Age of Ice and Blood: A Pathfinder System Heroic Fantasy Quest

Day Thirty Five, Year Unknown

"Old John the Bailiff would have called you mad for trying to train men to the fight with weapons you just took off the dead and had barely even fired yourself," Tom's words are low so as not to be heard far over the sounds of Nico and James practicing their archery and the by now familiar byplay of wind and wave.

"Crazy like the fox?" you ask with a smile. The weather had been getting warmer and more cheerful for it as the Marcella had been sailing west these last two days. According to Antonio that was likely more due to the turn of the seasons than the waters rushing underneath, though you care little for that and are simply glad for the feeling of the sun upon your face for more than fleeting hours at long last.

"As you say, milord," your man answers like butter would not melt in his mouth, though he has to bite his lip against a laugh and spit out a few hairs for good measure.

"There you go again proving the virtues of shaving even on the journey like this," you answer, not bothering to keep your own laugh back.

"I shave plenty, milord, it's just that I'm not minded to keep a blade so close to my nose. A man's nose is like his privates, aught to keep sharp steel well away from them." This he does say loud enough for the two younger men practicing with the bow to hear and to laugh in turn, though a little cautiously.

All of you are glad to be away from the island which had turned from sanctuary to den of monsters and even more so now that John Lordson seems to be making a recovery by the grace of God and the leechcraft of Zaia, able to sit up in bed and feed himself now, though slowly. Unlike others of his profession you had met the man is very clear that he is no miracle worker and that each day could see the end or even turn back. 'Blows to the head are tricky, not like you can open them up and have a look,' he is heard muttering more than once.

Yet after seeing even his gravest ill patient on the road to recovery the scholar had been spending more and more days sequestered with the girl Inge who by her strange powers of speech with bird and fish is your only guide, and your only window to the people of these lands. Ever since you had left the anchorage you had seen the lights in their cabin burn deep into the night, though the child does not seem to complain. If anything she seems to have a slight preference for the night when she can come on deck and work her magic out of sight of most of the crew... which makes it all the more surprising when she appears at your elbow and quietly bids you to follow into the captain's cabin. "Zaia found big, useful thing. Come hear.."

Seeing the shadow of fear still in the eyes of your men you let your smile purposeful grow and say with willful cheer. "Did he now? Well I am always glad to hear news to break up the day a bit. Life at sea is a fine thing of course, but not quite fit for my humors I fear."

She looks at your quizzically, then slowly starts to mouth some of the words. 'News', 'humors' and 'glad' you read upon her lips and you have little doubt she will soon understand them too. Somehow it does not feel as strange as it should to you, or perhaps it is that a witch should feel strange and it would be more disquieting if she acted as a ordinary child.


The passage from the sunlit deck to darkened cabin comes with the scent of cinnamon tea, rare enough to be a drink of princes and not something a man of Antonio's spending habits would brew without care. Big news indeed.

"I have finally figured out when we are if not yet where," Zaia begins with little preamble. "We are on the thirty fourth day of Elnu-ezna, the first local month of spring, though I hasten to add that Inge's folk do not measure months as the Roman Calendar does mostly by the passage of the moon, but have instead a system of Forty One days to every month, that is one and a half cycles of the moon interspersed with festivals to their gods." Here he pauses for a moment then explains. "I am going to have to offer some account of the heathen gods Inge and her folk keep too else this is not going to make much sense."

"As long as I have some notion if I should expect storm or sun you can recount the names of all the devils inHhell," Antonio says, his glibness doing little to mask the eagerness in his words.

You merely nod and allow the scholar to continue. "There are as far as I can tell four gods which are bound up in the rhythm of the seasons. The first is Elnu, the god of kings and of the sky who is said to remake the world each year in glory and then give it into the keeping of man in his descending phase, then there is Olweje, the Horned God whose sphere is bloodshed and war, then there is Ashinu, the god of the fields who it is said ripens the fruit and makes the crops grow fat and last there is Ikomi who..."

"Ikomi Deep Mother who dwells beneath the sea in the deepest black," Inge interjects, her voice faint and far away unlike you have ever heard it. "Mother who birthed us all in her bitter tears. She misses us."


You can hear your heartbeat in the silence that follows, but before you think of something, anything to break it, you doctor clears his throat. "Indeed, it seems that by Inge's measure the goddess of the deep misses her children and calls them home and so death comes to the world on her cold breath."

"Well she didn't seem to do a good job back on that damn island, did she," Antonio swears in his native Genoese, though it seems to be close enough to the Sicilian Inge had been learning for her to understand despite that.

"Some time they find their way back on dark paths, bodies broken, eyes snuffed out, cannot live and will not die..." Hot tears fall down her cheek. "Must be killed." And all of a sudden she is a frightened child again in your eyes, one who had to kill cursed mockeries of her own fellows. You wish you knew the right words to comfort her.

"As fascinating as I too find the subject I do not think unraveling it will be of much use to our predicament," Zaia picks up the thread of the conversation again. "I would like to know your thoughts on what I should focus on learning next in a more practical sense. I could focus on trying to discover where the east wind blows us and what the near shores hold, or perhaps more of the islands where we hope to make for and Inge's folk or even..." Again he hesitates, again you and Antonio ask him to say on. "I could try to learn more of her magic and how it might aid us on the journey. She is quite willing."

"Inge help..." Inge wipes the tears almost angrily then corrects herself. "Inge will help."

You have no doubt she will, but you cannot help but wonder where her help might lead.

What do you suggest Zaia focuses on learning?

[] More about the journey and the near shores

[] More about Inge's folk to whose shores you are heading

[] More about the girl's magic

[] Write in

OOC: Arguments will help sway the other two. I hope the little religious aside did not feel forced, but like Zaia in character I genuinely cannot explain the calendar without explaining a little about the gods.