College is Hell

Plot Setup

• Ivan seems to be having issues with the sinister tool he calls a phone. He suggests bringing his old friend Muluvia in to help
• While Ivan is out doing whatever demons do when you aren't looking, a mysterious package with a USB key is given to Kachi and Pira
  • The USB key holds files and images, copies of papers and more regarding what actually happened to Ivan that strongly indicates that Ivan's mind has been tampered with
• Ivan goes missing for several weeks before coming home

Session 1

• Ivan causes a massive power outage in Neopolis with an adaptive virus that even has the hospitals turning people away. He says it was to prove to Meluvia who he was
• A few days later, Meluvia arrives. She seems to know just how to get Ivan out of the room so she can make an assessment without him there. She also snags his phone while he is sent out on an errand for a drink he promised her
• Kachi and Pira get to see Mel turn a phone into a floating exploded diagram without breaking it as she starts checking the hardware and software for flaws of which she finds none.
• Mel gets into some of the odd behaviors Kachi and Pira have noticed in Ivan that include freezing in place at times when something challenges memories that have been masked such as those of Mel.
• Mel reveals the informant is her great grandfather who somehow keeps following after his descendants. She also reveals that like him, she is an angel of death. She explains them to be a more aggressive entity than a reaper but a being that is otherwise fairly neutral.
• Mel gets confirmation that Kachi and Pira do want to follow through in dealing with Ivan, so she suggests that they head to her lab, something she does not just casually toss out.
• The group needs to wait for Ivan and return and somehow get him to go along with it.

Session 2

• Ivan comes back but isn't awake for too long as Mel exploits a vulnerability to put him in stasis
• It turns out Meluvia has her own brand of storage magic. Unlike using a portable dimension like a bag of holding, Mel uses magic to distort the laws of physics to combine a sort of antigravy (to mitigate mass) and miniaturization (by stably collapsing the atomic size down into something more compact)
• Mel's car seems to double as a spacecraft, and she implies she has her own form of weapons and armor as well. As she said, she saves the best toys for herself
• Mel's house is on a Earth like planet high in the mountains. It is luxurious with large rooms and entertaining spaces, a well stocked bar, and even a heated in ground pool. SHe says it is mostly for keeping up with appearances.
• Mel gives Pira and Kachi coded wrist bands so that the house security won't vaporize them
  • (Mel seems to take some lessons from Edna Mode of The Incredibles. It is possible she likes the movie)
• Mel's lab is ultra high tech with magic added to it. She has a special scanning system that she uses to check on Ivan

The Scan of Ivan

• Ivan's memories are intact but his brain has been blocked form accessing them. Anything trying to get to 'inconvenient' memories is all shunted to the same shortcut that makes him stall for a moment and move on
• Mel's gear is not what is needed to fix Ivan. She needs a special kind of tech-Hellforge
  • Hell has them
  • STAR has them - probably the safer bet though still dangerous

What Mel Can and Can't Do

• Can
  • Restore Ivan's Memories
  • Disengage Ivan from Hell as a power / control source
  • Increase Pira's influence over Ivan

• Can't
  • Remove Ivan's attachment to Pira's soul (not without killing both of them anyhow)
  • Purge the demon aspect and get the old Ivan back (soul has been altered too much)
  • Can't alter Ivan's need to feed from negative emotion, especially anger and misery. This likely means he will still be trying to cause some degree of chaos.

Session 3

• Mel sets out to prepare Kachi and Pira for the trip
  • Starts with pistols that have rather advanced technology in them with a little magic that allows them to fire without recoil
  • Pira get an old sword and Kachi a trench knife, both of which belonged to Richter
    • The blades are both much sharper than they should be, and are effective against agents of heaven or hell

• Armor is in the works but needs to be done more custom to fit Kachi and Pira properly
• Mel made salads for dinner for everyone and they got to use the mansion for once.
  • As Kachi realized, Mel lives a very lonely life.

Session 4

• Mel take the group to a bar called the Thirsty Ear where a sinister gateway has been hidden in the form of a table and guarded by a well hidden infernal barkeep
• Upon entering the other side,, Mel leads the group past what looks like a very natural looking city and university on the other side. In fact, it resembled St. Marin in size and complexity
• Mel leads the group to Circle 6. While not actually a circle, the circle designations represent security and classification layers. Circle 6 has what they need without the added hassles of the next circle
• Mel figures out that someone took shortcuts with Ivan's mind wipe that are allowing her to fix him. HOwever he has a huge negative energy charge, so Pira and Kachi must bear the burden a while so he can 'recompile'

• Kachi gets Ivan's shadow magic and hellfire. This lets her manipulate shadows as weapons, armor, or just about whatever she decides to make up. She can also breath hellfire
• Pira gets the far more subtle gremlin powers because direct use of shadow magic is too close to the demonic binding that Ivan has to PIra, and it could rapidly corrupt her. Gremlin magic lets her sense technology and mechanical systems, almost immediately know their weak points, and cause all kinds of failures from small to catastrophic...and damn does it feel fun when you do it!

Mephistopheles

The headmaster of STAR made an appearance (inspired in part by the Radio Demon of Hazbin Hotel) and asked Kachi and Pira to try and convince Mel to re-join the institute. In exchange, he offered them free admission and access to all STAR has if only they can get the Angel of Death to join once more.

Kachi and Pira rejected him, and so he left without a fight and left them to flee the incoming students

Group Split

• Kachi and Pira escape to a side room as Blackthorn, Mel's other personality, kicks in and starts some wholesale killing with her advanced armor.
• Kachi and Pira land in a room that seems to be full of unawakened shells of demons like Ivan.

Session 5

• Pira and Kachi end up hiding in a room that appears to be where unactivated demons of the same type as Ivan are stored.
  • Pira activates several of these demons to use as her minions. They are fully active but soulless and so dependent on Pira for power. She has enough to make them very damaging.

• Leaving the demon storage room, they group is able to see the sheer destruction that Mel is causing with her suit, but she is also taking a lot of damage in the process.
• In trying to get out of the current ring, the group is blocked by a rider atop of a massive hellhound.
  • Pira is able to do extensive damage to the rider's weapons using gremlin powers
  • The rider does heavy damage to Mel before Pira and her minions get at him
  • Kachi takes on the wolf. She finds out what it is like to be a squeaky chew toy, but her shadow armor protects her enough to let her hack at he wolf and leave it without an eye and most of its jaw.

• Despite taking out the wolf, rider, and uncounted numbers of demons and students, the group is five circles away from freedom. and the college has no shortage of assailants. EVen worse, Ivan is waking up and so Pira and Kachi's power is waning.

• Mel yells at Ivan to get you all en exit. He makes one, but it leads to the only place they didn't defend against folks going into": Hell itself.
  • The trip in hell is short since Ivan is already getting another jump ready. However, it is long enough to have a first hand look at the sort of tortures demons put mortals through in order to power themselves. The eternity of torment not for itself but because it is a power source.
  • Ivan's next jump is to an outpost of hell: The Hotel California on Spindizzy!
    • The clerk at the desk gets a bit of a grim before Ivan lays claim to the lot of you and takes you all outside.

Back Home

Now back home, all the power from Ivan has been used, and the connections Mel made cease to be. Stuck running on his own power with his link to Pira present but rather burned out, Ivan starts finally realizing all his memories are mangled. He's caught somewhere between dismay and rage, but the thing he seems to hate most is that he is crying and can see tears on his hands, something he notes by saying "They said this wouldn't happen any more" But he says little else.

Mel, who should be dead after taking a blood spar to the chest, reveals the is a technolich, and she opts to depart so she can deal with the damage, though it sounds like they may meet again. She leaves Pira and Kachi with the gear she made for them including the armor, the pistols, and the enchanted blades.

Meanwhile, Back at the college

Standing out in the courtyard looking at the damage to the campus, the headmaster is all smiles despite at least fifty bodies of students, the smoldering remains of at least three greater demons, or more and a mangled hell hound as a woman in red approaches him.

"Ah, you finally made it. A shame you missed the show. It was a rather good one, War."

"Oh come now, this is barely a scuffle, nothing to be too proud of, but I will give you some credit for them managing to take down a pit fiend with such a little group."

"Yes, for what you are used to, but I can promise you, it was well worth it," he replied to the woman as he lifted a single, black feather a full two feet long from the ground.

"Is that what I think it is?" the woman inquired with great interest.

"Yes, it is. The feather of an angel of death. It takes quite an effort to get one to fall, and wrangling one from them on the mortal plane is nearly impossible without the angels contaminating them. No, this feather was well worth the cost, even if killing and replacing her entire family was a bit tedious. Here, my dear, I am sure that one like you can make the most out of this one."

War accepted the feather with a grin, "Oh there are ways of forcing this into something fearsome. I dare say your little stunt might have brought us a little closer to The Day."

"It is all I can do in the course of my studies."

"Speaking of which, what of that little demon they are toting about?"

"Ah! Yes, my little hobby. Seeing as Lillith is unwilling to aid us with her incubi and succubi, I felt it time to try and make something of my own. The souled demon project goes on, but the unit in question is special. After all, I don't know anyone else that has made it all the way with an angel of death. It made the imprinting process easier, though I will admit the bait sequence was more amusing to create than anything else. You know how these things are; a series of unfortunate events is not always simple to execute, but the results are always worth it. It was enough to bring them all here."

"Them? Oh now you are being cryptic, old man. Who else could be so interesting to bring here?"

"The djinn touched and her mate. I may have a new bargaining chip later on should it be needed or simply desired."

"Always laying out your plans ten turns in advance. So you are allowing them to keep their now diminished demon?"

"Oh yes, that experiment is ongoing. Now we can see if the trauma of a mortal soul emerging inside a demon will have useful repercussions. A shame he's not tied back to his family more, or I would use the murder of his parents for something more interesting. I suppose that conditioning was done too well. Still, he has more than just a malicious attachment to Kachi as well as Pira. We can use them as collateral should we need to enforce his obedience even without a binding to Hell itself. After all, a mortal soul is still bound by mortal weakness."

"Well, I will leave you to your playthings. You've given more more than enough to keep busy for a while. Maybe next time you can snag a reaper. I know pestilence is just aching for some new tools to use against the world, and something beyond grave dust ought to do wonders now that their antibiotics are slowly failing."