Custom trait: Advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks to locate soul coins, treasure, and corpses within 30 feet, and on Wisdom (Survival) checks to track creatures across ash and sand.
Custom: Krix's fellow scavengers (spined and bearded devils) grant him advantage on attacks against a creature within 5 feet of an ally that isn't Incapacitated.
Custom species: Krix is a damned soul reshaped by centuries in Avernus. He has darkvision 60 feet, resistance to fire damage, and speaks Common and Infernal.
Once per turn, Krix deals an extra 9d6 damage when hitting with an advantage attack, or when another enemy of the target is within 5 feet.
Advantage on attack rolls against any creature that hasn't taken a turn yet; hits against Surprised creatures are critical hits.
Krix knows the scavenger bands of the Brazen Wastes and who to sell to — including Vorgath's coin-buyers at the Rusted Citadel.
When dealing Sneak Attack damage, Krix can forgo dice to Poison (1d6), Trip (1d6), Withdraw (1d6), or Daze (3d6) the target.
Take no damage on successful Dexterity saves against area effects, half on failure.
Add proficiency bonus to Initiative; may swap Initiative with a willing ally.
Double proficiency in Stealth, Sleight of Hand, Acrobatics, and Deception.
Turn a failed ability check into a 20, or make an attack that misses hit.
Treat d20 rolls of 9 or lower as 10 for proficient ability checks.
Krix senses hidden and invisible creatures within 10 feet.
Dash, Disengage, or Hide as a Bonus Action each turn.
Halve the damage of one attack that hits Krix.
Proficiency in Wisdom saving throws.
Behind the character
Krix Vulture-Hand is the pack leader of the Infernal Scavengers who prowl the Brazen Wastes, a gaunt, ash-gray devil with cracked charcoal skin, curling ram horns filed down to jagged stubs, and burning amber eyes that have watched a century of travelers die on the black dunes. He is a damned soul reshaped by Avernus, one of countless mortals who fell to the First Hell and were remade by its hunger into something leaner, crueler, and endlessly patient.
His mismatched armor, a scorched breastplate over tattered leathers, a gray cloak stiff with ash, and a bandolier of soul coins glowing like dying embers, tells the story of his trade: he picks the bones of the wastes for soul coins, bronze scraps, and anything that clinks. His hooked dagger has opened a hundred throats, most of them from behind.
Krix is Lawful Evil in the way carrion birds are: he does not create suffering, he profits from it, and he follows rules that keep him alive. He is a negotiator first, an ambusher second, and a fighter only when the odds are overwhelming. He speaks Common and Infernal in a dry, clicking rasp, and he knows every soul-coin trail, hidden cache, and dead man's hollow between the River Styx and the Gate of Ash.
He whispers freely of Duke Vorgath's hatred for the mortal king Vane, because that hatred is the closest thing to religion the wastes offer, and because a well-informed stranger is worth more than a robbed corpse. Above all, Krix wants coin, information, and a way out of Avernus that does not end in a smelter, and he will attach himself to anyone powerful enough to make that possible.
Before the adventure
Krix was mortal once, though he has spent a century burying the fact. In life he was a cutpurse in a kingdom far from the old realm, hanged for stealing from the wrong noble and damned to Avernus for a petty crime under an infernal contract his creditor had signed on his behalf. He woke on the black dunes with no memory of his name, only the brand of his debt seared into his palm, and he learned the wastes' first lesson within hours: everything in Avernus is owned by something else.
He fell in with a scavenger band of spined and bearded devils and damned souls who picked over battlefields, crashed portals, and the leavings of infernal patrols, trading soul coins to Vorgath's buyers at the Rusted Citadel for water, iron, and another day of existence.
For decades Krix served under a bearded devil overseer named Skarn, who ran the pack with a glaive and a ledger of debts. Skarn filed Krix's ram horns to stubs as punishment for hoarding, a mark of shame Krix still carries. When Krix finally killed him, the pack followed the killer, and Krix Vulture-Hand became pack leader by the only law the wastes recognize: the one still standing. Under his leadership the scavengers have grown from desperate carrion-eaters into a disciplined intelligence network.
Krix realized early that information outprices coin in Avernus: knowing where a soul-coin trail leads, which slag vents into the Rusted Citadel are unguarded, or which travelers Vorgath's spies are watching is worth more than any single robbery. He trains his pack in ambush and withdrawal, striking only when the ash storm or the odds favor them, and vanishing before reprisal.
Krix's relationship with Vorgath's court is a tightrope. The scavengers are tolerated because they sweep the wastes clean and report strangers, but Ghazzad, the coin-buyer, cheats them on every deal, and Krix has been quietly building leverage: hidden caches, secret routes, and a mental map of every soul coin that has passed through his hands. He has noticed the coins stamped with Vane's face appearing along the trails, coins that whisper of an unpaid infernal tithe, and he understands before most that the mortal king's debt is the thread that could unravel everything, or make a clever scavenger rich beyond measure.
When the party crashes into the Brazen Wastes, Krix sees not prey but opportunity: strangers from the Material Plane, wearing gear from the old world, carrying a bronze coin that matches the whispers. He will ambush them, bargain with them, betray them, or follow them, whichever pays most. But somewhere beneath the ash and the greed, Krix is still searching for one particular coin among the thousands he has handled: the one stamped with his own face, holding the memory of his name.
He tells no one this. It is the only thing in Avernus he has never been willing to sell, and the day he finds it, everything else he wants may change.
Threads to follow
Beneath the surface
What haunts them
What drives them
Personal quest · 1
Krix keeps a tally of every soul coin he has ever scavenged, scratched into obsidian shards. He believes that among the coins he has sold to Vorgath's buyers was one belonging to his own mortal self, holding the memory of his true name. He hires or manipulates the party into infiltrating the Rusted Citadel's coin-vault to find it, offering his pack's knowledge of every soul-coin trail in the Brazen Wastes as payment.
Befriend or bribe Krix to learn of the ledger and the coin he seeks.
Personal quest · 2
Krix's ram horns were filed to stubs as punishment by a bearded devil overseer named Skarn, who ran the scavenger band before Krix killed him. Skarn's soul coin was lost in the River Styx, and rumor says the Pale Oarsman now carries it. Krix wants it recovered and shattered so Skarn can never be reborn or bargained back into existence, and he knows the party must cross the Styx anyway.
Learn from Krix that Skarn's soul coin rides with the Pale Oarsman.
Personal quest · 3
Krix has mapped every soul-coin trail in the Brazen Wastes for a century. Recently, coins stamped with Vane's face have begun appearing along the trail like breadcrumbs, dropped by something fleeing toward the Gate of Ash. Krix believes a soul collector who defected from Vane's tithe is running, carrying knowledge of the pact. He wants it caught before Vorgath's spies do, and will trade the whole trail-map for the collector's cargo.
Follow the trail of Vane-stamped coins using Krix's map and Scavenger's Nose.
When the party first encounters the pack, Krix has them dead to rights in the ash storm. He offers a choice: surrender the bronze coin and one soul coin each and walk away, or fight and likely die. If the party instead offers him information about Vane, Krix faces his own decision: sell the party to Vorgath's spies for a fortune, or hear them out.
Listening: Krix gains the trait 'Ears of the Wastes' (advantage on Perception to detect ambushes for the party) and the pack becomes recurring informants. Selling out: the party gains a persistent enemy in Vorgath's spy network, and Krix's later quests become hostile ambushes instead of offers.
If the party helps Krix recover his soul coin (The Vulture's Ledger), the coin whispers with his mortal voice. Krix can either crush the coin and remain what he is, a devil of the wastes, or swallow the memory and begin a painful reversion toward his damned mortal self, losing his devilish resilience but regaining fragments of his old skills.
Remain: Krix permanently keeps his Ashborn resistances and becomes a firmer infernal ally. Reclaim: Krix loses fire resistance and 10 hit points permanently but gains advantage on Deception against devils and can enter the Material Plane without a summoning, making him a viable asset in Act 3.
When the party departs through the Gate of Ash, Krix faces the choice of a lifetime: stay in Avernus as pack leader of the only family he has known, or cling to the party's departing portal and cross into the Material Plane, hunting Vane's tithe-collectors in the mortal world as a scout for Vorgath's revenge.
Staying: the party gains Krix's soul-coin map and a permanent Avernus contact. Crossing: Krix joins as an allied scout, granting the party advantage on tracking Vane's soul collectors and a devil who can negotiate with infernal turncoats, but Vorgath brands him a deserter and sends hunters.
Recovering his soul coin in The Vulture's Ledger
Krix's burning amber eyes flicker to their original mortal brown for moments at a time, and he begins speaking of 'before' without prompting.
Shattering Skarn's coin in Debt of the Broken Horn
Krix stops flinching at the sight of bearded devils and stands fully upright, no longer hunched like carrion-bird prey.
Witnessing the party spare or damn a fellow scavenger
Krix's loyalty crystallizes around the party's demonstrated values, hardening him into either a sworn ally or a patient, vengeful shadow.
Ally
Szik was the first to find Krix crawling half-dead across the black dunes a century ago, skewered by an overseer's glaive and left as carrion. Instead of finishing him, Szik dragged him to the pack's fire, fed him scorched meat, and taught him the scavenger's creed: the wastes provide for those who watch. Since then they have hunted together through ash storms, out-bargained soul merchants at the Rusted Citadel's markets, and buried eleven pack-mates.
Szik is the only creature Krix trusts to watch his back during a Sneak Attack, and the only one who knows the location of Krix's hidden cache of unspent soul coins. Szik's spined wings make him the pack's eyes above the dunes, and he is usually the first to spot travelers worth robbing, or warning. He quietly hopes Krix will one day stop chasing the ghost of his mortal name, fearing that the day Krix finds it, the pack loses its leader to a past that no longer exists.
Enemy
Ghazzad is the bearded devil who appraises every soul coin the scavengers bring to the Rusted Citadel, and he has cheated Krix on every deal for sixty years, using rigged scales and infernal contract loopholes to shave coins off every payment. Worse, Ghazzad was the one who reported Skarn's death to Vorgath's court, ensuring Krix was never rewarded for killing his overseer, and he keeps a ledger of Krix's debts that could see the pack conscripted into Vorgath's legions at a word.
Krix has sworn to ruin him, but Ghazzad is untouchable inside the citadel walls. When the party arrives in the Brazen Wastes, Ghazzad becomes aware of them immediately and sees them as either a lever against Krix or a bounty to collect. Krix may push the party toward Ghazzad's ruin as a test of their worth, knowing that a party that can reach inside Vorgath's citadel is a party worth binding to the pack.
Faction
The scavengers exist at Vorgath's sufferance. The Infernal Court tolerates the pack because they sweep the Brazen Wastes clean of stray soul coins and deliver them to Ghazzad's scales at the Rusted Citadel, and because scavengers make excellent early-warning eyes against intruders. Krix has sold to Vorgath's buyers his entire unlife, and he whispers to anyone who will listen of the duke's hatred for the mortal king Vane who stopped paying his tithe.
But Krix's loyalty is a coin with two faces: he resents the court's cheating and conscription threats, and he knows the wastes better than any of Vorgath's legates. If the party proves they mean to destroy Vane, Krix will spend his meager influence to vouch for them before Vorgath's gate-guards, opening the diplomatic path to the Rusted Citadel. If they cross him, he will sell their movements to the court within a day, and Vorgath's spies already watch the wastes through scavenger eyes whether Krix wills it or not.
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