BloodBrandy

Our party has been investigating the Church of the Macho One (aka the Church of Randy Savage), which is our Paladin's Church, after receiving information of a demon that our paladin ticked off a long time back, had been influencing things and may be linked to the death of the previous head of the church.

After a short investigation, dispelling an illusion of the Paladin's parents, and checking the guard records, the captain of the church guard drops his cover and attacks us and the new Macho Pope. However, as the Captain screamed his head off as the lair actions triggered, I, being closest to her, noticed odd whispers around the Macho Pope.

Turns out she was the demon in question under Shapechange. The fight dragged on and we had a couple close calls, with the Paladin having to counterspell a Power Word Kill, the Rogue avoiding being plane shifted to the Abyss, and the Bard dropping a Fire Storm from her instrument to take out the guard captain.

The Demon, a powered up Marilith, was drawing power from a gem that she had captured holy souls in, which lead my Warlock to take the initiative in summoning an Arisen Nightmare (A celestial Nightmare with all it's Fire replaced with Radiant) and gave him the duty of breaking the gem. Overall he only got one hit in on he because he missed his others, but that one hit was a crit with most of the damage being Bludgeoning, which the gem was vulnerable to.

The party followed suit, including the Barbarian who was grappled in the Marilith's coils and eating a lot of damage herself, but managed one last crit on the Gem, which shattered it and caused 85d6 Radiant to both her and the Demon, ending the fight and us having to quick Revivify the Barbarian.

We're getting close to a climax of our campaign, and we needed to get to the City of Temples. The issue is that the City of Temples does not have a permanent teleportation circle, under the belief that it should be some level of a pilgrimage.

The issue comes from the problem that the three closest cities to it are the Human Capital (Where the Queen, secretly controlled by a space rock from before time modeled after the Yellow Diamond, has had our paladin wanted in the past), the neutral City of Tomorrow (Which we fled after a fight with a devil assassin caused a lot of collateral damage) and the main port for the Human Empire (See above)

So with the port being our best option (Outside of my own suggestion of seeing if we can get transport from a Hag we know, but we're unsure the cost on that), our Paladin attuned his long unused Hat of Disguise, agreed on the fake name Virunus.

Upon arriving at the port, I give my usual nickname as my name, the guard remarks it's a short name for an elf and I say I just got back from the Feywilds (True) and am working on getting it all back (Not entirely false, but not true). After a short bit of back and forth, my young-ish elf (20 years since birth as a human, less than six months since I was reincarnated as an Eladrin, but I also spent 700 years in the Astral sea, so toss up which number counts), treating the 47 year old guard as a young fellow, and saying he can call me auntie. This and a joke from our Halfling, had the guard now being scared I am some level of actual fey, if not an outright hag.

The halfling and his goblin fiance who is disguised as a halfling give normal fake names without issue.

The half orc signs with a rough scrawl of a bear, and it's accepted relatively easily

But then the Paladin signs as Sir Virunus. Then when questioned if he's a knight of some sort, he backs down to erase the Sir upon questioning. This, of course, was sus as heck, which leads to them sending a navy captain to talk to us as we are getting horses, which leads to...further issues >.>

Tonight in D&D: We preside over a peace talk between Dwarves and Shadar-Kai, I tell one ~~Evil~~ Morally Questionable pair of lesbians about another pair of ~~Evil~~ Morally Questionable pair of lesbians they can be friends with, and the possible benefits of said friendship.

We learn that the old Pope of Macho Man Randy Savage, who we thought was alive but in containment after being mind controlled by the Yellow Diamond, is actually dead and the current Pope of Macho Man Randy Savage is either controlled by, possessed by or working for an Arch Demon. Said new Macho Pope is also possibly the reason the followers of Macho Man Randy Savage are having trouble with their powers, and is not only in control of our Paladin's family fund but may have killed his parents, who were also supposed to be in containment.

This brings about long term effects of my original character, a Tabaxi Rogue, keeping a magic book out of the hands of a Tiefling Warlock Mob Boss (Who was the cousin of our Paladin), it falling into the hands of a party member who became a servant of this archdemon, dying and the archdemon getting a vendetta against out paladin.

And as the day comes to an end, my Eladrin's spring personality keeps from screaming, goes to her room with a drink, says a prayer and just spends time with her familiar.

This week our group engaged a group of devil worshiping centaurs and a Bone Devil they had summoned who had escaped us a couple weeks ago.

My warlock kept out of range of most of them by dint of riding a special Figurine of Power that is an Arisen Nightmare (a Celestial Nightmare, just replace Fire with Radiant, give it wings and take away the Ethereal Step ability), most of our group had Fly on them and the Bone Devil went down quick because of a Holy Avenger crit from the paladin.

After that though, with civilians of the herd starting to sacrifice themselves to the blood pond, the paladin (Of Redemption, afraid of losing his oath) and the rogue (Not wanting to kill kids) tried to talk things down. The dark priestess was hearing none of it and just wanted us dead.

Pretty soon four adults and a child had unalived themselves into the now black and bubbling pool, the priestess was dead and growing into some sort of gnarly tree, and our barbarian half orc was dead. The rest of the group started to flee, but my Warlock had a couple remaining desperate attempts in that I had a couple of scrolls of Guiding Bolt in my pocket.

With a prayer to the Sun God and the Nature Goddess, my DM allowed me the first try and after a religion check, a damage roll and a D100, a bit of the pond purified, but that didn't last long and top of the next round, a visage of the Archdevil of the Fourth Circle came up, anointed a new priestess, inflicted fear on our bard and my steed (They were the only others in range and I passed the saving throw) and slumped back into the pond.

My steed, frightened, used it's next action to dash the fuck out and the Bard did the same. The steed carried me a good distance before passing his fear check to break it, and we decided we had to do something about it, even as the rest of the group was hauling ass to both get away and get the Barbarian revived.

The steed swiftly carried me back to the spot we had just been and joined me in prayer, adding the God of Protection and Goddess of Justice on his end, and with another religion check, a damage roll and a D100, the pond was wholly purified, if only for a moment, before evaporating, leaving behind a red stained crater, and a momentary visage of a devil who's summoning we'd apparently interrupted and who got a good look at me before fading back to the Hells

Blood Pond image clipped from - https://www.deviantart.com/skvor/art/Dark-Pond-635218185 Trident Throw clipped from video "Myth's Bad End"- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euPfAilSpuU