Finding the Spark (Pathfinder 1E Quest)

The Season of Still Stone

Blood is still thundering in your ears, the pain in your side revealing new nuances of agony with every breath, and Hollow Fiends know if you had been poisoned. A thousand times content you would have counted yourself to leave the dead to the tunnels, walking or otherwise, but even as you are you cannot help but imagine the thing creeping back here, barred door or no, needing only to overpower the one on watch before making a feast of all four of you.

"We should go deal with it now and not have it stalk us later." Pain stains your voice and you hate it, but far from the scorn you had been reflexively expecting Mina looks suddenly guilty.

"Desna's mercy, I hadn't realized... Let me get those out. Do you feel light-headed, weak?"

"A bit of both, but I'll manage." To be entirely honest her reaction is putting you more on edge than the false heat shimmer in the corner of your eye. That level of guilt is about what you expect from someone who had just burned your bunk and poisoned your spider-lizard, not forgotten you had some spines in your side.

"Just a moment..." Mina is as good as her word, getting the things out as Gorok looks between the two of you then at a clearly still game Cob, snapping his many toothed jaw decisively, and leads the way.


The pace he sets is so swift that you might suspect your scaled companion of spite, had he ever shown any sign of it before. Back the way you had come, through rooms long stripped of anything of value and now containing only dust and rubble, in which Gorok reads the signs of dead feet until you come once more out of the mine, through the narrow tunnel until you stand again in front of a familiar pile of stones.

Mina mutters something about shit under her breath, an awkward time for it to be sure, but you pretend not to hear.

"I will go first," Gorok announces. "I will swift-return. If I give no sign a two thousand heartbeats after I have reached the top, do not follow."

Cob frowns, obviously confused. "I follow. Why you not want to?"

"He does not expect us to follow," you explain, clearing things up for the goblin but making Mina even more upset for some reason you cannot fathom. Gorok's words are reasonable, even if somewhat to your surprise you have no intention of following them.

So you turn to watch the scarred warrior climb the slope of rubble and stone, his sharp claws giving him easy purchase. He tests each ledge before he trusts it with his full weight, having to shuffle sideways once to avoid a weak spot, but finally he is up and through the narrow slit at the top.


Time seems to slow, each heartbeat agonizing in its passage, then he's back out again, quietly tying off a knotted rope to the upper ledge so that all of you may follow. Much to your surprise Cob does not scamper straight up the rope, waiting instead for Gorok to come down and tell you what he saw.

This he recounts in quick, cut down sentences. "A hall there lies, pale stone cracked but not worn. I could not read the markings on the wall. There were within chests like the one the pale-bellies carried, all open, all empty. There is a statue in the middle of a woman who was half bat, her head missing. There are lights in the ceeling, old and clear, not the green of serpent nests, but red. They form patterns with lines between them."

"Can you show us?" you ask, intrigued. Arcane lights are rare, rare and precious. Whenever a new ruin is found to contain even such minor magics it is almost always harvested by the nearest settlement unless the ones who first came upon it keep the information to themselves. In Nar-Voth countless bandit hideouts, stashes, and smugglers' dens are built on the bones of elder things.

Gorok gives a long hiss, his way to sigh you are pretty sure, then the starts to cut into the dirt what seems to you a meaningless connection of straight lines between scattered points, then a second and a third just as baffling, at least to you. Mina has more luck. She runs a finger over the last figure, forming a rough trapezoid. "The Skull."


"It doesn't look like..." you start, but the sorceress waves you off.

"It's a constellation." She pauses. "It's a Burnlander thing, which makes it all the stranger to find here. Was there any way out of the room?"

"Stairway up, spiral," Gorok replies, adding thoughtfully. "There are many old tracks leading down, they were not careful."

"No matter what it is we need to deal with ghoul first," Mina proclaims.

Pepper gives an almost reproachful meow, earning himself a dark look from his mistress. It does not take an expert in either Burnlanders or their pets to realize what the concern is. Mina is the least likely to be able to sneak up on a ghoul and yet she is the reason you are even here. Doubtless she feels she has to contribute.

What do you do?

[] Tell Mina she can stay. You, Gorok, and Cob will deal with the ghoul

[] Stay silent

[] Write in

---

Definitions:
Hollow Fiends - In Caligni mythology these nameless entities serve the role of both antagonist and tester on the Long Descent, though invoking them in times of misfortune the people of Zul the Cave-Taker do not hold with tales of the Hollow Fiends, considering them something akin to the tales children tell to scare each other past Last Bell
Last Bell - Lights' out in the Hall of the Young
Spider-Lizard - Common short-lived pets of Caligni. Contrary to their name they are all lizard, the spider part referring to how well they climb on splayed sucker equipped fingers

OOC: I really wanted to have the fight with the ghoul this update, but short of having Gorok try to fight it alone (which would have been very dangerous for him and not that in character) I could not fit it in.

The Season of Still Stone

"I know little of magic other than my own gifts, but I fear the ghoul isn't the most dangerous thing in that place. Better that we all go."

Your words are greeted with relief by the sorceress herself and a surly shake of the head by her furry companion, but after a few brief moments of silent communion he gives in. With Gorok at the fore and the rope to guide the way the four of you move slowly, stealthily as you can manage up the slope. When you had made it about two thirds of the way, however, it all seems to go belly up. You hear it before you smell it and you smell it before you see it, the reek of rotting flesh and the scrambling of claws on stone, but as the ghoul leaps onto Gorok it does not seem to have accounted for the difference between lizardfolk and warm-blood. Stumbling and off balance it rolls past you, landing with a snap that would have been the end of any living creature.


Ghoul takes 11 Damage -> Now at 2/13

As the dead man scrambles to his feet, head twisted at an unnatural angle, the light in his eyes shifts from hunger to fear, pondering perhaps if his next meal might be found on the bones of someone not so well armed and armored. "I must return. If you kill me He will see, and He will have your heads. Do you think you can escape the bite of the Hidden Serpent? Do you think you can escape Her vengeance?" It starts to laugh, a broken jagged sound that is equal parts despair and contempt, but before he could say more or try to flee once more like a centipede under a rock Cob turns to it and, letting go of the rope, draws the stonebow from his back and fires. The stone finishes the job of detaching the ghoul's head from its shoulders, snuffing out the dark hunger that had kept soul and corpse shacked together.

Ghoul takes 10 Damage -> Dead

"Stupid, should run not talk," the goblin offers with a shake of the head that sets his large ears flapping.

"Is that why you shot him?" Mina asks, startled, to which she gets a firm nod.

"Smart stinker would have run, only dumb one stayed to talk, listening to stupid is stupid." 'Stinker', he goes on to explain is how, goblins and their kin refer to the living dead, being that they carry the reek of the dead with them.

For her part Mina seems caught between incredulous laughter and the urge to correct him, to explain the worst things that can arise from death with no stench to warn the living.

Yet another fear lingers in your mind. Mad the dead one might have been, but fervor in his eyes has shone all too genuine and the tales of the People are filled with accounts of wizards who can witness things far off, usually to the great detriment of whoever they are spying upon. No sense worrying over spilled blood, you tell yourself as Gorok turns back to the ascent.

"Wait," Mina says, her voice growing more certain as she speaks. "Now that that thing is gone we should rest first, night makes a fair counsel."

Gorok considers it for a moment before agreeing. "The things above waitied for many years, they can wait one camp-break."

[] Write in level up plan

OOC: Not entirely happy with this, but with the ghoul having tried to get smart and died there is less in character urgency about exploring up above and there is also that level up pending. It would feel like cheating you a little to make you do those rolls as level 1 characters when you have the XP to be level 2. In the meantime, you did get some hints as to what was going on here.