LIFE IN THE NINE HELLS
Much of the adventure takes place on the first layer of
the Nine Hells. This is not, to put it mildly, your run-
of-the-mill D&D setting. The following tips and tricks
can help you make the characters' stay in Avernus a
remarkable one.
EVERYONE' S UNHAPPY
The Nine Hells is a place of abject misery where no one
is happy. Weaker devils are exploited and tormented by
their superiors. Stronger devils live in constant fear of
being passed over for promotion or demoted. Even when
something seems to go right, joy is fleeting and only
fuels suspicion that things are about to get much worse.
Such inescapable pessimism leads many creatures to
become apathetic and spiteful. They take perverse de-
light in spreading their unhappiness like a contagion.
You can remind players that the Nine Hells is a place
of misery and suffering in the following ways:
• In conversations with the characters, natives of the
Nine Hells like to bemoan their misfortune and blame
others for their horrible lives.
When a character accomplishes something, you can
undercut that success in some small way. For exam-
ple, the character's belt might snap, or a hellish insect
might sting the character on the neck and leave a welt.
- If a character rolls a natural 1 on an attack roll made
with a nonmagical weapon, you can decide that the
weapon breaks.
EVERYTHING' $ AWFUL
Avernus is insidious in the way it fosters greed and
makes visitors pay or barter for the things they need to
survive. Most of the wildlife on Avernus is not edible to
mortals, and most sources of water are poisonous or
otherwise tainted. The rarity of edible food and drink-
able water encourages hoarding behavior.
You can remind players about the awfulness of
Avernus in the following ways:
• Any food or drink the characters bring with them
or conjure by magic retains its nutritional value but
tastes awful when eaten or imbibed on Avernus. The
food tastes like ash, the water tastes like bile, and the
wine tastes like spoiled milk.
If the characters want something that tastes good,
they must buy it from licensed sellers such as Mahadi
the rakshasa, who runs a restaurant called Infernal
Rapture (see page 129). The price of a good-tasting
meal is always a bit too high.
- If a character commits a selfish act, you can reward
that selfishness by granting that character inspiration
(as described in chapter 4 of the Player's Handbook).
Unlike regular inspiration, the benefit can't be trans-
ferred to another creature.
PARADISE LOST
Before the Blood War reduced it to a blasted wasteland,
Avernus was a honey trap created by Asmodeus, a par-
adise of infinite delights designed to lure and enrapture
mortals. Fragments of this lost paradise still plunge
from Avernus's sky as burning meteors, and the land is
dotted with the ruins of palaces and idyllic gardens that
were obscenely beautiful in eons past.
Fleeting reminders of this ancient paradise can come
to the characters in the following ways:
• While traveling across Avernus, the characters
glimpse a fantastic mirage: a grand palace or garden
oasis that vanishes when they get within 100 feet of it.
• A random character hears beautiful music or laughter,
catches the scent of Rowers or perfume, or experi-
ences a gentle caress. The sensation has no discern-
ible source and fades after a few moments.
• The characters find a relic that survived the fall of par-
adise, such as a beautiful vase or toppled statue. The
first character to touch the relic experiences a fleeting
moment of pure joy.
ANYWHERE IS EVERYWHERE
Geography warps at the whims of the Nine Hells. One of
the liberating aspects of this planar feature is that you
don't need to be fastidious about keeping track of where
locations are in relation to one another.
While the spatial distortion can be unsettling to visi-
tors, it affords you the following benefits as a DM:
You can decide how long it takes for characters to get
from one place to the next. For example, the char-
acters might need to travel 6 miles to get from Fort
Knucklebone to Haruman's Hill, and (^60) miles to get
from Haruman's Hill back to Fort Knucklebone.
• If the characters are in a rush to get somewhere, an
imp could appear out of nowhere and, for the price of
a soul coin or other valuable item, show them a short-
cut that halves the distance the characters must travel
to reach their destination.
• The Wandering Emporium (see page 126) can show
up almost anywhere in the Nine Hells, at any time. If
the players don't know where to go or what to do next,
or if you want to surprise them with fun roleplaying
opportunities, have the Wandering Emporium ar-
rive at the party's location. regardless of where they
saw it last.
THAT PERSONAL TOUCH
There are simple ways in which you can tailor the ad-
venture to make Avernus an even more hellish place for
your particular band of adventurers. Consider using the
following methods to customize your party's experience:
• Learn what scares the characters. At the start of the
adventure, ask each player to provide you with a note
of three things their character fears. Save these until
the party reaches the Nine Hells, then use them to
customize the terrors that populate Avernus.
• Keep a list of the flaws that the players selected when
they first created their characters, so that you can re-
mind the players of these faults when situations arise
to test them. For example, a character with the Folk
Hero background might have the flaw, "I'm quick to
assume that someone is trying to cheat me." Let the
player wrestle with this flaw during negotiations with
devils and other denizens of Avernus.
ABOUT THE ADVENTURE
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