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As Nali's stomach finally settles, she scowls at the closest dretch, and begins chanting prayers of righteous vengeance over the beasts of the Abyss in her accented Elven. As her words reach a rhythm, she swiftly draws another arrow from her quiver and fires at the closest dretch, immedately reaching for another arrow as soon as the first one flies.
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As your attacks easily strike into demon hide, you definitely notice that your weapons don't fully penetrate as they normally would.
Andolyn and Nali both strike the red dretch, taking it out with their combined attacks.
Shayna strikes into a different dretch, but only a small amount of her blade penetrates the demon's hide.
Blue moves in towards Andoyln (and provokes from Shayna) before it tries to bite at Andolyn.
But doesn't even come close to finding a weak spot in the armor.
Black tries to tear into Shayna, to which Andoyln immediately responds by trying all sorts of things to get in the way.
the demon gets within inches of biting Shayna before Andoyln bashes into it with a +1 heavy shield.
the first claw doesn't even come close to Shayna
When the demon gets blocked by Andoyln's shield, it feints with a claw attack that's actual goal was to grab Andolyn's shield, throwing it off balance and allowing the demon to ride the shield into Shayna's neck. Andoyln quickly reacts, however, and pulls the shield out from under the demon right as the blow would land, causing it to only lightly scratch Shayna instead.
Finally, yellow tries to figure out how to take down Andoyln. It puts its massive 5 intelligence to the test and decides that, maybe, if it just grabs Andolyn, they will be less annoying. So, it tries to just throw itself on top of Andolyn, but with little success.
Initiative Order, Bold May Go!
Map Slide
Khoda
Andolyn, -2hp
Angoldir
Nali
Shayna-4hp
Enemies, black -3hp
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Nali nails a demon with the dreaded cold iron. It remains standing, for now.
Angoldir continues to help out his party land their blows, letting Andoyln easily take out another dretch, although she notices that the fire doesn't even phase the demon.
Shayna stabs into the her dretch with the dreaded cold iron, easily piercing its hide and ending its life.
The final dretch comes close to finding a weak spot in Andolyn's defenses, but in the end, its not enough.
With only one demon remaining, the lot of you finish it off easily.
Combat Over!
Andolyn, -2hp
Shayna-4hp
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This room was once the basement of a building above, but the stairs in the far corner are now choked with charred rubble and seem to lead to a new stone foundation of the new building above. Odd furniture and knick-knacks of all description fill the remaining space, and strange winged effigies made of wood and broken pottery are arrayed in a bizarre diorama. The focal point of this display is a pair of chairs standing on different-sized piles of old crates like thrones on a dais. A charred and shriveled corpse dressed in rotting and burnt finery and wearing a tin crown is propped up in one of the chairs while the other, lower chair, sits vacant.
The charred corpse is all that is left of Gandros’s father, Relios. His tin crown bears a crude inscription that reads “Emperor Relios.” Gandros placed him in this seat of honor and built a faerie court from what materials he could find to give life to his delusions. Amidst the furniture is a desk with several log books and journals. Most of them detail the day-to-day transactions of the Emporium, but one is Relios’s personal journal. It details the goings on of many of his wealthy clients, as well as Relios’s personal life including the details of his ancestry and his son’s birth. One of the last ledgers mentions that Relios was falling on hard times and intended to sell his wayfinder back to the Pathfinder Society. The ledgers also show that Relios was selling a steady stream of yellowcap mushrooms to members of the pre-revolution high
society in Augustana.
The next rooms are vaults lined with shelves thick with growing yellowcap mushrooms.
that the mushrooms cause hallucinations when eaten. Yellowcaps were a popular drug among the nobility decades ago, but fell out of fashion in the wake of the People’s Revolution so are now worthless.
More faerie effigies hide among the mushrooms, and on the very back wall, Gandros has painted a portal, a large circle of swirling color patterns. On the floor lies an open and empty scroll case next to a slightly charred, blank piece of parchment.
the parchment to be the remains of a used scroll
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”These mushrooms cause hallucinations, which could very well describe the state of our contract,” Angoldir explains like a textbook. ”They’ve fallen out of favor with the nobility since the People’s Revolution, probably taking this poor soul’s fortunes down with them. And this scroll -“ he pauses to retrieve the parchment and place it in his pouch, ”- is most likely how the demons arrived. No doubt the man thought they came through the portal in his mushroom-addled state of mind.”
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Once the dretches are defeated, it is safe for Gandros to return home which he wishes to do. He is firmly entrenched in his delusions regardless of what you tell him. He magnanimously grants you anything they want from among the remains of the Emporium basement. If you arrange to have him removed to an asylum, the conditions are little better than his existing home, but he happily christens the place “his new royal palace.” Alternatively, the Almsman is willing to take care of the old man, and help clean up the old Emporium. Venture-Captain Caudron Wallace is more relieved than disappointed that there is no otherworldly portal in the sewers, but mostly self-satisfied that the whole thing was a waste of his time as he predicted.
