Act: Act 1 — Descent into Avernus
Sessions: 01/10/2020 to 29/10/2020
Main Locations: Avernus, Zariel’s Crashed Flying Fortress, Elturel, the Companion, Giovanni’s Magnificent Mansion
Main Threads: Returning from the Bleeding Citadel, finding the adamantine rods, freeing the planetar, breaking Elturel’s chains, redeeming Zariel, returning Elturel to the Material Plane
With the Sword of Zariel claimed and Costa permanently changed, the party leaves the Bleeding Citadel behind.
The victory does not give them much time to breathe.
As Costa walks out of the cathedral, the whole place crumbles behind them. The citadel had been waiting for the sword to be found. Now its purpose is finished.
The party returns to the car, only to be surrounded by a sudden wall of ice. An ice devil appears. The notes do not linger on the fight, but the message is clear enough: even after reaching the sword, Avernus is not done with them.
The party gets back into the war machine and continues onward.
Ahead, they see what looks like one of Zariel’s flying fortresses, except this one has crashed into the ground. It looks older and abandoned, with vrocks circling above. The group enters, and the place immediately feels wrong.
There is thick liquid coating the floors and walls. Massive snail-like creatures are inside. An iron pipe seems to run all the way to the top, and something is inside it. The notes also mention a soul intake machine, which fits the fortress perfectly: even abandoned, it still feels like part of Hell’s machinery.
The party fights vrocks and stirges hiding in the pipes.
Inside one room, they find a typewriter-like machine, almost like an old-school computer. There are four identical rooms nearby. One leftover piece of paper is written in Infernal and addressed from Zariel to Bel. It says the fortress is under attack, being overrun by demons, and is being abandoned.
The fortress is not only a ruin.
It is evidence.
Avernus has history. Zariel’s war has wreckage. Bel was involved. The things the party has been hearing about are not just lore anymore. They are walking through the abandoned machinery of the Blood War.
In another room, the party finds crates and a large bell that dings occasionally. Inside the crates are twenty iron flasks filled with black liquid.
It is demon ichor.
Rendar drinks one.
He vomits.
The notes explain that demon ichor is what demons basically turn into when they die. If it touches the skin of someone who is not a fiend, it can deform them. It can also coat weapons and transform people struck by them.
Costa drinks some too.
Nothing happens.
That is somehow worse.
Elsewhere in the fortress, the party finds metal contraptions with buttons and wires, almost like filing cabinets. One seems to scramble telepathic communication in an area, while another sends a telepathic message to fiends within a mile. Another console appears to be an alarm system.
Then they find a crazed, starved gnoll.
The party casts tongues on it, but it is too insane to understand or communicate properly. Later, after greater restoration, the gnoll transforms into a creepy spined frog-like creature: a death slaad.
They find a pair of gold-and-blue crystal glasses in its corpse: Eyes of Charming.
The most important discovery is in a safe.
Zaleron fiddles with it, and a massive alarm sounds through the fortress. Detect magic shows nothing. The narrator summons an imp inside the safe.
Inside are nine adamantine rods.
Each rod is marked with a number, one through nine. They are tied to something called the “solar insidiator lock.” The narrator remembers that before Elturel fell into Hell, there had been a radiant white sphere above the city called the Companion. It protected the city from demons.
These rods were designed to unlock it.
The code to the safe is 666.
Of course it is.
Zaleron takes the rods.
Then the sound of infernal war machines approaches.
The party escapes by diving into the war machine waiting below, only to discover it is Mad Maggie’s kenku. Zaleron kills one from the air. The party kills the rest, and Gary the flameskull turns on them.
Another car takes off. Costa and Giovanni dimension door into it and find it packed with madcaps. They recover more soul coins and a piece of parchment that appears to be Mad Maggie’s shopping list.
Then the party stages the murders as an accident.
They use Gary’s corpse as a hood ornament.
That is the last stretch of Avernus before the climax: holy sword, doomed city, celestial rescue, infernal war machines, stolen rods, dead kenku, staged accident, and a flameskull hood ornament.
The party drives toward Elturel.
They can see the city in the distance, and there are more demons than usual trying to get inside. They take a long rest in Giovanni’s Magnificent Mansion, where there are portraits of all of them above their beds. The next morning, they even have a morning spa in the mansion.
Then they face the truth.
Elturel has moved closer to the River Styx and will soon be lost.
Below the city, a massive battle is breaking out between demons and devils, with Zariel herself in the center of it.
The party begins casting teleportation circle to reach the center of Elturel. Horned devils attack while the spell is being cast, but the party holds long enough to complete it.
They return to Elturel.
Where the Companion used to be, there is now darkness.
Costa is turned invisible and flies up to insert the adamantine rods.
When he unlocks the Companion, a massive winged being bursts free: a planetar named Naeseus. He has been imprisoned there by Bel for more than a hundred years.
Naeseus tells the party:
“Break the chains that bind this place and I can lift it up.”
Zariel appears to notice what is happening and points toward the Companion.
The party goes to break the chains.
The chains are not easy to destroy. Weapons barely seem to affect them. The notes mention a damage threshold of 30, meaning ordinary attacks are almost useless unless they hit hard enough.
Still, the party manages to break one chain.
While Lulu starts on the next one, the effort draws attention. A pit fiend and several hezrou are fighting nearby. The party kills the hezrou, but the pit fiend, Lucille, does not press the fight. She is strangely chill about it, leaves, and seems to signal other devils to back off.
In Avernus, even mercy feels suspicious.
Lulu breaks another chain.
Then Zariel sees them.
She flies up and asks what they are doing.
She wants her sword back.
Olanthius arrives with his ghost warriors. Lulu and Costa try to convince Zariel to return to the side of good. All the pieces of the story are finally in the same place: the sword, Lulu, Olanthius, the memory of what Zariel was, and the city she doomed.
Zariel reaches for the Sword of Zariel.
She attempts to vow herself back.
Holy light washes over her.
Her infernal form is stripped away, and she is restored to her angelic self.
Lulu turns golden.
The party is washed in the same light and receives the Blessing of Health, increasing their Constitution.
Naeseus appears too.
Zariel forgives Olanthius for his deeds, and he finally turns to dust, released from the undeath and guilt that had bound him to Avernus.
Then Zariel and Naeseus lift Elturel back into the Material Plane.
The party has done it.
They saved the city.
They freed the planetar.
They redeemed Zariel.
They broke the chains.
They returned Elturel from Hell.
And Zariel tells them they have made an enemy of Asmodeus.
That should be the clean ending.
It is not.
Zariel is about to reward the party, but Lulu goes off about how badly they bullied her. Then Costa notices something like a scrying orb watching from behind them. The party hides in Giovanni’s Magnificent Mansion.
Inside the mansion, the strange does not stop.
The narrator sits in the study, and a book falls from a shelf. Footsteps sound. A door opens into a room that was not there before. It looks almost like a street lined with different doors: elven, human, dwarven, and more.
Then the door is just the hallway again.
The narrator goes invisible and finds Giovanni in the music room. The party gathers in the study over whiskey and cigars.
The others eventually sleep, but the narrator keeps searching.
Nothing else happens that night.
The next morning, the party starts toward Baldur’s Gate.
The road is incredibly, disturbingly quiet. No one is heading east. Some of the people from Elturel have followed them and camp outside the mansion, hoping to travel under their protection. They are worried by the empty road too.
Costa and Giovanni tell them to leave.
The first act ends with one impossible victory and the first signs that the world after Hell will not be peaceful.
The party saved Elturel.
But they did not leave Avernus clean.
They return with fame, scars, enemies, a transformed Costa, the attention of strange powers, and the knowledge that Asmodeus now has a reason to remember them.
The exact details of the fight with the ice devil after leaving the Bleeding Citadel are not preserved in the notes.
The notes mention the strange door in Giovanni’s mansion but do not fully explain what it is yet. It should be preserved as a mystery rather than explained too early.
The name Naeseus appears in the campaign notes. Some official material uses a different spelling for the planetar’s name, but this wiki should preserve the campaign’s version unless you decide to standardize it later.
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