Finding the Spark (Pathfinder 1E Quest)

19th of Lamashan 4707 A.R. (Absalom Reckoning)

After a long moment's thought, you answer: "The river seems wisest to me. This creature, if it even exists, has likely grow twice again as long for every hundred miles stories of it traveled. It's a long way from the eves of the forest to Augustana."

Gavhaul laughs and shakes his head, though not in mockery if you are any judge. "Good to know some things are the same under the earth as above it. A pleasure speaking with you, master Akorian. Please take the bottle on your way out. I would not want it to go to waste and it does me ill to drink alone."


20th of Lamashan 4707 A.R. (Absalom Reckoning)

Thus, wine in hand, you have on the next day gathered to hear what Sirim learned in the night. It makes for strange hearing, though an excited telling on the part of the shade. 'A fascinating knot of failures,' Sirim calls it. By his own accounting Oka had not always been a cook, years ago he had been a student of the Occularium, the school in arcane magic founded in the city of Manaket to stave off the encroaching sands. Their studies have apparently long since expanded to aiding the Council of Elders, sensible name that, in enforcing the far less sensible Laws of Mortality. To your mind, being militantly opposed to gods is akin to swearing vengeance on all rain and walking around with a bucket on one's head in the hopes of preventing any drop of it from touching the ground.

Regardless, Oka had, by his own accounting, been a poor failed student of the arcane, choosing instead to join the Pure Legion as a cook, though not before gaining the eye of a distant patron, one favorable to the opposition of the divine.

"Not a god, he is very insistent that his patron is not a god, and not without reason. He would likely suffer a most unpleasant curse should he come to see it thus, even as he prays for its favor," Sirim continues his lecture.

Impatient as she is uncomfortable at the talk of heresy, Mina asks: "Well, what is it?"

"He would not name it. Wise perhaps, but I recognized its signs from accounts in the archives of the Pale Sun. It is the Asura Rana Rahu, the Sun Eater. Eclipses are holy to him, who would devour all life and light at the end of the universe."

Sirim Diplomacy/Knowledge (Religion) (DC 25/20): 29, 23 (Success, Success)

"That sounds like Venkelvore. She's a biiiig eater," Cob offers. "Half-cheese sign?"

"Goblins worship a god under the mark of... half of a piece of cheese?" Sirim does his best not to sound incredulous, though that is not to say he manages it.

"Or half-pickle," Cob allows.

That does not seem to make things any better.

Before they can delve any further into the minutia of goblin worship and how that differs from the worship of a... 'asura', Gorok draws the conversation back to the man in the brig. "Mad or a fool?"

Snakes do not have eyebrows to quirk, but Sirim manages it by sending a half-crescent of smoke from one of his tendrils. "Should the Sun Eater come near to his designs I would say both, but he is far off indeed. Service to one so self-loathing would seem to have advantages. Rahu, as the Andorans would say, leaves money on the table. A few dead snakes are a small price to pay, especially as is he inclined to work such miracles as summoning wind as both Oka and the captain confirmed."

"Or he could just not worship a fiend," Mina sounds exasperated. "You know there are gods that don't hate their worshipers or themselves out there."

"And yet, Rahadum was laid waste by the cult of the Dawnflower as much as Father Skinsaw and the All-Seeing-Eye," Sirim points out.

Looking him straight in the eye, she proclaims: "I know less of Her than I would like, but this much I believe. If no champions should rise against the darkness, than all should have the 'peace' of nightmares everlasting."

"So you do and I do not call you liar, but we do not know what the world that may have been, only the world that is. In this world the errors of gods are no less than those of men, thus was the first asura born. I ask only that you do not judge a mortal who sought to make the best of his place in a broken world."

Sirim is almost entirely still as he says so, the answer clearly weighing more in his mind that the fate of Oka.

"I don't judge..." Mina stops herself, her expression somber. "I try not to."

"It would be rather hypocritical of me to demand perfection, now wouldn't it?" Sirim moves again, an edge of self-deprecation to his words.

A more practical question comes to mind, partly to ease the tension in the air, partly the inkling of a plan: "Are asura cults proscribed in Andoran? Or in Almas? I think the captain is going to be booting Oka when we get to port."

"While the details of apocryphal worship are likely beyond most ordinary temple investigators, the fact that asuras broadly hail from Hell and, however resentfully, acknowledge Asmodeus as master of that plane, would likely be enough to forbid discipleship in the name of the ranas."

"So he is probably not going to be welcomed in Almas for long..." Would he be worth recruiting as a cook for the expedition? A helpful piece for the planned betrayal, if you could trust him. Sirim at least seems to have some affinity for him.

What do you do?

[] Propose recruiting Oka for the expedition

[] Leave the cook behind in Almas

[] Argue that you should report him to the religious authorities in Almas yourself for reward or reputation

[] Write in

OOC: Keep in mind Sirim was raised in the faith of Zon Kuthon, as all Nidalese are. That might have something to do with why he thinks service to asuras is sensible/sympathetic as long as they are nowhere near winning.