Finding the Spark (Pathfinder 1E Quest)

Season of Rushing Waters

The Elders of Cauldron are a loud bunch, such as to make you almost regret Lorak's eerie silence, they chatter and they argue, they hiss and they caw in accent and manner almost as varied as their appearances, but they are not at the seventh and last unwise. Like most places outside the dour dwarf holds Cauldron does not have warriors whose only task is the spilling of blood, the nearest thing to it are the cave lizard herders who guard their flocks from smaller predators and the hunters stalking the outer corridors, the same ones who had brought warning of the xulgath raids. To spend those lives lightly is to risk the slow relentless killer more dangerous than any beast in these tunnels, hunger.

"Ghoul mother take you all!" one man with a head half of white hair, half of ragged feathers shouts at another who sports a milky third eye in the center of his forehead. "Treasure is that what you want! On the word of a bunch of vagabonds blown in on an updraft!"

"Where did you think our ancestors came from Izec," the other councilor asks quietly. "Do you think we crawled from the lake? Maybe we grew out of the rock? I could believe that given the the hardness of your head!"

On it goes like that for long enough that your stomach starts to complain, though thankfully the lantern set in the center of the table for the weak eyed cuts it off a bit.

Cauldron Elder Reaction: 77 (Major aid given)

In the end the threat of the raids especially to the trade of which the settlement has grown more and more dependent on in recent turnings of the seasons is enough to sway most of the council. such hunters and herders as are willing to set out in a deep raid will be equipped with the best weapons and alchemical concoctions as can be gathered and sent out in a full attack on the enemy while you four are to be... infiltrators as one rat tailed woman puts it. One would have to be deaf not to hear the word 'assassins' behind it. Stealing from the xulgath is one thing, but it is killing Shsesh that offers hope of ending the battle without drowning the tunnels in blood.

To your eye Gorok looks troubled, surprisingly not relaxing even when the final word is given.

"Worried about the fight?" you hazard.

"Yesss..." he sighs, well hisses deeply, but it comes out to the same thing from him. "Win fight or lose fight crafter, hunter, herder, growers will all die. Maybe I find what I seek and they lose what they have. How many others have been here, in what scales did they weigh it?"

"Crooked ones probably," you shrug. "Most people value their own interests more highly than others. Even if you wanted to though you can't guess the future."

"You have to," he contradicts you. "Have to guess right more often than wrong or you are dead."

"What or you get lucky." You shake your head. "Come on, lets see what Cob and Mina have gotten up to."

Having decided upon the path of subtlety two paths are open before you, either attempt to sneak in the same way as before and hope no one missed the shaman and thus make sure you can coordinate the timing better or going the long route around xulgath territory to attack them from the west, potentially risking conflict with whoever their neighbors on that side are. They are probably not friendly given how far they are from any source of outside trade. Isolated groups tend to be hostile, if there are even people up there and not horrors come up from the deeper reaches or stranger things.

[] Take the same route as last time, coordination is key

[] Take the detour, if that shaman was important enough to be plotting against their new chief he is sure to be missed

[] Write in

OOC: This is also your chance to put up any buffs you want for the raid.

Season of Rushing Waters

Around Cauldron the tunnels had been carved by the relentless flow of water, sinuous curves widening into chambers pillared in limestone set layer upon layer like the lines of fungus trees. Life too is relatively abundant here, even if it is of the sort that can bear the reek of the gasses bubbling up from the depths. The many breeds of Cauldron folk can and in more peaceful times do hunt the many sorts of digger, slurper not just the scurrying things that are the meat of any hunter, intelligent or nay, but as you move west all that changes, water carved tunnels give way to ones that had been clearly carved with pick and chisel, or at least expanded upon. Pick and chisel and brute strength...

Orc work, you guess from the ways of their war with the dwarfs. In the legends of the dwarfs at least the orcs had come at them with naught but brute savagery, naked as a slash lizard, but as their blood was spilled on stone and sand the survivors, the lucky and the clever learned, first to use weapons then tools, true not with any subtlety or skill, the dour dwarfs would say, but with will and savagery enough. Never were there foes more bitter than the dwarf and the orc, but they did after a manner respect each other

Akorian Knowledge (Dungeoneering): 1d20 5 =22 (Success)

Mina is surprised to hear your mussing on the matter, having been taught that orcs were little more than beasts whereas the dwarfs were among the most skilled artisans on the 'face' of the world. The rather disturbing idea of the world having a face and people walking around it aside that brings up the matter of the sky-dwarfs, the Betrayers as they are known in the litanies of the Duergar. In the histories of the Varisians who followed Soividia Ustav the dwarfs are recalled as having built great citadels, vaster and more beautiful than any work of human hands in the dark days of the Age of Anguish... many of which fell to the orcs.

Mina Knowledge (History): 1d20 +8 =17 (Success)

"And yet they still claim orcs are savages, beneath contempt?" You probably sound a bit too incredulous, as though you doubt her account but this is absurd. What kind of lunatic discounts such a dangerous foe.

"There were a whole lot of them?" Mina's frown, not to mention the way the words sink into a question at the end make it clear she does not quite believe what she has been taught anymore. "They say orcs serve demon gods. The kindest thing they have been known to bow to is the Lord of Iron and he is war incarnate in all its savagery." She turns her head this way and that in quick furtive movements. "I hope we don't meet any orcs."

"We already did," you say, even more bewildered. "They paid us quite well."

"Those were half orcs not full-blooded," she waves your words off. "Full orcs are a lot stronger and more brutal."

In your admittedly limited experience everyone is brutal given a good enough reason, or you suppose a bad enough from the perspective of who they might come across and it had not even occurred to you to ponder the heritage of someone you met in a mongrelman settlement, they might have had the blood of fifty lineages in them and not know or care.

"What do orcs even do?" you ask carefully.

"They... er... raid and they kill, they take slaves back to their camps and sacrifice prisoners to their gods on the even of battle, they make pacts with giants wargs, winter wolves, and blood bats."

It takes a bit for her to explain those last two things, but they certainly sound like someone you would want to have as an ally and as for the sacrifice... if some greater power had given you a sign that in sacrificing that shaman you would have victory you'd have slit his throat yourself. Of course you had also been told that gods do not usually bind one's fate to victory or to defeat like that so you guess you will have to count on the vagaries of Mina's own magic and the alchemy of Cauldron to see the four of you safe.

Gained

• 3 Scent Snuffer
• 3 Soothe Syrup

So far the scent snuffer had done its job it seems as you had passed through what Gorok insisted were the lairs of yet more spiders of the larger sorts, but since entering the old orc caves you had heard neither splash of water or shuffle of beast which must have unnerved Gorok given how often he called a pause to Warty's advance so he can have a look around. This isn't like the goblin tribe, an empty tomb. There's lichen growing on moist walls and signs of bone-worms dragging their armored bulk through some of the larger corridors, scrapping against the walls, but nothing more recent than a season.

That is when you come to the Gash, a river more than fifty feet across which cuts the roughly triangular chamber you are in half... at least it is supposed to. The river which in this season is supposed to be running wild and foaming is not there, the fused stone bridge made by some unknown magician in times past now spans a dark and follow channel. Hollow but not empty, from the depths of the channel one can hear the sound of metal striking stone, of gears moving and strangest of all the sound of voices, too muffled by distance to make out words, but clearly those of workers moving in unison on some great task.

What do you do?

[] Cross the bridge and be on your way, you do not need more trouble

[] Follow the voices, something strange is going on here and you would rather find it before it finds you

[] Write in

OOC: You guys took the long way, so now the question is do you want to poke what's here and if you dare the chance of it poking you back later.