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

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

Inge felt like a liar, like a girl who'd taken out her father's boat just for s swim in the shallows and now had to cast nets. Go talk to the priests Roland had said. She was one of 'em right? She didn't know how to say that she wasn't, that she was known more to Ikomi than to Ikomi's folk, she was just a girl from the far shore who loved the sea and the sea loved her. Inge did not know the old chants or the proper way to greet the sun and ward the moon on her way. I'm not a herald least it's to birds, but the birds didn't know what the dark fey had gone and done with Tom's spear, they didn't even know why she'd want something like that. 'Nasty things spears are, almost as bad as arrows' they would say. Sometimes Inge wished she was a bird.

"If you seek comfort child than do it somewhere else," a tall bearded priest hissed though a crack in the door, not even bothering undo the chain that held it fast. A part of Inge marveled at using bronze for such a thing when a plank of wood would be just as stout, Was it just so they could shout things though the door, she wondered.

"I... that is I wanted to talk to you about finding the spirits, I ain't scared of 'em..." That was not all the way true, the girl was scared of the fey that had come to Apuku, but not in the way she had seen most folk here he scared of them, like they were storm or pox, a thing to be endured not fought. She knew how to deal with their like, and truth be told would rather be dealing with them than the priests.

Before Inge could think of what to say Tom struck one gauntleted fist in the door and asked to be let in... with enough curses added in for seasoning to make it clear he expected the priests to get up or punch up. Ikomi be praised they chose the latter.

As soon as she got out from under the arch of the door though Inge's sense of victory was drowned in a familiar smell, heavy and foul, rot. They had taken the dead into the temple, but had not yet the set them to see.

"Why..." Inge started.

"Because you foolish girl we do not know if there is a curse on any of them, if they will linger," the head priest snapped. "Do you want to see a sea lurcher crawling out of the water to feed on the living."

"No lesser spirit has power where she walks." The words came to Inge's lips the way the tide comes in the morning, without thought or struggle. Without asking, without needing to be asked she conjured water five times in her left hand and then with her right she passed it over the head and heart of the dead and bid them go in peace.

It was only when she got to the sixth that another of the priests, this one younger, though oddly with less hair on his head spoke. "What are you doing?"

"Seeing to their needs as one day others will see to mine..."

Someone mumbled something in the back of the dark hall, it sounded oddly like: "Doubt you would bloody need it."

Inge didn't know what do say, so she asked the question she had come here to ask: "Where did the fey come from... where did they go?"

"They didn't speak to us save to bid us leave on pain of death and oath of lord downfallen," came the surly reply, though in their eyes gleamed fear, but after a moment the man who had spoken first relented and said they had come over the walls around Potter's Way, slipping like shadows in the night just as the Iranea come out with spear in hand.

"EnjoIku Hill is out that way..." the younger priest offered. "There's dark and unchancy tales all about that place."

"Snake's Death Hill?" Tom sounded resigned.

"I don't think Enjo is a snake that slithers," Inge took a deep breath. "I think that means dragon's death hill."

Who do you take with you to investigate the hill?

[] Write in

OOC: Very good rolls this time around and a chance for me to show more of Inge's uncertainties as well as how others of her faith can see her wielding so much power and so high in the favor of her patron so young.