SECOND ISSUE...
Welcome To Hell Kids AKA The Perdition Princess, or...
The One Where Diarrhea Saved the Day
The heroes awoke aboard the Perdition Princess, an infernal cruise ship carrying the dead through the Netherhold.
Except they weren't dead.
They woke in their actual living bodies in cabin 317, their powers were gone, and even their costumes had faded into eerie grayscale versions of themselves.
Their first encounter was with Yeoman Ferret Jones, the ship's purser: an infernal bureaucrat with roughly 500 years until retirement and absolutely no enthusiasm for making five anomalous living superheroes his problem.
Ferret wasn't particularly interested in stopping them. He was much more interested in not doing paperwork.
Before effectively adopting an “I didn't see shit” policy, however, he gave them three extremely useful pieces of information:
Whatever was blocking their powers was below them.
An ally was somewhere on their current level.
And danger waited above.
The team decided, quite sensibly, to find the ally first.
A suspiciously attentive little spring songbird showed them the way.
THE GODDESS IN THE STATEROOM
The bird led them to a luxurious master stateroom and Coralysienne, Goddess of Spring, who greeted them with:
“Welcome, children. I've been expecting you.”
Then Fabulon dropped a fairly significant piece of personal information on his teammates.
“My fellow team members, I'd like to introduce you to… my mom.”
It turned out Fabulon wasn't merely infernal-adjacent. He was the son of Sammael, King of the Netherhold, making Fabulon himself a prince of Hell.
Unfortunately, Dad was having problems.
Coralysienne explained that Sammael had been possessed by an entity called The Cherub, which was using his body “like a meat suit.” She had been imprisoned aboard the ship, and Sammael's chief sorcerer and evil advisor, Bloodspell, appeared to be deeply involved. Bloodspell's acolytes might know considerably more about what had happened to Sammael—and perhaps where his actual soul had gone.
Coralysienne couldn't restore the heroes' powers.
But she knew who could.
The Reader.
Before sending them below, she fashioned Livingwood weapons for the team, giving five temporarily depowered superheroes at least something to defend themselves.
She also informed the team what "Processing" means. Honored dead move on to their Heavens, damned and exiled embodied souls are assigned an eternal task.
DOWN INTO THE BOWELS
On the way below, the team encountered the first Triskaidepods: horrible little thirty-five-pound infernal things with tentacles, claws and eyestalks.
MadLad attacked one with his new Livingwood scythe while supplying his own badly sung Erasure soundtrack, since the supernatural version apparently wasn't available while his powers were suppressed.
Gatekeeper, transformed into a bear, introduced another creature's eyestalk to a staff.
Then Arbiter decided everyone was making this unnecessarily complicated.
He began glowing with holy light.
“Do not interfere with heavenly things above you. Out of the way.”
Every Triskaidepod caught within the radiance simply melted into goo.
The group's immediate conclusion:
“You should have led with that.”
Yes.
Yes, he should have.
THE READER
the heroes eventually found a door leading into a library that was physically impossible—vastly larger than anything that could conceivably fit inside the ship.
At its center waited an old man chained to an enormous book.
“Welcome. I've been expecting you. Please come in. We have much to discuss.”
He called himself The Reader.
He had once possessed another name, but no longer remembers.
The book was the Book of Destiny, and the Reader was supposedly its custodian. In practice, both he and the book had been enslaved and weaponized by the Netherhold. Among the things the Reader was being forced to do was suppress the heroes' powers.
He wasn't hostile.
He was trapped.
The heroes promised that if he restored their powers, they would try to free him.
The Reader agreed.
He opened the Book of Destiny, flipped through its pages and began making corrections.
Wind tore through the impossible library.
Pages fluttered.
And the heroes' powers came rushing back.
Color flooded back into their costumes.
MadLad immediately called out:
“You there, partner?”
He confirmed he got an answer.
Similarly Arbiter reached out...
Justice answered.
Gatekeeper promptly transformed and telepathically informed everyone that nobody had seen the cat.
Then the heroes kept their end of the bargain.
The Reader's physical chains weren't the real problem—the binding was magical. MadLad turned his newly restored nullification against it.
The chain faded into grayscale.
Its structure loosened.
And it fell away.
The Reader was free.
At their request, he immediately altered the Book again and released Coralysienne as well.
At which point the heroes had one additional request.
Could the Reader, perhaps, arrange for everybody working aboard the ship to develop really bad diarrhea within the next twenty minutes?
The Reader laughed.
“That is actually not beyond my power.”
Reality was revised.
An infernal intestinal parasite had now been present in the salad served at lunch.
Anyone who had eaten it was about to have a very bad afternoon.
The heroes departed.
They left The Reader behind and entered the corridor.
Then came the skittering.
The Triskaidepods had regrouped. Dozens poured around the bend—and behind them came larger things, great armored horrors squeezing through whatever breach gave their kind access to the ship. Legs scraped walls and ceiling as one enormous specimen forced itself forward over the swarm.
For one magnificent moment, the Triskaidepods had achieved overwhelming numerical superiority.
Arbiter looked at them.
Holy light erupted.
Sixty feet of corridor became incandescent. Lesser Triskaidepods burned away in brilliant silhouettes. The larger ones discovered that larger did not mean holier. Chitin blackened. Legs curled. The biggest managed half a screech before the radiance consumed it with the same divine indifference as everything else.
The light faded.
Silence.
The Reader surveyed the smoking corridor. Then Arbiter.
The Triskaidepod counteroffensive had lasted approximately four seconds.
It had not gone well.
THE DOCTOR WILL SEE YOU NOW
Unfortunately, Dr. Abbadon Breaker and Nurse Grese had apparently skipped the salad. While he initially allowed the players free passage after they rebuffed the Doctor's offer for a checkup, Dr. Breaker was delighted to discover that the unusual living specimens he'd noticed earlier now had their powers back.
“I don't get specimens like this ever. They never give me the good stuff.”
Grese was somewhat less conversational.
“I believe the doctor would like to examine you. Please step this way.”
It wasn't a request.
Gatekeeper hit Grese with Shadow Boxing.
She initially rolled spectacularly well against it—until Luck Control forced her to try that little miracle again.
The second result was considerably less miraculous.
Then Arbiter blasted her directly in the face with holy light.
She rolled a 1.
Grese went from dangerous infernal nurse to catastrophically blinded infernal nurse in approximately one round.
MadLad gave Breaker an opportunity to reconsider his career choices.
“You can let us go. Or we can finish you too.”
Breaker declined.
MadLad answered with pale green magical energy and staggered him.
Fabulon's Soulfire followed.
Breaker folded like a wet noodle.
Gatekeeper finished Grese with a Kinetic Bullet attack.
Both disappeared upon incapacitation.
The lesson was becoming increasingly obvious:
The Perdition Princess's crew was designed to control confused, frightened, ordinary human souls.
It was NOT designed to control five fully powered superheroes.
FUCK THIS NONSENSE
The team headed upward.
This was where the adventure had several additional attractions prepared for them.
Abe Warrington's infernal seductive bar with afflictions driving players to talk and drink until the boat docks.
Ghoulie deRoy's compulsory shuffleboard and conga-line nightmare.
April the mermaid, lounging innocently in the pool and waiting to eat anyone stupid enough to get in as she sings her VERy enticing siren song... which makes one WANT to ignore the signs that say "DO NOT GO IN THE POOL!"
Also avoided being smelled by the Hellkites (flying feral infernal aquatic pack creatures that can scent embodied souls).
The players considered there WERE possibilities...
Then effectively said:
Fuck this nonsense. We're going to the Captain.
And skipped all of it.
This turned out to be particularly funny because the Reader's lunchtime revision had actually worked: Abe and Ghoulie had eaten the salad.
They were having their own adventures.
The heroes never even bothered to find out.
THE BRIDGE
They reached the Bridge and encountered a magically secured door bearing the sort of warning that strongly suggested unauthorized entry might result in soul erasure. But it wasn't designed to erase EMBODIED souls.
There wasn't even a conventional handle.
Fortunately, Fabulon had his powers back.
He remotely sensed through the door.
The Bridge was empty.
There was a Captain's station, Becky's station, communications equipment, a Ready Room…
…and somewhere beyond that, a bathroom.
From which came unmistakable sounds of straining.
They had found Captain Daryll Knewbie.
Fabulon teleported onto the Bridge and opened a portal for everyone else.
They proceeded through the Ready Room until Arbiter encountered the heavily reinforced bathroom door.
Arbiter summoned a sledgehammer.
GONG.
From inside:
“Goddammit! I'll see you at dinner!”
At this point Fabulon remembered that doors were largely a matter of personal preference and simply opened a portal directly into the bathroom.
THE CAPTAIN'S LOG
Captain Daryll Knewbie was sitting on the toilet.
He was taking, by any reasonable standard, an extraordinarily large shit.
The smell was bad enough to require Fortitude checks.
Fabulon failed.
The others mostly persevered.
Daryll, despite being discovered during what was unquestionably one of the lower moments of his very long existence, remained remarkably cordial.
He asked them to give him approximately forty-five minutes and join him for dinner.
Or, as he put it:
“Allow me to offer you some hospitality before you kick my ass.”
The heroes responded by magically restraining him while he was still on the toilet.
And then something unexpected happened.
They talked.
Daryll explained that he hadn't brought them to the Perdition Princess and couldn't simply send them home.
The ship had a route it was compelled to follow. The path changed with every voyage, and the Captain instinctively knew how to navigate it.
More importantly, the ship had to have a Captain.
Remove Daryll without replacing him and the consequences weren't merely nautical.
People would stop dying.
There was another problem.
Passengers had to be Processed when the ship reached port.
The infernal crew were compelled to make sure that happened.
But crew members weren't passengers.
Someone asked the important question:
What if they simply disembarked as crew?
Could Daryll designate them as crew? Entertainment, security, consultants—whatever bureaucratic fiction was necessary?
Daryll considered it.
Then arrived at the most infernal conclusion imaginable:
It was technically correct.
And technically correct was, naturally, the best kind of correct.
There was absolutely no reason he couldn't make them crew.
Suddenly the final boss fight had become an HR onboarding procedure.
One of the heroes observed that they were now apparently:
“A crew in charge of unbinding you from the toilet.”
Daryll:
“I would appreciate that.”
They released him.
He explained that the necessary paperwork was on the Bridge, asked for enough time to clean himself up, and renewed his invitation to dinner.
He also mentioned that his gastrointestinal apocalypse had come on rather suddenly after eating the tiniest bit of salad at lunch.
Mystery solved.
Daryll changed into fresh dress whites.
The first uniform had experienced what he delicately described as “some spillage.”
DINNER WITH THE DEAD
Forty-five minutes later, everyone reconvened at the Captain's Table.
The heroes had regained their powers.
The Reader was free.
Coralysienne was free.
Dr. Breaker and Nurse Grese were gone.
Nobody had played shuffleboard.
Nobody had been forced into a conga line.
Nobody had been eaten by a mermaid.
Nobody had fought Charon.
And the five living intruders who were supposed to be Processed upon arrival were now, through the awesome power of bureaucratic technicality, officially members of the crew.
Captain Daryll Knewbie arrived for dinner in immaculate fresh whites.
Becky joined them.
And Daryll brought along the two biggest celebrity arrivals aboard the Perdition Princess that week:
The beloved and iconic Dolly Parton and Tim Curry. Don't get mad, Charon's Ferry and a Captain's Table was always the vibe. Didn't plan on TWO load-bearing gay icons though. Don't worry Dolly and Tim will BOTH definitely be processed to The Good Place. Everyone gets the cruise.
There were photographs.
Good conversation. Takeaway quotes they didn't say while alive but probably would've.
Dolly: "I don't discuss that. Judge me by my deeds, honey. I've had a whole lifetime of 'em."
Tim: "If someone tells you there's only one acceptable way to be, I've generally found that an excellent indication that you should make them uncomfortable."
And a lovely dinner celebrating the peaceful resolution of what could very easily have become an enormous supernatural bloodbath.
Although, for some reason, nobody at the table seemed particularly interested in the salad.
By the end of the night, the heroes had managed to:
-
Find their ally because they listened to Ferret.
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Restore their powers.
-
Free the Reader.
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Free Coralysienne.
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Retroactively give a substantial portion of the ship's crew explosive diarrhea.
-
Obliterate the Triskaidepods.
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Defeat Breaker and Grese.
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Completely bypass Abe, Ghoulie and April.
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Break into the Bridge.
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Corner the Captain on the toilet.
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Avoid fighting his considerably more terrifying Charon form.
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Discover a bureaucratic loophole that exempted them from Processing.
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Become official crew of the Perdition Princess.
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And have dinner with Dolly Parton and Tim Curry.
They didn't simply avoid the adventure.
They progressively figured out that they didn't have to accept the adventure's assumptions.
Ferret presented them with the basic structure right at the beginning: ally here, suppression below, danger above.
They found the ally.
They befriended the suppressor.
They turned the suppressor into an ally.
They used his reality-altering power to sabotage the danger above before they even got there.
Then, once fully powered, they stopped treating every encounter placed in front of them as something they were obligated to engage with.
And when they finally reached the person who appeared to be the boss fight, they discovered that defeating him wasn't actually necessary either.
They just needed to ask the right question.
Which leaves them free to turn their attention toward the much larger problem waiting somewhere in the Netherhold:
Bloodspell, what he or his acolytes know about Sammael's whereabouts, who or what The Cherub is and how to get the fuck out of Hell.
What happens next is up to the players...