Quest to the Nether
| Quest to the Nether | |||||||||
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| Factions Involved | |||||||||
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ShadowHaven Adeptus | Guardians of the Underworld | ||||||||
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Katherine Tyler Swerve Ez-Azael |
Hound of Death Son of Death Daughter of Death | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| Swerve gained concerning perspective. | The family's guardian children were disrupted temporarily. | ||||||||
| Mundane ascension for Kate | |||||||||
Summary
Kate promised to help Wychking out at one point, so Adeptus starts jumping the gun and arranges a rescue mission for an ally spirit.
Background
The Meet
Adeptus meets the team in the unfinished necroplex in Snohomish. Swerve manages to escape an ambush set by some Neo-Nazi elements in Snohomish by using a superpowered scream. The squatters guide the three to the guidance spirit who did some digging and enlisted the services of a bound Great Form Guardian of Wychking's, a daughter of Louhi. She chose the necroplex as the site for the mission since graveyards and catacombs are often seen as pathways into the Finnish folklore's underworld, which is likely where the ally spirit must be acquired from. She should've arrived on her own already, but since she hasn't, someone has to go to the domain of the dead and figure out what's going on. Adeptus offers the good feels of helping a spirit as a reward as well as knowing some people who can afford a blank check on a couple months of staying in one of the properties they own, as well as a unique setup for arcane research she figured out by talking to some enterprising spirits.
The Plan
The greatest challenge is that Swerve, Kate and Ez-Azael are not dead and thus the gods ruling over the underworld will not suffer their presence. Much of the folklore Kate can dig up supports the fact that ancient heroes did sneak into the afterlife at times to gleam secret knowledge or learn new spells. They did so by acquiring a specific disguise to appear as if they had been brought there by Death himself as a new dead arrival. Another source hints that the river may be crossable by someone brave enough -- once they pass the river, the sleeping dead are best left undisturbed and the Hound of Death is well trained to attack and devour spellcasters.
Many powerful figures dwell within: Death, Death's Wife, the trio of flesh and mending, Loviatar who may also be known as Louhi, the matriarch of the North and possibly the mother of the Nine Great Pestilences such as cancer, consumption and envy itself. The family of Death is a complicated affair best avoided involvement with, but the Lady of Pain, who is the team's target, is one of the daughters of Death himself and has to be reached first. It's possible that Death doesn't want her to leave from her duties after she was disrupted during her service to a mortal - Adeptus does clarify at this point that Wychking isn't anywhere close to strong enough to gain a god as an ally spirit, merely harnessing an avatar of one.
Lemminkäinen, sometimes called the Far-Mind also sleeps in the underworld, chopped into a hundred pieces by Death's Son and later stitched together by Far-Mind's mother. This ancient hero may prove useful yet, although he's diametrically opposed to Louhi who may also be of aid to the team given the covenant the bug hunter swore to her. Some of the lore implies that the world is reversed and beneath everything.
The Run
Entering through an astral gateway is the easy part. Kate and Swerve disguise themselves as fresh dead while Ez-Azael masks as a travelling spirit. Death's Daughter begins to judge their lives to determine whether they'll enter via her boat if they've lived well -- or if they must swim through the river of fire and ice, daggers and needles if they lived like evil individuals. Kate passes due to resisting the Mind Probe spell and the daughter approves of her strength as a good virtue. Swerve, however, has her mind opened close to like a book and the ferrywoman sees their plot clear as day. She refuses to let any of them pass and walks on the river's watery surface across to the other side, leaving the three stranded with their disguises falling through. Kate jumps into the river and her armor manages to withstand the river's powerful current dragging her off to one side as well as the spears and iron swords embedding into her back. She manages to utilize the current by standing up horizontally against one of the underwater rocks and jumps from one rock to another in a strangely tilted way, ignoring common gravity.
Once she climbs onto the shore on the otherside, she hides and observes for a moment before heading off to explore the catacombs. She finds the crypt of Lemminkäinen but has no tools to wrest the stone seal off completely. While she's doing this, the Bear of the Underworld walks up to Kate and sniffs her around curiously before offering her its back to ride on. Kate, not having any better ideas in mind, hops on and sees where the bizarre creature takes her.
Swerve and Ez-Azael manage to convince the Daughter to go talk to the Lady of Pain about their arrival; the request doesn't break any rules so the deity obliges since the two charismatic individuals are rather convincing. She returns by stating that she's under no particular desire to come meet some mortals, even if they know another mortal. With the Son also patrolling the river on a boat, a gremlin-like creature with a crow's head crawls up to the two and offers them a chance to do mischief; it becomes clear that Lempo is a creature committed to brewing trouble just for its own sake, and while the two don't really feel like obliging it wholeheartedly to upset the peace in the underworld, they do want its distraction. Using poisoned arrows from Lempo and a bow, a spirit is summoned to shoot at the Son -- at least, that's the plan until the spirit instead grapples Lempo and throws him in the river instead. The spirit is infuriated and panics, giving Ez-Azael the opportunity to form mana barriers as a makeshift bridge over the water that the two hurriedly sprint across while the Son chases after Lempo downstream.
Kate and the bear are harried by the Lapp Eagle, a colossal bird with hundreds of dead warriors riding on its back once they're on the surface. Kate also runs out of time to astrally project and has to overdose on another dose of Shade. The bear manages to hide Kate in a decrepit wooden shack while it gets impaled by the Kokko's talons and wrestles with it into the skies. Kate finds notes apparently left by Väinämöinen, a deific wizards of the old tales and what he did to survive in the underworld. By reading through the notes, Kate gets a better understanding of the hyperplane and how it may behave.
Eventually, she reunites with the other two team members and they contemplate their options in the shack, seeing only a large mountain that the Lapp Eagle roosts on top of. Climbing atop the shack for elevation doesn't showcase any deep pits in immediate view, either. Upon not seeing much at first, Kate begins thinking again of the concept of everything being reverse and beneath and strikes the wooden floorboards with her sword to create a cleaved gap. It shows a sky in the hole and once she climbs through she emerges on a second side of the world where the gravity and directions are reversed once more. There, they finally see the Hill of Agony and a great tall figure pouring black sludge into a pit at the top. They approach carefully and try to initiate conversation but seem to hold little interest to the entity. Swerve assenses the being, but its sheer Force causes her eyes to bleed. When finally it's peppered with attempts to communicate long enough, it confirms that it is in fact the Lady of Pain and has no desire whatsoever to work with mortals. When asked about the ally spirit, it asks whether the team wants its creator to suffer by not having her back or delay even greater torment by getting her back now for a brief respite. The team contemplates that possibility, but chooses the latter. The Lady of Pain reaches into her chest and pulls out a giant-sized, bandaged-up blonde girl, contemptuously stating that she will give back a spirit but not with the lies it wore before. The girl appears alive, recognizable with assensing and wholly unconscious and unresponsive. When the runners are leaving, the Lady of Pain, tasked with ensuring all beings suffer the correct amount, not too little and not too much while she goes around taking away pain from those in too much of it or giving it to those who live too comfortably -- this deity of suffering points its bony finger at Swerve and commends her (or at least that's what it considers the statement to be) that her life has appropriate suffering in it. This doesn't sit well with the banshee.
Time to leave. They start making their way to the river again when the Hound of the Underworld's howl is heard and the two siblings appear to bar the team's path. They don't like letting the living in, but they hate even more if any living leave, since none should leave the realm of the dead. The hound appears and uses immense power to disable most of the team with crippling terror and slowly begins consuming Swerve's life essence before the team's very eyes. The Son casts his iron nets upon all three and the Daughter prepares to fight them in melee. While the battle is agonizing and filled with pain, Kate manages to utilize the underworld's two-sided nature by flipping on the flooded underside of the river's shores and gets Pain Girl safe, only to be ambushed by the Son. This distraction is enough of a window of opportunity for Ez-Azael and Swerve to gain the upper hand, claim a hard-fought victory over the Hound and the Daughter and disrupt the latter. The Son gets disrupted soon after and the Hound burrows underground, having become within a hair's breadth of defeat.
The remaining escape is slow and measured but possible, although Swerve marches out of the Snohomish necroplex after having witnessed all that.
Aftermath
The blonde and far less spooky-looking spirit is safe in the Material Plane and Kate has a bad time staying completely intact after the battering her astral form endured. Ez-Azael has to contemplate the existence of a non-Christian afterlife or at least a hyperplane of one and Swerve tries not to think about the fact that a god told her life is just hard enough and it shouldn't get any better.
Rewards
1.66x Runtime Multiplier
- 35 Karma (35 RVP)
- 20 CDP (9 RVP)
- 24,000 Nuyen in Lifestyles and Lifestyle Modifications in Seattle up to Medium (6 RVP)
- May get a Tool Facility for Arcana skill checks, requires 13 RVP, must be taken from Karma, leaves 1,000 Nuyen leftover.
- Mundane Ascension for Kate