I posted a new youtube video - episode 5 of the great modron march. It's NSFW. 

Today I am going to write about downtime, the system of between-adventure rules created for 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons. It's a simple set of guidelines designed to help you run your campaign when the heroes are between adventures.

I love downtime. My sessions are probably half spent in downtime. To me, the idea of the heroes going out to get drunk or starting a business is just as much fun as going on a dungeon crawl. The point of this article is to be a simple reference. The downtime rules are spread between two books, which is a little unwieldy. I want it all on one sheet so I don't have to do a lot of page flipping.

I also want to throw out some ideas for expansion, and discuss the potential perils or usability of some of these concepts. I also think some of the downtime ideas are great but are easily overlooked. I'd like to shine a light on them, as they will most definitely enrich your campaign.

Read About Downtime

Obviously I'm only giving an overview in this article. You'll need to refer to the books to get all the rules details. Downtime is discussed in two places:

• Player's Handbook page 188
• DMG page 127

Lifestyle: Downtime is frequently tied to "lifestyles", which is the concept of a hero paying a certain amount of money to maintain a style of living. Lifestyles are covered on page 157 of the Player's Handbook. Living a modest lifestyle costs 1 gp per day.

General Downtime Rules: Each activity requires a certain number of days to complete before you gain any benefit. At least 8 hours per day muse be spent on the activity.

Crafting

You can make non-magical objects. You'll need appropriate tools, usually artisan tools. For each day of downtime you spend crafting, you can craft one or more items worth a total of 5 gold. You'll need to expend raw materials worth half the total market value. So basically you'll be spending 2.5 gold to make a 5 gold item. While crafting, you can live a modest lifestyle without having to pay the cost.

Armor would take a long time to craft. In the book, it gives the example of crafting plate mail. It takes 300 days to make by yourself!

Making leather armor (10 gp) or a shield (10 gp) might work out OK. Or maybe you could make chain shirts (50 gp). The thing about making armor, though, is that you're likely to kill dozens of people on your adventures. You can just take their armor, clean it up and sell it!

Being a bookbinder might be really cool. You could make spell books out of the weird stuff you find on adventures. You could have a book with a cover made of dragon scales, for example.

Practicing a Profession

Get a job! You can live a modest lifestyle while doing this. "Jobs" suggested in the book include:

• Working at a temple (good for clerics or paladins)
• Operating as part of a thieves guild (rogues)

Other ones that I can think of:

Fighter: Joining the town guard/militia.
Wizard: Working as a counsel to a local mayor.
Ranger: Working in a stable.
Rogue: A locksmith. How dastardly is that?

Gary Gygax's Book of Names has a nice list of professions on page 163. I am going to pick out the ones that seem the most fun to me:

Shepherd, fisher, "goat boy" (?), "goose girl" (?!?), bailiff, executioner, judge, bowyer, doctor, sage, dancer, jester (the book lists THREE subtypes - buffoon, fool and harlequin), baker, gypsy and crone.

I have no idea what job a crone does, but that seems like a fun character. A gypsy or an executioner sound full of possibilities, too.

Recuperating

After three days of downtime, you can make a DC 15 Constitution save to end an effect that is preventing you from regaining hit points, or for the next 24 hours you have advantage on saves vs one disease or poison affecting you.

I have never seen this come up in 5e.

Researching

This one is left largely in the hands of the DM. It could take days, it could include Intelligence (Investigation) checks, and you might need to seek out specific individuals or tomes. It also costs one gold per day to cover expenses.

This is a pretty cool idea that I think is being overlooked a bit in 5e. Most stuff that could require research is sort of handled with a simple skill check. Research is a nice way to have a bit of time pass and make the acquisition of knowledge something that takes a bit of an investment.

One thing that happened in my 4e games is that what skills could do became so abstract and broad that it covered too much ground. There was never a concrete feeling of what one could and couldn't do with certain skills, especially arcana.

I'd say you should go out of your way to put research in your campaign every once in a while. Travel to a certain library in a certain city, track down a dusty tome that needs to be translated, interview an entity through a magic censer. That just feels like a lot more fun than making a simple skill check. It also opens up opportunities for your players to do fun stuff in a town that could lead to some hilarious unforeseen circumstances.

Also, I'd like to see someone work out a sub-section of researching, where a wizard creates a magic circle and summons a demon to be questioned. There's actually a pretty detailed system for this in (I think) The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth.

Gaining Renown

This one is for improving your standing in an organization (such as the Harpers or the Zhentarim in the Forgotten Realms, or maybe the Sensates in Planescape). Renown is explained on page 22 of the DMG, as an optional rule. As you gain renown, you rise in rank and you gain access to perks. You might have access to a safe house or get discounts on adventuring gear. Higher ranking heroes might be able to call on a small army or gain the aid of a powerful spellcaster.

To gain renown, you take on minor tasks and socialize with members. After doing this for a combined number of days equal to your current renown multiplied by 10, your renown increases by one. I think I should be putting this to use in my Planescape campaign.

Training

This is meant to be a way for a hero to acquire a new proficiency, or to learn a new language. You must find an instructor and ability checks may be required. The training lasts for 250 days! And it costs one gold per day.

I just can't see this coming into play much. How many campaigns cover 250 days in game? And how many of them will have so much off-time that you'll be able to learn a single language?

If you have a campaign that stretches 9 months, chances are that the heroes will be fairly high level and will have magic that will give them access to whatever language they need.

Now we're getting into the Dungeon Master's Guide stuff.

Building A Stronghold

You will need a plot of land and if it's in a kingdom, you'll need a royal charter, land grant or a deed. These things are given as a reward, or inherited, or bought. Buying a deed costs anywhere from 100 gold to over 5,000 gold.

We get a sweet table that breaks down how long building different types of places takes, and how much it costs. This chart assumes the hero is there to oversee the whole thing. If the hero is off adventuring, construction takes three times as long!

A castle takes over four years to build!

Carousing

This is my favorite of all the downtime activities. Most of my adventures involve some level of carousing, and rolls on the epic carousing chart on page 128 of the DMG.

Your character chooses how many days are spent carousing (drinking, gambling and getting up to all sorts of shenanigans). You roll a d100 on the carousing chart. The worst result puts you in jail. The best means you win a fortune in gambling.

Crafting a Magic Item

The creator must be a spellcaster with spell slots, and the character will need to have a specific formula in order to create that particular magic item. The character should be able to cast any spells that the item can produce.

The higher level you are, the more powerful item you can craft (see the chart). Each item has a value in gold. One day makes progress in 25 gold increments. So, making an item that costs 100 gold would take four days of work.

While crafting, you can maintain a modest lifestyle for free.

This one is a little tricky. I would say that the best way for a hero to obtain a magic item formula would be in a slain enemy's spell book. Or it could be a book found in an ancient library or dungeon. Handing out a magic item formula isn't exactly the top priority when a DM is figuring out treasure, but it's pretty fun and it seems like something wizards should do.

I'm half-tempted to say there should be a skill check involved. Roll low and the item comes out cursed or defective. Roll high and it is super-charged somehow. I suppose players would hate the idea of spending all that time and money to end up with a faulty item, though.

Performing Sacred Rites

Basically, you pray for 10 days and gain inspiration at the start of each day for the next 2d6 days.

In my experience, inspiration is a rule that just doesn't stick. Players always forget about it, even when the DM tries to promote it. It's weird, because you'd think the players would be all over something that gives them advantage. But the ways to obtain it are a bit vague and it just feels a little wrong somehow. I think we need more concrete rules for it, like it can only be used once per session or something.

Running a Business

If I was a player, I'd be all over this one! The DM will have to handle how the heroes acquire the business (the book suggests that the heroes get a farm or tavern as a reward). You roll a d100 and add the number of downtime days spent on this activity by 30. Check the chart on page 129.

The lowest result means you must pay 1.5 times the business's maintenance cost for each day. The best result is gaining a profit of 3d10x5 gp. Seems a little low, doesn't it?

Selling Magic Items

This will probably come up with almost every group at some point, when they find an item they don't need or they don't want. Potions in particular seem to sit in backpacks, completely forgotten.

To sell an item, you make a DC 20 Intelligence (Investigation) check to find a buyer. Fail means no buyer is found for 10 days. Success means you roll on the chart on page 130.

The higher the roll, the more money the buyer offers.

Sowing Rumors

This is an odd one. You spend 1 gold per day to cover the cost of drinks. At the end of your gossipy rampage, you make a DC 15 Charisma (Deception or Persuasion) check. Success means the community's attitude toward the subject shifts one step toward friendly or hostile.

There's a little chart that shows how much time is required. A village requires 2d6 days to get a rumor going. A city needs 6d6 days.

I can see players with too much downtime on their hands spreading rumors about each other just for kicks.

Training to Gain Levels

This is a variant rule. Once you gain enough XP to level, you don't actually gain the level until you train. There's a table to show how much time it takes and what the cost is. It takes 10 days and 20 gold to hit 3rd level. It takes 40 days and 80 gold to hit 17th level.

The training rules seem cool, but I've never tried it. Players generally hate the idea, as it seems like a way for the DM to really stick it to them. They put all of that work into hitting the next level, and now they still don't get the benefits until they jump through more hoops.

I think if you are cool about it, you could get some fun stuff out of this. I sure wouldn't have the town be under attack while the heroes are training. But you could cook up some cool mentors and teacher-types, and run some fun training montages. You could make fellow trainees, either rivals or love interests.

Links

• Wizards actually posted the Carousing and Building Strongholds rules right here for free.
• Blog of Holding has a nice downtime rundown here, and includes a lot of information on lifestyles.
• Dungeon Dozen has some monster downtime ideas. Opium dens!
• RPG.net has a fascinating idea: Working out during downtime.
• Harbinger of Doom has extensive rules and notes on buying, selling and disenchanting magic items. 

Out of the Abyss is going to be out soon, and wizards of the coast has been releasing material on each of the demon lords involved in the adventure each week. I figure that now is a good time to jump in and get a good look at them so we can be fully prepared for Rage of Demons! Today we're going to tackle Yeenoghu, demon lord of gnolls.

The point of this is to collect all of the lore in one place so that when you use Yeenoghu, you will know all of the basic concepts and you can pick and choose what fits your game.

Real Life Origin

From what I can tell, Gary Gygax just made Yeenoghu up. There are a few fun tidbits about the creation of the demon lord.

Frank Mentzer says that there was this newsletter that TSR would publish, just for the employees. Apparently, D&D rules stuff was included in these newsletters. He says that there's one newsletter that stats out Yeenoghu as the demon lord.. of orcs.

James of grognardia relates an amusing urban legend that ultimately turned out to be false:

"In any case, I once heard a story about the creation of Yeenoghu by Gary Gygax. The story goes that players in the Greyhawk campaign, having run afoul of one too many demon lords and archdevils whom they accidentally summoned by speaking their names aloud, got into the practice of using circumlocutions to avoid repeating past mistakes. One such circumlocution was "You-Know-Who." After a while of doing this, Gary sprang Yeenoghu on his players, on the assumption that his name sounded enough like the phrase that he might answer by traveling to the Prime Material Plane."

The Essential Information


Here's the basic stuff you should know when using Yeenoghu in your games:

• He is the Demon Prince of Gnolls, and is also known as the Beast of Butchery and the Ruler of Ruin. 
• He wields a triple flail made from the bones of a slain god. 
• He rules his own layer of the Abyss called "Yeenoghu's Realm", but does not have complete control over it. 
• He lives in a palace on wheels pulled by slaves.
• For a time, he was allied with Doresain, King of Ghouls.
• Yeenoghu hates Malcanthet and Baphomet.

AD&D 1st Edition

It is said that Yeenoghu is one of the most powerful demon princes. He's 12 feet tall, has a hyena head, is thin to the point of being skeletal. He has dead grey skin and his body hair is "...a mangy crest of putrid yellow from his head to his mid back".

• He'll usually have "...66 gnolls of the strongest sort" with him.
• He receives homage from the king of ghouls (which is Doresain, ally of Orcus, as far as I know), so he has the power to summon 6-16 ghouls, too.
• He can see into the astral and ethereal planes.
• He has piles of spell-like powers, including magic missile, mass charm, teleport, fly and he can gate in d4+1 Vrocks.

He has a triple-headed flail with chains of adamantite. When he attacks with it, you roll to hit for each of the three spiked balls. Each ball does something different:

1. Does 3d6 damage.
2. Make a saving throw or be paralyzed.
3. Save or be confused, as per the spell.

Dragon Magazine #63

Gary Gygax wrote an article about how Yeenoghu created a special form of undead, called the Shoosuvas. It is believed they are incarnations of the spirits of Yeenoghu's greatest shamans.

The most powerful gnoll shamans have an amulet that can summon a shoosuva for aid. It appears as a huge, emaciated hyenadon, glowing with yellow light. Those bit by it are paralyzed. While paralyzed "...only the most basic life functions will continue."

It's also said in this article that any gnoll shaman or witch doctor can call on Yeenoghu for advice.

Manual of the Planes

Yeenoghu gets a blurb in the section on the Abyss. From page 102: "Yeenoghu's great mansion is the size of a city. It rolls across the barren salt-waste of his layers, pulled by slaves and controlled by gnolls."

AD&D 2nd Edition

In 2e, Yeenoghu is detailed in Monster Mythology. Those old blue DM books are my favorite things to flip through to this day.

• Yeenoghu dwells in "...an exceptionally dismal and fetid layer of the Abyss."
• He displaced Gorellik, god of the gnolls. Gorellik wanders Pandemonium and the Abyss, sometimes in the form of "...a mottled white hyenadon."
• His magic resistance dropped from 80% to 20%.
• His flail is a +3 weapon. The second ball now causes fear instead of paralysis.

D&D 3rd Edition
Yeenoghu is detailed in Fiendish Codex I, another one of my favorite all-time D&D books.

• He is the patron of all gnolls and commands ghouls through the subjugation of the King of the Ghouls.
• He is bestial and straightforward, more likely to charge into melee rather than trying anything subtle.
• He rules the 422nd layer of the Abyss, a place known as "Yeenoghu's Realm." He spends time there hunting lesser creatures or captured mortals.
• Yeenoghu's dream is to see gnolls rule, with humans and elves as slaves or food. He knows the gnolls can't do this alone, thus he is always looking for allies.
• Malcanthet, Queen of Succubi is a hated enemy. He periodically attacks her realm, but is always repelled.

Yeenoghu is in eternal war with Baphomet. Nobody remembers why the war started, but it continues to rage.

Doresain: We get details on how Yeenoghu conquered the ghouls. Doresain, King of Ghouls, was a vassal of Orcus. He had his own layer of the Abyss, which Yeenoghu invaded and conquered. Doresain swore fealty to Yeenoghu. Apparently Orcus is busy and hadn't noticed yet (Doresain is back at the side of Orcus in 4e).

Yeenoghu's Realm: It's the 422nd layer of the Abyss. It was once a desert dotted with ruined cities, ruled by a fallen angel named Azael who was chained to a plaza. Then a god-killer known as Ma Yuan showed up and killed him. The desert is still under Azael's influence - Yeenoghu hasn't taken control of it.

Yeenoghu lives in a mansion that is pulled through the layer by thousands of kidnapped slaves. Once per year, the palace takes a trip around the layer.

Major Locations in Yeenoghu's Realm include:

• Bechard's Landing: The shore where Bechard, the demon lord (a rotting whale) lies beached. Bechard is one of the obyriths, the ancient race of demons that existed before he demons and devils. He resembles a knotty beached whale, and is incapable of movement. He constantly bakes in the sun and he is very slowly dying. Bechard can barely speak, even telepathically. 
• The Curswallow: A yellow ocean that prisoners escape to. Cannibal pirates sail these seas.
• The Dun Savanna: A grassland full of deadly plants, poisonous water and carnivorous beasts.
• The Screaming Peaks: There's a gate to The White Kingdom, home of the ghouls, here. As such, these mountains are full of ghouls and maurezhi.
• The Seeping Woods: A vast forest of yellow trees. There's a huge statue of Yeenoghu and a secret band of succubi plotting against the demon lord.
• The Gathering Gate: A circular portal that allows access to various worlds. This is where slaves are brought through.

Libris Mortis

There's a quick mention in this book that Doresain paid homage to Yeenoghu for a time. Then "...Yeenoghu subsequently lost control of the King's layer, and more recently, Yeenoghu has lost the ability to command the King."

D&D 4th Edition

Yeenoghu got the deluxe treatment in a massive article in one of the first free digital issues of Dragon Magazine. Yeenoghu has "..few ambitions beyond the visceral thrill of rending the soft flesh of his enemies and drinking deep the hot blood from their bodies."

• The triple flail is made form the bones of a slain god. When used, the flail sprays blood and tears of the fallen deity.
• In 4e, it is said that Yeenoghu was once a primordial. He was transformed by the Chained God who lurks at the bottom of the Abyss.

Nezrebe, Exarch of Yeenoghu: Nezrebe is an albino gnoll that stands 9 feet tall who wields a magic sword called Winnower. He suffers from a disease that causes him to cough up bloody chunks of his lungs.

Nezrebe hates elves, and hunts them. He has a special chamber set aside for torturing elves. He even crucifies elf slaves to mark off lands under Yeenoghu's control. He spends his time outing minor demon lords who try to encroach on Yeenoghu's plans.

We are told that there are three cities in Yeenoghu's Realm:

1. Vujak-Riln: A staging ground to mount expeditions into The Seeping Woods.
2. Vujak-Sesco: A place where creatures of all races mine the mountains for iron and metals. Corpses litter the streets, which are devoured by roaming jackals and hyenas.
3. Vujak-Kesk: The home of Yeenoghu's cult. Followers gather here to perform ceremonies. There's blood pits where gnolls fight each other to weed out the weak.

Demonomicon

There's not much on Yeenoghu in here. I guess they figured the Dragon article covered most of the bases. There is a page on followers known as "Yeenoghu's Death Pack".

"The weakest of his faithful are treated as slaves, but those that can prove their mettle and their battle madness to Yeenoghu can rise high in his service."

They have an array of special powers. They can do damage even on a missed attack, get bonuses to hit when an ally is slain,  give allies bonus damage to a target, that kind of thing.

D&D 5th Edition

So far we only have the flyer that wizards released. Yeenoghu "...yearns to create a world where his gnolls are the last creatures left alive, tearing one another apart for the right to feast upon the endless dead."

In Out of the Abyss, apparently each demon lord inflicts a type of madness. Yeenoghu's brand of madness "...drives its subjects toward the anger of wild mobs bent on destruction and bloodlust."

The madness will make the victim view civilization as a threat to freedom, and give them a hunger for the flesh of sentient creatures.

Links

The 4e article is right here on the wizards site for free.
There's a really well done expansion of Yeenoghu on AuldDragon's AD&D Blog
Chamber Band wrote a song about Yeenoghu

Last Sunday we played through a special session of the Planescape campaign. I wanted to use material from a planescape article by Monte Cook in Dragon issue 240, "Mysteries of the Dead Gods".

Basically the article is full of charts of things that you might find on the giant stone god-corpses that float in the astral sea. I figured that would make for a cool session, and would be a buffer that would allow us to wrap up The Great Modron and put some space in before we start "Umbra" next week.

The Party

(Jessie) Bidam - Platinum Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Drow Wizard   

The Rogue Modron

The adventurers were in Acheron with the rogue modron, Trictaculus. They made their way through the portal to Mechanus. They found a portal back to Sigil with the aid of some magic and their planar compass.

The heroes decided to let Trictaculus stay with them in their office in the Clerk's Ward. They had to deal with a few things:

The Lamashtu Painting

They had stolen this in the Abyss and agents of Lamashtu were trying to get it back. They worked out a deal with a very successful, tremendously wealthy business man named Gonard Flumph. He's a rip-off of Donald Trump. I've been working on a Trump voice the past few weeks, as I find him to be very amusing.

Flumph owns lots of real estate, he owns a fragrance called "Achievement", and he runs beauty pageants in gate towns such as Tradegate and Ecstasy. He sat down with the heroes and Vrischika and entered into a tremendous negotiation while the heroes had the best meal of their lives.

Basically they traded the painting to him for a couple of properties. One was a home for Vrischika, who realized she needed a safe domicile after the solamith attacked her in the Curiosity Shoppe.

The heroes were given a choice. Basically this was me giving them a chance to own a business, so we can mess around with the "running a business" downtime rules. Our heroes now own a "festhall" called... "F***Haus. There's an umlaut in there, but I don't know how to make it. Their talking cat Jysson is going to run it when they are out of town. They'll do the hiring next session.

The Heart of the Lady of Pain

Bidam wants to build a magic heart for the Lady of Pain, who supposedly has a void where her heart is. The void is said to be the source of all pain in the multiverse.

The heroes went back to Undermountain to consult with the drow Paellistra. They gave her the evil, sentient sword Craggis in exchange for guidance. Craggis would be Paellistra's new henchmen, seeing how the heroes had killed her vampire sidekick Cryvistin a few sessions back.

The ingredients for the Heart of the Lady of Pain:

• The heart of a large creature.
• Three sensory stones, each one containing an experience of one of the building blocks of love: Understanding, Acceptance and Compassion.
• A formula for a philter of love.
• Godsblood.

Godsblood can be obtained by mining the corpse of a dead god. And so, the heroes were off to the astral plane.

The Astral Plane

Their magic pirate ship can fly in the astral plane thanks to the lifejammer helm on board. They brought along Trictaculus the modron, Alamandra the githzerai and her boyfriend Stewart Seven-Fingers.

I cooked up four dead gods. In my campaigns, I've had probably a dozen gods die, so I had a nice list to choose from. I won't bore you with all the details - most of them are former characters who became gods, or gods slain by heroes in one way or another. Each god-corpse shares some of its memories with the heroes when they land on it. Here's how it went.

Goddess of the Wamphyri: Wamphyri are super vampires from Brian Lumley novels. This goddess died in a campaign from the 90's that my friend ran. On this corpse, they found plants that could be used to make potions of giant strength. The heroes also encountered some warder devils lounging in a pool of milk. Bidam made friends with them. No godsblood on this dead god.

God of War: This was a character from the same 90's campaign who became a god, and then was eventually slain by a level 30 character from my Scales of War campaign in 2010. The heroes found markings and signs - githyanki planned to build an outpost here. The heroes mined some metal good for making magic weapons. They also found a pool of water that never freezes, no matter the temperature. No godsblood, though.

Wamphyri demi-god: The wamphyri were a big deal in our campaigns back in the 90's. This particular dead god was actually once a character who betrayed the party. It was a pretty legendary thing in our group. Bidam and Theran had to endure a lot of peril here - madness-inducing memories, an energy field that turned Bidam lawful evil for a day, and plants that were poisonous to the touch. They were also attacked by a two-headed couatyl. These creature were created in my Savage Tide campaign, another long story.

Goddess of Magic: That's right, Ioun died in my campaign, slain by the evil god who made his own "Shadow Pantheon" of zombie gods (this was the campaign I ran last year). This god-corpse let me put all my research on ioun stones to use. The heroes found a pulsing node of energy, only able to be mined by magic items. It also exploded. Luckily, the heroes were smart and figured this out (they had come upon a blasted crater earlier). They safely mined the node, and harvested three Ioun stones:

• Purple Multi-Faceted Cylinder: Creates a pulsing field that does 2d6+2 damage to attacker lasts for d6+4 rounds, once per week.
• Clear Lozenge: Become invisible once per day.
• Smooth Pale Lavender Torus: Creates a temporary crystalline duplicate of the user once per week. The duplicate moves under user's control, performs simple tasks (no combat) has 10 hit points. It lasts 24 hours and then crumbles.

The adventurers actually gave the invisibility one to Alamandra. They also found.. godsblood. Mission accomplished!

Githyanki Attack

Unfortunately, on the way back, they were attacked by a few githyanki on an astral skiff. The heroes set their skiff on fire. Ultimately, a githyanki warrior flew onto the deck of the ship while the burning skiff fled. Theran flew after the skiff, and killed both the mindslicer and the hracknir on board.

All in all, it was a good session. I love it when I can mine the history of my own games in a useful way. Next time, we will begin the highly regarded Chris Perkins adventure - Umbra.

I am going to try and write about a really tricky topic in D&D - inter-party combat, conflict or competition. Some younger players refer to it as "PVP". It is when one character gets in a fight with another. It is usually to the death. If it's not to the death, it usually becomes a prolonged war erupting over the course of a few sessions.

When it goes right, it can be hilarious and fun. But very often, it goes horribly wrong and can end campaigns and even destroy entire gaming groups.

My Experiences

I've had many instances of inter-party combat in my games, many of which occurred when I was a teenager. They were all different and very memorable:

The Lady's Man: One guy was playing a really evil character who always hit on the character of a female player. Her character finally had enough and slit his throat in his sleep. We had already established the rule that if somebody did this, they were just dead. No roll! He was crestfallen, to say the least.

That Guy: We had a new player join our group who liked to make drow assassins. He'd kill a PC, and then we'd kill him. Then he'd make a "revenge character" and come back for more killing. He got kicked out of the group after about two sessions.

The Rift: There was an epic battle between a psionicist and a dagger thrower. The psionicist put up an inertia barrier, which caused projectiles to lose their inertia and plop to the ground.This of course made for a hilarious battle. All the dagger thrower was good at as throwing daggers. It was a stalemate until the dagger thrower put a bag of holding in a portable hole, creating an explosive rift to the plane of fire that killed both of them.

The PVP Dungeon: Once in a while, we'd play a special one-shot where we'd go through a competitive dungeon. We'd all race through deadly trap-filled catacombs alongside NPCs who would drop like flies. Those of us who survived would face off in a mass free-for-all in the final room of the dungeon. The last survivor got awarded special powers (basically a special "prestige class", before those existed).

The Incident: Last year, I ran The Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga. The heroes were discussing plans, and a party member suggested something that the party wizard didn't like. The wizard hit him with a spell and nearly killed him. Just minutes later, the heroes tricked the wizard into leaving the hut, and then deserted him on the evil plane of his greatest enemy. The campaign pretty much ended right there.

Causes of Interparty Combat

This kind of thing has a number of causes. You'll need to make sure that, when your group first forms or adds a member, that you make it clear whether interparty stuff is acceptable or not. Here's some of the more common triggers:

Let's See Who's The Toughest: If you have a few competitive players who are both trying to make a powerful character, chances are that they'll be comparing themselves to each other. A little good-natured ribbing could slowly turn into  a feud, with everyone else watching on the sidelines piping up and openly speculating on who would win. Sooner or later, these two are going to butt heads to see who is better.

Domination: This is something that really needs to be used carefully. In D&D, especially in 4e, some bad guys can dominate a PC and force them to attack their allies. As DM, you're probably going to dominate the person who does the most damage, right? That means that over the course of the same campaign, the same player is going to be put in a situation where he or she has to hack into their allies. This player will likely become unhappy and the others might even be annoyed at how much damage their ally is doing and begin to question if their character is made correctly. From there, it's not much of a leap to go from forced inter-party combat to voluntary inter-party combat.

Magical Alignment Change: This actually just happened in my planescape campaign. Bidam the dragonborn fighter was hit by an energy field while exploring the corpse of a dead god, and he went from Chaotic Good to Lawful Evil. Sometimes, when a player is put in this situation, it's really weird for them and they don't know how to play it. What would an evil person do? Do you just do the opposite of what a good character would do? Honestly it doesn't seem like there's a lot of upside to even including alignment switches in your game, unless it is to affect NPCs. You're tampering with a PC in a way that might make the player not want to run their character anymore.

Party Thief: Here's the classic. A thief joins the party, and starts stealing from the party and secretly hoarding treasure. You probably know that there is no quicker way to incite player rage than to try to steal from other people in the party.

Claiming a Magic Item: The party comes upon a truly awesome magic item. Two characters really want it. A lot of shouting, rolling and snatching takes place. Player greed is partly the issue here. Also, this could be a case of the DM not handing out enough magic items - players are starved for them and become rabid dogs.

Player Decides to Sabotage the Game: This really does happen. Sometimes, for whatever reason, a player decides that they don't like this campaign and they purposely try to ruin it. I've seen it happen many times. I've heard people brag about it. It's about as pathetic as a D&D player can get. These toxic people need to be ejected when discovered. Just retcon their stupidity.

Using Skills on Each Other

As an aside, I've read about instances where one party member will use their intimidate skill to force other members of the party to do what they want. In my opinion, this should not be possible. A player has the right to decide what they want to do, unless they are magically compelled to do otherwise. You could end up in a situation where one unpleasant human being makes a character with a ridiculously high intimidate skill, and forces the group to do his or her bidding, even handing over magic items. Nobody would want to sit through that kind of game.

Intrigue


One of the best sessions of D&D I ever ran was with two players who were plotting against each other. They split up in the game, each maneuvering against the other. While I ran one player's stuff, the other either left the room or put headphones on. Every five minutes, we'd switch. It's a long story, but one of them ended up turning into a badger and swallowing his tongue.

If you can juggle this kind of situation without boring the group, do it. It's awesome. There's something very exciting about a game where players genuinely don't know what the others are doing. If you have players who aren't going to get distracted or disinterested while you handle other people, definitely give it a try sometime.

Why Even Bother?

Why allow inter-party combat at all? Well, it's fun. These incidents usually become the stuff of legend within your gaming group. There's nothing more intense and unpredictable than when two characters turn their power against one another.

The thing here, though, is that there's probably going to be hurt feelings involved. The person who loses is probably going to lose due to bad dice rolls, and that is a tough pill to swallow. If the winner is going to gloat, then you will have a real life problem on your hands.

To me, the best time to have this happen is when a player quietly comes to you and says that they want to change characters. You can cook up a scheme where the character betrays the party and battles against them, knowing that the character is going to lose or die.

Another good time to do it is in a one-shot competitive adventure, like I've described above.

The most important thing when thinking about inter-party combat is that you need to know your players. I don't want to be condescending and throw around the word "maturity", but really that's what it comes down to. Is your entire group mature enough to handle the consequences? Are they going to be bitter and ruin your campaign over this?

Running an Inter-Party Combat

So, let's just say that war breaks out at your table. Two characters attack each other. Here's things to be mindful of:

• Make sure this is not an out-of-game issue spilling over into the game. If it is, then just stop the game and work it out before continuing.
• Every roll must be witnessed and declared. Do floor dice count? Cocked dice? Make sure those rolls are on a flat surface, out in the open. Never is the temptation to cheat so great.
• You must look up every rule as you go. You cannot blow a call in an inter-party combat. Things might get intense, so you'll need to be double-checking as a player might broadly interpret a rule to gain an advantage.
• Keep the rest of the party in initiative order. They may want to jump in, heal someone, or try to break it up.
• It is vitally important to establish who is doing what, when. People will be excitedly shouting things out, lots of words and dialogue coming out at once. Use initiative order as a guideline, as well as common sense. Make it clear what is taking place, and in what order.

Conflict In Your Game

D&D is a story, and a campaign can be similar to a novel or TV show. The Walking Dead is built on tension between the main characters, and they sometimes attack or kill each other. That could be a heck of a campaign, but you have to have the right sort of players for this kind of thing.

Inter-Party conflict doesn't have to involve a fight to the death. It can just be to unconsciousness. It cold even be to "first blood" (half hit points..?).

The conflict might not even be a physical battle. It could be a foot race, a grappling match, an archery contest, a spell duel, a singing competition or a dance-off (which would be hilarious). Or my personal favorite: A drinking competition.

The safest way to explore inter-party combat is in a classic setting: The Arena. You can run a big arena battle, which is to unconsciousness, not death, and you can have other NPCs  in there, too. This will create a nice buffer so that your players aren't directly pitted just against each other. The random nature of the battle will give the players an out, so that the loser could blame the setting for the loss.

It also allows you to add some cool environmental wrinkles - pit traps, projectiles. Heck, maybe even do a chariot race! There was a video game that made a very lasting impression on me when it comes to arena fights. It's called Shadow of Rome. The battles in that game are so crazy, chaotic and fun that I've stolen from it many times for D&D.

Bottom line, inter-party combat needs to be handled really carefully. It can add tons of drama and legendary stories, but it also can kill your game and your gaming group. Tread carefully!

Inimigle

Tonight we started a new planescape adventure called "Umbra" by Chris Perkins. It was published in dungeon magazine #55. I am converting it from 2e rules to 5th edition, which is very easy to do. We just finished The Great Modron March, and once Umbra is done we're going through Dead Gods. After that, we'll do the other Perkins adventure - "Nemesis".

Dungeon magazine adventures at that time were extremely wordy and I found them difficult to read. There was no adventure synopsis. You had to slog through the whole thing to find out what the adventure was about. Most adventures had way too much backstory and far too many dull details of rooms.

Umbra isn't too bad in that regard, and the first half of the adventure in particular is really enjoyable. The scenario is entirely set in the city of Sigil, and it really helps. Sigil is awesome. I want to run more stuff just in the city. Perkins came up with some truly awesome locations, and was able to really bring the city to life.

There are huge piles of flavor text, but it was pretty fun to read. It's tricky, because it's so easy for a player's eyes to glaze over and miss details while I'm reading paragraphs of stuff out loud.

The Party

(Jessie) Bidam - Platinum Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Drow Wizard 

Downtime - The Festhall
Our heroes have opened a "festhall", so we got that rolling. The heroes hired a ton of prostitutes. I tried to give each employee a story. The overall idea I have for them is based on something I saw on the show called "Cosmos". There were these women, many of them deaf, who were called "computers". They pretty much created the definitive map of the stars years ago.

I had a door appear in the festhall. It's obviously a portal to another plane. But nobody knows how to activate it, or what plane it leads to. The ladies in the festhall have decided to try to figure it out, and they're studying and mapping the planes. They're also keeping a log of every portal that they know of in Sigil.

Razorvine

I also decided to use a cool NPC from Uncaged - The Faces of Sigil. There's this section of razorvine known as "Patch." If you feed it blood, it will answer questions for you by forming words in the blood on a wall. I decided that this thing is right next to Vrischika's new home.

The heroes investigated it. They saw Rule-of-Three (a major Planescape NPC who has a role in an upcoming adventure) use it. The heroes tried cutting Patch down, but it grew back. They kept trying to learn more, and almost worked their way to the secret of the razorvine (as it was revealed in Patch's story) but they left it alone for now.

The Black Sail

Inimigle

The heroes were walking the streets of the lower ward, when a Harmonium officer started harassing them. He turned into a barlgura and attacked! The heroes are now 5th level, and they were able to handle this monster. It made me a bit nervous though - the creature has this ability called "Reckless," which means that it gets advantage to attack, and people have advantage when attacking it. This monster gets three attacks per round, all with advantage.

The heroes were rescued by a mysterious cambion called Dirngrin. This whole thing was a setup by Dirngrin. He'd been following the heroes, and had his barlgura attack them as a sort of test.

Dirngrin proceeded to rattle off some dialogue that the players found hilarious. They actually asked me to re-read this part:

"The Cage ain't a place for the clueless, cutter. It'll make a basher go barmy before you can say, 'Pike it, primescum!'"

"Pike it, primescum" has become a new catchphrase among this group. I had told them if they convincingly used planescape slang that they would get inspiration. This lead to an evening full of the word "berk" and the phrase "put you in the dead-book".

Dirngrin works for this yagnoloth called Inimigle. Dirngrin took the heroes to meet him, in The Black Sail tavern.

Inimigle told the heroes there was this hag who owned a restaurant called The Worm's Guts. She sold all sorts of food. Apparently, the heroes were on the menu! The hag wanted to cook up the heroes and serve them to her customers. What a fun idea. It also makes extra sense, as a platinum-scaled dragonborn is quite a delicacy indeed.

Basically, Inimigle convinced the heroes to go rescue a girl captured in a Harmonium tower. The girl has this special mark on her hand, which means she's a chosen one for this old, lost faction called the Zactars. Basically this kid is going to grow up to become a god.

The heroes agree to go break her out. Inimigle says there's a hag who will help them (not the hag who wants to cook them). This hag's name is Varaga and she lives in The Screaming Tower. To get in, you need to repeat this phrase exactly:

I swear this oath to Sigil's guard:
Lord of all She gazes;
I pledge my life to Her, the one
Who spares us from the Mazes.

The players didn't write it down. I knew we were in for a wacky night.

The Lady's Ward

Barghest

The adventurers set out for The Screaming Tower, which was in The Lady's Ward. The module says it actually takes a few hours to walk there. I hadn't really given much thought to just how big Sigil was. A few hours.. it took me aback, but ultimately I like it. Sigil should be big.

Along the way, the heroes were harassed by Harmonium guards. A hag pushing a cart full of larvae helped them by casting a forget spell on the guards. This is the hag who wants to cook them up and serve them to her customers. Inimigle got her to follow the heroes and make sure they got to the tower.

Later, there was a cart full of prisoners. They'd looted a temple and were going to jail. The cart was pulled by... a gorgon! And it was driven by two barghests - blue-skinned goblins that could turn into wolves.

One prisoner could cast some spells. Her name was Heleta Vazgarth. She used a spell to read the heroes thoughts, and shouted out, begging them to save her. She said she knew of the chosen one and could help them.

Our heroes tried to use mage hand to quietly and swiftly pull the key ring off a barghest's belt, but the barghest heard the clinking of the keys (low arcana roll). A fight broke out. The heroes killed the barghests and set the prisoners free. The gorgon was left to its own devices in the city street. The adventurers didn't even realize it was a gorgon until they heard later that it had run around the city, turning people to stone.

The heroes took Helveta with them. She was a chaotic good mage. She admitted that she had read their minds and didn't know anything about the chosen one. She just wanted to be free! The Harmonium had arrested her along with the looters although she hadn't done anything. Helveta was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The heroes were outraged, and made it clear that she was coming with them. Poor Helveta was going to be trap bait.

The Screaming Tower

This place is incredibly awesome. Here's the description:

"Located in the heart of The Lady's Ward is a twisted, hollow structure known as The Screaming Tower. The 250 foot tall tower was built atop a natural portal leading to the Elemental Plane of Air and is riddled with apertures. Every hour, a huge gust of wind erupts from the portal and blows through these holes, creating the painful wailing noise which earns the tower its name."

So remember, the heroes are supposed to walk up to the tower, repeat the pass phrase, and then enter. The problem: Both adventurers had completely forgotten that they even needed to utter the pass phrase. They also didn't remember what it was.

And worse... poor Heleta had to go try the door alone! She approached, and saw a demonic gargoyle statue on either side of the 15 foot tall iron door. She saw a scorched body lying in front of the door. The heroes urged her on. She pulled on the door handle. Lightning erupted from the gargoyles mouths, and killed her.

After a bit of laughter and planning, the heroes approached the door. They looted poor Heleta and the scorched body (it had a +1 spear). Bidam tried the door. Bidam was scorched by the lightning trap, and the door didn't budge. The door is so heavy, it takes a total of 22 points of strength to open it.

Bidam staggered back, injured. The heroes decided to go rest. They went to Fortune's Wheel, a giant gambling complex owned by Shemeshka the Marauder. They sat in The Dragon Bar for an hour. Theran studied the spear, while Bidam burned some surges to heal. They still hadn't remembered about the pass phrase.

They went back to the tower and tried the door together. They got scorched again. Then they remembered about the pass phrase (with some hints from yours truly). They had no idea what the pass phrase was. So, laughing, they walked all the way back to the lower ward. They tracked down Inimigle's surly girlfriend, a tiefling named Turia (who also appears in the other Perkins Planescape adventure, "Nemesis"). She made the heroes pay her 100 gold. Then she told them the pass phrase. The heroes left, mumbling about coming back and killing her.

They walked all the way back to the tower, uttered the pass phrase, and at last entered The Screaming Tower.

Inside, there's a massive void (portal to the plane of air) and a staircase that winds up, hugging the wall. 99 gargoyles perch in here, looking out of the many holes in the wall.

Eyarq's Way
This is where an awesome encounter kicks in. The heroes are going up the stairs. Once they're about 50 feet up, The portal comes to life, spewing forth a mighty gust of wind. The heroes must grab on to something or go flying. Those who fail their DEX saves have to roll a d6 on a special chart. A 1 means you actually get flung out through a hole of the tower into Sigil!

The portal came to life. Theran grabbed on to a gargoyle as the wind forced his feet off the ground. Bidam failed his save, and the dragonborn was blown right out of the building. He soared through the air and crashed to the street below, taking 5d6 damage. He came back in and the adventurers made their way up the stairs to the third room.

They met with a margoyle flunky of the hag's. The margoyle hates the hag and wants to turn the heroes against her. I didn't care for this idea, so I just made him a doofus comedy character.

Zaraga's Lair

The adventurers went up a spiral staircase and came upon Zaraga the hag. She has some pretty epic flavor text. They walk in on her eating an imp:

"With ravenous hunger she shoves the reddish pulp into her toothy maw and devours it all at once, then wipes her talons on the front of her rags. Hanging from the nearby ceiling are three iron bird cages, two of them containing creatures like the one just devoured. Their pathetic cries for mercy can barely be heard above the great hag's belch."

The heroes handed her a disc (a portal key) that Inimigle told them to give her. She agreed to help them. Her plan: Gargoyles would fly the heroes to the Harmonium tower. The adventurers could sneak through the building, steal the kid, and escape..

We'll do that next time. I think we can finish this adventure next week! This was a very good session. I really love this adventure, tons of fun ideas.

Umbra, the alu fiend

On Sunday night, we finished up Umbra. I think it's safe to say that the adventure more than lives up to its reputation. If you break it down, here's what it has:

• An exploration of a tower that is home to 99 gargoyles.
• A scenario where the heroes must kidnap a kid from the home of a police lieutenant (more or less).
• Deal with the mother of the kid, a succubus, who wants to sell her own kid off as a slave.
• Bring the kid to the temple where, supposedly, she will become a god.

On top of that, you've got a bunch of cool street encounters which include a hag pushing a wagon full of maggots and some Barghests bringing captives to a jail.

In addition to all that cool stuff, there's a bunch of NPCs that really jump off the page and a lot of really well done flavor text. The read aloud stuff is long, but it's so fun and full of engaging stuff that it didn't bore anybody and in fact they actually asked me to repeat some of it because they liked it so much.

The Party

(Jessie) Bidam - Platinum Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Drow Wizard 

Durkayle's Stronghold
Gargoyles grabbed the adventurers and flew them to Durkayle's compound. Their mission: steal a kid named Umbra. Apparently, she was the chosen one of some long-lost faction called the Zactars.

Durkayle's compound had a tower and a courtyard teeming with Harmonium soldiers. Bidam drank a potion of giant strength, removed the bars from the highest window in the tower, and entered with Theran.

There was a lot of creeping around. They messed with an orb that could turn you lawful if you touched it. They listened at some doors. They decided to use a grappling hook and rope to lower down to the next floor and peer in some windows. They spotted a woman in a room with a baby carriage. They figured that was where they needed to go.

Emalica the Erinyes

Erinyes as depicted in the 2e outer planes appendix

The heroes went down some stairs and knocked on the door and spoke to the woman. She was Emalica, and while she appeared to be an elf in a red gown, she was actually an erinyes. Emalica was technically one of the child's guardians but, being lawful evil, Emalica hated the kid and wanted her gone. She charmed Bidam and politely advised the heroes on the best way to "rescue" Umbra.

She explained that Umbra was Durkayle's daughter. The mother was a succubus who was apparently out of the picture. The Harmonium would be outraged if they found out that Durkayle had a dalliance with a succubus, so he kept her hidden in the tower.

The heroes never got to check out the baby carriage, which is too bad. It's full of poisonous snakes! Snakes that Emalica uses as ranged weapons! Why, I don't know, but it's awesome so who cares.

The adventurers were introduced to Umbra by Emalica. Theran was able to win Umbra over by doing some magic tricks. She showed them what she could do - she could teleport. This power would come in handy a few times.

Durkayle Returns

Durkayle

Then... Durkayle came home. He'd returned from a failed mission in a gate town. The heroes heard him talking loudly down the hall. Theran cast a fly spell, grabbed Umbra, and flew out the window into the night. Bidam thought for a second and decided to jump out the window. He plummeted to the ground, took a big chunk of falling damage, and then bluffed his way past a Harmonium guard as he limped to the gate.

The heroes reunited outside the gate with Umbra. Dirngrin, the cambion who got them into this mess in the first place, was there to whisk them away. The heroes didn't realize that Dirngrin was about to double-cross his boss. He teleported the heroes and Umbra not to the Zactar Cathedral, but to a room at The Black Sail Inn where Umbra's mother, the evil succubus Karilyn, was waiting.

Karilyn the Succubus

Karilyn

Karilyn has a bunch of fun flavor text, trying to cajole Umbra into hugging her. Umbra shied away. Eventually, after a bit of discussion, the heroes tried to take Umbra and run. Dirngrin, the schmuck, did nothing. His sidekick, the barlgura, attacked. Karilyn charmed Bidam and then kissed him, which does 32 damage! Bidam made his save though, so he took 16 points. He snapped out of the charm and attacked her.

Out in the hallway, the barlgura tried to snatch Umbra. Barlguras in 5e can jump 40 feet (and 20 feet high), so he tried this maneuver where he tried to jump over Theran, grab Umbra, and then crash out of the window down to the streets of Sigil with her in his clutches.

Umbra ducked, though, and the barlgura exploded out of the window and hurtled to the ground.

Karilyn took flight. The heroes really wanted to subdue her and hand her over to Durkayle, but she escaped with just a single hit point remaining. People in the bar below ran up to see what all of the commotion was. Turia, the crabby tiefling who is Inimigle's girlfriend, helped cover for the heroes in her own dour way. Turia is a very interesting NPC. She is also in "Nemesis", the other Perkins Planescape adventure. In that one, she has a new boyfriend - Rule-of-Three, a major Planescape NPC.

The Zactar Cathedral

The adventurers took Umbra to The Zactar Cathedral, where apparently she could fulfill her destiny. Umbra immediately liked the place and knew the layout intuitively.

The cathedral is a magic dead zone. No magic spells or magic items worked inside! This obviously was a big problem for Theran, the party wizard. Umbra said she was pretty sure there was a grey orb in the temple that controlled the magic dead zone.

She lead them through the building, but an enemy was waiting - the 4 armed gargoyle from the screaming tower, Eyarq. He wanted to snatch the kid and ransom her off! The heroes were able to just barely hold him off as he tried to snatch Umbra.

They delved further into the temple, and came upon a statue of a woman with bat wings, holding out her arms. She had a strange symbol on her palm, just like Umbra. I don't think the heroes ever realized that this statue depicted Umbra in adult form.

The statue held a grey orb, which indeed controlled the dead magic zone. Bidam was hit by a lightning trap. Then, after a lot of amusing guessing, they figured out the command word of the orb - Zactar.

With the magic turned on, the adventurers met with Inimigle in the portal room. I was wondering if the heroes would be paranoid, but they weren't. They let Umbra walk right into that swirling pool.

Zactar Priestess

There was a flash, and three statues came to life - they were the last of the Zactars, delighted to finally meet Umbra, their god (they called her The One True Being). Inimigle was free, and he has this really weird and funny celebratory dialogue:

"Free at last! Oh, the joy! Oh, what merriment! Let the horns sound and the whistles blow! I am FREE! No longer must I ruminate in this ghastly sepulchre of a church!"

So it looked like Umbra is going to stay in the cathedral and Sigil might have a new faction on its hands.

Then, the heroes go to leave, and a pile of people are outside. Durkayle, some barghests... and Karilyn the succubus, all bandaged up! The mother and the father of Umbra were arguing.

The heroes hated Karilyn and seriously contemplated attacking her right there. I had actually been foreshadowing her for a long time in this campaign with Vrischika, who is an alu fiend who had been on the run from the demon lord named Karaphon who collects alu fiend slaves.

The whole thing culminated in more flavor text, where Umbra transforms and ages 6 years in 3 rounds. Umbra admonished both of her parents, and told them to leave her be forever.

Karilyn flew off, angry. Durkayle swore revenge on the heroes.

That's where we stopped. If there's any negatives about this adventure, it's that there is no final battle. The heroes could end up just kind of riding out the flavor text at the finish.

But by the point you get to the end, it's been so awesome that it's not a big deal. This is a fantastic adventure!

Next week, we begin Dead Gods, another very highly-regarded planescape adventure. The heroes are 5th level, and they'll probably hit level 6 by the end of next week or the week after.

I know I've been absent for a few months on the blog, so I have a bit of catching up to do. My group is pretty far into Dead Gods as of this writing. Over the next week or two I'll be posting summaries here to get back on track.

Limp Biscuits

Once I stopped running games at the store, I kind of lost interest in D&D to a degree. I still like running games, but when I'm not plugged in to the encounters program I feel very out of the loop.

I guess I also feel like I've come out on the other side of the game. I've really been involved in it for a long time, and I got a real clear look at many of the game's limitations. It is really hard to be a good DM and to keep a campaign going. I see a lot of posts on reddit of people saying "About to play my first game!" and not so many posts about long-running campaigns.

When I was younger, I'd watch old movies. I would see people going to fancy parties and getting all dressed up, drinking and laughing. It looked very adult and fun. Like in Alfred Hitchcock's "Rope", minus the murder. Then when you're older, you get to go to a wedding or fancy gathering, and it's nothing like the movies. It's annoying. There's all these people you don't want to talk to. You get bored. You end up having to do things you'd really rather not be doing.

To a degree, this is how I feel about D&D. When you hear about the game, it sounds awesome. But when you play it, if the group chemistry isn't perfect, it won't be fun for long.

"Hell is other people." That kind of sums up my take on life and D&D. Not that I hate it. I still like it and I'm still running a campaign.

Dead Gods is hailed as something of a classic. It's a book with a pile of linked adventures, dealing with a mysterious entity who is killing gods and wreaking havoc. Obviously there's going to be spoilers in these posts, so beware.

We had finished "Umbra" by Chris Perkins, a really fantastic adventure set in Sigil. The thing I liked most about it wasn't the overall plot, but all the cool Sigil details and locales. It was very vivid and really made Planescape fun. Monte Cook is awesome, but his adventures don't quite reach the heights of the Perkins stuff. Monte has good ideas but in some cases they are not fleshed-out enough.

The Heroes

Bidam - A platinum-scaled Dragonborn Fighter
Theran - A dark elf wizard

If you remember, they'd started up a bordello. Their rogue modron friend runs it along with the talking cat, Jysson.

The Flowchart

Dead Gods is organized very strangely. There's two adventures which are meant to occur alongside each other. It's quite confusing. There's a flowchart. One adventure is called "Out of the Darkness", and the other is called "Into the Light".

This adventure I was supposed to run first - "Initial Forays" - was really confusing to me. There's all these details to keep straight. Basically, there's this temple in Sigil that has some weird stones in it. Two factions are fighting over it. There's a mystery person behind everything, who is basically trying to get the two factions to go to war over it.

Buried in Details

The factions in Planescape have always been a problem for me. There's a million of them, and it's shockingly difficult to find succinct information on them. They have all these nicknames you're supposed to keep track of. It's hard enough to keep 18 organizations straight, much less remember all of their different names.

The factions involved in this scenario:

• The Athar: They believe the gods aren't actually gos, just powerful mortals. They search for the real true secret of the multiverse.
• The Sign of One: This group believes that everything exists because they imagine it. Nobody really exists except them. There's also two splinter factions that play into this adventure: The Will of One and The Way of the One.

All sorts of factions are hiring out investigators to find out what is going on in the temple. My job as a DM is to keep track of the investigators timetables to see if they either bump into the PCs, or beat them to the punch. This was just too much for me so I simplified it. The investigators:

• Ivth: A cool bad guy, an evil wind duke who has a bunch of cranium rats acting as his eyes and ears.
• Gremmith Mi: A hefty rogue with a blowgun
• Troubleshooters: Adventurers hired by the Athar to keep people away
• Malweis: A good paladin who might become an ally of the heroes

Post-Umbra Downtime

We started off our session with a bunch of subplot stuff.

• The heroes found out that the gorgon that got loose in Umbra was dealt with by Shemeska the Marauder.
• The heroes' friend, the alu fiend Vrischika, found Patch. Patch is this clump of razorvine that and answers questions in blood if you give it a living offering. Bidam and Theran were fascinated by Patch and did extensive research, coming very close to learning the secret of razorvine in Sigil.
• Vaimish and Greir Crasad, the paladin lords from The Great Modron March, were brought back to life by their church. They had been turned into modronoids, if you remember. Vaimish thanked the heroes for recovering their bodies, and offered to let them stay at his fortress in the outlands any time.
• Bidam continued building his heart for the Lady of Pain, buying philters of love from Wesley Powderbottom in Heart's Faith. I have ideas for what the Lady of Pain will do when Bidam gives it to her, but it's not all figured out just yet.
• I had some bordello reviewers who write for the Sigil Scroll stop by and experience the heroes' business. I'll spare you the naughty and amusing details. The heroes got a decent review, not great.

Finding Hulester

The adventurers are hired by my D&D Donald Trump NPC's son to look into this whole church thing. They were told there's this guy Hulester who knows stuff, and that he's at the Ubiquitous Wayfarer, a tavern I've been foreshadowing for a very long time.

The heroes went to the tavern, which is a cool locale. It's full of portals to different planes. It has a statue that tells riddles, And there's a really cool NPC in there. She's a tiefling named Nherid "...who sports long black nails and black eyes with no pupils."

The heroes met Hulester, who agreed to talk to them if he'd hook them up with the woman who owned the Wayfarer. The heroes set up a date in a nice area of Sigil. He gave them a bunch of clues.

Ambush

Ivth, his barghests and his cranium rats

The adventurers decided to spy on the date, wondering if Hulester was shady. Along the way, they spotted a few cranium rats watching them. They snatched one and learned that Ivth was also investigating the temple.

Another agent was on their tail. It was Gremmith Mi, the hefty rogue. As the adventurers spied on the date, he spied on them. He fired off a poison dart that missed, and sparked an epic battle on a rooftop. Gremmith ended up plummeting to his doom.

Dark Sun Crossover

Barmy Kank

Outside the Wayfarer, Bidam and Theran had met a guy called "Barmy Kank". He's from Dark Sun. When I was younger, this bothered me a great deal, because Dark Sun is a closed sphere.

Barmy Kank knew of a secret entrance into the temple. He brought the adventurers there. Malweis the paladin was checking it out too. The heroes befriended him.

Showdown at the Temple

Inside the temple, Ivth and his barghest henchmen were poking around. A big fight broke out, and the heroes won with Malweis' help.

The interior of the temple had 5 huge, weird stones which apparently had caused some people to vanish. Theran assumed they were portals, but he couldn't figure out how they worked, even with warp sense (the function of the stones isn't revealed until the very final chapter of the whole book).

That's it. There's nothing more to do here. The adventure just kind of shuts down at this point.

This scenario had some cool stuff in it, but it was a heck of a lot of work to prepare for. Worse, even with all my notes, I still couldn't keep it all straight when I ran it.

But Dead Gods was off to a start. The next adventure had a lot of fun ideas in it...

This is chapter 2 of Dead Gods.. or, I guess, chapter 1 of  the"Out of the Darkness" of Dead Gods. The book is broken into two intermingling adventures, if you recall.

It is always painful for me when there's a Planescape product that doesn't have DiTerlizzi art. This one fares better than most. The interior art is done by RK Post, who is good. It's also done by a guy named Josh Timbrook. He does this really awesome, slightly anime stuff. I tried to find out what else he's done, but it looks like he mostly did art for Vampire.

Then there's another guy who does these player handout art pieces, which are kind of muddy and generally it is hard to tell what's going on in them. The cover of the book is kind of weird, too. It's well done, but I'd have preferred a different look for the god.

Thief of Charms

This adventure is about a bunch of lizardmen who use an item to steal people's beauty. The adventurers must track them down across The Outlands. Basically the point of all this is to get the heroes to Crux, a town on Yggdrasil, the World Tree.

Crux is where a lot of stuff happens in this adventure. Honestly it's kind of a boring town. We'll get to that in due time.

Let me tell you about the item in this adventure: The Thief of Charms:

• It's a rod attached to a bottle. The bottle can be detached.
• When you touch someone with it, you teal their beauty. The beauty goes in the bottle. Beauty in a bottle is known as "Circean Embers".
• People with lost beauty are sort of shunned by people. They just look drab and weird.
• If you give somebody circean embers, aka someone else's beauty, that person becomes mega-attractive. Everyone who sees them must make a saving throw or have a deep desire to possess them. This effect lasts for a week.

This is a very fascinating item for characters who own a festhall.

Khaasta Raiders

Two of the employees of the heroes' bordello, known as "F***haus", showed up one night for work looking distinctly unattractive. Their beauty had been stolen by khaasta raiders, just moments ago. Bidam and Theran raced down the street to find the beauty thieves.

Along the way, there's a "githzerai crosstrader" named Drozeg Rake who tells the heroes that there's a child in need of aid inside. Theran immediately thought this was a trap. He was right. The githzerai's plan was to lead them into his den and have them fall in a pit trap. Instead, he got thrown in by our street-smart bashers.

The adventurers caught up with the lizard-men, called Khaastas. As far as I can tell, a khaasta is pretty much exactly like a lizardman. They've got a cart full of bottles of beauty that they're bringing through a portal. The khaasta toilmaster (awesome word) sicks a bunch of khaastas on the adventurers.

This is a bit tricky. The bad guys have to get through the portal for this adventure to work properly. The entire rest of the adventure is about tracking the khaasta cart. So as the heroes fight some khaastas, the portal closes. Our heroes need to figure out the portal key, which takes time and gives the bad guys a big head start.

Theran and Bidam get the key (a silver feather of an Arcadian dovetail, bought from Alluvius Ruskin). They go through the portal, which brings them to The Outlands. The bad guy tracks are visible in the mud. Our heroes are in for days of walking.

The heroes don't know it, but they are walking right on the border of two very scary realms. On one side is the home of a mind flayer god of  knowledge and philosophy named Maanzecorian. On the other side is the land of the beholder god, Gzemnid.

The Rotting Oracle

This leads to a really cool encounter. There's this building called The Rotting Oracle. It's in mud and is tilted at an angle. It's a mind flayer temple to Maanzecorian! That's a pretty alarming place for PCs to stumble on.

The mystery villain of Dead Gods has killed Maanzecorian, the mind flayer god. So the mind flayers are freaking out. Here's the flavor when our heroes get close to the building:

"As you watch, a figure emerges from the door of the structure. The skin surrounding its huge, white, pupil-less eyes is sallow brown with a hint of violet. Four small tentacles flail wildly from below where you'd expect to see its nose and mouth. The finery it wears grows filthy from the ooze it runs through as it stumbles closer, but it pays you no heed. Three-fingered hands clutch at its soft skull, and suddenly, wordlessly, the creature's face and head are drawn inward by an irresistable force - an implosion that resembles nothing so much as a giant, invisible hand crushing the skull of the creature like a grape.

It falls dead in the mud."

The adventurers decided to go in to the rotting oracle to check it out. There's a second mind flayer inside who tells the heroes "God is dead!", and then the text says "...the creature's spirit leaves its dying form...". Basically, Maanzecorian died and his knowledge is seeping into the temple and it is making mind flayer brains implode. The heroes began picking up random pieces of knowledge from the god, really random stuff. It freaked them out, but for some reason they decided to take a short rest in there. I think they hadn't healed wounds from the fight with the khaasta.

A beholder started floating toward the rotting oracle, as obviously something was up with his neighbors. His name was Blvastin. Luckily, Theran was resting on the front steps and saw Blvastin off in the distance. The adventurers immediately fled. I'd statted Blvastin out as a 5e version of the 4e Eye of Flame, but they wanted no part of him. The adventurers were able to sneak away and continue to pursue the khaasta caravan.

Ironridge

After three days of walking, Theran and Bidam came to a village called Ironridge. The khaasta had given an innkeeper and his wife some circean embers. They used them, and now there was a crowd of people fighting over them. Everyone wanted to be near them and "keep" them.

The heroes both investigated the crowd/brawl/burgeoning riot,got one look at the beautiful innkeepers... and failed their saving throws. Bidam and Theran both desperately wanted them for their own!

The adventurers pummeled some townsfolk, snatched their new friends and threw hooded cloaks over them. They fled and took the innkeepers back to their inn. There, the heroes tried to not hit on the innkeeper's wife or high five the innkeeper to death while they figured out what to do next. Ultimately, they decided they needed to keep following the khaastas. Their precious, wonderful innkeepers would have to come with them!

So the party grew by two NPCs.

For a day they traveled past wildflower fields. As soon as I mentioned this, the players got extremely paranoid. They kept asking me if the flowers made them sleepy, or made them hallucinate, or if there were giant bees. It was literally just one sentence in the book. That's it. But let me tell you, the heroes wanted nothing to do with those wildflowers whatsoever.

During this time, the heroes chatted with and tried to impress their new friends. I'll leave it to your imagine as to what perverted things may or may not have taken place when they made camp for the night. But I can tell you that dice rolls were involved.

Tiac Nami Ro

The next day, the heroes encountered something awesome: A walking tower. It had chicken legs. And it was controlled by a wizard named Tiac Nami Ro. He's a "...dark-skinned wizard from a remote prime-material world".

Here's his dialogue:

"Ah, hello? Yes? Please to pardon intrusion. Seen you gentles a group of... creatures with many bottles, yes? Am looking for these. Am looking to purchase more wonderful bottles, yes? Hmm?"

So is that an Indian accent? I decided to go with it and looked up some Indian swears to use for if/when the PCs made Tiac angry. There's a lot of filthy Indian sayings, it turns out.

During their journey, the khaastas accidentally shattered a bottle on some stones. Tiac found the stones, and failed his save. He is in awe of the beauty of the stones, and wants to collect more.

He invites the heroes in to his tower for a meal. He has a bunch of trained spider monkeys who set the table and serve the food.

Tiac took one look at the innkeeper and his wife and... failed his save. He asked them to come up to his bedroom for a private conversation. He was overcome by their awesomeness/beauty.

This left the heroes alone. Theran snooped around. He found the stones. He failed his save! The spider monkeys flipped out when Theran found the stones, and made a ton of noise. Tiac Nami Ro exploded out of this room, outraged that Theran was ogling his "Beauties". A fight was about to break out...

But it was really late so we had to stop there. I didn't like the khaasta or the fact that this adventure has so little to do with the overall story, but I love the thief of charms, the mind flayers and the walking tower.

In this session of Dead Gods, we finished chapter two and played through chapter 3. Last time, the adventurers were inside a walking tower, owned by a wizard named Tiac Nami Ro. Theran had touched his "beauties" - stones touched with Circean Embers. Obviously this means we need to roll for initiative.

Visage

Chapter 4 will introduce the main monster type of Dead Gods, the visages. I figured I'd post my 5e conversion for them, and explain what their deal is before they "debut" here in the next post.

Visage: AC 14 HP 45 2 claws +4/+4 5 (d6+2)

• Takes half damage from non-magic weapons.
• Undead immunities.
• (bonus action) Lucidity Control: WIS save DC 13 or the visage controls the victim's senses, save each round
• When the visage kills someone, it can shapeshift into their form. During this time, the victim can't be raised or resurrected. If the visage is not slain within 24 hours, the victim's soul is obliterated.

A visage is an undead demon created by the villain of this adventure. They look like wispy, translucent spirits with white masks where their heads should be. Other demons consider these creatures to be abominations, and attack them on sight.

Their lucidity control is extremely powerful. They can control their victim's senses, creating a false reality.The 2e version of these monsters also have the ability to dominate, but I chucked that. Too powerful!

You can really screw over your players with the lucidity control if you're not careful. There's a part in this adventure where the visages somehow are able to make it so that if the heroes enter their temple, the heroes just die. There's a whole paragraph on it. We'll get to that soon.

The Heroes

Bidam - Platinum-Scaled  Dragonborn Fighter
Theran - Drow Wizard

The Beauties

Tiac Nami Ro stood on a balcony, looking down at Theran who was coveting his precious stones. He pelted Theran with magic missiles and screamed obscenities in his native tongue. There was a chaotic fight, with Bidam charging up the stairs and tearing into the wizard. The heroes defeated the wizard and then the whole tower started to vanish.

This was mentioned in the module that the tower vanishes under certain conditions. Once it's gone, the heroes fall to the ground. Thinking back, I realize that the innkeepers should have fallen from a pretty great height (they were upstairs) and died.

The heroes dusted themselves off, picked up the trail and followed the khaastas to a forest of vast trees called The Norns. The forest is a magic place. There's thick growth. If you try to hack through the underbrush, you'll take damage from thorns and within d6 rounds you'll become trapped and lost. The only way to get through safely is for the PCs to find a path without causing harm to the vegetation.

Theran got one look at the norns and knew something was up. No birds were singing, no flowers bloomed. He consulted his lion skull mimir, and it told him what the deal was.

Yggrasil

After a few hours of wandering, the trail led up to Yggdrasil, the world tree. Yggdrasil is this impossibly huge tree that reaches into many different planes. The adventurers used it in the great modron march, when they led the modrons into Limbo.

The path of the khaasta at last leads to a knot in the tree. In that knot is a portal that leads to a "half-world" called Naphraks. Half-worlds are special demiplanes accessible only from Yggdrasil, spawned from the tree like fruit. The heroes went in.

They passed through the opaque portal, and found themselves on a large flat boulder, hurtling through an endless expanse for minutes. I really should have ran some kind of combat encounter while they were hurtling through space on the rock. The boulder landed them in Naphraks, a small muddy realm 800 yards across.

Naphraks, the Half-World

There's a few buildings: A barracks, a slave pen, giant lizard stables, and a tower. Bidam and Theran sneaked about a bit, then slipped into the tower.

They stumbled right into the khaasta ruler's throne room, where he was organizing the circean embers. The room was full of plants. The heroes watched him for a few minutes while they worked out a plan.

They approached him and tried to cut a deal. The rules, named "Haac(!)nss" (it's supposed to sound like like you're hacking a loogie which is really gross). This went south immediately, so Bidam rushed him while Theran snatched two bottles. Then Theran used a spell to shatter all of the remaining bottles.

Haac(!)Nss

Bidam cut down the ruler and they ran. They had used warp sense (a planescape spell) to find an exit from this half-world, and they ran through it. The innkeepers were hiding there, and together they went through.

They had the bottles, but they knew the khaastas would be coming after them. They spotted a town in the tree nearby. They headed for it.

Crux is a town that features heavily in Dead Gods. I sat down with a piece of paper and made myself an outline of all the stores in town, all the major NPCs, everything I'd need. It turned out that the heroes took a look around and didn't find it of interest.

They were really paranoid about the khaastas. They figured the khaastas were going to attack the town. This makes sense, but unfortunately this adventure sort of demands that the heroes venture out onto the tree again.

I was able to explain it later by saying that the khaasta raid party ran into some visages. The visages were going to use them for their own needs.

The heroes heard rumors about how the ratatosks (squirrel-people) who lived near Crux were freaking out, talking about how a great evil had come to the tree. The town druid was saying the same things. The ruler of Crux, Veridis Mov, asked them to check it out.

The heroes still had the innkeepers with them, concealed in hooded robes so as not to cause a stir. They left them in Crux.

Glittereye

The heroes ventured out onto a branch and eventually found a ratatosk. These are one of those annoying D&D monsters that likes to tease heroes and tell them riddles and stuff. If they answer the riddles, he'll take them to his leader. Here's one of the riddles:

"River that flows when death is near
Giver of life, you arrival brings fear"

Riddles can grind a game to a halt. I usually give the players a chance, and if they tap out we just roll an INT check to see if a PC figures it out. We have stuff to do!

In the past, I've found that the best way to use a riddle is to have it be part of some side quest. The player can mull it over in his or her real life for a week or two, and usually they'll get the answer.

They find that very rewarding and I think it helps get people more invested in the game. Putting a riddle right in the session as a roadblock sometimes puts people in an uncomfortable spotlight, and it can backfire.

Our heroes go to the leader's lair - a tunnel in the bark. The interior is wet and sticky with sap, which is pretty amusing. Worse, it's mildly poisonous and can cause hallucinations. "Colors change and even begin to peel away from the object they're associated with... a friend's speech sounds small and distant..." Awesome. They made their saves.

Glittereye, ruler of the ratatosks, is on the verge of insanity. The evil that has come to the tree is changing him. He agrees to bring the heroes to a place he calls The Warpwood.

The Warpwood
Along the way, they run into a modron who had gotten lost during the great modron march. I almost skipped this, because the heroes already had a rogue modron back at home. But the modrons are immune to the visages lucidity control, and that was something they'd probably need. So the ratatosks made fun of him, and the heroes let him join them. They agreed they'd eventually help him get back to his home in Mechanus. Here's some of the warpwood flavor:

"The wood in this area is rippled in a huge circular pattern, as if something large and heavy had been dropped on the branch and the bark had reacted like water, moving outward in tiny waves... But the most disturbing thing abut this strange warping is the intense blackness that makes up its center."

The deal here is that this is where the big bad guy crossed over from the astral plane to the tree. This bad guy has such a corruptive aura that he was dripping with negative energy.

This energy is too much for Glittereye. His eyes go black and he orders his ratatosks to kill the heroes. Bidam and Theran are able to subdue the squirrel-people without killing them, something that earns them the eternal friendship of the ratatosks.

Back to Crux

Having scoped out the Warpwood, the adventurers returned to Crux to find a building on fire. Marlus, the town druid, has also become corrupted by the evil tainting the tree. She was burning down her own lodge, and people were trapped inside.

Bidam and Theran burst in. Bidam battled the druid, while Theran got the people out. The smoke in here almost did him in. Each round, he had to save or begin coughing and choking. Each consecutive fail made it worse.

Marlus was defeated without being killed. The adventurers had done well so far, but Crux was not done with them just yet...

P.S. The answer to the riddle is "blood".

Crux

I don't know if I mentioned this, but if you're wondering why I run for 2 players, there's a few reasons:

• We play at midnight on Sunday night/Monday morning, which most normal people can't do. But it's the only time all 3 of us can get together. We've been playing campaigns since 2007.
• I am extremely picky about who I play with.
• I love running for just a few players. People are much more loose and comfortable. Things go much faster. You can really get to know a character. Probably the best campaign I ever ran was a solo Al Qadim campaign back in high school.

The adventurers were in Crux, a town built on the massive World Tree. They had just checked out The Warpwood, a tainted area that was evidence that some great evil had come to Yggdrasil.

The Party

(Jessie) Bidam - Platinum-Scaled  Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Drow Wizard

Murder Most Foul

They settled in for the night at one of the inns. A maid made a discovery in a nearby room. There was a dead body in a chest.

This adventure starts off as something of a murder mystery. It also introduces the visages, monsters that serve the big bad guy of Dead Gods.

Basically what happened was that a visage killed a guy and took his place. Visages have the power to assume the form of those they kill. The visages have infiltrated Crux, and it's up to our heroes to root them out.

Theran and Bidam asked around town, and it turned out that this dead guy was seen walking around town long after he had been slain. This brings them to an alley near High Point (home of the town guards), where the heroes spot a visage leaving Crux. The adventure wants the heroes to follow the visage. In fact, it's kind of crucial that they do. My players wanted to attack it. I was able to get them to follow without being too ham-handed. I could have just let them kill it and had another visage spotted off in the distance, I guess.

The heroes followed the visage out onto the tree, very wary of the khaastas. They'd killed the khaasta leader and were certain that the khaastas were looking for them.

Desert's Night

They followed the visage down a black, gnarled branch of the world tree and saw it pass through a portal. They followed. It brought them to Set's Realm. I'm not too keen on mixing real world mythology with D&D, but this happened quite a bit back in the AD&D days.

So the deal here is that the visage is looking for a certain plant that relates to the overall story of the campaign. The heroes are attacked by agents of Set. In the adventure, they're humanoid guards. I decided to use a manscorpion, as I think they're cool. Way back when, a friend of mine ran a Greyhawk campaign based on Rary the Traitor and we fought many manscorpions in the Bright Desert. I really liked it. Here's my 5e version:

Manscorpion AC 15 HP 84 2 claws: +4/+4 6(d8+2), 1 tail sting: +4 7(d10+2) and DC 12 CON save or 22 poison damage (1/2 on save).

• Blindsight 60 feet
• Obsidian-studded clubs, bolas

The manscorpion struck Theran with its tail stinger and dropped him! Bidam was barely able to slay the manscorpion and dump a potion of healing into the wizard before he died. He was on his last death save.

Their hearts sank as they spotted more manscorpions coming from over a dune. The creatures called out to the heroes. They wished to bring them to their leader. Things were afoot. The fact that the heroes killed one of their kind had impressed rather than enraged them.

The heroes were escorted to a regal pavilion made of black material. The place was home to hundreds of manscorpions and 20 giant snakes.

Nekrotheptis Scorpios

In the adventure, the leader of these creatures is an Egyptian guy named Nekrotheptis Scorpios. I changed him. There's not enough female NPCs in this adventure. So I cooked up Nekrotheptis Scorpia, a black-skinned woman with a pet snake that rested on her shoulders. She had "...black skin like ashes and eyes like smoldering flames...". I was quite proud of myself. "What a badass NPC," I thought.

Of course, Jessie began to harass me about what I meant by "black-skinned" and trolled me about the snake, saying some extremely inappropriate things about the phallic nature of my creation. She tried to take me down a peg but I was having none of it, dear readers. Nekrotheptis Scorpia is a top notch NPC, no doubt about it.

So anyway, this encounter boiled down to Nekrotheptis learning about the visages, telling the PCs that she will handle it, and for the heroes to get out of Set's Realm.

The heroes were escorted out of and back to Yggdrasil. They tried to head back to Crux, but found that the tree branch seemed never-ending. A visage was lurking nearby, and altering their perceptions! It tried to split the heroes up, but they made their saving throws.

Also, the rogue modron was with them. The modron was unaffected by the visage powers, so the heroes were able to use it to help them. It could give them advantage on their saves, I ruled.

The visage was able to lure them into a khaasta ambush. The adventurers made mincemeat out of the khaastas and the visage.

Battle With the Visages

They returned to Crux and heard a pile o' rumors:

• The town constable, Nacen Jon, was acting weird.
• Rumor has it that Bwimb, ruler of the Paraelemental Plane of Ooze had died.
• Another "big time god" had died, too.

Obviously the constable had been replaced by a visage. The heroes went right to High Point for the final showdown. Nacen and another guard had been killed and replaced.

The bad guys got the heroes to come upstairs to meet with them, but then used their lucidity control to make the stairs seem infinitely long and slippery. The heroes struggled to snap out of it, and engaged in a sprawling fight where the visages tried to make them think that the room had vanished, that there were pit traps, and even that they were floating in the chaotic expanse of Limbo.

The rogue modron again was of supreme use, helping the heroes cut through the perception-warping. The visages were defeated.

The adventurers had rooted out and destroyed all of the visages in Crux. While the bad guys overall plan was still a mystery, the adventurers were anxious to return home to Sigil.

This was an OK adventure. I didn't like how the heroes are kicked out of Set's Realm, and in general I wish all of this stuff had happened in Sigil rather than Crux.

This adventure is part two of the second storyline in Dead Gods. If you remember, part one of "Into the Light" was about a temple that some factions were fighting over.This scenario is very short, so I added in some of my own material.

The Heroes

(Jessie) Bidam - Platinum-Scaled  Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Drow Wizard

Downtime

• The adventurers had been away from Sigil for a while, and they were very happy to be back.
• They made a bunch of money off of their business, the festhall.
• Theran made and sold a few javelins of lightning.
• The sentient Razorvine known as "Patch" said it wanted Theran's demon amulet (he got it way back in the great modron march). The heroes didn't get involved in this. It was meant to be a clue as to the secret of the razorvine.

The ABCs of Planescape


Somewhere around here, I ran a really messed-up side adventure. If you are squeamish you should skip this whole section.

I saw this movie called ABCs of Death. It's a collection of five-minute horror movies. One of them is about this secret game.

Basically, a bunch of people in masks gather to watch two guys are strapped to a chair. The guys in the chairs have a masturbation competition. The guy who finishes last is killed, impaled on a spike that shoots up through the seat of his chair.

They have to pleasure themselves to what is presented in front of them. So in the movie, this one guy keeps winning, and each time the thing he has to watch is more and more messed up. The woman running the whole competition takes a liking to the guy, and helps him get through it by titillating him.

I had to turn it off because it got way too horrible for me, but I thought the idea was awesome. I had already established that the daughter of my Donald Trump NPC was a crazy, spoiled lady, so I figured she'd be perfect to run this competition.

I added another layer to it, by having her dress up in a Lady of Pain costume, which is exactly the kind of thing that the actual Lady of Pain will kill you for.

So basically, my idea was to invite the heroes to this secret party, and see what they did with it.

Now, when it comes to D&D, Jessie like to dive right in. As soon as she saw the set-up of this competition, even before the rules had been explained, she signed up!

You should have seen her face once Bidam was strapped into the chair and the rules were explained. Theran was up on a balcony, frantically using magic to help Bidam survive each round (Bidam had to make Constitution checks). Bidam's poor rivals were impaled and killed over and over.

Gronard Flumph's daughter, Srivlanka Flumph, took a liking to Bidam and also helped him as the competition wore on.

Bidam finally lost. Flumph walked over to his chair to activate the impaling spear. Theran fired off a spell at Bidam's chair, freeing him. Theran jumped down, took out a dude, untied Bidam and they fled as the party-goers howled with rage.

Sensory Stones

Bidam had his revenge. Bidam is a member of the Sensates. He can "record" his memories in a sensory stone, which is kept in the Sensates sprawling headqarters. Lots of people come there to experience the stones, it's sort of like watching tv .

Bidam put his memories of that entire competition in a stone, hoping people would recognize that it was Srivlanka Flumph and see her dressed up... mocking... the Lady of Pain. Bidam even made sure to have the stone featured prominently on a pedestal so as many people as possible would use it.

Bidam's plan worked. Srivlanka fled Sigil to the gate town of Tradegate.

But during this downtime, Srivlanka wanted revenge. She hired an Ettin bounty hunter to kidnap the heroes and to bring them to Tradegate. She wanted to use them as "living furniture".

The Ettin, named Killigan, sent a message to the heroes through planescape's most popular tout, Kylie. Killigan knew Flumph was a bad person, so he wasn't overly enthusiastic about this job. He held up a sack and told them to get in. The heroes decided to pay him off, and they did.

With all that out of the way, we got into this adventure, which was extremely short.

Daniphe

The heroes were approached by a silver-haired woman named Daniphe. She told the heroes that her sister was crazy, and that she was going to spread a plague in an area conveniently near the temple.

This is a lie. Daniphe is trying to get the heroes to spread this rumor so there will be chaos near the temple. This way, Daniphe and her fellow members of the Sign of One can get inside the temple under the cover of chaos.

Daniphe is a member of the Sign of One. The Athar has a blockade up around the temple.

Daniphe is also a foxwoman with an innate charm ability.

This is an exhausting amount of details for yours truly to keep track of. I barely kept it straight. It's also extremely difficult to run someone who innately charms people. Theran was extremely suspicious of her, trying to figure out what type of elf she was.

Our heroes go around with Daniphe, questioning people about this fictional plague-bearing sister. People freak out and a riot breaks out at the temple. The Athar guards blame the heroes and try to arrest them. Daniphe sneaks away, meets her friends, and they rush the temple.

Each round of this battle with the Athar, I added a chaotic element that got in the way of the battle - NPCs stumbling around in the crowd, trying to get to safety.

• A guy with a tray of urine samples.
• Dustmen with a cart full of dead bodies (the Dustmen collect the dead bodies in Sigil).
• A dabus holding a pair of hedge clippers.

The adventurers defeated the guards. They saw Daniphe and her Signers run - they had failed to get into the temple.

Stalemate

That leads us to the meat of the adventure. The Signers are holed up in a tavern - The Ubiquitous Wayfarer. The Athar are outside, demanding they come out. There are a bunch of innocent bar patrons in there.

So it's kind of an open situation, here. This standoff could be resolved in many ways. The patrons might become hostages. What would the heroes do?

Well, my group snuck in through the cellar and killed every single member of the Sign of One, especially the foxwoman. A few tried to flee through the windows and the Athar cut them down.

Problem solved!

I'm not sure I really get why this whole secondary adventure is even in this book. Maybe it will make more sense when I run the final part.

This chapter is where Dead Gods really starts to kick into gear. I really like this and the next few adventures. I feel like up until now, the slow burn was too slow.

The Heroes

(Jessie) Bidam - Platinum-Scaled  Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Drow Wizard

Downtime

The adventurers had gone back to their business following the altercation with the Sign of One at the Ubiquitous Wayfarer. Word was spreading that major entities were being slain. This included Bwimb, Maanzecorian the mind flayer god, and even the greek god Apollo!

During the downtime, the adventurers learned that their NPC friends Alamandra the githzerai and Stewart Seven Fingers were planning on getting married. I'm probably going to have the githyanki attack during that scene, as all the major Sigil githzerai will all be in one place.

Bidam and Theran received a note from Veridis Mov, ruler of Crux. They were having more problems and were requesting the aid of the PCs.

The adventurers decided to go check it out, and were told about a shortcut to Crux. They had to go visit someone called "The Queen" to find out what it was.

The Queen

This is a weird part of the adventure. "Vlrc" The Queen is a formian (ant-person) who lives in a clock tower. She's got elaborate flavor text and there's even a painting devoted to her in the book. All she does is tell them of the shortcut. No encounter, nothing. Weird, right?

So this shortcut involves going through a portal to a mortal world called Ranais. The heroes will need to walk 15 miles through this world, and they'll come upon a portal to Crux. The heroes went through.

Ranais

Ranais is really cool. It's a world in ruins. The heroes appear in the remains of a city that was once full of people who worshiped gods of death. While the adventure says that the DM should keep them faceless (to avoid spoiling the big bad guy), I decided to go ahead and let it be spoiled. Why not now?

So as the adventurers followed the road through the city, they came upon statues and mosaics relating to:

• The Raven Queen: Everyone loves the Raven Queen. It's a scientific fact.
• Vorkhesis, Master of Fate: The Raven Queen's son, a criminally under-utilized NPC
• Zahar, General of the Raven Knights: This is actually a former PC from my 4e campaign. He ended up with the Shadowfell blade in Nightwyrm fortress and has gone on to become the Raven Queen's right hand man and perhaps even her lover..!
• Orcus: Yep! The big bad guy!

Along the journey, the heroes heard wailing. They were being stalked by wraiths! These wraiths called themselves The Lovelost. They led the heroes to a special spot in the city and explained that the mysterious bad guy had ruined their world and that he was one who "lived again".

Orcus

Art Commission from my last campaign - Orcus in center.

My players sat there and tried to piece together how Orcus did this. See, in my last campaign, their old characters fought Orcus godzilla-sized and chucked him into a massive sphere of annihilation. They didn't understand how he could be reborn after that.

They don't realize that they made a fateful oversight during that battle - they didn't grab/destroy the wand of orcus. They were too busy doing really unspeakable things to this evil imp who'd been teasing them for the latter half of the campaign. To be fair, the imp was trying to kill the Queen of their city.

The Backstory of Dead Gods

In this adventure, the official version of things goes like this. The drow goddess Kiaransalee killed Orcus, who had gotten bloated and lazy. Orcus' servant Acererak raised Orcus as an undead god/lich. Orcus was calling himself in his new form "Tenebrous". He needs to find his wand to become his old self again and regain his status as a god/demon lord.

Obviously my version will be different, but I'm going to try to stay as true to this adventure as possible.  In my campaign's continuity, the 4e Orcus storyline (E1-E3, where Orcus tries to kill the Raven Queen) happens before the 2e storyline. How weird is that? And I do intend someday to run the 3e Savage Tide finale, where Orcus and Demogorgon face off. 

The Temple

After a bit of concerned discussion, the adventurers decided to poke around the city. They came upon an active temple of Orcus. There were cultists in purple robes, and black reeking death emanated from the interior.

This is partly an illusion created by the visages. There's no cultists or reeking death. Instead, there's a ruined temple that contains a portal to Orcus' secret lair on the Negative Material Plane! But to get there, the heroes need to brave the illusion, which is really messed up. Check this out:

Wow, right? I did my duty to blare out every warning I could, and the players decided to leave this place be for now. They'll be back. They have to go through this portal in the next chapter.

The heroes found the portal to Crux and went through. It turned out more visages were wreaking havoc on the town. In fact, as the ruler told the heroes about this, a person knocked at the door. My clever players immediately suspected that the lady at the door was a visage, and they jumped her! They were right.

The Salience

 They learned that the visages were meeting with a messenger on the World Tree in two days. The heroes decided to go there and spy on them, to see what they could learn. Along the way, they ran into some ratatosks. The ratatosks (squirrel-people) are friendly with the heroes and decided to accompany them. So 12 ratatosks joined the party.I made names for them, each meant to be stupider than the last. Remember, their leader's name in the module is Glittereye. The names: Nutterchip, Fluffyface, Twitchycheek and Raspytaint.

They made it to the meeting point a day before the meeting. The location was a place called The Salience, formerly the net of giant eagles. The place had wooden eagle statues and it was basically a big bowl sunk into the wood of the tree. The heroes were able to befriend a giant eagle, who agreed to help if things got dangerous. Theran paid the eagle with a javelin of lightning.

The next day, 8 visages showed up. They met with a mist mephit. It told them that there was a prisoner held in Tcian Sumere, in "The Bottom of the Multiverse", among other things. Then, the visages killed the mephit, declaring "None may know the master's secrets". The heroes fired off spells, rolling ridiculously high and just pummeling the crap out of the visages. It was a slaughter with the aid of the ratatosks.

Bidam and Theran returned to Crux. They learned that "The Bottom of the Multiverse" was slang for the Negative Material Plane. They made plans to go back to that ruined temple in Ranais....

I knew tonight's game would be tricky. I wanted us to get through this whole chapter in one sitting, but as written this dungeon has a lot of combat.

I really liked this dungeon, so I decided not to change much. We got about halfway through it.

This place is called Tcian Sumere, and it is located in the Negative Material Plane. This plane has a few environmental properties that made the PCs lives more difficult:

• There was no gravity in the dungeon
• All healing effects, both natural and magic, were cut in half
• The undead here innately sense the living. Living beings actually glow here.

The Heroes

(Jessie) Bidam - Platinum-Scaled  Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Drow Wizard

The adventurers came home from Crux, having learned that the mysterious bad guy had some kind of base in the Negative Material plane. They knew they could get to this place through a portal in the weird, deadly temple on the dead world of Ranais.

But first, we went through some quick downtime stuff in the festhall.

• Their modron ally Trictaculus came up with a way to make more money by offering microtransactions during client visits with their prostitutes (like a free to play game, but more sweaty).
• A dabus showed up and began hammering nails in weird places (this is foreshadowing for an idea I had, which will kick in at the end of Dead Gods)
• An adventurer asked to join the heroes. She's an NPC bard, wearing all white. Her features were concealed with a hood and a mask. The heroes took her in, not realizing this was an NPC with an agenda!

The adventurers took the portal to Ranais. They found the temple. Remember, this is the royally whacked-out place where, if you fail your save, you just die if you go in the building.

But the mysterious bard, Skara Brae (a name I took from Ultima), had a bardic power called countercharm that gave the heroes advantage when they made their saves.

The visages scattered. Theran used his magic to discern the key to the portal, and in they went.

They found themselves hovering (no gravity) in a circular room with four exits. Here is the map to the dungeon:

Tcian Sumere

Each room is a globe. The "hallways" are tunnels. Once you enter a tunnel, you are sucked through, launched into the next room.

It was here in this first room ("A", in the center of the map) that "Skara Brae" threw off her mask and laughed. She was actually Srivanka Flumph, the rich daughter of Gronard Flumph. The heroes had basically run her out of Sigil in a previous session. Now, she explained, they were going to record a new sensory stone of her being a hero.

Bidam and Theran seriously discussed killing her right there in room "A". Srivlanka was filthy rich. She told the heroes if they killed her, she had an ally in Tradegate ready to cast wish to bring her back to life.

There was more, though, that the heroes didn't learn. Srivanka is with the heroes so she can record a sensory stone of her own, revealing to the people of Sigil that the adventurers are scum. So she is going through this dungeon, behaving like a friend and ally, and is hoping to catch them doing something very bad.

I also put this NPC here because this dungeon is deadly. I loaded her up with healing spells and a bag of holding full of potions of healing. She's a level 7 bard, more or less. She told the heroes she'd been trained at "The Academy for Planar Damsels". I made that place up. I figure somewhere in the planes, there's this place that rich people send their daughters so that they could learn to defend themselves, cast spells, and also learn how to behave in high society.

Guard Posts

A whole bunch of rooms (all of the "1"'s on the map) in this place are exactly the same. There are ghouls floating in zero gravity that turn and attack the adventurers. When they are all slain, their spirits merge into a spectre that also attacks. The bulk of the evening dealt with these rooms.

The heroes didn't take a lot of damage in these battles, but they took a claw swipe here and there. The healing penalty in this place is really nasty, and Flumph was burning through her healing spells very fast.

To speed things along, I had made a player map of the place to help the heroes navigate. I was worried that room after room of ghouls would be frustrating or boring. Also, with all these globular rooms with 5 exits, it would be too easy for them to get lost.

The drawback of giving them an unlabelled map is that as soon as you look at the layout, you know to head toward an edge. The group ended up heading straight down. That makes sense. It did actually lead right to the final rooms.

Sepulchral (Workroom)

So after a few battles with ghouls and their spectral spirits, the heroes came to this room with an operating table and some mummification books. I didn't even realize it until we were playing, but this foreshadows a flesh golem elsewhere in the dungeon very nicely. It is also the place where he turns demons into visages.

The adventurers found a secret tunnel under a table/slab. It lead to... a throne room!

The Master's Chamber

I decided not to use room 12.

There was a throne made of skulls, a pond, a floating chessboard, a weird plant and iron doors. Theran immediately figured correctly that the pond was a scrying pool.

He stirred the waters and saw an image of a prisoner elsewhere in the dungeon. He was a drow glaring at a visage. This drow is really who they are looking for.

The chess board had pieces carved like important NPCs. The throne had a black gem on it. This gem is nasty! The bad guy can see through it, and he can even summon whoever holds it right to him! They made a fateful decision. They gave it to Srivlanka to hold.

They found a map of a place called Pelion, and then Bidam messed with the plant. This plant is nasty. It shoots tendrils into you, puts you into a coma, and slowly sucks the blood right out of your body! It also has a fun name: Tri-Flower Frond.

It attacked Bidam, but the dragonborn made his save and the heroes destroyed the frond.

Srivlanka picked the lock in the iron doors. It lead to a Treasure Vault!

Vault

3rd edition version of The Orcusword from Dragon #359.

In here were a number of things. There were four five-foot tall urns. The heroes assumed that gas or monsters would come out of them if opened, so they left them alone.

A sword was mounted on the wall. Bidam recognized it. It was The Orcusword. Seriously! It's in the adventure! I changed its stats a bit. It is a +3 sword that crackles with lightning. On a critical it does maximum damage. It can cast the spell lightning bolt once per day. Bidam was ecstatic.

In the adventure, it says that The Orcusword is all banged up. If you roll a one with it, it breaks. I changed that. If a one is rolled, I'm just going to narrate some kind of flavor dent. If the sword is subjected to many repeated traumas, then maybe I'll have it break.

Then there was a chest. On the interior lid is a warning: "Claim what's yours, now and forever". In the chest are two slots. Each one holds a wand.

The heroes got excited. Was one of them the wand of orcus?

Theran pulled out a wand. He was given an electric shock as he drew it out, taking 3d6 damage. It was a wand of magic missiles. After a bit of thinking, he figured out the deal with the chest.

In order to take a wand without taking damage, you need to declare that the wand is yours. Literally you had to "claim what's yours". He did so, and pulled out a wand of secrets and took no damage.

The heroes have jumped right to the treasure room, which was unexpected and fun. They hit one more ghoul room, and then we had to stop. We should finish this chapter when we play again in two weeks. 

I should note that I cut out room 12 entirely. It is a weird room that creates a monster double of a hero, and I felt it was too weird and probably more trouble than it was worth. The PC shares a mind between the two bodies, and will go insane in a few months. Worse, if either body dies, the other one goes into a coma for 2d4 weeks.

In this article, I am going to go through the first five issues of Dragon Plus. Or.. Dragon+. I just feel funny typing that. 

When Dragon Plus came out, I had heard it was mostly a "house organ". I tried to check it out, but I couldn't find it for my kindle so I didn't bother. Now I can access it on my laptop, so I decided to dive right in.

Let's go through the first 5 issues and see if we can pull out any useful stuff for our campaigns. I am going to focus on content for the tabletop game. I don't really care about the board games and video games, and from what I can tell, the content focusing on that stuff is pretty superfluous anyway.

Issue 1

Mighty Chris Perkins tells us what Dragon Plus is:

"Dragon+ is a free app that provides articles and interviews on our current D&D storyline and its related products, as well as glimpses of future storylines."

Elemental Evil: There's a bunch of stuff about Elemental Evil. There's a section where you can click on the artifacts (Drown, Windvane and etc). But when I clicked on them, nothing happened. Every issue is like that on my laptop. Stuff acts like I can click on it, but nothing happens.

Further down in this elemental evil article, there's an image gallery that does work, and it provides really great art from Princes of the Apocalypse. I had a heck of a time finding the elemental evil art online back when I was writing about PoTA. This would have been very useful.

Profile: Goliaths: This article gives player details for one of my favorite PC races, the goliath. It has a fantastic piece of art of a female goliath. This is easily the best piece of art depicting a female goliath. The artists had a lot of trouble with them in 4e, for whatever reason.

Know your Enemy: Black Dragons: We get details on a dragon living in the Dessarin Valley. Nurvureem is a black shadow dragon who breathes necrotic energy, doing 12d8 damage! Yikes.

This is a weird article, also detailing a black dragon from the board game (using board game stats) and a dragon from the Neverwinter MMO that has over 3 million hit points. It is very jarring to look at when you're in a tabletop mindset. My brain exploded a little.

Temple of Elemental Evil: We close out the issue with stories from people who played through the original Temple of Elemental Evil. Almost all of the stories are written by people from a site called dungeonbastard.com. They're all really short anecdotes. I think whoever put this together should have included the story about Rob Kuntz tearing through the temple when Gary Gygax ran it for him.

I am guessing there's a million better stories out there on the internet. I think that they probably should have solicited the broader fanbase on this one.

Issue 2


Pretty cool cover, right? I am old, so I prefer painted covers of more traditional stuff. But I understand things are simply different now, and that we are in this weird time where magazines as we knew them are dead, and so we're trying to figure out what is the best way to approach things.

I think that this cover image would appeal to people who know nothing about Dungeons & Dragons, so that makes it a good choice. As much as I like Clyde Caldwell, I know that boobs and gems aren't for everyone:

She would make a badass NPC, though, right?

Interview: Ed Greenwood: Ed talks about how he was writing about the Realms in the '60's as a little kid before D&D was invented. The stories featured a hefty conman named Mirt the Moneylander.

Ed talks about his home D&D campaign and says:

“It literally took them 20 years of real-world playing time to rise to an average of ninth level as characters. We quite often spent four-hour play sessions negotiating and exploring, without ever drawing weapons, although both the Venturers and the Knights had their shares of epic dungeon crawls, too."

He also designed the town of Red Larch, which was in Princes of the Apocalypse. I found that place to be really boring. He says that he created far more for it that couldn't fit in the book.

You know, I wish they had put that material in dragon plus. That's something useful to tabletop players and it would have at least drawn me and a few other DMs to check Dragon+ (ugh, I typed it) out a lot sooner.

Issue 3

The cover of this one is a sculpture of Zuggtmoy. In the past, some artists made her look cool, others not so much. This one's pretty good.

This issue is overloaded with video game stuff, mostly for Neverwinter and Sword Coast Legends.

Introducing Rage of Demons: We are told the basic story, which is that a wizard's spell goes wrong in the underdark which creates open portals to the Abyss. Apparently actual demon lords are now stomping through the underdark spreading madness.

We get some cool art. I really don't like how they changed the appearance of orcus. To me, Wayne Reynolds did such an awesome job on the 4e MM cover, why would you change it? Look:

The head of Orcus is now a cow skull. It wasn't broke, so why did they try to fix it? The wand also looks much, much worse.

Sword Coast Adventurers Guide: Steve Kenson talks a bit about this book, which is basically a guide to the Sword Coast. It has some player options. Honestly it is not very thrilling.

Adventurer's League: We get a link to a free download of Harried in Hillsfar, the first Rage of Demons expedition adventure. This right here makes the entire magazine worth it.

I still can't believe they use hand-drawn maps in these expeditions. I don't mean Doug Kovacs hand-drawn maps, I am talking about a map that looks like your DM drew it on a piece of blue graph paper. Take a look at this comparison:

DCC RPG is made by Goodman Games, a tiny little company. Look at how badass that map is. That map is from Glipkerio's Gambit, which was an awesome FREE adventure to those who ran DCC RPG in a store in 2014.

D&D is owned by Hasbro. Is there seriously no budget for Expeditions at all? Shawn Merwin's level one adventures in Expeditions are freaking awesome. They really can't help the guy out by paying an up and coming mapmaker to cook up some maps?

Issue 4

The cover is pretty cool. I hear it has 10 gigs of porn stored on it, too. They are really going to great lengths to create unique covers for this thing. How long can they keep it up?

Winning Races: Duergar: These guys have always been tricky. They often feel very dull. Their section of 4e's Thunderspire Labyrinth almost killed my campaign. But in 5e, their power to enlarge is really cool.

We learn that they were dwarves enslaved by mindflayers who eventually escaped. They are "...indifferent to anything but work..".

They can enlarge themselves at 3rd level, and they can cast invisibility at 5th level. The author is quick to point out that the DM might not allow a duergar PC, and that duergar have sunlight sensitivity (disadvantage to hit during the day!).

We learn a bit about Gracklstugh, the City of Blades. There, the duergar make steel weapons and ride around on spider steeders.

Travel Talk: Dare to Descend: This is a sort of in-character trip into the Underdark. We learn about the faerzress, a type of radiation which creates unusual rock formations and impossible, enormous spaces.

If you remember, in 4e it was explained that there was this hideous entity named Torog, The God That Crawls. Torog created the Underdark by tunneling through the world, oozing blood. I assume Torog is no more in 5e.

Demonomicon of Iggwilv: Belaphoss: Wow. The Demonomicon articles of the Paizo era by James Jacobs were some of my favorite Dragon articles ever. The 4e ones were good, too.

Here, Dragon Plus is actually doing one of the bad guy from the Sword Coast Legends video game!? Part of me resents their hubris. Let's see what we learn:

• He is a balor who wants to become a god.
• He is a lieutenant of Demogorgon and commands a demon army.
• He wields a flaming greataxe in one hand and a fire whip in the other.
• He lives in Demogorgon's plane of Gaping Maw
• He plans on betraying Demogorgon.

You can go mad looking at him. We get a snazzy little chart:

And we get a full stat block! Check out the free .pdf here.

You know what? I was expecting a lot worse. While this certainly doesn't reach the heights of older articles, and Belaphoss is pretty generic, there is nothing wrong with this article at all.

Also, if you're like me and like to make "dad jokes", you could jokingly refer to this guy as "Fella Boss." That frees you up to make a bunch of "Like a Boss" jokes which will certainly make your younger players groan and slap their foreheads (but secretly kind-of like it).

Tavern Tales: We get a link to another free adventure! Shackles of Blood. Again, this alone makes checking Dragon Plus worth it.

Issue 5

The cover has a kind of old school 70's scene involving a dragon and a wizard. The full version, which is shown above, is much, much cooler than the cropped version used for the official cover of this issue.

Community: Insanity of the NPC: Readers submitted NPCs for people to use in Out of the Abyss. The best one is probably Chuff, the insane flumph.

I think that they need to do more of this. They should have DMs send in side quests they used when running Out of the Abyss, fixes for things that didn't work quite right, that kind of thing.

Tavern Tales: Yes, we get another free adventure - The Occupation of Szith Morgane. Awesome.

Sage Advice: Jeremy Crawford answers rule questions. On the wizards site, there's articles like this that just kind of disappear off the front page into the ether. Seems like a smart idea to put that stuff in Dragon+.

One interesting answer Jeremy gave in this is how surprise is supposed to work. Check this out:

1. Bad guys jump out of the woods. The heroes are surprised.
2. Roll initiative like normal.
3. On the PCs turns, they can't move or act.
4. On the bad guys turn, they act normally with benefits of surprise.
5. In round two, surprise is done and we fight like normal.

Also, you can only knock a creature unconscious with a melee attack or spell, not ranged.

Interview: Rainn Wilson: He is Dwight Schrute from The Office. He played D&D when he was younger. He tells a story about how he submitted a monster to TSR and they rejected it. It was a cloud of air leeches. That's pretty awesome. Then, he says 6 months later Dragon magazine had a monster in it - "Oxygen Vipers". They ripped off his idea!

Overall

This thing is free. It is hard to really complain about it, even though we are on the internet and that's what you do on the internet.

I like that Dragon Plus has tons of art and a number of free adventures. Overall it is a pretty breezy, harmless thing. It is ideal for reading while you're going to the bathroom (sorry, but it's true).

What I don't like is that this thing could be so much more. It's so light on real content. I understand that its purpose is to make you aware of new products, but there's not a lot of insight or bonus content. I forget what I read almost instantly. Not only do you not get excited when a new issue comes out, you don't really care.

Check out Dragon+ here.

This is a reference to help Dungeon Masters running Out of the Abyss, the new adventure for the Rage of Demons storyline. Collected here are links, advice and reference material I've dug up from the internet. The point of this is to help DMs prepare to run the adventure. If I can, I will try to do some of your prep work for you.

If you are running this, feel free to email me and let me know anything you noticed that might be worth pointing out to others. I'm sure I've made some mistakes, so be wary.

Official Links

The Out of the Abyss Youtube Trailer
Rage of Demons Story Page - Includes demon lord links 
Art and Map Gallery on the D&D Facebook Page
Downtime: Establishing an Underdark Outpost
Tips on the Madness Mechanics
Adventurers League Treasure Amendments
Out of the Abyss Walkthrough Poster 
History of the Underdark
Map of the Sword Coast, High Resolution
Mike Schley's Out of the Abyss Maps
Jared Blando's Out of the Abyss Maps

Player Links

Adventurers League Rage of Demons Players Guide
Rage of Demons Pregenerated Characters 
Character Options for Expeditions Players in the Adventurers League
Tiefling Options and Demon-Summoning Spells
New Ranger and Warlock Options

Rage of Demons Expeditions Adventures

Harried in Hillsfar
Shackles of Blood
The Occupation of Szith Morgane

Other Links

Dungeons Master Out of the Abyss Session Recaps 
Celtavian's Session Recaps - Tons of handy notes
Bookrat's Session Recaps - Lots of useful stat blocks
Sword Coast Junkie Session Recaps
EnWorld Thread of NPC Fates - Lots of fun stories about what happened to the prison NPCs
A Guide to the Drow

Adventure Summary


You will be shocked to see that this book has no adventure summary. I cooked two up for you, one short, and one more detailed:

Short Adventure Summary: The heroes are imprisoned by the drow. They escape and try to find a way to the surface world. As they travel, they see that demon lords have somehow come to the underdark. Upon reaching the surface world, King Bruenor of Gauntlgrym asks the group to go back down and try to deal with the demon lords.

The heroes go back down, find a magic library and meet a drow named Vizeran. He has a plan: make a talisman that can summon the demon lords to a single spot in the underdark, and let them kill each other. This will banish their essences back to the Abyss. The heroes will have to kill off the last demon lord standing.

Detailed Summary:

1. The heroes start off as prisoners of the drow, along with various NPCs.
2. The group breaks out with the NPCs and tries to find a way out of the underdark. The drow pursue them the entire way. They may end up in:
3. Sloobludop - Where kuo toa worship Demogorgon.
4. Gracklstugh - Where duergar have problems with a derro faction.
5. Neverlight Grove - Where Zuggtmoy has tainted the myconids.
6. Blingdenstone - Where an agent of Juiblex is causing problems.
7. The DM decides where the group can find an exit out of the underdark. They should be 7th level when leaving.
8. The drow have a final showdown with the group as they head through the exit tunnel.
9. 3 months of resting. The group should be level 8 when heading to Gauntlgrym.
10. The group either seeks out or is summoned to Gauntlgrym, home of the dwarves.
11. The group takes a small army of NPCs down to the underdark to try to find a solution to the demon lord problem.
12. They go to Mantol-Derith and get a magic ring from a Zhent agent. The ring shows the way to Gravenhollow. The heroes should be 10th level by this point. The group has the chance to shatter a gem and banish Fraz-Urb'luu.
13. They use the ring to get to Gravenhollow, a magic library that can help them figure out what to do about the demonic incursion.
14. In Gravenhollow, the heroes learn that all of this may have been caused by a wizard named Gromph Baenre of Menzoberranzan. They meet a wizard named Vizeran DeVir who invites the group to his tower.
15. The group meets with Vizeran in his tower. If the group can get ingredients to create a talisman, he can cast a ritual that will bring all the demon lords together so they can kill each other. With their physical forms destroyed, their essences will return to the Abyss.
16. The Wormwrithings is where the group can obtain some ingredients. They can also learn about the maze engine here.
17. The Labyrinth contains more ingredients and an encounter with Yeenoghu. The group might use a device called the Maze Engine to banish Yeenoghu and Baphomet.
18. The heroes are called on to aid Araumycos (chapter 16). The group can get an elusive ingredient (timmasks) for the ritual here. The group might banish Zuggtmoy and Juiblex.
19. The group goes to Menzoberranzan to get Gromph's grimoire.
20. The heroes bring the ingredients to Vizeran. He makes the dark heart talisman.
21. Now the heroes need to place the dark heart somewhere. Vizeran casts the ritual from his home tower. The demon lords are summoned to the dark heart. They slaughter each other...
22. ..Except for one. The adventurers have to take down the last demon lord standing.

What Level Should the Heroes Be? Basically, the group should gain a level in each chapter except the two travel chapters (2 and 10). The book gives vague guidelines. The heroes should be level 7 when they escape the underdark, and they should be level 15 when fighting Demogorgon in the final chapter.

Place the Magic Sword Somewhere: In the back of the book, there are details on this sword called Dawnbringer (page 222). I had a hard time finding where it was in the adventure. It's on page 38, in a sarcophagus in the Lost Tomb of Khaem. If you decide not to run the tomb, you should place this sword somewhere else. They're pretty stingy with treasure in this adventure, though some people disagree with me on that.

Appendix A: Modifying Backgrounds


I am putting this in the beginning of this guide, because you should deal with this ideally before the campaign even starts. I am going to list each bond (from page 221) and then briefly note how it plays into the adventure:

1. Friend of the Kuo-Toa: You might want to say that the hero made friends with Ploopploopeen (page 44). He can become an ally of the group in chapter 3.
2. Melded with the Myconids: The hero might have met Basidia (page 85), who is a potential ally in chapter 5 or even visited Araumycos (page 210), the hive-mind/place/fungus thing in chapter 16. In fact, it might be cool to say that the hero actually bonded with Araumycos, went to the astral plane and saw Araumycos' astral form - a fungus skull the size of a mountain (212).
3. Morista Malkin: She's on page 128. Morista doesn't have much of a role in this adventure. She gives the group giant lizard mounts and some NPC allies.
4. Davra Jassur: She's on page 129. Davra is a Zhentarim agent who has a small role in this adventure. She has goggles of night and dust of disappearance.
5. Library Dream: This dream refers to Gravenhollow (page 152), a magic library run by stone giants. You might want to say that the hero is able to catch glimpses of the future like Ustova, the Keeper of the Future (page 152). Perhaps she can train this PC and enhance their precognitive abilities. Or maybe the PC could summon a spirit echo now and then (page 153).
6. Kazook Pickshine: Kazook (page 103) has a small role in this adventure. He owns a merchant stall in Blingdenstone. He likes to blow things up with his alchemical concoctions.
7. Feldrun Clan: You should probably establish ties to Eldeth Feldrun (page 6), an NPC that the heroes start the adventure off with. Gauntlgrym's role in this adventure is mostly as a place to rest. It's the stopping point between the two halves of the adventure. The biggest upside of taking this background is that it might make King Bruenor's summons a little less ham-fisted.
8. Ghazrim DuLoc: Ghazrim (page 140) has the ring that the group needs to find Gravenhollow. He is part of a very chaotic battle in Mantol-Derith and is likely to die in it.
9. My Family is Imprisoned: Blingdenstone (page 95) was raided by the drow years ago, so that might make a good location for the past abduction. The family could be prisoners in Gracklstugh (page 57) or Menzoberranzan (maybe family members are part of the slave parade on page 201).
10. Gauntlgrym: This is similar to the Feldrun clan background. Gauntlgrym ultimately plays a small role in this adventure. Maybe the hero has a magic item made in the Great Forge (page 123) and would like to repair the severed conduits (perhaps the PC could learn how to do this in Gravenhollow).

Chapter 1: Prisoners of the Drow

Sarith, drow outcast

This whole campaign starts off with the heroes having been captured. You should let your players know this ahead of time, as this kind of thing can cause problems with some players. The heroes were knocked out with drow poison, collared and shackled and are going to be sold as slaves or "entertainment" in drow cities.

Restrained: The slave collars and manacles put the heroes in the restrained condition. They have normal speed.


The Dire Situation: There's a lot of little things to keep straight for the opening:

• The heroes have no equipment or spell components  
• You might want to tell your players to keep a spot open on their character sheets to track their madness score (see page 21) .
• Each PC has been a prisoner in Velkenvelve for d10 days.
• Roll on the chart on page 5 to see if a PC has a scavenged item (unless you decide to have the characters steal these items during forced labor).
• Slipping out of the manacles is a DC 20 DEX check, breaking them a DC 20 STR check. 
• They are fed once per day - a thin mushroom broth in a clay bowl. 
• The adventurers are being held in area 11, the slave pen (page 15). 
• Magical Wards: Spells cast in the pen have no effect. Bad guys can cast spells into the pen from the outside.
• Picking the lock with makeshift tools is a DC 20 DEX check. The PC also has to make a DEX (Stealth) check vs the drow elite warrior's (in area 10) passive Wisdom, which is 14 (Monster Manual page 128) 
• Spellcasters might have dreams foreshadowing the madness/demon threat (see page 9)
• If the PCs annoy the drow while in their slave pen, they're hit with a ray of sickness.

The Other Prisoners: The NPCs in the pen with the heroes are really cool. I'd recommend having Ront the orc bully pick on Stool, the myconid sprout. This will be a nice way for a PC to stick up for Stool and begin to roleplay and portray their character. Or who knows, maybe the adventurers will want to bully Stool, too. You never know what will happen, that's the fun of D&D. But this is a nice place to have the players introduce their character.

Telepathy: The most important thing to remember is that Stool will probably use his rapport spores to allow everyone to communicate telepathically. This is extremely helpful when planning an escape.

The Prisoners May Be With The Party For A Long Time: The adventure warns us that many of these NPCs may accompany the heroes for a long time in this campaign. That means you will need to be very familiar with them. You're gonna need a cheat sheet. So let's do this thing:

Buppido

All of their profiles are on page 6-8 in Out of the Abyss. These stats assume they are not wearing armor.

Buppido (Derro, Out of the Abyss page 224): AC 12 HP 13 +2 1(d4-1) or trip target DC 9 STR check or fall prone.

• Advantage on saves vs spells, advantage on saves vs charm/frighten
• Talkative and cunning, he secretly thinks he's an insane derro god named Diinkaranzan. After the group escapes, he wants to kill the heroes one by one. Wants to go to Gracklstugh.

Prince Derendil (Quaggoth, MM 256) AC 13 HP 45 +5/+5 6 (d6+3)

• When he has 10 HP or less, +7 (2d6) damage and advantage to hit
• Immune poison, darkvision 120, climb 30
• Thinks he is a cursed elf prince, speaks elven. He's being deluded by Fraz'Urbluu. He goes into a violent rage both in times of stress, and when someone grills him on his story.

Eldeth Feldrun (Dwarf, Scout stats MM 349) AC 12 HP 16 +4/+4 5(d6+2)

• Advantage on Wis (Perception) checks
• She is defiant and proud, and may die before getting home. If so, she asks the heroes to bring her shield and warhammer back to Gauntlgrym, her home.

Jimjar (deep gnome, MM 164) AC 12 HP 15 +4 6(d8+2)

• Advantage on Stealth in rocky terrain, adv on INT/WIS/CHA saves vs magic
• Can cast spells, DC 11. At will: Nondetection (self only). Once per day: Blindness/Deafness, Blur, Disguise Self.
• Has a gambling problem. Constantly makes wagers. Loves money. Can guide the party to Blingdenstone.
• Check out the sidebar on page 217. Jimjar might be a god in disguise! It's up to you, but if he is, you can drop clues from the very beginning instead of revealing it all the way at the end of the adventure.

Ront (Orc, MM 246) AC 11 HP 15 +5 9(d12+3)

• Bonus action: Move up to its speed toward a hostile creature it can see.
• A bully. Hates Eldeth. Fled from a battle with dwarves and thinks his god, Gruumsh, is punishing him.

Sarith Kzekarit (Drow, MM 128) AC 12 HP 13 +4 5 (d6+2)

• Adv on saves vs. charm, can't be put to sleep.
• Casts spells, DC 11. At will: Dancing Lights. Once Per Day: Darkness, Faerie Fire.
• Accused of murder, doesn't remember if he did it or not. Doesn't know that Zuggtmoy's spores are infecting his brain and are the source of his dilemma. Wants to go to Neverlight Grove. Knows the Underdark well.

Shuushar the Awakened (Kuo Toa, MM 199) AC 11 HP 18 +3 3(d4+1)

• Breathes in air and water, sense any creature within 30 even if they are invisible/ethereal, Adv to escape a grapple.
• Hermit and mystic. Calm and peaceful. A total pacifist, he won't fight or even defend himself. Wants to share his enlightenment with the kuo-toa of Sloobludop.

Stool (Myconid MM 230) AC 10 HP 7 +1 1(d4-1) Speed 10 feet

• Can let out distress spores, all myconids within 240 feet can sense its pain.
• 3 times per day: Rapport Spores 10 foot radius. Affected creatures can communicate telepathically with each other while within 30 feet. This lasts for one hour.
• Wants to return to Neverlight Grove but not sure how to get there. Might become attached to a character like an enthusiastic younger sibling.

Topsy and Turvy (Deep gnome/wererats MM 209)
Deep Gnome stats: AC 12 HP 15 +4 6(d8+2)
Wererat Stats:  AC 12 HP 33 +4 4(d4+2) & DC 11 CON save or be cursed with lycanthropy.

• Adv on WIS (percep) due to enhanced sense of smell, can use an action to polymorph into giant rat or rat/humanoid hybrid. Stats are the same in each form except for size.
• Topsy is female and does all the talking. Turvy is her brother, and mumbles darkly. They don't want anyone to know that they are wererats. They were recently infected with the curse of lycanthropy. They don't want to go back to Blingdenstone, and will likely abandon the group at some point.

Jobs: The prisoners are divided into 3 groups and put to work for a third of the day, supervised by quaggoths. You are going to have to decide if your heroes are put in the same group, or set apart.

You'll also need to come up with what happens during their menial labor. You might want to have your heroes quietly steal the items from the list on page 5. You're going to run into situations where the heroes in theory will have the opportunity to acquire items outside of that list. For example, if they're cooking a meal, they might  have knives. The quaggoths will be watching them, but you can bet your PCs will be thinking of anything they can to slip a knife in their boot or.. wherever.

Here's the tasks:

• Fill and Haul Water Barrels: See page 14, area 9.
• Operate the Lift: This is on page 12, area 5.
• Clean Area of the Outpost: The place that makes most sense for this would be the barracks on page 11, area 2.
• Empty Chamber Pots: Waste is dumped into the pool in area 14, page 15. There is a very aggressive grey ooze in the pool, which makes for a lot of fun possibilities. Maybe the adventurers notice it somehow, and are able to trick their overseers into getting to close to the pool.
• Food preparation and service: This would be in area 3 on page 11. The heroes could be in charge of serving 4 drow who are playing cards. The drow would probably yell at the heroes for any infraction. You could make a skill challenge out of preparing a delicious meal. Your menu might include a florescent fungus salad, cave jelly, roasted deep beetles and a toadstool steak.
• Wash Dishes: I think this would be in the main hall, which is area 3 on page 11.
• Laundry: I guess to do laundry, you could hold garments under the waterfall at area 9. Then, maybe there's a few spidersilk lines where the clothes can be hung to dry.  The idea of the heroes handling the dirty underwear of the drow is quite amusing.

Stealing Stuff: Requires a DEX (sleight of hand) check vs. a guard's passive Wisdom (perception) score. If the hero fails, they'll have to hand it over or possibly be killed.

Where is Our Stuff? The gear of the heroes is in Ilvara's quarters (area 7, page 12). It's in the locked chest.

Gearless Start: The DM also has the option of just saying the gear is gone and having the heroes make do with whatever they can scavenge. If you want to do this, run it by your players and make sure they're cool with it before you start playing! A spellcaster without a spellbook, that's pretty rough at 1st level.

The Main Bad Guys: Here's a quick rundown of the bad guys. There's a total of 19 drow, 12 quaggoths and 6 giant spiders. There are four important drow:

• Ilvara Mizzrym: She is the commander and a priestess. She hates this job. She has taken Shoor as her lover, but it's nothing serious. She is WAY too powerful for the PCs to fight, with an AC 16 HP 71 , 2 attacks each doing 5+17 points of damage and she can cast spells up to level 5.
• Asha Vandree: Asha is Ilvara's apprentice. Asha is no fan of Ilvara, and is quietly antagonizing Jorlan to try to get him to take out Ilvara.
• Shoor Vandree: Young and arrogant. Ilvara's lover who lords it over Jorlan. He has a wand of viscid globs.
• Jorlan Duskryn: A black ooze scarred his face and hand. Ilvara dumped him. Jorlan now hates Ilvara and Shoor. Because of his injury, he has disadvantage to hit, on DEX checks and DEX saves.

Velkynvelve side view

Velkynvelve

Mind Flayer Tadpole

Trinkets: There are a bunch of areas with chests, each of which has d4 trinkets. I cooked up some drow-centric trinkets. If you can, you should place them in chests prior to running the game, as rolling right there at the table is a big time-waster:

1. A diary written in elvish, gives clues as to what it is like in Menzoberranzan.
2. A vest with 100 tiny pockets (sized for vials of poison).
3. An extremely detailed and well-done sketch of Ilvara Mizzrym, obviously done by someone who is infatuated with her.
4. An old, ornate key that fits a door in an apartment in the section of Menzoberranzan called "Lolth's Web" (See West Wall page 202)
5. A nightcap that, when worn, gives you dreams of spiders treating you like their best buddy and Lolth singing your praises.
6. A sheet of parchment partially detailing a schematic of a drow crawler chest (a treasure chest with spider legs, controlled by a magic ring).
7. A living mindflayer tadpole (this is from Dragon+ issue 3, which has a list of underdark spell components). This tadpole is not mature enough to attempt ceremorphosis (entering a humanoid's ear and burrowing into their brain), so for a few years it remains a harmless creature swimming around in a jar of elder brain fluid. It may need to eat pieces of brain on occasion.
8. A bottle of fungus wine.
9. Drow incense that, when inhaled, causes hallucinations and euphoria for d4 hours.
10. A tiny glob of silvery goo called quintessence (created by mind flayers). There's enough of it to coat a finger or coin, and forever protect it from the ravages of time.

Ways to Escape: These are on page 16. The adventure has a few suggestions on how the heroes bust out:

• Jorlan offers to unlock their door. Jorlan is angry that Ilvara cast him aside because of his disfigurement and is looking to embarrass her.
• Demons attack. This is very cool. It might work out really well if a few heroes are doing forced labor while other members of the party are trapped in the slave pen. The heroes can free their friends and flee together.

There are three escape tunnels to choose from. Check out the chart on page 18 for travel times. The map is confusing, but here is how the journey goes as far as I can tell:

1. North Passage: This leads to Menzoberranzan (26 days away), a place the NPC prisoners don't want to go to. Check out page 149 if the heroes go this way. As they get within a few days of the city, an NPC spy (and member of the Lords' Alliance) named Khalessa warns the group not to go there.
2. West Passage: This leads to Darklake.
3. South Passage: This leads to Gracklstugh, which is 28 days away.

Chapter 2: Into Darkness

Velkynvelve is right above Araumycos

Now What? Here's the deal. For the next half of the book, the heroes wander the Underdark, looking for a way out. The adventure encourages you to have an exit in Blingdenstone, after "steering" the group to the other locales. There is no set exit point! It is entirely up to you how and when they exit. The book even suggests using a magic portal on page 117.

Read Up on the Drow Pursuit: The entire time, the drow pursue the group as detailed on page 24. Check out the Drow Chase stuff on page 118! It should be implemented right away. Keep in mind on the journey, if the heroes do something that slows them down, the drow scouts will catch up with them.

Madness Rules: These are detailed on page 21. You'll need to have page 259 of the DMG handy, too. When a PC fails a madness check (from being in the faerzress or laying eyes on a demon lord, etc.), they permanently gain a madness level.

"If a creature with level 3 madness fails a madness saving throw, its madness level becomes 1. In this way, characters can potentially accumulate multiple forms of madness."

A greater restoration spell will cure indefinite madness and reset your level to 0.

Just So You Know: Once the heroes escape the Underdark, they meet with the dwarf king of Gauntgrym. He's worried about the demon lords running around. He asks the heroes to go back down to find out more in a place called Gravenhollow, where great knowledge is kept.

Foraging: This is on page 111 of the DMG. The party can forage while traveling at a normal pace. Don't forget the NPCs need to eat too, and they can also forage. Check out page 22 of Out of The Abyss for a great list of edible fungi.

You might even want to roll to see which type of fungus is found during foraging, as some also give water! Match this up with the material on page 22. Roll a d6:

1. Barrelstalk
2. Ripplebark
3. Trillimac
4. Waterorb
5. Zurkhwood
6. Giant, edible, cave grubs?

Surviving Without Food and Water: Check out page 185 of the Players Handbook. Each character needs a pound of food and a gallon of water each day.

Daily Outline: This is basically what you do each day:

• Roll to see if the group gets lost.
• Roll for random encounter (page 25). Roll a d20. 14 or higher is a random encounter.
• Make foraging rolls.
• Did anything happen that would cause the drow to catch up?
• Make Camp. Roll for a random encounter again.

Plan Out the Journey: I suggest you make yourself a little cheat sheet and map out the journey in advance, so you're not sitting there at the table rolling a million dice and looking up stats constantly. There's so much material here, it's easy to forget to include it when you're juggling 50 different things.

What I'd do is make a list of things that happen each day. Let's say that the heroes are taking the tunnel from Velkynvelve to Sloobludop. That's 8 days away. Keep in mind that the heroes will likely get lost, which will add days to their travel.

What follows is an outline just to give you an idea of how this kind of thing can be organized and run. I pre-rolled the encounters, and only ended up with two. So I decided to use one of the mini-dungeons to fill out the trip a bit. Here's the first 7 days:

Day 1:

• As the group delves into the Underdark, Prince Derendil speaks of his great elven kingdom. His story has some inconsistent elements. He claims the elf king has a great curly mustache.
• Stool is scared and sticks to his favorite PC very closely. The group finds some Tongues of Madness (page 23) growing on a wall.
• Toward the end of the day, there's a rockfall. DC 12 DEX save, 10 damage on a fail. Those who are buried take d6 per turn until they are dug out. A carrion crawler attacks, attracted by the commotion.

Day 2:

• Jimjar bets a PC that he can find more food when foraging on this day. He gambles rations of food and water.
• The group enters tunnels suffused with faerzress, weird dim light tainted by the demon lords. When a spell is cast, the caster has a 1 in 20 chance of a wild surge. The faerzress distresses Shuushar greatly.Remember that because the heroes are spending more than 8 hours in the faerzress, they will need to make madness checks.

Day 3:

• The tunnel becomes so thin that the group must travel single file. The walls are lined with Ormu (page 23), shedding dim green light.
• Ront the orc can't stand the close quarters and begins berating the group leader for bringing them this way.
• During the night, a PC notices Topsy and Turvy nervously whispering to each other.

The Silken Paths

Day 4:

• Eldeth flirts with a PC. 
• The group comes upon The Silken Paths (page 31). It's a network of spiderwebs crisscrossing a 500 feet deep chasm. The group is going to have to cross it to continue on their journey. There's a number of encounters:

1. Goblin webrunners Yuk Yuk and Spiderbait offer to be guides for 2 gp.
2. Giant spiders messing with a cocoon that has a still-living halfling named Fargas Rumblefoot trapped inside.
3. They meet a spectator who warns the group that 'demons are rising in the dark'.
4. There's a chest stuck in the webbing! It turns out to be a mimic. During the battle, a web strand breaks under a hero's feet. DC 15 DEX save fail = fall d10 x 10 feet and feet entangled in webs and restrained. 

Day 5:

• The tunnel the heroes are in clearly slopes downward, causing great dismay. The tunnel is lined with patches of Nilhogg's nose (page 23).
• Shuushar speaks of pacifism and enlightenment. He rambles on a bit about Sloobludop and someone named "Plooploopleen" (the archpriest the heroes are likely to meet in chapter 3).

Day 6:

• The path becomes a large cavern with massive stalactites. The area is dotted with timmasks (page 23). They find an uprooted timmask and a dead bandit neat it. He was stabbed to death (uprooting the mushroom created a cloud which put the bandit under a confusion spell. He attacked his fellow bandits and was slain).
• While the group is camped for the night, 4 bandits and their leader attack. They are also surface dwellers who are now lost in The Underdark, trying to find Blingdenstone - they heard there's an exit there. The leader has 70 gp in gems and is touched by madness.

Day 7:

• The group travels on a ledge. On one side, it drops off into a void. Buppido becomes sweaty. If he can get a PC away from the group, he will try to shove them over the side and claim it was an accident.

If you plan stuff out like this by rolling in advance, that lets you organize things so they're more coherent. You can also foreshadow events and avoid weird hiccups - many of the random encounters don't really work too well if they occur at night.

The Mini Dungeons: You're meant to drop these in whenever you feel like running them. The Silken Path is really great. The Hook Horror dungeon is not much, but there's some great rules on raising hook horrors. I wrote about hook horrors a while back here.

The Oozing Temple is beyond awesome. You must use it. The Lost Tomb of Khaem is OK. I think some players will completely steer clear of the hook (90% of the time in D&D, when a voice calls out for aid, it's a trap). This is a higher level dungeon, so I would wait a while to use it.

Keep Teleportation Circles in Mind: I'm going to mention this again further along, but I think you should strongly consider the concept of the group finding a teleportation circle in each settlement. A wizard/bard/sorcerer can study it for a minute and memorize the sequence (see the teleportation circle spell in the PH, page 282). In this adventure there is an excessive amount of walking for miles and miles and it is bound to become tedious. Prepare in advance so that once your group hits level 9, they can start teleporting around a bit.

Chapter 3: The Darklake
How Long Does Darklake Travel Take? On the water, the heroes are traveling 1 mile per hour. Assuming there's a few people per raft, that means they can sleep in shifts and thus the raft can travel 24 hours per day.

If you eyeball the Underdark map, you can guesstimate the scale of the map based on the fact that it was 56 miles between Velkynvelve and Sloobludop. Assuming the heroes travel nonstop on the lake, that's 24 miles per day. So:

Sloobludop to Gracklstugh: 160 miles, 7 days of sailing.

Do the Drow Pursue the Group on the Water? Yep.. I guess they make rafts of their own and question anyone they come upon. They will not follow the heroes into Sloobludop, as they don't want to risk an altercation with 500 kuo toa.

Makeshift Rafts: AC 11 HP 25, can hold up to 3 people. Made from the cap of a giant mushroom - what an awesome idea. Takes a day to make.

Whirlpool (page 42): This works like the control water spell (PH page 227). It is 50 feet wide. Any thing within 25 feet i pulled ten feet toward it per roung. You can make STR (athletics) checks at DC 14 to escape the pull. Once you enter the whirlpool, you make a DC 14 STR save.

• Succeed = half damage and you get out of the vortex.
• Fail = 2d8 bludgeoning and you're stuck in the vortex.. for good..! I think you might want to let the PC save each round. Also, the drowning rules should probably kick in on the second round.

Keelboats: AC 15 HP 100 fits 6 people, see DMG page 119. The kuo toa have 6 of these parked at the docks in their village of Sloobludop.

The Plan: The heroes are meant to meet Plooploopeen as they approach Sloobludop. He tells the heroes that his daughter has overthrown him as ruler. She worships a new entity (Demogorgon!). Ploop has a plan - he wants the heroes to pretend to be prisoners that will be used for human sacrifices.

The kuo toa have a duergar named Hemeth that they are getting ready to sacrifice. That leads to the coolest encounter in the book so far...

The Ritual: This is such an awesome scene. I almost hate to spoil it. But here it is: The kuo toa ritual begins, and DEMOGORGON rises out of the water to come get his sacrifice! The heroes will have to make DC 13 CHA saves or gain a level of madness.


The heroes have no chance against him. They need to run. But if you have young players or players who aren't aware that not everything in this adventure can be slain, you should drop some obvious clues to give them fair warning. You can have Demogorgon make two tentacle attacks on a building. Say out loud: "He has +17 to hit and does 35 damage per tentacle."

Chapter 4: Gracklstugh


This chapter is one big mess. Holy crap. It was quite the undertaking to sort it out.

The Most Important Thing To Know: All of this chapter is about one thing: Finding Droki, a crazed derro. He's clearly based on the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland. The deal here is that the heroes will be chasing him, and he's going to get away at least once. Almost all of the quests ultimately involve finding him. His stats are on page 231. The contents of his sack of stuff is on page 69. Remember, he's wearing boots of speed.

Here's the main things you need to know about the duergar city of Gracklstugh:

• The Gates: When the heroes first come near the city gates (page 57), they will be up to their neck in duergar guards and will need to do some fast talking. If the heroes are arrested, they'll either get free when a stone giant goes on a rampage (page 59), or they'll be conscripted by the stone guard (page 62).
• The duergar are starting to notice the rise of demonic madness in the city.
• There are many derro (insane evil gnomes) in Gracklstugh. They are mostly immune to the demonic madness, because they are already mad.
• Grackle-Lung (page 54): This is crazy. Every single day, the heroes make a DC 11 CON save or they gain a level of exhaustion due to smog! If they catch grackle-lung (page 54) they will cough, spew black phlegm and gain a level of exhaustion. Once they hit level 6 exhaustion.. they die.
• Themberchaud the Wyrmsmith: The city has a red dragon that keeps the forges ablaze. The duergar are secretly getting ready to off him and replace him with a new dragon.
• The city is split in half by a rift. There's over a dozen stone bridges that cross the rift, connecting the two halves.
• Drow might be here looking for the heroes (Signs of Pursuit, page 61).
• Places to Stay: The Ghohlbrorn's Lair (page 63) is the only place that accepts non-duergar guests. There are also abandoned guardhouses (page 64) that the PCs can squat in.
• Two Factions in the City Are at War: The Gray Ghosts stole a red dragon egg vital to the city's interests (this dragon is meant to replace Themberchaud). The Keepers of the Flame are trying to get it back. The egg is being kept deep in Whorlstone Caverns (page 81).
• If Buppido is with the party, he ditches them and secretly goes to Whorlstone Caverns (Buppido's Lair, page 70).

The Main Quests

I have never seen anything like this in any RPG product. Everything is all jumbled and broken up in this chapter. They organized broken-up pieces of the quests by city district, without page numbers referring you to the other parts! I can't imagine trying to run this without excessive preparation. It's overwhelming. I'm going to try to lay out the quests in a simple way to save you a lot of page-flipping:

When the Heroes First Arrive at Gracklstugh: After dealing with the guards on page 57, the heroes are either wandering the city or being led to jail. Rampaging Giant (page 59) kicks in, which leads to Audience with the Stonespeaker (page 65). The heroes are given a stonespeaker crystal (page 223).

If the Group is Arrested and are Brought to Jail: They are either Conscripted by the Stone Guard (page 62) or bailed out by the Keepers in Guests of the Stone Guard (page 60). Let's go through the Conscripted quest line first:

          1. In Conscripted by the Stone Guard (page 62), they are asked to spy on a derro named Droki in the West Cleft district and bring him in for questioning. They are also asked to look for signs of demonic corruption among the duergar citizens.

If the heroes then look for signs of demon madness/go shopping, go to Blade Bazaar (page 60) where they notice Merchant Madness (page 61). Then they spot Droki (page 61). He gets away (sad trombone noise). Remember, Droki is wearing boots of speed (DMG page 155). He can double his speed for up to 10 minutes. Also see Chasing Droki (page 64). The heroes will need to go to the derro section of the city to find Droki (see below the next paragraph, "Finding Droki").

          2. If the heroes were bailed out by the Keepers in Guests of the Stone Guard (page 60) duergar priests bring them to Themberchaud's Lair (page 65). The dragon talks to the group in private in Agents of the Wyrmsmith (page 66). The dragon makes the heroes be his spies. Then, in A Task for the Keepers (page 66), he tells our heroes to find Droki. That leads us to:

Finding Droki: Entering Derro Territory (page 64) to look for Droki is unnerving. Searching will uncover Access to the Whorlstone Tunnels (page 65). I will talk about Whorlstone below, as it is a gigantic dungeon. Going through that dungeon and nabbing Droki will bring the group an interesting reward. They are brought to the Hold of the Deepking (page 82) and have an Audience with the Deepking (page 82). His consort is actually a succubus, an agent of Graz'zt corrupting him. How the heroes would find this out, I have no idea.

Other Quests

Deepking Horgar, ruler of Gracklstugh

How Do We Get Home? If the group asks around about how to get to the surface world, they're directed to Ylsa in Ylsa's Deal (page 61). She will help them if the heroes investigate how the derro are getting all this surface world coinage. I guess this leads to  Entering Derro Territory (page 64) where the heroes find the entrance to Whorlstone Tunnels (page 65). On page 81, the heroes meet a derro named Pliinki. She has an ancient elven coin. Maybe I missed something, but she says something about it being a miracle..? Maybe the monolith in room 14 (page 80) is responsible? Ylsa will then tell the group how to get to Blingdenstone, where there is a way to get to the surface.

I Think This Merchant Quest Should be Run after Whorlstone: The heroes might have found the letter in Whorlstone on page 76 detailing how Gorgok of the Stone Guard plans to "deal with" Werz Saltbaron. At the Docks, the heroes see a merchant being attacked in Assassins Interrupted (page 62). His name is Werz Saltbaron. Werz asks the heroes to meet him at the Shattered Spire the following day in The Shattered Spire (page 63). Werz asks the group to deliver a sack of gemstones to Kazook Pickshine in Blingdenstone. While negotiating, a Bar Fight (page 63) breaks out. With that done, the group can head to Blingdenstone.

Whorlstone Tunnels

Rumpadump and our party's pal, Stool.

This place is gigantic. It has some unique traits:

• Whorlstone is suffused with faerzress, which means wild surges and if the group is here for more than 8 hours, madness checks.
• Foul Water: Drinking water here is not good. DC 12 CON save or you are poisoned for at least one hour.
• Lots of Edible fungi here, as well as magic fungi:

1. Bigwig: Eat it and make a DC 12 CON save. Fail = enlarged for 1 hour. Enlarge is on page 237 of the PH. The character doubles in size (as does their equipment - any item dropped returns to normal size), their weight is multiplied by 8. +d4 damage and advanteage on STR checks and saves.
2. Pygmywort: Eat it and make a DC 12 CON save. Fail = reduced for one hour. Reduce is on page 237 of the PH.  The traget's size is halved, weight is reduced to 1/8th of normal. -d4 damage, disadvantage on STR checks and saves.

Finally Finding Droki: On page 68, we are told that the heroes are meant to spot Droki and then chase him through the dungeon (he uses tunnels that only small creatures fit in). It is up to you, the DM, as to when the heroes catch up with him. On the map, his route is traced in a red line.

The Ghost: A ghost named Pelek (page 70) wants the heroes to get his severed hand (which is in area 13) and return it to Blingdenstone.

2. Diseased Pool (page 72): Cackle Fever is on page 257 of the DMG. Gnomes are immune. You laugh madly for d4 hours. Any stressful event forces a DC 13 CON save or 5 psychic damage and incapacitated for 1 minute. You can make the save each round. Any humanoids within 10 feet must make a DC 10 CON save or they also have the disease.

14. Obelisk (page 80): The egg is here, there's a monolith with weird powers (including the power to teleport the group outside of Gracklstugh). There's a mention of an ancient coin which I don't understand. I probably missed something. This chapter is gigantic and very exhausting. If anyone knows what the deal is, please let me know.

Don't forget, the king wants to meet with the heroes after they complete Whorlstone Tunnels. See page 82.

Chapter 5: Neverlight Grove


I have to say that the previous chapter was a total fiasco. Did they run out of time to edit it or something? 

How to get to Neverlight Grove: Getting to this myconid community is supposed to be difficult, as it doesn't appear on maps. The adventure expects that the heroes will either stumble on it, or that one of tree npcs will lead them there:

• Stool: It is his home and he innately senses the location.
• Sarith Kzerait: This drow has been secretly infected by Zuggtmoy from the start. Since Zuggtmoy is here in Neverlight Grove, he is drawn to this place.
• Rumpadump: This myconid is from Whorlstone in chapter 4 might have joined the party. Rump is worried that his home is infected.

The Grove is defended by Sentinel Mushrooms/awakened zurkhwoods (giant mushrooms that have a wood-like quality to them). I'm going to put the stat block right here because the book basically gives you a recipe to make them and it's quite a pain in the butt. It's based on an Awakened Tree (MM page 317):

Awakened Zurkhwood AC 13 HP 59 (reach 10 ft) +6 to hit 14 (3d6+4) dmg Speed 20

• Vulnerable: Fire Resistances: Bludgeoning, Piercing
• False Appearance: When motionless, it is indistinguishable from a zurkhwood
• Darkvision 120 feet
• Can't speak, was created by a myconid sovereign

The Bad Guys have Spores: Demon-tainted myconids can release demon spores in a 10 foot radius that force you to make a CON save (DC is usually around 12). Fail = infected with the spores of Zuggtmoy and roll on the Madness of Zuggtmoy table on page 249. You repeat the save every 24 hours. If you fail again, your body is slowly taken over with fungal growth. You die after 3 fails in a row, and are reborn as a spore servant.

Neverlight Grove is ruled by two myconids:

• Sovereign Phylo: He is secretly a thrall to Zuggtmoy, and is corrupting the colony.
• Sovereign Basidia: Basidia is suspicious of Phylo, and wants the heroes to check out a place called The Garden of Welcome. He offers them a reward ( a chest full of treasure).

The Garden of Welcome

 Here's an outline of what happens when the group decides to check out the garden (page 90).

1. Guards: On page 90, it is noted that 2 chuul spore servants guard the path to the garden and the won't allow anyone to pass without Yrberop's permission. 
2. Drow: Once in the garden, the group stumbles on some drow who had been hunting for them. The drow are buried up to their heads, rotting and fungus-y. They beg for death.
   Yestabrod, a myconid who is mutating into a larval creature, attacks the group along with some flunkies.  
3. NPC Sinus Problem: At the same time, Sarith (drow NPC ally of the heroes) screams - his head splits open and releases spores! He becomes a spore servant and joins in on the attack against the heroes. 
4. Flee: If Yestabrod is killed, his servants go inert and his other flunkies flee. 
5. Rehearsal: Then, nearby the heroes hear singing. There's a fungus wedding rehearsal going on. If they spy on it, they have a vision of Zuggtmoy. DC 10 WIS save or gain a level of madness. 
6. Yggmorgus: The procession files into Yggmorgus, a massive mushroom.
7. Demon Lord: If the heroes go inside Yggmorgus, they're going to run smack dab into Zuggtmoy, who is sleeping. Yikes.

Chapter 6: Blingdenstone


Lots of cool stuff here. Here's what you need to know about this deep gnome settlement:

• Ten years ago, the drow of Menzoberanzan slaughtered the deep gnomes of Blingdenstone. The deep gnomes have rebuilt, but the city is still a mess.
• If there are any drow in the group, they'll need to make a DC 15 CHA (persuasion) check to get in.
• This is the point where you have a bunch of options as far as what to do with Topsy and Turvy. They are deep gnome wererats. They might join the Goldwhisker Clan (page 99), they might come clean to the group, or they might flee into the underdark.
• Sections of the city have been taken over by monster factions, including wererats, ghosts, and The Pudding King (who is an agent of Juiblex who controls slimes.oozes.puddings).
• Strangers aren't allowed to buy or borrow maps.
• The group has the opportunity to really change this whole town. If they banish Ogremoch's Bane, make peace with the wererats, and take out The Pudding King, Blingdenstone will be a much safer place.

Random Encounters: This city is dangerous. Roll once per day. These are really good! I love the xorn who follows the heroes around, expecting to be fed valuables. All of the molds and slimes are on page 105 of the DMG.

Where To Stay? The group can stay at The Foaming Mug (page 108). The innkeeper, Tappy, will be thrilled to have them, and she'll give them free food and drinks.

Great Names: I just want to point out that there's some really great NPC names in here. Glyphic Shroomlight. Tappy Foamstrap. Warden Jadges. Sark Axebarrel. TRISK ADAMANTELPIECE! Awesome. Also I'd like to point out that the "dad joke" factor of this chapter is off the charts. Really work the "bling" aspect of Blingdenstone. When your group finds some gems, throw some dollar bills in the air and tell your group to "Bling dem stones."

Turning in Quests:

• Kazook Pickshine: This NPC is on page 103. Werz Saltbaron of Gracklstugh might have hired the heroes to bring him some gems.
• The Severed Hand Quest: If the group got the severed hand in Whorlstone, they can place it in the temple on page 104.

Can We Go Home Now? The svirfneblin won't tell the heroes how to get to the surface until they are friendly with them. The group will need to complete some tasks for the deep gnomes, most notably defeating The Pudding King. I'll talk about it at the end of this section.

An Outline: Here is what happens once your group is in Blingdenstone:

• There are layers of defenses that the group will have to pass through just to get in to Blingdenstone (Area 1, page 101).
• When the group goes to the Traders' Grotto, there is a gelatinous cube attack (page 103). This sort of foreshadows the menace of The Pudding King.
• If the group goes to the temple on page 104, they will meet Barrow Warden Jadger, who asks them to complete two quests: destroy a spectre named Vazuk (area 2 page 104), and bring back the remains of Udhask (area 8, page 108), who died somewhere in Rockblight.
• A bunch of NPCs have quests for the group to complete in Rockblight (see below). There are also further quests given in area 14 for Goldwhisker and The Pudding King (on page 106).
• When the group checks out The Pudding King, they see he has an army of oozes and slimes. If the group tries to attack alone, they are doomed.
• Once the group tells the deep gnomes about this army of oozes, there is a council meeting (page 114).
• The council decides to have their army distract the oozes so the group can try to kill The Pudding King.

Rockblight


There's a bunch of NPCs who all want to send the group to Rockblight:

• Nomi Pathshutter: She wants samples of elementals who were tainted by Ogremoch's bane (sample can be obtained from area 18, page 108).
• Barrow Warden Jadger (page 104): Wants the group to retrieve the remains of Udhar (located at area 17 on page 108).
• Sark Axebarrel (page 105): Asks the party to kill the medusa and bring back proof (she's in area 20, page 109).
• Gurnik Tapfinger (page 106): Gives the group a spell gem to place in a menhir in Rockblight (see area 22, page 109). 

Villains: This area is home to an evil sentient fog called Ogremoch's Bane. It has the power of elemental evil * cough cough *. Also lurking here is Neheedra Duskryn, a drow who turned into a medusa.

The Battle of Blingdenstone 

The Pudding King

This is really cool. The heroes team up with the deep gnome forces. There's all of these quests that the book wants the group to complete before forging on, but I'd chuck most of them. Especially the ones where you're supposed to go back to Neverlight Grove and Gracklstugh. I think those were put in just so that if your group skipped those locations, this is a way to get them there. This adventure thinks it is a sandbox, but really it is a railroad in serious denial.

Wading in to Battle: Getting to The Pudding King, the group will need to have d4+2 encounters with oozes, slimes and puddings! That sounds really fun. Like with most of these charts, I recommend you roll them in advance and have the monster stats on a cheat sheet.

The Pudding King Seems a Bit Weak: The Pudding King's stats are on page 233. The heroes will probably be worn down from all the previous fights, but this guy only has 49 hit points. While the heroes approach, he will have time to cast spells to give himself a boost. Seeing how he will likely transform himself into a non-spellcasting ooze quickly into the fight, I recommend having him cast buff spells using higher spell slots:

• Mage Armor: Lasts 8 hours, he'll have an AC of 16
• Shield: Cast as a reaction during the battle, gives a +5 to AC until the start of his next turn.
• False Life: Cast using a 4th level slot, he gains d4+19 temporary hit points.
• Blur: He has this as an innate ability usable once per day. Any creature has disadvantage to hit him. This is a concentration spell.

He Can Turn Into an Ooze: It doesn't appear that he can cast spells in this form. He keeps his original hit points. I guess he uses Gray Ooze (MM page 243) stats? So he can attack with a pseudopod which does 4 + 7 acid, which also corrodes armor. Also, any non-magical weapon that hits him corrodes, too.

Bonus Action - Green Slime Drops on Random PC: Don't forget, a green slime will drop on a PC every round during this battle. Their stats are on page 104 of the DMG. DC 10 Dex save. Fail = 5 damage, and the creature takes the damage again at the start of each subsequent turn until it is scraped off. It also does 11 damage to wood or metal, which is really nasty to your armored fighters.

Treasure: You might want to add teleportation circle to the spells in the spellbook entitled Magick from Beyond the Mirror on page 115. I strongly believe teleporting around the underdark is a good idea once the group hits level 9.

So How Do We Get Out? It's discussed in chapter 7. After all of this buildup you just make your own tunnel. I think it should be a secret tunnel near the city. I think the adventure wants you to have a final showdown with the drow on your way out, so you should place the exit outside of Blingdenstone. This is discussed in the next chapter.

Chapter 7: Escape From The Underdark


Here's what all this boils down to:

1. The characters should be 7th level by the time they get to this chapter.
2. The group has a final showdown or a final chase scene with the drow that have been pursuing them (page 118).
3. They say goodbye to their NPC allies.
4. They go out the tunnel and emerge into the surface world... in a location of the DM's choosing.

The adventure suggests that the group pops out in the Evermoors or the Lurkwood:

• The Evermoors: Trolls used to live here. Frost giants moved in and chased the trolls out. There is a frontier trading town called Nesme. You can get a lot of info on Nesme from a free adventure download on Candlekeep called Northern Journey West. On page 63 there's a map of Nesme and a description.
• The Lurkwood: A dangerous place with bottomless bogs. The Lurkwood is teeming with orcs, barbarian tribes, ettins and giants.

Three Month Vacation: The group will probably want some considerable rest time. The adventure suggests three months (page 120). The heroes should also feel the need to warn people that demon lords are in the Forgotten Realms and may come up to the surface.

They should also want to go to Gauntlgrym, either because of Eldeth or because they are summoned...

Chapter 8: Audience in Gauntlgrym

Here's What Happens: The group is treated as great dignitaries upon their arrival. They meet with King Bruenor (page 124) and have a great feast. At the end, Bruenor asks the heroes to go to Gravenhollow to learn what exactly is going on with the demon lords. To get to Gravenhollow, the group will need to meet with a Zhentarim agent in Mantol-Derith.

The Feast: Members of each faction are here (detailed below). I guess you could put in some prominent NPCs from your campaign world, though be careful. If you have Drizz't there at the table, then the players are going to wonder why the king just doesn't ask Drizz't to handle this.

Reward: Bruenor offers the group rewards, including property in Gauntlgrym and items made in the Great Forge.

The Factions: Bruenor wants the group to enlist the aid of as many factions as possible. The Zhentarim are needed, because their agent in Mantol-Derrith can get the group to Gravenhollow.

• (Harpers) Lord Zelraun Roaringhorn: He's a wizard who likes to gamble. He is accompanied by a shield guardian. He'll let a PC have the control amulet to his shield guardian if the PC can beat him at chess (best of three INT checks. Zelraun has a +9 to the rolls).
• (Order of the Gauntlet) Sir Lanniver Strayl: He's a paladin with a squire named Rhiele Vannis. He might offer the group 5 NPC veterans or a +1 hammer.
• (Emerald Enclave) Morista Malkin: She is an advisor to King Bruenor. She is stern and stubborn. She can give the heroes giant lizard mounts and 3 NPC dwarf scouts.
• (Lords' Alliance) Lord Eravien Haund: Charming and sly. He can give the group a whopping 8 NPCs.
• (Zhentarim) Davra Jassur: She is evil and values order and ambition. She wants a full share of whatever treasure the heroes get as well as a full report. She can give the group 8 NPC thugs.

The heroes also learn about some side-quests:

1. There's a Lords' Alliance operative spying on the drow. Her name is Khalessa Draga. She uses a hat of disguise to look like a drow. She's detailed on page 149.
2. An Emerald Enclave scout named Sladis Vadir has gone missing. He's in Mantol-Derith, page 135. He has gone crazy.

That is a Lot of NPCs: The group may end up in control of 25 NPCs! I guess we'll see how that works out. Seems like it would slow the game down in a major way. Remember, you have the option of telling your players that NPCs split XP with them if they're involved in a fight.

Chapter 9: Mantol-Derith


The Trip From Gauntlgrym: The heroes must travel 180 miles on the surface world to the Surbrin Hills. There's a tunnel in a cave (page 133) that is an underdark trade route used by the Zhentarim. The journey through the Underdark to Mantol-Derith is 200 miles!

Yes, you roll for random encounters the entire way. Check out the next chapter for details (scroll down, I did 8 sample travel days). At the end of the long journey, the Zhentarim guides lead the group to a secret door that leads to 1a in Mantol-Derrith (page 135).

Mantol-Derith is Guarded by Trapped Secret Doors: Trying to open one of these secret doors without the password will probably disintegrate you: 55 force damage, save for half.

The Goal: The group needs to find Ghazrim DuLoc. He can help them get to Gravenhollow. He's on page 141. He has a magic ring that can guide the wearer to the safest, shortest route to Gravenhollow.

A Black Gem is Causing Problems: The demon lord Fraz'urb'luu is trapped in a black gem. The gem is spreading demonic madness. If you touch the gem: Make a DC 23 CHA save or gain an indefinite madness (roll on the chart on page 239). Destroying the gem is a little tricky (page 133). Basically you need to smash it with a magic weapon.

Mantol-Derith has 3 Rules:

• No stealing of goods from fellow merchants.
• No disguising of goods by any means.
• No use of magic during negotiation and haggling.

The punishment for violating a rule: You are wrapped in chains and tossed into the Darklake.

Tons and Tons of Stats: This chapter is overloaded with stuff you have to look up. I don't even know where to begin. You need to look up traps, you need to roll magic items from table b of the DMG. Definitely set aside some extra time to get this chapter ready.

Complicated Situation: So basically, everyone has succumbed to demonic madness here. Mantol-Derrith has a population of 140 people, split into factions who are all turning against each other. The duergar are trying to kill the deep gnomes. The drow are planning to kill both of them. And there's a crazy drow provoking the Zhentarim into conflict.

Meeting Goes Badly: When the heroes find Ghazrim, he's about to have a big meeting (he's accompanied by a beholder and 6 thugs) with the drow that breaks out into a massive battle on page 140. A drow assassin attacks the beholder (to everyone's surprise) and the beholder ends up killing everyone in the crossfire except the assassin, who flees. There's a gargoyle who is secretly in love with the assassin watching. I'd guess he'll swoop in to save her under certain circumstances.

Chapter 10: Descent Into the Depths


This chapter deals with travel, like chapter 2. It discusses the horde of NPCs accompanying the heroes, a situation that seems to me like it will grind the game to a halt. But first...

Teleportation Circles: Your group should be level 9 by now, which means wizards have access to the teleportation circle spell. I highly recommend using this to cut down on the travel time, which in my opinion gets way out of control in this adventure. Do remember, though, that teleportation to and from Menzoberranzan is impossible as it is magically blocked by the drow due to the demonic incursion. Also be sure to read up on how the faerzress affects teleportation on page 21, but remember that you have a lot of control over what areas are in the faerzress.

Traveling With the NPC Horde:

• Not Stealthy: The group can't use stealth, as the group is too large (individuals would have to scout ahead to use stealth).
• Navigation is Easier: Advantage on Wisdom (survival) checks to avoid getting lost.
• Food is Provided: The NPCs are given provisions, so you don't have to worry about foraging for 25 NPCs every day.
• NPCs Want Loot: The NPCs are going to want a split of the treasure.
• Less Encounter Rolls: Instead of Random Encounters, you roll on the Random Events table (page 146).

Random Events: Every second day of travel or camping, roll on the random events table (page 146). Again, I suggest you roll these in advance so you can have stats ready. Some of these charts have tables within tables.

Sample Travel Time: I'm going to go ahead and do 8 days of travel, just so I can again show you how I think this can be prepared to keep the game running smoothly. Plus, I love rolling on charts.

We're traveling at a normal pace, which according to page 18 is 6 miles per day. That means that the journey to Mantol-Derith will take 34 days. I would suggest saying that King Bruenor provided the heroes with provisions as well, so you don't have to make foraging rolls for 34 days.

I am going to put some kind of NPC moment on each of the "off" days so we can flesh these NPCs out and make them more than just stat blocks. The NPC names are listed back in the faction entries in chapter 8.

Day 1: Thora Nabal has a prophetic dream of a hideous ooze-thing with eyes coming to drive everyone mad (she's having a vision of Juiblex).

Day 2: Discipline Problem: Loud Argument (does not attract monsters): Nero Kalvane (Zhentarim) claims that the giant lizard mount of Griswalla (Emerald Enclave) ate a portion of his provisions. He demands to get to ride the lizard as compensation. He's lying. He ate a bunch of his own food and now is trying to weasel his way into riding a mount rather than walking like a sucker.

Day 3: Zilna Oakshadow (Lords' Alliance) starts sucking up to a PC in the hopes of getting to keep a cool magic item the hero has, but doesn't use very much.

Day 4: Juiblex! (I swear I rolled this legit). This demon lord is on page 242. He's immune to non-magic weapons! I'd probably have the cavern rumble, and have his pseudopods reach out from the darkness of a side tunnel and attack three NPCs: +14 to hit, 21 damage, and any creature killed is drawn into Juiblex's body. Anyone closing in on him will have to save vs his foulness (fail = poisoned) and probably make a madness check.

Best case is that everyone runs, and any NPCs that survived now have madness to deal with.

Day 5: In an attempt to bolster everyone's spirits, Brim Coppervein shares his stash of booze with anyone who thinks they can hang with him.

Day 6: Raiders - Goblin boss and 3 goblins: This is sort of amusing. What chance do these goblins have? I imagine they'd spring out from the shadows and scream a threat, and then see just how many people are in the party, turn, and run.

Day 7: Saliyra Dalnor (Zhentarim) confides in a hero that she thinks Ghazrim, the agent in Mantol-Derith, has a beholder as an ally. The beholder is missing three eyestalks (this is all true).

Day 8: Demon Encounter -2 Barlguras: Again, I don't know what chance these monsters have. It might be fun to let the PCs handpick NPCs to fight them, and let the players roll for their chosen NPCs. Conversely, maybe it would be fun to have everyone swarm them, competing for the killing blow. Barlgura skin cloaks might be kind of fun to have.

Returning to Settlements: The book spends a few pages talking about what happens if the heroes re-visit places they've been to, places like Neverlight Grove or Sloobludop. The Gracklstugh section is actually really cool (page 148). The duergar want to sacrifice the red dragon to Demogorgon!

Chapter 11: Gravenhollow

This place is 360 miles from Mantol-Derith. That's 60 days of travel. Sixty days! You'll run out of random event encounters by then. Wow. The ring they got from Ghazrim will lead the party right to Gravenhollow.

Here's what happens in this chapter:

1. The group is greeted by a behir who brings them into Gravenhollow.
2. The heroes can explore the library, talk to ghostly echoes, and learn a bit about the demon lords.
3. They meet a wizard named Vizeran DeVir and his death slaad bodyguard (The slaad's name is Kleve, he is detailed on page 161). He is looking into the demonic invasion as well. He tells the group that he thinks a wizard from Menzoberranzan named Gromph has something to do with the demonic incursion.
4. Ulthar, the stone giant librarian who records the past, will give the group a stone speaker crystal (page 156), which only functions in Gravenhollow. They can use it to have tons of visions, where they learn a lot. Most notably, they have a vision that implies that Gromph is indeed the one who started all of this. They also get clues that Lolth is using this opportunity to have her demon children take over the vacated abyssal realms of the demon lords.
5. Vizeran talks to the group again, and claims he knows how to banish the demon lords back to the Abyss. He wants to team up with the heroes.
6. Vizeran asks the group to come with him to his tower to talk in private. The tower and the meeting are detailed in chapter 12.

Things to Know About Gravenhollow:

• Magic has warped the place so that it is bigger than should be possible.
• Every event that has ever occurred in the underdark is recorded on tablets in Gravenhollow.
• Troublemakers will be turned to stone by the behir.
• Finding anything (tablets, ancient texts, etc) requires a DC 14 Wisdom check. Failure just means you wasted some time and need to roll again.

There are 3 stone giant librarians:

• Ulthar, Keeper of the Past: He files ancient texts. He likes to compose poetry and is friendly to the PCs.
• Urmas, Keeper of the Present: He has a network of monster informants (galeb duhr, xorn, stone giants, etc) constantly filing in and telling him what's going on in the underdark. He is very busy.
• Ustova, Keeper of the Future: She is a seer who meditates and transcribes her visions onto stone tablets.

Echoes: The library "remembers" those who have been there. Ghostly apparitions of other visitors flicker in and out. This is a chance for the heroes to talk to 'famous' NPCs like Elminster and get some advice. There's actually a chart of NPCs to roll on if you want. They could also run into an 'echo' of their future selves, or even their own children!

Chapter 12: The Tower of Vengeance

Vizeran DeVir

Chapter 13: The Wormwrithings


The Wormwrithings are hundreds of miles of tunnels carved out by purple worms. Vizeran will give the group a map of a purple worm nesting area, which is about 48 miles from his tower.

• Foraging is more difficult here, requiring DC 20 Wisdom (survival) checks.
• The tunnels are 10 feet in diameter.
• Check for random encounters once per day using the chart on page 167. Roll a d6 to determine natural illumination. 1 means it is lit by luminescent lichen, otherwise it is dark.

Once the group is halfway to the worm nursery, they stumble on a troglodyte lair (page 168). Troglodytes are fighting over a magic sword. The troglodytes have a 20 minute standoff, and then a series of events occur throughout the complex (see page 171).

5. Supplies and Captives: The troglodytes have a bunch of prisoners, all with only a single hit point remaining. There are 2 drow (members of House Milarn who were searching for a purple worm egg as a gift for their matron) and 4 shield dwarves (prospectors from Mithril Hall).

Voice in the Dark (page 171): Once the group is 6 miles from the worm nursery, a lone lost drow named Hanne tries to scare them off with illusions. She could end up befriending the party. Hanne is a good ally to have, as she knows a lot about purple worm eggs (see page 174, "Hanne's Help"). The group will encounter Hanne's allies that she got separated from in the worm nursery. If the group treated Hanne well, this will work out good. If the group treated her poorly, things are going to be really rough for them in the worm nursery.

Worm Nursery (page 172): As the group explores this place, purple worms show up and carve new tunnels. 2 minutes before each one arrives, there is a loud rumbling. The worms actually create tunnels on the map (T1, T2, and T3).

Exploring the First Few Rooms: The group arrives and explore rooms 1-4 for 15 minutes. A purple worm comes out of a random wall, plows through room 3 and tunnels through the wall to 8.

Beware Room 5: There's a number of room 5's here. If the group makes noise in any of these rooms, a purple room arrives in 1d4 minutes and checks on the eggs in room 8.


8. Egg Chamber: The eggs are suspended up in a resin web. The eggs are each 3 feet in diameter. Check out the map on page 173. To get up to the eggs, you need to climb up from a strand anchored to the ground (marked as "0'" on the map). Stuff to know:

• The text says there's two strands but the map shows three.
• Climbing is slow, you move at 1/3rd normal speed.
• Taking any strenuous action on a strand causes a DC 10 DEX (acrobatics) check or you fall.
• Cutting an egg free takes 2d4 minutes.
• Zhora and the Dark Hunters show up from Area 7.
• Every 5 minutes the group is in here, roll on the egg encounters table (page 174). A 16 or higher means problems.
• In 10 minutes, the second worm shows up. 2 minutes prior, the place rumbles. 1 minute prior, a swarm of bats from area 9 comes into the room.
• Also remember that 10 minutes after the first purple worm carved out T1, the second worm comes through 7 into this room.
• 15 minutes after the second worm showed up, a third worm comes in from area 7.

A Thing of Beauty: The Worm Nursery is a great little dungeon. It takes a bit of planning to manage. It will be easy to forget something. But all in all, it is fantastic. What's really cool is that they built it around a fairly dull monster and made it really fun. This is definitely something to use in your own campaign even if you are not going to run Out of the Abyss.

The Vast Oblivium

Karazikar & Shedrak

This place (page 175) is 12 miles from the worm nursery. The cavern has a giant carving of a beholder glaring down upon a gaping chasm. Here's who is there:

• Karazikar the Eye Tyrant: This beholder is obsessed with finding a thing called the Maze Engine (page 175). He wants to find some modrons (!) too.
• Shedrak of the Eyes: A human slave of the beholder. He is the "high priest" of the slaves, and he leads them in worship of Karazikar. His staff has a beholder eye on it that Karazikar can see through.
• 100 Slaves: Of various races (page 177 has details). They worship the beholder as if he was a god.

Here's how things go when the group comes to the Vast Oblivium:

1. Once they get within a mile of the place, the heroes feel like they are being watched. There might be madness saving throws involved. 
2. The tunnel comes to a shaft with a rope ladder leading down. The ladder leads to a vast cavern with a chasm and the image of a beholder carved in the ceiling. This place is Karazikar's Maw. 
3. The group will first run into Shedrak, and either negotiate with him or attack him.
4. Then they will have to cross a bridge over the chasm. The beholder is on land on the far side.
5. If the PCs talk to him, he'll want to know about the Maze Engine.
6. If a fight breaks out, the beholder will disintegrate a 10 foot section of the bridge under the heroes' feet! Falling means 20d6 damage.
7. Karazikar gets lair actions, too.
8. With the beholder slain, they can claim his eye.
9. The slaves now worship the heroes. They will tell them where Karazikar hid his treasure, and lead them to his modron prisoner.

The Modron Prisoner: How crazy is this? He got lost on a Great Modron March! If the heroes cast greater restoration, the modron regains his senses and can lead them to a machine that can bring order to chaos. It is 289 miles away (apparently "the orderer" is the maze engine).

Chapter 14: The Labyrinth

The Labyrinth is hundreds of miles of twisting tunnels. Both Baphomet and Yeenoghu are roaming around in here.

• Vizeran told the heroes to find the Gallery of Angels to get some angel feathers. 
• The Maze Engine is also in here.
• Getting Lost is Easy: DC 12 WIS survival check see page 20 for rules on getting lost).Fail means you're lost, wandering in a random direction for d6 hours before the navigator can make a new check to try to get back on track.
• Random Encounters: Roll twice a day on the chart on page 179.

There's two really interesting random encounters (page 179):

1. Kurr: The gnoll whose madness has made him hate violence. He actually throws himself at the mercy of the group, thinking his fellow gnolls savages.
2. Monodrone: I really get a kick out of the use of monodrones in this adventure. This particular monodrone is a rogue, and he shouts "Down with Primus!" (god of the modrons). This is odd because in 2e it was established that modrons can only sense modrons one rank higher than them.  Thus this little guy should have no idea who Primus is. But maybe that has changed in subsequent editions and honestly it's fine with me. The whole modron perceiving each other thing was extremely complicated and led to some really confusing situations.

Adamantine Tower (page 180): This place is actually a magic item - Daern's instant fortress (DMG page 160).The only way to get in is to learn the command word, which can be obtained with an identify spell. Two shadow demons phased through the wall and killed the owner.

Spiral of the Horned King (page 181): The group comes to a cave and meets a pathetic, trembling gnoll named Gash. He offer to be their guide through this deadly area of the labyrinth. If the group treats him poorly, he goes out of his way to lead them into danger. If the group is nice to him, he steers them away from danger. Stuff to know about the maze:

• It takes 2 hours to navigate the maze.
• Halfway through, DC 15 WIS (survival). Fail = you're back at the beginning.
• Every 30 minutes toll on the encounter table on page 182. Advantage or disadvantage depending on how the group treats Gash.

Filthriddens (page 182): This shanty town is 48 miles from The Spiral. The people here worship Yeenoghu as their protector.

March to Nowhere (page 183): Heroes might hear the sounds of marching feet in the distance. It is 12 monodrones and a tridrone, lost in the labyrinth since the last Great Modron March. They might join the party. They warn the group to avoid the center of the labyrinth, as a malfunctioning "orderer" (the Maze Engine) is there. The tridrone could lead them to it.

Yeenoghu's Hunt (page 184): Once the group gets 12 miles from the modron encounter, they come upon Yeenoghu himself killing a goristro. That's a DC 12 WIS save or gain a level of madness. This is an opportunity for the group to get two components for the ritual, the heart of a goristro and demon lord blood (some of Yeenoghu's blood is on the goristro's horn).

The Group Might Find Timmasks Here, Too: We were told that they are mushrooms that grow in the footprints of goristros and demon lords (?). The group needs 13 of them for the ritual. If you don't want to run chapter 16, then you can put them here in the footprints of the goristro..


Gallery of Angels (page 185): There are 8 angels in here, all turned to stone. They're conscious and insane. Nothing can free them from their petrified state. If a hero touches one of them, they learn the angel's name and experiences. Each angel has the power to affect someone touching it, from dominating a PC to forcing a madness check.

Getting the Feathers: You can just break off some stone feathers and blam, quest complete.

The Maze Engine 


OK, people. This section is on page 186. Listen to me carefully: YOU MUST RUN THIS. It is too good to skip.

The Engine is 48 miles southeast of the angels. 

It Fell: This thing looks like a working model of the Great Wheel. It's stuck halfway down in a crevasse 40 feet above super-hot magma which does 42 damage per round if you fall in it!

Guardian: There's a nalfeshnee in here guarding the Maze Engine. Once the heroes beat him up, the real fun begins. We are about to have an EPIC encounter.

Write Down Magma Mephit Stats: Be familiar with these guys (MM page 216). Are they too weak for your group? They seem like they might be. We're about to be neck deep in them. They have fire breath and they can cast heat metal! Don't forget that when they die, they explode in a lava burst, so definitely have some of the mephits close in for melee.

Maze Engine Effects (page 188): This is a table of effects that you roll on every round after the Engine is activated. You must read these over well before hand. Here's some notes on the more eyebrow-raising ones (actually, they're more like eyebrows-that-launch-off-your-face-and-make-a-sandwich ones):

• 1: All magic items within 300 feet are destroyed. Will your players set fire to your Out of the Abyss hardcover book? Yes. Maybe change this one.
• 09-10: The group travels back in time to the start of the adventure! Hilarious? Yes. End of the campaign? Almost assuredly. Maybe just have this happen for a couple of rounds, and then the group returns to whence they left.
• 16-19: Pick this NPC or PC out in advance!
• 28-32: Have green slaad stats handy (MM page 277).
• 40-43: Get them flying snake stats ready (MM 322). Be mindful that you might suddenly have a character in the fight with five hit points.
• 49-52: Maybe pick this item out in advance?
• 53-57: Do you really want to disintegrate a character who has been playing through the campaign for this long? That's a very tough saving throw to make.
• 58-60: Faerie fire is kind of lame. Maybe have this one cure those angels. I feel sorry for them.
• 81-100: Baphomet and Yeenoghu are banished back to the Abyss (see page 218 for confirmation).

Climbing Up or Down: DC 12 STR (athletics) fail = no progress. Fail by 5 or more = fall into the magma!

Starting the Engine: If the group climbs down and starts the Maze Engine (a modron can help if Arcana checks are failed), roll initiative. The Maze engine 'acts' on initiative 15. I've mapped out this encounter by round so we don't miss anything when the fight occurs:

1. Round 1: On initiative count 15, roll on the Maze Engine Effects table. On initiative count 10, 2 magma mephits pop out of the magma and attack. 2 more join for the next 5 rounds.
2. Round 2: Roll on the Maze Engine Effects table. Two more mephits.
3. Round 3: Roll on the Maze Engine Effects table. Two more mephits. The Engine shifts, anyone on it must make a DC 10 DEX save or fall.
4. Round 4: Roll on the Maze Engine Effects table. Two more mephits.
5. Round 5: Roll on the Maze Engine Effects table. Two more mephits.
6. Round 6: Roll on the Maze Engine Effects table. The Engine shifts again. Two more mephits.
7. Round 7: Roll on the Maze Engine Effects table.
8. Round 8: Roll on the Maze Engine Effects table.
9. Round 9: Roll on the Maze Engine Effects table. The Maze Engine slides down the crevasse, dropping ten feet each round.
10. Round 10: Roll on the Maze Engine Effects table. Ten more feet.
11. Round 11: Roll on the Maze Engine Effects table. Ten more feet.
12. Round 12: Roll on the Maze Engine Effects table. Ten more feet.
13. Round 13: Roll on the Maze Engine Effects table. It sinks into the magma and is destroyed.
14. Round 14: Add a minor eruption at your discretion (see bottom of page 188)

Let me just say.. this is a fantastic encounter. I am blown away. I love random charts so I'm a bit biased, but still. Nobody will ever forget playing through this one.

Chapter 15: The City of Spiders

Why We're Here: The group is coming to Menzoberranzan to get Gromph's grimoire out of Tower Sorcere. Vizeran also wants the group to place the dark heart talisman in Gromph's sanctum.

Drow NPC Guide: Grin Ousstyl (detailed on page 162), a drow ally of Vizeran, accompanies the group. Once in Menzoberranzan, he tells the group some things that may complicate everything (see page 205). You might want to establish that Grin knows the spell "knock", as the party might need him to us it in Sorcere (see page 206).

Travel to Menzoberranzan: It is 72 miles from Vizeran's tower. Vizeran suggests that the group leave their NPC horde behind, as a small team will have a better chance of infiltrating the city. They can take a secret tunnel free of monsters (page 190).

The Secret Entrance: The tunnel leads to the bottom of the Westrift in Menzoberranzan (page 201). The group will emerge on a narrow ledge 60 feet below the lip of the rift. Climbing up isn't hard. If you look at the map, the group will be near West Wall (detailed on page 202) up in the top section of the city.

You Can't Teleport In: No divination or teleportation works in Menzoberranzan, a precaution taken due to the chaos of the demon lords.

Sneaking Around: Traveling here is tricky. Check out the city laws on page 195. Any non-drow who disguises themselves as a drow is to be slain.

Place to Stay: There's an encounter on page 196 that opens up the possibility of the group staying at Narbondell's Shadow in Eastmyr. The price is high but the owner, Dalfred Noakes, seems like a handy fellow to know if things go south.

How the City is Lit: I'm not familiar with Menzoberranzan so this may not be news to you. There's a 1,000 foot tall rock column. The base is magically heated each day by the city archmage.  This causes the stone to glow. The band of warm light rises up the column, taking 24 hours to reach the top.

The Heroes Gain an Ally: Basically, one of three factions approach the group:

• Matron Mother Quenthel Baenre of House Baenre (page 203) - She doesn't know where Gromph, her brother, is.
• Jarlaxle Baenre of Bregan D'aerthe (page 204) - Secretly knows that Gromph is hiding in the city of Luskan up on the surface world.
• The Council of Spiders (page 203) - A secret cabal of wizards friendly with Vizeran. Vizeran has told them about the adventurers. They are ready to disable the wards in Sorcere.

What About Khalessa Draga?! You may recall that the Lords' Alliance noted to the heroes that they have a spy in Menzoberranzan named Khalessa Draga. And yet she is not discussed in this chapter at all. She appeared on page 149 to stop groups from going to Menzoberranzan so early in the adventure. I highly recommend that you put her to use here to help the heroes out and maybe connect them to one of the three factions. Maybe she even knows a bit about Vizeran and can warn the heroes not to trust him.

Grin's Change of Heart: After the meeting, Grin gives his above-mentioned confession (on page 205). He thinks the ritual doesn't have to be done in Menzoberranzan at all. He thinks Vizeran wants it done in Menzoberranzan simply so that the demon lords will destroy the city.

Sorcere

This is where Gromph's grimoire is, and it's the place where Vizeran wants the ritual done. When preparing Sorcere, you're going to want to sit down and look up all of the traps and spells in Gromph's room. You'll probably need a cheat sheet handy to keep things moving. Here's how things go down in the tower:

1. Getting In: There is a guards and wards spell, but presumably the council of spiders gives the group the password. This resets in an hour, so the party needs to hustle.
2. Safe Passage? The group goes through the tower. The creatures inside will probably leave the group alone due to the aid of the faction.
3. Bypass the Door: Open Gromph's door via lockpick or knock spell.
4. Guardian: Entering Gromph's room (page 206) causes a fire elemental to appear and attack (MM page 125).
5. Loot, but no Grimoire: There's some valuable treasure in here, but it's all trapped (page 207).
6. Another Guardian: If anyone touches the desk, the statue animates and attacks (stone golem, MM page 170, has four attacks: +10 to hit, 10 damage each).
7. Secret Door: There's a secret door with a really nasty trap on it.
8. The Maze: Beyond the secret door is a void. If you go in or even touch it, you're sucked into a maze. Creatures need to make a DC 20 INT check to get out.
9. Sanctum: Those who escape the demiplane reach Gromph's inner sanctum (page 207).
10. Yochlol: There's a "drow" in here named Y'Lara who tries to trick the group into releasing her. She's really a yochlol (MM page 65). She's standing in a magic circle that she can't leave unless someone breaks it. She does whatever she can to stop the group from taking Gromph's grimoire.
11. The Grimoire: It's on a lectern in here, open to a chapter that discusses summoning Demogorgon. This proves that Gromph was responsible for bringing the demon lords to the Underdark.

Building the Dark Heart: Once the group has the ingredients collected in the Wormwrithings and the Labyrinth (and Araumycos), they can bring them back to Vizeran. It will take him 10 days to make the dark heart. Now the group must place it. Vizeran would like them to place it in Gromph's sanctum (which is in the tower of Sorcere page 207).

Chapter 16: The Fetid Wedding

The group receives a psychic call for help from Basidia of Neverlight Grove. Zuggtmoy is trying to bond with Araumycos, a powerful sentient entity - "the largest life-form in the underdark". She has lulled Araumycos into some kind of sleep.

After his warning, thousands of myconids make a pilgrimage to Araumycos. Juiblex notices and heads that way with an army of oozes.

Araumycos is 40 miles south of Darklake.

Here's how this chapter unfolds once the group gets to Araumycos:

1. Basidia helps the group create a psychic rapport with Araumycos' mind.
2. As the rapport is being established, black puddings attack the group (page 211).
3. The group must then defeat two otyughs who are Araumycos defenders.
4. The bodies of the adventurers are paralyzed as their astral bodies meet with Araumycos in the Astral Plane.
5. Araumycos is a mountain-sized skull full of fungi.
6. Zuggmoy senses the heroes, but Juiblex attacks her in the physical realm.
7. The heroes need to go into the skull and battle a tainted fungus mass.
8. Zuggtmoy is distracted by the heroes' actions, which allows Juiblex to destroy her physical form. Her essence returns to the Abyss.
9. The heroes return to their bodies, and now must defeat a weakened Juiblex.
10. On page 214, it states that the timmasks can be found in the area of the battle between Zuggtmoy and Juiblex.

Reward: Araumycos rewards the group with charms of heroism (DMG page 228). It's a one-use item that gives you 10 temporary hit points and gain +d4 to attack rolls and saving throws for an hour. That's kind of cool, but that's not much of a reward for killing a demon lord.

Chapter 17: Against the Demon Lords

The characters should be 15th level at this point.

Set-Up: The group has the dark heart talisman. They choose where to place it. They alert Vizeran, who is far away safe in his tower, via a sending spell to begin the ritual. The ritual takes 9 hours to cast. Then the demon lords are summoned to the heart, and they all fight. The group waits to see who is left standing. Their job is to defeat the final demon lord standing.

Choose the Location: There's a list of possible places the group might put the dark heart. My favorite is to put the heart right near Vizeran's tower. The guy did try to trick the group into destroying Menzoberranzan, after all. Remember that due to casting the ritual, Vizeran has 3 levels of exhaustion (PH 291). This means he has disadvantage on attack rolls and saves, his speed is cut in half, and he has disadvantage on ability checks.

Which Demon Lords Are Left? If the group used the maze engine to banish Baphomet and Yeenoghu, destroyed Fraz-Urb'luu's gem (page 133) and they took care of Zuggmoy and Juiblex in chapter 16, that leaves three demon lords:

• Orcus
• Graz'zt
• Demogorgon
• Additionally, other lesser demons come through the faerzress portals as well

Hide and Watch: The group might want to hide and watch. In fact, if they have that Daern's instant fortress (page 180), they might be holed up in there. I think I'd use a couple of the suggested encounters. As the demon lords duke it out, I'd have 3 (or 6?) vrocks attack the group and roll on the "near miss" chart every round (page 218).

The Wand of Orcus: A hero might try to snatch up the Wand of Orcus (DMG page 227) once Orcus is slain. It will attune itself immediately to anyone other than Demogorgon! It is a +3 mace and does an extra 2d12 necrotic on a hit. You'll need to cook up a bunch of random properties beforehand. Remember that the wand is indestructible, unless the ancient hero whose skull is on the wand somehow comes back to life.

Not a bad way to end a campaign! Thanks for reading.

We finished up Tcian Sumere tonight. It's a very good dungeon. I tweaked a few things, namely a xeg-yi that's in this observation hall. It's not meant to be fought, and really it's just an odd encounter. I removed it. Overall though this place is extremely creative and quite momentous. It's not every day that you stumble on the mortal body of Orcus.

The Party

(Jessie) Bidam - Platinum-Scaled  Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Drow Wizard
* They are joined by an NPC bard named Srivlanka Flumph, daughter of a tremendously wealthy Donald Trump-type guy.

We hadn't seen each other in two weeks so there was quite a bit of pre-game chatter that ate into the session a bit. That was fine. To make sure we got done tonight, I turned the three rooms full of ghouls into skill challenge combats. That worked like this: Everyone rolled initiative, told me what cool move they did, then we rolled to see how it went. Because the rooms had no gravity, there was all sorts of wacky maneuvers. My favorite was Srivanka Flumph using her whip to swing Bidam around to slice ghoul heads off.

The group was in the secret fortress of Orcus in the Negative Material Plane. They were looking for a mysterious drow that they had seen in a scrying pool...

The Phylactery

5. Sacristy: In this room is a 5 foot tall glass cylinder. It is filled with green fluid with organs inside. Bidam cast Identify on it, and learned that it was a phylactery of sorts - Orcus had needed it when he first transformed from a balor to a demon lord.

This container held the remains of Orcus' balor form! The group smartly kept their distance and used a shatter spell on it, causing the toxic contents to spill out. Bidam spotted the giant demon heart, and realized it would be perfect for the Heart of the Lady of Pain he was trying to create. He took it.

Statue of Orcus

4. Temple of the Knell: This is a temple to Orcus, complete with a statue of him. On a horn of the statue is a circlet. The group honed in on the circlet, grabbed it with mage hand, and used identify along with some guesswork to figure out that this thing definitely had a special magical use. They didn't completely figure it out, but here's the deal: If you touch this circlet to the Wand of Orcus, the wand is destroyed!

Glyphimhor

10. Visages: In here is a shaft of light. I got rid of the visages that were in here as an encounter because we were low on time. The shaft of light contains the spirit of a balor named Glyphimhor. He has a few powers but isn't really harmful. The heroes bowed to him and sucked up to him to get information out of him. They learned:

• His master is called "Tenebrous" (the heroes know that Tenebrous is, in fact, Orcus).
• Tenebrous is killing gods and powers using magic he learned in the ruins of Pelion (exploring the ruins of Pelion is in a future chapter).
• Tenebrous needs some vital secrets from two drow that lost their memories. One drow is in the prison (Theran saw this drow in the scrying pool last session).

3. Moribund Shadows: This is a cool room with moving shadows, but there's not much to do. It's mostly atmosphere to mess with the group's head.

8. Prison (Outer Room): A visage is in here warping the heroes' senses. I had Srivlanka use her countercharm to fend off the effect. There's also a flesh golem in here.

Bidam was anxious to try out his Orcusword and its' ability to cast lightning bolt once per day. Poor Bidam. Flesh golems actually get healed by lightning! Bidam groaned in dismay as he watched the lightning make the golem's muscles bulge.

The golem charged forward and pummeled Srivlanka. Theran unloaded with his new wand of magic missiles (he has decided to never use the 7th charge so he won't risk it turning to dust). Bidam chopped down the golem, and the group proceeded to the next room...

Kestod, the mysterious drow

9. Prison (Inner Room): The drow is chained up in here. A visage is trying to invade his mind and find his lost memories.

The group made quick work of the visage. The drow looked to Theran (who is actually a regular elf made to look like a drow by a slaad lord) and said, "My brother! Free me!"

As written in the adventure, the drow is a vampire. He kills himself at the first opportunity. He is devoted to his goddess Kiaransalee and thinks that the best way to keep his secret (before he lost his memory, he knew the location of the Wand of Orcus) is for him to die.

In my campaign world, Orcus was killed by George's old character Altor in a demi-god form. So in my version of this, Kestod just wants to die because he knows that the visages and Orcus will never stop pursuing him.

So Srivlanka picks the locks on his shackles. He delivers his dialogue, indicating that there is another drow who knew what he knew. This drow is named Erehe, who lives in the Vault of the Drow (!) on Oerth. Yes, next adventure, we go to the world of Greyhawk and play through what is essentially a sequel to a beloved Gary Gygax adventure!

Kestod asks the group for a weapon. They balk. They don't trust him. Dammit, this guy wants to kill himself! They take him along, come across some ghouls. The drow throws himself at them and is killed.

The funny thing about this place is when you die in here, you go somewhere special. It worked out so well. The heroes headed right to that place...

2. Cauldron of Lost Souls: In this room is a cauldron filled with swirling energy. When you touch it:

"Faces stretch out of the colors, beseeching the poor sod with imploring looks."

They see the drow's face in there! Basically, the soul of anyone who dies in Tcian Sumere ends up trapped in this cauldron. Nasty, right?

The group tried to figure out how to free the souls, but realized they needed spells they didn't have (dispel magic, bless, etc).

6. Observation Tower: This room is basically an observatory where you can look out into the void of the Negative Material Plane. They found a map that undead would pay 5,000 gold for. The group ended up bringing it to Vrischika in Sigil, so she could sell it in her magic item shop.

The Place Has Been Fully Explored: Getting out of Tcian Sumere is tricky. I planned for this in advance. Getting into Tcian Sumere is easy. Getting back through that portal requires a "key" - bones from a bone pile near the statue of Orcus. I had Srivlanka take an elf skull and hang it from her belt, so that she accidentally activated it so we could cut to the chase.

Back in Sigil

The group returned to Sigil. Bidam agreed to record a new sensory stone depicting Srivlanka's heroic actions (she was an extremely useful NPC ally). She had originally planned to record a sensory stone of the heroes being bastards, but they were on their best behavior. She had taken a liking to them anyway, so she decided to let things be.

She bid the heroes farewell. When she returned to Tradegate, she took a look at that black gem she'd found in Orcus' Throne Room. Orcus activated it, and summoned her to him!

Her father, Gonard Flumph (my Donald Trump rip-off NPC) will come looking for the group next session. His daughter has disappeared and he is hellbent on finding her...

Out of the Abyss is the tabletop Dungeons & Dragons adventure for the Rage of Demons storyline. In this article, I am going to review the book. I'm not going to go into too much detail, as I think I broke a brain vessel completing my guide to Out of the Abyss, which is meant to be an aid to DM's running the adventure.

I'm going to go over the good stuff first and then get to the bad stuff. I can say right off the bat that this is a pretty good adventure and is definitely worth getting. Even if you don't run it, there are tons of dungeons and encounters to pilfer for your own use.

The Good


Starting off Captured

I think it is quite a classic D&D trope to have the heroes be captured by the bad guys and it's the group's job to escape using their own ingenuity. It's hard to do this in the middle of a campaign unless it happens organically, so it's a good choice by the authors to have things kick off already in prison.

I really like the dynamics between the drow captors, and I love how the group meets all these fellow prisoners and they have jobs that they are forced to do. I think it could have been laid out a bit better - I would have liked some more concrete information on the tasks. But overall, it's cool.

The NPCs and Madness 

One major element of this adventure is demonic madness. The heroes will have to roll many times on charts to see if they go insane for a while (and perhaps even permanently). That's pretty fun, and it's especially useful on NPCs. You can load up the madness on NPCs and have all sorts of hijinx.

I really like a lot of the NPCs the heroes start off with, particularly Stool and Jimjar (make sure to read the sidebar in chapter 17, as it gives Jimjar a really fascinating story to play with). If I had one criticism of the NPCs, it's that there aren't enough females. In fact, if I were to run this I am pretty sure I would make Sarith, the drow prisoner, female.

The Charts
I have a love/hate relationship with the random encounters. The adventure just wants you to roll for everything way too often. It is is very obvious that this will ruin your game at the table, because the DM will have to spend too much time rolling and looking things up.

But, I think that if the DM prepares these things ahead of time, then the journeys to the different areas of the Underdark will be a ton of fun. There's a lot of great encounters and I really appreciate how the authors went way out of their way to give us non-combat scenarios. It's not just fighting monsters - you're dodging cave-ins, meeting other lost people and examining weird, glowing mushrooms.

The Organization

One of my major beefs with the previous 5e adventures was with the way they were organized. This book still has major issues in that department, but some things have been fixed. If you remember in Rise of Tiamat, two chapters were combined into one chapter. How weird was that? And the coalition events that occurred throughout the campaign were all listed in a single chapter, rather than being placed chronologically in the book when they would take place.

Here, each chapter pretty much details the place the heroes are likely to go next. It's tricky because the adventure is supposed to be a sandbox. But I can tell they are tightening up the format a bit.

The Dungeons


This adventure has a bunch of dungeons and set-pieces that I find to be vastly superior to most of the other stuff published for 5e so far. This book is brimming over with creativity and it is astonishing how densely-packed this book is with hooks and ideas.

Here's a list of the things that I think you should definitely use even if you don't run this adventure:

The Oozing Temple: This is a really great mini-dungeon and I absolutely love the idea of the group befriending a semi-intelligent gelatinous cube. Oozes in general don't seem to get enough attention in D&D so I'm really glad to see this.

Sloobludop: I really hate spoiling this, but there's no way around it. The heroes are in a kuo toa village, and suddenly Demogorgon himself pops up out of the water and looms over everyone, intent on devouring his sacrifice. How awesome is that?

The Battle of Blingdenstone: Our heroes lead a small force of duergar in an attack on a cavern full of oozes. The adventurers must tear through 4 encounters' worth of oozes and slimes to get to their leader - The Pudding King. This is just awesome.

Gravenhollow: The whole idea of Gravenhollow is great. It's a magic library run by stone giants who have information on everything. The place is infected with spirit echoes of past travelers. This means that if the heroes come back to Gravenhollow, they might run into an echo of themselves. It's a great location that you could put in any campaign and it would stand out.

The Worm Nursery: Purple worms are one of those monsters that don't get a lot of focus. I never considered the idea of a purple worm dungeon being something worth doing. But it is. This dungeon is great. The whole thing comes together so well, with purple worms burrowing tunnels to connect to dungeon rooms as it is being explored, to climbing strands to steal an egg while drow hunters try to do the same - this is a dungeon that deserves to be used.

The Maze Engine: I love this thing. In general, I love random charts. I love modrons. I love combats where a random effect goes off every round. I love battles over a pit of magma. This has all of that. I love it and I am using it ASAP.  I would recommend that if you use it, you change some of the chart results as they are really wacky (being sent back in time to the beginning of the campaign?! Awesome, but no thanks).

Menzoberranzan: I've never been a Forgotten Realms guy so this city is all new to me. I think it is really well done, and I like a lot of the street encounters. Especially the roaming drow kids who give the heroes lewd gestures. And I also got a kick out of the statue of Lolth which, if a non-drow touches it, a spider swarm crawls out of its mouth and attacks. Also, the pillar that lights and heats the city is a really cool and clever idea.

The Final Encounter


I like the whole idea of getting the demon lords to fight each other. I think it's tricky to run, because the heroes are going to be high level and while they are meant to be close by to witness the battle, I get the idea the heroes will be using high-level spells to protect themselves and might not even witness it.

I also appreciate the notion that 'killing' the demon lords physical forms just sends their essence back to the Abyss. Maybe players won't like it, but I don't like the idea of these guys being killed too easily. Truly killing a major entity should involve something bigger, like how you have to destroy a lich's phylactery.

This way, you can 'kill' the bad guy but he's not gone forever.

The Bad

Please remember that I like this adventure. Don't take these criticisms as anything other than one guy's rambling. I haven't even run this, and I don't think I ever will. These are just my thoughts after going through the book with a fine-toothed comb and preparing it as if I was going to run it.

Tons of Homework

I have been developing a theory based on what I have seen in Hoard of the Dragon Queen, Rise of Tiamat, Princes of the Apocalypse and this book. That theory is that the game designers who make these books don't run published adventures.

That makes sense, right? Game designers design games. It follows that their home campaign, if they have one, is full of material that they have created.

The problem then is that these designers don't have a feel for what a DM needs when they run a published adventure. The big selling point of these books is that all the work is done for you. I should be able to sit down, read a chapter, and then run it with few problems.

That simply cannot be done with this book. You will need to take extensive notes. You will have to map things out very carefully, and you'll need to look up a ton of spells, monsters, and traps.

Worse, there is no adventure summary. Do you want to know what happens in this adventure? Read 250 pages of tiny, tiny text and you'll find out. I can distinctly remember when Dungeon magazine started using adventure summaries at the start of each scenario and what a relief it was. That was in the mid-90's. Why have we taken 20 steps backward? A summary would take up a single page in the front of the book, and would save DMs a lot of agony.

Here's an example of the mentality that I am talking about. Very little thought seems to have gone in to how a DM is supposed to run an encounter full of things that need to be looked up ahead of time. Here are all of the spells/traps/monsters you need to look up in order to run Gromph's Outer Sanctum - a single room that the heroes need to get through (page 206):

1. Arcane Lock
2. Knock
3. Continual Flame
4. Fire Elemental
5. Research spells that the heroes might use to figure out command words (to deactivate some of the traps)
6. Dispel Magic
7. Stone Golem (whose stat block will need to be modified to reflect his 4 arms, something you should do on paper in advance so you don't mess it up in play)
8. Maze
9. Glyph of Warding
10. Bestow Curse
11. Leomund's Secret Chest

That is one room! It's an important room, and it's an extreme example of what I am talking about. But can you imagine how long it would take you to prepare that properly? They are asking a lot of DMs who just don't have a lot of time to prepare, especially Adventurers League DMs who are going chapter-by-chapter.

No Page Numbers

You will notice something else in this book. Nothing is referred to by a page number. It's by chapter. Here's an example:

"Much of the party's travel through the Underdark is handled abstractly, using the rules and advice given in chapter 8, "Adventuring," of the Player's Handbook."

How inconvenient is that? Chapter 8?! You can't give me a page number? Worse, even when referring to something in this very same book, we're given a chapter rather than a page number.

I thought and thought about why they would have done it like this. In previous adventures, there was usually an instance or two of "page xx" getting published - an editor missed filling in a page number. I think there have also been instances where the wrong page number was put in the book. Did they just give up and decide to refer people to the chapter and let them figure it out from there?

The only conclusion I can come to is that maybe future printings of the Player's Handbook will include errata, and the extra content might change what page things are located on. So printing the chapter rather than the page number would prevent future discrepencies. But come on, you can't give me page numbers for the stuff in the very same book?

Random Encounters

This is another big reason why I think the people who made this book don't use published adventures. This adventure is overloaded with random encounters. There are vast stretches - we're talking weeks and weeks - of travel. Every single day of travel, the DM needs to:

• Roll for encounters (and then scramble to get the stats ready).
• Let the group roll for foraging (and know how those rules work, know how long the group can go without food, have the exhaustion rules ready and have the foraging fungus page bookmarked).
• Roll to see if the group gets lost (and if they do, figure out how long they are lost for and have them roll again to see if they get on track).
• Track the dark elves who are pursuing them (requiring you to be familiar with an entire subset of rules).

Every day. For weeks. A lot of new DMs are going to hit a wall when they try to handle this section.

What makes this so mind-boggling is the fact that Hoard of the Dragon Queen had a long travel section like this that most people hated! I can't believe that they did this again, and they didn't even give us a concise cheat sheet or guide to help us keep track of everything.

Months of Walking

That brings me to another thing. This adventure is FULL of walking. Walking through the Underdark. Worse, there's this faerzress energy that can hinder or even block teleportation. There is a part of this adventure where the group has to travel 200 miles from Gauntlgrym to Mantol-Derrith. Thats 33 days of walking with a horde of NPCs at their side. Then, soon after that, there is a trip to Gravenhollow that takes 60 days. And then you have to come all the way back!

I'm going to estimate that this campaign takes the heroes around 10 months in game to complete. Most of that time is spent walking. Let's think about this. The demon lords are trapped in the Underdark. Lolth has 10 months to take over their Abyssal domains. That's an awful lot of time to take over their realms, right?

And if the demon lords are in the Underdark for that long.. I mean, that's 10 months that Graz'zt has to infiltrate Menzoberranzan and wreak havoc (he doesn't - in fact, he doesn't do anything in this adventure). That's 10 months for Orcus to raise an undead army (he doesn't).

What exactly are the demon lords doing down there for all that time? Walking? Do they really move that slow?

It's not the end of the world or anything, but it will probably be noticed by the players. Bad guys pull off entire evil schemes in much less than 10 months in D&D.

The Grimoire and the Timmasks

If you remember, there have been very confusing errors in previous adventures. For example, the plot hook for Princes of the Apocalypse - the Mirabar delegates. It was quite the process of poring over that book to find out who they were, what they were doing, where they were going, who had captured them and where they were held.

What made it really hard was that the delegates had this dead body quest hook that had no resolution in the final printed product, and the final delegate was accidentally omitted from the final node printed in the book.

That was not a minor error. The delegates were the entire reason the heroes got involved in the storyline. The heroes were looking for Teresiel from level 1 to level 15, only for it to turn out that she's not imprisoned anywhere due to an editing oversight.

You would think after that happened, that people would take more care to get the important things correct in this book. Right?

Well. Deep into this adventure, we get to this major thing. Our heroes need to make a talisman. The wizard NPC tells us we also need a grimoire. The book then proceeds to contradict itself on whether the grimoire is needed to make the talisman. Here's what it says:

"...they have two goals in the City of Spiders: obtain Gromph Baenre's demon summoning grimoire, and place Vizeran's talisman in Menzoberranzan..."

Obviously this implies that the talisman is made without the grimoire. But on page 215 under "Readying the Plan", the components needed to create the talisman include:

"Gromph Baenre's grimoire (from Sorcere in chapter 15)".

Page 215 is very, very clear. It is among a list of "...components need to create the talisman...". And yet other parts of the book just as clearly show us that the talisman is made before the group even has the grimoire.

You, the DM are left digging through this giant book with no page references (only chapters!) trying to figure out what the hell is going on. The grimoire is the entire reason for going to Menzoberranzan. It's the point of an entire chapter. And we can't figure out what we need the grimoire for!

But that's not even all. There's the timmasks. They're mushroom ingredients to make the talisman. Where do our heroes find these? Actually, the heroes might have grabbed some randomly in the opening chapters, but they probably ate them. Here's how the timmasks we need are described deep into the book:

"Thirteen timmasks, also known as 'devil's mushrooms', sprouted from the footprint of a marilith, a balor, or a goristro - a lure to draw demons in."

OK.. so eventually in chapter 14, our heroes run into a goristro being beat up by Yeenoghu! Crazy, right? Well, there's a goristro. I guess this is where you get the timmasks. Right?

No. There is no mention of timmasks at all in that entire section.

So you keep reading, and you get to chapter 15, which talks as if the group already has all the ingredients. But they don't! Then you pore over the book again. Did you miss it? This is a dense text, maybe you glazed over for a second.

No, you didn't. The timmasks are mentioned again - in chapter 16. A chapter that, I assume, should be run before chapter 15. The timmasks are not found in the footprints of "...a marilith, a balor, or a goristro...". They are found in the remains of a battle between Zuggtmoy and Juiblex, mentioned in a paragraph that I almost entirely missed. It says:

"Additionally, the thirteen timmask mushrooms on the list of required components that Vizeran needs to create his dark heart talisman (see chapter 12)"- No page number! - "can be found in the aftermath of the failed wedding ceremony, sprouting in locations touched by Zuggtmoy or Juiblex."

Then, in chapter 17, we are given a CHECKLIST of the components. Why is that in the final chapter? Why is that not in chapter 12? Here's what it says about the timmasks:

"Thirteen timmasks sprouted from the footprint of a greater demon (from Araumycos's cavern in chapter 16, or elsewhere)."

OR ELSEWHERE?! Can you give us a hand here, people!?

This is why I believe that game designers don't run published adventures. If they did, they would not organize books like this. It is incredibly frustrating. The book should not be your enemy.

Most people running games do not have tons of spare time to dig through a book to find this stuff. Most don't even have the time to read ahead. In fact, many will assume they just missed something and they'll make up a way for the group to get the timmasks on the spot.

The whole point of a published adventure is so that the DM doesn't have to make anything up. It's all done for them.

The NPC Horde

Another problem with this adventure is that the group has a ton of NPCs with them. In the beginning, the heroes will likely be accompanied by freed slaves. There's about 8 of them.

It's a cool idea. But when you have 8 NPCs with you, that game is going to slow to a crawl unless you have a very prepared or experienced DM. And then, when you add in the fact that the DM is rolling random encounters, foraging, navigation checks, the game will become very, very boring.

On top of that, there's no scaling. 5 PCs and 8 NPCs versus 1d6 giant spiders? So... maybe 1 giant spider? 2? Versus 12 people? Those spiders will be dead so fast some PCs won't even get to roll to hit.

It gets worse in the second half of the book. The group will have 20+ NPCs with them. I am not kidding. Up to 25 NPCs. And these NPCs go with the group on that 60 day journey to Gravenhollow that you're supposed to roll out each day for.

Random encounters include 1d4 chasmes, or 1d2 hezrous. Versus 30 people. I don't even know what we are doing at this point in the adventure. Why? I mean, why not give us a horde of monsters with 1 hit point (minions) each attacking us. Right? Minions would make the bookkeeping easy, but at least you will have the feeling of your small platoon being threatened by a substantial force.

I just don't get why they gave the group all these NPCs. It's too unwieldy. If you're going to do it, cook up special abstract rules to help the DMs run it without grinding the game to a halt.

I don't think there's too many DMs out there who can possibly keep all those NPCs straight. They all have names, they're all in factions, and there's about 6 different stat blocks to keep track of.

Gracklstugh is the Worst

Let's Not Find Droki

Now we get to the main event. Chapter 4. Gracklstugh. I don't know what happened here. It's like they ran out of time to work on this chapter. It's too big. It's organized in the most insane manner I've ever seen.

Quest lines are broken up by section of the city. It's so bizarre. You'll read about half of a quest, and then you'll read about a tavern, and then 5 pages later, you'll read more about the quest from earlier.

Then there's quests that are not even finished. There's this whole quest involving the derro and how they're getting surface world currency. There is no resolution to this! In the final room of Whorlstone Tunnels (the dungeon nearby), there's this monolith and a single coin from the surface world. There is no explanation as to where it came from. There are no other surface coins. The whole thing is just dropped, as if somebody deleted a paragraph and didn't realize it.

I could go on forever about how much I hate Gracklstugh, and especially how much I hate Droki. Droki is a derro who has a sack of stuff. The heroes need to find Droki. All of the jumbled-up quests that will take you 2 hours to piece together all end up with the same goal: find Droki.

The heroes might see Droki in the market. They might chase him. But the adventure says: "Pursuing characters quickly lose sight of the derro as he vanishes into the crowd".

So there's NO CHANCE of the group nabbing him. He gets away, no matter what.

You know what usually happens in D&D when you put an NPC that the heroes need to find in front of them? The heroes trample their own mother to get to that NPC right away. They bust out spells. They fling nets. They use magic items everyone forgot they owned. They get on horses. They climb on rooftops. They throw sticky stuff at the NPC's feet. They shout to everyone around the NPC that they'll pay 100 gold to whoever tackles him and restrains him. And they will gladly pay it.

So how do we find Droki? The heroes are supposed to go to the derro section of city, and somehow stumble on a pipe. In the pipe is tunnel. In that tunnel is a dungeon called Whorlstone Tunnels that Droki's in. There's no footprints. No one says, "Hey! Droki went over there in that pipe!". The heroes just notice a pipe, and peer in looking for treasure or a dungeon rather than the contents of 50 deep gnomes' bowels.

So then our heroes enter Whorlstone Tunnels. The idea here is that Droki eats magic mushrooms that make him small and allow him to run through tiny tunnels to elude the heroes. The group is supposed to pursue him through the dungeon. Eventually the group just finds him or something. The book leaves that entirely up to the DM!

The worst part of all of this is that there's cool ideas in this chapter. The red dragon is awesome. The idea that he's being replaced by a dragon yet to hatch - also awesome! The concept of the heroes being his spy - that's epic!

So how the hell did we end up chasing Droki and his sack through Whorlstone Tunnels (which in my opinion is a lousy dungeon)?

Prior to this, I considered the trip to Thay in Rise of Tiamat to be the low point in the 5e published adventures. Mostly because it was just too short and there was barely anything to it.

I also hated the tacked-on barren dungeon in the final chapter of Rise of Tiamat. And I thought the first 25% of Princes of the Apocalypse was sort of weak and probably would bore players into quitting.

But now there is no question. Chapter 4 - Gracklstugh - is the low point of 5th edition. It's simply not finished. It makes no sense. It's like a first draft of a chapter that nobody ever got back to. And worst of all, it's one of the longest chapters in the book! 33 pages! Why?

Overall

Despite my criticisms, I think this is probably the best adventure put out so far. While I enjoyed the dragon-centric action in Tyranny of Dragons, those books were more uneven than this one. Out of the Abyss maintains a pretty high level of quality throughout, with a couple glaring exceptions.

Tonight I did something I don't normally do. I expanded on a section of the adventure, stretching it to fill a session.

In the book, the heroes set out for the Vault of the Drow. They're supposed to join on this caravan which goes through a series of portals:

1. Sigil to the planar gate-town of Plague-Mort.
2. A gate in Plague-Mort to the Abyssal town of Broken Reach.
3. Out of Broken Reach, journey across the first layer of the Abyss to a portal to the Demonweb Pits.

The book gives some suggestions on what could happen on this trip and leaves it up to you. I have material on all of the locations. So I decided to roll up my sleeves and run a "travel" session. I also went through my 4e books and picked out my favorite demons and tried to work them into this session.

I really want to continue having an NPC hero with the group, because I think they need the healing and it lets me give the group clues in a not-so-obvious way.

(Jessie) Bidam - Platinum-Scaled Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Drow Wizard
* They are joined by an NPC "4e Warlord" named Sark Axebarrel.

Downtime

The Civic Festhall, home of the Sensates

The adventurers had returned from the Negative Material Plane. Bidam recorded a sensory stone of their adventure, which immediately became extremely popular at the Civic Festhall (home base of the Sensate faction). Within days, word had spread amongst all of the Sensates that Orcus was somehow killing gods despite the fact that he was greatly weakened.

Theran sold the Negative Material plane map through Vrischika's Curiosity Shoppe. A dabus was hammering magic nails into the wall of their festhall for unknown reasons (I'm setting up a big thing for a few sessions from now).

Factol Erin Darkflame Montgomery

The head of the Sensates, Factol Erin Darkflame Montgomery, called on Bidam to meet with her. When Bidam got there, he saw that Fall From Grace, the succubus paladin/head of the Brothel of Slaking Intellectual Lusts, was there too.

The Factol thanked Bidam for making the new sensory stone, which contained very rare experiences as well as vital information that all of the people of the planes needed to know. The Factol herself had experienced the sensory stone and had done some research. She had two things she wanted to say:

1. The heart that Bidam found was the heart of Orcus' balor body. Orcus shed his balor body when he ascended to become a god/demon lord.
2. Bidam had a plan to make a heart for the Lady of Pain. Supposedly, the Lady of Pain is the source of all pain and misery in the multiverse and there is a sucking void where her heart should be. The Factol warned Bidam that giving any gift to the Lady of Pain would likely lead to Bidam's death. The Lady of Pain generally either mazed or killed people who interacted with her.

A few days later, the heroes had some visitors at their place of business (the F*ckhaus) - Yugoloths (mercenary demons) paid by Gonard Flumph. They were looking for Flumph's daughter, who had gone missing.

A mezzoloth held up a gem that projected Gonard's image, and Flumph grilled the heroes on what they knew. I threw in as many Trumpisms as I could muster. He talked about how he made deals every day, and how you have to represent yourself properly, and that the if he was running Sigil all the portals would be closed until we could figure out what's going on. He even badmouthed the Lady of Pain, talking about how the city was green and brown and how she was too sensitive to criticism.

Even the mezzoloths got nervous when Flumph started talking about the Lady of Pain.

Bidam went to the Civic Festhall and recorded a sensory stone of Flumph's blasphemy for everyone to see.

Sark Axebarrel

Sark Axebarrel fighting a black pudding

The heroes knew they needed to find a drow named Erehe in the vault of the drow on the world of Oerth (Greyhawk!). They hooked up with a quiet bariaur named Quavis Faithminder who was heading that way on her trade route. She hired the heroes as guards. There was one other NPC guard named Sark Axebarrel. I based him on a recent fantasy drawing Tony DiTerlizzi did. I wanted to have a cynical and sarcastic NPC as I read a lot of articles about "Generation X" this week.

They headed through a portal to the Outlands and traveled to Plague-Mort, a town on the verge of being sucked into the Abyss.

Sark conned Bidam into buying and eating some food from Sweet Larissa's sausages. It turns out those sausages are made from people! Bidam quietly vowed to get revenge on Sark.

The Prison

Immolith

Their job was to go to the prison and sell some of Theran's javelins of lightning (he makes them - Quavis had bought them from Vrischika's shop) to the guards there. The prison is really cool. There's 7 floors, each floor specializes in a different torture method - Interrogation by magic, interrogation by water, etc. The ruler of Plague Mort, the Arch Lector, is extremely paranoid and is constantly having his guards (The Hounds) bringing in people for "questioning".

The prison is planning on adding a floor - "interrogation by lightning". So they are interested in buying lightning javelins.

The heroes and Sark go into the interrogation by fire floor and meet with two immolith guards. They are preparing to interrogate a 12 year old kid - the Arch Lector's nephew. I played the kid as one of those streetwise youths from the 20's who sold newspapers.

Obviously, the concept of a 12 year old being interrogated by fire didn't sit well with the heroes and Sark. Bidam charged the immoliths and Theran used mage hand to snatch keys off the wall and send them to the kid so he could remove his restraints (shifter's manacles - they prevent teleportation).

Then Theran busted out his wand of magic missiles and went to town. The immoliths were tough but the heroes prevailed. They scooped up the javelins and their money and fled the scene. They stashed the kid in a crate and Quavis made haste to the portal in town before someone found out what had happened.

Broken Reach

Red Shroud, Ruler of Broken Reach

They passed through the portal and appeared on The Plain of 1,000 Portals, the very first layer of the Abyss. They showed up right in Broken Reach, a sort of Mad Max-type of settlement built in the ruins of three towers. The main building here was a white marble palace that was 60 feet off the ground, held up by pillars.

The group needed to sell the ruler of the town some rare poisons called skinvice. The ruler, a succubus named Red Shroud, specialized in buying and selling poisons. She also was a person who knew a lot of information and had something of a network of informants.

When the group met with her, they were standing before here on this sheet of red glass. At her command, the sheet can disappear and the heroes fall 60 feet. If they don't die from the fall, her solamith guards can pelt them with necrotic energy to finish them off.

Throne Room of Red Shroud

So our heroes meet with Red Shroud, repeatedly being warned by Sark not to say anything to her as she was extremely dangerous. The meeting went like this:

1. Red Shroud bought the skinvice.
2. She asked the heroes if they knew Fall From Grace. They said "yes". Red Shroud asked them to bring her to Broken Reach, and that she'd reward them. Red Shroud looked into Bidam's eyes and charmed him. Bidam agreed to do as she asked.
3. Red Shroud said she'd heard of an elf and a dragonborn stealing some items from The Fortress of the Fallen Stair, including an amulet that the demon lord Alzrius wanted back. The heroes did this a while back. The adventurers correctly pointed out that they did not fit the description (since that adventure, Theran had gone from elf to drow, and Bidam went from black scales to platinum). They rolled a deception check and rolled really high. Bidam was charmed, but they were able to get him out of there before he revealed the truth - Theran was wearing the amulet right now.

The group fled Broken Reach. Theran was able to break the charm spell by punching Bidam (suffering harm causes the victim to get a save - otherwise the victim is charmed for 1 day! He also shares a telepathic bond with the succubus until it is broken). They weren't sure if Red Shroud had scoured Bidam's mind or not. I think she might hire a thief to steal it from them when they get back to Sigil.

For a few days, they traveled across the windswept barrens of the Abyss with a giant ancient red sun beating down on them. During this trip they:

• Passed by many pools of acid.
• Came upon an archway carved with demonic sigils and images of chained succubi on it. Sark said he knew it was a portal, but he didn't know how to activate it or where it went to. I thought Theran might cast warp sense to find out, but the heroes wanted no part of it. This portal leads to the realm of Karaphon, the demon lord who "collects" alu-fiend slaves who was mention in the "Umbra" adventure.
• Passed through a cackle storm - they had to make saving throws (with advantage if they covered their ears). Theran failed his save, and came under the influence of a Tasha's hideous laughter spell (which is really nasty! You are prone and incapacitated). This is different from the spell, though, as it is permanent.

Luckily for Theran, Quavis had brought along the cackle storm cure. Theran had to drink 10 vials of holy water.

The Orderer

Soon after, they arrived at a fateful place - an iron fortress. If you read my guide to Out of the Abyss, you know that I loved the Maze Engine encounter. So, yeah, I put it in this adventure.

There's a lot of backstory to this scene, so bear with me.

In 2012 I ran a 4e Blackmoor campaign in the game store. It didn't really have much to do with the setting of Blackmoor. It was more about jumping from plane to plane. That group of heroes had come to the Abyss, and they met a demon with ambitions of becoming the demon lord of vanity. Her name was Bazuuma. She was a beautiful lady who wore a veil. She had 20 eyes on her face.

Back then, I just wanted to trot this NPC out in front of the players and do my best impression of an old-timey burlesque song as this lady strutted onto the scene. I wanted to see the reactions of the players to this ridiculous NPC. I knew it would make me laugh (and it did).

If I remember right, once I trotted out Bazuuma in all her glory while chortling uncontrollably, a player named Rebecca told me: "You need to get a girlfriend". One of my other players was immediately smitten with Bazuuma. His character became Bazuuma's chief agent. Later in the campaign, he ended up putting her in a chamber of positive energy on the world of Eberron which changed her from vain and capricious to proud and enlightened.

Long story short, that character became a blue slaad and now Bazuuma is single and setting up a home in the Abyss. Because she is "tainted" with good and positivity, she is likely to be especially hated in the Abyss, so her home will need to have extra defenses.

Jovocs serve and worship Bazuuma

So Bazuuma picked out this abandoned iron fortress and made a deal with the modrons. They agreed to deliver her an Orderer. An Orderer is a 20' diameter globe-like device full of gears and steam vents that can create "order" in the land around her new home. Bazuuma's jovoc servants screwed up, though. While trying to move the Orderer into position, they rolled the orderer into a crevasse near the fortress and now it's stuck halfway down. It's inching its way down to the pool of acid at the bottom.

One by one, the jovocs tried to climb down and do something, but they fell in the acid or were killed by gnaw demons lurking in the crevasse.

Now a lone modron is watching a jovoc have a temper tantrum. The heroes come upon this scene and decide to help. They realized if they can pull the lever and activate the orderer, it can do its job before it falls into the acid and is destroyed.

Bidam climbed down and pulled the lever on the orderer. Because the orderer has been damaged, I roll on the random effects chart in the maze engine section of out of the abyss for 14 rounds. During this time, gnaw demons fly up out of the crevasse each round and attack.

Gnaw demons bite ankles and are drawn to blood

The encounter went fine, but I made the gnaw demons too weak.  I had customized the maze engine chart, but unfortunately we didn't get some of the results I wanted. I had a bunch of ideas for when the heroes rolled "time travel" on the chart (in Out of the Abyss, it sends the heroes back to the beginning of the campaign!), but we didn't get to do any of them.

Bidam did get hit by energy which boosted his DEX by two points. Also, the orderer summoned a deceased NPC back to life - Aach the traitor. Aach is the woman who left the heroes to die in Undermountain. The heroes tracked her down in Sigil and fed her to a slaad.

Now that she comes back to life what do they do? Theran casts earthshock and sends her hurtling over the side of the crevasse into the acid pool. Dead again.

The orderer changes the land around the fortress into a pleasant, orderly area. There's a modron maze to protect the fortress from demons. There's bridges over acid pools. It's nice. I'm going to flesh this place out next time using an article from Dragon 233 by Monte Cook which is all about these fortresses.

Bazuuma returned home later and was very happy when she saw what the heroes had done. She invited them to stay for the night. Bidam lives by the philosophy of "hit it and quit it" and so one thing led to another.

I should note that we drank a bit of alcohol in this session, which I never do (I drink about once per year, if that). But I figured it would be a fun experiment. So I was a little off my game, but we had a lot of fun and it was kind of a goofy session. I figured now was the time to do it, because from here on out we're going through the most important stuff in the whole campaign.

Now that I have gotten caught up with Out of the Abyss, I'd like to take some time to talk about the current way the D&D team is handling things. Back in November, Chris Perkins gave us a lot of insight during a seminar at Game Hole 2015. Merric Blackman did a great job summing it up here.

I'm using art by Jeff Carlisle, who was really awesome but never quite got his due for some reason. He seemed to stop doing D&D art right when he got really good.

Here's some topics from this seminar that stuck out to me:

A Lot of Old D&D Books Were Bought and Never Used

I think that is certainly true. So much stuff - a lot of it really good - was made that people never got to. This phenomenon goes way back to my time in 2nd Edition. You may notice that right now in 2016 I am running Dead Gods, an adventure which came out in the mid-90's. I have been waiting 20 years to run it! It sat on the shelf so long because there was just so much other material I wanted to run. I still want to run Age of Worms, which came out around 10 years ago.

Also, in every edition there were so many sourcebooks full of things that I am still sifting through. There's just only so much stuff you can fit into a session. For example, say you get a book on seafaring. You have to wait until your heroes are near an ocean to use it! And if you're running Out of the Abyss now, and maybe a Ravenloft campaign next, then that book you bought will be sitting idle on a shelf for a very long time.

A good portion of this blog is really just me sifting through all the old volumes and pulling out cool material.

I think one of the unique things about role playing games in general is that a huge portion of the people who play the game also have the desire and ability to create material for the game. DrivethruRPG is full of 3rd party stuff for 5e, far more than anyone could actually use.

Shared Experiences

The current model is to put out one big adventure every 6 months. They want everyone to have a "shared experience", kind of like how many of us from the 80's have fond memories of the Tomb of Horrors or the Isle of Dread. Back in the old days, you can ask someone you just met at a convention, "So what did your group do in the opening hallway in the Tomb of Horrors?" and you'd usually get an answer.

I think that the ultimate goal for the creators of D&D is for when people look back on Out of the Abyss, they think of December 2015 and the friends they had at that time, the music they listened to, all that kind of thing. Sort of like the Marvel comic book crossovers. The Infinity Gauntlet miniseries brings me right back to the late 80's/early 90's.

The Adventures Are Too Long

There's been a problem with this approach, though. The adventures are too long. This is touched on in Chris' seminar.

In fact, these adventures aren't just a little too long, they are way too long. Out of the Abyss takes a group from level 1 to level 15. I don't think there's too many gaming groups who will be even close to done with it in 6 months of play.

I wrote quite a bit about the other groups in my game store back when I was running Adventurers League games. If you remember, there was one table that played Hoard of the Dragon Queen every week for six months. After all that time, they had only made it to chapter 4! That group would need about two years of weekly play just to complete Tyranny of Dragons.

Judging from the search results in my blog, by far the thing people are googling the most is stuff from Tyranny of Dragons. That's the first storyline. People are still playing the first adventure.

I think groups play slower than Wizards of the Coast expects them to. I also think people for the most part, at least those outside of the Adventurers League, do not play D&D on a weekly basis. I think they get together when they can, but when they can is more of a monthly schedule than a weekly one.

So right now we are in this weird situation where Wizards of the Coast are putting out adventures that are so big that groups won't be able to play (or have the need to buy) the next book for a very long time.

I have been trying to figure out the best solution to this. How long should an adventure be that groups can complete in six months?

What Length is Best?

These old adventures we have fond memories of were about 14-22 pages long. I was stunned when I read through White Plume Mountain a while back. It's just a handful of pages. Yet it is a large dungeon that took 4 sessions to get through. And it was awesome.

So if you're making a 5th edition adventure that takes 6 months of real life time to finish, I guess you could make it where characters start at level 1 and they finish at about level 8. People can definitely do that in 6 months, I think. The hardcover book might be a little shorter, but that's OK.

But it seems like wizards wants these adventures to be epic. The final battle in each path has been with a major entity: Tiamat, Imix (or another prince of elemental evil), and Demogorgon (or other demon lords).

If these adventures only go to level 8, then that means we don't get those fights. Also you'll run into the problem where players are going to want to keep leveling. It happened over and over again in the 4e encounters program. After every season ended, the next adventure started at level one and players got annoyed. They wanted to keep going with their old character. 

I personally like the idea of Wizards putting out one adventure for levels 1-8, and then another one for levels 8-15. So then groups could level their characters all the way up over the course of one year. But I wonder if putting out a book for high level characters will be harmful, as new players need to start at level one and thus won't buy that book.

Future Adventures

I was tantalized by this quote:

"One upcoming adventure will be very short, but is very, very replayable: it can be played 200 times and you would never play the same adventure twice. The adventure can be played two or three times in 6 months, and it really changes up the model for adventure design."

The thing that pops into my mind when I read this is Baba Yaga's Hut. All of the rooms are connected in a weird way, but there's room to shift them around and there's a lot of interdimensional stuff going on.

Or maybe this adventure is some kind of random chart scenario? Where you roll to see what room or area comes next?

I'd really like an adventure set in Sigil, and one in the city of Greyhawk. All of this Forgotten Realms stuff just isn't my thing.

Are the 5e Adventures Classics?

I think it is too early to say whether the 5e adventures will be fondly remembered. From what I can tell, more people are playing them than, say, the people who played the 4e path. 4e's Keep on the Shadowfell is not fondly recalled, I don't think.

Personally I think that the 5e adventures are good but are missing a certain inspired element. I can't think of too many really crazy moments in any of the adventures that players truly got excited about.

I did like the beginning of Hoard of the Dragon Queen, with the town under siege. The problem there was that the whole thing was too difficult to run as written. To me, the very beginning of an adventure is where there should be a classic memorable scene or encounter of some kind. That's partly because not everyone is going to play through to the end.

Play Every Week
Writing this post really crystallized things for me. I can't encourage everyone enough to make an effort to play every week. You don't have to play for 6 hours. Just do 2. If you're organized, you can get a lot done. 

A weekly schedule keeps everything fresh in people's heads. It gives the campaign a ton of momentum. And it's something to look forward to, really.

That's one of the great things about D&D. It's a pretty healthy hobby to have. You're not doing drugs, you're not getting wasted (well, probably not). You are socializing with friends.

I just watched this documentary on loneliness. A lot of people out there are having a hard time feeling connected. D&D is the perfect way to connect in a safe and healthy way. It is an excuse to get together and to sit and laugh and create with other people.

Tonight we got to a really interesting part of Dead Gods. The heroes had to go to the Vault of the Drow on the world of Oerth (aka the Greyhawk setting). They're looking for a drow named Erehe, who lost his memory. Essentially in this chapter, the group revisited a site from a classic Gary Gygax adventure.

There is some criticism out there of this chapter that I agree with. The problem in this section is that the vault and the city are described, but there are almost literally no encounters and no city locations detailed.

It's weird. The heroes could basically zip right to Erehe very quickly, which feels like a waste. We're in the Vault of the Drow! Let's get our money's worth!

So I dug up the 1st edition adventure along with the material in the 4e Underdark book and fleshed out the city. I also borrowed liberally from Out of the Abyss. The Menzoberranzan chapter is littered with fun drow city encounters.

The Party

(Jessie) Bidam - Platinum-Scaled Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Drow Wizard

George is cautious and thoughtful. Jessie likes to jump into things and take risks for the sake of adventure.

Fiendish Fortresses

Last time, the adventurers helped out a demon on the path of becoming a demon lord. They used a modron device to create a fortress in her image.

I used a great Monte Cook article from Dragon #233 to flesh this place out:

• It is sentient - It can sense activity within 5 feet of it, it gets 3 attacks per round,  is immune to lightning, fire and poison, etc.
• It is covered in eyes with blinking eyelashes.
• It has spell projectors (see the above image of the levlevor).
• It is surrounded by a clockwork maze with conveyor belts.
• There's a chamber of mirrors, where the walls, floor and ceiling are all mirrors. When you look into it, each of your infinite reflections show a different possible version of yourself - different race, class, color, gender, etc.

Bidam had seduced the lady would-be demon lord last time. We ran a goofy mini-adventure about Bidam's sperm going through the "Womb of Perils". I'll spare you the details.

Bazuuma gave the heroes a copy of a spell called Teleport Ward. It protects an area from teleportation. It's from the dragon magazine article. I am trying to give the heroes more spells as part of my new policy: when I use an article or supplement that has new spells in it, I should let the players learn some of them.

The Demonweb

The adventurers said goodbye to Bazuuma and their caravan headed back out into the plain of 1,000 portals. They spotted some manes (low level demons) and let them be. Later, they passed a lake of molten iron.

They crossed a bridge over the River Styx. Quavis pointed out that if the heroes touched it, they'd lose their memories forever. I meant for this to be a huge clue as to how the two drow in this adventure lost their memories, but neither player picked up on it.

They met with a drow who led them into a portal to the demonweb. Out among the strands, the group saw a half-mile long spider watching them. It was actually Lolth's animated fortress (from Q1, Queen of the Demonweb Pits).

The heroes popped out in a chamber in the underground cavern known as the vault of the drow. Dark elves approached them, talked to Quavis and began to unload the cargo. All of them wore green hooded cloaks.

From here, the adventurers were on their own. It was up to them to sneak or talk their way past the drow and get into the city.

I changed this area a bit. In the adventure, there's a chamber called the Egg of Lolth and in it is a tall building known as the Fane of Lolth. The building is dangerous and is barely detailed in this book. There's nothing to gain by going in there. So I just decided it's destroyed and is nothing but a pile of rubble.

Instead, in the Egg of Lolth, a bunch of drow parade out some prisoners. Three mindflayers pick out some prisoners and eat their brains. The rest are thrown into a magma rift. I did this to foreshadow a few things:

1. House Kilsek has taken over the city, and they have been killing anyone suspected of being sympathizers to House Tormtor.
2. House Kilsek is working with mind flayers.

So in the middle of all this, the heroes tried to bluff their way past all these drow. Theran had a really hard time bluffing. The drow heard him speak and were suspicious of his "surface elf" accent. They were the first to ask him, "Where's your pifwafwi?!". He had no idea what she was talking about.

They asked a priestess about Erehe. The priestess explained that Erehe was with the enemy - House Tormtor. After a ton of awkward back and forth, the heroes were able to get past the Egg of Lolth and headed into the vault.

The Vault

I made player maps of the vault, as it is pretty confusing. There's three main sections:

1. An area with estates of the drow houses.
2. Erelhei-Cinlu, the depraved city of the drow.
3. The Lower Vault, an area full of fungus fields and merchant houses.

The whole place is in the middle of a civil war. Three drow houses - Tormtor, Aleval and Everhate are battling the rest for control.

The group got to the estate area. They ran into some drow riding giant lizards. The drow asked Theran, "Where's your pifwafwi?". The heroes bluffed and privately wondered among themselves, "What the hell is a pifwafwi?!". They'd be asked this question by almost everyone they came across - gate guards, beggars, suspicious merchants, etc.

Theran had no idea what they were talking about. Remember, Theran was a regular elf transformed by a slaad lord to look like a drow. When he speaks, he speaks with a "surface elf" accent.

I kept waiting for the group to head off the road so I could have a displacer beast attack them, but they stuck to the road.

They went to the estate of House Tormtor and asked to speak with Erehe. There were githyanki guards there, which threw the heroes off a bit. Basically what has happened is that Tormtor recruited the aid of githyanki in the civil war.

After a long discussion, the heroes were told Erehe was at war further in the vault and wouldn't be in the estate for a few days. The group actually seriously considered handing over all of their weapons, armor and equipment and waiting in the estate for several days for Erehe.

Erelhei-Cinlu

They went into the city. They wanted to make their way through it to get to the Great Gate, as apparently Erehe was involved in a battle there.

The city is crazy. It is full of brothels, torture parlors, drug saloons and beggars who give you leprosy if you don't give them money! There are slaves everywhere. In Gygax's vault, there's a mention of three different drow drugs:

• Mushroom powder
• Poppy juice
• Lotus dust

No notes on what they do, as far as I could find.

I included a lot of merchants in the city. I figured I'd give the group a chance to acquire magic items if they wanted them.

A group of "bitter youths", who were half-orc/half-drow, tried to mess with the heroes. They shoved Theran to the ground and started stomping on him. Others tried to snatch The Orcusword out of Bidam's sheath!

Theran knocked 3 of them out with a spell, while Bidam dropped the other 3 in a single round. The people in the streets gathered around and cheered the heroes on, shouting "Slit their throats!". The heroes refused.

The adventurers watched in dismay as people swarmed the bitter youths, slit their throats and looted their meager belongings. Then, a swarm of spiders began devouring what was left of the youths.

Spiders are everywhere in Erelhei Cinlu. The people revere them. So there's webs all over the place and spiders of all sizes just hanging out.


The heroes resumed their trip through the city, intent on getting out of this evil place as quickly as possible. They saw a drow in an alley whipping a slave and just kept going. They passed by a gambling hall and a torture parlor.

They passed through market, and stopped in their tracks when they saw a lady selling pifwafwis for 1500 gold each.

A pifwafwi is a cloak that all the drow wear in the vault. They are magic cloaks that make you predator-invisible when the hood is up, and those drow who don't wear one are deemed suspicious or outsiders. The heroes were going to buy them, but realized that maybe they should just kill some drow and steal them instead.

They were approached by goblin beggars who asked for food. The heroes gave them a pile of gold. The goblins, overjoyed, asked the heroes to meet their boss in a secret tunnel.

The adventurers went into the secret tunnel, a small area underground area where a bunch of smelly goblins lived in hiding. They explained the House Kilsek had taken control of the city, and were killing thousands of people - anyone they suspected of being allies of Tormtor.

The goblins offered to let the heroes stay in the tunnel whenever they liked. The heroes bought them food, and in exchange the boss gave the heroes a crusty ring. It turned out the ring was actually a ring of arachnid control!

Pifwafwi

The goblins also knew a guy who might know where Erehe was. His name was Terrigen, a rebellious dark elf who hated the noble houses. The group met him in a bar. I went into this huge description of Terrigen - he was covered in scars, his eyes flickered with equal parts sorrow and rage, he was drinking shadow stein and seemed lost in thought.

Terrigen looked the heroes over. A goblin whispered to him. Terrigen nodded, thought for a moment, looked around conspiratorially and leaned forward. He asked Theran in a whisper: "Where's your pifwafwi?!"

This might be a "you had to be there" kind of thing, but none of us could stop laughing for what seemed like forever.

Terrigen agreed to take them to Erehe if they would do something for him - he wanted them to kill the House Kilsek constable who was in charge of slaughtering the thousands of civilians.

The group agreed.

Robbery

Drow and a Draegloth

Theran and Bidam decided to go to a brothel to find some drow to rob. The brothel they chose had human and elf slaves working there, being watched by a draegloth guard. The heroes brought two women to the same room.

There was a bit of planning, which really should have been done prior to the entry of the brothel. Once the slaves realized that the adventurers were intent on battling the drow of Erelhei Cinlu, the slaves begged the heroes to free them.

The heroes went downstairs, talked with the draegloth, and bought the slaves. They took the slaves out of the brothel and hid them with the gobins. Then they hung out outside the brothel and waited for two drow wearing pifwafwis to come out of the brothel.

After some waiting, the adventurers spotted targets. Bidam laid in an alley, pretending to be unconscious or dead. Theran used the ring of arachnid control to make a swarm of spiders head into the alley. The two drow noticed the swarm, followed it, and saw Bidam lying there in the alley. They got excited, as Bidam is overloaded with treasure.

One drow leaned over Bidam and went to slit his throat. Theran jumped into the alley and blasted him with his wand of magic missiles. Bidam stabbed the other guy with the Orcusword. As they traded blows, Bidam repeatedly rolled natural 1's to hit.

If you remember, in the book, The Orcusword is supposed to break on a natural one. I didn't like that, so I am just narrating damage. I think I'll have it where Bidam needs to repair the Orcusword in some fashion next session.

One drow put Theran in a globe of darkness. Bidam killed the other. We had a bit of confusion as far as what spell Theran could cast without seeing his target and what penalties applied. I googled it now and it's still a bit fuzzy.

The surviving drow tried to flee. He lost his concentration on the darkness globe and raced out into the street. Theran used a ray of frost to slow him and then Bidam had a brief duel with him and killed him. Most people in the street fled, but a few drow took notice. I rolled randomly to see if there were guards present, but I rolled low. So I decided that the drow watchers were messed up on lotus dust.

The heroes finally had their pifwafwis. Now they needed to go kill some drow guards.Bidam was hurt very badly (he had about 4 hit points left), as he had been stabbed repeatedly by the drow's poison blade. They needed to find somewhere safe to rest.