Two Worlds Pacifist Run - Thabarkin Crossroads Inn & Gorelin Village

This section covers the Thabarkin Crossroads Inn and the village of Gorelin, found further to the east.

Gorelin Village viewed from the western mountains, with Thabarkin in the background further to the east.

You'll be able to receive a related set of quests between Thabarkin's Pale Stone Cave (see Thabarkin section), the Crossroads Inn & Gorelin Village (covered in this section), and the Skelden House Excavations (see Excavations section) that require you to visit all three areas. When all are completed, you'll be able to gain a good amount of experience and reputation with the Karga, Skelden, and Giriza factions, gain access to the gated Karga Clan Fortress (which is eventually required to complete the main storyline quests), and gain access to the gated Gorelin village controlled by the Giriza.

The Thabarkin Crossroads Inn
You can get to the Inn by following the road that heads roughly north/south to the west of the turnoff to Thabarkin's citadel (i.e. by continuing south down the hill, without taking the turnoff to the Thabarkin Gate and teleport, avoiding the higher elevation cliff road).

The Thabarkin Crossroads Inn. (The Giriza you need to speak to are in the side courtyard to the left.)

The Thabarkin Crossroads Inn is occupied by the Giriza, and is one of the relatively few places you can find nonviolent quests to gain reputation with their faction (since most of their other Giriza members will ask you to kill someone to gain reputation with the faction).

Stork & The Excavations Informant
The first Giriza operative to speak with outside the Inn is named Stork: He'll tell you that they are trying to learn what is going on in the Skelden Excavations, and that they already have an informant among the diggers, but need someone who can freely enter the Excavations to go talk with him. This will give you the quest "Withheld Work", which you can solve in the Excavations by visiting the digger (an imprisoned thief) named Armin.

Stork, the first Giriza man who will give you a quest to visit the Excavations

You'll find Armin inside the Excavations digging pits. (See the Excavations file for other details about the quests you can get there.) Armin will tell you to "push off" at first, since he doesn't want Skelden soldiers to see him, but will give you the information if your persist, and you'll be rewarded with experience points. Then, after you return to the Inn and talk to Stork to deliver the information, Stork will reward you with gold, and you'll also gain increased reputation with the Giriza.

Keshi Lono & The Dwarven Artifact
The increased reputation with the Giriza that you gain from helping Stork will allow you to speak with Keshi Lono. (If you tried to speak with him before completing Stork's quest, Lono would just give you an unfriendly rebuff— unless you somehow gained reputation with the Giriza elsewhere.)

Keshi Lono will give you another quest after you help Stork

Lono then gives you the quest "Shadows Over the Family," claiming some unidentified enemy has thrown down the gauntlet to the Giriza. Apparently this mysterious adversary somehow turned the tables on the Giriza in their own occupied stronghold of Gorelin, as well as at the Excavations, where he arranged to have something valuable stolen from an Excavations caravan.
Lono will speculate that their mysterious enemy may have hired nearby bandits to steal the item from the Excavations caravan, and offer a reward if you can find out what it was.
The best way to complete this quest is probably to first visit the Skelden Excavations, because you'll eventually discover that the item Lono wants to see is the same Dwareven pre-war artifact that you can obtain (without violence) by completing Set Kistor's Quest from the Excavations. (See the Excavations for the full details about Kistor and the bandits who you will need to visit inside Silver Plate Cave to get the Dwarven pre-war artifact.)

Set Kistor will give you a quest to get rid of a gang of bandits, and give you the password you need to enter their cave without fighting: However, you won't have to kill any of the bandits, and can offer to let them go in exchange for the dwarven contraption that Keshi Lono wants to see.

Once you have the "Dwarven Contraption" from Finch, the bandit leader inside Silver Plate Cave, you can show the artifact to Keshi Lono. He won't understand why the enemy of the Giriza went to such lengths to acquire the contraption, but will nonetheless reward you with gold, experience points, and more increased reputation with the Giriza.

Finch, the bandit leader inside Silver Plate Cave, will give you the dwarven contraption that Keshi Lono wants to see.

Unlocking the Gate to Gorelin Village
Completing the two quests above for Stork and Keshi Lono at the Crossroads Inn will enable you to have a good enough reputation with the Giriza to get the guard outside Gorelin village to open the gates for you, so you can solve more quests for both the Skeldens and the Karga Clan inside...

Without reputation with the Giriza, the gate guard Met won't let you into Gorelin

Gorelin Village is a gated Giriza stronghold in the hills east of Thabarkin stronghold. After you get involved with the quests involving the Karga Clan and Skelden House, this place becomes important.
(As described above, the best way we know of to gain enough reputation on a pacifist run is to do the Crossroads Inn quests from Stork and Lono.)

The open gates of Gorelin, after completing the Thabarkin Crossroads quests

Zed Masara:
If you got the quest "Collecting Evidence" from Ethan in the Karga stronghold, he will have directed you to find the  anti-Skelden spy Zed Masara, and obtain some reports from him about the Skelden Excavations.

Zed Masara has the Excavations reports sought by Ethan from the Karga Fortress

(If you were choosing to side with Skelden House instead, this Zed Masara is the same unidentified spy sought by the Skelden soldier Brokk. Siding with the Skeldens has problematic implications for a pacifist challenge run since they would eventually insist on attacking the Karga Fortress, but we don't know if there's a way to still solve the quest for Brokk in the short-run without also causing Masara to be killed, and still side with the Karga Clan in the end.)

Zed Masara

Either way: Zed Masara is found inside Gorelin Village, and you can get the documents from him here. He'll tell you that he has an old grudge against Erbat Skelden, but that Brokk is suspicious and the documents were all he could obtain.

Estar Gren:
If you have been to the Skelden Excavations and received the quest from Sanno Moon to find the missing "package" he was expecting to be delivered, you'll find the courier inside Gorelin: His name is Estar Gren. Sanno Moon told you to teach Gren "the meanin' of the word responsibility," but you can complete the quest without using violence by just speaking with Gren:

After telling him that Sanno Moon thinks he is shirking his duty, Gren will tell you that he lost the package to a Karga raid, and doesn't want to antagonize any of the three sides involved: The Skeldens, the Karga Clan, or his own Giriza thieves and smugglers.

Estar Gren will give you the money and the location of Sanno Moon's goods

Gren will say that he knows where the Kargas have the goods, but that there is no way he will go up against the Karga Clan himself, since his own Giriza recognize the Kargas as the true power in the mountains, and would skin him alive if he antagonized them. However, if you demand that Gren give you all the information and the money, he'll oblige.

After learning that Moon's item is in the Karga Supply Cave, it will trigger a quest called "The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" suggesting that you might have to kill the Karga guard at the supply cave, but you won't: As long as you gained some reputation with the Karga Clan (e.g. by helping Eras Brakalet at Pale Stone Cave, or alternately Ged Sammra from Thabarkin), then the guard named Serpen will recognize you as a friend of the Kargas, and let you inside with an invitation to take any supplies you need. Moon's package is the item called "The Cure," which you can find on the ground inside the cave, and bring back to Moon for a reward and increased reputation with the Skeldens.
(Note: You could probably also complete Moon's quest without speaking with Estar Gren by just taking the cure from the Karga Supply Cave and bringing it back to Moon at the Excavations, but if you skipped speaking with Gren in Gorelin, you might miss some rewards.)

There is also a man inside Gorelin who will tell you about an angry spirit of the mountains called "Ironshoes" that has been killing people in their sleep, but we never found any other quest involving this mystery. (Some of the Skeldens who mention the Ironshoes legend will state that it's just a myth, and that the actual killings are committed by Karga Clan men to punish anyone who aids the Skeldens, but we never found out the truth.)

Two Worlds Pacifist Run - Thabarkin Citadel & Pale Stone Cave

Thabarkin Town is the castle-like citadel found south of Komorin Village and southeast of Covengor. You will probably have seen it in the distance while exploring the mountains, and it is a good place to go for many rewarding pacifist run side quests.

Thabarkin's citadel-like enclosure seen from the northern mountains in Thalmont

House Skelden (the regents from Cathalon, who many consider usurpers over the native Karga Clan of Thalmont) is in control of Thabarkin, but they won't prevent you from entering the main gates.

Approaching Thabarkin via the northern roads

Inside the Gates of Thabarkin:

After entering the Thabarkin gates and walking a short way into the citadel, you can find a man named Brogh Ardna, the quartermaster of the Skelden-controlled Thabarkin town. As you may have learned in Covengor Village, the Skelden house has banned alcohol in the region, but Ardna considers it a practical necessity to supply his men with the stuff regardless of the ban. However, he is under the impression that his supplier Dras Beclem has defaulted on his obligation to deliver the alcohol.

Quartermaster Brogh Ardna, describing Dras Beclem as a man who"does not walk, but slithers in a pool of slime, like an eel."

If you already visited Dras Beclem in Covengor, you'll know that what really happened was that a bandit stole the moonshine from Beclem's courier. However, all you have to do is confront the thief and demand he give up banditry and hand over the moonshine, which he'll do without a fight.  (See the Covengor section for details.) Whether you visit Ardna or Beclem first, bringing the moonshine recovered from the thief + the moonshine given to you as a bonus reward by Beclem will get you enough bottles to sell to Ardna to also solve his quest, and receive some gold when he buys your whole stock.

As you walk a short way onward into Thabarkin, you'll also meet one of the mysterious "Stranger" paladins, who have taken an interest in your quest. (You can speak with them for some interesting dialogues that somtimes foreshadow future events, but they won't give you any quests.)

The Thabarkin Merchant's Guild
You'll meet a merchant named Pol Getber outside the Merchant Guild, and having a conversation with him is enough to gain increased reputation with the Merchant's Guild. The Merchants are one of the best factions to gain easy pacifist run side quests from.

Getber will tell you about the Guild's history, suggesting that you also speak with Ion Furvo inside the Guild Hall for more work.

Speak with Pol Getber outside the Guild Hall for reputation with the Guild.

Speaking with Getber may be enough to get inside the Guild Hall and initiate these, but if not, you can also gain reputation with the merchants in the pacifist run quests to help Dras Beclem in Covengor (to scare off the bandit and recover the stolen moonshine), and Veran Korstill in Komorin (to deliver the Moon Eye Crystal from the ruins of Brumhill).

Once you gain some reputation with the Merchants, you can unlock a quest chain here inside their Thabarkin Guild Hall

"Earning Trust"
Inside the Merchant Guild building, Furvo will offer you a job to take sensitive Guild  documents to his associate Samon Veller at the Guild Hall in Cathalon (the largest city in the South).
However, the Merchants will warn that the criminal Giriza are eager to get their hands on the Guild's documents, and have already caused some of their other couriers to disappear. Agreeing to deliver the documents will initiate the quest called "Earning Trust."

Samon Veller gives you a quest to deliver sensitive guild documents

Delivering the documents to Veller when you reach Cathalon will reward you with gold, experience points, and increased reputation wiht the Merchants. He will also offer you another in a sequence of courier-missions for the Merchant's Guild that can also be completed without any violence. (You can find other details in separate sections on Cathalon, Quidnar and Ashos, since the quests will send you to each of those cities.)

Ged Sammra: The Missing Son
Back outside the guild in the city streets, you can find an old man named Ged Sammra. He is very concerned about his missing son Myron, a gifted prospector who has gotten mixed up with a band of mercenaries led by the norotious Hagrast Wisp. (Details about the quest are in the section on the Eastern Thalmont Mountains, and you'll need to visit the camp of Hagrast to find out what happened to Myron.) When you return to Ged Sammra with the news, you'll receive experience and increased reputation with the Karga Clan. (This is one of the pacifist run quest you could use to gain enough reputation with the Karga Clan to get into their secret fortress covered in its own section, but there is also another closer to Thabarkin at Pale Stone Cave, described below.)

The Mage Quarter:
You'll meet a number of mages who congregate here, including two who can give you good pacifist run quests that can be solved without using violence. (Note that if you find the mage quarter late at night but don't find anyone there, the mages will all eventually return there again the next morning.)

Examining an illuminated mage tome at the Thabarkin mage quarter

You will also find mages here who can train you in Water and Earth magic, in exchange for some gold. Note that these skills cost only a few hundred gold at low levels, but the price will be scaled up as you gain levels, so the sooner you learn them, the better. (After you learn any magical discipline or other skill for the first time, you will unlock the ability to invest your own skill points into that skill without requiring a trainer.) 

This Thabarkin mage can train you in Earth and Water Magick

The Water and Earth magic disciplines are probably the most valuable pacifist run magic disciplines early in the game, since they enable you to cast Earth Chains at level 1, and our favorite "Freezing Wave" spell at level two of water magic. (Later on, though, the level 16 Air Magic spell "Ressurection" will allow you to bring anyone who dies back to life, so you might also want to plan for that in the long-run.)
You will also find a special type of mage called a "Soulpatcher" here, and if you pay him some gold, he can randomly unallocate skill and attribute points so you can re-allocate them yourself in whatever way you want. (This means you can theoretically rebuild a character nearly from scratch and try radically different builds in the same run, as long as you have enough gold to keep paying for "regressions" from the Soulpatcher.)

A Soulpatcher mage

If you use a Soulpatcher, just make sure to pay attention to which skills you had before the random de-allocation of points, since the regressions can sometimes remove even level 1 of skills you start with (like horse riding, sneak, or magic), making it impossible to use those skills until you plug the points back in again (which seems to work fine).

As for the pacifist run side quests:

Rama Erandar's Stolen Mage Staff:
Rama Erandar is a kindly old earth mage who was attacked by some Groms while traveling the roads between Gorelin and Covengor. He survived the encounter, but is very upset that the Groms stole his staff from him. (He'll mention the the staff isn't worth much to anyone else, but that a mage's staff is "a part of his very being," and promise you a reward if you return it to him.) Agreeing to help him will initiate the quests "A Missing Staff" and "Mountain Tribes."

Rama Erandar, in the mage quarter of Thabarkin

Erendar is convinced the Grom fiends came from a camp in the Northwest, and you'll find it northwest of Convengor high up in the hills.

The Grom camp where you'll find Rama Erandar's stolen mage staff

The "Archmage Earth Staff" that the Groms stole from Rama Erendar is lying on the ground between their sacrificial mound and their cookfire, but you can recover the staff without a fight if you have enough stealth/sneaking skill. Alternately, you can just run in and grab it, then run away again, as long as you've got enough stamina to withstand any Grom arrows that strike you. (A potion can be used to add temporary defensive power.)

(We managed to use the sneaking skill to get into the camp and snatch the staff at night without being seen, and also stole the horned goblin totem and magnesite crystals— but got caught at the end trying to also steal the horse tethered near the camp. However, we still managed to get away without fighting, and found that the hostile Groms eventually give up the chase after you ride far enough from their camp.)

Returning the stolen mage staff to Erendar will cause him to express his gratitude and reward you with gold, experience points, and increased reputation with the Society of Mages.

Daron Moreti: The Dragon Scale
The mage Daron Moreti found a short distance from Erandar will tell you that he's working on a "complex experiment" that requires a dragon scale. He won't confide the exact nature of this experiment (since he fears the information may be passed on to "undesirables") but will offer to reward you if you bring him the Dragon Scale.

Daron Moreti offers you a quest to bring him a Dragon Scale.

The easiest place to pick up a dragon scale without any fighting is probably to visit the Brotherhood Outpost in the northeastern mountains: Dragon scales can be found on the ground there beside huge dragon skeletons, but without any need of battling living dragons. (See the separate section on the Rusty Ogre Lodge & Brotherhood Outpost for more details about the outpost, including other pacifist run quests you can get in the area.)
When you return a Dragon Scale to Daron Moreti, he'll reward you with gold, experience points, and more reputation with the Society of Mages.

The Thabarkin Dungeons
You may notice the entrance to the dungeons of  Thabarkin while exploring the city: To be efficient, you'd probably want to return here after you first visit the entrance to Pale Stone Cave south of the city, since you'll meet a man who will give you a pacifist run quest, and give you a key to unlock the inner gates found deeper in the dungeons. (See below.)

Pale Stone Cave & The Secret Passage
If you ride out of the Tharbarkin Gates and south over the upper roads following the cliffs, the road will eventually wind downhill to the entrance to Pale Stone Cave.

Following the cliffside road south of Thabarkin toward Pale Stone Cave

You'll meet a young Karga Clan operative named Eras Brakalet standing outside the entrance to the cave. Brakalet will have already heard about your activites at Throglin Temple and Komorin Village, and will give you a lot of interesting information about why he thinks the Skelden House has conspired to occupy Thalmont (unearthing Dwarven artifacts being one motive).

Eras Brakelet, who you'll find here next to the entrance to Pale Stone Cave, south of Thabarkin

After this, Brakalet will ask you to help open the underground Thabarkin passageway connecting this cave to the Thabarkin dungeons, and give you a gate key for this purpose. (Brakalet's motive for doing this is to enable Karga operatives to get inside Thabarkin to gather intelligence about the Skelden's operations, by the way— not to sneak armed forces inside for an assault that will cause any deaths.)
Brakalet will also warn that the cave is full of skeletons that forced him to retreat when he tried to do this mission himself.

Eras Brakalet talks about the Skelden House that has displaced the native Karga Clan as regents of Thalmont

To solve this quest, you can ride back up and re-enter the citadel, then find the dungeon entrance inside the city walls. After entering the dungeons, you can explore it to find two gates that you can unlock with the key given to you by Brakalet.

Inside Pale Stone Cave

You can reach the cave entrance again by sneaking through the tunnels, and can get past all the skeletons inside without being seen. (However, if your sneaking skill isn't high enough, or you prefer to be speedier, you can also just run past the skeletons, as long as you don't let them cluster together and block your path.)

Sneaking past skeletons inside Pale Stone Cave

When you return to the entrance of Pale Stone Cave and speak to Brakalet again, he will reward you with gold, experience points, and increased reputation with the Karga Clan, enabling you to get inside the Karga Fortress found in the Northwest, as well as the Karga Supply Cave. (See the separate section on the Karga Clan mountain fortress for other details about what can be done there.)

The Thabarkin Crossroads Inn & Future Access to Gorelin Village
This is one more important place to visit just outside Thabarkin Citadel, further south down the main road past the turnoff up to the Thabarkin gates.
You'll find two Giriza operatives named Stork and Keshi Lono at the Crossroads Inn. We covered the details in a separate section on the Crossroads in and Gorelin Village, as we found that Stork and Lono's quests are probably the best means of getting enough reputation with the Giriza to be let inside the Giriza-controlled Gorelin Village gates. (They will also let you gain the optimal amount of nonviolent quest rewards from related quests you can get at the Excavations.)

Gorelin Village seen from above, with Thabarkin further to the east.

Two Worlds Pacifist Run - Covengor Village Environs (Western Mountains of Thalmont)

Covengor Village (labeled "Covenant Village" in some versions of the printed map) is found in the range of mountains west of Komorin, on the other side of the lake. You can also find the village of Rovant down the mountain roads to the south.

The Karga Clan's secret mountain stronghold is in the mountains north of here, but Covengor village is also a good place to visit early on for at least two sets of pacifist run subquests, which you can get from Dras Beclem in the village, and from Ash Lorus (found outside the Thief's Cave a short distance up the road south of Covengor).

Covengor Village at night.

There is also a Skelden House commander named Berud in Covengor village: He will ask you if you're a mercenary and offer a quest called "The Dangerous Rebel", to claim a bounty on a Karga Clan warrior named Conn Krannach. (Doing this quest would require killing Krannach as far as we know, so we didn't complete it. However, if you find Krannach's cottage a long way away in the eastern mountains of Thalmont later on, you can get a pacifist run quest from Krannach. See Eastern Thamont Mountains section for details. )

Berud, House Skelden commander who gives the non-pacifist quest "The Dangerous Rebel"

Dras Beclem, the Distiller & Merchant Guild Member:
Covengor is also home to a former distiller named Dras Beclem, whose trade has been hindered by the Skelden House instituting a ban on strong drink. As it happens, however, Beclem is actually still in business despite the ban, and will reveal that he has been shipping moonshine to the Skelden House quartermaster in the citadel of Thabarkin Town, found a little further to the southeast.

Dras Beclem's house (where he is secretly distilling despite the recent Skelden ban) is to the right.

However, Beclem's trade (and that of his partners in the Merchants Guild) is now threatened by a bandit lurking somewhere along the road, who has stolen his latest shipment. Offering to help Beclem by getting rid of the bandit will initiate the subquest "Alcohol Trail," but you won't need to use violence to solve it:

Dras Beclem

All you'll have to do to is sneak up past the Thieves' Cave (sneaking to avoid being spotted by nearby wolves) and talk to the bandit, who is lurking near the woods, near the road above the cave. This particular thief is easily intimidated by a bit of manly talk, and will leave the area after surrendering all the stolen moonshine.

The roadside bandit surrenders the stolen goods without a fight.

You can then return to Dras Beclem back in Covengor to be rewarded with gold, experience points, increased reputation with teh Merchants Guild, and a bonus of even more bottles of moonshine. (These can then be sold for more gold to the quartermaster inside Thabarkin Town, covered in its own section.)

Dras Beclem rewards you after you scare off the bandit.

The Thieves' Cave
Just down the hill (southeast of Covengor) from where the roadside bandit was lurking, you will also find a side road with the entrance to a cave. You'll meet a man named Ash Lorus standing near the entrance, and he'll tell you that he tracked a thief down to this cave while trying to recover a ring that the knave stole from his family. Lorus is reluctant to go in the cave himself, however, since it is infested with skeletons, and will offer you a reward to go reclaim it for him.

Outside the Thief's Cave, where you'll find Ash Lorus.

This initiates the subquest "Follow the Thief." (Note: This is a different thief than the roadside bandit who stole Beclem's alcohol shipment, even though they both look similar.) Inside the cave, you can sneak or run your way past the skeletons without fighting (and even more easily if you already have some magic spells that can freeze hostile foes in place).

Using sneak mode in the dark caves can get you past the skeletons quietly.

The Thief & The Necromancer:
The thief who stole Lorus' family ring is named Tyco Thorn, and you'll find him in a large cavern at the rear of the cave.

Tyco Thorn, found in this cavern past the skeletons, will give back the ring he stole without a fight.

Fortunately, like the nearby bandit who stole Beclem's moonshine, Thorn has no desire to fight with you: He will start the dialogue by asking how you managed to get past the skeletons in the cave, and then immediately acquiesce if you demand that he give you back the ring he stole from Ash Lorus. Thorn will then try to recruit your help against the skeletons:

After giving back the ring, Thorn will give you an optional quest to clear the skeletons in the cave.

It turns out Thorn hired a necromancer to summon the skeletons to guard his cave, but the creatures quickly rebelled on him and became just as dangerous to Thorn as to any outsiders. He will offer to pay you some gold if you take on the task of clearing the cave of hostile skeletons. This initiates the quest "Clear Out the Cave."

Magnesite Crystals
Regardless of your other choices from this point, note that you can also grab a number of magnesite crystals inside this cave (which might be important if you're still working on bringing magnesite to Ferid Redismos the Mage, at the teleport near Komorin village).

There are many magnesite crystals in the Thief's cave, and also one outside it.

After Thorn gives you back the Lorus family's ring and asks you to clear out the skeletons from the cave, you'll have two options:

Option 1) The path of pure non-violence: Just ignore Thorn's request and let him solve his own problems, then run or sneak past the skeletons. (This will prevent you from being able to meet the necromancer Orm Varagor, but Varagor's quests yield little or no experience points or gold, so you won't be under any pressure to deal with the skeletons if you don't want to.)
Either way, you can give Ash Lorus back his family's ring, after which Lorus will thank you, and you'll receive more experience points and increased reputation with the Brotherhood.

You can give Ash Lorus his ring back regardless of whether you choose to aid Thorn as well.

Option 2) Clear out the skeletons and unlock the Orm Varagor necromancer quests:
If you decide to help Thorn deal with the skeletons, you'll need to decide on some "compromise" solution, depending on how you feel about the status of dispensing with undead in a pacifist run:
If you want to use an indirect option without fighting yourself, you could use Chaos Rage fire spells to make the skeletons fight each other. You could also lead the skeletons back into Lorus' own cavern and let him fight with them himself. (Caveat: In addition to taking awhile, this might endanger Thorn on the "Hard" difficulty setting— though you could always help him out with spells.)

Thorn (after dispatching the skeletons lured back to his own cave) gives another quest that will cause the necromancer Orm Varagor to appear outside his hut north of Covengor.

Whatever your tactics, if you choose the anti-skeleton path: Talking to Thorn again will unlock another chain of subquests, starting with "Talk to the Necromancer." If you accept these, it will cause the necromancer Orm Varagor to appear at his hut along the steep mountain paths north of Covengor. (The hut will be there regardless, but Varagor will never appear there unless you do Thorn's cave-clearing quest first.)

Orm Varagor will only appear here outside the hut after receiving the "Talk to the Necromancer" quest from Tyco Thorn

After you deliver Thorn's message, Orm Varagor will agree that it is his duty to go back to the cave to make a "minor change" to assist Thorn, but he will also be impressed to learn that you managed to get past the skeletons yourself, and suggest you do a potentially dangerous quest for him also: This will initiate the quest "Bring Me Some Taint" to go and retrieve shoots of necromantically-tainted plants from various graveyards found around the world map. (Varagor will tell you that he wants the taint shoots for research to discover how to escape into another dimension, by the way, so you won't have to worry about him killing anyone if you decide to bring him the shoots.)

Orm Varagor will give you multiple quests to bring him more and more Taint Shoots.

The taint shoots can all be collected easily without fighting (even if the graveyards you find around the map are all full of hostile undead), and are also easy to spot from a distance, since the taint causes a brightly glowing shaft of ghostly light to emanate from each shoot. When you bring Varagor some more shoots, he'll be pleased with you and reward you with a necromantic spell card and reputation with the Necromancers, after which he'll announce that his latest research will require even more shoots.

This graveyard near Varagor's hut containstaint shoots, which you can spot from a distance by the shafts of light they create.

Bringing Varagor his taint shoots leads to somewhere between 3-5 quests in all, but as far as we can remember there is no experience or gold rewarded in any of them, even though they're easy to complete without violence. (Gaining reputation with the necromancers will enable you to be let inside their secret Enclave in the far south later on, and meet their leader "The Flame," among others. This is interesting, but did not provide any more pacifist run quests that we discovered.)

Rovant Village & Alchemy Training
If you want to learn the valuable skill of Alchemy, you can find an alchemy trainer relatively early on by traveling a distance over the mountain roads southwest of Covengor, to the small woodcutting and hunting village of Rovant.

Following the western Thalmont mountain roads leading south over high ridges will bring you to Rovant, and to Gorelin if you go even further south.

You can find a man named Baler Witur in Rovant (wearing a black mage robe): He doesn't give a quest, but can teach you the powerful skill of Alchemy for a very reasonable sum, and is probably the earliest trainer you can find for that particular skill. (He can also teach necromancy and the iron skin skill.)

Rovant Village: You will probably find the Alchemy trainer just up from the area shown above, inside the village walls.

As soon as you learn the Alchemy skill once from a trainer, you can choose how many of your own skill points to invest to increase the potency of your potions. Many potions granting you temporary increases to your ability scores can be brewed from combining reagents (herbs, minerals, and other items), but if you combine only those that grant permanent attribute increases (e.g. Centaurium for dexterity, or Saffron and Pearls for strength, among others) you can permanently increase your basic attribute scores as soon as you drink the potion.