Finding the Spark (Pathfinder 1E Quest)

Season of Rushing Waters

You raise your stone-bow to shoot the things, which is all the encouragement that Mina needs. As they buzz close she starts to sing, her voice more stern command than lullaby. Thus falls the foremost of the winged beasts, infant still wailing on the way down.

"Cob will get!" the little goblin shouts, and before the sound is even over he takes a running jump with his new knife at the ready to cut the binds. Alas he has mistimed the leap, ends up smashing into the ground with arms and legs wheeling even as the creature falls from the sky. Babies are tough you think, and hope.

Mina screams and there's a flash of lightness color where the creature falls, like the edges of a dream bleeding into waking one, as the 'stirge' hits the ground and bounces like a stone on still waters, once then twice. To judge from the volume of its screams the infant is till very healthy... but you have more trouble to worry about.


Stirge One takes 11 Damage -> Now at 11/22

The remaining beasts dive, perhaps in defense of their fallen fellow perhaps only in hunger. Hands slick with sweat you pull on the trigger, but while the heavy bolt passes through one of its wings it has four of those. You soon find it has many other appendages beside as it strikes you full in the chest and latches on, scratching and picking at your neck, the drone of its wings impossibly loud.


By sheer instinct you try to roll in the mud to get away from the monster, but it does nothing. Its grip is too strong, its appetite too voracious... until it suddenly isn't. The thing goes slack above you and you scramble out from under it to see the first of the monsters sliced near in half, barely twitching with Gorok standing over it, head low and tail lashing while Cob tries to stab it and Mia is backed almost into a mass of dry thorns by the third creature.


Though you try to return the favor and tangle her assailant in its own shadow there is just too many other shadows moving about, such as the branches swaying in the moving air. So instead you 'catch' a tree and the winged horror comes for Mina again, and this time she's not as lucky as the thing latches onto her back.


Out of the corner of your eye you see Cob dispatch the beast still writhing on the ground even as Gorok charges back, axe already painted red in his hands. The thump of steel striking chitin echoes under the branches as, to your, relief the thing lets go of a battered Mina and rises into the air again on labored wings.


Just as the one who had been on you starts to shake itself awake you bid it stay. In ropes of shadow you bind it, rooted in place no matter the furious beating of its wings. In truth it is a prisoner of its own mind.

"It won't hold long. Kill it!"

Your shout is unnecessary, as Gorok is never one to leave a job half done. Though even rooted in place the thing is able to weave around the axe blow meant to end it. It it less fortunate against the dagger of a whooping Cob who almost manages to lodge his new dagger in its abdomen as he twists it around in there.

Feeling lightheaded you are vengeful you slap a bolt into your bow, cock it and raise it to shoot the beast... Then Gorok strikes and you do not so much see it die as feel the hot blood in your eyes, some of it undoubtedly your own twice spilling. Looking down you see that it is also all over your cloak and your hands and down to your boots.


It is only as the ringing in your ears stops that you realize the baby had stopped crying, though as Mina rushes over the the corpse of the monster she finds it unharmed.

Akorian, Cob, Gorok and Mina gain 400 XP

"Oh..." you breathe, surprised as she turns around with it top revealing pale green skin and black faceted eyes. "Mongrelfolk. I wonder what it's doing up here?" It is hard to tell with babies since their size depends so much on how much they have been fed, but he looks about a season and a half old.

Mina Knowledge (The Planes): 1d20+10 = 13 (Failure)

"I don't think so," Mina says, speaking slowly. "He does not seem to mind the light anyway." She runs her hand over the blanket the infant is wrapped in. "Huh, that is odd, this is Cullerton wool. I've only seen it once before on a sash given to a one of the priestesses by a noble pilgrim."

"So he's from wherever this Cullerton is? Do people from there often look like this?"

Mina looks like she is not sure how to explain something to you so you just motion for her to be blunt.

"People aren't as varied in the sunlight world. You have humans, gnomes, dwarfs, halflings, oh elves and half elves I guess, but that is about it among the civilized peoples and none of them have eyes like this..." She trails off guiltily. "Not that there is anything wrong with them."

"I don't think the infant understands you," you hazard a joke while you get the blood off your face.

Cob comes over and pokes the baby with a finger. "Definitely not goblin," he proclaims. At the curious looks that earns him he explains. "Didn't bite."

Gorok is the only one who seems to find that answer reasonable.

In the meantime Mina had been unwrapping the blanket a little. "There's a crest under here, threaded in gold. Who puts gold on a baby? Wait... a bow threaded like a lyre. That's House Narikopolus. They are high Chelish nobility, the Dukes of Menador. I guess that makes sense then. Not the stirges though, those make a lot less sense now. Unless... I guess someone did not want you either, huh little guy?"

Mina Knowledge (Nobility): 1d20+11 = 30 (Full Success)

The not-mongrelfolk and apparently 'Chellish' infant flails his fists at her.

"We need to get him to a temple of Desna of another kindly power. They'll take care of him."

"How likely is such a temple to let us in the door?" you ask motioning between yourself, Cob tearing off a stirge's wing to eat and Gorok performing his own much more thorough butchery on the rest of the creature.

"I can glamor myself," she says, nodding with perhaps more fervor than she feels at the prospect.

Alas, there is another complication. According to Gorok the nearest road is west... in the direction the stirges were flying.

Mina Gains 50 XP

What do you do next?

[] Continue to Gorok's tribe deeper in the woods, you can handle a baby for a few sun-turnings

[] Head in the direction the stirges were going looking for a warmblood road

[] Write in

OOC: Congratulations it's a... something (you failed the roll to identify).