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

Day of Rule, 1349 A. L. (After Landfall)

You return to the strange hill this time with the light of morning in your face to find it bereft of the plumes of smoke you had seen before, though thankfully still in the possession of its rightful master. Ro'No'Ron has been busy....Shielded from view by the craggy shape of his home yo find a pit out back behind his house, but not just a rude hole, it seemed to have been scoped out of the flesh of the mountain by the tooted maw of some enormous beast larger than even a mammoth.

"How did you...?"

Before Zaia can get more than three words in edgewise the fey smith bids him quiet putting both his upper hands to his lips: "No time, quickly quickly get in so they won't know I let latecomers down the true path."

Your own question as Silver navigates the oddly smooth path down into the earth is you think far more urgent. "Who are they?"

"Mites and wreckers, mites and wreckers, gossip worse than pixies they do, which is how I know where you'll find the thief. He'd going to White Fern Stump to sell off the spear to the highest bidder, there's all sorts of folk who want a dragon-killer of a spear, but iffen you can catch him on the road that doesn't matter at all..."

He tosses you something, bright green in the morning light and to your surprise it is just the kind of crystal Inge had sent with Ripper all those months ago, the one that lead you on the first leg of your journey. "Run fast, but don't tire your limbs for fighting nor your eyes for seeing, he might have guards or he might try to vanish altogether off the road and let you pass him by "

Down and down you go, on spiral paths that twist and turn, as the thin earth gives way to rough stone, then to smooth, polished so brightly that the light of sword and lantern casts ghosts of pale crimson on its wall and each of you a dark shape following the light. There is no threshold to cross, no gate beyond the pit behind you. The light of the sun fades swift as a dream and in the gathering gloom you hear Inge say softly: "I can't hear the sea anymore... I can't, I don't know if she can hear me in this place?"

There is a fear in those words that you had not heard before.

"So even the hand of the gods cannot in all realms stretch," Esha turns to look at the girl, then sighs. "I wish I would have found that out some other way."

"I think we should test her power now when we are alone and not in the midst of battle," Zaia says, ever reasonable, but to your surprise silver shakes his head.

"If the power of Ikomi is strange to these lands yet she heeds the call would not others he able to hear it from afar, smell it on the wind? Better that the little one rest in mi saddle safe and guarded."

You glance at Esha, but this time your learned friend has no answers. "I've never been here before, I don't know the ways and the paths of the world, much less who might be listening in."

What do you do?

[] Have Inget test her magic
-[] Write in how

[] Continue to follow the guiding stone

[] Write in

OOC: Well this took longer than I thought it would,, but I got it done in the end.

Day of Rule, 1349 A. L. (After Landfall)

Poor Inge, you reach out a hand to pat her back, but there is something else, something that stills the words in your throat as though you had swallowed sawdust. Fear, not fear of battle, not even fear of the twisting realms where the thief had fled out of sight of man and beast. You fear injury that does not slay, you fear that you or someone of your company would lay on the bare stone bleeding with naught but Zaia's bottles to heal them. Bottles run out...

You cough and in defiance of the thought spit on the ground to clear your mouth, you would not walk with fear, nor let it master you and if your quest is less noble than some, simply in search of s stolen weapon then so be it. You are not that Roland for which you were named, but you would have to do .

Perhaps it is a trick of the light, but lighter seem the shadows on your path once you had made that decision and swifter your way down the deep delved stone.

To your left you hear Zaia say something in his own mother tongue and from Esha's answer you guess the meaning of them: "I know not who made this place nor by what art, perhaps it was simply willed into being at the call of the Eldest Before, though if that was so it must have been a long time ago, for the stone falls in lines and arcs that the mortal mind can grasp and does not twist and turn in defiance of all reason."

Thus it is that in the echoing darkness, broken only by the sound of distant water you hear Esha speak of what she knows, what she remembers of the Fey in their own House, creatures of an elder time who dream eternal of times that are no more. Some of the Lonely Spirits want to be part of the world that is, some of them want to look upon the mortal creatures that have inherited it, to help or to harm, to toil or to trick, but even the most wicked of that kindred in their own way accept the turning of the world and what they have become, but in this place, veiled from all mortal eyes save those of rare travelers lost on the ways of the world live those who do not wish to see.

It is well that you do not meet them and well indeed that these tunnels seem to be empty of life for a long while. A fair place for a thief to pass, but also for a thief catcher.

"Like a hound on the scent it is easier for the wayfinder to one thing where there are no others to muddle the scent..." To your surprise, though perhaps it aught not have been it is Silver who says that, though no sooner has it passed his lips than the sound of water grows louder and louder up ahead. One can only hope that the scent of magic is not washed away like more common ones

The seven of you turn the corner to find a river some twenty feet wide cross your path across a wide vaulted cave... Perhaps it would be better called a hall for the walls that gleam like polished granite shot though with rose stone that might be marble...

"Oi, what you looking for?" a rough voice calls out from the darkness beyond the water. Coming closer you see it looks like a pile of tasking stones... a very tall pile of talkative moss covered stones with balefire gleaming in dark cracks where its eyes aught to be.

Riding a little forward you lay out your quest forthrightly, you've no reason to lie to those who dwell in this realm and you know that the fey who do not lie hold particular ill will to morals who avail themselves to that vice.

The strange creature listens grumbling to itself with the sound of grinding stones. "Well now it seems mighty unfair to ask a price of you when you are already looking for something you have lost, so how about a surety? Half of you lot stay here and as long as you don't do anything dishonorable in Glimardale I'll let you all ride back with spear in hand."

What do you do?

[] Agree to the bargain, half of your company will stay here

[] Offer some other price, the guardian does not seem to have much interest in gold or silver, but you might be able to scrape enough interesting trinkets for a toll
-[] Write in

[] Ask more questions, he seems talkative, why not take advantage of it?
-[] Write in

[] Write in

OOC: The being you have in front of you seems to be some kind of troll, but I did not want to link it right away because it is heavily modified and I did not want to give the wrong impression.