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

Twelfth Day of Ashinu-ezna (Ashinu Ascendant) 1348 A. L. (After Landfall)

"I will be glad to help as I may," you reply at once, for you do not lack for trust in her skill or her character, but a moment later add. "Though I would know what aid I am providing, so as to better to give it."

"Tis easier to show with deeds than to explain with words," Esha replies, sounding oddly surprised. After all this time you would imagine she would have understood you, for surely she does not lack for skill in that regard either.

It still feels strange for a lady to simply take your hand, as though it were a gesture of no great import, though that is nothing besides the strangeness of the whispers ripping through your mind, then deeper,... not whispers now, not feelings, but some deeper impression to which touch and sound are but a shadow's shadow. You simply feel her, coiled at the back of your mind, formless yet filled with purpose.

"What...?" Much to your relief there still seems to be a boundary there as the sea and the land meet upon the shore, one may impinge upon the domain of the other but only so far as the reach of the tides.

"That is a soul anchor, or one might say you are my soul anchor for the moment, language meant to describe the material realm is not the most nimble when dealing with matters solely of the spirit, but I shall do my best."

You nod in understanding, shaken, though perhaps less by the experience and more by how little your instincts are troubled by it. Where you had recoiled from the first brief touch of her thoughts the shadow of her soul on yours feels almost comforting, like the shade of a cloud on a too bright day.

"A soul anchor goes by many names, they are the heart stones of withered liche lords and they are the breath jars of the howling frost-kin of the both, my father's corpse, animated by his will was technically a soul anchor which is why it could not be destroyed in the manner of simple flesh, any joining of soul and form that did not form entwined is a soul anchor. What I have forged between us is nothing so enduring, but I will not lie to you Roland, it would make it easier for me to weave spells upon you..." Esha trails off, sounding less more uncertain than you have ever heard her before, besides perhaps that moment when you had pressed her into an admission of her heritage. "Or one might say it makes is harder for you to resist, though that is semantics."

You realize with a start that she is speaking more to fill up the silence and that you should say something. "Given Zaia's skills it would no doubt be easier for him to poison me when we share a meal, yet behold I do not shy away from that."

At that the sorceress gives a brief startled laugh, almost a chortle. "That is not the same."

"I do not see why not," you point out reasonably. "Both are potential risks to my life by means i know little of and both are just as easily dismissed in light of the people involved."

Though Esha shakes her head as though in denial she does not argue the point aloud any further, but simply snaps he fingers together as though to pluck some unseen thread between you and in a moment the sense of her presence fades. "I did not want to surprise you with that later."


Fifteenth Day of Ashinu-ezna (Ashinu Ascendant) 1348 A. L. (After Landfall)

Later proved to be midnight three days later as the light of autumn's first full moon bathed the ship in liquid silver. Rarely have you seen the moon seem so close or the stars shine so bright as now filtered into the cabin, though you are rather more distracted by the circle of bones in the center of the narrow floor space and Esha standing within them with a cup in either hand. "Seal bones, offerings from our enthusiastic scaled friend, also seal blood..." she motions to the cup in her left. "It took some explaining to get across that I wanted him to bring one of those alive to bleed but he was nothing if not accommodating."

"Why the bones and the... er blood?" you ask. If you had seen this scene half a year ago you would have thought it a fever dream.

"I doubt the goat would catch its fancy seeing as we have been feeding it that..." She cuts herself off. "Of you mean why bones and blood in general, they are symbols of life and deah and the passage between them, they are a stand in for me. The other cup is just salt water..." Here Esha shows you the cup and indeed it seems to be water. "It's to represent the ship, but not fully, the absence, the lack hopefully pulling the spirit through."

"That is why you need an anchor," you realize abruptly. "As you pull the thing into the light of common day it would drag you down to its own strange realm."

"Yes." If Esha is surprised at your deduction she does not show it, eyes already growing distant. "It does not need to mean us any harm, but the weight of it could bring me down into the depths of its being just the same."

"But not me?" you check, just to be sure. There is something altogether more ominous about having this conversation by night lit only by the distant face of the moon than under the light of day.

"You are one of the least transgressive people I have ever men..." She says it so plainly she might be discussing the color of your hair. Then before you can do more than stand there and stare she drops the cup of blood on the floorboard, a streak of red libation and drinks the sea water. Softly at first then louder and louder she begins to sing, a wordless chant of nonsense syllables... yet somehow impossibly you recognize the melody, the requiem for the dead, that you had heard at the old king's passing.

Another flash of insight comes to you, another question that seems to answer itself. Are you hearing this with your ears at all?

The grand and somber melody dissolves into high and piercing notes like arrows out of the dark, like the cries of seabirds far off, or perhaps men in dire need, near onto death but not yet needing remembrance. At your feet the blood pools and shifts, ripples and turns clear, and in that macabre mirror you see what seems to be the eye of some great sea beast.

"It... she is asking what we want," Esha's voice is distant, but clearly her own.

Pick one advancement for the ship:

[] Sails upon the Dreaming Wind: The Marcella no longer sails solely with the wind of mortal realms, able to even travel against it at great need, though to linger among its rigging grows more of a strain upon the mind of man

[] Barbs of the Beast: The Marcella takes the two arcane crossbows into itself, firing shards of bone from its meals from them in place of bronze bolts. Beware though for the ship might care for its crew but it does not understand the world in which they live, to arm it is to bear the responsibility for how it might use said weapons

[] The Black Bounty: As the crew feeds the ship, so too does the ship feed the crew. In times of need or simply at the captain's command the ship's stores will fill with blind alien fish from the deepest depths of the sea and mayhap Beyond, the merest pinprick into the veil of worlds

OOC: And once again it is nearly midnight and half asleep. Since I know you guys are going to ask it though, you do not know the precise mechanical effects of the choices since well no one here has any sort of first hand experience with Far Realm touched ships.