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

Twenty Fourth Day of Olweje-eza (Olweje Ascending) 1348 A. L. (After Landfall)

Nameless is the blade at your hip until you should accomplish some deed worthy of an name. The last three days have revealed no grand battles, and found no natural treasures to add to Zaia's collection. Indeed you are not entirely sure what you are even looking for among the windswept coastal shrub-land south of the city. "At least there are no strange eyes looking at us from between the branches," Silver snorts when you dismount to give him a change to drink from a small eye of water gathered in a slight dip in the otherwise flat land. His drinking alone is enough to lower the level of the water.

If it weren't for the rains sweeping in from the sea islands would be as dry as the Egyptian desert according to Zaia and you see no reason to doubt him in that, nor in the prediction that with the height of summer most of the water here will be gone and even the trees further north will struggle, living off what dew they can gather in their branches until the rains return.

The trouble is that no matter how meticulous an accounting he makes of the nature of the island, the supernatural eludes you both. Local legends of healing flowers find such hidden gems as Marry thistle, St John's Wort and Wormwood, all have their uses and all have their place, but though the doctor dutifully takes some of every plant into his satchel it is clear that is not what he had been looking for, what he had been hoping for.

"Given all we have found and seen of late that was beyond my understanding of the world my hopes had been uncommonly high that we would keep finding such. Alas that fortune seems to have deserted me. If there is any sorcery in the brewing of these plants than I suspect it is with the rituals whispered upon them and not with their fundamental nature," the man admits with a rueful shake of the head. "I fear that I have lead you upon wandering ways with naught to show for it."

"Naught of recompense perhaps, not naught of peril either," you note to scattered cheers from the rest of your company. From the sounds of things the men had been at first afraid the doctor would lead them back into the woods where trees walk like men, but he had no such intent, having learned from Ohun that the more troublesome spirits of the land take as poorly to thieves as they do to trespassers and they are all too willing to name such over petty cause for their own profit or simply for their own entertainment.

"You are right of course," he gives a soft laugh. "Almost I feel the heedlessness of youth has overtaken me at the renewed realization of how true the words of Socrates still ring."

"What words are those?" you ask intrigued.

"True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us," he replies softly, half lost in his own thoughts perhaps, or simply suffering under the heat of the noonday sun.

"A humble man," you note. "Was he a saint or merely a scholar?"

"He lived long before the Risen Christ, how long ago is a matter of some debate, though his words were fair enough to carry echoing from quill to parchment down the long ages of the world." Again a pause as he considers his next words. "He was clear sighted, if accounts of his life are to be believed enough so as to be a thorn in the side of the mighty of that age and so they tried him and so he perished before his time."

"Almost a saint then, but for the hour of his birth..." Lost among the years as you are lost upon the miles of a strange world, you cannot help but think. "It seems a burdensome thing to be a saint or even near one, but I hope to at least manage humility and perhaps some day even wisdom."

"That you can jest of it proves that you are near the mark."

As the time comes to sail away from Lirman if becomes clear that it is not wise to take all of the horses with you, two of the mares are with foal so now the question arises do you leave some of your men behind or do you trust the locals Antonio hired to see to his business with the task?

[] Leave it to the locals to care for the horses you leave behind

[] Leave some of your men behind to care for the horses
-[] Write in how many and optionally who

OOC: Between choosing to interrupt the action and some low rolls Zaia did not find anything magical so here's a bit more character building for both him and Roland.