Tartarus

CHASES
COMBAT RULES
DISPELLING INSIGHT
DISTRACT
EXECUTIONS
GIVE AIR
HELPING WITH SAVES
LEVELS & CR
MADNESS
PREGNANCY
REINCARNATION
REPUTATION
SPIRITUAL DUEL
WAKING UP

TARTARUS

Normal Gravity.
Normal Time.
Infinite Size: Tartarus is an underground labyrinth that goes on forever. However, all locations mentioned here are in close proximity to each other, requiring at most a couple of days of physical travel to reach, if you know the way.
Divinely Morphic: Only someone wearing the Helmet of Hades may change the geography or other physical characteristics of Tartarus.
Minor Negative-Dominant: Visitors don’t take damage from just being here, but no life can begin here. Should someone give birth in Tartarus, the baby will be stillborn.
Mildly Evil-Aligned: Good characters suffer a -2 circumstance penalty on all Charisma-based checks.
Impeded Magic: No healing magic functions without the active consent of Hades.
Reachable Planes: The Known World (Greco-Roman), the Elysian Fields by physical travel, Purgatory by spells.

This is the punishment part of the Greek underworld. Anyone judged evil by Hades gets to spend the afterlife here. But all the Greek dead, even the good ones, must pass through here. But to those deemed good, the portal to the Elysian Fields stands wide open.

TARTARUS INHABITANTS
The main inhabitants of Tartarus are the petitioners, the reconstituted souls of the dead. They differ from the standard petitioners of MotP in that they retain all memories and abilities of their living selves. They even retain the humanoid type. The only difference is that they have fast healing 2 and are unable to leave Tartarus without divine consent.
   Hades harpies are also present in Tartarus, hunting and tormenting petitioners and visitors alike when they get the opportunity, but strictly following the orders given by Hades or his representatives.
   Shadow guards (human Ftr8) are Hades’ personal servants. They are mortal and totally loyal, but the environment has robbed them of much of their creativity. They can be found at many different places, overseeing mechanisms of punishment, patrolling key areas or doing various tasks in Hades’ castle.
   Charon, master of the ferry that carries dead souls (and the occasional insistent hero) over the river Styx. He is immortal only while on his skiff, and begins to age normally onshore. Although he avoids that as much as possible, brief forays have sometimes been unavoidable. Over the millennia, he has aged and wrinkled to rare hideousness.
   Finally there’s Hades himself, god and lord of Tartarus and the Elysian Fields. For some reason, his mansion is here in Tartarus. Maybe he believes his presence to be needed more here than in the more pastoral parts of his realm.

MOVEMENT AND COMBAT
Battlefields in Tartarus are perilous affairs, with lakes of sulphur, deep crevasses, noxious fumes, torture equipment and a variety of other physical dangers always close at hand. Apart from the occasional huge cavern, sight is usually limited to fifty yards at best, before a wall of rock (or worse) obscures.
While outside assaults are virtually unheard of (barring the occasional grief-stricken lover), incursions sometimes arise when some ingenious petitioner finds a way to destabilize things. If Hades finds out, he can usually correct things by instantly reinstate the rebels in their appropriate areas of punishment.

FEATURES OF TARTARUS

Castle of Hades
A towering construction, several hundred yards in height, perched upon a steep hill in the middle of a colossal cavern. Here Hades retires when he needs to and keeps is important belongings, his Helmet, his chariot (and the nightmares that drives it), the barracks of his shadow guard, and other more secret things. It’s virtually impregnable, even against an aerial assault.
Normally, several dozen Hades harpies perch on the battlements, ready to attack intruders instantly.

The River Styx
This stagnant waterway runs in a tunnel. That tunnel is an interplanar gateway between an air-filled cave at the bottom of the Alcyonian lake in the Known World and Tartarus. The souls of the dead of the Greco-Roman culture line up here to await their turn. Charon’s skiff is the only way to traverse the gateway. You can jump in and swim (although the water is icy cold and filled with all kind of supernatural germs), but without the skiff, there’s no way for you to pass over to Tartarus, no matter how far you swim.
Charon’s skiff is SR20 and is impossible to harm physically without magical weapons, but isn’t otherwise more durable than a well-built boat. Hades can create a replacement with a wave of his hand, and Charon can do the same by using dead souls nearby as raw material.
For all its foulness, Styx is in fact composed of holy water, thus forming an effective barrier for holding the underworld spirits back.

Screencap from the excellent Ariane's Xena Warrior Princess Gallery.

The Stygian Swamps
There’s a variety of lakes and swamps along the river Styx. Charon can navigate them expertly, but if another were to commandeer his skiff, they’d have to cope with the risks of getting stuck in vitriolic slime, running into banks of poison mist, getting sucked down by freak whirlpools or attacked by escaped petitioners, mutated by the bizarre diseases of the area.

The Asphodel Caverns
An example of a specialized area, this cave complex is strictly for those who routinely sacrificed others for the common good, notably generals and disinterested judges. Beautiful asphodels cover the ground. If an asphodel is touched, or even is caused to wave slightly by nearby movement, it emits a hellish shriek. The shriek goes on for 1d10 rounds, effectively deafening everyone within 30' for that time. People inside that area must make a Fortitude save or take1d10 points of nonlethal damage (the same result as the number of rounds the shrieking went on).

The Elysian Gate
This is the portal to the Elysian Fields. Petitioners doomed to Tartarus are unable to pass through the invisible force field that covers the opening. Most tries once, but not more. The sight of paradise, an unreachable inch away is a torture too severe to most.
You can go from the Elysian Fields to here, even if you’re a petitioner.
The gate isn’t under constant surveillance, but shadow guards make regular patrols here.

The Elysian Gate
Another screencap from Ariane's Xena Warrior Princess Gallery.

The Abyss
When the Titans lost the war against the Olympians, they were imprisoned in a variety of ways. Some were petrified in deep caves, other were encased in ice. But some were confined to the deepest pit of Tartarus: the Abyss.
The Tartarian Abyss is not to be confused with the Outer Plane of Abyss, the home of the Tanar’ri. This is simply a deep chasm. On the bottom rests a number of coloured spheres. They function much like prismatic spheres, but the different layers are equally deadly to those inside if they try to break out. Every such sphere contains a prisoner, usually a titan, but there might be rogue gods and other monsters. The only way to ascertain what is inside is to try to communicate with the prisoner.
The Abyss has memory-draining qualities. After a year, prisoners have forgotten every detail of their lives. If they escape from Tartarus, their memories return over the course of a month. If people actively try to help them remember, the details return in just a week.

TARTARUS ENCOUNTERS

d% Encounter Number

1-9 Hades 1

10-14 Abysmal heat (1d6 points of damage/minute, metal objects react as per the heat metal spell) -

15-17 Elysian petitioner searching for a loved one 1

18-21 Escaped pettioner (Ftr10, brutal and intelligent) 1

22-23 Escaped petitioner (Rog1, just lucky) 1

24-25 The Furies 1d3

26-35 Good petitioners bound for the Elysian Fields 1d4

36-40 Gray Ooze 1

41-53 Hades harpies 1d6+6

54-57 Mortal hero (Ftr15) 1

58-60 Mortal artist seeking to impress Hades 1

61-64 Mutated petitioners (ghouls) 1d10

65-75 Shadow guards (Ftr8) 1d4

77-80 Raising fog (harmless but limits sight to 5' and gives ½ concealment even then) -

81-85 Sudden burst of smoke (Fortitude save DC15, +1 per previous check, to avoid choking and coughing helplessly 1 round; 2 consecutive rounds of choking causes 1d6 points of subdual damage. Vision impairement as per raising fog above). -

86-90 Sudden flame jet (1’ wide, 50’ long stream, 3d6 points of damage, Reflex save DC13 avoids). 1

91-95 Violet fungi 1d3+1

96-100 Yellow mold 1