An Angel Falls…

Zariel was once a celestial, an angel residing on the plane of Mount Celestia. She watched the Blood War from afar with a growing sense of disquiet. She feared that, left unchecked, the War would continue to grow and spread. The evil devils and demons cared nothing for the wake of devastation left behind, on infernal as well as mortal realms. Eventually she was content to watch and wait no longer. Hearing a plea from the city of Elturel to spare them from the horrors of chaotic demons menacing them, she defied her superiors and offered her aid to the city.

A brief period of triumph followed. Zariel and the city’s protectors drove off the fiends. The city rejoiced and raised Zariel’s name on their lips in praise. But Zariel was not content. She asked for volunteers to take the fight directly to the infernal realm, intending to decimate the evil armies on their own turf, where their bodies could be permanently broken. Again the city rose to the challenge. Inspired by Zariel’s bold plan, scores of cavalry and volunteers stepped up to back the angel’s charge. They rode into hell itself, earning the name Hellriders.

But something went wrong. The forces of hell did not fall before the combined might of Zariel and the Hellriders. And during the calamitous battle, Zariel was corrupted. She sold her soul to Asmodeus, shedding her celestial form and rising again as a terrifying fallen angel. The fate of the Hellriders was sealed, and all were assumed lost.

Through cunning and ruthlessness in her quest to stamp out the forces of chaos which she deplored, Zariel moved swiftly to unseat Bel as Asmodeus’s favored lieutenant. In short order, she had succeeded and assumed the mantle of Archduke of Avernus. Under her militaristic reign, the tide began to turn in the devils’ favor against the demonic hordes of the Abyss. But Zariel needed soldiers, and the only way to bolster her army’s numbers was through corruption of mortal souls. The recruitment effort—focusing one at a time on unpredictable and fickle mortals—was insufficient. Too slow. Too unreliable.

So, with calculating patience and a subtle hand, Zariel enacted a brazen new plan to corrupt hundreds of thousands of souls all at once from the city she had once sworn to protect: Elturel. She manipulated the city’s High Overseer and secretly bewitched the city’s revered oath into a blood pact. Once the city was almost completely populated by forfeited souls, she tightened her fist and pulled Elturel off the mortal plane, dragging it down to her corner of hell with massive iron chain.

Now, with her plan well in motion, she set her sights on another city ripe for mass corruption: Baldur’s Gate. With Elturel all but lost and her foothold in Baldur’s Gate nearly secure, Zariel smiles confidently that her schemes are about to come to full fruition. Next to nothing can stop her now.