The Deva Spark

The Deva Spark is Planescape's stab at philosophy, for four-to-six 5-9th level philosophers. Bill Slavicsek and JM Salsbury wrote this one in 1994, all 32 pages of it. Some of those pages being full-page pretty pictures.

The eponymous Spark is the light of goodness, here Elysian (so without respect to all that Law/Chaos cods). This module ponders questions of free-will (and of blind chance) if Platonian Good were, actually, reified into some artifact (however incorporeal). If eat Good cookie does Cookie Monster be not monster? (As an unreconciled Catholic might ask, at Mass.)

The monster here is a bebelith and, yeah, normally those guys are pretty monstrous. So, how'd such a horror end up with a Spark? What's happened here is that -

This article contains spoilers! You have been warned.

- Ybdiel the deva, no not like Lady Gaga, has been tasked to spy upon one Lindyrm lord of an Abyssal layer. That's... hard, for a literal [2e not!]angel. Slavicsek and Salsbury macguffin this such that there's a "Spark" in a deva which can slide past the notice of the demtanar'ric hordes. Ybdiel, being about the least-intelligent grunt of the Heavenly Host, instead of granting the Spark to, you know, a Good person who volunteered, gave it to one Fachan whom he'd witnessed rescuing someone from an inn-fire.

If Ybdiel had been paying attention he'd have seen Fachan starting that fire. The innkeeper sure did, because as soon as the angel turned away the innkeeper plugged Fachan with an arrow. This Fachan's soul set off for the Abyss... but not before Ybdiel, mortified, bound that soul with the Spark. Ybdiel then follows Fachan down there. Fachan re-forms as a bebelith, Abaia; Ybdiel and Abaia are about to be reunited - walking into a bar, one might say.

The party joins the adventure, again, by accident: from one bar in Sigil to the... other bar. Around p. 15 the actual plot starts.

As time goes on, the party aids Ybdiel in tracking down a monster with a demon's mind and an angel's heart. Fachan-Abaia, filled with cognitive dissonance, ends up (literally) in Elysium, wreaking Chaos; more that than deliberate Evil, although the results are assuredly evil. Ydbiel needs to get his Spark back because he's losing his powers hour by hour.

Oh right and Lindyrm is still out here - he's aware of Ybdiel's meddling, and has sent a nycaloth: Garrish. (Yes, yugoloth, not tanar'ri.) Fachan-Abaia the addled bebilith seeks absolution through death at the daemon's hand. But if he is killed, the Spark inside him is killed, and Ybdiel - well, he'll probably live on, as a "mere" blessed soul in paradise, but he'll be in no shape to perform his mission, which is what the forces of Good would prefer.

It all ends in the Labyrinth of Accord - an instantiation of the atonement spell. Herein lie a test for the deva, a test for the demon, and a test for the... party. Rule-Of-Threes, yo. (It's Planescape.)

As you see, this module is full of ideas and those ideas are... pretty decent. It gets bonus-points for actually getting some use out of a heavenly plane, although not so much as to justify all five of them nor the purchase of the full Planes of Conflict box. Making a miniadventure of atonement is cool. As for the underlying philosophy, we must admit, A Clockwork Orange exists. The main hit on this one is that it is short, better suited as part of a collection of (philosophy-themed) adventure, or a Dungeon article.