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
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