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You find yourselves attending a meeting in a briefing room in Skyreach, the primary fortress of the Pathfinder Society’s Grand Lodge in the city of Absalom.
Banners adorn the walls of this impressive meeting room. Symbols of dozens of groups emblazon the banners, but overshadowing them all is an enormous tapestry at the hall’s front depicting the Pathfinder Society emblem: the Glyph of the Open Road.
Venture-Captain Ambrus Valsin, steward of the Grand Lodge, saunters into the room from a door at the opposite end of a large table. He doesn’t bother taking a seat at the table, instead pacing around while he speaks.
“Welcome. I’ll keep this brief; I don’t have a field assignment for you, but I do have some requests from the three deans. Given that you’re all in-between missions, the deans have requested that you take part in some training upkeep trials. Nothing serious, mind you. We just want to make sure those skills of yours don’t get too dulled!” Valsin ends with a brief chuckle, as though joking to himself.
“You’ll want to go see each of the deans at your convenience. In case you’ve forgotten, that would be: Kreighton Shaine, the Master of Scrolls; Sorrina Westyr, the Master of Spells; and Marcos Farabellus, the Master of Swords. I place you in their capable hands, and may fortune be with you all.” With his delivery complete, Valsin makes way for the exit.
“Oh... yes, you’ll find the deans in their respective offices. If you don’t know where those are, then just ask around.”
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Achurious is most interested in the master or scrolls.
Achurious looks like a clerk, with a serious and determined look on his face. He is dressed comfortably and about the only weapons you can see are a staff with the emblem of Nethys on the head and a pen. With brown hair cropped short you can see the tell-tale pointed ears of an elf.
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Webny says, "Well, I'm biased, but I know Dean Shaine the best from my time in the Scrolls. I say we start there."
Webny is dressed in leather armor and wears a long hunting knife on her belt and a shortbow on her back. She also wears a large, stylized mask of rich, brown wood on one thigh, almost like a piece of armor. She has other, smaller such masks on her shoulders, almost like pauldrons, and a necklace of wooden beads, all intricately carved to look like tiny, stylized faces.
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Ronnie, a rather large human youth, is dressed in a way that makes him appear even larger. Wearing a half suit of plate but they still shield strapped to his back and a mace hanging by his side he looks as if he were a walking fortress. With that said, his face seems very open and genuine with a large smile as he looks bright-eyed at his companions. "Scrolls it seems. I will let the two of you take the lead. Pleased to meet you. I am called Ronnie."
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Ronnie, a rather large human youth, is dressed in a way that makes him appear even larger. Wearing a half suit of plate but they still shield strapped to his back and a mace hanging by his side he looks as if he were a walking fortress. With that said, his face seems very open and genuine with a large smile as he looks bright-eyed at his companions. "Scrolls it seems. I will let the two of you take the lead. Pleased to meet you. I am called Ronnie."
"And you, Ronnie. I am Webraellane, but around here, I'm mostly called Webny. I think this will be fun, yes?"
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A woman with purple skin, wrinkled face, and white hair, wears a leather apron over a simple gray woolen dress. She sews a few stiches onto a humanoid shaped poppet with four slender arms and two longer, stockier legs. He skin could be described as glowing, not a description of her complexion but rather giving off a subtle luminance.
"It will be nice to chat with each of them again."
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The Master of Scrolls, Kreighton Shaine, awaits you in his office in Skyreach. Shaine stands and bows in formal greeting. "Ambrus said you would be coming." He quickly steps forward and ushers the newcomers to his office to follow. He leads the group out of Skyreach to carriages waiting outside.
Kreighton Shaine speaks as the carriages get underway. “We’re off to a facility in Absalom that the Society rents out and uses for training purposes. The location was formerly the domicile of a conjurer with some rather unpleasant plans. That got all sorted out, of course, but it’s still conducive to summoning magic!”
As Shaine continues his explanation by going into detailed history of the building’s previous owners and their relatives, the carriages come to a halt outside an abandoned locksmith’s shop in the Coins district of Absalom. Shaine exits the carriage and quickly unlocks the front door, gesturing to a dusty glass‑fronted cabinet in the main room, which opens to reveal a descending staircase.
The Master of Scrolls steps briskly down the stairwell into a worked stone dungeon. Ambient light comes from two glowing patterns on the floor, but Shaine doesn’t pause for these curiosities. After a short trip northeast and down another flight of stairs, he halts in a long chamber containing more of the glowing circles. Two circles rest at either end, with others in nooks along the northern wall. The circles come in five colors; red, blue, green, yellow, and violet, with each of the five nooks featuring a different color.
“This whole dungeon is really an interesting place, and it’s worth exploring in full sometime, but that’s not what this trial is about. No, I’m not interested in seeing you untangle traps and unlock doors. This isn’t about what you can do or your physical skills. I’m grading you on what you know. Each of the northern circles is a two‑way teleportation device. Four of them, all but the green one in the center, are currently active. Stepping inside an active circle brings you to a matching circle elsewhere in this dungeon, and waiting in the vicinity of each of these is a summoned creature. Four creatures, of four different types. Each of them has an amulet you have to retrieve for me. But this isn’t just a bruteforce test of forcing them to hand it over! No, no. This is the Trial of Scrolls, and we do things with more... finesse.”
"I want you to seek out a specific creature in order based on the clues I provide."
The Master of Scrolls pulls a slip of paper out of his pocket, and reads it out loud. “One of our subjects is a protean, a creature of the Maelstrom that thrives on raw entropy. Proteans are interested in acts of both creation and destruction.”
He then sits down on the floor, and pulls an improbably large book out of his little belt pouch, and starts reading.
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Achurius pauses briefly at the initial patterns on the floor. Fascinated by the trial, he considers colors and nature.
"Violet would be my guess, though I have no rational explanation for it. I must say, Nethys would approve of this trial."
Before entering the portal, he tries to get a peek at the book Master Shane is reading, his curiosity something he cannot ignore.
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A short blond woman in leathers joins the group. She's well-groomed and her equipment appears to be well maintained.
"Greetings all, Shayna Quickfingers is who I am. I manage the Quickfingers Equipment Emporium near the Grand Bazaar. Next time you need equipment head over and I'll see what I can do for you."
Shayna turns to Webny, her eyes growing wide. "You must be Webny! My sister Shayla told me she adventured with you! It's a pleasure to meet you!"
Realizing she's just talked over Ambrus Valsin, Shayna blushes and clamps her lips shut. She listens intently as VC Ambrus briefs the group. She follows the other Pathfinders to Master Shaine's office for their first mission.
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As Ronnie listens to Shane explain how this will be a test of their knowledge, rather than their physical skill, his lightly complected face turns a bit more flush. He waggles his red mustache in consternation.
physical skills all I got.
He worries to himself, but shuffles along noisily behind his companions.
"A monster puzzle. How lovely!". He says with forced enthusiasm
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Entering the portal you feel a strange sensation as you are whisked away to a new chamber within the same warehouse. This chamber is empty save for a single stone plinth covered in a purple drape. Standing on the pillar is a tiny creature with fiendish wings and a whipping scorpion-like tail lashing behind its red skin. It idly toys with an amulet.
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Webny and Norbwald are sure that this fiend is what is known as an imp. Imps are infiltrators and corruptors who, despite their diminutive stature, are more than capable of subtly influencing a weak-willed individual into performing increasingly evil acts over time. An imp will often agree to serve a mortal and act docile and loyal in a long-term plot to eventually damn its master’s soul to Hell. Imps are born directly from Hell itself, rather than from mortal souls, and thus they serve outside the usual diabolic hierarchy, granting them leeway to pursue their specialties. Despite standing a mere 2-feet tall, imps can be vicious combatants, flying out of reach and turning invisible to escape should the odds turn against them.
The imp sighs a bit bored. "You know I am here, right? No need to name-call." The tiny devil yawns.
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Completely ignoring the tiny devil you step back through the portal returning to Shaine, who has little more than a smile on his face as you return empty handed. Shrugging it all off you head into the other left handed portal #2.
Several other glowing circles dot this hall’s length, and magical script lines the floor.
A tiny, iridescent serpent that measures two feet long and weighs two pounds, with skin covered in complex patterns and colorful, feathery crests sprouting from its sides flits about the room moving up and down the long corridor, constantly fascinated by the way the stone walls remain solid and unchanging.
The creature looks at you curiously as it begins to gurgle and chitter.
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Norbwald and Webny are sure that this creature is what is known as a Protean Voidworm.
Other proteans don’t consider the flying, iridescent beings known as voidworms to be part of a protean caste at all, but instead merely a shameful side effect of the Maelstrom’s constantly churning energy. To call a voidworm a protean in the presence of a more powerful protean is as sure a way to instigate combat as any.
Voidworms themselves have little interest in whether anyone sees them as proteans. They maintain a thriving ecology in the Maelstrom, frolicking in schools of up to 20 and playing in the chaos of constantly shifting realities. Elsewhere (such as on the Material Plane), voidworms are mesmerized by the principle of object permanence; many latch onto specific features of a region (such as a hillside or pond) and flit through the air around it for months or even years as they wait for the object of their curiosity to change. Minor changes— such as a tree’s change of color in the fall, a corpse’s slow decay, or periodic venting of steam from a geyser—all fascinate voidworms.