Giving the Devil his due

[Greenfield]

This is a sort of rant (if a mild one) and sort of a stream of consciousness thing. Not sure where it's going, or what kind of response I expect.

Some of you may be aware that our group is playing in a Grecco/Roman campaign. I think I've mentioned a deal a player made with a Devil. Long story short, one PC made a deal to save the life of a man tempted into trying to steal from the Devil. His mission was to recover the Dagger of Helios and give it to the Devil. Succeed, and debt is paid. Fail, and he owns the PC's soul. I'd come up with this as a simple dungeon crawl, a toss in plot hook for anyone who wanted to take a swing at it.

They recovered the dagger, but the thing blossomed into the major driving sub plot of the game. It was expected of me that I'd DM the final resolution to that, the payoff.

Well, the current DM is planning on bringing the story to a close, ending the campaign. That leaves the resolution to the deal hanging. Since the DM reached a break point 45 minutes or so before our normal quitting time, I suggested that I go ahead and run the epilogue scene.

This was to take place after the campaign ends, so it's a flash-forward in the time line. I walked around the table, player to player, saying that they'd had time and opportunity to make preparations for this encounter, and asking them if they had anything they wanted/needed to do, acquire or arrange. Some had preparations, many did not.

Then we began. They arrived at the magical Isle of Lesbos days ahead of time, so they could prepare. The Cleric spent a day casting Holy Ground around the Inn where they have to meet the Devil. He added a Dimensional Lock effect to it, so the Devil couldn't easily escape. They planned to kill him, rather than surrender either their friend's soul, or a holy Relic.

The party Wizard spent that same day scribing a huge protection circle, burying silver wire at the perimeter, mixing powdered iron into the soil as he coved it, then capping it with Wall of Stone as a thin layer on top, with the symbols inscribed separately in each layer. Yeah, I know, Circle of Protection is a 10 ft thing, not an entire building, but you have to give him points for style. It makes good story, so we went with it.

Come the day, they try to call the Devil in early. He uses his Telepathy ability to talk to the PC, declining to walk into such an obvious trap. He admits that he's already in the building and has been there for days, watching them prep the place.

The party immediately starts to search the place. Detect Evil can scan through wooden doors, so they pretty much did a TSA on the whole place. Second floor, end of the hall, the Cleric spots the Evil (with a capital E) behind the door, and blasts it open.

Short battle shorter, they dog pile on the Devil. The Cleric casts Anti-Magic to block any magic or supernatural attacks, and they grapple, shoot, and beat the guy to death.

One PC figures that this is way too easy. Surprisingly, the Devil doesn't seem to be afraid of dying, either, which puzzles them.

The smart PC figured that this was a decoy, a second, lesser Chain Devil (closer to standard, rather than the elite one they'd been prepping for), and decided to check the attic. Bingo, the real deal is up there waiting for him.

Short fight (the Devil had had time to stock the place with chains he could control), and the Devil departs. Seems that Dimensional Lock allows SR, and the Cleric didn't roll quite hot enough.

It was frustrating for them, but also for me. They'd spent sessions of time in game researching how to deliver true death to a Devil. Not easy at all. And when it came time to do the dirty, nobody had a thing prepared. As soon as the Devil in the fight felt the Anti-Magic go up, he knew they didn't have the means to give final death. It takes magic, and they were making sure there was none.

A life stealing weapon would do the job. The right ritual on the right altar (followed by a sacrifice) could do it. Dragging him to Hell and killing him there would work. I would have allowed a Sphere of Annihilation or a Voidstone to do it. I would have allowed for creative solutions, if they sounded good enough.

Also, adding injury to insult, the players knew the oddity about this island in the game. When I was looking on line for ancient maps of the "known world" around the year 500, I'd come across an oddity. Lesbos (or Lesvos, depending on the map) appeared on some maps of the day, but not on others. Since that was just too good to leave unexploited, in our game world this island is magical. Sometimes it's there and sometimes it's not.

The Innkeeper had advised them that they were welcome to bless his place (what Innkeeper would turn down an offer like that?). He advised them, though, that they had to be gone before the next New Moon, which was the night after their appointed meeting. They missed the clue.

So, the epilogue to the Epilogue was that, the night after they left, the island vanished away in that odd manner it had. All except a certain bar, which was magically blocked from any form of dimensional travel, thanks to a Dimensional Lock spell linked to the Holy Ground. The island left, the bar stayed, and promptly dropped into the sea. The player of the Cleric is more upset about this than he is about his friend losing his soul. He's trying to get me to say that someone remembered or noticed so he could take down the effect.

He wants some degree of a happy ending. But there is no end. There's just the point where the story teller stops talking.

 

[NuSair]

Voidstone?

 

[Herobizkit]

Don't most Greco-Roman opuses (*ahem* opera?) end tragically?

This is a brilliant end. The Heroes attempt to destroy the Devil himself, but fail, and in their Hubris, fade away into nothing with the Holy Artefact (which I would have assumed was artifact level and could have done in the Devil quite easily, but I'm a sucker for "let the PC's win")...

Meanwhile, the site of the battle sinks to the sea, the poor innkeeper with it, and the Inn remains a watery testament to their grand failure.

Maybe a God/dess takes pity on the poor mortal and turns him into a sea creature/dweller, and now he can tend his bar as a merman. Or maybe some other God/dess with a sense of humour keeps the Inn and its contents intact - the Barkeep becomes undying in his undersea cabin, 'forced' to tend bar forever.

And the Heroes, well...

At least they have the Dagger, right?

 

[Ryujin]

I think that I'd have gone with one change; the island disappeared but for some reason a bar was left floating several dozen feet above the sea, sitting on top of a wall of stone.

 

[Grogg of the North]

I like the bar sinking into the ocean. Though I might have had the bar "adrift" in the ocean. Or perhaps had the PCs tied to the island. They can never leave it and fade in and out of reality with the island.

I'm surprised no Inevitables showed up to enforce the contract.

And if you chose to keep the Greco/Roman setting, you have a good hook for the next campaign. Go investigate what happened to the last group and their Dagger of Macguffinism.

 

[Greenfield]

General replies: A Voidstone is something found in the Negative Material Plane. It disintegrates things that fail their Save, and I remember hearing that it's the raw material needed to build a Sphere of Annihilation.

Yes, the Dagger could have killed the Devil. It was a sacrificial dagger to the old sun deity, Helios. It told them, in fact, that it had life draining abilities, and that all such lives went to Helios. Helios, by the way, is imprisoned in Tartarus, along with most of the other Titans.

The PC who had the dagger decided to get rid of it. He gave it to a Cleric at an Egyptian temple of Ra. They didn't have it with them.

They had been told that simply killing him wouldn't void the contract. True death would remove his ability to collect. Even a normal death would work, if they had the dagger and killed him before the appointed day, if only bcause he wouldn't be able to show up on that day to complete the deal. If they're there and he isn't, he's the one who failed to complete the deal. And oddly, there was nothing in the contract that said they weren't to harm each other.

Despite having done research on the subject, they waited until the due date to tey and do him in. I had arranged for them to be at the site days in advance.

As I said, they did a lot of research into the matter, and promptly ignored/forgot everything they had learned.

As for the bar itself: I could interpret the Holy Ground effect not as a radius, but as a simple area of earth, extending up into air space and down into the ground. That would have left the bar standing on a narrow spire of earth and stone as that tiny column of earth below the Holy Ground failed to depart when the island did.

But I didn't.

 

[Greenfield]

Addendum: They weren't on the island when it vanished and the Inn sank. They'd been warned to be gone before the new moon, and they were.

Officially the PCs won't even know what happened unless they happen to go back there some day, and even then it may take a while for them to figure out that they were responsible.

It's the players who are pissed.

 

[MarkB]

So, did the devil actually get his due? Did he manage to collect the PC's soul before he left?

If not, there's room for a re-match when he shows up to collect.

 

[Greenfield]

So, did the devil actually get his due? Did he manage to collect the PC's soul before he left?

If not, there's room for a re-match when he shows up to collect.

Yes and no.

He has a claim on the soul when the character dies, but the contract was for his soul only, not his life. He gets to live his life just as he would have. And the Devil made it clear that further dealings were possible.

Originally the PC traded 10% of his soul to help someone else. Later he traded another 20% for hrlp when the party really needed it.

The Devil made it clear, from the beginning, that he was open to negotiation, that services rendered or other souls given in place of his could reduce or eliminate the debt. It was such a service deal that sent the party off looking for that dagger. Delivering it would have reduced his debt from 30% to 20%. Accepting the deal and then failing to come though, however, is what cost him the balance of his soul.

So even paying the Devil his due would only have reduced the debt, not eliminated it. At this point though, the soul is to be collected, and even if the Devil is killed it may not stop that. He might sell it to someone else for favors or services. The way I see it, souls are a form of currency in Hell, and the souls of high level heroes are very valuable. At this point, knowing that they plan his demise, the last thing that Devil will do is show up anyplace where they can take another shot at him. He'll sell the soul and let them know, so going after him becomes pointless.

Figure that Hell has been making these deals and playing these games for a long time. The system won't be easily broken, and certainly not by so simple a thing as brute force.

I recall a list from some online source called "If I ever become an evil Overlord". One of the pieces of self-advice was, "I shall hire a 9 year old child and keep them on staff. I shall have them review all of my evil schemes. If they can see a hole in it, then it shall need to be revised."

Inviting the Devil down for drinks so you can kill him, and thus void a contract? That plan wouldn't pass the "Ask a 9 year old" test, nor would any Devilish plan or standard practice that could be foiled that simply.

This is something of a standard for this class of opponents: I presume that they've done this before and have given their approach some thought. They're professionals.

 

[MarkB]

So even paying the Devil his due would only have reduced the debt, not eliminated it. At this point though, the soul is to be collected, and even if the Devil is killed it may not stop that. He might sell it to someone else for favors or services. The way I see it, souls are a form of currency in Hell, and the souls of high level heroes are very valuable. At this point, knowing that they plan his demise, the last thing that Devil will do is show up anyplace where they can take another shot at him. He'll sell the soul and let them know, so going after him becomes pointless.

Or, option B, he arranges for the PC to be killed. That way he's not just dealing in futures - he has cash in hand, and can sell it on for a higher price.