After making notes on the four recognised guises, the party heads on to the illuminated narrow passage in the southern wall. As you carefully pass the tunnel, you reveal a room beyond the cavern walls.
The soft light of the surrounding fungus mixes with the flickering glow of the nearby torches to reveal a grand chamber. A large pool of water along the chamber’s southern edge reflects the blue and green radiance to illuminate the massive stalactites that cling to the ceiling overhead. Two other tunnels branch off from this area, leading to the east and west. Rising up from the pool is a column of rock with steeply sloped sides and a flat top, as if someone had sawn off the top of a massive stalagmite. A miniature city carved from this same stone occupies nearly the entire surface. Tiny trinkets such as ancient coins, polished semiprecious stones, and ornately braided loops of string are scattered throughout the diorama, and pale cave frogs clamber atop it. The smooth cavern floor is covered in gravel and pebbles along the edge of the pool, and several foot-long centipedes prowl among the gravel in their search for prey. Kneeling in the pool is a lone humanoid figure. They don't seem to be paying attention to you, however.
You identify the diorama in the pool as an intricately detailed model of Absalom, easily identifiable by its Starstone Cathedral. This representation of the City at the Center of the World and the Inner Sea also acts as an altar to the dead god Aroden that retains enough power to bless a few more pilgrims.
The man seems to ignore you up until the point when Kaa attempts to snatch a centipede. Unfortunately Kaa misses, tossing a few rocks into the water in the process. After seeing the concentric circles created by the pebbles, he turns around. You notice he has gills on his neck. He is a bit startled when he sees your weapons drawn, but quickly regains his composure and addresses you:
"If it is a fight you are here for, you came to the wrong place. Nevertheless - I will defend this holy place, even though I'd rather not desecrate it."
He measures each of you with a quick glance.
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"We are NOT here to fight. If this place IS holy and you desecrate it, we'll make you answer for the scandal, though." Feza's tone is warning, cautious.
Feza accents her statement by carefully coiling her whip and placing it back on her hip and lowering her hands, palms towards the strange man with gills on his freaking neck.
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Senma gleefully runs up to the man, sloshing through the water. A small electrical current seems to keep everyone's hair on end when they touch the liquid.
"Hi mister gilled man! We have come to explore these caves. Can you help? "
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Sense Motive - you don't discern anything of major importance on the gillman. He is clearly surprised to see you here, on top of everything - with weapons in hand, and sneaking up on him. His defensive posture is only natural.
Perception - He does have a crossbow and a quarterstaff laying on a nearby rock above the water surface, but does not seem to be reaching for either.
The gillman looks carefully at each adept as they speak, silently mimicking their mouth movements. When the Tengu and Nagaji speak, he seems clueless, however.
He takes a few seconds after that, and responds, looking at Senma: "Ah! A creature after my own heart. With a passion for the life-giving water, I presume?"
He then scans the entire group of cadets again.
"Does this old pilgrim seem dangerous to you?"
Saying that, with a seemingly forced smile of a negotiator on his face - he extends his arms towards the party, palms up, showing that they are empty.
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"I LOVE WATER!" remarks Senma with glee. "What are you doing here Mister Gilled Man? What is your name? I am Senma. Senma Set-en-et. We are with the Pathfinder Society and this is my first mission! We were sent to explore the caves and there was this pit with some stuff and I leapt over it like WHOOSH!" Senma starts, not letting the gillman get in a word edge-wise.
The gillman looks at Eldak when being addressed, but doesn't seem to have much to work with. When Senma starts talking, he makes several unsuccessful attempts to step in, then gives up. When the dust settles, the gillman speaks:
"Fascinating...", he pauses briefly, absorbing the information. "I am on a pilgrimage here. Most of our kind visit the place at least once in their lives. These are the purest and holiest of waters."
He looks at Senma again, and addresses him: "The name's Uori. Pleasure to meet you, Senma, is it? Unfortunately, your land-dwelling friends make it very hard for me to understand them. At least the ones with beaks and fangs. We will need to make some sort of arrangement. Any ideas?", he asks, looking at the entire group one by one.
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"Senma, please be respectful of the sacred man's sacred waters in his holy place. Would you do that to a church you like? And give the poor guy a chance to breathe, much less talk, eesh."
The Calistrian pauses for a moment and considers.
"Ask him what kind of faith his people follow, and why he can't understand those of us who aren't human-looking? Is it a language thing or something else? And would he be willing to tell us a little bit about his people? If this is the gillman we're supposed to meet, we need to learn all kinds of things to document, right?"
The gillman watches Feza talk, then watches Ophelia talk, quietly moving his mouth.
"To be perfectly frank - I have had hearing problems for a while in my life, and am currently completely deaf. In order to have a conversation, reading lips is necessary. That's quite hard to do when the other individual has no lips to read, however."
Uori looks at Senma, a bit puzzled. "Help with my pilgrimage? No, not really. There is one thing, however. Some creatures seem to have taken residence in here, and a few gillmen fell to their schemes. They are deeper in the caves to your left and right. I'm not sure what their plans are, but I can surely say they are not peaceful ones."
While he's saying that, Eldak writes his note and hands it to him. The gillman reads the message, and nods his head: "Certainly, but I suggest you try to deal with the things I mentioned first. They might be dangerous."
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The Calistrian tengu pulls out her whip as she glances to the tunnels, giving 'Uori' a bit of a nod and bow.
Deaf, and here. Aware enough to know about his surroundings despite that, durable enough to have made it through the Cairnlands somehow... Hmmm.
"Right. Shall we, then? Someone pick a direction, I'll follow your lead."
While Eldak writes, Ophelia takes a while to listen to her surroundings. Just now, she realises there are a lot of noises in these caves - a handful of bats flapping their wings in the distance, centipedes slithering about, water droplets falling into accumulated puddles, wind whistling against the walls of the cave ... But nothing discernable coming from either tunnel.
Uori reads Eldak's note, takes a few seconds, and nods: "I arrived here a few days back. When I did, there was another pilgrim already here. He mentioned he would stay at least until the full moon. So we set up our sleeping bags over there, near that passage.", he points to the narrow cave to the north. The one you came in through. "He was a man of small stature. Short, thin ... didn't seem very strong, but he was a youngster compared to me. Anyway - we prayed together here, and slept at the same time. In retrospect, that was probably a bad idea." He sighs heavily, then continues: "Two nights ago, I dreamed about something pale and sinister - quietly leading my companion away. He was not protesting. Just walking, as if hypnotised. The morning after - I woke up, but Chidan was not here. So I went to investigate. As it turns out, the pale thing is quite real, and is hiding in the eastern cave. I don't know what it is doing, but I have found my companion's clothes - and more - just scattered in the cave. I don't know more. I only know that what I saw there makes me shiver to this day. You could imagine what a great spy a deaf man can be." He takes a short break, and splashes some water onto his face. I've barely slept since. While I think myself a considerable quarry, who knows what is that thing capable of. I was waiting for other gillmen to come to the pilgrimage, so we could deal with it... but you showed up instead. So - good luck. I need to get some sleep now. I'll answer your questions afterwards."
Almost immediately after he finishes talking, the gillman dozes off.
A few moments later, the agents head out for the eastern tunnel. There are no more torches here, but luminescent fungi grows conveniently and the lighting gives you little to no problems. After a short while, the air in the tunnel fills with the smell of rot and decay. Random articles of clothing can appear on the ground, and more and more footmarks appear in the shallow damp mud on the floor. You seem to be hearing some sort of buzzing from beyond a corner as well. Following through, as you walk around the bent cave wall, you stumble upon a pile of what seem to be exclusively gillman corpses. Only now, you realise that the buzzing are flies - feasting on the rotting meat along side other small critters. While some of the bodies are already in an advanced state of decay, the top ones don't seem to be more than a few days old, however. You count at least two dozen bodies on the pile. Combined with the humid air, the stench is almost overwhelming.
As you stop by the corpse pile to examine the gruesome scene, you notice one amulet and one ring with the corner of your eye. The amulet is barely hanging from the neck of a severely disfigured gillman near the bottom of the pile. Parts of his face seems to be quite literally eaten away. Not far from said corpse, a hand of another dead pilgrim extends from the pile, with a ring on one of it's fingers.
You notice teeth- and clawmarks. Other signs of damage are hard to identify with all the maggots working the pile. You also believe you saw what might have been a magical rune on several bodies. The very same one. The bodies themselves are not moving.
You don't recognise the rune as being attributed to any single deity, but you're fairly certain it's connected with necromancy. Reanimation, specifically.
Ophelia reaches for the trinkets. The amulet is not a problem, but - while trying to remove the ring, the finger snaps off like a dry twig.