Finding the Spark (Pathfinder 1E Quest)

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

"Why jump when you can fly?" Sirim asked, already shaping the magic in his mind. He would have to whisper it, but he knew well the craft of secret magic.

Not a leaf moved save by the breath of the wind from the river. Gorok for his part stayed low under the cover of the trees, for the glamor that had carried them so far was all but spent. Fortunately there was plenty of room for a flying armored warrior who had not yet mastered flight under the branches of the great oaks that had had never known the Age of Darkness.


Indeed, the deeper they went the less the forest around them resembled what could be found on the Selen's banks. Chelish moss shone with sparks of light, blue and pale yellow like fairies trapped in shrouds of green, and ferns unfolded wide as roc feathers. Of flowers, some there were that seemed to have the heads of snakes and moved unbidden through the air, and some that made Sirim thankful for his lack of smell for the first time since he had lost it, since according to his companions they reeked of rotting flesh as they sprawled under the shadow of unfamiliar evergreens. If he had hands and time he might have collected some samples. Who could say what properties such a plant might have, particularly in works of necromancy? For all that, the strangeness did not last long before they came in sight once more of familiar trees and... Was that the sound of water?

"Have we crossed the whole island?" He asked, annoyed at wasted time and wasted spells.

"No." Gorok sounded considerably more irritated.

It was Cob who explained: "We're back where we came from, see? Tree knot the shape of headless rat."


"We could ignore the paths, fly straight to where we are meant to go, but there will be watchers in the air," Gorok said, half planning, half convincing himself to turn back, Sirim guessed.

"Cob, what would you say to riding in the bag?" Sirim asked, thinking quickly.

Befuddle me with a glamor, will they? Now it was a matter of pride, and the pride of wizards could be a perilous thing indeed for those who rouse it. Not without cause did ancient Thassilon name illusion the magic of pride, and Xanderghul the greatest of illusionists.

Akorian shrouded Gorok, and Gorok alone, again with another glamor to attempt the path again once more while Cob rode in the enchanted bag. That said bag also contained most of their prized possessions would have worried someone more given to fretting than Sirim, but he would not be bested by a bunch of tree sowers who sold trinkets to the Taldan Navy.

"There is another way to stretch the spell," he informed his companions.

Were Gorok a timid soul... well, he never would have left his tribe and into the wider world. Perhaps it was better to say were Gorok a less rational soul he might have balked sharing his body with Sirim to make the most of the spell.

Inhabiting the iruxi was both like and unlike his brief stint in dwarvish flesh. The posture was still upright, though he also had to balance a tail and he knew he would strugle to cast spells or even fight properly with the added weight of armor, so the mail remained on the Dancing Slurk as the three of them attempted the passage again.

On conjured wings of air, so unlike the weightless flight of smoke, they flew over the trap and the guard trees. It was easy, their passage all but assured. The smells were so strong, the colors were so bright under the moon.

"Woah, stop, stop! Sky's going all funny!" Cob sounded distressed.

Sirim stopped and listened to the goblin.

"Look careful, aren't the stars sorta jiggling?"


'Jiggling' was perhaps one of the least academic terms one could imagine to describe magic, but Sirim was suddenly reminded of a lecture he had once taken part in on the hybridization of glamor and phantasm in elven magic. Two classes of spells that most human traditions considered distinct but to the elves existed among a spectrum between impacting the mind and the senses, a sort of bright faerie mirror to the shadow-craft practiced in Nidal which could of course imitate both phantasms and glamors.

"A self-adjusting illusion. It pulls from the mind one's expectations and then shifts the view ever so slightly off, until the traveler is entirely turned around. Clever bastards. You have my thanks, master Cob."

The goblin, who had opened the bag to speak, mimed plucking something unseen out of the air and gently putting it in one of his many pockets. "Don't worry, I'll keep 'em safe."

If someone had informed the Sirim of a year past that he would be smiling at a goblin's jest with a borrowed iruxi mouth, he would have captured them to study whatever protean madness had infected them. Yet here he was.

Here, as it happened, was before a structure crafted half of stone and half of the bones of titanic beasts, like a necromancer's perfect prize. It also did not have a door, much less a lock. Between the murderous trees and the glamor that would get most trespassers lost among them, why would the druids of the Wildwood Lodge feel they need it? Good thing they did not account for others being as skilled in glamor-craft as they.

Gorok knew well the bones of his people. He took those and only those, leaving the spirits of the place untroubled.


A breath of smoke was he, passing back into the world, frustrated with his own shortcomings. There was much yet to learn. And yet, like a ray of pale moonlight through the clouds, at least he had fair company to seek those answers with.

Gorok, Sirim, and Cob gain 1,100 XP

What do you do next?

[] Speak to one of your fellow travelers
-[] Write in which

[] Find out what happened with the ancient iruxi druid of Arenway

[] Speak to Leontas about the Stonewilds

[] Frustrated by the difficulty of gaining druidic solutions, Sirim has decided to start reading Breolia's book. See if you can help

[] Write in

OOC: Man, the dice did not like Sirim this time around. Good thing he has friends to back him up and a good plan going in.

29th of Neth 4707 A.R. (Absalom Reckoning)

Over the next four days neither fish, bird, nor beast follow in your wake. It seems, at least, that the druids had not realized their loss, or perhaps they do not care to chase down three time-worn skulls, though Leontas and Urgor both mark how often the five of you look back along the riverbanks. As though we would be so lucky.

Still, for the first time since Almas you find yourselves with time on your hands and, as Mina puts it, 'the chance to put up your feet'. To which Sirim replies that he has none and would rather study to get them back. A cabin is thus shaped from the stone of the Dancing Slurk, and if any of your other companions find fault with the bar you included they make no comment. A roof makes better shelter than tent cloth, after all.

So it is by spell-light and rocked by the wide waters of the Selen that Mina first cracks the spine of the Thousand Faces of Ardad Lili. It begins with a treatise on theology and the rightness of worshiping she who is called the End of Innocence. Innocence, the text holds, does not exist, it is simply ignorance. To know of an action is to consider performing it for all minds, to experience the world from their own unique perspective. To project a sin onto a third party, as with any other action, is simply to put on a theater of the mind; useful in some circumstances, but only if one is aware of the fact, not stumbling blind upon the stage of life to the mockery of an audience transcendent. The word used could as easily mean devil as agathion, demon as archon. It cuts reality in twain with merciless effectiveness and then reveals that even that is only a knee-high elevation, a few steps to climb down from the stage.

Mina looks sick as Sirim gets to that part of his translation, pulling apart repeated phrases and copying down symbols of arcane significance as he goes. From time to time she interjects with comparisons to Pharasma doctrine, especially concerning the relation between the mind, the soul, and the Four Pillars of Reality, which it is said the Judge of the Dead alone of all gods saw unclothed in names and veils of mystery: Order and Chaos, Good and Evil. All souls possess some attraction to each of them, though the souls of mortal beings flow easily like water whereas the souls transcendent are like ice that must fracture to move.

From this angle the undead can be understood as a kind of artificial post-mortal existence in imitation of and unknowing exaltation of the Pallid Princess, and it is only in seeing one's self clearly that the unliving can withdraw that unmerited allegiance and walk under another a more worthy banner.

Herein lies the greatest secret of magic that one will not find even in the ramblings of Nethys, all magic is divine for all mortal action resonates with the audience transcendent. One cannot cast a spell that does not serve the interests of powers by the score. Only the foolish and the blind think that they walk through existence playing only a single part. Choosing a patron is not, as I thought in the depths of my despair, selecting a new slave-master, unless one chooses to play the role of slave.

"That's a lie, or a distortion at least," you interject. "The text is trying to tell the reader that they have ultimate freedom and yet no freedom, that they must follow the guidelines and walk into Hell because Hell is the most honest, but notice that nowhere does it speak of truth. What powers and symbols does that align with? Not this one certainly," you motion at curling script snaking its way through the pages. "A canticle of lies pretending ultimate truth by praying on the reader's sense of superiority. One is either blind or clear-eyed, wise or foolish, and all the shades of grey between are thus ignored."

"The world is one piece," Gorok says from the corner. He had not spoken much, for matters arcane are of little concern to him, but Sirim had agreed that it made sense for someone to keep an eye on the book without trying to pick apart its meanings. "Earth, wind, flame, and water, that much I know, perhaps the worlds beyond too, but that does not mean the one thing can be held." He clicks his claws together. "Under the eye."

"So what you are saying is it's missing a sense of humility?" Mina asks, voice growing more certain as it does so.

"Curiosity in the face of the unknown, it offers its purported truths and then tells you to lie," Sirim adds. "The lie thus becomes in the mind of the uncritical reader a thing they do to others and not a thing that is done to them... by a liar avowed. Not revelation but debasement, and that is why the victim must be suffer before the rite..."

"To see themselves as their torturer sees them, an object, a mask to be worn and discarded," you finish with relief as you finally allow yourself to feel fully. "It's not following some law of higher form, it is just hiding the instrumentality. Have any of you ever knapped a stone knife?"

Everyone beside Gorok shake their heads.

"Neither have I, wasn't good with my hands that way, but I have seen it done. You need a hammer to chip pieces off, the harder the hammer the bigger the pieces, look," you flip the pages of the translation of the ritual itself. "This bit here can mean 'carving' in a more metaphorical sense, not just of flesh, but the invoker is not the one who gets the finished tool. The 'flint knife' they get is just the chips that fly off, while the the Serpent Muse gets the better end of the deal."

"And then they thank her for the privilege of being used, as though more proof was needed that diabolists are fools," Sirim says in disgust. "Let us see if we can salvage the technique..."

"Who are you planning to do it to?" You can tell Mina's trying not to sound accusing. It isn't working very well.

"Myself," for his part the shadow mage hardly seems to notice, too engrossed in the riddle before him. "Use them as anchor points... nails, if you will, driven into a body to allow me rightful habitation and keep other things out. A living simulacrum would die from the shock, I think. A greater undead, like a vampire, would serve better, and this rite already uses vampire blood so it should be easy to adapt. If done right the vessel would shed most of the weaknesses of the breed, but alas, along with all of its abilities. We would have to rob a cleric of Urgathoa or Zura to be certain... or find writings of the Runelord of Gluttony one supposes, but those are exceedingly rare."

"Or we could talk to some priests of better gods to see if they know how to keep a simulacrum alive through the process," Mina cuts in.

"Which temple to you want to bring this into?" Sirim motions at the necromantic notes strewn on the table, most of them still in devil's tongue.


What does Kori think of the matter?

[] An undead body will serve well enough, and the world will be better off with one less vampire in it

[] Sirim should strive for a living body, it would likely be healthier for him and less trouble for the company

[] Write in

OOC: Well, if nothing else this was fun to write. I just hope I managed to managed to make this philosophy talk interesting to read for you guys.