Timeline that we know:
Day -7: The Iron Sphere goes missing.
Day -6: Zora escapes from Sthombo with Mordred's help.
Day -5
Day -4
Day -3
Day -2
Day -1: Zora seen in Grine's Knot trying to hire a ranger. Townsfolk try to stop her, she flees pursued by Kligson.
Day 0: We see Kells executed and head to Edvers' village. Repulse ambush. Head to longhouse. Kill bad guys. Felor meets Oak's Wife who says Zora is near the Ophid.
Day 1: Party heads back to Sthombo, investigates inn.
Day 2: Party investigates crown-symbol tomb under Nethuns temple, evades arrest, leaves. Fights dogmen at barn, meets Zangua and Shamush
Day 3: Party treks south. Arrives at Old Welg's hut.
Day 4: Party arrives in Beerpool. Meet Adan. Meet Patlen in the middle of the night.
Day 5: Party travel to Headlee and then on to Grine's Knot. Meets Harmon Koal. Set off to Five Stones overnight.
Day 6: Kill Owlbear, arrive in Five Stones, find girl, take her to goat farm.
Quest items and/or misc stuff:
Scallop shell with picture of Zora Kells
Copper vial sealed with red wax (contents unknown)
Cloak embroidered with a fine, intricate vine pattern, similar to Kligson's
Tile with hippocampus on cracked lintel.
The hippocampus is a creature associated with
Nethuns, the principal god of Sthombo.
Clues
Nethuns priest:
Quote:
"Kells' daughter has the Sphere. She must. But I cannot fathom why it was stolen. In the dreams Nethuns sends me, not once have I seen the Sphere. It is inconsequential to him. Nor can I guess why the sign of the Six-Pronged Crown should coincide with its disappearance." He looks away. "I don't know what the symbol means, or who these men are who bear it. But I have seen it before.
In the catacombs beneath this temple, in the deepest parts carved out when this was a house of many gods, there is a crypt whose sealing-stone is engraved with that symbol. It has perplexed us for generations."
He sits back down on the bench. "A year ago, two men from Hazard came to the temple and asked to see the crypt. They called it by the same name as you know it: 'we wish to see the tomb of the servant of the six-pronged crown,' they said. They seemed decent folk. They brought offerings to Nethuns. And so one of our priests led them down to the catacombs. He said afterwards
they did nothing but stand before the crypt for the longest time, staring at it, saying nothing. And that was all they did. When they were finished he led them back up, and they left, and we never saw them again."
Patlen:
Quote:
"Adan came to live with us when he was very small, after the wet fever took his parents. He was very intelligent. He knew letters and maths and all of that. The Vicar of Aitas in Bearshir took a notice of him and paid for him to enroll at the College of Scribes in Hazard. He did well there, for a time. But
he fell in with people who studied and taught...unnatural things. Sorcery, like they teach in Banwod, but...darker.
[...]
"Before he left again, he put that mark on my father's door. He said it was the sign of his masters, and that it represented a crown with six prongs, and that it was the crown of the one who would rule all of Bload one day, and after Bload, the very whole of the Werld.
[...]
He was never here, you know. What you saw in my father's house was an apparition. Still dangerous, but...only an image. The stronghold of his masters is somewhere to the north, I believe. The last time he passed through here in the flesh, it was about a year ago.
He was headed north in the company of someone in a black pointed hood who he called his teacher, and a boisterous mercenary man.
[...]
I was at Grine's Knot two nights ago, and I heard there a strange story. They said a girl had been there the day before, a youth of about seventeen, and that
she had tried to hire a ranger at the tavern to guide her into the Badgerways. She was overheard, and for her own safety the men of the town tried to detain her, but she slipped loose of them and disappeared into the night.
Grine's Knot barkeep:
Quote:
"
She was looking to hire Kligson, and Kligson went looking for her after she ran off. Haven't seen him back here yet."
Kligson thought the girl was touched in the head, y'see. Talking madness about witches following her. He told her he'd take her through the Badgerways to Hazard but he knew that'd be the end of them both. While she packed her things he rounded up
Harmon Koal and his son, and Vicar Jon, and I forget who else, and when she came back they pressed her to go on to the Koal house to sit tight and have some sense talked into her, but when they were just at the house she slipped under Harmon's arm and kicked him in the generatives and took off running! Ha! I seen it all from my porch, then Vicar Jon explained what it was all about, because sure as shit I couldn't tell what was going on. Madness! If she made it to the Badgerways she's most like to be warming a goblin's belly right now, fellow."
Adan:
Quote:
If the
Implacable* should find her before we do...
[...]
If you see {Zora} in Hazard, entreat her to seek refuge at the
Shrine of Culsu**.
*???
**a minor goddess of the underworld, associated with passages and doors both literal and metaphorical.
Harmon Koal:
Quote:
Kligson went after her. Said that as best as he could figure,
she'd go to the King's Cradle, which is the entrance to the Badgerways most folks have heard of and does in fact link up to an old smuggler's tunnel that bypasses the Milvil Bridge. He planned to try to get there ahead of her and talk some sense into her, try to get her to someplace actually safe. King's Cradle is about thirty-five miles from here. It's been six nights and five days and he's still not back.
...
"Cross the river and head south-by-southwest," Harmon says. "When you reach the foothills, you'll find a settlement called Five Stones. Two miles due west, there's a hill and on top of that hill is the rock formation they call the King's Cradle."
Milvil Bridge :
Quote:
The Milvil Bridge is almost as old as Hazard itself and serves both as a chokepoint for boats to Hazard from upstream and as the only nearby crossing for foot and wagon traffic that doesn't pass through Hazard itself. As such, it is tremendously strategically important and is heavily guarded with fortified watchtowers at either end. The Bridge Authority collects tolls and taxes from all who pass over or beneath it, and functions as an autonomous entity tolerated by the government of Hazard for unclear reasons generally assumed to be an inscrutable tangle of centuries-old pacts, familial ties, secret kickbacks, and unbreakable oaths.
Last edited February 26, 2016 11:50 am