Fini'they meets with advisiors

Fast Facts and Concepts: Baator

It is an important and popular fact that hell has nine layers. The native baatezu ain't a bunch of stupid fiends, waiting passively for do-gooders to come an "clean out" the place. No, you won't find a fouler and cannier bunch of creatures anywhere - not even in the Abyss. These fiends disguise their dark hearts with a foundation of order, which at first might sound encouraging. Instead, it makes the plane one of rigid an unyielding law, a realm filled with struggles for absolute, total domination far worse than any Prime Material Plane's most terrible totalitarian rule.

There are two major groups of beastly folk in Baator: First, there's the Dark Eight - eight powerful pit fiends who control large armies of baatezu and other creatures. The eight direct the baatezu forces of the Blood War. The other group comprises the fearsome beings known as the Lords of the Nine. Each of these rules a layer of Baator, hovering in status somewhere between the greatest of pit fiends and actual powers themselves. Much is unknown regarding these beings (including most of their names), but that may be for the best - a planewalker's better off not even referring to the Lords at all.

Each of Baator's nine layers has its own unique environment, but they're all inhospitable and deadly.

Makos takes the party to avernus

Through the mercury pool

Slowly, slowly, our bodies descended. I had no clue, what to expect (if anything), so i looked around one last time at the Prime Material plane that surrounded us. It was shimmering, beginning to look indistinct and cloudy, becoming transparent. Finally, after a minute that seemed an eternity, we descended all the way into the cold pool.

Then, chaos! Tumbled and turned in a wild vortex, our bodies felt as if they were being turned inside out! My disorientation was total as I was gripped with nausea and dread. Then suddenly, I broke free, to find myself floating weightless in bright, well-lit grayness that seemed to extend to infinity in all directions. Floating near me were my comrades, and also nearby was a pool of rippling silver - obviously the portal through which we entered the Astral plane.

That was, off course not our final destination. I felst myself being dragged helplessly along toward a pool of amethyst. I was sucked in, felt the terrible discorientation and nausea once again, and then felt a wrenching, tearing sensation within me.

Suddenly it all stopped. I sat up and looked around. Tthe surroundings have totally changed - it was a barren, dusty place without life or greenery, baking beneath a hell-red sun. The dusty plains were broken by three features: huge holes in the earth, great iron fortresses, and a winding, black river. Welcome to the Abyss.

High priestess Fini'they meddles with the devils of avernus

Her quest starts with the son of a lord who sought spiritual assistance to stop a blight that befell his lands, his people, and his wife. He ended up making a deal with demons, then died after a long bout of madness, which soon caused a giant orb to appear in the sky that later tossed the area into the first layer of the Nine Hells.

Hell: There and back again.

Baator, of the Nine Hells, is the sort of place, every smart planewalker wants to avoid - but sometimes you have to go to places and do things you don't wnat to in order to get by.

The easiest way to get to Hell is to die with an alignment of lawful evil. The spirits of the dead are known as petitioners, and each one re-forms on the plane that corresponts to its alignment. Long ago the baatezu discovered that lawful evil petitioners could be made into lemures and nupperibos, the lowlies members of their race. It is for this reason that diabolic agents ply the Prime Material Plane tempting mortals into evil.

Other ways, that do not involve dying and spending several millennia as a lemure:

• travel via Sigl
• use gates
• spells (e.g. plane shift)
• macial items (e.g. amulet of the planes attuned to Baator)

Sigil sits at - above, really - the Spire at the center of a plane called the Outlands, or the Land. Technically, the Outlands are part of the Great Ring, but since they exist at the "center" of the Ring, nobody ever thinks to include them in it. As things count on the Outer Planes, the Outlands are realms of true neutrality, but most folks think of them as places with no alignment at all. The Outlands serve as meeting places and common ground for any berk from the Outer Planes. Oh, the Land has its share of natives, and a good number of powers, but most folks steer clear of actual Outlander settlements except for the gate-towns.

Situated about the Outlands are burgs that contain gates leading to the various other Outer Planes. Each gate-town opens onto the first layer of its respective plane. The areas around the gate-towns, as well as the burgs themselves, take on various aspects of the plane to which the gate leads.

So the town around the gate to Avernus is Ribcage. The gate to Baator is protected by a fortress city, nestled unter the curving "ribs" of the Vale of the Spine mountains. The people are a peery bunch who work hard and keep their eyes open. Fail in either, and there'll be music too harsh to pay.

Hell looks like an inverted mountain (an apt metaphor, as more than one commentator has mentioned). The plane consists of nine layers: Avernus, Dis, Minauros, Phlegethos, Stygia, Malbolge, Maladomini, Cania, and Nessus. The broadest part of the plane is the first layer of Avernus, and Hell comes to a tip on the ninth layer of Nessus. The farther down a traveler goes, the better his view of the layers above. The nine layers fit together like the pieces of a puzzle; each subsequent descent allows a traveler to see more of how the puzzle comes together.

While it is easy to get to Hell, getting out is an altogether tricker proposition. Gates are heavily guarded by diabolic forces, who can always gate in assistance when needed. Gates that change location are difficult to locate. It's possible to spend years blundering around the landscape of Hell without stumbling across a portal out. Then there's the River Styx. It's more reliable, but only travels through the Lower Planes. You can get out of Hell, but is Acheron or the Abyss any better?

Most travelers discover that a good way to escape is to make a deal with a local. The righteous, of course, have problems with dealing with the devils and usually refuse to do so. They also tend to stay in Hell longer than those with a more realistic outlook. If they get out at all, that is ...

A paladin of noble birth, but with questionable methods

I must admit that the waterdeep mission has become a little bit boring. What had started as a great opportunity nine months ago, has become a routine job.

At the beginning, all was new: The city of waterdeep, the yawning portal, the discussions in Gareth's council about financing this mission. Not to forget the rapid growth of House Vandree that was the reason for me and Riordan to come here in the first place.

But not much happened during the last months. OK, I have to admit: some Gith appeared and brought their eternal fight against the mind flayers to neverwinter. This opened an opportunity, which Fini'they Vandree immediately took. She invited Gith characters into House Vandree. But the number of Gith in the ranks of the house remains small. Not much impact.

House Vandree made some progess, too. It could build important supporting structures and is about to upgrade their barracks soon, but it clearly lost its dynamic.

Finally, after my last presentation at the court of Gareth, the funds of this mission were cut to 0. Consequently, we had to transform our cover up workshop into a real enterprise. That was quite a success. Follwing the example of Omin Dran and Acquisitions Inc., we really make money by producing highest quality healing potions and selling them to the merchants.

So this operation has become self sustaining. We can continue to monitor House Vandree, as long as the Barony of Bloodstone has nothing more important for us to do. Nice, but I did not escape the daily routine in the Bloodstone army and move to the promising west coast, just to run an alchemists' shop and watch the slow progress of a minor drow house in neverwinter.

I should really look for another exiting opportinity...

"Cousin Celedon! Have you heard about the Vallenhas estate?" Riordan suddenly asked.

Maybe Riordan had found something interesting for us. "No, tell me about it!" I replied, trying to hide my hope that this might become a hook for a new adventure.