Finding the Spark (Pathfinder 1E Quest)

8th of Lamashan 4707 A.R. (Absalom Reckoning)

The voices fade from hearing, though they do not to silence fall, only a wordless whisper of a song that makes the hand twitch, that you might set verses to it once more. And yet you are not distracted as you return to the busy waters of the town, the port of sorts called Arkentos, for it above all other things is a stop over in the trade with Augustana. In that sense holding the wedding here is its own message on the part of the king, one you are about to burn with acid... at least hopefully.

"Kori, what's with all the gold? What did he want with you and Cob?" Mina asks.

"Goblin," you answer, a touch more cryptically than you had meant to. It is not like the small shoal of youngsters playing with some kind of inflated bladder are going to both know the tongue of the People and carry your words to the king, but caution keeps poison off your lips.

Mina looks to Cob and asks the same question, coming out in the short staccato tones of the goblin tongue.

"He wanted an ill prophecy so that he might have the freedom of his lover's arms and war against the Chalish instead of joining the Usena against their foes to the north..." As you give your account Mina nods along until it comes to the name of the knight Prince Cozut had given his heart to.

"Ravonge... that's odd, that sounds like an old name. Maybe... no, I'm sure of it, that is an old Taldan name. West Verduan, which means Andoran aristocratic, the kinds of families that used to be lords and ladies before the People's Revolt. It would make sense for one of their scions to join the Eagle Knights for the prestige of it and maybe even take on dangerous missions to prove their loyalty to the new regime, but at the same time sweet blood does not mix with the sour, as they say in Ardis, so a noble would seek noble to wed. Perhaps one of the sea is good enough."

Mina Knowledge (Nobility): 1d20+13 = 27 (Success)

Once you might have been entirely bewildered by the declaration, now you know enough to have at least an inkling of how the shadow of the self-proclaimed Infernal Empire falls over these waters bitter foes and would be supplicants all swarming about. Still, her motives matter little to you at the moment. You have a prophecy to declare...

The thought surges unpleasantly into your throat like half chewed food as you look towards the north. Among the scared warriors of the Usena you see a pair of beasts, sinuous and impossibility long, coil upon coil twisting blue-green, their horn-crowned heads along six feet long, their eyes the yellow of coins lost in the sand, and atop each one a northerner wearing shells glittering silver around their necks, an old man and a young woman.

Looks like you found Chief Rokus, he does not look nearly as old as you expected, and his daughter... she does not seem the sort to take bad news on her wedding day well.

"Big Snakes...?" Cob half-asks in awe.

A passing fisherman, now made server at the royal table, who had taken the chance to stop and look upon the foreign royals, helpfully informs you those are dragons.

The Usena chiefs draw their legitimacy from being able to saddle the vicious sea drakes of the northern Arcadian Ocean. It does not really ease your worries to hear there is as much sly bargaining as spear dancing in the bargain according to rumors. All in all you would have preferred done without the option to feed you to a fifteen foot long beast, but if they must have such creatures under them you'd rather they were short of wit or lacking courage. Alas, neither seem to be the case.

What words of doom do you proclaim upon the union of Izentis and Usena?

[] Plague, plays into the role of your people in old Izenti legends you heard

[] Strife, plays into the fears of the moment, the dark side of the alliance, the hope is that it does not play too well

[] Famine, simple straightforward and feared by all, though likely the local priests will try to reassure the people

[] The World-Breaker, you had been called that once before, maybe you can use it

[] Write in

OOC: You guys failed a bunch of checks for identifying that sea serpent, but then it occurred to me that its riders would have made its power known as far as they could since it made them seem all the more fearsome. Also, any association with the Linnorm Kings, who must kill the beasts for which they are named, may not be coincidental, but one would be wise not to point that out to the Usena themselves.

8th of Lamashan 4707 A.R. (Absalom Reckoning)

No ink is there to set to parchment, but there are stones about, flat limestone sheets pale by conjured light, already writ with the shells of small shelled things, spirals that catch and turn the eye inwards on their own. Cob lends his clever tool, Mina her prayers for all that Desna might or might not hear a voice so deep, and Gorok his protection, and you are lost to the subtle voices. This union, should it come to pass, what sorrows what tragedies will it lead to?

The hand flies tracing the lines in the stone, then other lines unseen that do not seem to you willfully carved, but revealed, nonsense symbols into ominous script rephrased:

Beneath the moon's blind gaze, the ocean churns,
The bloody veil lifted for peace the hydra spurns
Lo! Ships like shadows glide in unheard woe,
Amidst the whispers of the depths below.

The waves, once peaceful, now bear the weight...

War there shall be, but whose war is that? Doubtless the waters have seen as much strife as the land, the salt on your tongue as much from blood as tears. Give me a name, you beg and a name appears before you, but not one you had wished for, four cruel jagged lines giving shape to a broken mountain sheathing a broken sword. Blood drips onto the chisel...

Of vessels armed for a cruel fate,
Masts like splinters in Gorum's hide of iron,
By the dozen pierce the midnight air.
Star dipped in pitch, far-off candles burn.

"Give me a fucking name!" you curse the hand that writes, the voices far off that inspire it. In that moment black hopelessness overcomes you, a winding sheet for those still living, made silent witness even as the dead speak.

The day shall be when breath is heavier than steel
Where rose-stems break, when turns slow wheel
The the eagle burns, under the moon's blind gaze
With broken bronze the realm uncaring pays

Blood falls, first drops, then rivulets, defusing and swirling in the water. It's in those patterns, gone in a blink that you see the signs, not in any tongue that you can read, yet somehow made to be carved upon stone:


Automatic Writing (DC 10): 1d100 = 12 (Success)

As you finally straighten from the work, a crick in your neck from sitting stiff as a corpse other than motions of the hand Mina looks over your shoulder and reads. "That's draconic... Sonthonax."

"A kobold's name?" you ask, briefly bemused before your brain wholly catches up with your tongue. "No, a dragon's."

Cob looks over towards the sea serpents coiled around the base of the royal residence in the heart of the city. "Think we should ask what they're called? Maybe shout?"

"That did not sound like you were foretelling doom to the sea-folk," Mina offers to which Gorok do your surprise gives a kind of approving click.

"If you had found just what you had sought," he explains, "I'd wonder if we had been tricked with a bottle of sap-glazed whispers."

"But what do we have then? A battle on the surface, so a battle between 'landwalkers' that will only happen as the verses described if the wedding goes ahead. A burning eagle would mean... Andoran loses?" It us hard to keep track of symbols and flags when then things upon them are so strange to you.

Mina shakes her head almost angrily, at herself you would guess. "Bronze could be Brigh, creativity and invention broken by war. Certainly we've seen a lot of that in Augustana."

That does not feel right, writing it out line by line, did not feel like reaching out to distant powers, above or below. If anything it felt like being trapped in place by webs of fate.

Mina Knowledge Arcana (DC 20): 1d20+12 = 13 (Critical Failure)

Akorian Wisdom(DC 5): 1d20 = 8 (Success)

What do you do?

[] Fortell, truthfully a military defeat for Andoran, which may have some impact on the Izenti but would mean nothing to the Usena

[] Keep to the original 'borrowed prophecy' of the World-Breaker

[] Write in

OOC: This time I did not borrow any verse... as can be seen by the time it took me to write it.