From Tunwéya‘s notebooks:

Our sleep was interrupted.

Awakening we found, not that monsters were about (which, I must admit is my fourth least-favourite way to be awoken, failing only “Waking to discover the bard failed to set out guy ropes,” “Waking to discover that the owlbear whose cave you have been sharing has woken from hibernation two weeks sooner than you predicted,” and “Waking to discover you knocked over and spilled your inkwell in the night”), but merely that our hapless companion Trevik, in his determination to strike a deal with the Redcaps, had made some terrible faux pas: in purchasing the putative ‘lucky finger’ he acquired last night he somehow contracted to surrender one of his own fingers, and the Redcaps were intent on collecting.

I must admit that in spite of our best efforts to pacify the Redcaps, one of them managed to slice his finger off with the aid of a genuinely sharp sickle (Memo: must try and find said Redcap to congratulate him. Have to give credit where it’s due, and sharpening sickles is a fundamentally thankless task). Further, despite our best efforts to rally and join the assault, which brought down a number of the villains, the one responsible for Trevik’s mild mutilation did make good his escape. I attempted to console Trevik, pointing out that he had at least not surrendered without a fight and had actually had a really very good try at kicking one of the redcaps, but he did not seem ready to take this in.

Sadly, that was all the time we could spare to dry Trevik’s tears, and indeed his blood: the commotion had attracted the attention of the much-vaunted Mad Maggie who we understood to be our best chance of speaking to the Kenku. Having first broken up the scuffle before anyone became seriously hurt, Maggie remarked that there was little point in pursuing the Redcaps, who had probably eaten Trevik’s finger already, and instead invited us for cakes. She also expressed a desire to be told why it was we’d been running around telling everyone we owed her money. Hinnerk quickly disavowed this plan and instead explained that we owed money to some putative ‘Crazy Margret’ rather than to Mad Maggie herself, but this did not seem to impact the level of hospitality we were being offered.

Mad Maggie told us a little of her history – when she first came to Avernus, some 60 years previously, she did so as part of a coven which has since disbanded. She has since given over her time to developing a History of Avernus, which has included some study of the Blood War. Among her other items, Maggie has a tapestry which illustrates the rise of Zariel and features a vast Hollyphant which bears (insofar as the stylistic necessities of a tapestry ever bears any resemblance to the real world) a striking similarity to Lulu. Maggie seemed sympathetic to our increasingly strong suspicion that our own diminutive Lulu (whose chief powers appear to confined to a Trumpet of Sparkles, an unvarying cheerfulness in the face of crippling amnesia, and an only occasionally insulting preference for the company of Hinnerk above the rest of us) could well be the same enormous mammoth Lulu whose involvement in some part of the Blood War appeared to be revealed to us during Reya’s vision.

Maggie offered us some insights into the history of Avernus – it was, she suggests, a paradise once (hence, at some point, the opportunity to ensure an afterlife of eternal duty within Avernus may not have been as bleak a prospect as it would be today), and also briefly recapped the history of Avernus’s rulers – Zariel having deposed Asmodeus, who deposed Bel, who deposed Gargaruth.

At this point, I took it on myself to enquire whether she had any interest in a magical gobby shield which seems to alternate between offering implausibly good bargains and insisting that it, Gargaruth, ran Avernus much better when it was in charge. My hope, obviously, was that this simple exchange of resources would lead Maggie to share her notes on the history of Avernus with me, in order to inform my own research (not least because should we ever return home it seems probable that my links to the publishing industry will be more effective than hers), but we were obliged to settle for an arrangement in which she gave us merely soulcoins – her evident intention was to purchase the shield outright but Hinnerk instead agreed to lend it for a deposit of three soulcoins, two of which we will return in the event we survive long enough to reclaim the item.

Most critically, Maggie noted that she possesses a Dream Machine, which may be of service in restoring Lulu’s memories. To restore the device to working order, however, requires a few key components which are no longer in Maggie’s possession – a Nivernian Cogbox such as is used in the flying machines, a Heartstone, some Phlegessian Sand, and an Astral Piston (now largely obsolete but possibly in the possession of a Forgemaster named Marligan). Inevitably, restoring the machine seems that it will take some time, and is hardly our current priority, but we promised to see what we could do.

We also successfully persuaded Maggie to introduce us to the kenku tinkerers who we still believe could have some vital information for us, and she kindly agreed to take care of the majority of Trevik while we went to meet them.

The two key kenku, Chukker and Klonk, were engaged in working on a magical cart which moves forwards when soulcoins are inserted into the slot, and did not take particularly kindly to Leofric’s request to ascend the ladders to their nests and speak to the women and children – however they responded with genuine excitement as Lulu spoke to them in their strange patois: the kenku speak a bizarre amalgam of languages, utilising loan words apparently at random, but fortunately Pherria seemed able to interpret the bulk of what was being said, and in the course of their conversation with Lulu it became clear that the word “love” which Lulu used was identical to the one the Kenku have adopted: clearly, she said, at some point these Kenku have spoken to another Holiphant, and learned the word from them! This discovery caused Lulu great excitement, and it was only with some difficulty that she was dissuaded from theorising who this mysterious earlier holiphant could have been and re-focused her attention on the discussion at hand (Query: is there any record indicating that the waters of the Styx can impede ability to mobilise disparate data in addition to impairing memory? Beloved as she may be, I am beginning to wonder if Lulu’s faculties actually justify what sounds like an extensive recovery effort to procure four obscure and highly specific mechanical devices…).

Regardless, once Lulu had been drawn back to the immediate present, she agreed to fly me (in beetle form) up to the level of the Kenku nests while Hinnerk shimmied up the ladders. The nesting level was composed primarily of caves with crude nests arranged around, and as we arrived we were privileged to see a kenku mother regurgitating food for her young. Hinnerk, clearing his throat with remarkable thoroughness, encouraged Lulu to ask the Kenku was happening, and we received the information that she was settling her young to sleep. The tune was remarkably steady, given the linguistic jumble of lyrics, and presently Hinnerk began to join in, adding elements of a rolling sea shanty to the mix which, to our absolute fascination, both the kenku and its child rapidly assimilated into the song.

The effect was only slightly marred by the booming voice of Leofric, echoing up from somewhere below, as he attempted to banish Nick the chicken herder back to the real world, together with a message for Cinders (always supposing he bothered to try and find her): from the cheering, we gathered that this had been successful, or at least that Nick was no longer visible within Fort Knucklebone, which is arguably not the same as “safely arrived back at his beloved village”.