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

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

It is well into the afternoon by the time you make it back into sight of the river ever watchful that someone might think to fall on the foreigners in some dark secluded place if they should see you as more wealthy than you are well armed. Thankfully the worst you face is taunts and jeers hurled by roof-traders and one pot that you dearly hope was filled with water that narrowly misses Zaia's head.

The scholar looks up serenely to meet the gaze of the half-grown boy who had tossed it. "A pity, that one seems to have spirit, but I would wager his parents will try to whip it out of him for the waste of a piss pot." He even seems to mean it.

As for the guards at the narrow bridge, they let you through without even a perfunctory request for a bribe, too eager perhaps to discuss your folly to have taken such a host across. 'The gods of wine and song must watch for you strangers, spill a cup for us,' one of them calls, all but naming you fools, but your errand is too urgent to stop.

You make it to the temple and thence are ushered into the company of the high priest at once.. Though the man is open to attempting mediation his own news is strange as it is worrisome.

"A herald came from House Koire while you were away saying that one of their weavers had contacted the blood whip, though the timing of such a fearsome illness after the talk of magic lies like a stone in my stomach."

"Blood whip?" Zaia asks, ever curious to learn new things, even the most gruesome.

"An illness of the lungs that kills perhaps three in ten, though the manner of it is such as to awaken the fear of the people and make the imagination of the poet soar. The sufferer coughs blood you see and when they are near to death they spew forth so much of it and so violently that it may lie 'like the very marks of divine scourges on the walls'."

"You do not seem troubled..." you note, unable to keep worry out of your own voice. In all the wars you had fought you had seen more men die of sickness than of the foe's blades.

"Ikomi will guard her own," the priest replied calmly

"But only so many in one day," Esha notes dispassionately. "If there is sickness many will come to your door seeking healing and from that shall come your peril."

"Our walls are thick and out guards leal," the high priest proclaims. Then in a more apologetic manner, at least so much as a man seated on what might as well be a throne could be apologetic, he adds. "Yet if you go into that house how we may not admit you into the temple again until we are certain the plague has not found host in your flesh, such is the law of the temple."

So the priests and the city at large dares not send anyone too senior and high ranking to see what is going on in the Koire Manse, you curse inwardly. "The hunters have surely not had any time to enter the manse though?"

"Bring one to me with pledge that they have not and I shall use what authority I have to sway them to common cause."

So to translate the priest is willing to to anything but actually endanger his own skin even though he admits to possessing a cure for the plague that is supposedly ravaging the manse

How do you find the watching hunters?

[] Deploy the otter-kin who would learn stealth, between their keen senses and mind speech they should be able to pick out any watchers

[] Have Inge show herself very openly as a priestess of Ikomi and hope one of the watchers approaches her

[] Use bird spies, it risks the least but also might miss the most

[] Write in

OOC: Well you rolls are getting better, at least so much that you were not waylaid in Farshore.

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

The night is thankfully clear with the pale eye of an almost full moon illuminating the city, plenty of light for birds to see. The citizens be it in garb colorful or drab avoid the gate of House Koire, knowing full well that the plague spares neither rich nor poor its dark touch, but some there are who linger close. Temple guards with shields blue and white to mark the sea, called froth by priests worried about whatever wickedness might lurk within... but also other folk.

From the air, either a bird's eye or Inge's own boosted up by the temple roof itself as well as the will of Ikomi it is easy to pick up the hunters, men or perhaps women who are skilled enough at hiding in the crowd and warding off the suspicious of their fellow citizens but between knowing what they are observing and the height they are all marked by the third hour after sunset. Or at least you think that is all of them. Five seems about on par with the team Anisi had gathered and given how few take up the silver star of the hunter since the fall of them temple of Elnu they must be a significant portion of the hunters in the city.

You even catch sight of the rude fellow who would not give his name, hidden under a blanket in a wheelbarrow which had apparently been abandoned not far from the garden wall at the back of the manse, the workers perhaps scared off by rumors of plague.

As you and Zaia weigh if you should try to approach them again or wait for them to make their move and then follow Inge gives a sudden wordless cry.

"Something... something came out of the house... it took one of the hunters. I couldn't get a good look at it in the dark, but it didn't... it wasn't human. It had roots or tentacles like a squid. There was... a lot of blood. I don't think he lived, the hunter I mean."

"They are moving," Esha cuts in. "The hunters are many things, but they are not fools, they would not approach from many directions unless they had some means to speak to each other from afar and to mark if one of them is killed."

What do you do?

[] Circle around to where Inge saw the hunter die, it may be the long way but it gives you the chance to confront or follow the monster

[] Move through the front gates, one way or the other you need to get to Odorin and keep him safe, both from the enemy within and from the hunter with their blood up

[] Write in

OOC: I was really busy today, but I did not want to miss a second update in two days. You have with you all the people you had previously as you did not vote to go back to the ship for anyone