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Robert J. Schwalb
Exquisite agony
A Guide to hell and the damned
Writing, Design,
and Art Direction:
Robert J. Schwalb
Editing: Jennifer Clarke Wilkes
Proofreading: Kara Hamilton and Dan Heinrich
Graphic Design and Layout: Kara Hamilton
Cover: Mirco Paganessi
Interior Illustrations: Biagio d’Allessandro, Ivan Dixon, Jack Kaiser,
Britt Martin, Mirco Paganessi, Svetoslav Petrov, Bob Schwalb
Cartography: Cecil Howe and Andy Law
Brush art: indodreamin and chain
Exquisite Agony: A Guide to Hell and the Damned
is ©2016 Schwalb Entertainment, LLC.
All rights reserved.
Shadow of the Demon Lord, Exquisite Agony,
Schwalb Entertainment, and their associated logos are trademarks of Schwalb Entertainment, LLC.
S
CHWALB
E
NTERTAINMENT
, LLC
PO Box #12548
Murfreesboro, TN 37129
info@schwalbentertainment.com
www.schwalbentertainment.com
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Chapter 1:
Welcome to hell .....................................3
The Root of Evil ..................................................... 4
The Dark Lord Rises ............................................. 4
Finding Hell .............................................................5
Gaethira ............................................................................5
Tarterian Gates................................................................6
Fuming Trench ...............................................................6
Boundless and Pervasive Horror ................................6
Hellish Terrain ................................................................6
Notable Locations ..........................................................7
Hellish Happenings .....................................................10
Escaping Hell ................................................................ 13
Hell Revealed .......................................................... 6
Incubus/Succubus........................................................28
Lemure ............................................................................29
Malebranche ................................................................ 30
Serpahim ....................................................................... 30
Shedim ........................................................................... 30
Termagant ...................................................................... 31
Tormentor ......................................................................32
Zeboul .............................................................................32
Chapter 2:
with all my hatred ........................... 33
The Path of the Third Prophet...........................33
In the Footsteps of a Saint ...................................36
Aftermath ...............................................................39
ThePilgrimage...............................................................36
Holy Sites........................................................................36
The Pilgrims .................................................................. 33
Hell’s Denizens ......................................................14
Diabolus.......................................................................... 14
Greater Devils ............................................................... 14
Devils ............................................................................... 16
Monsters ......................................................................... 16
The Damned.................................................................. 16
Outsiders ........................................................................ 16
Corrupted Objects ....................................................... 17
Temptation and Corruption...................................... 17
Diabolical Objects........................................................ 17
Hellish Relics ................................................................ 20
Angel ................................................................................22
Behemoth .......................................................................23
Bogie ................................................................................23
Butcher ............................................................................24
Cambion .........................................................................24
Chimera ..........................................................................25
Devilkin...........................................................................26
Gargoyle ..........................................................................26
Gaunts .............................................................................27
Hogman ..........................................................................27
Ifrit ....................................................................................27
Chapter 3:
hellbound characters .................... 40
New Story Complications ..................................40
New Marks of Darkness......................................40
Worshiping the Devil ..........................................41
Cambion .................................................................41
Apostate ................................................................. 43
Diabolist ................................................................ 44
Witch Hunter ........................................................ 44
Diabolical Spells ...................................................45
Curse Spells ...................................................................45
Enchantment Spells ....................................................45
Fire ...................................................................................45
Forbidden ...................................................................... 46
Illusion ............................................................................47
Protection .......................................................................47
Song .................................................................................47
Spiritualism ...................................................................47
Theurgy ...........................................................................47
Rewards and Discoveries .................................... 16
Creatures of Hell ...................................................22
Index .................................................................48
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From pulpits and street corners, doomsday preachers
shriek about the horrors awaiting those who walk in
darkness. The druids, roaming the lands under their
protection, whisper prayers to the Fair Folk to keep the
dark ones at bay. Even the witches use symbols to ward
against the attention of the malevolent spirits, those
fallen faeries known as devils.
Every religion, large and small, claims there exists a
place of punishment, a great repository where the souls
of the damned face suffering beyond description at
the hands of fiendish tormentors. This place has many
names, such as the Darkness Below, the Nether World,
the City of Graves, or Torment, but most know this place
as Hell.
Hell would not exist without mortals. It is a place
of purification, where souls stained by evil can
find release from their burdens through the cruel
ministrations of the warped faeries living there. The
process of purification does not come easily but involves
extraordinary pain; thus, the devils have amassed a wide
range of torture techniques for this purpose.
Hell is also the staging ground for the devils’ efforts to
corrupt souls in the mortal world. In this place sustained
by great magic, devils can draw power to tempt mortals,
to bestow on them wondrous gifts in exchange
for ownership over their souls. Devils find mortals’
rapid descent into darkness hilarious—even more so
when it hurts other people. However, as much as they
enjoy ruining mortals’ lives, devils depend on them for
survival. Should mortals ever pass from the world, so
too would the devils. For this reason, devils have a keen
interest in the present troubles blighting Urth. The
Demon Lord’s shadow reaches even into the bowels of
Hell, and its denizens stand ready to contribute to the
struggle to save the world.
Exquisite Agony
lays bare the secrets of Hell and its
inhabitants, offering GMs new inspiration for creating
adventures and campaigns that explore themes of
corruption and redemption, take groups into the depths
of darkness, or test the player characters’ ability to resist
the power Hell offers. As with other sourcebooks, you’ll
find a mix of story and mechanics to support these goals.
Players can also find more options at the end of this
supplement, including a new ancestry, a selection of new
paths, and new spells.
Since the material in this book injects a heavy dose
of evil into the game, it might not be appropriate for
all groups. Be sure to consider carefully before you
introduce these options into your game.
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The Root of Evil
In the years of legend after the genies went mad, but
before the faeries withdrew from the mortal world,
something strange happened on Urth. Animals
evolved, innovated, and built on the knowledge of their
predecessors. The faeries recognized that the great speed
of their development came from an eternal essence
housed within the temporary and fragile bodies of those
ancestors to humans. When those creatures died, their
essence slipped free from the meat to find a place in a
newborn body.
For the faeries, death is final. There is nothing beyond
it. But for mortals, death was only a transition, marking
the passage from one life to the next. With no end to
the number of lives they could experience, mortals had
nothing to fear from violence, sickness, or mishap. They
would be born again into new bodies, recalling all their
previous lives. As evidenced in their rapid development,
mortals learned from their mistakes and avoided making
them again. Many faeries believed they might one
day come to dominate the world, overpowering and
enslaving the immortals.
The great fey, including Titania the Faerie Queen,
Oberon, and others, came together and used their magic
to fashion two realms to house the souls loosed from
mortal bodies. The first was the Underworld, a place of
shadow and long silences created to trap souls before
they could assume new bodies. In this gloomy realm, the
imprisoned souls would grow numb and forget the lives
they left behind. Only when nothing remained of who
they once were, would they be freed to find new lives as
the wheel of life dictates. The second realm was Elysium,
a paradise set aside for the souls of exceptional people,
individuals too valuable to be recycled or too dangerous
to risk their return with even some of their memories
intact. Thus began the cycle of birth, death, and eventual
rebirth all mortals face, and so it has remained the long
years since.
The decision to create the Underworld and Elysium
was not unanimous, however. The most outspoken critic
was Diabolus, the Lord of Seven Flames. He despised
mortals both for their potential to transcend the faeries’
achievements and for the true immortality their creators
(whether the genies or something else) had granted to
them. Diabolus felt the steps his brothers and sisters had
taken did not go far enough; souls could always refuse to
descend into the Underworld and linger in the world as
spirits, recalling their lives with perfect clarity. Diabolus
proposed that the great fey should present themselves
to mortals as gods, to set themselves above them and
rule over them. More importantly, he demanded a more
rigorous purging of the souls’ memories: eradicating
their past lives through torment, driving them mad with
pain until they knew nothing but suffering.
As convincing as the Lord of the Seven Flames could
be, he failed to shift the others to his way of thinking.
Some, such as Titania, could not countenance the
suffering of innocent souls, while others, such as the
Horned Lord, wanted nothing to do with ruling mortals
or settling their petty disputes. The great fey set aside
Diabolus’s plan and moved forward with the decision on
which most of them agreed.
The Dark
Lord Rises
Undeterred by their rejection, Diabolus took steps on
his own. He adopted a mortal form and moved among
the tribes of the first people, planting the idea that there
were gods in the world, among the fair folk of the wood,
amid the stars, and everywhere else. Through his efforts,
cults formed to venerate the Horned Lord, Father Death,
and even the Maiden of the Moon. The early days of
these fledgling religions were steeped in blood and
violence as various factions fought against each other,
offering sacrifices in blood and treasure to the beings
they exalted and feared. Within those religions came
schisms, factions born from disagreements between
members of the same faiths. These groups turned
against each other, driven by the certainty that they
alone had apprehended the truth. Arguments turned
violent and communities were torn apart by the fighting.
Diabolus watched it all, pleased by the chaos his
meddling had created.
What the fey lord did not expect was how mortal
belief interacted with the field of magic enveloping the
world. Through faith and prayer, mortals channeled
power into the great fey, whose power grew until they
became nearly what mortals believed them to be.
The effects were considerable, in some cases causing
terrible transformations. Thanatos, who oversaw the
Underworld, became Father Death, a skeleton with
eye sockets burning with blue flames and swaddled in
darkness. The Horned Lord became a terrifying figure,
the embodiment of wild animals and the natural world.
The damage Diabolus had wrought was done, and the
great fey feared that if they confessed they were not gods,
the mortals would turn against them and their kind. So
to quell the fighting, the “new gods” gathered the leaders
of the various faiths, teaching them the secrets of the
lands and how to use magic. Their apostles were named
druids, who went on to establish the religion known as
the Old Faith.
The great fey, having brought peace to the land,
withdrew from the mortal world. They fashioned the
hidden kingdoms into which they and the faeries who
served them retreated. As the fey began to disappear
from the world, Father Death, Revel, and the World
Mother confronted Diabolus on the slopes of Mount
Fear. They accused him of contravening the compact
they had made, turning mortals against one another
and staining their souls with darkness. They demanded
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