Bulvi keeps his mouth decidedly shut... Quasit has things well in hand... hopefully...
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Hace you can tell that theese creatures are merrows, they aren't too bright
Between the traveling supplies you have you can see where they would think you are coming as merchants
though between the looks at Quasit, Maka, and the words spoken, you have confused them enough to let you all pass
~~Combat Avoided~~
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after having crossed the bridge, you soon enter a forest of leaf-less birch trees, and after half a day of travel, the city of Whitethrone comes into sight. Nadya turns aside at this point, guiding the you all toward the shantytowns east of the city called the Fishcamps, where her late husband’s uncle Ringeirr lives.
you all can hear her sigh but does explain why:
Ringeirr Malenkov is her late husband Hjalnek’s maternal uncle. When Nadya’s husband was just a boy, Ringeirr’s wife and son were taken by the White Witches and brought to Whitethrone. Ringeirr went to the city to rescue them, but though he was able to secretly enter the city and leave it again many times, tragically he never saw his family again. Nadya’s husband told her that Ringeirr stayed near Whitethrone, however, and the last she heard was that Ringeirr was living in the Fishcamps
and working as a smuggler. Nadya’s husband considered Ringeirr an expert in getting in and out of Whitethrone unnoticed, and she still places much stock in that opinion.
~~Approaching Fishcamps~~
Arctic gulls fill the overcast sky with their cries over this small shantytown. Ramshackle huts are erected on the cold ground, hard packed and barren from generations of foot traffic. Dories and other small fishing boats are moored to dilapidated piers nearby or pulled ashore on the gray pebbled beach of Glacier Lake. The pervasive smell of fish is everywhere, sometimes fresh, but often with the underlying stench of centuries of decay.
The story of Ringeirr's family brought a familiar response of anger from Maka. Flames engulfed her fists and licked her shoulders. "Why do they have to be so mean!? What do they get from it!? What does anyone get from it?" The anger in her heart spurred her to charge at the city and fight the witches. Thankfully her training and the memories of Hace's and her's similar attempts in Taldor tempered that instinct. "Fire is a tool." she reminded herself. Still, that tempering did little for her anger.
---
Maka sniffed the air as they approached the fist camps. "I can't tell if the smell is making me hungry or if it makes me want to throw up."
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Quasit has been in Irrissen long enough at this point to know what a local looks and sounds like. She packs away her sword and drapes a spare shirt over her armor and pulls the wolf pelt cloak tight over her shoulder to conceal unsightly bulges. She plops on the gifted ushanka to complete the look.
Then she walks up to one of the people in the shanty town.
"Oh. it's nice to be among regular folk again. Ran into some merrows near a bridge some ways back, robbed us of half our money and all our food. Say, we're looking for an uncle of my friend here. Fellow by the name of Ringeirr. Ringeirr Malenkov. Any idea where we can find him?"
Hace carries no weapons and he wraps Issalissk's mouth shut as a show of good faith more than anything else.
Maka eyes go wide and teary at Izzy's mouth being wrapped shut. "Oh do we have to? I mean, maybe we can make him look like a dog or something?"
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With everyone else putting their weapons away or hiding them, Sakitu decides it would be wise to do that as well.
"Hold on guys. I need to rearrange some stuff." She drops to a knee and swings her backpack around to put in on the ground. She unstraps the shortbow from the outside of the pack then opens the top. Pushing the bow into the bag is only slightly successful. With a few grunts she gets all but about six inches into the pack. The top of the bow is still quite conspicuous.
"Hmm. I'm going to have to disguise this somehow. Oh! I've got an idea."
Sakitu reaches into her backpack and feels around until she finds a bit of cloth. "Aha. I'll put this on the top. No one will know." She pulls out a handful of light blue cloth and drapes it over the top of the bow, obscuring it from sight.
"There we go," she announces with a note of triumph. She stands and repositions her backpack on her shoulders. A slight breeze blows against the cloth and it shifts in the air revealing an embroidered flower on one part of the cloth and a little lacy frill around the edges.
Bulvi has a heavy yeti cloak around his breastplate and longsword with his heavy shield slung over his back. A cold iron dagger joined the longsword at his belt. "Now I know I'm a bit more obviously equipped than the rest of ye but you don't travel through the wilds unable to defend yourself... and I'm a strapping big Ulfen lad so I think they'll just give me more leeway."
He had stashed his chakrams and several other weapons into his backpack.
Maka compared Quasit's disguise with the rest of her companions. "I don't know, y'all kind of look like you have something to hide. Maybe Ringeirr will know if it's enough?"
"So what are we here to do again Quasit? I'm not really a fan of this city, but I doubt I'll find a way to get back to mine here." Hace says to Quasit.
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"So what are we here to do again Quasit? I'm not really a fan of this city, but I doubt I'll find a way to get back to mine here." Hace says to Quasit.
"Well, I think the original idea was that you and Maka were coming to Whitethrone to look for work so you could make some money and earn passage back home. The rest of us were coming here for a couple reasons. First, we were helping Nadya get out of Waldsby safely since Nazhena would probably be looking to kill her, and Nadya has this uncle here in this village that she was going to hide out with. But second, we're sorta trying to save the world by... and I can't believe I'm saying this... rescuing Baba Yaga from her even more evil daughter Elvanna, who's currently wearing the crown. And from what little we know, the way to find Baba Yaga is to get hold of her magical hut, which is in Whitethrone somewhere. It's all a bit vague, honestly. And as I describe that to you, I can't quite believe how hopeless and stupid that sounds. But, um, yeah, that's basically it. Why, you wanna help save the world too by rescuing an evil demigoddess?"
"Wait, wait, wait. You want to RESCUE Baba Yaga!? I'm going to need more details on this, Elvanna, person if I'm going to help with that." he says to Qausit before turning to Maka, "Hey Maka, wanna save the world from an evil ice witch? I don't think we have anything better to do right?"
Maka did not pause in her reply. "Of course we're gonna help, we can't let our friends do that by themselves. Plus we can't let these witches keep acting like they've been acting. Once we save this Baba Yaga we can get her to make things better.”
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"Wait, wait, wait. You want to RESCUE Baba Yaga!? I'm going to need more details on this, Elvanna, person if I'm going to help with that." he says to Quasit
"Yeah, that's pretty much what I said. So, fair point." says Quasit with a lift of the eyebrows and a slight shrug.
She settles herself on a pile of fish nets, reclining back on her elbows and crossing her feet at the ankles.
"So... I'm not an expert on winter witches, but we traveled with one for a while, and she delighted in showing us how knowledgable she was about this place. Anyway, Irrissen is a matriarchal monarchy. Baba Yaga is always the mother, but she has a daughter, leaves her in charge here, goes off to other worlds, then comes back several decades later, slaughters her daughter, has another one installed, and the cycle begins again. Horrible yes, but manageable. Basically the system is in a sort of balance, and the winter witches keep a stranglehold on Irrissen, eat babies and terrorize peasants, but don't expand out into the world."
"Now, enter Elvanna, the current daughter and the current queen. Elvanna is not a fan of this system. She wants to (A) rule forever, and (B) control all of Golarion. So she (A) imprisoned Baba Yaga so that mom can never slaughter and replace her, and (B) opened winter portals to all corners of Golarion so she can take over the world and turn it all into a wintry hellscape. We just managed to close *one* of those portals, the one that brought us all here from Taldor."
"So... yeah, lesser of two evils thing. We hope that if we free Baba Yaga, she'll show her gratitude by not killing us and stopping Elvanna. Not that we have a ghost of a chance of actually succeeding."
"And if you're asking why this all-important task is being left to an elf, an Ulfan, a guttersnipe and an amazing fox lady instead of... oh, I don't know, the Pathfinders or the Shining Crusade or something, all I can say is that for whatever reason, we're here and they aren't and the clock is ticking. Clear as mud?"
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Maka did not pause in her reply. "Of course we're gonna help, we can't let our friends do that by themselves. Plus we can't let these witches keep acting like they've been acting. Once we save this Baba Yaga we can get her to make things better.”
"Heh. Maka, you're an optimist. I like that. But anyway, one poop sandwich at a time."
" And we'll take all the help we can get, especially from people who can shoot fire out of their hands and people who suddenly learn to heal by just wishing for it. And alligators in sweaters."
"I'm really not sure about freeing Baba Yaga to take out Elvanna. That sounds like it has a really high chance to bite us in the ass later. Any chance we can, you know, take out Elvanna ourselves?" Hace replies to Quaist, "Hey Maka, how much do you think it would cost some really powerful Pathfinders to take out Elvanna?" Hace says to Maka.
Maka huffed at Hace's mention of Pathfinders. "More than we'd be able to afford. The Pathfinder Society does some good but is more interested in crawling through dungeons and solving mysteries than helping the world. They didn't lend me any real resources for dealing with Taldor. I've got some friends but I'm not even sure where the closest lodge from here is to contact them, and they are all the way in Absalom." Maka sighed. "And if we couldn't take on the nobles I don't think we'll be able to take on all of the witches, not yet." Maka realized what she said with visible annoyance. "Hey I'm supposed to be the one talking violence and you talking sense!"
"I mean, I thought I was talking sense. Elvanna is likely too powerful for us right now, but I've heard of Pathfinders called 'seekers' that might be a match for her...I'm just trying to find an alternative to freeing Baba Yaga. I'd rather end the cycle for good and free Irrisen from her influence while we have the chance." he replies to Maka.
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Quasit shrugs noncommittally. "To be honest, I don't really care who runs this place. My main goal is to stop Irrissen from turning the whole world into their private winter wonderland. That would completely ruin by beachfront retirement."
"That being said, assassinating Elvanna ... that's a tall order. She has the whole apparatus of a magical police state working to protect her. And even if we manage to catch her in a lucky ambush, and even if she has no magical contingency spells in place to save her *if* we somehow managed to take her down, it seems like the most likely result is that some other Jadwiga sister just like her steps into her place and embarks on the same mad scheme. I mean, they're all in up to their necks already at this point, what choice would they have?"
"Before I came here, I thought Baba Yaga was just some nasty fairy tale witch mothers invented to scare their children into behaving, so I'm obviously no fan. But she is probably powerful enough to deal with this cabal and stop the invasions."
"I've often found that it's best not to get too tied down with set plans. We should just be prepared to react to whatever opportunities come up. And if a bunch of archmages and paladin lords suddenly show up to take things over, I'm happy step aside and go home."
"So first things first. We find Nadya's uncle and we find a way into Whitethrone that doesn't involve being taken prisoner and tortured to death. Then we'll see what our options are. Fair enough?"
"I must have tuned out the little white witch more than I remembered. To be fair Baba Yaga might just scrap the whole scheme... at least on Gollarion. Maybe she can go off and set up shop on Akiton or Castrovel. She at least doesn't seem to want to conquer the world. She's close enough to a god I'm hoping once Elvanna's dealt with she leaves or at least leaves for a few decades or centuries to heal up..."
"Obviously I'm not enough of a Pathfinder to keep Quasit happy but we're stuck on this thrice damned quest because the Black Rider gave it to us! Almost certainly doomed."
"So first things first. We find Nadya's uncle and we find a way into Whitethrone that doesn't involve being taken prisoner and tortured to death. Then we'll see what our options are. Fair enough?"
"Fair enough." Maka replied with a nod.
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Sakitu listens with interest as Quasit lays out the situation. Many things she didn't understand start to fall into place. Now, more than ever, she feels like they need to complete this but it is very overwhelming.
"Let's start with something we can do," she says. "I don't know how we can find Baba Yaga or do any of that other stuff but maybe we can at least find Nadya's uncle. I guess it's a start."
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"Obviously I'm not enough of a Pathfinder to keep Quasit happy but we're stuck on this thrice damned quest because the Black Rider gave it to us! Almost certainly doomed."
"I'm sorry Bull, I'm an idiot, I forgot you were a Pathfinder. I don't think of you that way. For what it's worth, you're one of my favorite Pathfinders ever. Forgive me?" She gives him a sad guilty face, simpering just a touch for effect.
Hace turns to Bulvi with surprise, "Black Rider? What's that, sounds bad...but also important."
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"I thought we mentioned him." says Quasit. "It all kinda runs together at this point. Back when we found the portal in Taldor, we were just done dealing with the baddies guarding the Taldor side of things when this old man in black armor on a black horse came stumbling through. He was mortally wounded, but before he died, he sorta laid this quest on us to go back through the portal, close it on the Irrissen side, then work to rescue Baba Yaga from Elvanna's scheme. I think he worked for Baba Yaga somehow... like a herald maybe. Elvanna's people had hunted him and others like him down, and it was pure luck that we happened to be there when he came through the portal and died at our feet."
"Any quest given by someone called the "Black Rider" must be important." Maka replied to to Quasit, her tone completely earnest. "Hace it's double important that we help. We need to find Nadya's uncle!"
"Don't worry about it Quasit, it's a grim bloody fable... let's just hope it doesn't have an unhappy end. I would very much gladly let a more experienced group take the lead but... that hasn't happened so far."
"I'm sure there are many people trying to figure out what's going on, we're just ahead of everyone else. A planet spanning winter is going to attract attention."
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Quasit as you ask the people around, you get answers of not knowing who you are talking about, never heard that name before, who are you talking about, etc. give me a sense motive check?
Quasit mutters to herself as she walks off from the 3rd or 4th unhelpful person. "I must be losing my touch. And I just washed. Hmm, maybe I don't stink enough."
"Or maybe something else is going on..."
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Hace kind of brisstles at the idea of this Black Rider, "Just cause some guy up and died in front of you doesn't mean you're suddenly responsible for their last request, it's not like you choose to be there for it. I mean, this is why I don't like the Gods, especially right now. I didn't ask for this power and I don't want to be someone's puppet. My destiny is my own and yours should to..." he says before taking a minute to calm down. "Now, if you're doing this of your own free will because he asked you to, that's different. You just shouldn't feel like you have to. It's the principle of the matter really."
As he walks and talks with Quasit, he notices the way people respond to her questioning.
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Hace kind of brisstles at the idea of this Black Rider, "Just cause some guy up and died in front of you doesn't mean you're suddenly responsible for their last request, it's not like you choose to be there for it. I mean, this is why I don't like the Gods, especially right now. I didn't ask for this power and I don't want to be someone's puppet. My destiny is my own and yours should to..." he says before taking a minute to calm down. "Now, if you're doing this of your own free will because he asked you to, that's different. You just shouldn't feel like you have to. It's the principle of the matter really."
"I agree with everything you just said." responds Quasit breezily. "I guess we aren't doing this because the old fart died exactly, but it definitely tends to get your attention. And we needed to close the portal anyway. But I can tell you for me personally, I very nearly walked away at that point to get on with my life. And yet here I am."
She shrugs and spends a moment gnawing on her lower lip, a habit she has when she gets lost in thought about something. Then she pipes up again.
"I mean... have you ever done something really important, something that had a lot of long term consequences, and your reasons were just paper thin? Not a whim exactly - though the gods know I've done that too - but just a snap choice you made without really thinking it through? And pretty soon you realize your choice isn't something you can just back out of, once you do think it through? That's pretty much my life in a nutshell. It seems like all the most important things I've ever done, I've just drifted into them and done them for the flimsiest of reasons."
She's only half talking to Hace. She seems to be thinking out loud -- figuring something out about herself. She appears to be somewhere between bemused and appalled at her serendipity. And true to form, after stumbling into what might be a serious truth about herself, she shrugs and makes light of it.
"Oh well. I might not make all the same choices if I went back and did everything all over again, but then I wouldn't be nearly so fascinating." She finishes with a cheeky smirk.
"Vartamaan ateet ka gulaam hai, bhavishy vartamaan ka gulaam hai." Maka responded to Hace. "The present is a slave to the past, the future is a slave to the present. It doesn't sound right in common, but the idea is that your fate is both in and out of your hands. The world around you and your past actions and decisions, however big and small, have already determined the fate of the present. If you walk in to a room, you can't then not have walked in to that room. But you also don't have to stay in that room, your future isn't written in stone to be in that room." Maka's forehead wrinkled and her nostrils flared as she struggled to put the concepts in to the common tongue.
"Grrr it's hard to explain, but they did and they didn't choose to be there for the Black Rider's death. Master Isa traced the exact moment that put him on the path to being a Martial Artist to a breakfast he had when he was young. That one decision and a thousand others, big and small, all lead to a lifetime of dedication. In the same way Hace, everything that has happened was leading up to your getting your powers. But just because you got the powers doesn't mean they define your future, you can still define that, but it doesn't mean they don't define your future. And if breakfast can determine your fate, then you should just do what feels right and not worry so much about it."
Hace nods to Maka, "I think I've internalized most of what you said by choosing to use the powers the way I want to use them, but...look at where we are. Met up with some people that are trying to save the world or something and here I am with powers I didn't seek out. I get that I have some choice here, but I still feel like a puppet on a string in some ways...maybe I should accept that fact and work with it rather than fight it. It's a lot to think about." he says as he pets Issalissk, "I like some of the gifts after all."
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"Vaahrt-uh-... Vaahrt-uh-mine..." Sakitu tries to repeat the strange phrase that Maka said and gives up. A brightness shows in her eyes. "What language was that?" she asks eagerly. "That sounded so, well, I guess, exotic." Sakitu silently works her lips and mouth again, obviously trying to form the words. It seems she's more fascinated just by the strange tongue than any of the philosophical discussion that follows.
She catches the tail end of what Hace says. "Gifts? Where? I like gifts too."
"I'm not the kind of man who is going to stand by and let Gollarion freeze... but even if I was all my stuffs here and I'm not exactly flush with ways to get off plane or world." Bulvi sighs "I suppose we could have tried to ride it out in Taldor after closing the portal but if it's not stopped a lot of people are going to die."
"I've seen drawings of buildings in Garund with flat roofs and many other ways they aren't suitable for this kind of weather, their shelter will be a poor defense against this scheme. So I probably wouldn't sleep very well hoping someone else will deal with it... I'll be very happy if someone does though."
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"Of course I do. I'm jealous as heck." says Quasit jovially. "Between you being able to shift between a fox woman and a beautiful human woman at will, not to mention having magical spells in your blood, and Maka being a bad-ass who can shoot fire out of her fingers, I'm pretty much jealous all the time these days."
Maka slapped Sakitu on the shoulder and vigorously shook the Kitsune, all with a wide grin on her face. "Yeah we are pretty great." She replied, more a statement of fact than a boast.
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The responses are normal for what you can gather, however the tone and body languages show that they fear reprisal for helping or mentioning that name, or anything to do with him.
Though while returning back to the group quasit manages to see a group of "guards" on a pier working on collecting "taxes" from a fisherman, when he refuses to pay, the guards have knocked him to the ground
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"Well, deja vu. It's like the merrows all over again. Frickin' bullies." growls Quasit to herself.
She gives a shrill whistle to the other members of her party, then cocks her head toward what's going on, then goes stamping over to butt into things, pulling her short sword out of her pack as she does.
"HEY!" she shouts angrily at the thugs. "Knock it off before someone gets hurt! And I'm not talking about him!" and she points at the victim of the shoving.
There's something almost comical about the small, shrill woman barking at the bruisers, but there's little question that she's quite serious and that she's not too worried about what's coming next. She seems quite at home with this game.
"Go slap a squid if you're feeling frisky!"