Session date: Monday, May 8, 2017
Game date: Saturday, September 6, 209
PCs:
Gulleck Stonefoot, Dwarf 4, hp 23, xp 14394/17000
Caryatid, Magic-user 4, hp 19, xp 16145/20000
Simon Sackwell, Halfling 3, hp 11, xp 4939/8000
Adrien, Fighter 3, hp 9, xp 4269/8000
Retainers:
Manley "Meat" Smythe, Fighter 3, hp 17, xp 5093/8000
Brother Chase Pike, Cleric 2, hp 11, xp 2225/3000
Kevon, Fighter 1, hp 5, xp 167/2000
Debbi, Magic-user 1, hp 6, xp 350/2500
It was two weeks later when the adventurers reunited to mop up some loose ends at Caryatid the Green's apartment in the dungeon. As far as they knew, there was still a demon down there, bound to an arcane summoning circle. Kevon was back again, so Simon let Orin go on his way and reunited with his original retainer. Debbi was still off somewhere, so Adrien again decided to adventure without a retainer. Over the course of the two weeks, Gulleck spent some time securing their recently purchased house in The Steps. He barred shut the magical wardrobe on the top floor that was somehow linked to an identical wardrobe in the dungeon, lest something wander into the city through the wardrobe.
The party visited Professor Zinn in his rickety house at the very top of the Street of Steps. The professor was happy to see them as always (once they had paid his 500 silver shekel fee). He was shocked to hear that Caryatid the Green had summoned a demon, and confessed with some embarassment that he had been helping her with her research into arcane rituals. It was so nice to find a kindred spirit, interested in research for its own sake (or so he had believed). He wasn't able to give them specific information about the demon in question, but suspected that it was bound to the service of those who controlled it, able to bend reality and grant the most outlandish of wishes, the traditional number being three. Professor Zinn was very amused to hear of the goose. Green Caryatid had paid him for his research services with golden eggs, and it delighted him to think they had been laid by an actual goose. He could offer no suggestions on the nature of this goose however (which was now living in Caryatid's apartment).
Down in the dungeon, the adventurers headed to the apartment of the late Green Caryatid, intent on confronting and hopefully banishing the demon. On the way, they encountered two bugbears, who came sprinting towards them out of the darkness with alarming speed and silent, loping strides. The tall, gangly, and hairy goblins lunged for Gulleck as they approached, shrieking, "Die, enemies of the Goblin Prince!" in their eerily high, hooting voices. Caryatid spoke the words of the Web spell and ensnared one of the bugbears in a mess of sticky spiderwebs, while Gulleck and Adrien made swift work of the other one. Then they turned towards the one in the webs, and killed it as well, without even trying to parley. They burnt the body free of the web, and dragged the two bodies down the hall to a corner not far from the Goblin Prince's lair. Using a stick of chalk, Gulleck wrote "Beware the King of Shadows" on the wall above the two bloodied corpses, and then they continued on to Green Caryatid's apartment.
The door was still wizard locked as they had left it, and seemed undisturbed. Caryatid opened it easily, and they looked in upon a grotesque sight. Green Caryatid's remains were still on the floor, but little was left but her skeleton and some scraps of robes. It appears that over the two weeks her body had been skeletonized by the swarm of beetles and other insects that covered most of the floor of this room, their carapaces glinting in the flickering of the magical heatless fire below the mantel.
Gulleck and Simon decided to run through the scuttling swarm to the threshold of the summoning room. The insects bit at their feet and ankles as they passed, but did little damage and did not seem overly aggressive towards the PCs. Simon wanted to explore the laboratory in the back of the apartment, and used his recently acquired levitation boots to float a foot above the ground, and then pulled himself along the wall to the other doorway. In the laboratory he discovered a number of interesting books, including a thick tome detailing methods of summoning and binding beings from "elsewhere", and another old book that seemed to be a treatise on human anatomy and how a "superman" could be assembled by using the best parts of several bodies and then imbuing them with the spark of life somehow. All these books were very technical and absurdly over the head of Simon, but the gist of what Caryatid had been up to was clear enough. Simon also found an empty metal box about a foot square. When he later described this box to Gulleck and Caryatid they went pale, for it sounded exactly like the box that Gulleck had bought to lock up the dreadful Beating Heart after they had destroyed it. The box (and the Heart) had gone missing one day shortly before they left on their sea voyage, and at the time they had suspected Green Caryatid of stealing it. Now it seemed their suspicions were confirmed.
And then, with some trepidation, they entered the summoning room. It was the same as when they had last seen it: a large circle was inlaid on the floor in brass, and across the room from it was a similar triangle inlay. Cold braziers stood at the points of the triangle and the four cardinal directions on the circle. Within the triangle was a hideous monstrosity, a grotesque shrimplike creature standing upright about five feet tall. Its bulbous eyes stared at them balefully as they entered the room. It grew agitated and began a fearful clacking and gnashing of its mandibles, gesticulating wildly with its clawed arms.
"So how do we communicate with this thing and tell it to go home?", mused Caryatid. She noticed that its flailing arms seemed to be motioning towards the brass circle inlaid on the floor. Anxious that this might be a terrible trap, she cautiously stepped across the brass line defining the circle. It felt as though she was crossing a tangible threshold into another space, and immediately the demon's horrible clacking and gnashing seemed to shift in her mind and become comprehensible speech.
"Free me from this prison, and I will grant you power beyond imagining," it hissed, in an unearthly gurgling, wheezing voice.
"Ah, I don't think that's gonna happen, sweetheart," said Caryatid brightly. Outside the circle, it a one-sided conversation as far as the rest of the party was concerned. All they heard was senseless gnashing and hissing. Eventually, Simon decided to join Caryatid within the circle, and the two of them engaged the demon in conversation.
The demon was very willing to speak, but kept returning to the topic of imploring them to free it. Caryatid and Simon interrogated it about its services to Green Caryatid. It told them that she had summoned and bound it to the triangle, and by the laws that govern such things it was required to grant three wishes to those who stood in the circle; only then would it be freed. Green Caryatid's first wish had been for an endless source of wealth, and the demon had provided her with a goose that could lay golden eggs. When Caryatid asked the demon where the goose came from, it told her that it had belonged to a giant who lived in a castle in the clouds. (Groans and laughter went around the table.) Green Carytid's second wish had been for the demon to imbue the spark of life upon a body she had assembled over several months. It was to be her bodyguard and servant, and the demon gave it life.
There was one wish left, but if used the demon would be fulfilled of its obligation and free to leave the confines of the binding triangle.
"Well, what will you do then?" asked Simon nervously.
"Feed..." hissed the demon hungrily.
"Like, feed us lunch?" asked Simon, but the demon only seemed to smirk, although it was hard to be sure about a giant prawn smirking.
The demon begged Simon and Caryatid to free it, to just scrape out some of the brass inlay in the floor and break the triangle that held it prisoner. If it was freed, it swore it would serve them loyally, and grant them power and wealth beyond their mortal imaginations.
This was a pretty funny conversation, actually. The players actually kept going back and forth on what to do. Everyone was sure the demon was untrustworthy and that it would tear them all to shreds the moment it was free, and that the thing to do was to use the last wish to send it away forever, but then just when everything seemed decided, Simon said, "Wait, maybe we should go ahead and set it free; we could be passing up a big opportunity here!"
"Yes! Set me free! You will be well rewarded!" gurgled the gruesome thing with undisguised eagerness.
But alas, in the end, saner heads prevailed. A wish was very carefully worded: "Go back to the place, or plane of existence, or wherever you came from when Green Caryatid summoned you here, and never come back again! And don't kill us all before leaving, either."
"So be it," snarled the demon. There was a clap of thunder, a bizarre warping of space that was only half visual, and a sudden whiff of the rotten egg stench of brimstone and then the thing was gone. The brass triangle stood empty.
The adventures returned to the Rusty Lantern, pleased that they had banished the hideous thing from the world, although perhaps Simon still wondered if there might have been a way to safely get an actual wish or two out of it before sending it away.
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