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Pointing to one of the guards. Is that Nelk? Shay, does he look like Nelk to you? Sure is a spittin' image 'im. Anyways, well met Grandmaster. Name's Korum. I wuz just wonderin' if there's any chance we can see these 'notes' of yours? Nah? I didn't think so. Well, can you tell us anything about the maze other than the location and the prize?"
Neither "Nelk" nor his fellow guard so much as bat an eye. Truly they are a testament to stoics everywhere.
Torch gives a nod and smile as Korum appropriately anticipates his unwillingness to share his notes. "My notes," he starts with a playful emphasis, "refer to it as Delirium’s Tangle. The author claims to have once been lost in the maze ages ago and escaped by pure luck. I imagine it’s hardly the simple mines and crypts you’re accustomed to. The design sounds elven, but I haven’t finished translating everything. Perhaps you can enlighten me on your return.
"It lies below the Ivy District, but I couldn’t possibly tell you how deep, or even its surface relation. My notes only tell how to reach it, and even in that they’re needlessly confusing. Very few citizens of Absalom go crawling about beneath the streets, let alone below the sewers. Even I didn’t realize there were any natural caverns below the city; it seems a trifle unsecured to my mind. But even then, it almost sounds from my notes as if the Tangle somehow hides itself, or subconsciously steers people away.”
He pauses, collecting his thoughts before continuing, "The prize, though ... The notes mention a large hourglass of elven design. I believe this may be Izryen’s Hourglass, an artifact left behind when the elves first fled Golarion. It appears often in elven astrological writings, and sounds like a complicated timepiece. Should the Pathfinder Society have no interest," he concludes, looking back over at Dreng, "I’d love to add it to my own collection.”
Dreng rolls sleep-clouded eyes, "No doubt you would." His tone leaves no question as to whether the Society is interested in taking Torch up on his 'offer'. He focuses back on the pathfinder team, "I fear Nuar's time grows short. Do you have any other questions before you set out?"
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(Shaya has spent the downtime eating and cooking, and foisting the results of her cooking on her new friends. Some of these recipes turn out better than others, but the perpetually optimistic half-orc is never daunted by these failures...)
In the office, she listens. "Yeah, looks like Nelk. Hey, buddy, you got a brother in Averaka...? No? Okay..."
"So, I guess we got no information who made this weird maze, well, what else is new. Alright, team, let's do this! Let's make sure we buy, uh, chalk... and string..." Shaya counts off on her fingers. "So WE don't get lost too, you know. Hey, does anyone got one of those wayfindy things yet?"
Torch quirks an eyebrow at Yargul's followup question, but only shrugs enigmatically.
Dreng ignores Torch, instead giving a frustrated shake of his head. "Unfortunately, this has all come to light too quickly. We don't know what we don't know. Your group has proven resourceful and resilient ..." he pauses, quirking his head with a half-smile, "only other word that fits the word pattern is resurrection." He looks back at your assembled team, "Was that in poor taste? That was in poor taste. You'll do great."
It is with those final super-encouraging words ringing in your ears — along with Torch's instructions regarding finding the mysterious maze's entrance — that you find yourselves ushered into the early morning Absolom gloom, then down into the sewers.
You're fairly certain it hasn't even been an hour since you passed below the streets of the Ivy District, through some sewer maintenance tunnels, and into the natural caverns mentioned in Torch's super-special notes.
Long before the walls went from tool-cut stone to natural formations, any light sources from the surface were completely gone. Only those of you with dark vision can see through the gloom unaided. The shift from the smells of Absolom, then sewer, then ancient natural cavework leaves your noses reeling. And at this point, the only sounds are your own footsteps, gear creakings, and breathing echoing into a criss-cross of confusing caverns.
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Kul-Amon, playing with the straps of his Cords of resistance comments: "Kul-Amon does not see why one would hide a town down in these caves; it seems like a lot of human strangeness. But Kul-Amon is not one to know much about humans and hiding towns underground." And with that, he gruffly reaches into his pocket to fetch one of the many, MANY pieces of chalk he purchased.
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Looking over to the large cleric, "I missed ya big guy, I really did."
After hearing the proposed dinner plan, "The Green Pig? I love that place! They have the best stew. Actually its the bread that does it. Buttery and dipped in to the meat juice. By the way, whatever 'meat' they put in there, it sure is delicious."
Grandmaster Torch's instructions are surprisingly helpful, and — with Korum making an expert show of taking point in the dark caverns – the crew makes excellent time down into the dark depths. He quickly picks up a set of large, heavy hooved tracks, most likely those of the missing minotaur. But as Korum follows them deeper, the canny half-orc points out a string of tell-tale signs that there is more living down here than Nuar (if he still lives). Korum points out small tracks, well, smaller than any of your own save maybe Jikan's, and in greater numbers. There also seem to be what he thinks are signs of large insects of some kind. But there are also other ... less encouraging signs. Odds and ends from the surface. Torn scraps of clothing. Scratches in the walls that might be writing or might just be errant marks of whatever has walked these caves before. Then, littered here and there, are bones. Some from dogs, cats, or rats. Some seeming humanoid.
You reckon it's been barely over an hour — far less time than you think you could have spent wandering down in these confusing caverns without luck and Korum's expert tracking — when you come to something new.
The cavern opens from a bottleneck into a large, smooth cavern of striated blue stone and pale, sandy floors. The walls glisten with moisture, and a small pool sits on the eastern side of the chamber. All across the area, thick carpets of fungus blanket the stones.
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"Green pig? I wonder how it got that name. Or perhaps I don't wanna know..."
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Jikan casts Light once the party enters some darkness. "Who wants the **Torch**?" Jikan uses Torch with hand gestures of quotation marks, casting Light on the one who volunteers.
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"My goodness. This whole place is gigantic..." He waits for the rest of the party to proceed into the room, following in after them.
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Kul-Amon nods to Dulcinea, the newest addition to the group in his mind. "Kul-Amon understands. In part. It is a terrible name to give a place. Only pig guts fester green most of the time."
Kul-Amon steps on in past Korum, his orc eyes piercing through the darkness without trouble and puts another marking upon the wall.
"Kul-Amon agrees. The nothing within this chamber is quite large. A sign from the All-Seeing Eye, to whom contradictions are manifestations of the power to accomplish the impossible."
Kul-Amon steps into the immense nothing inside the room. Water drips. Their footsteps echo. But otherwise, the two pathfinders sense nothing.
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Shaya pulls out the gem they found in their first mission for the Society with a smile. "Knew this would come in handy."
"Let me see if there's anything naughty up there, hang on."
Pushing her way to the lead, Shaya scans the chamber beyond after a quick prayer to Shelyn. "Holy Shelyn, if there's anything spiritually ugly in here, please let me know, thank you."
Shaya continues the half-orc advance, holding up her gem to push back the gloom a bit. The only movement she sees is the reflection of a slow ripple in the far water, making a faint ring of light that crawls across the walls towards her. Neither her eyes nor her paladinic senses reveal anything new or naughty. Her footsteps are met with silence.
Korum 11
Kul-Amon 14
Yargul 18
Initiative
Yargul strides cautiously forward, shield pushing the gloom back farther and farther. As he moves between the two piles sand, the softest hiss of sliding sand registers in his elven ears. His eyes dart towards the sound just in time to see two ... somethings disturbing the surface of the sand. The shifting of those somethings causes the sand to slide off their carapace, and he can just see the shapes of some kind of bug creatures just beginning to launch an ambush.
The ambushers skitter aggressively forward, sand sliding free from their hardened bodies as they rush to follow Yargul.
.
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With a smile on his face and in his best Kul-Amon voice, "Korum once tried to buy a beer with the currency of knowledge, but the barkeep had no change. Then Korum went across the street to buy dinner, but the chef said Korum did not have enough currency to pay. So, Korum became a Pathfinder, now Korum pays for it all the time."
Kul-Amon steps up to support the defensively-positioned Yargul, but the half-orc's blade glances from the attacking creature's chitinous hide.
The two creatures — whose small bodies you realize to be slightly luminescent as they fully shed their sandy covering — ignore the advancing paladin to converge on the most immediate threat ... Kul-Amon. One brings its mouth-pincers to bear on his axe-wrist, just missing. The other, though, bites low, its hard pincers snapping momentarily closed on his legs ... shearing into a bit of exposed flesh.
Dulcinea darts forward and slides the tip of her rapier into a crack in its hide, skewering it to the floor. Ichor sqirts out as it dies on the floor. Jikan steps forward to finish his Enlargening spell on Shaya, who explodes to twice her size. Jikan then flicks out his every-ready wand and sends a bolt of force into the remaining ambusher, its hide soaking up most of the damage.
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Shaya blinks as the world gets smaller! "Ooh, this again! Alright! Hey Korum! I'm definitelythe bigger sibling. --I got no idea what the bugs are either but let's find out if they splat."
Swinging her glaive overhead-- and over the heads of the front line-- she tries to smack the little critter.
Sadly, while her strike is strong it isn't accurate-- possibly she's too worried about hitting her friends.
Shaya's huge glaive slams into the ground, trapping the creature in place while Yargul does what folks have done to bugs for time out of mind ... stomps it under his heel.
The chamber goes suddenly still, filled mostly with the team's own breathing and the death-skitters of the two creatures. Now that the fight is over (and you have a moment to be a bit more perceptive), you notice that one of the little bug-creatures seems to have some kind of harness on it. Or, rather, the aged, well-worn remains of a harness that looks like it might have been put to actual use months ago.
A quick scan shows that there a number of cracks and smaller caves leading away from this one.
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The half-orc makes certain he is just far enough away before responding to his sister. "Yeah, yeah. You're absolutely enormous. 'Bout time the rest of yer body caught up to the size 'o yer bum."
Continuing to mark the way with chalk, Korum searches for signs of the missing minotaur or a path through the 'maze'.
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"EY, GET BACK HERE AND SAY THAT," Shaya laughs, enjoying the even deeper echo of her voice around the cavern while she's in this towering form.
Apparently Korum's not far enough away to not be caught up with and have his head knuckled mercilessly. Shaya is far too busy with this task to manage delicate tracking or clue-hunting.
The first thing Korum finds are tracks, a path that seems heavily traveled as of late and leads down a particular cavern branch and farther into the gloom. The second thing he finds is that not only are there minotaur prints along said path, but it looks like there was a fight or ambush. Then huge drag marks in place of the minotaur prints as it heads farther down that path.
And the third thing Korum finds is … well, whatever it was, it’s interrupted as Shaya grabs him up into an oversized headlock. Her booming laugh echos off the cavern walls.