When the hellgout took the building, it took only the building. The doors and windows were sealed with an inter-dimensional phlogiston that resembled caked blood, and for a week the building tumbled through the ethers. Some quirk of the gout fused the demon Chaice to the building’s machinery, rendering it incapable of leaving the structure. The demon’s agonised screams as it was welded to the machinery in the basement echoed through the apartment block.
The inhabitants made their way to the basement, where they found the artifi cer demon melted to the wall, with pulsing tubes and cables running into its still-molten metal body. Quite understandably, they tried to kill it, which was less than effective. The demon was immobile, but its claws were still just as sharp. In a fl ash of metal, John Steadman was lying on the ground, his intestines spread over the basement fl oor.
Chaice explained the situation to the terrifi ed mortals. Soon, they would arrive in the Infernum and the demons would hunt them down and destroy them. If they listened to Chaice, if they fed it iliaster
and protected its immobile form, then it would tell them what they needed to survive.
What choice did they have?
1772 Chalmer St.
The few mortals to remain in the building until the hellgout took it are now trapped in the Infernum. They have the advantage of having a deranged and immobile demon in the basement to advise them about survival. The downside is that the demon is demanding that they torture the ghost of their former neighbour immediately.
They did all pass through the Lethe Clouds relatively unscathed, presumably because the building was sealed throughout the hellgout.
George Keel (Mortal 3): A security guard,
George Keel has become the de facto leader of the inhabitants since Steadman’s death. Secretly, Keel was a gang member; he left the gang behind him years ago, but stayed in contact with his former friends. Two of them were killed by Chaice when the demon was rampaging through the city, and Keel vowed revenge. He stayed in 1772 because it seemed to be close to wherever the serial killer was, but he never dreamed that he would discover that the killer was a demon living in his basement, or that it would drag him into Hell.
Keel does realise that he needs Chaice’s insight to survive, but as soon as the demon has told him all it knows, he is determined to fi nd a way to kill or starve it.
Mr. and Mrs. Alder (Mortal 2): This elderly couple
had retired on a meagre pension and had nowhere else to go when the nightmares struck Chalmer St. Mr. Alder was the building handyman, but he was sick for several weeks and so never noticed Chaice taking up residence in the basement. The shocks of the last few days have driven Alder to the brink of insanity; he and his wife are listening to the demon, whose instructions are coming to them through the heating ducts and the telephones and their dreams. Mr. Alder’s creativity is coming to the fore; under Chaice’s instruction, he is assembling a rather nasty torture device from the contents of their kitchen. The Alders are trapped in a nightmare and are taking the worst possible route out of it.
Toni Mahl (Mortal 2): Mahl is a young arts student
who took the Chalmer St. apartment because it was the only one she could afford. She has few ties to the other inhabitants – she thought the Alders were boring and that Pollis was strange before they were all dragged into Hell – and plans to strike out on her own as soon as she can. The problem is getting the supplies she needs; only Mary O’Sullivan has anything in the way of extra food and bottled water.
John Steadman (Damned 3): John Steadman died
about halfway through the Twisting of the hellgout. His body has been wrapped in trash-bin liners and lies in the basement. Once the hellgout opened, his soul pushed its way out of its mortal shell and found itself pinned by the hungry gaze of the demon in the wall. Steadman’s soul has stayed at the apartment block out of fear and confusion. The other residents are unsettled by the presence of the ghost, but it is far from the most alarming thing to have happened to them in the last few days.
Before death, Steadman was an unemployed electrician with little in the way of personality. His
death is the most interesting thing to have happened to him.
Darren Pollis (Mortal 1): Another student, Pollis
was unstable and depressive before entering into Hell. He is convinced that the inhabitants of the apartment complex are all utterly doomed. He has locked himself in his room, which he has bedecked in religious symbols. Pollis does have one potentially useful asset; one of the many pop- occult books stacked in his room contains formulae for sorcery. While the spells are far too fragmented and distorted to function in the mortal realm, they might work in Hell when boosted by the mortal ability to alter fate.
Pollis’ roommate, another student called Jay Cole, vanished during the gout. He broke a window and threw himself out into the interdimensional chaos. The room in which he broke the window is on the fourth fl oor and appears largely unaffected by its exposure to the full force of the hellgout, although all the inhabitants of the building agree that the room now feels… wrong.
Mary O’Sullivan (Mortal 1): O’Sullivan was
working in a convenience store before being dragged into Hell. She was always nervous, a hypochondriac and prone to taking whatever the latest dire news was and applying it to her own life. She is convinced that the hellgout and all the other weird events were caused by terrorists, and all they need to do is wait for the authorities to get here to save them. O’Sullivan does have a stockpile of food and bottled water (she started keeping such supplies from when she was a young girl listening to news about the imminence of nuclear war). Mary is actually even more unhinged than Pollis or the Alders; she will fi ght to stay in the building and to keep others from leaving.
Chaice, Former Demon of House Zethu (Artifi cer 7): Finally, there is the demon Chaice, welded to
the machinery of the building. This functions just like the fi fth link of the Artifi cer breed chain, but the demon is unable to stop its possession. Chaice was always an independently minded demon and the death of its master was the best thing that ever happened to it. Its current predicament is an ironic result of this independence; new demons risk throwing themselves into a portal, and if it had not travelled to the mortal world, it would not have gotten itself stuck to a crumbling apartment
complex currently located in the shadow of a Brass Pillar on the First Circle of Hell.
Chaice privately suspects that it is technically Dissolute, and cannot risk disconnecting itself from the building until it has consumed a great deal of iliaster. The only soul to hand is Steadman’s, so the demon has been forced to cajole the mortals with information on how to survive in Hell. It has carefully avoided mentioning the Branded, but has mentioned the abandoned Zethu research centre (see below.)
The Lost Tower
Physically, 1772 Chalmer Street is a six-storey apartment block, built of concrete. It was decaying and dilapidated before it was taken by the hellgout; now every inch of its exterior surface is streaked with blood and scabs. The building emerged from the gout at an angle. The basement and ground fl oor are partially merged with the rocky foundation of the neighbouring Brass Pillar, which is all that keeps the building upright. It suffered severe structural damage – there are burst pipes and cracks in the walls all over the building, especially the upper fl oors. Obviously, the structure has no functioning water supplies any more, although it is somehow drawing some power from the static of the Brass Pillar. The lights fl icker on and off and there is a constant static hiss resonating through the building.
It is still a relatively sturdy structure compared to the caves and hide tents that make up most dwellings on the First Circle. The ground fl oor contains a communal day room and abandoned offi ces. The apartments are on the upper fl oors; Pollis and Keel on the fi rst, O’Sullivan on the second, Steadman and the Alders on the third and Mahl on the crazily angled fi fth.
The building does have an elevator, but it has undergone a bizarre change. The doors open on an empty shaft most of the time and the one time the elevator car was present, it was warped and made of bone, with nine eyes for buttons. The eyes were scarred with the Roman numerals for I to IX.