Inferno is the first original Dantesque Campaign Setting for the 5th Edition of the most important RPG ever created (and played!).
We’ve been working for three years on this game, and our project will adapt The Divine Comedy, an epic narrative poem widely considered to be the pre-eminent work in Italian literature and one of the greatest piece of world literature, into a tabletop role-playing game. All perfectly combined with the sense of wonder, the spectacularity and the amusement of the 5th Edition!
Our Inferno is not just a hell-themed Campaign Setting like many others, but a unique and unforgettable experience. We have studied the original poem for years and translated in the game every monster, phenomenon, environmental effect, situation, and peril of Dante’s Inferno, to let the players having a complete, philological experience of the content.
Between 1304 and 1321, the poet Dante Alighieri was in exile, away from his beloved Florence.
In those years, he wrote an epic, unrivaled masterpiece which we call La Divina Commedia, or simply the Commedia.
The first of the Commedia’s three Canticles is Inferno; this is where your journey begins and where I will guide you, with this book. The Hell which Dante describes in Inferno is a vast, endless, eternal place which groups the lost souls – those who have strayed far from God and did not repent before death – and their jailers into nine Circles.
A place with one way in, and one way out…
A WARNING, TRAVELER: Dante was able to cross these Otherworldly places as a silent witness, protected by the unstoppable force of Divine Providence.
We will have no such advantage.
Inferno - Dante's Guide to Hell
Inferno – Dante’s Guide to Hell (the “Red One”) is our “Player’s Handbook” and completely focuses on character creation and options, setting rules, and a deep description of the Inferno itself. It could be read by players, and it explains why the PCs are there, who they are, what they could do in Hell, and how to leave this supernatural realm.
Inferno - Virgilio's Untold Tales
Inferno – Virgilio’s Untold Tales (the “Blue One”) is our “Game Master’s Guide” + “Monster Manual”, with adventures, perils, game hooks, special equipment, a whole campaign, and the bestiary, together with a deeper description of the Inferno as a sandbox, to be used after the end of the campaign.
Inferno - Full Pack
Inferno - Divine Comedy
Inferno - Core Pack
Inferno - Guide's Screen
On the Nature of the Lost Ones
In Inferno, players are all Lost Ones, living beings forced to enter Hell for some reason and to complete their voyage to the Last Gate, the only exit, before losing their Hope.
They could be from any world or plane, and of course from our Earth, but when entering Hell they will appear with unique physical features, primarily forged by their virtues and sins in an otherworldly look.
They are alive and they could stay alive during the whole voyage, like Dante was in his, but the Inferno itself, with its demons, damned souls, and perils will try to catch them and enslave forever them in it.
So, the main challenge of the Lost Ones is not to face and defeat the damned and monsters, but to keep their path and their Hope during the voyage.
They cannot die there. They cannot be defeated. They cannot lose the way to the Last Gate.
But they could despair, fail, and be damned forever.
ARE YOU READY TO FACE THIS INFERNO?
Hell is a dark and terrible chasm at the center of the Earth. You may picture it as a funnel-shaped ravine, which burrows into the world’s pit, or as the decaying and annihilating void at the heart of all matter, of our soul, of all things.
It was created when Lucifero was cast out of the eternal Heavens by the Lord’s hand, because of his arrogance and the rebellion of the angels that he instigated.
Lucifero is still here, at the heart of the world, and the abyss caused by his Fall has become the eternal one which houses his followers, the fallen angels, and all the damned souls that have since been sentenced to that horrifying place.
The titanic overhauls that followed reshaped land and sea, bringing about a global flood and causing the rise of Mount Purgatory on the other side of the world.
The war between faithful and rebellious angels swiftly ended, with the latter side vanquished, and all of the evil one’s followers were cast into the chasm, sealed forever by the Eternal Gate.
The latter can be found somewhere at the center of the known world, the city of Jerusalem, hidden just out of normal sight. The infernal influence that runs through it has borne, over the centuries, the first vanguard to Hell itself: the Dark Forest, a threshold between worlds, the final border between the material and the infernal world, in which dark, twisted plants have grown like thorns, and through which terrifying beasts prowl, allegories of the evils contained within the abyss itself.
Not everyone can find their way to the Dark Forest, but it is even harder to leave – impossible without a Guide or divine intervention.
This is the Antiferno, the vestibule of Hell, a decaying twilight dimension which hosts and keeps captive the Indifferent spirits and angels, those who never chose a side in the war between good and evil.
Beyond the Antinferno is another border to cross: the Acheronte’s black waters, the first of the infernal rivers, which separates the Antiferno from Limbo, the widest of the Circles of Hell, leading directly into the ravine below.
Devils of Hell and Other Denizens of the Dolorous Kingdom
The Dolorous Kingdom crawls with cursed beings,fallen angels turned into torturers, foul beasts drawn out of the heathen abyss or from the ages before history, servants of False and Lying Deities, and any kind of foul prodigy.
All devils, monsters, and Keepers of Hell are captors and prisoners at the same time in the Blind World. After all, the Eternal Gate is always closed for them, too.
This means that not only their eternal task of relentless torture makes them savage and cruel, but they are just as bitter and despondent as the damned, darkened by the torture they have to endure as well.
On the other hand, this can be an important advantage for the Brigade, as this weird condition may induce certain hideous torturers to ignore their task and to let the Travelers pass, if their explicit intervention is not required by the orders they were given. For instance, a guardian keeper watching over the towers of the Fourth Circle to prevent the damned from fleeing the Stige may never have been ordered to stop an indifferent angel or a Lost One headed to Dite.
The Giants of the Pit are not supposed to stop those who want to climb down to Cocito:
AFTER ALL, WHO WOULD EVER WANT TO DO SUCH A THING?
Between 1304 and 1321, the poet Dante Alighieri was in exile, away from his beloved Florence.
In those years, he wrote an epic, an unrivaled masterpiece which we call La Divina Commedia, or simply the Commedia.
The Commedia is composed of three Canticles, each containing thirty-three Cantos, except the first, which counts thirty-four – though this additional one is considered the opening to the entire epic. Each Canto, in turn, is divided into more than a hundred hendecasyllabic lines arranged in rhyming tercets. Three Canticles of thirty-three tercet Cantos.
These are not casual numbers, traveler. The symbols and allegories which Dante has hidden in his masterpiece are innumerable, and they are the key to his mysterious journey. A dangerous and solitary journey which, in 1300, brought him to lose his way in the Dark Forest and ascend to the summit of Paradise.
The first of the Commedia’s three Canticles is Inferno; this is where your journey begins and where I will guide you, with this book. The Hell which Dante describes in Inferno is a vast, endless, eternal place which groups the lost souls – those who have strayed far from God and did not repent before death – and their jailers into nine Circles.
A place with one way in, and one way out…
A warning, traveler: Dante was able to cross these Otherworldly places as a silent witness, protected by the unstoppable force of Divine Providence.
We will have no such advantage.
