Path of Evil Ch. 02 Pt. 1

This was inspired by the Path of Evil Module for NWN2—little besides character names and abilities are used.

*

The story thus far: Our party of adventurers arrives at the decrepit keep they intend to turn into their base of operations only to find that not one, not two, but three groups of enemies had infested the keep. Thurlith bargained with the devils, offering their assistance in defeating the Drow, in exchange for certain payments (including the succubus courier whose company he'd enjoyed earlier). Knowing the devils would betray them, they created the opportunity for them to be betrayed at a known time, then left Caracin behind to prepare to deal with devils upon their return from eliminating the drow. The rest of the party marched into the cellars, after massacring their way to the main cavern where the drow hoped to bring their superior numbers to bear, their leader, escorted by an impressive drider, came forth, demanding his surrender. Thurlith killed her, while Kvas and Tan struck down the most dangerous of the drow from behind. Mu'tasin held off the orc slaves while Thurlith convinced the drider to switch sides. She agreed and gathered the slaves and drow who were trustworthy. With their leader, priestesses and mages dead and their drider switching sides, the remainder fled. Kvas, Tan and Mu'tasin went in pursuit of the fleeing drow to kill and loot any males and rape, kill and loot any female drow they catch. Thurlith and the drider spent their time...entertaining each other and learning about Fillra Baenre, a drow who spent almost a year in the abyss, before being returned, broken to the underdark, where she makes her way as a slave-whore.

Thurlith walked back to the main cavern, feeling remarkably good. With his fellows still out, chasing down the fleeing dark elves and his lust, temporarily, sated, he got some work done. He looted the corpses and sorted those which could profitably be raised as undead from those which could not. Those under Larel's protection began to drift back in. Some looked longingly at the bodies he was dragging about. After a moment's thought he said. "If you wish to see one of your fellows buried in a particular manner, you may do so. However, you will owe me a body. You may pay that debt yourself, or with gold, or with service."

Only two took him up on it. A hobgoblin and an orc. The drow happily left their fellows where they lay, while the other slaves did the same, though less happily.

Larel returned with the lists he'd requested. "Good. Get these people organized and get watches back on the stairs. I'll deal with the undead after the devils." He hadn't exactly been discrete, but he was well protected against scrying. No one was trying scry and fry tactics on him and not just because he was fireproof.

She snapped orders, ignoring the fact that she hadn't bothered to put her top, such as it was, back on. "Some of this gear we have, some should be elsewhere in the keep, or the abandoned lands surrounding the keep. The rest we'll have to buy from the nearest market. Is there anywhere in the underdark less than three days away from here with a useful market?"

"No. We fled here specifically because it is far from anywhere useful."

"Then we'll go overland." Thurlith muttered.

"That would be...difficult for me." Larel noted, quite tactfully.

"Indeed. Which is why you will be my Captain of the Guard and protect this tower."

She flushed slightly, in pride or embarrassment, he wasn't quite sure. Either way, it was hard to see in her dark cheeks. "And you? What are you?"

"For now, merely a mercenary. Soon enough I will be the lord of this tower, then I will bring the surrounding lands under my control. I will choose my title then based on the amount of land I have under my control. And the size and power of my army." Thurlith stepped forward and let a calloused finger run all the way from her cheek to her lower carapace, casually scraping over a hard nipple on the way. "So, your success is my success," he kissed her lightly on the lips, "your obstacles are my obstacles," he pulled back, meeting her eyes, "and your failures—" his hands locked in her short white hair twisting it painfully enough to make her lips screw up in pain, "are my problem. Though never my failures." He released her. "I do not fail." His pride stiffened his spine and weakened her legs. In drow society, no man would speak thus and few women, for pride was beaten out of most early. To have pride proved you worthy of it.

"I will return to work." She whispered hoarsely, before turning back to the confused slaves and commanding guards set up, bodies cleared away and supplies organized. Thurlith sat quietly on a box which he covered with a silk hanging ripped from where one of the drow had hung it. The stylized spider of Llolth went under his firmly muscled backside.

Tan was the first back. In all the time Thurlith had known the tiefling, he'd never seen him indulge in any activity fuelled by lust. The demonspawn could have been smooth as a doll down below for all Thurlith knew of it, but it hardly mattered. The tiefling needed him, at least until they found the rest of the fragments of the demonic crown the ranger wanted. Afterwards...there might well be a reckoning. And given the speed and ease with which he had hunted drow through the Underdark, enough drow to collect quite a bit of loot, that reckoning might be unpleasant, if the ranger had reason to dislike his sorcerous commander.

The ranger dropped a pile of supplies he had no use for on the floor near where Larel was working. Tan took a seat beside him and they began planning their return to the apex of the tower and dealing with its...inhabitants. Tan insisted on referring to them as devils. Thurlith didn't much care. There was a difference and he knew it, but all it changed was how they would betray and attempt to murder him, not the fact that they would do so.

Mu'tasin was the second to return. He'd dragged back a couple of corpses as well as his loot, making good use of the strength his orcish half gave him. He swaggered over to the group and with yet another joke about how many drow he'd split, he dropped down beside them, exhausted from the hunt, but still trying to participate in the planning. At least until he noticed the orcish whores moving amongst the throng. His exhaustion fell from him, even as his satiety did. And he abandoned planning for sex with a roar exclaiming the length of time since he saw a decently green woman.

The whore squeaked when she was picked up and tossed over his shoulder, but she didn't protest or struggle. The other two orcs followed along at his command, used to obeying.

"Well, that's going to be loud." Tan noted.

Thurlith agreed, but they got back to work on coming up with a plan to ensure complete victory over the devils. Mu'tasin fairly blatantly cheated, using his prayers to restore the energy he needed and to heal any...aches that his activity produced, in order to ensure that he could sample the charms of all three of the orcish whores.

Kvas stumbled in, trying to act as if nothing was wrong, despite the fact that the tip of his nose was missing. It had rather clearly been bitten off. All he would say about it was that you shouldn't try to kiss drow. And that she'd regretted biting him. And she'd regretted summoning the giant frickin' spider.

That was enough to conjure images into Thurlith's brain that he wished didn't exist, and so they moved on. And, after Mu'tasin stumbled out of the back, leaving the orcish women asleep in a, quite literal, pile of naked green flesh. The noise of his...activity had left Thurlith powerfully aroused, which had survived Kvas's complaints. The priest healed the gnome with a touch of his hand and then they were off, moving upwards, in accordance with the plan.

Thurlith alone staggered through the halls, covered in the blood of the fallen and limping as if his leg were injured. His disguise was entirely physical, a mystical one would probably have been spotted by the devils inside the throne room, though it might well have fooled their guards, as Mu'tasin's party was fooling the imps who circled the top of the tower by simply ingesting a few potions of invisibility before the priest's spells lifted them all from the ground to the top of the tower. They would be ready when the time came.

Finally, Thurlith reached the top of the tower. He'd kept up the act all the way up. Partly for practice, partly for verisimilitude, if there were any spies watching, partly because it amused him to play the part of one who was helpless. He truly enjoyed that moment where his enemy realized it was all an act...

The pair of large guards opened the door to the large hall that held the lord of the devils who'd occupied this tower. Thurlith forced himself straight and walked as if pain was barely concealed under pride and fear. His eyes darted, theoretically to the barely-dressed succubus, actually to the fully dressed Caracin standing behind the succubus. The wizard nodded slightly. Everything was ready.

"It's done. My payment?" Thurlith asked.

The demon lifted a massive chest easily with one hand and tossed it directly at the staggering sorcerer, who just barely dodged it. It splashed open, revealing the goods he'd been promised. Thurlith lay sprawled on the floor. "Oh, and you also wanted Jorra, yes? Go to the man, be his consort, serve him, for as long as he lives." The devil said, emphasizing the last clause so blatantly that his intent was even more obvious than it had been from the start.

"Then our business is concluded." Thurlith noted.

"Indeed. Kill him. I'll take care of the bitch!" The devil said, swaying towards her, his naked cock swinging a menacing counterpoint to his nasty weapons.

"Now?" Caracin asked, as if Thurlith was a coach driver and she was a child, impatient to reach her destination.

"Now." Thurlith agreed, rolling and tossing the sprightly succubus directly at the guards who were closing behind him. A window shattered as the others dove into the fray, slaughtering the devils with the contemptuous ease of those who'd faced competent foes who had reason to fear death.

Thurlith himself rose with a surprising agility. A breath of acid swept half the room, leaving many of the lesser devils screaming and writhing on the floor. Only a handful of imps had escaped above his breath. And they rapidly fell to Tan's bow.

Mu'tasin roared a challenge and met the largest of the devils, probably the second in command, matching his greataxe against the devil's massive pincers, for precisely long enough for Kvas to slip between the devil's legs, and jump straight up, blades extended above his head. A moment later, the devil fell, neatly bisected (horizontally, vertically would have been impossible given his carapace.

Caracin meanwhile had not been tardy in enacting the spells she'd prepared as the boys had played with the drow down below. Runes appeared, filling empty air with mystical light. The devil lord skidded to a halt before them, rather than risk whatever effect they could cause, being caused upon his flesh. A moment later, he regretted his reticence when a massive hand lifted him from the grounds and pinned him to the ceiling. A word and a wave of her hand sent acid skittering towards him. He flinched, raising an arm to protect his eyes as the rest of him struggled against the restraining hand pinning him in place. This turned out to be unnecessary as none of the acid hit him. Instead it melted into the rock, carving runes and other mystic symbols into the rock.

A second wave of her hand and the rock below him melted, a second circle of power appeared below the pinned devil lord. A devil leapt to free its lord, talons extended towards the distracted mage. It went down, screaming as Kvas materialized behind it, blades buried in the back of its legs. It slid into a heap by the focusing mage. Thrulith stepped over and stomped hard, snapping its neck, before he turned back to the guards who were finally detangling themselves from the luscious and lust-filled succubus. The pair of barbed devil guards attacked. Thurlith slid under a blow and placed a hand against the barbed devil's carapace magic flared and the barbed devil screamed as ice spread from that point over his limbs, then over his head, silencing him. A blow from the other knocked the sorcerer halfway across the room.

The succubus stepped forward and suddenly she looked like Thurlith. The barbed devil rather stupidly attempted to strike the succubus, despite the fact that she had changed in front of the barbed devil and she was hovering, which Thurlith did not.

Four blows hammered the air where the succubus was not. Thurlith rose behind the distracted barbed devil, but before he could get there, three arrows sprouted from the giant devil's back. And as it turned to face Tan, who'd turned his attention from the furious devil and resumed dropping silver arrows amongst the broken scattered handful of devils attempting to organize themselves into some sort of resistance around the room. Kvas however scampered up the barbed devil's back, using the arrows as hand holds and then, reaching its shoulder took its head off with half a dozen absurdly quick blows, then tumbled away as the devil collapsed. The rock gnome paused smash the barbed devil's frozen counterpart, more for fun than any tactical reason.

The remaining devils fled, their leader captured, their lines broken, defenses compromised, they had no plan and so they fled, rather than be banished from the plane. Thurlith rose, unhurt and glanced around. The devil lord was trapped in Caracin's net and her eyes never left the pinned, writhing creature.

"Kvas, Mu'tasin, and you, Jorra, was it?" The succubus nodded. "Go through everything here, get it organized. Especially anything on this list." Thurlith passed the list to Mu'tasin, who could read, not Kvas, who couldn't. "Anything else, we split the usual way. Mu, collect anything that's useful alchemically, then sort the useful bodies from the ones too badly—" he glanced at the frozen and collapsed barbed devil, then shot a sardonic look at Kvas, "damaged to be usefully...reused."

They nodded. Only the succubus didn't know him well enough to bother asking what he was going to be doing while they were working on this. "Dealing with the undead. Two factions down, one to go. I don't sleep in unsecured territory." His eyes raked the succubus's once-again-voluptuous form, "and I'm very tired. Oh, but before I forget, he—" the sorcerer waved at the still restrained devil, "said you would be my consort and serve me, loyally," he added the word, "for as long as I live. However, I would have you declare your loyalty yourself, demon."

"Of course." Her voice was throaty, promising the fulfillment of all desires, however depraved, however acknowledged. "My loyal service as your consort, for as long as you live."

"Good."

"And your archer?" She asked.

"He's loyal enough." Thurlith said, to a snort from the tiefling.

"I meant, what will he be doing?"

"Making sure Caracin's safe as she questions the devil. Which she's going to do shortly. I don't particularly want to watch that, so I'll be going now."

"Alone? Are you sure—"

He laughed. "To be a pale master you must be locked, in a crypt, with intelligent undead for three days and three nights. I chose a crypt containing a pack of vampires who thought themselves mighty because they could terrorize farmers and defeat the occasional farmhand who took up a pitchfork against them. For three days and three nights predator and prey flittered through the halls of the crypts of long-dead kings. On the third day, when the crypt opened again and only the predator, the new pale master, was left. No, I do not require assistance to defeat the vampire."

He reached the door and realized that despite everything, he was still painfully aroused. "However," he began, freezing the succubus where she had begun to turn away. "I would like the best quarters in this tower. Show me to them."

She nodded and led the way, taut red ass swaying, barely covered by black fabric, tail weaving a counterpoint to the sway of her hips, which somehow managed to draw even more attention to her strutting self.