Cor touches the orb and feels his wounds heal. 8

"Hah! That old fool!? No. He has refused my help before. I am half-convinced that he wants the Blight to continue. After all, his power and influence on the continent have increased a hundredfold since the Blight. Not that I was around before it began, mind you, but anyone can read. No, I have no intention of coming anywhere near Arbane. Especially now that I have the orb." Prozhar replies, settling back down against the table and bringing the orb back close to his body.

Twig watches Prozhar, tail twitching in thought.

Insight: 6

History: 3

For Twig:

"I am no scholar so I can't validate your claims but he is still well connected and that could be both good and bad. I just think it would be useful for everyone if we go to him. You can explain a bit of what was happening here and if you think he has some connection to the origin of the blight you might be able to find something by being close to him. And maybe you'll learn that he is actually a good person and could assist you." Cor says to the Necromancer. "I mean if he isn't a good man then I definitely don't want to be assisting him."

Persuasion:18

“To be clear, our mission here is to gather information. We have every intention of sharing all we have learned with Master Dorsalor. Though, it does make me wonder...why didn’t he warn us about the undead? It would make sense that he couldn’t see what was behind the protective shield. But the undead weren’t behind that shield. There were hundreds of them. All surrounding the area Master Dorsalor was interested in. I’m no mage, but that seems like something he should have noticed. And mentioned...” Twig fell silent, thinking about this, what it meant, and its possible repercussions. 

"Yeah, Twig has a good point. This is just another reason I want to be certain of his allegiance. Was it fine with us marching to our deaths. This is why we need more information." Cor says with a screwed up face and just a touch of fear in his eyes.

"I don't know anything about a Master Dorsal, I'm just here to fix the blight and this man says that he has the cure." Rad turns to Prozhar "What do you need for that to happen? I don't think your undead are going to be very reliable."

Prozhar gave you a blank look before responding. "I reiterate. I will not be going with you. And I implore you to not tell him of the orb. I have protected its existence from him thus far for a reason. If someone like him were to possess this artifact... I would hate to think of our future." Prozhar nodded toward Rad. "Thank you. I am working on it. The cure is right here," the Necromancer said, patting his breast. "Well, at least the instructions are. The reagents necessary are incredibly rare and are often... difficult to obtain. That was the point of the undead. I miscalculated, unfortunately. I will just need to find a different way to collect the reagents. Once I do, the alchemical formula in here," Prozhar said, pulling out a book,

"Should be able to transform the reagents into a solution that must be placed in the lake, here. But, as I said before, my undead are no longer an option. I believe I will have to do a bit more research to determine how I can use the orb to recover the items." 

"Tell me where I can find the reagents. I will find them myself." Rad blurts out.

Prozhar barks out a laugh. "You? HA! That is preposterous. You would never be able to retrieve even the most effortless item on the list. Let's see..." Prozhar opens the book and flips to a page, running his finger down it until he got to some unrecognizable symbol. "Ha. Yes. The bark from the crystal tree in Brightwood forest. You see? You would perish before you made it within a hundred yards of that tree. And that is the least of the challenges." The necromancer shakes his head with a chuckle.

"Well than there is no harm in giving me the list of items and where to find them, is there?" Rad continues "And you sent out undead to do the job for you, look how well they fared when they went up against us."

"That was-" Prozhar started, then paused. "That was a bit different. But I guess I'm not risking anything of value by sending you. Go on, then. Retrieve the bark. I can't pay you, though. I'm not exactly flush at the moment." The necromancer says, lifting his robes a bit.

"Agreed, working together I believe the four of us have a better chance than a pack of mindless zombies. If we fail, the Blight is no further from a cure than it already is." Garth said, patting Rad on the shoulder.

"Can you give us any information on the location, or what we may encounter?"

“One thing at a time, please,” Twig says, cutting in.  “If we aren’t to tell Lord Arbane of the orb, do you have any suggestions what we should tell him? I have no desire to meet his wrath if we are found deceitful or withholding. After we have followed up with him, then I would be very interested in seeing this crystal tree in a bright forest.” 

“Unless you think we shouldn’t return to Lord Dorsalor?” Twig asks the group

(OOC: there is a continent map on the campaign page. Brightwood forest is visible from there. We are currently in Farrin) 

"Yeah I would sooner never return to Master Arbane than go and lie to his face. This puts on in a predicament. Do we go and report a deceitful thing to him or do we just not return and let him suppose we failed in our task?" Cor says looking for answers from his friends. I really hate this whole thing. Why couldn't we just get the wizard to deal with this for us.

"Personally, I like the idea of not lying to powerful people."

“While I agree with you there, I also have limited funds and will need to buy more arrows and crossbow bolts, among other things. It would be foolish not to collect our recompense....” Twig paused, thinking “Perhaps as a safety precaution we should stay tonight at an inn, regale half of our tale, and make sure everyone knows we are going to see Lord Dorsalor, with the promise to return afterwards to regale them with the rest of our tale. We tell Lord Dorsalor that we have removed the problem, being as honest as possible without revealing the orb. We make sure Lord Dorsalor knows that there are those who are waiting for us to return, to hear of him, specifically. This way, if anything untoward should happen to us, his reputation will feel it. I don’t think a man such as him would risk his reputation like that.” Twig stopped to gauge the reaction of her companions. “What do you think?”

While her companions consider her words, Twig goes to collect her dropped rapier and any salvageable arrows or crossbow bolts she can find. She also keeps an eye out for any daggers that were thrown, and returns all weapons (including crossbow) to their proper owners. 

Crossbow bolts and daggers were collected. The crossbow, light and bolts and daggers were returned to Cor.

"Hmm, I'm inclined to believe Prozhar and think we should avoid mentioning the orb to Arbane.  To Twig's point, he should have been able to see all of the undead outside of the shield and duly warn us, which he didn't.  In fact, he was altogether unhelpful beyond telling us where to go.  Since Arbane's original request was for us to find out what is causing the shield, we either need to have a really good story of something else that caused the shield, or we just don't go back.  I'm leaning more towards avoiding Arbane."  As he finished, Garth pulled out a rag and began to clean his longsword.

"Although I would love to see what Arbane has to offer with completing the quest, I feel my duty as a citizen of Issrisyl is to assist Prozhar if he even has an inkling of what can cure the Blight.  My vote is to rest up and buy supplies before leaving town and heading to Brightwood Forest.  And I think its fair that I warn you now, I get a bit gassy after fights - I think it's all of the leftover adrenaline."  With that, a new odor entered the room and mingled with the smell of the zombie corpses.