Hell Preview 10 - Brutish Hobgoblins, Chained Duergar and a Terrible, Terrible Place

12.40. Hobgoblins: A tribe of 100 brutish hobgoblins burrow deep into the earth here in search of iron for their master, Flavros. Their village is a series of gray, adobe buildings bristling with spikes and stacked upon each other in the fashion of a great mound. The hobgoblins are overseen by an erinyes called Gofany, a reeve in service to Flavros, who is as paranoid and ill-tempered as any demon ever born into Hell. She is clothed in banded armor of leather and bronze and from her wings hand dozens of holy symbols taken from foolish clerics. The village is surrounded by a 20-ft deep moat filled with hundreds of spikes (actually tubes containing worms that infect wounds caused by the tubes; save vs. disease or lose 1 point of constitution each day as the worms burrow through flesh and spread their putrescence.

The hobgoblins leave the village in work gangs overseen by the largest and meanest hobgoblins of the tribe, venturing out to ancient mines where they descend into the darkness and return with sacks of iron ingots. They process the iron around their village, and great heaps of slag have completely blighted the meadows. At Gofany’s command, 1d6 of these slag heaps can rise up in the manner of earth elementals to combat her challengers.
Gofany keeps a treasure of 1,000 sp, 3,000 gp, 260 pp and a silver plate worth 16,000 gp. The plate, when filled with a bit of wine, acts as a scrying pool that shows any person alive living their most humiliating moment.

13.56. Sand Pit: The landscape here descends into a valley of dunes. Black rivulets flow into the sandy area from the surrounding landscape, forming a oozy marsh in the center. Strange totem poles of grotesques jut up from the sandy soil, apparently carved from living trees. These totem poles are few and far between when one first enters the hex, but become more numerous as one approaches the center. They seem to exert a strange influence over magic spells cast here as well, an influence that becomes more pronounced as they become more numerous. The chance that a spell cast in the hex goes awry starts at 15%. For each mile towards the center of the hex one travels, that chance increases by 5%. If a spell is found to go awry, roll as though the spell caster has used a wand of wonder.

This strange hex has a forge fueled by cold, black fames at its heart. The flames arise from the heart of an ancient demon lord called Humbaba, long since slain by the forces of Law. The forge is worked by a three duergar brothers without names, who are themselves chained to the forge. They are currently beating upon a tangle of black, iron wires intended to become a crown for the succubus called Lady Scarlet, who dwells in a deeper Hell. The forge and the duergar are guarded by a company of dragon men who are clad in burning platemail and who wield military forks that drip with acid.

14.34. Saslarta’s Domicile: Saslarta is a pit fiend who controls a particularly unpleasant stronghold as a vassal of Azazel. Saslarta appears as a masculine, muscular humanoid with obsidian scales and a head reminiscent of a raven, upon which he wears a platinum diadem (12,000 gp). His stronghold is dull, ugly and filthy and stinks of feces. In fact, it is made of great bricks of excrement through which burrow worms and dung beetles (each turn spent inside the fortress carries a 1 in 6 chance of 1d4 rot grubs falling on you from above).

Saslarta’s fortress is surrounded by fields grazed by stench kows, the kows being tended by halfling cowherds, who split their time between tending the herds and patching the fortress walls with fresh loads of dung. The halflings are renowned leather workers. The fortress is defended by ten companies of manes demons.

The walls of the fortress are 50 feet high and it has nine mound-like towers. The entrance is via a barbican. The courtyard of the barbican is home to a chaos dragon called Mote. The wide halls and chambers of the fortress are jumbled together in a haphazard fashion, and there are numerous pits holding loathsome otyughs. A buzzing of giant flies constantly assaults the ears, and attacks by 2d6 the beasts occur on a 1 in 6 chance per hour. Saslarta’s throne room consists of a deep chamber guarded by rusted iron portcullises. His throne and the dais is rests on are made of concrete and are surrounded by a moat of raw sewage that drips from rusted pipes that jut from the walls at odd angles. The throne actually sits on a rusted iron grate, beneath which is his treasure chamber.

Saslarta’s treasure consists of 36,000 sp, 2,000 gp, 1,170 pp and a garnet worth 950 gp that was lodged in his eye during a fight with a movanic deva. The treasure is kept in a deep pit that is home to a truly massive otyugh with the face of Doukas Basileios, an ancient emperor of Nomo.