Page 6 - Mordenkainen's Tome Of Foes

CHAPTER 1:

THE BLOOD WAR

HROUGHOUT HISTORY, THE TEEMING HORDES Demons enter the Nine Hells by following the River
of the Abyss and the strictly regimented Styx from the Abyss into Avernus. By hiring skilled mer-
legions of the Nine Hells have battled for su- renoloth pilots to navigate the river, a demon lord can
premacy in the cosmos. In the mortal world, transport an invasion force of enormous size.
the scant few scholars, arcanists, and ad- Mimicking a complex dance, the two sides shift their
venturers who know the conflict for what it attacks and trade positions with each passing day. About
is refer to it as the Blood War. once every thousand years, the demons close in on the
The fighting takes place across the Lower Planes, on lower reaches of the Styx and portals leading deeper
the Material Plane, and anywhere else that demons and into the Hells. Invariably, the legions of the Nine Hells
devils might congregate. From time to time, demons boil up from below to repel the invaders out of Avernus,
spill out of the Abyss to invade Avernus, the uppermost back to the juncture where the Styx enters the Hells.
layer of the Nine Hells. While the devils defend their This drive by the devils attracts the attention of more
home turf, they also make strikes against locations in demons from the Abyss, which pushes the front line
the Abyss. Although the intensity of the conflict waxes back into Avernus. The process repeats itself time and
and wanes, and the front lines of the war can shift dras- time again.
tically, a moment never goes by when demons and devils To the good fortune of the rest of the multiverse, al-
aren't battling each other somewhere in the multiverse. most all the battles in the Blood War take place in the
Abyss and the Nine Hells. Whether by cosmic chance
THE GREAT DANCE or the design of some unknown power, the dark waters
of the Styx provide passage between the two planes, ·
WE MEASURE OURSELVES BY THOSE WE FICHT, AND MY but pathways to other realms are at best fleeting and
company faces the greatest threat to the cosmos. unreliable. Despite the difficulty of escaping the Lower
Planes, combatants on both sides find their way to the
-Veritus Wrath, commander, Flawless Execution
Material Plane and other realms from time to time.
Although the conflicts on these other planes are little
The battle lines in the Blood War undulate like a writh-
more than skirmishes in the Blood War, even a small
ing snake. Each time one side gains an advantage, in-
number of demons and devils can wreak havoc and
variably its lines weaken somewhere else.
bring destruction wherever they see fit to do battle.
CHAPTER I THE BLOOD WAR
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