D&D 5E A Banquet In The Nine Hells

[jrowland]

Legendary musicians could be very good, especially ones who died or vanished tragically young and are considered lost. My elven noble is a bard, so it would resonate with her if there were elves there, I think. As for the contract addendum or condition, that could be devilish fun, negotiating clauses. We'll see how negotiatory my players feel.

The one EPIC BARD who was lost to hell (gluttony?) is ELVIS.

Yes. Have Elvis Play for them.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

I'm on the fence now about whether I want Dispater to show his face or not. If he does, however, it will likely be in close company and not at the party at large. Playing up the hatred of the Viceroy by the guests could provide a nice undercurrent of intrigue to the party.

Fiendish Codex II Tyrants of Nine Hells. A 3.5 supplement. Not too much has changed in Hell 3.5 to 5e. Other then Zariel taking her throne back from Bel. (Zariel does get some mentions about how she is Bel's prisoner after he dethroned her.)

The Info on the Viceroy is from Dragon Magazine 360. Dragon 360 and 361 have articles called Infernal Aristocracy which Details one of the Unique devils from each layer. (Well the fourth gets two dukes detailed due to one serving Beliel while the other serves Fierna.)

It's pretty easy to find all of these online.

Perception of time is definitely something I want to play with. It feels fitting that time would be altered in this place, that a banquet would stretch on for what feels like days, while mere hours have played out. And snide one-upsmanship and self-indulgent discussion would certainly be fun to play. Especially directed at the PCs.

There is a cool location in DIS that does perception of time stuff as well.

(Note from 3.5 so if you use this the saves and such will need to be changed.)

Behind sandstone walls lies the Garden of Delights, an oasis of pleasure inside the inhospitable city of Dis. To gain entrance, a visitor need only knock on its delicately filigreed wooden doors. Comely servants beckon the weary travelers inside and quickly usher them to the side of a beautiful azure pool. Cool beverages are placed in their hands, as innocent or intoxicating as the visitor specifies. Then the newcomers lean back on silken pillows to watch lovely faeries disport on the water’s surface. Sweetmeats and fruits appear on trays of gleaming silver, and palm fronds bend obligingly down to fan the visitors’ brows. Colorfully attired musicians serenade all present with soothing and sensuous melodies.
When asked how long visitors can remain here, the lovely and charming wait staff responds with naïve surprise. No one, once admitted to the Garden of Delights, is ever required to leave.
But in fact, the garden is a complex illusion created by a staff of efreeti puppet-masters. Once managed by a single bound efreeti, it proved so successful as a collector of souls that an entire group of the deception-loving fire creatures are now handsomely rewarded to maintain it.
The garden is designed to corrupt souls—or, failing that, to simply kill enemies of evil. Imps in human form mingle among the guests attempting to determine each visitor’s spiritual susceptibility. Then they set to work on those they deem corruptible, urging them into corrupt or obeisant acts. The incorruptible are left alone to die of thirst or starvation in a place where all the food and drink are illusory.
The garden’s complex series of interwoven illusions includes figments, glamers, patterns, and shadows. Any character who carefully studies the environment for 1 minute without interruption can attempt a DC 25 Will save to detect its unreality. However, imps and illusory servants attempt to distract any visitors who appear to be concentrating too intently on their surroundings.
Even characters aware of the garden’s falseness often find it too intoxicatingly pleasant to leave. Voluntarily exiting the garden requires a successful DC 30 Will save. Only one such save attempt can be made per day, but a +4 bonus applies if the character knows that the garden is illusory. A character can, however, persuade another to leave by making a Diplomacy check opposed by the subject’s Will save.
Spending undue time in the garden saps one’s sense of self and motivation. For each day after the first spent there, a character takes a cumulative –1 penalty on her Will saves. When a character leaves the garden, this penalty vanishes.
Lawful evil beings can enter the garden only to further a mission. Dispater firmly prohibits recreational visits by his minions, which ought to be busy serving him.

I won't detail them here but the book also supplies some encounters that can be run in the Layers of hell. Dis for example has a trio of Imps that attempt to get hired by the Party to serve as their guides. A Bone Devil police officer who's higher up believes a Dwarf denizen of Dis to be involved in treasonous behavior. (Or he thinks the dwarf cheated him) and has sent the Bone Devil to investigate. Said Bone Devil wants the Party to help him. And finally a Horned Devil Tax Collector who wears his wealth on his chest. (The hot iron of dist has melted his coins to adhere directly to his hide.) The Horned Devil will attempt to tax the characters and the odd bureaucratic rules of the Horned Devil's profession reward it more highly per episode of taxation, so it would rather come back to tax one group multiple times than strip its members of all their goods at once. So he can be used to constantly annoy the characters.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Some details for the Book I forgot about. This is all about Dispater.

Dispater, ruler of both the city and the layer, is famous as the most cautious and calculating of the archdukes. But though his supremely unruffled manner would never betray any anxiety, recent upheavals in Baator have left him fearful about his power. The ease with which Asmodeus’s daughter Glasya eliminated the ruler of another layer, seemingly with her father’s collusion, has the already cautious Dispater doublechecking his escape routes and quadrupling his guards. Notorious for never venturing out of his fortress, Dispater has now retreated even farther into the depths of his inner sanctum. He now sees only his most trusted advisors and issues commands through multiple layers of intermediaries.
Once an ally of Mephistopheles and an avowed foe of Baalzebul, Dispater has recently altered his political course in hopes of making himself a friend to all and an enemy to none. To that end, Dispater has politely distanced himself from former allies and made peace overtures to old rivals. None of his counselors dare to point out that making peace with everyone is impossible in Baator.
Dispater’s overriding goal, as always, is to protect the realm he already commands. At present, he’s pursuing this goal in the following ways.
Slowly Clamping down on Dis’s Safe Zones: Portions of Dis have always been relatively hospitable to planar travelers, some of whom have elected to take up residence therein. Now Dispater worries that these half-crazed voluntary occupants of his city are natural sources of betrayal. Afraid to provoke them openly lest they spring some kind of trap on him, he has resolved to squeeze them out slowly, through incremental harassment, taxation, and heightened surveillance.
Reorganizing Operations: Dispater has ordered a top to- bottom survey of his soul-harvesting operations on the Material Plane. He has been trying some relatively new schemes and has offered to trade territories or even minions with more ambitious archdukes. Dispater is reinforcing old territories that reliably send him souls with minimal effort and rewarding the devils that find ways to increase their yields.
Rooting out Traitors: Convinced that his ranks are packed with potential betrayers, Dispater has half of his devils spying on the other half, and vice versa.

When the characters go to Dis you should make it very clear to them that everything is watching them and that everything is being watched in turn.

 

[Shemeska]

It's also worth skimming over the 2e Planescape adventure, 'Fires of Dis' which involves the PCs meeting Dispater face to face in Dis.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

It's also worth skimming over the 2e Planescape adventure, 'Fires of Dis' which involves the PCs meeting Dispater face to face in Dis.

His Avatar actually, still not willing to to meet even a small threat in person.

Edit: Correction even when they are no threat to him as even his avatar is more or less invincible in his tower.

 

[Kinneus]

Some random NPCs for you:


-A Bone Devil that hits on one of the PCs relentlessly. He's polite but very clearly attracted to the PC, commenting endlessly about their attractiveness and especially their "perfect bone structure," and how much the devil would enjoy "undressing" him or her. The implication, after a while, is that the devil is actually sexually attracted to the PC's skeleton, and intends to remove all the "extraneous parts" prior to copulation.

Bone Devils are described as being "lustful" in the Monster Manual, but I have no idea what an evil half-skeleton demon thing is supposed to lust after, so this is what my brain cooked up.

-A devilish lady pulls one of the PCs aside and makes a proposition. She offers him or her something valuable (a single wish perhaps, a magic item, or some thing else tempting but not necessary). The devil makes it clear she's NOT looking for the PC's soul... that would be terribly gauche at a function like this, Faustian pacts are so last century, dahling...

No, instead she wants the PC's favorite color. She will be characteristically evasive about how a person can "give up" a color, but she will eventually explain she will take away the PC's ability to perceive his or her favorite color. If the PC declines, she looks mildly disappointed and maybe makes the offer to another player. If the PC accepts, she provides the agreed upon item or service... but the PC goes completely color-blind. She explains that, well, since she took their favorite color, their second-favorite naturally become their de facto favorite. And since the terms of their agreement was that the PC gave up his or her ability to perceive their favorite color, she of course had to revoke all colors to ensure the PC didn't unwittingly breach the terms of the contract.

It's a nice way to give a player some treasure while also enforcing the whole, "don't deal with devils" thing without completely screwing the player over.

- A glabrezu, balor, or nalfeshnee who's acting as a sort of "diplomatic guest" to the party. These creatures are very intelligent (Int scores in the 18-20 range), so I always thought they'd be a little dissatisfied slumming it with other demons. An intelligent demon might really enjoy an intelligent conversation with devils. PCs can overhear them having a friendly, theological "debate" over whether the universe has a right to exist. The visiting demon would argue of course that it does not, while the devils would offer the solution that its myriad sordid pleasures are more satisfying than primordial nothingness. A debate over whether to destroy the universe or enslave it.

I also heartily endorse the dancing pit fiend and the idea of a damned (but legendary and very talented) musician. Those are great ideas.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

- A glabrezu, balor, or nalfeshnee who's acting as a sort of "diplomatic guest" to the party. These creatures are very intelligent (Int scores in the 18-20 range), so I always thought they'd be a little dissatisfied slumming it with other demons. An intelligent demon might really enjoy an intelligent conversation with devils. PCs can overhear them having a friendly, theological "debate" over whether the universe has a right to exist. The visiting demon would argue of course that it does not, while the devils would offer the solution that its myriad sordid pleasures are more satisfying than primordial nothingness. A debate over whether to destroy the universe or enslave it.

I like your other idea's but this part bugs me. Demons are beings of chaos and no matter their Int scores that does not change about them, Meanwhile the Devils are creatures of Order. The Devils would not be able to tolerate them even being in hell and Dispater himself would never allow something chaotic to possibly ruin an event meant to show off his power. I remember a pair of Abaishai talking in Planescape torment. They explained that there are two types of beings in the universe. Those who were right and those who were wrong. They the Baatezu are right and their enemies the Tanari'i are wrong and need to be wiped from existence for that reason.

There is also the fact that letting Demons into the 2nd layer of hell would be humiliating for the devils as a whole. In the Blood War (The war that Demons and Devils fight.) the devils have a fair amount of pride that every demon invasion has never gotten past the first layer of hell and that a Demon has never set foot or flight in a layer other then the first plus and that the Demons since the War started have never managed to hold territory on the first layer of hell for more then a day. To simply let Demons into Hell would be humiliating and anger many devils.

 

[Kinneus]

Heh, I thought you might object to that.

It's obviously not "canon" to show demons breaking bread with devils, but they're both beings capable of deception and I think it's conceivable that they might have diplomatic ties. You'll notice that the Blood War isn't mentioned once in the Monster Manual in 5e, nor (I believe?) in the DMG. Just because it was part of the standard D&D setting in the past doesn't mean it's part anymore, and it could very well not be a part of the OP's campaign.

Different strokes, is my point.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

True but it still just does not seem right.

 

[MortalPlague]

-A Bone Devil that hits on one of the PCs relentlessly. He's polite but very clearly attracted to the PC, commenting endlessly about their attractiveness and especially their "perfect bone structure," and how much the devil would enjoy "undressing" him or her. The implication, after a while, is that the devil is actually sexually attracted to the PC's skeleton, and intends to remove all the "extraneous parts" prior to copulation.

This, I will almost certainly use. I think it hits the tone I'm looking for, right between serious and amusing.

-A devilish lady pulls one of the PCs aside and makes a proposition. She offers him or her something valuable (a single wish perhaps, a magic item, or some thing else tempting but not necessary). The devil makes it clear she's NOT looking for the PC's soul... that would be terribly gauche at a function like this, Faustian pacts are so last century, dahling...

No, instead she wants the PC's favorite color. She will be characteristically evasive about how a person can "give up" a color, but she will eventually explain she will take away the PC's ability to perceive his or her favorite color. If the PC declines, she looks mildly disappointed and maybe makes the offer to another player. If the PC accepts, she provides the agreed upon item or service... but the PC goes completely color-blind. She explains that, well, since she took their favorite color, their second-favorite naturally become their de facto favorite. And since the terms of their agreement was that the PC gave up his or her ability to perceive their favorite color, she of course had to revoke all colors to ensure the PC didn't unwittingly breach the terms of the contract.

One of my PCs made this bargain with a cyclops in the Feywild in a 4th Edition game. He traded the color of his eyes for magic boots that made him untrackable. His eyes went pure white. Then he began to lose his perception of color. He was much higher level when his color vision began to go, so he went back to the cyclops to renegotiate.

This is a different group I'm running with, though, so I think I can get away with this kind of usage.