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Irini intensifies her gaze, supporting herself with one hand on the tree trunk. Small bruises begin to appear on her hands. "They're young hippogriffs. It should not take much more to drive it away."
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Chou fumbles again with her crossbow, but Amaron manages to coach Anzu into another successful strike, killing the the final Hippogriff.
Janira looks at the fallen hippogriffs and frowns momentarily, but quickly turns her gaze onto the rest of you. "Well, that was unexpected, but good job! You worked together, used your talents, and no one got hurt!"
"We should get back to the road though, we've got a time table to keep."
Janira brings her wayfinder out and regains the path, leading you all deeper into the wood. After an hour or so, the halfling seems frustrated. You keep running into fallen trees blocking your path, shortcuts overgrown.
"This...is embarrassing to admit, but I seemed to have been turned around. Are any of you particularly good with travel through the wilderness. Could you assist me?"
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Valon stops to take in his surroundings. He scratches his head. Are some of these trees supposed to look different from each other?
"I have no idea how to get ourselves back on the right path," he declares, shrugging his shoulders. "What Chou says makes sense, I think. Perhaps that's our best option."
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"Oh! Thank you Chou! What do you know, handy with tinkering and navigation, you'll need to utilize both in the Society, they'll be lucky to have you when this is all done." With the path found once again Janira continues to lead you onward.
Eventually the dense forest opens to a wide clearing at the base of a sheer cliff. Thick vines cover the surface of the cliff stretching 30 feet overhead. “Here! The cave entrance is behind those vines,” Janira says with a broad smile as she walks to the cliff’s face. She pulls back several layers of vegetation to reveal a narrow crack in the cliff’s surface. “This is where I saw the gillmen enter.” As she motions toward the aperture, the surrounding woods come alive with the sound of small animals fleeing some unseen danger and a large creature crashing through the undergrowth.
The halfling worriedly remarks, “Quick, take cover before whatever it is spots us!” As if she’d summoned the creature with her words, a massive horned monstrosity emerges from the trees. Standing eight feet tall on a pair of cloven hooves and wielding a tremendous axe, the bull-headed creature roars with unbridled anger when it spots the group. Wisely assessing that a minotaur is beyond her charges’ capabilities, Janira screams, “A minotaur! There’s little chance we can stand against it. Take this bag,” she continues, pulling off her backpack, "and head deeper into the caves. Finish your mission. I’ll lead it away from the caves, lose it in the forest, and join you as soon as I can. Now go! GO!” She heaves her backpack into the cave, casts a spell, and darts off toward the minotaur before turning to lure it away.
You move toward the cave entrance, just five feet away. It feels, however, like an eternity as you feel the minotaur bearing down on you. Janira takes off in another direction, shouting at the minotaur in another language . The minotaur turns and follows the halfling and eventually you can no longer hear the cacophony of the chase. Standing in the cave entrance, with a bag full of Janira's belongings, you are left to plan the next step on your own. The narrow tunnel twists and turns for several hundred feet before lowly opening to a wider passage. A large hole spans the cave’s width and stretches ten feet down the path. At the bottom of the pit lies a small bundle of cloth floating in dark water.
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"Wait wha?"
Chou's eyes go wide as Janira gives the order. She looks at the sun's position in the sky, looks at the cave entrance, and looks back at Janira. "But... I hafta record the time of entry and..."
She watches Janira rush off, and peeks at her journal. "Um... doesn't say anything 'bout this. Um... OK Janira! Please don't die!"
She grabs the bag and drags it into the cave. "Mister Shaine said we're supposed to come back awive..."
She pauses just inside of the cave and peers at the level of sunlight. She makes a rough estimation of the time and notes it down in the journal, then turns the page and begins to mark down the entryway, and the short path ahead. Once she's content with her markings, she begins to rifle through the bag to take inventory. Finding the sunrod, she happily lights it up to give everyone a better view.
"Ooh! Mage armor! Irini, come here! This would be reawwy good for you! If you wan't I can try to cast it on you. I dun usuawy use spewws, but I think I can figure it out..."
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As soon as the sound of something hurdling through the bushes becomes apparent, Valon turns and lowers himself into a stance, ready for a fight. When the minotaur appears, he hesitates, trying to take in the details of the surrounding area, searching for some sort of advantage. He looks a lot tougher than those hippogriffs. This might get ugly.
He hesitates again as Janira drops her bag and orders them into the group. "Janira, wait!" he shouts as she runs off, but to no avail. Having little other choice, he ducks inside the cave.
"That's not good. Can she actually lose it?" He sighs. "May as well see what we've got in the meantime..." He watches quietly as Chou goes through the items in the bag. He's forced to squint for a moment when she lights up the sunrod, but after a moment his eyes adjust, and he looks around the cave entrance.
Valon spots something on the ground and kneels down to inspect it. "Footprints. Webbed feet. Must be from a gillman. They look like they're only a few hours old, too." He stands back up. "It would seem they beat us here."
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Irini looks at the halfling with incredulity. "But Janira, we would be at the advantage in the tunnel, if it could even--" she trails off as the senior Pathfinder runs off to be heroic.
Inside the cave, she squints as the sun rod flares to life. "Thank you, Chou Wei, that would help if we encounter aggressive resistance to our exploration."
Upon arriving at the flooded pit, she shrugs her pack off of her shoulders and imperiously places it in Valon's arms. "Be a love and carry this across for me."
She marks out a reasonable distance to get a running start and then leaps for the other side of the pit.
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Chou tries to read the scroll 3 times, but to no avail. In fact on the last try she seems to have been rejected by the scroll. "$&%@! Sorry... Maybe easier if you use it on yoursewf?"
She takes a peek over the edge of the pit as Irini clears it. "Something is down there... I wonder what it is? Vawon, you're strong... can you wower rope so I can see what it is? Then you can toss it to Irini and everyone can cross without jumping!"
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As Chou, Valon and Irini rush into the cave the rest of the party follows. Valons keen eyes spot the tracks on the floor and the group follows them to the pit.
As Irini shows a how nimble she can be, and leaps the ten feet toward the other side of the hole, Chou peers over the edge trying to identify the cloth at the bottom.
Chou sees that the the cloth is actually a colorful cloak thats floating on water about ten feet below the party, and the water itself seems to be another ten feet deep. Chou can also see the the walls of the pit are rounded, making it impossible for anyone climbing out to brace themselves.
The rest of the Pathfinders must still make it across the pit before they can continue.
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Irini lands quite safely on the other side, trotting to a stop. She looks momentarily surprised at how well she did, then turns and brushes her hair back over her shoulder with one hand. The other hand on her hip, she asks, "Well? If I can make it look easy, what are you waiting for?"
She backs further down the tunnel to give the dinosaur plenty of room to land.
"Valon, don't get my pack wet."
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Abdi lets out a curse in Osiriani as the others rush into the cave, following Janira's commands. Knowing what it is to be a leader, Abdi gives their halfling guide one last look of desperation before following his companions into the cave....
Once they reach the gap he gives it a quick, appraising glance and then provides everyone some guide to get over the obstacle. He then easily leaps across it with a nod. "With the power of Ra behind us, nothing can get in our way. That said, we will be searching for Janira once we have completed our mission. I will not leave her to die alone."
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Chou backs up, then runs forward on all fours, leaping across the pit with ease.
"Hrm... yep! Man made. Gimme a moment... I want the pretty cwoak!"
Chou fishes around in her pack and produces a line of string and a fishing hook. She ties it off, then lowers it slowly into the pit, attempting to hook the colorful cloak to retrieve.
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The witch continues to back down the tunnel as more of her comrades make the jump.
Once Chou Wei is secure and, more importantly, dry, Irini accepts the scroll from him. She unrolls the vellum and works at deciphering the script.
Satisfied that she understands the magic, she incants as instructed on the scroll.
"Maybe it did not work for you because you were chanting with your mouth full."
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Valon blinks as Irini drops her pack into his arms, and watches as the others leap over the gap. "Uh, yes ma'am." He takes a moment to assess the pit, then steps back, moving a bit slower due to the extra weight. "I wonder if this is what it's like to be married," he mutters to himself.
Irini's pack still in his arms, he takes a somewhat slow running start and leaps over the pit. Valon only just makes it across, and he wobbles a bit on the edge of the pit before regaining his balance and stepping away. "That was close. Closer than it should have been, even with the extra bag. Looks like I need to do more jumping exercises when we get back."
That decided, he turns around to look back at Amaron and Anzu. "I have some rope, but not much else. How well can Anzu walk on ropes?"
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Abdi, Chou and Ace launch themselves over the pit as well, in an equally impressive display to the one Irini provided moments before, all unaffected by the caverns slippery floor.
Single minded in her curiosity, Chou rummages through her things and retrieves a fishing pole, which she uses to deftly collect the cloak in the pit. When she pulls it up she sees that it is, remarkably, still in tact.
As Irini steps back to make room for her fellow agents, she bumps into a wooden plank that appears to be long enough to place over the pit. Amaron and Valon cross over the plank while Anzu leaps the distance with ease and takes his place at the front of the group with his druid companion.
The tunnels continue on, leading deeper beneath the Kortos Mounts until they eventually open into a large cavern. What must have once been beautifully carved reliefs and inscriptions have since weathered heavily, their features dulled and softened to the point that it is hard to distinguish what each once depicted. A wide tunnel exits the cavern on its far side, and blue-burning torches line the passageway walls.
Some of you might be able to decipher some of these carvings. From information you learned studying religion, or language, or perhaps just intuition.
One relief depicts The Hunter (an aspect of the dead god Aroden) slaying a giant serpentine creature and then parading a trophy through the city streets—a sign to all humanity that the wilds are safe to inhabit once the monsters are slain. You get the distinct feeling that this information in these carvings will be useful in the near future.
The next, shows the Scholar writing on a piece of parchment and then reading from it to passersby, just as Aroden was said to smile on those who recorded history and other knowledge to share it with others.
The Soldier is depicted bearing a lantern through the streets of a city, following the dead god’s prophecy that the vigilant shall carry light to the darkest corners of the world to banish the shadows.
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"Ooh! A nice cwoak to help resist things wike magic and poison and expwosions!"
She slowly walks up to Valon, then tugs at his shirt. "Vawon! You stand in front... do you want this cwoak?"
It takes a moment for her to notice the carvings, as she's got her nose stuck in her journal as she maps every passage. When she does finally notice them, Chou lights up and immediately flips to a new page. She begins sketching copies of them furiously.
"Wookit that! It's a schowar, writing on parchment just like me! I think it represents the teachings of Aroden who was said to smiwe on those who recorded history and other knowwedge to share with others."
She looks at the next carving and holds up her sunrod and mimicking the pose. "And a sowdier... carrying a wantern through the streets. The owd books of Aroden say that the vigiwant shaww carry wight..." She stops, thinks, then slowly takes everything out of her mouth. "Light... not wight. Wights are bad and scary. As I was saying, the vigilant shall carry light to the darkest corners of the world to banish the shadows."
The last one seems heavily obfuscated, but she sketches it, then thinks, and jots a few notes down. Once she's content, she marks a few more lines with the comment 'likely part of original carving.'
"This one looks like a tailor sewing together a long cloth. The cloth wraps around the city like a moat... I do think I remember another proclamation of Aroden recorded in scholarly texts that say that when the fate of all peoples is woven together, it shall be humanity's greatest strength."
She squeaks with excitement, then quickly shoves her excess gear back into her mouth, takes a swig of Alkenstar's finest cleaner (pure ethyl alcohol), swishes, and spits it back out.
"Aww cween!"
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"Oh!" Irini looks down at her feet. "So this is how the gillmen got across."
The woman lugs the board down the tunnel and then looks expectantly for someone to finish the job.
"Interesting," she remarks, removing paper and writing utensil to makes notes on the carvings.
"I think you missed this one, Chou Wei." Irini says as she points to a scene. "The Hunter slaying the dragon and parading its head through the streets to show all that it is safe again. They all appear to be aspects of Aroden. His other eight aspects must have been depicts, but time seems to have worn them away."
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"Really? Thank you very much, Chou Wei. You honor me." Valon smiles and bows deeply to the ratfolk as he takes the cloak.
The monk follows into the cavern, casting his gaze here and there, looking over the carvings one by one. He has no formal education in these subjects, but the images themselves in several places remind him of stories he'd heard in the past. He takes retrieves the paper and ink he'd been given earlier to take notes. "Aspects of Aroden..." he mutters quietly, listening to Chou and Irini go into detail about each and adding details to his own log. A bit more loudly, he states, "Interesting as these are, something tells me that what's in these engravings is going to be important for more than just our reports to the Society." He frowns, thinking. "I don't really know how, though. Just a gut feeling."
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Chou looks a bit embarassed as she's pointed at the most obvious of the carvings. "Ah! Oops..."
She takes down notes on the last carving, then flips back to the mapping page and moves forward down the hall with Irini. She stands up on her tip-toes and inspects the torches.
"If someone spent the time to put magic wi- hwi- torches in the rock they must come here often."
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Chou seems to not only be a trained historian but also an intelligent engineer. After deciphering the four most intact reliefs with the help of Valon and Irini on some of the finer details. Chou also inspects the burning torches, and finds that instead of magic, they seem to be fueled by the bioluminescent algae found throughout the cave.
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 long 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 water, in front of the miniature city, is a lone gillmen, a colorful robe folded up and placed on the drier ground behind him. The tunnel branches off in either direction.
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The gillman continues to kneel in front of the miniature Absalom, and makes no movement to suggest he has noticed any of you.
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As Abdi circles around toward the model, the Gillman see's him in his peripheral vision and startles. Though he makes no move to introduce himself. He turns his head and finally notices the rest of the group as well and keeps an eye on all you, watching what you do with interest.
He seems to be eyeing the cloak with interest.
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Valon steps forward with the rest of the group. He notices that the cloak on the ground near the gillman is quite similar to the one Chou handed him earlier, and nods when the ratfolk confirms this aloud. "I wonder if this is some sort of gillman design," he says, absently running one hand along the fabric.
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Abdi, ever the diplomat, stops when he is noticed by gillman. "Well met, friend. My name is Abdi and these are my companions." He introduces each of the others. "We are members of an archeological group called the Pathfinder Society. Perhaps you have heard of us? We seek you no harm, but have come here to learn more about this place. If you are willing, I would be interested in hearing all that you are willing to share."
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The Gillman stares intently as Chou speaks but seems not to comprehend most of what she is saying. The confused look on his face softens a bit as the others speak a bit clearer.
"Taldane will do." The man responds to Irni, 'I..do not know the other language you speak."
He turns his head to Valon, and almost instantly looks toward the cloak again. "You are correct. That cloak you bear is from my people, it belonged to one such as me that had traveled here to this cave."
He slowly peels his eyes off the cloak as Abdi seems to be speaking.
"I have heard of your society of course. You may call me Uori. I doubt I would have much of interest to tell you, but you may go about your business as long as you do not desecrate these waters."
Before he can turn back to the shrine, Uori seems to contemplate the Pathfinders words, and with a small smile, decides to offer some more information.
"The shrine here, it was once sacred to Aroden, the dead god of humanity, but over the past century, the carvings in the nearby room have weathered and melted. I believe they used those carvings to receive Arodens blessings here in this very pool. Unfortunately, soon, I think the dead gods influence will have faded completely. Because of this, other creatures have invaded the caves and are not so polite as you Pathfinders."
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"Ooooohhh.... so the carvings are... instructions? Wike a prayer book?" She chitters with excitement. She moves up next to the Gillman, then kneels at the edge of the pool. She thinks over the carvings that she read and makes a decision. "History! I know history..." She turns around to make sure not to sully the waters of the sacred pool, and carefully extracts all of the objects from her mouth, bundling them up and putting them into her pack. She begins a new section in the current journal log and titles it 'On the history of Absalom'
She jots down a historical account of the founding of Absalom and then reads it out loud for all to hear. "In the first year of the Age of Enthronement, the Starstone was pulled from the depths of inner sea, becoming the center of Absalom. Since the founding of the city at the center of the world, 3 more mortals ascended to the ranks of the gods by taking part in the test of the Starstone: Norgorber, Cayden Cailean, and Iomedae."
She pauses and looks for signs of activity from the shrine at the center of the pool.