Finding the Spark (Pathfinder 1E Quest)

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

Pepper wanders around the room like 'a caged lion', or at least that's how the governor describes him, in an attempt you suspect to lighten a moon turned grim, but the cat stops here and there, jumps on furnishings, stretches and claws at the embroidery, such that you would think it ordinary feline mischief, if that is he didn't keep looking back to Mina and Sirim by turn. Finally he proclaims: "Pisca and Saenar's scent vanishes, the other never was."

"What do you...?" the guard starts to ask, but the princess cuts him off.

"The ward against scent of bird and beast and eye of man, 'tis green magic, the kind all too common at the court of elven-folk. You said the one who tried to intimidate the pathfinder had a lion? There you have it, a touch of nature magic and knight and alchemist are both gone. Can you tell us when the smells vanish? How old the most recent sniff is?"

"Alas, your Highness, I an but a humble feline, not Cayden Cailean's Thunder," the scoff didn't sound all that humble. "All I can say is that some parts of this chamber are touched by their scent, as you would expect, and others are clean as if the staff had passed through with buckets and suds, only I can't smell that either "

"Mayhap a verse will tell what mortal senses cannot," the princess looks up at her head bodyguard, who tips his head towards the window and the storm, perhaps to ask her if she is sure she wants to get into this. "A citizen of the realm is missing presumed taken by stealth into the hands of a foreign power. I will get them back one way or the other." The words are grim, lacking in the bravado they could all too easily have held.

"Ah... the mirror is here." The governor sounds odd as the pair of servants arrive, sweating a little under the weight of the silver bound mirror covered in a thin patina of dust. An unwelcome reminder perhaps.

Mina too notices, but she has work to do. With her right hand she wipes away the dust and in her left she holds the scroll, slowly chanting the names of stars brightest in the sky, the wanderers who see all from their perch, the knowledge seeping into you mind unbidden. You do not have long to ponder...


Shadows swim over the glass like ink stains to show a cramped underground chamber, the packed earth barely held back by a collection of rotten boards and crumbling brickwork. Crude markings eat into the wall, marks of suffering and violence, though some seemed to have been defaced as though by the claw of some great beast. Pica lies in the dirt, stripped of his armor, slumbering but otherwise unharmed as a pair of elves perch gracefully on some of the larger stones. One has hair as white as snow, held back by a silver circlet above his brow, while the other is garbed as a knight in plate which flows like water over her.

Quite apart from their seeming ease in such a place, the elves argue in their own tongue, which Mina translates.

"The white haired one is saying they should just slit his throat and throw his body at the... beasts, monsters, it doesn't really translate well. The humans are making this too complicated again. The warrior seems more philosophical, says the Swallowtail is making trouble for the humans. Then the mage asks her sarcastically why she's even here and she says..."

The princess picks up the translation tartly. "Someone has to keep the Emperor from learning of the Court of Blood or he'll sell slaves by the thousands for weapons against the easterners and the rabble. I think she means Qadira and either Andoran or Galt. Not great respecters of human nobility, these elves, though we might have guesses from kidnapping an imperial knight."

"But why?" Gorok asks, leaning closer to the mirror as though trying to force its narrow field of view to shift by sheer force of will.

"The elves, or I should say Kyonin, think we are foolish children who broke the world," the princess explains. "The fact that House Thrune seem hell-bent on doing so again hasn't really helped the case for mankind to be sure."

"Your highness..." the governor starts, almost chiding.

"I can either laugh or weep at the fact that we are looking at a major diplomatic incident precipitated by the diplomats of House Basri, Governor Bozbeyli," the retorts tartly.

The warrior elf frees a large sword from her back and starts to clean it as she asks something.

"She is asking what they should do with Pisca's sword, concerned it might be intelligent, the other, the mage, assures her it's not," Mina continues to translate. "I think they're planning to stage his death."

"Underground... the Locker," you conclude, the glyphs on the wall now coming into focus, lamashan markings. They plan to frame the hive with Pisca's death, and one assumes Saenar's as well, though they might have killed him already. It's not like the lantern bearers would want the Taldan authorities to get their hands in drow, alive or dead.

"Well Bjron, it looks like we have somewhere to be," the princess says with a growing smile.

"We?" the guard asks with enough emphasis to make a lesser soul wilt.

"I can hardly ask the governor to send guards into the middle of this mess, qho knows how deep they are. Are there even any in Cassomir who can track that deep? More to the point, it will do my reputation a great deal more good than harm to get my hands dirty."

What, if anything, do you say?

[] Offer the Ghosts to go into the Locker and retrieve Pisca as well as Saenar if he's still alive

[] Suggest that the princess squeeze House Basri for more information

[] Write in

OOC: Enjoy.