Finding the Spark (Pathfinder 1E Quest)

25th of Lamashan 4707 A.R. (Absalom Reckoning)

"Of little use would children be in battle under the ground where they'd be blind as soon as the enemy makes our lights go out, but as to guarding them..." you shake your head. "Every hand missing from the battle ahead is one that could have deal the killing blow, or one that could have healed a fallen friend. A poor showing on all accounts..."

As Urgor bristles at the words part of you wishes he would just choose to stay back on his own, where he can't hear any incriminating secrets. Though on the other hand, if he died you'd all be on the hook with little room to wiggle.

"On your head be it then," he mutters, turning away as Sirim sends his warning and the herd begins to move, patches of white against the darkening grass, impelled by the high voices of their minders.

"I could send Pepper with them," Mina offers quietly in the tongue of the People. "He wouldn't be much good in a fight, but at least he might be able to warn them off trouble. And if anything happens, I'll know."

Unnoticed by the dwarf, the small cat pads off following the youngsters and their woolly charges. There won't be any questions for how she has more than one 'familiar' at least.

Pepper Stealth vs Urgor Perception: 34 vs 16 (Success)

Following along the line of hills you come to one, steeper and more stony than the others, as though a mantle of rock had fallen from the peak into a jagged pile of stones that only the foolhardy would try to limb. Among the stones one can still see the banks of what must once have been a stream that once tumbled from a high mouth. Above even that a crown of dark trees rustle in the twilight air.

"Not this way, we come at it from the other side, though the pines. If it's strong enough for roots to hold, it's strong enough to hammer a piton..." Gorok's words trail off as an unexpected and all too unwelcome sound rings out from above, the sound of a child crying, loud hacking sobs. Had the shepherds lost one of their number?

Gorok Perception (DC 20): 1d20+11 = 23 (Success)

Clockwise around the face of the hill you go until you find a path among the gnarled roots. The crying is only getting louder. Finally you spot a small figure at the base of a tree, left arm bent at an unnatural angle.

"Wait!" you place a hand on Mina's shoulder as she's about to run over. When you had been about seven deep-rushes old you had broken your arm about that bad running away from some of the larger children, crawling into a tight nook to cry, sniffle and sob, but not just screaming, rising and falling evenly as though without breath.

The child stumbles to its feet, head still in the crook of their unbroken arm, the wailing only getting louder... and that's when the thing you'd been looking at all this time hits you. It's no warmer than the ground it had been lying on.

"Undead!" you shout as the wailing starts up from all sides. Eight pairs of eyes like cold hungry embers alight in the trees, the horrors that once had been children.

Akorian Will Save: 1d20+4+5 = 28 (Success)
??? Disguise vs Akorian Sense Motive: 10 vs 28 (Success) -> Surprise Round to Players


Another warrior might have frozen in horror, but the blood of iruxi already runs cold. Gorok charges the last twenty feet, putting the whole weight of his body into the swing that bisects one of the corpses in ragged chunks of frozen meat. As she is splattered with the long congealed blood of her companion, the girl next to him begins to sing through frost-bitten lips.


In the garden of shadows, where the moonlight hides,
Whispering voices now sing lullabies,
Where the night is dark and the whispers grow,
A secret that good children know.

"Night-loved," Sirim's words come with the edge of distant sickly sweet horror, the cruel understanding that these mockeries are the children the Midnight Lord loves best, the cold and the starving given leave to eat of the flesh of those who had not fed them in life. "Silver slays them, moon's metal."

Sirim Knowledge (Religion): 1d20+12 = 22 (Success)

At once your eyes go to Cob... to find him staring into the dead eyes entranced. "Arise, from the fog laid in your mind arise!" you call an old warding spell, shaking him by the shoulder. He tears himself out of your grasp, charging beside Gorok, his silver dagger flashing and slicing. Undead flesh sizzles, blackens, and cracks under the power of the metal, and one more is given true death before they can do more than twitch in surprise.


Beside you Mina plants her staff, a line of searing white light flashing from it to yet a third corpse. Though this one does not fall, only screams all the louder, until Urgor's axe swings with all the weight of his rage behind it and launches it into a tree in three pieces pieaces.


Still, other voices take up the song in tongues that mortals aught not so sing, laughing as they close. You recognize the tongue of shadows, the fiends you had chased here.

Tiptoe through the graveyard, where the shadows creep,
In the land of twilight, where the cold winds blow,
Listen to the whispers as the spirits weep,
Hush now, little one, it's time to go.

They are laughing at this, and some part of you wants to scream and run towards the song, sword in hand and cut and cut until there isn't anything left. But that's not what you are best at... that's not what your power's for. You see them now, moving through the trees light as shadows... they hadn't expected you to spot their trap, planning to drop only once the corpse bit down. With shadows you try to snare one in place, but just barely they slip through the noose.


Kyton Reflex Save: 1d20+3 = 18 (Success)

Sirim, now alight with strange geometries, spins before them patterns of light and one black eyed fiend so is snared. "What weak-willed wretches they send to capture me. Mayhap they do not even wish you to succeed."

"What have you become, little worm?" the other laughs again

"Free," spits Sirim of Nisroch, not breaking his focus.

Before it can speak one more word of denial, Mina's power comes over it. Not slumber that would send it tumbling to sleep on the ground, but a web to bind it tight to the branch.


Back on the ground Urgor's silver axe lays another of the corpses to rest in a more measured swing this time, as rage gives way to grim workmanship, while Gorok slices off an arm and Cob sends his dagger through a small unbeating heart as the last four of the horrors swarm forward.


One digs into your leg, wriggling its way up your body like some horrid worm, while another grabs Cob by the ear with a clawed hand while a third manages to jump on Mina's back. Only Gorock manages to fend one off between shield and sword and none come within reach of Urgor's axe, yet as the dwarf rushes to free you he misses his swing. A spell sputters on your lips as the corpse starts to lap at your blood like sweetest nectar. Mina's screems are muffled beside you.


As you try fruitlessly to shake the thing off you catch sight of Cob managing to drive his silver dagger into the arm that had grabbed him, but the thing won't let good, too entranced by the prospect of warm blood. At last Gorok manages to finish off the corpse in front of him as Warty realizes that these are not children anymore. He charges the one on Mina's back and sticks it to his slime covered head to drive it into a tree.


Pushing through the agony of the thing's teeth in your flesh, ripping and tearing, you find the words again, the words in your dreams... the words for light: "You have no power here Ever-Liar!" Cob is free now, he'll... deal with... this... thing. The mocking song of the fiend in the trees, still trapped, rings through your mind

Underneath the willow, where the shadows play,
Dance with the phantoms till the break of day,
...
Hear the whispers calling from the grave below,
Feel the chill upon you, the midnight's echo.

It's not Cob who gets to you first, it's Gorok, but that's fine too. He manages to pry the monster off of you, still chewing on strips of your flesh, just as Mina scrambles for her fallen staff and lifts it to bathe the corpse in cleansing light. It crumbles, sad little bones on the ground stony ground.


One of the fiends was still snared in place by Sirim's illusions, but the other had managed to wiggle himself almost entirely free of the tree. "Oh dear, oh my... killing children just because they are of another faith than yours, how horrid." It does not seem to have noticed the goblin, a dagger between his teeth climbing up the knotted trunk behind it. Then a dwarf axe embeds itself in its chest, hurled with all the force and all the spite of its bearer, sending it stumbling into the goblin's silver knife. It dies without another word.

Kyton Slain

"Are you well?" You hear Gorok hiss through the pain.

A nod, a deep breath, the best you can do. Hands shake on the butt of the crossbow as you take aim for the last small, too-small corpse just trying to pick itself up off the ground, ready to maul either Warty or Mina again, who is only now trying to heal herself. One of the good bolts. It lands in its stomach, hissing, but it's not over. It lunges at Mina, crying tears of blood as it feasts and feasts.


Sirim twitches in place, not quite sure if the battle below is more important than holding the last fiend with Cob so close. You take another shot, it misses... but Urgor had picked up his fallen axe. He swings, the last 'night-loved' is given what peace death may bring its soul.

Hush now, little one, it's time to go.

0 Undead Remain.

Quietly, stealthily Cob nears the last of the fiends and rams a dagger into his throat where he stands. It has perhaps two heartbeats before a flying dwarfish axe crushes its skull.

Cob Stealth: 1d20+16 -4 (Pain) = 33 vs Perception: 1d20+8 -4... (Success)

Kyton Slain


After all of you are done healing, and Cob spits on the corpses of the fiends for good measure, you, Gorok, and Cob gather all the pieces of the dead children you can in one place for a pyre as Mina runs through prayers from her childhood in her head. Alas for Ustalag that they have far too many that fit.

"Burn them at dawn, skulls facing the east, it will be most displeasing to the Midnight Lord," Sirim offers darkly. There is something in that voice you had not heard before... guilt. Tis not hatf to guess why, for if Sirim had not been traveling through here the fiends would have had no reason to hunt these children and make of them a ghoulish trap, but you are not sure what to say.

"I think we should travel to the nearest village, tell them what became of their children," the shadow mage continues. "I would have wanted... I would have wanted to see my sister's remains, changed as they may have been."

Oh... hate against the 'Midnight Lord' redoubles in your heart.

What do you do?

[] Go to the nearest village to inform them of what had gone on here

[] Burn the bodies as is

[] Write in

OOC: Man, I probably shouldn't have done this in one update but since I started there you go. Enjoy guys.

26th of Lamashan 4707 A.R. (Absalom Reckoning)

After arranging the remains such that wild beasts can't get at them easily under Gorok's instructions, the six of your head down the same rough path the shepherds had taken. It's hard to tell, since he'd only grown more quiet since the fight, but Urgor seemingly approves of heading down to inform the children's kin of their fate. So down among the thorns and elderberries, a trail meandering towards water as most are wont to do, until under the light of the crescent moon you see a village unlike Longacre in almost every way. Where those houses had been built of wood these are of stone and the raised foundations to keep the water off the thresholds when the rains are heavy. Where the woodsmen of Longacre had lived huddled against the walls against whatever might come out of the Whisperwood, this village is open to the rolling plains and anything strange that may come from it.


Rather than guardians you are greeted by the gleam of Pepper's eyes, come to inform you that the children had made it home safe, though not without incident. "There was a foul scent on the air as we came out of the hills, sweat and blood and unearthly bile close at hand, but in the light of the children's lanterns naught to be seen. One of the sheep seemed to go mad from it and ran off into the dark at some unheard call. When the girl started to follow it I bit her ankle and cut off her path. She was weary enough not to cross me and clever enough to heed my warning when I started talking. I think the thing out there wanted to snatch one child, not two, that or it wanted the girl, not the boys. A little while later we passed by an small roadside shrine and found it defiled with blood and offal with the head of the sheep it took set atop it."

"Trying to scare the little mites?" Urgor asks frowning. He's be taking the talking cat you all seem to know better than you thought he would.

"That or it was just angry," Pepper answers gravely. "It smelled of the Pit and wrath is the air that they breathe. If I were to wager a guess what kind... swaithe, they have a habit of troubling beast and man and they love to skulk in the shadows, letting the fruits of their malice grow slow. Ill news to bring to any threshold in the middle of the night, much less one as quiet as this."


"We have worse. We found more children that might have come from here, dead and cursed by the fiends we were hunting," you inform him. "Are demons and other horrors likely to make common cause?"

Mina is quiet for a long moment before answering. "No, not unless there is some greater evil to make them do it."

"We do not have much time, the caravan is slow and Warty is swift, but not so much that we can delay," Gorok informs you. "We must wake the chief of this place and tell them of the evils that stalk it."

And so you do, what a strange sight you must have made even with Sirim staying out of sight and Cob keeping Warty company on the outskirts of the village: three figures cloaked and hooded, one of them obviously not human from the scales peeking through, and a surly looking dwarf armed to the teeth.

"What can I do for you... neighbors?" the elderly but still hale man who had come to answer the door of the largest house in the village is clearly more used to his actual neighbors. Yet as he peers through the light of Mina's staff illuminating all of you he's doing his best to sound welcoming. "Name's Rostor, Elder Rostor, but don't tell my wife, it might remind her of how old she is and that's trouble that is."


The four of you glance at each other while in the wings you can feel Sirim's mental presence. He wants to give these people a chance to burry their children, as he obviously never had the chance to do to his sister, but he is not opposed to blaming the whole thing on the demon to smooth things over.

How do you spin the story?

[] Blame it all on the demon Pepper had spotted, sure you'll have to admit to sending a magical cat after the herd, but it won't involve any talk of the Kytons who were drawn here by your presence

[] Tell him everything you know, the Kytons, the undead loved by Zon Kuthon, and the strange encounter with what might have been a demon on the road

[] Write in

OOC: That will save came in clutch, since she crit it the demon figured she was too determined to try again that night. Either way there was nothing Pepper could have done against that demon if the kid followed the sheep.