Dealing With Devils

From the Chronicles of the Peacemakers. Events of the 12th of Rain's Hand, 836 P.S.

• The party - Aramir, Tordek, Haakon, Murmarsaryese, Echo, and Tulgey - hear of refugees arriving from the North-east. The people speak of ambushes and abductions en route, reports of fiendish creatures, devils.
• The party proceeds, discovers a crenelated tower in the Darkinwood. Roughly humanoid, winged figures fly around it, in and out of windows.
• Another flock of the creatures approach with an abductee, party hide in treeline while Haakon and Aramir stand in a clearing and try to lure them down.
• The fiends ignore them, drop off abductee at tower, return to the clearing with more numbers.
• Hidden party members are immediately spotted and set upon.
• Party dispatches the devils, their corpses begin to decay rapidly into noxious, sulphurous smoke. Tulgey is sickened for a time. They move away from the site.
• Approaching the tower, they find it attached to a small, thatch roofed building. Echo senses no traps on the doors, but several localised sources of magic inside. 
• Tulgey, in spider form, creeps to the roof and scouts the interior. Finds it crawling with malformed semi-humanoid creatures that Tor identifies as newly formed devils - the souls of evil mortals that arrive in the hells on the lowest rung of devil hierarchy.
• When they burst through the doors, the blob creatures pay the party little mind, milling around aimlessly in the bloody abattoir that used to be a stables.
• The sources Echo had detected turn out to be magic items on humanoid remains. A backpack with a magically roomy interior and a kerchief that unfolds into an extradimensional hole. Tor and Murmar recognise these devices as being incompatible, and contact could result in a planar tear. They also find a damaged wand capable of casting a Dimension Door spell.
• The party proceed up the spiral staircase.
• They find the newly delivered abductee being eviscerated by a small winged devil, a process that seemingly births one of the malformed creatures into this plane. It flees from a window, but Haakon jumps out after it and drags it down and destroys it.
• The entire tower is lined with similarly butchered corpses, each apparently the source of a blob devil
• The parapet gives a perfect view of the Witchpass, ideal for staging ambushes on refugees travelling to the towns to the south
• The party decides to take a rest outside of the bloody, brimstone-smelling building, before exploring further. As they leave, they are attacked by more of the winged humanoids from the downward stairwell. In the resulting combat, Tor notices the doors have slammed shut, and the temperature in the stable begins to rise.
• Finishing the devils, the party look out of windows to find the snowy land of the Marches changed to a fiery hellscape. 
• They use Echo's tiny hut ritual to shelter and rest, and then head downstairs, passing through a set of double doors and seeing a bound figure suspended in chains from the ceiling. It is Aramir's brother.
• At Aramir's denial, the doors slam closed, bound with chains, and the figure changes to that of Aramir's devilish patron. Aramir is accused of breaking the terms of their arrangement, and his warlock powers are revoked. The fiend claims ownership of Aramir and his brother's souls, and suggests a renegotiation: offer up his companions. "Those aren't my souls to give," Aramir says.
• Haakon bravely climbs the chains and attacks the devil, who merely laughs 
• Tor and Murmar combine the portable hole and the handy haversack which implode in a violent rip of swirling planar energies. Dodging grasping, lashing chains, the party dive into the rift
• Floating in the Astral Plane, the party group together and Tor uses the wand, opening a ribbon of coursing energy. With no way of knowing where they might emerge, the party pass into the ribbon and are whisked away. They choose left.
• Materialising submerged in pitch-dark water, Tulgey casts a spell that bobs them all quickly to the surface, where they are enclosed in a small dome of a cave. Tulgey takes the shape of a shark and scouts the underwater cave system. He finds a route, Tor casts a spell that allows the party to breathe water, and using their ropes, the shark drags them to safety. They emerge in the cave not far from Witchcross, where some of the party pursued darklings several weeks ago.