have to dig through 10 different books for cool NPCs and ideas.

Most of the content in here is listed by edition. In the case of major pit fiend NPCS like Bel and The Dark Eight, I listed their information at the end. They are discussed in many different sourcebooks, so I compiled the information and placed it all at the bottom.

Miniatures

There are a lot of pit fiend miniatures out there. My favorite is the official one put out by Wizards almost ten years ago.

Simbul the Pit Fiend Slayer

The Simbul

In Ed Greenwood's novel "Elminster in Hell", The Simbul apparently killed four pit fiends! The Simbul is, according to this site, "...a wild and powerful sorceress, highly unpredictable and prone to sudden outbursts of rage."

I tried to find out more, and found some pretty scathing reviews of this book at Candlekeep. One reader mentions that The Simbul's hair allows her to wield multiple magic wands. Please don't tell me she killed four pit fiends with hair wands.

Pit Fiends and Balors

The pit fiend is the smaller one.

It's easy to get a pit fiend mixed up with a balor. They look similar. A Pit Fiend is a devil and a Balor is a demon. Pictured here is a balor fighting a pit fiend, a scene from the 4th edition adventure Prince of Undeath. In it, the heroes have to travel to the bottom of the Abyss, wade through a massive battle between devils and demons, and make their way through a magic forge.

Epic art by Mark Winters

Here's what make balors different from pit fiends:

They're bigger (balors are huge, pit fiends are large).
Balors wield a lightning sword in one hand and a fire whip in the other.
They are re-skinned Lord of the Rings balrogs.

Fun fact: I have an old metal balor miniature that, for some reason, includes the monster's genitals.

AD&D 1st Edition

I really like the look of the original pit fiend in the 1e Monster Manual. They're really wide and sinister, just a classic looking devil that you can tell is very powerful. Here are the properties of a pit fiend:

Twelve feet tall.
Personal servants of Asmodeus, lord of Hell.
Carry an ancus-like weapon in one hand and a jagged-toothed club in the other.
They can cast fire spells like wall of fire once per turn.
They have a 70% chance of gating in another pit fiend (and I guess that pit fiend cold do the same, right?).
They have an aura of magical fear.
Strength of 18/00, regenerate 2 hit points per round and they have a tail stinger.

Not much else there, as far as detail goes. There's a really cool section on devil talismans in the actual devil entry. I did a bit of searching, but I could not find any significant pit fiend encounters in 1st edition modules.

AD&D 2nd Edition

Baxa

There are a couple of different artistic renderings of the pit fiend, and I really like them all. In 2e, they tended to reprint their monstrous entries in different supplements. So that means that Baxa did the first depiction, which appeared in the Monstrous Compendium. It stays true to the 1e Trampier version, which is massive and someone you do not want to mess with.

In the Planescape Monstrous Compendium, Tony Diterlizzi has a pretty epic depiction of a pit fiend as a purely evil being wreathed in flames. Here's some notes on the 2e pit fiend:

Gargoylish in appearance.
They don't communicate much, but use telepathy when they do.

DiTerlizzi

Once per year they can cast a wish spell!
They are the highest ranking devils in the Nine Hells. They are commonly found in Nessus (the ninth layer of Hell)
They sometimes command legions of devils and lead them into battle against demons.
"Pit fiends are spawned from the powerful gelugons... when those icy fiends are found worthy, they are cast into the Pit of Flame for 1,001 days after which they emerge as a pit fiend."
The text says to refer to the gelugon entry which, when flipped to, explains that for a gelugon to be "promoted" to a pit fiend, it must have served Hell flawlessly for 777 years.

What's the Pit of Flame, you ask? Let us consult a supplement...

Planescape - Faces of Evil: The Fiends

The Pit of Flame

The Pit of Flame is guarded by hordes of cornugons and is located in Phlegethos (The Fourth Layer of Hell). It is a huge lake of boiling filth and excreta, burning with searing white flames that reach over 100 feet high.

Devils who bathe in the pit heal and gain strength but also suffer great pain.Those not lawful evil are instantly consumed by the fires.

Fires of Dis

I feel like I talk about this adventure endlessly. Here's the pit fiends that appear in this scenario:

Kri'ik: Kri'ik is a pit fiend that serves Dispater in the Iron Tower of Dis. In the adventure, he tries to embarrass his master by helping the adventurers steal a holy sword named "Guardian" from Dispater's tower.

Zaggutch: This pit fiend first shows up in a very cool encounter. The heroes look into a mirror. Zaggutch appears inside the mirror, and begins doing terrible things to the adventurer's reflections! He kills them and eats them. Here's some of the flavor text:

"Hiya, flaggoes!" laughs the fiend in the mirror, though you can't be sure if he's talking to you or your reflections. "Ready to have some fun? Ol' Zaggutch'll teach ya how to have a real good time!"

Zaggutch is a lieutenant fiercely loyal to Dispater. Dispater has given him the power to become a spirit who can possess people. Zaggutch possessed the paladin who wielded guardian and did his best to turn him evil.

While I hated the section on Tiamat's lair, this adventure has a ton of really cool stuff in it.

Well of Worlds

This book has a number of adventures, including one that deals with the blood war (the eternal war between devils and demons).

Blood Storm

This is a real twisty adventure with many possible outcomes. The heroes get mixed up in a blood war skirmish, where disguised demons and devils try to get the heroes to help them achieve their goals. The devils are represented by a pit fiend named Gallus.

Gallus: He disguises himself as a portly merchant and tries to pay the heroes in cursed gold. If spent, the heroes want more of that particular gold. The only way to get it is to do more work for Gallus.

There's a pretty amusing section of this adventure where the heroes escort a bunch of weird people out for a night on the town. The people are very cruel and extremely lucky at games of chance. It turns out these are polymorphed demons trying to keep our heroes occupied. I can just imagine all the shenanigans that went on when people ran this adventure

D&D 3rd Edition

This depiction of the Pit Fiend is pretty good. I especially like the pit fiend miniature that came out in this era. It does a good job of keeping the tone of the original depiction but also blending in the modern elements.

Third edition pit fiends have an AC of 40, over 200 hit points and have very high spell resistance.
The bite of a pit fiend can infect you with a strength-draining disease called "devil chills"
Twice a day, a pit fiend can summon a few devils like an erinyes or an ice devil.
3rd edition has some helpful combat tactics, which is a cool feature. Basically, they'll probably hit you with a fireball, than a meteor swarm (!) and then close in on an injured PC for the kill.

Devilishly Difficult Opponents

This article on the wizards site discussed pit fiends in 2007. It mostly talks about how to handle pit fiends in the 3.5 rules system. There's a nice sidebar that discusses the notion that devils like pit fiends deplore chaos and keep meticulous records.

Fiendish Codex 2: Tyrants of the Nine Hells

This book, to me, is the best supplement on Hell. It has so much great stuff. The 2e Guide to Hell is very good as well, but this gets more in-depth and has much better art.

The Court of Asmodeus includes a number of pit fiends:

Alastor, executioner of Nessus
Baalberith, majordomo of the palace
Martinet, constable of Nessus

There's also a very cool spell..

Investiture of the Pit Fiend: It's a 9th level spell that gives the target fangs and wings of a pit fiend. The target can do stuff like make claw attacks, let out a cloud of disease-ridden air, or gain a fear aura. It lasts around 15 minutes.

Lord of the Iron Fortress

Lydzin

This adventure involves a half-duergar/half-red dragon named Imperagon. He's re-assembling this powerful efreet sword called the Blade of Fiery Might. Once the sword is made, he's going to lead an army of allies that includes illithids and "the hosts of hell" to attack our heroes' world.

Imperagon's main devil ally is a female pit fiend named Lydzin. Lydzin's minions include a devil-tainted cloud giant, a fiendish hydra named Torrix.

The adventure goes to great lengths to explain how Lydzin used a wish spell on the fortress, and has placed an unhallow spell and all of these magic symbol traps throughout the place.

Lydzin is part of the final battle, turning invisible and using spells, mostly.

D&D 4th Edition

Obviously the 4e version of the pitfiend is more concise and has some new powers.

4e has declared that each pit fiend is a lord of a large domain and is a vassal of an archdevil. Pit fiends run cities and lead legions. Each archdevil commands less than 12 pit fiends, except Asmodeus. Other details:

They lurk in the background and scheme.
They have a flame-touched mace
This power is awesome: A pit fiend can slide an allied devil up to 25 feet and cause it to explode, injuring foes.
It could summon devils once per encounter, which is very, very rare in 4e. It can summon 8 minions to use as fodder for it's explosion power.

Manual of the Planes

This pit fiend just doesn't look right to me

The 4e manual has a nice section on Hell that discusses a few different pit fiends in passing:

Amon: A pit fiend who serves as the seneschal of Levistus. He commands a vast stygian army.
Lenphant: A pit fiend that controls a city called Grenpoli, the City of Guile on the seventh layer of Hell.
Neshm: A pit fiend who rules Neshminaar, a secretive city in Nessus. Here, devils experiment with breeding monsters and creating infernal constructs.

E3 Prince of Undeath

In this super-high level adventure, our heroes end up rescuing the Raven Queen from Orcus, who is trying to kill her and become the god of death.

Utarla: A female pit fiend who is trying to stop Orcus's plot. The heroes can avoid a fight with her by convincing her that they're on the same side (in a really lame skill challenge). Her master is Asmodeus.

D&D 5th Edition

The 5e pit fiend has most of the same powers as earlier versions. It can cast fire spells and has a fear aura. They have "...an inflated sense of superiority and entitlement", which is amusing. They are manipulative and political.

I really like the artistic depiction of them, although it's got some weird blue tint thing going on. I'd really like someone to paint what a female pit fiend looks like. Do they look just like the males?

Dead in Thay

Baazka

Baazka had tried to build an army in Dragonspear Castle in the Forgotten Realms, but a priest of Tempus defeated Baazka using a magic sword called Illydrael. The blade broke off in the pit fiend's body as it fled through a portal.

"Had the blow killed him in the world, the devil could have returned after a century to wreak his revenge. Had it killed him in the Nine Hells, Baazka would have ceased to exist. Instead, the pit fiend’s black heart continued to beat around the blade. Fearing that removing the broken sword would mean his end, Baazka has struggled along in the Nine Hells, reminded of his desire for revenge with every painful heartbeat."

Baazka can enter the Forgotten Realms only in a ghostlike form that can possess people. How cool is that? Baazka proceeded to team up with the Red Wizards of Thay to build a bloodgate that might cure him of his condition as well as allow the Thayans to bring their forces to the Sword Coast.

Major Pit Fiends Referenced in Multiple Editions

The Dark Eight

Legend has it that long ago, a pit fiend named Cantrum teamed up with eight other pit fiends to become a sort of mediating body between the Lords of Hell and the devils. Cantrum was assassinated. The rest of them, The Dark Eight, are now in charge of running the Blood War.

They hold council four times per year at the fortress of Malsheem in Nessus. The assassin of Cantrum was a paladin from Mount Celestia who was killed before he could escape Hell. If they go to other planes they magically disguise themselves as humans.

When a member of the Dark Eight is slain, another pit fiend replaces them, takes on the destroyed member's name and magically alters its' appearance. The idea is to promote the concept that the Dark Eight are immortal.

They are:

Baalzephon - Supply Master of Baator, the only surviving member of the original group.
Corin - Spymaster, frets a lot, always expects the worst.
Dagos - Marshall of the Pits, haughty and contemptuous.
Furcas - Minister of Mortal Relations, restless.
Pearza - Chief of Research, magic-obsessed, commands Fierna's armies, but cozying up to Mephistopheles.
Zaebos - Minister of Promotions.
Zapan - Minister of Immortal Diplomacy, "reviled by all for his fawning demeanor".
Zimimar - Minister of Morale, described as "thundering".

Bel

He was a general in the blood war who convinced the demons he was defecting, then led a huge demon army right into a devil ambush. As a reward, he was given control of all of the armies on Avernus (the first layer).

Bel went on to betray Zariel, the ruler of Avernus. He overthrew her and took control of Avernus.
He captured Zariel and has been draining her energy to add to his own.
Bel's Blade: +3, +5 vs. demons. It does double damage against cold/ice creatures.
Bel is trying to form an alliance with Tiamat. She agreed to let him use her abishai (draconic demons). "Imprisoned in the bowels of the Bronze Citadel, Zariel languishes under the cruel knives of abishai torturers that carve off bits of her flesh to feed their master."
On page 68 of the 5e Monster Manual, Zariel is listed as the current ruler of Avernus. On page 64 of the 5e DMG it is said: "The archduchess Zariel rules Avernus, supplanting her rival, Bel, who has fallen out of Asmodeus's favor and is forced to serve as Zariel's advisor".

Final Thoughts

I think pit fiends are awesome. I don't like some of the ways they've been used in certain products. I don't think they should be snooping around in disguise - they should send flunkies for that. I also don't think they should run cities. It just doesn't feel right to me.

My take on pit fiends is that they are terrifying warlords. When they show up somewhere, everybody quakes in terror. Because they are used to this reaction, they serve the archdukes begrudgingly and regard them with resentment. Only the fact that they focus their hatred on the demons keeps the archdukes relatively safe from full-fledged devilish treachery.

I was hoping we'd finish episode 2 today, but I doubted we would. It's a pretty big area to explore - a dungeon inside a glacier. But somehow, they did it.

The store remains packed each week for Dungeons & Dragons encounters. It is astonishing.

Elemental Evil

I told the group about the announcement regarding the next storyline. They were quite excited to hear about the new player content. I told them about the genasi race, and they can't wait to find out more.

The Party

(Zhentarim) Elf Rogue: In real life, played by Dark's dad.
(Zhentarim) Gnome Rogue: Middle Schooler. We joke that his character lives in a garbage can.
(Zhentarim) Elf Rogue: Middle Schooler. Often does "combo moves" with the gnome, throwing him at stuff to get Inspiration.
(Order of the Gauntlet) Half-Elf Paladin: Middle Schooler. Oath of the Ancients.
(Order of the Gauntlet) Half-Elf Fighter: The player is about 25 years old, knows the rules pretty well.
(Harper) Elf Sorceress: The player is in 4th grade and she loves her little black dragon, "Sparky".

The Ice Hunters

Last time, the heroes had earned the right to stay on Oyaviggaton through a one-on-one combat with the tribe's best warrior. The heroes were ushered into a storage room and fed raw fish.

Some of the PCs were wary of the food. There was a long moment of contemplation. Sparky the black dragon ate some. A rogue's dog ate some (one of the rogues adopted a stray dog in Boareskyr bridge). Dark ate some. Nobody else would dare it.

Good thing, too. It was poisoned. If you fail your save, you are knocked unconscious. Of course, Dark always makes her rolls by a wide margin. The dog actually died, but the paladin brought it back to life with a revivify spell. It's nice to see the group using more magic.

The heroes took an ice hunter hostage and eventually they met with the shaman who explained that the tribe fears the dragon and blah blah blah. She showed them the entrance to the dungeon and down they went.

Room 1.

This dungeon has some cool gimmicks. There's fog that is more dense in certain areas. The floor is icy and thus difficult terrain. There are lots of slopes that the PCs will have to slide down.

The key here is to use some special shoes like the kobolds do, but the PCs weren't able to make that happen.

Room 4.

In here are a bunch of kobolds. The adventurers rushed in and slaughtered them. I was thinking about not even rolling this fight out, but I was afraid it might cheapen the overall experience if I hand-waved too much stuff.

Room 5.

It's a room full of junk. Our party gnome is smelly and lives in trash. It is hilarious that almost every episode has a trash encounter for him.

Room 3.

Piles of food for the dog and Sparky to eat. The dog, however, won't eat fish anymore. It did kill him, after all.

Room 6.

This room has a vast pit in the center that drops right down into the dragon's lair. You can go around the pit to get to the hallway across the room, but if you take the left side, there's a 50% chance it collapses.

I was quite interested to see how my group would approach this seemingly innocent room. They were hyper cautious. They came up with quite an odd plan. The paladin teleported across to the other side with misty step. They chucked him one end of a rope. He held one end, and another PC held the other, and PCs crossed directly over the pit via rope climb.

Remember, the floor is ice! They can't get traction! This was quite reminiscent of the super-tetanus razor room in White Plume Mountain. But, after tons of shenanigans and a spider climb spell, no PCs actually fell in. It was quite amusing.

Room 9.

Just a big empty chamber with an up-sloping tunnel that leads to...

Room 10.

An ice troll guards the room, because this is where Maccath the Crimson is. She's the person that the PCs came here to find, because she knows a lot about the Draakhorn (the device calling dragons to the cult).

The PCs tried to trick the troll with an illusion of treasure, but it didn't bite. The heroes ended up murdering it with a killer combo (they do lots of fun combo attacks to get inspiration). Dark cast a firebolt at the troll, and her dad shot an arrow through the bolt, setting the arrow aflame! It was awesome. When he hit, I declared it an auto-crit.

The troll went down quick. Dark wanted to be friends with Maccath (despite being a black dragon sorceress, she wants to be friends with most monsters). And friends they were!

Maccath explained that the dragon was forcing her to translate books. She also explained that the dragon Arauthator has a mate - Arveiaturace. Arveiaturace refuses to admit that her friend, a wizard, is dead. That dead wizard is still on Arveiaturace's back as if it is riding her. Arveiaturace even talks to the wizard as if it was alive. Arauthator is trying to convince Maccath to replace the corpse and be Arveiaturace's new friend, perhaps to cure the dragon's madness.

The players absolutely loved this story. I'm surprised Dark didn't volunteer to be Arveiaturace's new friend. She might have been in the bathroom at the time

Basically, Maccath won't leave this dungeon until some Arcane Brotherhood books are retrieved. These books are in - where else? - the dragon's hoard.

She gave the heroes some awesome magic items to help them defeat the dragon: A ring of cold resistance and 2 arrows of dragon slaying. If an arrow hits a dragon, the dragon must make a CON save or take 6d10 damage. If it makes the save, it still takes half!

Room 11.

This Scriptorium has all sorts of funky traps and treasures. Maccath warned the heroes that the stuff was dangerous. The players were again super-cautious and resisted temptation. They just passed on by. They needed to go down the chute in here to the dragon's lair.

I love the chutes. PCs need to make a DEX check to slide down unless they have climbing gear or a clever idea. The group was again super-cautious and used a rope and some other stuff. It turned out they all made their rolls spectacularly well. They slid expertly right down on top of the dragon's icy treasure hoard!

Room 19.

The adventurers were admiring the treasure beneath the ice. And then from the fog (visibility in here is 60 feet) comes the white dragon Arauthator! The dragon won initiative.

In the last fight with a white dragon at the end of Hoard, I had the dragon use it's frightening presence right off the bat and it devastated the party.

I was curious to see how the fight would go if the dragon used a breath weapon first. The tricky thing here is that the PCs have those two arrows of dragon slaying. The dragon is supposed to flee once it's taken 100 points of damage.

I gave it a try, and wow, the breath weapon devastated the party. Nobody went down, but they all got hit pretty hard. Then the dragon hovered above them and used it's tail attacks 3 times as legendary actions.

The party isn't great at ranged attacks, but they had those two arrows of dragon slaying and they had inspiration. So they opened fire and hit with both arrows.

The dragon was hurt bad. On it's next turn, it let out the frightening presence. The whole party was extremely concerned with this, and used all sorts of powers and gimmicks to help them get bonuses to their saves. Even so, I think half the party was frightened (and thus had disadvantage to hit and couldn't move closer).

The dragon had taken over 100 points of damage, so it fled. It was a quick but intense battle.

We had to stop there. The adventurers had indeed conquered episode 2.

Ideas

The player reaction to Arveiaturace's story makes me think I need to use her. In this adventure, the cult tries to assassinate the adventurers three times. I decided to use dragons for all three.

We did the first assassination attempt last week, the fight with the red dragon. I am thinking that the second one will be a battle to the death with the red dragon. Maybe the third one will be against two dragons! Arauthator and his mate, Arveiaturace.

I'll have to check and see if this is just too deadly. But I can work in some weaknesses: Arauthator will freak out if his mate is hurt badly, and Arveiaturace will panic if she thinks her "friend" on her back (the long-dead wizard) is in danger. The heroes can exploit this stuff to their advantage, and I think it would make for an epic encounter.

I started a new group in Hoard of the Dragon. Yeah, I'm already writing one report but, hey, what the heck. I can write about what it's like to run the same public play deal with a different group.

For me, it's interesting. I know the material like the back of my hand so it should run more smoothly and I can foreshadow things much better. I can also work in other people's cool ideas. I sprinkled in some concepts from the Hack & Slash blog, namely:

The cultists are divided into the colors of the five dragons. So the raid on Greenest is being done by cultists in blue and black robes.
I added in the encounter where the dragon knocks over a stone building which collapses on the heroes.
I put in the idea that Escobar the Red has a drug problem, because Escobar is a pretty dry NPC.

Not Many Players

Seven people told me they wanted in on this game. Seven! And yet only three showed up. This actually worked out well for me, as I like smaller groups. I got some of them to use the PC backgrounds! The group:

Human Sorcerer: Played by Hack and Slash Guy. He took the "I dream about the world being destroyed by a creature with ten eyes" background.
Elf Wizard: Played by "the bad cleric" from way back when. He is a nice kid.
Dwarf Cleric: Took the "I was gravely injured by a dragon" background. He chose a black dragon. So, we decided his back had been burned by Voaraghamanthar.

Hella the Dwarf Cleric

The player of the cleric is new. He's about my age (30's) and he has a similar sense of humor to mine. His character's name is "Hella", and we proceeded to make terrible dad jokes about how "hella good" the cleric was.

I have a love for using dated slang as if it is cool, to get the younger people to groan. Air quotes really seal the deal.

The two younger players told him about some of my past terrible jokes, including one I'd forgotten about:

I had the heroes run into Lord Nizzle and the Knights of Shizzle. When it was time for them to charge into battle, they raised their blades and shouted, "For Shizzle!".

The new guy died laughing, I died laughing, and even the young players laughed. I was quite proud that this terrible joke scored big almost a year after it was first unleashed on my poor unsuspecting players.

Seek the Keep

Our heroes raced into Greenest. A wizard, a sorcerer and a cleric. I was very excited.. what an original party makeup. I scaled things down, worried they'd all die. They took out 4 kobolds quickly and rescued Linan Swift.

She fought alongside them, and was extremely effective. My dice were on fire tonight. They faced off against a lone ambush drake, who I was really worried about. I thought it might be too deadly. But they wounded it, and then the wizard dropped it with a sleep spell.

Governor Nighthill

The heroes raced to the keep just as the gate closed. They were healed by clerics of Chauntea. Escobert dropped crystals right in his eye, totally overwhelmed. He took them to the Governor, who dropped a quest in their eyes.

The Tunnel

The heroes used the secret tunnel. Their job was to go back into the city and rescue the villagers trapped in the cathedral.

The first time I ran this, the heroes did not disturb the rat nest, unlocked the grate and went outside.

This time, the group carefully examined the nest, saw rats in it, and scorched it with a firebolt. They took down the swarm (I only used one) with no problem.

They had a key to the lock on the grate. The deal here is that the lock is old and a PC has to make a DEX check to open it. If you roll low, the key breaks off. The dwarf proceeded to roll a one! Key is broken!

The party has no thief. I wondered what they'd do. Sorcerer proudly casts mending, which says right in its' description that it mends broken keys. How awesome is that?

So, he mended it, they unlocked the great, and moved on.

The Cathedral

There was a skirmish in the stream wherein Hella demolished the bad guys with her warhammer.

I had to reduce monsters here. Again, I was worried. The deal here is that the villagers are in a barricaded cathedral. The bad guys are outside, split into three groups:

Group 1 is using a battering ram to bash the doors in
Group 2 is walking around, throwing stuff and mocking the villagers
Group 3 is trying to burn the place but having no luck.

The heroes decided to try to get the jump on group one. This group had one dragonclaw (a cultist in blue draconic armor) and two cultists in blue robes.

This went poorly. My dice caught fire, and the casters couldn't hit. Hella tried to take on all three while the casters fired off range attacks, but the dragonclaw rolled a critical and dropped the cleric.

But, on Hella's next turn, she rolled a 20 on her death save! Hella healed herself and blocked a series of attacks as the casters frantically tried to take them down.

But then, a cultist rolled a critical and dropped Hella again! The sorcerer cast a spell that poisoned the Dragonclaw. Poisoned is a nasty condition. He has disadvantage to hit!

The casters dropped the two cultists, but the dragonclaw shook off the poison and cut down both of the casters.

We were looking at a total party kill.

TPK?

The group thought it was pretty awesome. I explained that in Encounters, PCs 4th level and lower can be raised by their faction for free.

So what happened was, two of the PCs stabilized on their own. The wizard bled to death. The villagers in the cathedral took the opportunity to burst out of the building, swarm and kill the injured dragonclaw. They scooped up the PCs and raced to the keep.

Overall

It was a lot of fun. We will need one or two more player to make this work in the long haul. Heck, who knows, maybe this will end up as the only session. Bt it was definitely worth doing.

Wizards of the Coast has announced some details about the new Dungeons & Dragons storyline that will carry us through the summer. Tyranny of Dragons ends in March, and Elemental Evil begins.

The adventure is called Princes of the Apocalypse and it takes characters from levels 1-15.
The book also includes new elemental spells and a new PC race: Genasi.
There will be a free download that includes the player content in the book as well as new races.
The adventure is in one book.
It will be set in the Forgotten Realms city of Mulmaster.
The storyline runs from March to mid-summer. This is a detail I didn't notice until just now. Mid-summer would be July. That means that this runs for only 4 months, and then we will have a new storyline (Chris Perkins has hinted that the next storyline is related to Alice in Wonderland. Gary Gygax had published a pair of "Dungeonland" adventures that were demiplanes connected to... Castle Greyhawk).
There is a list of Elemental Evil Expeditions adventures.

Elemental Evil and Tharizdun

Traditionally, "Elemental Evil" has to do with the evil deity Tharizdun, sometimes known as "The Elder Elemental God". It's all been made famous by the legendary Gary Gygax adventure "The Temple of Elemental Evil".

I'm going to try and cover a lot of bases here, to hopefully create a nice foundation of knowledge that will be an aid when running the 5th edition Princes of the Apocalypse adventure.

A good portion of this article is framed by the content in a great Skip Williams overview article in Dragon Magazine #425. I have organized the information by relevance rather than chronology.

The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun

This is a classic adventure by Gary Gygax known for it's deadly beginning where all of the monster in the dungeon might come at your heroes at once.

There's a nice background in the beginning. It says:

Tharizdun, "He of Eternal Darkness", was imprisoned by the gods.
His servants discovered a "Black Cyst" beneath his temple. A huge form could be seen in the Cyst.
Every day they tried to awaken him, but nothing happened.
The cultists eventually died or left. Now the place is over-run with monsters.

When the heroes get to the Cyst, they see it, sort of: "The shape is so black that it is absolutely lightless...". An occasional ripple seems to pass through the lightless, haze-swathed form.

Just before this room is an insanely nasty tree trap.

Dragon Magazine #425 - History Check: The Temple of Elemental Evil

The Gods banished Tharizdun to an extradimensional realm. He reaches his followers through dreams. He can only give them spells if they use a relic or ritual.

His followers infected other religions and then tried to convert the clerics. Two organizations were infiltrated:

Some drow worship him as "The Elder Elemental Eye", not knowing it was Tharizdun they truly worshiped.
A cult dedicated to slimes, fungi, and the demon lord Zuggtmoy was similarly infected. It split into four branches, one for each element: fire, water, earth and air.

Zuggtmoy got directly involved in building the temple. As Zuggtmoy's army grew, the forces of good raised an army to destroy them. The army of good marched to the temple and the Battle of Emridy Meadows commenced. The army assaulted the temple and destroyed the upper works. They sealed it off, imprisoning Zuggtmoy.

Iuz, an evil Greyhawk deity, helped Zuggtmoy out. Together they made little elemental nodes, small demi-universes 5 miles across. In the nodes, the deities could magically summon evil elemental creatures. Lolth also got involved.

Zuggtmoy and Iuz created the Orb of Golden Death, which was a magic item that made it easy to access the nodes.

The Temple of Elemental Evil

This classic adventure contains "The Village of Hommlet" adventure as well as the temple. The Hommlet adventure details the town, and a moathouse run by agents of the temple. The moathouse is known for it's giant frogs, and the leader - Lareth the Beautiful. People really like this adventure.

The temple itself is known for the four factions that squabble inside, the temples of earth, air, fire and water. I ran this a few years ago, and there was some fun stuff in it:

The telepathic pool that needs your help.
The temple of fire and it's many weird little dangers.
The wand of "a" wonder - a variant wand of wonder.
Zuggtmoy's room with some really insane, deadly stuff.

The Elemental Nodes are not detailed much in the adventure. It is suggested in the adventure that the DM create them

The official version of what happened, suggested by Skip Williams: Adventurers busted in, accidentally freed Zuggtmoy, and then destroyed the Orb of Golden Death. Doing so caused the lower levels of the dungeon to collapse, cutting off access to the Elemental Nodes. Zuggtmoy was wrenched from the world into the Abyss.

Shannon Appelcline of RPG.net has a fantastic actual play thread of his group's run through the temple. Each session report is short and fun to read.

The Temple of Elemental Evil Novel

There was a Temple of Elemental Evil novel released years ago. I have it and tried to read it, but I couldn't get into it.

The reviews seem to agree the book is pretty dull with weak characters, but the descriptions of the temple are a lot of fun.

Dungeon Magazine #221 - The Battle of Emridy Meadows

I remember waiting and waiting for this 4th edition adventure, but by the time it came out, I was neck deep in some other campaign and didn't pay this any mind. I had become jaded, feeling that Dungeon didn't offer enough new content. Now, looking back, I appreciate these magazines much more.

This adventure is written by Chris Perkins and Jon Leitheusser, and it uses the D&D 5e playtest rules! This adventure depicts the battle that took place just prior to when Zuggtmoy was sealed in the temple of elemental evil. The struggle is underway, and our heroes fight alongside "The Righteous Host" and go on missions to help take down the enemy army. Their missions:

Assassinating the gnoll leader.
Ambushing a lich.
Tracking down an escaped spy who stole a ritual book.

That third scenario involves the scummy town of Nulb, which appears in the AD&D 1st edition Temple of Elemental Evil. We get a new map, details of the familiar locations and everything. I loved the depiction of Nulb in the computer game. You should check it out, it really brings the place to life. This scenario is very, very, good.

With those missions complete, it is now time for the actual battle. The adventurers now get to choose the role they will play in the conflict:

Help a team of dwarves deliver alchemist's fire
Defend a field hospital
Sneak behind enemy lines and topple a signal tower

All of this stuff is tracked with quest points. At the end, the DM makes a final d20 roll with quest point modifiers. This one roll determines if the battle is won or lost.

This adventure looks absolutely fantastic and I hope I am able to fit it in to some campaign, someday. It deserves to be run.

The Battle of Emridy Meadows is actually depicted in the intro to the computer game.

Dragon Magazine #423 - The Inn of the Welcome Wench

This is actually the hostel in Nulb, I just like the picture

Shawn Merwin wrote this handy article which details the Inn, which is a central location in the Village of Hommlet. This includes a depiction of the map of the inn which has been published in a number of poster map forms. He runs down the major NPCs, right out of the original Hommlet adventure:

Ostler Gundigoot: The owner. Militia man and trusted elder.
Goodwife Gundigoot: She runs the kitchen and is very insightful
Vesta Gundigoot: The eldest daughter. Attractive, single, hopes to run the inn one day.
Emadyne: The mischievous younger daughter. She likes to spy on the inn patrons (how amusing).
Zert the Fighter: Zert is a mysterious guy and an accomplished swordsman.
Spugnoir the Wizard: A fledgling, secretive wizard.
Turuko & Kobort: Dumb, evil fellows looking for a scam to run.
Furnok the Gambler: A guy who always seems to win his games of chance.
Elmo the Ranger: An enthusiastic, friendly fighter who is a bit of a drunken yokel.

There's a few adventure scenarios linked to the Inn. A delivery that never arrives, a fugitive who needs the PC's help, and bandits who want to get at "treasure" in the cellar.

Very good stuff. The Inn is a perfect place for new players to start playing D&D at.

Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil

This D&D 3rd edition adventure takes place 15 years after the originaladventure. It is written by the great Monte Cook.

Followers of Tharizdun (sometimes known as The Doomdreamers) have set up a new base, the Temple of All-Consumption. Their goal was to regain access to the moathouse, which was a holy place that would give them a magic connection to Tharizdun. They also wanted to get into the Temple, to sift through the dungeon ruins and find the elemental nodes, which were not destroyed.

They had a new magic item - The Orb of Oblivion. Basically, using the orb, the moathouse and the nodes, the bad guys could free Tharizdun from his ancient prison.

Lareth the Beautiful is now the anointed champion of elemental evil and he might be able to summon the Princes of Elemental Evil to release Tharizdun. Our heroes must stop them.

The cultists can summon evil elementals: "A small, isolated number of the inhabitants of the Elemental Planes are indeed evil and ruled over by the Elemental Princes of Evil...".

The heroes end up going into the fire node and fighting Imix, one of the princes of elemental evil.

The Princes of Elemental Evil

Imix

Sometimes known as Archomentals, these entities first appeared in the AD&D 1st edition Fiend Folio. They are sometimes thought of as the offspring of the Elder Elemental God, which is interesting. They are:

Imix: Prince of Evil Fire Creatures
Ogremoch: Lord of Evil Earth Creatures
Olhydra: Princess of Evil Water Creatures
Yan-C-Bin: Master of Evil Air Creatures
Cryonax: Prince of Evil Cold Creatures

Dungeon Magazine #192 - Creature Incarnations: Abyssal Plague Demons

Now we're getting into some more modern stuff. It will be interesting to see if any of this comes into play in 5e. This article was written by Mike Shea of Slyflourish.com.

These monsters are first described in Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale, but their origins are vague. They are demons that infect you with the abyssal plague. If you catch the disease, you grow red crystals on your body, you get mad and violent, and then you die and are reborn as an abyssal plague demon.

This article explains the following:

Tharizdun is imprisoned in the bowels of the Abyss.
Tharizdun actually created the Abyss by piercing the Elemental Chaos with the Heart of the Abyss (a crystal of pure evil).
A cult was able to summon an essence of his will, in the form of a sentient red liquid laced with silver and flecked with gold - The Voidharrow.
The Voidharrow infects those who touch it, filling them with strength and the desire to destroy all creation.
The plague spread to many major D&D campaign worlds in a sort of "crossover" event. It hit Dark Sun, the Forgotten Realms, Eberron and 4e's own Nentir Vale.

Dungeon Magazine #197 - Creature Incarnations: Abyssal Plague Epic Threats

This article details high level abyssal plague demons. It also explains that the Voidharrow resides in the Plaguedeep, the core of a demiplane of its own creation.

There's actually stats for the Voidharrow in this. It's a "sentient disease that travels from world to world". It appears as a column of twisting red liquid crystal.

There are also details on high level exarchs. They are knights with red crystal blades jutting out of their limbs.

The Abyssal Plague was an early attempt at the 5e "storyline" approach. It played out through a series of novels, discussed here.

Dungeon Magazine #214 - The Elder Elemental Eye

This adventure was part of the D&D Encounters program, and was later published in Dungeon Magazine. This is one of the most recent treatments of Elemental Evil and might give us some clues as to how the new storyline will handle things.

This is set in the Forgotten Realms, at the crossroads village of Easting.

There's these three dwarf brothers meddling with dark forces:

Zarnak: The oldest, a seer whose mind was shattered when it came in contact with the Elder Elemental Eye.
Arzyg: Mastered the elements, devoted to the cause.
Jakairn: The youngest, fears his brothers.

Zarnak went into a temple of Ghaunadaur (god of oozes) and found a hidden intrusion of the abyssal plague. He brought his brothers and servants to the temple, planning to spread the plague and to create as many demons as he can.

In this adventure, if you catch the abyssal plague, it kills you and turns you into a chaos demon lasher. The problem mechanically with this was that the disease didn't kill you until the season was over, at best. Plus, everyone made their saves.

Abyssal plague demons

The adventurers figure out what to do with sick villagers, then head to the temple. They battle a giant ooze known as the Amorphous One. When it dies:

"The massive ooze turns solid, like dark ice, and then shatters. It leaves behind an immense blue jewel. The unnatural cold subsides, and the ice blocking the exits and covering a spiral staircase in the dais melts. The stairs lead down into a dark hole that has strange whispers emanating from it."

Now they can get to the secret Temple of the Eye. They battle Black Cyst elementals who are made up of all four elements. They bleed mud slicks and punch with fiery fists.

The adventurers eventually need to drain the Voidharrow basin, which will sever the link to the abyssal plague. They'll also need to defeat Zarnak, the crazy dwarf.

This was a good adventure, though it dragged at points when I ran it.

Lair Assault - Into the Pit of Madness

This was the final d&d 4th edition Lair Assault, and it had really, really awesome maps. This scenario is simple: Kill Tharizdun's priests and stop Tharizadun from coming into the world!

It's one ginormous encounter with a 20-round time limit. There's whispering madness, elemental nodes and a creature known as the Essence of Evil.

I never got to run this one, as it came out during my extended break from running store events. It looks incredibly awesome.

Derek Myers talks all about it here

Thanks for reading.

Modrons are little magic clockwork people from the plane of law known as Mechanus. They've been around in D&D for a long time.

Not For Everyone

Modrons are definitely a creature that some game groups like and other game groups hate. Are they too cutesy? Too weird? Too steampunk?

Somethingawful spent a number of pages gawking at the AD&D modrons. The comment that sticks out the most to me is this: "Nobody knew what the heck to do with modrons."

Creative Origins

I was wondering where they even came from in the first place. Apparently, they are inspired by a novel by Edwin Abbott called "Flatland". I found this article, wherein Jeff Grubb talks about how they came about.

Artist Tony DiTerlizzi has talked about how Zeb Cook reached out to him in the 2e days, to try to make the modrons more appealing. He said that he was on a tight deadline, and that he took inspiration from Tik-Tok of the Wizard of Oz books.

"The re-thinking of how a hackneyed or contrived character looks was a very big lesson for me."

AD&D 1st Edition

Monster Manual 2

There are 5 types of base modrons and 10 types of Hierarch Modrons. There is a precise number of modrons, all ruled by an entity known as Primus.

Nirvana: A plane of balance and absolute order. It's laid out like a great wheel with the Tower of Primus at the hub. Obedience to the laws is immediate and unquestioned. We are told a lot about modrons:

They are unaffected by illusions or mind-affecting magic
Upper tier modrons determine the initiative order in a combat due to their precision in order. That is hilarious. The DM tells the player not to roll, the modron has decided that the thief goes first because he is fast, then the fighter, then the modron will go.
If slain in the prime material plane, the modron is reformed in Nirvana.
Rogue Units: Rogues are defective modrons, "...either through natural decay or exposure to outside, chaotic forces". They are usually hunted down by a pentadrone police force.
Decaton: They heal modrons. They have an ability to heal all modrons within 144 feet of 1 hp of damage.
Nonaton: These are kind of like modron police. They have powers like ESP, detect lie, and power word stun.
Septons are really weird-looking, even for modrons. They have constant ESP and detect magic going, as if they were natural senses like sight and smell.
Secundus: These are humanoids who fight like Bruce Lee. They pretty much stun you if they hit you, and they "have special abilities as 13th-level monks, including the dreaded 'quivering palm'...". Quivering palm, you say?

Primus:

He sets the order and writes the laws.
Primus rises from the energy pool in the center of the plane (which spawns modrons)
The right hand of Primus is swathed in rainbow-colored lights. If he punches you with this hand, you are teleported to Arcadia (land of lawful neutral good).
The left is clouded in inky darkness. If he hits you with this hand, you are sent to Acheron (plane of lawful neutral evil).
The damage on that one attack per round is... 20-160. That's 8d20..!
Primus has 100% magic resistance and can only be hit by +5 or better weapons.

AD&D 2nd Edition

Planescape Boxed Set

My favorite piece of modron art

Mechanus: It is explained that Nirvana is also known as Mechanus, "The Clockwork Universe". It is a realm of giant cogs that hover in space at all angles. The modrons live in a realm in Mechanus known as Regulus.

The modrons polish cog teeth and fuss over the great wheels.

The modrons are detailed in a gigantic section of the 'Monstrous Supplement' in the box. The text explains that "to understand modron society, one must abandon all understanding of the self".

Each rank of modron can only comprehend the existence of the ranks directly above and below it. It can't even see the others! This means that almost no modrons even know Primus exists. His edicts are passed down from modron to modron.

This means that modrons regard the caste higher than them as the "fountainhead of supreme logic". Other notes:

The modrons refer to themselves as "we".
Promotion: When a modron is promoted, it is seemingly at random. All modrons of a caste are considered equal. It adapts to it's new form instantly.
They speak a precise mathematical language. Duodrones and higher can speak common.
They abhor chaos, and spend their time wiping out slight imperfections in their home plane. When in a prime material plane, they try to bring order to chaos.

This makes me really want to give my PCs a modron sidekick, who insists on organizing and cleaning their stuff and reorganizing their backpacks in a symmetrical manner. If a PC has 21 arrows, the modron will have to destroy one so they have an even 20.

When slain, a modron disintegrates. Their energies merge with Mechanus, and a new modron is spawned out of the energy pool. It is speculated that the only way to wipe out modrons is to destroy their energy pool.

Primus, The One and the Prime

Only Primus understands the whole structure of the modron race. Primus sometimes appears as a normal, androgynous human. If Primus is killed, one of the secundi are promoted to become the new Primus.

Planewalkers Handbook

This book has rules for playing a rogue modron as a PC!

A modron can go rogue due to conflicting orders by a superior, or if confronted with proof that all is not orderly. They have "..the forbidden and reprehensible glimmerings of self-awareness..."

Modrons have organic and mechanical parts inside, so magic healing works on them.

The Great Modron March

This is a gigantic adveture by Monte Cook. I came so close to running this on two occasions, as part of my traditional pre-campaign hemming and hawing.

Once every "Grand Cycle" (289 years), the time it takes for the largest gear in Mechanus to turn once, modrons march through the planes. Nobody knows why.

Primus in humanoid form

During these marches, the modrons trample anything in their way. People in the planes are used to this, and are prepared for the marches in advance. This adventure is about the Modron March happening 189 years early. The modrons have a crazed look in their eyes. The heroes end up involved in the whole thing, trying to figure out what is going on.

What Happened (Spoiler Alert): This adventure is all about Orcus. He killed Primus and has usurped his position. He has sent the modrons on the march to find the Wand of Orcus.

Technically, in this adventure Orcus is known as "Tenebrous", an undead version of himself. He was slain by the drow goddess Kiaransalee, and he needs the wand to be brought back to his former living state. This scenario leads into the next adventure, Monte Cook's highly acclaimed "Dead Gods".

D&D 3rd Edition

Manual of the Planes

Mechanus

Mechanus is discussed in this book. It is called "The Clockwork Nirvana of Mechanus". The centers of many cogs in Mechanus have portals to other planes. They appear as green coglike circles, slowly turning.

The modrons seemed to have been elbowed to the side somewhat in 3e. Interestingly, the book says that most prevalent creatures on Mechanus are the Inevitables:

Kolyaruts - Fugitive hunters.
Maruts - Foes of those who cheat death.
Zelekhuts - Enforcers of contracts.

The other major inhabitants of Mechanus are formians - ant-people. They actually reside at the center of the entire plane, where the Scion Queen Mother resides.

It is mentioned that the modrons live in a section called Regulus and that they control 64 cogs.

Web Enhancement

Wizards unleashed an internet-only web supplement to this book that spends 18 pages discussing modrons. This is a fantastic article that covers everything that has gone before in great detail. I'd go so far as to say this is the one thing you should read before using modrons. And it's free!

There is some new material here, too. Two creatures that function in modron society:

Moignos: Tiny, two-dimensional constructs obsessed with finding the exact value of pi. The modrons use them as calculators.
Coggles: These are massive, living, floating cogs. Sometimes they are nearly a mile across. The modrons use them to transport battalions. Coggles can speak the language of modrons.

There is also a place in Regulus:

The Modron Cathedral: In this place building is a device that the modrons have been working on - an orrery made of constantly moving gears. You can try to use it to scry on a specific plane, but if you roll bad you will go insane. Primus uses is to teleport modrons to different planes. This device has a reputation for causing people to go insane, so few people try to break in and use it.

Dragon Magazine #354 - Return of the Modrons

This giant article is utterly fantastic. Author Ken Marable takes what has gone before and moves things ahead a step in a logical manner. Many bases are covered:

The Rogue March: The events in "The Great Modron March" are now known as "The Rogue March". Many modrons on that march got stranded in different planes.

The Original Primus is a Vestige: Primus was killed by Orcus, but lives on as an entity who can be contacted by practitioners of pact magic.

The Tainted Modron: A secundus had been corrupted by the link with Orcus. It has taken a million modrons to Acheron and is planning to return, attack Regulus, and take the mantle of Primus by force.

The Inevitables: The inevitables have been allowed to live within Regulus, and even have some monodrones serving them.

The Failed Formian Invasion: The ant people tried to wipe out the modrons, but failed.

Exiled Modrons: Their bond to the energy pool is broken. They have a few memories of their past lives.

Sample Encounters:

The Messenger: Your heroes might run into a messenger modron, en exile who now serves a wizard.
The Serial Killer: ...a serial killer modron!? Tainted by Orcus, this maniac has accepted the chaotic taint killing the poor and helpless. This trirone is known as Maniel, the silent death.
Rogue Hunters: A pack of moderons are hunting down a rogue modron called Cubelian the Bright. Cubelian has turned to goodness and worships Pelor.

The article even has some information about using summon monster to call on a modron, and a note on using a modron as a familiar (which I would love).

D&D 4th Edition

I am very interested in seeing what happened with modrons in 4e.

Dungeon Magazine #186 - Creature Incarnations: Modrons

This starts off with a note that Greg Bilsland, Mike Mearls and Bruce Cordell held a seminar at Gen Con about making monsters. They let the attendees vote on which monster to create, and the overwhelming choice was modrons.

4e modrons battle chaos, specifically slaads and aberrations. They also don't like portals (modrons see them as planar tears or weak points).

They can... assemble with other modrons into a more powerful modron! What a crazy idea.

The Origin of Primus: Nobody is sure. He might have been a primordial.

There's a few different types, all around 8th level:

Monodrone Brickguard: A minion (what creature is more fit to be a 1 HP minion than a monodrone?)
Duodrone Marcher: Wow. When it is slain, 4 monodrones appear in its place.
Quadrone Enforcer: It can slide monodrone minions around and blow them up, like pit fiends do. Four monodrones appear when it dies, too.
Modron Hierarch: It drops area burst attacks that do force damage. When it dies, two duodrones appear in its place.

Pretty cool stuff. I don't get why they're all 8th and 9th level. I'd have loved stats for a combined modron.. a mecha-modron. What a great idea. If you accept that kind of thing in your D&D, that is.

Dragon Magazine #414 - Ecology of the Modron

Way back when the primordials were creating things in the Elemental Chaos, a creature from the Far Realm called the Nine-Tongued Worm tried to destroy and corrupt everything. A primordial called the Prime Achitect defeated the worm, but was mortally wounded.

It retreated to a plane of order, and became Primus and the modrons. The modrons took to traveling the planes and sealing off breaches to the Far Realm. Stuff we learn:

Abyssal Plague tie-in: Wow, I just wrote about the abyssal plague the other day. The plague has caused all these tears in reality, and Primus may need to declare an emergency march so the modrons can destroy these dimensional cysts.

The Accordant Expanse: Mechanus is in an "extraplanar realm" known as the Accordant Expanse. It's a cube-shaped void 10,000 miles on a side, filled with interlocking gears.

Primus: Primus is humanoid in shape, with a head and upper torso made of solid gold. The lower half of Primus is energy that fades into the energy pool that Primus dwells in.

The Nexus Cube: The modrons may have an artifact that grants the bearer immunity to aberrant creatures.

The Tower of Primus: A complex floating clockwork fortress, 41 stories high. It forms a spiral, and it shifts from black to bright and shiny at the whim of Primus. Primus lives in the center. One of the seven pieces of the rod of seven parts is supposedly here.

The Infinity Web: This is mentioned a bit in the Great Modron March adventure. Primus uses it to deliver orders.

There's stats for a few monsters, a tridrone, a pentadrone and a nonaton. Nothing too special.

D&D 5th Edition

Modrons are in the 5e monster manual. They re-used the art from the Paizo Dragon article. That doesn't bother me, because I never noticed. One of the best pieces of art in the DMG depicts a band of heroes hiding from an endless sea of modrons on Regulus.

The 5e monster entry has all of the basic modron stuff from previous editions. No major changes or deviations. Only 5 types of modrons are listed, monodrones through pentadrones. I guess that means we will see more modrons in a future book?

That's where we're at right now with modrons. They're weird, but I can see an awesome session or two where your heroes have to go to Mechanus to either meet with Primus, steal something, or stop a plot by that evil tainted modron. The whole concept that modrons can't all perceive each other opens up a lot of cool possibilities.

Check out this old site for some weird stuff about Mechanus.

This artist has created some modrons out of metal. Awesome stuff.

Well, it finally happened. The main reason why I started this blog in the first place has reared it's ugly head. Power Score is mainly about telling you what it is like to run an rpg game in a game store and the many things that can make it so unpleasant and difficult.

I will try to be as polite and diplomatic about this as I can. First I'll run down what happened in tonight's game, and then I'll get to the agony.

Our 4th grade buddy Dark couldn't make it this week. Something happened with a book report involving Erik the Red, apparently.

The Party

(Zhentarim) Elf Rogue: In real life, played by Dark's dad.
(Zhentarim) Gnome Rogue: Middle Schooler. We joke that his character lives in a garbage can.
(Zhentarim) Elf Rogue: Middle Schooler. Often does "combo moves" with the gnome, throwing him at stuff to get Inspiration.
(Order of the Gauntlet) Half-Elf Paladin: Middle Schooler. Oath of the Ancients.
(Order of the Gauntlet) Half-Elf Fighter: The player is about 25 years old, knows the rules pretty well.

The Second Council of Waterdeep

The heroes looted Arauthator's lair. I threw in some magic items they'd missed from Hoard of the Dragon Queen, including the wand of winter and a bag of holding (everybody loves bags of holding).

Laeral Silverhand

They returned to Waterdeep and took part in the second council of Waterdeep. I had the factions react to what the PCs had done (some of them were mad that the heroes killed Varra the White). Ontharr Frume was not happy to see Maccath the Crimson, as he does not want to associate with the Arcane Brotherhood.

The adventurers received their next mission: Go to the Misty Forest and investigate a green dragon attacking elf settlements.

The heroes also met Elia, the woman with silver hair (they learned her secret way back in Hoard). She wanted to take the heroes to meet with the leaders of the metallic dragons soon.

Lady Silverhand, the new ruler of Waterdeep and a powerful wizard, teleported the heroes to Daggerford. From there, it was a relatively short trip to the Misty Forest.

Along the way I had the heroes stumble on a destroyed caravan, just to impress upon them the fact that the cult of the dragon is starting to run roughshod all over the Sword Coast.

The Misty Forest

The heroes came to a Misty Forest village called Altand. One of the players wanted this to be where his elf came from, which was cool. The heroes met his mother and cousin (who he came up with names for). The hero decided to leave the dog he'd adopted in Boaresky Bridge with his mom, which is a cool idea.

The deal in the village is that the leader cut a deal with the dragon and the wyrmspeaker - if they spared his village, he'd help them pick out other settlements to raid and destroy.

Our heroes figured this out very quickly. The guy has a pet raven. The gnome can talk to birds and small animals. The raven told him what was going on and the leader was exposed.

The leader, Galin, told the heroes where the dragon and wyrmspeaker were based out of. The adventurers headed out.

Along the way, there's this druid. She wants to see if the heroes are worthy of her aid against the dragon. So she has an "awakened tree" (like a treant, I guess) lie on her leg. As the heroes approach, she called out for aid. If the heroes helped her, she'd give them these magic garlands.

Well, our heroes came upon this scene and smartly scoped out the scene with perception, insight, you name it. They saw that the lady was a druid, and that there were some awakened trees about, including the one that was "pinning" her leg. It was very suspicious.

They left her there!

This was quite a development. If they had saved her, she'd give them the garlands, which would protect them from the dragon' spies. Without the garlands, the dragon will know they're coming and will attack them at the entrance of the lair!

The heroes got close to the lair and ended up in a battle with ettercaps and giant spiders. It is hard to hit the paladin, and he has some cool gimmicks to prevent bad guys from hitting his allies. He is a very good player.

The Dragon's Lair

The adventurers came to the lair. There was a waterfall that disguised a tunnel that led inside. Because the heroes didn't have the garlands, the animals of the forest had warned Chuth, the green dragon that they were coming.

Again, the heroes smartly surveyed the scene. It was quiet. They noticed a lot of small animals and birds watching them, nervously. Suddenly, the green dragon exploded out from behind the waterfall and took flight!

It used it's frightening presence, which hit only a single PC thanks to a new power the paladin has. It clawed and bit a rogue, dropping him unconscious. Chuth, the dragon, hovered in the air, breathing poison as the heroes fired arrows at it.

The paladin healed the rogue. Many of the PCs fled to the tunnel on the other side of the waterfall. The tunnel was steep and wet from the mist, so the heroes had to be careful not to fall.

What ended up happening was that the paladin stayed outside... alone... while the heroes popped their heads out of the waterfall and made ranged attacks.

The paladin then used misty step to teleport onto the dragon! He held onto it with his shield hand and legs, and stabbed at it with his sword (making dex checks to stay on it). This allowed the rogues to get their sneak attack damage!

The paladin wanted to cast a spell, but I noted it had somatic components, which meant he'd have to make hand gestures. He could try it, but he'd have to make a dex check or lose his grip on the dragon and fall. He decided not to cast.

In the tunnel, the gnome spotted a guilty-looking squirrel. The gnome can talk to small animals. The squirrel said, "Sorry. I had to tell Chuth you were coming!"

The squirrel explained that Chuth makes the animals spy for him on threat of death.

When Dark's dad found out about this, he impaled the squirrel on his arrow and fired it into the dragon! And he hit! It was awful and utterly hilarious.

The dragon was hurt bad ("bloodied" in 4e terms). The adventure says Chuth runs away when reduced to half of his hit points. It was time for it to flee... with the paladin on it's back!

I had a hard time deciding if the dragon could use it's legendary actions, like the tail attack, to try to knock the paladin off. I decided not to partly due to the torrent of complaints I was enduring at this point (I'll explain below).

Instead, the dragon flew up in the air... 170 feet... then 250. It was so far away from the rest of the party that the archers had disadvantage to hit it. Their shots all missed.

Then, on the dragon's next turn, I had it try to shake off the paladin. I made it an opposed strength check. I rolled a total of 20. The paladin had a +3 to his roll. He failed.

The paladin fell 250 feet, taking 96 points of damage! Amazingly, he did not immediately die. He landed in a tree and rolled death saves... he was unconscious.

The dragon flew away and the heroes tracked down their friend and rested, healing him.

It was awesome, I thought. But here's the part I left out.

"It's Not Fair"

As the dragon fight got underway, the guy who plays the fighter began to seethe. He was mad that the dragon was flying. He has Hazirawn, the sword that does a lot of damage. But because the dragon is up in the air, he has to make weak ranged attacks.

He got angrier and began to rant about it. He said dragons are "broken".

I said, "Well, it has to get adjacent to make claw attacks. You can hold your turn until the dragon comes down, and then run over and hack at it."

He said, "Yeah, but then he's just going to fly back up!".

He means that he's upset that he can't slice into it with Hazirawn every round. It's "unfair" that he can't do massive damage to the dragon every round.

He kept going on about how horrible it was, and everyone was getting uncomfortable. This fight was awesome, but his complaints were souring the mood at the table. The guy who fell 250 feet and took 96 damage wasn't upset. The guy lurking safely in the tunnel was.

I said, "You could lure it into the cramped tunnel and melee it."

He said, "Yeah, but then we're sitting ducks for the breath weapon!"

That's where I started to lose it. I have heard this kind of talk over and over and over again since I started running public D&D games in 2008.

I said to him, "Life is not fair. It is just a game."

He did not acknowledge this comment. He said, "I am calling customer service! It seems like in every edition there's some broken thing like this."

He means that he is going to call Wizards of the Coast, the company that makes Dungeons & Dragons, to get an explanation as to why dragons fly and use breath weapons rather than land next to you so you can slice them with your cool sword.

We had ten minutes left, but the other players looked at me with pleading eyes and asked if we could end it there. Unbelievable. This guy had ruined my game.

This player is very nice. He's fun. He knows the rules well. He has a lot of enthusiasm. Unfortunately, I think that he has a mindset that about 20% of D&D players have:

They can't handle "unfair" adversity.
Usually they can't handle rolling low on their dice.
They can't control their anger and it ruins things for everyone.

These people should not play D&D, because they do not enjoy it. They need to go do something else.

Steve Winter Speaks

I was reading some comments made by Steve Winter, one of the authors of Hoard of the Dragon Queen. Here is what he said, talking about the duel in chapter one of Hoard:

"A mistake (from my perspective) that many people seem to be making is assuming that every situation in D&D should be "fun." If my ambition is to have nonstop "fun," I'd be better off playing Lego Star Wars or Whack-a-Mole. D&D can also be thrilling, frightening, inspiring, maddening, depressing, frustrating, immensely gratifying -- name a reaction on the human emotional scale and there's probably a place for it in D&D. The match against Cyanwrath was never meant to be "fun." It was meant to trigger an emotional response -- anger, even hate, and a desire for revenge against the Cult of the Dragon. I haven't seen much to indicate that it isn't doing that.

Steve Winter"

I read this quote a few days ago. I almost yelled out loud. "Depressing"?! "Frustrating"?! I immediately thought to myself, "He obviously hasn't run any public games lately". I'm not saying he's right or wrong, I'm just saying some players can not handle his style of D&D. To them, each encounter has to be balanced, they have to look awesome, and they sure as hell had better roll well.

I'm going to have to tell this player to either deal with it or join another table, because there's going to be a ton of dragons from here on out and this is only going to get worse.

In this article, we're going to take a look at a creature who has appeared in many D&D products throughout history. He is Imix, an evil fire lord who is often linked with the Elder Elemental Eye, also known as Tharizdun.

I will attempt to collect the relevant lore to give you a basic outline of what Imix has done, and what you can do with him in your own campaign. I feel like I may have missed some things, but this should give you a nice foundation to work from.

The Art

For whatever reason, a lot of the depictions of Imix are less than inspired. The artists also seem to stray from the author's description. Most times, Imix is described as a humanoid column of flame. To me, this means he doesn't have legs, just a twisting column of fire. But most times, Imix is drawn with legs.

AD&D 1st Edition

Fiend Folio

In the "Elemental Princes of Evil" section of this book, it is noted that the Princes have all sorts of at-will powers like teleportation, detect invisible, and dispel magic. Traits:

Appears as an 18 foot pillar of fire
+2 or better weapons to hit him.
Can summon 1-3 efreet every day!
Once per day he can cast a fireball that does 20d6.
He hates Olhydra, princess of Evil Water Creatures.

Egg of the Phoenix

You can pick up the pdf of this adventure for cheap here. I've barely flipped through this adventure prior to this article. There's so much to say about it that I don't even know where to start. There is a thread that discusses it at length here.

This adventure is actually four linked scenarios. They were originally four unrelated convention adventures by Frank Mentzer. Paul Jaquays was in charge of putting them in one book and Jaquays rewrote them to some degree.

There's some really inane stuff in here. There's time travel. There's a sitcom family of fire giants. I assume this was a Mentzer idea. He's the one who wrote that basic D&D adventure where you go to New York City and fight a gang on a subway, and you travel to a dimension full of talking music notes.

One of the Egg of the Phoenix scenarios has a demiplane where a skull-faced moon tries to kill you! I feel like I could write an entire column just on this adventure.

The basic story in this is that the Princes of Elemental Evil want the Egg of the Phoenix, a powerful magic item. There is a possibility that the heroes have to actually fight all four of the Princes! Imix is in the form of a 20-foot tall red bull.

The Egg is a magic item that allows casters to cast spells without memorizing them or losing them. It also allows non-casters to cast spells! The higher level of spell you cast, the more the egg damages you.

I love the first paragraph of the Egg's description: "Ancient legends describe the the hero Delcinous as having an 'Ybonee Ygg swoddled in fyre' which 'did Ynchante the armees of Yvl as one.'"

AD&D 2nd Edition

Planescape Monstrous Compendium Appendix 3

I did not expect this art to appear in a Planescape Monstrous Compendium. Those books are usually full of awesome stuff by Tony DiTerlizzi. Here, all of the archomentals are in a single image, all colored a variation of brown or mustard yellow. Here's what we learn:

Imix rules the Elemental Plane of Fire.
He is an archomental, which is like a demon lord, in that they are one step removed from being a deity. They can grnt spells to worshipers (only up to 3rd level).
The Archomentals are said to have a relationship with the mysterious being known as the Elder Elemental God.
Imix lives in a volcano that contains portals to the planes of earth an magma.
He strives to destroy creatures who refuse to worship him.
Imix was once at war with Zaaman Rul, the Prince of Good Fire Creatures. Imix won.
The powers of Imix are practically identical to the Fiend Folio.

D&D 3rd Edition

Monster Manual 4

Holocaust disciple

This book has a lot of cool stuff in it, including some new ideas on the connection between the princes and Tharizdun.

There is a section on "Avatars of Elemental Evil", which talks about how Imix and the others want to use the Elder Elemental Eye to extend their influence into the Prime Material Plane.

The Eye is trapped in a void between the planes. The Princes are trying to free it. They are unaware that The Eye is actually Tharizdun, who seeks to annihilate all of reality.

The worshipers are divided into elemental temples. The fire clerics wear amulets and bracelets with continual fire cast on them. Fire giants, salamanders and efreets also worship.

Imix created an elemental avatar, known as a holocaust disciple. It's a fire monster that relishes spreading destruction and misery.

This thing can cast fireballs every round and can even summon a meteor swarm once per day! It has a heat aura and can generate waves of flame that hit all within 60 feet for 13d6 damage.

Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil

In this adventure, cultists uncover the entrance to the fire node from the original Temple adventure by Gary Gygax. In the original adventure, the fire node is only partially detailed. The rest was left for the DM to design.

Lareth the Beautiful was able to call on Imix for aid. Their hope is that Imix can free Tharizdun.

Imix dwells in the fire node in a long hall of circular, flaming pits. He has a throne of glass that is filled with roaring flames.

The adventurers actually fight him. He has a colossal flaming swor and is accompanied by a half medusa/half-fire elemental named Maliskra.

Dragon Magazine #347

Issue 347 has a lot of elemental evil stuff in it, including an article on the archomentals. In it, it explains that there were wars between Law and Chaos. In these wars, the good archomentals sided with the Wind Dukes of Aaqa (who were in the Rod of Seven Parts boxed set adventure and the Age of Worms path). The evil princes sided with the Queen of Chaos (the villain from the Rod of Seven Parts).

(Imix)

They gave Imix some nice flavor:

"This pillar of red flames crackles and hisses with life as flaming tendrils stretch out to grasp and feel. This roughly humanoid column stands as tall as three humans and radiates waves of intense heat."

Imix lives in a volcano on the Plain of Burnt Dreams, which rises from the liquid flames of the Blazing Sea. He has a pyramid fortress known as the Temple of Ultimate Consumption.

Imix is passionate, intense and easily infuriated. He is also vain, jealous and quickly frustrated.

Imix cannot enter water or any non-flammable liquid. He is 18 feet tall and weighs... 6 pounds.

His greatest servant is Asgeroth, a pit fiend who is loyal and power-hungry. His job is to destroy Zaaman Rul.

Dragon Magazine #353

Zaaman Rul

They actually detailed the good archomentals in this issue, one of a million reasons why Paizo is so awesome. They fleshed out the lore of D&D so much and did it well. Here's what we learn about Zaaman Rul.

He is courageous but naive, and has built a fortress called the Hidden Heart.

When Zaaman's assault on Imix failed, he was left for dead on the scorched battlefield. A phoenix came and restored his body and mind, giving him inspiration and newfound hope. The phoenix is now his ally. It has given Zaaman an army of phoelarchs and phoeras to use.

He has allied himself with a bronze dragon called Rolothere, who is linked to the fey Court of Stars. Through the court, Zaaman has recruited devas, asuras and eladrins.

Other allies include Raziel, lord of archons (who I believe appears int he Great Modron March adventure) and Amaimon, king of the azers.

D&D 4th Edition

Monster Manual 3

To me, this is the definitive depiction of Imix

Imix has his own entry in this book. Here he's a "primordial far older than the world". He "serves" the Elder Elemental Eye, and is still unaware it is Tharizdun.

Imix promotes rash action, wanton violence and arson.

He lives in a volcano in the Elemental Chaos. His palace is a black inverted pyramid that hovers over magma, its tip tracing the symbol of the Elder Elemental Eye into the rock. That's a great new detail.

Imix lives like a prisoner inside the pyramid. He is level 32, and he has an aura that shuts down fire resistance. Yikes.

There's also an entry for Imix Cultists. They're, you know, crazy people who set fires. Sometimes they'll have a temple in hidden ruins, or infiltrate communities.

Some bigger temples use rituals to summon a Conflagration Orb, which is an "avatar of Imix and a manifestation of the Fire Lord's approval". It is a "miniature sun that hurls flames from it's super-heated mass".

The orb has little regard for Imix's servants and will incinerate them along with enemies.

That is a really great idea. It helps make the cult more unique.

Heroes of the Elemental Chaos

This book talks about how the Princes had to go into hiding after the Dawn War (the ancient conflict between the gods and the primordials). It mentions that the good archomentals - Ben-Hadar (water), Chan (wind), Sunnis (earth) and Zaaman Rul (fire) actually fought alongside the gods in the Dawn War.

Imix "was the first to emerge from the chaos at time's beginning". Ever since the end of the Dawn War, he has been trapped in a volcano's fiery heart, unable to escape the bubbling magma and noxious fumes confining him.

The good prince of fire, Zaaman Rul, is Imix's son. The mother is the late Bristia Pel, a princess of elemental fire now dead. Lamentations of the Flame Princess...!

There's a section on Zaaman Rul that gives a bit of insight. Imix had a "tryst" with Bristia Pel. Zaaman "inherited his mother's virtue" (umm... she had a tryst with a supremely evil being) and sought to avenge her death - she died in a massive battle that led to the defeat and imprisonment of the Queen of Chaos.

Zaaman led an army against Imix, but was defeated. His army was enslaved, and Zaaman fled. Zaaman is 10 feet tall, has crimson skin and long black hair.

There is a temple to Imix in the City of Brass called The Mosque of Blistering Atonement.

That's where we're at. It seems likely that Imix will have some involvement in the imminent Elemental Evil storyline, so it will be fun to see how 5th edition handles the villain.

Sigil

In this column I am using art from Howard Lyon, a very under-rated D&D artist. The more I searched for his art, the more awesome stuff I found.

Public D&D Games

I started this blog for a number of reasons. The main one was to discuss running games in a public setting. I've been running D&D in a game store since 2008 and I have been running D&D Encounters since the very first season (Halaster's Lost Apprentice).

I saw that Jason Denton wrote an article on the Adventurers League site called "This Is Not Your Home Brew Game". It is a very well-written article with an interesting viewpoint. Jason talks about how Adventurer's League games are intended to be run, and I was struck by a number of comments he made. Some of the things he says contrasts very sharply with my own experiences.

I can say that our store has a solid base of about 25-30 players who show up every week, and it's been like that for quite a few months now. Prior to that, we had a single table. 5th edition has been a big hit here in New York.

Tooling With Characters

Denton says:

"Home brew games follow the ongoing adventures of a single party, but organized play is the episodic adventures of a rotating cast. "

He goes on:

"In a home game, you only get to play one character. But if you play Adventurers League games on a regular basis, you will quickly find that you need multiple characters as adventures repeat. Take the opportunity to play unusual characters. Rotate through them, and do not be afraid to try new things."

In my experience of running games in a game store, almost nobody wants to do this. Nearly every single person who comes to play in our store is there because they don't have a home game. D&D Encounters is, for all intents and purposes, their home game. They all want as close to a "real" D&D experience as possible, and they really don't like weird rules restrictions such as magic item book-keeping or XP caps.

Almost none of them like the idea of playing the same adventure twice. They want to take their character (such as our store's legendary hero, Dark the Dragon Sorceress) to the highest of levels.

Pretty much every player in the store has a close bond with their character. They do not switch their character out for another build or make a wacky one-off PC. This is their ultimate character, the one they've wanted to make since they heard about D&D. They are skulking rogues, noble paladins and gothic-but-friendly spellcasters.

Switching Groups

Denton says:

"Just as you should take advantage of the D&D Adventurers League format to play many different characters, you should also take advantage of the opportunity to play with many different people. Many groups are large enough to run at least two tables every time they meet. This gives players not only a choice of adventures but also a choice in who they play with. Resist the temptation to always play with your favorite people and take the opportunity to play with other D&D Adventurers League gamers."

The number one thing that drives players out of public play in our store is other players. We have lost dozens and dozens of cool people from in-store games due to the behavior of other players. It doesn't take long for players to scope out the problem people, and they avoid them at all costs. When a player ends up trapped at a table with a problem player, they stop showing up in very short order.

The problem player, of course, keeps showing up. The public game is the only game they can keep attending because no one in the "real world" wants to play with them.

To me, this is the biggest hurdle in all of public play. The Adventurer's League guidelines have great rules for moderating behavior issues, but the trouble is in enforcement. The store owners sometimes really don't want to tell a problem person to leave, even when multiple DMs complain (we have DMs who flatly refuse to DM for certain people).

The problem person might be a great customer who spends a ton of money in the store, and the owners don't want to lose them. The store owner may also hate the idea of excluding someone just because they're a little eccentric. After all, many D&D players are a little eccentric.

But the fact is that problem players drive people away from public play in droves and those people never come back. They also tell other people not to go to that game store.

DMs can be a problem, too. One incident in particular bothers me. Back in 2009, I was running the 4e Scales of War adventure path in the store. The game got so huge that I actually had to recruit a second DM to run another table for a while. There was this quiet kid who showed up a few times. He was really nice. I warned him that I needed to know in advance if he was coming, so I could get the second DM or scale my adventure properly.

He showed up without advance notice. I had like 8 or 9 players already. The table was too big, and I didn't have a second DM ready. I told the kid that he didn't warn me like I asked, and that I couldn't fit him in.

He got this quiet, sad look on his face and disappeared. That kid never came into the store again.

I should have just added him in, but 4e combat rounds took so ridiculously long that I felt the game would grind to a halt. I was obsessed with getting through a certain number of encounters each night.

I think that I drove that kid out of the store and probably out of D&D altogether.

The Players Generally Don't Know The Rules

Cobalt Dragon

Denton says:

"The other players at the table will all be familiar with the rules, and will be thrilled to help you if you have misunderstood a rule or failed to keep up with the FAQ published an hour before game start. Many of them will have played the adventure before, and there is a strong likelihood that some of them have run it before and can help you should you encounter any problems."

In my store, players don't know the rules. In 4th edition, we had the hideous combination of players not knowing the rules and not owning any books! They'd just take them off the shelf, refer to them, then put them back. It drove me crazy.

In 5th edition, they all buy the books, but they don't know the rules very well at all. They certainly couldn't help a new DM run a game. I don't mean this as a criticism, I'm just pointing out an observation.

None of them have played an adventure more than once. As I've stated earlier, playing through the same adventure multiple times is an idea that does not appeal to them at all. They like a solid continuity in their games.

Bolstering The League

I think most people would agree that the Adventurers League is cool. But it feels like it could be better. The question is whether it is possible to make it better. I am seeing three issues that the League needs to come to terms with:

Enforcing behavior guidelines.
Preventing "illegal" characters from participating in a way that doesn't penalize everyone else.
Getting DMs to run the adventures unmodified.

Monitoring Behavior

Nobody likes the idea of kicking people out of a game. The whole point of the league is to draw new players in, not reject them. Also, bouncing people is not an easy or fun thing for most organizers to do. I personally have a hard time with it, but I do the best I can.

There needs to be a culture within the league, a common knowledge of what is acceptable behavior and what is not. Bad behavior can not be tolerated, because it can and will kill the game. One obnoxious, loud or pervy person can ruin the game. And what that group disintegrates, that one person will slide over and infect the next table.

There was a period a few years ago when I'd be out in the real world and I'd tell someone I just met that I run games at the store. The person would perk up and immediately share a horror story about playing in that very store one time and how there was this horrible person there and they'd never go back. I would know exactly who they were talking about. What could I say?

Character Database

This is just an idea. It seems to me that there are a ton of D&D players devoted to the cause who volunteer to help for free. There's hundreds of people online who make and post D&D content on sites just because they love doing it.

It would be nice if we could organize these people and put them on a mission to make the Adventurer's League something truly special.

Fire Giant

D&D is big, but it's not that big. Instead of trying to micromanage individual campaigns, I'd like to see broader rules. As an example, have a rule that says that a PC's stats cannot exceed a total of 72 points (giving them an average of a 12 strength, intelligence, etc).

Also, have a rule that a certain level PC can only have X amount of magic items. For instance, maybe a 4th level character can have 3 uncommon items and one rare, or whatever. And most importantly, maintain a list of legal magic items.

Then we can develop a worldwide database where PCs stats and items are placed. When you go to a con, your character is pulled right out of the database. Your character may have other weird items in your home game, but for the purposes of a fair and fun con game, the character in the database is what you have to run.

Herding DMs is Impossible

I don't think you can get DMs in game stores to run an adventure without modification. It's just what they do. They are not getting paid for this, and one of the main draws of doing it is to express yourself creatively.

Everyone has their own style. I consider myself a stickler when it comes to running an adventure as written, and even I added a few encounters in Hoard of the Dragon Queen.

The DMs are already doing this for free, and they are navigating the myriad of hurdles in their game stores. It can be a very annoying, thankless job. When you give them strict guidelines as far as how the adventure must be run, I think it just turns them away. That's not good, because most people don't want to DM to begin with.

Celebrity Characters

If you ever read Knights of the Dinner Table, you're probably familiar with the "Hackmaster Association". This is their Adventurer's League. In the HMA, GMs are certified, their campaigns are monitored, there's paperwork. The thing I like about it is that events in campaigns are known to the organization at large. Certain people and characters are legendary or notorious. The twists and turns of individual campaigns are discussed by gamers like the world at large talks about the newest episode of The Walking Dead.

A dragonborn in Sigil

Most of all what I'd like to see is for some way to create Adventurer's League legends. I want to hear about the cool things other groups have done. I want to read about great characters with a unique or dramatic concept.

I'd really like it if there was some way, each storyline, for a few actual characters to be immortalized in official D&D lore. The character would be in an upcoming product as an NPC, or a magic item would be named after them, or a spell is named after them, or a D&D artist depicts them in a published supplement.

This gives players something to shoot for. I love reading about legendary real-life characters such as Gary Gygax's Mordenkainen or Monte Cook's Malhavoc.

Player creativity and devotion deserves to be rewarded. It helps make the Adventurer's League feel worthwhile.

Those are just some thoughts I had. I am running Rise of Tiamat tomorrow, so we should finish Episode 3. I will have a full report.

Neronvain

I missed last week's session of The Rise of Tiamat due to a severe illness. Another DM filled in for me last week, and from what I had heard, he was flying by the seat of his pants. He is a guy who is really fun to be around. Coming in to tonight's game, I was prepared to steer the party back on course if he'd taken them in some odd direction.

I came in a little early and most of my players were already there. The store gave each of us a "Freebie" from a 4e underdark encounters season - a box with the rise of the underdark logo on it. Free stuff!

The players told me that last week, there'd been a lot of "arguing". I was a little taken aback. They explained further that by "arguing", they meant that the game got bogged down by a seemingly endless debate.

Last time I ran the game, the heroes had come to the entrance of Neronvain's lair (Neronvain is one of the five big bad guys in the adventure). They drove off the green dragon at the entrance in an epic battle.

The Fill-in DM

Then, last week with the new DM, the heroes went into the caves behind the waterfall. They found a secret passage that led to three ettins arguing amongst themselves in a room filled with garbage.

Apparently, for one hour of real life time, the group debated over what to do. When they explained it to me this week, none of them seemed pleased about it.

The replacement DM was happy to let them debate. I crack the whip in situations like this, as I want to get through a certain amount of the adventure each session. This DM was content to let them do whatever (he might have seen it as a way to fill time, as I don't think he had time to read the adventure). So they argued for an hour, and ultimately didn't engage the ettins at all. Some of the party found elves who had been forced to work for the dragon. The heroes freed them.

Then they came upon a shrine which they prayed at and received a magical blessing.

The players didn't like how there was no combat at all the previous week and were happy I was back. It's good to hear... I was a little worried the other DM would sweep them off their feet and make me look like a 2-bit amateur.

Dragon Orbs

Our heroes continued to explore the cavern complex in search of Neronvain and maybe the green dragon mask.

They came upon some cultists and made quick work of them. One of the cultists ran and warned Neronvain. The adventurers didn't try to chase him. One cultist, a "dragonsoul", had an orb that he fired spells from. The heroes keep these things and want them to be magic items. They're not. I'm trying to think of some cool use for them. Maybe in the final chapter I can use them as "keys" to doors in the tunnels leading to the Well of Dragons,

The adventurers looted a bit and came upon Neronvain's room. They were hit with a glyph of warding trap which has no saving throw or anything. You just take 22 damage. At least, that's according to the module. I probably should have looked it up.

In Neronvain's room, there's a trapped trunk. The poor rogue got hit with a needle trap and failed his save. 54 points of damage! He dropped instantly. The paladin revived him.

They found Neronvain's journal, which explained that the green dragon mask was already at the Well of Dragons, and that it could be combined with the other dragon masks into a uber-mask.

Treasure!

They came upon the dragon's cave, full of his loot. I'd decided that once warned, Neronvain had swam through the underwater tunnel and got the ettins. He'd be back with them soon. But for the moment, our heroes got to divide up the green dragon's hoard... which is pathetic as written. It totals about 1,000 gold and no magic items! Though it does say that I am free to toss in some potions or scrolls. They are 10th level heroes and all they get are potions and scrolls.

I ended up placing magic items in the hoard that they'd missed in other sessions. They found a cloak of elvenkind, white dragon scale armor and +1 chain mail. Dragon scale armor is no joke. Advantage on saves vs. breath weapons and frightening presence!

Ettin

The heroes decided to take a short rest in the cavern, which was interrupted by Nerovain and the three ettins. A massive battle broke out. Neronvain dropped a poison cloud which gave almost the entire party disadvantage.

I had been wondering if the ettins would be too tough, but the heroes had no problem with them. Neronvain got trounced. The fighter and the paladin have very high ACs and the party smartly hides behind them whenever possible.

They cut off Neronvain's ear to bring back to the council (King Melendrach, Neronvain's father, was mortified), and they noticed one of the ettins was wearing a belt... a belt of hill giant strength. It gives the wearer a 21 strength! The players rolled off for it. The paladin won.

Waterdeep Assassins

The heroes made the trek back to Daggerford and on to Waterdeep. There, I planned to run the second assassin encounter. The adventure suggests having this one in Waterdeep. One possible idea in the book is for the heroes to be in a building. A dragon rips the roof off and attacks along with some cultists.

The list of monsters possible to use for this encounter included some yugoloths bound by red wizard and recruited by the cult. They have no loyalty. I decided to go with this.

Mezzoloth Ambush

Mezzoloth

So, our heroes returned to Waterdeep. They wanted to sell some stuff, including a suit of +1 chain mail. They also bought all sorts of mundane equipment. I had Leosin Erlanthar (the monk harper from chapter 2 of Hoard) and Ontharr Frume (of the Order of the Gauntlet) there with them. One of them noticed that Elia was watching them from the crowd (she's the disguised silver dragon that will be taking them to meet the metallix dragons next week).

A beggar in tattered robes approached the heroes and asked for coins. Dark immediately gave him 7 gold. But it turns out this fellow is a cultist! He threw off his robes and held up a consumable charm. It glowed and summoned forth 4 mezzoloths (insect demons) and a Nycaloth (a powerful winged yugoloth).

Dark (dragon sorcerer played by a 4th grader) knew what these creatures were. She immediately decided that the mezzoloths were "cute" and tried to hug one. The mezzoloth was utterly taken aback. She knew they were mercenaries and opened negotiations. This is actually noted in the adventure. The suggested price is 2,000 gp per mezzoloth.

She paid off the mezzoloth, who she wants to "keep". She also paid off the Nycoloth, who she said was too ugly to "keep". The nycoloth had cast mirror image on himself. The cultist was furious at the yugoloths. The other mezzoloths attacked the heroes.

The paladin used his oath of the ancients turn ability - he can turn fiends! He turned all of them except Dark's new friend. The cultist saw that his ambush had failed utterly and tried to flee, but a rogue fired an arrow into his knee (rolling a natural 20).

Elia transformed into a silver dragon and helped the heroes mop up.

I had planned on this being a fun battle with NPCs helping them out, doing cool maneuvers, but Dark figured out the alternate solution. Not bad for a 4th grader!

She wants to somehow keep this mezzoloth. I'm going to read up on them and see what would work without breaking the game. Maybe I'll have her make some kind of infernal pact, or a financial arrangement.

This is smart on her part for another reason - in these games, there is nothing to spend gold on! So why not use it to pay off a fiend to help you?

After the session, I talked with the player who was mad about the dragon two weeks ago. I can't tell if it sunk in. His dad was there. His dad will be playing in the next season, and he may sit in on some upcoming sessions. We'll see if that helps, I guess.

The Greatest Dungeon Masters in the World: Gary Gygax

Dungeons & Dragons - Gary Gygax Castle Greyhawk Encounters

The Rise of Tiamat - The Council of Waterdeep

Dungeons & Dragons - Famous Dragon Lairs

The Rise of Tiamat - Tomb of Diderius

Tyranny of Dragons - The White Dragon

The Rise of Tiamat - Varram the White

Dungeons & Dragons - A Comprehensive Look at the Githyanki

Dungeons & Dragons - The Succubus

The Rise of Tiamat - The Sea of Moving Ice

Dungeons & Dragons - A Guide to Tiamat

Dungeons & Dragons - A Guide to The Pit Fiend

The Rise of Tiamat - Arauthator

Tyranny of Dragons - Hoard of the Dragon Queen Episode 1

Dungeons & Dragons - The History of Elemental Evil

Dungeons & Dragons - A Guide to Modrons

The Rise of Tiamat - Chuth, the Green Dragon

Dungeons & Dragons - A Guide to Imix, Prince of Evil Fire Creatures

Optimizing the Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer's League

The Rise of Tiamat - Neronvain the Green