I have a couple questions regarding Descent into Avernus:
1. It's described that there are watchtowers all along Styx, each one within sight of 2 others! Which would mean, it would be impossible to travel Styx at all without being seen by devil's in the watchtowers. Yet, there's a whole thing about travelling the river. So... what am I supposed to surmise about these watchtowers? That devils don't care about any non-demons that come by?? So the party should expect to be seen at all times as they travel the river, but won't be harassed by any of the devils?
2. OK, so Mahadi's Wandering Emporium wanders around Avernus, he has a restaurant and spa, a barber, etc... who in the world exactly goes there?? He stops the caravan in various places for a while, but who would one expect to actually be there? Not goblins or kobolds, undead, or lemures, or other common wandering Avernus creatures. And why would any devil, lesser or arch, bother with a wandering marketplace? What could they possibly gain from a barber and a spa visit?? tl;dr: Who would the PCs expect to encounter as other patrons in the wandering emporium?
Had this in your Gen thread, it's more appropriate here:
So re the Emporium. I mean, a lot of it is all there in the text. I'd do a closer read through as to the why of the Wandering Emporium.
For me the Wandering Emporium sort of functions as a mobile PX for the Infernal war effort, a sort of Casablanca and trading space for other activities supporting the war effort, and I feel the "delights" aspect of Wandering Emporium fit into the Emporium being a sort of vestige of Avernus's past, when the first level of hell was supposed to be a garden of temptations for mortal souls a sort of innocent seeming "first contact" level of the Plane.
As far as what's there and who would use the services:
Zariel relies on Mahadi for sourcing magical items and weapons for her war efforts. Mahadi, as a wheeler dealer fixer type, doesn't strike me as the one who personally obtains such stuff. Rather, he likely relies on a network of extraplanar agents and mercenaries. Aside from the Emporium being a place to make these deals, the services of the Emporium are a way for Mahadi to recoup some of the coin or riches he's paid out to these agents, maybe enticing them to spend their pay in its entirety at the Emporium.
The Spa Services and Infernal Rapture are both means to extract further costs from people doing business with Mahadi. Food is horrible everywhere in Avernus except at Infernal Rapture. Between that and creature comforts of the spa, there are likely many mortal beings actively participating or supporting the Blood War on Avernus and they'd avail themselve s of it. Maybe your goblin are uniformly wretched, but mine are parallel to humans in social strata, and on Avernus one of my parties regularly bumps into one whose something of a clotheshorse and very particular about their hairstyle.
Firesnake Forge, self explanatory
Burney the Barber, it's likely Mahadi or many of the other proprietors of the Emporium even know Burney's there based on her nature and boons from Bahamut. Her shop is a front for her spycraft, and she's likely there hoping to divert "good" or at least "not all that bad" souls from the Emporiums other temptations ... so she can use them for her ongoing espionage activity or at least develop some intelligence from their experiences. In my game Burney is a "big deal" NPC and de facto patron of one my parties. My version, she's got a slightly, ok extremely, heretical view on the conflict between Tiamat and Bahamut dividing dragonkind (kinda based on real life intelligence field agents' (handlers) tendencies to have a more nuanced and ambivalent take on the conflict than those back at headquarters making executive decisions). She's also there as a sort of hardship posting due to actions that led to the decision to put her as far as draconically possible from the Court of Bahamut. There's a book The Good Spy and George Clooney's role in Syriana I lean on for her characterization, but it's a big departure from the the BG:DitA as written.
From Here to Avernus, if you absolutely positively need to get something across Avernus in one piece and you don't have time for a side quest to do it yourself, this service is pretty useful.
Ichor's Away, fun and games with Abyssal Ichor, or it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye because the eye got up and walked off. Ichor's got a lot of "unsound" uses in Avernus, and here's your purveyor.
Z'neth's Larva farm. There's trade in soul coins, I'm sure larva have their uses too.
As far as patrons beyond the folks Mahadi is cutting deals with?
RAW Devils at least the bulk of them are very rank and file uniformity and likely don't need outside contractors to maintain that uniformity. But there's no reason your devils can't have a bit of vanity.
Avernus is a planar layer warzone, but that doesn't mean the Hells and the Abyss are the only players in that zone. Look at IRL war zones. Think of Afghanistan, besides the U.S. coalition and its fight against Al-Queada and the Taliban, you had both Pakistan and Iranian intelligence, Chinese humanitarian work which likely supported intelligence efforts, alleged Russian intelligence activity, and tons of non governmental organizations. Look at the Planes and figure out how many powers may have cause to put agents in the conflict zone (we know at least Bahamut's got someone). Given the nature of the planes it's often easier to send mortal agents to work these operations ... and they are going to want to do something in their downtime, or at least canvas the place for more leads. Also conversely Hell has needs for mortal agents throughout the planes, Avernus is an easy place to get to as far as the Hells go, and Emporium is as good place as any to have "off the books" conversations.
Yes much of Hell is a locked down fortress, Avernus is more breakers with lots of waves crashing against it. Think of the Emporium as a curious tidal pool.
Watch Casablanca, Clear and Present Danger, New Rose Hotel is a bit iffy, check out Bartertown in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, Time Bandits, if you got the time and resources to dig them up look into Planescape to figure out some characters. There's a DMsGuild product Codex of Infinite Planes that gives lots of hooks for adventures to be wandering around anywhere including the Hells, it's got a supplement of players options too (which is more hit or miss IMHO than the main Planar guide) ... Infinite Planes take a lot of the Planescape lore and smooths it out to be a lot more accessible without having to know all the "chant" and the "dark" of things (the setting has a lingo that insists on itself).
Re: the Styx. Yes the Infernal watchtowers are there to monitor for demonic incursions. They're likely not going to consider 4-6 adventurers a threat worth noting, and the Styx is used for lots of things besides Abyssal invasion fleets. If they don't have anything going on, they may harass the party, demand bribes and the like depending on the war's effects on Infernal discipline in your game. My game is currently located in Avernus but we're not running BG: DitA. But we're using the location as a key locale as the campaign is dealing with the impact of Tiamat unleashed from her confines (long story how that happened). A large chunk of Avernus is still a sort of power nexus for her, Arkhan is still there as her sort of Hell Marshal supervises the growth of her Abishai and Draconian resources, but the unleashing has serious destabilized the planes, and Hell being sort of Ground Zero is particularly shaken, at least on Avernus.
I have a couple questions regarding Descent into Avernus:
1. It's described that there are watchtowers all along Styx, each one within sight of 2 others! Which would mean, it would be impossible to travel Styx at all without being seen by devil's in the watchtowers. Yet, there's a whole thing about travelling the river. So... what am I supposed to surmise about these watchtowers? That devils don't care about any non-demons that come by?? So the party should expect to be seen at all times as they travel the river, but won't be harassed by any of the devils?
2. OK, so Mahadi's Wandering Emporium wanders around Avernus, he has a restaurant and spa, a barber, etc... who in the world exactly goes there??
He stops the caravan in various places for a while, but who would one expect to actually be there? Not goblins or kobolds, undead, or lemures, or other common wandering Avernus creatures. And why would any devil, lesser or arch, bother with a wandering marketplace? What could they possibly gain from a barber and a spa visit??
tl;dr: Who would the PCs expect to encounter as other patrons in the wandering emporium?
Had this in your Gen thread, it's more appropriate here:
So re the Emporium. I mean, a lot of it is all there in the text. I'd do a closer read through as to the why of the Wandering Emporium.
For me the Wandering Emporium sort of functions as a mobile PX for the Infernal war effort, a sort of Casablanca and trading space for other activities supporting the war effort, and I feel the "delights" aspect of Wandering Emporium fit into the Emporium being a sort of vestige of Avernus's past, when the first level of hell was supposed to be a garden of temptations for mortal souls a sort of innocent seeming "first contact" level of the Plane.
As far as what's there and who would use the services:
As far as patrons beyond the folks Mahadi is cutting deals with?
Re: the Styx. Yes the Infernal watchtowers are there to monitor for demonic incursions. They're likely not going to consider 4-6 adventurers a threat worth noting, and the Styx is used for lots of things besides Abyssal invasion fleets. If they don't have anything going on, they may harass the party, demand bribes and the like depending on the war's effects on Infernal discipline in your game. My game is currently located in Avernus but we're not running BG: DitA. But we're using the location as a key locale as the campaign is dealing with the impact of Tiamat unleashed from her confines (long story how that happened). A large chunk of Avernus is still a sort of power nexus for her, Arkhan is still there as her sort of Hell Marshal supervises the growth of her Abishai and Draconian resources, but the unleashing has serious destabilized the planes, and Hell being sort of Ground Zero is particularly shaken, at least on Avernus.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.