The Fishman's Baby

Regrouping at the Bent Compass, the party found the envelope carried the King in Yellow's seal and decided not to open it; Taz'Or Ka's owlbear skull turned to watch the door. The Fishman, a red tiefling sent by Kett, hired them: something from the sewers had taken his baby from the drain at the top of The Tallow Stair. He translated a story from Uldrick's book about a spell that sends a tree away, cut off from the world; the book is Stephen's Record of Infernal Spells, by Stephen Amber, an alias of Grobnak.

Handing over the envelope, the party learned it had been a loyalty test. The Baron showed them his King in Yellow contract: he took it to save the city, ended slavery but not indenture, was in a press-gang when the dwarves vanished, and needs the second copy destroyed. Deals are made through a five-foot white-skinned devil; the table recalled Thekelan, the contracts destroyed in campaign 2, and the deaths of Glix and Glux at Wildharbour. His companion, the pale high elf Marya Velcrow, hired the party for 2,000 gp (plus a 1,000 gp "donation" to the Star Dancer, a swindle by Brother Oils) to clear the aberrations below the city that swallow every guard patrol; a book story ties them to many-legged rats and "Calinistrax".

Uldrick communed with the Amber Queen: answers on devil contracts lie in The Iron City of Dis, and another contract-holder is Heishen the Deathless in Creatis. Below the Tallow Stair the party was ambushed by corrupted spring-onion folk and coral merfolk on seahorses, who accused them of taking and corrupting the Salmon of Knowledge; the corruption receded from their faces as they died.