| Tiamat Rising |
In this version, the PCs will be imbued with a surge of "divine" energy (part of a devil's plot in my version) that allows them to full rest and level up instantaneously. Then, after a quick teleportation, they'll have to quickly navigate the (literally) hellish Fane of Tiamat and stop the ritual before it fully melds with Avernus itself!
Here's the final document - let's jump in!
Prelude - The Battle of Brindol
So, divine magic will go wonky a few times throughout the fight. Unintended consequences, both big and small. Possibly in the days of lead up as well. Then, during a critical point in Streets of Blood, it will fail altogether. (If you only have 3 waves, this is probably fine. If you have 4 or 5, and the party relies on divine healing, make sure they get extra healing potions/elixirs of life, or possibly have Avarthel and some druids come help them out with some healing if things look dire.)
The party will have to finish Streets of Blood and go through Sniper Attack with narry a divine spell in sight! From anyone! (Including the baddies, incidentally - feel free to add a cleric to one of the waves to broadcast that if you want.) Then, just before the final battle, a brilliant miniature sun will appear in the sky above the city that not only brings back divine spellcasting but also heals the party to full and restores their focus points!
The War In Heaven (And Hell)
So, what happened? Part 1: Why did divine magic stop? I have two possible ideas. The first a is Paizo's upcoming War of the Immortals where one of the gods will die! We don't know which one as of now, but we do know it will spark a divine war, and I think this war makes things wonky! Zariel could even be using this chaos to specifically create a web blocking off divine magic from the Vale. The second idea, which is the one I wrote into the doc, is that the Avernus ritual made other divine magic in the Vale unstable / unpredictable (in which case the baddies have divine magic, but the PCs don't).
How did it come back? Shortly after Jarmaath is grievously wounded by an assassin and Lady Kaal takes control, she makes a deal with Zariel to restore the divine connection in return for Zariel claiming the city in 10 years. Zariel does this by summoning the companion, one of the key features of Descent Into Avernus. This way, Lady Kaal gets to live (plus continue to get value from her treasure/connections, hence bargaining for the city not just herself), and Zariel gets revenge on both the Hellriders and Tiamat, both of whom betrayed her (during the Charge of the Hellriders and Hell's Reckoning respectively).
I know I'll want to do heavy foreshadowing (for example of the Shield of the Hidden Lord, from which Gargauth manipulated Lady Kaal for years), and I'm not sure what will happen next. Will Lady Kaal repent and be assassinated before she can evacuate the city? Will she flee the city in the 10 years before it is pulled into hell? I'm not sure! It'll probably depend on how much the PCs end up liking her. I do know that the Hellriders will swear a new oath to the Companion (and that several characters they already care about will swear that oath, including Peri and Sir Lawren from The Fall of Plaguestone), but a lot of other details will be later.
The Final Push
As many GMs have done before, The Battle of Brindol was part distraction, part sacrifice to Tiamat to complete the ritual. Instead of merely summoning some devils, however - something the Red Hand has already been doing (see the Razorfiends, the Abishai, and the full Devils in the Fane) - Azarr Kul means to summon all of Avernus, including Tiamat's prison, releasing her into the world! (I wrote in a line for Wyrmlord Kharn to tell them this as he dies, but definitely foreshadow this in other ways too.)
As such, after the battle subsides, the players have a matter of hours, not a matter of days, to stop the ritual once and for all! But they're so hurt, how will they recover? Lady Kaal gives them a speech about how they are the Heroes of the city, and even if things are desperate, they must push through - no one else can save Brindol! This triggers the last gift of "The Companion", as per the final clause of Lady Kaal's contract with Zariel.
There is a flash of light, and suddenly all the PCs glow like the sun for several minutes, as do their weapons and armor. In this time, they regain all HP, focus points, and spell slots, and prepared casters can re-prepare spell slots. Their weapons glow, and the runes become malleable - the master crafters (Shank and a Dwarf from the Holds, if allied) have never seen anything like it! But they can quickly move runes around (including taking some off of of Kharn's weapons, or quickly buying new ones from Shank). Any weapon with runes no higher than Level 8 can also be transmuted into poor-quality Silver! Or maybe just hand them some Silversheen. Once they are ready, they'll be loaded up with healing potions (and Immerstal will teleport them to the Mountains, where the Fane's infernal transformation will make it easy to find.
The Fane of Tiamat
Broad concept - Avernus is already in the process of being summoned!! The Realms are merging, and as such distances are rough. This becomes a series of a few cool encounters, instead of a full dungeon crawl, and the macro-challenge here is more of a Gauntlet than an exploratory delve. Again, make sure they have enough healing - I'd say somewhere around 2-3 potions each, either moderate healing potions or moderate elixirs of life depending on how good you think the party's fast-healing options are otherwise. I'd lean generous, personally, but ymmv.
Once inside, the party get 3 10-minute rests. Each should come with a description of things getting worse, and the last should come with a blatant "The whole complex begins shaking with tremendous force - you can tell the ritual is only minutes from completing!" If they take more, they fail. The ritual complete, they'll have to fight both Azarr Kul and the Aspect of Tiamat at once! This is a likely TPK unless they flee. Note that the time for other tasks (running across the bridge, traversing the twisting tunnels, etc.) is abstracted. If you'd like to track time more carefully, feel free, but I don't think that level of detail is necessary here.
You might, however, decide to reward PCs who are particularly efficient with their Brindol preparations! I'd reward them up to 1-3 extra rests depending on how efficient, personally. The reason I am doing this rather than setting a total time is that I don't want to punish folks who want to be prepared, but you're welcome to just say like "they have 2 hours; prep takes time, getting from the teleport to the dungeon takes 10-20 minutes, traversing the bridge takes 10 minute, the tunnels take 20 minutes, etc.
Dragon Guardians
As written, all the dragons the players haven't slain will be here! It'll be an Elite Tyrgarun baseline, for a Moderate encounter. Since the other two dragons are both level 8, adding one makes the fight Spicy and adding two makes it Severe. If you want even more dragons, you can remove the Elite template to add an young white dragon (lv. 7)! Or add an Adult (lv. 10) if you want to be spicy or have more than 4 players, though I wouldn't have Tyrgarun be Elite in that case so the Big Boi feels scarier.
I'd say Abithriax probably can't get back in time, and remains a problem for later (likely to become an Adult Red Dragon if not dealt with before he can flee, which makes a great Severe fight for level 11 heroes post-RHoD!).
We're changing the location a bit though, to this - the PCs can already see Avernus starting to seep through... The Dragons probably lair somewhere up high (potential lairs here), the PCs should see where that is so they can decide to go back for their treasure later after they escape! And maybe the Abishai are climbing out of the bit.
Collapsed Bridge
The second phase will use this map - here, hell is even closer. Abishai and Barbazu (and bigger bois!) are climbing out of the pit and attacking fleeing Red Hand soldiers all around! This is a chaotic scene, and unfortunately the PCs don't have time to wait it out. (Though if they try to do so, you're welcome to trade out the 3 easier fights for 1 harder fight as the enemies coallesce. And, of course, they waste one of their 3 rests.) This will be several waves of bad guys, all relatively easy fights on their own (Low or Trivial), but all in a row as the party Fight their way across! A mix of RH soldiers and Devils.
If you want the Blue Abishai to be less of minions and more lore appropriate, feel free to replace them 2-for-1 with this Level 8 version.
The Approach
The Final Approach to the ritual will be on this map, against a mix of foes. We're keeping it moderate, though if your party has had an easy time so far and still has rests left, feel free to go spicy (100 XP, or +2 wyverns). I really like that this encounter is a mix of foes foe types - a Warpriest for magic support potential and smites (which also sets up Azarr Kul), two (or more) Wyverns to play up the dragon theme, and two Erinyes for ranged devastation (likely the hardest part of the encounter unless the party is good at flying or has crazy ranged attacks).
The biggest danger here is falling! Remember your grab an edge rules (though I tend to allow folks to drop an item as part of rolling a success if necessary), and that climbing requires 2 hands without feats. Two notes on this:
- Wyverns should have to succeed on an Athletics check to grapple after hitting, as per Remaster updates. Otherwise Dive + Momentum is absolutely brutal on this map.
- The Wapriest has victory cry to either knock a PC off theirself or have the Wyverns do it (if they crit, I'd use this first, and then if it fails try to grab).
- If the PCs knock any of their flying enemies prone (e.g. through telekinetic maneuver), they're the ones that will fall in! Though the Erinyes are immune to fire and won't care that much.
- Lava damage is at the beginning of a PCs turn. So if their allies can rescue them first, they're fine! (Though delaying won't help with this.) We can likely think of this as grabbing them before they hit the lava, though they'll fall most fo the way immediately.
Finale!
The first fight is Azarr Kul and 4 Blue Abishai (or 2 Level 8 ones). The main downside of the tougher Abishai here is it makes the scaling less precise - in that case I'd just do +/- 1 Abishai per extra player and not use any Warpriests. The PCs can also ignore the fight and destroy the Crystals in the ritual instead if they want!
As soon as that fight is done, the ritual cracks! Both the Crystals and Azarr Kul were necessary for the ritual to work, so destroying either stops the ritual. But while Tiamat herself can't escape, an aspect of her can.
Give the players 3 rounds or so to heal, drink potions, stop status effects, pre-buff, whatever, while making very clear that dragon heads are ripping through the planes. I'd have both them and the surviving Azarr Kul/Crystals be immune to damage during this time as they are surrounded by force energy or some shit, these 3 rounds are just to give them a little break.
Then, they fight the Aspect of Tiamat! If they defeat it, the ritual is fully severed, and Avernus returns back to hell. If they don't, it will grow stronger and eventually complete the ritual on its own if not stopped.
Escape!
After defeating the dragon, the whole place begins to blow! If they don't get out soon, they'll all die. They have time to grab their gear / any treasure (this is why I turned Azarr Kul's armor into a Shield in this version, though you're welcome to keep it as armor and have his body dissolve or some shit so they can grab it pretty quickly and easily), but then they've gotta run! They have 6 rounds to clear 5 obstacles before dying. Reward creativity - the stakes are high! Let cool ideas bypass obstacles when possible, or give bonuses/lower DCs when not.
Epilogue
Run Jarmaath's Gifts as before (see the previous article for suggestions) amidst an awesome, dramatic ceremony with everyone they've helped and saved (or everyone who survived, if you're running the tiers of victory and they barely scraped through).
Then, it's up to the players! They have the deed to Vraath Keep and the favor of the most powerful people in the Vale, so they could easily become regional players. There might be a few loose ends to tie up (Abithriax or the 5th, ancient white dragon), and you might either play through those or just narrate how cool they are depending on whether you are continuing or not.
Even if you are running something else afterwards (and I currently plan on running the Alexandrian Remix of Descent Into Avernus), I recommend giving it a few years (5, 10, or even 20!) so the players can re-establish a new normal for their characters, after that several months of craziness.
And then you're done! If all went well, it should've been pretty epic. And I'm done too! At least, on the converting part. I'm sure I'll flesh out some more sandboxy/side-quest aspects, as well as the Hellriders subplot, but you can now take the things on my blog and, with minimal changes, run The Red Hand of Doom in Pathfinder 2e! I think that's pretty neat.
If you end up running this, please let me know what you think! What cool additions/changes did you make to the adventure?
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