Although I’m fairly new to D&D as a fandom - I’m returning now having played only a single campaign in the 1990s - I’ve been inspired by the activity in this community as well as all the lore resources available out there. In an attempt to develop a character I find rather fascinating, and to teach myself about the lore along the way, I’ve begun writing an origin story explaining why the sole heir of a respectable family became so bitter. I plan on posting individual chapters here (and elsewhere) as I write them. Comments and feedback are more than welcome - I have no doubt that, due to my noob-ness, I’ll make a few canonical and continuity errors here and there.
Also, as a disclaimer: I do not like this man. He’s a despicable POS who does inexcusable things which I’d never condone. This is written as a character study, not as a fantasy of things I’d ever consider doing for a second.
Down the finely carved steps of the spiral staircase, there was blood.
From one end of the ornate wine cellar to the other, there was blood.
Dripping from the stone grey ceiling to the profane runes on the floor, there was blood.
Stained on the eight corpses of his now departed family, there was blood.
Blood on the candlesticks they’d tricked him into dipping himself.
Blood on the rubble of the twisted idols he’d smashed.
Blood on the tattered raiment draped over the altar.
Blood on the plain brown robes he’d worn to conceal himself.
Blood on the gardening shovel he’d used to do it all.
Blood smeared on the hands which had rendered him the sole heir to their name.
Tears streamed down the young man’s cheeks as he knelt on the floor in front of the altar. For a very long time after he’d uttered the incantation, he heard nothing. Not a soul survived in the house save his sisters’ cats upstairs, leaving him to wonder if he’d wasted the effort. Truly, he had no idea what he was doing, but what other options did he have?
The odor of his family’s blood began to fill the room, though he was beyond the point of nausea. There was no coming back from what he’d done, and as he stared numbly at the bloody runes on the floor, and the subtle details which he’d altered based on the grimoire he’d discovered in a sealed-off room in the attic, he found himself unable to act. To move. To think.
Stunned into silence, he waited until the blood forming the runes began to bubble and churn. Motionless from bereavement and shock, he observed without interfering as the symbols he’d traced glows and took a more definite shape. A pentagram burned beneath the blood yet didn’t generate heat, and cool smoke wafted up as the red lifeblood boiled in place without spilling beyond the lines of the runic circle.
In a scene which would have frightened anyone else, a circle of fire opened up on the floor, providing a fleeting image of a scorched landscape. The disheveled young man didn’t react, however, not entirely feeling or grasping the gravity of the situation. Even when the otherworldly being rose up from the blood-fueled fire, he didn’t flee or even stand up. Kneeling on the floor with his hands limp at his sides, he did nothing more than breathe as he gazed upon the infernal spirit which floated up out of the circle.
Flame-touched wings folded behind her back, providing a relatively narrow profile for the elegant, almost angelic silhouette. Light from the flames revealed the battle-hardened albino face of a very different creature, though, and cold eyes contrasting with the heat of her wings stared down at him judgmentally. When she noticed that he was too numb to shrink away from her judgment, she became impatient.
After a few quick glances to the lifeless bodies scattered around the cellar, she folded her arms behind her back and frowned at the crestfallen figure deeply. “You dare to call on Zariel, Archdevil of Avernus, gateway to the Nine Hells?” the fiery fiend asked him rhetorically. “Explain yourself or face my wrath!”
Too dejected to properly and intelligently fear the horror he’d summoned, the young man remained kneeling before her, eyes downcast out of heartache rather than the necessary deference.
“My name is Normanir Chandler…son and heir of this house…heir of a calamitous name…and I beseech you by the blood of my own family.
Surrounded by fire and blood, the disheveled, broken young man knelt on the floor without fear, pulling his limp arms up to stretch out his hands to the haughty fallen angel hovering in the cellar. Her flaming eyes burned down on every inch of him with her judgment, but his total lack of fear gave her pause.
“You wish to make a deal, yet you have no idea if I’m interested in your offer,” Zariel said in her echoing cadence. “I, archdevil of the first layer, seek; I am not sought,” she added with a dismissive tone. The way she paused and waited for his response, however, made her verbal test as clear to him as the hellish image shimmering below her.
“Your power and hate have proven irresistible,” Normanir replied, feeling a bit of the pain over his actions recede now that he had his audience. “What am I to do but seek your favor? I have spilled so much blood, and I can think of no other patron for which I wish.”
Her fiery feathers ruffled visibly, betraying her strong reaction toward the precisely correct type of flattery. “Then you’ve earned yourself a few fleeting moments in which I won’t kill you for interrupting my spot inspection. Tell me about this,” she said, sweeping her hand across the eight corpses littering the room, causing him to bristle. Though her expression didn’t change, he could sense her revelry in the twinge of pain she’d caused him.
“This is…was…my family,” he replied evenly, controlling his breaths. Though he was still numb, he feared the weakness of sorrow, and he chose his words carefully. “My siblings…my grandparents…one uncle and one cousin…my…mother. All of them. As their heir, I offer you…I offer their souls to you in exchange for your time. I hope that the recent nature of their demise allows you to retrieve them before the forces of chaos can.”
Though still haughty, with her nose upturned, Zariel directed her disapproval toward the dead bodies scattered among the wine racks and broken bottles. “Your family bears Abyssal taint,” she sneered.
He nodded. “They do. They tried to call forth a demon of some sort. I realized what they were doing, and I slayed them in time.”
“Slayed?” she asked derisively. “Your family members look soft. You killed them with a gardening tool. I am not impressed.”
The way she paused after she’d verbally stabbed him in the heart again made her testing even more apparent. He needed that reminder, that sharp pain, for the pain of loss was great even when mixed with hatred. “I prevented them from helping the Abyss creep back into this plane. I did what I had to do, and what only I could do, because only I knew what was happening.”
“And so you have my attention without my wrath…for a time. Tell me, mortal: what is the meaning of this? Be direct, and don’t waste my time.”
“Hell forbid I waste that which you value,” he replied, though her reaction to the second round of flattery was more muted. “My family masqueraded at adherents to the Church of Ilmater. I was raised to uphold the law, and believe in the law, even if I could not accept their naïve devotion to the idea of goodness.”
“I asked what happened here, not for your personal backstory,” she said, more disappointed than agitated.
“Of course. I only wished to reveal to you their secret: my family, as I recently came to discover, were only using the church as a front. They were worshipping demons, and from what I can tell, this is not recent. I was always excluded from this part of their lives, for reasons I don’t understand.”
“So you killed your family out of resentment? That’s a mortal dispute. I’m not interested.”
“There is more, o archdevil of the first layer! This is what I wanted to say. I was raised to uphold the law, and I had no excessive issues beyond what we mortals face with family. Their secret devotion to chaos is what…” He paused before his voice hitched in his throat, weary of showing weakness in front of the fallen angel. “…forced me to eliminate them. I was motivated by a sincere desire to oppose the forces of chaos, to keep the Abyss far down below the lowest of planes where it belongs. This was not a tale of revenge.”
“Then your evil deed for the day is complete. Congratulations.” Zariel dramatically unfolded her arms from behind her back and refolded them in front of her chest. “I’m still not impressed.”
Her words vexed him, but she neither took her leave nor continued speaking, granting him a sliver of hope that she was merely pushing him to reach his main point. “I wouldn’t expect one of your lofty status to be; that’s not the reason why I called on you,” he said. She stared at him, granting him time to explain himself. “I’ve come to realize that the corruption of the Abyss cannot be stopped…it’s constant, unending, and must be opposed at all times. If even my family, as lawfully strict as they were, could fall, then there’s limit to who can be corrupted on this plane. Demonic influence must be stamped out everywhere.”
“By you?” Zariel asked rhetorically. “You think that I’m interested in hearing from you because you ambushed a few cultists with a shovel?”
On instinct, Normanir balled up his fists and bristled. A measure of fear finally worked its way into his mind, much belated considering his interlocutor, but the sensation proved to be unfounded. Instead of reacting in anger, though, Zariel raised an eyebrow at him curiously. His fear decreased.
“A few cultists-“ He cut off his own sentence and adjusted his tone for the person he was addressing. “Lady of the First, I spilled the blood of my own motherto oppose the forces of the Abyss!” he said pointedly. “The blood spilled on this floor is the same as the blood flowing in my veins. I’ll go to any end in this multiverse to serve the cause of lawful evil. This is not merely bashing a few cultists with a shovel.”
Although she kept her arms folded in front of her, they didn’t pull as tightly as before. Even when he’d spoken out of turn to her, she seemed more intrigued than irritated. Her gazed washed over the corpses of the deceased Chandler household before returning to the bloodline’s final member. “You don’t look like them,” she said earnestly and without mockery. “I smell fey ancestry in your blood, but not in theirs.”
“My father was a drifter from the woods, but he’s no more an object of attachment for me than these betrayers you see here,” Normanir replied acrimoniously.
“A wood elf, then. Can you swing a sword?”
Numbness receding, Normanir found himself less tense once the fallen angel had begun to interact with him more professionally. “It’s the only thing the lout taught me before he left. Marching and fighting is armor was taught to me by my uncle.” He pointed toward one of the corpses, all of them full-blooded humans. “If I have more than a shovel, then I will add the bodies of many more demon-worshipers to that pile. You will find me a useful tool in the Blood War.”
Her feathers ruffled again in reaction to his promise. Haughtiness was replaced by a more sober-eyed judgment, and Zariel bore a sort of regal air about her as she regarded the apparent half-elf kneeling to her. “Then you’ve bought yourself a few moments beyond a mere conversation, mortal. What would you ask of the ruler of Avernus?”
Normanir‘s heart pounded in his chest, excited and stressed by the gradually approaching success. Originally, he hadn’t even expected the summoning circle to work; he could have easily ended up as a broken, destitute man wasting away in a house full of his own family’s corpses. Now, he gulped and worked hard to control his breathing, feeling success so nearly in his grasp.
“I wish to pledge my soul to the Nine Hells and to yield direction of my fury to you,” he said while bowing his head solemnly. To his confusion, she didn’t seem to understand his simple request.
“Indeed, a pact with the Nine Hells will require this of you at a minimum, though the sacrifice of your own family is a rare and desirable act. But what do you ask of the Lady of the First?” Zariel asked.
“I…wish to pledge my soul to the Nine Hells and to submit to the ruler of Avernus.”
Zariel did a double take. “Yes, but..you…Normanir Chandler, what do you ask of the ruler of Avernus?” she asked in frustration.
“I ask that you accept the sale of my soul and my oath of fealty to you!” he replied, just as frustrated.
“I know that…you…I…argh! Mortal, what do you want in return for your soul!”
“I want to give you my soul, that’s the point I’m trying to make, Lady Zariel!”
He finally looked up at her, matching her perplexed expression of annoyance. The two of them stared at each other for a few seconds before she stopped furrowing her brow so heavily. Ideas churned in her mind, but what they were, he could not tell.
“Just one minute,” she said before sinking back down into the portal to hell, dashing the young man’s previous hopes for swift success.
As Zariel dipped back down through the portal in the floor, Normanir began to quiver. Technically, he hadn’t lost anything he’d already had before contacting the angel-turned-devil, but the way he lost sight of her filled him with a sense of loss. His shoulders slumped, and he didn’t even bother rising from his kneeling position.
The strangest error occurred with the portal, however. Instead of reverting to a typical summoning circle on the floor of his cellar, the gaping hole into Avernus remained, though the image flickered and blurred; the various hues of red and orange dulled and blended, warping the view he had of the first layer of Hell. Although Zariel dropped out of his view, leaving only the searing mountains and burning skies to look at, he heard the sound of her landing on a surface he couldn’t see.
“Bel!” Zariel yelled, though in which direction, Normanir didn’t know. “Bel, get over here! You need to listen to this.”
Wings flapped as another creature, seemingly the fallen angel’s lieutenant, approached. The smallest flock of a wingtip moved across the visible part of the portal, but otherwise, Normanir couldn’t see the scene unfold.
“Yes, archdevil?” came the gravely voice of the pit fiend, oddly cordial considering the sordid history between the two.
“Bel, assess this scenario. Some mortals contacted me, some elf or something like it.”
“A half-elf, my lady, though I can assure you that my partial fey ancestry-“
Zariel continued speaking, causing Normanir to fall silent. “He sacrificed his family to contact me, but instead of asking for a pact, he wants me to take his soul.”
“In exchange for what, archdevil?” Bel asked nonchalantly.
“For nothing; he literally just wants me to take his soul. That’s what he’s asking for.”
“If I may, archdevil,” Normanir tried to interject, “I hadn’t finished explaining my motivations.”
His protests fell on deaf ears, and he felt a little invisible as the pair continued talking about him right in front of him. “It’s a trick,” Bel replied brusquely. “But whatever for? Did he say what he wanted?”
“No, he just kept talking about how much he hates his family. But he already killed them by himself, so I don’t know what he actually wants from me.”
“Are they truly dead? It may be an ambush.”
“If you could give me a moment,” Normanir tried again, but he felt like they weren’t even listening.
“Not possible; I sense the evil in him, of the lawful variety. His family were demon worshippers, and he got mad,” Zariel said.
Bel hummed while considering the situation. “Sounds like a revenge story.”
“Yes, but it’s complete. What could he want? I’ve considered every possible tactic, but none of them make logical sense.”
“Is he still waiting for you?” Bel asked.
What Zariel said next clarified much of what Normanir had been perplexed by. “Yes, he’s on the other side of the portal, but it’s liminal barrier is sealed. He can’t hear us.”
Normanir’s eyes opened wide. “O lady of the first, I can actually hear you,” he said in a raised voice, but to no avail. The planar connection had been faulty, and he was left listening in on a conversation he wasn’t meant to hear.
“Perhaps we can open a communication gate to Meritos,” Bel suggested.
“Agreed, his knowledge of strategy is sound; perhaps he’ll have an idea of what this mortal is up to,” Zariel replied.
Magic crackled out of Normanir’s view, warping the portal on his cellar floor to the point where all of the colors changed. The burning steppes of Avernus were replaced with a barren glacier in Stygia, though the image was still dulled and blurred. All that was visible was ice and the shoulder and arm of an ice devil. On one side.
“Archdevil of the First, I need your call,” came the insectoid voice of the ice devil.
“Meritos, we need your help to settle a discussion,” Zariel said without any pleasantries. “Some mortal sacrificed his family and contacted me offering his soul.”
“He wants his family back?” Meritos the ice devil replied.
“That’s the thing, he doesn’t. I have no idea what he wants,” Zariel replied.
“Come on…I can tell you in thirty seconds,” Normanir grumbled in vain.
“A masochist. His soul is wracked with guilt, and he wishes for its punishment,” Meritos suggested. The ice devil’s arm shifted in the portal’s image, making a gesture Normanir couldn’t see.
“That’s the thing, he really doesn’t,” Zariel replied again. “He hates his family. They were demon worshippers, and he claims he wants to fight in the Blood War.”
“He wants to sell his soul, and the price is to fight in the Blood War?” Meritos asked rhetorically. “Impossible. I scoff. It’s a poorly considered trick.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Bel chimed in. “But from what Zariel describes, the mortal appears sincere.”
For a moment, the ice devil paused in thought. Its insectoid hand moved across the portal image so it could scratch its head. “If he wishes for a Pact, then it will ultimately be with Asmodeus.”
“You’re really suggesting we bother the Lord of the Ninth for this?” Bel asked, though Normanir’s heart beamed with hope.
“Yes,” was all Meritos said.
“Agreed; this is the quickest solution. This mortal is either extremely crafty or mentally disturbed. I’ll reroute our portal of contact to Nessus.” Zariel casted a crackling spell, and the image of glaciers fizzled out, leaving in its wake a shimmering, wavy image of an upside-down shelf affixed to a wall of crimson stone. “Lord of the Ninth, have you heard?” Zariel asked the unseen figure.
When the person spoke, Normanir’s skin broke out into goosebumps, and his shoulders twitched nervously. “I heard,” the deep, noble-sounding voice replied and then proceeded in an almost therapeutic tone, “and I saw. I felt him as clearly as I feel any being with a truly evil soul. He’s neither lying nor a fool.”
Normanir’s heart fluttered and skipped two beats, once at the complement from the master of Hell himself, and a second time at the way the naysaying of the two doubting devils were caught off guard. Zariel fell silent, and Bel stammered.
“He…then…he’s selling his soul as the benefit rather than the cost?” the pit fiend wondered aloud. “But what value does a soul have if it’s gained at such a low price?”
“The soul isn’t the aspect of a loyal soldier which holds its value,” Asmodeus replied, soothing Normanir’s nerves every time he spoke. “The value lies in the services rendered. For a true believer such as this, you must view his mortal husk as temporary, his status equal to the remainder of our legions’ rank and file. This isn’t a shortsighted mortal offering his soul as currency for temporal power; this is a strategist who believes in our mission.”
Bel made a noise as if to protest but wisely held his tongue, allowing Zariel to demurely accept correction of her viewpoint. “How shall I arrange his contract, considering the nature of his offer?” she asked Asmodeus, masking her skepticism well.
“Give the mortal a gift and a quest.”
There was a moment of uncomfortable silence until Bel cleared his throat. “My lord, our rank and file in the Blood War must survive numerous conflicts before receiving commendations,” the pit fiend said in a mousy voice which didn’t match the image Normanir had in his head of such a fearsome creature. When Bel began to murmur, that image was shattered even further. “I…well…of course, I only mention this to measure project development.”
“Shall I bestow upon the mortal anything in particular?” Zariel interjected before Bel could further embarrass himself.
“I can sense his presence through the portal he opened, as I can sense any evil soul…he’s a fighter, but without a path in life other than his hatred. Grant him a weapon befitting his quest…and always show mortals so willing to pledge themselves that the Nine Hells are generous to those who wield power successfully.” After a brief pause which may or may not have been punctuated by gestures or expressions, the Lord of the Ninth spoke again. “The pact which you must settle with him is separate, and must be tied to his quest. Send him out to spread disbelief…the weapon you’ll give him is his to use, but failure in his quest will constitute violation of the pact. You know what must be done in such cases.”
“All you’ve expressed will be carried out, Lord of the Ninth,” Zariel replied before Bel could. The pit fiend remained silent, likely in recognition of the fallen angel’s authority over him.
“I know it will. And, by the way…in the future, you - all of you, including Meritos - may want to check the containment of portals used for communication,” Asmodeus said for the last time.
Despite the prime archdevil’s soothing tone, Normanir felt his hair follicles stand on end at the final command. There was a long pause during which Normanir felt as if he were being watched, hearing no sound and seeing only the flipped image of the shelf against a wall. Too amazed by the resounding success of his very first attempt at contacting another plane to feel shocked, he merely wondered what sort of commotion had been caused once Asmodeus had noticed the fact that their entire conversation had been heard.
A partial glimpse of that commotion was visible on Zariel’s face when she appeared a few minutes later. Rising up out of the portal once it had switched back to Avernus, she glared at Normanir with tightly pursed lips, like a sack of wheat ready to burst. She demonstrated incredible self-control when she spoke with restraint, but the tightness in her jaw clashed too obviously with her even tone of voice.
“Fetch me a chair, mortal,” she ordered, “so I can get this part over with.”
Four hours later, when the corpses had already begun to fill the cellar with their odious odor, the two of them leaned back and quietly read the copies of the contract drawn up by the mini-devils attending the archdevil. Normanir couldn’t help but glance at the miserable creatures occasionally: small-sized, red-skinned, and hunched, like an ugly little cross between tieflings and halflings but with the positive traits of neither. They certainly wrote fast, though, which was a relief. Even Zariel, despite her immortal alertness, was growing weary of the discussion.
“You’re far too frustrating to deal with for a mortal negotiating such an insignificant pact,” she announced while thumbing through the fine print of the contract. He was mirroring her movements, poring over the fine print as well.
“Thank you,” he replied, causing her to bristle at the third or fourth time he’d responded to her insults with thanks.
“This has taken my attention away from the front lines for more time than it’s ultimately worth,” she added.
He wasn’t quite sure if she even cared if he heard her or not, so he tested her with an actual cogent response. “I believe you’ll change your mind when you see what I can contribute to the war effort.”
She sneered mockingly, but her sneer almost looked like a smile, which was the most positive reaction he’d received from her. After a few more minutes free of insults, she set her copy down on the table he’d brought in from the dining room upstairs. “Did you read the fine print?” she asked tersely.
“Only every time you asked me,” he replied, sincerely not intending to sound passive aggressive, but she glared at him all the same. “I take your instructions seriously.”
She folded her hands in front of her, though one of them appeared to be a weaponized prosthetic. “To review: you sacrificed your family’s souls to me, giving Avernus priority to them over the Fugue Plane. This is your right as sole heir of your family. In return, I won’t kill you for interrupting my troop inspection for the past few hours.”
“Of course. I’m honored by your audience.”
Ignoring his complement this time, she continued reading off the main points of the agreement. “You’ll be given a weapon commensurate with the tasks you’re offering to do as a signing bonus. The weapon is yours, but it’s jealous and demands that you use it when slaying your foes. The souls of anyone who falls by it are mine.”
Normanir was about to ask for the purpose of such a clause since he didn’t need souls himself, but he stopped himself when he realized that letting her have as many victories as he could bear in the negotiation was in his interest. “As they should be, Lady of the First,” he said, peeling away a small portion of her irate sneer with his words. She didn’t react to his comment otherwise, but she did continue without mocking him further.
“Next, your pact. For reasons I can’t comprehend, you insist on having a staff, so instead of a standard tome or chain, you’ll take these Hellions as your servants,” she said while nodding toward the two mini-devils, both of whom grinned stupidly when they were mentioned. “You’re also entitled to a flock of familiars - as needed only - and a talisman for one abishai.”
“We hadn’t discussed which species I’d have as a minion,” Normanir said, vigorously searching through the fine print. “Wait, it’s already here.”
“Yes, and that’s not a detail I felt I needed to check before adding. You asked for a minion you could command occasionally for whatever wasteful reason you’ve thought of; is this really cause to start renegotiating?”
“I didn’t intend that, my lady.” He spent a few moments reading the fine print, which required him to squint and hold that portion of the scroll close to his eyes. “It seems you already have a specific devil in mind. Why an abishai?”
“For you? Because it’s what you asked for. For it? As a punishment for a previous failure. Also, to spite Tiamat.”
Upon hearing the justification, Normanir set the contract down and wondered which part he should ask about first. “Could I be implicated in committing a slight against Tiamat?” he asked. This time when Zariel’s expression hardened, she didn’t seem to be directing her ire at him.
“One-hundred percent no,” she said emphatically. “Neither you, nor I, nor the devil in question can be implicated in anything. Tiamat answers to Asmodeus but at a lower rank than I, and her lair is under my auspices.”
“And…this talisman you’ll give me is part of a punishment for the devil in question?” he asked with a cautious hesitation.
Her upper lip stiffened. “That’s none of your concern,” she said, a tone of finality in her netherworldly voice. “Moving on, your ability to summon the aforementioned creatures is the only form of magic you’ll be granted for now. These are for the purposes of countering Abyssal or other meddlesome influence on the prime material plane only; they are not your personal property, and aren’t to be used for personal errands.”
“Except for when such errands can maintain my anonymity,” he interjected. Her lip curled at his comment, but he knew contract law from his family business well enough to know when he was justified. “My efforts depend on our enemies not knowing that I have a home base with a shrine in it; I’m free to use them for domestic chores, as you implied earlier when you mentioned a staff. Since I can no longer employ a staff of mortals without arousing suspicion among my neighbors, given my family’s deserved demise…”
His voice trailed off, leaving her to finish his thought. She didn’t like being corrected - not one bit - but she didn’t argue the point further. “The abishai‘s punishment is none of your concern,” she repeated. “By the way, the shrine isn’t until further down the list. Please stay focused. Your ability to summon these minions, for specific purposes, is the only magic you’ll be granted for now. Those minions are a symbol of the pact, and that pact is contingent upon your completion of your quest. Only upon successful completion will you have an open-ended promise of proper pact magic siphoned from a grant by Tiamat, expanding based on your annual performance rating.”
Having spent a good hour just sorting out the performance rating, Normanir wasn’t in the mood for revisiting the topic. “Alright, so the shrine?” he asked, skipping to another point.
“Why do you need to ask about this? Establish it here in your cellar, see that it’s maintained.”
“Unless, unless, unless I travel beyond the Sword Coast for a single quarter against my own will,” he said, emphasizing a point she’d previously resisted rather strongly by wagging his finger.
Had he not let Zariel feel like she was winning by claiming the souls of all his victims, his poignant emphasis might have provoked her, but she permitted his behavior as a victory she felt she’d granted to placate him. “Yes, you made that clear; watch your tone,” she warned, and he bowed his head deferentially.
“My apologies.”
Once she’d stared at him long enough to feel he’d been reminded of her dominance, she leaned back again. “So the shrine must be established here as a part of your initiation into my ranks, with further shrines beyond the Sword Coast contributing to your performance rating. The scale of punishments and rewards for the performance rating are separated between your pact and your weapon; do we need to review the scale again?"
"Let's not, please," he replied, admitting defeat to appease her even when he knew she didn't want to revisit such a convoluted topic again either. "The only major point remaining is the quest to seal the pact."
Zariel tried to wave the topic away with her prosthetic claw-hand. "That should be the clearest part of the contract."
"Clear in the sense that it includes the fewest lines of fine print; unclear in the sense that there aren't enough details mentioned."
Her fiery eyes widened at his comment, though she seemed more exasperated than upset. Sitting up straight, she spoke to him without her usual commanding, borderline condescending tone. "What more could you want, mortal! Most of your kind who strike up deals with the Nine Hells want to conclude their bargains in a matter of minutes. The sun is starting to rise here in your miserable plane, and you’re still nitpicking over a lackof details!”
“Because I don’t want to screw myself over in the future.”
“Then don’t screw up! Look, look at this,” she said while tapping on his own copy of the contract. “You must sunder a shrine of Torm and drive its laypeople to disbelief within a year from today. You're lucky I don’t make you kiss my feet for giving you such an easy quest in return for all you’re reaping from this deal!”
“How am I to locate such a shrine? How many laypeople must their be? What type of sundering-“
She cut a line through the air with her natural hand, cowing him into silence. “Another word and I’ll start adding fine print. Understood?” He nodded without speaking, wary of pushing his luck on a deal which was already tilted in his favor. “Good. You have your mission, and you’ve stolen four hours of my time just to get this far. Congratulations: you’re already my least favorite soldier.”
“But if I serve you for my lifetime, I have a chance to…?” he asked, letting his voice trail off innocently as he pushed the last point.”
For a split second, he felt terror creep up on him as she looked at the contract in her hands and frowned at it deeply. A fleeting, momentary fear that she’d back out upon reviewing how much he’d earned stung him, and his foot began tapping nervously under the table. When she opened her mouth to speak, his heart clenched almost long enough for him to pass out. In the end, though, his paranoia was just barely proven unjustified.
With a simple pinprick, she drew a bit of her own fiery blood and signed her copy and his. “…you enter Hell as a minimum rank four devil in Avernus,” she sighed as she burned her signature onto the infernal contracts. He rushed to sign both copies with his own blood as well, lest she pull it away at the last moment. She watched him with resignation in her eyes. “If you fail, you’ll wallow with the lemures for your first millennium after death,” she warned.
“A fair wager,” he replied, too ecstatic to focus on anything else.
Normanir didn’t even wait until the following sunrise before he got to work. Under normal circumstances, he might have spent a fair amount of time mourning his family. Even though he felt they deserved their end, there may have been a period during which he lamented over what could have been or how their lives might have turned out differently. Not now, though; he had a job to do.
Still in the wrecked wine cellar, he waited as the two ugly little servants he’d been granted finished the job of extracting what little blood was left from the stiff, decaying bodies of his family. A brief, fleeting sense of filial jealousy filled him as he watched the mini-devils slicing pieces out of the corpses, but he repressed those feelings quickly once one of the homely twerps held up a bowl of the putrid red liquid to him.
“We collected their blood, master!” the little devil called a Hellion said. “Did we do good?”
Displaying no emotion, he only glanced at the bowl briefly. “It’s sufficient. Now, take a look at this.” He pulled out the talisman Zariel had given him yesterday. “Can you draw the sigil engraved on this?”
The stupidly grinning mongrel climbed on a wine rack like a monkey to get a better look at the obsidian artifact. “I know that symbol. We can draw it…if we have…” The creature glanced around, looking at the shattered bottles and splintered wood everywhere. “…pencils?”
Normanir’s face must have hardened, because he noticed the Hellion shrink away. “Use the blood you just collected,” he said in an even tone, trying to emulate Zariel’s decorum even when upset.
The mini-devil’s hairless eyebrows shot up. “Oh…right! The blood bowl!” She turned around toward the other Hellion, which appeared to be her fraternal twin brother. Or a clone. Or they all just looked very similar. “We need the blood to draw calling circles!”
The other hunched over creature stopped sucking blood from its fingers and collected its bowl. “Blood circles!” he bleated in a raspy little voice.
“Sooner rather than later,” Normanir said while running his thumb over the talisman impatiently.
Both of his small servants met in the middle of the aisles of wine racks, nervously rushing through the profane sigil. They apparently made a few errors and had to backtrack, wiping lines of blood away and redesigning them. After what felt like ten minutes, they finished the intricate lines and stood up straight, a seemingly uncomfortable and unnatural position for their curve, almost gnoll-like spines.
“Presto!” they both chirped in screechy, tone deaf unison.
“Good job,” Normanir said while waving the two of them away. They both rubbed their hands together, snickering with glee at the complement because normal laughter was apparently impossible for them. “Now…I studied a few basic courses in spellcraft, but I never even reached the level of cantrips. Let’s see if this works.”
In a low voice, Normanir began chanting words he hadn’t even learned. Their presence felt intrusive within his brain, unnatural and unlearned, and the verbal components felt like another person was using his tongue even though he’d studied the grammar and syntax of Infernal. Yet flow the words did, spilling from his mouth for the first time ever, yet sounding so fluent that anyone else would have assumed he’d repeated them all his life. His vision blurred as the blood forming the sigil glowed brightly, pulsating with each syllable. By the time he’d finished the incantation, he needed to lean against a wine rack for a moment.
Hellfire crackled on the floor, granting him another glimpse of Avernus. Slowly, a shadowy hand reached up through the floor, gripping the stone blocks for stability as another one followed. Two wingtips finagled their way through, and soon enough, a gangly gargoyle-like being crawled into the Prime Material Plane. Once it had entered, the portal to Avernus closed behind it, leaving a few plumes of smoke rising up off the floor, now stained with dried blood. A black Abishai stood in the middle of the cellar, eying its caller warily like an abused dog evaluating a potential adopter. Due to its semi-bipedal posture, it appeared slightly shorter than its summoner despite having larger dimensions overall. It looked horrific, like a perfect enforcer.
The two of them sized each other up for a few seconds before the scaly devil raised its arms in a questioning shrug. “Well?” it asked in Infernal.
Normanir needed a few more seconds to mentally switch languages, especially for one he was used to reading rather than speaking. “Welcome to your new home…for now. You’re speaking to Normanir Chandler, and we’ll be working together for the duration of my mortality.”
Hesitantly, the black scaly devil tested him with insults. “We’ll see how long that lasts,” It quipped, though it was shut down swiftly.
“If it ends early, your punishment will be more severe than mine, Karakul-Phy’lok,” Normanir said, using its true name and causing it to back away from him. “I’ll call you by your preferred, known name, and you maintain respect for me in public at all times. How’s that for a simple deal?”
Cowed from its very first minute on the prime world, the black scaly devil’s wings hugged tightly to its back sheepishly. “My name is Shax,” it said flatly, trying yet failing to put up a confident front.
Seeing no reason to humiliate a minion, Normanir switched his tone at the deferent reaction. “Shax, you’re going to enjoy your time here. We have much evil to spread in my world. Your name will be known positively in the First Layer when all is said and done. Are you prepared to bring the Blood War to Toril?”
When faced with a closed-ended question, Shax had little to say other than affirmation. “Demonic invasions of Avernus have been very…inconvenient. They must be confined to the Abyss.”
“Good. Good, I’m glad to hear that you have experience with them. First, though, we have one year to sunder a temple to Torm.”
The two little Hellions began a laughably bad dance routine to celebrate the news, but Shax turned its head sideways in confusion. “What does the Triad have to do with the Abyss?” it asked.
Normanir waved the concern away without really listening. “Zariel wants that as an initiation rite. Don’t worry, we’ll get to the good stuff once the year is through. I trust that isn’t a particularly long period of time for you. Now.” He folded his arms behind his back much as she had, walking along the aisles of damaged wine racks and ignoring his minion’s attempt to interject. “The first order of business is corpse cleanup. You all need to drain the bodies of as much blood as possible for the sullying ritual. You’ll need all of the wood, glass, and other debris to build a makeshift shrine to Asmodeus here in the cellar. Strip the bodies, too - the cloth, leather, and other items can be used for now. You know more about infernal shrines than I do, so be creative with these two things.”
One of the Hellions raised a hand. “Actually, we have names.”
“Not until you finish this initial task, you don’t,” Normanir said. “Help Shax do everything I just explained. When it’s all finished, I need you to eat the corpses, too. There’s no other safe way to dispose of them.”
“This is all going to take way longer than the usual deal for an infernal calling,” Shax said, arms folded.
One last time, Normanir turned back to face the handful of devils sharing his house. “You were called with a ritual using the blood of my own family, along with your talisman, using your true name. You’re going to be here much longer than you’d expected…make yourself comfortable.” He began ascending the steps leading out of the cellar, much to the dismay of the black scaly devil with two small red mongrels dancing in circles around it.
“And just what do you plan on doing when we’re doing all the real work?” Shax asked up the stairs.
Without even looking at them, Normanir folded his hands behind his back and continued walking. “Securing my family estates, maintaining professional contacts…and researching every shrine along the Sword Coast.” He opened the door at the top of the stairs, heading toward the study which now belonged to him. “A year isn’t a lot of time.”
The trip to Waterdeep took a whole week due to caravan stops. Normanir could have covered the distance in less time had he ridden in a smaller group, but small groups could draw attention. When he arrived at the city’s trades ward anonymously, though, mixed into a crowd of merchants and migrants, he knew he’d made the right decision.
Not that he was likely to draw attention anyway. Now being the sole heir of a family in a less significant city, he was unlikely to be properly identified. Being a member of the guild of chandlery due only to his family connections, he was unlikely to have been previously known. Being a candlemaker with the tragically stereotypical surname of ‘Chandler’, he was unlikely to be distinguished from any other younger member of the guild. Being a member of a smaller guild without sleeping quarters, he was unlikely to even be identified at the cheap inn where he’d rented a room.
But he still felt paranoid. So much so that, after paying the annual dues required of all guild members, he waited for half a day before returning to the chandlery hall so the daytime clerk would be a different underpaid apprentice.
As small as the guild was, the space of the narrow, three story building was utilized well. Being the only such guild for makers of soap, wax, and lighting fixtures in the entire Sword Coast, the hall had been dedicated to records of vendors, trainers, producers, and customers for the entire region. Instead of grand reception areas and rooms for socializing, the guild served solely as a locus for networking and record keeping for members of their profession. That economic use of space, and that meticulous form of record keeping, proved to be a Pact boon in and of itself.
For hours, Normanir sifted through the guild’s records, delving into a trove of information on the region which hadn’t likely been opened in years. From the afternoon until twilight, he deftly avoided the handful of other visitors to the guild by strategically shifting his position among the shelves of the guild archive, never being seen until the bored clerk had already fallen asleep at her countertop in the cramped foyer. Undisturbed, he flipped through the stacks.
Those stacks…there were receipts of major sales shared with the guild, copies of letters of request, training records for journeymen from the previous century, and much, much more. He didn’t even decipher the labeling methodology for past customers of guild members until over an hour into his search, and it took him another hour to decode the symbols used for customers who were exempt from local taxes due to religious affiliations. Working without food, water, or even coffee, he plumbed the depths of the archive, poring over logs of what must have been every scented candle ever sold to a monetary in western and northwestern Faerun during the previous decade. The slower his progress was toward his goal, the more motivated he became, even growing stubborn as the unknown target he was looking for evaded him.
As if the Lord of the Ninth himself had sent an infernal miracle, Normanir finally located the perfect candidate only minutes before the clerk woke up and told him to leave so she could lock up. On a shelf where the record books were double-packed into two layers, with another layer of loose books laying on top horizontally, stuck between two hard cover volumes due to a stain from a sugary drink however long ago, wedged in with other loose pages torn out of logs, and all of the above improperly shelved and categorized…he found it.
Carefully, he looked over the single sheet of paper he’d found by means he couldn’t logically explain. To the northeast, deep in the High Forest but far from the settlements of elf or man, there was a single entry along with a crudely drawn map. On a hilly glade but away from proper roads, appearing more like a retreat than a proper house of worship, laid the Pertinent Promise shrine to Torm - a relatively new celestial shrine which had purchased a single order of scented candles seven years prior and then never put through any more requests which the guild had recorded, according to the anonymously written entry.
A lone shrine to Torm in the middle of nowhere, with no contact for years…Normanir wondered if Zariel had given him the order at random, or if she’d intended him to figure it out that way. All the same, he stole the record from the archive rather than copying it lest his target ever be noticed again. Not that anyone was likely to delve that deeply into the shelves anytime soon, but still…he had to be sure he couldn’t be traced. With his family eliminated, he had no backup plan were he ever to be outed for what he was planning to do.
He glanced at the calendar on the wall in the foyer as he was shooed out by the clerk. He’d already lost five weeks since his contract had been signed due to demands of the family business as well as his minions’ lack of creativity when helping him brainstorm. Even with forty seven weeks left, he felt the pressure begin.
“Soon,” he whispered to the stolen map in his pocket rhetorically.
By his fourth month into the year, Normanir could feel every day ticking by. The remainder of his time to fulfill his end of the bargain felt painfully short, and he found himself constantly counting the minutes passing by at random. Out in the southern edge of the High Forest, though, he had reason to count.
Tucked into a little camp he’d dug into the underbrush a day’s travel north of Loudwater, he continuously glanced over the canopy covering the rolling hills through a looking glass and then back at the hourglass he’d brought. Obsessive to an almost comical degree, he even logged his observations in a notebook he kept, noting any sounds he heard despite not having encountered any other people in the woods so far. Only in the early evening did his darkvision pick up movement ahead, and he checked in the looking glass to confirm that what he was seeing was correct.
For the next ten minutes, he waited for the flock of docile imps to return. Venomless but extra sneaky, the tiny creatures took their time darting in and out of the branches, as paranoid about being caught as he was. They eventually landed and hid in the bushes with him, bobbing with excitement and nervousness. He scooted closer to them, sitting cross legged and leaning down.
“Tell me,” he ordered, though his blunt manner with them caused no offense to the enthused little devils.
The first of the imps raised its hand, crawling forward beyond the others to practically sit in his lap. “Nobody saw us; they suspected nothing, and we scouted the entire area,” it said.
Normanir hummed in excitement and thrust his notebook into the hands of another imp. “Draw diagrams of everything you saw,” he ordered, and the devil began furiously scribbling down. “Fill every page with minute details if you can.”
“Yes sir!”
“Tell me, now: what did you see? Spare the details unless asked for now,” he ordered the first imp.
The tiny fiend rubbed its palms together. “It’s not a proper monastery; it’s smaller than your house, like a retreat. They don’t seem to be equipped for a large number of visitors.”
“How many people did you see there?”
“Seventeen,” said the first imp.
“Eighteen,” said the third imp.
“Sixteen,” said the fourth imp.
“Eighteen,” said the second imp, who was still drawing pictures of the place.
“Seventeen,” said the fifth imp.
“Sixteen,” said the sixth imp.
When Normanir frowned at them, the entire flock of the tiny devils shrank in fear. He pointed at three of them. “You all, take my second notebook and identify each individual person you can remember distinctly. Write down any discrepancies.” This time when he thrust a notebook at tiny fiends, none of them were brave enough to respond out loud. While they began to quietly bicker over what to write, Normanir looked to the pair who weren’t preoccupied. “Was anybody armed?”
The two imps tried to speak at the same time before glancing at each other hesitantly. The one who’d spoken first then continued. “Two young people carried maces, but they looked very new. Clerics in training, maybe?”
The second imp nodded and crawled closer. “There was also a suit of armor in the living quarters, but we couldn’t tell who it was for. There may be a professional paladin living there.”
“No one else?” Normanir asked, and both imps shook their heads.
“Only civilians,” the first imp said.
The second imp nodded and raised its hand. “One priest, a few nuns, and worshippers. Mostly young, but definitely staying for an extended period of time. The living quarters looked like a communal home, not a hostel.”
“And the shrine?” Normanir asked. “Was there a proper shrine to Torm?”
“Complete with a statue and all,” said the first imp.
Smiling deeply, Normanir rested his chin on his hand. With the rest of the flock dutifully scribbling away, the pair sitting at his knees waited curiously. Eventually, their master reached a conclusion.
“I’ll vouch for you to Zariel that you’ve begun a cycle of great evil today,” he said to the delight of the entire flock. “Soon, they will understand that the only law worth following is that of the Nine Hells.”
Although I’m fairly new to D&D as a fandom - I’m returning now having played only a single campaign in the 1990s - I’ve been inspired by the activity in this community as well as all the lore resources available out there. In an attempt to develop a character I find rather fascinating, and to teach myself about the lore along the way, I’ve begun writing an origin story explaining why the sole heir of a respectable family became so bitter. I plan on posting individual chapters here (and elsewhere) as I write them. Comments and feedback are more than welcome - I have no doubt that, due to my noob-ness, I’ll make a few canonical and continuity errors here and there.
Also, as a disclaimer: I do not like this man. He’s a despicable POS who does inexcusable things which I’d never condone. This is written as a character study, not as a fantasy of things I’d ever consider doing for a second.
Darbakh - Duergar warden [Pic] [Model]
Quorian - half-elf watcher [Model]
Ruffler - human wizard [Model]
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Part one:
Blood.
Up and down the walls, there was blood.
Down the finely carved steps of the spiral staircase, there was blood.
From one end of the ornate wine cellar to the other, there was blood.
Dripping from the stone grey ceiling to the profane runes on the floor, there was blood.
Stained on the eight corpses of his now departed family, there was blood.
Blood on the candlesticks they’d tricked him into dipping himself.
Blood on the rubble of the twisted idols he’d smashed.
Blood on the tattered raiment draped over the altar.
Blood on the plain brown robes he’d worn to conceal himself.
Blood on the gardening shovel he’d used to do it all.
Blood smeared on the hands which had rendered him the sole heir to their name.
Tears streamed down the young man’s cheeks as he knelt on the floor in front of the altar. For a very long time after he’d uttered the incantation, he heard nothing. Not a soul survived in the house save his sisters’ cats upstairs, leaving him to wonder if he’d wasted the effort. Truly, he had no idea what he was doing, but what other options did he have?
The odor of his family’s blood began to fill the room, though he was beyond the point of nausea. There was no coming back from what he’d done, and as he stared numbly at the bloody runes on the floor, and the subtle details which he’d altered based on the grimoire he’d discovered in a sealed-off room in the attic, he found himself unable to act. To move. To think.
Stunned into silence, he waited until the blood forming the runes began to bubble and churn. Motionless from bereavement and shock, he observed without interfering as the symbols he’d traced glows and took a more definite shape. A pentagram burned beneath the blood yet didn’t generate heat, and cool smoke wafted up as the red lifeblood boiled in place without spilling beyond the lines of the runic circle.
In a scene which would have frightened anyone else, a circle of fire opened up on the floor, providing a fleeting image of a scorched landscape. The disheveled young man didn’t react, however, not entirely feeling or grasping the gravity of the situation. Even when the otherworldly being rose up from the blood-fueled fire, he didn’t flee or even stand up. Kneeling on the floor with his hands limp at his sides, he did nothing more than breathe as he gazed upon the infernal spirit which floated up out of the circle.
Flame-touched wings folded behind her back, providing a relatively narrow profile for the elegant, almost angelic silhouette. Light from the flames revealed the battle-hardened albino face of a very different creature, though, and cold eyes contrasting with the heat of her wings stared down at him judgmentally. When she noticed that he was too numb to shrink away from her judgment, she became impatient.
After a few quick glances to the lifeless bodies scattered around the cellar, she folded her arms behind her back and frowned at the crestfallen figure deeply. “You dare to call on Zariel, Archdevil of Avernus, gateway to the Nine Hells?” the fiery fiend asked him rhetorically. “Explain yourself or face my wrath!”
Too dejected to properly and intelligently fear the horror he’d summoned, the young man remained kneeling before her, eyes downcast out of heartache rather than the necessary deference.
“My name is Normanir Chandler…son and heir of this house…heir of a calamitous name…and I beseech you by the blood of my own family.
“I want to make a deal.”
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Part two:
Surrounded by fire and blood, the disheveled, broken young man knelt on the floor without fear, pulling his limp arms up to stretch out his hands to the haughty fallen angel hovering in the cellar. Her flaming eyes burned down on every inch of him with her judgment, but his total lack of fear gave her pause.
“You wish to make a deal, yet you have no idea if I’m interested in your offer,” Zariel said in her echoing cadence. “I, archdevil of the first layer, seek; I am not sought,” she added with a dismissive tone. The way she paused and waited for his response, however, made her verbal test as clear to him as the hellish image shimmering below her.
“Your power and hate have proven irresistible,” Normanir replied, feeling a bit of the pain over his actions recede now that he had his audience. “What am I to do but seek your favor? I have spilled so much blood, and I can think of no other patron for which I wish.”
Her fiery feathers ruffled visibly, betraying her strong reaction toward the precisely correct type of flattery. “Then you’ve earned yourself a few fleeting moments in which I won’t kill you for interrupting my spot inspection. Tell me about this,” she said, sweeping her hand across the eight corpses littering the room, causing him to bristle. Though her expression didn’t change, he could sense her revelry in the twinge of pain she’d caused him.
“This is…was…my family,” he replied evenly, controlling his breaths. Though he was still numb, he feared the weakness of sorrow, and he chose his words carefully. “My siblings…my grandparents…one uncle and one cousin…my…mother. All of them. As their heir, I offer you…I offer their souls to you in exchange for your time. I hope that the recent nature of their demise allows you to retrieve them before the forces of chaos can.”
Though still haughty, with her nose upturned, Zariel directed her disapproval toward the dead bodies scattered among the wine racks and broken bottles. “Your family bears Abyssal taint,” she sneered.
He nodded. “They do. They tried to call forth a demon of some sort. I realized what they were doing, and I slayed them in time.”
“Slayed?” she asked derisively. “Your family members look soft. You killed them with a gardening tool. I am not impressed.”
The way she paused after she’d verbally stabbed him in the heart again made her testing even more apparent. He needed that reminder, that sharp pain, for the pain of loss was great even when mixed with hatred. “I prevented them from helping the Abyss creep back into this plane. I did what I had to do, and what only I could do, because only I knew what was happening.”
“And so you have my attention without my wrath…for a time. Tell me, mortal: what is the meaning of this? Be direct, and don’t waste my time.”
“Hell forbid I waste that which you value,” he replied, though her reaction to the second round of flattery was more muted. “My family masqueraded at adherents to the Church of Ilmater. I was raised to uphold the law, and believe in the law, even if I could not accept their naïve devotion to the idea of goodness.”
“I asked what happened here, not for your personal backstory,” she said, more disappointed than agitated.
“Of course. I only wished to reveal to you their secret: my family, as I recently came to discover, were only using the church as a front. They were worshipping demons, and from what I can tell, this is not recent. I was always excluded from this part of their lives, for reasons I don’t understand.”
“So you killed your family out of resentment? That’s a mortal dispute. I’m not interested.”
“There is more, o archdevil of the first layer! This is what I wanted to say. I was raised to uphold the law, and I had no excessive issues beyond what we mortals face with family. Their secret devotion to chaos is what…” He paused before his voice hitched in his throat, weary of showing weakness in front of the fallen angel. “…forced me to eliminate them. I was motivated by a sincere desire to oppose the forces of chaos, to keep the Abyss far down below the lowest of planes where it belongs. This was not a tale of revenge.”
“Then your evil deed for the day is complete. Congratulations.” Zariel dramatically unfolded her arms from behind her back and refolded them in front of her chest. “I’m still not impressed.”
Her words vexed him, but she neither took her leave nor continued speaking, granting him a sliver of hope that she was merely pushing him to reach his main point. “I wouldn’t expect one of your lofty status to be; that’s not the reason why I called on you,” he said. She stared at him, granting him time to explain himself. “I’ve come to realize that the corruption of the Abyss cannot be stopped…it’s constant, unending, and must be opposed at all times. If even my family, as lawfully strict as they were, could fall, then there’s limit to who can be corrupted on this plane. Demonic influence must be stamped out everywhere.”
“By you?” Zariel asked rhetorically. “You think that I’m interested in hearing from you because you ambushed a few cultists with a shovel?”
On instinct, Normanir balled up his fists and bristled. A measure of fear finally worked its way into his mind, much belated considering his interlocutor, but the sensation proved to be unfounded. Instead of reacting in anger, though, Zariel raised an eyebrow at him curiously. His fear decreased.
“A few cultists-“ He cut off his own sentence and adjusted his tone for the person he was addressing. “Lady of the First, I spilled the blood of my own motherto oppose the forces of the Abyss!” he said pointedly. “The blood spilled on this floor is the same as the blood flowing in my veins. I’ll go to any end in this multiverse to serve the cause of lawful evil. This is not merely bashing a few cultists with a shovel.”
Although she kept her arms folded in front of her, they didn’t pull as tightly as before. Even when he’d spoken out of turn to her, she seemed more intrigued than irritated. Her gazed washed over the corpses of the deceased Chandler household before returning to the bloodline’s final member. “You don’t look like them,” she said earnestly and without mockery. “I smell fey ancestry in your blood, but not in theirs.”
“My father was a drifter from the woods, but he’s no more an object of attachment for me than these betrayers you see here,” Normanir replied acrimoniously.
“A wood elf, then. Can you swing a sword?”
Numbness receding, Normanir found himself less tense once the fallen angel had begun to interact with him more professionally. “It’s the only thing the lout taught me before he left. Marching and fighting is armor was taught to me by my uncle.” He pointed toward one of the corpses, all of them full-blooded humans. “If I have more than a shovel, then I will add the bodies of many more demon-worshipers to that pile. You will find me a useful tool in the Blood War.”
Her feathers ruffled again in reaction to his promise. Haughtiness was replaced by a more sober-eyed judgment, and Zariel bore a sort of regal air about her as she regarded the apparent half-elf kneeling to her. “Then you’ve bought yourself a few moments beyond a mere conversation, mortal. What would you ask of the ruler of Avernus?”
Normanir‘s heart pounded in his chest, excited and stressed by the gradually approaching success. Originally, he hadn’t even expected the summoning circle to work; he could have easily ended up as a broken, destitute man wasting away in a house full of his own family’s corpses. Now, he gulped and worked hard to control his breathing, feeling success so nearly in his grasp.
“I wish to pledge my soul to the Nine Hells and to yield direction of my fury to you,” he said while bowing his head solemnly. To his confusion, she didn’t seem to understand his simple request.
“Indeed, a pact with the Nine Hells will require this of you at a minimum, though the sacrifice of your own family is a rare and desirable act. But what do you ask of the Lady of the First?” Zariel asked.
“I…wish to pledge my soul to the Nine Hells and to submit to the ruler of Avernus.”
Zariel did a double take. “Yes, but..you…Normanir Chandler, what do you ask of the ruler of Avernus?” she asked in frustration.
“I ask that you accept the sale of my soul and my oath of fealty to you!” he replied, just as frustrated.
“I know that…you…I…argh! Mortal, what do you want in return for your soul!”
“I want to give you my soul, that’s the point I’m trying to make, Lady Zariel!”
He finally looked up at her, matching her perplexed expression of annoyance. The two of them stared at each other for a few seconds before she stopped furrowing her brow so heavily. Ideas churned in her mind, but what they were, he could not tell.
“Just one minute,” she said before sinking back down into the portal to hell, dashing the young man’s previous hopes for swift success.
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Part three:
As Zariel dipped back down through the portal in the floor, Normanir began to quiver. Technically, he hadn’t lost anything he’d already had before contacting the angel-turned-devil, but the way he lost sight of her filled him with a sense of loss. His shoulders slumped, and he didn’t even bother rising from his kneeling position.
The strangest error occurred with the portal, however. Instead of reverting to a typical summoning circle on the floor of his cellar, the gaping hole into Avernus remained, though the image flickered and blurred; the various hues of red and orange dulled and blended, warping the view he had of the first layer of Hell. Although Zariel dropped out of his view, leaving only the searing mountains and burning skies to look at, he heard the sound of her landing on a surface he couldn’t see.
“Bel!” Zariel yelled, though in which direction, Normanir didn’t know. “Bel, get over here! You need to listen to this.”
Wings flapped as another creature, seemingly the fallen angel’s lieutenant, approached. The smallest flock of a wingtip moved across the visible part of the portal, but otherwise, Normanir couldn’t see the scene unfold.
“Yes, archdevil?” came the gravely voice of the pit fiend, oddly cordial considering the sordid history between the two.
“Bel, assess this scenario. Some mortals contacted me, some elf or something like it.”
“A half-elf, my lady, though I can assure you that my partial fey ancestry-“
Zariel continued speaking, causing Normanir to fall silent. “He sacrificed his family to contact me, but instead of asking for a pact, he wants me to take his soul.”
“In exchange for what, archdevil?” Bel asked nonchalantly.
“For nothing; he literally just wants me to take his soul. That’s what he’s asking for.”
“If I may, archdevil,” Normanir tried to interject, “I hadn’t finished explaining my motivations.”
His protests fell on deaf ears, and he felt a little invisible as the pair continued talking about him right in front of him. “It’s a trick,” Bel replied brusquely. “But whatever for? Did he say what he wanted?”
“No, he just kept talking about how much he hates his family. But he already killed them by himself, so I don’t know what he actually wants from me.”
“Are they truly dead? It may be an ambush.”
“If you could give me a moment,” Normanir tried again, but he felt like they weren’t even listening.
“Not possible; I sense the evil in him, of the lawful variety. His family were demon worshippers, and he got mad,” Zariel said.
Bel hummed while considering the situation. “Sounds like a revenge story.”
“Yes, but it’s complete. What could he want? I’ve considered every possible tactic, but none of them make logical sense.”
“Is he still waiting for you?” Bel asked.
What Zariel said next clarified much of what Normanir had been perplexed by. “Yes, he’s on the other side of the portal, but it’s liminal barrier is sealed. He can’t hear us.”
Normanir’s eyes opened wide. “O lady of the first, I can actually hear you,” he said in a raised voice, but to no avail. The planar connection had been faulty, and he was left listening in on a conversation he wasn’t meant to hear.
“Perhaps we can open a communication gate to Meritos,” Bel suggested.
“Agreed, his knowledge of strategy is sound; perhaps he’ll have an idea of what this mortal is up to,” Zariel replied.
Magic crackled out of Normanir’s view, warping the portal on his cellar floor to the point where all of the colors changed. The burning steppes of Avernus were replaced with a barren glacier in Stygia, though the image was still dulled and blurred. All that was visible was ice and the shoulder and arm of an ice devil. On one side.
“Archdevil of the First, I need your call,” came the insectoid voice of the ice devil.
“Meritos, we need your help to settle a discussion,” Zariel said without any pleasantries. “Some mortal sacrificed his family and contacted me offering his soul.”
“He wants his family back?” Meritos the ice devil replied.
“That’s the thing, he doesn’t. I have no idea what he wants,” Zariel replied.
“Come on…I can tell you in thirty seconds,” Normanir grumbled in vain.
“A masochist. His soul is wracked with guilt, and he wishes for its punishment,” Meritos suggested. The ice devil’s arm shifted in the portal’s image, making a gesture Normanir couldn’t see.
“That’s the thing, he really doesn’t,” Zariel replied again. “He hates his family. They were demon worshippers, and he claims he wants to fight in the Blood War.”
“He wants to sell his soul, and the price is to fight in the Blood War?” Meritos asked rhetorically. “Impossible. I scoff. It’s a poorly considered trick.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Bel chimed in. “But from what Zariel describes, the mortal appears sincere.”
For a moment, the ice devil paused in thought. Its insectoid hand moved across the portal image so it could scratch its head. “If he wishes for a Pact, then it will ultimately be with Asmodeus.”
“You’re really suggesting we bother the Lord of the Ninth for this?” Bel asked, though Normanir’s heart beamed with hope.
“Yes,” was all Meritos said.
“Agreed; this is the quickest solution. This mortal is either extremely crafty or mentally disturbed. I’ll reroute our portal of contact to Nessus.” Zariel casted a crackling spell, and the image of glaciers fizzled out, leaving in its wake a shimmering, wavy image of an upside-down shelf affixed to a wall of crimson stone. “Lord of the Ninth, have you heard?” Zariel asked the unseen figure.
When the person spoke, Normanir’s skin broke out into goosebumps, and his shoulders twitched nervously. “I heard,” the deep, noble-sounding voice replied and then proceeded in an almost therapeutic tone, “and I saw. I felt him as clearly as I feel any being with a truly evil soul. He’s neither lying nor a fool.”
Normanir’s heart fluttered and skipped two beats, once at the complement from the master of Hell himself, and a second time at the way the naysaying of the two doubting devils were caught off guard. Zariel fell silent, and Bel stammered.
“He…then…he’s selling his soul as the benefit rather than the cost?” the pit fiend wondered aloud. “But what value does a soul have if it’s gained at such a low price?”
“The soul isn’t the aspect of a loyal soldier which holds its value,” Asmodeus replied, soothing Normanir’s nerves every time he spoke. “The value lies in the services rendered. For a true believer such as this, you must view his mortal husk as temporary, his status equal to the remainder of our legions’ rank and file. This isn’t a shortsighted mortal offering his soul as currency for temporal power; this is a strategist who believes in our mission.”
Bel made a noise as if to protest but wisely held his tongue, allowing Zariel to demurely accept correction of her viewpoint. “How shall I arrange his contract, considering the nature of his offer?” she asked Asmodeus, masking her skepticism well.
“Give the mortal a gift and a quest.”
There was a moment of uncomfortable silence until Bel cleared his throat. “My lord, our rank and file in the Blood War must survive numerous conflicts before receiving commendations,” the pit fiend said in a mousy voice which didn’t match the image Normanir had in his head of such a fearsome creature. When Bel began to murmur, that image was shattered even further. “I…well…of course, I only mention this to measure project development.”
“Shall I bestow upon the mortal anything in particular?” Zariel interjected before Bel could further embarrass himself.
“I can sense his presence through the portal he opened, as I can sense any evil soul…he’s a fighter, but without a path in life other than his hatred. Grant him a weapon befitting his quest…and always show mortals so willing to pledge themselves that the Nine Hells are generous to those who wield power successfully.” After a brief pause which may or may not have been punctuated by gestures or expressions, the Lord of the Ninth spoke again. “The pact which you must settle with him is separate, and must be tied to his quest. Send him out to spread disbelief…the weapon you’ll give him is his to use, but failure in his quest will constitute violation of the pact. You know what must be done in such cases.”
“All you’ve expressed will be carried out, Lord of the Ninth,” Zariel replied before Bel could. The pit fiend remained silent, likely in recognition of the fallen angel’s authority over him.
“I know it will. And, by the way…in the future, you - all of you, including Meritos - may want to check the containment of portals used for communication,” Asmodeus said for the last time.
Despite the prime archdevil’s soothing tone, Normanir felt his hair follicles stand on end at the final command. There was a long pause during which Normanir felt as if he were being watched, hearing no sound and seeing only the flipped image of the shelf against a wall. Too amazed by the resounding success of his very first attempt at contacting another plane to feel shocked, he merely wondered what sort of commotion had been caused once Asmodeus had noticed the fact that their entire conversation had been heard.
A partial glimpse of that commotion was visible on Zariel’s face when she appeared a few minutes later. Rising up out of the portal once it had switched back to Avernus, she glared at Normanir with tightly pursed lips, like a sack of wheat ready to burst. She demonstrated incredible self-control when she spoke with restraint, but the tightness in her jaw clashed too obviously with her even tone of voice.
“Fetch me a chair, mortal,” she ordered, “so I can get this part over with.”
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Part four:
Four hours later, when the corpses had already begun to fill the cellar with their odious odor, the two of them leaned back and quietly read the copies of the contract drawn up by the mini-devils attending the archdevil. Normanir couldn’t help but glance at the miserable creatures occasionally: small-sized, red-skinned, and hunched, like an ugly little cross between tieflings and halflings but with the positive traits of neither. They certainly wrote fast, though, which was a relief. Even Zariel, despite her immortal alertness, was growing weary of the discussion.
“You’re far too frustrating to deal with for a mortal negotiating such an insignificant pact,” she announced while thumbing through the fine print of the contract. He was mirroring her movements, poring over the fine print as well.
“Thank you,” he replied, causing her to bristle at the third or fourth time he’d responded to her insults with thanks.
“This has taken my attention away from the front lines for more time than it’s ultimately worth,” she added.
He wasn’t quite sure if she even cared if he heard her or not, so he tested her with an actual cogent response. “I believe you’ll change your mind when you see what I can contribute to the war effort.”
She sneered mockingly, but her sneer almost looked like a smile, which was the most positive reaction he’d received from her. After a few more minutes free of insults, she set her copy down on the table he’d brought in from the dining room upstairs. “Did you read the fine print?” she asked tersely.
“Only every time you asked me,” he replied, sincerely not intending to sound passive aggressive, but she glared at him all the same. “I take your instructions seriously.”
She folded her hands in front of her, though one of them appeared to be a weaponized prosthetic. “To review: you sacrificed your family’s souls to me, giving Avernus priority to them over the Fugue Plane. This is your right as sole heir of your family. In return, I won’t kill you for interrupting my troop inspection for the past few hours.”
“Of course. I’m honored by your audience.”
Ignoring his complement this time, she continued reading off the main points of the agreement. “You’ll be given a weapon commensurate with the tasks you’re offering to do as a signing bonus. The weapon is yours, but it’s jealous and demands that you use it when slaying your foes. The souls of anyone who falls by it are mine.”
Normanir was about to ask for the purpose of such a clause since he didn’t need souls himself, but he stopped himself when he realized that letting her have as many victories as he could bear in the negotiation was in his interest. “As they should be, Lady of the First,” he said, peeling away a small portion of her irate sneer with his words. She didn’t react to his comment otherwise, but she did continue without mocking him further.
“Next, your pact. For reasons I can’t comprehend, you insist on having a staff, so instead of a standard tome or chain, you’ll take these Hellions as your servants,” she said while nodding toward the two mini-devils, both of whom grinned stupidly when they were mentioned. “You’re also entitled to a flock of familiars - as needed only - and a talisman for one abishai.”
“We hadn’t discussed which species I’d have as a minion,” Normanir said, vigorously searching through the fine print. “Wait, it’s already here.”
“Yes, and that’s not a detail I felt I needed to check before adding. You asked for a minion you could command occasionally for whatever wasteful reason you’ve thought of; is this really cause to start renegotiating?”
“I didn’t intend that, my lady.” He spent a few moments reading the fine print, which required him to squint and hold that portion of the scroll close to his eyes. “It seems you already have a specific devil in mind. Why an abishai?”
“For you? Because it’s what you asked for. For it? As a punishment for a previous failure. Also, to spite Tiamat.”
Upon hearing the justification, Normanir set the contract down and wondered which part he should ask about first. “Could I be implicated in committing a slight against Tiamat?” he asked. This time when Zariel’s expression hardened, she didn’t seem to be directing her ire at him.
“One-hundred percent no,” she said emphatically. “Neither you, nor I, nor the devil in question can be implicated in anything. Tiamat answers to Asmodeus but at a lower rank than I, and her lair is under my auspices.”
“And…this talisman you’ll give me is part of a punishment for the devil in question?” he asked with a cautious hesitation.
Her upper lip stiffened. “That’s none of your concern,” she said, a tone of finality in her netherworldly voice. “Moving on, your ability to summon the aforementioned creatures is the only form of magic you’ll be granted for now. These are for the purposes of countering Abyssal or other meddlesome influence on the prime material plane only; they are not your personal property, and aren’t to be used for personal errands.”
“Except for when such errands can maintain my anonymity,” he interjected. Her lip curled at his comment, but he knew contract law from his family business well enough to know when he was justified. “My efforts depend on our enemies not knowing that I have a home base with a shrine in it; I’m free to use them for domestic chores, as you implied earlier when you mentioned a staff. Since I can no longer employ a staff of mortals without arousing suspicion among my neighbors, given my family’s deserved demise…”
His voice trailed off, leaving her to finish his thought. She didn’t like being corrected - not one bit - but she didn’t argue the point further. “The abishai‘s punishment is none of your concern,” she repeated. “By the way, the shrine isn’t until further down the list. Please stay focused. Your ability to summon these minions, for specific purposes, is the only magic you’ll be granted for now. Those minions are a symbol of the pact, and that pact is contingent upon your completion of your quest. Only upon successful completion will you have an open-ended promise of proper pact magic siphoned from a grant by Tiamat, expanding based on your annual performance rating.”
Having spent a good hour just sorting out the performance rating, Normanir wasn’t in the mood for revisiting the topic. “Alright, so the shrine?” he asked, skipping to another point.
“Why do you need to ask about this? Establish it here in your cellar, see that it’s maintained.”
“Unless, unless, unless I travel beyond the Sword Coast for a single quarter against my own will,” he said, emphasizing a point she’d previously resisted rather strongly by wagging his finger.
Had he not let Zariel feel like she was winning by claiming the souls of all his victims, his poignant emphasis might have provoked her, but she permitted his behavior as a victory she felt she’d granted to placate him. “Yes, you made that clear; watch your tone,” she warned, and he bowed his head deferentially.
“My apologies.”
Once she’d stared at him long enough to feel he’d been reminded of her dominance, she leaned back again. “So the shrine must be established here as a part of your initiation into my ranks, with further shrines beyond the Sword Coast contributing to your performance rating. The scale of punishments and rewards for the performance rating are separated between your pact and your weapon; do we need to review the scale again?"
"Let's not, please," he replied, admitting defeat to appease her even when he knew she didn't want to revisit such a convoluted topic again either. "The only major point remaining is the quest to seal the pact."
Zariel tried to wave the topic away with her prosthetic claw-hand. "That should be the clearest part of the contract."
"Clear in the sense that it includes the fewest lines of fine print; unclear in the sense that there aren't enough details mentioned."
Her fiery eyes widened at his comment, though she seemed more exasperated than upset. Sitting up straight, she spoke to him without her usual commanding, borderline condescending tone. "What more could you want, mortal! Most of your kind who strike up deals with the Nine Hells want to conclude their bargains in a matter of minutes. The sun is starting to rise here in your miserable plane, and you’re still nitpicking over a lackof details!”
“Because I don’t want to screw myself over in the future.”
“Then don’t screw up! Look, look at this,” she said while tapping on his own copy of the contract. “You must sunder a shrine of Torm and drive its laypeople to disbelief within a year from today. You're lucky I don’t make you kiss my feet for giving you such an easy quest in return for all you’re reaping from this deal!”
“How am I to locate such a shrine? How many laypeople must their be? What type of sundering-“
She cut a line through the air with her natural hand, cowing him into silence. “Another word and I’ll start adding fine print. Understood?” He nodded without speaking, wary of pushing his luck on a deal which was already tilted in his favor. “Good. You have your mission, and you’ve stolen four hours of my time just to get this far. Congratulations: you’re already my least favorite soldier.”
“But if I serve you for my lifetime, I have a chance to…?” he asked, letting his voice trail off innocently as he pushed the last point.”
For a split second, he felt terror creep up on him as she looked at the contract in her hands and frowned at it deeply. A fleeting, momentary fear that she’d back out upon reviewing how much he’d earned stung him, and his foot began tapping nervously under the table. When she opened her mouth to speak, his heart clenched almost long enough for him to pass out. In the end, though, his paranoia was just barely proven unjustified.
With a simple pinprick, she drew a bit of her own fiery blood and signed her copy and his. “…you enter Hell as a minimum rank four devil in Avernus,” she sighed as she burned her signature onto the infernal contracts. He rushed to sign both copies with his own blood as well, lest she pull it away at the last moment. She watched him with resignation in her eyes. “If you fail, you’ll wallow with the lemures for your first millennium after death,” she warned.
“A fair wager,” he replied, too ecstatic to focus on anything else.
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Part five:
Normanir didn’t even wait until the following sunrise before he got to work. Under normal circumstances, he might have spent a fair amount of time mourning his family. Even though he felt they deserved their end, there may have been a period during which he lamented over what could have been or how their lives might have turned out differently. Not now, though; he had a job to do.
Still in the wrecked wine cellar, he waited as the two ugly little servants he’d been granted finished the job of extracting what little blood was left from the stiff, decaying bodies of his family. A brief, fleeting sense of filial jealousy filled him as he watched the mini-devils slicing pieces out of the corpses, but he repressed those feelings quickly once one of the homely twerps held up a bowl of the putrid red liquid to him.
“We collected their blood, master!” the little devil called a Hellion said. “Did we do good?”
Displaying no emotion, he only glanced at the bowl briefly. “It’s sufficient. Now, take a look at this.” He pulled out the talisman Zariel had given him yesterday. “Can you draw the sigil engraved on this?”
The stupidly grinning mongrel climbed on a wine rack like a monkey to get a better look at the obsidian artifact. “I know that symbol. We can draw it…if we have…” The creature glanced around, looking at the shattered bottles and splintered wood everywhere. “…pencils?”
Normanir’s face must have hardened, because he noticed the Hellion shrink away. “Use the blood you just collected,” he said in an even tone, trying to emulate Zariel’s decorum even when upset.
The mini-devil’s hairless eyebrows shot up. “Oh…right! The blood bowl!” She turned around toward the other Hellion, which appeared to be her fraternal twin brother. Or a clone. Or they all just looked very similar. “We need the blood to draw calling circles!”
The other hunched over creature stopped sucking blood from its fingers and collected its bowl. “Blood circles!” he bleated in a raspy little voice.
“Sooner rather than later,” Normanir said while running his thumb over the talisman impatiently.
Both of his small servants met in the middle of the aisles of wine racks, nervously rushing through the profane sigil. They apparently made a few errors and had to backtrack, wiping lines of blood away and redesigning them. After what felt like ten minutes, they finished the intricate lines and stood up straight, a seemingly uncomfortable and unnatural position for their curve, almost gnoll-like spines.
“Presto!” they both chirped in screechy, tone deaf unison.
“Good job,” Normanir said while waving the two of them away. They both rubbed their hands together, snickering with glee at the complement because normal laughter was apparently impossible for them. “Now…I studied a few basic courses in spellcraft, but I never even reached the level of cantrips. Let’s see if this works.”
In a low voice, Normanir began chanting words he hadn’t even learned. Their presence felt intrusive within his brain, unnatural and unlearned, and the verbal components felt like another person was using his tongue even though he’d studied the grammar and syntax of Infernal. Yet flow the words did, spilling from his mouth for the first time ever, yet sounding so fluent that anyone else would have assumed he’d repeated them all his life. His vision blurred as the blood forming the sigil glowed brightly, pulsating with each syllable. By the time he’d finished the incantation, he needed to lean against a wine rack for a moment.
Hellfire crackled on the floor, granting him another glimpse of Avernus. Slowly, a shadowy hand reached up through the floor, gripping the stone blocks for stability as another one followed. Two wingtips finagled their way through, and soon enough, a gangly gargoyle-like being crawled into the Prime Material Plane. Once it had entered, the portal to Avernus closed behind it, leaving a few plumes of smoke rising up off the floor, now stained with dried blood. A black Abishai stood in the middle of the cellar, eying its caller warily like an abused dog evaluating a potential adopter. Due to its semi-bipedal posture, it appeared slightly shorter than its summoner despite having larger dimensions overall. It looked horrific, like a perfect enforcer.
The two of them sized each other up for a few seconds before the scaly devil raised its arms in a questioning shrug. “Well?” it asked in Infernal.
Normanir needed a few more seconds to mentally switch languages, especially for one he was used to reading rather than speaking. “Welcome to your new home…for now. You’re speaking to Normanir Chandler, and we’ll be working together for the duration of my mortality.”
Hesitantly, the black scaly devil tested him with insults. “We’ll see how long that lasts,” It quipped, though it was shut down swiftly.
“If it ends early, your punishment will be more severe than mine, Karakul-Phy’lok,” Normanir said, using its true name and causing it to back away from him. “I’ll call you by your preferred, known name, and you maintain respect for me in public at all times. How’s that for a simple deal?”
Cowed from its very first minute on the prime world, the black scaly devil’s wings hugged tightly to its back sheepishly. “My name is Shax,” it said flatly, trying yet failing to put up a confident front.
Seeing no reason to humiliate a minion, Normanir switched his tone at the deferent reaction. “Shax, you’re going to enjoy your time here. We have much evil to spread in my world. Your name will be known positively in the First Layer when all is said and done. Are you prepared to bring the Blood War to Toril?”
When faced with a closed-ended question, Shax had little to say other than affirmation. “Demonic invasions of Avernus have been very…inconvenient. They must be confined to the Abyss.”
“Good. Good, I’m glad to hear that you have experience with them. First, though, we have one year to sunder a temple to Torm.”
The two little Hellions began a laughably bad dance routine to celebrate the news, but Shax turned its head sideways in confusion. “What does the Triad have to do with the Abyss?” it asked.
Normanir waved the concern away without really listening. “Zariel wants that as an initiation rite. Don’t worry, we’ll get to the good stuff once the year is through. I trust that isn’t a particularly long period of time for you. Now.” He folded his arms behind his back much as she had, walking along the aisles of damaged wine racks and ignoring his minion’s attempt to interject. “The first order of business is corpse cleanup. You all need to drain the bodies of as much blood as possible for the sullying ritual. You’ll need all of the wood, glass, and other debris to build a makeshift shrine to Asmodeus here in the cellar. Strip the bodies, too - the cloth, leather, and other items can be used for now. You know more about infernal shrines than I do, so be creative with these two things.”
One of the Hellions raised a hand. “Actually, we have names.”
“Not until you finish this initial task, you don’t,” Normanir said. “Help Shax do everything I just explained. When it’s all finished, I need you to eat the corpses, too. There’s no other safe way to dispose of them.”
“This is all going to take way longer than the usual deal for an infernal calling,” Shax said, arms folded.
One last time, Normanir turned back to face the handful of devils sharing his house. “You were called with a ritual using the blood of my own family, along with your talisman, using your true name. You’re going to be here much longer than you’d expected…make yourself comfortable.” He began ascending the steps leading out of the cellar, much to the dismay of the black scaly devil with two small red mongrels dancing in circles around it.
“And just what do you plan on doing when we’re doing all the real work?” Shax asked up the stairs.
Without even looking at them, Normanir folded his hands behind his back and continued walking. “Securing my family estates, maintaining professional contacts…and researching every shrine along the Sword Coast.” He opened the door at the top of the stairs, heading toward the study which now belonged to him. “A year isn’t a lot of time.”
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Part six:
The trip to Waterdeep took a whole week due to caravan stops. Normanir could have covered the distance in less time had he ridden in a smaller group, but small groups could draw attention. When he arrived at the city’s trades ward anonymously, though, mixed into a crowd of merchants and migrants, he knew he’d made the right decision.
Not that he was likely to draw attention anyway. Now being the sole heir of a family in a less significant city, he was unlikely to be properly identified. Being a member of the guild of chandlery due only to his family connections, he was unlikely to have been previously known. Being a candlemaker with the tragically stereotypical surname of ‘Chandler’, he was unlikely to be distinguished from any other younger member of the guild. Being a member of a smaller guild without sleeping quarters, he was unlikely to even be identified at the cheap inn where he’d rented a room.
But he still felt paranoid. So much so that, after paying the annual dues required of all guild members, he waited for half a day before returning to the chandlery hall so the daytime clerk would be a different underpaid apprentice.
As small as the guild was, the space of the narrow, three story building was utilized well. Being the only such guild for makers of soap, wax, and lighting fixtures in the entire Sword Coast, the hall had been dedicated to records of vendors, trainers, producers, and customers for the entire region. Instead of grand reception areas and rooms for socializing, the guild served solely as a locus for networking and record keeping for members of their profession. That economic use of space, and that meticulous form of record keeping, proved to be a Pact boon in and of itself.
For hours, Normanir sifted through the guild’s records, delving into a trove of information on the region which hadn’t likely been opened in years. From the afternoon until twilight, he deftly avoided the handful of other visitors to the guild by strategically shifting his position among the shelves of the guild archive, never being seen until the bored clerk had already fallen asleep at her countertop in the cramped foyer. Undisturbed, he flipped through the stacks.
Those stacks…there were receipts of major sales shared with the guild, copies of letters of request, training records for journeymen from the previous century, and much, much more. He didn’t even decipher the labeling methodology for past customers of guild members until over an hour into his search, and it took him another hour to decode the symbols used for customers who were exempt from local taxes due to religious affiliations. Working without food, water, or even coffee, he plumbed the depths of the archive, poring over logs of what must have been every scented candle ever sold to a monetary in western and northwestern Faerun during the previous decade. The slower his progress was toward his goal, the more motivated he became, even growing stubborn as the unknown target he was looking for evaded him.
As if the Lord of the Ninth himself had sent an infernal miracle, Normanir finally located the perfect candidate only minutes before the clerk woke up and told him to leave so she could lock up. On a shelf where the record books were double-packed into two layers, with another layer of loose books laying on top horizontally, stuck between two hard cover volumes due to a stain from a sugary drink however long ago, wedged in with other loose pages torn out of logs, and all of the above improperly shelved and categorized…he found it.
Carefully, he looked over the single sheet of paper he’d found by means he couldn’t logically explain. To the northeast, deep in the High Forest but far from the settlements of elf or man, there was a single entry along with a crudely drawn map. On a hilly glade but away from proper roads, appearing more like a retreat than a proper house of worship, laid the Pertinent Promise shrine to Torm - a relatively new celestial shrine which had purchased a single order of scented candles seven years prior and then never put through any more requests which the guild had recorded, according to the anonymously written entry.
A lone shrine to Torm in the middle of nowhere, with no contact for years…Normanir wondered if Zariel had given him the order at random, or if she’d intended him to figure it out that way. All the same, he stole the record from the archive rather than copying it lest his target ever be noticed again. Not that anyone was likely to delve that deeply into the shelves anytime soon, but still…he had to be sure he couldn’t be traced. With his family eliminated, he had no backup plan were he ever to be outed for what he was planning to do.
He glanced at the calendar on the wall in the foyer as he was shooed out by the clerk. He’d already lost five weeks since his contract had been signed due to demands of the family business as well as his minions’ lack of creativity when helping him brainstorm. Even with forty seven weeks left, he felt the pressure begin.
“Soon,” he whispered to the stolen map in his pocket rhetorically.
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Part seven:
By his fourth month into the year, Normanir could feel every day ticking by. The remainder of his time to fulfill his end of the bargain felt painfully short, and he found himself constantly counting the minutes passing by at random. Out in the southern edge of the High Forest, though, he had reason to count.
Tucked into a little camp he’d dug into the underbrush a day’s travel north of Loudwater, he continuously glanced over the canopy covering the rolling hills through a looking glass and then back at the hourglass he’d brought. Obsessive to an almost comical degree, he even logged his observations in a notebook he kept, noting any sounds he heard despite not having encountered any other people in the woods so far. Only in the early evening did his darkvision pick up movement ahead, and he checked in the looking glass to confirm that what he was seeing was correct.
For the next ten minutes, he waited for the flock of docile imps to return. Venomless but extra sneaky, the tiny creatures took their time darting in and out of the branches, as paranoid about being caught as he was. They eventually landed and hid in the bushes with him, bobbing with excitement and nervousness. He scooted closer to them, sitting cross legged and leaning down.
“Tell me,” he ordered, though his blunt manner with them caused no offense to the enthused little devils.
The first of the imps raised its hand, crawling forward beyond the others to practically sit in his lap. “Nobody saw us; they suspected nothing, and we scouted the entire area,” it said.
Normanir hummed in excitement and thrust his notebook into the hands of another imp. “Draw diagrams of everything you saw,” he ordered, and the devil began furiously scribbling down. “Fill every page with minute details if you can.”
“Yes sir!”
“Tell me, now: what did you see? Spare the details unless asked for now,” he ordered the first imp.
The tiny fiend rubbed its palms together. “It’s not a proper monastery; it’s smaller than your house, like a retreat. They don’t seem to be equipped for a large number of visitors.”
“How many people did you see there?”
“Seventeen,” said the first imp.
“Eighteen,” said the third imp.
“Sixteen,” said the fourth imp.
“Eighteen,” said the second imp, who was still drawing pictures of the place.
“Seventeen,” said the fifth imp.
“Sixteen,” said the sixth imp.
When Normanir frowned at them, the entire flock of the tiny devils shrank in fear. He pointed at three of them. “You all, take my second notebook and identify each individual person you can remember distinctly. Write down any discrepancies.” This time when he thrust a notebook at tiny fiends, none of them were brave enough to respond out loud. While they began to quietly bicker over what to write, Normanir looked to the pair who weren’t preoccupied. “Was anybody armed?”
The two imps tried to speak at the same time before glancing at each other hesitantly. The one who’d spoken first then continued. “Two young people carried maces, but they looked very new. Clerics in training, maybe?”
The second imp nodded and crawled closer. “There was also a suit of armor in the living quarters, but we couldn’t tell who it was for. There may be a professional paladin living there.”
“No one else?” Normanir asked, and both imps shook their heads.
“Only civilians,” the first imp said.
The second imp nodded and raised its hand. “One priest, a few nuns, and worshippers. Mostly young, but definitely staying for an extended period of time. The living quarters looked like a communal home, not a hostel.”
“And the shrine?” Normanir asked. “Was there a proper shrine to Torm?”
“Complete with a statue and all,” said the first imp.
Smiling deeply, Normanir rested his chin on his hand. With the rest of the flock dutifully scribbling away, the pair sitting at his knees waited curiously. Eventually, their master reached a conclusion.
“I’ll vouch for you to Zariel that you’ve begun a cycle of great evil today,” he said to the delight of the entire flock. “Soon, they will understand that the only law worth following is that of the Nine Hells.”
Darbakh - Duergar warden [Pic] [Model]
Quorian - half-elf watcher [Model]
Ruffler - human wizard [Model]
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