The Copper Piece Gang

D&D Session Summary

The session picked up after the party’s brutal return from the City of Brass. They had survived the portal-crossing back into the seventh layer of Hell, an experience remembered less as travel and more as being torn apart, burned, and spat back into Vladyn’s domain. They were somewhere within his territory, but not somewhere familiar.

The group remembered that one of their earlier bargains with Vladyn had included a strange infernal mount: a hell centipede. After some debate over whether it was a centipede, caterpillar, horse, or some cursed children’s toy from the 1980s, the answer became simple. If they were within Vladyn’s domain, they could call it. The party whistled, and the armored hell centipede came to them. It could not necessarily find Vladyn anywhere in existence, but inside his territory it could always bring them to him. The absurdity of riding a monstrous infernal centipede through Hell became one of the lighter moments of the night, but it also mattered. Once other devils saw the mount, they gave the party room.

The centipede brought them to a massive legion hall. At the far end, Vladyn sat behind a massive desk reading a tome. The pages turned rapidly without his touch while he consumed whatever information it contained. The party approached and waited while he made them stand in silence for an uncomfortably long time.

At last, Vladyn looked up and acknowledged that they had survived, placing them in a surprisingly exclusive category. When the party brought back the altered document for his review, he accepted it without touching it. It floated to him, and his eyes moved through the legal language at impossible speed. He offered one of his typical lessons in infernal logic: thrones rest on conditions, wise rulers learn them, foolish rulers ignore them, and dead rulers discover them. He seemed satisfied that the document would serve his purpose.

The party still wanted access to the eighth layer of Hell. Vladyn explained that he could not simply grant that passage openly. Instead, he could give them a task that would require them to travel in that direction. He needed them to determine whether someone was lying to him.

The missing figure was Morvex, an Orobas commander in Vladyn’s service. Officially, Morvex had been destroyed six months earlier, with all the proper documentation, testimony, and infernal bureaucracy to support the claim. Unofficially, Vladyn did not believe it. Vladyn sent the party to a fortress-city called the Ninth Bell, a military outpost on the edge of the seventh layer, where the answer supposedly waited.

Vladyn transported the party and their hell centipede to within sight of the Ninth Bell. The fortress rose behind fifty-foot black stone walls, bristling with hellfire like barbed wire. Watchtowers crowned with bells surrounded it, and those bells rang constantly. The party learned the bells tolled for executions, which meant the city was killing people at an alarming rate. They approached along a sharp, regimented road of black lava stone and found six tar devils guarding the gate.

Rather than announce that they were questioning Vladyn’s official records, the group wisely framed their purpose as an administrative investigation into the death of Morvex. They were not challenging the conclusion. They were documenting and clarifying the official account. That approach fit Hell perfectly. With intimidation, careful wording, and a touch of arcane pressure, they convinced the guards to let them through without turning the visit into a fight.

Inside the Ninth Bell, the party first questioned a terrified functionary connected to the earlier reports. He admitted that he had seen paperwork claiming Morvex’s body had been recovered, but he knew no body had actually been found. He pointed the party toward Sabiator, a lunar devil magistrate responsible for official records.

The magistrate’s office proved every bit as infernally bureaucratic as expected. A bell for service summoned an angry little imp, and after exactly twenty minutes, Sabiator appeared: a heavy lunar devil wearing a name tag, because even Hell apparently has conference culture. When asked to prove his identity, he threw an absurd stack of documentation at the party. Once satisfied, they asked him to walk them through the records of Morvex’s supposed death.

Sabiator took them into a records archive and found problems. Several statements from different sources appeared to have been written by the same hand. Multiple witnesses used phrasing too similar to be natural. The more he looked, the more offended he became. The records were not merely wrong. They had been forged well enough to fool the official process, and his office had been used to validate them.

The records pointed to a cambion named Blaco Adar, a labor and transport manager in the tunnels beneath the city. Blaco had supposedly witnessed Morvex’s body and confirmed its cremation. When the party found him, he was surprisingly willing to talk. He explained that no one had directly ordered him to lie. Administrative devils had asked questions in a way that made the desired answer obvious. The truth was that Morvex had vanished in the tunnels and never returned. There had been no battle, no body, and no cremation.

Blaco directed the party toward an ancient ruin beneath the Ninth Bell. Morvex had been seen going there several times, usually returning the same day. On the final trip, he never came back. The party rode the hell centipede through the tunnels and found the ruins filled with dust, grime, and yet more documents. They discovered a hidden ceiling apparatus, a pulley-like travel system that allowed someone to move overhead and conceal their route. They followed it to an overlook above a disused archive chamber.

From there, the party found signs of recent work: modern quills, ink, desks, and supplies out of place among ancient shelves. Arcane examination revealed residue of illusion, shadow, and transmutation magic. Someone was bringing sensitive official documents here and magically altering or masking them. It was a document-forging and concealment operation, backed by magic and hidden inside the old archive.

Further investigation revealed Infernal scratched on one desk, written in a dialect associated not with the seventh layer, but with the eighth. The party preserved it as evidence. They then settled in to watch the chamber. After waiting, they saw a group arrive: two bearded devils, two ink devils, and a Herald of Darkness, all wearing Vladyn’s sigils. The ink devils began manufacturing altered documents, using old archive materials as references and layering illusion over the work.

The party observed rather than attacked. With arcane monitoring, they captured fragments of what was being written. The messages suggested someone in Vladyn’s court was feeding information to agents on the eighth layer. They also learned that the conspirators had not yet obtained evidence Morvex possessed, confirming he was likely still alive.

When the Herald of Darkness left alone, the party followed. She descended deeper into the ruin to a small dungeon and spoke to a prisoner in an elaborate cage. She called him Morvex. He was alive, badly weakened, and being interrogated because he had evidence the conspirators still needed. The party waited for the Herald to leave, then moved to extract him.

Rather than trigger the cage’s traps or start a fight, Krovuur used Thundering Summons to teleport Morvex out as an ally. The opposing magical clap canceled the noise well enough to avoid raising the alarm, and the group completely bypassed the combat that had been waiting for them. They freed Morvex, treated his wounds, and got him onto the hell centipede.

Morvex confirmed the conspiracy was real and larger than expected. He had discovered a traitor in Vladyn’s midst, but not one working simply to overthrow Vladyn. The traitor served something higher, something powerful enough that devils were afraid even to name it.

The party returned to Vladyn at full speed. Vladyn heard the report in silence, spoke to Morvex privately, and then acknowledged the party’s success. He praised them as having done even better than Morvex, which was no small compliment. True to his bargain, he granted them a writ of safe passage through the seventh layer and a writ of protection against lesser devils. He also gave them directions to a hidden route into the eighth layer.

Quick Recap

• The party returned from the City of Brass to the seventh layer of Hell after a brutal portal crossing.
• They called their infernal hell centipede, which can bring them to Vladyn while they are in his domain.
• Vladyn reviewed the altered document, approved it, and kept it for his own purposes.
• Vladyn gave the party a new task: investigate whether Morvex, an Orobas commander, was truly dead.
• The party traveled to the Ninth Bell, a fortress-city where bells toll for executions.
• They talked their way past tar devil guards by framing the mission as official documentation work.
• A frightened functionary admitted the records claimed Morvex’s body was found, but no body had actually been recovered.
• Sabiator, a lunar devil magistrate, helped review the official records and found forged witness statements.
• The false report pointed to Blaco Adar, a cambion transport manager in the tunnels beneath the city.
• Blaco admitted he had implied Morvex was dead after being led into that answer by administrative devils.
• The party followed Morvex’s trail into ancient archive ruins and discovered a hidden document-forging operation.
• The conspiracy appeared tied to the eighth layer of Hell and someone connected to Vladyn’s own sphere.
• The party found Morvex alive, rescued him without combat, and brought him back to Vladyn.
• Vladyn rewarded them with safe passage, protection from lesser devils, and directions to a hidden route into the eighth layer.