Hex Crawl 23 #253: Ugunazir and Kulla'a on the Road

Eleven hexes northwest, one north of Alakran.

  

Another road encounter for the Road of Flowers.

Two walk together, both of advanced middle years; one a short and wiry man who plays snatches of songs on a bone flute, and one a stout, complacent-looking woman wearing an array of tubular scroll cases across her back. He is Ugunazir and she is Kulla'a. They each claim a talent that people might rightly be wary of.

Ugunazir can play a song on his flute that makes female goats certain to conceive in their next mating season (the early autumn) and bear a litter of three healthy kids. He will relate how some villages are skeptical of his gifts, and others take advantage but defer payment until he returns after birthing season. The ones who try to cheat him by denying his effectiveness, he simly smiles and and announces the song that will make all goats sterile, which they should equally disbelieve in. This always produces payment, as the evidence of the first song's effectiveness is there.

Kulla'a has a world-weary, mournful air about her. She will give cynical lessons, tutoring from the collection of accounts of historical folly she carries on her back. Though her instruction is of little immediate use to adventurers, she also offers risk assessment, similar to the augury, with an uncanny ability to tell whether a proposed course of action will end well or poorly. If met with doubt, she can point to a handful of satisfied clients in both Eryptos and Gesshed. You may try to seek out her dissatisfied clients, who will announce themselves only reluctantly. However, if enough questions are asked to cut through their bluster, it will turn out that they brought disaster on themselves by following their desired course of action instead of her augury.

After their talents have been established or questioned in conversation, the pair will pull out the two halves of a treasure map, which is the reason they are traveling together. Ugunazir's half shows a path starting out eastward from Eryptos, and Kulla'a's half shows its ending in the broken hills abutting the Scarp, with warnings of danger and unholy guardians. They are looking to sell the map for whatever they can. Whether you trust them after the revelation of their powers, or should trust them, is up to the choice of the players, and the cynicism of the GM.

wiry fertilization

didactic cynicism