81. When You've Got Two Problems...

* Pyt, naked and alone with the Archmage of Abjuration, Sienna au Prespescone, with the shield guardian necklace the party seek in hand, has just failed to teleport away to safety. 
** He quickly tries to modify Prespescone's memory but she shrugs off the attempt. 
** Then she seals him inside a wall of force, sends off a couple sending spells, and gets dressed. 
** She assumes Pyt is part of an assassination plot on her life, hence the reason he'd target the necklace -- an item that ensures any damage she takes is shared with the shield guardian it is linked to. Pyt for once opts to just tell the truth (or at least some of it), saying that he really was just after the necklace. Ironically, she doesn't believe him. 
** She dispels the mage armour and death ward Pyt had on. 
** Then she informs him that Bianca and Rodrigo were going to be detained by her adjunct. 
** Pyt is still naked. 
* Meanwhile...
** As the guards he lied to are returning to their posts, Aerendyl wildshapes into a spider and creeps under the locked door he'd just attempted to open. 
** Cill had been set to washing dishes but manages to sneak away, carrying with him a tray of drinks. He finds his way over to the section of the house where the orgy was taking place and starts trying the doors, planning on using the drinks as a pretence for his search for Pyt. 
** The door to the room Pyt is actually in doesn't open because of the wall of force blocking it. 
** Pyt calls out when he hears the door bang against the invisible wall. Cill says he's brought drinks. Prespescone tells him in no uncertain terms that he's to leave immediately. 
** Cill then sees Yeebe Sapply Barren round the corner. The adjunct is in a hurry and doesn't pause for Cill as they pass one another. 
** Prespescone starts giving Yeebe instructions through the door. She tells him to alert Madame Elonrae immediately that there's an ongoing attempt on Prespescone's life. 
** Cill lights the adjunct up with a fireball from the end of the corridor. 
** Yeebe screams.
** Prespescone, unsure what's happened, uses another sending to alert the guards.
* Everyone hears the guards whistles sound through the house and the stomp of armoured feet down many stairs that follows. 
** Wilfred takes the noise as his que to leave. He bids the Lady Margrave farewell, and says he hopes to meet her again some time. She smiles a knowing smile and says she'd like to but she doubts if the opportunity will present itself. 
** Wilfred rushes down the main stairs of the house and demands some guards lead him towards the danger. He repeatedly gets ignored but follows them anyway. Wilfred is still naked.
** Aerendyl summons his quicklings, turns into a bear, and busts down the locked door. 
** He turns back into his elf form and casts wall of fire on top of the shield guardian. The thing immediately turns on him in defence of itself and proves to be both hardy and capable of dealing out some real damage. Aerendyl starts getting his ass kicked. 
** The fire starts to spread from Aerendyl's spell. 
** Cill gets naked, thinking it will help him blend in. Then he bumps into Wilfred. It's awkward.
* With a fire starting to rage on the first floor, the shield guardian swinging haymakers to defend itself, and all the guards in the mansion converging on the first, barring the doors of the participants of the orgy, things were already getting quite chaotic. Then the sea fury's spirits attacked. They converged on Wilfred and Aerendyl, as expected. 
** Wilfred and Cill are able to deal with the Wailing Spirit in quick time. (Cill didn't have Cormorant's gun on him, but he did have his own magical variant, and it finally worked for once!) Still, the spirit's initial scream killed the guards Wilfred had been following. 
** On the floor above them, Aerendyl gets mobbed by the Blighting Spirit and the Hungry Spirit. Things are looking bleak for him. 
** People die on the floor below, echoing the movements of the Blighting Spirit above. All the party-goes fall. Yeebe Sapply Barren watches on in horror as the guards that he'd stationed outside the revellers' rooms fall dead to the ground, blood leaking from their ears and noses. He dimension doors away. 
** Prespescone was just preparing to turn her interrogation of Pyt on a more violent path when the shouts of 'spirits!' and 'necromancy!' fill the air. She's disgusted by the thought of the dark art, and her glare shows all too clearly that she suspects Pyt to be at the heart of the necromancy too. Favouring self-preservation over answers for the time being, Prespescone dimension doors away, carrying Pyt's clothes (and the drum and sword stored within) with her. 
** Having seen that, Pyt figures that the ward on the mansion only stops him attempting to teleport out the mansion entirely. So long as his destination remains within the mansion, he thinks he should be ok. So he tries it, aiming for the foyer, and it's successful! 
** Pyt rushes for the front of the mansion, opens the door, and sees Luciana finishing off the guards that was watching the front. She tells him she heard commotion and thought she should come lend a hand, then gives Pyt his viol when he asks for it. Pyt's still naked. 
** Cill and Wilfred next encounter the Knowing Spirit. It's addles their minds, but the two of them are better able to fend off its mental attacks than many of their allies would have been. Together they beat the spirit back and it flees through the inner walls of the mansion before they can slay it.
** Aerendyl realises he's in a dire situation. His quicklings have all been killed by the aura of the Blighting Spirit, and he learned the previous night how deadly the Hungry Spirit could be. Plus the shield guardian was still beating the shit out of him too. He makes a break for the big window at the end of the corridor but fails to smash it. He appears to be trapped. Doomed even.
** But then the window smashes and Tariq reveals himself to have been watching the proceedings while maintaining his invisibly. He's in his large, true form. 
** Tariq snatches Aerendyl up and takes to the air, making to fly away. But then the shield guardian comes diving through the window, tackling Aerendyl where he hangs from Tariq's grip, and slamming down into the ground 30 feet below with the elf under its bulky form. 
** Luciana and Pyt were attacked by the Stalking Spirit but made quick work of it, thanks in large part to Luciana's cold iron dagger, which the spirit did not like at all. 
** The two of them heard the massive window smashing from the side of the house and ran around to investigate. They find Tariq in the air, Aerendyl on the ground with the shield guardian on top of him, and Hungry Spirit descending on the elf. 
** The Blighting Spirit has sunk through the floor and doubled back. It kills the household staff as it goes near the kitchen. When it encounters Cill and Wilfred, it eventually meets its end, but not before hurting them a good amount. 
** Outside, the combined efforts of Aerendyl (oh so nearly dead, which would have been disastrous, since he was to provide them with their means of escape), Pyt, Luciana, and Tariq manage to finish off the Hungry Spirit and then the shield guardian. 
* Eventually, the group manage to reconvene round the side of the mansion. The fire Aerendyl started is blazing on the second floor now. Most of the people that were in the house appear to have been killed. Wilfred, Cill, and Pyt are still naked. 
** Pyt puts the amulet in the portable hole. 
** Then the group flees across the mansion grounds towards the tree in the near distance. 
** They make it without too much issue, Aerendyl casts transport via plants, aiming for the secluded fig tree in Spice Town's bazaar, and they step through. 
** As the portal in the tree closes behind them, they see the mansion burning and they catch a glimpse of a raven swooping down towards its entrance before shifting into the form of Shandara Elonrae, the Archmage of Evocation. She doesn't appear to notice them in turn. 
** The portal closes and they can hardly believe they pulled it off. Though it was not without cost to the party themselves: Pyt no longer possessed Cormorant's magical sword, his faithful drum, or the sending stone he'd been carrying. 
* Tariq leads the group to another of the mamluks' boltholes in the city. Luciana obliges the group by waiting outside while they finish their business (since she wasn't to know that they were working for Ibn Qahbe).
** The oni instructs Wilfred to bleed himself so that the Emir can make the lineage log pin that Wilfred desires. 
** Tariq takes the amulet and Wilfred's blood. He tells the group that due to the nature of the job, they would never go to the Emirate's palace again, to preserve the secret that it was the Emir who orchestrated the theft of one of the treasures of Rumidia.
** The oni tells them that he will return in the morning with an update for them. 
** Before he goes, Cill asks if perhaps the Emir Ibn Qahbe would be amenable to turning a blind eye to the activities of the Al-Ghumari estate (the place where he and Lockjaw were installing themselves under false pretences). Tariq smiles, saying he's sure that it could be arranged -- good faith, to balm the wound his unexpected announcement that the party could never return to the palace has caused. 
** With Tariq gone, they call Luciana inside and then worry about how they should sleep. The tiny hut had proved itself effective in stopping the Sea Fury's dream spells, but it wouldn't fit in the room. And yet, they were to keep a low profile, so they couldn't exactly just go out into the street and set up the magical drum-yurt. 
** They decide that they should risk the nightmares rather than just not sleeping at all. And as it happens, Pyt and Wilfred both resist the dream spells the Fury tries on them!
* The next morning, Fallingleaf 42, Tariq returns to them first thing. He informs them that the Emir has returned from his journey, having successfully secured the genie that represented his end of the bargain. Further, he would have Wilfred's lineage log pin ready by that evening. The group then spend their day handling a few logistical arrangements. 
** Aerendyl uses a sending stone to message Taylor, just checking in. The crew are apparently all doing fine, mostly helping Lockjaw with the work of setting up the Al-Ghumari estate. Taylor is excited about a new strategy game he's discovered in the emirate, something involving tiles, but he's cut off by the spell ending before he can explain. 
** The group decided that it was time for them to deal with the Sea Fury once and for all. Luciana was happy to lend a hand, saying she wanted her own payback and that the party had paid her fee for the month anyway, so she owed it to them. Thus, Wilfred messages Rangrim, arranging to meet at sundown by way of Rangrim first travelling to the tree near Luciana's house and then Aerendyl opening a passage from there to the tree in the bazaar. 
** Before sundown, Tariq returned to them. He presented Wilfred with the blood red marble that was the lineage log pin; the black needle within was inactive. Then he handed Pyt a beautiful brass oil lamp. Finally, he took the iron flask from the group, bid them well, and took his leave. 
** Wilfred takes that moment to tell the group that Lyra had managed to contact him, explaining that he'd got a coded message from her here in the emirate. He tells them that she wants to meet with Wilfred, but that the meeting place is in the Sultanates. Wilfred thinks he should do that before returning to the roof of the world with the lineage log pin, and asks the group if they will lend him their strength again. 
** After that, they bring Rangrim through the tree and into the Sultanates. He and Luciana have a fairly stoic reunion, and he tells them all how keen he is for the hunt that is to come. 
* Before they turn their attention to preparing for the Sea Fury (who, if previous patterns are to be believed, would require another day before she attacked them in the emirate again), Pyt cannot wait to make a wish from the genie sealed within the lamp he now holds in his hands. His reasoning is that if the Sea Fury kills him, he doesn't want to spend eternity toiling away in Hell. 
** The group find a secluded warehouse to conduct their genie business inside. 
** Luciana and Rangim quickly decide they want nothing to do with genies. They wait outside. Rangrim gives Aerendyl a serious look but keeps his own council. 
** Wilfred hands the lineage log pin to Luciana, asking her to give it to Alric if anything here should go awry.
* And so it is that Aerendyl, Pyt, and Wilfred stood in the middle of a dark room around a brass lamp. 
** Pyt grins and rubs the thing to a shine. 
** Thick black smoke begins to bellow out the thin spout of the lamp. The temperature immediately starts climbing, such that crates and boxes around them begin to smoke and flame. From within the ashes spewing from the lamp a deep, hearty laugh is heard. Then the roiling black smoke coalesces into a humanoid shape: thick armed and barrel chested, red skin covered only by a silk vest and turban on the horned head. A long goatee of pitch black hair was groomed to a point on the creature's chin, and his moustaches stretched off his face in opposite directions, each as long as a forearm and waiving through the air like seaweed dancing underwater. The efreet's torso melds into the smoke still connected to the lamp on the floor. By now the lamp had burned a black ring of char into the ground. The genie laughed again, looking at the little group. And where his arms were folded across his chest, the one visible hand held up three sausage-thick fingers. 
** "I am creation, you are the course," the genie said. "Your wish is my command."
** The air smoked and sizzled, the temperature continued to soar upwards, straight through 'uncomfortable' and into 'life threatening.' And the genie looked at them all expectantly, a slight smile on his lips. 
** Pyt said, "I wish for the immediate destruction beyond repair of all contracts in the Hells signed by myself, Pytinel."
** "Done," said the genie. Then there was a flash, and when the group blinked the spots clear from their eyes, the genie held only two fingers up now, and Pyt was gone. 
** They all panicked. And the temperature continued to rise. Many of the warehouse's goods were on fire now. 
** Wilfred: "I wish for Pyt to be returned to us immediately, alive and well!" And the genie replied, 'Impossible! My wishes cannot undo my wishes." 
** They put their heads together a moment more, but they're burning up badly now. 
** Wilfred: "I wish for you to tell us the precise location of Pytinel and how to get to him."
** "Done," says the genie. And there is another flash. 
** When their vision clears a second time, the group find themselves in unfamiliar surroundings. They appear to be between shelves of lock boxes. Only the shelves seem to stretch as high as a mountain and as long as a city street. Pyt is stood before them, holding a small metal box in his hands. Its lid is open and inside a contract writ on sheets of infernal iron linked in accordion fashion burned away quickly, one rune at a time. "He is directly before you," the genie said, "and you need only step forwards to reach him."
** The genie had twisted their wishes and succeeded in sending all of them to the heart of the Fifth Hell. They stood within the hall of records in the spire of Mephistar, the home of the archdevil Mephistopheles.
** The wicked efreet looked very pleased with himself. He held only the one finger up now. And he advised the group that they would do well to hurry with their final wish, for forces greater than he were surely converging on them as they speak. 
** The group started squabbling among themselves how best to right this situation. They were rightly panicking. But Aerendyl had been sitting on a wish of his own for a while, and thinks he might be able to turn it to the group's advantage, at least a little. Aerendyl says, "I wish for Clwyd to be returned to life so she can serve as our guide through the Hells." 
** "Done," says the genie, and a final flash of light blinds them for a moment. When they can see once more the efreet is gone and their goblin friend stands beside them, looking quite confused, and feeling entirely empty of the hellfire that she'd carried inside her and used as a Source of her magic for so long. 
** Clwyd says to them, "where the Hell are we?"
Category:Part Five