Zobeck Se01Ep07 - DECEIT AND DEVILS

General Summary

PRINCESS MOON SHADOW RETURNS!

BEGIN TRANSCRIPTIONfour solar years ago through late Highsummer and early Harvest Tide, a variant green mead appeared on the markets and gained substantial popularity. This is an interesting fact that I thought would be pertinent for you to learn, diary! For reference: I find all facts interesting.
Also of note, on Ceresday of Highsummer 28, I located an advertisement requesting a vigilante! My excitement circuits experienced a kernel panic and I arrived at my prospective employer’s location with due haste. As it turned out, Mr. Gorhig did not want to exact supreme justice in the name of the moon so much as he wished to facilitate deletion of a wanton undesirable. Decidedly unethical, and not at all fabulous. 
There was also a menial task involving transport of a minor criminal to a neighboring city. There is little joy in punishing a bad guy if the actual Justice part has already concluded. Luckily, we came across another executable task thanks to Miss Holly, and proceeded to investigate with alacrity. We agreed to transport the previously apprehended criminal after the conclusion of this task.
3 degrees of separation from Miss Holly, there was a grief-stricken widow who wished revenge upon the one who had slain her husband. Unfortunately, the suspect in question was a captain of the guard, and had commandeered a guarded warehouse for his nefarious deeds. This complicated the application of justice.
Further investigation at an information repository (Designation: “The Book Fetish”) and peer to peer data sharing with a scholar named Eida revealed that the captain had been researching pacts with fiends, and perhaps intended to broker such a deal in the near future. Odds of such an event occurring at the lunar equinox two days from that time: 96.69%
Many attempts were made to breach the warehouse making use of subtlety, but the guards were fully up to date on their virus protection protocols, and Molly was unable to corrupt their programming with her “charm;” even with Illomen’s spyware in place.
My programming prohibited me from taking the door by force, as I cannot willingly lie or allow an innocent to come to harm. Anaerobic scouting beneath the dock supporting the warehouse revealed nothing more than silt and several fish. INITIATING JOKE However, Atticus was able to make use of a trojan horse backdoor protocol, or should I say…
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Trojan cat! JOKE COMPLETE and slip inside while wildshaped into a feline form. During his wildshape’s runtime, he downloaded the location of an interior trapdoor, which we were able to slip through after ☆ Miss Theresa ☆ set an illegal fire outside the building and our new friend DATANOTFOUND the dwarven barbarian roused the local kobold population into a small riot.
The guards sufficiently distracted, we arrived in the catacomb beneath the warehouse and investigated our surroundings. What little data we’d gleaned from The Book Fetish was of no use here. There were several sigils inscribed on the floor in a large superscript font. Each would glow as one of us stepped on it, but nothing more.
Unable to retreat to the surface, what with the warehouse guards returning to their posts, we resolved to dig our way out through a rubble cave-in. It lead to a tunnel that was instantly familiar to each of us that had visited Mr. Gorhig earlier. It led to the tunnels of the undercity, now in disuse following the ousting of the nobles who had excavated them some years ago. With the option of retreat now re-highlited, we resolved to craft an ambush for the captain. We deduced he would return here soon to complete his ritual, what with the occult trappings of the location self-evident.
With Tireless.exe in effect, waiting took no time at all. The captain dropped through the trapdoor we’d used earlier and made straight for the altar at the other end of the room, heedless of our cries to halt. A devil appeared, and the captain was instantly slain. The devil materialized completely and christened its entrance into our realm by launching an all out assault against us. It would teleport about the room, hiding behind force fields and launching bolts of green energy at us while summoning phantom hordes of robed cultists. It was all thanks to DATANOTFOUND that we discovered the thing’s weakness. During the fight, he stepped on one of the glowing sigils while fending off multiple cultists, and a few seconds later, the fiend’s force field fell. Each of us smote it in turn, until it retreated behind another translucent wall. Each time, we located the proper sigil and weighed it down, all while fighting for our lives, until we could expose the devil to our righteous blows of justice.
(Mistress Arashi has thoughtfully provided a humorous illustration of a weeping devil missing multiple teeth, hunched over as the assembled heroes curb stomp it en masse.)
After the fight, Eida was deeply troubled that such a mighty fiend could download itself into the prime material realm with such little trouble, but resolved to help us remain on the lookout. We were paid for our incidental services of making sure the guard captain met his end, and set off to begin our next adventureEND TRANSCRIPTION

Date

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Report Date

27 Jul 2018