Demogorgon's Hunger

Demogorgon emerges - prepare for a brutal D&D 5E encounter in the depths of the Black Meridian!

Demogorgon's Hunger is a 5E adventure bundle for average party levels of 8/13/18!

Inside you will find the following content:

• Boss Encounter PDF
• Bestiary PDF
• Player Option PDF
• Magic Item PDF
• Gazetteer PDF
• Location PDF
• Printable Handouts
• Printable Battlemap
  

Boss Encounter

Kagon 
A terrifying aspect of Demogorgon born during the Concord Rite that shattered Naq Maxtal. From the heights of the Shattered Ziggurat, Kagon guards a planar rift to the Plane of Madness and seeks to force the world toward a single inevitable future.

Handouts
Use 2 unique illustrated handouts and hand them out to your players as clues!

Scalable Encounter Design
Run the Boss encounter across multiple Average Party Levels (APL 8/13/18), each revealing a stronger manifestation of Kagon and escalating the challenge as the battle unfolds.

Location & Battlemap

The Black Meridian

The Black Meridian is a jagged scar across the highlands where reality itself was torn apart. Long ago, the Xotalan priesthood attempted a powerful rite meant to harness the strength of Demogorgon. Instead, the ritual shattered the land and opened a fracture between worlds.

Today the region is a maze of canyon walls, unstable ledges, and ruined structures suspended over a vast abyss. Strange lights drift through the air, gravity twists unpredictably, and fragments of ancient Xotalan architecture cling to the canyon’s edges.

Adventurers who enter the Black Meridian quickly learn that every path here carries the weight of past decisions—and that the land itself no longer obeys the rules of the natural world.

What Makes It Dangerous

Gravity Pockets
Unstable zones where gravity behaves unpredictably. Some pockets slow falling and allow controlled descents, while others invert gravity entirely—sending creatures and objects falling upward toward nearby surfaces.

Perception Breaks
Certain stretches of the canyon distort distance and direction. Ledges can appear closer or farther than they are, and entire routes may shift depending on the direction of travel.

Treacherous Travel
Movement through the Black Meridian is slow and dangerous. Narrow ledges, chain bridges, unstable stairways, and shifting stone paths force travelers to carefully navigate every step of the journey.

Notable Locations

Meridian Hold
A fortress-temple on the canyon’s rim where the Host of the Stone Chain oversees pylons, chain roads, and salvage charters throughout the region.

Naq Maxtal’s Heart
A fused mass of stone, glass, and ancient ruins suspended within the canyon depths -formed when the original Concord Rite collapsed and the fracture first opened.

Sun Temple
A modest shrine in Lullsway whose rites have begun producing strange, precise effects on nearby anchors, gravity pockets, and travel routes.

T’lalco Starwatch
A damaged Xotalan observatory embedded in the canyon wall, where ancient instruments still react to the strange pulses of the fracture.

Xalco’s Ledge
A bustling salvage settlement perched on a wide shelf above the Drop, serving as the main staging ground for expeditions into the canyon.

Factions in Conflict

Fracture Cartel
Clans who control salvage operations and mining throughout the Drop and Deep Meridian.

House of the Broken Sky
Scholars descended from the old Qyintakla scribes, studying the fracture and documenting its changes.

Host of the Stone Chain
Wardens who maintain anchor pylons and chain roads while attempting to contain the region’s dangers.

Shattered Meridian
Cult circles who study the overlap between the planes and seek to shape the fracture through dangerous rites.

Perfect for Exploration-driven D&D 5E campaigns, hazardous wilderness travel across fractured terrain, faction-driven sandbox adventures and encounters with cult activity and planar corruption

Bestiary 

From the scar of Naq Maxtal and the shadow of the Shattered Ziggurat come creatures shaped by void-rites, broken kingdoms, and the lingering will that hangs above the canyon’s Heart. 

These creatures stalk ledges, guard rifts, lead void-cults, and enforce Kagon's ill will. They drag prey upward, break battle lines from above, and turn mortals into blood-soaked meat piles.

Encounter new monsters ideal for canyon descents and cliffside strongholds, cult-driven campaigns and abyssal corruption arcs, vertical combat and brutal close-quarters encounters and backstories shaped by mutation, rage, and transformation.

Expect monsters built around battlefield control, corruption, psychic pressure, and relentless aggression - designed to test veteran parties and punish hesitation!

Monster list and CRs 

Dikagon - CR 10
A divided fiend born of severed flesh and void energy, raging across the obsidian wastes.

K’ahanak - CR 4
Feathered aberrant hunters that drag victims skyward before casting them down.

Pious Metamorph - CR 2
Void-devoted cultists who mutilate themselves to become heralds of the Great Unmaking.

T’chuultin - CR 8
Cataclysm-warped elite warriors with tentacled backs and a hatred of sorcery.

Teraton Stalker - CR 2
Lesser demons that cling to walls and break formations from above.

Vizon - CR 4
Twinned butcher-shamans bound by blood ritual and void promise.

Voidflame Augur - CR 8
Two-headed prophets of black flame who lead cults beneath the rift.

Gazeteer

At the heart of this month’s release lies the Black Meridian - a colossal canyon carved through what was once the thriving Xotalan Greenwild. Long ago, its cities raised pyramids aligned to the meridian stars, guided by the priest-astronomers of the Qyintakla.

Their final attempt to control the celestial road between planes ended in disaster. During the Night of Convergence, the rite meant to anchor the heavens instead split reality itself, drawing an aspect of Demogorgon into the world and tearing open the land from Naq Maxtal outward.

Uncover every bit of hidden lore for the villains, allies and history of this bundle within the Gazzeteer PDF!

The Player Options

Race – Vrock

Vrocks are carrion-winged fiends whose blood still echoes with the endless wars of the Abyss. Once shock troops and executioners in demonic armies, a rare few broke their chains and fled through planar rifts rather than remain slaves to demon lords.

These free Vrocks now gather in brutal warbands, claiming wastelands and canyon skies as hunting grounds. Their culture is built on trophies, scars, and the simple truth that survival proves worth. Feared as omens of ruin or hailed as living defiance against the Abyss itself, a Vrock carries both the hunger of its ancestors—and the power to choose its own path

Barbarian Subclass – Path of the Living Nightmare

Barbarians who walk the Path of the Living Nightmare are haunted by visions of forbidden rituals and the nightmare-god Demogorgon. When their rage erupts, those visions become flesh: twisting mutations, writhing tentacles, and horrifying screams drawn from the deepest pits of the Abyss.

Their rage drags enemies close, crushes them in monstrous grip, and spreads terror through the battlefield as the Demogorgon’s influence leaks into the world through their nightmare-born form.

Magic Items

Abyssal Warplate - Armor (Half Plate), Legendary

A brutal set of black-green armor is wrapped in ragged crimson fur. From beneath the metal, barbed tentacles slide and coil.

Crutch of the Monkey King - Staff, Rare

Crafted from bronze and bone, displaying a visage of a primate's skull with ever-sparkling ruby eyes.

Heartfire's Offering - Dagger, Rare

The pommel of this bladeless stone dagger is formed from a fossilized human jawbone-a grim reminder of the sacrifice used in the dagger's construction.

Kagon's Blessing - Wondrous Item, Very Rare

A golden belt fashioned with a stylized likeness of the demon lord Kagon.

Limbs of the Acolyte - Wondrous Item, Rare

Armored sleeves, made from a pair of copper vambraces and rerebraces, bound together by a harness supporting the severed, elongated arms of a voidflame augur.

Macuahuitl of the Thirsting Sun - Maul, Legendary

Jagged obsidian teeth are set into this massive, gold-bronze macuahuitl, carved in the likeness of a tiered sun temple.

Mask of the Jade Demon - Wondrous Item, Rare

The grinning visage of a jungle demon is forever etched into this solid piece of jade.