Out of Out of the Abyss

We finished the Out of the Abyss 5e adventure last night on Roll20, and it was a pretty fine end to a fun campaign that took us all the way through the pandemic and back again. We began on January 28, 2018 but only got in a handful of monthly sessions before we went on hiatus. We picked the campaign back up at the very end of 2019 and then pretty much played weekly all through last year. In total, we completed 56 sessions and I’m going to guess a bit over 130 hours.

A total of 9 players and 17 characters cycled through the game, though we only had a few PC deaths. At the end, we had six PCs: Trent Purpling, drow necromancer; Jigme, gnome monk; Titus Basswood, elf ranger; Jhandor Jobis, half-orc barbarian; Jalen Stoutmantle, cleric of Pelor; and Leaf Woodcock, elf druid.

I need to collect my thoughts about the adventure in a future post—my overall feelings are a little complicated, but I do want to relate a bit about last night’s final session.

Serious Spoilers Follow!

The final chapter of OotA involves the characters planting a magical device that will draw in all of the demons rampaging across the Underdark to a single place, where—being demons—they will be induced to battle each other to the death. The characters are then expected to dispatch the weakened survivors.

My party elected to place the device directly in the drow city of Menzoberranzan. They had successfully banished Baphomet, Yeenoghu, Zuggtmoy, and Juiblex, leaving only the demon lords Orcus and Demogorgon for the final battle. The default script then has a weakened Demogorgon to fight the PCs.

Under the circumstances, I found the final battle to be rather wanting. Just from a time perspective, I couldn’t see a fight with a weakened Demogorgon lasting much more than 30 or 40 minutes. A bit anticlimactic, if you ask me.

I also wanted to integrate the final battle more fully into Menzoberranzan. After all, the PCs effectively dropped a WMD in the middle of a bustling drow city: I wanted to show the consequences of that choice.

So I greatly expanded the base script for the final battle. I also wanted to really amp up the epic factor for this last session. I pulled out my copy of the 3.5e supplement Hordes of the Abyss and added some additional demon lords from that excellent source into the scenes of chaos and destruction. I wanted to present a series of horrific, powerful demons without a lot of explanation or exposition; many of the descriptions I used were adapted straight from Hordes.

The following script of my final battle was intended to be just a baseline for improvisation. I ad-libbed a lot of description based on player questions and ideas. Some embedded notes indicate game-mechanical directions, and I was ready if the PCs wanted to interact with any of the scenes I described.

The waiting is the hard part. Time seems to drag as you remain alert, weapons drawn, every nerve singing with the tension in the air all around you.

On the street before you, a drow merchant haggles with a potential buyer over a spider-silk cloak. Two off-duty guards lounge about, passing a wine skin back and forth. Three drow thugs shake down another merchant, holding a knife to his throat. A shabby, destitute drow, a strange sigil carved into his forehead, staggers through the street, murmuring about a great double prince.

Finally, a swirling light begins to flare in the darkness. A barely audible humming shakes you to the core, rising and falling like a vast heartbeat in the depths. 

A hush falls over all of Menzoberranzan. All of you suddenly feel very . . . different: calmer, and somehow more hopeful. It is easier to focus. You realize that for months and months a certain part of your waking energies has been spent fighting off the demonic madness, and without this constant drag on your mind you are able to think clearly again. On the street, the merchant and his buyer shake hands in agreement. The two lounging guards stand up and straighten their tunics. The thugs pick up the merchant they were harassing, and apologize. The destitute drow stops, looks around, as if awakened from a dream.

Then the calm breaks and the press of madness returns, now even stronger than before. You hear a faint rustling whisper, growing louder and louder. A dark line of scurrying rats, scuttling spiders, and flapping bats stream across the streets and rooftops, away from the outskirts of the city.

The glow of faerzress gathers and brightens, creating swirling pools like holes torn in the air. A roar sounds from far away as shadows move in the depths of those pools of light. 

The demons are coming.

You hear, in the distance, screams. Bells ring. Flames jet up in the darkness several blocks away, some nearly reaching the ceiling of the great cavern. Screams are joined by smashing, splintering, roaring, and insane, wicked laughter.

A patrol of two dozen drow guards, accompanied by a dozen bugbear slaves, begins to form up in the streets. But although the captain calls out orders, the guards begin bickering and shoving one another. Suddenly, the bugbears attack their masters, and the guards are caught by surprise by the onslaught.

[Psychic wave of anger, frustration, and fear. Take 20 psychic damage, DC 16 Wisdom save for half.]

A monstrous, blue-faced parody of a mandrill, twelve feet high, with enormous black raven wings with rotting feathers [Mandrillagon] roars and lopes forth into view. It is accompanied by nine rampaging demons, looking like powerfully muscled orangutans with filthy, rusty-red fur [barlgura demons]. These demons seize and rip apart the guards and bugbears and eat them in the streets. 

[2 barlgura demons]

A rickshaw, pulled by a massive, scarred troll carries a haughty drow priestess. She is accompanied by an elite guard of twelve female drow fighters. The priestess consults with an officer, then points to a distant area and the group charges ahead, toward the chaos.

A bandy-legged, 24-foot-tall giant [Kostchtchie] strides through the streets with a thunderous roar, just as snow begins to fall and an unnatural chill rolls across the scene. He wields an immense maul crafted of cold iron, his malformed head jutting above his hunched shoulders. The giant swings his hammer back and forth, smashing several orangutang-demons, splintering and battering entire drow buildings to rubble. The towering mandrill demon sniffs the air, then swiftly clambers up to a rooftop and disappears.

[Each creature within 30 feet of a point you choose must make a DC 13 Dexterity saving throw, taking 3d6 bludgeoning damage and falling prone on a failure.]

A winged demon [Pazuzu] swoops down from the darkness above to attack the giant. The winged figure has the body of a tall, well-proportioned man, but its legs end in powerful birdlike talons and its four feathered wings shine with oil and writhe with smoke on his back. Its head combines the features of a handsome man and a feral hawk, its cruel, hooked beak filled with a forest of needle teeth. The giant roars and charges, but the winged figure vomits a swarm of buzzing locusts that envelop and devour the screaming giant.

A headless troll, carrying an empty, burning rickshaw, races through the streets away from the chaos, before tumbling into a heap in the streets.

A phalanx of five horned and winged fire demons [balor] marches down the street, driving a pack of burning giant spiders before them. The demons are fourteen feet tall, wreathed in fire, and bear whips and flaming swords. Behind them marches another fire demon, but even larger and carrying a greataxe [Belaphoss]. Its red flesh is covered with glowing black sigils. As these demons advance the buildings along the street alight on fire. 

[Each creature within 20 feet of a point you choose must make a DC 13 Dexterity saving throw. On a failure, the creature takes 3d6 fire damage, or half as much damage on a success.]

At an intersection the fire demons meet a strange shimmering in the air, announcing the arrival of a shape, little more than a billowing white diaphanous sheet [Pale Night]. Closer inspection reveals a lithe and seductive form beneath the sheet, a voluptuous feminine figure indistinct and hazy. Now and then the edges of the sheet rise a little too highly, yet never rise high enough to reveal the details that writhe beyond.

The fire demons roar in unison and charge the shimmering figure, which floats down to embrace one of their number. The fire demon cries out in terror, becomes insubstantial, and disappears. The remaining fire demons immediately fall back.

Lightning blasts play upon the roof of the great cavern. Somewhere something large and brittle shatters.

The great mandrill demon leaps from the rooftops upon the largest fire demon and rampages among the group while the shimmering figure hovers and watches. The mandrill demon rips two fire demons apart, tearing one’s arm clear off and breaking the horns off a second, before being cut down and destroyed by the surviving fire demons. The mandrill demon screeches as it burns. The fire demons suddenly rise up, as if heeding a silent command, and then hustle away as the shimmering figure watches.

[A character you choose must make a successful DC 13 Dexterity saving throw to dodge a stray attack. On a failed save, the character takes 3d6 bludgeoning damage.]

A darkly handsome, ebon-skinned man nearly 9 feet tall [Graz’zt] arrives with some two dozen naked, fawning drow in his wake. When the dark figure stops the drow fall to the ground, clutching and kissing his feet. The man’s slightly pointed ears, yellow fangs, and six-fingered hands mark him for the demon he is. 

The shimmering figure floats down to street level. Immediately, many naked drow rise and blindly rush the shimmering figure. They are easily destroyed each in turn but the dark man slashes the shimmering figure with an enormous, wave-bladed sword. Again and again the sword slashes through the shimmering figure until it flashes brightly and is gone. 

As soon as the shimmering figure disappears, a great, high-pitched wailing sounds and many drow hiding in the rubble are clearly driven mad, wandering dazed out from their shelters and into the streets.

A group of six drow warriors, bloodied and battered, come rushing through the streets. Their weapons are discarded, they run for their lives. 

[Sound of Demogorgon]

Dozens of terrified drow citizens rush through the street, headed toward the great cathedral of Lolth. Many are trampled. The dark man skewers one for fun and laughs.

In the vault high above the streets of Menzoberranzan, an aerial battle: on one side a massive demon, 15 feet tall, with the body of a grossly obese man, the head of a ram, leathery wings, a barb-tipped tail, and thick-furred legs ending in cloven hooves. This is dread Orcus, Demon Prince of Undead. He is accompanied by thirteen flying figures: pale, thin, wearing tattered black rags. On the other side, the four-winged, hawk-headed demon prince with dozens of vulture-headed demons. The pale flying figures dart and wheel until they break through the vulture-demon ranks, allowing Orcus to close and strike the hawk-headed demon prince with his skull-tipped wand. Black energy bursts from the wand and the hawk-headed demon prince is destroyed, tumbling down to smash in the city streets.

[3 vrock demons land]

Now comes Demogorgon, the Prince of Demons himself, accompanied by three large demons, six-armed women with the torsos and tails of great serpents, along with a dozen capering toad demons. Demogorgon and his guards clash with the three remaining fire demons back in the intersection. The snake-women and toad demons destroy the two smaller fire demons, but are themselves destroyed in turn by the largest fire demon. Demogorgon batters the largest fire demon with a series of tentacle blows, breaking its flaming greataxe and finally knocking it low.

[Roar of Demogorgon]

The dark man with the wave-bladed sword turns to face Demogorgon, and begins to speak.

But a 30-foot-tall wave of black, putrid water rushes down the street. An enormous black shape [Dagon] emerges from the roiling waters to swallow the dark man whole, destroying him. The water dissipates and the monstrous demon prince flops upon the street. The demon is immense, its glistening bulk heaving monstrously as a writhing storm of hook-suckered tentacles unfolds from its shapeless lower body. Its two longest tentacles terminate in immense five-fingered talons. Its head is that of a deep-sea fish, twisted with cruelty and leering with a primordial intelligence, its stiletto-like teeth immense and translucent. Its body is not quite sea serpent, not quite mollusk, and not quite shark, but somehow, horribly, a combination of all three.

[Wave of terror and revulsion. Anyone viewing Dagon takes 30 psychic damage, half on a DC 18 Charisma save.] 

Orcus and Demogorgon immediately close with the titanic fish demon, along with a mob of vampires and lesser demons. Buildings are flattened and scores of demons and vampires are extinguished before the giant fish demon is brought low.

Orcus and Demogorgon turn on each other.

The sounds of battle finally die away, the ground before you stained black and red with demonic blood and ichor. In the terrible grip of Demogorgon, even the mighty Orcus looks almost small. Tentacles hold the Demon Prince of Undeath in a crushing grip, slithering across the maggot-riddled flesh of the horned demon, as they tighten inexorably. A strangled gasp issues from the demon lord’s throat as a horrific crunching sound echoes throughout the cavern and his skull-topped wand clatters onto the floor.

Demogorgon casts aside the limp form, which melts away as Orcus returns to the Abyss that spawned him. The Prince of Demons throws back his two heads and roars his triumph. As he does, his nearer head turns, burning eyes raking across the battlefield. Filled with bloodlust and battle rage, the demon lord searches for another target.

[Roar of Demogorgon]