One Step Forward: Behind the Screen + Spell Keys

Spell Keys

Spell keys are an incredibly vague part of Planescape, but like portal keys, they can be anything from items, to words, gestures, thoughts, spells, or augmentations to spells so they work the way they should. All planar spellcasters would realistically know that spell keys exist, even if they don’t know specific keys. If you want to use spell keys for your arcane casters, the Outlands is a good place to introduce them. The Outlands are a common enough area that you can give players the answers without them having to invest too much time; and the keys for spells all have a very low cost. Maggots, fire, some water, a handful of dirt. Find my curated Outlands rules here.

PCs whose faction alignment or background grants them access to a library or information network (Guvners, and perhaps Indeps and Anarchists?) will fare best at finding spell key information; but any adventurer can hang out at a planewalkers’ tavern like the Ubiquitous Wayfarer and try and probe others for chant with the help of jink and bub.

The Rest

I mostly prepared Sigil locations for this session. Tivuum’s Antiquities especially. There’s a ton of info in the Faces of Sigil supplement. I also prepared the White Casket from In the Cage, figuring the players could stay there. When it says there's a pickled osyluth above the bar, it means a bone devil, which is in the 5e Monster Manual. To keep my Sensate player happy, I ripped off Casu Marzu for the Dustmen’s special cheese, and of course their bread is a dense, ashy black colour (if it weren’t obvious, I love food and the opportunities for imagination planar food offers). I prepared Chariamur too, just running it by the book. Reading about Casu Marzu afterwards, I found that in the real world, the cheese maggots can still be alive and leap from the cheese. Wearing goggles is advised.

This session was a good one. There was a lot of excitement to prepare and travel through the portal. Alex having a flash of inspiration and remembering the maggots in the cheese was one of my favourite ever moments in my 6 years of running D&D. It was an awesome player moment. The kind of moment D&D is all about. I had read in one Planescape book that a dead maggot is the spell key for radiant spells. Did I know that dead maggots would be required in the Outlands? Yes. Did I consciously lead the players towards a pub popular with a faction whose headquarters is on the Negative Energy Plane, and then hope they would order food so that they could eat cheese containing maggots from the Negative Energy Plane, as part of a wild elaborate puzzle? Obviously fucking not. Andres asked me about that part after the game. My lips were sealed.