Planescape – Blood War XI. The Slick of Foulest Humors

I finally finished Emirikol’s Guide to Devils. I feel so good having it done! It was fun to work on but it was definitely quite a grind. I just didn’t know realize how much time it takes to do these things.

Slimes: When I prepared for this session, I wanted to do an adventure focused on slimes and Juiblex, the demon lord of slimes. There is a pathfinder book that mentions a realm called the Abyssal Undersump, slime tunnels that connect layers of the Abyss. As soon as you hear the words “Abyssal Undersump,” you know you’re going to use that in your campaign in some fashion, right?

Making Up a Dungeon: I was afraid I was going to draw a blank when it was time to make up stuff for this session. It’s hard to come up with encounters from scratch. Worse, I looked at the 4e Juiblex article and there’s really not a lot in there that could help me.

Filth Person: The one thing I had was the Fulsome Queen from Wrath of the Righteous (a pathfinder adventure path I’m looting for this campaign). She’s a slimy woman made of filth! That’s gold where I come from. I’ve been waiting to use her for a long time.

I googled slime adventures and got a little bit of inspiration. For the most part, I made things up. I kept it basic and I though about a D&D sewer and what you could do with that. I came up with this:

• A dark tunnel that had many, many green slimes on the ceiling.
• A tunnel with slime fountains and a yellow statue with a secret compartment in it. The statue is covered in yellow mold.
• A hall with a classic chess board floor. Trapped, of course! But also a distraction from the brown mold on the walls and ceiling.
• A lake of slime, protected by the Fulsome Queen who demanded tribute. The group had to figure out a way how to get a devil army across the lake.
• The final area was this sewer area with lots of pipes crisscrossing for hundreds of feet above them. There were also magic slides/conveyor belts moving gelatinous cubes around. The floor of this place was grating, underneath it was a river of slime.
• The goal in there was to use this magic control device to move three pipes pouring slime out of the way so the group could get the army through the portal to Thanatos.

It worked out great!

The Party

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

We started off with some of that sweet downtime activity.

Truename: Theran obtained a devil talisman, which gave Theran the truename of Nin, the heresy devil that serves Bidam. Nin is a real jerk and with the truename, Theran has a lot of power over him. I also used this to remind Theran that he knows the truename of a nascent demon lord trapped in the interior of Azzagrat – Xanthopsia, Queen of Obscenity! She swears a lot.

Mel Narnia: Last session, the group took D&D Trump down. Where will poor Mel Narnia and her son, Baron Flumph, live? The group let her live in the mansion they put a down payment on last session.

Theran’s Spell Quest: George told me last time that he wants to learn almost every spell. So he joined the Society of Luminous Aether in Sigil (membership costs 1,000 gp per year). They have a library full of spells and tomes. He copied down every spell over the course of a few days.

Family Time: Bidam is married to a “good” demon lord, Bazuuma. I made up a ridiculous family skill challenge involving a baby dragon who wouldn’t eat his demon crustacean dinner, a daughter who melted her dessert and cried, stupid stuff like that.

The Lifepearl: Then I had Bazuuma ask Bidam about the lifepearl the group still has. That thing can raise the dead about 20 times, create a plane or a race! She floated the idea of using it in the core of Burningwater, her abyssal realm. She senses that the Abyss is afraid/repulsed by her positive energy. She wants to see if she can transform it into something else. Not now, but down the road.

The Senseless Court: The group visited the abyssal layer that Cabiri ruled. Long story short, it’s full of demon beholders at war with each other.

My version of Zariel

Zariel: The group had told the ruler of the first layer of Hell that they’d bring her a vat of holy water. She needs it for a secret plan. They delivered it. When they arrived at her ruined, burned castle, they could hear her whispering in a back room to her severed angel heads. Last time, they crept around and eavesdropped, and she almost killed them. This time, they stayed where they were.

Zariel was given the holy water, and then she showed the group another plan of hers. Thanks to the heroes, the devils had claimed a layer of the abyss – Onstrakkar’s Nest, formerly ruled by Lamashtu. Zariel is having these massive chains of baatorian green steel made. She is coming to try to pull that layer of the Abyss into Hell! She wants to merge it with her realm, to tame it. She wants to turn chaos into law.

The group was a bit dumbfounded at this plan. I think it will be an epic adventure that we’ll do pretty soon!

Miscellaneous Threats: We did a bunch of other stuff with their businesses. Iggwilv magically threatened Theran again through a sending spell. She is trapped in Graz’zt’s palace, and she wants Theran to convince Graz’zt to let her go.

The Undersump

Bovina - I'm getting art for this campaign now

Once all that stuff was out of the way, it was time for the heroes to lead the devil army through the Abyssal Undersump. Their goal was to get to Thanatos, the abyssal realm once ruled by Orcus (he’s dead in my campaign). Now it is ruled by Lamashtu.

The ultimate goal of this whole Blood War story is to march across Thanatos, Kill Lamashtu, and help their pit fiend friend take over Thanatos. The pit fiend is going to defect from the devils and become a demon lord all his own.

The group was accompanied by Nin the Heresy devil and Bovina the cow lady/minotaur/thief/pirate.
They scouted ahead of the army to clear the path of any obstacles.

Green Slime Ceiling: The group forced Nin to go first. He has a floating throne. He also has a ring of evasion, so once the slimes started dropping, he was making some sweet dodging maneuvers. After a bit of experimentation, the group saw that the green slime was destroyed by fire, so they burned it all away with cantrips.

Yellow Mold Statue: They smartly figured out it was yellow mold and used fire again to destroy it. In the secret compartment of the statue were two vials of powdered gelatinous cube. You add water and throw it a bad guy. It shatters and turns into a gelatinous cube. Pretty sweet, right? Jessie liked that one.

Chess Board: The group prodded the chess board floor and saw that the black squares were trap doors. They dropped you into a big pit full of combined slimes and oozes! The heroes realized it was very cold in here, took a look around, and saw the brown mold.

It took a bit of experimenting, but they finally figured out that cold damage destroys it. Fire makes it expand! They were extremely alarmed after hitting it with a fire bolt.

Slime Lake: My campaign is stupid, so you can probably guess what the Fulsome Queen wanted as payment to cross the lake. You know it. They had to poop on her. And they did. We rolled for it, of course. I’ll spare you the details.

There was this whole thing about tipping over a massive statue to create a bridge across the lake.
I had another room planned, where this slime from the 4e article was going to attack the group, popping in and out of holes in pipes and statues. I like the name of this creature: Darkness Given Hunger. But we had no time so I skipped it.

The Pipes Room: I was worried I’d have a hard time describing this place so I did some sketches. Jessie loves it when I do these, she likes make fun of how she can’t figure out what the hell it’s supposed to be.

There’s three slime waterfalls falling through the grate floor, blocking the portal to Thanatos. The group needs to operate this magic panel and “turn them off.” Theran realized that each of these activities were tied to other pipes above them. A whole lot of shifting was going to take place. So, it went like this:

1. Pipe One: Pipes above turned, spewing black puddings down at the heroes and the grate floor. The heroes made epic dexterity checks to dodge.
2. Pipe Two: A gelatinous cube conveyor belt turned and for a round or two, it dropped cubes on the group! Bidam got hit! He was stuck in the cube as it slowly sluiced through the grate. His armor of invulnerability helped him tremendously and ultimately he got out and was fine.
3. Pipe Three: They set off an ooze sprinkler system! Droplets of grey ooze everywhere!  How do you turn it off? There is a wheel that needs to be turned clockwise on a pipe 60 feet above them.

Nin has a flying throne. He’d been complaining all night. He’s always been shifty, looking for a way to take down Bidam, his “master.” Now he had his chance.

Nin the Heresy Devil

Bidam got on the throne with Nin and they flew up. Nin suddenly turned and dumped Bidam on a gelatinous cube conveyor belt! Bidam plopped right in a cube. To his horror, he saw that the conveyor was going to take him through a hole in a wall into some kind of lime tunnel full of gelatinous cubes.
The group freaked out. Bovina chuck a rope and grappling hook on a pipe. But the slime spray did too much damage and she went down!

Theran Misty stepped up 30 feet and balanced on a slippery pipe. He mage-handed the rope to himself and climbed up some more. He got up there and helped Bidam get out of the cube.

Theran saw Bovina was down. Bidam jumped across a gap and landed on Nin’s throne. Nin slammed him into a wall and Bidam failed a dex save. He fell 50 feet to the floor!

The floor is grating. Bidam is heavy. He’s wearing plate mail. I rolled to see if he crashed through the grating. Nope! He just dented it.

While that was going on, Theran was turning the wheel and turned off the sprinkler system. Bovina rolled a 20 on her death save! She popped up and she was angry. She did a sweet swinging maneuver on the rope and tried to jump on Nin’s throne, but.. she fell. She fell right on Bidam, and the grate gave way! They plunged into the slime river beneath the grate.

Bidam activated his armor so that he would take no damage and did his best to keep Bovina out of the slime.

Theran was quick to find a solution. He levitated Bidam. Bovina was on him, and floated up with him.

The group accosted Nin. The army came in. The pit fiend said it was time to demote Nin. The pit fiend has the power to turn devils into different types of devils. He thought a spined devil would do.
George asked me if he could keep Nin’s flying throne. Sure! I gave him a griffon lat session, they’re 13th level, it’s time to fly around, right? That seems really cool, a wizard on a flying throne.

The army marched through the portal. Drokkarn, the pit fiend general, had a map. It said that they would emerge near the “city of Licus”. Once they got there, they realized that was a typo or bad handwriting. They emerged next to the city of liches!

Yes, in Thanatos, there is a city full of liches. That’s where we stopped!

Very good session! I was very happy that it felt like an “adventure”. It’s cool to do stuff other than combat, but it is hard to pull off without being boring or flat. We did well!

Next time, I think we’ll do a little with the liches and then I want to do a blood war naval battle and use some demonic chaos ships.

Emirikol's Guide to Devils

You can get Emirikol's Guide to Devils here. This is a shill-y post, so put on your lanyard, hit the sales floor with me and don’t forget to upsell batteries.

This Will be Easy!

Corruption Devil by Joseph Vitale

You might remember that I wrote some guides to Hell about 6 months ago. The guides were to the Nine Hells, devils and the archdevils.

I thought to myself, “Hey, it would be cool to make a book out of this material. It could be like the 3e Fiendish Codex II, except for 5th edition!" Sounds fun!

I thought it would be really cool to try to take all of the lore from every edition and fit it into one big continuity. I wanted to explain why erinyes are so different in each edition. I wanted to come up with a cohesive backstory. I wanted to work in Erin M. Evans Brimstone Angels stuff, because it's awesome. I wanted to make a full picture of Hell, everything included.

You don't need to dig up issues of Dragon from 30 years ago. It's all right here, updated and organized and 5th edition-ized.

Then I said to myself, “This will probably take 2-3 weeks.”

6 months later.. it’s done. It was a lot more work than I thought. I had to drop my online games to get this done. That's horrible, because every single player was awesome and I feel like I’m losing out on a good thing. I just didn’t realize what a commitment this kind of thing is.

Hurdles

3rd Edition Erinyes by kagurachi

So I’m just going to talk a little a bit about what I learned about writing a D&D sourcebook.

The thing that ate up the most time was the technical stuff. Learning the arcane functions of libreoffice was maddening. You want to add page numbers? Where’s the page number button? Oh, there is none. Just click Page > Paragraph >Text Flow. Text flow! Very intuitive! So easy to figure out! Text flow, of course!

Formatting a page is very tricky. Once you’ve made a draft and you edit it, everything gets moved around and the images end up in weird places. You can anchor them to a page or a paragraph, and it makes a big difference which you choose.

I had to learn a lot and it took a long time.

Volo's Style

Hell Knight by Wendy Sian-Roberts

I did this book in the style of Volo’s Guide to Monsters. In Volo’s, two ‘famous’ D&D NPCs make comments throughout the book. I decided to do the same, but with different ‘famous’ D&D NPCs. Emirikol the Chaotic and Natasha the Dark, stepdaughter of Baba Yaga and the person who may secretly be Iggwilv the Witch-Queen.

I was trying to figure out the tone. I am very joke-y. So I sat there, literally cracking myself up with the goofy comments I thought of. If you could see me writing these things, you’d probably think I was a crazy person. I find myself hilarious, I'm like my own Will Ferrel.

Should it all be jokes, though? I got to a point where I was reaching and struggling for goofy gags. I decided to delete all of the moderately crappy ones and added in quotes from old products, and ideas I had that I couldn’t fit into the book for whatever reason. That worked much better.

Ordering D&D Art is Fun!

Natasha the Dark by vasiart

By far, the biggest thing I learned from making this product is that I love ordering D&D art. It is so much fun. I send a sketch to some guy in Romania, and a few days later I get a piece of art that I couldn’t have imagined beforehand. I love seeing different people’s interpretations of D&D NPCs and monsters.

Sometimes I’d get one that was not so great. Usually that was due to a miscommunication, as a lot of these artists don’t speak much English. But what I found was that I enjoyed the “bad” ones just as much as the good ones. The whole thing is fun.

I also learned that most artists are better at some types of subjects than others. Some are awesome at magic items, but maybe not as good at monsters. Some do really awesome ladies (almost every artist is good at drawing beautiful women, I found).

I have one guy who is an architecture student. I had him do a city and sent him my crappy sketch. He turned it into something that blew my mind.

One horrific trend I’ve found is that some of these artists will send you art with a photo background. As in, a photo they googled. I ordered a piece of art where a samurai is fighting a bone devil in the mountains, in the rain. I got a samurai fighting a bone devil… on Mars. Mars, the planet.

Worse, some artists try to use photos of faces and they paste them on the characters. It sticks out like a sore thumb. It’s insane.

In the beginning it was a lot of trial and error, and eventually I nabbed a small core group of artists who were just pumping stuff out for me. Some of them were doing one monster per day.

On the images I'm showing in this article, I put links to the artists contact pages. In the credits of this book, I put links to everyone’s online presence. You can get art of your character for an incredibly low sum of money. It’s amazing. I am hoping people will check them out, as I love the idea of getting them more work.

The artists whose name come up over and over in the credits deserve more, in my opinion.

Stat Blocks

Asmodeus by Joseph Vitale

Making stat blocks was another thing that took me time to get competent at. Most of these monsters are high level. I mean, Asmodeus is about as powerful as Demogorgon.

In the beginning I kind of messed up. I didn’t give the devils some of their basic traits and all sorts of other stuff. So, about 1/3rd through the process, I had to go back and fix them all. That ate up some time, too.

The artist above who did Asmodeus is incredibly dependable. He lives in Venezuela, which right now is in tremendous turmoil. He is a great dude and I hope he ends up somewhere safe where he can pump out art and make some good money.

Satanic Panic

Corruption Devil Judge by turtlestance

One thing I’m a little worried about is just the fact that I’m writing about devils and angels. It’s a bit of a controversial thing and there were one or two ideas I had that I actually took out because if you look at it from a Christian context, it’s pretty awful. I decided to try to err on the side of caution.

What Next?
 

Guionne, my favorite 4e NPC, by vasiart

So.. it’s done. It’s quite a relief! It ate up all of my free time. Now I can get back to normal, sort of.

A few weeks ago, this adventure I wrote on the DMs Guild was put in a sale bundle. I didn’t really think too much about it. But when it hit, it was a real shock. That bundle sold thousands of copies! I suddenly got a pile of emails asking me where the sequel was!

The Castle of Corellon is the beginning of an adventure path. When I put it out, it didn’t really sell that well. At least, not in comparison to the guides.

It didn't seem like it was in that much demand, so the path wasn’t a priority. But now it is! I’m going to dive into that and order me some more sweet art of orcs, elves, oozes, displacer beasts, all sorts of cool stuff!

Dice, Camera, Action: Episode 47 - Storm King's Thunder

Episode 47: Apocalypse Drow

• Watch this episode on Youtube here
• Buy Storm King’s Thunder here
• Season Two Dice, Camera, Action Episode Guide
• Dice, Camera, Action on Reddit
• The Reddit Dice, Camera, Action Index
• The Dice, Camera, Action Youtube Playlist 

I decided to go through the Storm King's Thunder adventure to look some things up, as I couldn't remember much about the story in Ironslag. I put that information at the bottom of this review. It has spoilers!

The Party

(Anna) Evelyn - Human Paladin of Lathander
(ProJared) Diath - Human Rogue
(Nathan) Paultin - Human Bard
(Holly) Strix - Tiefling Sorcerer
(Sam Sykes) Kozin Xorlarrin - Drow Fighter

The group is in a fire giant lair and the giants are beating the bejeezus out of them. The group is allied with an earth elemental and an iron golem. A dao disguised as a dwarf is around here somewhere.

Iron Flask

Sam Sykes is playing Kozin, a drow. We start the session off focusing on him. He is with other drow who have arrived at the outside of Ironslag, on that stairway that zigzags all the way up the cliff wall. They find the remains of the chimera that the group killed on their way in. They see a giant bird... that's Harshnagg's bird, I think!

Kozin shoots it with a crossbow bolt. The drow sleep poison kicks in and the bird falls allll the way to the grond. Wow. The drow enter the complex and make their way to the huge room that the group is in. The drow watch what’s going on while lurking in the shadows.

Strix and Evelyn are making death saves. Waffles, the baby owlbear, actually runs over to the drow. The group eventually gets Waffles back.

Diath has a sword at the duchess's throat. He tries to hold her hostage, but his intimidation roll does not inspire fear in Duke Zalto. Zalto is sure that Diath’s tiny little sword can’t do his wife great harm.

Kozin casts a darkness spell to give the heroes cover to escape, which outrages the other drow. Their only task here is to deliver the flask.

Diath stabs the duchess and does a cool 24 points of damage. He springs off of her and tries to find Evelyn and Strix.

The female drow shoots Paultin and now he's down. It's just Diath and Kozin. Oh no, Evelyn failed her second death save. Not good!!

Diath stabilizes Evelyn.

The drow go to hand over the iron flask to the giants. Korin tries to trip him. The drow are furious. Kozin starts running. One of the drow hits him with a lightning bolt.

The group runs into the kitchen. They have been on the brink of death for a few sessions now and they are desperate to get out of this situation. They bump into Jasper the dwarf, who casts a mass healing spell on them. Jasper is the guy that they freed from the duke’s maul.

The group casts a darkness spell to cover their escape, but the giants are nearby and hear the group talking. Strix looks at the chimney and realizes the group can climb up and out.. probably. The giants can’t fit in the chimney.

They roll really well on their climb checks and they ascend safely. They emerge in a cave. Evelyn has an idea to block the chimney with a boulder.

They take a minute to rest... and now Kozin is trying to convince them to go back in! Wow. The group doesn’t like this idea. They need a rest!

Kozin explains that the giants have the flask, and that in the flask is Maegara, a fire primordial. With it, they can put together that big colossus/mech and send it on a rampage (it's called the Vonindod, I believe).

The drow explains that if the flask is opened normally, Maegara will be free, which obviously is very dangerous. But she can also be used to melt that adamantine heart. Destroying the heart will end the threat and the mountain will explode.

Evelyn has a great idea: Steal the heart and blow it up somewhere else. That might not be feasible, because the heart is very big. Kozin says that the explosion might not be instantaneous, they might have time to escape.

Heyyy…. Paultin pipes up and has a great idea. Paultin says that the WAFFLE HUT might protect them from the explosion. Nice.

The drow realizes that Maegara might already be freed down there. That’s where we stop.

Overall

I read Storm King’s Thunder, but I really don’t remember all that much from it. I decided to refresh my memory. This is full of spoilers!!

Lightfall Replacement? I forgot that King Harnoth of Citadel Adbarr will reward each character with a magic item if they complete this mission. That means that Evelyn might get some really cool replacement for Lightfall, or perhaps an item that can bring it back.

The Drow: Duke Zalto's deal with the drow of House Xorlarrin is that if they bring him Maegara, he will use the vonindod to destroy their enemies. These drow once inhabited the underground city of Gauntlgrym, but they were driven off by dwarves. They want the vonindod to go kill the dwarves.

Using Maegara: It says that once Duke Zalto has the flask, he traps Maegara in the adamantine forge. The fire becomes hot enough for the giants to begin reforging the vonindod.

The Adamantine Doors: They are 50 feet tall, airtight and soundproof! So that means the group couldn't use gaseous form spells to seep through the cracks and escape. The doors only open if a fire giant says the passphrase in the Giant language. The passphrase is on page 183.

Kozin and Friends: The drow are detailed on page 186. There is Draac and Taal Xorlarrin, a pair of drow mages, and six elite drow warriors. Each mage can attempt to summon a shadow demon, which is cool. Maybe they will summon shadow demons to track the group.

Timeframe: When Maegara is freed, it is compelled to obey the commands of whoever freed it for one hour. After that, it goes berserk!

Jasper’s Story: Jasper's story is on page 184. It looks like Chris changed him quite a bit.

Maegara is Deadly: Maegara's stats are on page 241. The group should definitely stay far, far, farrrrr away from this thing!

There is no Adamantine Heart: The whole reason I looked in the book was because I couldn’t remember what the heart’s deal was. I didn’t remember anything about it at all. Why did it destroy Lightfall? Why does it blow up?

There is no adamantine heart in this adventure. Chris made it up! That means anything can happen next week.

Dice, Camera, Action: Episode 46 - Storm King’s Thunder

Episode 46: Heartbroken

• Watch this episode on Youtube here
• Buy Storm King’s Thunder here
• Season Two Dice, Camera, Action Episode Guide
• Dice, Camera, Action on Reddit
• The Reddit Dice, Camera, Action Index
• The Dice, Camera, Action Youtube Playlist 

I fell a little behind and I'm getting caught up now! I've been working on this gigantic .pdf for the DMs Guild for many a tenday. It's done, so hopefully I can get back in gear.

The group actually went to a renaissance fair in real life as their characters. I like it when the crew is at the same table, I hope we get to see more of it. Maybe for episode 50 or 75? They should play somewhere fitting, like on a boat or a castle or something. Although if it's a boat, they might get seasick, and come to think of it, their dice would roll all over the place if the seas be turbulent.

The Party

(Anna) Evelyn - Human Paladin of Lathander
(ProJared) Diath - Human Rogue
(Nathan) Paultin - Human Bard
(Holly) Strix - Tiefling Sor

Paultin is inside a golem and he was hit with a reduce spell, so he’s child-sized. The rest of the party is fighting fire giants in the assembly hall of a massive, disassembled golem. Evelyn hit one piece of this golem, the heart, with her magic axe, Lightfall. Lightfall got destroyed!

The Duke sees that his hell hounds are dead. He’s despondent.

More people enter the hall. It’s Krak Dragonspore in his magic armor, and the golem. Hmm... so is Krak the dao in disguise? Krak tells the group to help Paultin figure out how to control the golem. Diath rescues the animals, who were in the rubble. He notices that the cranium rat is wounded. He bandages it real quick.

Here comes Duchess Brimskarda, her two kids and some more giants. Evelyn sends the heart crashing to the floor. It actually cracks the floor.

Strix is still super-strong because of the potion of giant strength. Evelyn is up on a gantry above the floor. Brimskarda, the fire giant duchess, jumps and ends up hanging from it. Evelyn hacks at her fingers with Treebane. One finger from each hand comes off! Brimskarda falls 30 feet to the floor with a loud crash. Strix wants to keep those fingers.

The duke chucks a stone brazier full of hot coals at Evelyn. She’s down and dying.

Krak summons an earth elemental. There are big doors in here that lead outside. Krak tells them that they are magically sealed and that a fire giant has to open them by uttering a specific password.

Diath revives Evelyn with a potion of healing. He rolls well: 10 points! Evelyn is so happy that she jumps on Diath and hugs him and makes him uncomfortable with the nuzzling. Juniper, her mouse, is handed from Diath to Evelyn.

Strix wants a severed finger, but it is 60 feet away. How big is that finger? Is it a foot tall? Strix is hit with a thrown giant flagon and drops to 0 hit points. Some of the giants attack the golem, but they do no damage. I think it is immune to nonmagic weapons. Evelyn revives Strix.

Krak is getting pummeled. He strongly urges the group to get the doors open.

A giant picks up Paultin, and Paultin tries to trick him into opening the doors. He offers a reward, but is having trouble figuring out what the reward is. Evelyn tries to persuade the giant, too, but rolls poorly.

The Duchess hits the giant on the head and tells the giant to drop Paultin. He does. Once Paultin plops on the ground, she attacks him. Man, this is not going well!

One thing I am thinking is that Strix could gaseous form each hero one at a time, and they can slip through the cracks of the giant door. If there are cracks, that is. That would require the group surviving in here for 6 or 7 rounds.

Another option is to get one giant down to 1 hit point and hold it hostage (I think this option is actually covered in the adventure).

Krak turns into a pile of sand and bails out. One giant is down, and two are hurt. The golem and the earth elemental are doing all of the damage.

Diath spots a grate. Looks like the group is going to go in. Wow.. they need to get out through those doors. Strix is down, Diath heals her with a potion.

Strix polymorphs into a wooly mammoth. It has black emo hair and moths are flying around it.
Paultin rolls a death save. Natural 20! He’s up! He plays dead. Evelyn runs over, slings Paultin over her shoulder and flies onto the mammoth using her boots.

The golem and the elemental nearly kill the duchess. She turns and hits the mammoth. Strix is down again! She returns to her normal form and is unconscious.

I thought she had more hit points than that, but maybe I missed something. I thought she had 127 and she took about 60..?

Evelyn hits the floor and she’s unconscious. The waffle crew is going down, this is brutal! They need to get out of here.

The iron golem drops another giant. There’s 4 more giants remaining. Diath is right next to the duchess, who is hurt bad. Is an ally adjacent? I hope so.

Diath draws his short sword, intent on holding the duchess hostage. Awesome! He might save the party here.

Diath runs up her body, puts his sword at her neck and tells the giants to let them leave or she dies. Chris wants an intimidate check. Ohhh boy. He rolls a 10. Damn it!

Even though that didn't work, it was a great idea.

Paultin takes what he anticipates to be his last drink. That’s where we stop!

Overall

YIKES. Good show.

Planescape – Blood War X. The Samoran Slave Care Act

This one is a little political, so if you don’t like people making fun of Trump, you should skip this thing.

I went way overboard preparing for this session. I almost always feel like I need more time when planning out an adventure, but I spent way too long on it.

The group was set to go after my Donald Trump NPC, who rules a settlement called Samora in the abyssal realm of Azzagrat. My plan was to parody the real life Trump stuff and fit it into the D&D lore of Samora, which is pretty well-detailed in a number of products.

It can feel overwhelming when you try to figure out how to approach an “investigation” type adventure. I sat down and listed all of the Trump notes I wanted to hit:

• Alex Jones and Infowars.
• Melania in a lonely tower.
• Carter Page as the most nervous suspect of all time.
• Trump getting peed on, and more stuff like that.

Then I looked at Samora concepts and tried to fit the Trump stuff into the existing lore. In the books, Samora is ruled by Marietta, she lives in a counting house, and the place is guarded by 13 alu-fiend (half-succubus) soldiers with lances.

Putin: My big problem was.. who is Putin? I wanted to use a demon lord, but had no idea which one. I looked at my own guide to Grazzt. The main reason I write those guides is so that I have a resource for my campaigns. When I use NPCs like this in my games, I forget all the details if I don’t have a file of some kind on it.

Family of Graz'zt: This led me down a google rabbit hole. I saw that Grazzt has siblings. There’s actually a lot of them not in my guide. I found piles of stuff and I couldn’t tell if it was official or not, but I liked it, so I used it. I picked Vucarik of the Chains, a half-brother of Grazzt. He has these iron worms that burrow into people’s skins. I decided Grazzt had caught a spy of Vucarik’s in his court, so he levied sanctions on Vucarik’s layer of Nethuria that has crippled the people who live there. These people are called “paedions,” I have absolutely no idea what they are.

That’s my Putin. I gleefully realized that the penultimate encounter of this session could have the heroes magically disguised as ladies who have to pee on Trump. I had my plan set.

More Prep: Then I went back and made “downtime” stuff. I love this kind of thing and really dug in. I wanted the group to touch on everybody and everything they are linked to in Sigil, to emphasize that the NPCs are “real people” and to enforce the notion that what the heroes do matters. The decisions that the heroes made with these NPCs had an impact on their lives.

This turned into two pages of notes and I realized that we might not get through everything. I was excited about it though, and I timed my planning perfectly so that I had all of the information “loaded” into my brain right when it was time to go play. If I work on campaign stuff 3 or more days before a session, I find that I have trouble keeping it all straight and can’t remember my intent behind some of the things I had planned.

Also, I just want to note that I went through the 4e Demonomicon and wow, there is a lot of new stuff in there. I saw an abyssal realm that is a slaad breeding ground! How did I miss that? I will definitely be using it ASAP.

The Party

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

Two Goals: We started off with piles of Sigil stuff, much of which is perverted events that I’ll gloss over. That’s how we roll. In the comedy department, I “killed.” The players were laughing through the whole thing. As a DM, I have two primary goals. Make it really fun/funny, and get the “D&D feeling” (which is the reading-a-book-and-can’t-put-it-down feeling). It was a good one!

Theran’s Babies: Zaraga the Hag’s magic told her that Theran had three babies on the way. Hags like to eat babies, so Zaraga offered him money and/or magic items for them. Theran declined. A few sessions back, Theran had to do “employee reviews” of the group’s “jinkskirts” (they own three festhalls now). I rolled for all this randomly. The three mothers: Busty Razzle, Barl Excellence (who has a french accent so I can say her name in it) and uh.. Squirt Cobain. My campaign is stupid.

The Mansion: The group finally investigated a building in their square called the Hall of Keys. Every day, a key appears in it. Someone in the city has a dream about it and comes to get it. The group took the key that was in there on this day, and ultimately figured out that it was for a mansion for sale in the Lady’s Ward.

According to the DMG, mansions are around 25,000 gp. The group is pretty rich. The key actually activates a portal that connects the mansion to the group’s home in the Lower Ward. The heroes made a down payment on it.

The heroes are 13th level now, so I’m trying to establish that they are famous and rich. High level is supposed to be a big deal, right? They earned it and it could lead to all sorts of interesting things. They are Sigil celebrities.

Undersigil

Carousing: The group went carousing with their NPC friends. I dug up info on a tavern in the Lady’s Ward called Twelve Factols. It’s connected to Undersigil and has historical significance. We did a whole bunch of stuff: gambling, Theran impressed the crowd by using mage hand to pour drinks. Fall From Grace got drunk, as did Bidam’s harpy sidekick as determined by die rolls.

I was also able to establish that Feurina the warder devil is like Bidam’s brother. A long time back, they had this weird magical merging and they shared all of their memories with each other.
Plane of Elemental Earth: The group checked in on their holdings there, everything’s fine.

Rival Festhall: There’s a new festhall owner, a corruption devil. It met the group and told their best employees that if the heroes ever treated them bad, they could come work for it for double the pay.
Pazuzu sent the group gifts: Fiendish griffon mounts. I figure at this point, the group should be able to fly around.

New Demon: Bidam’s demon breeders at Allagash made a new demon – a nephropic, which is lobster-demon from the Teratic Tome. It’s perfect for Bazuuma’s realm, which is mostly an ocean full of demonic crustaceans! I don’t know why, but I die laughing every time I see the phrase “demon crustaceans.” It’s so ridiculous. But the art here makes them look pretty cool:

Skyshrine: At Theran’s floating castle, he investigated the damage done. The place had been hit with a meteor swarm courtesy of Iggwilv in a previous session. The damage to floors revealed a secret underground chamber. In it was a sphere that could be used to fly the island around.

The group got a bit excited. Skyshrine has a huge chain that connects to the ground ruined city below. The city is called Tornbend, and it is full of “bloodseep demons,” demons who weep poison blood. Theran cast disintegrate on a chain link.. and realized his mistake too late. The chain is massive, and once it was separated it fell on the city, killed piles of demons and crushed any buildings still partially standing.

Burningwater: In Bazuuma’s layer of the Abyss, another tower had risen out of the water. This layer was ruled by an obyrith named Cabiri long ago. These towers reveal more about him and contain fun little things.

Part of my Google journey took me to notes on Cabiri. Someone wrote up a ton of stuff, and again I can’t tell if it is from an official book or not, but I used it.

One thing I know is official: Cabiri is Pazuzu’s brother! The group just made friends with Pazuzu last session. Pazuzu betrayed Cabiri and stuck him in an abyssal prison-plane called the Wells of Darkness. This document claimed that Cabiri had been working on fusing elementals and demons together, and that his goal was to become an elemental prince of Evil.

The Senseless Court: In the tower, the group found the pit that Cabiri used to merge elementals and demons. They found notes containing all sorts of info, including the fact that Cabiri ruled another layer of the Abyss called The Senseless Court. It is likely that this layer is empty! They want to go check it out, so I’ll add that in next session.

They freed Cabiri’s three demon servants from stasis:

• Korb: An arachnid demon with three heads.
• Haklo: An amphibious, winged demon-dragon.
• MeemGlum: A demon lady. I need to figure out what to do with her, but I am not sure what that will be yet.

These creatures want to free Cabiri from the Wells of Darkness. For now, they’ve agreed to stay peacefully in Bazuuma’s realm. I can do some fun things with Haklo the dragon interacting with Bidam’s kids, who are demon-dragons.

Samora

The goal of this scenario is to expose Flumph as a traitor to Grazzt and Samora. Flumph always stays in the Counting House, which is beneath the city and heavily guarded.

The group had sent 5 spies here a few sessions ago. They are Agonists, a new type of demon from the Teratic Tome. One of the Agonists is Christine Steele, and she compiled a dossier.

There’s all this fake news being spread by this guy Alexi Joams. The Lady’s Lancers have some Russian moles in it, and there’s this mysterious “fancy bear” forging documents and assassinating dissidents.

Flumph had just passed the Samoran Slave Care Act. The price of cure disease in the Abyssal Temple was jacked up to 100 gold. Those who are sick and can’t afford it can get cure disease for free if they agree to be enslaved for six months. This six month time period keeps getting extended.

Agents of Flumph are cracking down on drugs. In Samora, the drug of choice is called Lubix.
Basically, agents of Flumph raid houses of hot women (they have to be “10’s”, according to Flumph). The guards plant Lubix in the house if necessary. The punishment for possession: Six months of slavery.

Flumph’s real goal is to enslave all of the tieflings, who all have devil blood and, to him, are “evil foreigners.” His other goal is to round up all the hot chicks in Samora so they can hang out with him. Remember, Trump once told Howard Stern that he thinks Scarlet Johannsen is a “6”, so these ladies must be extraordinarily beautiful.

Alu-Fiend

Lady's Lancers: The group met with some Lady’s Lancers. Some of the corrupt ones attacked. It turns out they were infected with those iron worms. Once those iron worms were out of their body, they snapped out of it.

Fake News: Then the group went to talk to Alexi Joams, who was in a theater ranting to an audience of conspiracy buffs. I transcribed a real, actual Alex Jones rant that involved both actual weeping and frothing rage, and modified it with D&D stuff:

“Sometimes when I go out to eat, I don't like make a big deal out of it, but if I see old ladies buying food, I go up and pay for it. I don't like to make a big deal out of it and then I start crying because ten years ago, people weren't able to buy themselves food. (cries) People are so evil! Why can't Samora wake up and.. Gonard Flumph's not perfect, but he doesn't want to hurt you and your family. Marietta and Graz'zt want to make you poor and pathetic they hate you! They hate prosperity, they hate children, and damn them to the Nine Hells! I'm sorry, but Marietta.. I gotta look at her sharp face? That's a frickin devil!”

Players are inherently unpredictable, so they did something I didn’t expect. They set the building on fire. In the chaos, they abducted Joams, removed the iron worms from his body, and intimidated him into luring Flumph out into the open.

Joams wandered off. He never did get to Flumph. He stopped for a drink and fancy bear slipped polonium into it. Joams was done for!

Miss Tradegate: The group visited Miss Tradegate, the wife of the late Gonard Flumph, jr. Theran killed him a few sessions ago. Tradegate wasn’t broken up about it at all. She told the group to go visit Sharter Page (I know) and Mel Narnia, Flumph’s wife, who lurks in a lonely tower far from the counting house.

Fancy Bear: The group set up a meeting with Page in a bar in town. He was super nervous and awkwardly proclaimed his innocence, unprovoked. But that damn fancy bear dropped polonium in his drink and he died.

Fancy bear cackled, leaning against the bar. Fancy bear is a hairy dude with a russian accent. That's not all. He's a werebear! The group beat him to death and moved on.

Mel Narnia: This place was guarded but the heroes were able to magically charm their way in. Mel Narnia told the group that Flumph had declared that she was a “7” and thus he was not interested in her. The heroes agreed to help her escape with her son, Baron Gonard Flumph. His dad gave him the royal title of “Baron” when he was born.

The group learned about Vucarik and she suggested to them that they use alter self to look like “10’s” and get into the counting house. They did.

The beautiful enslaved women just kind of hang out in the counting house and do whatever they want. Flumph just wants to be surrounded by beautiful ladies. The heroes volunteered to pee on him. Again, my campaign is stupid.

They were ushered into Flumph’s bedroom. It wasn’t long before the peeing began. The group rolled to hit, because that’s what you do in D&D. They both rolled extremely high! Once that was done, Bidam grabbed a pillow and began smothering him to death.

Vucarik: Suddenly, a magic mirror in the ceiling flared to life. Three chains shot out, grabbing Flumph and the heroes. The mirror was a portal to Nethuria! Vucarik was trying to drag them all inside! Bidam quickly breathed fire on Gonard, killing him. The group escaped the chains as Vucarik made his case that the sanctions were hurting his people. He pulled Flumph’s corpse into Nethuria and the portal closed.

The group realized that Vucarik might raise Flumph, but for now, he wasn’t going to bother them.
Next time, the group will lead the devil army through the Abyssal Undersump! Should be fun! I might try to work in that Slaad breeding ground if I can. And then I think in the next session, I want to do a big naval battle on some planar sea between demons and devils. I want to use at least one demonic chaos ship. I love those things!

Dragon Plus Issue 13

It's that time again where we add a plus to a dragon. You can read the new issue right here.

Real quick, I think this is by far the best issue yet. If you have even the slightest interest in Tales From the Yawning Portal, you should check this out. It is loaded with art and TONS of maps from the adventure.

The cover this month is a peeps diorama. I think I had written about peeps-flavored oreos recently, which I never did buy but I sill sort of want to. I can't imagine it being anything more than brightly-colored ipecac.

This diorama was done by someone who I follow on twitter, which is pretty cool. I don't know Dani Hartel, but I could conceivably declare that I am "loosely affiliated" or "twitter-connected."

Fiction

I'm not big on fiction in general, but this series of stories has some Yawning NPCs you can stick right in your campaign:

• Georgie Two Shoes: Is often drunk.
• Shay: A young female elf ranger. Worships Corellon.
• Snuff: An old dwarf. Wears odd clothing, jewelry and has seen much of the world. Worships Moradin.
• Nibs: Gnome bard. An artist who sells his sketches, knows a lot about the tomb of horrors.
• Mary Greymalkin: A warlock, old and fearsome. She has dull-gray ioun stones in her hair and apparently owns a deck of many things.
• Garret: Tiefling rogue. Various charms hang from his wrists, neck and horns.
• Nameless Ranger: Wears a tattered town banner as a cloak. Member of the Emerald Enclave. Scars and burns on hands and arms.

The Yawning Portal has a stuffed hyenodon head from Tamoachan on a wall.

Heroes Who Died in Tamoachan:

• Hap the Fierce: Was "charmed right out of his pantaloons" by the nereid.
• Sacha the Thief: She made the mistake of looting Tlocques-Popolocas
• Elf Bard: Plucky optimist. Killed in the will-o-wisp sand trap.

Sunless Citadel

An interview with Bruce Cordell! He's done a ton of awesome stuff in D&D, including the Illithiad, probably my favorite D&D sourcebook of all time.

He says that when making this adventure, they sat down and thought up scenes and things they thought should be in the adventure, and made a story around that.

Meepo was put in there to give even experienced players pause. What do you do with a crying kobold?

Forge Of Fury: Interview with Richard Baker

He talks about the beginning of the adventure, where a group who tries to march in the front door is met by a massive horde of orcs. He says that this was done to teach players that arrow slits and strong gates are actual obstacles. The roper was put in there on purpose to teach player that it is OK to run away sometimes.

He talks about playtesting the forge,where a gnome character had levitated and ended up unconscious, hovering in the air and bleeding to death.

The encounter with the dragon was meant to be a situation that spread the group out so that the dragon could pick them off one at a time.

White Plume Mountain

This is an interview with Claudio Pozas, who did the map of White Plume's surroundings. It mentions that he wrote a 4e adventure set in Dead Gnoll's Eye Socket, which I sort of remember. I should definitely check that out.

I didn't realize Claudio did the art for the weapons and the aquarium. Long ago, I had bought these Arcana Unearthed tokens that Claudio drew. He was good then, but he has improved so much it is insane. 

Dead In Thay

An interview with Scott Fitzgerald Gray. He talks about megadungeons and the pitfalls of running them. He always puts teleport circles in them so the group can leave without creeping all the way back the way they came.

Tomb of Horrors

Creighton Broadhurst cooks up some lists of stuff one might hear or find in the tomb of horrors. There are a number of amusing references to NPCs, pregens and real-life characters.

My favorites:

"The mortar around one of the bricks in a wall is in bad repair. The brick can be removed to reveal an empty niche beyond."
and

"Dried spatters of blood mark out a twisting pattern across the floor. After a short distance, the pattern vanishes abruptly, as if the creature that was bleeding disappeared."

Planescape: Torment

We get an article about the enhanced edition of Planescape: Torment. They say that they didn't add content, they just tried to clean the game up. My biggest question is if they tweaked the movement at all, because that was a bit of a pain waiting for the group to run all the way over to the spot you clicked. It works on tablets, too. That's crazy.

If you've never played this game before, all you need to know is that this game involves tons of dialogue and reading. If that is not your thing, then you won't like this game! Anybody else will really like it, I think.

Video Games

Shannon Appelcline gives us a history of D&D video games. He talks about the old gold box games from SSI. As a kid, I had a friend who was really into these. I distinctly remember going over to his house and watching him tear through a dungeon in Pools of Radiance, it was pretty awesome.

Best of the DMs Guild

This time it is Trouble in Waterdeep, an introductory adventure. I have been having trouble downloading these things. I have realized that it is a firefox issue! Come on, firefox, you're killing me.

Tales From Cryptic Developers

We get a bunch of D&D stories from A software engineer. Very amusing stuff, I love hearing this kind of thing. The best one is probably the one about the guy who forgot he gave away his ring of feather falling.

D&D Beyond

There's a big article on D&D Beyond, the digital reference thing. You can make characters and look stuff up real quick. I probably should have reviewed this thing by now, I'll get right on it.

The Virtual Reality Gambit

They're working on a game called "Dungeon Chess" which involves D&D monsters killing each other on a chess board.

Planescape: Blood War IX. The Dark Angel of the Four Winds

For this session of Planescape, I had to decide what happened to Bidam when he fell into the rift in the center of the Abyss. I had a bunch of ideas. At first I thought it would be fun to have him team up with a harpy, go into one of the portals in the side of the rift and try to survive in some obscure abyssal realm.

I had other ideas, too. Ultimately I decided to dangle the harpy in front of Bidam and completely leave it up to him to tell me if anything happens.

The Party

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

Last time, the devil army tried to march through the Abyss and it didn't go well. A demon army attacked them and this huge demon lord named Codricuhn rose up out of the rift and blindsided everyone.

Bidam was falling in the rift, which, they say, is bottomless. He could see portals in the walls of the rift zipping by. Falling near him was a demon harpy. Her wing was cut. She looked at Bidam and hissed. What did Bidam do?

He didn't attack. He continued to observe her. The harpy used her charming song on him, singing "Be my protector" or something like that. Bidam had already made a save against another harpy's song on this day, and thus he was immune to this effect for the rest of the day.

He decided to pretend to be charmed. She glided over to him and held onto him from behind, singing to him and referring to him as her "dragon protector."

They continued to fall. Some creatures were hovering deep in the rift. They were ferroliths. A commenter pointed out to me that the ferroliths work perfectly into what I am doing. I read up on it and wow, he was right. The ferroliths hate Grazzt and want him dead, and they live right here on the Plain of 1,000 Portals.

Even better, I'd used a ferrolith previously as an attendant to Bidam's wife. The ferroliths knew who Bidam was already.

So these two matched speeds with Bidam, talked to him, and ultimately agreed to fly him to their home. They asked if he wanted them to "scrape" the harpy off his back. Bidam decided to 'keep' her.

The harpy's name is Xanthip Shrew. For the rest of the session she rode on his back and whispered nefarious plans in his ear. Her charming song was very, very useful.

The Sorcerous Duel
 

Meanwhile, Theran had teleported to safety. He was in the throne room of his flying castle in the abyssal realm of Azzagrat. He ate some healing berries, and noticed a scrying sensor nearby. His robe of eyes lets him see invisible, and thus he had no trouble spotting this thing.

He wondered who was scrying him. Then he guessed... Iggwilv. And yep, she appeared. It was a simulacrum, a clone of her made from ice and snow. Iggwilv is trapped in Grazzt's palace.

Iggwilv confessed to being the one who sent the meteor swarm down on his palace last session. She said she would continue to do so unless he did three things for her:

1. Agree to help Grazzt capture his enemy, Varin, under the condition that Iggwilv was freed of her imprisonment.
2. Hand over the sphere of annihilation.
3. Hand over the staff of power. She said, "I already have one, but it might be nice to have a backup."

Theran refused and here we go, sorcerer duel!

Iggwilv used telekinesis to send Theran flying into a wall. Theran cast disintegrate, blowing a hole through her abdomen. Ice and snow dripped from within.

She was hurt, but still alive. She cast finger of death. The thin black beam struck Theran and dropped him.

He came to moments later, with his silent imp sidekick Barbagg stuffing healing berries into his mouth. He could see his ally, the succubus nurse Joiifercus sneaking up on Iggwilv. Iggwilv didn’t notice because she was looking at her wound, freaked out.

The nurse gave Iggwilv the succubus kiss of doom. Iggwilv threw her to the ground and began to cast a spell. Theran cast his own finger of death first, dropping Iggwilv. Then.. the demon babies that the nurse watches came crawling in. All of them are spawn of Grazzt. They devoured the remains of Iggwilv’s simulacrum as Theran watched, disturbed. He took special notice of what looked to be the child of Lamashtu and Grazzt. It had dark skin, long claws and three red eyes.

The Iron Maiden
 

Back in the rift, the ferroliths flew Bidam up and out. There were lots of smoke and thousands of harpies and vrocks in the air, obscuring the scene. Bidam would eventually learn that Bazuuma, Bechard the demon whale and Pazuzu knocked Codrichn back into the rift.

Bidam and his harpy backpack were flown to a palace made from one million broken swords. This is the home of the ferroliths.

He was led to the throne room. A line of ferroliths, which are essentially succubi with metal skin, watched him walk by. They were all in awe of Bidam, as he had platinum scales. One ferrolith with a swedish accent touched his scales and said, "you are like me, yes?" She had platinum skin. The harpy swatted her hand away.

My terrible Swedish accent sounds like my terrible German accent, and immediately Jesse began scheming on how to get me to have to roleplay a conversation between the two. She finds it hilarious when I have to roleplay two NPCs talking to each other because I hate it so much.

Bidam met the Iron Maiden. Hey, that's her name in the book, I didn't make it up. I gave her a grand, heavy metal entrance, stepping out of an iron coffin with smoke spewing out, extending her claws as the ferroliths cheered.

The Iron Maiden explained to Bidam that the ferroliths were created when Grazzt threw a bunch of traitorous succubi into a lake of molten iron. They didn't die, they became the first ferroliths. Their goal is to kill Grazzt. What's more, it actually says in the book that they want to reach out to the devils to team up! The heroes are allies with the devils, how great is that?

Bidam agreed to work with them to eventually try to kill Grazzt. She said Bidam could choose one of her three best ferroliths to stay with him so they could report back and keep lines of communication open. The choices were some stupid joke NPCs I made up:

• The Gold Lady: She's covered in gold and acts like a spoiled princess.
• Iron Schlong: He's a dude with an iron.. well, you know.
• Devarda: She's the platinum Ferrolith.

Bidam picked Devarda.

From there, Bidam was able to go home. He, Theran, and their two new sidekick NPCs met with Bazuuma, Bidam's demon lord wife.

The group was worried that their friends Drokkarn the pit fiend and Bovina the cow lady were captured or dead.

The Lord's Rook
 

I made up Bazuuma in 4th edition as part of this Blackmoor campaign I ran. At that time, she was a nascent demon lord of vanity. The heroes of that campaign eventually used a chamber of positive energy on the world of Eberron to change her into a demon lord of self-esteem, basically. During that time, it was established that she used to date Pazuzu, ruler of the Plain of 1,000 Portals.

So Bazuuma knows a lot about Pazuzu. She explained that Drokkarn was likely imprisoned in the Lord's Rook, Pazuzu's floating home.

I read a bunch of stuff about Pazuzu and used as much as I could. I changed it a bit. I think the Lord's Rook is actually in Pazuzu's other layer, Torremor, but I stuck it here on the Plain of 1,000 portals. It's already confusing enough, I don't want to throw another layer into the mix.

So the group rested and then went to break into Pazuzu's floating Palace. They made their way through magic doors and snuck past guards. Ultimately, the harpy charmed a guard, who led the group to a prison.

I've mentioned before I don't like violent torture in D&D. I use joke torture. Drokkarn and Bovina were being “tortured” by having to sweep up feathers in an aviary for four hours a day using brooms with bristles that were sort of too soft. And they only got a 15-minute break each hour! They weren't sure how much more of this they could take.

The group were able to use their little magic jar with Lord Stillborn in it to teleport everyone out of there, including the charmed vrock, who got an all-expenses-paid trip to Bidam's demon breeding farm.

The heroes were eventually contacted by Pazuzu, who wasn't angry. He wanted to make them an offer. They returned to his home and met him in his throne room.

Pazuzu has this giant floating throne called The Blinding Claw detailed in multiple books. It is in the shape of a talon and can blind people. If you sit on this thing and you are not Pazuzu, you turn into a vrock and lose the memories of your old life forever! Pretty awesome.

I made up a new consort/girlfriend for Pazuzu, the "Queen of the Harpies." She's not the demon lord of harpies. I am pretty sure that there already is one. Her name is Ardat, I think. This is just some sub-ruler or something.

I wanted to run Pazuzu like Starscream from the old transformers cartoon - a whiny schemer. With her there, I could have him whine to her and kind of put his personality on display.

Once I'd read about Pazuzu, I saw how perfectly he fits into everything. He hates two demon lords: Lamashtu and Grazzt! The two big bad guys in my campaign! Lamashtu is a Pathfinder demon lord, but she has been mentioned in more than one D&D book. It's amazing how everything fits together.

Pazuzu had a few things to say:

• He hates Lamashtu and wants to help the devil army get to her layer. He told the group about a tunnel that could get the army there, unnoticed.
• He wants Grazzt dead and will help them any way he can.
• He told them if they say his name out loud three times, they can communicate telepathically for one minute. This is from an old Dragon Magazine article.

The group also met the anzu, a monster from that issue of Dragon.

It's supposed to be a dragon-sized creature with a lion's head, but the art makes it look a bit like a kitty cat. I had it meet the group. I rolled some dice, and the dice told me that it liked Theran. I did that cat-thing where it rubs up against you. The anzu is covered in oil, so Theran got oil all over him.

As the group left, the Queen of the Harpies contacted them via a sending spell. She wants them to help her overthrow Pazuzu!

The heroes were pretty pleased. I don't think they want to overthrow Pazuzu, they have too much on their plate right now But maybe wayyyy down the road I can roll that out as a surprise that blindsides them in some fashion.

The heroes caught word that the demon army of Lamashtu was pouring into the layer that the devils had taken. The demons were trying to take it back!

General Khorramzadeh

The adventurers got there and saw a massive battle taking place. Khorramzadeh, the colossal balor general, was standing right in the middle of the fighting kicking the crap out of everybody. Khorramzadeh is a Pathfinder bad guy.

Theran got on the death hurler and started firing off spells. Bidam flew up to Khorramzadeh and hacked into him with the sword of sharpness.

Khorramzadeh tried to use his massive lightning whip to hit Theran, but he missed and soldiers went flying. He hit the death hurler with his giant sword and tipped it over, sending Theran falling into a crowd of dretches.

A lamia hit Bidam with a chaos hammer spell that sent him falling to the ground.

The group rallied from there and started piling on damage. Theran with disintegrate and finger of death, Bidam with the sword of sharpness.

Fun fact: Bidam finally rolled a natural 20 with the sword. It does a pile of extra lightning damage. Khorramdadeh is a special balor who is lightning-based, and thus is immune to lightning. In all this time, I don't think Bidam ha ever been able to get anything off of the sword's critical effects.

Khorramzadeh was very close to dying. He had no choice but to teleport away. When he fled, the demon army panicked and scattered. The demons were chased down and slaughtered. The devils cheered. They had held on to their layer of the Abyss.

The Trump Adventure: I asked the players what they wanted to do next time: Lead the devil army through the tunnel or go after Gonard Flumph, the Donald Trump NPC who has been causing them problems. There was no hesitation. They want to take down Gonard Flumph.

So I'm going to try to work in all the trump stuff I can and translate it to D&D. Putin, Michael Flynn, Kellyanne Conway, Pence and his mother/wife, and of course, peeing on Russian prostitutes, D&D-style.