Serpents Of Scuttlecove

Wells of Darkness

Into The Maw

Sancho's Demon Best Friend

The party, somewhat depleted with Analesia and Laureli both exhausted after the fight and so retiring to the galley to make tea and scones, continued. Over on the clot ship, Sancho started to talk to the occupant of the cage who proved to be a friendly and well-informed Palrethee demon (bit like a skeleton covered in flames). He introduced himself as Azael, a servant of Orcus now in disgrace and offered to act as the groups guide. Since he was not a pirate, Sancho let him out of the cage and spent the next two days teaching him the finer intricacies of deck quoits.
 
Moving on, the heroes found Divided Ire, their destination,. It proved to be two islands, one a volcanic hell on ..well, hell actually, the other an earthly paradise. They landed on the paradise half for some reason and soon found the Crimson Scar, the ship Vanthus had travelled here in. Unfortunately, it as abandoned and empty. Making their way toward the prison structure which straddled the two islands, they soon found a break in the walls caused by seismic activity and moved in, to discover a huge chamber with a rift across the floor to their left. Moving to the right, they entered an area with a large number of cages suspended from the ceiling and began cataloging the prisons inmates, which ranged from demonic to angelic to apathetic.
 
In the midst of this, a squad of Hezrou guards chanced upon them and a combat ensued, with Sancho attempting a flanking move around the cages as Arry and Keth beat the living wotsits out of the poor defenseless Hezrou. Sancho found himself facing two Hezrou on his own for a short time, but relied on his armour to save him, which it did until Arry arrived to 'do a Sancho'.
 
Moving on, they came out of the cell block area and found a series of doors, leading from passages between the cells. Selecting one at random, they opened it and Arry and Keth charged in to confront two Babaus (total wimp demons). As they did so, they noticed the Glabrezu (big dangerous demon) standing off to one side, who immediately reversed gravity, causing Arry and Keth to slam into the spike festooned ceiling and Mr P to find himself hanging upside down from a door handle. As Sancho pulled Mr P to safety, Arry and Keth set off across the ceiling to find the edge of the effect, where they fell painfully to the floor. As Arry and Keth faced the demon, Sancho set off round the cages to find another way into the room - he arrived just in time to see the demon fall, having nearly killed Keth and sorely wounded Arry. During the combat, both Mr P and the demon learned important information about checking the range of spells prior to casting them, which the demon is unlikely to remember, due to its condition.
 

Vrock Disco Inferno

Regrouping, the party pondered their next action. After a brief discussion, they headed for a set of double doors at the end of a wide corridor, which were covered with a thick green slime. Overcoming her distaste (after remembering that the heroes feast they had had that morning granted immunity to poison), Analesia checked them out and opened them, to reveal a wide bridge stretching into the distance. Deciding that this would leave enemies behind them, they headed back to the chasm with the wall behind it. A lengthy discussion ensued after Mr. P flew up and saw some Vrocks behind the wall, who also noticed the party. As the Vrocks alerted most of the camp, cast mirror image and commenced a dance of ruin, the party prevaricated, until finally they began moving across. When they finally got there, they had time to notice that the Vrocks were grooving to an alien music before the dance came to completion and hurt all of them except Analesia (b'%$8y evasion!) and Mr. P, who was too far away. A mighty combat ensued, with Laureli becoming isolated at the wall as Arry and Keth killed many mirror images, Mr. P prismatic sprayed, Analesia shot a few and Sancho helped where he could. As the battle came to its inevitable end, Laureli settled on top of the wall, which promptly collapsed, adding a little comedic value to a grueling battle.
 
As the last of the Vrocks fell, Sancho set off to explore invisibly. Shortly after he became visible and was joined by Arry, Keth and Mr. P. Analesia set off to explore on her own and Laureli set about healing her wounds, while wondering why there were no calls of medic. As the main group stood there (or flew there in Mr. Ps case) a two headed, four tentacled monstrosity rounded the buildings. Arry promptly charged, taking vicious damage as he did so. Mr. P tried to disintegrate it, to little avail. Meanwhile, Analesia looked into the other building, to find eight Vrocks looking back at her.
 
As Arry took a fearful battering from the golem, the rest of the party moved to help. Sancho, realising that his spells were not going to hinder it too much (, began to orate as Keth charged into combat. Mr. P continued to work his way through his spells.
Analesia, realizing eight Vrocks was quite a lot, hid round the side of the building as they piled out. What she did not realize was that the three who did not come out had started to strut their stuff. After a short time, she decided that attack was a good form of combat and
began to shoot at them, causing those outside the building to close with her, only to discover that it was nigh on impossible to hit her. At this point, the dance of death went off, causing no one any great discomfort.
Meanwhile, Laureli had arrived at the golem combat to find both Arry and Keth in rather poor shape. Risking all, she moved into the combat and cast fortunate fate on both of them, giving them a fighting chance of survival. As the vrocks dropped one by one, the golem was finally over-powered and the combatants moved to help Analesia, just in time for the assassin who had been studying her to attack and expire almost instantly in a welter of the proverbial
.
Our happy heroes retired for the night to their boat and had a pleasant sleep, before venturing back into the prison.
The next morning, refreshed and having checked that the deva and palrethee were well and had resisted the temptation to kill each other (they had taken up stations at each end of the boat and were busily trying to out-glare one another), they returned to the prison.
Having explored the paradise half of the prison, they set off across the bridge to the nasty side. As they entered, they found a door to their left, which Analesia checked for traps. Finding it untrapped, she opened it, releasing the flood of effluvia on the other side - yummy. She danced out of the way, as did the others. Almost immediately, as they had their attention focused on the door and its charming contents, they came under attack from filth demons, as yet another monumental battle was joined. The party split up to meet the two pronged attacks and Arry found himself isolated and briefly in trouble before Mr. P joined him. The demons came in several waves, until finally there were no more.

Anticlimax blues and the singing, ringing, face removing tree

As the party peered anxiously into the gloomy chamber beyond, they could see, at the limit of vision, large shapes moving. As they tried to see what was out there, they got fireballed. Mr. P took great exception to this and fireballed back, at which point a Nalfeshnee charged the two fighters and swiftly ended his brutal existence. He was followed by a shator demodand, which caused great unpleasantness with his vomit attacks, until Sancho nerfed him with ray of dizziness.

Once the general clamour of battle had died down, they ventured on - at least Sancho and Mr. P did, finding a throne. Sancho immediately climbed on to it, and discovered that it was Demogorgons throne, still tainted by the madness of him. Sancho was unable to withstand the force of the split personalities and was driven insane, with two distinct sides to his personality who hated each other. This complicated situation was finally resolved when Keth unceremoniously dragged him off the throne and held him while Laureli healed him.
Finding nothing else of interest, they explored the side corridors, where they met a friendly gnome. None of them paused to consider what a charming and pleasant little gnome was doing in a demonic prison surrounded by chocolate because Mr. P saw a pile of mobile magic items legging it off down a corridor.
They followed, but found only Hezrous, which did what Hezrou do - died horribly. Finally, they found a room with Lavinia trussed up and hanging from the ceiling, defended by a marilith. Once again, Sancho eased the fighters pain with ray of dizziness and what could have been a deadly encounter became somewhat tame.
Egged on by Lavinias need for revenge against what her brother had become, they moved out of the prison to a small bridge out across the lava to an island. As they crossed the bridge, they came under assault from a form of demon resembling undead in many ways. These proved a far more dangerous enemy as they caused damage most vile and didn't collapse as easily as a hezrou. After a titanic struggle, in which lots of interesting and heroic stuff happened, the shadow demons fell, just as more of them emerged from the building on the island. As they engaged this new threat, they saw a figure they recognized emerge - Vanthus. He stood to one side of the door, crowing in his obvious victory against such weaklings - at which point Mr. P disintegrated him. Talk about an anticlimax!
 
The party retreated to the boat, where Laureli hallowed the mid deck and healed the vile damage they were all carrying. Arry then lead them on a final cleanup of the prison, where they were attacked by fallen angels and had a degree of unpleasantness with a face removing pillar - all in days work, really. Again, Laureli was called upon to glue them back together and they left hell, to go shopping in Sasserine.