Vladar's Blog

Planescape review: The Field of Nettles

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.

Hellbound: The Blood War

The Field of Nettles

In which our Heroes meet a celestial who deals in Misery, journey to a grisly Battlefield where the very plants themselves drain Life, and hunt for a fiendish General's plans for the Blood War.

Overview

Aside from having a badass cover illustration, Hellbound: The Blood War features a trilogy of adventures that allows player characters to experience the horrors and bloody carnage of the Blood War firsthand. What starts as an ordinary assignment to steal secret battleplans at the end of the third adventure turns into a multiverse-scale sabotage against both sides of the eternal fiendish conflict.

The adventure starts with Spiral Hal'oight, an aasimar merchant from Sigil who wants to hire the party to retrieve the baatezu's battle plans from one of the Blood War battlefields on the Gray Waste. The meeting with Spiral is described in particular detail, from high-class security measures in his mansion in the Lady's Ward to the exquisite furnishings of the aasimar's office. The party may also choose their reward, be it money, a powerful magical weapon, information, or a favor. He will also gladly sell Sigil-forged magical weapons if any character needs them (or even Gray Waste-forged ones for a double price). The map of the aforementioned battlefield is provided to the party (as a handout) along with some suggestions on how to get there.

The Field of Nettles

Whichever way the characters decide to travel, sooner or later they arrive at the edge of the 300-mile-wide area ravaged by the unending war. In fact, most of its landscape consists of innumerable decaying bodies soaked in blood and fiendish ichor. The trek starts at the tanar'ri side of the field near their destroyed war camp and takes a couple of weeks to reach the baatezu's camp. Since flight isn't possible here, the party can stick to the "roads" carved in the macabre terrain, or wade straight through, suffering bleeding damage from the namesake blood-draining nettles — the prevailing type of vegetation of this area. The bulk of the module consists of nine random and five predetermined encounters. The latter ones happen when the party advances to the next numbered zone marked on the DM's map, while the former ones are left to the DM's determination. In such cases I prefer to have a random table I could roll on, and since the module lacks one, here you go (reroll if you happen upon an encounter that had already happened):

2d6 Random Encounter Type
2-3 30 stirges
4 2 bar-lguras tanar'ri
5 6 carrion crawlers
6 10 manes tanar'ri
7 30 larvae
8 5 lemures baatezu
9 13 nupperibo baatezu
10 3 black abishai baatezu
11-12 1 ultroloth yugoloth

Speaking of the numbered encounters, they are quite good and flavorful, giving glimpses of the true horrors of the Blood War: a self-constructing tower of bones that slowly consumes dead and injured combatants, a succubus sniper with a stash of magic missile scrolls, a mysterious city made of solidified fire and smoke produced by eternally burning firepit full of corpses, a group of petitioner slaves digging up a drainage gutter for the lake of blood, and a swarm of belligerent severed body parts animated by some long-dead baatezu wizard.

When the characters finally reach the 45-mile-wide baatezu camp, they now must sneak through it right to the commander's keep where the battle plans should be. After dealing with a squad of spinagon patrol, the party finally lays their hand on the plans just to realize, that the Field of Nettles isn't even some critical location in the grand scheme of war but a mere distraction for the opponent, a minor diversion the fiends are happy to sacrifice millions of their troops for.

Once the party gets the plans back they are rewarded in a manner agreed upon, or even with a bonus if the characters share their story with Spiral in detail. Additional experience bonuses are given for the completion of specific tasks throughout the adventure. This module is also a prerequisite for getting offered a more delicate mission of finding a lost shipment of equipment for their aasimar patron. This is, of course, the second module of the trilogy, but that must wait for some time, since the next time we are getting back to the modrons and Tacharim knights.

Presentation

🖋️🖋️🖋️ superb

Notable features and hazards of the Gray Waste and the Field of Nettles in particular are listed at the start of the module along with other useful information. There's even a list of optional materials that can be used for additional information about certain locations featured in the adventures. Despite not having a proper table for rolling random encounters, all monsters' statistics and their motivations are presented in full.

The trilogy is also accompanied by the Visions of War booklet containing a collection of full-color handouts and maps for the players.

Openness

☀️ linear

The five numbered encounters will happen regardless of which path the characters choose to follow through the battlefield, though the shorter path will surely lessen the usual risks of traveling through the Gray Waste for a prolonged amount of time.

Quality

★★ good

Overall, the module is good, fun, and gory in its flavorfully disgusting descriptions of the Blood War. Good for a quick introduction to this conflict, it fades in comparison to the rest of the trilogy though.

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

  2. https://www.dmsguild.com/product/17281/Hellbound--The-Blood-War-2e?affiliate_id=850783

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