Down Come the Claws
I suppose it’s time I showed what I’ve been working on and see if it’s met with enough enthusiasm for me to continue. Tackling the Hells has been humbling, fun, and a ton of work. I set out with the goal of making a place Players will hate, but that simultaneously offers opportunities available nowhere else in the multiverse.
I want the Players to dislike Hell. Otherwise it’s not Hell!?
I also want them to know there is simply nowhere else to obtain certain kinds of objects, information, high contracts, and low deals.
Going to Hell should be grueling. But it should also become easier as Players familiarize themselves with the way things work. Yes, characters will suffer there. But they can also, through resource management and strategy, deflect some of Hell’s agonies and come out on top.
I want Hell to feel like free diving. It’s scary. You can only stay down so long. But the more you train, the longer you can go.
I also want Hell to be less about combat and more about manipulation. There are so many personalities in Ed Greenwood’s articles from Dragon Magazine 75, 76, and 91. My goal is to capitalize on those personalities; stay as true to the source material as possible, yet still inject a few surprises and twists. I also want to draw more directly from other prominent mythologies related to Hell (like I drew on mythologies related to the City of Brass). Specifically, I want to look a bit more at Dante’s Inferno along with more classical mythologies concerning the underworld—so that the Hells resonate.
Hell also needs an economy that makes sense. When you think of a truly evil person, you probably immediately go to “murder”. Murder for fun. And I have explored that to an extensive degree in Dream House of the Nether Prince. Brutal, senseless violence is the provender of the Abyss. No, they literally eat it. The demons are always hungry.
This is not to say that Devils don’t enjoy cruelty or murder. They totally enjoy murder. And an arrogant paladin in Hell is likely to call down the claws immediately. On the other hand, some humility, deference, diplomacy, and salesmanship could keep a mid-level paladin in business, as the fiends seek to turn him against their rivals and enemies.
The basic premise here is that Devils are suffering. Hell is about Agony. All devils are competing for Respite from Agony. There’s only so much Respite to go around.
And because of this, Hell is about petty grudges as much as it is about grand schemes and plane-spanning ambition. They want to rule the multiverse but they need to medicate while working toward that goal. Because being Hell HURTS. All-the-time-Hurts. The constant competition for, nay, desperation for Respite drives every kind of plot.
Therefore, calculating devils may want to use PCs as enforcers, punishers, distracters, red herrings, spies, assassins, thieves, messengers, and more. “Primes” are disposable. And you can blame them for all sorts of indiscretions and breaches of infernal protocol. Utilizing Primes might allow Devils to skirt the edge of a contract that otherwise forbids the devil and its minions.
PCs will quickly discover that in order to stay alive in Hell, you have to be useful.
To be useful, typically means causing problems for someone else. As a result, enemies will be made almost immediately at the same time relationships are forged—for better or worse. One group of PCs might have Geryon’s support. Another might never dare set foot in Stygia. With the infinite web of grudges and vendettas, however, PCs should be able to find a path forward regardless of which infernal personalities they side with. “Oh you hate Belial and He hates you? We have something in common. Yes, I’d be happy to get you safely through his realm, provided you’re willing to…”
The only mantra is probably, “Don’t piss off EVERYONE.”
Alliances might shift as debts are settled and slights squared. But PCs will not be able to take all comers. They’ll have to earn respect. Sometimes through violence. Sometimes through shrewd parley. And sometimes by having the right arch-devil backing them up (even if only for a moment).
Hell is stuffed with machinations, conversations, threats, bribes, extortion, seduction and so on. Characters who are willing to bend in the wind are less likely to break and more likely to be picked by Infernal elites to execute operations they themselves are forbidden from pursuing.
Yes, there will be double-crosses. Yes, there will be compromises. But it just might be worth it. If a powerful Devil owes you a favor, and you have it in writing, Hell itself, the VERY PLANE ITSELF, will make certain you collect. And if you prove yourself resourceful and clever, odds are good some greater fiend will think it more useful to keep you around than bleed you for Taint and grind your bones to Grave Dust.
Such political intrigue means that even lower level characters can give Hell a try.
My development framework for each layer is based on Avernus being difficult but suitable for characters of 5th level and higher.
Extrapolation:
Avernus 5th
Dis 6th
Minauros 7th
Phlegethos 8th
Stygia 9th
Malbolge 10th
Maladomini 11th
Caina 12th
Nessus 13th
Even so, Hell (in my opinion) should NOT be a place that immediately kills characters for exceeding their reach. And, another caveat, is that adventures of ANY level could, of course, transpire on ANY layer of Hell. Each layer is infinite. My approach is simply to frame the Hells with the broadest strokes. And to give a sense of generalized difficulty when hex-crawling each layer.
But don’t think Hell is just a dialog tree of choices.
Combat is an omnipresent threat. Disrespect that Arcanadaemon on its way to a meeting with an arch-devil and see what happens. Talk to the Arcanadaemon as if he were a noble, however, and you might be offered an opportunity. Something for something, as they say.
Strangely enough, PCs can get help with their infernal goals FROM DEVILS—in exchange for stealing, subverting, killing, [ fill in the blank ]. Such deals will often lead toward one of the adventures in the supplements. Avernus’ adventure is for levels 5+. Minauros’ demands 7th level and above. Stygia is most fearsome of all, with the central challenges being suitable for 9th level and above. Combat is likely in all scenarios.
In addition to the adventures, however, I am including encounter, destination, and mechanical information pertaining to each layer of Hell. While there is going to be at least one and maybe two fleshed out locations that present playable, fully-keyed adventures, I provide thumbnails for other major points of interest so the DM can extrapolate and add onto the framework of each layer.
The adventures I provide should be suitably epic, with the potential for long-term consequences (good or bad) both for the PCs in relation to that layer of Hell and even, perhaps, for Hell itself.
You: “Ok, Anthony so it’s like? A module? With some extra crap?”
Me: “Yes.”
The supplements are a collection of ideas, hooks, threads, and converging motivations intended to bring about collisions between devils, the PCs, and other devils, all while providing the PCs with access to radical opportunities.
To summarize, adventuring in Hell is essentially a hex-crawl toward whatever destination the PCs choose. This is handled with tables and dice. Each book contains a worksheet to help make the procedure easy to manage.
While hex-crawling, the PCs will have encounters. They will trade, parley, and fight. These interactions might alter the PCs’ course or goals and lead them toward one of the adventures.
Such interactions might also spontaneously create situations that naturally lead the DM to design more specific campaign-tailored content. Doing so should be easier with these supplements in hand.
Off the shelf, however, each of these books will provide many hours of playable material and devil-killing fun.
What are they not?
Not exhaustive or comprehensive. Each layer of Hell is infinite. No book is big enough to cover it all.
Not a campaign. These books are stuffed with vignettes that dovetail thematically and loosely correlate. There are trailheads to adventures (some of which span multiple planes) but there is no overall goal or enemy foisted on the Players. These books are meant to support exploration of Hell, and to support (through mechanics and systems) any greater goal the DM wishes to design.
Not a rehash of obvious tropes. Into the Pit: Avernus, does not deal extensively with Tiamat, for example. Yes, she features as a prominent NPC and some of her motivations are offered as trailheads to various quests, but don’t expect an adventure that focuses on the Primordial Queen and her caves.
Not a buy-them-all necessity. Avernus is written as the key to the Hells. It contains one scenario along with the treatise on Hell (which is reprinted and further edited from the Castle of the Silver Prince campaign). If you own Avernus (or the Castle of the Silver Prince) you can pick up any other layer of Hell and run it. No need to buy them all. If I complete the other six supplements, I plan to adhere to this principle.
You: “I see, Anthony. So what IS the Adventure in Avernus, if it’s not Tiamat?”
Me: “Well, you see, my local players read this blog. So I’m damned either way. What I can say is that it’s an esoteric location, steeped in Hell’s history, before it broke into nine layers. And it houses something capable of terrifying even the Overlord of Hell.”
And that’s about it.
I really just want to see what everyone thinks.
If people find these three supplements compelling and valuable, then my TENTATIVE order of continuation would be:
Maladomini (because I have some ideas for Baalzebul that I find very motivating)
Nessus (at this point Hells i, iii, v, vii, and ix would all be done!—a nice cross section indeed.)
Dis (because you need Dis). Get it? Boo, Anthony.
Phlegethos [or] Caina
Caina [or] Phlegethos
Malbolge (Moloch is just the worst. He’s the toady of arch-devils).
Just looking at that list, though? It’s SO much work. That’s at least 600 pages of material yet to be written. And I don’t want to go down that road unless I have a strong sense that folks WANT them.
You can get the print version of these at Lulu and the digital bundles (including maps) at Gumroad.
May your day be un-hellish in every way and may you continue to find friendship at the gaming table.
Peace,
and happy gaming.
