Finding the Spark (Pathfinder 1E Quest)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Fantasy
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- Tags
- pathfinder
[x] Seek out a curse breaker for Mina
[X] Speak to the troll. Had he found someone else to deal with his brother?
[X] Speak to the troll. Had he found someone else to deal with his brother?
OK it looks like it's curse breaker and then someone to destroy the ring.
Arc 3 Post 39: A Bat's Bargain
A Bat's Bargain
29 of Arodus 4707 A.R. (Absalom Reckoning)
Elder Lorak seems from your recollections the most likely to either be able to break a curse of blindness or know someone who does. So as Iolda and her companions seek to take what succor they can in the unfamiliar settlement filled with folks they are used to hearing about only in dark tales by the fire, you, Mina, Cob, and Gorok make your way up the long, winding path to converse with Elder Lorak. Though as this time you do not have a xulgath prisoner in hand chances are you would have a longer wait, perhaps one longer than you can afford.
"We should bring crevice bats, buy from market," Cob pipes up, hearing you and Gorok worry at the timing of the meeting.
"Why?" Your scaled companion asks, knowing that the goblin's plans often make sense, if by unusual paths.
"Well he doesn't have a mouth, remember?" He waits for the nods to confirm that you indeed recall the elder's visage. "Well that's weird, ain't it? So I asked around to know what he is and the great-big-mouth-kobold said he eats bats, the little brown ones."
"How would a bat fit in a mouth that isn't there?" Mina asks, halfway between amused and perturbed.
To this Cob shrugs. "Dunno, but he buys lots of 'em and he doesn't sett 'em on, has to be to eat."
Cob Knowledge (Local): 1d20+6 = 26 (Critical Success)
Lost 20 gp
Regardless of how solid the notion might be live bats were among the more plentiful creatures being solid in the markets, filling up cages and baskets squealing and screeching right alongside brown lizards and water worms. If only you didn't have to carry the basket. Still, having to shout to be heard over the damned things does make the guard less suspicious when you claim 'delivery for Elder Lorak' so you are waved up the path with a sympathetic look.
Akorian Bluff: 1d20+12 = 28 (Success)
Reaching the three sides crevice you knock as you had seen your guide do before and a few moments later the horned elder shows himself, looking at first surprised at the bats then even more surprised to see your face behind them.
"So, already the darkness of your dreams slips into the waking world, child of broken dreams," the elder speaks without words.
"It is not my wish that I be blind," Mina answers acerbically, perhaps despite herself. "We have come to ask if you know of any way way to break this curse."
"A way to break this curse, perhaps. It it yet a small thing, a stalk barely rooted into stone, but it will grow deeper child, it is your destiny." He shakes his head, making his bright horn drawing an arc of pale light through the air.
"We are not asking for an answer to 'destiny', whatever that might be, we are asking for a spell broken," Gorok cuts in, as uninterested in riddles as Mina herself is.
"The one who cast it is dead," you add, though keeping silent on the fact that the dark spirit is unlikely to stay dead as long as the ring remains intact.
"Such haste..." the thought trails with an unnerving feeling, like a tingle at the back of your brain. "I will break the spell, I do not even ask for gold for I know your journey will be long and perilous under the light of the lands above where those of Nar Voth are not often welcome. In exchange, I ask for a favor to be redeemed when we speak again."
"The stew you do not know the recipe for is often too rich for your blood," Mina replies, an odd saying, but one easily understood. "I'd rather pay in gold and part with scales balanced."
That seems to annoy the elder, his tone is harsh, almost painful in the mind as he answers. "Very well, if you are so certain of your path... four hundred gold hammers, that is my only offer."
Mina looks back at your and Gorok with a wince, that is almost half your stock in coin. Maybe, you can see her doubt, the favor would not be so bad.
What does Mina do?
[] Offer a Favor
After all he can only ask for it when and if you pass this way
[] Pay in Gold, lose 400 gp (Current Funds: 960 gp 7 sp 15 cp)
It is a long and dangerous journey to make blind
[] Leave
No doubt Mina can find cheaper curse breakers at your destination
[] Write in
OOC: Welp, it is a solution, but a rather spicy one.
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Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
Not a fan of owing open-ended favors, even at the expense of paying 400 gold.
Regular 3rd level spellcasting services for a Remove Blindness spell would only cost 150 gold, so this asshole is seriously price gouging us. We can afford it, though, much more so than we can afford Mina to be blind for weeks or months to come.
[X] "Not how I would expect friends of Cauldron to be treated, given the aid we rendered in your time of need. But if that is how you wish any future relationship we might have with the community to be handled, then so be it."
-[X] Pay in Gold, lose 400 gp
Regular 3rd level spellcasting services for a Remove Blindness spell would only cost 150 gold, so this asshole is seriously price gouging us. We can afford it, though, much more so than we can afford Mina to be blind for weeks or months to come.
[X] "Not how I would expect friends of Cauldron to be treated, given the aid we rendered in your time of need. But if that is how you wish any future relationship we might have with the community to be handled, then so be it."
-[X] Pay in Gold, lose 400 gp
- Location
- Germany
[X] Pay in Gold, lose 400 gp (Current Funds: 960 gp 7 sp 15 cp)
If we pay the money, might as well do it without complaint and not sour the relationship on both sides instead of just one.
There's no point in angry words here.
If we pay the money, might as well do it without complaint and not sour the relationship on both sides instead of just one.
- Location
- St. Petersburg
The service costs as much as people are willing to pay for it.
If it's cheaper elsewhere, buy it elsewhere. That's my answer when I am being haggled down. He may not have the Remove Blindness spell, and we are not in a temple that offers services at fixed rates.
I think an offer of a favor is fair. Yes, it's probably worth more than 400 gold, especially by the time it is cashed in, but he is making a gamble here too. Us being alive and coming back to speak to him is in no way a guarantee.
And things get weird when it comes to people with future sight. Suppose he wants us to... I dunno, dispose of illithids' nest (are there illithids in Pathfinder?) when we hit level 12, a somewhat reasonable expectation... to him, maybe. Hearing about it at level 3 would elicit an unanimous 'HELL NO' from the party. Then what, ask for the cost of favor in gold? The 3rd level party hasn't seen that much money in their wildest dreams. Ask for peanuts in exchange? To us, the value of removing blindness here and now is worth far more than 150 gold (the market rate for removing the curse) he doesn't even need. It wouldn't be a fair use of his time and efforts, and he would still have his problem to deal with.
All I am saying, it might be entirely reasonable to him to both ask for a favor and to keep its contents undisclosed for now. In which case I'd like to deal on the level and expect the same in turn.
[x] Offer a Favor
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[X] Offer a Favor
TheOmnimercurial
Dragon Bard
- Location
- UK
[x] Offer a Favor
There are no Ilithids in Pathfinder, but there are plenty of things that are as bad in the depths of Orv (that is the lowest level of the darklands).
Adding up the votes paying in gold wins, just barely. I think this is the closest vote we've had in a while.
Arc 3 Post 40: Of Strange Concoctions
Of Strange Concoctions
31 of Arodus 4707 A.R. (Absalom Reckoning)
In the end going on blind is no choice at all, but you talk through favor against coin long and hard. On the one hand, Cauldron is the only settlement above or below the vaults of the world where you have been so far welcomed and the favors you have done them so far have proven profitable, but on the other, every instinct and every lesson learned in pain and tears tells you that open-ended favors are folly and Lorek... damn that title anyway, has given you little reason to trust him with the way he's treated Mina.
"Maybe he knows something we don't," your friend says when she notices your anger at the spider's brood of a magician.
"Dark heritage... dark heritage," you wave around at the pleasant half-light of the tavern to faces furred and scaled, knees that bend backwards and necks with gills. "Who in this city can name their heritage? Whatever blood runs in your veins likely runs in theirs a hundred times over, and whatever fate you may have ahead of you a dozen of their ancestors had behind them. Four hundred gold coin cheap for the asking as only the desperate might give them."
"Or a favor, he would have preferred the favor," Gorok speaks up between stripping the flesh off the leg of a cave lizard.
"Aye, wouldn't he now..." You take out the gloom blade, twist it this way and that to admire the way it swallows the light. "How much would our aid have been worth when we first made our way into the city armed with naught but the cast-offs of the duergar, and look at us now? How much more will it be worth in a season's time, in seven?"
"Think we'll be alive in seven seasons?" Cob asks, dubiously holding up seven fingers.
"Of course, why wouldn't we be?" you ask confused at the sudden morbid turn of the conversation.
"Us goblins don't live long with tribe, away from tribe even less," your friend points out, fluttering his large ears, not all that troubled by the proclamation.
"We are together," Gorok cuts in. "Tribe of four isn't usually that much, but depends on which four."
And with that you all clink your glasses and turn in for the long sleep. Lorek had said that he would have the potion ready after you awoke.
***
1st of Rova 4707 A.R. (Absalom Reckoning)
Ready it is indeed, or at the very least it is something. Pulsing in its container with grey-blue light like the slow heartbeat of some deep slumbering beast the glass hums in the air, as though the thing wants to get out and into the innards of some unsuspecting imbiber. Somehow you refrain from making any threats of the elder, they are implied in any case.
Steeling herself, Mina takes the vial and downs in two gulps. Her eyes widen, she sways a little.
"Blergh... I don's dhink dere's a name for dhat tas'e," she slurs but stays upright. "I can shee... colors pretty... you have pretty shcales." One assumes she means Gorok.
Mina Cured of Blindness
Lost 400 gp -> Current Funds: 560 gp 7 sp 15 cp
"We are keeping the bats," you shoot off in parting. What exactly you will do with a basket-full of bats has yet to be determined, but you are not quite done with the strangeness of the potion quiet yet.
When Mina wakes from the sleep she obviously needs she seems troubled, 'eyes on tunnels that aren't there' as they say. It does not really help that the first word out of her mouth is: "Blood..." She collects herself and adds: "I dreamed of blood, flowing twisting, spraying outwards, but it was so loud so I made it silent. I think I can still the magic in blood, for a little while at least."
Secondary Effect from ???: 78 -> Mina Gains Bonus Blood Hex Feat Abeyance
Alas, between the discussions on pay and Mina sampling strange potions that knocked her right back into bed you were not able to find any local spirit binder willing to take on the ring. Even mentioning such things in passing got you shown the door, more or less politely. It seems the four of you will have that curse trailing your steps for at least the remainder of the journey.
Cob Knowledge (Local): 1d20+6 = 10 (Failure)
Though the journey is still long ahead of you, while you are still in the tunnels patrolled by Cauldron you have a chance to speak to one of your traveling companions about recent happenings, the world beyond or other things that might strike your fancy.
Who do you speak to?
[] Mina about all the ominous talk and the strange potion
[] Gorok about what he plans to do once you are back in the burnlands
[] Iolda about how her people are holding out and the nature of the journey, does she rescue her kindred often?
[] Write in
OOC: Enjoy
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- Location
- Germany
[X] Gorok about what he plans to do once you are back in the burnlands
Also I will note here you are not playing a diplomatic character, there is a reason Kori feels less smooth than Viserys.
- Location
- Germany
He often feels younger than Viserys ever did, despite being a teenager most of the quest.
Yeah, but the thing about Viserys is that he was faking it hard with all those social rolls and also he felt he had to fit the role of king, of sorcerer, of dragon, Kori just wants to hang out with the first friends he has ever made in the world and not die to the monsters.