Terval moves forward to a spot he can see the dretch thanks to Strom's light. He gathers enough magic to create a force missile that bursts on the demon.
Leena protects herself magically and finally refocuses gaining back control on her body.
Everyone else moves around as good as they can despite the terrible pain in the lungs.
The dretch just waddles around trying to recompose.
The Pathfinders move over the dretch closing their circling.
The dretch can hardly do anything else than coughing.
Brand feels recovered from the stinking cloud.
Although unable to fight, Strom and Hrotman maneuver to corner the remaining lesser demon.
Terval entangles himself with his own sling while trying to use the mundane weapon.
Brand tries to hit the dretch around the doorstep, and although his card hits the wall, his ray of frost scores a hit freezing the demon's right hand.
Joining the fight with renewed resolve Leena cuts hard on the weakened dretch that finally collapses to the ground.
Without the demon menace you have a chance to more closely observe the last vault, which is lined with shelves thick with growing yellowcap mushrooms.
These 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, someone 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 are the remains of a used scroll.
The scroll was a lesser planar ally.
The following items are mixed among the wreckage of the vaults: brooch of shielding (30 charges), potion of enlarge person, screaming bolt, wand of shocking grasp (50 charges), and a gold necklace worth 300 gp.
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"Dont Look at me! I havent seem mushrooms like these ever before."
" But I wonder where these demons cam from? Looks to me like somebody read this scroll and maybe that summoned the demons. Could it have been the mad chap himself? But why now? And how did he get the wayfinder in the first place? Anything in his Journal Strom?"
Terval knows if the demons were summoned, they would have disappeared long time ago and their bodies would have come back to their plane of existence once defeated.
The portal drawn is clearly but a mockery of real magic, thus the scroll must have the secret of the demons existence. Someone knowledgeable of magic, or someone with an innate knack to activate magical without truly understanding must have done this.
Readying the logbooks in the desk more calmly you find out they detail the day-to-day transactions of the Emporium, a fine furniture and accessories business dealing focused on the tastes of the upper class of Andoran society. The notes date back 40 years, some time before Andoran's People Revolt, and document the shop owner, named Relios, had a secondary business, although more lucrative than the official one, trading with yellowcap mushrooms. The notes are interrupted by the time of the People's Revolt.
On the journal you find out a first part written by Relios. On a first section there are some notes encrypted with Pathfinder ciphers that denote Relios worked with the Pathfinder Society in the early stage of his life. After his retreat, it explains about his business selling yellowcaps in Andoran, what seems a mild hallucinogen popular among the younger nobles of that time. Local gangs often tried to impose themselves on Relios’s illegal mushroom trade, but his noble clientele helped him keep the gang’s attempts to subsume his business at bay.
Apparently, during the People’s Revolution, Relios should have lost the protection of the nobles, as they were prosecuted or confiscated of their possessions and properties, and a gang called the Steel Wyverns, long thwarted by Relios’s noble connections, burned the Emporium to the ground. One of the last ledgers of this part mentions that Relios was falling on hard times and intended to sell his wayfinder back to the Pathfinder Society.
The second part of the journal is written instead by Gandros himself. It starts detailing the night the Steel Wyverns burned down the Skytower and how his father Relios saved him from the flames when he was just 8 years old. Relios wrapped his son in wet blankets and carried him through the fire to the Emporium’s deepest basement vaults. Badly burned and having inhaled too much smoke, Relios pressed a small pouch into his son’s hands and told him to “Go to them for help” and then died there. Leaving Gandros to fend for himself, the boy found the item given by his father worked as a small compass, made from silver and etched with gold accents inside.
Later on the journal details how Gandros explored the sewers and lived from what he found in his father's vaults and the sewers to survive to this days. From a point on where he details a man come to his home and called him Emperor, Gandros starts referring himself as the Prince of Augustana.
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As Strom finishes telling the tale from the logbook, he shuts the log and puts it down with a frown. "A sad tale to be sure.. The lad's had a hard life. Can hardly blame him for the state he's in.. Well, atleast our mystery is solved. I must say, it wouldn't be surprised if there eas more to it for him, sendin' us here. But we'll see when we return.
He looks tonhis companions to gauge their reaction.
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When Strom finishes reading the tale to his companions from the logbook, he shuts the logbook and the sound thunders in the room. He puts it down, frowning and feeling sad.
"A sad tale to be sure. The lad's had a hard life to be sure. It's no wonder he's turned up the way he has.. Well, at least the mystery's been solved. We should go back and confront him. I think there's more to it, him sending us here, than just someone going crazy."
With the trip goals solved, the group picks up the scroll remains and the documents in the desk and make their way out of the sewers.
After a few hours you are back at the lodge, stinking and wet, but alive and successful. With the dretches 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 "Loyal knights of Augustana! Saviors of the land! For the defeat of the otherworldly assassins and cleaning the land, I magnanimously grant you anything you want from among the remains of my realm"
Venture-Captain Caudron Wallace seems more relieved than disappointed that there is no otherworldly portal in the sewers "The scroll remains you brought, they were a lesser planar ally spell. I do not know how Gandros managed to get his hands on something like that and trigger the spell. Such a danger when people plays with things they do not understand" but the Venture-Captain otherwise smiles back at you "Well, I am satisfied that the whole thing was a waste of my time as I predicted. Thanks for your efforts. The Society will pay you well and return the favor when needed"
"Yes, sure, please don't go into the inner quarters without passing first through the tub" Venture-Captain Caudron Wallace blocks his nostrils with the hand and smiles.
Sometime from now, you will now Gandros has gone back to his Skytower Empire. The man lives like a king among beggars and long recounts the story of how the Pathfinder Knights of Augustana came to safe his realm from a horde of demons. Some people in Augustana can hear such stories some nights from the lips of one or two drunk beggars.