Tallak (and whomever wishes to accompany him) finds Naqqun roasting some large unidentified four-legged animal in front of his hut. Naqqun is rumoured to be one of the best warriors in the village. He and several other warriors went hunting for the dragon recently, and Naqqun was the only one to return alive.
He is short - about 5'5", though he looks extremely fit and muscular. He wears hide armor, has sleek black hair that runs halfway down his back, and has dark skin. Two braids fall in front of his body as he expertly removes cuts from the roasted meat and packages them.
”Are you the one they call Naqqun? The warrior that survived the last dragon hunt?” Tallak asks as he approaches the man. ”I am Tallak, shaman of the Utgar Clan far to the south. I would ask you some questions, if you don’t mind.”
With Akio not planning to go into the tower until night, Vashta follows Tallak, but for the moment lets him take the lead, figuring she'll see if the one warrior would rather talk to another. If not, she'll see if he'd like to talk to a woman with a warm smile.
En route, she pulls Akio aside.
"If you wish, we could try to disguise you this evening. It may not throw him off, but if we make you look less human, perhaps we can cast some doubt on the situation should you be discovered..."
Aiko says to Vashta, "I'm familiar with disguises, from my use of theatrical make-up as well as my training. What disguise would you suggest that we try to use? If I am spotted - and I plan to be invisible - then they will immediately know it's not someone from the village, so it must be an outsider. And I wouldn't want to disguise myself to look like someone from the village and cause trouble for an innocent person. That means they would probably still throw suspicion on us, as it's just too much coincidence for some other stranger to show up, someone they've never seen before. But perhaps you have a clever notion that would get around that? Something that would be plausible without connecting back to us if I'm spotted?"
"Some sort of cold spirit, perhaps. The shaman spoke of spirits of the air, and there are these living storms plaguing them. Perhaps we can make you up as some sort of creature. As you said, hopefully you won't be spotted at all, but it might be just enough to cast some doubt in their minds -- with a little help perhaps -- if you should be," Vashta replies.
Aiko nods slowly. "That's a novel idea. I like it. Let's see what we can do."
Naqqun shrugs and grunts. "Eh, sure," he says. "Questions about what?" He doesn't pause in his slicing-apart of the animal carcass, however.
When Aiko's ready, Vashta helps her with a disguise.
Vashta's assistance makes the process of putting on a disguise much easier and much more complete. Instead of relying on a sketchy metal mirror or pool of water for a reflection, she can simply count on Vashta to take care of anything she can't see.
And what a disguise! Blue and white make-up, whorled and designed to look like wind-blow snowdrifts. Tiny fragments of quartz suspended from wire, as if to suggest a halo of particles in ever-present wind surrounding her. Shadowing and ambient occlusion to make her face stark and hollow and her figure thin and elongated at a glance.
Then, she's off. In the darkness of night, the shozoku of the night wind makes her invisible, and as she skates across the snow silently there aren't even any tracks.
She clambers the side of the tower readily. Though she can't be seen or even heard for the most part, there's no cry of surprise, no sudden depression in the ground from a falling body; Vashta sees no sign that Aiko has slipped.
Above, she slips into the highest window 30' up, squeezing through the tight space with her contortion skills, learned in the traveling carnival days.
The DC noted is for getting through a space where your head fits but your shoulders don’t. If the space is long you may need to make multiple checks. You can’t get through a space that your head does not fit through.
Action Squeezing through a tight space takes at least 1 minute, maybe longer, depending on how long the space is.
Retry? Yes. You can make another check after a failed check if you’re squeezing your way through a tight space, making multiple checks. If the situation permits, you can make additional checks, or even take 20, as long as you’re not being actively opposed.
Too much fatty food up here in the cold north, she thinks to herself.
Once inside, she ever so quietly takes in her surroundings.
”About the dragon,” Tallak says as he sits. ”Where was it you encountered it? How large was it? The size of a horse? A mammoth? Larger? What sort of tactics did it use?”
Clara says, "I feel a little weird about you poking around in his tower...even if he is being a jerk. That said, if you're determined to do it you should take these fizzy drinks with you."
Clara offers fizzy pops of Invisibility, Levitation, and Heightened Awareness, as well as an experimental mutagen.
Naquun grunts and turns to address Tallak. "Hmm." he sizes the Ulfen warrior and his Varisian companion up. "You don't think of trying to kill the beast, do you?" he growls. "Because it will kill you."
"It is the size of an ox, breathes deadly ice and snatches warriors into the air in order to drop them to their deaths."
He points vaguely to the north. "We went to what we thought was its territory to hunt for it, but it came for us first."
- - - - -
Aiko scrambles up the side of the shaman's stone tower to the very top level and, with a couple minutes' struggling, slips in through the small window after pushing open its wooden slat. She tumbles in without a sound, finding herself inside of a small study.
Tunuak's tower is uninhabited, which allows Aiko to search it without inhibition for awhile. The floors in here are polished and flat and reflective, probably with some kind of snow shape spell. The bottom floor has a few chairs, a firepit with a chimney made of metal, a concave table containing a set of knuckle bones and a cabinet filled with various odds and ends and other worthless trinkets.
The second floor is the old man's bedroom. It's basically entirely dominated by a large bed with a small bedside table.
The top floor is a study with a table and a chair, as well as a small variety of divination implements - more knucklebones, a crystal ball, tea leaves, etc. In the back of one of the desk's drawers, hidden underneath some papers and a bag of tea leaves Aiko also finds a holy symbol. The holy symbol is on a chain made from simple string, and is a clawed hand with three fingers. The hand symbol seems extremely cold to the touch and is coated in a thin layer of rime.
His favored weapon is the longsword. His domains are Chaos, Death, Evil, and Weather.
After concluding her search - and wondering a bit where the shaman is if he isn't asleep in his bed at night - she stops and stares at the symbol of the clawed hand. She considers it for several seconds.
Finally she simply pockets the symbol and makes her way back out. She drinks a fizzy pop of invisibility and one of levitation, squeezes out the window , closes the shutter behind her, floats to the ground, and lightly races across the snow to rejoin the team.
~~~~~~~~~~
Arriving in her bizarre disguise, Aiko lets out a burp, then says, "Thank you, Clara. Your fizzy drinks were helpful."
She rummages in her waist-sash, then pulls out the three-fingered holy symbol and tosses it on the table. "I don't know what faith this symbol represents," she says, "but to my thinking, if it's evil, we don't want him to have it anyway. If it's not, we can leave it somewhere to be found and let him think that he lost it."
"I didn't find anything else particularly interesting. Personal effects, divination tools, a few papers and heirlooms."
"It's not a symbol I recognize," Vashta says with a shake of her head, before turning to Tallak .
Tallak nods at the warriors council. ”So, we need to track it to its lair, as I thought. Take away its ability to fly in the open. Where were you hunting it?”
Clara beams at Aiko's praise of her fizzy drinks.
When the ninja shows her the rime-covered claw, she shakes her head. "It's not one of the major deities...but that might not mean much out here in the frozen tundra."
Nobody else in the caravan recognizes the symbol, although Koya suggests putting it back to avoid rousing suspicion. Ulf agrees - "I don't think we can ask around the village to see if anyone knows about it. Maybe someone else is wearing them if they're common, though."
Sandru chuckles and then suggests: "How about we just find and ask Tunuak about it?"
- - - - -
Naquun hums. "I could show you, I suppose. If you have a map. It's to the north, we were searching around the nearby mountain caves to see if we could find the thing's lair. It came out of the sky."
Vashta agrees that the symbol should be returned to hopefully help cover their tracks, though she's frustrated none of them know what it is -- it could be important.
Without it, it feels like the only way forward is through the dragon, and that may be a way only to death, even if they are more prepared.
"Can anyone, I dunno, sense the presence of eeeviiiil? If it's an evil holy symbol he's just gonna use it to cast evil spells on us later."
Tallak nods. ”Ulf may have a map. He has been our guide. I will check with him.”
Tallak rises to his feet and turns to leave. He pauses and asks, ”What is your shaman’s problem, if I might ask? Has he always been this distrustful of outsiders?”
Naqqun frowns at Tallak, fixing him with a baleful glare. "What do you mean, what's his problem? He is our honored elder. He has guided us through decades of difficulties."
"Many in our village don't recognize that, but his greatest concern is protecting us."
He shoos Tallak away. "Perhaps you had best find help elsewhere. Or better yet, leave Iqaliat behind."
"My friend is plainspoken and meant no offense," she says, trying to mollify Naqqun. "Your shaman seems to have taken offense to us, blaming us for ills that began before we arrived, though we did not even know our path would lead us to your village. We merely wish to understand why and see if we can find a way to bring our caravan closer to you."
Vashta shakes her head at Aiko's question, looking to Tallak or one of the others to see if he has such an ability.
Aiko sighs and says, "Very well, I will do this the hard way."
As the caravan has cleared away a spot of snow to make room for the wagons, she moves to a dry spot and lowers herself to the ground. She rummages through her bag for her teacups and some tea and sprinkles tea leaves into her cup with some cold water. She crosses her legs and holds the symbol in her lap.
Her hands trace over the symbol, and her eyes flutter behind closed lids. Her back straightens suddenly and her breath comes in sharply. Then she places the symbol on her right, leans forward to pick up the teacup, and opens her eyes. She looks into the cup as she swirls it, then stops.
"I see..."
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Aiko focuses on the symbol, focusing on its origins and receives a chaotic, painful vision. The symbol is clearly connected to a chaotic evil entity. However, Hattori's prognostication isn't strong enough to divine more about the shaman. He must be too powerful.
- - - - -
Naquun grumbles. "Fine," he says. "But your shaman friend should be more careful with his words when speaking about elders beyond their station." He slices a haunch off of the animal and then says: "He is trying to protect our village. He is the interpreter of the wind spirits' will, and his pronouncements often don't make Material sense... but they effect the luck and the path of our entire village."
Aiko's head falls back and her eyes flutter, then she rocks back and forth and, finally, she leans forward and with a great heave she vomits onto the cold ground. She breathes heavily for a minute, wipes her mouth, then in one smooth gesture she snaps the symbol in half and tosses the pieces to either side of her.
She stands and straightens her robe, looking for a cloth and a waterskin to clear her mouth.
"It was an icon of evil," she says. "I am not certain that Tunuak is its minion... but he did keep it at hand. A servant of a benevolent power would either destroy it, or lock it up somewhere safe while trying to discover how to thwart its powers. He left it in a place where it would be readily accessible to him. I think that either out of desperation, or madness, or lust for power, Tunuak has taken to serving wicked entities."
She picks up a waterskin and washes out her mouth, then says, "Perhaps even the demons that hunt our dear Kaijitsu."
Vashta nods.
"How long has he been tending to your villages needs?" she asks.
The Varisian woman nods at the Tian's comments, agreeing they make sense and impressed with her own abilities. She can remember her grandmother doing similar things, but such had never quite been her skill.
"If we knew where he was, I could perhaps try to divine his thoughts, but even then, I don't know how much that would help us. Even if he is serving evil, how can we expose that in a way the villagers will accept?"
”The whole village is close minded and blinded to their shamans failures and cowardice,” Tallak grumbles. ”But their hunter says they were to the North when the dragon struck. Fortunately for us, he said it was about the size of an ox. He also said it was snatching men off the ground and dropping them from great heights, which means we need to try and find it in its lair to remove that tactic from the field of battle.”
Aiko puts back the waterskin and suddenly looks like she has a thought. She strides back and scoops up the two pieces of the unholy symbol and throws them into the campfire.
"There's magic to find things that have been lost or stolen," she says. "No sense leaving around another means to discredit us. And magic for mending broken things - this should be destroyed."
She turns to respond to Tallak and says, "I think both the shaman and the dragon are hurting this village. We will probably have to deal with both of them."
Clara--who has mostly seemed engrossed in fiddling with her chemicals and reagents--suddenly looks up.
"Ooooh, magic to find things! I don't know any of that but: Tallak, and Sis, do either of you have any spells you haven't prayed for yet? It's likely that this wasn't the shaman's only holy symbol. Otherwise, why would he leave it at home while he was out?
"Maybe--if you can still pray for it today--what if you cast locate object to find holy symbols like the one you just saw. I'm pretty sure this one won't show up anymore after Aiko burnt it to ash. I guess there could be a lot of them around...but maybe it'll lead us to our friend the angry shaman."
Shalelu shrugs. "We could try to find the shaman. We have several good trackers, and I'm sure at least somebody's seen where he's gone."
Ameiko nods, agreeing. "Maybe he has places that he usually goes?"
Sandru hums. "It seems to me that the dragon is the bigger threat. I think we should leave the village and go hunting for its lair as soon as we can," he says.
- - - - -
Naquun responds to Vashta, "He's been here for our whole lives," he says. "I heard that the old shaman died when he was still young, so he must have been our village's shaman for... at least 40 years."
Calder has been keeping silent, his thinking on being diplomatic involved throwing the Shaman off the cliff to let him commune with the wind spirits personally. "He's up to something." He grumbles. "I say we deal with him now, rather than have him at our backs when we do face the dragon."
"I didn't mean we need a location spell," explains Aiko. "I mean if he has another symbol he might cast a location spell to find this one. No sense making that possible, hence why I put it in the fire."
"I suppose we do need to deal with him... but how do we do it in a way that doesn't alienate the whole village? They've had him as their shaman for decades. Even if we have proof there will probably be people who don't believe outsiders like us. Though if we also deal with the dragon they won't have much choice but to recognize that we did what their shaman couldn't."
Vashta nods, trying to think.
Mother would know how to do this; it was her bread and butter. Even Grandmother probably would have, if only she hadn't walked the lonely path so soon, she thinks.
"I think we may need more information if we're to come up with any sort of plan," she says.
Clara rubs her head. "I didn't realize adventuring could be so confusing. That shaman seems like a real meanie...but he also seems like he takes care of this village. Maybe he's the best they've got?
"Tallak and Sandru, I guess you're right. Let's go kill us a dragon!
"That shouldn't be that tough, right?" Clara wonders aloud.
When Vashta goes around to gather information, Clara tags along. She aims to use fizzy pop as an incentive to share info--Who wouldn't want that, right?--but it turns out she gets more distracted by the drinks themselves and forgets what exactly they were trying to learn about.
"Could we try talking to the dragon? Set up some... kind of meeting or something?" says Aiko. "They do talk, right?"
Calder nods. "They talk. It may be worth while to do so. Dragons don't change their habits unless they have to. For this one to start attacking means it's angry about something?"
He smiles. "Of course talking to something that can eat you with one bite is a delicate business."
"Anyone speak Draconic?" asks Ameiko.
Vashta glances over at Clara, who has a sort of pet dragon ... sort of.
"How do we get a message to the creature, though?" she asks. "There seems to be peril on all sides here."
Shalelu pipes up first in answer to Vashta's question: "I can prepare and cast animal messenger, if you need it. I'm sure there are arctic birds we could send to the dragon's lair with a note, if we could find the location of the lair without being killed."
"Perhaps I or another could go and scout for it? A single scout is much less likely of being found and ambushed than a large group, after all."
Ameiko speaks as well. "Well, perhaps we could leave some sort of offering for it in a high place? Dragons are usually pretty arrogant, right? Maybe it will come down just to see who wants to flatter it so much."
Clara nods to Ameiko, "Sure, I speak Draconic."
Then her mouth opens again with Kolung's metallic voice,
"Perhaps, darlings, we plan both? We ask the dragon to talk, and offer it some sort of bribe. If it agrees, we've solved the problem. If not, perhaps we're in an advantageous place to spring an ambush?" Vashta suggests.
”It’s a dragon. Even if you flatter it, according to the tales, it is equally as likely to attack us as not because it considers itself our better. We are but foodstuff to it. We would be better served trying to hunt it down and end its threat before it grows older and stronger.”
Tallak folds his arms in front of him, signaling that he has spoken his mind on the matter.
"Then perhaps skip the attempt to talk and just lure it into a trap?" Vashta suggests.
"I'm not saying we should have a tea ceremony, but at least knowing why it has suddenly decided that this village is its new favorite snack may be informative," says Aiko. "If we still need to fight it, so be it."
Koya agrees wholeheartedly with Aiko. "Yes, dragons are not savage beasts, and I did not get the impression that this dragon has been a problem forever. Either it just moved to this region recently, or something changed in the conditions here. If we can manage talking to it... well, we could learn something."
Shalelu, on the other hand, agrees with Tallak. "I don't think that we're going to be able to convince this dragon to stop attacking the village. That's what we want to happen, which means we're going to have to end up killing the dragon one way or the other..."
Ameiko and Sandru are undecided, grumbling and mumbling about possibilities and such. However, all will go along with whichever plan the group wants to suggest.
"Keep it on the ground and I'll keep it busy." Calder grumbles. "But I'll bet a barrel of whiskey that worthless Shaman has something to do with the dragons tantrum."
Tallak nods at Calders input.