Finding the Spark (Pathfinder 1E Quest)

27st of Rova 4707 A.R. (Absalom Reckoning)

"I think..." the word stretches out uneasily, but it needs to be said for all that Mina will not enjoy hearing it. "We should speak to High Loreseeker Jaes before we make a decision on whether to take this phylactery out into the wilds. Over stone or under it I fear it can make more mischief out of the dreams and ambitions of those along the way."

As you mention the priestess of Desna, Kastor changes from initial wariness to acceptance, though he does insist that rather than take the ring off of temple grounds and into the city again she should be summoned here by messenger. It's not as though you have anywhere urgent to be today, so neither you nor Mina argue the point and instead spend the next hour recounting more of your adventures, though very deliberately not the story of the silver band, gift of the ancient dead that it was. The snail does a lot of heavy lifting again. To be fair, it was quite a large snail.

"You still have the eggs?" the priest asks, blinking in amazement.

"No one's bought them off us yet," Mina shrugs. What she does not add is that those eggs are what you had all agreed to sell next if the raid in Vale Manor had failed somehow.

The priest is spared from having to consider the logistics of snail egg trading by the appearance of his counterpart garbed still in colorful robes, though bearing a stout walking stick one might break over a foe's head in a pinch.

Alas, Mina looks like she had just swallowed a lump of coal raw, though before you can steel yourself to try explaining the matter, High Priest Kastor presents the facts with only a handful of pauses for Mina to interject if she wishes to.

She mostly doesn't.

"Mina... why did you not speak of this thing when you brought the babe to the temple?" The Loreseeker's tone is as bland as lichen stew, but Mina still jumps to assure her.

"It's not that I didn't trust you, I just... didn't want to to know such a thing could befoul the night."

For a long moment the priestess is quiet, then she speaks again. "Tell me, are you familiar with the tale of Ranja the Cunning?"

Mina Knowledge (Religion) (DC 16): 1d20+11 = 17 (Success)

"He tried to spare his people all wants and sorrows, to smooth the path ahead and veil ugly memories from the songs of the clan, but in so doing took from them the learning of life's lessons. Alas, to his sorrow, when he passed from the earth their sorrows fell thrice as thick, like the Great Summer rains falling all at once and thick with hail," she intoned the almost verse that you had come to associate with Desnan script. "But I am no elder, I'm just... well, me."

"If only elders could make an elder's mistake and only children could make a child's mistakes, oh what a blessed world we would live in," the priestess quips as her Pharasman colleague chuckles knowingly.

"Aye, though I must confess I would rather have to deal with the young making the mistakes of the aged than yet more of the latter made brash as children by the sense of looming Judgement."

Even as he had been speaking the priestess held a butterfly pendant in a well practiced grip, silver between her fingers flashing. For what she prays you are not sure, luck or lore or other stranger things, but when she looked up again upon the ancient rune-scarred ring it is with something balanced almost perfectly between pity and revulsion.

Jaes Knowledge (Religion) (DC 30): 1d20+12+2+2+1 = 33 (Success)

"You say it wanted to go on the finger of a statue that was no statue, but a false succubus?" the priestess asked at last. "Know ye that there were many foul cults in the lands of Azlant in the days of its darkening, but none so foul nor so insidious as the cults of unlife. In an age of plenty, unlike anything we can now imagine, what more could mortal man desire than that the good times would continue endlessly? Temptations for the 'discerning' palette were many, yet all came at a price. I am sure Blessed Tuvius could recount them better than I. So a few, a very few to the world's good fortune, sought another path only hinted at in the oldest and most apocryphal of the records of the old Arodonite faith, to create undeath that was like onto the spirits of the Outer Spheres and to do that..."

"They infected spirits of the Outer Spheres with undeath," Mina finishes, horrified.

"Were I to guess the thoughts of such madmen I would say that though the woman was no demon neither was she purely mortal, but some unhallowed admixture of mortal and immortal mortared with undeath. Though the wings as you say were not grown, neither were the truly false," the priest of Pharasma adds. "I fear that by placing the ring upon her finger you would have woken her, and woe betide the world to have such depraved souls walking it once more "

Tuvius Knowledge Religion (DC 25): 1d20+13 = 29 (Success)

"So if we were to sunder it then she might never wake," you point out.

"Or the soul now, freed of the soul cage, might fly to her and free her," Mina counters speaking barely above a whisper.

What does Akorian say?

[] This talisman is a danger and it will remain one as long as it is whole. Better to break it now than take counsel of our fears

[] Keep it here then, you know what it is and what the dangers are

[] Ask more about these Arodonite texts (Diplomacy DC 15)

[] Write in

OOC: I did not have Kori and Mina roll spellcraft on the buffs Jaes cast on herself since they were both rather preoccupied.