Finding the Spark (Pathfinder 1E Quest)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Fantasy
-
- Tags
- pathfinder
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
Actually, it might be best if Warty doesn't eat them. No telling what's making them act so bizarrely. Knowing the Darklands, it could be some kind of funky parasite or something.
[X] Continue towards the old mine
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
- Location
- Argentina
So, this is my assessment of the situation:
-There is a curse, probably something related to ghouls, giving these animals a maddening hunger
-It means that they are stupid and will commit cannibalism or feed on whatever corpse they find
-Which means, in turn, that they are even more stupid than normal, won't use ambush tactics, and can be easily distracted
So I propose the following:
[X] Stay and butcher (180 gp worth of materials)
-[X] While Gorok works on one corpse, move the other fairly in front of our group, so that whatever comes from the tunnel is distracted by it, giving us some time to shoot it from a distance.
--[X] Once one corpse is finished, swap them and process the other one
-[X] Have Mina cast Pass Without Trace on Cob and Kori so that they can scout ahead and give us an early warning.
-[X] Also render the limbs of the spiders unusable in the unlikely case they try to reanimate, you burned a strong necromantic corpse nearby and don't want to risk anything.
If they are feeding on each other we won't have a whole flock upon us, and that works to our advantage. The problem with most animals is their ambush tactics. If they don't use them, I feel fairly safe from them.
-There is a curse, probably something related to ghouls, giving these animals a maddening hunger
-It means that they are stupid and will commit cannibalism or feed on whatever corpse they find
-Which means, in turn, that they are even more stupid than normal, won't use ambush tactics, and can be easily distracted
So I propose the following:
[X] Stay and butcher (180 gp worth of materials)
-[X] While Gorok works on one corpse, move the other fairly in front of our group, so that whatever comes from the tunnel is distracted by it, giving us some time to shoot it from a distance.
--[X] Once one corpse is finished, swap them and process the other one
-[X] Have Mina cast Pass Without Trace on Cob and Kori so that they can scout ahead and give us an early warning.
-[X] Also render the limbs of the spiders unusable in the unlikely case they try to reanimate, you burned a strong necromantic corpse nearby and don't want to risk anything.
If they are feeding on each other we won't have a whole flock upon us, and that works to our advantage. The problem with most animals is their ambush tactics. If they don't use them, I feel fairly safe from them.
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Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
Hmm, that's pretty clever. You should add that he swaps the remains, leaving the already processed corpse out front when he starts working on the other one.
Also, now that she is 2nd level, Mina's Pass Without Trace spell can affect two targets. She could also cast it on Gorok or Warty. Not that I would expect Cob to take Warty with him while scouting. Hard to be sneaky when you're riding on the back of a giant frog monster.
[X] Tomcost
- Location
- Argentina
Added the corpse swapping. I am unsure if Gorok, the one doing the burchering, should be the one with Pass witohut trace. Maybe have it on Kori so that he can scout ahead, but closer?
TheOmnimercurial
Dragon Bard
- Location
- UK
I think we may need to be cautious of Parasites that cause strange behaviours via hormonal tweaks, imfection or more direct forms of mind control....
MordredRaal
Agitating
- Pronouns
- She/They
[X] Continue towards the old mine
Still don't like it. Not sure that it is Hunger that caused that behavior. Seems very unlikely to cause that behavior even if it's supernaturally heightened.
My guess is that it the venom causes zombification in other spiders and that it will wake up while Gorok is butchering it.
Still don't like it. Not sure that it is Hunger that caused that behavior. Seems very unlikely to cause that behavior even if it's supernaturally heightened.
My guess is that it the venom causes zombification in other spiders and that it will wake up while Gorok is butchering it.
- Location
- Argentina
Okay, I am going to add that we dismember the spiders first to prevent reanimation.
How about that?
MordredRaal
Agitating
- Pronouns
- She/They
Fair enough. I suppose it's better to stick around and maybe get some hints what's going on rather than be blindsided if this is some wider reaching effect.
[X] Tomcost
Update will be tomorrow, in the meantime you guys might want to consider if you want to go to the surface or not given that you know the mines lead up there.
Vote closed.
Arc 1 Post 43: Hand of the Dead
Hand of the Dead
The Season of Still Stone
Water is already a lure to beasts and the carcasses would only make it more enticing, but Gorok assures you than between the four of you and Warty's obviously carnivorous bulk he could be able to carve them up unmolested, yet Mina is uneasy still about the beasts acting unnaturally, a worry you cannot dismiss from your own mind. As for Cob, he scrunches his nose. "Water spider tastes like water, boring meat, have better." Though you do not think it's the lack of flavor that has him lead Warty away before the slurk can partake. Maybe he's more worried than he looks...
The notion that the loud little goblin is also worried about looking weak is a strange one, with all the mad feats he has performed in battle and out of it. Perhaps they are expected of him among his own people, though if that is the case you question how any of them live past their second decade.
After the path parts ways with the stream the bare rock of more spacious delvings is a relief for all of you, though you will miss the fire beetles. At least one cannot get lost on so straight a road. Thus as Gorok scouts ahead and Mina studies more of those scrolls you had recovered from the mine up on the platform with Cob you are left on cat watching duty.
Granted the cat is much more clever than a spider-lizard, not liable to run off into the dark and get eaten, but it does get bored easily. Eventually it falls upon the notion of teaching you the Burnlander script, 'Taldan' as he calls it, a thing made somewhat more complicated by the fact that he cannot speak, but his claws are more than sharp enough to mark the signs in slate and drawings for that matter. Soon the attempt to learn a script had devolved into linguistic puns for their own sake, the sort of silliness your own teacher, the grey-eyed matron of the Hall who had only taught almost as much with the rod as with tongue and chalk, would have found wholly unacceptable.
"Writing is funny?" asks Cob, whom you had not even noticed getting off the slurk, even though it takes some doing.
He almost sounds weary of the notion so you do your best to explain how 'to dance footloose upon the earth' can apparently mean both 'to get drunk' and 'to partake in formal dancing' in the older form of the tongue. According to Pepper the headman of the Ustilavic town of Vautil had once been invited to a carefully ordered dance in honor of Abadar as part of the opening ceremony of a new bridge across the Raiteso River only to show up already quite inebriated culminating with stumbling off the bridge, taking one of the ceremonial tables which marked the dance floor with him. This had allowed him to float safety into the town itself, leading to the tradition of the Vautilians to henceforth call their headmen 'Captain of the High Table'.
Caught up in the story Cob starts giggling himself.
***
Alas that good cheer, like fine meat and fair light, cannot last forever. As you continue along the tunnel you start to see strange grooves in the floor, almost like sudden ripples in a still pond frozen in place. At least none of them look overly large, barely more than five feet from and end to end at most. So Gorok leads on, at a low and cautious pace, abandoning the notion of hunting for Warty for now. Instead he gobbles down the morloc provisions with gusto as you near the mine. Yet as the last leg of the journey nears you see something peeking out of the stone... a hand attached to that a small arm, grey-skinned but clearly not stone... and just as clearly dead.
Without a word passing between you everyone sets their hands to their weapons as Gorok and Pepper, for his sharp nose, advance to make sense of the thing.
"Stone Gobbler, died inside the rock," the hunter calls back. "Dead for three Long Sleeps."
"Something tells me we are not going to get that trade," you mutter under your breath.
"If something can kill stone swimmers in stone we should know about it," Mina speaks up. "We have a pick and the rock here is soft."
Now it is Gorok's time to be cautious: "Soft stone still stone is, will take long time and make much noise, might draw goblins, might draw worse."
"We should give him a decent burial, not..." she waves at the pitiful sight. "Like that. Do you think someone can rest easy in that state? Cob, what do you think? Should we bury the goblins?"
"Already buried," he replies with a twitch of his ears. "If you want to bury all cut off arm, throw it down pit."
At this the sorceress seems taken aback by the answer, though she cannot deny that this would fit the least definition of a burial. The question is, would it help to know what could slay those who dig through stone like a trekker through mud? On the one hand the long straight tunnel gives excellent lines of sight, one the other...
You are not alone in giving a suspicious look at the stone under your feet.
What do you do about the goblin body?
[] Try to dig it out, see what could have killed him
[] Cut off and burn the arm
[] Write in
OOC: No rolls in this one, it's not like the dead arm sticking out of the rock was hiding.
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Small note, Kori and company are underground, anything that can pass through stone could come at you from all directions.