Alert: May contain spoilers for the adventure “For Duty and Deity”

13 Patchwall (in places where that matters)

We finally found a staircase made of gritty black stone, where the air turned cold as a witch’s heart. At the bottom of the steps, almost tucked away, sat a door emblazoned with the symbol of a six-fingered hand. All of us except Agnar had to duck to get through it – even Aliana and me.

The moment we got through, Raven turned around and put a mark on the entrance with chalk – like the old days in the elememtal nodes. I took a good look around, too, so hopefully we can find this exact nook – and the exact door we’ll need to get out.

I think we all can’t wait to get out. We’ve all seen back alleys before, and we’ve all seen sewage before. But the light is wrong – blue, somehow, with a blue “sun” up above – and the buildings are all tumbled together, like in Erelhei’Cinlu. The mortar seems to be oozing out of the rocks, trickling down their faces like tears, and Usin swears it’s crying.

Besides the noises of a restless, busy city, there’s something on the edge of hearing – like low talking, or weeping. Usin puked into the stream of sewage shortly after we arrived, and Guderwinda and Clatriel say they wanted to.

We stepped out of the alley, and immediately a dozen long-armed apes jumped off a nearby roof and attacked us. They each had six fingers on their hands, red glowing eyes, and tusks in their mouths. Clearly, Lulu has recently died and brought the ape-mafia to the underworld…but don’t tell Mikael; he’s having a hard enough day. I think Aliana appreciated getting to kill some evil things right away…especially since we’ve been playing detective since then and talking a lot.

No one seemed to notice us slaughtering ape-demons, or care. I suppose that happens often enough. We patched ourselves up and headed for the nearest tavern in search of information. (I was wearing the sword of Lyons, so I just stood in the corner and waited. Some of the locals can probably see invisible, but I didn’t want to draw attention anyway; and I’m not the best talker.)

The “Sodden Solar” was full of all kinds of people – especially humans, gnomes, and other Primals, but also a blue giant sitting on the floor in the corner that didn’t look like anything I’ve studied. No one seemed to notice us, which I guess is a good thing.

Ezekiel picked out a man in the corner (I say “man,” but he has black eyes) and went to talk with him. “Warrik” knew gossip about a golden-haired “lady guest” of the Lord of Pleasure, and filled us in on some geography. They call this place the 47th Layer, and the demon-lord has two more “above” it that he also controls. The biggest city is Zelator, somewhere on this “level,” and the second largest around here is Simor…which I think is where we arrived. The geometry is confusing.

There’s a story that goes around that the Lady travels from city to city sometimes, in a big caravan. Warick thinks it’s a trap to lure out anyone who might want to rescue her. For a fee, he agreed to be our tour guide for a day, and lead us to Zelator, where we might find more information.

Had one dodgy moment. A squad of aludemons burst into the tavern, collared a vrock, and dragged him out. I thought they might be secret police looking for interlopers…but they’re just “recruiting” demons for the Blood War.

**

Warick led us to another tavern where a pillar of green fire rose from the pavement near one corner. They have similar pillars of fire at other places in the city, and apparently they are portals around the plane. When we stepped through this one, we found ourselves in a groves of demonic trees (yes, it burns like fire, but fortunately it didn’t catch in anything we were wearing).

These trees are more stuff of nightmares. At first, it seemed like the branches were just shifting in a breeze – some kind of spiritual breeze that didn’t affect us. But once you look closer, you can see they’re all snakes…every single one. Warrick had a torch to make them shy away from us, so we could walk past, but behind us they hissed and danced like a nest of vipers. Fit to make your skin crawl.

Finally, we came out on a plain by a river – white milk…maybe whiter – and a city on its bank. No doubt the water would do terrible things to a person if it touched human skin.

No one seemed to notice us entering the gate of the city. The streets are packed – not just with demons, but humans, gnomes, and dwarves, too – and even the squid-face-men from the Underdark. Do the souls of mortals really migrate to other planes after final death?

A palace stands shining above the city, its stones bright white in the strange blue sunlight. This is the Argent Palace, and Warick (playing tour guide) said the lord alledgedly bought the stone from divas of Celestia (I’m not familiar with those terms, but Ez seemed to know what he meant). Sixty-six towers rise from the palace (after Raven said something, I counted them myself) and allegedly they are made of ivory. That would be one big walrus.

The buildings are laid out more regularly here – not as though they were giant creatures huddling together in unease…but even the order has something wrong with it. Like the park we passed through full of statues…at first, they seem to be beautiful winged ladies (more modest than the lilendi) but all their faces are contorted and demonic. Even the very stones seem to have faces – sad, angry, anguished faces – that keep catching the corners of our eyes. It’s as though the person in charge wanted to emphasize his authority, since he contrained the construction to a unified plan, but also make a mockery of proper architecture by distorting the execution.

…Anyway, Warick brought us to a tavern where we might pick up the information we need. It’s called the Plane Walkers Guild.

At first, Usin looked so sick Ez had him guard the door with Theobaldus. But then the drunk vrocks inside decided Ez was rude and cheap, and refused to talk to him…so Ez asked Usin to come in and try listening to the voices in his head (which I thought was something you shouldn’t do – unless the voices are instinct – but I take it demons’ thoughts sometimes spill out of their heads, or they sometimes talk to each other through thoughts, or something, and someone who’s sensitive to that can sometimes listen in. I’m glad I’m not sensitive).

Usin gave Raven what clues he could pick up, so Raven took some treasure to soften them up, and went to talk to the vrock who claimed to be a guard on the caravan once.

**

The word is: the Lady travels from the Counting House (in the city we just left, Semora) and the Argent Palace (with all the ivory towers, just above us). There’s supposed to be a caravan coming here in a couple days or so…but although it sounds like we could take it, we learned there’s a green-fire-portal that serves as a kind of back-way into the place the Lady stays while she’s in Semora. And that portal is right outside an inn called the Weeping Goddess, which Warrik says he knows.

So back we go through the serpent-wood, and through the fire to the portal in question. (And by leaving now, we’re still within Warick’s contract.) Sounds like we’ll find somewhere to rest a bit for the spell-casters to refresh themselves, but then…we go.

Hopefully we won’t have to fight any demon-lords this time…but will it really be that easy?

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Find the previous entry here.