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

Thirty Third Day of Ikomi-hamba (Ikomi Descendant) 1348 A. L. (After Landfall)

By the time you are satisfied that the men fight no worse in the new armor than in the old one most of the season had already passed, and though the cold and wet had not relented one can at least hear from the edges of the wood the sound of the forest beginning to awaken from winter's slumber. Birds chirp and beasts scurry in the branches and all around you Wayfarer's Respite rises to something you can call a keep without shame. It is a simple thing but solid in the making, with good walls of local timber atop a stone foundation and a moat some twelve feet wide, sure to be a barrier to any would-be invader. Granted, for now, it is more the playground of Ripper and the otter-kin splashing about to the wonderment of the local workers, but to your eye it is fair to see just the same.

Net-users and Spearmen Men-at-Arms gain Medium Armor proficiency

For their part the Koire armsmen are now worth the name, and they are worth a drink of Zaia's Magian Wine as well. You find yourself laughing right along with most of your men and the sailors beside them when Antonio dramatically declares that this much praised wine used to be moat water not so long ago.

Koire Spearmen Complete Warrior training

A good jest and, like many of Antonio's schemes, also a shrewd way to get the word out about something he will be able to sell for good silver. Zaia had asked if it might not be worth keeping the secret back, given that even among the merry company of men who do not often get to enjoy a feast there were some looking at their cups in askance, but the captain had turned to him and, seeming much more sober than the prodigious amounts of drink he had put away himself would indicate, gave his accounting:

"Seven and a half gallons of wine, which is about how much you can make of sea water with one conjuring, would be worth about one hundred and thirty gold Icari sold in any tavern. Now of course this ain't a tavern and the wolves and bears are not much minded to buy it from us straight up, so cut the price in half, the tavernkeeper gets as good a profit as is if he keeps his mouth shut and a little less if he just tells them it's wine of the witch and not of the grape. Maybe he makes a bit more if he tells the truth and knows how to sell it, not my business, that's still something akin to fifty thousand Icari every season."

Hearing the words you choke on the aforementioned wine.

"Only if you want to be run out of town for selling them salt water seven hours after the deal is struck," Zaia snorts. "Tis harder by far to transmute water into wine evermore than it is to do it for the span of a single feast, only about a tenth I would say."

"Still five thousand gold per season makes for a fine feather in our cap," Antonio presses.

"And it makes me a goose plucker by trade," Zaia cuts him off acerbically. "I did not set my sights on the transmutation of matter so that I would might become a tavernkeeper, no matter how rich that might make me."

As Antonio opens his mouth to argue Esha speaks up unexpectedly: "A spell cast in the morning to make wine to market is power one does not have to call if noon, evening or night be stained in blood. Better that we make less profit and remain all prepared for battle if we are to sail to far off shores."

"Fair point," the captain sighs, putting his own cup down. "If there were less in the way of demons, beasts and ghouls about then I might argue harder, but..."

"In that world a man might find it harder to make wine of water," you finish, amused and wistful all at once.

Gain Passive Income: Magian Wine 1,250 gp/season (Scales with Zaia's level)
Zaia has -1 first level spell slot when he is not preparing for battle (when he is he will shift the casting about)

"What if we raised a tavern here? Then we could use the one that doesn't stay wine, right?" Antonio is nothing if not insistent on the scent of profit. "True, we are out of the way now, but Wayfarer's Respite will grow I'm sure. The Shore-Sworn could do with some cheap fine quality wine that is not served to them by sneering cityfolk."

Unlock project build a Tavern (will serve your men and the local fishermen)

What do you talk with next?
Final Action before Spring

[] Zaia has learned more of the local fey. The Tinker Court is drawn, it seems, to the diligent industry of mankind, thus Orinilu itself might be your passage into their domain.

[] Inge, as she tries to teach herself how to throw a knife

[] The strange owl, the thing has been following you for more than a moonturn by now. There has to be some reason for its strange behavior, see if you can discern it

[] Antonio as he goes to the market to pick up trade goods for the journey in the spring, perhaps you can do some buying or selling of your own

[] Esha, to learn the tongue of the city more thoroughly so as to stumble less over the words of Engur

[] Speak to Serik Priest of Ashinu about the curse upon your men

OOC: For all there was some number-crunching in the background I think this ended up as a solid little character piece. Hope you guys enjoy.

Thirty Fifth Day of Ikomi-hamba (Ikomi Descendant) 1348 A. L. (After Landfall)

For all the bustle and clang of commerce and war preparation that passes each day by the three gates of the city and into the mouth of its harbor Orinilu could not sustain itself without the treasure that lies within the great grey granaries on the Street of Succor, or as they had come to be called half in quiet mockery and half in grim remembrance, the Fane of Famine.

According to Antonio, some fourteen years past there had been winter, long and black, snows that filled the streets and ice that froze the river solid a moonturn and more into the season of Ashinu, then the seed had rotted in the ground from some blight, leaving many of the common folk of the city to the mercy of the temple and its prudent and divinely mandated stores. For that year the gates of the temple had opened and the influence of the priesthood waned more with every month. It was said they had the power to name and to cast out all members of the Ruling Council save only the Lord High Admiral, and yet for all the sacrifices that the priests had attempted and all the long months of fasting and of prayer which had been asked of high and low alike, the harvest was not better on the second year and barely better on the third as the blight started to wear itself out.

Less grain had come into the city and new customs were born. Where before it had been that any man who would come to the door of the temple would be given food, albeit in exchange for having his name marked in the Book of Hearts to be recalled and perhaps cursed with greed if he took more than his share and tried to pass it on, now some were cast as wastrels and by their misfortune cursed by the god already and so were driven away...

Driven away with those, you think, spying a guard bearing a tall rounded shield and a heavy club tipped with a round granite plug that was not quite a hammer. The man certainly looked old enough to have been part of the Ragpicker's Riots, named for the man Rangum the Ragpicker who had finally lead the mob into trying to force open the gates. More than three hundred had died then, their end likely more merciful than what hunger would have dealt them as the great landowners were not interested in more mouths to feed.

Rumor went that the priests had been having great and decadent feasts that only grew in the telling, that they were using the one coin that was most precious at the time to gain full control of the city. According to Antonio, who knows cities better than you, that is the sort of rumor that hunger and plague often set in the streets, like spark to dry kindling. No doubt the priests had not been starving, but neither did they have the means to feast in luxury, and the notion that they could have taken the city was, in Antonio's words, 'the fruit of a fevered mind'.

Yet true or not, fair or foul, it is true that Ashinu, or more particularly his priests, are not well loved among the hovels of Farshore even now and Serik's skill with curses may not just be in the lifting of them. There is little more fearsome in a magician, no matter his stripes, than the power to lay curses. He had been nothing but kind to you and seemingly fascinated with the otter-kin and their story, you remind yourself, not to judge a man more by hearsay than by what you had seen of him yourself.

Once into the warm corridors of the temple you are swiftly lead not into any hall of worship, but what seems to be a solar specifically for the head priest to meet with important visitors, all about draped in tapestries woven green and gold and lit with candles and incense. You are given food and fair you find the offering, more refined than the simple fish and roots you have been living on for most of the season, and then Serik names his price.

"Of all the treasures of your travels I wish for the stone egg that once burned with Elder flame yet now is dead to ashes fallen. I ask this not for myself nor for my own greatness, but that I should better prepare the city for the evil of which we have spoken. In exchange, all of those who were given the curse of brine and bitterness shall of it be cured."

Seeing your surprise and uncertainty Antonio speaks up: "Just like that, they will be cured? You know the priest of Olweje told us to kill a dragon, not hand him an egg."

"Tssk," Serik shakes his head. "Asking a warrior to break a curse. Give a man a warhammer and he will try to grind seeds to flour with it. But no, I will not be using the egg or anything of dragons for it, but the Way of Earth and Sea, so two will be joined as one and they will be freed." He pauses a moment and asks. "All those cursed are men yes?"

"They are, yes," you answer. "Is that needful for the magic?"

"Needful, no, but I must ask. The prayers are different whether the man or the woman is cursed."

"The man or woman...?" you begin, but Antonio cuts you off.

"I heard about this, only rumors but... they would have to lay with the priestesses as man with woman I mean? Ashinu is, after all, what did Zaia call him? A fertility god? Both of the harvest and of, well..."

The priest waits quietly for his answer. You check...

Antonio had not misheard those rumors.

What do you reply?

[] Make the deal (exchange dragon egg for the ritual to lift the curse from all your men)

[] Do not make the deal

OOC: If you are feeling mood whiplash, well so is poor Roland. Sometimes the strangeness of the world comes at him fast.