Finding the Spark (Pathfinder 1E Quest)

The Season of Still Stone

It is practically speaking impossible to aim and fire the heavy dwarf crossbow prone, but the lighter stonebow? That you can shoot between Gorock's legs, carefully avoiding the sweep of his tail. The creak of the moldfolk's leg as the stone connects sounds less like bone shattering and more like the creak of dry planks breaking. The high-pitched squeak emanating from its mouth seems less of pain and more of confusion, though it does not seem to have any trouble sweeping under the scaled warrior's blows, striking him in the chest with its crude bone spear.

Vegepygmy 1 takes 4 damage -> Now at 1/5

Thankfully that chest is covered in armor and beneath that heavy scale. Two more of them quickly join the first and stab at Gorok's legs, one with... unfortunately far more success than the other. Yet even as the blood stains the ground Cob jumps down from where he had been hanging from a ledge on the low ceiling and stabs down through the head of the offending foes. Moldfolk, you all thus learn, do not have skulls, their heads more akin to an enormous bulb or root with a soft pinkish center, which splashes onto Gorok and Cob in equal measure.

Gorok takes 6 damage -> Now at 8/14

Vegepygmy 2 takes 11 damage -> Dead

Perhaps he liked the taste, some part of your mind not engaged with your current, rather poor, shot whispers as Gorok proceeds to bite off the face of the one you had lamed a moment ago.

Vegepygmy 1 takes 4 damage -> Dead

Two more shadows frame against Mina's trembling lights... Maybe this had not been the best idea. In the long darkness at your back Mina is calling out to something, someone, perhaps her Desna, her voice tinged with desperation. She splays out a hand and from it spins something soft and tightly packed that splatters at the feet of one of your new foes, binding it in place... though that is not as remarkable as a pair of bright eyes opening above Gorok's shoulder.

Vegepygmy 4 is entangled


Before you can make heads or tails of the thing, for it does have a tail, slender like a rat's but furred. Mina calls out again, though in a much different tone... joy. Alas, you cannot turn, for there are foes still to fight. Another properly sized rock is slotted into the stonebow. Another foe dead, this time from a blow to the throat even as it flailed against the wounded Gorok.

Vegepygmy 3 takes 5 damage -> Dead

With only one other free moldman in place it might be starting to consider its mortality, or perhaps it is simply minded to search out more of its kin to deal with the recalcitrant prey that had wandered into their lair. Whatever the case, Cob had been watching and his dagger ends it with a slash across the throat.

Vegepygmy 5 takes 11 damage -> Dead

Claw and fang make quick if messy work of the snared foe... and everyone else is left looking at Mina as she pats the back of her 'cat' companion. A cat, you thus discover, is akin to some of the smaller rats that haunt the upper tunnels, but with the fangs of a meat-eater, slitted eyes like a lizard, and a body that seems at once sleeker and less sturdy. This particular cat, you are very glad to note, does not smell of death.

"He says... says all I had to do was try to use my magic and he would come back, but I saw him die," his mistress says shakily. "And some riddle about magic. That's how I know he's Pepper, I guess," she adds with a fond look.

Mina Regains her ability to spell-cast

"That not dog," Cob sounds relieved for some reason. No doubt you will be regaled with what a dog is soon, for now there is a mine to clear.


Cob quickly climbs the chain, followed by Gorok, after which you, Mina, and the... 'cat', Pepper, can take the lift. The ball of fur seems to enjoy the ride even less than you do, and you doubt it is because it has any particular insights into workings of shoddy tunneling.


The upper chamber is larger than the cramped tunnels, though that is about the extent of its charm. The exposed ore-face has tendrils of blue black sludge covering it that smells so foul even Cob does not want to go near it, whereas the other walls are covered in tally marks and what Mina tells you must be some kind of miner's shorthand because she cannot read it. Other than that the only things in the room are a trio of strange effigies, as though someone had tried to make a stick figure out of bone and not even bone from a single kill. Some of it is yellow with age and other pieces seem freshly stripped of meat. Pinned crudely to one of them is a fluttering strip of something that looks almost like hide, though it had clearly been stripped finely to make it a good writing surface.

"It's a cargo manifest," Mina says with only one eye on the letters, the other still on her miraculously returned companion. "For an Egriso of Augustana. Wait, why was he buying russet mold? That's mad!"

"Someone was trading the mold that makes the little pests through here?" A headache hovers just at the edge of being.

Light flows like quicksilver from Mina's hand and where it passes wounds are mended and bruises fade. Cob and Gorok are as ready to take on the rest of this place as they can be. Time to finish this.

The four of you manage to ambush another three lone moldfolk in the tunnels, each one giving Gorok another trail to trace back to the heart of the tribe.


"They are in the kitchen?" Cob sounds dejected at the news. "All the food ruined. Stupid mold men."

There are two ways into the kitchen, from above via a trapdoor and rope ladder that you can descend only one at a time, but which does allow you to throw fire, acid, or poisoned light through and strike the middle of the seven enemies within, or though the door from the exhausted tunnels, which you can all fit through in a rush no problem, but then you are fighting seven of the enemy head on.

How do you take on the last of the moldfolk?

[] From above

[] Head on

[] Write in

OOC: This will be quite a lot of XP once it it tallied.