Finding the Spark (Pathfinder 1E Quest)

The Season of Still Stone

"Your choice." You half glare at the elder, your shadow wavering in the light of lanterns hooded to only s sliver of blue flame. "Then I will be staying here as well."

Lorak turns towards you, head tipped to the side, scratching the base of his horn, though for a long moment he says nothing either aloud or in your mind. For her part Mina does not look quite surprised, not anymore but she opens her mouth to argue against your decision, but Cob's bellicose agreement is far faster while Gorok leans back on his heels, tail on the ground to show his solidarity. It's hard to tell if he would have done so had you not spoken, but as this is how it is now.

"Very well." Annoyance colors the min-voice a dirty green, like half rotted lichen unfit for the pot. "We will speak here."

Shaman Will Save: 1d20 +5 = 13 (Failure)

'Speak' is perhaps an overstatement and not just because the mind mage does not utter a single sound. The xulgath shaman is set against the stone, hissing angrily through his gag until at last he he made to meet the eyes of the elder. It is as though a veil is drawn over his face, all rag, all understanding gone from it . His interrogator just starts talking, offering an account of the Lurkfang Tribe starting with the discovery of a strange gold glowing dust in the depths of an old sinkhole. They had thought it was gold, but it shone with its own light and it weighed far too little in the hand and the scales of passing traders.

Not knowing what else to do with it, the shaman had sacrificed it to the tribal spirit, He Who Lurks Above, once a mighty scaled beast, now more than that, a totem, a guardian. Something had gone wrong with the sacrifice though the prisoner could not say what according to Lorak, the spirit had gone or died and the shaman had then moved as one possessed to the place where the dust had been found, he had driven his fellow Xulgath without mercy or rest to break the stone into a sealed chamber, the hiss of escaping air like the voice of ages long dead.

There had been a strange stone-hollow in the middle, a forge positioned below a disk pierced all around with spears and at the back a glass cylinder with something alive inside Sshesh.

Upon awaking the elder Xulgath took control of the tribe though mental dominion and cruelty both. He had forced the old chief to drive needled though his eyes and throw himself onto a pyre upon which the first blades of steel were forged. He had even peeled off the scaled hide to make grips.

But for all his malice the ancient seemed dismayed that only his live-tube, his forge andthe tools hidden within it had survived, nothing of the lore of his people. So he had set about writing tablet after tablet, demanding the tribe provide him such fine goods and reagents as he was used to... or at lest that is what the mind mage claims. For the tribe the black scale's demands might as well have been the ravings of derro, but they had to be obeyed

Caravans were ambushed, raids were begun and upon the flames of the Scourge prisoners were set to burn with eggs laid out all around them. Sshesh is breeding more of his ilk.

The raids Cauldron is suffering of late are simply the result of the latest and largest brood of such xulgath reaching the age to be blooded, though they had been blooded rather more than their progenitor intended, for the dwellers on these shores have long held out against even raids from the deeper caverns, a bastion too tough for even steel armed slavers to hold out against.

There is a chance that the anvil shall break the hammer, particularly as the original spirit of the Lurkfangs endured, according to your prisoner. He had been gathering herbs for a rite of beckoning where he would seek to slay the black scale and... destroy his blasphemous works. A poor ally he would have made, you realize.

Given what Lorak had found many of the warriors of Cauldron rally in the hopes of delivering what they hope will be the final blow that will force the ancient to show himself and slay him, but for Gorok who seeks those very tablets, perhaps even the tools and the apprentices this is as troubling as it is encouraging.

"We sneak in, steal much when they're lookin' at the fight," a newly arrived Cob suggests.

"There are rather a lot of them," you point out, though with a smile at his enthusiasm.

"Black scale chief controls all food, takes it to single storehouse. Poison stores, cause even more trouble, then sneak in, maybe kill him and take old shinnies."

That is starting to sound oddly doable and from the sounds of it Gorok is inclined to agree.

Which path do you take?

[] Attack at the side of the warriors out of Cauldron, hoping to break the xulgath tribe and then loot the remains

[] Use the attack as cover to sneak into their caves, poison their food stores and steal their treasures

[] Write in

OOC: You do not know what spell was used on the prisoner since it is weird psychic magic and you guys are just level 2, not really skilled enough to substitute knowledge types at a penalty.