Remove ads

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

Voting is open
Reader mode
Remove ads
Arc 15 Post 30: A Few Words More
  • Threadmarks
    • 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.
     
    Last edited:
  • Threadmarks
    • DragonParadox said:
    "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?"
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Um, whoops?
     
    Haha, oops...

    Sings in Sorrow must think we're either really strange or kinda creepy now. Perhaps both.

    :oops: <-- Roland

    I worry that the solution might end up being worse than the haunting itself, but I would rather be proactive here instead of waiting for something unpleasant to happen when we're otherwise occupied or absent entirely.

    Also, @DragonParadox, it's Wayfarer's Respite, not Rest. :lol:

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

    Even if it doesn't directly prey on us, introducing an even stronger predator to deal with the current one seems… unwise.
     
    Goldfish said:
    Haha, oops...

    Sings in Sorrow must think we're either really strange or kinda creepy now. Perhaps both.

    :oops: <-- Roland

    I worry that the solution might end up being worse than the haunting itself, but I would rather be proactive here instead of waiting for something unpleasant to happen when we're otherwise occupied or absent entirely.

    Also, @DragonParadox, it's Wayfarer's Respite, not Rest. :lol:

    [X] Try to deal with the haunting
    -[X] Try to tempt a being that feeds upon the dead into the spirit realm of Wayfarer's Rest
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    On the positive side, haunts usually revive when killed, their predators might stay dead.

    [X] Try to deal with the haunting
    -[X] Try to tempt a being that feeds upon the dead into the spirit realm of Wayfarer's Rest
     
    Last edited:
    And why not to ask in the temple of Icomi?
    Hmm...
    "Summon one supernatural horror to try get rid for another" does not appear as a reliable plan to me, but I like "wait and see" even less.

    [X] Ask for help in the temple of Icomi

    I guess this is a legitimate write-in, @DragonParadox ?
     
    Random idea. How about if we manage to communicate with it? We could use Casper the friendly haunt in our keep
     
    Vote closed.
    Adhoc vote count started by DragonParadox on Jul 29, 2022 at 8:59 AM, finished with 16 posts and 9 votes.
    • [X] Try to deal with the haunting
      -[X] Try to tempt a being that feeds upon the dead into the spirit realm of Wayfarer's Rest
      [X] Try to deal with the haunting
      -[X] Wait for it to react so you can follow it back to the location of the curse
      [X] Ask for help in the temple of Icomi
    Click to expand...
     
    Arc 15 interlude 4: Spider at the Door
  • Threadmarks
    • 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.


    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.
     
    Last edited:
  • Threadmarks
    • @DragonParadox, Ah, it's vacation time again. Nice! I'm on vacation all next week, too, but that's just to burn accumulated time before I hit my maximum at work. Nothing accrues after I'm at the max. I plan on laying around the house like normal.
     
    Reader mode
    You must login or register to reply here.
    Voting is open
    Remove ads
    Back
    Top