Foundations of the Future

Life, Achievement/ Win

The Sapphire Oath are joined by the gnomish wizard Zith Vailstorm as the perform a begin the first steps to get a skyport built. Ridding a catacomb beneath the Aisalda neighborhood of yellow mold, they find more down their than just spores.

In the morning, Jedingo Null met up with the adventurers for breakfast to report in that the Saffron Palm had pulled him in on this job as well. He had already begun speaking to the peasantry about their cooperation in the skyport enterprise. While not everyone is sold on the seriousness of the plan, enough were on board to hear what kind of offer would be made. Now the party just needed to get the political and fiscal funding for the venture. The companions swung by the town hall to eventually receive their invitation to the Vizconde's home.
  Upon arrival, Beatle navigated the etiquette of the court to open up emotional appeals from Marduk and Ravel. From their Jedingo Null handled the generalized numbers and expectations for the elven Vizconde and his advisor to hear out. After a private council, Vizconde Iarnan made it known that this venture was one that he was willing to investigate further. While he did so, though, he had a request for the party. Whether or not he personally oversaw this project, he had a concern with the area.
  Large sections of Argil are built over old catacombs no longer in use. For respect of the dead, access to them has been shut down. Despite this, large construction projects have a habit of breaching them releasing possible dangers. In the past, a highly toxic yellow mold has been released. Iarnan has requested that the Sapphire Oath descend into the neighborhood's catacomb and ensure that any yellow mold within has eradicated. The dark, malignant fungus is quite flammable and can be dispatched with out much threat if magically done so at a distance.
  To aid the Sapphire Oath, Iarnan is sending along an arcanist he has worked with in the past for divinations. The arcanist will both be helpful and provided more trusted eyes on the situation to ensure that the act is properly attempted. While the companions are out, Iarnan and his advisor will look more closesly at the proposal. The Vizconde set up a meal at the fine restaurant The City Leaf to let the Sapphire Oath meet their tag-a-long.
  Later at the restaurant, the Sapphire Oath would come to meet purple mohawked gnome by the name of Zith Vailstorm. After very short introductions, the companions began planning their job from the course of strategizing spells to purchasing masks for short-term toxin clearing. They would reconvene in the morning at the catacomb access site.
  In this case, the catacomb entrance had been collapsed. The catacomb was a resting place for some of Argil's Deceased in the long ago Fields of Ichor. The Party would gain access to the catacomb through a secret exit under a holy water faunt whose tunnel that let out into a latrine pit. Single file, the companions climbed down easily using Marduk's gear and crawled up the tunnel. From the other side of the removable panel the companions heard a scrapping on stone and smelt a ruthless stench. Opening up the panel, the companions found a gathering hall within the catacomb whose floor, pillars, and dual faunts to be covered in scratched engravings of abyssal script. To the side, Marduk saw a pudgy cross between a smashed-faced hound and a gorilla. Demonkind. The companions poured out to fight.
  The sound of battle drew others from the side corridors, both more of these Dretches as well as bloated and rotting clay men: Manes. Zith's blessing upon the party carried them forward hard as the companions dealt with the steady wave of mixed creatures. The manes waddled in precariously attempting to surround while dretches fought in nefarious ways. More than just Tooth and Claw, the excreted noxious gases, attempted to lure the party towards patches of Yellow Mold, and even used the dead as weapons. As the Demons died, they disintegrated into a black sludge that the dretches began to throw. What hit Marduk mutated a patch of hair before shedding off. Any greater hit could be disastrous.
  As the companions fought on, they heard a droning and a telepathic voice in their heads eager for their fresh blood, eager to feed their children. As the battle ended, Ravel used her flaming sphere to burn away both demon ichor as well as the yellow mold she could see. Zith began trying to translate the scratched glyphs riddling the floor as Ravel and Beatle investigated onward. In a side chamber, they found a chamber with a large table meant as a place of rest of great honor. The only thing remaining of the occupant was a suit of armor covered in Demon Ichor. The armor smoked black as it's sacred magic tried to burn the ichor away. The magic was holding but just barely.
  Wanting to cleanse the place, Ravel Conjured a small rain cloud to dose the area. In doing so, calling on the flow of nature, what is right in the world, she cleansed the armor. Despite the ichor leaving, it continued to smoke. The difference now was that in place of the black smoke of burned corruption, it gave off a whit smoke like incense burning. Despite this, the two honored the final rest and left the armor in it's place. During this process, the droning voice crept into their heads once more in spite, stating that if they would not come be fed upon, it would have to come to them.
  Back in the main chamber, Zith finished his ritual to begin reading the mad scrawlings around him Discordant fragments, the layers of writing spoke of Disdain, Entrapment, Escape, Eternity, Fear, Desecration, Dispelling, Breaking of the Sacred, Seeking further mortal flesh. The demons had grown up in this tomb, brought back on the fallen warriors weapons and armor. They had been birthed in a sanctified catacomb and could not get out due to its blessing. The words were ones of release, of slowly breaking free similar to the ichor's slow degeneration of the suit of armor. Your coming, while hazardous, is good, for better an known threat than one that would have eventual emerged in the night in an unknown future.
  Responding to the telepathic threats and the incessant drone, the companions began to wrap their way around counterclockwise along the northern passage. Zith took the precaution of having his bat fly ahead of the group. Serpentining through the catacombs, the drone got louder. Approaching an intersection, the noise grew in such intesity that the bat, and therfore Zith who was looking through the bat's senses, browned-out for a moment almost losing consciousness. Withdrawing the bat, Zith informed the others of the sensation and warned of the demonic presence's proximity.
  Filing out, the companions made their way forward with Marduk in the lead followed up by Beatle, Ravel, and Zith. As Marduk got to the intersection, he too felt the droning pressure across his mind. He stumbled for a moment as he took the mental blow. Putting a hand out to one of the catacomb shelves, his hand landed on an old bone that skidded and scraped under his weight. Knowing that this had given them away when the broken voice called out about the food playing nice, the bugbear pushed hard to the south. Rounding a T-intersection, he had wheeled around into a patch of yellow mold that exploded with spores. Coughing and blinded but fighting it off, the warrior pushed for his companions to take the other entryway opposite of him on the T intersection.
  Beatle fought through the droning oppression and when he did so, he turned through the T to see a giant, mosquitolike demon dominated the central chamber. As he pulled back into the corner, a thump could be heard from behind as one of his companions collapsed to the droning mind oppression. Back in the hall, Ravel stood over Zith working to awaken the small wizard. Her first attempt was to use a blessing of restoration. When that didn't work, she brough out the Scale of the Mighty Light gained from the dragonborn servant of Sol and let it's light shine out. Banishing the demonic corruption, Zith was awakened.
  Back in the main chamber, Marduk did all he could to beat down the demon without allowing the proboscis from landing a solid blow. As the other companions managed to work their way in, the chasme herself had two more manes children waddle their ways in to disturb the heroes formations. Taking heavy blows though, the chamse moved out from the rooms center to perch on the far wall over the large patch of yellow moldd. As the droning wings beat, the spores of the mold were shot across the room. Despite doing considerable damage to the creature, the threat level had only increased.
  Zith attempted to ensnare the Chasme's mind to think an angelic presences had entered the room. Unfortunately, it firmly knew that no such planar movement would be happening down here. As Marduk split attention between manes and chasme, both Ravel and Beatle turned their attention on the Spores and the Chasme. Ravel Summoned her final flaming sphere to begin destroying the patches of yellow mold while Beatle sent a gust of wind to hold back the spores to one side of the chamber. The bard then managed to put the creature to sleep on the wall to give everyone else time to deal with the manes. Unfortunately, the vast battlefield had evolved to have the characters moving into the only quadrant effected by the spores.
  Beatle fell under the influence of the suffocating and toxic spores. Ravel rushed to her friend knowing that while she needed her friend up, she needed to deal with the spores first. If she didn't they would kill him anyways. As she purged her friend of the affliction, the Manes dropped her with it's claws. What followed was a perfectly executed succession of finishing blows and reviving of companions that would fortuitously lead to no loss of life.
  After regaining their bearings, the companions began a room by room extermination of all of the yellow mold that they could find. Additionally, the companions burned a clutch of eggs that the chasme had stayed to protect through the companions first assault on the demonspawn. While searching through the facility, the companions found a narrow burial room with a halfling's body laying perfectly preserved upon a slab. The entryway was covered in demon ichor from where they had been destroyed before entering. Scanning the room for magic, they found a longsword lying behind the halfling that seemed heavily enchanted to protect the room. Looking through plaques and across the symbology, the companions learned that the halfling had been a servant of Tyr and one of the prominent warrior of honor from the Fields of Ichor. His body remained here in perfect preservation if if ever Tyr should need his champion risen again.
  Conversation broke out about how the companions might be able to take the sword with them without it attacking them like it had the demons. In the end, it was decided to leave the sword. However, this did bring to light that while the sword was not lootable, the smoldering armor previously found no longer served a purpose down here and was more easily taken without moral quandries.
  Finding their way back out the secret exit and shuttering the paneling behind them, the companions crawled out of the catacomb, climbed the latrine trench, and shuffled their way back to the Moss in for a rest. Zith joined them as one inn was as good as the next and the trio discussed forming into a new quartet. While there, Beatle did not pass an opportunity to share of their adventures with his newly composed song, Fields of Mold:
  Parody:You'll remember us when the west wind moves
And your fields don't smell so gnarley
Because we killed demons in the stinky mine
When we walked in fields of mold
(Original “Fields of Gold” by Sting”)
You'll remember me when the west wind moves
Upon the fields of barley
You can tell the sun in his jealous sky
When we walked in fields of gold