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Finding the Spark (Pathfinder 1E Quest)

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Arc 10: Post 7: Scales of Green New
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    • Scales of Green ​

    22th of Kuthona 4707 A.R. (Absalom Reckoning)

    It's not an easy argument to make, persuading Gorok to stay behind. Too well does he recall the dangers of the crypt, the evils that lurked in Breolia's boudoir, but Sirim is nothing of not reasonable. Discovery would be a greater risk in his presence than the aid the iruxi's arm might offer in the moment. 'What of wards?' Gorok asks and the shade laughs with scorn, naming them 'bright-eyed' and 'mirror seen'. The Taldans, he argues, would not want to cut their flowerbeds with ward-lines. The house at most is warded, and was he not swifter of foot than he had ever been?

    Reluctantly Gorok allows it, eyes unblinking with that uncertainty which upon the faces of the iruxi is not motion but stillness. "We'll see ourselves out just as we do in," you proclaim confidently before in one long breath bidding farewell to both gesture and form. Thus you become a shadow though the air.

    Sirim Diplomacy: 1d20+14 = 29 (Success)

    The edges of your new substance flicker and boil in silent patterns that beguile the eye even with the morning sun already casting its face upon the world, but even that transformation seems commonplace compared to Cob who puts two fingers in his mouth as though to whistle but no sound comes out, only one long breath that seems to carry with it three fourths of his mass. As he floats through the air on the power of Mina's spell he seems more fairy than goblin, if one without wings, and then be promptly adds those with a flourish of bound glamor.

    Both of you pass under shadow unseen, following the vine up until Cob stops about halfway and wonders strangely: "Huh, wonder what they feed it? Picnic? Picnic people?"

    "What?" you ask... or start to.

    Cob is smiling at a particular spot on the vine where a red flower seems to have bloomed... "Wonder if it can taste smell of shadow on air?"

    Only then do you realize that what you see are eyes on an the arrow shaped head. What you, and one assumes the whole city, had taken for a carefully cultivated vine is in fact a titanic serpent with scale-leaves and and fangs like pale stone in gums of moss. A slow patient guardian, but terrible when roused. One wonders which druid had decided to rouse this thing out of the primeval woodlands or grow it by their strange rites and how long its been here.

    But that wondering wouldn't have been enough to keep you here if it hadn't been for Cob slowing far too close to its head for comfort and peering his brand new sprite's head down.

    "Doesn't look like picnic people skin, too red." Now that he points them out you can see up a few scraps of ragged red skin that are caught in the thorns that masked the head of the snake.

    He pokes it with the tip of one of his many daggers, now held with both hands in a posture that might make you smile if he weren't tempting the ire or hunger of something that could swallow him whole.

    "Get away from there!" you hiss reflexively, but it's too late, the piece of skin had started to smoke and spark. A moment later it was gone.

    Guardian Perception(Sees the Invisible): 1d20+24 = 38
    Cob Stealth 1d20+46 = Automatic Success
    Akorian Stealth: 1d20+26 =     44
    ...
    Akorian Perception: 1d20+11 = 12 (Critical Failure)
    Cob Perception: 1d20+17 = 37 (Critical Success)

    "Knew I recognized it," your friend declares triumphantly. "Devil skin. Imp tried to get in, got munched by snake, bit of wing caught on the thorns."

    The vine shakes ominously, though none of the folks outside seem to notice, and after a moment of seeing nothing, tasting nothing on the air, the guardian stills. The people below probably think it was the wind.

    Guardian Perception (Sees the Invisible): 1d20+24 = 35
    Cob Stealth 1d20+46 -10 (Messing around) = 49

    "Do you think there are more devils inside?" Cob asks once you are finally past the window and into a narrow humid chamber filled with deep narrow plant pots, most of them empty, though a few sickly looking flowers hang on in one.

    "One hopes not..."

    You are reminded again that House Basri is apparently most opposed to war with Cheliax and you begin to wonder if it is more than fear of House Thrune that guides them. Though if that's the case why would their own guardian kill the imp whose remains you found?

    What do you do next?

    [] Try to read a servant's mind for directions

    [] Check all the rooms systematically, starting with the ones that have a good view

    [] Write in

    OOC: Lets just say it would have been fun times if you tried to climb that 'vine.'
     
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    • Whew, that would have been loud, to say the least. It's a good thing we kept the entry team small. :o

    We don't have long on our Invisibility spells, another 6 minutes or so I think, but Kori can reapply them if it proves necessary. If we do find a servant to target with Detect Thoughts, we have no guarantee they'll be a useful source of information. The spell doesn't provide full mind reading, but just focuses on surface thoughts. The servant would need to be thinking about the specific location for us to be able to lift it from their mind.

    Better to just start checking the place out now, IMO.

    [X] Check all the rooms systematically, starting with the ones that have a good view
     
    Cob needs to be more careful about what he pokes.

    [X] Check all the rooms systematically, starting with the ones that have a good view
     
    We are going to need to caution him about that. It's one thing to poke around when the stakes are low, but when we're on important missions, it's dangerous and unprofessional to take those sorts of risks.
     
    Goldfish said:
    We are going to need to caution him about that. It's one thing to poke around when the stakes are low, but when we're on important missions, it's dangerous and unprofessional to take those sorts of risks.
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    It is a Goblin though.

    If you asked random people to describe Goblins, dangerous and unprofessional might make the top-ten list.
     
    I'm trying to figure out the Devil angle here. The Imp probably wasn't just random snake chow. Was it here to spy on House Basri, to deliver a message, or to communicate with a traitor within the House?

    Are the Basri as a whole in bed with the Cheliax? If they're trying to prevent a war with Cheliax while also fomenting conflicts with the nearby Dwarven powers, possibly destabilizing the region and damaging the economy, on top of helping the Elves of Kyonin do shady shit that could start a conflict between them and Taldor, it doesn't take much of a leap to assume they're working on behalf of House Thrune rather than Taldor.
     
    [X] Check all the rooms systematically, starting with the ones that have a good view

    I assume if they were working with devils, then the devils would know where not to tread in the garden.
    An Imp-spy being eaten by your home defenses is no proof of anything but a functioning home defense.
     
    Arc 10: Post 8: What Drink Reveals New
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    • What Drink Reveals ​

    22th of Kuthona 4707 A.R. (Absalom Reckoning)

    With a little help from some grease on the hinges the door opens without a squeak into a corridor set not with torches as you had seen for the first twenty four years of your life, not even with lanterns with which you had grow accustomed to in the Burnlands, but mage lights, false embers of gold and green that cast changing shadows over tapestries that recount a history writ in wool, flax, and silk of far off lands. In the changing light the birds seem almost alive upon branches woven and the lions peering golden-eyed between false trees carved of decorative half-pillars. Not the servants quarters, that much you can be sure of. But in the absence of anyone to follow you start checking the doors... that is Cob starts checking the doors, both to keep from raising any alarms and because he, unlike you, still has solid hands to do so.

    For the most part what he finds is bedrooms, each showing the personal touch of their occupant; there a desk piled high with parchment as though the owner could not stand to ever be more than a few steps from a scribe's labors, there a canopied bed whose perfumed depths hints at scandal, there a narrow table bearing wine glasses and strange powders.

    "Don't," you raise a hand before Cob, who looked like he'd been about to taste the latter.

    Not that passing through said hand would be any trouble, but he huffs and loops in the air impatiently. "No, see under there?"

    Now that he had pointed it out you can see a hinged lid in the surface of the table, not quite closed all the way thanks to the carelessly placed goblet.

    Over the next fifty heartbeats, as you are all too aware of the veil running thin, he fiddles with a tangle of steel gears and metal wires until at last biting back a triumphant call he makes the wheels spin. The bed flips upward in almost perfect imitation of the lid on the table to reveal a secret staircase to a windowless door below.

    3 Minutes Spent Searching through the Rooms
    Cob Perception: 1d20+17 = 30 (Success)
    Cob Disable Device (DC 30): 1d20+ 24 = 29, 41 (Failure, Success)
    Time Taken: 4d4 = 12 Rounds, +1.2 Minutes
    Total Time Spent in the House: 4.2 Minutes

    It's... most certainly not any kind of study, deep and dark like a well and opening into the stone. The circular chamber is meant to be lit by torches, and there in the center of it is carved a circle edged in lambent flame, though you cannot guess its meaning or read the symbols all around it. There are also shelves pressed into the walls, heavy with tomes and parchments. Perhaps clues as to what you'd stumbled on... perhaps, as Cob is quick to say, worth taking.

    Akorian Spellcraft (DC 16/21): 1d20+9 = 13 (Failure)

    "Probably not the lord's study," you muse, not unless he has another much more public abode.

    Meanwhile, Cob starts to call the third of your company. It's hard to say for sure what looks stranger, the bag on Cob's belt unfurling itself to its full size when he sets it down like some strange shroom, or a winged cat fluttering out of it to look down at the hole. He takes one look down the hole and sneezes in disgust: "Cabal markings, flawed ones. See there and there, the lines break at odd angles. A mage, if such a fool could be called such, was attempting to summon not merely one of the baatezu, but an uniila. It is to their great good fortune that they seem to have failed."

    "Failed to summon, or failed to bind?" you ask worriedly.

    "To summon," he answers firmly.

    "Bigger devil than the imp trying to get in?" Cob asked, frowning in turn at the hidden room.

    "Or trying to get out," you say in a flash of insight. One would be well-served using a long spoon to sup with the devil, and better still for the spoon to be in the hand of another. House Basri might shelter a diabolist, but it is perhaps not wholly beholden to Hell or to house Thrune, though the full answer is likely to be found in those scrolls.

    Pepper Spellcraft (DC16/21): 1d20+15 = 31 (Success)
    Akorian Wisdom (DC 10): 1d20 = 11 (Success)

    What do you do?

    [] Loot as much as you can

    [] Search though carefully, seeking answers not profit

    [] Close the secret compartment and keep looking down the corridor

    [] Write in

    OOC: A bit short, but I figure this was worth a vote since you found something quite unusual, even if Kori can't quite tell what with that roll.
     
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    • @DragonParadox, we have Pepper in Cob's Handy Haversack so he can peak out and check for stuff like this. The plan had him switch his Evolutions to Skilled for Knowledge (Arcana) and Spellcraft, raising their bonuses to +24 and +15, respectively.
     
    DragonParadox said:
    Edits done, you found the abode of a diabolist.
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    Did Pepper notice the presence of any wards preventing or interfering with teleportation? Or anything else?

    Also, what is the general light level inside the manor? Normal?

    This is not something we want to poke right now.

    It's great information we can pass on to Eutropia as ammo against House Basri, but it's not what we're here for and messing with it is going to slow us down.

    Kori is probably going to need to cast additional Mythic Invisibility spells on himself and Cob within a couple minutes and they haven't found the evidence yet. I would rather not spend more Mythic power on that if it isn't necessary, though. Their stealth is good enough they should be able to do without now that they're inside.

    [X] Close the secret compartment and keep looking down the corridor

    Artemis1992 said:
    Well damn.

    We are cetainly lucky there's no Uniila, but there might be an Erynies.
    Dangerous watchers are plenty among devilkind.
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    If there is an Erinyes around, Invisibility isn't going to do any good against them. Thankfully, our stealth is amazing and True Seeing doesn't do shit against that.
     
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    Goldfish said:
    Did Pepper notice the presence of any wards preventing or interfering with teleportation? Or anything else?

    Also, what is the general light level inside the manor? Normal?
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    Nothing else out of the ordinary in the chamber that pepper could sense.

    The light level is normal, but anyone attempting to make a ranged attack takes a -1 due to the way the light shifts unexpectedly from the illusion enhanced tapestries
     
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