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For many of you, the last few weeks have been a time of rest and relaxation as you took a well-deserved rest from you most recent travels. It is rare, after all, that the highly-trained (and often semi-retired) seekers of the Pathfinder Society are called upon for missions.
But for Pathfinders the call to action can often come abruptly and without warning, and you are reminded of this when a small air elemental comes before you bearing a sealed message.
Grand Lodge. Restricted Library. Midnight tonight. The Grandmother stirs.
Signed
RC
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Amsheagar looks back at this once young man. Knowing what he did wasn't something that he could ever be forgiven for. And for that, he gave up everything he once was to start anew. "That part of me is dead and gone. I even forsook the name that went with it. You can call me Am Sheagar now. The one without a name." lowering his head a little he spoke once more. "For what it's worth, I am sorry. Those experiments took a toll on all of us... even Celie. It drove her mad."
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A gnome wearing a helmet with antlers appears next to a big tan dog with saddle bages strapped to his side.
"Hi again all...where's my friend the dwarf? Those giants where tough weren't they. Did you tell you all my uncle Trapsfinger was killed by a giant er was it an orge?"
Purs dog licks his hand.
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Standing before you is a male Dwarf who appears to be approaching his middle years. His green eyes are sharp, appearing not to miss a single detail. His hair is black as night with rings of various metals woven throughout and his beard is intricately braided with rings of varying metals decorating it and held together with a silver beard clasp. His full plate armor is highly polished but dinged and dented from years of adventure and exploration. A pair of golden eagles are etched onto the shoulders of his armor, looking the same as those of an Andoran Eagle Knight. Rhons' shield and ax are leaning up against a nearby table allowing you to easily note the holy symbol of Torag emblazoned upon the shield. A white cloak of Iomedae is wrapped around the top of the shield. Rhon holds a silver tankard in hand that he is gesturing to you with in greeting.
"Greetings and Torag's blessing upon you all." Rhon pulls a chair up to the table and takes a seat. He sets his mug down after taking a long draw. "Given that we are all here again rather than at our homes what do you suppose the Venture Captain wants us to accomplish this time around?"
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A man of Tian descent floats just a little off the ground, appearing as at ease in the air as he would be sitting. He is dressed in resplendent white robes embroidered with gold threads and a rose-gold rapier hangs at his hip. A gold circlet topped with blue leather sits on his brow, though most of the headpiece is tucked under his broad straw hat. His left arm appears to be sheathed in an oversized steel gauntlet fashioned to resemble a leonine paw, though the oversized digits tap on his right arm freely and unonsciously as if they were his own fingers. He would appear human, were it not for the flash of iridescence in his eyes.
"Well met, brother Delver. Ralph's been all but obsessed with uncovering the fate of Baba Yaga since this whole affair started. From his message, I'm guessing that he has made some headway in working out how to open that doll we found in Rasputin's sanctum."
He purses his lips grimly.
"I'm expecting we're gonna be facing alot of dark magic once again..."
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A large and burly half-orc armed with a beautiful pole arm saunters in taking up the space in the room.
"I heard you lilly loving bespawlers needed some muscle on this here venture so I got the summons."
He sizes up the other members of the group rather quickly and adds "Looks like I will be needed after all.... are we bringing kids on this mission?" he asks pointing to the gnome.
"The name is Jaggar."
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While you are bantering, the air in the corner of library ripples, and when the rippling ceases, you see that a stone statue now stands in its place. Those of you who have seen Venture Captain Ralph Cauthorn before immediately recognize that the statue has been fashioned in its image. Purs, Exiel and Rhon in particular are relatively unsurprized when the stone statue walks up to you and beckons you to gather.
Once you have taken your places around the statue, it riffles what appears to be a deck of cards between its hands, and your vision begins to swim. As it clears, you find that you have been transported someplace else. You find yourselves in the middle of a large stone hall - on one side stands a large mahogany desk with a cushioned high-backed chair, while on the other side stands three gargantuan statues of the same archmage arranged in a rough semicircle. Amidst them, a wooden hut set upon gigantic chicken legs paces about anxiously until it notices your arrival, upon which it crouches down and allows the stairs at its front porch to touch the ground.
The door to the hut swings open of it own volition, and you see behind it a crowded kitchen complete with a wooden table, a lit fireplace with a cauldron upon the flames, and an open trapdoor set into the floor.
The roar of rushing waters issues from within the hut.
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"I'm surprised you have not heard of Baba Yaga, Purs. The legendary witch and true ruler of Irrisen. She returns every couple of hundred years to take the reigning queen of Irrisen away with her and put in place a new queen, except this time she got jumped by Elvanna and Rasputin, who it turns out was her son. Baba Yaga was trapped in some magical wooden doll that we recovered after defeating Rasputin, and Ralph has been working on finding a way to open it."
"As for our Venture Captain, well, I think there may be more than one present who has that title, but I am guessing you mean Ralph in this case. In which case, I'm gonna guess he's somewhere in the hut..."
Exiel flies up to the hut and lays a hand gently upon it.
"It's been awhile, old friend. Good to see you again. We'll get your mistress out soon, don't you worry."
As Exiel utters those words, it suddenly occurs to him that while there is an immediate need to free Baba Yaga, and while she might be the lesser of the two evils at the immediate moment, there was no telling what would come from freeing the witch queen in the long run.
"One problem at a time, Exiel. We need her to prevent Golarion from being engulfed in a permanent winter. Let's solve that problem first, and then see what we can do afterwards."
With that thought tucked in the corner of his mind, Exiel follows Rhon into the hut to check out the trapdoor.
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Rhon and Exiel discover that the sound of rushing water is coming from the trapdoor, and peering down it, they see... a sky! The look closer and realize that what lies on the other side is an inverted world, where the gravity is also pulled in the direction of the surface the trapdoor on the other side is set upon.
Stepping through the trap door is mildly disorienting, but as you re-orient yourselves you find that the the trap door opens out of a large, flat-topped gneiss boulder at the bottom of a grotto surrounded by sheer rock cliffs broken by myriad ledges and fissures. The sound of falling water echoes through the grotto and a fine, chill mist fills the air with sparkling droplets. Most of the grotto’s walls are in shade, though bright sunlight shines down from somewhere above, refracting through the mist to create rainbows and glowing jewels of radiance. The shadow of a huge, gnarled tree is just visible through the fog toward the sound of the waterfall.
From within the fog, you hear Ralph's familiar voice calling out.
"Rhon. Exiel. So good of you to finally come. I trust you are not the only ones here? Your abilities are considerable, but this mission will require more than just the strength of the two of you."
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You follow Ralph's voice through the fog to a large picturesque grotto.
A picturesque waterfall tumbles from the cliff above into a roiling pool that bubbles like a giant witch’s cauldron. The waterfall gives off a frigid mist, but hot steam rises from the bubbling waters of the pool, combining with the mist to make a comfortable, if somewhat damp, locale. Colorful lichens grow on the rocks around the pool, and lush ferns grow from every fissure and seam in the rock. Numerous trees, ranging from shrublike saplings to fully grown specimens crowd the soil around the pool’s edge. Just visible through the mist, a magnificent rowan tree with an immense trunk stands on a low ledge overlooking the pool. The lowest of its thin branches hang all the way down to dip into the surface of the pool, and its leaves constantly drip with condensation from the ever-present mist. Massive knots that almost resemble contorted faces look out from the tree’s gnarled surface, and its fissured bark bears the scars of ancient lines carved into the tree that lost whatever symbolic meaning they may have had ages ago.
Before the tree stands a large elfin woman with skin like bark and coniferous leaves for hair. A pair of dark shears is tucked into her sash and she holds several long golden strings in her hands. Ralph is slumped in front of the tree beside her - he does not appear physically hurt, but he nonetheless looks drained. One of the golden threads held by the elfin woman leads to a loop around his chest. Before him are two sets of wooden shells that would each fit together to form a wooden doll, one small enough to fit into the other. Yet another even smaller doll stands before him.
Rhon and Exiel recognise the largest of the wooden shells as two halves of the doll that they retrieved from Rasputin's sanctum.
"As you can see," Ralph coughs, "I have not been idle this past few weeks. However, it appears that attempting to resolve this on my own was too ambitious an undertaking, even for me. I have already succeeded in removing two layers of Baba Yaga's prison by myself, but my efforts have taken their toll, and I am now required to remain here until Baba Yaga herself is freed..."
"Which is where you come in. This here is Vigliv, an ancient Norn and Baba Yaga's first teacher."
"And now her prisoner," Vigliv interjects, "though at least my former pupil had the courtesy to bring my entire domain into my prison with me, and I am well enough cared for. My own fate is bound to the one you call Baba Yaga, so suffice to say it is in my own interests to see that her upstart daughter does not succeed in her plans."
"If you are here to help my former student, as Ralph tells me you are, then know that there are two more layers to her prison that you must remove, and to do that, you must recover her death, and her life. Baba Yaga placed her death in an athame, a witch’s knife, which she then hid in a chest within a corpse, which she buried under an oak tree on the mystical island of Buyan. Even if Baba Yaga was slain, her death would still need to be recovered and released back into her body in order for her to truly die. And so Baba Yaga plucked the island from the ocean and stored it in one of the many hidden realms of her hut so that none could stumble across it, and her death, without first facing her power."
“North and East from here, across the stream, stands a cliff. Follow the path by the cliff to a cave where you will find a pool. Therein you will find the path to the Island of Buyan, where you will find the path to Baba Yaga's death.Find her death and bring it back here to me."
"One more thing. Baba Yaga is gaining greater awareness as the layers of her prison fall. She will be able to guide you to some extent, so take her prison with you, and heed her counsel.”
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"Oh Ralph, what have you gotten yourself into..."
"Alrighty then, head North-East, cross a stream, follow a path beside the cliff and find a pool inside a cave. And... find a path inside the pool... which will lead us to an island. You know, after what we've seen just a few minutes ago, somehow that last part doesn't overly surprise me..."
Exiel flies over to the doll and picks it up.
"Shall we?"
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Ralph chuckles wryly.
"All this means is that when your magic is powerful enough, you can control not just the physical world, but the metaphysical as well. I myself am only beginning to master such power. This has been quite the eye-opener, even for me."
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You follow the Norn's instructions, eventually finding the cave with the pool that she described. As you peer in, you notice that although the pool lies within a cave, it appears to reflect a clear sky! Familiar by now with the curious portals that connect the domains within Baba Yaga's hut, you steel yourselves and plunge into the pool, one by one.
Your senses are thrown in disarray as the icy cold water of the pool suddenly changes to warm, and you surface in a salty tidal pool on a sunny stretch of beach. A brilliant sun shines down from a cloudless azure sky above, as flawless as a painting from a storybook. Ahead, the waves of a cerulean blue sea break against a sandy shore that stretches into the distance in either direction. The cry of gulls and the roll of the surf is all that breaks the silence of this empty seascape.
You are on a small, sandy islet no more than a quarter mile in diameter. All around you stretches an apparently endless blue sea, but Exiel feels a mental prod from the doll he carries, urging him to travel West across the sea.
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"Right, I don't think I will ever get used to having my bearings flipped around like that..."
"Seems like we need to head that-a-way over the sea. You'd think that they would give us a portal that actually brought us more directly to where we needed to go. Good news is, I can just fly across the sea, but I might be alone in that regard..."
"No idea how far we gotta go, so we probably want a form of transport that will last a long while. Perhaps Amsheagar could turn into a giant turtle or something and carry the rest of you on his back?"
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Amsheagar chuckles as Exiel explains his plan. ”Only one problem with that plan Exiel.” Amsheagar points to the ocean, ”The ocean is big, with big monsters that attack slow pray. A turtle carrying passengers would be slow. But don’t worry, I got transportation covered.” Amsheagar raises his hand and soon 5 shadows start to grow larger and larger. Soon those looking up can see a Aerie if Eagles land in front of the group. ”Flie you fools.
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Looking around and seeing where they have arrived and where Exiel indicates they need to go Rhon exclaims "Oh, come on now! How are we to manage that? It is not like I brought a boat along." Finally listening to his companies he realizes that they appear to have a plan. "Well I guess that will work. Just need to be sure no one falls off."
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You mount your respective eagles and take flight over the vast ocean - Pur's hound is instead carefully carried in the talons of the eagle, which unnerves it more than a little. You travel for hours. Eventually, as the sun sets ahead in the distance, you see the dark mass of an island rising from the gently rolling sea. Surrounded by sheer cliffs hundreds of feet high, the island is thickly forested. To the south, the rise slopes down to a wide, flat beach, but the island ends at a precipitous cliff to the north. Atop this cliff sits a golden city, overlooking the sea from the precipice. The light of the dying day reflects off its walls and turrets with a gleam that extends out over the waves like a beacon. A stretch of smooth beach lies at the base of this cliff, interspersed with great rocks that emerge from the sea. You estimate that with the speed of your eagles it will take you only about another 3 minutes of flying to reach the shore.
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Amsheagar looks on the group as they mount their eagle mounts, and almost laughs when the one eagle tells him that the cleric is worried that He would drop the Dog.
"My friends will stay around if we need them. As for the city... I don't know where we are nor do I know anyone who does." looking for a clearing outside of town, Amsheagar aims his lead bird towards the landing area. "It's best we don't land in the city."
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As you near the shoreline, you notice that there are 6 figures flying through the air towards you. They resemble humans from the waist up, but from the waist down they resemble lions, and each is borne aloft by a pair of hawk-like wings on his back. At about 100ft away, they form a line in the air, directly in your path, with scimitars drawn, but advance no further.
These creatures are maftets - a race of winged feline humanoids. Accomplished hunters and stalkers, maftets are highly skilled in fighting with dual scimitars, they are no more evil than other more common humanoid races, but have a tendency to be quite territorial.
"Halt! State your business at the Island of Buyan!"
"Did you not hear me? I said HALT! State your business at the Island of Buyan!"