Sample file Classic Play The Book of Hell
Adrian Bott
Contents Credits
Introduction 2 Editor Entering the Infernum 3 Infernal Environments 16 Richard Ford Lower Levels 38 The Creatures of Hell 47 Line Developer The Organisation of the Devils of Hell 60 Richard Neale House Astyanath 67 House Carthenay 71 Studio Manager House Haimon 75 Ian Barstow House Glabretch 84 House Oblurott 90 Cover Art House Riethii 94 Vincent Hie House Sturrach 98 House Zethu 102 Interior Illustrations The Four Great Princes 107 Devil Species 111 Jim Brady, Danilo Moretti, Ricardo Jaime, Demon Species 128 Randy Nunley, Moises Donoso Segundo, Demon Bikers From Hell 135 Stephen Shepherd, Joey Stone, Alejandro The Laws and Customs of Hell 139 Villen Corruption 145 Sympathy for the Devil 160 Production Director Infernal Secrets of Magic 174 Alexander Fennell The Harvest of Souls 189 Sample file Infernal Equipment 207 Infernal Transfiguration 223 Proofreading Adventure Hooks 247 Mark Quennell, Sarah Quinnell Designer’s Notes 249 Index 251 Additional Support Licence 256 Ian Belcher, Matthew Sprange Open Game Content & Copyright Information Classic Play – The Book of Hell ©2004 Mongoose Publishing. All rights reserved. Reproduction of non-Open Game Content of this work by any means without the written permission of the publisher is expressly forbidden. Classic Play – The Book of Hell is presented under the Open Game and D20 Licences. See page 256 for the text of the Open Game Licence. All text paragraphs and tables containing game mechanics and statistics derivative of Open Game Content and the System Reference Document are considered to be Open Game Content. All other significant characters, names, places, items, art and text herein are copyrighted by Mongoose Publishing. All rights reserved. If you have questions about the Open Game Content status of any material herein, please contact Mongoose Publishing for clarification. ‘d20 System’ and the ‘d20 System’ logo are Trademarks owned by Wizards of the Coast, Inc. and are used according to the terms of the d20 System Licence version 5.0. A copy of this Licence can be found at www.wizards.com/d20. The mention of or reference to any company or product in these pages is not a challenge to the trademark or copyright concerned. Dungeons & Dragons® and Wizards of the Coast® are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast, Inc. in the United States and other countries and are used with Permission. Printed in Canada. Mongoose Publishing Mongoose Publishing, PO Box 1018, Swindon, SN3 1DG, United Kingdom
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1 INTRODUCTION
torment the damned? Are all devils members of the Introduction same monolithic force? What actually happens to the soul of a person who sells his soul to the Devil and what can he expect in return? s an adventurer, you will be used to hardship. You can wade up to the neck through leech- Between these covers, you will find an exhaustive Ainfested swamps; you can shiver on an arctic guide to Hell in which all of these questions are plain with nothing to eat but the stiff body of your answered. The Book of Hell is a bestiary, spellbook, companion, who was lucky enough to die first; you resource guide, gazetteer and Who’s Who for the can struggle through seemingly endless desert, place we have chosen to call Infernum. Although blinded by the sun and dried crisp as a mummy by it reflects our own ‘take’ on the outer planes, it is the heat, while scorpions and venomous fully compatible with other works on the subject. In reptiles lurk in wait and vultures particular, the concept of what a ‘devil’ is has been circle overhead. In all of these expanded immensely. The terrible straits, one thought may civilisation, social conduct serve to comfort you: no matter and objectives of these how bad this is, it could be fascinating beings worse. have been fully investigated. They There is one place where are far more than mere even that thought cannot scaled and horned bring comfort, because warriors of darkness. it is the worst place that can be found Those who are anywhere. It is a familiar with such place so dreadful things will note that its very name that a good deal is a curse and has been adapted good folk fear to from authentic mention it. That sources. This place is Hell. simply perpetuates Sample file the established tradition All too often, in d20 of drawing from Hell is merely the folklore of the real glimpsed from afar. world to expand the Legends, frequently game’s mythos. We must, contradicting each of course, insist that other, tell of its this is a game and that many awful sights. any reference to infernal So varied are these powers and rituals is to accounts that one might be understood entirely in that wonder whether they were context. Irresponsible and wilful describing the same place. meddling with genuine occult It is a realm of endless fire, material is not condoned. though insectoid ice devils dwell within its confines. It is all chaos and horror, yet the devils Classic Play are fundamentally lawful, or else why do The Book of Hell is the latest in the highly they always work with contracts? The place is acclaimed ‘Classic Play’ series from Mongoose supposed to be inescapable, yet fiends are often to be Publishing. Each volume in the series covers found walking the material plane. The souls of evil one field of central importance to any d20 game people go to Hell when their body dies, yet evil ghosts in unprecedented depth and detail, providing an are often reported, so why are they not in Hell? abundance of readily usable material, new rules mechanics and background information. With this Other questions beg to be answered; for what series, we intend to produce the definitive works on purpose, other than sheer sadism, do the fiends subjects relevant to any Games Master.
2 ENTERING THE INFERNUM
From the sea of flame emerge outcrops of red-black Entering The rock. Some are nothing but craggy, featureless peaks in the middle of a sea of roaring flames, while others are large enough to support a multitude of cities, Infernum outposts and estates. These islands are the territories that the infernal powers claim. Each one has a hough Hell is immense, it is not without form population and a character that varies according to and boundary. The features of Hell remain who has claimed it. The lands of the devils develop Tconstant enough for the various powers and culture, civilisation and industry, building structures principalities to claim certain regions as their own and making the torment of the damned into a refined and establish borders. There are features of Hell occupation, while the lands of the demons remain in known to all cultures of the Prime Material plane, chaos, with an ongoing orgy of torment and gluttony such as the Sea of Fire and the Shrieking Peaks. sprawling over the surface. Beneath these lands lie This is one reason why so many accounts of Hell the sub-planes inhabited entirely by fiends of one from the various different worldly religions have so alignment. The hells of the devils do not connect many details in common, even when the cultures have with the hells of the demons, except in the topmost grown up separately. level. What Is The Infernum? The Infernum is thus a middle ground. Those The realm referred to as ‘the Infernum’ is the Hell who enter it are not necessarily treading upon the with which this book deals. It is not a part of any sovereign territory of any of the infernal or demonic of the established lower planes, such as have been powers. Only a few creatures count it as their home covered in other publications. The Infernum has no plane. It is easiest to think of the Infernum as a form alignment other than ‘evil’. It occupies a vast realm of satanic no man’s land or colonised nation, where that lies between the Astral and the various lower different factions compete for territory and resources. planes, feeding into all of them. Each of the lower There is one resource that the Infernum will never run planes, from the hells of the demons to those of the short of, not so long as human beings are prone to devils, opens on to the Infernum. As a result of this, give in to the temptations of evil: damned souls. the Infernum is both a realm of transport between the lower planes and a battleground where the wars Where The Bad People Go between devils and demons are fought out. There are Normally, when a person dies, their soul simply also openings from the Prime Material plane intoSample the departs filefor the plane where their deity lives, or the Infernum. plane that corresponds to their alignment. Where the good and neutral planes are concerned, this is a fairly Most of this book is given over to detailing the straightforward matter. The soul instinctively knows topmost level of Hell, since this is the one that which way to drift. There is usually a manifestation travellers from other planes are most likely to of some sort that it can follow, such as a bright light, encounter. It has the most resemblance to the Prime or a long tunnel that leads to the soul’s ultimate Material, though the materials, colours and elements resting place. The evil planes are, however, not so are very different. Other levels of Hell are literally benignly organised. beneath the first. Only the upper level is, as it were, open to the sky. When commentators speak of the The fate of an evil character after death depends on Infernum, they usually mean the upper level of Hell, how evil he actually was. One theme to which we though the term technically encompasses all of the will recur several times in the course of this book lower levels as well. is the contrast between an evil philosophy and an evil history. There is no profit in merely being evil, In form, the topmost level is one vast lake of fire, as one might be if one had a lawful evil alignment. beneath an unending sky that is always dark, stormy or One must also do evil. Only when the corrupt full of seething red light. In some places, the regions nature of a character is expressed in deeds are the further out than even the devils care to venture, this true possibilities of Hell opened to him. Consult sea is sluggish, putrid and blackish-green rather than the Corruption chapter for more details as to how a flaming, as the liquid is too full of other substances to character’s corruption rating is determined. burn. The souls of the damned fall from the sky into the uppermost levels of Hell, where they are claimed Characters who are of evil alignment when they die by whichever band of fiends finds them first. but have only moderate levels of corruption do not
3 ENTERING THE INFERNUM
drift away to a plane corresponding to their alignment power (as determined by the character’s alignment) to at the point of death. Instead, the accumulated evil dispatch a devilish or demonic agent to the character that weighs heavy upon their soul drags it down as he nears death or even at the point of death. This through the realms of the Astral to the brink of the devil or demon then has responsibility to ensnare the Infernum. The soul can do nothing about this. A soul character’s soul and bring it back to the Infernum that has any corruption rating at all when it dies is when the character dies. The devil or demon will referred to as damned, since this shall be its fate. The usually wait invisibly or observe from the Astral soul then falls from the sky into the Infernum. Such Plane. is the yield of damned souls from the Prime Material plane that there is always a constant fall of them. Some especially notable figures of evil may find, as they lie on their deathbeds, that a whole crowd As evil men and women die on the world above, their of devils has come to fetch them away, such is their souls come tumbling (and usually screaming) like a prestige in Hell. Sometimes, especially in the case of human rain from the skies of Hell. These souls fall pacts that have run their course, the infernal powers down upon various different parts of the Infernum, all will send agents to carry the damned person down to of which we shall detail in due course. The majority Hell without waiting for them to die first. For further fall into the Sea of Fire, where they float among the information, see The Harvest Of Souls. sulphurous fires in utter agony. Some are impaled upon the jutting rocks and spear-like peaks of Hell’s mountains and others smash into the seemingly Prison And Punishment endless red, dry plains of one of the infernal islands. There are only two roles one can possibly have in Although almost all souls think that their torment Hell. You are either the torturer or the tortured. there is to be unending, it is not long before some devil or demon comes to fetch them from their first For the majority of damned souls, who were not evil point of impact. Souls are the primary resource in enough to join the ranks of the tormentors but were Hell, for reasons that we shall cover presently. not repentant enough to save themselves before they died, the Infernum is both the place of their eternal When a character dies with medium or high levels of confinement and the source of their eternal agony. corruption, or has made a pact that requires his soul It is simultaneously the prison that keeps their evil to be forfeited to from infecting the Hell at the end world and the of a given time Sample file punishment that period, his fate is they deserve for different. He does having been evil not simply fall in the first place. from the sky into They have nothing the Sea of Fire to look forward to with the specimens but an eternity of of mediocre evil. gloom, pain and Instead, Hell takes regret. The time an interest in him. for repentance is Souls such as this are past. worth seeking out. As well as From the point of view being rich of the devils resources, and demons, since Hell is an they are opportunity. so steeped in Corruption corruption, they is meat and have the potential to drink to them. become demons or The one chance that devils in their own a denizen of Hell has right. It is therefore to gain power and customary for the escape reduction to appropriate infernal insignificant status is
4 ENTERING THE INFERNUM
to pile more and more corruption upon himself. A As well as being convenient victims to torment, devil that does not perpetrate evil deeds is not worthy the souls of the damned have many other uses. As of the title and may find himself reduced to the rank we address in The Harvest of Souls, souls are a of a mere damned soul, hurled back into the chambers rich resource in other ways. Their distilled agony, of torment alongside those who he once tortured. The sorrow and strain are delicacies among the infernal ongoing goal of the denizens of Hell is therefore to nobility, their resilient bodies can be used to build become even more corrupt than they already are. This objects and even structures and they can be devoured is the infernal rat race, the motivation behind much of (temporarily, as nothing can be completely destroyed Hell’s agenda. The two most popular activities in in Hell) to lend energy to evil outsiders. Hell are thus tormenting the damned and corrupting the people of the Prime Material plane. Contested Territory Despite the fact that most cultures portray Hell as Devils and demons have two main reasons for punishing the damned, as if it were somehow for fighting over territory in the Infernum. The first is their own good, the devils and demons that do the related to the Harvest of Souls. The more souls that work of tormenting them have their own agenda. can be claimed, the more the claimant garners power, They are certainly not servants of the lawful and influence and opportunity for indulgence. Infernal good Gods. On the contrary, the very sadism and settlements and fiefdoms claim any souls that fall into inventiveness involved in torturing the damned souls the Infernum within their dominion, which translates (who, it must be remembered, can be tortured to a simply to the realm that they are able to retrieve souls level impossible for the living, since they have no from. Set boundaries are less important than the flesh and are therefore not liable to die under torture) ability to fetch in your harvest. is itself a way for the devils and demons to gain more corruption and advance themselves yet further in the The other reason for fighting is simply because it is ranks of Hell. what devils and demons do, and always have done. There is no love lost between one side and the other. The tormentors of Hell inflict horrible suffering on Law and chaos may sometimes unite in the interests the damned because this is an evil thing to do in of good but very rarely do so in the interests of evil. itself. As sheer sadism against a defenceless creature, In the ongoing war, devils have the advantage of it counts as an evil act and as such is one of the only organisation, while the demons have brute strength on ways to gain increased rank, status and power. The their side. The chapters entitled Infernal Equipment other is, as we have pointed out, to spread the causeSample of and Infernal file Transfiguration give details of some of evil among those who have yet to die. This is the real the different units and equipment produced by each reason why devils and demons are so interested in side in the never-ending battle of demon against perverting human souls. If they were secure in their devil. own position, they would be content to let humanity lead itself astray. This, though, is not enough; since The Infernal Archipelago there is such an ongoing struggle to achieve greater As Hell consists of ‘islands’ of solid rock in the midst and greater heights of corruption, they must find of a fiery sea, it has some strange resemblances to some way to do evil from their home in Hell, which a marine culture of the upper world. As well as the boils down to either tormenting the souls in Hell or ships built by the devils and demons to sail across plotting fresh atrocities in the mortal realm. the fire, there are also smaller vessels and harvesting plants on the shores of some islands. The operators The devils and the demons have very different are independent factions composed of evil outsiders approaches to this, as one might imagine from the not allied either to the demons or the devils, who fundamental difference in their alignments. Devils trade souls harvested from the fiery waves to whoever prefer to work through intrigue, spreading distrust and will give them the best price. suspicion and leading their dupes deeper and deeper into sin, whereas demons aim to provoke outbreaks There are also isolated islands that are home to of raw and destructive emotion, leading to massacres, savage entities that take no part in the ongoing war; wars and carnal atrocities on a massive scale. Where there are even rumours of a colony of free souls who the devils go for quality of corruption, demons go for have managed to escape the claws of the devils and quantity. The Infernal Agenda is addressed at length demons (for now) and are desperately planning to later in this volume. return somehow to the upper world. In addition, the further reaches of the fiery sea and the less
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