The Scorching Depths

[bc56]

Demons and Demigods
That's a topic for after this encounter.
Sekhmet closes her fist. "Then I grant you permission to wield my fire." She is wreathed in flames, incandescent heat pouring off her like a furnace. The ritual is drawing to a close. It's mostly up to Sophie to finish copying this power.

Palace Gardens
"Blush." "Twist." "Max." Those aren't their real names, if it even matters to Baccata. "We're just here to say hi and see if there's anything we could do to make you more comfortable." There's almost certainly an ulterior motive involved, at least if Baccata believes Sekhmet. But these people seem nice. And hot. Are they really that bad?

[Earl of Purple]

Palace Gardens

"At the moment I don't think there is. I'm still getting used to the feel of this place. Hot and dry and stagnant, not like the others. The Endless River's wet and humid, with the constant gurgle of water, and the Sunless Country is always windy and dark. It's a lot hotter here than the Plains of the Dead, though the air's just as still. What names did you go by when you lived?" Baccata tilts her head to one side and climbs the rest of the way out of her tree.

[Morty]

[Demons and Demigods]

The fire seems to contract on itself in Sophie's hands, until it forms a concentrated ball of incandescent heat. Sophie's own glow intensifies until it erupts in a blaze of golden sunlight, depicting an open hand surrounded by shadows and flames. The fire in her hands surges upwards and to the sides, forming a circle around her and Sekhmet. A wall of fire to ward off evil. The fire has a dark gold tinge to it, with a darker centre.

"I've taken your fire and made it my own," Sophie says. "It seems to have turned into a protective one in my hands."

[bc56]

Palace Gardens
"It doesn't matter." "Those aren't our names now." "The old me is dead, and even if he wasn't, I'm pretty sure we're not supposed to tell fairies our real names." It looks like they're not going to cooperate on that front. "You sure you don't need anything? Food, drink? Clothes to replace that... Thing you're wearing? Makeup? I can work miracles with cosmetics." Evidently Blush finds Baccata's appearance a little distasteful. Given how the demons are dressed, that's probably not too surprising.

Demons and Demigods
"I, uh, that's good." Sekhmet's flaming armor and shield evaporate and she loses a couple feet of height and a substantial amount of muscle mass. It looks like she's returning to normal from whatever just happened. It seems she exhausted herself somehow.

[Earl of Purple]

Palace Gardens

"I'm not a faerie, I'm a dryad. The old you isn't dead, they're still you, you're just different. If the old you were truly dead, you wouldn't remember them at all, and... I don't think that's the case." Although still fae, so perhaps a distinction without a difference. "And I killed for this jumpsuit, I think I'll keep it. My yew would like some sunlight, if you can do that, but... I don't really need to eat or drink." Which is handy, given various things about eating whilst in the afterlife.

[bc56]

Palace Gardens
"No, he's dead. Shot himself. That's how I'm here," Twist counters. The others chime in, "Burned at the stake," "Old age." "Seriously?" Apparently death by old age isn't especially common among succubi and incubi. "So what'd you die of to wind up here?" They're all pretty sure Baccata isn't dead, it's just small talk.

[Morty]

[Demons and Demigods]

The iconic display above Sophie vanishes, but she's still glowing. The fire fades away for now as well. She steps closer to Sekhmet.

"Are you alright? This seems to have taken a lot out of you."

[Earl of Purple]

Palace Gardens

"Soul is not the abode of memory, y'know. If you truly were apart and seperate from your old lives, you would not be able to answer any questions about who you were. Just because they're dead doesn't mean they're gone, least of all to you. Your lives, your experiences, actions, and who and what you were... they all matter, and shape who and what you are now. Your lives now, your experiences now, your actions now, who you are now, is all a derivative of who you were then. Dying doesn't change who you are, if you remember dying. I mean, it does, all experiences and lessons change who you are. What it doesn't do is stop you from being the same person that you were, so long as you remember them. And you do remember that." The very fact they know how they died is proof of that, though the succubus who died of old age may still be mistaken; if she died in her sleep, it may not have been old age's infirmity that claimed her.

[bc56]

Demons and Demigods
"I'm fine," Sekhmet conjures a chair from molten rock to sit down on. "Big displays of power like that, uh, tend to be exhausting." She can't exactly explain why; in her own domain, she should be practically omnipotent.

Palace Gardens
"Maybe not where you're from," Twist replies, "But I'd like to think I know more than some dryad about souls." Demons are known soul-dealers. The trade in souls promotes a knowledge of souls.

[Earl of Purple]

Palace Gardens

"I wasn't just talking about souls. Souls don't matter. I'm talking about minds. Mortals come in three parts, a body, a mind, and a soul. You have the mind and soul of the person who died. You are the same person you were before you died, because their mind lives on in you. The body's just decorative, and souls are mostly identical. There's differences between a human and an elven soul, and between the soul of a conjurer and an elementalist, but those are minor. Eye colours vary more than souls do. They might work different here, but you're forgetting something important about dryads." Baccata smiles at Twist, and leans back against her yew. "Dryads aren't mortal, and I do not have a soul. I am the mind of my yew, and he is my soul. I can see my soul whenever I want to, can you?"

On a reread, Earl discovered he made a mistake. Baccata did mention souls first... but only because Earl thought the group had already mentioned them.

[bc56]

Palace Gardens
"We can. All of them." Multiple souls? That's what Max is implying. "We have more important things to do than sit around listening to a dryad be wrong about souls," Blush dismisses the argument. "Sorry, we're getting off on the wrong foot here," Twist adds, "Let's shelve the soul talk for now, okay?"

[Earl of Purple]

Palace Gardens

Well, as Baccata is a psychopomp- and thinks all souls are basically identical- she's not surprised at the succubi having multiple souls. "Sure. What do you want to talk about, then? Oh! Why don't I introduce you to Bill and Ben?" Baccata smiles and reaches into her tree.

[Morty]

[Demons and Demigods]

"Thank you for doing it on my behalf, then." Teaching her a new power took Sekhmet a lot of effort. "What do you say that we go back to GLoG and have a hot drink now?"

[bc56]

Demons and Demigods
"That, uh, sounds good to me," Sekhmet agrees.
She reopens the portal and now they can return. It sounded like Sophie might have some questions as well.

Palace Gardens
"Who're they?" Unknown unseen people? The succubus sounds intrigued, but wary. This is either an innuendo or a threat. Either way, it's interesting. And it's not like she can really be hurt anyway, not down here.

[Earl of Purple]

Palace Gardens

"Well, this one is Ben, and this one's Bill." Baccata reaches into the tree with both hands, pulling out what are, undeniably, human skulls. Ben is in her left hand, and Bill in her right. "I met them forty years ago, when they were alive. I'd not met anyone before, and I was a lot younger." Her tree will stop growing once it reaches the size of a fifty-year-old yew, which is a hint, though Baccata looks to be eighteen or nineteen at most, so there's also some dryad ageing going on here. "I didn't own any clothes, yet, so Bill and Ben took theirs off to feel... more comfortable. Then they got too comfortable, and I killed them. I don't think they were called Bill or Ben, but... they never actually told me what their names were."

[bc56]

Palace Garden
So it was a threat. Not a very effective one. "Relax." "We won't make you do anything you don't want to," the succubi try to reassure. They're telling the truth, even. They can't take souls by force. One must willingly give in to them.

[Earl of Purple]

Palace Garden

"These guys were my only company for over thirty years. In the state that you see them now, even. So... If I come across as a bit odd, that'd be why. Their souls whooshed down the Endless River, really quick. I didn't think the current was that fast, but I guess it differs for everyone." The only people Baccata's actually crossed over are the ones she's killed herself. "I've seen others drifting past, and even occasionally someone fighting the current and wading upstream."

[bc56]

Vaults
The portal opens into a dark room. The air is stiflingly hot. Sekhmet snaps her fingers and sconces along the walls flare with flame and cast a reddish glow across the chamber. The room is furnished with display cases, all heavily reinforced and locked. A larger-than-life basalt statue of a succubus that looks similar too but not quite like Sekhmet stands glowering over the arrivals in the corner. Otherwise the room is utilitarian, with no decorations at all."Here we are. One of my mother's vaults."

[Keeper]

Vaults

"Just one? Do they have themes or are they just distributed randomly?" Jace asks as he steps into the vault. His ward keeps him from sweating bullets.
"Well, you have the keys to the place. Just point us at whatever you want us to look at."
Despite Jace's many talents he has no idea how lockpicking works.

[bc56]

Vaults
"There are six vaults like this one, dedicated to different types of items. The library vault, the armory vault, the apocalypse vault, and so on. This one, uh, I just called it the miscellaneous vault. It has a bunch of stuff and I'm not sure what it's for." There are fancy jars with animal-head shaped lids. There's a hollow crystal rod about three hands in length. There are numerous other oddments locked away in their glass cases. And there's that statue. It really has an unpleasant expression.

[Keeper]

Vaults

"Well, that's just as well. The apocalypse vault and the weaponry of a demon queen is the most likely things to well, blow up in our face." Jace goes to examine the jars. They look like canopic jars which means they're likely simply remains and unlikely to be supremely powerful. A good thing to start with.

Zebes sniffs around the statue for magic just to make sure it isn't some kind of security system. But he's fairly sure Sekhmet would be aware of it.

[bc56]

Vaults
Four jars, with the heads of a falcon, a jackal, a baboon, and a human. All of them are inscribed with protective spells, but those spells don't invoke the expected gods, but rather a dark and terrible power: Sapphira, Queen of the Scorching Depths.
The statue, on the other hand, smells strongly of magic. Not the sort that would indicate that it's a trap, but rather the sort that would keep it intact. It's likely no mundane force could even scratch the statue's surface.

[Keeper]

Vaults

Jace focuses on the jackal-headed jar first since it reminds him of a story his daughter told him. And of his dog, a little. He delicately weaves his sight around the jar, probing at the protections. They call to a patron that is no longer present, and he would like to get a glimpse of the contents beyond the seal. No demon queen would store an ordinary man's organs in her vault of artifacts. There must be something powerful bound up in there. Hopefully not some ancient spirit or mummy that would rise again if he were to open it. Which is why he is trying not to.

[bc56]

Vaults
The jackal-headed jar contains a mummified stomach (that's what one should expect in there). It seems like the inside of the jar is devoid of magic. Which is actually strange given how hellish magic suffuses the very air down here.
"What is it? What do you see?" Sekhmet asks.

[Keeper]

Vaults

"A preserved organ. Which is actually what is usually in jars like these. Not sure which one; I'm not a doctor."
Jace stands up, dusting off his hands.
"There doesn't seem to be any magic in the jar at all. It's possible there was some form of binding against magic in the jars to make sure they didn't regenerate or something. But without the body that they normally accompany I'd have trouble saying. Maybe that's in one of your other vaults?"
He can see a demon queen keeping the body of an old enemy bound up to make sure they don't wake up and cause trouble.

[bc56]

Vaults
"I don't know of any corpses in the other vaults," Sekhmet says. "If there's any more to this, it's in here." Unless whatever is in the jars can regenerate from just those four organs, there might be a corpse hidden in this room, or one of the other vaults.

[Keeper]

Vaults

”Well, they’re no danger to you as it is. Whoever they’re from it might be better to not disturb such things.”
But speaking of disturbing things, Jace goes to inspect the rod next while Zebes sniffs around the curio cabinets. Surely there’s something more exciting in this vault than old guts.

[bc56]

Vaults
"Maybe. Anyone Mother would, uh, dismember like this might be a powerful potential ally, or a, uh, grave threat."
The rod is enchanted with the element of wind. Given that it's a hollow tube, one could probably blow air through it, but is that actually how it's intended to be used?
The cabinet on which the canopic jars rest is locked, but Sekhmet provides a key. It's full of bottles in unusual shapes. A red glass bottle in the shape of a heart (the organ) is full of black fluid. A small phial shaped like a chess bishop is full of clear, watery liquid. A steel tankard is sealed with a padlock and reinforced chains. And there are many more containers with their own contents.

[Keeper]

Vaults

Zebes pops into a kobold shape for proper hands to hold the rod. Very slowly, he moves it horizontally so that air will pass through it.

Meanwhile!

Jace has commented on being generally less adept at identifying potions so he's going to be a little less skilled at these. The heart is probably demon ichor of some kind, given the source. Not going to touch that. He does uncork the vial and take a small whiff of it to get a general idea of what's going on.
The locked tankard is much more interesting to him, though. If Sekhmet doesn't have a key for it he might have to try cutting through the chains, but for now he'll see if it has any sort of magical aura.

[bc56]

Vaults
As the rod moves, it produces a faint, musical sound, like the half-remembered notes of a song you heard in your childhood.
The opened bishop-shaped vial smells strongly of salt. The tankard on the other hand, is non-magical, but maybe it's contents are? Sekhmet doesn't have a key, so Jace will have to cut it open if he wants to check inside.