Finding the Spark (Pathfinder 1E Quest)

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

The boats or, as Oka reminded you today at dinner, ships lie still at anchor among the other half dozen proper River Guard Galleons and the eight trading barges seeking sanctuary at Arenway. By ancient decree, or simple happenstance of custom, the port here bears no name but that which the island lends it. The soldiers and sailors here do not speak of what is beyond the wardstones often, and when the do its when they are usually deep in their cups, or so Sirim has informed you after taking the chance to flit from shadow to shadow to overhear things, and with a kind of fearful circumspection. Given the circumstances in which you met the last druid of their order, perhaps they are not fools to do so.

All the stranger then to speak in favor of Gorok's plan to slip beyond the stones, follow the path the leshies had given them, and take back the bones of the long dead iruxi druids.

Mina certainly seems to think so. Her look says, 'I expected this of Cob, but not you' to which you can only shake your head. "I have met my ancestors and they rest fitfully under stone, their breath ash and their thoughts heavy with regret. How many others like that there are I do not know, but I fear that it's many. Do Gorok's kin sleep more easily here, in a place his kin have not set foot in for generations if not centuries?"

"We do not know that for sure..." Mina starts, but much to your surprise it's Sirim who speaks up.

"Then we should ask. That is the purpose of this whole endeavor, is it not? Should they at the moment of their deaths been pleased to rest where they are, then we will return them."

"What, and say we just stumbled across them?" she asks more sharply than usual.

"Say nothing, just hand them over to the leshies," the shade replies with heat to match the question, then reels himself back to cold calculation. "They seem amenable enough, if odd in reason and manner." Catching your curious gaze, and Pepper's come to that, he explains. "The days of ancestor worship in Nidal are long since past, or at least of admitting to do so where pious Kuthites might hear, but respect for those who came before, for blood and bone and oath of kin, not even ten thousand years of dogma have been able to fully extinguish. Though I never partook of it myself, I will not ask a companion in arms, a... friend," the word comes haltingly, as though he hasn't used it in a long time, "to leave the bones of his kin behind where he feels they do not belong."

"Bones aren't souls though, they are just a vessel for souls that have passed on. These ones have long since passed, surely," Mina insists.

"And yet when you question them they speak."

"That's just..." It's not hard to guess what she might have said, 'just the spell' or something of that sort. It is as though for the moment she and Sirim had changed places, but there's a deeper meaning buried in her words. To the folk of haunted Ustalav the remains of the dead are more a source of peril than comfort, often consigned to flame. Only nobles can afford tombs guarded with spell and blade, the common folk consigning their loved ones to the pyre and taking what comfort they can in the soul's journey to the Great Beyond. "You're sure you want to do this?"

Gorok starts to give one of his wordless nods, then he too stops himself to explain. "In Augustana, in Almas, soon in Cassomir, I am strange. To some of interest, to others a thing of fear, 'anímeros', savage, and yet we as you built walls of stone, sowed fields, forged steel, and wove magics before the dark times. Why did your people pass as you did and mine did not? How?"

You hear the fear that is not spoken. What if the sneering masses of humanity are right and the iruxi are in some way flawed to have fallen so far and not raised their heads since?

If you were to wager a guess against the vagaries of history, it most likely was nothing more than mischance. In a time of great dying the thinnest edge would separate the living from the dead, not some great chasm, but that is not what Gorok wants to hear. He's looking for certainty from those who lived in those days.

So it's stealing bones from druids.

"I can do it, I'm better sneak," Cob's cheery offer cuts the silence like a knife.

Gorok considers it and nods. He does not offer thanks aloud, there's no need.

What do Gorok and Cob do by way of preparation, and what items do they take with them to raid the ossuary?

[] Invisibility and Mythic Heroism

[] Mina uses Hermean Potential as well, the druids might be able to feel the spells being used, but that's probably better than just being seen by their guards

[] Write in

OOC: No rolls on this one, there was no way Mina was going to contest Gorok once he made his reasoning known and Sirim understands the concept of not leaving your ancestors unwatched. On top of tradition saying you shouldn't doing that, Nidal has a way of ending up with them being press-ganged into some vampire or ghoul noble's undead armies.