Game: Dungeons & Dragons 5e
Campaign: Black Label Society
Quest: 02 - Liches Be Schemin'
Session: 05
Author: Austin / ChatGPT

Current Situation:

Recap from Part 4: Adventure through The Manor

Heaven Knocking:

The echo of broken bones and dying screams still lingered in the manor’s halls. Victory had been claimed—if only for now. The Skeleton King’s shattered crown lay discarded beneath the ashen remains of Maghda’s visage, and the spectral cries of Nicollo Paganini were silenced, swallowed by the infernal resonance of his final, cursed note.

Outside, the heavens themselves clawed at the sky.

Serra’s angels circled like wolves starved for righteousness, wings like razors, voices like sermons wrapped in steel. But they could not pierce the barrier—a pulsing ward of unknown origin that now cocooned the manor in a dome of darkened light. It was an uneasy peace, and none inside mistook it for safety.

In the wreckage of Maghda’s quarters stood an artifact unlike any seen in Sanctuary or Dominaria—a towering, arcane monument of brass, bone, and obsidian glass. It moaned with faint, rhythmic pulses like the heart of something long buried, now awakened.

Liliana’s eyes narrowed. “The Infernal Waypoint Machine,” she whispered.

Skill Check: Intelligence – Result: 18.

Her mind sifted through fragments of forbidden texts and half-truths traded by demons. This device wasn’t just a portal. It twisted time itself. Reality, memory, and causality became soft clay in its current. But it was unstable—active, but not complete.

Zakk, his fingers still bandaged from his last battle with arcane fire, volunteered. “I’ll stay. That thing hums in the same frequency as Paganini’s compositions… I can learn from it. Plus,” he grinned, “I’m underpowered as hell.”

Sorin grunted. “This infernal tool reeks of sin. I’ll remain as well. You’ll need a watchdog who’s not enchanted by its song.”

So it was decided. Zakk and Sorin would hold the manor.

Liliana and Digoria—confidante and trickster, necromancer and chaos-weaver—would venture forward.

Together they approached the Waypoint Machine. As they neared, it thrummed violently, demanding tribute. A voice rang inside their minds, not spoken, but felt—a price to be paid.

“Confess.”

Liliana’s voice was ice. “I still desire the power of the Chain Veil… as corrupt as it is potent.”

Digoria smirked. “In spite of my whimsy, I admit I have a taste for chaos—even if it breaks a few eggs.”

The machine ignited. Light folded in on itself. Reality cracked like glass. They stepped through.

But they were not taken to Tristram Cathedral.

The wind hit them like knives.

They emerged into Pandemonium’s Pandesmos layer—a realm of endless howling gales and shrieking stone. Voices moaned from the wind itself, and the very ground beneath them pulsed with the psychic scars of forgotten wars.

A figure stood in the distance, wrapped in shadow. It beckoned.

They followed.

What came next was a blur of blood and nightmare. Gnashing demons poured from clefts in the ground. Underdark beasts, twisted by infernal magic, slithered from stone wombs.

Random Encounter: Demonic Scavengers & Umber Hulk hybrids – Battle won, narrowly.

Wounded and weary, they pressed forward until the air calmed and the stone beneath them grew smooth and ancient. At last, they stood before the Pandemonium Fortress—a silhouette of impossible geometry rising against the chaos, draped in crimson banners.

Cultists waited.

But they did not strike.

Digoria cocked an eyebrow. “Either they’re here to help, or we’re about to be sacrificed with extra ceremony.”

A voice rang from the shadows.

“I sense a soul in search of answers.”

Adria.

She emerged from the gloom, cloaked in black flame. No longer merely a sorceress—she was something other. Her skin cracked like porcelain over magma. Her smile was both motherly and monstrous.

“I have kept the manor safe,” she cooed. “Now I ask compensation.”

Liliana snarled. “We never asked for your help.”

“You need not ask,” Adria interrupted. “I can let the barrier fall whenever I wish. And your friends will be torn apart by angels whose mercy died long ago.”

A pause.

Adria smiled again. “But I am generous. I offer you this.”

She extended a scorched hand. In it was a tome—leathered, chained, and pulsing.

Its pages whispered. Not in tongues, but in secrets.

Digoria snatched it with a wink. “This should be very helpful in stopping Kulle. Thanks, buh-bye!”

She turned to leave—but the doorway behind her was now lined with a hundred cultists.

Adria raised an eyebrow. “Do you even know how to return?”

Liliana and Digoria said nothing.

“Favors do not come freely in Heaven, Hell, or Pandemonium,” Adria sighed.

With a snap of her fingers, a portal roared open.

“To return, speak your truths.”

They repeated their earlier confessions. The portal shimmered, and Adria stepped aside.

As they vanished, her expression hardened.

She turned toward her cultists. “All is proceeding as planned.”

In the manor’s depths, Sorin stirred.

His dreams had been poisoned.

A figure cloaked in flame and chains emerged from the black—Skarn, God of Damnation.

“Your guilt is your leash,” the demon said. “I offer you justice in return. Restore your power. Reclaim Innistrad.”

Sorin resisted. Yet… he listened.

“Defeat your angel. Your Avacyn,” Skarn whispered. “And deliver the Sliver of Terror to Adria’s altar.”

Sorin awoke in a cold sweat.

He was whole again. His power surged.

Liliana and Digoria returned, faces windburned, hands clutching the Book of Lorath.

“You’ve changed,” Liliana observed.

“Just a nightmare,” Sorin said flatly. “Nothing more.”

Before more could be said, music erupted from the far hall—blaring, joyous, discordant.

Zakk burst in, hair wild, lute ablaze with runes, strumming chords that shook the walls.

🎶 “THEY’RE FIGHTING A WAR OUTSIDE—AND THE STARS ARE BLEEDING LIIIIIGHT!” 🎶

Liliana blinked.

Digoria: “Well… he has been practicing.”

Zakk shouted between verses: “The angels are breaching the sky! Looks like break time’s over!”

Outside, the heavens cracked with fire and wrath.

And beneath it all, the Waypoint pulsed once more—waiting for the next confession.

Certainly. Here’s the epilogue scene focused on Adria, in keeping with the dark epic tone, revealing her deeper motives and setting the stage for Sorin’s grim quest:

Epilogue: The Altar Beneath the World

Far below Pandemonium Fortress, deeper than light could reach, Adria stood alone.

The sanctum was ancient—older than the Sin War, older than Sanctuary. A cathedral carved into madness, its geometry fluid and wrong. The walls wept blood not from veins but from memories—shadows of titans long slain whose dreams still poisoned the stone.

At its heart stood The Altar of Gestation.

It was not meant for prayer. It was meant for birth.

Massive and cruel, it pulsed with thick cords of infernal energy. Organs of unknown origin beat within its bronze-lined womb. The air reeked of myrrh and decay. Chains carved from angel bone hung from the vaulted ceiling, each one etched with runes of forbidden desire.

Adria approached the altar, her footsteps soft against the graven floor. The Book of Lorath floated beside her, its pages open, its glyphs rearranging themselves as if reading her.

She whispered.

“Skarn’s essence sleeps within the Sliver of Terror. A shard of primordial dread. Before angels. Before men. Before hope.”

Her fingers brushed the altar’s surface. The metal rippled beneath her touch.

“I have kept my end of the pact. The manor is shielded. The machine is active. The bait has been cast.”

Behind her, unseen, the shadows twisted into forms—watchers. Beings neither living nor dead. They hissed in syllables that melted ears.

Adria smiled, as if to children.

“The vampire will find it. He is wounded. Proud. Driven by guilt and righteousness. A perfect vessel.”

She extended her hand, and in the altar’s basin, a cradle of void shimmered into being—a hollow space, shaped to hold a single relic:

The Sliver.

Not a weapon. Not a soul.

A concept.

Adria’s voice deepened, twined with something older than language.

“Return to me the seed of damnation… and I shall give birth to a god the world forgot to fear.”

The watchers bowed and retreated into the dark.

Adria turned, eyes aglow with hunger.

“Soon.”

Chat Prompt and Generation: GPT Link