We have not yet been paid for saving Felicia – our payment would come from her father, the Noble. The Pontiff made a promise on his behalf that we would be paid should she be saved.

We descend the stairs to the Undercroft – a place where Pontiffs and other servants dwell during their stay at the Church. Burial services are performed here. This is an unholy place. (Because the Church of the Host is bad, so the Gods are being prayed to in order to not get fucked over by the Gods).

There is a strong negative presence emanating from the Undercroft. There is a palpable sense of dread, the presence gets darker, more complete, and more enveloping. There is anger washing over us as we descend. We feel the anger of the gods.

“Felicia, stay here… the rest of you… I will ensure you are paid well if you help me.”

“Haven’t we done enough?” Anatole says.

“You may stay, but I must press on.”

“I’m just… curious… what’s down there? Give us something?”

“It should be the dormitories and the private chapel, where Eddward should be praying. He should have been finishing his final ascension to Junior Pontiff.”

“And what does is take for this, to happen?” I ask.

“I have never seen this.” He replies.

I explain what we know of Eddward and his existence as a mage/sorcerer. I explain he was giving it up to become a Pontiff.

The high Pontiff sighs and guesses that we will not be needing weapons, as Eddward is likely a corpse. The anger that floods the Undercroft. Asmodeus is likely very angry with Eddward. Our subconscious becomes flooded with thoughts of the small mercies we have shown enemies on our travels.

A big wooden door with every god of the Host’s symbols on it appears, and as we approach the inverted pentacle of Asmodeus and the two-faced mask of Nethis begin to glow red. An ominous sight indeed.

The Pontiff looks visibly shaken as he sees this. “Since I took my oaths, I never thought I would see a symbol glow on this door. But at the very least, a servant of each god is here… It is possible that if they are angry enough, they may be here themselves… Steel yourselves.” Then he reaches up, hand shaking in fear, and opens the door.

The first thing we notice is the smell – iron, fresh blood assaults our senses. As the door swings open, the room is red with blood, there is not one surface in the chamber that does not have blood on it. The pews, the altar, the two figures shrouded in darkness at the altar and with small pins holding him against the wall, is Eddward. His skin flayed, muscles exposed and entrails hanging.

The first reaction is “He must be dead.” But as we stare in horror, we can see his lungs still inflating and deflating. The being of Eddward, what is left, is very much still alive.

“This is fascinating!” Anatole says as the High Pontiff drops to his knees, he bows his head, touching his forehead to the ground, Kudu – fearing for my life – drops to the ground so fast that his head thuds into the tiles.

Fester also drops down in confusion, Anatole in admiration of their work. Kon stands. As we kneel, the two figures standing in the gloom look to us, we see the shapes of their heads. The one on the left has bright, gleaming red eyes that seem to glow with an internal fire. The other has a white half of face that shines bright, but the rest of him is in shadow.

They turn and walk towards us, it is now that we notice their size; this chapel is huge and as they come towards us it becomes clear that they are very, very large. At least 9 feet tall. The one with red eyes has red skin with black leather of some description covering them. The other one, the entire body bar the face is living shadow. They each take a knee and reach out a hand to the high Pontiff, Kon decides to bow. As he does, the red-skinned, red-eyed creature meets his eyes with a look, lifting his head up, his face contorts into a smile.

“Ahhh, little one. So innocent… and yet you follow the edicts well. I will not torture you.”

The two beings help the high Pontiff to his feet. The one with the white face and shadowy body looks towards the Pontiff, “Did you know?” It asks.

The Pontiff, terrified, visibly shaking in the presence of these creatures looks up, trying to force himself to make eye-contact. “No, I-I did not.”

The red being speaks out, “He speaks true. This one has not broken his oaths. He is not an oath breaker like the other.”

“Yes… yes, good.” The white one speaks, “You all have seen today, what happens to those that break their oaths to the Host. Do not make us pay you a visit.”

With that comment, the dark creature with the white face shimmers and fades from existence. With the absence of the other one, the red creature, eyes aglow, face curled into the mocking smile looks at the rest of us. “And so you come to my abode. What brings you here?”

“My lord,” The Pontiff says, bowing his head, “These adventurers saved one of our… one of my, I suppose.. I am bonded to serve the Lord Estrada, they have saved Felicia. Thus in keeping with the oaths of the many and of the one, so that they may seek shelter and succor for the night, before tasking them with delivering Felicia to her father tomorrow. What was yours will be again, my Lord.”

“Yes. It will. You do well, Pontiff, you may go. Give this one a few hours to perish. He still has some suffering left. Do not take him down until he has breathed his last. All of you here, do not touch the creature hung from the wall, upon pain of flaying.”

Kon repeats the standard response, Anatole asks for permission to watch his end for his own research.

“Oh, you wish to bask. Yes. Enjoy! Just do not tell He who is Caged, he will be most displeased, yes?”

The creature turns back to the Pontiff, “You may not have broken your oaths, but you still fucked up. So! Mild suffering for you.”

Asmodeus reaches out, grasping the entire head of the Pontiff is in his clawed hand, his eyes glow brighter, then the Pontiff begins screaming and flailing. Asmodeus releases him and he writhes in the blood pools, screaming and wriggling.

“And for you, my young Kon…” It says, turning to him, “A small blessing.” Kon attempts to bow lower. A single clawed finger touches the crown of his head, Kon feels infused with the righteous anger of Asmodeus. Kon receives a hero point and an extra 100+Exp for following the edicts of Asmodeus.

“And with that, I will leave you all, until next time. What was mine will be again.”

With the ominous presences gone, we can hear the screaming and crying of the Pontiff, and the sobbing, pathetic cries of Eddward hung on the wall.

“Well, that’s terrifying!” Kon says.

Anatole goes up to Eddward to ascertain if he’s alive because of human limits, or only because of magic. It turns out each of the nails holding the guy to wall are made of some kind of iron, but the metal is darker and emits heat. A further examination may provide more information, but touching them is not permitted right now. It seems there was some magical intervention and even though the wounds are new, the process seems to have been to heal and destroy him, pushing him to his limits for the sole purpose of torturing him.

“This is incredible… fascinating.” Anatole says.

At this moment, Felicia comes down, and Fester blocks her viewing. She decides to go to the living quarters and asks Kon to accompany her. Kon acquiesces. “Of course, Felicia.”

The Pontiff takes around a half hour to stop writhing, and when he does, he stands very gingerly.

Anatole asks him how he would describe the experience, and he responds, “It was some of the most exquisite suffering I have ever experienced. Every nerve ending in my body felt alight with flame, as if I had been tossed into a lake of flame in hell itself. I almost didn’t know who I was, I was just pain.”

“And how do you feel now?” Anatole questions.

“Terrified.”

“Well, I suppose that’s an expected side effect. Hopefully the healing of Thamir will not anger the host enough for somebody to appear again. I only did but the mildest of mental restorations.”

“Hm, well, do let us know if something else comes up. This is all very interesting, what has been done here to this poor man is just fascinating!”

“I am going to adjourn to the rest chamber, I’ll send word that someone should send food and give you lodgings. I was planning on providing the hospitality myself, but I am in no condition for that myself I am afraid.”

It would seem the hand of Zon-Kuthon was at work here somewhere, the Pontiff speaks to Anatole. Then he leaves for the evening, thanking us again for our services, his robes thoroughly soaked through with Eddward’s blood from his 30 minute floor writhe.

I find a cool book and detect its aura, all of the books that are of the Host have awful vibes and most of the books on the other shelf have very cool vibes. One of the books has a sparkling pink tinge, so I grab it. It has the Title the Worship of Modern Gods and how to appease them.

I flick through it real quick to see if there are any loose things. I look through for anything that might stick out to me as being of Old Mother. I roll a nice, dirty 20. Flipping through the pages quickly but not recklessly, I find a chapter that seems to be not so much the worship of an “Old Mother” but more the doctrines and practices line up with how I know I to worship Old Mother. It mentions the worship is towards some kind of deity level creatures. A demi-god or physically formed being. It details more than just the worship but it will take me some time to figure anything out.

Meanwhile, Kon is experiencing a trip of some kind and snaps into a room not similar to the one we were in, it is instead a cave of hanging moss and lichen. Light spilling in from the cave entrance tells him it was not somewhere in Kirin-Tor. A different type of light, different colour to what we have in the Abyss. There are corpses around him, some in various states of decomposition, and a being towers over him.

He knows he is not just here, but also there, down on the floor with the being, watching himself in third person. Then the pulling fades to blue and green and once more when it snaps into focus, Kon is in the same cave, sans corpses, only a man. A man wearing green curly shoes, a strange leather jacket, and wide brim hat protecting his face and eyes. He has a gleeful smile. Kon has control and takes a look around the room; a natural cavern, stone walls wet with moss and lichen. Large sheets of it dangle from the ceiling as if green curtains of nature. There are some small flowers growing in the moss, uncommon in Kirin-Tor, but not in the Abyss. A small hat-like thing is sitting in the corner of the room with a little orange feather next to it.

“This place is beautiful, is it the Abyss?”

“But of course, my dear!”

“Oh… how did I get here?”

“Why, I woke you up.”

“Makes sense, I suppose.”

“Well, you were dying, you see. I didn’t want you to. You seem fun!”

“I was dying?”

“Yes, like all the others.”

“We’re all dying?”

“Well, yeah, you saw the corpses.”

“Oh… how are we dying?”

“Well, those who came before you, horrendous head trauma.”

“By who?” Kon is slowly starting to freak out.

“Well, that is the question isn’t it? But if we knew the answers to the questions there would be no questions and then there would be no fun!”

“… I agree… but what are we going to do about it?”

“What are you going to do about it, my little phoenix?”

“Sorry?”

“What are you going to do?”

“What did you call me?”

“Oh! My little phoenix!”

“Well, you were dead, but now you rise again, like a phoenix.”

“Oh yeah, wait I died?!”

“No, but close enough. What’s some semantics between friends?”

“Oh. Good point, sure. Did you show me all that to warn me, or to help me?”

“You tell me! This is your memory, your flashback, as it were.”

Kon looks around the room and approaches the hat-like thing and feather. The feather is a gorgeous mix of yellows and oranges, the calamus is black, however. The hat appears to be a crown, a little bit red with a wet substance that Kon knows is blood. He sniffs it and find out it smells like his.

The crown feels important. “I’ve never been here. Why do I feel like I have?”

“Oh, but you have! My little phoenix, you have.”

“When?”

“Oh, not that long ago I suppose, in the scheme of things. I wrote you a poem, would you like to hear it?”

“Ok, hit me.”

“What are you willing to lose; you cover your wounds. But underneath them, a million voices in your head whisper stop now. Another twist of the knife, turn of the screws…” I miss some of it, but it goes on for a lot and implies that the ceiling we know is not the edge of the world but rather an obstacle to be destroyed, ushering in a new empire of life.

“Are you trying to tell me I’ve forgotten something?”

“Ahhhh, now we come to the heart of the matter. Yes, my little phoenix, I think you have.”

“Hmm, I had a hunch, but you never really know. That’s… huh… where do I even begin?”

“Well, that’s a fine question! Perhaps find me, yes? I was the one who saved you after all, my little phoenix.”

“Where would I find you, here?”

“Wherever the moss goes, I go.” I am choosing to call this man Percival von Mossley. Kon rolls a check for nature; the man speaking in rhymes and sonnets is clearly a member of the Fae. The Fae are generally wherever nature goes, but there’s not much nature anywhere other than the top layer of the abyss. Mushroom forests and so on exist, but Fae don’t tend to go there very much. Perhaps the Abyss may prove fruitful again.

“I feel like I need to ask questions, but I don’t know what.”

“Oh, we never do until we find them, my wee phoenix!”

“How did I lose my memory? Did I already ask that.”

“I don’t think you did, but based on everyone else, bludgeoning to the head I would say.”

“Did I know who?”

“Well.. maybe, I don’t know who, which means you don’t know who, but you might have!”

“Well, shit.”

“I don’t know what’s going on with the crown there, but the phoenix feather makes more sense, a core ingredient of the potion that saved your life.”

“Wait… someone used a potion to save my life?”

“Yes, me. I thought that was abundantly clear.”

“I thought it was magic.” Kon wiggles his fingers.

“No, no, no. Magic of this world is not capable of that when you’re that close to the grave.”

“Well, thank you for saving my life… but why did you do it?”

“Well, you can thank me when you find me! And it was all just a bit of fun, isn’t it? Dying people isn’t fun but saving people! That’s fun. Whimsical even!”

“I guess I have a lot to try and remember.”

“I wouldn’t think too hard, best bet is to retrace your steps, figure out what that crown means, right?”

“Do you have any advice?”

“Well yeah, I kind of wrapped it all up in that lovely poem I wrote you!”

“Do you have anything that might help me find you?”

“Hmm! If you return to somewhere lush, where water flows freely, with a beautiful tree. Find the moss, sleep under the tree, I’ll find you.”

“In the meantime, keep following the moss!”

“I do like moss!”

“Anyway! That’s enough hallucinating, everyone will be getting concerned with you now!”

“What?”

“What!”

Then the world snaps back into focus, I am rifling through the pink book, and Felicia is sitting by his side. The world feels a little bit brighter, and the moss fluoresces a slightly more blue hue than normal. The feather and crown are not with Kon.

“Hey Kudu….”

“Hmmmm yeah? What’s up…”

“Where would you find a phoenix feather? How hard is it to find one?”

“Hmm…” I think, with Kon’s assistance. “Well, I know some things about them. They exist, their feathers are used in potions of resurrection… but proper death is a hard thing to undo, as our Gods tend to take their duties very seriously. A potion would have to be on hand in order to save someone’s life… Black opium is also an ingredient… Only gathered by the roots of the angorn tree. The angorn itself only grows on unhallowed ground. I’m talking ground so bad that it burns holy or righteous people… Anyway, it can only be used during the Red Flash events anyway, which is a window of about 12 hours. So, you need to find a tree in a terrible, horrible place, then do all sorts of other things in that 12 hour period. Possibly the most difficult potion I have ever even heard of. No idea if anyone alive can even make it in our time…”

“Anyway! Why do you ask?” I finish.

“This is hard to explain…” Kon looks very troubled, which is odd, because he never looks anything. “Have you ever, no… met… no. Fuck.” He tries to explain.

“Do you ever have a memory on the tip of your tongue?”

“No, I know everything that has ever happened to me.”

He explains the concept of his flashback and the crown. It was of a dark iron, similar to the nails holding Eddward up in colour. It had a number of different coloured gemstones across it. The largest stone was a ruby in the center of the crown and the other 9 were all different colours. I come from a forest over by Griffincape. Netherfire is a large settlement, Griffin is a fishing village, then tracking down the river, Ruins of Direbane is a no, but one of the western entrances to Bastion, or South from Littelrootmere.

I check my memory and it is the literal High King’s crown. I explain that that is the crown. Kon continues to explain his flashback, that the cave was in the Abyss. A man said he saved me with that potion and that it was where he had been killed. Inside the cave was a phoenix feather and the crown.

“You should forget it… But if we take it seriously… I guess any excuse is a good one to go down there. I know I need to get there, Anatole does… Fester I can’t speak for.”

“It’s lush, so it’s not very far down.”

Kon mentions the man said a poem about Kon, but he recites it to me.

“What are you willing to lose?

You cover your wounds, but underneath them

A million voices in your head that whisper, "Stop, now"

Another twist of the knife, turn of the screws

It's all in your mind and it's fighting you

Arm yourself, a storm is coming

Well, kid, what you gonna do now?

It's your reflection looking back to pull you down

So are you gonna die today or make it out alive?

You gotta conquer the monster in your head and then you'll fly

Fly, phoenix, fly

It's time for a new empire

Go bury your demons then tear down the ceiling

Phoenix, fly.”

“Well, you definitely have arms, so I don’t know why he wants you to get more.”

“Yeah… a lot of it is very confusing. I don’t know why he calls me a phoenix either.”

I cast Read Aura on Kon. He is not actually very magical beyond his racial things.

“Well, you’re definitely not a normal human. You’re magical. Anyway, try remembering something else!” I cast Guidance on him.

He rolls an 18 and remembers that it was a popular resting spot for him and his team, that he could find the cave if he desired to do so, and that others were there, but they were not threats.

Back in the other room, Anatole and Fester witness Eddward’s death, then touch the iron-like spikes. It feels warm to the touch when it really shouldn’t be. Down in a cave it should rather be cold. It does feel very hard for what looks like iron. The material is almost unyielding. As Anatole works with metals and alchemical substances, there is a particular feeling to iron, not soft, but edges rounded, and other things. It is one of the hardest materials he has ever touched. Also, they have been hammered into a solid rock wall.

They cannot figure out how long the nails are, but they move to remove them from the wall anyway. The collect some nails and find out that they are like, infernal nails or whatever, made out of people’s souls who have broken an oath to Asmodeus. Between the two of them, it will take them some time to extract all the nails.

We all meet up for dinner, and it is mush-worm soup, we briefly discuss staying with the Church, versus the Tavern and free here with Felicia. Some of us may stick around or go on our own. I would like to stay in the grounds, it’s free and we can snoop and make use of the information here.

We also briefly discuss who has been to the Abyss. Fester knows there are three Thaumaturge Orders that are almost constantly paying people to go down into the Abyss. They are Secure, Contain, Protect – S.C.P offers ongoing protection if you have problems. Cryptids are very real in Pathfinder and a decent threat. The Spider’s Web – smaller than S.C.P, but next largest, run by Edward Spider? They just do work, jobs, hunting cryptids, or whatever else people hire them to do, including hole expeditions. The third group is Laid to Rest – newest, making a name for themselves in a big way, founded by the previous 2IC of S.C.P. A dispute of how S.C.P was being run, so the 2IC splintered and took the people who agreed with him with. Rapidly growing, but newest kid on the block.

They all have headquarters in Bastion, and have branches in other locations. S.C.P Is in most cities and trade hubs, but those three places are good areas to start. If we follow through with our plan to get Felicia home, we can leverage that goodwill with her father, the Noble of Alpinlight, to get introductions to the Thaumaturge orders, possibly only S.C.P, potentially none, but worth a shot none-the-less. This could help us as well, with getting our work started for delving into the Abyss.