Finding the Spark (Pathfinder 1E Quest)

The Season of Still Stone

You dream at first of commonplace things, the dangers of the road, flood, fire, raiders and of the prospect of selling the stones you had ripped from the temple to the highest bidder. As the sack opens it seems to you in the dream it seems to you that it is the mouth of some great reptilian beast disgorging them as it might spit out the bones of its victims in disdain. Rather than feel fearful of the thing you are overcome by the feeling that you are missing something that the arrangement of the shards hold some hidden meaning and that you should snatch them back from the red-eyed merchant his cheeks streaked with blood and restore them to the temple. The fact that the 'bag' sports a set of very carnivorous teeth keeps your hand back long enough to take a closer look at Gorok, who you realize to your horror had the wide-eyed vacant look of the blindhelm, his head illuminated by... something.

Where is the light coming from? As you scramble back the figure of Gorok, the merchant, even the stall and the facsimile of Cauldron lose depth and color, like shadows on a wall but where the biting sack had been there is now a single ruby larger than any you had seen in your life, larger than you think one ever could be, the size of your head, pulsing crimson light, first a line though the center, then spreading out. An eye, it's an eye opening, you think with mounting panic, looking around for something to cover it.

As you struggle to pull the cloak off your shoulders and throw it onto the thing it starts to roll towards you long the floor, the sound of crystal striking stone a cackle that chills your blood.

"What do you want!" you shout as loud as you can. "What is this?"

As you turn and consider running you realize there is nothing there, like a vast cavern spreading out in every direction as far as you can see, your voice lost and echoless. Instead of running from it you mutter a blessing of the mind under your breath on instinct and kick the thing out into the dark. It flies forth like a malignant ember leaving you standing on a pool of light still even and grey, without source and without shadow.

If the only thing here is the floor I'm going to read that then, you vow as you get down on your hands and knees to make some sense of what's there. It has to be something, groves, tracks, even a smooth floor would reveal something, if only that it had been carved. So it is with your head turned downwards and your palms feeling the stone for grooves that you hear a voice behind you.

"Child of the Sundered, Guide of the Lost behold and be at peace!" The light which had been soft as the glow of common glowshrooms revolved into a vortex of impossible darkness and scintillating light that you know would blind you in an instant. From the heart of that vortex emerge two pairs of arms, grey-skinned like your own palms held up in a gesture of peace.

"Dark Below, what are you?" you ask bewildered.

"An answer, a shadow on a wall soon banished, light at the kindling of all things," the voice emerges from the heart of the vortex.

It does not sound like an answer, you think resentfully, but instead you ask. "What was the thing I kicked away?"

"Scavenger's lure, feast's light, they come for what you have, they come for what you claim, they come for what you might be."

"Who?"

"Kin in flesh, but not in thought, lied and lost, doomed and darkened." The syllables rise and fall, rise and fall, their patterns like music in the dark.

"What 's their name?" you prompt again, but the pulse of light and darkness are the same and so are its words. They are not spoken with any particular inflection, be it frustration, anger or cruel laughter, you had heard them all before. This is simply the answer, the only answer to this question that this strange being can give.

"Have they come before?" you try another way.

"Came in purpose, not in form, mirror bright and shadow dark," it pulses. "Time is short and space is near."

Do you have any questions for the strange visitation?

Up to Three (3) Questions

[] Why are you here?

[] Who are the Lost?

[] Why was I Sundered?

[] What is the dark steel ring?

[] Who poisoned the Dancer?

[] Write in

OOC: Welcome to being an oracle, which is to say an unbound conduit of otherworldly powers. Depending on what Kori wished for he would be visited by a minor Outsider in his dreams, 'wisdom' here had a double meaning, it is the one that knows the most, but takes the most wisdom to interpret. Camaraderie would have been an Agathion Glory would have been a Devil.