MAL Ep. 46

Having successfully solved the conflict between sprite clans in the Fey lands and won passage to the plane of the Abyss where Khirg is being held, the party spent the night in the Autumn Grove, retrieved Bay (who has taken he new level as a chaos elementalist under the tutelage of the Couatls), and went through Feachan's portal.

They emerged in the middle of a chaotic street scene in a loud, crowded, smoggy, foul-smelling demonic city named Malice. The PCs have found most of their abilities to be somewhat handicapped here due to the sensory overload of the place; Zadkiel and Vanima Kaimelar (but not the other good-aligned PCs) additionally reported the sheer evilness of its aura is making them feel ill.

Despite these challenges, the group did an excellent job information-gathering in the Abyss without getting themselves into mass combat with the thousands of demon inhabitants of Malice. Interactions noted by me (there may have been more):

1) Aler alertly realized that being shoved and jostled around the main drag was a recipe for pickpocketing; he and Bay mounted a successful defense, and the PCs suffered only a few minor losses.

2) A fiendish big cat tried to provoke Angara into a fight, but she didn't take the bait and it went away

3) The party started to duck down a slanting side street, but when Jon overheard some demons saying in Abyssal that way was not safe, they decided against it.

4) Jon attempted to hail a couple of demons passing in the street to get information out of them, but they would not stop to talk to him. An undead being addressed the party, stating that they did not belong there and calling out Zadkiel as a "celestial." Zadkiel denied being a celestial, which is technically true (he is a half-celestial.) The party declined to tell the undead being anything else and he left.

5) A dire scorpion attacked the party in the street, causing a minor brawl which dissipated after it died (whispering to Red with its dying breath: "It's my nature.")

6) The party decided to avoid the houses lining the street and tried a second side street, where they collided with a group of bird-headed demons on heavy metal bicycles, one of which broke its neck but Zadkiel managed to save its life. They started screaming that this was a one-way street and the party retreated.

7) A black starbeast like the one they saw earlier with the feysworn sorcerer approached the party and detonated, doing a fair amount of AoE damage and angering some of the demons who were caught in the blast, some of whom seemed to blame the party for this.

8) The rather battered party finally managed to escape down an alley to a quieter part of town. Some ghosts only Tanya could see passed by and she watched but did not interfere with them.

9) A female demon came over to chat with the party. The party suspected she was up to no good and declined to tell her anything about Khirg or Chavalk, merely saying that they were planar adventurers from Malachi. She left and Aler wondered aloud who she was spying for.

10) Then Adriel was slammed up against a wall by a large demon roaring about Chavalk; a short melee ensued before Jon was able to tell her that the demon had mistaken her for Chavalk and was actually shouting "Chavalk, you've got some nerve showing your face in Malice after what you did to my grandson!" The situation was resolved by the removing of Adriel's helmet, revealing her visage which is now human again. The confused demon was convinced by Jon to sit down to parlay.

11) The demon introduced himself as Asteppo (the first being in Malice to provide the PCs with a name-- demons guard their true names zealously, and only higher level or Prime Materially connected demons tend to bother with call names,) the Vicar of Orcus in Malice and hence an important demon in town. According to Asteppo, Malice is "ah... a bit loosely... part of the Empire of Orcus." The party learned from Asteppo that Chavalk does not live on this plane, he is "one of the Crag lords from plane 456." Asteppo doesn't really know him that well, but apparently he cursed Asteppo's grandson, offending Asteppo's pride. The party deduced that Asteppo's grandson is, in fact, Barris Wainwright, and told Asteppo they were allies of Barris who had also been cursed by Chavalk. Asteppo agreed to meet with the group later to discuss Chavalk, telling them to find him at his vicarage. He limped heavily away. Zadkiel offered to heal his leg, and he laughed and said he was born with one club hoof. "I won't be winning any footraces, but anyone who thinks I need to has already lost."

12) The group continued down the side street to look at the enormous copper demon statue whose back they had seen from the main street. Jon identified it as an altar of Orcus. It had a fire pit, and a blue demon was there making an offering to Orcus. The blue demon guessed the party must be demon-worshippers from Malachi, and Jon said yes and placed a cold iron sling bullet into the flame, causing a strange uneasiness in his soul and an exasperated scolding from Zadkiel about the perils of making sacrifices to evil demon gods on the Abyss. Aler revealed his demonmark to the blue demon, who told him he should see "our high priest" about it, and described Asteppo. Jon and Aler chatted him up about mines and learned that there were two main mines in town: one to the north, by Khre Anjanksa (which means Elf War Butte), which yields some kind of fuel; and one to the south, by Sinjikt (which means Bad Water), which yields a particularly hard Abyssal metal.

13) The party theorized that Khirg might be in the Sinjikt mine, because of the steam they saw bursting from the wall where he was mining in Tanya's vision (which could qualify as "bad water." The party also remembered that the sibyl had told Aler he could find answers about his father at Elf War Butte. Hmm.

14) After some discussion, the party decided to affirm Khrig's location but then return to talk to Asteppo before entering the mine, since they might be able to find a way to free Khirg that didn't involve combat and if it did involve combat, they might have to leave the plane in a hurry.

15) The party started off for Bad Water Mine. On the way, they passed a strange eyeball recessed into the cracked earth. Jon reported it radiated chaos magic. The group asked Bay to use her chaos powers on it, and when she did, the eye opened and closed. The party backed out of its sight before continuing.

16) A pair of green winged demons in uniforms with a sigil on them passed by. The PCs hypothesized this might be a mining company uniform. They had a short and guarded conversation with the group. Jon cast clairaudience on them to listen to what they said after leaving the party. They were wondering what "all those extraplanars" were doing heading for the mine, and one of them commented that the big dinosaur wasn't really a dinosaur, it was a druid. The demons concluded they'd better tell their boss. Jon insisted the group double back to Malice.

17) But first, Zadkiel was able to use his Discern Location spell to confirm Khirg's location underground in this region, suggesting the party's hypothesis about the Bad Water mine is correct.

18) Returning to the greasy black metal vicarage, the party met again with Asteppo. Asteppo didn't seem incredibly impressed by Chavalk-- "eh, he's not that tough." When asked why he didn't kill Chavalk himself, he explained that would involve waging war and though he was personally pissed off at Chavalk, he was not pissed off enough to spend political capital on a war at this time, which he doubted Orcus would even approve of. Jon sensed that Asteppo did not really trust the party and wasn't convinced they weren't working for Chavalk. The party then suggested that he could take revenge on Chavalk by providing them with information that would help them beat Chavalk. Asteppo clearly liked this idea since providing you with information would not hurt him even if you were spies.

19) The party asked Asteppo about Elf War Butte, and he said it used to be called by the more boring name of Blood Rock until some elves-- "black elves, like you"-- had a big fight up there 20 years ago. When the party asked for more information about this, he offered to hook them up with a local historian who could tell them more about it.

20) Asteppo left to fetch a map of Chavalk's fortress in the Crag Kingdoms for you. Bay, watching him limp away from the vicarage, suddenly exclaimed that Asteppo is a lame priest--possibly the one from the prophecy about saving Piper!

21) Jon reluctantly decided it was more important to stick to the plan and talk to Asteppo again once he returned with the map. The Abyssal historian arrived, in the form of an old woman surrounded by a flock of geese. She told the story of Elf War Butte: the drow after whom it was named was none other than Thrane Do'Ezzen, a necromancer/demonologist who used to summon demons from this area many years ago and who Goose Lady had been personally acquainted with. He was forced into a combat on the butte by another drow, who Aler believes must have been his father: a ranger with a dire hyena who was consecrated to Orcus, whereas Thrane was loyal to Lolth. There was a dramatic battle, which Thrane won, but slaying the Orcus-bonded ranger cursed Thrane in some way and he has not returned to Malice since.

22) The party resolved to go shopping in Malice while waiting for Asteppo to return, then to get more information out of him, and then to rescue Khrig.

And there we broke for the night. Onward!