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

Eleventh Day of Elnu-Hamba (Elnu Descendent), 1349 A. L. (After Landfall)

What is in Zaia's concoctions you do not know and after tonight you do not want to know. As you and Antonio work to pull the body of the assassin away and beat it out under Zaia's instructions the patrons belligerent courage turns to rout and panic, the flames rush across the floor and greedy tongues begin to lick at the walls faster than any flames you had seen. Thankfully the three of you are near enough the doors and hale enough in body to get out of the press, prize and all, suffering no worse than a bout of coughing for the passage. Yet looking back amid the shouts of the growing flames you see the meadhall that had moments ago been filled with boisterous good cheer made into a pyre. For the second night in a row the skies of Noromo are stained red with the glare of flames and the air is heavy with the breath of smoke.

"Give him here," Zaia points to the corpse drawing your eyes away from the grim spectacle.

"Are you sure..." you begin, but he cuts you off with a frustrated shake of the head. "While the potion is in me I can."

He lays the assassin down on the road, gingerly as though it were a sick man and not a corpse, glaring at the onlookers who had startled to gather. "He is cursed with black luck and foul misfortune for the company he kept, away lest it befall on you as well." They do not seem minded to interfere now... but neither are they about to help with the fire flinching and fleeting. By the time anyone had come with a bucket or sack of sand the meadhall was well an truly alight and three of the homes between it and the river had already caught in the gusting wind.

"Some vials that must have been his personal extracts..." Zaia swirls a vial of thick and alarmingly red liquid in his hand. Moving on to a few others, all fine glass fit for a lord's cup he sniffs them and says. "Liikely poisons, including the one Antonio was cut with." And so on it goes, from the jagged blade that proves to be finely crafted as any knight's sword for all its malignant form to an odd leather booklet that opens not at the side, but the bottom folding out into page upon page of markings and symbols like yet unlike the tongue of the Anwari. Alike was the script on tablets of clay that the assassin held near to his heart and those Esha called filled with a fel magic, though the Shadow unlike his master did not embrace the grave in death.

Gained

• Masterwork Drow Razor
• Various potions and poisons
• Book of Alchemical Formulas
• Strange Tablets

It would take Zaia days, perhaps even weeks to make sense of all the Shadow's possessions but alas other consequences of the night arrived near as soon as the morning light. The owner of the meadhall is looking for justice before the seat of Aina who he now calls queen, or as Antonio puts it he is looking for silver and a dead assassin cannot give it to him. So the man argues since it was Zaia's hand and no other that cast the fire onto his hall than it should be Zaia who pays the price and steep is the asking:

"A ship's price from the stranger I ask, enough to buy a fair ship and all the crew and suplies that I might need for a year!" According to Ohun this is a common practice among the Anwa when they seek to resolve their feuds without blood... not that you think a destitute ale-master can force such a price on you. He has no bronze to set against Durendal.

But if you should refuse him than it would lay a pal upon Aina's already unsteady reign here you know, it is not just he who suffered but also his neighbors, whose homes were touched by the blaze, though not destroyed by it. It is not hard at all to imagine how the rumors would spread: a weak queen sitting on nothing but the points of foreign spears, she had brought war and twice how she had brought fire, of those who dwell in cities among the most feared perils.

What do you do?

[] Accept responsibility for the fire and pay the ship's price (Cost 2500 gp)

[] Deny any wrongdoing (Will harm Aina's popularity)

[] Write in

OOC: I thought about just telling you what the potions are, but no matter his skills it would not really make sense for Zaia to just know on sight what the concoctions made by someone of a totally different magical tradition would do. Not yet edited.