The Dance Floor Battle continues!
There are eight lemures left, four something-elses left, and the demon in the center is irresistibly dancing. Our centaur fires off a bunch of arrows and takes out three of the lemures, then poses; unfortunately, there’s nobody close enough to really be looking at him.
The demons close ranks and continue advancing on Chuck, shoving the dancing demon along with them. They’re in more of a hurry now, shoving people aside and ripping them up, but the crowd doesn’t seem to find this terribly unusual. Possum calls another bolt of lightning, and zaps the dancing demon just as he’s unbuckling his belt.
Olen notices that the servants are nowhere to be seen, and it is impossible for him to get a drink now. He fires off Glitterdust, and the lemures are all blinded and glowing. Adonis the centaur takes out more lemures. The two remaining lemures, blind, continue advancing, still flailing ahead of them. The other demons follow. The four central demons hoist the dancing demon onto the stage. It’s a bone devil, by the way. They follow him onto the stage.
So Adonis and Possum are at the back of the room, Olen is next to the DJ booth, and the demons are now on the stage. Possum throws more lightning, using her coin to reroll the resistance check. (Coins offer 1 reroll, one +1d4, one open door to the whorehouse, and one fifty-fifty winner-take-all result per session.) The central demon takes the hit, and sparks burst all around him. He is looking rather less sexy.
Olen studies the demons and decides that they’re willing to die to get that central demon on stage. Olen shouts at them, attempting to intimidating them into stopping. His shouting and waving fails to faze them, but does get the attention of Balaam, who’s over in the wings offstage. He turns around and puts his hand to his ear. Olen’s work here is done.
Adonis gallops forward, trying to weave between the attendees, He misses some of them, then leaps over the rest of the crowd and attack the dancing demon. It inconveniently fails to die. Fortunately, Olen called the help. Balaam bolts out: “Look out! He’s got a thing!” Balaam leaps on and rips him in half; the thing drops something and Balaam throws himself on top of it. A burst of sunlight is faintly visible from underneath him.
The lemures are still causing trouble, and Adonis takes them both out, then stops to mug. The baarbezu are climbing the stage and thus vulnerable; they get hit with the spiked chain as well. They finish climbing up and drawing weapons. Possum calls more lightning. Olen takes to the air, and attacks one of the baarbezu – and misses. They slice at him with their glaives as he flies in. Three of them miss, and the other takes out one of his mirror images.
Adonis smites one of the baarbezu, taking it down to the edge of collapse. Balaam attacks, but misses completely. The Barbezu attack, two of them going after Olen. One of them hits him, and the other takes out another mirror image. He takes some damage and acquires an infernal wound. The other two attack Adonis, who suffers similarly. Possum calls another lightning bolt but fails to get through; Olen stabs and misses.
Adonis finishes the one he wounded, and the smites the other, which is badly damaged. Balaam attacks, and hits the one that hadn’t yet been damaged; he does a number on it. A baarbezu attacks Olen and loses his footing and falls right off the stage, right next to Adonis, who wraps it in spiked chain without missing a beat… and rips it to bits before it hits the ground. The remaining baarbezu hits Adonis for a bit of damage and another wound. Possum tries more lightning, and fails to connect.
Olen disengages and flies back. Adonis slams the last baarbezu with his chain, then leaps up and smites him. Adonis: “Are you not entertained???” The crowd erupts in appreciation of the show we’ve just put on.
Adonis uses Lay on Hands to heal himself; he’s concerned that we didn’t all end up in the arena. Possum thinks it’s really odd that these things would have had a Daylight weapon in here. Olen notices that Chuck is really focused on his set.
As Adonis leaps out to the dancefloor, the imps flow out of the kitchen to reserve their service. Possum notices that a lot of people around Adonis are licking their lips. However, Chuck had assured us that no vampire will drink from us here; he keeps dancing. Olen flaps down and hands Balaam a shiny gold piece for his good work.
Balaam says, “What was this? What happened?”
Olen: “I think they tried to murder your boss.” Balaam goes over to Chuck and tries to get his attention, fails, and then cries: “That isn’t even his equipment! Where’s Chuck?” The DJ booth is overflowing in magic, as Olen turns on Detect Magic; Balaam picks him up and shakes him, and he finally snaps out of it.
Chuck: “What the fucking fuck was that.” He points to each of us. “You. You. You. My table! Now!”
Adonis: “Sorry, I’ve got to go to the big table.” The vampires are suddenly merely lascivious, rather than lusting after his blood.
Chuck: “No guests!”
We head over while Adonis tells the girls where our room is. The rooms behind the stage are for Very Important Demons; the room to the left of center holds a single vampire with long dark hair, with noble garb. He’s accompanied by four blonde women, also vampires. To the right of Chuck, Adonis spots a private area with two figures in it: one winged, and another with two heads and spiked tendrils for its four arms; they’re busily conversing.
We get back to Chuck’s HIV room (Highly Important Vampire) and admits that he blacked out when he touched the DJ booth. Mistress Eden cinches Adonis’ mouth closed, and we discuss what just happened. Chuck is pissed. He tells Balaam to move to high security. Mistress Eden treats Balaam to a bit of whip-based domination, in that demeaning way that only a pixie can dom a pit fiend.
“Listen, there’s a bunch of very important people, very powerful people. At this point, I don’t know who I can trust.” Olen tries to convince him to drop his stake in whatever this is and invest in his company instead; Chuck says the Sin Thread will give him access to the Multiverse. If this goes through, Chuck will get to control access to Polvos and from Polvos to anywhere else. It’s a conglomerate. Apparently he’s been politicking it up for the last few years; he wants to get “out there”. If he does, Chuck’s going to be a much bigger name.
Mistress Eden: “We’d love to help you. Assume you’d help us in return?”
Chuck. “Yes. But this soft launch: if it goes poorly, the consortium collapses and they drop the connection. This has to work.” He sends us out to find out what’s going on. We bargain a bit, and then head out. Adonis wants a rigged fight against Balaam in the arena, Olen wants more money and a contract to provide Chuck with spelljammers. Possum just wants to be in charge of the sewers.
Does Chuck know of any enemies? Well, a couple. “The frost giant in charge of the Windy-go casino, Aveshthu, is the only one who’s been getting on Chuck’s business. It’s kind of apparent that Chuck doesn’t really understand why anybody would dislike him.
What did the imps say? Well, they think this whole Sin Thread thing is just going to be more work with no more benefits. Olen thinks that this is typical worker bullshit; they always complain and they never want to work.
Chuck asks if we know anything about how the devils work. We know a little about devils; we narrow it down to a handful of very powerful demons and devils who could have summoned that group, plus a few mid-range ones. A lot of the baatezu are able to summon that exact group. Chuck insists that it can’t be Balaam, but maybe one of the pit fiends at the Abs of Steel show, as could pretty much any arch-devil. Could be a guest of a guest, too.
Chuck drops our concealment, and everything around us starts to move again. The most like suspects are the folks in the booths behind him.
Adonis decides to start with black-haired vampire, looks him over and says, “If you’re going to enter my realm while covered in blood, you should come closer. Do please, enter freely. He draws in Adonis and his entire entourage. “To what do I owe the pleasure of friends of Chuck; he is quite an amusing man. These women, they are gifts from Chuck?”
Adonis explains about how they’re priestesses of a sex cult, Olen tries to sell him on investing, and the conversation turns to Chuck. Strahd is… unimpressed. Chuck doesn’t even approach his power; he’s only here because this is a nexus point and he can find new Minas. He thinks it would be funny to watch Chuck fuck up, so long as it doesn’t destroy the nexus.
Adonis petitions his help.
Strahd agrees to grant us one boon, since we stopped the sun bomb. It would have been uncomfortable for him. There are only two people present who are capable of doing that. Both left right before the blood rave started. Olen: “Who?”
“The Wendigo, and then there was also Prosephorine, but he and Chuck have special arrangements. Prosephorine is a devil.” He would gladly tell us where they are, in exchange for Adonis’ entourage.”
He agrees to keep them only for a single night, with the reassurance that they will spread word of him to future lovers. “It will be hard to meet with the Wendigo; he does not see just anybody.”
Prosephorine, on the other hand, is a fan of the Abs of Steel show and attends every single showing of Z in their own private box – the Cirque du So Lame show. We bid farewell to the priestesses, and depart.
We head to the next box, with the winged figure and the tentacled thing. They’re speaking in Abyssal as we approach: “--the fool.” Then they cut off abruptly. Adonis attempts to introduce himself in Common, then in Sylvan. They are Pazuzu (presents male) and Demogorgon (presents hentai). Pazuzu introduces itself: “You may have heard of me. Giver of temptations, Sprayer of Chaos. I am the dark angel of the four winds and the prince of the lower aerial kingdoms… and guest, to Chuck. This is Demogorgon, the Prince of Demons and quite a beautiful creation if I do say so myself.”
Olen knows a bit about both of them. Pazuzu runs the six wings of Pazrael, six Baalors in command of thousands of Vrocks in their battalions. He’s a duke of the nine hells. Demogorgon was a creation of some of the most powerful folks in the abyss. He was created by two of the greater lords of the Abyss, as a foil for Orcus. He is now the keeper of the Great Maw in the Abyss.
Olen mentions how honored they are; Pazuzu thinks our concern for the Sin Thread is cute. But we were brave. Demogorgon punches into Adonis’ brain: DO YOU WANT TO KNOW THE INFINITE MAW? Adonis abruptly realizes that nothing good will come of attempting to make this into a threesome. Mistress Eden calls him away. Do they have any idea what mmight have led to that crass display earlier? Well, demons and devils are very competitive, the fool Chuck is an easy mark.
Do they know who summoned those devils? Pazuzu might, but we have nothing that would possibly entice him. They, however, had nothing to do with; they remained wholeheartedly neutral and we get the literal Hell out of there.
Mistress Eden: “What if… we went and questioned some people who aren’t gods?”
We decide to check out the other, lesser VIP areas. We start working the rooms, checking up on people after that crass display. Up here there’s a lot of hobnobbing, and the closer we get to Chuck the more important the people get. Everyone here has an angle. We’re getting to lower devils and other denizens of the multiverse. A really soft chameleon-skinned woman takes an interest in Adonis. She’s not like a succubus, she’s more motherly; and she lets slip that Chuck had a tryst and it didn’t work out. You know, when you start making deals and you open yourself up to… commitments.
Presephorine – they – are very sweet. Another woman, this one leans in: “I heard the Presephoine works directly for Mephistopheles, and this whole thing might be an experiment. Chuck’s fling wasn’t with her, but with someone very important from the outer world.”
Adonis takes the two women off with him for a night of carnal gymnastics. Possum heads into the kitchen to see what she can get from the imps. Olen stays out to see what he can learn about Mephistopheles from the guests.
The cat-woman and the bird woman are relatively impressed with Adonis, and he’s completely drawn in. All things considered, it’s a pretty normal sexual encounter. Jensen is pleased. In the afterglow, she admits – and he did not hear it from her – that Chuck had a relationship with the one and only Fierna. She’s the princess of the Nine Hells, servant of Asmodeus. Adonis actively jealous. Chuck dated the daughter of Belial. Thing is, she picks her mates. Chuck thought it was more than it was.
There are a lot of folks talking about how important the Sin Thread is, and the importance of Sol Povos since it’s had a Vecna here.
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