Hades

A grey wasteland under a sky without sun, where lost souls wander until they forget who they were. There is no rain, no wind and nothing to eat, only dust, dead trees and slow rivers. One arrives by spell, by following a soul too far, or by a door beneath a forgotten grave; leaving takes a spell or a guide, and the will to go. Its true danger is quiet: visitors stop caring, sit down and stay.

Light

Dim

Going

Slow

Hear it

• Void: The Void (In the album RPG Ambiences Vol. 2)
• Plains: Void Plains (On Patreon, Guardian tier)
• In a storm: Void Stormland (On Patreon, Guardian tier)
• World’s end: World's End (On Patreon, Guardian tier)
• Marsh: Dead Marsh (In the album RPG Ambiences Vol. 1)
• Mourning: Day of Mourning (On Patreon, Raven tier)
• Silence: The Silence (Unbearable)

Hazards

• Fading will. Every day the reasons to go on seem a little further away. D&D 5e (House rule): At each dawn, each creature makes a DC 13 Wisdom save. After two failures, it will not travel that day unless a friend succeeds on a DC 13 Persuasion check; after five, it forgets why it came.
• Grey light. Everything is the same grey, near and far, and shapes are hard to make out. D&D 5e: The whole plane is in dim light: Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on sight have Disadvantage.
• Nothing to eat. Nothing grows and nothing lives that can be eaten. Packs empty fast. D&D 5e: A creature eating less than half its daily food (about 0.5 kg, 1 pound, for a Medium one) makes a DC 10 Constitution save at day’s end or gains 1 Exhaustion. After five days with no food at all, it gains 1 Exhaustion that day and each day after. Either kind lasts until it eats a full day’s food.
• The river of forgetting. Its water is cold and tastes of nothing. Those who drink it lose their memories. D&D 5e (House rule): Whoever drinks or is soaked makes a DC 15 Wisdom save or forgets everything since its last long rest; on a roll of 5 or less, it forgets its own name until a Greater Restoration or a week away from the plane.

Adventure hooks

1. A woman followed her husband’s soul into the grey wastes and now sits under a dead tree, unable to remember why she came. Her children have sent the party, with a list of things she loved, to remind her.
2. A dealer by the slow grey river buys memories from souls who no longer want them. One memory in his stock belongs to someone the party knows, still alive, and it is the only proof of a crime.
3. A soul has guarded a single flower in the grey dust for a thousand years. It wants to know what colour the flower is, and nobody here can see colours.
4. A party member’s old companion, dead these two years, is found sitting in the dust and is glad to see them. He does not want to leave, and he would like them to stay too, just for a while.

What may happen

1. A field of souls sitting in the dust, staring at nothing. One of them still wears a wedding ring.
2. An old woman with dark skin and bright eyes offers to carry the party’s dreams for them, for a small fee.
3. Someone has carved arrows into every dead tree along a path. They all point the same way.
4. A black horse with a burning mane gallops across the plain without a rider, leaving smoking hoofprints.
5. One soul still remembers its name and repeats it to everyone it meets, so as not to lose it.
6. The party wakes to find its cloaks and packs a shade greyer than the night before.
7. A crumbling jetty on a slow river, with a bell to call a ferry. Nobody has rung it in a long time.
8. A grey merchant buys memories by the dozen and pays in food, the only food on the plane.
9. One of the party sits down in the dust and says, very calmly, that they will stay here.
10. A single living weed grows from a crack. Anyone who looks at it for a while feels a little better.
11. Far away, a bell tolls once. Every soul in sight turns toward it, then forgets.

Creatures

• Nightmare (a fight to fear, Challenge 3)
• Night Hag (deadly, Challenge 5)

To bring back

Hag Index Finger, Hag Brain, Hag Moldy Heart

Other planes

Feywild, Shadowfell, Ethereal, Astral, Elemental Fire, Elemental Water, Elemental Earth, Elemental Air, Infernal, Abyssal, Celestial

This work includes material from the System Reference Document 5.2.1 ("SRD 5.2.1") by Wizards of the Coast LLC, available at https://www.dndbeyond.com/srd. The SRD 5.2.1 is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.

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