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

Eight of Olweje-hamba (Olweje Descendent), 1349 A. L. (After Landfall)

It had seemed like a good idea at the time, you think looking around the rumbling earthen walls of the Farshore. Wandered and Tom to add a bit more heft to the implied beating any thugs would take for trying their luck, Zaia for his scholarly skill and level head, Esha for her arcane lore. Maybe it was Swift Pebble, who must have the look of some exotic pet in the dusty gaps between the buildings that had never heard even the whisper of a fountain, maybe it's the fact that there is no disguising the value of the weapons you bear, implied threat of using them or no.

A score of hungry eyes are an itch on the back of your mind as soon as you cross the river and no amount of shouting from Wanderer, or warnings from you are able to ward them off for long. You catch sight of furtive shadows out of the corner of your eyes and think how good it would be to have bow and arrow in hand over the hilt of a sword... then you abruptly change your mind when you notice one of those figures is a boy who could not be more than two years older than Inge.

"How many?" you ask Swift Pebble.

"I don't know," she replies sounding as unnerved as you feel if not more so. "I don't have eyes on the inside, I need to see or to know someone is there."

"Enough to gather their courage and get their blood up I fear," Zaia says, not in any of the tongues of the land. "Those of the Purple have no no love of us and no reason to stop the gutter sweepings from trying their luck."

"Surely they have more sense than that," says Tom, an honest country fellow if ever there was one, but the chemist laughs and reaches for his vials.

"Then you have never walked the streets of Alexandria or Damascus after dark, if there is one thing every footpad learns it is that be a man's armor well-wrought and his blood noble he will still die to a dagger in the ribs, and the well accounted and well-bred have the best loot."

"Let them come, we'll crush their bones," Wanderer growls, though he may not have been able to understand the words he gets the gist of them in every unwelcome movement high and low.

"A less dire fate than hunger would bring surely," Esha mutters darkly. "If folk were at the edge of starving at the edge of the Old City I shudder to think how bad it must be here."

"Not many pigeons about," Zaia notes, to the confusion of Swift Pebble, who had not seen men hunt birds thus far.

"What in the name of the Thousand Gods and the One are you doing out here?" the voice comes suddenly out of a gap between buildings that you could have sworn was not enough for a grown man to fit through.

In fairness the man in question is not very broad, tall and stretched out as if he had been pulled by his neck and ankles until both were a few inches taller than they should he is wrapped head to toe in strips of grey cloth, save for the lips and the dark eyes starting intently into yours. He would have the look of a mad beggar is some of those strips of cloth were not embezzled with what can only be magical scrips.

Then again a mad magician would not be that uncommon would it? you think even as you bow your head and say aloud. "We seek the hunters of the Empty Lotus Garden." You see about you neither locus not garden, but thus you had been told to introduce yourself.

The man points at Esha. "She smells of death, she may not come into the sanctum, the rest of you follow."

"Am I then so leave the lady to the jackals?" you ask incensed.

"Any of the rest of you that care to come and talk business out of the street come, or don't, it matters little to me," the man in grey says, turning to leave.

What do you do?

[] Split your company to leave someone with Esha
-[] Write in how

[] Argue for Esha's presence
-[] Write in argument

[] Write in

OOC: It would have taken a better roll than you got to stumble onto a hunter you know, there's a whole organization of them after all and you only have a relationship with Anisi and the others.

Eight of Olweje-hamba (Olweje Descendent), 1349 A. L. (After Landfall)

Anger bubbles hot in your thoughts and hot upon your tongue also. "The good lady has fought Neverborn and worse at my side and, thanks as much to her actions as my own, kingdoms of man have persevered rather than become the playgrounds of monsters and worse. If she isn't welcome here then none of us are..."

Too hot perhaps, the stranger's eyes show not a spark of understanding but only anger in return. "I did not ask what cesspit you dragged yourself through stranger. Keep company with vultures, expect the reek of their breath of draw flies. Now unless you would want to try your luck against every scab and flint-knife in these parts I suggest you turn tail and go off. We shall not have that know the way into our sanctums," the hunter buries the word in such contempt as to make it worth a dozen insults.

"A scavenger you call me and yet you would not follow were I lead," Esha says softly. "Poor hunters are you not to know the portents of death."

You expect many things of the man, a heaping of contempt, silence and departure back by whatever secret way he came, even anger, even, recalling your first meeting with Anisi violence. What you did not expect was for him to give her another searching look and then to give a short bitter laugh. "Strange ways do you tempt men by death's get."

"Do I looks like I need to tempt your aid hunter?" she motions to you, to Tom and to Wanderer. "I have no wish to flaunt the law of the city or set the spark of disorder in it for mobs are less discerning than the beasts of the wild. Yet if we bear witness to peril in a high place among the lords and princes, who are we to go to? The priests of the soil and the sea and hope they can grow or drown the troubles? The Guard of the Council of Captains? Are we to pay them to investigate?"

Apparently when provided with a sufficiently self-interested reason for your actions the hunter is at least willing to listen to you... if not invite you into a private sanctum. Normally you would have the choice of leaving or airing the troubles of House Koire for everyone with an ear in this part of Farshore to hear, but you had Swift Pebble and therefore a means to speak in the mind and in silence.

You thus find that the hunter's name is Lak, than he is more of an investigator than a warrior hence how he came upon your company 'stomping about Farshore like a herd of mammoth in rut'. As you reveal what little you had seen at the Koire Manse he grows more and more wary until at last he curse and spits on the ground, stomping the place with his foot.

"You have given your warning stranger, we will Hunt now and if the path is true... perhaps we shall ignore the company you keep the next time."

"Your hunt this may be but Odorin Koire is an ally of ours, we shall not abandon him to his fate having revealed it to you."

Lak laughs, an ugly and bitter sound. "You expect me to trust you with a danger at my back in a place we were sent only at your word? I'd sooner slit my own throat than walk into such an obvious trap. Stay away from House Koire if you do not wish to make fresh foes."

And with that ominous warning the man... literally melts into the shadows.

"He is not unseen, he vanished," Esha says, her dark eyes glowing faintly. "And now we have trouble not allies waiting for us. It seems like I outsmarted myself. I apologize."

What do you do?

[] Nothing says you cannot watch the watchers and see if other Hunters might not be more reasonable

[] Try to get the priests of Ikomi involved in building some kind of trust

[] Write in

OOC: Your rolls just aren't cooperating this time around it seems. You literally rolled a 2 on the d20, one higher and you would have gotten at least a slightly better result. Esha rolled high, but there is only so much she can salvage given what she is.