You all received a letter inviting you back to the Blackwood Swamp, but this time as part of the Pathfinder Society group investigating them further. Now formally recognized as agents, it's time for you to get your feet wet with the Society's bread and butter, exploring old ruins and learning their secrets.
The trip back through Cassomir and to the swamp has proved much easier this time, what with the wagons that everyone used to get here and the fact you know where you're going this time. A few hours after sunrise, you find yourselves in a bustling field camp that has been set up a ways away from the Tskikha iruxi enclave and among various entrances to the ruins proper.
It takes you a moment to reorient yourselves and get your bearings, possibly introducing yourself to people you find around, before you can start tracking down the four faction leaders who are leading this expedition and could always use more help.
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A woman of medium height with brown hair saunters into the room. She's in leathers, with a rapier at her hip and a buckler strapped to one arm.
"Well met," she says in a jaunty tone, "Francine Quickfingers, at yer service. I was told to meet you here as you needed an extra sword. Started life out as a gladiator but winning got boring. So now I'm a sword for hire. Still better than tending the store in Absalom. Ya want some good quality gear, go to the Quickfingers Equipment Emporium. Tell my sister Shayna that I sent ya!"
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Kondai, A spikey black-haired man of Numerian decent who is unusually short makes a fist, gripping his gloves tightly. "I do not NEED a sword to kill my enemies . . . though if you do have any striking runes that will fit on my gloves I . . . MAY deign to visit your shop later." he looks her over, as if sizing her up to see what kind of use she would be in a fight.
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A tanned Erutaki man in padded sealskin gambeson emerges from a tent. He brushes a stray length of hair over his ear as he looks about and then heads towards you. "Greetings," he says with a neutral expression. "I am Qigiq. Fola said you needed someone with medical skills. She assigned me to your team."
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A tanned Erutaki man in padded sealskin gambeson emerges from a tent. He brushes a stray length of hair over his ear as he looks about and then heads towards you. "Greetings," he says with a neutral expression. "I am Qigiq. Fola said you needed someone with medical skills. She assigned me to your team."
”THEY might need healing, I doubt there anything here to challenge me.”
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"Well good," he says with a small smile. "Then I will be able to focus my attentions on them." He looks over at Francine. "I often weave starlight into my allies' blades to make them stronger , but if there is something the Path of the Heavens can offer you that is more to your advantage, let me know."
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A thin but muscular man in dark plated armor enters the room and looks around. His tattered crimson cloak wrapped loosely around his half-plate armor, An emblem is emblazoned across the surface of, barely visible beneath the holes in the cloak. It is that of an infernal eye staring from a swirling portal. "Greetings Francine and Qigiq. I am Alaric." He gives a small bow. "Hellknight of the Order of the Gate." He offers a gleaming smile.
Seeing a standard 6 person Pathfinder cell standing around complaining about the smells and fan themselves, a camp aide moves up to the party. "Dou have assignments yet? The faction leaders have been mentionning needing people to help with various tasks. Fola's over in between the tents over there and seems to need some help with the iruxi around here. Gorm is in his tent there and seems to be gathering some schoars to study something. Calriso is leaning that pillar over there and wants some people to explore a dungeon. And Eando is in his tent swamped with various dangerous looking relics and objects. I'd recommend talking to one of them if you aren't waiting for something. Not a good look to be standing around in a busy camp like this."
The interior of Eando's tent is brightly lit and sparsely decorated. The fully armed and armored human man many of you know as Eando stands at a table opposite the entrance, a large wooden crate in front of him. In his hands is what appears to be an ivory idol with an tag bearing a bright red X on it.
He looks up as Alaric and Kondai enter, giving the latter an incredulous look. “Hold there a moment, Pathfinders.” he says. He then delicately places the idol within the crate, packs it with straw, replaces the lid, and finally seals it with a tag.
Once he has set it aside, he speaks again. “Thank you for waiting. I’m Eando Kline, leader of the Vigilant Seal. I recognize Alaric, but might I ask what the rest of your names are?”
He nods at each name as if trying to commit it to memory, before he continues. “Seeing as you are in a hurry, I'll save you the whole spiel. To explain this simply: You all know about the Society’s motto: ‘Explore. Report. Cooperate.’ The Vigilant Seal has its own motto: ‘Protect. Contain. Destroy.’ The last thing we need is for a horde of fiends to be unleashed because someone jostled the wrong statue,” he says, and nods meaningfully toward the just-closed crate.
“So today I have an important job for you. Other Pathfinder scouts recently cleaned the monsters out of a nearby Azlanti temple dedicated to the vampiric demon lord Zura. They found an odd bit of treasure that had a dangerous aura about it. When they tried to seal it away in a protective box, it simply teleported itself back to the center of the temple. Rather than continuing to experiment with the item, they wisely reported their findings to me. After a bit of research into similar items, I believe that removing the item from the temple will require carrying it out by hand." With this he hands you a simple drawn map and a picture of the object.
“Your job is to go to the ruin, retrieve this item, and return it to me so I can decide what to do with it next. The path is clear, and I have a map with the item’s location marked. Questions?”
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Jaxon walks in, winding boxer's wraps tightly around his palms. The linen cloth seems to have some runes inscribed on them, though they look more like gang tattoos than typical magical runes. He ties it off around his upper forearm and then looks up at the others.
"A box? Seriously? We're a moving company now?" He rolls his eyes, but has caught on to how the game is played. He glances at Alaric and then Qigiq. "Sure, sure. Hellknight and a truck...er, medicine man. The rest of us is just muscle."
Eando levels a look at Jaxon. "If a moving company regularly has to move what is almost assuredly a relic to a demon lord that might literally kill you if mishandled, then, sure, you're a moving company."
He then looks over at Qigiq, "I'm not sure what Benarry is wanting to have explored, but I hope she'd have understood that the sign the pathfinder's who explored here before you meant she shouldn't send people in unprepared."
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"Sounds like the place was cleared out. [b]"I can carry the cursed statue, though what's to say once I set it down later in life it doesn't teleport back?" Alaric mostly ponders to himself. "Or maybe it teleports me back to the temple." He seems a bit nervous dealing with a demonic artifact. "Devil's at least abide by a certain structure and rules. Demons are chaotic and you don't know what will happen."
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"Sounds like the place was cleared out. [b]"I can carry the cursed statue, though what's to say once I set it down later in life it doesn't teleport back?" Alaric mostly ponders to himself. "Or maybe it teleports me back to the temple." He seems a bit nervous dealing with a demonic artifact. "Devil's at least abide by a certain structure and rules. Demons are chaotic and you don't know what will happen."
"Demons may be a more impulsive than devils, but they aren't stupid. Any demon-worshipper worth their salt would have to know that they might have to move the thing SOMEtime. Likely once we take the thing out of the confines of the complex this . . . magic teleportation whatever-it-is will probably stop working."
"Should we expect more resistance on the way to the relic? What did the first team encounter?" he asks.
"Any idea on what we might be facing down there?"
Eando reaches down and pulls out a sheet of paper, a chronicle of the previous group's expedition. "They cleared out the place of all of the undead they could find in it. Seemed the place was teeming with them, especially in the area where the found the relic. If you're going to run into trouble it'll probably be undead in nature."
"Sounds like the place was cleared out. I can carry the cursed statue, though what's to say once I set it down later in life it doesn't teleport back?" Alaric mostly ponders to himself. "Or maybe it teleports me back to the temple." He seems a bit nervous dealing with a demonic artifact. "Devil's at least abide by a certain structure and rules. Demons are chaotic and you don't know what will happen."
Eando nods in understanding. "We'll have someone examine the relic and of course perform the standard cleansing rituals. If we find it has laid hooks into you, we'll do everything in our power to cut them off. But like Kondai said, similar relics have lost quite a few of their abilities to move once removed from their 'lair.'"
”You-Kline! Do you demand this get done now or can we ask the others if what other chores they want us to do in case they want us to go to the same complex?”
Eando gives the saiyan human a puzzled look. "Reasonable words and reasoned ideas one moment and then rude impatience the next. If you want to go around to the other factions and ask what they need done, I'm sure they'll give you something to do, but there's little else in these ruins but the relic at this point, and I would prefer you hurry with this and come RIGHT back with the relic once you retrieve it. If you're going to do other things in those ruins, finish them before my task, okay?"
Fola can readily be found wandering through the various tents of the camp, but seems to be paying special attention to the side that's closest to the distant iruxi camp. Spotting your group she waves you down and picks her way over to you.
The dark-skinned half-elf with several silvery tattoos decorating her face smiles widely and steps close to shake hands. “Pathfinders,” she says, “thank you for coming! My name is Fola Barun, and I am the leader of the Envoy’s Alliance. Do I correctly understand you are relatively new to the Pathfinder Society? There's a few faces here I don't recognize. Please, tell me about yourselves. Qigiq, Jaxon and Samna, HOw have you been. Anything exciting happen recently?”
She listens to your introductions, or life updates, with interest and nods after some small talk she turns to what seems to be troubling her. "“It is good you have come. I'm sure you know but members of the Envoy’s Alliance faction seek cooperation as our primary way to further the goals of the Pathfinder Society. This isn't just cooperation within our own ranks, but also with allies and potential allies throughout the world."
“One of our recruits recently established contact with a remote iruxi enclave in the Blackwood Swamp, called the Tskikha enclave. I would like to help grow that relationship. According to rumor, they recently had some sort of trouble. This is where you come in." She pauses and hands you a small sketch of an iruxi in chieftain's armor signed with an unmistakable 'Rain-in-Cloudy-Day.'
“I want you go to the Tskikha enclave and meet with their leader, Chief Thakik. Tell her that you wish to aid them in whatever way you can. Your primary mission is to build trust and prove that Pathfinders are worthy allies.”
Fola pauses a moment and her face fills with concern. “If you’re asked to undertake dangers on behalf of the Tskikha, please be careful. While alliances are important, the safety of our agents is worth more to me. Too many Pathfinders have been lost heedlessly charging into danger."
“What questions do you have?”
Fola nods with a look of concern on her face at the mention of Eando having something that is of importance. "If Kline wants you to do something that is urgent, I'd recommend handling it first. He rarely says something is urgent unless it is. This has waited some time and can wait a little longer."
It takes only a few minutes to get down to the third and lowest level of the ruins. Throughout the place there's signs of fighting and the previous pathfinders, with dead undead corpses, piles of bones and splashes of blood here and there.
Finally on the lower level there's a small pedestal in the middle of the room with a single beam of light that filters down from above bathing a luxurious box of rosewood filled with a single blood red gemstone attached to a chain. Anyone who gets close to the gemstone starts to feel themselves getting weaker and weaker as they can feel their essence slowly getting dragged into the hungry stone. It takes standing away from the area of draining for a minute to start feeling like normal again. It the stone is moved from the pedestal and then left alone for a few seconds it disappears and reappears on the pedestal.