The Demon Wastes

The Demon Wastes consist of the broken and shattered lands north and west of the Shadowcrags and the Icehorn Mountains. A vast swath of badlands, ravines, and treacherous plains stretches from the mountains to the shores of the Barren Sea—a toxic landscape that is anathema to life.

Life in the Demon Wastes is uniformly horrid and short. Little grows here, and what few creatures can survive these lands share the same corruption as the Wastes’ humanoid inhabitants. The ground is toxic, and poisonous winds scour the landscape as volcanoes belch forth ash, flaming rock, and acidic rain. Unforgiving deserts of black sand are dotted with old ruins and oases filled with brackish water, while steaming fissures offer glimpses down into rivers of lava and the tunnels of Khyber. One cannot dwell here for long without feeling this land’s corruption, and explorers who linger too long in the Wastes are often driven mad, either wandering off into the wasteland to die or joining the barbarian tribes.

Even entering the Wastes is a challenge. The Barren Sea is home to dark and sinister fiends that dwell in horrid cities far below the waves. Sharks, venomous fish, and pirates control these waters, and tremendous storms send ships to splinter against the rocky shore. Access is no easier by land, for past the mountains separating the Demon Wastes from the Eldeen Reaches, the perils of the Labyrinth await. Boiling mud, scree fields, and other hazards erupt without warning in this seemingly endless maze of perilous canyons.

Despite the hardships of this land, the Demon Wastes teem with life. Gnolls, orcs, humans, and tieflings all dwell here, preying on each other and on the corrupted creatures of the Wastes. The Unknown, as they are known, are a diverse lot, distinctive in their customs and beliefs. All are controlled and consumed by the evil trapped beneath this land.

The presence of natural and supernatural resources in the Wastes draws the attention of the dragon marked houses. In particular, House Tharashk maintains an outpost at Blood Crescent, from which it mounts frequent expeditions in search of dragon shards and relics from this land’s ancient ruins.

The Demon Wastes present a picture of Eberron as it was during the Age of Demons, and death is not the worst fate that can befall explorers here. Magical power infuses the ancient ruins, masking them with potent illusions to deceive and lure the unwary into ancient traps or demonic lairs.

The Demon Wastes are perilous lands filled with vile creatures, foul fiends, and savage tribes of humanoids bent on slaughter. To explore the Wastes is to invite a fate worse than death, but in spite of the risks, these lands attract more then their share of adventurers. The Demon Wastes are home to abundant deposits of Khyber dragonshards.

The true powers of this realm are the Lords of Dust, servants of the evil overlords that have been buried beneath the shattered landscape for a hundred thousand years. Their plots in the world are carried out by myriad agents, including demons and other fiends, night hags slipped free from the Feywild, and their corrupted human, orc, and tiefling thralls.

Evil is pervasive in the Demon Wastes. The fractured landscape offers numerous access points to the depths of Khyber, where hideous demons and elemental horrors escape the Churning Chaos far below. In the Wastes, fiendish magic has weakened the barriers between all the planes, and gates arise and disappear here without warning.

Numerous attempts have been made to settle the Demon Wastes and reclaim this land from the horrors that dwell here. Each has met with failure, its settlers either dragged off screaming to feed the Carrion Tribes or wiped out by storm, plague, or demonic forces.

Two settlements of note have managed to survive in the Wastes—Festering Holt and Blood Crescent. The former comes closest to being an actual community, offering refuge of a sort to people intent on exploring these lands. The latter is a House Tharashk outpost, from which the house’s mining and exploration activities in the Wastes are controlled.

An important point here is that fiendish cities were created, not constructed. They were made by the Overlords, for whom it was a trivial matter to shape reality within their sphere. So the first main point is which Overlord created the city? There’s no common style here. Katashka might build a city from bones, while Rak Tulkhesh’s followers would live in a fortress of steel and stone. The city of Sul Khatesh would be a spectacle of magic while also being filled with secrets. Tul Oreshka might not have a city… or her city might exist as a shared delusion that overtakes anyone who comes upon it.

In general, things to consider:

• These cities were formed by epic magic as opposed to mundane labor. You can have floating towers or monuments. You can have structures made out of impossible substances – a living tower, a house made from mist that somehow never drifts apart. Need light? Buildings could simply glow, or anyone in the city might find that they have darkvision within its confines.
• Magic still lingers in these places, but that doesn’t mean it’s as strong as it was. You might have one floating tower that’s standing while another has come crashing down. A fountain of fire or blood could still be running, or it could be scroched or dried up. We’ve said of Ashtakala that the memories of the city linger even though the city is ruined – and that anyone who enters it will be cloaked in those memories.

First off, demon ruins aren’t confined to the Demon Wastes. Page 20 of the 4E Eberron Campaign Guide described demon ruins as one of the types of places you can find adventure, noting in part “Fiendish strongholds are likely to be found at the edges of civilization, in places such as the Demon Wastes and Q’barra, but a subterranean ruin could lie hidden anywhere in Khorvaire.” Krezent in the Talenta Plains and Ha’katorvhak in Q’barra are both ruins from the Age of Demons. So these ruins ARE spread across Eberron. It’s simply that very, very few have survived. The Age of Demons was over a hundred thousand years ago. What hasn’t succumbed to time was often intentionally destroyed, either in the conflicts of the time or leveled by dragons in ages after. Those places that have survived are generally extremely isolated, incredibly durable, and generally infused with immensely powerful magic – like Ashtakala.

But let’s take a moment to look at the question of WHY these cities existed in the first place. Demons don’t need cities in the same way that humans do. They don’t need food. They don’t sleep. They aren’t concerned with shelter from the elements. Their numbers are static, so they don’t create NEW cities to house a growing population.

Now, the greatest cities would be the seats of power of Overlords. The city is a reflection of the Overlord; they don’t NEED it, but it is a representation of the Overlord and their power. Let’s call these citadels. There were a limited number of Overlords and not every Overlord would have a citadel, so that’s a concrete limit right there. An Overlord wouldn’t and couldn’t make more than one citadel; it literally is the heart of their power. Thus, Haka’torvhak is the seat of the Cold Sun. These places are the most likely to survive in some form, because they are suffused with the power of an overlord. But the fact that we haven’t mentioned, say, a citadel of Sul Khatesh suggests that even these could be destroyed.

Lesser cities serves a different purpose: they’d house mortals. Because most of the Overlords feed on mortals. Not literally – but it’s through mortals that the Overlords express their nature. Rak Tulkhesh is the Rage of War and yearns to create conflict and bloodshed. He can get his demons to fight each other just as a way to pass the time…but it’s not real. They’re immortal. They don’t feel rage and loss and death the way mortals do. Tul Oreshka needs mortals to experience her madness. An Overlord of Tyranny exists to dominate mortals. Tiamat is the darkness in dragons – which is meaningless without dragons. Not all Overlords need mortals. Draal Khatuur embodies the killing cold, and she is happy to lord over a desolate frozen waste. This was the point of the PC warlock in one of my campaign who was working for an Overlord of Tyranny. He didn’t WANT his Overlord to escape, but if one of them HAD to escape, at least his Overlord needed to keep mortals around… while Draal Khatuur would be happy to kill them all.

So it was these mortal cities that would have been spread across Eberron, but there WEREN’T made to last for a hundred thousand years and most are ash and rubble… hence the surviving demons assuming the title “Lords of Dust.”

And with all of THAT said: the current cities like Ashtakala do survive a concrete purpose. They are places for the rakshasa to meet and scheme. They are places for them to store their lore and their treasures. The Lords of Dust DON’T have the transcendent power of the Overlords, and they do value their artifacts and lore. So they don’t need cities the way humans do – but they still need places to keep their stuff!