Description
The Dragon Friends travel forward through time towards their final destination, hoping that their wayward friend lost in time will be waiting for them when they wake. What they find, however, is much worse.
Synopsis
The Friends awake in the cold cells but feel something is wrong - its engines have finally gone truly dead. As they blink away the gunk of centuries of sleep, a bell rings somewhere in the heart of the machine as the sarcophagi of the cold cells open and they find themselves still in the crypt, but Boroff kept his word; the entrance is bricked up and an ancient iron pickaxe sits next to it. Baston’s cell has been tinkered with - enlarged using additional but less expertly made technology. It too hisses open and reveals Logan the Huge. He has changed a bit, and now has metal spikes on his shell, a patch over one eye, and wears Boroff’s fur coat as armbands.
Logan is furious with the friends, especially when they mention Boroff’s name. He insists on joining them whether they like it or not, and explains that Boroff died “yesterday”, fifteen years after the others entered the cells. He and Boroff spent those years looking for Baston, but couldn’t find him; it drove Boroff insane, and Logan is devastated by his loss, as he was his first true friend (despite imprinting on the Dragon Friends first). As Boroff was Logan’s “imprinted turtle friend”, he is sworn to fulfil Boroff’s duty, which is why he entered the cold cells to join them: he still has to find Baston or suffer from magical sadness. He also has Boroff’s hat, adorned with his medals, and was promoted to Commander.
The Friends investigate the bell and find that the egg is cracked, and as the bell winds down a card pops out of the machine: it’s a message from Val for Baston. She explains that they must be back in their home time, give or take a few years, and how wonderful the future must be. They then notice that the egg has hatched: squatting on the pickaxe is a silver wyrmling. Bobby picks it up and it bites him; Freezo tries to talk to the dragon using a speak with animals spell, but it cannot talk yet. Philge tempts the dragon with a gold coin, but it throws the coin hard at Philge. She considers killing it, but Bobby thanks the dragon, and when Logan speaks to it, it calls him Dada and perches on his shoulder.
Philge rages about the dragon’s choice, and breaks a hole in the wall with the pickaxe. Immediately smoke pours into the chamber, and all of them save Logan suffer from it. The find the Castle was completed, but has destroyed, almost as though it had been picked up and dropped from a great height. The ground is warped and broken, and the air is corrupted by poison and acid; in the distance is a spire, and demons roam the skies. Freezo says nothing about his dream.
Philge leads the group towards some nearby ruins, and they encounter a group of ragged humanoids staggering towards the spire carrying silver platters of strange food on their heads, followed by a small demon with a whip. Philge asks Freezo if he knows about Hell - and it does feel very familiar to him. He tells the others he thinks they’re in Hell, and asks them to promise not to get mad even though what he’s about to reveal might damage their friendship. He then tells them that while he was in Hell, he think he made a deal with a demon, swearing a pact that he would kill the Dragon Friends at some point, and he wants them to know now it might come up - but he’ll “try and get out of it”. Philge asks what company he kept, what “manner of beasts” made him do that, and Freezo vaguely remembers the Beef Babes, including that he killed Bushu. Bobby suggests changing their name from the Dragon Friends as a loophole, though they reject the name “Beef Babes” as something no-one would ever use.
At that moment, Philge and Logan are spotted by the demon with the whip, who waves hello and jokes that he’s taking them all to “somewhere nice” before demanding to know who they are. Philge and Logan claim they are undercover supervisors, “mystery shoppers but for employees”, but the imp can smell that they’re alive. Meanwhile Freezo is still hidden with Bobby, and tries to apologise, badly, not even able to remember if Bobby had been returned to life before Freezo was exiled to the planes. Philge bonks the imp on the head, and then before he can react, hits him again, knocking him out. Logan is impressed, and Philge takes his stuff including his clipboard, which reveals that he was taking these souls and their snacks to the Garden of Immoral Delights in the Iron City. Logan notices a symbol tattooed on the imp’s wrist denoting the renunciation of all gods and people.
They speak to one of the procession, an elderly elf with a French accent, who remembers only that he died and was brought here on the train of souls, and that they are in Dis, the Iron City, the second circle of Hell. Philge is confused but then they realise why the castle was ruined - it’s been somehow dropped into Hell. Philge asks who’s in charge, but they can’t understand the French elf and so ask Ben Jenkins, a human comedian also now damned to Hell - every damned soul here is a podcaster. Having once made a podcast about the Dragon Friends he’s able to remember that they learn in this scene that the ruler of Dis is known as Pater Terra, who was once a gorillon - the one summoned by Freezo in “Chongus the Interbable” (8.12) - but is now a Pit Fiend, and has ruled Dis for eight hundred years.
As they prepare to leave, Philge eats one of the runts from Ben’s platter, and it blesses her with improved abilities for an hour. Philge also learns how Ben died: while recording this episode of the podcast, he fell back off his chair and accidentally wrapped a microphone cord around his dick too many times and his dick exploded, but his friends told his wife he died in 9/11. Then, as the imp is about to wake up, Freezo debates with Philge about slitting his throat, and Bobby does it without waiting. Bobby refuses to wear the imp’s harnesses and gimp mask as a disguise; Freezo tries to adjust them to fit him instead, with limited success. They ask Ben to take them to the Iron City, which he says is where the train arrives. Freezo pretends everything is fine, intending to visit Pater Terra...or maybe just check out the city.
Cast
Dragon Friends
Guest NPCs
- Logan the Huge, a container sized tortle who easily imprints on other people (played by Tom Cardy)
NPCs
- Ben Jenkins (fictional)
Ham's
Bestiary
Places
- Dis, second layer of the Nine Hells
- Remains of Castle Ravenloft (1492, sucked into Dis, destroyed)