Stay on the boring old Material Plane, and not get to do the many fascinating experiments that the Abyss allows? Forget it. In fact, Nenio already has.

"I - I hate who I was, in the Abyss. But I can't improve by trying to ignore it." Deep breath. "I will go to Alushinyrra; and do better this time."

"The mission parameters as outlined by the Queen seem to have an acceptable risk/reward ratio."

"Perhaps there's beauty in the Abyss? It's getting hard to find any around here." Sosiel does not have Abramo's or Regill's fine control over body language, and stares directly at Galfrey as he says this.

"Sounds like the Queen ordered me to go to the Abyss, and she knows more about stuff than I do."

"We're seriously doing this? I mean - eh, whatever. You're the boss, chief. Just - maybe keep in mind, I got some kind of big juju demon after me, Alu-whatever might be almost as bad as Kenabres for my health."

"At least the Abyss doesn't have all this sky and sun and suchlike."

"How can we make peace if we don't meet the demons where they're at? I'll go. Maybe they'll listen to me if they're at home."

Abramo isn't entirely surprised, but he's a little touched nonetheless; entirely unanimous? No hesitation? He bows his head in salute to his companions, gives Galfrey a measured nod.

"Then let's go."

The Abyss is... awful, actually.

Not for the way the constantly-changing tides of unreality seem to rip at the sanity of mortals, although that's bad enough; Abramo has gotten used to that, fighting in the Worldwound. Not for the singing literally-demonic tension that threatens to break into violence at any moment and sometimes does. Not for the nonsensical architecture that disappears or changes as soon as you take your eye off it and refuses to stay still, or the distances that stretch and rotate unpredictably, or the smells of blood and sulfur that come wafting every few minutes. Abramo could deal with all of that.

No, it's the city that bothers him, Alushinyrra.

It's not a city, that's the problem. It's a... congeries of imagined buildings and conscripted residents; as if someone had read a children's book about Great Cities and decided they wanted one, and heaped up walls and doors in random colours to make a fine show from a distance, and strong-armed their friends into running through the alleys and Playing City with them.

A city has some reason to exist. It's a place where craftsmen barter with farmers. A harbor that shelters merchant ships from storms, and where they unload their goods to be taken inland. A fortress guarding a mountain pass. A refuge from invasion. All else failing, the Name help him, it is a delivery mechanism for drugs, to weaken an enemy in a plot spanning centuries... in a real city, people have things to do. They truck and barter and trade; they exchange one thing for another, and make both parties better off; they work and save and invest; they build. 

A city may have beggars, by all means; because it is a place where wealth is created, and sometimes that wealth overflows into charity. It does not have... swarms of people lying about the streets, to all appearances playing the role of beggars, whom nobody ever gives anything and who will not starve if nobody does, because they are demons and need not eat.

A city has a market, or a multitude of them, or is itself the market, and sometimes - not where Venice rules, but it happens - those markets deal in slaves; it doesn't have only a slave market and nothing else. It doesn't have "traders" who don't need a profit to live, but play-act at slave trading anyway because they enjoy being cruel, and someone more powerful has decreed that their toy city must have a market. 

A city has brothels, no doubt, or elegant courtesans as famed for their conversation as their beauty, or back-alley whores, or all three... because everyone needs to eat and some people are willing to admit that every comparative advantage allows some gains from trade. It doesn't have... Abramo can't find words for what the "Ten Thousand Delights" is. It's as though someone heard that a properly decadent city should have dens of sin selling exotic sex to stir jaded appetites, and didn't actually understand much about sex (or sin, or sales, or plausibly even appetites) but immediately set off to invent some exotic variants of it.

A city has courts of law, or merchant arbitrators, or clan elders who mediate disputes; and those courts may be corrupt or they may enforce bad laws or they may be tools of the powerful against their enemies or they may just be overloaded and arbitrary, but they don't hold "trials" whose sole and avowed purpose is to demonstrate the contempt that all involved feel for the concept of law.

Abramo has never cared much for the intricacies of Christian theology, but here at last is a place where it applies: Alushinyrra has the accidents of a city but none of the substance.

Alushinyrra is not a city, it is an abomination unto Abadar, and if Abramo had the power he would ask the Name to smite it as Sodom was smitten, and for much better cause. And the Name would ask him whether he would not save the city for the sake of ten righteous men, and Abramo would reply that any righteous man would rejoice to be smitten if it wiped this, this blasphemy from the face of the world. 

None of which can be allowed to matter. Abramo does not have the power to smite the parodic imitation of a city, and if he did it would interfere with his work. But he sets about it with a grim get-it-done efficiency quite unlike the satisfaction he took in organising armies and building infrastructure on the Material.

The demon who's on his case turns out not to be all that bad, in the end - what he means is, it goes down easy enough to the combo of twin daggers and powerful friends. His so-called "grandfather" who set the whole thing up, Moon of the Abyss and all, on the other hand...

That guy is... awful, actually.

Woljif guesses this shouldn't exactly be a surprise, what with the whole "powerful demon" thing. You don't get to be a powerful demon without selling out some friends, and once you've done that a couple of times, just raping a mortal woman so's she can bear a tiefling child that will grow up to be a "destined vessel" for you to keep backstabbing and raping your way through life, eh, what's the big deal? 

No, the weird thing is that he seems to've thought Woljif would actually go for that shit. What, was he born yesterday? "You'll have the power", "we'll be equal partners", "vengeance on everyone who hurt you", give him a break. Woljif knows a conman's pitch when he hears one. He's not even tempted, honest. 

After the resulting fight - Woljif really appreciates having a boss who can fling those Bolts of Justice around like they're magic missiles - they obviously loot the smoking corpse; waste not, want not. The fact of the matter is, the Moon of the Abyss was a nice enough jewel, and all, but... any one of the bits of magic gear this powerful demon carried woulda paid for it twice over, and it's still not as good as Woljif's stuff. Which you can tell, because Woljif just used his gear to kill the guy who had this gear, right? Kinda disappointing, really.

"Hey, are you guys gonna eat that?"

"Nah, we got what we want from him; help yourself, little guy."

The rat is - well, ok, its looks are a bit against it. Not that Woljif hasn't sometimes wished he didn't look so obviously fiendish, but at least he has a roguish charm and his horns grow out of a mass of dark curls. Chicks go for that look sometimes. This rat? Well, maybe Abyssal rat chicks go for the mutated scabby half-starved look, this is the Abyss and for all Woljif knows it's the height of fashion among the local rats. Lann was able to attract a girlfriend, after all, and his horn is much less handsome than Woljif's. But it's not conventionally attractive, as rats go.

Looks can deceive, is the point Woljif's trying to make. But what doesn't deceive is - this here rat has obviously been living in the walls, scurrying away whenever so much as a dretch came by, eating whatever scraps it can grab, never fighting unless cornered and never getting cornered if it can possibly help it. And then when the local top guy gets killed, what does it do? It turns around on a copper piece, comes right out of the walls bold as brass and politely asks if it can have a share. This rat has an eye for the main chance, is what he's saying.