Finding the Spark (Pathfinder 1E Quest)

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

Fortune, you reason, comes in strange guise. A man already skilled enough to be a cook and yet inclined to darker dealings known to you might be just what you need to betray the expedition when the time comes.

"We're not going to kill them though, right?" Mina asks uneasily. "The soldiers I mean, they are just looking for pay."

"We're not?" Cob seems confused at the sudden turn of the conversation, or maybe at the notion to leaving enemies alive. From what he told you of Stone Muncher life, even leaving enemies out of one's cookpot was uncommon.

"We could just put them to sleep... kill Gavhaul," the words do not sound convincing even as she speaks them.

"If we steal the treasure and kill their paymaster, the pay will be rather late," Sirim notes, his manner so neutral he has to be biting his ethereal tongue over it, but you do not call attention to the matter.

At the moment it's unclear what kind of help you can get from the Lodge. Maybe, hopefully, it's the throat-slicing kind.


22nd of Lamashan 4707 A.R. (Absalom Reckoning)

The first sight of the city is not of towers tall or walls across the horizon, it's a single pale light through thick morning fog, the lighthouse of Benedict's Hope at the very mouth of the Andoshen River for which the whole of the new nation was indirectly named. Half again as large as Augustana, Almas is not just the least of the Supreme Elect and the People's Council, but also the home of such thinkers as Alysande Benedict who put quill to paper not only denouncing the evils of House Thrune, but also charting a path to rebellion that did not wade in blood. On the Field of Concord, so it is said, the people of Andoran gathered to with one voice reject tyranny, ignorance, and blind tradition.

"It must have been a rather long walk," you hear Sirim offer lazily, his own form all but melded with the mist, but not quite low enough that he is not heard.

"Not for many it wasn't," Captain Mel says, though clearly more for the benefit of Mina than her 'familiar'. "Freeland, that's Almas and its hinterlands, about a day's ride has more folks than any place I've seen that didn't have the sea squeezing it. They say one in thee Andorans live there, and I believe them. Just to hear the ring of Smithtown and you'd think that's all of 'em!"

"They can at least be loud, I will grant," Gavhaul offers, having come up from behind as you had been speaking as the line of the city grew more distinct ahead. "Just don't ask anyone from Almas University to be concise about politics. Really, they should be thankful for all the graft and bribery, without them nothing would get done."

A few of the sailors grumble at the jape, but for the most part they are too busy getting the ship ready to enter the busy harbor.

Narrow long ships from the north and hawk-prowed Osiriani galleys from the south meet in these crowded waters, where both encountered one of the tall galleons of Absalom there was such a tangle of profanity one finds to hard to imagine any land, heritage, or god escapes unmarked. A local pilot, her hair streaked with grey, her hand still steady on the tiller, comes aboard to guide the Fruitful Endeavor into her berth Portside, an expression that is both a literal descriptor and a geographical point in Southeastern Almas, opposite the much more fragrant 'Mugget'. Before today you had never had considered just how much meat a city of seventy-five thousand souls might need. Would that the wind had not been from the west that you did not have to consider it now. Warty, on the other hand, looks hungry enough to be concerning, especially with the tales of gore sometimes flowing out onto the streets from the stockyards and butcher shops. You can just imagine some guard accusing your company of trying to steal the cobbles.

Speaking of messy work, Oka hardly needs any convincing at all to come along, as long as you are willing to pay him that is. Five silver a day seems cheap enough that you would almost pay it for a bit of variety around the cookfire, never mind any schemes in the offering. As the mercenaries perk up at the news Mel opens her mouth, on the cusp of saying speaking ill of her former friend, then she shakes her head and walks off to see the the loading.

Sirim Negotiating Prices (DC 15/20/25/30): 1d20+12 = 31 (Full Success) -> Oka Hired: 5sp/day

While you had been distracted by the smell, and the grim prospect of having to reacustom yourself to walking on a surface that doesn't tilt and wobble, Mina and Gavhaul had gotten deeper into a conversation on the virtues and vices of Almas' academia. On the one hand she thinks it is quite remarkable that they allow any citizen access while the merchant points out that it only opened the way for a thriving industry of 'ink mules', dubiously literate locals whose profession is to copy the texts within for the benefits of foreign scholars who do not wish to pay the heavy entrance fees that are asked of them.

"Failed mummers the lot of them," Gavhaul proclaims. You'd wager he did not mean to make Mina curious about the actual workings of Masks' Row, the city's theater district.

The expedition is slated to remain in Almas for several days as Gavhaul makes arrangements for transportation, as well as for receiving the adamantine and other treasures on your return voyage. What do you do in the meantime?

Choose Three

[] Go with Gorok to Mugget in search for a horse and cart, maybe a few other bargains [Gorok, Cob, and the Iruxi]

[] Surreptitiously visit the Pathfinder Lodge in order to speak to Venture Captain Brackett [Mina and Cob]

[] Visit the Bellows, Almas dwarf quarter alongside Urgor, a chance to perhaps buy some superior arms and armor at a discount and get to know him more [Urgor]

[] Seek answers to some of the mysteries in the past at the Golden Cathedral, the largest publicly available repository of information in all of Andoran [Mina and Sirim]

[] Watch a genuine Andoran Theater performance [Mina and Pepper]

[] What better place to ask about land for Gorok's people than the Palace of the People's Council? [Gorok and the Iruxi]

[] The Consortium offices, Gavhaul hinted that he might have need of someone skilled in being unseen and unheard, you might even learn something [Loric Gavhaul]

[] Write in

OOC: The people in brackets will be taking the action, unless you convince them not to for some reason. The vote is for where Kori is going.

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

If you're going to visit Mask's Row, you reason, best do it on your first day in the city. "Gavhaul alone knows what sort of business he's stuck his tail in to get those permits, and if we'll have to leave in a hurry once he's done."

"Tail?" Mina asks, more amused than worried. "He's not a devil, you know."

"Who said anything about devils?" you ask, bemused that her mind would jump to Hell so fast. "Gorok has a tail."

"Oh, right..." she trails off. "I don't really think of people having tails, normally I mean."

"A tail's not as strange as this thing," you stomp your foot and motion to the shadow stretching out away from the pier and onto stone walls that march even onto the sea.

Unlike the half-timbered houses of Augustana, Almas is a city of stone, grey, pink, and russet worn by the sea breeze and warmed by the sun. Near the docks one can hear the cries and gulls, though further in they are quickly replaced by the clucking of their more sedate poultry kin. Everyone who had the land in Almas owns at least a few chickens, and those who can't made due with pigeons, leading to a city where one is well-served keeping a wary eye on the sky. A wariness that at least some of the residents of Almas are counting on.

Halfway down Triumph Way, which does not seem particularly triumphant to you given the ruts made amid holes made by the recent rains, you watch a girl, her head covered by a ragged scarf, carrying parcel step into the path of a fellow whose sweeping black mustache and wide-brimmed hat marks him as some manner of foreigner. She drops the package and there's a loud sound of breaking glass as shards go everywhere onto the cobbles.

"Lookit at what you did! The vase! Ye gone and broke it! 'Twas from Tian Xia! Now what will my mistress think? She's sure to call the guard, the magistrates!" The girl, she does not seem to be older than fourteen or fifteen turns of the seasons as Burnlanders count time, is good, or else she's done this before. You'd wager gold to copper that glass hadn't been in one piece to start with.

The behatted man doesn't seem to notice. "Should've watched where you're going!" he gets out, but there isn't nearly as much bite to the words as there might have been. Stranger in a strange land that he is, he's likely already considering the danger of being judged under a law not his by folk who might take the girl and especially her 'mistress'' words over his.

Indeed, two of the other passers by on the street, both older men, one with a limp, are glaring at him: "Watch you're tongue, scab! Your feet have gotten you in enough trouble already!"

The girl's look isn't so much grateful or relieved as she might have been if all was as it seems, all but confirming the truth.

"You could pay me maybe, not the full fifty gold, but twenty five at least, then I won't get in as much trouble," her voice rises in panic, offering what seems to be a desperate compromise.

Akorian Perception: 1d20+9 = 29 (Critical Success)

Even though she might not have noticed all the byplay, Mina noticed you looking. "What?"

"That's a scam. The fellow over there is about to pay the price of a vase that never was was," you explain, halfway between entertained and impressed by the byplay. Surely the girl would make a decent mummer herself. "Think we should do something about it?"

"Maybe... I think he might be from Caliphas from the accent, but the girl looks like she could use the coin."

"Something tells me she won't be keeping most of it anyway," you motion to the two men who had already started to gather a following of actual chance-passing locals, from a pair of laborers bearing a large wooden beam, to a laundress fetching new kindling for the fire.

Mina nods, relieved to have that set to rest. "So do you think I should try to talk to them or should you..." scare them, she doesn't quite say, but you both know where your particular talents lay.

What do you do?

[] Mina speaks up revealing the scam (Diplomacy)

[] Kori tries to scare the thugs away (Intimidation)

[] Write in

OOC: The scheme is called 'dropping glass' and it is a thing that was done historically. As far as I know it might be done even today. It is very cost effective.