Sessions: 11/06/2020 to 16/07/2020
Main Locations: Avernus, Fort Knucklebone, Haruman’s Hill, the Wandering Emporium
Main Threads: Entering Avernus, meeting Mad Maggie, recovering more of Lulu’s memory, acquiring infernal war machines, surviving the road through Hell
After climbing down from Elturel, the party finally reaches the ground of Avernus.
The city is still above them, chained in the sky, but now the party is standing in Hell itself. The Blood War rages nearby, demons and devils tearing into each other across the wasteland. The party sees a possible path toward Fort Knucklebone, but it runs close to the fighting, so they move carefully and scout ahead.
Just being in Avernus feels wrong. The notes describe it as a flood of negative energy. The party makes it through the fighting without drawing too much attention, and Lulu leads them onward.
The road to Fort Knucklebone makes it clear that Avernus is not only a place of devils. It is a wasteland of waste, machines, mutation, and things that should not exist. The party finds a nasty pool of bubbling black goo, like demon ichor, with three gross, deformed creatures nearby. They also see infernal vehicles for the first time, described as boxes with wheels and spikes on the front. They look like something out of Mad Max.
Then Fort Knucklebone comes into view.
The fort looks like a hand clawing out of the ground. Its gatehouse is watched by six short, stout humanoids in red pointed floppy hats. They demand a password, but the notes make it clear they are mostly just being cruel little bastards.
Inside, Fort Knucklebone is made of ramshackle junk structures, redcaps, madcaps, kenku, scavenged machines, and strange cruelty. The redcaps try to goad the party almost immediately.
A kenku goes to fetch the hag in charge, followed by a large creature. When the hag sees Lulu, she says, “My goodness, where did you find such a treasure?”
This is Mad Maggie.
Mad Maggie makes the cars. She sells them for soul coins. She also knows more about Avernus than most of the creatures the party has met so far. She says Avernus was once green and beautiful before the demons came.
The kenku explain that they found Lulu wandering around lost and took her in. They gave her to another group at some point, and now she has come back. Mad Maggie claims she can help cure Lulu’s memory problem.
Fort Knucklebone is not safe, but it is useful.
The party sees a monstrous creature scavenged from who-knows-what. Lots of stuff comes out of a building around it. It has a tube-like mouth and a limp. The redcaps taunt it and throw rocks at it. Its name appears to be Mickey. The rock-throwing does not amount to much, but the redcaps keep looking back at the party and whispering.
The kenku ask any magic users to inspect the war machines. The machines have no energy flowing through them, and one specific gear seems to change the energy into something demonic. A dispel magic fixes the demonic gear, which means the kenku now owe the party a favor.
Then some imps try to pull the party into more trouble.
The imps are named Pins and Needles. They hide from the redcaps and claim that the redcaps and madcaps are planning to kill Lulu, with Wazzik the madcap leading the charge. But the imps seem to be full of it, more interested in starting chaos than helping anyone.
They run into a building.
The boys fight some imps.
Somewhere around this point, the party goes through Lulu’s vision quest. The notes for that part are missing because the narrator missed the previous session, but the result is clear enough: Lulu’s memories are still central, and Mad Maggie helps move the party toward the next stage of the search.
Mad Maggie warns the party about the warlords of Avernus, especially Smiler the Defiler.
The party also meets Barnabus, a flameskull, who teaches them how to drive their infernal war machine. The vehicle can hold eight people and runs on soul coins.
The party names it the UniKorn.
That name matters because from here, the campaign changes shape. They are no longer only walking through Hell. They are driving across it.
The first real drive is tense but ridiculous. Barnabus functions like a periscope. Giovanni takes the wheel and uses portent to get a dirty 20 on the driving check.
After a few hours, another war machine starts following them. It has a wrecking ball attached to it and is crewed by wererats and wereboars. The party cannot fully outrun it, but it cannot catch them either.
So the chase begins.
The other war machine vanishes with Rendar inside it, then reappears three hundred feet away. The party fights through the chase, kills most of the enemy crew, gets a second war machine, and recruits the survivor as their engineer.
Because of course they do.
They decide to keep both war machines and teach Rendar how to drive.
The road through Avernus then takes a darker turn.
The party sees something forming in the distance: wrought iron trees with knights impaled on them. Stirges feed on the impaled figures, but the victims are still alive. They have red eyes and fangs.
One of them is an elf named Jander Sunstar.
Lulu recognizes him immediately and yells that this is all his fault. Jander cries when he sees her. Lulu says he is a traitor, that he is the reason they are all trapped there, because he was a coward and ran away.
The party tries to pull the vampire-like man off the tree, and he fades away.
Then the bodies on the trees begin screaming:
“Here he comes!”
A rider appears: a souped-up knight on a flying horse with burning hooves.
As the party retreats, the rider reaches the trees and everything behind them is engulfed in flames.
Then Lulu is attacked by a massive hellwasp.
More hellwasps pour from a sticky nest filled with trapped angelic creatures. It is one of those Avernus images that feels both disgusting and tragic: even celestial beings are just meat for something down here.
Fortunately, the party is faster.
They escape and reach their next destination.
That destination appears almost impossible at first: a border of gigantic infernal war machines surrounding tents, shops, tables, food, people, devils, and tieflings. It looks almost like a festival.
Lulu says the place feels familiar and safe.
A man welcomes them to the Wandering Emporium.
His name is Mahadi.
He recognizes Lulu by name.
The Wandering Emporium is one of the strangest places the party has found in Hell. It is a marketplace, a resting stop, a trap, and a demiplane all at once. Contracts are required to enter, promising that visitors will pay their tab in full before leaving or become indebted until they do.
Mahadi can sell almost anything: magic items, transformations, resurrection, spa services, healing, food, longevity treatments, and more. There is a postman who can send letters and packages anywhere. There is someone willing to trade things for soul coins. An old hobgoblin offers the party soul coins to take out Mahadi, but Mahadi already knows and does not care.
The party sends hate mail.
Then Lulu thinks she knows where they need to go next, so they leave the Emporium and continue the road.
They avoid a patch of green grass and flowers, because in Avernus anything that looks pretty is probably dangerous.
A hobgoblin on a bike tries to flag them down. Rendar tries to run him down with the other car but fails, and the hobgoblin gives chase. Three more machines pull out ahead and try to surround them. The party kills one, and the others flee.
In the distance, they see Zariel’s tower.
The party reaches level 8.
Then they come across four bearded devils bullying another devil. The group is trying to burn down trees that spawn abyssal chickens. The party kills all but the bullied devil, who says he will help them.
His name is Kirkendolt.
He seems hurt, not evil in the usual way. He even pitied the strange chicken creatures, which makes him oddly sympathetic by Avernus standards.
The party loots four soul coins and three vials of demon ichor.
One of the soul coins contains the soul of a child named Leandra, sold by her own mother.
The party tries to question the coin about the mother’s description.
Lulu instigates the interrogation.
Even the money in Avernus has a tragedy inside it.
The narrator missed the session involving Lulu’s vision quest at Fort Knucklebone, so the exact details of that vision are not preserved in the notes.
The exact mechanics of the war machine chase are also not fully detailed, but the important result is clear: the party wins, gains a second vehicle, and recruits a surviving enemy as an engineer.