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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rel" data-source="post: 1789394" data-attributes="member: 99">Thanks for stopping by, Riggs and ledded.  For my players, I strongly recommend reading ledded's Story Hour, particularly some of the recent updates!  I haven't loved a shield wielding character so much since Captain Texas ("Kiss Abilene, evil doer!" *Wham*).I also wanted to mention here that, although I led Marius down the path of temptation in a Rat-Bastardly fashion (the whole Lucy/Monica thing was just plain mean), Riggs did an awesome job of roleplaying and was a great sport about the predicament he found himself in.  It turned what I thought would be a somewhat colorful sidetrack into a major plot point and one of my favorite things about this campaign.  Thanks again, Riggs (and sorry about your soul <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />).Here's another snippet and there might be another later this afternoon if I get a bit of time while my daughter naps.“Well we’re in Hell alright.  And not one of the nicer parts from what I understand.”  The group listened to Marius expectantly.  That bridge we saw out there is called ‘The Bridge of Regret’.  There are people…well, the manifestation of their souls anyway, who are shackled to it, damned to hang there and contemplate their regretful actions for all eternity.  The river itself is comprised of the tears of the damned.”Marcus gaped in horrid amazement.  “You mean…”Marius cut him off, “Yes.  We do NOT want to visit the headwaters.”“What about that pyramid?  Is it some kind of temple?” asked Speaks.“Not a temple.  A prison.  And guess who’s inside:  Bane.”“That’s impossible!” Marcus interjected.  “Bane is dead!  St. Cuthbert himself smote him down!”Marius held up a hand, attempting to calm Marcus from his dogma.  “Smote he may have been, but according to Jalena killing off a god just isn’t that easy.  Bane was somehow cast into Hell and a host of angels descended and made this Tomb around him.  I guess it is supposed to somehow cut him off from his source of power or something.”Lazarius jumped in this time, “But those devils are tearing it apart!”Marius nodded his head in grave agreement, “Yep.”Speaks’ brow wrinkled in contemplation.  “But Bane has been dead…or, well, imprisoned I guess, for three hundred years.  Why are they just now getting around to trying to open his tomb?”“Nobody ever paid them, until now,” replied Marius.  “You see, Hell is a rather mercenary place. Nobody does anything without compensation unless they have to.  And the coin of the realm is souls.  Those coins and that gem we found on those devils that attacked us?  Those are the local currency.”Marcus gasped in horror, “You mean those are souls?!”Marius continued, “Not exactly.  See, the rulers of Hell are these devil Lords.  When the average damned soul is consigned to Hell, the minions of these Lords gather them up and return them to their masters.  They are put into the large pens to await whatever fate the Lord decrees.  But the Lords also issue currency against the value of these damned souls and use it to pay those who serve them.  These coins can be cashed in for the souls in question, even at a great distance.  That’s how those devils we fought were able to summon forth all those pitiful wretches who we had to wade through atop the mountain.”Marcus cringed at the horror of it all, “My dear god.  They literally traffic in the misery of the damned!  This is an outrage!”Marius rolled his eyes, “Well this IS Hell we’re talking about!  And before you get all weepy, remember that you don’t wind up here without having done some pretty bad stuff.”  Marius’ sarcasm seemed to falter just a bit at the end of his statement.  Speaks filled the ensuing silence, “But who is paying the devils to break open the Tomb of Bane?  And why?”“Well, the local Lord is the one doing the actual paying.  But Jalena says that he just recently got a massive influx of new souls from somewhere.  The devils he has been paying have complained a lot about the ‘quality’ of these souls, whatever that means.  But the Lord has been spreading the cash around generously so they don’t complain too long or too loud.  And devils from all over Hell are starting to respond to his largesse.  Devils are going to be thick on the ground around here in the very near future.”Lazarius was already in motion, packing his few belongings into his Haversack, “Then let’s get the…well, the Hell out of here!”</blockquote>

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