Vladar's Blog

Planescape review: Fires of Dis

For the last three years, I've run a Planescape1 campaign through almost all of its modules. Now, after successfully finishing it, I want to look back and review these adventures, highlighting the pros and cons of each one.

Each module will be rated in three categories, up to 3 points in each:

The full list of currently published reviews is available under the planescape tag.

Fires of Dis

Fires of Dis

From Sigil, the City of Doors, the heroes plunge head-first into a dangerous journey across the Outer Planes. Their quest for a stolen sword leads them to the hostile gate-town of Ribcage, the treacherous plane of Baator, and the disciplined burg of Fortitude — a gate-town teetering between two planes, just waiting for something to tip the scales. Your player characters need wits as keen as their steel to brave the fires of Dis — and survive!

Overview

Sigil

Tis but a scratch!

Wandering the Great Bazaar, one of the players' characters falls victim to a sneaky pickpocket. After a short chase, they stumble upon a standoff between a paladin and a band of baatezu. A couple of rounds later a 12-foot tall gelugon tears off the paladin's hand with the holy avenger sword still held in its grasp and teleports away with this prize. The paladin Daneel is a member of Harmonium. Depending on the party's faction affiliations, they might decide to help them or not, but one way or another the wounded paladin will soon be brought to the Barracks, his faction's headquarters. Tonat Shar, Harmonium's second in command, will listen to the characters' story and give them a small reward (if they did help Daneel), asking them not to leave Sigil for a couple of days.

📝 NOTE: Two alternative starting hooks are suggested at the end of the first chapter, though it would have made more sense if they had appeared at the beginning instead.

After a day of waiting, sprinkled with some minor encounters (six of them are provided), the party is invited to another audience with Tonat Shar. The factor explains that the stolen sword is needed for a special ceremony — the Harmonious Ascension, designed to bring the gate-town of Fortitude to the plane of Arcadia. If the party already went through the Recruiters module, they are more or less familiar with the whole process. The Hardheads had already tried to capture the sword back but got their armored asses kicked. Nevertheless, they've determined that the sword is kept in Dispater's Iron Tower. Since the adventurer types are generally sneakier than Harmonium soldiers, Tonat Shar proposes a lofty reward for the return of the sword, including an item of choice from the fabled dwarven armories of Mount Clanggedin for each character. On top of that, all expenses will be covered by a bagful of gems (a preferred currency of baatezu) waiting for them in the gate-town of Ribcage. If the party is still reluctant, the dwarfsmith Stonehammer will provide a choice of some minor magic items that might help the characters in this quest.

📝 NOTE: The player characters are not the only ones hunting down the holy avenger. A Free League group led by a cunning wizard Karris will attempt to get ahead in this race to the Iron Tower to obtain the sword themselves, and they are already ahead of our heroes.

Ribcage

If the party decides to follow the plan laid out by Toant Shar, the next stop on their journey will be Ribcage — a gate-town to Avernus, the first layer of Baator. Populated mostly by tieflings, this burg is ruled over by Lord Quentill Paracs and his Blackguard militia. Six major locations the party might visit are described herein, along with five random encounters to place in between. On their way through the characters can come upon signs of the Karris's band passage to Baator, start a strife with the Blackguard, find three possible venues of obtaining a cover story, and finally, attend the audience with Lord Paracs to pass through the Baator gate to Avernus.

Avernus

📝 NOTE: Depending on some decisions the party made, they might have one of the two guides that were available for hire in Ribcage. Keep their presence in mind since each one has special reactions to some of the encounters (marked by "The Guide"). Both guides are given full statblocks and role-playing guidelines in the NPCs statistics section at the start of the book.

Unlike the relative freedom of the previous chapter, most of the set encounters in Avernus will happen in a set order, especially if the party is led by a guide or has the arrow of direction given to them by dwarfsmith Stonehammer in Sigil. There are some nearby landmarks given if the party decides to go off track (such as the famous Pillar of Skulls), but there's no actual map of the region besides the handout sketch that the characters might obtain. About a dozen locations and encounters are described in detail, including a clash with the Free League band, plus a table of random encounters with wandering baatezu. The order and timing of the named encounters are left to the DM's discretion.

Dis

After passing through Tiamat's lair (hopefully unnoticed), the characters emerge on the second layer of Baator, right on the edge of the infinite city of Dis. A mysterious benefactor, first encountered in Avernus, appears again, offering help infiltrating the Iron Tower, if the party agrees to steal the holy avenger from Dispater. Agreeing to this would indeed help in the task, but it's not strictly required if the characters have reasonable doubts about the true motives of the stranger.

Dis itself is a site to behold with its infinite streets filled with buildings of smoldering iron, petitioner work crews constantly rearranging the city plan by tearing down buildings and roads to immediately build the new ones, sparse establishment catering to the Prime Material Plane visitors, and omnipresently looming Iron Tower — seen from any point of the city but always out of reach. While the characters figure out the way to even just reach it, they will walk into some of the 15 available encounters along the way. Some of these are tied to a specific cover-up story and the chosen guide and a good part of them are quite detailed. From our group's experience, the highlights of the city are "The Fugitive", "The King of Dis", and "Old Debts" sections. The last one is tied to Herfik the Silent — a githzerai guide hired by the party. If Flamen Therma was hired instead, the "Betrayal" event should have been run instead.

The Iron Tower

Once the characters figure out a trick to get to the tower, they have three ways of getting in. Depending on the chosen way, the party arrives at different locations inside the tower. There are no corridors between the rooms inside this 999-mile-high everchanging structure. To move around, the party needs to use a flower of holes, black petals of which can create portals (similar to portable holes in appearance) to specific rooms marked by a unique symbol on each petal. Twelve rooms can be visited in this manner in any chosen order. After all twelve are visited, the party can access the Garden where a new flower with blank petals can be acquired, and the characters can now inscribe any room symbols they know, including five new ones they could have discovered while rummaging through the tower. One of these is Dispater's Study where the sword is held.

Archduke Dispater

The finale of this chapter includes a hilarious interaction with the archduke Dispater himself, suddenly erupting in a geyser of fetid slop from a small bucket standing nearby, accompanied by a host of 27 greater baatezu. Dispater is quite cordial and lighthearted today and takes his time to explain how he regrets getting the holy avenger (since none of the baatezu can even wield it without suffering immense pain) and wishes to get rid of this troublesome souvenir.

📝 NOTE: Take your time preparing to roleplay the archduke. It's not often that the characters have a chance to meet one of the Lords of the Nine face to face and it should be a truly memorable experience.

Cutting to the chase, the archduke offers a deal, allowing the characters to take the sword in exchange for a single eyelash from each of them. The most simple way is, of course, to accept the offer, but the characters are free to attempt a daring escape with the sword, while nine gelugons, nine cornugons, and nine pit fiends are chasing after them with an honest intent to kill. Granted the party is resourceful enough to escape the Tower, they are free to leave Dis without much intervention, except for the final encounter with the mysterious stranger from before. Depending on previous interactions, this meeting might go different ways, but this scheming individual would certainly attempt to claim the holy avenger for himself.

Fortitude

The final chapter takes place in the gate-town of Fortitude, on the eve of the ceremony of Harmonious Ascension. Six major locations are described quite shortly, and the main focus is on the delivery of the sword and the ceremony itself. The characters have twelve hours to rest, explore the town, and speak with the NPCs before the Ascension begins.

Daneel, Smiter of Fiends

Finally, at this point, the Dispater's dark plot comes to fruition, when Zaggutch, a pit fiend lieutenant of the archduke, whose spirit form was carefully hidden in the sword, possesses Daneel. Fiend's plan is to derail the ceremony and cause as much havoc and chaos as possible to make sure the town won't slide to Arcadia any time soon. The party is presented with four situations to handle while trying to restore order in the town, after which the final confrontation with the possessed paladin would happen. Zaggutch is pretty serious about succeeding in the given task, and won't shy from exploiting any weakness in the characters' tactics.

Once the fiend is defeated, barely alive Daneel is immediately arrested by his Harmonium brethren and sentenced to death for the heinous crimes he had committed today. Here the characters can stand up for the unfortunate paladin if they want, since they are the only ones that know what really happened. Of course, this decision would decide not only Daneel's fate but the fate of the whole town, regarding the ascension. Depending on the party's achievements during the adventure, the characters might receive up to an 11,500 XP bonus in addition to the promised reward.

Presentation

🖋️🖋️🖋️ superb

One of the best ones so far. It has:

📝 NOTE: Further information on gate-towns can be found in the Planescape Campaign Setting1 and the Players Primer to the Outlands3 boxed sets.

Openness

☀️☀️ semi-linear

While there are some predetermined events, the module tries to cover all possible ways the characters might decide to proceed. If I were to sort the chapters based on their openness, then it would look like this:

More linear than open More open than linear
Chapter 1: The Sting (Sigil) Chapter 2: Under the Ribs (Ribcage)
Chapter 3: Red Journey (Avernus) Chapter 4: A City that Burns (Dis)
Chapter 6: Hearts and Minds (Fortitude) Chapter 5: The Lord of Dis (Iron Tower)

Not a bad score, but it certainly could have been better. The main problem though is that sometimes your players can't know if they are choosing their own way or just following a predetermined set of events. The towns, for example, are quite open, but there are barely a half-dozen points of interest there; ways of handling various decisions are given, but there always is an obvious one. Does this count as a railroad if the characters can leave the beaten path while making their lives much harder in the process?

Quality

★★ good

Very fun and enjoyable module, especially if your players don't mind some linearity here and there. Otherwise, you might want to write up some additional material to accompany this module to provide more possibilities for the party. Very close to reaching the ★★★ outstanding rating (and might still be for your group), but the stated flaws bring it down a little.

Planescape logo

Discuss this post on Reddit

  1. https://www.dmsguild.com/product/17267/Planescape-Campaign-Setting-2e?affiliate_id=850783↩

  2. https://www.dmsguild.com/product/17273/Fires-of-Dis-2e?affiliate_id=850783↩

  3. https://www.dmsguild.com/product/17301/A-Players-Primer-to-the-Outlands-2e?affiliate_id=850783↩

#adventure #dnd #osr #planescape #review #ttrpg