61. Hell and High Water

* After successfully rescuing Aerendyl from Dunvegan Castle, killing a number of powerful cultists among Clan MacLeod - including Magnus MacLeod, the Rumidian Northern Margrave, his brother Tormod, and his wife Cecilia - and defeating the erinys Alekto in combat, taking him alive, and depositing him into the River King's care, the crew of the Drunken Dragon celebrated aboard their ship out on the waters of the lake, while the city of Dunvegan Keep burned with the fires of riots the party and their crew had instigated.
* The day is Fallingleaf 6. Everyone aboard the ship is up by 11am, though Aerendyl's old teacher Rangrim left before dawn. The party's next steps are to head towards the ice, both to look into Wilfred's lead on Old White Eyes and to hunt down the witches that were part of the coven of covens who lived there.
	+ Aerendyl talks to his new ally, Alric, son of Eric son of Fjor, the man having come from the lands beyond the Frostflows. He advises the party to island hop their way around the territory of the Northern Margraviate.
	+ Setting off down the River Dun, the party enjoy some of the luxury that is afforded to them by having more hands to man the sails and rigging now that they had a growing crew.
	+ Aerendyl took to keeping the ship as clean as he cool, trying once more to make it a home a klabauter spirit might want to inhabit.
	+ Wilfred and Clwyd clean up the portable hole and do an inventory. They find that 650 platinum pieces and the Feeblemind scroll are missing from it.
	+ Next, Team Small spend most of the day trying to work out how the contract ragdoll they'd taken from Cecilia's room worked. After 8 hours of experimenting, Clwyd finally squeezed and rocked the doll in just the right sequence - it sicked up some blood on her shoulder, giggled, and then began reciting the particulars of Clan MacLeod's contract with House Alekto in the Infernal language.
	+ By this time, the crew have got the Drunken Dragon off the river and had begun circling around the bottom side of the island of Newwe Rumidia. They anchored in a bay for the night.
* The MacLeod contract, as recited by the ragdoll (translated from Infernal):

> *Section one: The bearer of this rag doll, henceforth 'the contractee,' is entitled to the knowledge and assistance of the Hell Hag known as Red Rona, she who serves as Lord Mephistopheles's advocate in matters of the Infernal courts, as she sees fit to lend and as is to be negotiated in person. The contractee has expressed desire for this knowledge and assistance to pertain directly to the fall of House MacTavish and the strengthening of House MacLeod, such that the latter might claim leadership of the Rumidian Northern Margraviate, to do with as they see fit. Red Rona has been made aware of these desires. At this stage, this contract ensures the contractee the right to meet with Red Rona, and entitles the contractee to the services of an advocate from the Infernal House Alekto in their negotiations with Red Rona. This advocate is to be N'deese of Alekto.*
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> *Addendum one: The Hell Hag Red Rona, advocate of Lord Mephistopheles in matters of the Infernal courts, has provided House MacLeod with their means in payment for services rendered. In line with Contract 110-121-b-I, negotiated between N'deese of Alekto, Red Rona, and House MacLeod of Terca Mahres, the following has been added to the contractee's terms: Upon the death of the last of the MacTavish line, the contractee is to begin at their soonest opportunity the opening of a Hell Gate linked directly to House Alekto, esteemed Hellfire Household of Mephistar, the Fifth Hell of Baator, such that Lord Alekto, the succubi Nesseva of Alekto, Syled of Alekto, and Galatte of Alekto, and his necessary retainers may pass through to the mundane world, with details of their and the contractee's subsequent conduct outlined in Section Two of this contract. Should said Hell Gate have not been opened within a period of 367 days' passing on Terca Mahres from the moment of the last MacTavish's death, the souls of all of House MacLeod, their sept clans, and those sworn to their leadership shall be immediately forfeit to the wants and needs of the Infernal House Alekto.*
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> *Section two: Upon the opening of the Hell Gate, the contractee is to provide no less than 5 willing females of child-bearing age and apt health for each the Lord Alekto and his succubi in their incubus forms to inseminate. Further, they are to provide no less than 3 willing males to inseminate each of Lord Alekto's succubi. Upon the birth of the cambions from these unions and their return to House Alekto on Mephistar, the Fifth Hell of Baator, this contract shall be concluded in full.*
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* They handle some Hell admin at night.
	+ Discussing the particulars of the ragdoll contract, they realise that with the opening of the Hell Gate and with Clan MacLeod having provided the necessary people, most sections of the contract had been fulfilled. Should the three Alekto succubi have impregnated anyone or have fallen pregnant themselves, the birth of those cambions would bring about the formal ending of the contract, but until then, as the bearers of the ragdoll, they would be entitled to meet with the Hell Hag known as Red Rona should they wish, and they would be entitled to an advocate in the meeting to boot.
	+ Clwyd messages Nix and they arrange to meet in the city of Brech on the morning of Fallingleaf 8.
* The next day, Fallingleaf 7, is spent sailing to Brech - Aerendyl has to use a few *Control Winds* spells to get them there before full dark. Brech is a sprawling port city, built as a way-stop for people sailing to and from Dunvegan Keep. They all sleep on the boat, conscious that news of what happened in the capital will be following them; rumours from the first merchants to leave had already reached Brech on their arrival. Nix arrives in the morning.
	+ Pyt sends all the crew and Alric out into town with 10 platinum coins, telling them to busy themselves buying stuff to make the ship more homely. Taylor sees through Pyt's desire to just get the crew away but is happy to go along with it, asking his captain how long he should keep them gone for.
	+ Then the group have a meeting with Nix in their deck cabin.
	+ Clwyd runs through what they did in Dunvegan Keep, thwarting the MacLeods and Alekto, and tells Nix they're now heading towards the ice.
	+ Nix is very pleased and thinks his mother will be too. He suggests they all travel with him to the Fifth Hell, so that they might report to Lady Telphousila and then perhaps enjoy some revels besides.
	+ He suggests they get their crew to sail on to the island of Dougal's Waite, at the very edge of the Northern Margraviate, while they're in the Hells. Nix would then bring them back to the island and thus they won't have lost any time anyway.
	+ Aerendyl insists he stay behind to look after the crew, despite a few attempts to persuade him otherwise. Nix is more successful with Wilfred, telling him the workshops of Mephistar have a great many things an industrious young wizard might covet, including new spell scrolls, and that Nix was at that moment willing and inclined to help them access such workshops.
	+ Nix departs, telling the group they'll head to the Hells in the morrow.
	+ Once the cambion is gone, Pyt exhales loudly and thanks Aerendyl for being the voice of reason and staying with their new crew. He would have done so himself but he 'has to keep up appearances.' Pyt then turns his ire on Clwyd, who had been very keen for them all to go to the Hells and leave their crew to fend for themselves.
	+ Part way through the argument, a thought occurs to Wilfred and he casts *Detect Magic*. And indeed, he senses the illusion magic of Nix's imp Dimitri, invisible in the corner of the room.
	+ Wilfred calls for the affable little imp to come out and make himself seen. Dimitri is legitimately apologetic, shrugging his shoulders, saying 'you do way you gotta do,' and that he was just doing his job. After a couple bad impressions of the party, Pyt modified Dimitri's memory so that the imp thought they'd only been singing Nix's praises and talking about how excited they were to go to Hell again.
	+ Pyt ends the discussion thusly: 'Clwyd, I can't help but respect your lust for power, but I really cannot empathise with it.'
	+ When the crew do come back, they have bundles of shag rugs, blankets, and bedrolls to fill the deck cabin.
* In the early morning of Fallingleaf 9, *the Drunken Dragon* has a little meeting.
	+ Pyt and Wilfred start, telling everyone that tomorrow marks the day their crew was first put together, two years ago by the calendar, three years ago to them.
	+ They reminisce about the original seven of them - Starth and Elio and Clark, who all left on their own, and Vic and Malak, who had fallen in one way or another. They admitted that they didn't want to try scrying on Vic because then they'd know the truth of it for sure. Uncertainty held a bit of hope for them.
	+ Next they tell the group that Clwyd, Pyt, and Wilfred were going to the Hells. After a brief hesitation, Pyt explained the details of Clwyd and his relationship with House Telphousila to the group. Clwyd tells them the situation is useful and often mutually beneficial, and they shouldn't have to worry about it too, too much. Pyt is keen to emphasise that they won't be sacrificing any innocents or anything like that, and how if it came down to it, he'd rather try fighting Nix than do something truly awful. Clwyd keeps her own opinions to herself here.
	+ In the following Q&A, Alric lets slip that he's seen the Mountain and the River three times in his life, and that seeing it is in fact something people in his culture seek out. They look to enter the afterlife, see the Mountain and River, and then return.
	+ Aerendyl gives Clwyd a brief letter he wants passed to Nix, expressing his apologies for not going to the Hells because looking after their new crew was more important to him. He also provides 500 platinum pieces with which he invites Nix to buy him something as he sees fit.
	+ With that, the Drunken Dragon pushes off, leaving Clwyd, Pyt, and Wilfred, and making for Dougal's Waite, a trip that would take them roughly 7 days.
* The trio meet up with Nix and he *Plane Shifts* them to the Telphousila estate in the Fifth Hell.
	+ They go and speak to Lady Telphousila, with Nix going down on one knee, fist to the floor, head bowed, before his mother. He gives a full, detailed report of the activities of his wards and their associates and the extent to which they'd thwarted Alekto's plans - adding that Alekto himself was in the custody of what Nix gathered was a violent, power-hungry archfey. Nix has Clwyd play the ragdoll contract as well. The erinys inquires as to what Clwyd and Pyt's plans are with the thing, but she isn't intent to take it away from them.
	+ The lady says she is well pleased indeed with their efforts. She has someone fetch the second contract between her and Clwyd, the one concerning Alekto. A copy is provided to the goblin. Now that her end was fulfilled, Clwyd was entitled to the services of Nix for a period not exceeding five hours, to be requested with not less than three days of notice. During Nix's five hours, Clwyd was also entitled to the aid of the Lady Telphousila herself, to be summoned by Nix, for a period not exceeding five minutes.
	+ Telphousila then says she wished for them to accompany her as she goes to see Mephistopheles regarding these events. The group departs, heads back to the docks of the estate, and awaits the erinys.
	+ Nix ushers them aboard an oversized rowboat-like vessel with a large canopy covering its centre. At the aft is a creature known only as a Boatman, a skeletal figure clad in simple, drab robes. Nix explains that the Boatmen are part of the group known as Shaytan, the Soulless. They are the original denizens of the Lower Planes, there before demons and devils started being formed of mortal souls. Other shaytan the group had heard of included rakshasa and succubi.
	+ When Lady Telphousila arrives, she is dressed in armour and armed for war, accompanied by a mighty horned devil at her side and a band of mask-faced, halberd-wielding merregon guards.
	+ The group all board the boat and Nix instructs Pyt to tell the Boatman a story, but it must be a story nobody in all the Lower Planes has told one of them already. Pyt endeavours to make up a tale about a spider born with six legs, and the Boatman pushes off, taking them across the stupefying waters of the River Styx, towards Mephistopheles's court at the heart of Mephistar.
* A short time later -- too short a time, perhaps -- and having passed a great many factories, furnace houses, and workshops, the boat pushed into an impressive set of docks that spilled out into an intricate network of black granite columns, all spiralling around, forming a glyph-like pattern that could only be comprehensible from very high up. At the centre of the pattern was a beautiful, black stone spire, massive in scale, and masterfully constructed. The place where Mephistopheles held court was a mage's tower.
	+ The group followed Telphousila inside. Around them, hellish attendants rushed around ahead of the group, trying to get the place ready and pass word of their arrival, but not getting in the group's way as they travelled through the long and winding halls.
	+ They eventually came to a room resembling a cluttered scroll workshop, tables around the room filled with ink pots, paper, and other odd trinkets besides. Despite having not walked up any steps of appreciable slope on the way there, the view from the window revealed them to be at least halfway up the tower, the smoke and fire and sprawl of Mephistar's infernal industry spilling out below them.
	+ They stood still in the centre of the room and the trio of mortals grew increasingly nervous. Shadows appeared to twitch and shudder at the edges of their vision, but never when they swung their heads to look; their skin itched as if ants were crawling beneath their skin; whispers filled the dark crevices and alcoves of the workshop.
	+ Telphousila addressed the empty air, calling forth Lord Mephistopheles, telling him she has a grand report to make, and some intriguing guests she'd like him to meet.
	+ The air grew thick and heavy when the Lord of the Fifth's response came, sourceless. He was perhaps less regal-sounding than they'd expected, instead evoking an image of a fussy, impatient professor.
	+ When he did deem to join them in the room, Mephistopheles appeared behind Pyt. He walked around to the bard's front and appeared as a particularly handsome tiefling, blood red skin, dark red robes, long hair tied back, long beard coming down to a point. His shadow didn't match his form, instead appearing like long, writhing snakes. He appeared to be only a little taller than Pyt.
	+ The Lord of the Fifth walked from Pyt to the next of them in line, then the next, until he'd stood before them all and looked into their eyes, and though they didn't see him grow or shrink, each time he stood before someone new, his height was different - always just a little taller than the person he addressed, just enough to make them raise their eyes a touch.
	+ At last he stood before Telphousila, and the pair traded some barbs - Mephistopheles knew well that the erinys had come to gloat on the fall of her rival Alekto, and she revelled in saying that he was being held by an archfey in a demi-plane linked to Terca Mahres, likely being tortured and having his power leeched even as they spoke.
	+ Mephistopheles agrees that successes should be rewarded and failings punished, and he'd sooner have Telphousila appeased and gone so he could get back to his business. To that end, he turns his attention on Nix's wards, Clwyd and Pyt.
	+ He snaps his fingers and a dark-skinned human man came into the room. Mephistopheles whispered some instructions to the man, who then gave a quick bow and dashed off, returning a short while later with a large coin purse.
	+ Mephistopheles presents the thing to them, saying it contains soul coins for sixteen prominent members of Clan MacLeod, whose generational efforts had been spectacularly thwarted at the last by the little group. The coins were for Clwyd and Pyt now to do with as they see fit.
	+ He requests a look at Clwyd's blasting rod. After a quick appraisal, he sees that it's already been upgraded and concludes that her handler is over-generous, upgrading such a thing *before* the work had been done. He returns the rod to her, saying she might think of the upgrade as an advanced payment.
	+ For Pyt, Mephistopheles has a knowing smile and an offer: would he prefer a boon of might or a boon of mind. Given the choice, Pyt opts for the latter. The archdevil asks again to confirm, then fishes out out of the palm-sized fell iron coins from the pouch and snaps it in two, releasing the chained-up soul of Cecilia MacLeod. With sudden, cold cruelty, Mephistopheles begins flaying the former cultist's soul before the group, distilling her very essence down to nothing more than a bright blue-white wisp. Her tortured screams echoed through the halls long after she'd been reduced to almost nothing. The wisp was offered up to Pyt, and when he took it, the bard felt the concentrated intellectual essence of an accomplished, once powerful warlock rammed into any gaps they could find in his brain - at once mind-numbing and enlightening.
	+ Mephistopheles tells Nix's two wards that they do indeed have great potential. To Pyt, he says that Fierna, Lord of the Sixth Hell, has an excellent musician in her court that Mephistopheles hates, and he'd love for Pyt to become good enough to rival them. To Clwyd, he says that ambition and raw and simple as hers can be a potent force indeed, so long as she keeps the fire within her burning.
	+ The archdevil makes a cursory offer to Wilfred for boons and power should he join a household, but the gnome isn't keen and Mephistopheles doesn't appear in the mood to give proper sales patter. He bid they leave his tower and is gone as suddenly as he appeared.
* Having given her report to the Lord of the Fifth, the Lady Telphousila departs, going via Boatman back to her estate, happily telling the shaytan her best and cruellest estimates of what tortures Alekto was going through at that moment to get the boat going. She left a small company of merregon guards with Nix and the mortal trio, who were next going to go shopping!