After spending the night at the city’s temple to Iomedae, I returned to the docks to wait once more. Today, the Ninth Circle did arrive. The High Inquisitor of Asmodeus walked off, asked me what I was doing there, then rudely left in the middle of my explanation. Truly, this place’s corruption is a blight on the world just short of that of the Worldwound, and as soon as we crusaders are done with the demons we will come here to take care of the devils and Hellknights.
Following him off the ship was Arueshalae herself, accompanied by another Hellknight. I walked up to her and greeted her: “It’s good to see you again, your highness.” It seems, however, that for reasons I do not understand, she had neglected to tell her traveling companions about her engagement to Queen Galfrey. Consequently, they have not been treating her with the respect she is due; in the future I will attempt to get them to address her properly. Once we explained things to them, she introduced us to each other. I met Fay, an aasimar cleric of Shelyn decorated with many colorful feathers, and Saggaroth “the Thunderer” - I think he may have been an elf, but I’m not positive. He was covered in many tattoos that seemed to be of an arcane nature, and was very blunt of speech - to our chagrin, as he seemed overly eager to criticize Cheliax. In addition, there was a half-orc named Felix who was apparently a cook of some kind.
Once we got that out of the way, and Arueshalae explained their mission to me, we were escorted by that Hellknight, Vincent, to their outpost where we were to be staying for the duration of our stay. We discussed the investigation and decided to head immediately back to the docks to question the harbormaster to find out about the ship that brought the plague from Absalom. To our surprise, the ship was not only Chelish, but belonged to the very important Admiral Thrune. We decided that we needed to question her, but to do that we needed permits to enter her building.
So we went back to the outpost and asked Vincent about it, and he said he could get us permits by the next day. Then it was time for dinner, and there was a quite embarrassing incident involving Felix and the halfling slaves that I have not the heart or patience to describe here.
The next morning, we were given our permits and went to the port building to find the Admiral. After being let into the building, we found Admiral Thrune’s office which was very well-kept and well-decorated. Thrune turned out to be neither pleasant nor all that helpful, though we did find out that she was indeed carrying cargo from Absalom at the time, which she got from a man named Vill. We also found out that High Inquisitor Pesh was her personal bodyguard. She told us that he had been sent to capture a unique chimera a couple miles down the coast, so we thought it best to go question him outside the city limits.
It wasn’t long before we ran into Pesh’s caravan, with the chimera in a cage being transported back for study. Pesh was surprisingly helpful for an inquisitor of House Thrune; he sent his men away so that he could speak with us freely. He admitted that on the way back from the Absalom mission six weeks ago, Admiral Thrune seemed somewhat different. Because of Arueshalae’s party’s experience with shadow demons, and because they knew that this Vill character had been involved with the cult of Baphomet, we theorized that one of them may have possessed Thrune in Absalom.
I formulated a plan to exorcise and destroy the demon from Thrune so that we could get some real answers from her. First, Arueshalae insisted on watching over the chimera to make sure the cults weren’t trying to do anything with it. I was reluctant to let her go alone, but she is quite capable and she insisted; I always find it hard to say no to her. I did make her promise to teleport straight to me if she got in any trouble. Then we decided that the best way to take care of Thrune would be simply to walk in and meet her in her office again, using our permits and social skills to talk our way through the building. Then Fay, the cleric of Shelyn, would use her divine magic to drive the demon out of Thrune’s body, and we would destroy it.
Our permits got us into the building, and we started making our way to her office. It appears, however, that she knew we were coming, for we soon encountered some guards that weren’t there before. They insisted we leave before drawing weapons on us, so Saggaroth used some of his magic to blast them with electricity. Rash, certainly, but effective, as it revealed the two guards to be illusions. When we tried making our way through the rest of the passageway we were ambushed by several demons that had remained invisible. Seeing that invidiak were involved, Saggaroth lit up his sword with daylight, driving them away. I’m starting to respect that strange elf, if not exactly like him.
The next room held even more demonic servants; the demon controlling Thrune had prepared for us. Two half-fiend minotaurs in armor and a hellish apocalypse locust awaited us. We made short work of the minotaurs, of course, and the locust teleported away. Another room in this area held the six-week-old corpses of numerous Hellknights; this was getting ominous. In the next room we once again encountered the apocalypse locust. Unfortunately, it used illusion magic to trick me into letting my guard down, and it hit me from behind and knocked me out, so I did not get to participate in that battle. Fortunately, it seems the other three were more than a match for the creature.
Finally we reached Thrune’s office. She greeted us thusly: “Lay down your weapons, we wouldn’t want this fleshbag to get hurt,” confirming our suspicions of demonic possession. Fortunately, we planned for this, and Fay cast her spell. The invidiak was driven out of Thrune’s body, and the Admiral fell to the ground unconscious. This invidiak, however, was tougher than the others and seemed to possess the same strange power that Arueshalae and I do. Like a coward, it used magical trickery to possess each of us in turn, trying to turn us against each other, but Fay’s magic protected us from the worst of it. Still, both Fay and Saggaroth fell in that battle, leaving just me and Felix.
Felix’s unarmed attacks were proving ineffective against the incorporeal demon, so the invidiak focused just on me. It tried using its silver tongue to talk me into surrender for the sake of my teammates, but it didn’t count on me being a Paladin of Iomedae; surrender is not an option for us. However, it said something else that troubles me still - it said that her allies had captured Arueshalae and that she would be spared if I gave up. I still hope with all my heart that it was lying, but I will have to investigate immediately.
I successfully held off the invidiak until Felix was able to revive Saggaroth, who weakened it with a great blast of fire allowing me to finish it off. As I write this, we are taking a moment after the battle to search the invidiak’s body for useful items and patch up our wounds before we see to Admiral Thrune and figure out what’s really going on here. If it is true that they have Arueshalae captive, I swear on my sword that all the legions of the Abyss will not stop me from saving her.
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