Zulon and Friends!

A squad of bodyguards accompanies the Ambassadors as you race into hell against them:

Joining the Ambassadors are a motley assortment of guards, indicating the large diversity of the Mineosi Empire. A small strange fish-like man holding a spear and shield. An orange-skinned brutish creature with an unkind smirk on its face. A blue-skinned lizard-faced creature with sharp teeth and a heavy club. A serious-looking creature with pointed ears and red fiery hair. And what looks to be their leader, a purple giant of a man with eerily glowing skin and long pointed horns. While the others are monstrous, they still make sense to you as humanoids of this world. This last creature has an unnatural quality about him.

In the narrow tunnels:

Something compels you to move forward, a dozen whispers. As the time passes, you feel as if you don’t recall how long you’ve been traveling. The heat and the narrowness of the corridor presses on you, its jagged points digging into you as you push forward. There is only darkness ahead.

The whispers suddenly stop. You hear the sounds of moaning, like people, voices that sound familiar, but warped somehow.

The corridor opens up onto a wide cliff. In the far distance below, you see the bend of a wide black river. Above you, there is a strange sky, as though you have emerged from a cave. The air is purple and clouded. Red lightning streaks across the sky. You can see the heat rippling in the air before you, but there is no sun or fire in sight.

Climbing up the cliff face you can see strange faces, creatures climbing up, and you swear you recognize some of them. People, humans or dwarves or elves, their faces warped as if melted by the heat that you are currently feeling.

On the blasted plain before you, there walk strange blobs of flesh, radiating a horrid stench, all of them walking toward the river of black water. On the other side, you can perceive twisted, withered trees, and from them, strange things hang. In the sky, winged shapes move, carrying weapons and horns. A screeching noise trumpets out above you, answered in turn through the sky.

Malbec hops down a cliff with great dexterity. Abe follows and hurts himself badly.

On the bend of the river, there is a bank where several of these blobs approach. From this vantage point, you can see a dock stretching out to a small wooden ferry, plied by a hooded creature.

On the beach, an oafish creature stands writing on a wax tablet. His hands are withered and spiny while its head is a pile of flesh with the vague markings of a face: a pair small red pinpricks mark its eyes, a pig-like snout for a nose, and an unnaturally wide slit of a mouth reveals rows of pointed teeth. The creature is dressed in elegant red and gold robes and is bedecked in jewelry. From its back, two withered wings hang useless.

Several of these blobs approach the creature. It makes a mark of them and the blobs climb onto the ferry in the water. A pair of bodyguards flank the creature with the wax tablet. They have the powerful build of fighters and the castle-forged armor and axes, but their heads are simply stone sculptures: identical, bald, and baby-faced.

The gang meets Zulon. Hadrash is mentioned by the Ambassador (so that the heroes look bad in his eyes), but

“Oh, Hadrash?” Zulon snaps his fingers and all at once a dark burst of smoke appears before you. You back away as familiar snake tendrils lash out at you. The devil nearly slashes at your face with his claws, but he is snapped back. As the smoke clears, you see Zulon with a tight grip on a chain tied to Hadrash.

“He isn’t allowed back on the material plane after his failure. You understand.”

Malbec makes a deal with him: Putting in a good word with Xarog and the Duergar for the sirablood contract in exchange for Malbec summoning Zulon and his infernal army to the material plane in ~40 days time.

The heroes are unaware of the nature of the deal until later on. On the way back up the cliff, the heroes kill one of the Ambassadors handily.

Xarog, having been provided adequate proof (a small statuette radiating infernal energy) of their good standing with “Hadrash”, agrees to give the sirablood contract to Hespero’s representative Malbec and ultimately the contract is meant to be ratified by the Argoti Assembly.

The heroes surface with a pound of devils ore, a small sample.

Hespero tells them that the Mineosi ship has departed and that he and the crew were safe to dock. The Duergar emerge, lifting their hands over their eyes. Hespero shows them the riches he has brought and the Duergar bring up 20 pounds of devils ore in exchange for rugs, wine, fine clothes, pounds of fresh produce, and 20 chickens.

Five year exclusive contract, no arbitration clause, right of first offer after expiration