Finding the Spark (Pathfinder 1E Quest)

Elsewhen Elsewhere

When you were young, chasing spider-lizards more from boredom and the desire to be away from the others in the Hall, you came upon a pair of hunters in the wild: one dark haired and sporting ragged cuts on his cheeks and the other grey haired and missing an arm, the limb ending in a ragged petrified stump. They were arguing loudly, their voices bouncing off the walls like boulders from a giant's hands and so you hid and listened, such is the wisdom of the People for secrets have power. Three things you gained that day: an understanding of how swiftly a knife to the neck kills, a pair of boots with the laces still in them you sold for seventeen silver, and a nightmare that stalked your slumber for a season.

Almost you had forgotten. Alas that it had not forgotten you.

There is stone under your feet, jagged and grey, fashioned into fangs rising as though to scrape an unseen vault above. Only this time you know it is not a vault, you recognize the emptiness above, the 'sky' whose name is a curse in the duergar tongue only it is not as you had seen it in your brief visit to the Burnlands. There is no orb of burning gold, no brilliant gems of silver starlight nor the pitted face of the moon, only a veil of grey. The twisted blackened things that you had taken for stalagmites before reveal themselves to be 'trees' burned black and withered. What horror had befallen this land?

The thought drags your eyes back the way you had come to see a group of travelers and at first they recall Iolda and her charges, not ragged and worn as those who follow the Bellflower might be they aren't this bad: faces gaunt with hunger, layers upon layers of clothes, now little more than rags stained grey in the ashen air and yet still shivering. They are not going to make it, old Lukios is already more carried than walking and you have nothing to carry him in...

You should be paying more attention to them...

Why had you not turned your head to look before?

I'll have to scout ahead, you turn your head away before they can stray in the direction of the children. The broken land gives plenty of opportunities to hide, though a part of you wonders if it might be simply that everything else here is dead. Nothing left to fear but hunger and cold, the last and greatest predators.

As though to mock your hopes a screech echoes from a above the next ridge-line and there you see it, as tall at the shoulder as as a man is tall, its body like that of a line though stretched out and gaunt as though by endless hunger, one head leonine and the other goat-like, both with eyes that glow like witch-light, from its shoulders ragged wings growing. It is waiting, stalking, tail coiling like a serpent above its back... no, a dragon, the scaled head opens in a mocking screech.


Chimeras, you recall from lessons that seem a lifetime ago, are as lazy as they are wicked, perfectly content to wait for their next meal to come to them. Maybe it hadn't seen you yet... Looking down you are amazed to see nothing at all, a glamor hides you from head to toe. Coiling at the room of your mind the whispers grow, almost like words, an offer, an enticement.


4th of Rova 4707 A.R. (Absalom Reckoning)

You wake with a full body shudder, like a mole caught in the gaze of a serpent, or you guess like a man in the gaze of a chimera. Cob is close and so you ask him: "What's a lion?"

"Big cat with big head. Why'd you ask?" your goblin friend asks in turn, putting away what you dearly hope is not another of those noise-makers.

"I dreamed of one, or something like one..." you start to explain, but Cob already has a solution.

"You need ta find one and eat 'em. Some say you have ta eat the brain in particular, but I don't hold with that. Wanna see me do a trick?" He does not wait for you to say yes, but you do so anyway, about halfway through him jumping in place, garbing his feet and twisting in air, only to let go and land on his hands with a hearty slap.

Cob Acrobatics: 1d20+11 = 29 (Success)

"Finely done, masterful!" you cheer. Something about the rhythm of the claps sounds off to your ear, or maybe incomplete. Adding a few syllables between the beats you find a figure of shadow tearing its way from the ground and start clapping, soundlessly, along. You stop dead... That's a hunter's power. Maybe not entirely, the power isn't as deep or all encompassing against the lights of the halflings' fires, but if you could have done this when you were younger you would've earned your knife, you're sure of it.

How does Akorian feel at this revelation?

[] Sad, wondering what that life might have been like

[] Angry, if his tribe had not shunned them maybe he would have stayed until this magic awoke

[] Curious, why had this power appeared in his mind now and why could he no longer make a shadow-binding

[] Write in

OOC: For reference, this is the last time you had a dream-vision.

5th of Rova 4707 A.R. (Absalom Reckoning)

"I wonder why my magic changed?" you ask aloud at the next stopover, slowly chewing on the piece of hardtack and coming to the realization that you can get bored of eating anything. "Bindings to trickery, bindings to shape of self? It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't fit..." me, you think but do not say aloud. The power that whispers within has always answered readily, when you speak the words is jumps to your command, yet now the words of binding are hollow and new ones come to mind. Why? Is there some outer force, some veiled patron behind your arts or had you nudged something in that dream, like a sleepwalker might trip and scatter their bedding?

Mina just shakes her head looking into the fire while Cob looks up from his travel stew bowl more at the sound of a distant bat far above. The relatively straight tunnel you had been following here had branched out into a tangle of limestone passages dominated by the slow drip of water and a kind of mold you had never seen before that stained the hands, clothes, and especially feet of anyone who so much as brushed against it a dark blue. Cob had some fun with it and Iolda had wondered at its value as dye.

Speaking of the halfling magician: "Tis as the gods wish, even when we do not know their names."

"That seems a bit of a unfair trade. I didn't seal any bargains, in my blood or foe's blood," you point out mildly, earning a sniff from her and what you are pretty sure are warning gestures from some of the other halflings. Familiar territory then.

Mina Knowledge (Arcana): 1d20 +10 = 17 (Failure)
Iolda Knowledge (Arcana): 1d20+8 = 9 (Critical Failure)
Cob Rolls Knowledge (Dungeoneering): 1d20+9 = 16 (Failure)

"Blood sacrifice, even if it is willing is... unusual in many places. I'd assume including Andoran," Mina whispers. "Frowned upon."

"It was an expression, I didn't mean it literally." After a moment's pause you do ask. "How is one meant to make a bond on the soul without a blood offering?"

"Spoken vows and all the deeds of your life," she answers like she is quoting something, probably something she cares about so you don't point out the obvious, people can lie with word and deed both, the point of blood it opening the supplicant up to retribution.

Still, the lack of easy answers does not deter you, if anything it's exhilarating. Maybe you'll be the first one to figure it out and in understanding gain control over the magic flowing through flesh, bone, and shadow as no one else ever had.


As you continue to move more carefully through the caves the bats grow, if anything, louder. A good sign, Gorok assures you, since they are probably hunting in the world above. It is not that flying creatures are unknown in Nar Vorth, but the tunnels here are generally narrow enough that most winged things generally come from above or below, terraced caves and black seas of Sekamina. Strange and perilous as you had found the lands above, you are glad to be nowhere near any steps that lead below.


The peace of your musings shatters in a instant as Gorok hisses a wordless warning just as half a dozen winged shapes come streaming down out of the shadows, claws outstretched to grab the halflings behind you. They had covered themselves in limestone dust and water to cover up the heat of their bodies you notice, but under the plaster are forms caught between bat, bird, and humanoid. You might not know what kindred they spring from, but you know too well what they are, raiders trying to snatch up easy catches.


Out of all of you only Gorok is quick enough on his feet to act before the creature's talons close. He throws himself in front of one of the raiders and deals her a shallow cut with his axe as he pulls out of the dive. All around there is pandemonium as the enemy grabs four of the defenseless halflings, screeching and whooping.


Raider One Takes 7 Damage -> Now at 31/38

Blood turning to ice in your veins you see one of them almost grab on to Click's basket, only seeming to decide on the ginger halfling beside it at the last moment.


Four Halflings Grabbed

What do you do?

[] Write in Battle Plan

OOC: Damn, those initiative rolls were brutal. At least they didn't get a surprise round.