The Infernal Syndrome - Session 32: From Hell

Dramatis Personae

Alfaren “Alfred” Eredel – Elf transmuter

Boecca – Half-orc inquisitor of Erastil

Carlos Santiago - Half-orc (Alkenstarian) evoker

Slavé/Jancen – Tiefling (in guise as a human) rogue/assassin

Tavo Dechirent - Human cleric of Pharasma

Oathday, 16 Calistril, 4709 A.R.

Jancen accepts the gargoyles’ offer and samples the tender, raw hearts. Alas, his unpracticed palate is unable to discern an appreciable difference in the flavour of virgin’s vs. trollop’s heart. Nonetheless, the seemingly verbose gargoyles are impressed by his effort. Jancen trades words with the creatures for a time, then offers the group a drink of his waterskin, which he claims holds the finest of hell’s nectars. The lead gargoyle takes a cup of the dark liquid with gusto, downs it in one mighty quaff. The Stygian water takes effect immediately, and the gargoyle doubles over in pain as the vile liquid sends its tendrils into the deepest recesses of the gargoyle’s mind, erasing memory and knowledge. The party springs to the attack at this, eventually bringing the group of gargoyles to defeat.

Once the gargoyles have been dealt with, a cursory investigation reveals the cityscape of Dis to be an elaborate illusion – a mirage created to comfort the pit fiend imprisoned in the Nessian Spiral, according to Vheed’s scrawls earlier in the complex.

The Returners venture deeper into the Spiral, winding ever downward in a clockwise corkscrew pattern. They pass through a long hall of mirrors reflecting terrible hellscapes; avoiding looking directly at any of the mirrors as they do so. Alizander, unfortunately, becomes mesmerized by a vision he witnesses in one of the mirrors. Before the group can tear him away, the Varisian sorcerer’s eyes grow wide in terror and he collapses into a heap, still breathing, but comatose. Unable to rouse the sorcerer, the group sits him in a corner of the room and promises to return for him.

Continuing on, each successive room in the Nessian Spiral represents some sort of hellish environment: a fire-blasted desert marked by long lines of fresh souls newly arrived in Hell; a vast underground mine patrolled by blue-tinged drake-like behirs and burning devils wielding glittering barbed whips; and finally a wide garden of metallic trees bearing brass-coloured fruit, where gaps in the densely packed trees reveal glimpses of bestial couplings between devils and the damned.

The Returners face challenges in each of these rooms: massive black-feathered bird-head creatures in the Avernus desert; a slave-master behir that compels Tavo, Jancen, Carlos, and Alfred to take up heavy picks and get to work; and finally a towering stone statue of a minotaur wreathed in flames. The minotaur blocks the only exit from the grove of metallic trees. Taking a defensive posture, the minotaur announces in a rumbling voice that none may pass without the iron ring. Guessing that the hall of mirrors they bypassed earlier is the only area they haven’t searched closely, the Returners head back in an effort to find the iron ring demanded by the burning guardian.

Boecca faces each mirror in turn, viewing images of his own torture in different hellish landscapes – reflections of the various layers of Hell - at the hands of a towering pit fiend with a horribly scarred belly. Boecca resists the feelings of despair, hopelessness, nausea, lethargy, bloodlust, greed, homesickness, oppression, insignificance, and greed that threaten to overcome him as he gazes into each frightening visage to retrieve an object revealed behind each of the mirrors. In one, he finds an iron ring, etched with infernal runes. In another, he finds a heavy adamantine talisman – the Talisman of the Twin mentioned by Crosael.

Treasure

· From Nessian Spiral – The Hall of Toil

o +2 Heavy picks (5) (worth 20,770 gp)

· From Nessian Spiral – The Route to Hell

o Talisman of the Twin (value unknown)

o Rune-etched iron ring (non-magical, value unknown)

o Rod of Splendour (worth 12,500 gp)

o Bag of Holding type IV (worth 5000 gp)

o Staff of Swarming Insects (worth 11,400 gp)

o +2 Returning mithral trident (worth 10,000 gp)

o Minor ring of cold resistance (worth 6000 gp)

o Rope of entanglement (worth 10,500 gp)

o 30,000 sp (worth 3,000 gp)

o 19,400 gp

o 1360 pp (worth 13,600 gp)

Experience Awards

· Gargoyles (6) – 7200 xp

· Achaierais (4) – 6400 xp

· Behir – 4800 xp

· Total – 18,400 xp

· Per PC (5) – 3680 xp

Current XP Total per PC

· Carlos, Slavé – 60,615 xp each

· Alfred – 58,080 xp

· Boecca – 57,860 xp

· Alizander – 56,935 xp

· Tavo – 56,870 xp

· Total Current Fame Points – 18

The Infernal Syndrome - Session 31: Into the Heart of the Nessian Spiral

Dramatis Personae

Alfaren “Alfred” Eredel – Elf transmuter

Alizander Carmelizzia - Human (Varisian) sorcerer

Boecca – Half-orc inquisitor of Erastil

Carlos Santiago - Half-orc (Alkenstarian) evoker

Slavé/Jancen – Tiefling (in guise as a human) rogue/assassin

Tavo Dechirent - Human cleric of Pharasma

Oathday, 16 Calistril, 4709 A.R.

While Carlos, Alizander, Alfred, Tavo, and Jancen examine Vheed’s drawings and scrawls and determine some of the Nessian Spiral’s inner workings, Boecca makes his way back to the group, trying to come to terms with what happened with Joraviah. He finds the rest of the Returners and presents the Stygian Keyrod. Jancen and the other Returners ask Boecca where he retrieved the object. The half-orc’s hesitant response puts everyone on edge; Jancen in particular finds Boecca’s story that he single-handedly wrested the object from a group of tiefling tunnel rats suspicious. After several tense minutes of questioning that nearly comes to blows between Jancen and Boecca, the half-orc breaks down and admits that he was given the object by a beautiful, angelic creature with silken wings sprouting from her back. Tavo, Alfred, and Alizander quickly deduce that Boecca ran afoul of a demonic succubus from his description, and from his praise of the creature believe he is somehow love-struck with the creature.

Upon admission of his deed, Boecca doubles over in pain. He hears Joraviah’s voice in his head, admonishing him for his insolence and cursing his weak half-orc blood. Now under her full control, Boecca unleashes an attack upon his friends. Jancen fires a crossbow bolt at Boecca, and the others quickly join in, attempting to subdue the half-orc and determine a way to remove the succubus’ taint from their companion.

As the fight to subdue Boecca rages on, Joraviah herself joins the battle, her calm, alluring demeanour given way to a righteous indignation at the Returners’. Joraviah screams prayers to the goddess Nocticula to rain destruction on the Returners; she tears her profane gift from Boecca in a fit of rage, stunning the love-sick half-orc and sending him into emotional anguish as a result. The Returners respond by firing spells and arrows in her direction. Joraviah gets close enough to Alizander to reach out and strike him, feeding upon his lifeforce and bolstering her own. Ultimately, the battle turns in the Returners’ favour, and Joraviah falls, her body dissolving as her diminished soul is called back to the Abyss from whence it came.

The party backtracks to Joraviah’s den. Jancen and other party members negotiate with the near-feral tiefling caretakers, convincing them that they are absolved of their duties and free to leave the Nessian Spiral. The Returners find the near-comatose Sascar Tilernos, daughter of House Tilernos, tied up in Joraviah’s den. They free the noblewoman and escort her out of the Nessian Spiral and the ruins of Aberian’s estate, where a crowd of citizens and dottari have gathered. The crowd cheers as the Returners appear, pointing to the clear sky behind the party, devoid of the frightening pillars of fire now that the cooling chambers have been disabled. The party takes the time to deliver Sascar to the dottari and accept her invitation to visit her estate in the near future before heading back into the Nessian Spiral.

Back in the Nessian Spiral, the Returners move quickly through the remaining three cooling chambers, dealing with a Stygian-tainted water elemental trapped in one and deactivating each chamber using the Stygian Keyrod along the way. Finally, the party comes to a mirror-smooth red door – the entrance to the Nessian Spiral’s containment area, according to Vheed’s drawings found earlier in the complex.

With a touch, the door opens to a wide flight of black stone stairs, leading down to a stone archway. The Returners pass through the archway to behold an incongruous sight – a ten-foot-wide, thirty-foot-long banquet table floating in the air five feet above a black cobblestone plaza in the middle of a bustling city under some sort of martial law, as armies of devils dressed in iron march to and fro through the streets along the plaza’s edges. The sky above is red with dark clouds, while the surrounding cityscape is composed of sharp iron towers and spires – a view obscured only to the south of the table, where a churning wall of fire blocks the only street leading away from the plaza.

Seated around the table, locked in a heated argument as they feast on a banquet of victuals too terrible to repeat, are six diabolic horned creatures seemingly carved from a deep ochre-coloured stone. While the creatures argue and eat with all the grace and decorum of high-society aristocrats, their craggy visages and fiendish wings betray their bestial natures.

“Ah, we have visitors,” rumbles one of the creatures. “Come, do join us please. It has been some time since we had newcomers to debate with. You have arrived at just the right moment. Our discussion has progressed from the politics of Dis to a somewhat more vulgar, but infinitely more interesting subject: whether or not one can actually taste the difference between a virgin’s and a trollop’s heart.”

“Grick here prefers the trollop’s heart, and insists that it has a quality of earth and iron much more preferable than the virgin’s heart. I must confess, I don’t notice the difference myself, but Grick has always been a connoisseur of such things. Perhaps you can settle the argument for us? Here we have the finest quality in heart-of-virgin; one plucked from a boy only three days past his thirteenth birthday. And to compare, a slightly withered, yet no less tasty, example from an old crone – and trollop of the highest order – from a city called Westcrown, recently delivered to us by a very cooperative barbazu named Saszmir.”

Treasure

· From Joraviah

o +1 Studded leather armour (worth 595 gp)

o +1 Frost hand crossbow (worth 4200 gp)

· From Nessian Spiral – Joraviah’s Den

o +1 Keen mithral dagger (worth 4250 gp)

o Jewelry and silks (worth 2000 gp)

· From Nessian Spiral – Ruined Workroom

o Lyre of Building (worth 6500 gp)

Experience Awards

· Joraviah – xp was factored into session 30 story award

· Story Award (freeing Sascar Tilernos) – 7200 xp

· Story Award (deactivating remaining cooling chambers) – 4800 xp

· Story Award (deactivating the Infernal Capacitors) – 4800 xp

· Stygian Water Elemental – 4800 xp

· Total – 21,600 xp

· Per PC (6) – 3600 xp

· Fame Point (for saving Sascar Tilernos and getting her out of the Nessian Spiral) – 1

· Fame Points (for deactivating the Pillars of Fire) - 2

Current XP Total per PC

· Alizander, Carlos, Slavé – 56,935 xp each

· Alfred – 54,400 xp

· Boecca – 54,180 xp

· Tavo – 53,190 xp

· Nagiphax – 31,657 xp

· Damien Hellbent (cohort) – 22,360

· Total Current Fame Points – 18

The Infernal Syndrome - Session 30: A New Friend

Dramatis Personae

Alizander Carmelizzia - Human (Varisian) sorcerer
Boecca – Half-orc inquisitor of Erastil

Carlos Santiago - Half-orc (Alkenstarian) evoker

Slavé/Jancen – Tiefling (in guise as a human) rogue/assassin

Tavo Dechirent - Human cleric of Pharasma
Alfaren “Alfred” Eredel – Elf transmuter

Oathday, 16 Calistril, 4709 A.R.

While Boecca dallies with a succubus elsewhere in the Spiral, the other Returners continue on, finding a second cooling chamber much the same as the first. This one, however, is populated by a gaggle of mischievous steam mephits who flit about the room, and within the pool of Stygian water float a number of bloated, decapitated bodies.

Tavo and Alizander lead the assault on the steam mephits in the second cooling chamber; most of the creatures fall as Tavo channels life-draining negative energy in the name of Pharasma. With the mephits eradicated, Jancen and Carlos get to work shutting the cooling chamber down by manipulating the crystal valve. Tavo examines the bodies floating in the pool of Stygian water and suspects that the decapitations were performed after their deaths. All of the bodies wear Wiscrani finery, suggesting they come from wealthier families. Telltale signs suggest that the victims were drained of life-energy somehow. The absence of bite marks do not point to vampire predation, and the fact that the bodies were decapitated after death suggests that the Stygian water wasn’t the cause of death, as they would likely have been decapitated prior to being placed in the water. The cause of the victims’ death remains a mystery for now.

Once the cooling chamber is shut down, Carlos attempts to aid Tavo’s investigation by casting detect undead, suspecting the presence of some variety of life-draining undead creature. Curiously, his first several attempts to cast the spell fail, as if they were countered somehow. The spell does eventually succeed, but Carlos does not detect the presence of any undead within the spell’s range.

The party continues past the second chamber into a curving hallway much the same as the one that led from the first cooling chamber. About halfway down the hallway they encounter the shambling corpse of Dargentu Vheed, former mayor of Westcrown. Vheed’s corpse is a hideous thing, his flesh hanging in tatters, his entrails spilling onto the floor, and his eyesockets empty black holes. Vheed spouts a litany of curses at the Returners, bemoaning their intrusion upon his domain, demanding they give him their magic, and inquiring as to the whereabouts of his favourite plaything, the twisted vulpinal Jezeletrix. The Returners mete out destruction on the former Lord-Mayor of Westcrown with a vengeance. The undead Dargentu Vheed attempts to absorb and recast many of the spells visited upon him. Alas, it is not enough, and the lich-shade falls under the Returners’ onslaught, nevermore to burden the city of Westcrown.

Meanwhile, Boecca attempts to elude the succubus vixen by heading down the tunnel she came from. He finds himself in a well-appointed cavern, hung heavy with fine silk brocade, strewn with jewels and heady with exotic, Abyss-touched perfumes and incense. The head of a tiefling, perhaps Veladness, the tunnel rat leader Lord-Mayor Aberian Arvanxi alluded to, is pinned to the headboard of a bed with a finely wrought stiletto. Several bodies lie in another corner, all dressed in noble finery. One of them, a woman, moves slightly in her bonds.

The succubus strides slowly into the room, her long legs glistening with oils, her black hair framing her almost angelic face. The dirty, unkempt tiefling tunnel rats follow close behind, obedient to the succubus’ whim.

“Come now, I can sense you in my bedchamber. No need to hide from me. Have you come for my playthings?” She glances at the nobles in the corner. “Really, there is no need for this to end in bloodshed. As you can see you are sorely outnumbered. These tieflings are brutish, and uneducated, but they know their way around a blade. Of course, the one whose head you see on the bed, the one who summoned me, presumed too much. I killed him for his insolence; he was a disgrace to our goddess, the great Nocticula.”

“But I digress. Please, show yourself; as I say this need not end in bloodshed. Indeed, I may be able to help you in some way, if you only tell me why you are here. All I ask for in return is some companionship. I have been rather bored, and was considering another foray into the city. But such a trip is unnecessary with you here.”

Mesmerized by the succubus great beauty and honeyed tongue, Boecca does reveal himself. He talks with the succubus, called Joraviah, and through their conversation comes to learn that she possesses one of the objects the Returners are looking for – the Stygian Keyrod. She pulls it from under the mattress on her bed; the keyrod is a two-foot long, rod-like device shaped like a weird twisting knot of metal branches and coils.

“This is what you were looking for?” says Joraviah. “Oh my, I’ve been using it for something else.”

“Well, I guess you can have it. But if it’s that important to you, surely you’d be willing to part with something in return?”

Boecca agrees that of course such an exchange would only be fitting. He agrees to pay Joraviah 2000 gold, and willingly accepts something she refers to as “the angel’s gift”. Boecca receives a long, lingering kiss from Joraviah, one that seems to go on forever. He feels himself falling suddenly from a great height, through layers of earth and fire into a blinding white light. Joraviah’s voice fills his head like a mantra, seeping into every crevice in his brain and coursing through every vein. He awakens suddenly; Joraviah stands before him. Curiously, her dark red leather corset is on the floor. She is naked, smiling.

“That will do Boecca. Now, go back and find your friends. Don’t bring them here. You help them find whatever it is they’re looking for, and go back to the city. We’ll see each other again, I promise.”

Treasure

· From Dargentu Vheed

o Ring of protection +3 (worth 9000 gp)

o Ring of wizardry I (worth 10,000 gp)

· From Joraviah

o Stygian Keyrod (value unknown)

Experience Awards

· Steam mephits (6) – 4800 xp

· Dargentu Vheed, lich shade – 6400 xp

· Story Award (deactivating cooling chamber #2) – 1600 xp

· Story Award (negotiating with Joriavah) – 10,000 xp

· Total – 22,800 xp

· Per PC (6) – 3800 xp

Current XP Total per PC

· Alizander, Carlos, Slavé – 53,335 xp each

· Alfred – 50,800 xp

· Boecca – 50,580 xp

· Tavo – 49,590 xp

· Nagiphax – 31,657 xp

· Damien Hellbent (cohort) – 22,360

· Total Current Fame Points – 15