Age of Ice and Blood: A Pathfinder System Heroic Fantasy Quest

[DragonParadox]

Those Who Linger ​

Fifth of Olweje-hamba (Olweje Descendent), 1349 A. L. (After Landfall)

Getting a bird, or as the case might be a woman who is sometimes a bird, under a roof to chat, is not as easy as one might have hoped. She does not trust the stone of the keep nor the eldritch wood of the Marcella's form. But in the end you manage to get her away from any ears that might bot be meet to hear all she has to say. "Your pardons fair lady, but I am a poor climber of trees let us perchance walk upon the shore..."

"Unchaperoned... tsk," you hear Esha's voice teasing unbidden in your mind sending you sputtering. Thankfully all Sings in Sorrow does is look at you in askance. You will find some way to get back at Esha though, you vow.

Asking how she has fared this past season earns you an earful of how an owl might see the winter through. If you ever find yourself in need to tell the fat squirrel from the lean you are set, but the real meat of the talk begins when you ask if she had gone back with her people or not. Her face darkens and her cloak of feathers seems to flatter like a living thing, which is might be for all you know. "They don't need me there anymore, they want me, my mother, my kind, but they do not need me. I've seen it in moontouched water, I've heard it in the hearts of prey when they come to a sudden... stop."

Her mien had grown less woman and more owl the more she speaks, the more agitated she becomes, so wisely perhaps, you choose to turn the question to 'those before'. How does she know about them and what does she know?

"I know they carried iron that was not from the sky and not from the forges of giants, I know they were brave as they were cruel and would have been harsh lords if they had lived. They spoke much with all who would listen about the place where they had come, a city with Seven Hills." she drops her voice. "I know they made deals with the landwards to look for the hills, to look for the river. Many, many of the spirits went alooking and they did not find the river because the water hides itself away maybe, always sly. But they found the hills..."

'The land is mostly as we found it,' you recall Zaia saying and wonder at the tribulations of those long dead sons of Rome. Oh course they found the city.

"All was empty but herders and grazing beasts," Singer in Sorrows continues. "But they spoke to the earth Wyrd and it said to them that a city might one day be there for it was much alike to other places where men had chosen to dwell and then some among the Forecomers thought that they must be in the days of their grandfathers grandfathers that then might then tangle the skeins of fate and the dark ones came and they fed upon their sorrows as rats feed upon carrion in the dark and some of them fell to the service of the darkness for it promised than that it would leave fate unbroken. Though the Shining Ones called it madness that those who had been vested to be fateless should wish to preserve fate, as though a fish should wish for drought to dry up the seas the traitors would not be denied, and so it is whispered in the dreams of the Shining Ones and so it is."

"You said something about rats, by the sea," you motion to the waves. "Though I confess I have seen the like in every ship I sailed on the same is true of every house, rats do not seem to have any great affinity to the sea."

"The sea is where most things live and though she is perilous the sea guards her children, so in times of great strife some linger there that were lost to land or air." She turns to look you with wide golden eyes. "You have heard tales of the face of the world then the challenge of the age is met as the Forecomers have done. Do you not wonder what happens when the trial is not passed?"

You remember the demons looking at you from behind glassy eyes, through rotten lips speaking... you do not want to know and yes the mind flies on dark wings hence.

"You think the Formless are survivors of a battle lost with the Neverborn?"

"I know only that he... that the shaman who was not worthy of the came wished you ill and when I asked who in all the world would most wish you undone that was the takers of souls, the Neverborn as you say."

What do you reply?

[] Offer her a place in Wayfarer's Deep

[] Ask more questions
-[] Write in

[] Write in

OOC: Sorry this took so long guys, I always struggle with exposition because I am afraid of making it an info-dump, but I feel this gets the character right and shows that this is just another piece of the puzzle and not an eye in the sky ultimate answer.

 

[DragonParadox]

A Few Words More ​

Fifth of Olweje-hamba (Olweje Descendent), 1349 A. L. (After Landfall)

You cannot imagine it would be too comfortable to dwell as an owl in a tree, though perhaps that marks a lack of imagination on your part. "Lady if you wish it Wayfarer's Respite can well live up to its name for you, such is the least that I might give you for all the aid that you offered and all the wisdom of thine words."

Sings to Sorrows looks at you oddly, as if that was the last thing she had expected. "You wish for me to share the roof of your kindred?

"Yes..." you trail off as you see her draw back a step, golden eyes suddenly cautious. "I mean no insult..."

"I am content enough as I am, the lesser kin shall keep me company. As I have seen to it that the rats do not gnaw at the roots of the man-hill so too shall I do now." With that she turns and she is gone in a whirl of feathers and rushing shadow.

When you ask Wanderer what you may have said ill to make her turn about so quickly he laughs, low and unsmiling as it the manner of his kin. "We do not live in halls of stone, only in caves delved into the earth and in the tents carried on the backs of the reindeer and so the Kinkut do not have the habit of inviting others to dwell with us. Oh if it was for a few days to give a traveler a place to rest their head, for a season to wait out the winter that I have heard of. But to ask a woman to dwell 'neath your roof for a all seasons... she likely thought you were asking her to be one with your tribe and one with you, to be... married is word I think?"

Sitting down on the worn stone that musty have been carried here by the sea on some long past fit of temper you don't know whether to curse or laugh... in the end you settle on doing both. Not even a chance to ask her if she can do anything about the haunting and all you had gained was what you had already, a cure against the bane of rats.

***​

Seventh of Olweje-hamba (Olweje Descendent), 1349 A. L. (After Landfall)

Thankfully Esha had not been idle and she had her own notion of how you might be rid of the shadow of death in your halls. "Death leaves marks and the dead dwell in them," he explains. "Fetters to those for whom the grey wold, which sorcerers call the ethereal realm, is less frightful than the judgement of the powers, if whatever power was left here should show itself than by second sight we could follow it and in the end undo it..."

"If we let is act," you echo back her last words, running a finger over the rough glass of your study, perhaps it is just your imagination, but it feels colder to the touch than it aught. Perhaps it is a trick of the light but the antlers someone had nailed above the door as a sort of trophy seem longer and more gnarled almost grasping. "That puts the initiative in the hands of out quarry and by now it must know that the keep is sometimes more filled with people and sometimes less. What if it does not act until all those who can see beyond sight are gone..."

"Well it has not in our absence," she notes, then shakes her head. "No, that is not a good way to measure a foe or any danger." She pauses and takes a sip of cooling tea. "There is one other thing I could do, make the grey wold... inhospitable to spirits for a while, summon those beasts that feast upon the wondering dead. The least of them cannot trouble the living any worse than an unquiet dream or two, but... should the summoning be too successful then we might have a worse battle on our hands."

"We could ask at the temple of Ikomi," Inge interjects, but Zaia reminds you that you had not even sought out the sea-stone to divine the thoughts lingering in the bones of the dead... bones now absent those of the dragon you have slain.

What do you do next?

[] Try to deal with the haunting
-[] Wait for it to react so you can follow it back to the location of the curse
-[] Try to tempt a being that feeds upon the dead into the spirit realm of Wayfarer's Respite

[] Talk to one of your companions
-[] Write in who and on what subject

[] Write in

OOC: Well your rolls were kind of terrible this time around, no way around it.

 

[DragonParadox]

Spider at the Door ​

Seventh of Olweje-hamba (Olweje Descendent), 1349 A. L. (After Landfall)

The bed had been pushed against the wall, so had the small table and the chair had been set upon it, a precarious tower to make more room in the middle. She would need all the room she could get, the sorceress knew. Eight legs the hunters had, seven eyes in darkness peering, six paths to bind them true. A sight pointed star, inside a seven pointed one inside one that had six... the points carefully misaligned all drawn in a mix of blood and ash as precious mirth wafted through the air.

You couldn't intentionally replicate summoning gone by because that was a kind of order, a kind of predictability and in the eyes of those she sought to summon any pattern so tight looked like a trap. Such was the world seen by their many eyes, for that is how they hunted, in patterns of thought of memory of emotion the Doorstep Spiders hunted those already dead, the truly dead that was.

How and when did the first drinker of minds encounter the first eater of ragged souls even Esha's late and unlamented father did not know and he did not care. It was a most profitable match, the vampire would consume the minds of men and then turn their unhallowed corpses into puppets and the spider would have a feast of broken of broken specters, barely remembering their own names with hardly any hope of protecting themselves. So was the trail of destruction burned like strands of silk into the flame.

Of course, Esha thought lighting the black candles on the points of the outermost symbol, actual spider silk didn't burn any better than it cut... or bludgeoned, or torn.

There was no easy way to get rid of a Doorstep Spider once you had called it because they could pass the border of worlds as a man might pass through a reed door and unlike so many other spirits able to make the passage they were not anathema to the gods and so the condemnation of priests and the presenting of holy things had no more power over them than it did over men... which was to say none for Esha had never met a faithful spider in her life.

Then again I did not mean that many of them did I? the sorceress thought as the shadows started to waver and the smoke to shift in ways not wholly under the power of the wind. The first time she had met one of those Esha had still been a girl, maybe about Inge's age or a little older, certainly before she had tried to run away from her father for the first time.

The nightmares had followed her for months.

"Wu eyim alankacun, olusi ilekon..." the chant was a call, and a warning, it marked her as one not to be trifled with, it marked her as not-Prey. The Hungry Dead did not leave ghosts, their souls fat with stolen memories quick to sink into death should they be slain in truth. Esha herself did not enjoy that advantage, though the timber of her soul was akin enough to a velata's.

And also there is a man with a burning sword outside the door and he would jump in here if I so much banged by foot on the door, Esha thought as she carefully avoided doing just that. It was still... odd to trust others so far. Odd but not unpleasant.

The words carried on as she spilled a thread of honey golden bright into the summoning flame. Burning honey as it happened did not smell nice, it made one's nose itch and made one desperately want to sneeze. She shuddered to think of what sneezing would do or signify in the chant... Stupidest way for a magician to die, that was one way to make history.

A door that wasn't there opened and from it stepped something glossyblack and burning orange orange, something with eight legs... but not with seven eyes. Eyes it had two in a face that was all too human framed in a mane of wild black hair.

Spoiler: Doorstep Spider

Summoning unexpected things was... not the mark of a long lived summoner to say the least, but compounding that with a impolite greening had been the doom of many a neophyte.

"Greetings great one, I did not expect to be honored by one of your stature," she said.

"Hmm... and what do you know of my stature girl that you would summon me so rudely into a troubled hall, perhaps I should take my repast now."

The nice thing about windows was that you could see out of them, or as the case might be that you could see into them. It would have been unwise in the extreme to have a servant of Ikomi in the room with her when she carved a way through the Pale, but that did not mean a certain girl could not be waiting just outside the window.

The veil of fate fell about her shoulders, fleeting authority and whispered wisdom.

"Perhaps you would be wise to wait and not find enemies where there might be allies, this hall is not at it appears, not a trap but burrow deep."

"Hmm..." the spider seemed almost to purr, which image Esha did not wish to have in her head, but sorcerers had to be flexible about these things. "What are your terms then?"

[] Feast only in the troubled dead, the violent, the perilous. This will spare any innocent souls, but you will have to feed the spider some other way eventually

[] Feed on all you find, these are your hunting grounds

[] Write in

OOC: Sorry this took so long I'm going away on holiday tomorrow and I had to do some packing and stuff. I probably won't be on until tomorrow evening because the journey is really long.

 

[DragonParadox]

Bubbling Over ​

Seventh of Olweje-hamba (Olweje Descendent), 1349 A. L. (After Landfall)

Somehow the giant spider with the face of a woman hiding in the walls of the world is not the strangest being in the keep. Still you are content that it seems to understand to hunt only those of the restless dead moved by malice and wickedness and not those merely confused along their way. The prospect of having to feed it something else doesn't exactly fill you with good cheer, but it's no worse than the ship. Well alright, it is a little worse than the ship in that these are the souls of men meant to go to their just reward or punishment. But as Zaia notes this world is not yours and these creatures are as natural in the abstract as the spiders that feast on flies. The only difference is that they are hunting here and not in some other place

The sound of something metallic jangling against stone startles you from your thoughts, like someone had thrown an enormous pot against the wall, followed a moment later by raised voices.

"What in the name of the Black Pit of Souls do you mean there's no room for my workshop!" Mog shouts. "Am I supposed to let my equipment in the rain and the wind. Just you wait for the next time there's a storm, you'll see a hell of a fireworks show."

While you do not know what 'fireworks' are you can guess from context and from the calm, not to say somewhat patronizing tome Zaia is taking with him you would guess the fight is unlikely to go anywhere good.

"You can keep your tools in the ship a while longer, while we prepare a new place for you to work your craft. In this realm stone is not shaped like clay to the potter's hand..."

"In he ship, with the brine to corrode the joints, with a hundred left feet running about fit to trip on something at the worst time, with Other Things singing their songs through the hold."

"The Marcella shall not harm your work and the sailors have learned to keep away from what they don't understand," the alchemist notes.

As you turn the corner to see them arguing in front of the feasthall's door he catches your eye and says. "Ah sir knight, just the man I was looking for. Perhaps you could get Mog here the chance to see the city rather than troubling himself with... kitchen renovations."

He was trying to use the kitchens. You wince inwardly... and maybe a little outwardly as well. Zaia is right about the sailors and your men as well for that matter, keeping well away from things they do not understand but when the inexplicable is near the stew pot they might refuse to eat from it and that is the last thing you want.

With Zaia himself busy with moving things from ship to shore, Tom seeing to the men as they do the same and even Swift Pebble and her kin busy with the children you are probably the best one to distract the excitable little fey. Well unless you wanted to call on Esha again, but the summoning seemed to have cost her.

If nothing else it will give you a chance to get to know Mog better.

What parts of Orinilu do you visit and what do you ask the little fey?

[] Write in

OOC: So here we have it, social action. Normally I would not leave a floating write in like this, but with the longer wait times for updates I figure you guys have the time to think it though.

 

[DragonParadox]

In Uncanny Company ​

Eight of Olweje-hamba (Olweje Descendent), 1349 A. L. (After Landfall)

It is strange to hear all about you the Engur tongue and stranger still be have to prove who you are to the satisfaction of the guards of the High City. The Hillfolk they know, though they do not often come among the palaces of the nobility, and of your own company something had been said, even if twisted by rumor and hearsay, but one of the fey wondering about under the light of day festooned with strange artifice, with what must seem to them weapons of dread power... well that calls an accounting. Alas not the kind of accounting that can be solved by adding a few more pieces of silver to the right palm, not for lack of trying on Antonio.

The guard is resolute... as resolute at least as a man facing down armed strangers and one conspicuously unarmed lacy sizing him up through pale eyes can be. It is the law of the city, he claims, that no magician should walk among the people in the company of strange spirits and call them servant. "Too often such have been the master and not the servant to the ruin of all."

"But I do not claim to be a magician good man, nor to have bound Mog by any sorcery, only by his own word freely given for the chance to work his craft in peace and honor."

"I know the law and so I speak it," the guard replies in what is likely a practiced manner to judge by the fact that the crowd waiting to get in the gate which had been at first weary of the gremlin was now groaning and tossing the odd insult where they were thickest. Words they had all heard before when the high plumed guard were at their most intransigent.

"What pray is a spirit good man?" Neios asks. "I confess that I am a stranger to your realm and still struggle with the finer twists of your Engur tongue. Is a spirit one who cannot be touched?" he lays a hand on Mog's shoulder. "Is a spirit one who cannot be understood save by the wise and the learned?"

"Oi, get out the way already?" Mog's accent is... indescribable, best you can place it was if one of the flighty fey of the air tried badly to imitate a troll, but it is without a doubt in the tongue of the land and known by all.

At last the prince asks: "Is then a spirit simply one whose like you have not seen before? Because if that is your measure then I fear trade shall go ill indeed this year."

"It's already gone bad enough on account of the war and no thanks to those who live in the high houses!" one wit shouts from behind you. "What's war gotten us that serve but blood and death for the glory of the Highborn!"

And that is when the pair of younger guards get out their cudgels, oh not for you, they would be as useful as a willow branch against armor and sorcery, but the young fellow had spoken out in the open and the gate guards aren't used to taking lip from the commons, especially ot those who come from good families.

What do you do?

[] Try to calm spirits

[] Ask to get through now that the guards are distracted

[] Write in

OOC: Things have heated up rather badly in Orinilu in your absence and unfortunately for you you are now in the place where pissed off commoners meet the scions of the minor nobility.

 

[DragonParadox]

A Subtle Weave​

Eight of Olweje-hamba (Olweje Descendent), 1349 A. L. (After Landfall)

"There's no war more bloody than one that pits brother against brother on the very threshold of your keep," you call out in a loud voice, but the crowd does not seem to be listening, like a bull enraged by bright colors, like a hound ill kept and off its chain they surge towards the guard trying to get a grip on the young man.

A breath, a heartbeat away from blood is it when the cold breath of the grave falls over you and with it insight of a sort you would once have been hesitant to wield, for it can come from only one. "Stay your hand or death will be among you sure as sunrise, rich and poor highborn and low!" The ring of steel and the hiss of fire kindled underline the words and those nearest in the crowd draw back as if scalded.

"I think," Neios speaks in carefully measured tones, "it would be wisest for all of us to pass along on our business and let others do the same." He takes a half-step towards the guard who was about to connect his cudgel to the head of the ill-timed wit, enough to distract the man, enough for the source of his ire to draw back among his fellows, a family of carters from the knots about their necks.

The captain of the gate looks on your company with a stormy gaze, but he does not try to detain you anymore, too busy now looking for the 'filthy swine' who had dragged the honor of his men through the mud.

They did a good job rolling their honor in it without any help, you think but doo not say as you ride past and into down the long, wide avenue to the manse of House Koire.

You find those halls more filled with voices and with the soft chords that are almost and yet not like lutes, you find the servants gracious and yet weary of the company you keep and you find those guards which had been trained at Wayfarer's Respite now in posts of some import. But Odorin Koire is too busy to receive you, he is the servants tell you, deep in negotiations for his betrothal and so he will be on the morrow, but the day after they assure you he may speak to you as honorable allies.

"Well it looks like we are ill timed this time," Neios laughs and you are about to depart when Esha speaks in the silence of your mind. "I asked the captain of the guards what the lady Odorin is to be betrothed is and he could not say, he said it was not important."

You bite back a curse, but she is not done. "He does think, think mind that his master is with the woman, the one he cannot named but which he is sure is to he the new lady of the manor. There is enchantment here and strong enchantment at that, but of what kind I cannot say, nor what might set it off."

What do you do?

[] Write n

OOC: I have to run, but I wanted to give you guys something.

 

[DragonParadox]

To Seek the Seekers ​

Eight of Olweje-hamba (Olweje Descendent), 1349 A. L. (After Landfall)

If there is one thing all your travels have taught you it is that a stranger bearing strange news and ill omen is never welcome and yet a warning you must give. You look to Inge an see the girl confounded, she speaks with the word of a fel power and her she is a child of fishermen, one of the western islands who barely speaks the tongue of the land. Perhaps another priest, perhaps one of this land will guess where this tapestry snared and if not than their calls of shrill alarm will cause less scandal in the old city and rouse men to action more readily.

Thus you are away, leaving in your wake smiling servants and a mystery most dire, out into the crowded streets, among the folk who find the company you keep strange and unchancy, among the hawkers of talismans 'to ward off the evil eye' and those who sell love potions by the cauldron. A bit late for the former and too much of the latter ails House Koire...

"We need to find the hunters," you resolve. "The priests of Ikomi aught to know where they might be found..."

"If anyone does," Neiros finishes grimly. "I have heard of these hunters alongside which you slew a mad mag, but they seem the sort to make themselves lost among the tangled streets as a wolf in the woods and we have but a day to find them."

Inge's blessings, stronger than when last you had visited the temple open the way to the sanctum and the high priest, but he can no more answer the riddle you have found than he could pry the secret of the bones.

"Did you know of the betrothal?" you ask.

"How not, I was invited, but a middling House of little honor and less power was..."

"Not important enough for you to go," Esha finishes. she fidgets to be in the House of Ikomi which sings of dark things to her nature and perhaps it makes her short-tempered. "And so many were asked who were above answering, then no doubt some of far lesser note than House Koire and they thought it great honor so would not question the strangeness of the moment. You were careless and so you opened the way for your own undoing."

"We were not the target of this malice, if malice it be," the priest snaps.

"You think a power strong enough to ensorcerel a whole household will stop at one household?" she asks, her words more like salt and vinegar than honey.

"We would know where the hunters dwell," you interject ere words can grow anymore bitter. "The Lady Anisi..."

"She is no lady and if you think I can find one hunter from another by name than you do not know them," the priest bristles. "There are some places, most of them in Farshore, where such folk can be found, but 'were who you bring to meet them..." he glances pointedly at Esha.

Once out of the shadows of the temple you look towards the gate and wonder if it would be wise to send some of your companions back to Wayfarer's Respite. Mog certainly perhaps Esha as well.

"There is fel sorcery afoot and I the most skilled in recognizing it," the sorceress counters the the thought. "If Anisi learned to hold her nose than so too shall whoever we meet."

"Hold their nose or try to cut off yours, both seem as likely," Mog giggles darkly. "I have heard of these folk and they do not take well to surprises, especially ones that bring word of peril. They might well think it a trap."

Who do you go looking for hunters with?

[] Write in

OOC: I just got an email which means some plans shifted around so I will not be online for much of the next two days as I'll be visiting stuff so I got this up since it is probably best to be early with a promise than two days late.
[/QUOTE]

 

[DragonParadox]

On Broken Ways ​

Eight of Olweje-hamba (Olweje Descendent), 1349 A. L. (After Landfall)

It had seemed like a good idea at the time, you think looking around the rumbling earthen walls of the Farshore. Wandered and Tom to add a bit more heft to the implied beating any thugs would take for trying their luck, Zaia for his scholarly skill and level head, Esha for her arcane lore. Maybe it was Swift Pebble, who must have the look of some exotic pet in the dusty gaps between the buildings that had never heard even the whisper of a fountain, maybe it's the fact that there is no disguising the value of the weapons you bear, implied threat of using them or no.

A score of hungry eyes are an itch on the back of your mind as soon as you cross the river and no amount of shouting from Wanderer, or warnings from you are able to ward them off for long. You catch sight of furtive shadows out of the corner of your eyes and think how good it would be to have bow and arrow in hand over the hilt of a sword... then you abruptly change your mind when you notice one of those figures is a boy who could not be more than two years older than Inge.

"How many?" you ask Swift Pebble.

"I don't know," she replies sounding as unnerved as you feel if not more so. "I don't have eyes on the inside, I need to see or to know someone is there."

"Enough to gather their courage and get their blood up I fear," Zaia says, not in any of the tongues of the land. "Those of the Purple have no no love of us and no reason to stop the gutter sweepings from trying their luck."

"Surely they have more sense than that," says Tom, an honest country fellow if ever there was one, but the chemist laughs and reaches for his vials.

"Then you have never walked the streets of Alexandria or Damascus after dark, if there is one thing every footpad learns it is that be a man's armor well-wrought and his blood noble he will still die to a dagger in the ribs, and the well accounted and well-bred have the best loot."

"Let them come, we'll crush their bones," Wanderer growls, though he may not have been able to understand the words he gets the gist of them in every unwelcome movement high and low.

"A less dire fate than hunger would bring surely," Esha mutters darkly. "If folk were at the edge of starving at the edge of the Old City I shudder to think how bad it must be here."

"Not many pigeons about," Zaia notes, to the confusion of Swift Pebble, who had not seen men hunt birds thus far.

"What in the name of the Thousand Gods and the One are you doing out here?" the voice comes suddenly out of a gap between buildings that you could have sworn was not enough for a grown man to fit through.

In fairness the man in question is not very broad, tall and stretched out as if he had been pulled by his neck and ankles until both were a few inches taller than they should he is wrapped head to toe in strips of grey cloth, save for the lips and the dark eyes starting intently into yours. He would have the look of a mad beggar is some of those strips of cloth were not embezzled with what can only be magical scrips.

Then again a mad magician would not be that uncommon would it? you think even as you bow your head and say aloud. "We seek the hunters of the Empty Lotus Garden." You see about you neither locus not garden, but thus you had been told to introduce yourself.

The man points at Esha. "She smells of death, she may not come into the sanctum, the rest of you follow."

"Am I then so leave the lady to the jackals?" you ask incensed.

"Any of the rest of you that care to come and talk business out of the street come, or don't, it matters little to me," the man in grey says, turning to leave.

What do you do?

[] Split your company to leave someone with Esha
-[] Write in how

[] Argue for Esha's presence
-[] Write in argument

[] Write in

OOC: It would have taken a better roll than you got to stumble onto a hunter you know, there's a whole organization of them after all and you only have a relationship with Anisi and the others.

 

[DragonParadox]

From Lips of Shadow Passing ​

Eight of Olweje-hamba (Olweje Descendent), 1349 A. L. (After Landfall)

Anger bubbles hot in your thoughts and hot upon your tongue also. "The good lady has fought Neverborn and worse at my side and, thanks as much to her actions as my own, kingdoms of man have persevered rather than become the playgrounds of monsters and worse. If she isn't welcome here then none of us are..."

Too hot perhaps, the stranger's eyes show not a spark of understanding but only anger in return. "I did not ask what cesspit you dragged yourself through stranger. Keep company with vultures, expect the reek of their breath of draw flies. Now unless you would want to try your luck against every scab and flint-knife in these parts I suggest you turn tail and go off. We shall not have that know the way into our sanctums," the hunter buries the word in such contempt as to make it worth a dozen insults.

"A scavenger you call me and yet you would not follow were I lead," Esha says softly. "Poor hunters are you not to know the portents of death."

You expect many things of the man, a heaping of contempt, silence and departure back by whatever secret way he came, even anger, even, recalling your first meeting with Anisi violence. What you did not expect was for him to give her another searching look and then to give a short bitter laugh. "Strange ways do you tempt men by death's get."

"Do I looks like I need to tempt your aid hunter?" she motions to you, to Tom and to Wanderer. "I have no wish to flaunt the law of the city or set the spark of disorder in it for mobs are less discerning than the beasts of the wild. Yet if we bear witness to peril in a high place among the lords and princes, who are we to go to? The priests of the soil and the sea and hope they can grow or drown the troubles? The Guard of the Council of Captains? Are we to pay them to investigate?"

Apparently when provided with a sufficiently self-interested reason for your actions the hunter is at least willing to listen to you... if not invite you into a private sanctum. Normally you would have the choice of leaving or airing the troubles of House Koire for everyone with an ear in this part of Farshore to hear, but you had Swift Pebble and therefore a means to speak in the mind and in silence.

You thus find that the hunter's name is Lak, than he is more of an investigator than a warrior hence how he came upon your company 'stomping about Farshore like a herd of mammoth in rut'. As you reveal what little you had seen at the Koire Manse he grows more and more wary until at last he curse and spits on the ground, stomping the place with his foot.

"You have given your warning stranger, we will Hunt now and if the path is true... perhaps we shall ignore the company you keep the next time."

"Your hunt this may be but Odorin Koire is an ally of ours, we shall not abandon him to his fate having revealed it to you."

Lak laughs, an ugly and bitter sound. "You expect me to trust you with a danger at my back in a place we were sent only at your word? I'd sooner slit my own throat than walk into such an obvious trap. Stay away from House Koire if you do not wish to make fresh foes."

And with that ominous warning the man... literally melts into the shadows.

"He is not unseen, he vanished," Esha says, her dark eyes glowing faintly. "And now we have trouble not allies waiting for us. It seems like I outsmarted myself. I apologize."

What do you do?

[] Nothing says you cannot watch the watchers and see if other Hunters might not be more reasonable

[] Try to get the priests of Ikomi involved in building some kind of trust

[] Write in

OOC: Your rolls just aren't cooperating this time around it seems. You literally rolled a 2 on the d20, one higher and you would have gotten at least a slightly better result. Esha rolled high, but there is only so much she can salvage given what she is.

 

[DragonParadox]

Crimson Lies ​

Eight of Olweje-hamba (Olweje Descendent), 1349 A. L. (After Landfall)

It is well into the afternoon by the time you make it back into sight of the river ever watchful that someone might think to fall on the foreigners in some dark secluded place if they should see you as more wealthy than you are well armed. Thankfully the worst you face is taunts and jeers hurled by roof-traders and one pot that you dearly hope was filled with water that narrowly misses Zaia's head.

The scholar looks up serenely to meet the gaze of the half-grown boy who had tossed it. "A pity, that one seems to have spirit, but I would wager his parents will try to whip it out of him for the waste of a piss pot." He even seems to mean it.

As for the guards at the narrow bridge, they let you through without even a perfunctory request for a bribe, too eager perhaps to discuss your folly to have taken such a host across. 'The gods of wine and song must watch for you strangers, spill a cup for us,' one of them calls, all but naming you fools, but your errand is too urgent to stop.

You make it to the temple and thence are ushered into the company of the high priest at once.. Though the man is open to attempting mediation his own news is strange as it is worrisome.

"A herald came from House Koire while you were away saying that one of their weavers had contacted the blood whip, though the timing of such a fearsome illness after the talk of magic lies like a stone in my stomach."

"Blood whip?" Zaia asks, ever curious to learn new things, even the most gruesome.

"An illness of the lungs that kills perhaps three in ten, though the manner of it is such as to awaken the fear of the people and make the imagination of the poet soar. The sufferer coughs blood you see and when they are near to death they spew forth so much of it and so violently that it may lie 'like the very marks of divine scourges on the walls'."

"You do not seem troubled..." you note, unable to keep worry out of your own voice. In all the wars you had fought you had seen more men die of sickness than of the foe's blades.

"Ikomi will guard her own," the priest replied calmly

"But only so many in one day," Esha notes dispassionately. "If there is sickness many will come to your door seeking healing and from that shall come your peril."

"Our walls are thick and out guards leal," the high priest proclaims. Then in a more apologetic manner, at least so much as a man seated on what might as well be a throne could be apologetic, he adds. "Yet if you go into that house how we may not admit you into the temple again until we are certain the plague has not found host in your flesh, such is the law of the temple."

So the priests and the city at large dares not send anyone too senior and high ranking to see what is going on in the Koire Manse, you curse inwardly. "The hunters have surely not had any time to enter the manse though?"

"Bring one to me with pledge that they have not and I shall use what authority I have to sway them to common cause."

So to translate the priest is willing to to anything but actually endanger his own skin even though he admits to possessing a cure for the plague that is supposedly ravaging the manse

How do you find the watching hunters?

[] Deploy the otter-kin who would learn stealth, between their keen senses and mind speech they should be able to pick out any watchers

[] Have Inge show herself very openly as a priestess of Ikomi and hope one of the watchers approaches her

[] Use bird spies, it risks the least but also might miss the most

[] Write in

OOC: Well you rolls are getting better, at least so much that you were not waylaid in Farshore.