Campaign Update #19. New Year's in Hell (by Ironbeard)

Campaign Time: December 8 - January 4 1051-52 HR

Last session was literally a journey through hell. The Heroes of Gwudd Hill began the night with a twenty day journey across Thanatos’s Plains of Hunger, a journey ably led by the newcomer to the party, Elizar a half vampire ranger. Along the way, they encountered a Solamith who they dispatched without too much difficulty.
Eventually, they arrived at the City of Straight Curves, a gloomy and haunted metropolis on the banks of the river Styx. They hoped to meet the wizard Beleg, a mortal who Elizar had heard had the power to return the party to the Prime material plane. Unfortunately, the rumor proved to be false. The city was desolate, largely abandoned and inhabited by phantoms,demons, and dispirited mortals.

The party thus decide on a new course of action. They learned from a doomed mortal that they met that if passage down the river Styx could be purchased from a Yugoloth ferryman, it would be possible to travel to Pazunia, the first and topmost layer of the abyss, and find a gateway home. This is precisely what they did. The ferryman provided them with directions to an ancient fortress that supposedly contained just such a portal. According to this outsider, a savage battle had recently been fought at this location and the fortresses defense should be considerably weakened.
After traveling across the parched and withered landscape of Pazunia and fighting a desperate battle with a Chasme, the PCs arrived at the fortress. There, before its ancient iron walls, on a plain littered with the carnage and carrion of recent battle, the party fought a pitched battle with two Arrow Demons who almost killed them. Fortunately, they prevailed and managed to secure entrance into the fell pit of evil.

That is where we left off. Who knows what further evil may lie within? Could you be on the verge of finding your way home or will this hope elude your grasp yet again?

3,166 xp per PC