Sense motive: 1d20+4
Don't have the sheet, but that should be the minimum. With that roll might need to check though.
Captain Harita is taken aback by the force of the half-orc's words. "I don't have proof of anything!" she says defensively. "All I know is that one of the guard officers, Vraj, is known to recently have become lazy, commonly late to his duties and often disheveled. I cannot believe that he is a traitor, but he did not used to be that way. That is my only suspicion. Something is amiss with him."
Harita is somewhat mollified by the halfling's words, but avoids Montesquieu's gaze for the rest of the conversation. "Would you like to speak with Vraj?"
Captain Harita shakes her head, "Viraj does not speak your tongue, but I can translate for you if you wish. I will speak to my men first, to see what they know of his troubles. He is not my immediate subordinate and therefore I am less familiar with him."
With that she stands up and walks from the room, looking back to make sure you are following her. She leads you to a barracks room where numerous palace guards are resting or sleeping. She walks over to a group of them who are sitting around a table and playing dice. They stop as soon as they see her, jumping to attention. She exchanges a few words with them beyond your earshot, and they seem to be telling her several things.
After she finishes the conversation, she comes back to you. "Viraj is on duty in the Thakur's garden. The men whom I was just talking to are members of his squad. They say that Viraj was supposed to be married about a year ago, but that it fell through. He has been heartbroken ever since." Here she lowers her voice, "They tell me that his recent aberrant behavior has gotten worse, and that it is only a matter of time before his superior would have come to me, asking for him to be chastened or dismissed. I wish to resolve this now, but since you are here on orders of one of the Maurya-Rahm himself, I will leave you the choice. Do you wish to speak with him, or would you like to search his storage locker here first? It might yield some clues."
"Let's search the locker first, but let's be careful it might be trapped!"
Perception (including eagle aspect and guidance, take 10)10+24+2+1
Inside seems to be a rather normal-looking group of personal effects.
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"Trapped? I seriously doubt that one of my men would trap his own locker."
"You can never be too careful!"
Adressing his fellow pathfinders
"By the way, if you ever need to search my belongings please do check for traps first! I'd hate to have bad things happen to you guys."
Examining the contents of the locker:
Perception (including eagle aspect and guidance, take 10)
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"Your belongings? C'mon, only if we need something to revive you, and I hope that never happens." Then he turns and has a look at the locker himself, "don't know, if we should really try the direct approach, or maybe we might have a chance to follow him after his duties?" Farouq suggests. "Adjo," Farouq continues and patts his mane, "might follow from a long distance, but your eagle, Aquila, might help with following him more closely?"
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"Your belongings? C'mon, only if we need something to revive you, and I hope that never happens." Then he turns and has a look at the locker himself, "don't know, if we should really try the direct approach, or maybe we might have a chance to follow him after his duties?" Farouq suggests. "Adjo," Farouq continues and patts his mane, "might follow from a long distance, but your eagle, Aquila, might help with following him more closely?"
"Nice idea, but I think a lion and an eagle might attract quite a lot of attention. If we do decide to shadow them it might be better to wildshape into something more inconspicuous like a bird that's common in this region and follow them ourselves?"
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"Good idea, I am up for it, now we might want to communicate with the others? Yoiu never know what happens - just in the case of an emergency."
"The direct approach might still be a good plan. Let's first have a closer look at the contents of the locker."
Aquila looks at Garra and when Garra is looking in another direction he whispers:
"As for communication, we could have Garra act as a carrier pigeon"
Aquila and Ursus spot it at the same time: minute traces of agada leaves on the bottom of Viraj's box. Agada is a highly addictive drug that the Captain confirms is illegal in Jalmeray. The plant is a relative of the more benign cabble-weed, with soporific and hallucinatory effects.
Captain Harita agrees with Daxter and Ursus, and you hurry to find Viraj in the Thakur's garden.
The garden itself is an incredibly ornate affair, with carefully manicured topiary that resemble creatures native to Vudra. Harita spots Viraj across a large crystal fountain spewing white wine and hurries over to confront him.
As soon as he sees the Captain with your group in tow, his face flashes to panic before quickly adopting a seemingly calm demeanor. He is a young Vudrani man dressed in the Palace Guard's gold-tinted scale mail, shield and guisarme.
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Diplomacy
** spoiler omitted **
Diplomacy
1d20 + 14
Viraj looks at Daxter for a long time before letting out a long sigh and looking down at the ground.
"She was very beautiful, but it was not meant to be. I felt such great shame, and I was willing to look anywhere to escape it, even if just for a few hours. I started smoking agada in a tea house in the harbor district soon afterwards. It was an abandoned building, and I thought no one would find me there. Sometimes while I lay hallucinating, I heard a soft voice in the darkness asking me questions, questions about the palace. I thought I was just imagining the whole thing. Perhaps I wasn't."
** spoiler omitted **
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"After he tells us the location. I suggest we go there because as of right now, that is our only lead." Daxter says to the rest of his group.
** spoiler omitted **
"After he tells us the location. I suggest we go there because as of right now, that is our only lead." Daxter says to the rest of his group.
Viraj nods at Daxter's words, and you think you even see a glimmer of hope in his otherwise downtrodden face. He happily gives you directions to the tea house, and seems to want nothing more to do with it.
After taking your leave of Captain Harita, you wind your way down the hill from the Palace to the Harbor District, where you first stepped off the boat. It doesn't take a lot of asking around on Daxter's part to find the correct address. It is an old house in decent repair. A large faded sign proclaiming it to be the "Nirvana Tea Room" hangs on rusted chains above the door. The windows have been boarded up and the front door looks like it hasn't been opened in a while. Thanks to Viraj, you know that he gets in through a small door through the back alley.
You make your way around the building to the back entrance on the packed-dirt alley. The windows back here are boarded up as well, but its single door looks like it is only leaning shut.
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"Ok, here's a plan:
One of us should disguise himself as Vraj.
The rest should be invisible or otherwise unnoticable, like take the form of a rat or something.We also should prepare to encounter something invisible. Scent might help, but maybe we might use some spells."
"If you want to go that route, my acting career has given me some skill with disguises."
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Ursus raises an eyebrow at the halfling's analogy.
"Well I don't know much about strongholds but I know plenty about penetration", the blonde Ulfen says with a smirk. "And a quick strong approach is often the best when you are dealing with an unknown that plays like she doesn't want it".
"That is your response to everything. Subtlety is lost on you isn't it, barbarian?
Rakshasas are born on Golarion, but they are not of it. Although they possess the powers and shapes of fiends, their fates are inexorably tied to the mortal world, and there they seek to rule. The reincarnations of manipulators, traitors, and tyrants obsessed with earthly pleasures, they are the embodiments of the very nature of materialistic evil. After dying violent deaths, these spirits are so tied to worldly decadence and selfish concerns that they take shapes better reflecting the baseness of their lives and are reborn as rakshasas. Thus, in Vudra, sages have come to know these fiends as the “earthbound evils.”
Although the body of a typical rakshasa is essentially human in form, each has a head that takes the appearance of a creature native to Vudra. Great cats are common, especially the leopard, lion, and tiger. Snakes are equally standard, with cobras, pythons, and vipers being well represented. Canines are less common, but jackal-, fox-, and wolf-headed rakshasas are not entirely unknown. Most other rakshasas have heads in the forms of rhinos, elephants, ibex, or vultures, although a rare individual might have a unique animal head or even—in rare cases—that of a creature foreign to Vudra. No rakshasa has a mongoose head, as mongooses instinctively hate the evil outsiders. Some rakshasas prefer to take the form of an animal-headed dwarf or elf, but their true forms have human bodies.
Rakshasas always have one reversed element of their anatomy, which gives away their fiendish nature. Common examples include having reversed hands (the most pervasive, with the palms being face-up when at rest rather than facedown), ears that face backward, elbows that bend outward, toes that go from the smallest on the inside to the big toe on the outside, or (rarely) even reversed knees.
Even when taking the form of another humanoid, at least one element of the rakshasa is backward from the norm, although they can control and change what this element is, and it need not match the reversal of their true form. Rakshasas are masters of concealing these characteristics, using body movements, loose clothes, and fake injuries. Thus, only the most thorough scrutiny might reveal one of these deceptive outsiders’ true nature.
The skin of a rakshasa is remarkably resistant to physical damage, able to ignore or greatly reduce most weapon attacks. Even holy weapons only do significant harm if they can easily penetrate the rakshasa’s skin and reach the less-resistant flesh beneath. Rakshasas are well aware of this, and target foes with bows, crossbows, or spears first. Of course, sages of Vudra—and, to a lesser extent, the world over—are aware of this as well, and more holy piercing weapons are created in this region than anywhere else in the world.
This “weakness,” however, is only a removal of a rakshasa’s extraordinary defenses. Unlike a vampire, rakshasas don’t take extra effects from these weapon designs. Rakshasas often go to great lengths to disguise their true nature (easy enough given their shape-changing power) to prevent foes from seeking a weapon than can more easily hurt them. If a group of opponents seems particularly clever, a rakshasa might well take the form of some other evil creature, such as a fiendish humanoid, lycanthrope, or vampire, to misdirect efforts to discover its exact type.