Ragon had returned! But he was greatly changed. His attire was strange: He wore a red suit cloaked in roiling flames. Just as striking to those who knew him was the conspicuous absence of the corruption that had scarred his face for years. Furthermore, Ragon reported that the soul anchors stamped onto his back by Devin were now gone. What had happened to him?
The rest of the Pisspots were flabbergasted and — whether they had the presence of mind to say so or not — were very glad to see he was alive. When they asked Ragon about his disappearance after drawing from the Deck of Wondrous Things two days prior, he was amazed that not more time had passed. To him his time away felt like weeks. He reported that he had been transported to a prison somewhere in the Nine Hells, but really it wasn’t nearly as bad there as people said. In fact, the entity in charge known as Reif was friendly to him and soon released him from his cell!
Reif cured Ragon of his blindness and corruption and gifted him the suit and other equipment. He also removed Devin’s soul brands and explained some of Devin’s secrets: The proper name of the creature they called Devin was Dagon, and Reif said Dagon was a “Godspawn” descended from the Mad Tyrant.
The others were skeptical of the purported good will of Ragon’s new benefactor. Those among them who were paying attention months prior may have even recalled Ragon mentioning the name Reif in association with the Order of the Pit cult that tried to sacrifice him as a boy, and that his celestial patron Galistris was diametrically opposed to him. Others at least guessed that altruistic beings are not common in hell and probably shouldn’t be trusted. Some may have also been concerned when Ragon spoke wistfully about a bygone age before Good and Evil were concepts that conveniently divided the haves from the have-nots. Fearing he might be under some charm, they attempted to dispel one with no effect. When they asked Ragon how he was able to return to the Material Plane, he said that his “patron” brought him back, though he managed to maneuver around specifying a name.
Ragon was still just as hell-bent on taking down Dagon as the rest of them, so they resumed planning their next steps, even as Ragon quickly got friendly with an aasimar employee at the brothel.
Remi’s memories of his death returned to him overnight, and he was able to recount to his friends what he saw. As God-Touched Emil had predicted, the soul anchors on his back had transported his soul upon death to an inhospitable and chaotic otherworldly place containing massive stone structures. There his body was grasped by writhing tentacles and pulled in all directions. Over the course of what felt like weeks, he was pushed and pulled toward a destination where at last he was suddenly released. He fell and fell until he slammed onto a hovering stone slab. A booming, disembodied voice called him one of his “chosen”, said he arrived earlier than expected, and was about to offer him an ultimatum when Remi was instantly transported back to his old body, alive again. Though the experience was harrowing, he still had his memories of Platinum Whiskers, so it kind of balanced out.
Braxis used his recently purchased crystal ball and attempted to scry on the Governor. For the first time, he succeeded in pushing past the Governor’s resistance, but he was not prepared for what he saw (as recalled by Gabe):
You concentrate on the spell, and after a few moments the face of the Governor comes into view. He is in a rocky cavern and seems to be in mid sentence when a man in front of him quickly silences him. This man should have been overshadowed by the two hulking humanoids on either side of him, both well over 10 feet tall while hunching, but cloaked in a way that hides any kind of facial features. But something about this man makes him stand out. It is impossible to tell his age. While his bald head and skin are gray and his eyes are sunken, his slender body has a radiating strength to it.
After silencing the Governor he looks around the room like he is searching for something. Finally he settles on you and his eyes focus. He is clearly looking right. at. you. He lets out a small smile, which keeps growing on his face until it’s a wide open laugh. And then it continues to widen! As his mouth stretches back to his ears, it reveals jagged teeth throughout. The mouth threatens to take over the entire head, with new teeth appearing in it, each sharper than the last…
They were all utterly unsettled by Braxis’s report. Mav decided to put his newly acquired Sending spell capabilities to use by asking Till for an update on his mission to hunt down the Governor and learned he was exploring the mountains north of the College of the Occult. The Pisspots had heard that adventurers were being recruited to kill the dragon that had made its home there, so they decided heading that way should be their next move.
Before they left Pandin, Kaicho had one of the diamonds they acquired set in an engraved ring. Mav spoke to Mierdras and established a bounty for the killing of the hag that kidnapped his daughter, with the condition that the girl must be unharmed. Hopefully this would increase the odds of a positive outcome for her.
Meanwhile, Ragon went to Wonders of the World and decided that the Portable Hole for sale there, worth tens of thousands of gold, would be put to better use in his hands, rather than sitting idly on display in a store. He was, after all, trying to stop the end of the world, and it might make the difference between success and failure. Maybe. Frankly, the store owner should just give it to him as payment in advance for saving his ass and everyone else’s. He’d be sorry he didn’t when Ragon was done with this little quest and could finally begin his work of correcting the scales of justice in the cosmo—
“Can I help you?” asked the gnome store clerk. “You’re tired, go home. And leave that Portable Hole on the counter,” replied Ragon. “You’re right, it’s only 10 AM, but I am beat!” Ragon tucked the folded cloth into his bag and disappeared. Minutes later, everyone within two city blocks could hear the gnome shouting, “Hey, that aasimar in the flaming suit is a thief!”
Soon the Pisspots teleported to the main campus of the academy. They briefly stopped in Zyzarlyx to purchase some gear. Kaicho delivered the diamond ring he commissioned to Tameth and Andi as a replacement for the one they gave him to unpetrify Mav. He held back the fire opal ring Braxis had made since it wasn’t diamond, not realizing that it was probably even more valuable.
They began their trek north to the College of the Occult. After a full day of walking, they rested, and in the night they encountered a friendly group of mercenaries traveling south. They said they had gone north too to confront the dragon, but it and the giants it kept as servants had left the school; perhaps it had returned to its old lair. They were eager to leave this island and find work elsewhere, since here they all had strange dreams involving flailing tentacles.
In the morning, before the two parties parted ways, they purchased a Wind Walk spell from the other group’s druid to help them move more quickly. Hoping they might be able to meet up with Till, Mav sent another message to the bard. This time, however, someone else picked up the phone: Dagon! He claimed that their ally was now in his custody. This was bad news indeed.
With Wind Walk they continued north at great speed. If the dragon was gone and they couldn’t rendezvous with Till, perhaps they could focus on locating a weakness in the blizzard that obstructed their path into the mountains. From their prior experience, they believed the winds deep in the mountains to be too powerful for traveling in Wind Walk form, and the atmosphere was so thin in the area they last saw the blizzard that they couldn’t risk going there directly. Hoping they might find another way around the barrier, they spent much of the day traveling west — a direction chosen almost at random — from the school along the base of the mountain range. Not knowing if it would work, they occasionally stopped to cast Detect Magic to see if they could sense any changes in ambient magic levels. They covered many miles but found nothing.
Unsure of what to do next, they thought that perhaps they would have had more luck if they had gone east instead of west. However, time remaining before their dreaded appointment with Dagon was growing very short, and simply getting back to where they started would be difficult. Since the teleportation circle at the College of the Occult was destroyed, Wind Walk was the only fast mode of travel they knew of. And the only person they knew who might be able to cast it on them was Naturalist Jyn at the College of Nature.
They teleported to the college and were relieved to see that the war effort against the undead had really ended. Jyn could give them Wind Walk, but not until the next morning. They asked if Salendra had delivered any scouting reports about the whirlpool, and they learned that the whirlpool still existed but, like the hurricane, was frozen in place and unmoving. Salendra further reported that they had found an ancient city beneath the waves.
As they began to bed down for the night, Mav attempted to use his new skill once again to talk telepathically to his daughter. However, again the message was intercepted by Dagon, who said he would let Drendil, the hag, know about this.
Countless questions lingered. What were Reif’s motives for aiding Ragon, and could he be trusted? What did it mean that the hurricane and whirlpool were unmoving? Might the blizzard be unmoving now too? Would that make it easier to pass? How could they possibly get there in time? Was Till really captured, or was that a lie? Was there anything Dagon didn’t already know that they could tell him by trying to message a friend? By defeating the undead, did they remove the only obstacle to the fulfillment of Dagon’s plans? Was it just too late now? Did our heroes have any clue what they were doing?
That last question certainly had an answer: No!
Countdown to Devin’s Dagon’s rendezvous: ~4 days