The Sound of Gold - Bugloss

Industry, information and influence flow through the close heat of Kundar like blood. But even amongst the urgent hustle of kobolds and dragonborn, Bugloss finds his eye, like in a cathedral, drawn up. Up the sides of the high-sided streets, up past the wide weave of synaptic aqueducts and walkways that bridge from building to building, and through to the bright celestial glow of the sky. As if inhaling a scent, Bugloss, dragonborn, draws a long, slow breath in the Kundar air.

The company is guided by assured, forthright Tania, bodyguard to Ambassador Panbas. A priest of Bahamut seeks assistance deep in Kundar's catacombs. Tania leads Wil, Veridian, Nikja, Osborin, Bugloss and Melancholia from the surface down through the descending tunnels. Deeper and deeper they go. The tunnels are lined with recessed layers of burial stones on which lie neatly arranged bones of the deceased of Kundar. Heavy darkness sucks the heat from the air and Nikja, Wil and Melancholia, learned in the revelations of death, bicker over the rites of life and its ending. Tania presses on unheeding, ever downwards into the twisting, turning catacombs. They reach Prelate Loran.

Loran stands in a vaulted room. The walls are covered with open sores that ooze a creeping sickness; thick, black tar that spreads its chill to the surrounding air. "A manifestation of pure evil," says Loran, "It's spreading. We need to find its source, to see if we can stop it." He points to a door, "We can't get through. We need you to find the way to the other side and try to open it from there." In a moment of silence, a stilly murmur of distant clinking metal echos up a chute, no wider than your fist, poking through the chamber floor. "That's the only way down," says Loran, opening a box on the table. Six potions bottles sit inside. "These should help," he says.

Each of the group swallows a potion and sublimates in a burst of magic into a cloud, diffuse and shapeless. One by one, they float down the dark, cold throat. Forever they descend, further downwards until the chute widens into a giant bell jar. Following the wall, they reach a pile of coins at its base that declines to a central aperture.

Melancholia sees it first. Beyond the wall of the glass lung is a wider chamber and in it, movement. Through the aperture Melancholia reaches the chamber floor. It is covered with gold coins and more thick, black tar. The rest follow, but edge away from the moving shape towards an exit on the opposite side of the chamber. As Melancholia slowly glides towards the stirring form, a dark looming mass in the darkness, it grows larger. She gets too close to the ground and coins shift beneath her clinking like wind chimes. The creature, hulking, twists in the blackness. Melancholia evokes a light. A huge torso, green with scales and black with pustulating sickness bends towards her. Above it a neck swings down. An immense dragon's head veers into view. Giant threads of viscous diesease like tendons bind the dragon to the cavern wall, the walls lined with the wicked seeping ooze. "More," the dragon speaks in a huge, deep whisper, "Feed me more."

Wil, Nikja, Veridian and Bugloss, reverting by arcane deposition, flash corporeal. The dragon speaks, "You come here, to my lair, to take what belongs to me!"
"We're not here for your belongings," Nikja says. She drops some coins to the floor. The sound is otherworldly. Metal strikes metal and a deep, rich bell-like thread of sound swells around the cavern, sonorous and resonant. It spins and spins round the black air of the chamber ringing, endlessly, with a clarity, a purity, utterly alien to Toril. Everybody stops, transfixed. The dragon lurches back at the neck, throwing it's nostrils upwards; a sharp intake of breath then, through taught vocal cords, releases a long, slow, agonised sigh. The spell breaks.
In draconic, Veridian speaks, "Our mission does not relate to you. We need only passage through this chamber."
The dragon lowers its head fixing it's stare on each in turn. The group edge back towards the door. The dragon, once magnificent, copper, lets them go.

Through the doorway the passage is choked with more of the oozing gore. As the group stops to discuss the dragon, Osborin hears footsteps approaching down the corridor. Two kobolds dressed in Tiamat's favour emerge through the shadows. "Please, follow us. Our library will give you all the information you need."
Wil sees through them immediately, he's seen these creatures before. "Look, their feet," he says. Beneath the hem of their robes are sulphurous tendrils tethered to the same clonal mass of sickly slime that lines the arterial passageway. The kobolds recede back into the shadows. "We can be ready for a trap," says Wil, "but we can't avoid it." The only way out is through the darkness.

The group push on, cautious, ready, following the kobold priests. The corridor widens and before them a gelatinous stalk of slime rises from the floor. This is the ambush, but the group are ready. Osborin brings thunder, but it's Nikja's fire that it fears. The lashing ooze encloses her with a flash of psychic violence. She stumbles, bewildered, divested of memory. Everybody strikes at the creature but Veridian's scorching fire finally breaks it, burning the parasitic ooze to the floor.