Out Of The Abyss Rage Of Demons

[Henoch Holverson]

Thanksfor this! I read through the book once, and it is a doozy in terms of it's scope, so your guide will certainly be handy if I get to running it. I'm not a WotC disciple by any means, but this adventure is really well done and has some unique ways to conceptualize and adventure in the underdark. Thanks for your efforts!

Jason Raabis: Seriously, this book is so dense. It's full of good ideas, but there's wayyyyy too many moving parts. It really does seem like it would be a lot of fun to run, though. I really like the kuo toa thing and the Pudding King. Thanks!

Thanks for this collection. I plan to run the adventure soon and your post saved me doing the usual search for helpful materials myself.

Although you see AotA as a "railroad in serious denial", I find this characterization a little bit harsh. It has a core story which guides a lot of the things in the adventure, yet there are a lot of different ways for the adventurers to reach their goals. This "goal" is indeed a given - drive the demons back to the abyss - and in so far your railroad comment is correct, but a published adventure wouldn't make much sense without one in my opinion. But I may be predisposed because my players like to decide their own course of action, but don't actually like pure sandboxes. They want an overarching theme and goal during their adventures and are not really happy with making it up all on their own. Some may frown upon this, but after some decades of playing they know what they want from an adventure.

I wrote way more than I intended. Actually I just wanted to thank you for your helpful post :)

Anonymous: I think the thing that really bugged me about this "sandbox" is the fact that in the very beginning, the adventure gives the heroes the option of going to menzoberranzan. But if the heroes take that tunnel, the adventure advises you to cave in the tunnel and basically force them to go to darklake. Or, they get near menzoberranzan and Khalessa Draga begs them not to go there, and warns them drow are coming after them and etc. So to me, I think to myself "Why are you putting a tunnel to Menzoberranzan there when you clearly don't want the group going there until they're around 10th level at least?" I understand that the heroes are meant to be shipped off to menzo as slaves so there should be a tunnel from velkenvelve to menzo, but I think the adventure should have had that tunnel caved in from the start of the adventure. Maybe the heroes' job as slaves is to clear the cave-in, and it's a long term project that never gets close to being finished. That way you have a tunnel to menzo but there's a legit reason why the group can't go through it.

Anonymous: Thanks! I'll add the link, I really appreciate it.

Zingbob: I think that players aren't going to hit every location in the book, so they will miss out on some of those items. Also I am still in the mindset that every character should end up with a magic weapon, magic armor (or a ring of protection) and one other cool item, in addition to consumables. I realize it's not really like that anymore, but all of these adventures just feel so stingy to me.

What a useful article!

The Droki as white rabbit connection is easy to see, but I wonder if he was also influenced by Gygax's NPC dwarf Obmi. Psycho dwarf, boots of speed, big sack of stuff...

Great work - thank you! I have just started this with my group (one session in), and these notes will be a great help. An idea: I think I will let one or two demon lords actually reach the surface during the middle section. Let them break out into a city somewhere in some suitably epic fashion. Maybe draw inspiration from the Pathfinder adventure path Wrath of the Righteous. Put additional pressure on the PCs. The summoning ritual at the end will draw them back into the Underdark.

Re: The Obelisk in the Whorlstone Tunnels.

From what I understand, this obelisk was broken at some time in the distant past. The true magical purpose of it is unknown and not revealed (at least not in Chapter 4 which I am on). However, faerzress has infected it and caused it to gain this teleportation ability. If a character casts any level spell while touching it, they are transported to just outside Gracklstugh's gates (they can learn this if they are proficient in Arcana and make the appropriate check. The derro Pliinki, who is at the obelisk, has a notebook with notes in it with various surface world items listed on it (especially coins and jewelry). The gold coin she has on her is an anicent elvish coin from the surface world. Pliinki indicates if interrogated that the Tunnels are very far from the surface. The implication is that the faerzress is causing the obelisk to transport items from the surface to itself, and this is the reason that the coins Ylsa knows about have appeared in Gracklstugh. If you bring the notebook to Ylsa, the party is rewarded with XP.

Great guide... the thing that i notice on the first chapter of the book is the lack of drow priestess and drow stats... where are they? i looked on it but didnt have any luck. thank u for your work and time dude.

Maestro, you have to go to the Monster Manual to find the stats for the drow and drow priestess. And one of the drow priestesses uses the non-drow "priest" stats from the Manual rather than the specific "drow priestess". It is all quite confusing!

Such a huge help for me while running this crazy campaign. First published adventure I've ever run (20 year now I've played) and it seemed to be much more work for me then usual but this has made it manageable.

I am the Anonymous who wrote on January 6th and things have been going pretty well. I have been able to outline for about two chapters ahead of where the party is.

Notation about Chapter 10. You indicate that you rolled for the trip TO Mantol Derith using the stats in Chapter 10, but the manual under Chapter 9 specifically indicates that you should still use Chapter 2 encounters for the trip for the underdark portion of the journey to Mantol Derith. There is nothing listed in Chapter 9 for rolling for encounters during the surface portion of the trip. Do the Chapter 10 encounters make sense for that "overland" section (obviously not going to have Jubilex running around above ground)?

I agree that the random encounters are ridiculously easy, and have been trying to up the difficulty by throwing more creatures at the party and maxing their HP, who would be able to handle any of the randoms in Chapter 2 or 10 easily without the NPCs help, especially with a long rest at the end of each day of travel. They really didn't think this through when setting up those journey chapters. Why would you have a part of 6th or 7th level characters encountering the same level of difficulty as level 2s? Gee another solo Rocktopus? , let the raging Barbarian take him out in one round. Even most of the regular chapter encounters don't pose much of a challenge for the average party.

Anonymous: I'll have to look at that chapter 10 encounter thing.. i probably made a mistake, sorry about that.

It's weird that they didn't account for the 25 NPCs. The whole thing is strange. I read somewhere that the reason the NPCs are there is just to give the characters NPCs to roleplay with. At the very least, they could have made the NPCs 5 hit point dwarves or something. That might be fun to run it where your job is to keep them alive until they reach a certain destination.

Thank you and good luck with your game!

Yeah, I am planning on requiring them to keep at least one of the Zhentarim thugs alive so they can get into Mantol Derith.

They definitely should have scaled the creature encounters to account for level advancement.

Thanks. I am just grateful I have a great group of players that go with the flow and have a good time.

One other discrepancy I found in Chapter 10 is at first they tell you to replace the Creature Encounters from Chapter 2 with those in "this chapter", but later, in the tables section, they tell you to use the creature tables from Chapters 2 and 3 depending on where the party is. Seems like it would have been simpler to come up with a higher challenge creature table right in Chapter 10.

RE: Wormwrithings:

Beholder Encounter:

"Then they will have to cross a bridge over the chasm. The beholder is on land on the far side."

Hmmm, I think the text indicates that Karazikar stays floating above the chasm and out of reach of the characters out of suspicion. Should be running this in the next two weeks, and hope this will make it more challenging.

As a player who shouldn't be reading this, let me say it hasn't helped me cheat that much. As a player for decades, my opinion is this is the best adventure since 1e. It has the foes that a 1e player only dreamed of fighting, and brought it to life. Truly epic stuff.

Our group is a weekly public game, so if a new (Noobian) player arrives, they roll up a level 8 character and jump right in. The DM says the Zhentarium sent them. It has made a difficult game to run even harder, the Labryinth even longer.

As a reader of Salvatore, a player for decades, a recovering (financially) 3.5 DM, I simply HAD to read this synopsis...

My knowledge did not keep the Noobs from splitting the party in the Labyrinth and killing the Modrons. No Maze Engine.

My knowledge did not keep our Bard from being trapped in Gromph's phylactery trap. We need her to get back in the fight, but it appears the adventure is done for her. Nobody can cast a 9th level Dispel to beat the Imprisonment save Gromph or Viseraun themselves, and by then the story is finished.

We just activated the Dark Heart Talisman on the 'roof' of Sorcere, and are currently fighting a Goristro as we started down the tower.

In the end, my 9th level (yes only 9th) Duergar Cleric will attempt to retrieve the Wand Orcus. He has the Grimoire, and my trapped Bard. Achieve 10th level. My play is to go to Jarlaxle (met him @ House Do'Urden) and bring the Grimoire and my trapped party member to Gromph himself. Via Gauntylgrym and/or Luskan. My 'META' knowledge does not come from this synopsis but from reading the Homecoming Series. Apparently, the only one besides the DM who has.

This is the best storyline, in my opinion, in the history of D&D.

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