Session 4

Realm of Principality in Elysium

Heroes (lvl 3): Bastion, Thrum, Yvaine, Aibell, Percival, Emile

The heroes walk the gentle hills of Elysium, within the realm of Principality. The air is warm, the light soft, and even the wind seems to move with intention. Yet the peace is marred by purpose: a demon has come here.

They encounter two shepherds upon a green rise overlooking a quiet valley. The men are solemn, digging a grave. At their feet lies the body of Jalkim, the Cipher slain in Sigil when the spider-demon tore open a path to this plane. The shepherds speak of witnessing the fiend’s passing. They describe not only its monstrous form, but something stranger—an undercurrent of hesitation, a flicker of guilt, as though the creature recoiled from its own violence.

They explain a truth of Principality: in Elysium, the swiftness of one’s journey is measured not in distance, but in virtue. Those who perform goodly acts find the road unfolding swiftly beneath their steps. Those who do not, wander.

The heroes help lay Jalkim to rest. When a lamb slips into a rushing brook, they wade in without hesitation and pull it free. The shepherds smile, and the road ahead feels shorter already. They are directed toward the Rollicking Crescent, an inn where many travelers through Elysium gather.

At the Rollicking Crescent, tranquility has given way to ruin. Timber is splintered. Tables lie broken. The spider-demon has passed through here as well. Survivors repeat the same uncanny detail: the fiend raged, yet seemed conflicted—snarling one moment, faltering the next, as though torn between malice and remorse.

The heroes set to work, lifting beams and freeing the trapped. In the midst of this mercy, the demon returns. Cloaked in shadow and preternatural stealth, it slips among them. Before alarm can spread, it seizes Ybdiel and vanishes into darkness. Every attempt to pursue is thwarted. The fiend is gone.

In the aftermath, the heroes are approached by Lady Selene of Pax Benefice. Composed and radiant, she offers guidance rather than despair. She directs them to the Conclave Fidelis, a monastery of the Monks of Accord—healers and sages whose wisdom may reveal how to restore Ybdiel and track the demon.

At the Conclave Fidelis, they are received by Cebulon, high priest of the Power of Principality. He listens without interruption, weighing each word. When the tale is finished, he sets them upon a path not of vengeance, but of harmony.

He entrusts them with the Chalice of Peace.

To begin the healing, the chalice must be filled with the Waters of Serenity from Lake Serene. They must also claim the Gem of Harmony from the nest of a phoenix on the verge of self-immolation. When these tokens of accord are united, they must walk the Labyrinth of Accord within the Ornwood Forest. Only then, Cebulon declares, can true restoration commence.

The heroes remain at the monastery for the night.

During their rest, a stranger comes to them—soft-spoken, composed, yet unmistakably wrong. The disguise is thin to discerning eyes. A fiend stands before them.

He proposes a bargain. Deliver Ybdiel to him, and they will be rewarded beyond measure. Wealth. Power. Safety.

They refuse.

The fiend does not argue. He smiles faintly and departs, leaving behind an air thick with menace. His interest in the angel is clear, and his patience is not infinite.

The road through Elysium grows brighter ahead, yet shadows gather behind.

LEVEL UP!

Session 3

Heroes (lvl 3): Bastion, Thrum, Yvaine, Aibell, Percival, Emile

At the Ubiquitous Wayfarer, the heroes take their first real pause since leaving the Mortuary. Food is served, ale flows, and conversation drifts quickly toward philosophy—as it often does in Sigil. Patrons debate belief, destiny, and the nature of the planes with casual intensity. The company finds itself drawn into the discussion, testing ideas as much as blades.

Among the staff is Mirta, a scatterbrained serving maid who repeatedly confuses orders and returns the wrong change with cheerful obliviousness. Whether incompetence or distraction, none can tell. In Sigil, even small irregularities invite suspicion.

When their tout fails to appear as arranged, the heroes decide to seek the Hall of Records on their own. As they step out of the tavern, the air shifts. A portal flares open without warning. Before they can react, they are swept through.

They land in another tavern—this one deep in the Abyss.

Abyssal Tavern

The atmosphere is thick with menace. Demons crowd the room, their presence heavy with violence barely restrained. Tension coils tightly. Then, one of the demons reaches out telepathically, urging the heroes to remain calm and draw no attention to themselves. The warning is unexpected. A friendly demon is an unsettling thought.

The moment fractures into chaos. A terrified man bursts into the tavern, stumbling in desperation. Behind him crashes a bebilith, a monstrous spider-demon that tears through wood and flesh alike. It kills the man swiftly. As he dies, a spark of celestial radiance erupts from his body—and is immediately absorbed by the bebilith.

At that instant, the illusion falls away from the so-called friendly demon. The disguise shatters, revealing an angel concealed in infernal form. The angel clearly recognizes both the fallen man and the divine spark that leaves him.

The bebilith turns on the angel. Its venomous bite lands true. The poison burns deeper than flesh, and the wound festers with unnatural severity. The angel falters.

He reaches out telepathically to the heroes, urging them to aid his escape. They do not hesitate. Together, under mounting threat, they dive through another portal.

They emerge in the Great Gymnasium of Sigil. The angel collapses, gravely wounded. Healing magic proves ineffective. Whatever the bebilith’s venom carries, it resists simple remedy.

The angel explains.

He had entered the Abyss on a mission for his god. To conceal himself, he temporarily entrusted his celestial spark—the essence of his divine power—to a mortal man he judged worthy. That mortal, however, somehow arrives in the Abyss as a petitioner. The judgment may have been flawed. When the bebilith kills the man, it absorbs the angel’s spark.

Without it, the angel is diminished. His strength wanes. Death approaches.

He asks the heroes to accompany him to Elysium, where he may petition his god for aid and perhaps reclaim what was stolen.

Events move quickly. The bebilith, now empowered by stolen divinity, has also found passage to Sigil. It storms into the Great Gymnasium and kills a member of the Transcendent Order, believing the Cipher may hold a key to a portal to Elysium. Using the corpse, it activates such a portal and vanishes through it.

The path is clear.

If a demon now carries celestial power into Elysium, the consequences could be catastrophic. The only option remaining is pursuit.

The heroes step toward the portal, preparing to follow the demon-spider into heaven itself.

Session 2

Heroes (lvl 3): Bastion, Thrum, Yvaine, Aibell, Percival

In the depths of the Mortuary, the company faces a black pudding. The battle is grueling. Steel hisses and blackens, armor smokes, and the creature divides whenever struck. Progress comes at a cost. By the time the last of the ooze collapses into lifeless sludge, the group is battered and depleted. They withdraw long enough to recover their strength.

Their path leads next to an immaculate dining chamber, incongruous amid the gloom of the dead. A ghostly butler named Kingsley receives them with impeccable manners and serves each hero their favorite dish, unbidden and perfectly prepared. The gesture proves treacherous. The food is poisoned. Suspicion rises quickly enough to prevent disaster, but the message is clear: in this place, even comfort is a weapon.

They press onward and discover the records room—an archive of the deceased, its shelves heavy with scrolls. There they encounter Thaeziagnuz, a tabaxi demilich and former bard, suspended in a strange union of artistry and undeath. He requests their aid in composing an epitaph for a Doomguard who drowned in a bathhouse. The irony is not lost on him. The company obliges, lending words to the departed. Pleased, the demilich grants them access to the records.

Among the countless names, they find their own death certificates. Each is properly inscribed, each confirms their demise. Yet in every case, the cause of death is absent. The omission stands out more starkly than any written explanation could have.

Farther still, they enter a chamber filled with drifting snow. Three dryads stand in silent vigil around a dying tree, watching its slow decline. No intervention is attempted. Weariness and caution prevail. The Mortuary has already yielded more revelations than answers.

Parisa the bariaur tout guides visitors wherever they want to go in Sigil

At last, they depart that somber edifice and emerge into Ragpicker’s Square in the Hive Ward of Sigil. The stillness of the dead gives way to the restless churn of the Cage. There they meet Parisa, a bariaur tout who offers her services as guide. She leads them through the city’s winding streets to the Ubiquitous Wayfarer.

Food is taken without poison. Beds are secured for the night. Though their names are recorded among the dead, they walk the streets of Sigil still breathing, the question of how—and why—left unresolved.

Morte

The talking skull Morte is a curmudgeonly interplanar traveler plucked from his eternal punishment in the Nine Hells. Tormented by the lies he told in life, Morte masks his pain with a morbid sense of humor and an insufferable dose of sarcasm.

Session 1

 

The floating skull Morte welcomes some less-than-dead adventurers to the Mortuary

Heroes (lvl 3): Bastion, Emile, Thrum, Yvaine, Aibell, Percival

The heroes awaken on metal tables in the morgue of the Mortuary, Sigil’s vast necropolis. None of them remember how they arrived there, only the unsettling certainty that they are not supposed to be dead—and yet, clearly are.

They are quickly greeted by Morte, a wisecracking floating skull who acts as an informal guide and commentator. Through him, the party learns the bare basics of where they are and that the Mortuary is run by the Dustmen, a faction who believe true death comes only after shedding all mortal passions.

Exploring the Mortuary, the party encounters its grim routines firsthand. In the autopsy room, they surprise a Herald of Dust dissecting a Flesh Golem. Once both sides realize the heroes are not registered dead—and therefore intruders—the Dustman and the golem attack. A brutal fight follows, ending with both enemies destroyed. The party’s first combat makes it clear that the Mortuary is not a place of mercy, even for the newly awakened.

In a nearby storage room, the tone shifts from violence to horror-absurdity. Two poltergeists stage a grotesque puppet show using scraps of corpses and animated tools. Rather than fighting, the spirits demand to be entertained. The heroes are forced into improvisation, playing along with the macabre performance to amuse the ghosts. Their success spares them from a lethal haunting and provides a rare moment of dark humor amid the gloom.

In the cold locker, the party meets Fruth, a Dustman on his very first day. Nervous, unhelpful, and clearly in over his head, Fruth offers little useful information. Still, the encounter reinforces that not everyone in the Mortuary is an implacable fanatic—some are simply unfortunate recruits.

Passing through the crematorium, Percival makes a fateful decision to test the room’s safety mechanisms. There are none. The crematorium ignites instantly, incinerating Percival on the spot. The moment is sudden, shocking, and final—at least, it appears to be.

The remaining heroes press on and reach a chamber where a chute continuously disgorges corpses onto the floor below. One such body ruptures on impact, releasing a mass of sentient black goo that begins to coalesce aggressively. The party prepares for another fight.

Meanwhile, Percival’s story continues elsewhere.

In a place that is nowhere and no-time, Percival experiences a vision of millions of versions of himself, branching across countless possible lives. A vast, wyrm-like entity—ancient, alien, and unmistakably tied to time itself—intervenes. From the infinite Percivals, it selects one. That version is given substance.

Percival—unchanged, yet subtly different—awakens once more on a slab in the Mortuary’s morgue.

Prologue

There is a place that does not belong to any plane.

It has no direction, no distance, no sequence. Moments do not follow one another here. They simply exist, stacked like reflections in dark glass.

Three figures gather at the center of it—not arriving, not summoned, but converging, as if the multiverse itself has pressed them together.

Between them hangs a vision of everything that is: a wheel in motion, grinding endlessly, fed by voices without number. Each thought adds weight. Each conviction pulls reality slightly off balance. The motion accelerates. The noise builds.

One figure gestures, and the vision slows.

“This cannot continue.”

Not an accusation. An observation.

What has grown is not life, nor death, nor even suffering. It is excess. Divergence. Too many answers to the same question. Too many versions of truth, each insisting it is the final one. Reality bends to accommodate them all—and in doing so, grows thin.

Another figure studies the vision, watching strands twist and overlap until even cause and effect lose their meaning.

“It does not need to be destroyed,” it replies. “Only corrected.”

The third does not speak at first. It watches the motion of the wheel, the way past and future blur at its edges. Eventually, it inclines its head.

“There is a point beyond which variation becomes instability.”

They agree on the remedy.

The wheel needs turn more slowly. More cleanly. Fewer contradictions grinding against one another.

The vision shifts. Entire currents fade. Some paths end before they begin. The shape of what might be narrows.

Far from the still point, something stirs.

Time —old, vast, and aware in ways no living thing should be—tightens like a muscle under a blade. Possible futures recoil. Threads are severed, then—against all order—reknotted.

For a moment, the still point trembles.

One of the three turns, as if sensing resistance.

“An echo,” it decides.

The cut has not yet been made. But it has been planned. And plans, once formed, exert their own gravity.

Somewhere, in a place of endings, the dead will soon awaken.

They will not remember why.

Bastion

Warforged, Crown Paladin
Soldier

[Character Sheet]

Emile La Roche

Kenku, Eloquence Bard
Noble

[Character Sheet]

Thrum Tembo

Loxodon, Conjurer Wizard
Selesnya Initiate

[Character Sheet]

Yvaine

Hexblood, Twilight Cleric
Acolyte

[Character Sheet]

Aibell

Faerie, Spellfire Sorcerer
Charlatan

[Character Sheet]