Arc 19: One Hell of a Deal

## Episodes

* Episode 202 - The Whimsical Wizard
* Episode 203 - Soul'd Out
* Episode 204 - Help Wanted
* Episode 205 - The Idleberry Job
* Episode 206 - My Mistake!
* Episode 207 - Beginner's Luck
* Episode 208 - Down the Rabbit Hole
* Episode 209 - Heartstopper
* Episode 210 - Implosion
* Episode 211 - Like a Phoenix From the Ashes
* Episode 212 - No Way In, No Way Out
* Episode 213 - Imp-rov Theatre
* Episode 214 - A Meal to Die For
* Episode 215 - Falling Apart
* Episode 216 - On Thin Ice
* Episode 217 - What's Behind Drawer Number 3?
* Episode 218 - Did It Hurt When You Fell From Heaven?
* Episode 219 - Wheel of Whimsy
* Episode 220 - At Death's Door
* Episode 221 - Nightmares
* Episode 222 - Double Up, Double Through
* Episode 223 - A Deal Is a Deal Is a Deal

## Synopsis (abridged)

After the attack by Our Lady of the Deep and the funeral for Winsler Wallaby and Bailey Blue, the students met to discuss a possible way to retrieve Winsler. Following a meeting with Seltie, they learned that the remaining part was held in the Betting House of the Gods, Duplicity, in the Plane of Lem. To gain Seltie's assistance, they agreed to find a lost coin in Lem and enlisted the help of Bou Bolero in Dry Falls, agreeing to his condition of robbing a shoe shop owned by Integrity's family. The theft was successful with Bou's guidance and despite the town guard's interruption. With Bou's help, the group was transported to the Plane of Lem, where they began their journey to Duplicity on nightmarish gondolas across a landscape filled with mansions, casinos, and the River of the Damned, guided by a tuxedo-clad imp.

The Gamblers arrived at Duplicity, a massive casino, where they encountered various chained workers. After playing and cheating at games, they met Count Haktul, who offered a bounty for the Fiend of Avarice's life. They also encountered Kreshoal, a jaded former boat captain. Later, they fought guards, found a network of tunnels, discovered a powerful heart, and engaged with imps, finally locating the Fiend of Avarice's fighting pit. Along the way, they released enslaved beings and made tactical plans to face the Fiend. They fought and killed the Fiend of Avarice in an intense battle involving betrayal and power struggles, with the casino patrons betting on the outcome. After the Fiend's defeat, they used his key to free the enslaved, causing chaos within the casino. The Fiend of Death then confronted them, extracting payment and arranging a dinner to discuss a deal. They agreed to enter the domain of the Fiend of Whimsy and free Di'Auna, the casino's architect who was imprisoned by Whimsy.

After infiltrating the plane, they explored Whimsy's desk, upon which Mira found the coin and hid it from Bou. Integrity triggered a trap that was slowly turning her to stone. The Gamblers rescued Di'Auna, who had repeatedly been tortured and imprisoned by the fiend, upon which they learned the Fiend of Death was a former angel who betrayed her fellow angels in exchange for power. Di'Auna agreed to heal Integrity in exchange for assistance killing Whimsy. They killed the Fiend of Whimsy. After the fight, a confrontation broke out between Bou and the others over the coin, ending with an injured Bou being killed by Serinepth. They confronted the fiend of Death, upon which Mira used to coin to exchange maximum lifespans with her. While they were not able to kill her, the Gamblers and Di'Auna managed to escape via Kreshoal's boat with their lives, Winsler's soul, and the coin. They exchanged it for the remaining sliver of Winsler's soul, and, returning to his home in the Mudflats, revived him, where they shared a tearful reunion.

## Synopsis (detailed)

After the attack by Our Lady of the Deep, a funeral was held for Winsler Wallaby and Bailey Blue, during which Crowe informed the students that the Event Planning Committee would be disbanded, and the surviving members of SWIM paid their respects. When the ceremony was concluded, they met in Serinepth's room to remember their friend, and Integrity asked if there was any way they could get him back. After some discussion, they decided to visit Seltie and ask about the part of Winsler's soul she possessed, as well as the location of the rest of it. The next morning, as they prepared for the journey to Isathil, they tried to figure out what they could offer Seltie in exchange for this information, as a soul was bound to be worth a lot to her.

They used the seed door in the Undercampus to travel next to the lake where Seltie's house normally resided. After pulling themselves across the water they were welcomed inside by Seltie and her new servant, a small, gnome-shaped shadow she called Arthur. Seltie invited them to sit down and asked why they had come. Mira cast *Detect Thoughts* on her and asked about Winsler. Seltie, aware of such magics, was able to keep any important thoughts from surfacing and told the students that if they wanted information on Winsler, they would need to offer her souls or the names of those close to them. Unwilling to do this so quickly, Mira probed deeper into Seltie's mind, announcing her presence but learning that the rest of Winsler's soul was currently held in the Betting House of the Gods, known as Duplicity, in the Plane of Lem. Seltie ordered Mira to get out of her head, and told them that even if they knew where he was, they had no idea what they were getting into by visiting Lem.

Serinepth offered the names of her parents in exchange for the information they needed. Seltie said that if they gave her those names, and did a favour for her while in Lem, she would help them. The students agreed, Seltie told them that there was a person named Bou Bolero in Dry Falls who could help them, and while in Lem she wanted them to find a special coin that had been lost there. With the deal struck the students returned to Wildcliff, where Mira found Delnys waiting for her. She told her girlfriend that they needed to leave again, and after a moments hesitation that she knew Delnys had gone through with the lichdom ritual. Delnys seemed put off by this, but admitted she had by request of the Lady of the Woods, though she hadn't been strong enough to go all the way. She wished the group luck on their journey, and they went to the Hall of Voyages to teleport near to Dry Falls.

After a long cart ride, the students finally arrived in Dry Falls, Serinepth used the fox mask she had made for the Gala to hide her face. On the other side of the town, in a shoddy little room, sat a very tall tiefling with pink skin, named Bou Bolero. Someone knocked at the door and Bou welcomed them in, seeing a young human and a very old halfling, dressed in dark cloaks. The human said he had found who Bou was looking for, and quickly left the two of them alone. The halfling and Bou talked about a person he was looking for, named Quent Perciminpale. The halfling told a story of how Quent was a big gambler, who had died in a mysterious blue fire many years ago. Bou then brought out a shard of metal, asking if the halfling knew anything about it, though after an inspection he said he didn't.

Meanwhile, the students were following Mira, who was using *Locate Creature* to home in on Bou's location. On their way they ran into the human who had just met with him, and Integrity immediately recognised him as her brother, Rustin. They scared him off by pretending to be muggers and continued on their way. They arrived at the room Bou was staying in just as the halfling was leaving. Bou quickly jumped into a cupboard to hide as the students came in, saying they just wanted to talk. With Mira still using *Locate Creature*, they had no trouble finding Bou. Giving up on hiding. he burst out of the cupboard and locked the front door, before demanding to know who the students were and what they wanted. The students explained their situation, and Bou agreed to help provided they prove themselves first by robbing the shoe shop owned by Integrity's family. They agreed to this and left for the night, finding rooms in a local inn. While her friends slept, Integrity snuck out to find her brother again. He was initially surprised to see her, but she explained that she and her friends would be robbing the family store the next day, and she needed him to get their parents out and pretend to go along with the robbery. He seemed hesitant but eventually agreed.

The next day, the students waited near the shop until Rustin was alone, and put their plan into action. They went in and pretended to threaten him while taking various pairs of shoes from the shelves. Bou was watching them do this from afar, and noticed a small group of guards coming closer to the shop. He discreetly knocked against the window, pointing out the guards when the students looked towards him, before walking off. The students hurried to take as many shoes as possible, at which point the guards noticed the scene in the shop and tried to get in. They managed to escape using enchantment and illusory magic, and scattered around the town to regroup at Bou's house, except Integrity to stayed behind and hid in the house. With the shoes acquired, Bou agreed to hold up his end of the deal and would take them to the Plane of Lem.

Mira went back to the Idleberry house, which was now swarming with guards, to look for Integrity. The guards were initially suspicious of her, though Amorette assured them she was a friend and welcomed her inside. She asked how the group was doing and if Winsler was with them, to which Mira said they had been separated, but they were going to get him back. Mira eventually found Integrity hiding in the pantry, and the two of them left for Bou's house.

After the sun had set, the group made their way to the ruins of Quent's house, the man who Bou was searching for. They gave offerings of money and fire to Lem, until flames enveloped them and they found themselves standing in some kind of station, which large golems climbing across chains like nightmarish gondolas. A small imp in a tuxedo welcomed them to the Plane of Lem and asked what they were looking for. The group said they needed to go to Duplicity, to which the imp told them to get into one of the gondolas, and they slowly made their way across the plane. During the journey, they saw massive mansions and casinos dotted across the land, as well as massive crevasses, which the imp said contained the River of the Damned.

Eventually, the group saw a massive building made of black and white stone in front of them, and the imp welcomed them to Duplicity. They left the gondola, Bou used illusory magic to give himself a fancy tuxedo, while the students pretended to be their entourage. In the lobby was a foxfolk who was begging for money and being ignored by all the patrons of the casino, including Bou and the students. They reached the front desk, where the clerk was wearing a thin silver chain around her neck. She welcomed them to Duplicity, offered them rooms, and to exchange their money for chips. After carefully reading the contract, the group agreed to take a room, and tried to give the clerk thirty gold pieces for chips. She flinched, apologised, and told them that the minimum amount she could take was one hundred gold pieces. As she did so, the chain around her neck grew tighter. Mira passed over another hundred gold pieces, and the clerk once again apologised, saying that she meant the minimum denomination she could take was one hundred gold. The chain around her neck tightened until she was struggling to breathe. The group hastily thanked he and took the single chip she could slide across the counter. Just as they were about to leave, a pale-skinned tiefling with a single onyx horn in her forehead walked over to them and apologised for the inconvenience, saying they would have a talk with the clerk.

The group hurried away and went up to their room, taking a moment to relax and plan their next move. Part way through there was a knock on the door, which opened to reveal a gnome with a cart holding various plates of food, courtesy of the tiefling from before. The group tried asking if he knew where they could find Winsler or Quent. The gnome apologised and said he didn't, the chain tightening around his neck as he ran out of the room. After that, the group decided the best course of action would be to mingle around the casino floor whilst searching for their friends.

While searching, they found a table playing a game called Chock Block and decided they should try and get more money in order to seem less suspicious. Just when they were about to lose their only chip, Bou swapped the dice used in the game with some weighted dice he owned, and was able to win more chips. The group played for a little while longer, cheating even more to win money, until the shock of it all caused the dealer to have a heart attack. Another dealer came over to the table and apologised for the inconvenience, giving them vouchers for a free meal at the casino restaurant to make up for it. The Gamblers gladly accepted these and went into the restaurant, called Silvertons. While there, a strange and gaunt looking figure took interest in what they were doing there, and warned them that cheating would likely result in getting chains around their necks and being enslaved to the casino. After he left, they were approached by an imp who said their master wanted to talk with them.

The Gamblers followed the imp to a private dining room, where they introduced a fiend wearing extravagant clothes as Count Haktul before leaving and closing the doors behind them. The Count asked the group to join him, and congratulated them on not getting caught cheating. The group asked what he wanted, to which the Count told them that one of the fiends who ran the casino, the Fiend of Avarice, had wronged him and he wanted them dead. In return he offered a few casino chips worth hundreds of thousands of gold pieces each. The Gamblers accepted his offer and left the room. As they walked out of the restaurant entrance, discussing how they could find the Fiend of Avarice, two guards appeared next to Serinepth out of thin air and bound her hands, accusing her of cheating in the Chock Block game. Seeing this as a chance to potentially get closer to the Fiend, the others tried to discreetly follow them to a door that appeared in the back wall of the casino. Mira and Integrity were able to get through unchallenged by disguising themselves as casino workers, though Bou ran after them without any disguise.

On the other side of the doors, the Gamblers found themselves on a small iron platform on the outside of one of the casino walls. Upon seeing Bou come through the doors, the guards turned back and ordered them to stop and surrender. Bou responded by growing to an even larger size and quickly killing the guard with his pike, while Mira seized control of the other guards mind and forced them to lead the group to its master. The guard brought them to a chamber where several people were hung by chains against the walls, including the foxfolk they had previously seen begging in the lobby earlier. The guard pointed down a well in the centre of the room and mimed out a series of directions. Serinepth freed the foxfolk, he thanked her and begged her to look for his son who had been taken by the Fiend of Avarice.

The Gamblers descended the well, finding themselves in a network of tunnels, with a river of oil coating most of the floor. They followed the directions given by the guard, sometimes seeing the flicker of some kind of flame coming from the tunnels before vanishing again. After a few minutes of walking, a skull emerged from the oil behind them, cackling as its eyes burst into flame. They turned to another tunnel to run, only to see a large beast blocking their path. It had the body of a big cat, but the three heads of a lion, goat, and red dragon. The Gambler's fought the monsters, managing to kill them both in time to hear a door open and close from one of the nearby tunnels. The group hid against the walls and waited to see what was coming.

They watched as a small imp wearing a tuxedo and carrying a strange lamp that emitted a green and red flame came round the corner. Upon seeing the dead body of the chimera, it dropped to the ground and began to weep. Realising they were still disguised Mira and Integrity came out of hiding, much to the surprise of the imp. They questioned what the two of them were doing in the tunnels and if they knew what happened to the chimera. The students made up a story that another monster had come by and attacked them all, they had survived by hiding. The imp urged them to get close to the lantern's light for protection and began scanning the nearby tunnels. The light caused Bou's shadow to be cast onto the wall, to which Mira and Integrity cried that it was the monster known as the Boublage. Taking their cue, Bou yelled out to scare the imp. Now extremely panicked, they dropped the lantern and fled, with Mira and Integrity close behind. They led the students to a small room filled with a blue light and six other imps. At the back of the room was a large marble door, which the imp told them led to the fighting pit, where the Fiend of Avarice was.

The imp asked if the students could deal with the Boublage, to which they agreed. They also asked if there were any other monsters in the tunnels, the imp said they didn't know but they might be able to find out at the Heart of Desire, and drew a map of the tunnels to help them find it. The two of them returned to Bou and Serinepth and explained that the Heart might help them kill the Fiend. They followed the map until they came across a massive room, suspended in which was a large, still-beating heart, connected to the floor and ceiling by a mass of veins and arteries. Touching the Heart sent shivers of electricity down their spines, but seemed to weaken the Heart. In an attempt to give its energy back, Serinepth cast *Shocking Grasp* on the Heart, which caused it to beat so rapidly the network of blood vessels holding it in place collapsed and the Heart fell to the ground, unmoving.

Thinking they might have done something to weaken the Fiend, the Gamblers headed back to the imp's room. Bou pretended to be dead while Mira tried to convince the imp to leave the room so they could sneak into the fighting pit. The imp was unwilling to leave and tried to cut Bou's throat to ensure he was really dead. At this point, the group gave up on diplomacy and killed all of the imps. Serinepth turned Integrity invisible and she snuck through the marble doors at the back of the room to find the Fiend of Avarice.

On the other side of the door was the back of a large stage. When Integrity peeked around the curtains she could see a theatre centred on some kind of arena, surrounded by lava, where a fight between two elementals was taking place. Patrons of the casino filled the seats of the theatre, cheering and placing bets on who would win the fight. In the centre of the stage was a protruding platform, upon which was a large throne in between two guards. Integrity crept forward towards the throne. Sitting upon it was a tall elven-looking figure with red hair, he was watching the match in the arena but seemed almost bored with it. Looking around the rest of the chamber, Integrity saw two more guards, and only one other exit from the room. On the ceiling was a large chandelier made of cages, each one seemingly housing a person or a spirit. She returned to the imp room, and the Gamblers began planning how to kill the Fiend.

They decided to have Bou and Serinepth attack the Fiend head on, while Mira and Integrity would free the people trapped in the cages and perhaps even persuade the patrons in the theatre to turn against the Fiend at the promise of taking their money. Together, they snuck back into the backstage area. Integrity used a *Potion of Flying*, and Serinepth cast *Levitate* on Mira to allow them to reach the cages, while she and Bou began to sneak closer to the throne. Mira and Integrity got into position, assuring the trapped souls that they were there to help. As Bou came closer to the throne, the floorboards beneath him creaked and alerted the guards to the side of the throne. They began to pull out their weapons and warn the Fiend of the intrusion, but were silenced by them and instead ordered to bring Serinepth and Bou closer to the throne. The fighting continued as the Fiend leered over Bou, bringing out a silver chain and asking if they wanted to be his pet. Bou refused and the Fiend raised his hand as if to slap them across the face. Seeing this, Mira and Integrity yelled out to the audience from atop the chandelier, calling on them to rise up against the Fiend. The theatre grew quiet, then patrons started betting on whether the Fiend would kill the Gamblers or the other way around.

With that, the Fiend and the Gamblers began to fight, along with the guards around the room. Bou was seriously wounded by the Fiend and the guards, Serinepth blasted them with freezing energy, Integrity taunted the other guards in the room and enchanted one to attack the other, and Mira summoned a massive magical hand to assault the Fiend whilst preventing some of the worst attacks of the Fiend and guards from being as severe. Eventually they were able to kill the Fiend, who lay unmoving near the arena. The crowd waited in anticipation, and after a brief moment the Fiend came back to life, though seemingly not as strong as before. He summoned a phoenix from the lava surrounding the arena and flew around the theatre in a final effort to kill the Gamblers. By this point, the rest of the patrons had fled.

The fight continued, Serinepth blasted the Fiend and phoenix with lightning, Integrity nearly cut through his neck, until Bou leapt onto the back of the phoenix and was able to decapitate the Fiend. This time, he did not get up. Integrity found a chain still in the Fiend's grasp and picked it up. Immediately, she felt connected to all of the souls under the control of the Fiend of Avarice. She tried looking for Winsler, but couldn't find him. The guards that were still alive begged the group to free them. Integrity tried hitting the chain against the floor to break it, to no effect. She then dropped it into the lava pit around the arena, and after a few seconds all of the chains around the guards and the phoenix disappeared. They all thanked the group profusely and fled, except for the phoenix. It apologised for the hurt it had caused while under the Fiend's control, and offered to take them away from the plane. The Gamblers thanked it but declined, saying they still had business in Lem. The phoenix warned them they might not get another chance for a long time, and disappeared. Bou searched the Fiend's body and found a key that seemed to open one of the rooms in the casino.

As the group tried to recover and think of their next move, the doors to the casino burst open and three pit fiends walked in, as well as the pale-skinned tiefling from the front desk. The Fiend of Death ordered them to stay where they were before flying over to them. She told the Gamblers they would have to pay for killing the Fiend of Avarice, though admitted she was delighted that he was dead. She also told them that Count Haktul had informed her of the assassination attempt right after they had made the deal. As payment, the group gave her two of the three chips they had been given as payment, and set up a dinner the following evening to discuss a possible deal.

When they headed back to the main floor of the casino, the Gamblers found it to be in a state of chaos as the workers previously held by the Fiend of Avarice were running for their freedom out of the main casino doors, only to be stopped and recaptured by a line of pit fiends. They avoided most of the chaos and headed to the lifts, where they showed the key Bou had found to the imp controlling it and headed up to the Fiend of Avarice's room. Inside they found a grand and lavish suite, with a bed filled with clones of the Fiend, and a bathtub with the decapitated body of the Fiend. While looking around the rest of the room, they found several potions, a listening device, a strange eyeball, and a love letter from Count Haktul. When they finished investigating, they headed back to their room to relax before their dinner the following evening.