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

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

"We would fight not only for pay, but for a good cause also..." you reply. Antonio will not think well of such a softhearted answer, you know, but he is not here, you are, and so by your judgement this shall stand. These are goodly folk from all that you had seen of them. So long as they do not ask too great a risk of your men you will offer aid and gladly.

"Know that this is a secret that could do much harm to me and mine, and so we ask that if you do nothing else keep it in your heart and not upon your lips," the Voice speaks quietly in the depths of your mind. He glances towards Tender to whom he had spoken but a little and formally to and sighs, his breath sending his whiskers shivering, and strange you find that until his tale is done.

He tells of how before his birth, when his grandmother was the voice of the Willowbrook people, they had dwelt much as they did now, hunting and fishing and partaking of the bounty of the land and sea, but they also lived in fellowship with the Knikut of the hills and each profited by the company of the other for the Stout Ones where strong and hardy and the otters swift and agile swimmers, able to sneak into all manner of nooks that the larger folk could not. They had traded fish and forage for hides and fine flint fit for the knapping, and amber from the streams for hooks of bone and horn.

In those times was born an otter pup, sharp of mind but swallow of wisdom he proved to be in the end. Listens-to-the-Wind he was named for ever did he know all the rumors in the land, ever curious to know more of the hidden things. With every summer of wandering he grew more bold and more insatiable for the knowing of things. He came to listen to the shamans of the Kinkut by cunning and hidden guise and there he learned the art of listening to the spirits of the world and seeing the unseen, but alas he did not learn the caution that the shamans passed to their students.

This foolish pup came back to the halls of his grandmother and listened to the stones of the Willowbrook to learn who had delved them and in what way, for it was clear to him that so great a hall was not made by the small claws of the otter-kin. In the dark crevices hidden by the hand of time and perhaps the works of elders far wiser than him he found the answer, slumbering upon stone awaiting the hour of his rebirth there lay a one with horns like the great deer, wings like a bat and the forked tongue of the serpent. One old in malice who would claim the forest for his own and he claimed to have made not only the Willowbrook but those who dwelt in them also, that he had given them speech and reason, raised them from their lesser kin who dwelt each alone in their own mind.

"The Jade Beast promised to make the fool pup even mightier in mind, to give him powers over the world beyond those he had stolen, if only he would open the great door that lead out into the woods. For the narrow pass through which Listens-to-the-Wind had gone through was much too small for his great bulk, but that door was too heavy for small paws, two or six or even a hundred together. So the young otter went into the halls of the Knikut and with lying guise that he had learned from his master in trickery persuaded some of their young warriors to come and open the way for he said there was treasure to be found there..."

As the Voice speaks his manner grows ever more dejected and the cheerful light of the torches seems to fade all around you, for all there are still smiles upon every other face.

"When the warriors opened the door the beast demanded they serve him evermore and when they refused he devoured them, every one save the fool who lead them to their doom, and then he flew swift as the storm wind to the camps of their folk. There was great battle and all who stood perished, yet not in vain. At the last their shaman cast in her heart's blood a spell of enchantment, of slumber that snared the beast true, and there it sleeps even now among the ruin of those who were once our friends..."

"A sad story indeed, yet if the beast sleeps as it had before Listens-to-the-Wind found it than the lands and the people are safe now, are they not?" you ask not aloud, but only in your thoughts so as not to draw the ear of another.

"It sleeps, but under sky not stone and so it whispers in the dreams of all who slumber in these lands, promising power and wealth and glory, whatever their hearts desire if only they should come to it and wake it. Our people know not to listen, even if only the Voice knows the full tale passed from one to the other, but men dream alone as they do all other things and so we seek to speed travelers in these parts on their way where we can, offering aid and hosting and..." the next words seem almost to pain him. "Those who come too near the sleeping beast we drive away, doing as little harm as we may, but there are more men every season and they are harder and harder to send off. Just this season two were wounded so deeply that I fear they were not able to return to their folk alive. Soon I will be gone and I shall have to pass the mantle of Voice to another chosen and they shall have to choose how much harm they are willing to do in order to keep secret the sleeping beast. I do not wish to pass that burden to on and so I ask of you strange men bearing weapons sky-forged and keeping company with two who know the lore of spirits to end this beast, to avenge folk and to spare us from the blood on our paws."

What do you answer?

[] Accept the task, you will do your best to end this old evil so that the land may have peace and men may settle here again without fear that they will wake it

[] Refuse, you do not have with you the strength to slay a foe that killed a whole tribe of the Stout Folk

[] Perhaps there may be a better way to keep guard on the cursed hills
-[] Write in suggestion

[] Write in

OOC: Since I know you guys are going to ask, the Voice cannot give you a better description of the beast since he has never seen it. He knows about it from the Voice before who knew about it from her predecessor who actually heard about it from a distraught Listens-to-the-Wind. The otters do not dare get close enough to the destroyed camp to get a look at it.