The Demonological Paradox
I didn’t read the letter on the quest board. Sue me. Wesley explained that we received a letter from Faelan. He runs a vineyard in Yeluma. He wants the adventurer’s guild to come quickly.
Introductions happened. Gary the ape alpha, or whatever, said he’s speaking to Ko’bal through his hat. I didn’t hear a thing when I put on his tinfoil hat. He did his normal handing our hair thing. I got comfortable with a little drink and smoke. Bram introduced Mimic and said, “We fight stuff and try to keep it from hitting you.” Gary pointed out he was the omega, what ever that means. Dartan was all like, “All you need to know about me is my name.” I laughed and called him EspressoDepresso. Thanks for that moniker, Blathnat. A doofy looking dude named Quercus and said, “My mom kicked me out, so I had to find a job.”
I wasn’t paying much attention to the scenery on the trip as I was focused on scribing a scroll. First class is like super comfy though.
Caran Gaelack, the owners son, picked us up at the train station. He told us recently their neighbor’s pets are going missing. Also, a couple dudes Gayland, Toby, Bob, and his brother Rob, and their other brother Alan. Also, Chris the stable hand. They were all kind of idiots.
The Yeluma papers have reported people doing magic and just dying. One dude casted chill touch. Dead. One of the guys casted like astral projection and like died. This reached the papers a week ago, but who knows how long it’s been going on?
Caren’s dad was really worried with the guild stayed in Yeluma during the great pirate war which happened an undisclosed number of years ago.
Our host gave us all a bottle of spice wine. He introduced his daughter Elrin and his wife Elris. Their middle child is at Springreach University. It’s Blathnat!
He explained that he thought something quite sinister was going on. He’s heard through the rumor mill that people have been going into the woods and conversing with unsavory creatures out there. When they return, they act very different. Chris went in with a horse and neither came back. He believes the creature are fey. They don’t usually go into the woods unless it’s under the full moon for totally different reasons. They’ve noticed some masked figures around a house in the city. Which isn’t necessarily the weirdest thing as they use masks for all kinds of things, but these ones stood out. In the woods we should go past the standing stones.
We found effigies made of small bones. The largest was likely a dog, but mostly cats. The bone ears clued us in. Dartan knew this was for sure done for an evil deity.
Gary kept calling Dartan and Quercus betas and subjects. Quercus seemed to embrace it.
Gary pretended to be a druid and realized that the alter in the center of the clearing was an ancient druidic site for sacrifices to the first druidic circle.
We continued deeper into the woods and found a series of nightmares. Not the horses, like the bad dream, although there was a horse. Kinda. A few “horses” were just a human whose skin was stretched over the horse itself. There was also a human centipede. I truly wish I didn’t know what that was.
A centipede hag said, “Are cadavers really people still?” She invited us to her home to discuss it. Nah. Well ok, but with misgivings. There were three of them. Damn it.
The hags seemed to know a lot about us. A creepy amount. I asked why and they claimed they know a great deal of a lot of things. They refused to clarify how. They wanted to keep some secrets.
They explained the cadavers came to them because they sought their son. She assumed we came here to make a deal with him. People want power, but don’t like the cost that it takes. Sometimes when they use the power they’ve been given, they can’t handle it and they croak. The bodies are brought back here and... disfigured. Bob Rob and Alan were triplets the same person to begin with. Turning them into a human centipede seems even more twisted now.
The hags blamed their icky skin on the fact that no one brings them Retinal. Vitamin A is wonderful for your skin apparently. I don’t think any cream is going to fix the horror that was their faces. They should have started a skin care routine centuries ago.
One of the hags put on tea. When it was offered to us, she explained the ingredients: 3 lunar moth wing, 4 wings from a dragon fly, the corn in your teeth you can’t get out (and the teeth with it), toe jam, a hint of jasmine, all wrapped in a cocoon of black widow silk. She recommended sweetening it with raw sugar, not refined, to be classy.
Dartan, pointed out that is in fact the hags fault they’re all dead. They said people only received what they asked of their delightful son they birthed and grew so fast. God damn, can you imagine that process? Better yet, don’t.
The son finds wayward souls who are troubled, upset, want to make a change, bring someone back, prove themselves, yada yada. They come into the woods looking for someone to provide that to them. The hags only provide information how to meet their son so they can watch him grow just like any mother would.
He doesn’t have a name. We’d have to find the book of names if we truly wanted to figure that out. “Isn’t son his name then,” someone asked. No, that’s a title. His other title Demegoth. A Demegoth is a type of demon that feeds on pain and sorrow and is able to provide deals with people for what you would equate from a cantrip to a 7th level necro spell for a blood price.
They told us the secret to summoning him: build a bone effigy using a pet you sacrificed near the alter and he’ll come.
I maybe sort of threatened them and they polymorphed Gary and I into chickens. Bram agreed to leave, but not by walking the way she suggested. We all wiggled out in one manner or another.
We went to town to get a chicken, sacrificed it, and then built an effigy. The Demegoth arrived. I started thinking about tamales. I told him that parents don’t allow stupid children to make bad choices and we should defend people from it. EspressoDepresso started talking about making deals. I said he needed a spanking, and not in a sexy way. I went back to thinking about tamales. Bram got bored and punched it. After we whooped its ass for a while it destroyed the effigy and disappeared.
We went to the house of masked people. Asking questions got a door slammed in our face. When we broke in the woman cast fireball incinerating herself. I found a note that said, “Don’t come in pairs. Enter and leave at separate times. Maintain the illusion of farmstead. Bring pets keep them in the cellar.” We returned all of the cellar pets and made 200 gold each. Dartan tried to sell all the branded sheep from the farm that apparently had belonged to Rob, Bob, and Alan. Since that wasn’t successful, he released all of the ewes and kept the ram as his slave. I think it was a sex thing.
We told Blathnat’s parents about everything we discovered, and that we would need to return another day to address the hags. They gave us each 50 gold and a promise to pay the next crew’s train travel.
Gary handed Bram the tinfoil hat. I’m not sure if he was pretending to hear Ko’bal or not, but Bram did say he was being instructed to punch Gary. Hard.
Tamales are really good.
