Finding the Spark (Pathfinder 1E Quest)

8th of Kuthona 4707 A.R. (Absalom Reckoning)

"Alas, it's no night-blind burnlander's guess nor idle rumor of which you speak of. You speak of the only elves ever spoken of in the tales of my kin and foul was the telling. Deeper than the caverns of Nar Voth where the the deep dwarfs live, slaves to Droskar among the ruins of the race of serpents, dwell those whose hands wove this...." You open your cloak to show the spider-silk shirt, gleaming dull silver in the light of the sun which had so rarely fallen upon such a weave, though not yet so rare as men might wish it.

A moment's pause, a spell cast, and then you continue speaking to an ever more intrigued Sir Pisca: "They are the drow, masters of wide arched Sekamina. Graceful they are and skilled in sorcery, as long lived as their kin of the uplands, but there all kindship ends for they are treacherous and hateful to all who are not drow. They delight in cruelty and the arts of demons, which they learned at the feet of Andirifkhu, demon lord of knives, illusions, and traps, Haagenti, demon lord of alchemy and change, and Abraxas, who has dominion over knowledge and arts accursed by those who first crafted them."

As you speak the names of the demons the next one comes to you, and the next fueled by the enchantment as a lantern is by oil: "To Kabriri, Him Who Gnaws pray the necromancers wrapped in shrouds, and to Shivaska the Chained Maiden pay homage the slave keepers who delight in agony. They are the reason the People bear knives out into the tunnels of the world."


"To fight these... drow?" Pisca sounds intrigued and worried in equal measure, which is to say not worried enough.

"Aye, knives and feet and fists and whatever strength can be mustered. But should that strength fail, should we be taken by the drow, this our elders taught us: the knife is for you."

On the fact that you had not been gifted such a knife before departing you are silent, though the thought could not be further from Pisca's mind.

"Who would cry over rotten teeth?" he wonders half to himself before explaining. "There are islets just off the coast before Grayguard Castle called the Dog's Teeth, the haunt of thieves and beggars for no honest man could raise a house on a foundation of sand. There have always been tales of people going missing there from the commonplace to the lurid, perils enough to die and rocks enough to weigh down a corpse to the bottom, but now I wonder if perhaps some of those unlucky souls weren't taken, as you say, by those who dwell below. You said this place is below the domain of the dark dwarfs?"

"There are no clear borders below, but the stone changes supposedly. there are more and wider gaps, allowing many roads that span the length of whole realms, not just one Long Road. If I were to guess how far down Sekamina begins... eighteen hundred feet, maybe a little more, maybe less in places. Passages down are as uncommon as passages up and they are claimed by traders, though we are far past the easternmost of the Long Road before it curves back. Mayhaps there is just one long passage from the Burnlands all the way down into the deep caverns of the drow. If that is so, than you are fortunate to have lost so few..." Cold comfort is all you can offer, and you are not even sure it has the worth of being true. As large and teaming as the cities of men are the loss of dozens could have been overlooked, especially if the slavers take from among the poorest. In Augustana you had seen how little the guards were willing to risk themselves even in the ordinary running of the city. Going down a dark passage after a beggar... as soon to expect a mouse to willingly go down snake holes.

"News worth bringing to the governor. Would you be willing to bear witness to this in person? You say you've lived in the darklands, right?"

"For most of my life, yes, though as soon ask the dwarfs, they hold many of the passes down into the depths." True you had not spoken to Urgor about drow, but one does not idly speak of them. If the Taldans are so ignorant that even Pisca, headlong gambler that he is, makes a good messenger...

"I'll ask Master Urgor as well then," he does not let up.

"I will consider it once we reach shore," you allow, not wanting to be pushed into an obligation you do not wholly understand.

Speaking of elves, the skull of Miska, First Mate of the Scorpion's Sting, proves to be stubborn in keeping the secrets of her kin and why they had been hired to meddle with the dwarfs of Highhelm.


Sirim opines cautiously on the suggestion that you appear before the ruler of Cassomir that night: "Pisca is imagining a short sharp campaign against slavers who have not the strength to stand and fight. If he delivers this to Governor Bozbeyli and the latter is feeling combative, one could well imagine the accolades he too would earn, especially if he is the one to bring a native guide for the expedition."

"I was half-worried he would charge in there himself and end up daemon fodder. I'm not sure if this is better," you admit.

As the forest grow thinner to either side, the glades and villages more common, you wonder how far you are willing to go in order to bring the drow to light.

[] Agree to speak to Lord Governor Bozbeyli about the Darklands and the drow in particular

[] Do not agree to speak to the governor, you are tangled enough in politics already

[] Write in

OOC: Since the skull made the save you will not be able to try again for another week, by then you will be in Cassomir.

12th of Kuthona 4707 A.R. (Absalom Reckoning)

The remainder of the journey downriver is made up of trading tales with an ever more fascinated Pisca. It's not that the man thinks of you as a friend, even an equal really, but the more you speak of your adventures the more he seems to appreciate you as a fellow traveler, hunter of demons, ogres, hags, and other horrors that the light of Taldor burns against. He seems rather more fascinated by the world below than you would be in his place, half blind and still nine tenths ignorant, but as Mina puts it, his heart is in the right place.

Sirim chimes in to say that only means a drow assassin would know where to find it, a jest only Cob finds funny.

Forests give way first to tended woodland, sleepy apple-dryads with gold in their hair waving to passing ships, and then to markettowns and wide expanses of fields that know not the touch of any fey spirit. The Dancing Slurk's journey is not interrupted by any save passing officials of the Taldan Crown, the blue of their uniforms growing ever more vibrant and crisp the closer you come to the city.

"How do they get those curls in their hair?" Mina asks in passing.

"Hot iron," Pisca answers seriously.

"Urgh, I'll stick to spells." Mina shakes her head at the things people do for their appearance, and not even for their own sake. Apparently it is the custom of low-level Taldan officials to adopt the fashions of the century prior, and that includes the curling.

"At least they aren't wearing fake hair," Urgor grouses.

"Wigs?" Cob has the sound of someone who is considering the virtues of snatching one.

"Beard 'Stentions," he swallows the 'e' and turns the 'x' into an 's'. "Dwarves don't cut their beards for cheap, you know. they're a mark of age and status, but there's always those bad enough off they're willing to sell."

"And so the wealthy buy off the seeming of age and wisdom," you finish. "Think we're going to meet someone like that in the city?"

"Not from us Surefoots, but when it comes to handing those gems back you bet your ass lad. Send a dwarf to deal with humans they won't know what's true beard and what's knotted. Best place to send some well-born gravel for brains who should still be breaking ore for the furnace."

"'Handing it back?'" Gorok hadn't been paying much attention to the conversation on warm-blood grooming until became about the treasure you had just secured.

"Oh aye, you can't treat dwarf gems like they're pirate spoils. Every jeweler in a thousand leagues of the mountains will know what to look for and they'll hand you in for a ransom."

"Then they will pay us the ransom, yes?" Your friend presses. One might mistake the insistence for greed, but he's just as blunt in wanting what he's earned as anything else.

"Depends on what the lawspeaker says..." the dwarf stops.

"Regarding?" Mina asks, you suspect prompted by Sirim.

"If it's the Crown that got them back then there's nothing to pay, it was their job to keep the river way safe." The reluctance paints the picture well enough. Dwarves are known to the stingy. If they can get away without paying anything to get their property back, that's the way they'll take.

It is with such thoughts that you come within sight of Cassomir the Golden and gold it seems indeed as the evening sun shines off the light yellow sandstone of which it had been wrought. The style of it recalls that of Augustana or Almas, but the arches are more squat here, seeming pressed under the weight of near six thousand years. Statues of generals and admirals look on with eyes of unseeing stone upon ships that spill out from the river mouth towards the sea, though their living counterparts have rather more to say about strange ships and glass-gathers.

The port fee for 'an untested ship of magical origin' is two thousand gold a month, and one has to pay for a month to dock it in the first place.

"We could just take the ship apar..." Mina trails off as she catches Cob's stricken expression. "We could take it back upriver to anchor."

"This ship is stone, sorcery, and skill, we have no lack for any of them," Sirim notes. "There is no impediment to unmaking it now and making it again when we wish to leave."

What do you do?

[] Pay the docking fee (-2000 gp)

[] Take the Dancing Slurk back upstream (You will have to send a party member up there or ensure it is guarded some other way)

[] Unmake it and re-make it later as needed

[] Write in

OOC: Welcome to Imperial Taldan Bureaucracy, it has been growing unchecked for three ages of the world.