I also speak Infernal, although I am guessing that what he said would be caught by the censures.
Bejis would speak with Asmodia privately, (and also out of sight of the devil).
On the way to the Theatre, LeVash walks with a light step, looking forward to the play. On the way, he stops by a stall and chooses some freshly picked berries, turning of them into Goodberries.
LeVash glances at the devil, his face carefully neutral , though a skilled observer would note his movements are stiff with rage.
Once backstage he relaxes slightly, though he still moves tensely, handing out a Goodberry to each of the others, murmuring "keep it with you to guard against bleeding". Looking at the two berries still in his hand, he pockets one, and hands the other one to Calsenica, giving her the same instruction.
While LeVash has never been social, he has always seemed aware, but now he seems very inner-directed...not his typical standoffishness, but instead a complete lack of awareness of his surroundings.
"Mammon is a Duke of Hell concerned with greed and overwhelming wealth," Asmodia replies, a disgusted look on her face. "His home is the plane called Erebus, of the Bastards fame, although likely with far less crudely drawn pornography," she continues.
Asmodia chuckles. "Oddly specific a sending, hmm?" she hums, then claps Bejis's shoulder. "Find some consolation, my darling Bejis, the only way in which a devil can take possession of your soul is for you to sign it to them in a contact."
As zero hour approaches the general sense among the hired staff and the other workers is one of barely contained terror. There is no telling what lies in store for you during the more dangerous parts of the play and the whispers around the backstage is the fear that the hazards can easily slip into the back and snatch the life away from them as well.
Before long you are all led to the stage where you are fussed over by Millech as all the final set pieces are put in place. Outside the crowd bustles and the air is filled with the smell of countless amounts of gold worth of perfume and tobacco wafts through the air.
As you are manacled in place (with real rusted adn heavy manacles!) on stage in order to give a true impression of a Trial Thesing in his Haanderthan garb stands by just out of spitting range. "I'll be sure to give a toast to your memory!" He laughs and walks away to give someone else trouble when the group spots Robahl listening agitatedly to a tall dark figure dressed in the robes of an Asmodean priest. The upper portion of his face is covered with an ornate iron mask while the lower portion is covered with ruinous looking burn scars. Black leather gloves cover his hands which are steepled in front of him as he speaks with Robahl.
Robahl for his part has turned white as a sheet and is turning slightly greener by the second. Before long the pair walk towards you. The priests boots echo throughout the stage despite the cacophany around you. Without bothering to be introduced the priest addresses you in a deep breathy voice used to command. "I am Vestus Savaska, a humble servant to the Prince of Darkness. I am in charge of the...hazardous parts of the performance. I have assured the mayor and the director that any...collateral damage will be limited to the stage and the participants in the performance. I am informing you that any damage that spills into the audience will be responded with....severe consequences. However I am to understand that this will be unecessary and that we will put forth a show that the mayor and the houses here will find...enter-tain-ing. I believe the saying is...break a leg."
Before you can respond he turns and walks away disappearing backstage. Thesing is close by and practically giggling with delight. Delour looks nervous but maintains her veneer of absolute professionalism. Calseinica and Robahl look terrified.
And then without a care in the world the bearded devil from before steps on stage ranseur in hand and stands casually behind you all ready to take on his role as the bailiff.
You have but a few quiet moments before curtain rise.
Knowledge(religion):
I whisper to the others: The not so good cleric is very high in the devil church. The mayor is really trying to pull all the strings to make this night memorable.
I also attempt to unlock or remove the manacles. I will leave them in place so that they appear to be on.
Escape Artist:
Disable Device:
Sleight of Hand:
Before things get going, Bejis consumes a Shoanti Barbarian Chew, (which will last for 1 hour).
I had cast Mage Armor before we got manacled up. It lasts 3 hours.
LeVash shrugs, "I'll take your word for it. In any case, we are committed now."
Asmodia grips the chains of her manacles hard and releases a feral growl, her eyes following the priest as a predator who is starved enough to take on prey that is likely to harm herself. When he has gone, she flicks her eyes to the obese actress and narrows them.
What contract has she signed?
I watch the stage trying to see what if anything unusual is occurring. Is there any unusual monsters, other than one very powerful smoking devil, around?
Perception:
After an appropriate pause, and not belonging to the first scene at all, Bloodless turns and attempts to follow the masked Asmodean priest behind stage, but his grace is hardly cat like this evening.
Perception
Despite the bustling and barely contained panic backstage the Asmodean priest suddenly turns on Bloodless his fingers steepled before him and glares him down. "Begone from my presence. And be lucky your requirement in the performance stalls me from tearing out your filthy blooded heart."
Intimidate
Bloodless grits his teeth and swears an oath in Celestial beneath his breath, but recognizing that he would scarcely be performing at peak against the priest, he drops back, carefully, not taking his eyes from his aborted quarry.
NO AD LIBBING!: No.
As people gather into position a few extras gather around Calseinica looking at any moment ready to run screaming from the bearded devil directly in front of them.
Thesing moves to his postion off stage while Delour goes outside the curtain and starts off the play with a haunting melody about the background surrounding the play and the circumstances involved in Larazods capture. As the curtain rises you get a glimpse of the audience for the first time. The place is absolutely packed. Whatever promotional efforts you have done seemed to have worked magnificently.
As Delour disappears backstage the bearded devil behind you comes to life and suddenly his role in this play becomes very clear. Brandishing his Ranseur at the gathered jurors he announces in a gravelly infernal voice.
"Order in the Tribunal. The Court of His Honor Paraduke Montigny Haanderthan, Black Tongue of Asmodeus, Magistrate Maleficarum, now holds session. All rise."
Haanderthan enters from the left stage and takes his place at a massive obsidian podium set up above Larazod. As he take his position he picks up an iron mallet and court is in session.
"Be seated, members of the Court. Today this court seeks truth, or at least shadows thereof, from one Larazod Rilsane, honored veteran of the Shadestar War, member of a once gloried house, of recent fallen in Asmodeus’s regard. The accused stands on several counts of failed conspiracy, evidenced thereof by the industrious interrogations of the court’s own Seeker, Drovalid Vorclune, administered with his usual diligence and severity. In these interviews Vorclune gathered from notable sources, only a few of whom survived their conversations with the lash, that Larazod of the Rilsane held audience with undesirables—
the topic of their whispered covenant the activities of none other than myself. A most serious affair. Service to Asmodeus’s ever-darkening glory is never without risk of menace, betrayal, and threat of doom. My family and I have long suffered the bumbling attempts of assassins who would tear at our dark lord’s visage as casually as they befoul their mothers’ beds.
What they lack in cunning they bolster with sheer desperation, evidenced by consorting with all manner of Aroden-suckling knaves, and aged wiz-worms who trust in mystic secrets over the Dark One’s love.
You hereby stand accused, Larazod, along with your illseeming compatriots, of conspiracy to undertake grievous harm to the institution of this tribunal, namely myself, Paraduke Montigny Haanderthan. How answer thee these charges, Larazod of House Rilsane? Be thou maligned by a scandal-brewer’s wagging tongue, or dost thou cleave to my comings and goings as a bloat fly to a fresh cadaver? Speak! And know that lies are my closest friends. They’ll betray you before I. Speak the truth or do worse than die!"
Upon hearing the accusations, the wizened Dentris with a flourish of his robes steps over to Larazod. Turning to the accused, Dentris grabs Larazod's face and looks directly into his eyes as he states in a drawling whisper to Larazod - an acting whisper which can be heard by the crowd:
Hold your tongue, boy, and we’ll escape the firebrand yet. Your father was the model of a devil’s squire. Summon his wiles now, and keep shut that Abyss you call mouth, before we all tumble down into its darkness. Had you been born deaf and dumb, this loyal servant would yet live to see another midnight.
With that, Dentris steps back nodding to Larazod with the assumption that the youth has understood his message.
Tybain appears calm and collected in the shackles, his faith in Aroden perfect. "Hurl his arrogance and accusations back at him, Larazod," Tybain's voice booms, lending his companions courage. "He wants precious golden-yoked truth? Give him more than he can choke down." Tybain grips a length of chain and forms a fist around it emphasize the last. His eyes grow softer and he seems to look beyond his incarceration towards some unspecified horizon. "For whether revealed by the brilliance of Aroden’s eye, or the long red shadows cast by your Dark Lord’s fiery gaze, a man false at heart and shrouded in hollow faiths is nothing more than a traitor to all. Let him that judges false be judged by wraiths—smote by his own brand shall he fall."
Krona turns towards Tybain, (but still facing the audience), and acidly retorts, "cease your gibbering! One can hardly hear her own thoughts for your tongue wagging!"
Then, turning subtly more towards the audience, Bejis adds a bit of exasperation to Krona's next line:
"Not that this pompous fool can hear them shaking as he does from the pleasure of his own unceasing tongue!"
Dentris turns to the audience and shows a look of astonishment that the barbarian woman would have the gall to speak so to a Paladin. Dentris then steps back from the confrontation between law and barbarism.
As Haanderthan speaks, Lazarod is paying no attention, instead checking his equipment, brushing imaginary lint from his shoulders, and inspecting the architecture of the Council chamber. It is only as Tybain speaks that he straightens his shoulders and focuses on Haanderthan, and then he waits for Krona to finish before addressing the council.
"Larazod knows no lies, great magistrate, and no slanderer’s tongue caresses my dignity. The accusations you speak are as true as Asmodeus’s sword. They cleave clean through."
Lazarod turns to the other council members, "Let the witnesses suffer no more lash. To burn their innards with pokers and steal their eyes is simply to waste precious toil better spent in Asmodeus’s service. There is but one point misaligned in this dark constellation—"
He turns back to Haanderthan, "I seek not your death, though the secrets you harbor in your feeble heart deserve a gruesome demise."
"I carry no assassin’s blade, nor breath-stealing spell to rob your mortality. To end you I need only know you, and to cast you in an honest shade. I pierce your “shadows of truth” and show you for what I know" - his voice drips with contempt - "a false knave, a demon-supping wag-tail, a balor’s bawd, a pus-leaking cataract in the eye of Asmodeus’s justice, and subject to the multi-handed ministrations of a marilith whore, dretchloving plunderer, and traitor to our. great. Dark. Lord."
He stands, unconcerned, ignoring his shackles and the bailiff.
The council whisper among themselves and a few shout loud questions in infernal. Calseinica in her costume merely looks on demurely and touches a painted nail to her lips as she looks Larazod up and down.
"And to think I almost spent this session in the orgybaths of Kalrath. None of their fleshy delights could compare to the ecstasy this half-breed’s words stroke within me! See his fierce aspect burn in fury, even below the tribunal’s culling justice. But how shall Haanderthan answer?"
Haanderthan looks down upon Larazod and shakes his head dismissively waving a black gloved hand down at him in a wide accusational gesture.
"Heavy words for a forked tongue to manage, boy. You juggle them well enough, but like a poor fool, offer jest and jape. I assume this glib outrage, obviously a threadbare attempt to throw off the keening blade of justice, is backed by the testimony of a thousand law-loving fiends? Perhaps the ancient augurer at your side, ever your father’s faithful lap-lizard, probed the ancient secrets of the cosmos and
uncovered my blasphemous treachery? Or have you a soulbonded scroll of bone-white parchment upon which my scrawled hand appears next to some Abyssal conspirator?"
Haanderthan laughs mockingly.
"You amuse me, half-breed, and it is the only reason your sniveling soul is not yet blasted away in hellfire and borne on a river of sorrow to some ignominious corner of the Nine. Whereof comes this lunacy? What disease vexes your broken mind? From what mystery of psychosis do you
draw your lies?"
Asmodia smiles broadly through Tybain's face and eyes as she regards the villain Haanderthan. "You mewl lies like a sullied maid on her wedding night, O Great One," she mocks her former partner, denying the urge to stroke the chains of her shackles with glee. "Even a lord may be smote in darkness as Asmodeus sees the truth of you — a base and lowly thing, snivelling in crimson robes."
Tybain looks out to the audience and resumes the air of an agent inspired and fulfilled by a goodly divine patron. "These devil-bowing citizens about us are affront enough to Aroden’s divine will, but ye," she pauses and looks to Haanderthan again, "whose left hand clasps devil’s claws, and right reaches out for demonic boon —oh double-dealing fiend-lover, who allies with the Abyss. Infernal oaths and Abyssal blasphemy spew in one breath from your twisting lips."
"Does your Aroden arse-kissing pall-a-dine put you up to such resounding blasphemy? Have you no tongue of your own, half-breed, to answer my charge?" Haanderthan says in an acidic tone.
Lazarod shrugs, "Truth is spoken freely in many tongues, false magistrate, and by agents of light and dark."
He raises his manacled hands, pointing to Haanderthan, "You know what you are."
Haanderthan shakes his head again and points his gavel at Larazod as if at any moment it might leap from his hand and strike the defiant tiefling down. "You persist in this foolishness? It shall go hard for you and
yours. Recant and your deaths shall be swift, your souls consigned to diligent service in Hell. Refuse, and enlist in agony’s service, consign your soul to wallow in the most ignominious corner of the Nine, and take eternal suffering as your bedmate."
Ilsandra visibly quivers at the sight of Larazod's contempt for the court. "He’s to have a much more interesting bedmate, if I’ve anything to say. The fire that one shows at tribunal, will no doubt burn even stronger between my sheets."
Dentris solemnly listens to the magistrate. However, upon hearing the comments from the she-devil, he turns and speaks with the audience with a lustful grin. That one grows hot betwixt her infernal thighs.
Walking to the front of the stage. Hope beyond hope. One voice of dissent on the council and the slenderest chance of salvation is ours to clutch.
As Dentris returns to his place, he turns one last time to the audience. Glances at Ilsandra, then back to the audience. Let this waxen sliver of hope not melt until she does—let her find her tongue. Dentris then turns back to the assemblage.
As he is about to return to his place, Dentris once more turns to the audience with an evil smile. Were I not bound I would tear the saucy wenches wings from her back and force the magistrate to choke upon them! None may have the heart of my beloved.
As he is about to return to his place, Dentris once more turns to the audience with an evil smile. Were I not bound I would tear the saucy wenches wings from her back and force the magistrate to choke upon them! None may have the heart of my beloved.
Looking into the audience for the aside, Bejis pulls on the chains, straining them taunt. "Were I not bound I would tear the saucy wenches wings from her back and force the magistrate to choke upon them!"
Bejis then spits out the next line, words dripping with envy, "None may have the heart of my beloved."
Ignoring the paltry rabble Haanderthan continues angrily. "Speak, boy. Do you still baffle with false charges, or have your battered wits returned? Speak."
Lazarod crosses his arms, looking Haanderthan straight in the eye, "I recant nothing. You, accuser, so stand accused. How do
you answer?"
Haanderthan laughs. Thesing's well tuned tenor adds extra menace to it as it carries across the crowded theatre."Innocent, of course. And so judgment is passed. My right as magistrate puts you to the flames on my command. My word is law."
As Lazarod has no further lines for the rest of this act, he will feign disinterest in the proceedings, talking quietly with other persons who don't currently have lines or the otherwise silent 'other council members', gesticulating flamboyantly, and clapping his companions bracingly on the shoulder.
...all of this will be a cover for regular castings of Guidance (if and only if he can do so without disrupting the play...otherwise he will stand fast, looking Haanderthan straight in the eye)
Hearing the corrupt magistrate unjustly proclaim his ruling, Dentris turns to stare at the audience for a moment as though dwelling in deep thought. Then he turns to the magistrate and forcefully proclaims: Respectfully, my lord, when I was a barrister of the tribunal, it was common practice to ask Consular Consent in any judgement of a matter involving the Magistrate personally in the case.
Pausing for a moment to allow this to sink in, Dentris then turns and addresses the full court. Has the ancient code of Asmodeus’s court -- gesturing at the background on which is painted an elaborate stone tablet inscribed with infernal runes. -- scorched on the Tablets of Law by our Great Lord’s own fiery talon, so fallen as to warrant its complete disregard in this tribunal?
Once I have asked this question, I turn again and stare at the magistrate. After pausing and staring at the magistrate, I turn and glare at the audience as though this question of whether the word of Asmodeus must be followed is directed at them as well.
Haanderthan looks upon the old wizard somewhat bewildered before he speaks again with a tone of slight ridicule in his voice."Of course, you are correct, old man. I’ve no intention of affronting our Great Lord. Council, what say ye on this matter? Do you concur with my judgment? These heinous slanders cast upon my great name warrant utter annihilation. So sayeth I, Magistrate of this Gloried Tribunal. Do you agree?"
The expressions on the companions faces fall as they here the council mutter among themselves and each begin to agree in turn. Stepping forward the delicate Erinyes smiles mischieviously and responds.
"Nay."
Confused Haanderthan addresses her.
"My ears deceive me. Do you, august erinyes, daughter of Hell, speak against our cause?"
"I speak against your judgment. Our cause is yet undetermined by my mark. According to our oldest codes, truth can be drawn from an offender, as pus from a wound. Asmodeus’s Trials show the true heart from the false. Why, simply put the half-breed to the flames. Let us try him properly in accordance with the old ways."
Turning away from the council, Dentris pats his charge on the back as best he can with hands bound (or at least pretended to be bound): Well done, lad. Your pretty infernal face is good for something, even if your tongue offends all who hear. We may live yet.
Finishing this, Dentris once again stares briefly at the magistrate before again turning to the audience and then stepping beside his charge to show his support for the good tiefling.
Haanderthan holds up an admonishing finger.
"Tut, the business of the tribunal heaps higher day by day. We’ve cases waiting in the wings by the thousands. Penitent souls singing out for justice. Shall we delay their flight to Asmodeus’s waiting embrace to engage in infantile contests? Nay, expediency is our charge when matters so lacking in evidence are brought before our bench."
Ilsandra laughs and gives Haanderthan a dismissive gesture as she speaks her tone grows farther away from the courtroom and more suited to the bedroom.
"Come, come, sweet magistrate. The spectacle of a few trials would do my poor heart well. I wane at these tiresome sessions. Let the trials commence. ’Twould arouse me. ’Twould tickle me. ’Twould drive me to distraction."
Haanderthan contemplates this as he stares at the seductive Ilsandra for longer then what is proper.
"Trials you say? How now? If it is to be so, let us sweeten the pot. A price I would exact for trials as you insist. If this half-breed fails, not only is my name cleared of all preposterous charges, but you shall compact to me for a full moon’s service, to do my bidding and satisfy all my unwholesome needs."
The Erinyes smiles again dropping the seductiveness.
"Let it be so agreed. I hunger so for trials, I happily wager my body to your whim. We shall see if this half-breed’s words strike true or false."
Haanderthan turns away from the council and glares a baleful gaze upon the accused.
"So be it. Larazod, you stand in trial. By my discretion you shall face six of Asmodeus’s fell tests. You stand alone in the face of terrors over which no mortal has prevailed."
Bloodless is still smarting from his 'correction' by the Priest, as he settles his nerve he considers how best to avoid the man and return to some 'innocent' skulking and sneaking.
Perception
Tybain stands tall, his spine rigid. "Not alone, my lord. I stand with him," he pledges, although comically his voice breaks on the verb meant to inspire courage.
The crowd chuckles at the paladins almost innocent stand. Haanderthan merely waves him off.
"You are under no obligation to do so, Arodenite. Back down and be discharged, to keep at your slobbering benedictions for a few more years at least."