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

The Twenty Fourth of Elnu-hamba [Elnu Descendent] Year 1348 A. L. (After Landfall)

Looking down at Inge you see more than a girl-child, more than a sorceress, you see one who is herself seeking a place in the world after setting out into it and finding only death and ruin. "Far be it from me to deny a generous heart, young one. You are free to accompany me as far as you wish, though I shall not hold you to seeing the end of a journey which even I do not see the end of."

She opens her mouth, closes it, expecting perhaps that she would have to argue longer. A small shy smile steals over her face. "Maybe you not have to stop, maybe journey be home, rocked on Her waves."

"Alas, I do not have such love of the sea young one, but we shall see. For now I would rather keep to my own two feet, or better yet to Silver's hooves..."

And thus you do, your old friend eager for the chance to ride under the sun after all the weeks he had spent in the darkness of the hold. The sun is high, the sky is blue and the wind is warm rippling through your hair. Faster and faster you ride, hoping perhaps to outrun the shadows of your own thoughts and for a few stolen hours in the sun you do. You are not sure why Inge had brought a basket out for lunch, or for that matter where she had been keeping it, but you are not one to looks a gift horse in the mouth, if Silver would pardon the expression. The bread is still fresh, the goat's cheese is pleasantly sharp and the boiled eggs are nice, though you still do not know what laid them, some kind of pheasant from the description maybe. Inge had even brought a small watermelon along.

The two of you eat under the fragrant crown of a laurel tree, the shadows of growing evening turned soft green. Wary as you are now in mind and heart, and thanks to the ride in body too, it seems the simplest thing to question Inge on matters which you had so far shied away from, the workings of her magic and the ways of her goddess.

While she struggles to explain the latter for in her own words, 'Ikomi has as many moods as the sea', she is surprisingly forthright as to the former. She can in some manner 'see' magic when she chooses to and as long as she is in sight of the sea she can always find north, south, east and west even with her eyes closed, a skill for which you suspect Antonio will want to hire her for even if she had no other. She can also conjure light to see by, 'for the living and the dead alike' in her own words and...

"Alright, you can try..." Maybe you are a little mad to let her try this on you, but then this has been a rather mad day.

Inge whispers something, like the wind passing through bay leaves, and for just a moment you feel a flash of insight. You do not know what else to call it, or even if there are words for the feeling in any of the tongues you know.

"A little nudge from the other side. You can use it to duck out of way or hit true with sword, can use it to jump, ride and swim, just a little nudge though." The girl shrugs a little awkwardly. "It does not always work, but it is small magic see. It works on anyone though."

"Anyone?" Strange as it might be to consider that the goddess of which she speaks exists in some manner it is stranger to think that she would give counsel to anyone.

"Anyone I choose; me, you, Silver, all the same," Inge confirms, tossing a piece of sweet melon at the horse for emphasis. "All that is small magic. I can do... that I can do when I like. Then there is big magic, only so much big magic I can do before it goes dry. Three times each day now, mist or..." she pauses a long moment, then her voice falls to a near-whisper. "Ice."

You nod quickly, needing no demonstration, the image of the already dead Ilfa's chest exploding in a flash of unnatural ice heavier than a warhammer's blow is not one you will soon forget.

Sounding more subdued she continues. "I can make magic stronger by touching the world-magic, the streams like in the temple, like the standing stones where Ohun wants you to look. I think he wants me to look too."


For all stings your pride to think that you had been tasked with a mission on the assumption that you would have a child's aid it does make sense. You know nothing of magic or its ways, perhaps you might not even be able to spot the trouble without Inge's second sight. Hopefully in this at least you had made a good choice.

Who do you set out with on the morrow in search of the Standing stones Ohun spoke of?

[] Write in (Inge included automatically; Antonio will be harder to persuade as he has not yet sold all of his cargo and does not wish to leave his ship)

OOC: As a child Inge would normally only get one trait, but she gets one more due to Easy Target, since she is not combat trained in anyway.

The Twenty Fifth of Elnu-hamba [Elnu Descendent] Year 1348 A. L. (After Landfall)

Beyond the walls of Apuku the path winds between the trunks of odd trees with scaly bark, their long graceful bodies opening into feathery green crowns that cast delicate shadows over your path. The air is filled with short sharp calls of nameless birds, their wings a flash of fitful color in the bright southern sun. No path made for horses this and so Silver walks with a careful stride, parting the underbrush and sending dozens of small scuttling things fleeing from his path. In your wake come Jean, Henri, Nico and Tam's horses, like liegemen following a gracious lord.


Suddenly a hiss rings out from the rustling leaves to the left of the path and a far larger creature darts out, mayhap the largest lizard any of you have ever seen. Three feet from scaled snout to long whipping tail, and as it thrashes its head in warning you see that its throat is sky blue and its eyes the color of old gold.

"Don't suppose that one's a dragon fit to scorch us if we take one more step, is it?" Jean asks in jest.


Somewhat to your surprise Inge understands and turning in the saddle she answers in something about halfway between French and the Sicilian she had first learned. "Do not mock the Great Ones, is back luck..."

She does not mean the lizards, you realize with an uncomfortable lurch, as though Silver had stepped into a hole. Are there dragons in this land? You wonder. For certain you are no Saint George.

Before any of you can speak again the lizard runs off, its reptilian pride perhaps assuaged, and the six of you ride on in silence.

The ground grows stonier as you pass into the south and the feather-trees give ways to brilliant green laurel leaves watered by small streams, like fingers of water reaching through the hills. Here the path grows worse, pitted and tangled with grasping roots until at last you come to a tree old rotted to the core that had fallen across it. Mushrooms like fleshy shelves grew from it damp bark and a smell like onto that of a rotting carcass rose from it.

As Jean and Tam dismount to move the thing aside Inge calls out: "No, don't touch..." Her face shows more than disgust at the smell, fear and perhaps sadness you do not understand. The girl slides off the horse, wincing at the pain of unaccustomed riding, but her eyes are still on the log. "This is not good, not good at all. A Warding Wood fallen. That's a tree with old wise spirit." She knocks on the wood, then listens carefully as if expecting to hear something answer back, but there is nothing save the sounds of the forest. "Should stop for food before we go higher," the girl adds.

"Aye, my stomach could do with a bit of trail bread after moving that," Jean says, earning himself a glare from Silent Tam.

The log breaks as it is being moved, spilling thick red sap like rotted blood over the ground in a shower of worms and insects that sends all the horses into a fright.

Once you have made camp a little away from the road in a hollow guarded from the wind Inge does not touch the food but instead stares into the fire, her lips moving slightly as one who tells a story to themselves, then she turns to you and translates.

"We Anwa are not the first folk on the islands, not first to craft with hands or speak with voices. Before us there were the Woods Walkers who did not make houses of stone nor worked with tools of iron and dwelt only in the branches of the Hearth Trees. We learned much from them when Umatilshe the Mariner came over the water to take land in the isles, of the trees that flow with the blood of the land and of the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, which to hunt and which to leave be, but the Woods Walkers were few and lived apart from each other and we were many and lived together and tilled the land in great swaths with the Horn of Ashinu. They fled the great noise of our coming and many winters past they sang themselves into the land in quiet lonely places. When you see beast that is not beast and tree that is not tree they are the old ones watching."

"What do they want then, these almost-men?" you ask, voice falling to a whisper without meaning to, as though some part of you is worried at being overheard by spirits from the rustling trees.

"Many want many things; some to be left alone, singing songs of wind and rain to themselves, some to take offerings of bread and nuts. Some want blood and tears for broken bough and stolen fruit of the land, some lay with men and some trick and kill. Many, many stories to tell, no time to tell them now." She pauses for a few moments before continuing. "Old Spirit Tree this close to path must have been left to grow, must have been friend of Stone Keepers. Now it is dead, spirit gone, something killed it," There is no hint of doubt in Inge's voice. "No way to tell what did it, other spirit or man with magic, rot runs too deep."

"That has been there for a while though, surely, too long to have anything to do with our charge," you reply, resolving then and there that you would listen to more of these tales when time was not so short.

Inge shakes her head firmly enough that it sends a lock of her hair tumbling over her eyes which she then futilely tries to blow away. "No, there us much magic in trees, much life, rot eats life."

By the time you return to the tree is is already late afternoon, the sun just starting to gleam red in the sky as it descends and in that fading light you see something among the splintered wood of the defiled tree... it looks like a dagger made of smooth pale wood as though grown from a single piece, the same color as the shards around it but unmistakable in purpose, a weapon of the dead for vengeance meant. Inge claims some of the magic of the tree clings to it, but she does not know for certain if it is wise or not to take it up.

Do you take the strange dagger?

[] Yes, you will need a weapon that can harm things that are of magic

[] No, leave this mournful place behind its treasure untouched

[] Write in

OOC: Not a lot of action in this one but some lore. Hope you guys enjoy.