Fate of the Dam-ned

The moment Silas summoned the demons, the room became thick with the tension of battle. They hummed with necrotic energy and wasted no time before attacking us. Diablo’s flesh blistering from infernal wounds that refused to close properly. I hurled a fireball into the chaos, more interested in controlling the battlefield than preserving the governor’s furniture or any evidence of his wrongdoings. Percy scrambled to support the group while fire filled the office. The blast from my fireball clipped Silas as he activated a hidden mechanism at his desk, revealing a portal behind the bookcase before fleeing through it into some strange violet realm.

Naturally, we pursued him. Of course he tricked us, having led us here on purpose. Where we ended up being was the last place I could have guessed. Penance, also known as the Maw, or the Prison Realm. 

And Penance was extraordinary.

The moment we crossed over, I recognized fragments of old planar theory made manifest. Purple skies split by constant storms. Floating landmasses of flesh-like structures that pulsed with residual magical conductivity. Even the air felt metabolically active, as if digesting our very presence. The others saw a nightmare dimension, but I was beginning to see a system.

Penance wasn’t merely a prison plane… It was an ecosystem built around extraction. The Scavengers drained energy from anything stranded there, recycling life force through the plane itself. Elegant, in a grotesque sort of way. The others wasted time moralizing over it.

For instance, when we encountered a man being devoured alive by these maw-creepers, Sanasha immediately considered helping him. I advised against it. Penance does not collect innocents by coincidence, and more importantly, interfering with native feeding patterns while trapped in a hostile dimension seemed deeply unwise. The creatures’ mandibles were remarkable though, consisting of serrated appendages capable of complete immobilization within seconds.

Naoki attempted communion with nature spirits and found nothing truly alive. That interested me more than it unsettled me. Penance wasn’t natural. It was self-contained, self-sustaining. A plane functioning as a digestive organ.

As we explored further, the biological inconsistencies became impossible to ignore. Floating flesh-webs stretched between landmasses, regenerating almost instantly after damage. Sanasha ripped a piece free while Percy tested the tissue with his blade, causing the entire structure to convulse like a wounded nerve cluster. Useful information.

The tower that was above our resting spot was the true revelation of the Maw.

Inside was folded layers of flesh and sinew arranged like some colossal circulatory system. Columns of meat acted as weight-bearing beams. Faces protruded from the walls. This organic architecture responded to our presence. At its center hung Amoral Tamlish, suspended within the Obliette; a living stabilizer for the entire dimension.

I performed a ritual casting of detect magic to study the construct directly. The answer became clear almost immediately, seeing as how the Obliette actually communed with me, asking me questions and answering some of my own.. The Obliette consumed a living host in order to regulate the entropy of Penance. Without a prisoner acting as a core, the plane’s chaotic structure would rupture outward into neighboring dimensions. Brutal design, certainly, but undeniably effective. More importantly, the system sustained its captive indefinitely by balancing consumption with preservation.

A prison that continuously destroys and restores organic matter… The medical implications were staggering.

If the regenerative cycle could be isolated, replicated, refined even, then diseases involving tissue degeneration, necrosis, terminal decay… there were possibilities here no inferior arcanist would ever dare pursue. Which, naturally, made me want to understand it even more.

The others reacted emotionally once they realized someone would need to replace Tamlish if we freed him. Bill, the grotesque fly-like demon guard trapped there, became the obvious candidate in my eyes. He had already been altered beyond recognition by the plane and had survived there for years. From a purely logical standpoint, the exchange made perfect sense.

Unfortunately, heroism tends to complicate efficient solutions. Sanasha decided she would rather sacrifice herself than condemn Bill. Percy immediately sided with her. Both were thinking emotionally instead of structurally. If Sanasha entered the Obliette, we would lose one of our strongest allies to save a stranger already broken by Penance.

I wasn’t willing to allow that, and neither was Naoki.

While Percy attempted to interfere with charms and confusion magic, Naoki neutralized Sanasha by polymorphing her into a toad. Effective. Temporary. Minimal long-term harm. I used the opportunity to drag Bill into position (after casting hold person on him, of course. Minimal struggle.) and completed the exchange before anyone else could derail the process.

Tamlish was freed moments before Thaine arrived with a portal.

The reactions afterward were predictable. Sanasha looked at me with outright disgust. Diablo nearly attacked Naoki. Percy treated the entire situation like some moral catastrophe instead of a successful containment procedure.

But the facts remained unchanged by how they feel. Tamlish survived. Penance remained stable. The Maw did not collapse into entropic chaos. And for the first time in centuries, someone had learned something new about how the plane actually functioned.

Frankly, I still consider that a productive expedition.

Back at the safehouse, we learned Silas was preparing an infernal army while attempting to destroy the dam. The city alarms began ringing soon after. Everyone immediately shifted focus toward war preparations and alliances.

But I kept thinking about the Obliette.

About the regenerative properties of extraplanar flesh.

About whether the process could be replicated without the… suffering.

Probably not.

But “probably” has never been enough to stop progress before.