Holy City Down

Seeking a Helm within Elturel's crypts leads to a city under siege and a trip to Avernus is finally taken. What fresh hell is this?

Within a moment of internal conflict, Maximus did not strike Gideon Lightward with his weapon. Although Maximus had dreamed of taking out one of the betrayers of Elturel. Something else had kept him from doing so.

The party then witnessed another adventurer join them from the steps descending to below. Gromak Shadowblade revealed himself in epic fashion by riding in upon a giant scorpion before removing its head and surfing its entrails down to the floor before the party. He seemed straight as an arrow, expressing his interest in treasure and a bit of demon hunting.

As the party descended Maximus made a poor attempt to sneak away from the party, entering a side chapel. There they witnessed him kneel and say a prayer before an altar, before a golden glowing mace presented itself on a pedestal before him. He reached out and took the mace which then triggered a change in both half of the mace and Maximus himself. His armor turned to rust and fell off before revealing new ebony armor beneath it. Horns protruded from his forehead and his skin seemed to gain a dusty covering as if he has been left in a sandstorm. It seems a pact had been struck…although Maximus stubbornly refused to give any more details into the matter.

Ignoring the internal strife within the party, they all went below into the chapel basement in pursuit of the Helm of Torm’s Sight. Little still known about this helm, Ulder Ravenguard had come seeking it with the intention of some way to liberate Elturel from its current fiery predicament. With Chepi words abouts Ulder suffering some sort of possession once he had dawned the helm, the party needed to find Ulder and assist him to get more answers.

The troupe scouted through the dark, crypt filled tunnels below where they eventually made their way towards the portal room led by Chepi. For a moment Rylorr went of course and witnessed just how twisted some of Elturel’s holy traps had been since entering the first realm of Hell. The portal room itself was shared within story by Chepi and several plaques below was that it used to be a way of communication and contact with Celestia itself. Hence why Elturel had been referred to as the Holy City. They literally had a portal to the Heavens…before it had been corrupted into something else…and to somewhere else…

Upon entering the portal room, the party found Ulder Ravenguard suffering alone with a beautiful golden white helmed dawn upon his head. He stood amongst a dozen bodies of the previous crew that Ulder Ravenguard had arrived with. Ulder was speaking in gibberish between celestial and abyssal, the helm was unremovable and Chepi highly recommended getting him back to Father Vaughn Jo Vi who might have a better chance dealing with this advanced form of possession that seemed to be gripping the de facto leader of Baldur’s Gate.

With one last attempt on Waldren’s part to telekinetically remove the helm, the party spotted a large demonic monstrosity that bore a superficial resemblance to a toad in humanoid form, with long clawed arms and hands instead of forelegs come crawling out of the warped portal. The party took a few licks from the Hezrou as well as several Dyybuk’s that had taken over the corpses of a few fallen soldiers, Waldren took a tough spill into the copper sludge filled pool, but ultimately were able to fell the demons, even in their exhausted states of being running amongst Elturel for the last 24+ hours.

Regrouping and doling out some healing, the party planned to get back to the High Cathedral as fast as possible. Avoiding Gideon and his undead minions above with Ravenguard in tow seemed like the smart move & luckily Kyler located an alternative exit and secret door to the portal room here below. Exiting the structure, the undead outside continued to ignore the party…for whatever reasons that were slowly becoming clearer to some of the adventurers.

Arriving back at the High Cathedral, after a brief encounter with a bout of Hellfire (RIP Rylorr’s eyelashes), the party finally reached their destination only to find two dozen troops moving out of a well protected golden shield around the area. Father Vaughn Jo Vi had turned the grounds into a sanctuary once more to protects those that remained. These troops on the move however were making one last venture to the Eastern part of the city to rescue those that were still locked into a clash with demons that had been mounting an assault on the eastern side of the city. Dowell Harpell, Dessel Darrington and Shaewin Riverleaf were said to have been leading that expedition in search of more locals and more guests of the wedding that they had all been in attendance when the city sunk.

The crew decided it best to have Chepi get Ulder Ravenguard to Vaughn Jo Vi, but the urgency of the situation on the eastern front called for their immediate attention. They began to follow the troops towards the conflict at the bridges of Torm.

Along the way Maximus and Raven took a brief stop at his family’s doorway, calling out to see if any of his family members had made it home…. silence greeted them, along with one of his children’s stuffed tigers. Maximus picked up and gripped the stuffed animal in his dark gauntleted hand…he was doing this for them he continued to internally tell himself.

Arriving at the hill above the bridges, the group witnessed the chaos ahead that was had become visible beneath the blood-red sky over Elturel. A chorus of screams and roars echoed from both bridges to the North and South, carried by the hellish winds that swept over the city. Dark clouds swirled above, occasionally split by a lance of crimson lightning that crackled from the companion.

From their vantage point, they could make out the bridges spanning the glowing, molten chasm that has opened below the city. On the eastern side, the demonic onslaught seemed relentless. Hundreds of twisted figures surged forward—skittering and writhing entities scurrying before hulking brutes covered in flames— that were clashing against the dwindling forces trying to hold the lines. The sight of massive claws tearing through flesh and armor in the distance filled the air with the metallic scent of blood and the stench of sulfur. The party could make out the form of Dowell Harpell a few hundred feet away, leading the Northern bridge troops towards several runes that would be able to collapse the bridge as a last result and stop the demon’s advance. On the South bridge, it was harder to make out figures in the distance, but the comradery of several group members lured them to the bridge farther away.

Kyler slowed for a moment to request an update from Dowell, the words they got back bid them to the other bridge to help turn the tide and get more help for his son, Dizzy, who was battling there. As the party turned and began to surge along the gaps edge, a sudden flash of radiant light from the Northern bridge occurred. In an instant, the runes carved into the stone railing of the North bridge ignited with brilliant, divine fire.

The entire structure trembled as the runes flared, and with a deafening roar, flames burst across the length of the bridge as the stone beneath shattered and cracked. The remaining fighters along with a large portion of the demonic horde got caught in the blast as screams echoed across the chasm and hundreds of mortals & demons fell to their fates. The bridge crumbled into the river styx far below, leaving nothing but a fiery ruin that sealed off any hope of crossing that way again.

The party surged forward toward the South bridge now. Spotting a Harengon and Halfling warrior back-to-back slinging bolts and holy spells at every demon in their sights. The party employed a whole array of talents as they inspired the troops here with tactics, song & battle prowess. The party’s actions gave the troops remaining just enough time to ignite the runes and get the bridge primed for the same fate they had just witness on the North bridge.

Being forced to hold back the demon hordes, the party found themselves on the bridge still…as it ignited and began to crumble into Avernus below. Remses, Rylorr, Kyler, Dizzy & Shaewin found themselves safe by the skin of the teeth on the western bank of the western half of the city…as they watched the eastern half falter and hang lazily away from the now safer citizens of Elturel. They also witnessed their friends and colleagues fall, hundreds of feet down to the dusty red surface below. The Hidden Lord spoke out to Waldren…impressed with his boldness and promising salvation as flames licked the faces of most of his party members around him. Loved ones, fleeting moments of recognition through psychic connections & familiar faces flashed across each of the party members minds as they fell and fell before colliding with the ground below…

In the moments between life and death, the party members that had fallen witnessed these beastly metallic vehicles coast up alongside many of the bodies that had fallen with the explosions that had enraptured Avernus as a whole. A hag and a monstrous looking humanoid at the hags side along with several other entities began to scoop up the unconscious party members as they were stabilized and collected into the nearby vehicles. The party members that had survived quickly made their way to the surface to check on their allies and conversed briefly with Mad Maggie (the hag leading the crew on the ground). It seems that they were allied with the party for the time being and had instructions to take them all to Fort Knucklebone for safety. Lulu confirmed that Fort Knucklebone would certainly be a good place to get to…she had recalled more of her memory and the party’s future certainly lay at the fort for the time being.

Just as the party began to load up and feel the rumble of the iron machines that begun to tear across the surface of Avernus beneath them…Kyler spotted her Aunt Gemini. They took to each others embrace as the destruction left behind them by a still hot war zone slid safely off into the distance. Felix had caught some sort of sight as he had been falling, his mind raced…he knew what he had felt, he had seen Sintia, she was out there somewhere in Avernus. The clatter of war awoke Maximus briefly as well, whose eye’s stirred and opened enough…just to catch the sight of Grace & Eli hovering over his body, tears in their eyes as they dropped forward, clutching their papa in their embrace.

With these infernal war machines ferrying the party across the first plane of Hell, these adventurers found themselves in the thick of the blood war now…trekking across the surface of an alien plane…in the hopes of finding the next clue towards liberating Elturel and getting back to the Prime Material Plane in one piece and hopefully with their souls intact…