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I was really about done screwing around at this point. A person can only take so many hits to their morale before they snap and I was damn close needless to say.

We discussed for a bit our strategy for the rescue of Doak and Liri, and then headed back to Alestia to begin our journey into hell. I was a bit leery about this devil-guide thing that Boyce had going but if it accomplished the job with minimal risk of double-cross, I guess it was ok. I guess. Hmphf.

While in Alestia for this brief interlude, we discovered that Philip Madrigal had been killed by a devil-possessed Bagram. And Bagram was subsequently killed by the city guards, even though he was not in control of himself during the commission of the murder of his long-time friend.

This really more than I could take; the whole scenario pretty much shook me to the core. I would not rest until Sanria Veris paid a hundredfold for making this personal. That was her first mistake. And from here on out, her plans would be riddled with mistakes and interference and no longer would she be able to get done anything that she wanted. Melfir or perhaps Parnth, if she was still around, would win this stupid war to control Upper Thalia, and Veris would be reduced to a pile of ash, not much different than what she had done to the city of Seldermoor. Even if it killed me, I would see to it that Veris perished first.^1)2)3)4)

This news, though, I didn't know how Doak and Liri would take it. It seemed to me that we would be blamed for the death of their father and their own kidnappings. Hilda too, really. What could we even do to make it up to any of them? Doak and Liri we would start out by rescuing them from their captivity. But from there, I just don't know.

Anyway.

Well, we went to visit some guy Boyce knew to open a portal for us, and thus, we arrived in Dis. Time to search for this devil guide guy named Belthrax the Malefactor. We had a bit of trouble finding him, given how large the city was, but making use of some of Trent's Spiritual capabilities, we were finally able to locate him.

After speaking with him a bit, I was ever so slightly concerned about what deal was made to secure his assistance… but well, I guess it was done and there was no going back now. Off we headed to some gates to head to a different plane of hell, called Acheron.

This place was rather bleak, apparently some eternal battlefield, bodies scattered everywhere, the ground itself burbled up blood as we walked. Ew. Belthrax lead us toward the mountain where Doak and Liri were being held, and Grey eventually pointed out that Boyce could teleport us all to the base of the mountain so we wouldn't have to walk for two days to get there. He did so and then we began the climb to the top.

We knew there was a dragon, Belthrax had mentioned it. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get the drop on the two guys waiting for us and the dragon. Fortunately we were already buffed. I wasn't sure who was going to be the more difficult of the two, but as soon as the dragon appeared behind us, foiling our surprise-factor, there was no longer a reason to hold back, so I took off at a run toward the two human-ish guys standing before Doak and Liri. I manifested my weapon and sprouted some wings to attack these guys, and slammed into them from the air.

While I was not particularly used to aerial combat, I was pretty comfortable with fighting from a height advantage, so I didn't have too much trouble with the logistics. As the battle unfolded, Boyce joined me in fighting against the two blackguard, while Trent and Grey held back to take on the dragon.

These blackguard guys seemed to have some kind of magical attack that dealt aggravated damage. Well that disturbed me some, but near as I could tell they were only able to do it once. Between Boyce and I, we cut these guys to ribbons, and while Trent and Grey had a few issues dealing with the magical nature of the dragon, Trent was able to finally fell the beast.

While Grey and Trent worked on freeing Doak and Liri from their magical bonds, I spent some time chop-shopping the dragon, taking with us the things that seemed like would be valuable or rare or whot-not back in our plane of existence. I also took with us what identifying symbols and such were adorning the two blackguards' bodies.

We returned to our plane, dropped Doak and Liri off at the Crane compound in Masayume for some reason. I am not sure exactly why we did that, I mean they couldn't speak the language, were in a culture completely alien to them, surrounded by a bunch of people they didn't know at all. It seemed like maybe we could've come up with a better place, but oh well, I suppose this was sufficient for the time being. We gave the Cranes some of the Umbral Dragon parts as payment or something for safekeeping the two.

And after that, we discussed our next steps. I expressed to the others that I wanted to return to Alestia to go speak with the Prince Elector, Dulvan Rowth, to get him to do something to protect the remaining electors until we could take care of these Gatekeepers of Enma goons. That's when Boyce finally spoke up that he knew a thing or two about these guys. Apparently 5-10 cultists, who were infusing devils into the captured villagers, basically possessing them with the devils, and sending them off to kill people. They had the combat capabilities of the devils but not the magical capabilities. And, as we already knew, they carried knives dripping with a one-use devlish poison.

The other thought was to go back to Dis to do research on that Azranael devil person whose powers Veris was stealing. I expressed that I would be of no use searching libraries, so I could go to Alestia to talk to Prince Elector Dulvan Rowth while the others went to Dis to search libraries. But eventually after discussing it it was decided that we would all go back to Alestia to talk to Rowth, and then go to Dis afterward.

So we headed back, stopped in to see Nicele Hames to get her to set up a meeting with him within the next few hours. She was able to pull this off and we headed off to meet with him in a surreptitious manner. I was decidedly mad about the Electorate's lack of action, but I tried not to let it spill out at him too much.

I explained to the guy that we had the information and he had the resources to do something about this. I explained to him that the attackers were normal people who were forcibly possessed by devils, with the combat skills of the devils but not the magical abilities, given knives with poison, and sent to murder a particular target. Once the target was killed, the possessing devil would leave the person. I told him that he needs to pull in as many trustworthy Spirit manifests as they had access to in order to assist them, because the spirit manifests had the capability of determining if a person was possessed. I also mentioned that the poison on the knives was devilish in nature and that he should get some of the temples of the gods of good within the city to start working on a possible antidote, as that seemed kinda like a cleric-oriented thing.

After discussing several strategies for him to take in order to protect the remaining electors, he asked us when we would take care of these Gatekeepers of Enma. I eyed Boyce since he was the one with all the data on them. We told Prince Elector that it would be as soon as we could manage to find them. It was a necessary question, as this situation could not go on indefinitely, and fairly obvious to me that this was his way of telling us that this was _our_ problem, one very negatively affecting the Electoral body, and _we_ needed to make it go away. Fair enough.

And so after heading out of the meeting, it seemed that our plans had changed slightly. Instead of heading off to Dis to do some boring research, we decided our best plan of action was to set up a trap for the Gatekeepers of Enma.

Grey headed off to the Alestian library to research Azranael with the full-access library pass we'd acquired from Prince Elector. Unfortunately no more information was to be gleaned from the Alestian library, but it was still worth checking before heading off to Dis. Well, Grey wasn't attacked that night, so he went back the next day to piddle around amongst the shelves or something, and finally this night he was attacked.

In the ensuing battle, Grey was able to disarm a couple of the guys so that we could get some of the knives with the poison intact. And furthermore, the more important thing, Trent was able to gain control of at least one of the possessing devils in order to interrogate the guy about how to access these Gatekeepers of Enma guys.

Apparently, there were seven of them, and all seven of them were holed up in some largeish house in the rich district. We got directions from the devil to their hideout, and extracted some details about our adversaries before letting him go. The four villagers who had been possessed we sent on their way to talk to Nicele about where they should go from here, since their hometown remained a ghost-town at this point. I passed them some money so that they'd be able to afford the travel expenses back home, wherever they decided to head.

And now it was time to plan an assault upon the Alestian headquarters of the Gatekeepers of Enma.

And after that was accomplished [next game], I had a thought about something. I vaguely remember from Veris's place that not all of the people hanging out in her keep were redheads. Most were, but not all. It seemed suddenly pertinent to me to get ourselves tested to see if any of us carried the blood of this Azranael.