03/26/2026: Lyric the Demon

Jeremiah and Bob meet the group at the Ship’s Prow rooming house — a sketchy, nearly-empty establishment in the rankest corner of the Dock Ward. The party retires to their rooms, grateful for even the lumpy beds, though the sheets are questionable and the walls seem to seep sea water. They are exhausted. They sleep.

In his own room, Sean lies awake. He turns over the evening’s events in his mind, searching for a next move. He has been sent back — bonded now to the demon Lyric, tasked with helping to open the gate that will flood Waterdeep and the rest of the known world with demons. 

Bolinda’s cards were right, as it turned out. The card reader had asked whether any of them owed a debt to someone with horns and a tail. Sean hadn’t answered. Lyric had teleported both Sean and Bolinda to a dungeon where three victims waited, chained to the wall. Only Sean’s tiefling heritage spared him from becoming the sixth and final sacrifice. He is not spared from the bond.

⚔

In the grey light of early dawn, the orcish landlord stumps up the stairs. His walking stick is in hand and he uses it to pound on each door. Dante snarls that they’ll be packed and gone shortly. Wilrick informs the orc he’s leaving as well. Jeff, ever resourceful, hides in his closet — and the orc moves on, fooled into thinking the room is already empty.

He reaches Jeremiah’s door. Three rounds of knocking. No response. The landlord tries the handle.

But the elf is ready. He braces his shoulder against the door — then thinks better of it. He grabs his gear and slips out the window.

Jeremiah scales the exterior wall, finding handholds in the weathered brick, and pulls himself up to the floor above. A wave of ammonia hits him before he reaches the sill. He peers inside: the room is unoccupied, save for six cats, who immediately begin winding around his ankles.

Then he sees it — a glowing red sigil on the back of the door.

Curious, he reaches out and touches it.

He is swallowed by light.

⚔

In the room he’d shared with Jayce, Viktor rolls over at the sound of banging and notices the other bed is empty. Hmm. He rises, dresses — and then hears two voices cry out, followed by two tremendous crashes. He flings open his door. From somewhere above, Wilrick’s footsteps move toward whatever happened on the upper floor. From somewhere far below, in the lobby, comes groaning.

One floor above, minutes earlier, Bob flings open his door and takes a swing at the orcish landlord. He misses. The orc seizes him by the collar, hauls him off his feet, and dangles the dragonborn over the third-story banister.

The orc snarls, “You will leave my establishment now.” 

Bob exhales a blaze of lightning directly into the landlord’s face. The orc screams and releases him.

Bob falls three stories to the lobby.

Wilrick, opens his door across the hall, having no knowledge of what has just transpired save the shouting and falling bodies. On the landing, Wilrick finds the landlord crumpled and not breathing. He kneels beside him and works to restart the man’s heart. The orc comes around gasping, clutching Wilrick’s arm with gratitude. Together, slowly, they begin to make their way downstairs.

⚔

Viktor reaches the lobby to find Bob in a broken heap on the floor. The wizard renders what aid he can, and soon Bob is sitting up — just in time for the orcish landlord to spot him from across the room, still clinging to Wilrick’s arm.

The silence stretches. Orc and dragonborn glare at one another.

The only thing Viktor can think to say is: “Where is Jayce?”

⚔

Jayce finds himself chained to a stone wall. To his right, Bolinda rattles her own fetters as well, her earlier composure entirely gone.

“They are going to sacrifice us!” she wails.

Then, with a blue flash of light, Jeremiah lands hard on the stone floor across the chamber. The demon is nowhere to be seen. The old woman stops crying, something like hope moving across her face.

Surprise flooding his voice, Jayce asks Jeremiah to try the lock. He works at it. Again. Again.

The lock remains stubbornly unopened.

⚔

Before Viktor can go searching for Jayce — before the orc landlord and Bob can resume their argument — the lobby fills with the stench of brimstone.

A red flash.

An enormous, scarlet-skinned demon materializes in the center of the room. He surveys those before him and smiles.

“Excellent. You are all here.”

What the demon does not know: Dante and Jeff are still upstairs in their rooms.

Lyric raises one arm and traces a sigil in the air above their heads. The lobby dissolves — walls, floor, the smell of mildew and old wood — and resolves into damp stone, torchlight, and the clinking of chains. They are in a dungeon.

In the shadows, Jeremiah goes very still, uncertain whether the demon has noticed him.

Bolinda leans close to Jayce and whispers, “I was almost sure your friend wasn’t a demon.”

Jayce blinks. Once. Twice.

Sean now sports a long pointed tail and a great set of coiled horns that spring from under his dreads. These are much larger than the ones he had earlier. Wilrick also now has horns. Viktor and Bob lie unconscious on the floor.

The demon’s smile widens. “Soon — after the ritual is performed, and you sacrifices,” he gestures to all present except Sean, “will render your service to our cause.”

In the shadows, Jeremiah weighs his options.

Not far away, Wilrick quietly begins to prepare a Divine Smite.

And back at the Ship’s Prow, Dante and Jeff have no idea any of this is happening.