In the false paradise of Cocytus...
Plot Developments
- The Dark Three chose the Chapel of Sloth as their next destination, finding it the lowest of the orders, and in shameful disrepair. Its one saving grace might have been the mud baths, but bathers seemed near-comatose. The vicar was nowhere to be found, and the temple's attendants were unusual and cryptic.
- After quite a time with the Crawl of Futility, the party eventually figured a way into the actual chapel... or so they thought. Renato had the foresight to stay awake, while the girls drifted off to sleep, as suggested in a persistent fresco. Within a dream-like realm, both were met with a much more conventional depiction of sloth, a classical paradise of bloodwine baths, nectar and ambrosia, songs and laughter, vast gardens interspersed with marble statuary, populated by a bedazzled variation of wandering races- including the more lively counterparts to the dead-eyed bathers, attended by scantily-clad creatures of pale, androgynous beauty.
- The girls were tempted with all manner of things, and Isabella quickly grew enthralled with how life should be. Diana was not so easily swayed, though her negativity echoed outward harshly, damaged and distressed the dream. They eventually found the vicar leaning against a Pan-like idol, an artist, whose magnificent paintings included a portrait of the Dark Three.
- In the real world, Astraea warned Renato something was not right. The place the girls had entered was not the true Dream, but a close facsimile, driven beneath by a malignant consciousness. After long, that consciousness sensed Diana and Isabella's presence, spurring Astralheart to panic. Renato, through her, spoke a whispered warning.
- Pressed for time, Isabella appealed to the vicar to shake off the apathy and join her in restoring the church in Hecate's name. She spoke of Asmodeus and Saspien, visible paining the vicar. Diana's added words served to cast the place in an ice age, though things quickly thawed as the vicar seemed to find new strength.
- Diana was tempted by all manner of material things, then with dark-haired infant girls that could very well have been her own daughter. She refused, and the ivory attendants, persistent to fault, dropped them on their heads with wet cracks and went to find something she desired even greater. Christopher's voice called softly behind her, thought it only served to remind her of her loss and fortify her resolve. He brushed her shoulders, nuzzled her hair, but still she did not yield.
- The vicar leaped up and embraced the Prophet, but in quiet murmurs warned her not to turn around, for the Archduke Beelzebub had arrived and now sought a prize of Diana, and Isabella's own power for himself. In a brash act, he threw the Prophet into Diana's arms and begged them to run, while he occupied the Archduke. He was not more than a trifle to the slippery, slug-and-fly-like being, too terrible to behold, but his sacrifice did allow the girls a head start.
- Renato slapped Diana hard in the face, waking her from the dream world, and together they watched through Astraea as Isabella tried saving as many of the jarred and waking Slothites as she could, terrified they might wait to long, but knowing she had a job to do.
- Yet the wrath and jealousy of the Unseen was that he slew many of the Slothites within reach out of spite, then pursued the Prophet with hungry, if playful, intensity. Only the speed of a grown Minka allowed Isabella to keep just out of his reach. She wept as she fled, willing the others to safety, and her bloody tears became ribbons on which the faithful clung desperately.
- Isabella did eventually wake, taking with her some 32 of 99 Slothites, cursing herself. Yet the survivors were nothing but grateful, and praised her for acting when she did.
- It is now the Dark Three's fear that the Archdukes have betrayed Hecate and aligned with Asmodeus, giving claim to his title Lord of the Nine (or at least the Seven). It could be there is a portal to Hell in each chapel, and that in closing it the fiends' influences are lessened in the temple proper.
Experience: 3000 (118,881 total)
Worldly Resources
Isabella has taken command of the destitute Chapel of Sloth, and what survives of its faithful disciples, a small, but extremely loyal, cadre of 32 Slothites, numbering priests, blackguards, wizards and monks. The Slothite coffers contain 10,000 gp, a pittance compared to other sects.
Personal Resources
treasure: Scissione, Pigrizia di Coppia
Scissione (Incisive Dagger, level 19 Uncommon), or 'Split' in Infernal: This narrow, steely Misericorde is about the sharpest dagger you've ever seen, fashioned simply, without luxury of gems, pommel or even a proper grip, simply a lethal and naked blade. So sharp, in fact, it can cut through the very fabric of space and time. Even when swinging it, faint, spectral threads, the stuff which holds our existence together, seems to snap and fray in the passing air.
It is said this dagger once belonged to the angelic lover of fallen Beelzebub, Baftis, looking to infiltrate the Slow Doom and redeem cursed Beelzebub against the will of the Choir. That... did not go well, yet the dagger has managed to survive the sinking oblivion of the mires, passing hands amidst Ivory Attendants and other Slothi fiends.
Pigrizia di Coppia (Moonlight Lavaliere, level 23 Uncommon), or 'Sloth's Torque' in Infernal: Taken from the tarnished marble elephant's neck in the main baths, this heavy collar of marble beads like yawning faces and highly-detailed gold plates like dreaming thoughts, studded with grape-sized diamonds, and bordered by pea-sized black jet, is a burdensome mantle, looking nearly like a dangling breastplate, but provides the mighty enchantment of apathy. No matter what neck item this enchantment is transferred to, it will become burdensome.
This was the mantle of a former Beast of the Seventh, the massive, marble elephant known as Tantrun, trapped between the world of mortals, the dreamy fumes of upper Cocytus, and swampy reality of lower Cocytus. For centuries he was the reigning guard dog of the Seventh, until an even fiercer creature took his place.
coin: 4,000 gp from the treacherous Ivory Attendants
loot: Vicar's portrait of the Dark Three (masterwork quality; worth 500gp)
New NPCs
Vicar of Sloth (dead): In the real world, a failed and frustrated artist, but in the dreamy fumes of Cocytus, an artistic genius and leader of the inspired revelers. He died protecting the Prophet, who woke him from his self-delusion.
Archduke Beelzebub: Lord of the Flies, Archduke of the Seventh, the Unseen; Beelzebub is a fiend so malodorous of person that to look upon him would wreak unimaginable damage upon a mortal psyche. He rules the Slow Doom, Cocytus, a bubbling, bleak morass of sin and depravity, whose fumes drift upward like dreams for revelers' souls to foolishly drift, many often thinking them Heaven. He is a clear traitor to Hecate, made quite apparent when he attempted to devour her prophet.
Next Session
106b: Having rescued who they could from the grip of the Unseen, the party regroups during their night-long retaking of the Church of Delights.
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