Search Posts
Having found papers on Abaal's body that were written in a beautiful calligraphy and detailed the resources and arrangements he'd made in the event of his untimely death, Akazim quickly loses interest in the Sword of Katapesh. He lets Ingrge secure the black blade, and is aware of but unconcerned with the arrangements that the clerics make, except to offer to fund his share of the cost of the dust also. In Nagura, Akazim acts as translator for Cirri and everyone else. He does his best to explain what happened, but finds that with so many people and so much excitement, his tendency to be long-winded leaves him unable to add the details he'd like and so resigns himself to being the designated translator. Then, after all the celebrations have died down, he finds the lady from the Kami's Whisper and gets another hot stone massage to help him relax. --------------------------------------------------------------- Upon their return to Goka, he allows Cirri to give her brief-briefing before asking Amara Li if she might have time for a more detailed debrief. Perhaps over a pot of hojicha, a specialty tea from Minkai that he picked up in Kasai? And would her new intern, Tsamara, be available to attend also? During the part about rescuing Seiko-chan, Amara-Li offhandedly asks him what password he set on the alarm spell. The old half-elf blushes as he looks at Tsamara. Clearly embarrassed, he initially stumbles through his "logic" for choosing the password. Finished, he takes a deep breath, and then admits quite bluntly that he'd been thinking about her quite a bit on the trip. On their way out of the garden after the 2-hour debrief (and assorted impromptu history lessons), Akazim asks Tsamara, "I heard that you completed your first mission with the Society. Would you like to go hang some suncatchers, and tell me all about it along the way?" As he asks, he presents to her the rainbow-design suncatcher that he had made specifically for her in Nagura.
"Ah, that explains what 'Garrigai's formulae' was that the wayang referenced in his journal. Interesting, though well outside my bailiwick. It will certainly add to the Society's knowledge of the dark arts and the fate of the Way, though." Turning to the young magus, Akazim puts out his hand for the unknown stone. "May I take a look at it, Cirri?"
"Ah, it is an ioun stone that improves one's resistances to a variety of effects. But honestly, not much more useful than most adventurers' cloaks, nor would it work in concert with one. But I suppose it was hard to wear a cloak in her .. new ... form." "Cirri is correct that we must attend to both Seiko and Abaal. I think returning Seiko home will be a rather positive endeavor, myself. As to the swordsman's fate, let us see if he has a will or other instructions on him first," Akazim concludes as he goes to check Abaal's body to see if there are any instructions for what to do with him (and his sword) in the event of an untimely death.
Cirri, I realized some time after I had posted that I have Liberating Command as a spell known. I should have used it on Riddy as my immediate or swift action. Sorry. But I think we had it in hand. You were gonna get Bane Undead next round too, and between you and Ingrge being hasted and Baned, plus 2 channelers, and I still had 4 slots to cast liberating command left plus some other fun class features. I think we'd have been okay. Even without the decorative paperweight in the other room. ;)
Akazim returns the ranger's nod. "You are welcome, my friend. All in the name of teamwork." "Speaking of which, it is too bad that one of our teammates did not make it to this point. Although, I feel as if I still hear his voice...." Shaking his head and looking around at the room, he continues, "But perhaps it is just the nature of this place that the dead seem to linger past their time." As he makes his way over to the writing desk, he considers Abaal's future. I do wonder if he has made arrangements with the Society to be raised from death. If not, his sword would make a fine addition to the Museum's collection.... His musings halt upon reaching the desk, and he begins to thumb through the ledgers.
Akazim calls upon the warriors who've wielded his glaive before him to grant him a bit more strength. As he feels his muscles bulge under his armor, he focuses his mental energy on a spot in the doorway. A pulse of psychic energy ripples through the air and his colleagues feel as if the rest of the world is moving in slow motion. He then bounds through the room, hops onto and over the bed and stops next to the desk in a blur of accelerated movement.
"Cirri, I will enhance your staff also as soon as I can." "Minasako, even if the Way of the Kirin was too weak to be saved, why turn to Garrigel's formulae? Why not build a new organization dedicated to the same cause of helping the oppressed?"
... for its occupant.
Akazim looks over the text and quickly hands it to Cirri who seems not to have noticed it. "I think this is more in line with your mystical tradition, my young friend. It's nothing I can use. These others, though..." he trails off as he begins poking through the books on the floor.
On Mental Health:
It probably doesn't help when one of your players boasts thoughtlessly about his latest excursion to a beach in Thailand during the winter season in North America. In light of that, I'm not gonna reveal where I am now unless y'all ask. My ex-wife suffered from SAD, and the winters when we lived in Seattle and Germany were the hardest on her. Short days denied seeing the sun by the eternal overcast take a toll on the spirit. I'm thankful that it didn't bother me, and on top of that I got regular breaks away from it for work.
One of my favorite things is driving through falling snow at night -- I feel like I'm jumping to hyperspace. I wish everyone could see and feel what it's like to do that in a climbing banking turn at almost 300 mph!
Akazim opens his eyes slowly as the vision ends, but the woman's voice lingers in his mind. He sets the blade back with the rest of the loot from the undead guardians and joins his remaining comrades in the library. "The skeletons were mercenaries originally employed to do unsavory deeds on behalf of the Way but to which the Way could not be associated. They were lured with promises of vast amounts of gold, and then enchanted into undeath, presumably by Minasako. It was certainly not the wayang's voice I heard in the sword...." "Speaking of whom, we've not seen him either since he fled." He gestures to the opposite door closest to where Ingrge stands. "Whenever you are ready, my friend."
Akazim will be off-line for about the next 36 - 48 hours. He has to follow along in Nomadical's flight bag on a back-to-back Pacific round trip, Tokyo-LAX-San Fran-Tokyo with about 2 hours per stop and no inflight wifi. Plus sleeping in Tokyo at each end. If combat commences before we return to sanity, he'd like to cast Haste just before we enter the boss fight. He could even be the door kicker using his standard action to cast, then his move action to open, and then he'll grant Bane (B@+%!?) onto Ingrge's bow next round. Otherwise, as they say here, "Ganbate!"
Having laid the swordsman to rest for now and warded the room, Akazim's eye is caught by the items in their midst. A mere glance tells him the value of the masks, but he is more curious about what the swords may reveal. While Ingrge inspects the door, Akazim hefts one of the magical swords then sits on the floor cross legged, the katana across his thighs as a samurai might. He places his hands on the weapon and lets his mind drift. Not randomly, but slowly down through his arms and fingertips, and eventually into the blade itself. Therein he sees its history. And that of the man who wielded it.... Having learned what he can, he replaces the blade in its holder in the room before rejoining his comrades in the library. "Books and maps and scrolls, oh my!" he says barely able to keep his voice down.
"Would one of you mind checking for magic while I, ummm, appraise the value of these books?"
"Should we move him to the warded room? I don't want his body desecrated like those two were." "I don't think Seiko would appreciate waking in that room with a dead body. It might cause her to flee, which would be particularly unsafe for her. Better, I think, that we find and eliminate the source of the evil." He considers the remains of the valiant, if thuggish, warrior. "Perhaps he has made previous arrangements for his burial or even his reincarnation. I have heard of Pathfinders having sufficient resources in their estates to accomplish such things." "But to your point that we should secure his remains, Cirri, I can ward one of these side rooms the same way that I did for Seiko," he remarks once Hanlin completes his quick reconnoiter. If agreed, Akazim enlists the help of someone strong. Taking his grip on Abaal's arms while a teammate grasps the legs, they move the body into one of the rooms and set it peacefully upon the floor. He returns to retrieve the swordsman's treasured blade, places it atop his body, and wraps his hands around its hilt. As he leaves, he wards the room with the same set of spells (and password) that he used on Seiko's hideaway.
Akazim winces but otherwise doesn't react much when the swordsman falls. He cannot help him, and the focus must remain on the battle at hand. Holding his ground to prevent the one wearing the Red armor from stepping into a flank on Cirri, he again focuses on the spirits within his bonded weapon, calling upon their guidance and their protection intending to help his allies more directly in just a few more seconds.
Akazim closes his eyes and focuses on his glaive for the briefest of moments before hustling down the corridor. He lays a hand on Hanlin's shoulder as he brushes past the cleric and then cuts between the skeletons into the tiny anteroom. Positioning himself off to the side, he reaches out to tap a finger to Abaal's great black falchion. "A fine weapon you have, my friend. Let's see if it can't work even better against these undead, yes?" j
Rant, that is. Let's talk about Haunts. As a general concept they make sense, they're certainly a part of fantasy and horror stories and myths, and they serve as an alternative to traps. But I feel like they're not built well. The fact that you have to perceive it and also beat a 10 Initiate means not everyone can even act before it. But that's opposed to a Trap which almost no one can do anything about. Okay, some people can act, but since it's a surprise round few can do much, and there's only a couple things that are effective: channeling, holy water, and the soulblade feat are the only things that come to mind. No one walks around with holy water in hand, and no normal player burns a feat on soulblade :) So there's not much you can do if you encounter one, but at least the damage typically isn't significant. I guess it's balanced that way. But, what then? We should be trying to put the haunt to rest, right? Certain religions would require it I presume, like Pharasma. But the conditions to do so are often nearly impossible to ascertain. "Removing the skull from the pit and then dousing it in at least a gallon of water puts this haunt to rest," are the Destruction conditions for an actual haunt from a Society scenario. And that's one of the less esoteric ones. Of course, there's no way to determine what that action should be except guessing. When you encounter a Trap, someone rolls Disable Device and it's resolved. You the Player doesn't have to actually figure out the trick to disabling this particular trap. Can you imagine that? "I remove the spring from the trigger assembly, did that do it? Well, what if I thread a piece of wire through this heirloom ring we found in the last room and then tie off the latching mechanism that way? What do you mean I have to wait 24 hours to find out?" In a 4-hour session there's simply no time to spend trying to figure it out, especially since there's almost never an immediate in-story reason to actually bother trying to destroy the haunts. There's never a chronicle boon related to them, nor any treasure, and only occasionally would doing so remove the malady that the haunt imposed. In older scenarios, there were some Faction missions related to certain haunts, but you didn't always have that Faction at the table, then those missions went away entirely. In a home game, the players could take the time, and the GM could customize haunts to enhance the story and character developments. But in Society play, why bother putting these souls to rest? "Alright, shake it off. Heal me up, and let's move on." Haunts serve as excellent story elements, especially when used well to support a narrative like in this scenario here. But I feel like many characters would want to try to put the souls to rest properly. Maybe we need a skill option that works like Disable Haunt would, such as a feat that lets you use Knowledge Religion, or Perception, or just an INT check to figure out the destruction conditions. Obviously isn't going to happen now, but maybe that's something that PF2 can do differently. [/RANT]
"'Times change. People change,'" Akazim echoes Minasako's words contemplatively and without the cruelty of her voice. "What happened to change her from the caring noble fighting for an oppressed underclass to someone so cruel as to do *that* to someone she clearly had some feelings for?" he asks, again rhetorically, but with some hope that they will get answers. At some point. When he goes to scratch his chin, though, he realizes that he still has a bit of acid burn on his neck. Withdrawing a wand from his pack, he flexes the fingers of his left hand. The glove on that hand appears to have an arcane pattern in very fine wire woven across the palm and around the fingers. The wires seem to glow very slightly as he flicks the wand.
Tool*:
He has a masterwork tool for the UMD skill. In order to be legal, it has to have a limited purpose. So these Thaumatic Gloves are only for the Use a Wand activity of UMD. In addition, they occupy the hand slot, which while not required is a price I'm currently willing to pay for the bonus. At +19, even a Natural 1 does not trigger the lock out provision, since it states: "if you ever roll a natural 1 while attempting to activate an item and you fail, ..." As he places that wand back in its appointed place in his pack, he notices two other wands, one of which he hands to Malusha before using the third on himself. "My friend, I fear we may have need of this, and I don't want to have to rummage about for it if we do. It is the spell of daylight, should Minasako or the wayang attempt to plunge us into darkness." As he uses the third wand himself, he comments to the others that before Abaal opens the door, perhaps they should all prepare themselves for what may lie beyond.
Troubled by the vision revealed to them by the spirits in the pool, Akazim is uncharacteristically uninterested in the opening of the chest. Instead he stands staring at the water in the pool, collecting his thoughts and considering what they've learned. He shrinks his glaive down to dagger size, pockets it, and begins to think aloud, a practice you've observed of him before. "The masseuse said that Minasako’s influence in the area began to wane when the Way of the Kirin could no longer provide the kind of support she'd come to rely on. Then one day she simply vanished. No remains were ever found," he says each sentence while extending his long, thin fingers one at a time to count off facts. "The Minasako in the vision said 'Weep as I mourn for the years I devoted to this organization! And for what? To grow old and die?'" He pauses in contemplation, watching the water as the ripples from Cirri's exploration fade out. "She was bitter at the impending death of the Way. She thought the leadership had deceived her somehow. And she was afraid to die, herself. Sobo-san said that there were rumors of strange new advisers. Priests of undeath; necromancers; agents of extra-planar entities: any of these are possibilities." He tilts his head as a thought occurs to him. "Perhaps this was a ritual to harvest her victims' life energies to extend her own." He nods to the dripping Cirri. "Assuming Minasako is The Mistress and our waitress, who is the wayang and what is his role in all this?" he posits rhetorically, well aware that none of them knows. Yet.
Once the snow stops and Hanlin's healing wave washes the bruises and cold away, Akazim joins the cheerful cleric at the telescope. He withdraws a small magnifying glass from his coat pocket and gives the scope a quick assessment. "Hanlin, my friend, this is quite valuable. I'm sure you could easily get 1,500 gold for it. If you could cart it away from here, of course," he finishes sadly noting its weight. "Perhaps we could come back for it. After we deal with The Mistress."
He then follows Ingrge into the communal bathing room where he notes something odd about the pool.
"Is that a shadow in the water? Of a chest, or something that size and shape? It's hard to say for sure," he tells the others.
For future reference, when Akazim gives you Bane X, you can add +3 to your attacks and 2d6+3 to damage (I'm assuming that all your primary weapons are at least +1 magical already.) Normally Bane increases the enhancement bonus of the affected weapon by 2, so your +1 sword becomes a +3 sword, thereby adding +2 extra to the attack, and also doing +2 more damage. Most people forget about the extra +2 damage and focus on the 2d6. But, wait, there's more! The occultist power, Legacy Weapon, lets him add Bane along with an additional +1 (stacking!) enhancement bonus. That's where the +3 in the first paragraph comes from. He could instead grant a different +1 equivalent weapon quality, like Ghost Touch, Merciful, or Shock, for example, and still add that extra +1. Or he could grant a +2 quality like Flaming Burst or Disrupting instead but without the bonus +1. But Bane tends to be the most powerful unless a specific situation requires something else. So, for the record, since he only added the 2d6, Ingrge actually did 3 more damage per successful attack (and the attack rolls in his post should each be +3 higher) during his 2nd attack round (the only one after being Bane-boosted.)
Yep, you guessed it. I'm a pilot. I fly the 747 for a cargo company. You've not likely heard of us, but we haul a lot of stuff for DHL and Amazon, also for the military, and during the holidays we provide extra lift for both UPS and FedEx. I'm also intentionally homeless, hence the moniker Nomadical. At this company we get our days off in 10 to 14 day blocks, so I just go somewhere and stay in a hotel until it's time to go back to work. Yeah, hotels ain't cheap, but I'm not also paying rent or a mortgage somewhere else - the cost of my hotel on the beach in Thailand, or those days touring Kyoto or Tokyo, or wherever(!) is my rent. Jet lag is for the weak! Nah, I do get it some, but surprisingly not at work. Jet lag only happens when you have to adjust to local time from your normal acclimated time zone. When we're working we don't try to adjust to the local time in the city that we're only in for 20 hours or so. Why bother? I don't have to go to meetings with clients, or catch the tour bus right after breakfast, or go to a concert or event in the evening. The local time zone doesn't matter. I just have to be rested for the next flight, so I nap, workout, eat and sleep as needed during the layover regardless of the local time of day. It's not a lifestyle for everyone. I don't personally get lonely, but I also can't have a girlfriend, much less a family or even a pet. (Full disclosure: I'm in my 50's, my kids are grown, and my ex and I are amicably divorced.) If I ever find the 'perfect' place or the perfect partner I'll settle down. Until then, it's off to the next horizon....!
Akazim follows Cirri into the next uninhabited room. As he looks around, his eyes are drawn to the accusatory graffiti. "Who are the 'Liars'? Who lied to whom?" he wonders aloud. A raised dais. A small throne - perhaps. Mats for supplicants. Likely an audience chamber. But this does not answer the questions. "Onward then, friendly bugbear," he jokes as his attention returns to the door.
The eastern portion of this room has a raised floor where a finely crafted wooden chair — almost a throne — sits. A half-dozen faded woven mats litter the floor. I was in Kyoto earlier this year and visited the Tokugawa Shogun's castle. The room you describe is very similar to the Ohiroma, which was an audience hall for the Shogun to conduct meetings with the feudal lords. He would kneel or sit on the raised area, and the lords would kneel on the lower portion which was technically considered a separate room. You can check out the official web site for Nijo Castle and look at item 4. The photo shows the raised area fairly clearly. And for those still hatin' on my Thailand beach post, I'm now in Anchorage, Alaska. It's just barely 30 Fahrenheit here. Boooo! Off to chilly Korea tomorrow, then toasty Guam the next day.
Once Cirri places Seiko in the guard room, Akazim casts his spell of alarm on the area just outside the door. He sets it to provide him with a mental alert if something should pass through it. "I will set a password on it so that we may pass through the area without setting it off," he tells his friends. He thinks aloud for a moment,"'Pathfinders' is too obvious, and someone may have mentioned the name 'Amara Li' in the inn...." Then he recalls something truly memorable from their mission briefing: Tsamara. "If you pass through this entry, speak the name of the lovely catfolk agent we met. Do not speak it now, as these walls may have ears," he says warily. "Rest here, Seiko-chan. Do not leave, please. We will be back to get you and take you to Naomi very soon," he tells her in Tien. He then closes the door to the guardroom and sets his more deadly spell on the outer handle of the door before joining Ingrge.
"Does she need a little more normal healing? Not for the disease, but for the bruises and blood loss? Perhaps if she were cogent, she could tell us something about what did this to her." Akazim considers the options, and agrees with Ingrge and Hanlin that they should continue their investigation here. "Then we can also explain why we've left her in a different room instead of taking her home." If the team do indeed leave her in the guard room, he will use a couple spells to ward the room. He uses them at the museum sometimes, and often on the road after finding something of significant value to prevent its theft. One spell to let him know someone's there. And another more deadly one to encourage them to leave it alone.
Congrats! Hopefully buying it on Halloween doesn't mean it's haunted or will become a 'nightmare' to own. Temp in the 30's? Yeah, it was almost that warm here. Oh, you mean Fahrenheit. Cause I'm thinking in Celsius while sitting on a beach in Thailand. :) Seriously, though, I am totally disappointed that we didn't trigger the haunt in the basement *on* Halloween.
Wait, what was that? What did I just feel? It isn't until a few moments after he leaves the room that Akazim realizes he noticed something. Something ... wrong. But he'd been musing about who or what else might be in the mansion that it had slipped his mind initially. "Careful! There is something else in the room. Another troubled soul lingers here. Hanlin, Malusha, be ready to neutralize it if you can," he warns his teammates.
@GM: Please tell me you're not trying to time everything perfectly so that either 1) some big, spooky/creepy surprise thing happens or b) the ghostly-vampire-wizard boss fight starts on HALLOWEEN! :) So I say thee 'Nay!' We shall thwart your efforts to maximize the tension with our slow posting and extensive role-playing! We shall enjoy our sanitized, commercialized, family-friendly holiday with candy and cheesy costumes! Then afterwards you can suck out our sugar-coated souls. FWIW, this scenario is waaaay more Halloween in theme than the pumpkin-heads of Reaping What You Sow.
At Cirri's cry, Akazim calls out to Hanlin and Malusha, "Gentlemen, I believe your expertise may be required. There's plenty of room down here now." He zips into the room, flying just above the ground and adds, upon seeing the motionless and unresponsive girl. He then backs out of the room and takes up a guard position in the dead-end of the corridor to make sure no one traps them all together in the creepy dungeon. I do hope that 'dead-end' is just a figure of speech in this case... "Someone has been here; someone chained her up. And this someone used a key to secure the room. So not a ghost, not just a haunt, not a mindless beast; but a thinking, planning creature with some need for Seiko and the traveler above. Perhaps much - but not all - of the 'haunted mansion' aspect of this mission is just a cover for something more mundane," he muses, although it's clear he's really just thinking out loud rather than addressing anyone directly.
Akazim shifts out of the way as The Descending Sword of Katapesh slides right by him into the short hallway. He floats back into the ladder well since there doesn't appear to be anywhere else for him to go.
"Hanlin, it's a bit crowded down here at the moment. At least until we get the door open." He then switches up to a quick, percussive language that sounds a bit like the popping of a fire. To Hanlin, in Ignan: "Much as I am loathe to stoke the roaring fires of his ego, I have to agree with our hot tempered friend."
The references to heat and flame flow naturally as part of the Ignan language, and the sentence simply wouldn't make sense without them, of course.
When Cirri heads down alone - since he can't see Ingrge descending the ladder - Akazim decides to join her. He focuses his mind on overcoming the very essence of gravity and his boots silently lift off the ground. The scholar grips his glaive in both hands, careful not to catch it on the lip of the trapdoor as he descends straight down into the basement. "Maybe don't alight on the ground itself until we know more about what those stains are," he whispers to the ... flying bugbear. Not the strangest thing I've ever seen, he considers.
Akazim rolls his eyes at Abaal's bloodthirsty impulses. "Well, now that that's resolved," he begins, "perhaps we can move on." As the team gathers in the kitchen, he takes a moment to inform them of what he and Abaal found in the secret room. Mindful of the time he surprisingly manages to keep it brief. He listens to what they tell him about the dead man hanging next door before popping in to have a look at the corpse for himself.
"Abaal, what are you doing? Stop! The dragon is joking!" "Riddywhipple, you cannot joke with a man lacking a sense of humor. It's likely to backfire on you. Or your mistress," Akazim chides the little dragon as he steps in between Abaal and the bugbear. The bugbear that is coincidentally dressed and speaks exactly like their young teammate.
Like Hanlin, I've never even been notified. Maybe because I've moved every two years on average, was in the military, have lived overseas, and now am homeless (in a good way.) I'll be at PaizoCon Asia-Pacific (aka PaizoCon Oz) in Brisbane this weekend, so limited posting from here for a couple days also, sorry.
Akazim hadn't realized how dark the room was until Abaal helpfully lit up his wayfinder. "Ah, much better. Thank you, my friend. Now, what do we have here?" This one is interesting. Appears to be in a code of some type. I'll look at it later," he thinks as he sets the first one to the side and continues looking through the desk. The next book he looks at is titled, Echoes from Nagakino: An analysis of the Battles of Succession in the Akafuto Province. "Incredible! This is the only book I've ever seen about this particular campaign!"
As he focuses on the rare and important work, he notes that there is some kind of hidden information within the text itself. He turns to share this with Abaal, and is surprised when the thuggish Katapeshi swordsman holds out the other coded text and informs him of its contents. "Ah, yes, this one also contains coded references to the Way of the Kirin. This secret room makes more sense now." Hearing Hanlin's call, he stows his historical prize and follows Abaal to the kitchen.
Seeing that the hidden room was a dorm or bunk room of some type, it dawns on Akazim what this might have been. He steps into the room to examine the books just to be sure though. "We know that the owner worked with the Way of the Kirin, and they protected commoners from misdeeds by the nobles. I wonder if they used this room to hide people that the Way was sheltering." So, after a quick search of the room...
He looks back to the doorway and realizes it's only himself and Abaal in this part of the manor. "Perhaps we shouldn't have left everyone else... ummm... wherever they are, and we should rejoin them?"
Akazim steps past Abaal into the littered dorm room and over to the western wall. He reaches out to trace the line of a hidden door. "Do you see this, Abaal?" "Why would there be a hidden door in the servants' quarters? Surely they knew it was there, so whatever is in it wasn't a secret from them. And the owner must have known it was there also given its location in the manor. So what were they hiding and from whom?" It's unclear if his murmured questions are rhetorical or not, but confident in the ability of his lone present ally he slides the hidden door open.
@GM, you know I love you! Finding those ukiyo-e prints and including them in the narrative was inspired. But now I have reason to hate you, too. (jk) Who is the artist(s)? I don't have time to do an exhaustive search, and my google-fu is pretty poor to begin with. Are they both Hokusai's? The little bio you gave of the in-game artist sounds like Hokusai, but I can't find those prints! You're killing me! Do Not read if you'll be hatin' on my Amazing Travel Lifestyle: I don't have time to find them because I have to hustle down to the pier for my all-day snorkeling trip... on the Great Barrier Reef! I'm in Cairns, Australia, for the next three days doing one Reef snorkel today and another probably on Tuesday.
"Oh, they're definitely authentic, my good friend. And fairly valuable to the right collector. Or museum, of course. Though art isn't my specialty, I'm familiar with the artist. Considered now to have been well ahead of his time and willing to take risks with his art...." His impromptu art history lesson is cut short by Abaal's curt admonition reminding him to get back to the business at hand. "Ah, yes... of course." He hefts his glaive and with a final look at the contrast of the vibrant orange against the stark white snow, he moves to join Abaal at the door. Trinkets! These are incredibly valuable art works. That barbarian wouldn't know great art if it walked up and kissed him. And then he'd probably just kill it, either way. But I will make sure to come back this way to collect those for the museum. "We haven't seen any sign of Seiko yet. Troubling, isn't it?" he quietly asks the Sword of Katapesh.
Satisfied that nothing will be coming at them from the small guard room, Akazim joins Abaal and the others at the atrium doorway. Upon seeing the luxurious paintings and woodcuts that adorn the eastern wall, curiosity overcomes caution and he enters to examine them. He leans his glaive against the wall between two of the most interesting pieces of artwork and withdraws a jeweler's loupe from his pack. Setting it to his eye he begins looking for an artist's chop or any other identifying information.
|
