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Fayd
2010-08-28, 09:54 PM
Adanar by Cometlight

Welcome to my second campaign journal! After my successful journal of Doomriders, and by popular demand, I will be chronicling my second campaign. First session was last night, and it appears to off to a fantastic start, though I’ll let you be the judge of that. We are playing using the system our DM created, called Umzamo.

Cast of Characters

Gav Jagger: Human swashbuckler, lighthearted and mostly carefree. He seems to be somewhat of a magnet for trouble, in my humble opinion. This is a good thing, as it leads to a lot of fun. (Played by Cade Rentyr, both as he is known on this forum and was his character last campaign)

Urgrim: A crazy dwarf barbarian, even by dwarf standards. With reason, apparently… Horribly scarred and disfigured. Drinks heavily, though that might not be too different from normal dwarves. An exceptional fighter. (Played by The Werebear)

Yhennon Dei: A slightly older human mage. He has the ability to shapeshift into a giant bird, due to a nasty magical accident. Cautious, but not without reason. His alternate persona, Bloodhawk, has yet to say a lot. (Played by a newcomer, though he did assist last campaign by acting as my extra intelligence and familiar. He knows EXACTLY what he’s getting into being a mage in this campaign. He was warned. Repeatedly.)

The Nobleman: His name is currently a secret, as is most things about him. Wears very nice breastplate and wields a dagger-axe (Essentially, a weaponized scythe.) (Played by Keito’s player)

The Ninja: At this point, we have received assistance from a sixth party member. Who may or not be a ninja. Confirmation will follow if we can actually find her. Ninja are tricky like that. (Probably played by Lossëlen)

Guy D’Masque: Your host this campaign and yours truly. A changeling rogue, in both senses of the word: a human child kidnapped by the Fey and someone who wears more faces than shirts. He doesn’t quite understand the concept of personal property (or anyone’s property but his own,) and sometimes the concept of morality.

More information about the setting (and probably characters) will be revealed as we know it. However, this is the same world and general setting as Doomriders, though we’re on a different continent and in the year 980 IA instead of 555 IA. Maps and such to follow soon.

Chapter 1: All Hell Breaks Loose. Or: Kill It With Fire!



The session begins, not in a tavern, but in a teahouse. (Blame the regional taste.) The Golden Teahouse, located in the city of Rimtown in the country of Adanar, is a two level establishment, with one balcony overlooking the edge of the plateau and the mangrove forests underneath, and the other side overlooks the river. In a mostly hidden corner, Urgrim is drinking himself into a stupor on some (probably vile) rotgut and people are leaving him mostly alone. The Nobleman is seated on the top floor with a balcony level view of the river, with people bowing and scraping to please him. I am sitting on the top balcony, also near the view of the river, but not at the same table as the Nobleman. I am wearing my long leather coat, a red hat with a feather in it, and a mask, mostly because I can. This mask, specifically (though less pixilated) http://www.worstcartoonsever.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/mw-phanto-283x300.gif
Yhennon enters the teahouse, asking around for a library or a place of knowledge or something, and not having much luck. He joins me at my table when he’s done asking around. He already knows me a little, and we know that we’re both polymorphs.

On the other side of the balcony, some … person … is making a racket, warbling a sailors’ song very off-key, generally being an obnoxious drunk. Gav is cavorting back and forth, annoying the other patrons as he takes clumsy drinks from a cup that never seems to spill. The Nobleman is attempting to affix him to the wall from across the room with the most venomous glare he can manage, with mixed results; the drunken fool does cease his song for a moment, but only long enough to snigger to himself before belting headlong and louder yet into the next verse, grinning right at five feet to the left of the Nobleman.

One of the patrons on Gav’s end of the room attempts to get Gav into trouble by deliberately moving his teacup into the drunk’s path, which Gav somehow gracefully avoids, sweeping his leg over both the teacup and patron’s head. Gav then drunkenly salutes him and walks off… After a beat or two of surprise the irritated patron hurls his teacup at Gav’s head… Unable to quite catch the cup, Gav deflects it off the balcony to rain its contents down upon another table.

“HEY! What are you doing up there?”

“It’s not us, it’s this bloody foreigner!”

At this, the table below stands up and gets ready to come upstairs for trouble. They have to pass close by Urgrim, who advertises his “Don’t mess with me” attitude by deliberately putting his (masterwork) pickaxe on the table. Meanwhile Gav, having swept stealthily across the room, glides into a seat next to Yhennon and myself, casually flipping his glass up into the air and catching it again without spilling a drop of its contents. Intrigued, I ask my friend the mage if he can do that. The ‘drunk’ laughs and shows us the bottom of his empty cup. “Evening gents.” …He’s completely sober. “Shame about that tea, eh?” …And very smug with himself. Yhennon introduces himself, and asks the stranger’s name.

“Name’s Jagger, Gav Jagger. You can call me Gav, Jagger, Jag, Guy, Friend, [Explicit Expleting Expletive] or Hey You. Perhaps you’ve heard of me?”

“No, ‘fraid I haven’t. That’s quite the coincidence though, because my friend here is also called Guy.”

We talk for a bit. The slightly menacing crowd appears to have lost track of Gav temporarily.

A peasant enters the bar, making unsuccessful propositions to various tables of patrons. Spying this, Gav excuses himself and glides away again, dramatically and sarcastically stoop-bowing to the Nobleman as he passes. Fortunate for him, as the crowd of annoyed patrons appears on our balcony opposite shortly following his exit. As they pass by, I temporarally give myself a woman’s voice and say “Good luck boys!” Some do a quick double-take, and one appears to hesitate, apparently torn between continuing the chase and chatting with this mysterious person. As the management converges on the peasant and attempts to usher him out, Urgrim gets up, stalks over and asks why they’re ejecting him. “He’s a commoner.”

“So am I. Come on.” The waiters retreat from the grim-looking dwarf, leaving the peasant to repeat his proposition. Bowing and scraping, which the dwarf cannot and will not allow, the man informs Urgrim that his village is under attack from bandits and such. Urgrim offers to help ‘pro bono,’ and suggests they look around for anyone else willing to help.

Seated at the bar immediately behind him, Gav spins ‘round and claps his hand on the dwarf’s shoulder. “I’m in.”

“Pro bono?” Urgrim asks.

“Sure.” Pause, frown. “…Well, all right, I might want some feed for my mule.” Pause. “…Well, and for me.”

The peasant quickly and gladly offers food. Gav glances over at his shoulder at his fan club emerging onto the ground floor, smirks, and quips at the dwarf, “Up for a good bar brawl?”

“Oh aye,” he replies, cracking his knuckles. The two hustle the peasant out the door, with Urgrim handing him his pickaxe and instructing him not to lose it and to wait there.

Yhennon and myself observing curiously, the two reenter the teahouse, where a crowd of ruffians with blue arm bands (the SkyFist gang, not the Blue Arms of Doomriders fame) are waiting to beat them to a pulp. “We don’t want your kind here, foreigner scum.”

There’s a little bit of general taunting, followed by the lead SkyFist attempting to throw a punch at the dwarf. It would have been a spectacular hit… if it wasn’t thrown for human height. As is, it completely misses. Urgrim responds with a critical unarmed strike to a very natural place for him to punch. Every man in the room winces in instinctive sympathy. (To satisfy reader curiosity, this does include me at the moment.) Gav joins in enthusiastically, breaking into the same sailor’s song, perfectly in tune. He throws a couple punches himself before putting someone in a headlock and crowing “It’s on, lads!”

Urgrim throws another critical hit to the same area of the next guy in line. Morale of the next guy breaks, and he flees. Quickly. The man Gav is grappling flops to the ground, taking Gav with him and allowing his buddies easy kicks. Gav sweeps the man’s head through one set of feet, dropping another body to the ground.

The Nobleman suddenly sweeps past Yhennon and myself and jumps from the balcony down to the ground floor, landing on another group’s table (sending tea in all directions, but he’s a noble, so he can get away with it). He sweeps over to the brawl. “No no, it’s not polite to kick a man when he’s down,” he calmly declares with a fist to the face of one of Gav’s attackers.
Yhennon and I are watching this unfold, and he encourages me not to jump in and do anything stupid. He creates an ice slide and we go around the side of the building. I re-enter the room and try to startle people into breaking and running off… only to realize that I haven’t trained Intimidate. And my roll is low. It’s hard to intimidate people by yelling “HEY! LISTEN!” in a high, squeaky voice.

Urgrim tackles another fighter into the bar, flipping him over and into the barkeep. Caught suddenly between him and the Nobleman, one ruffian tries to get a better angle on the fight by jumping onto the bar and onto the second-floor balcony. SOMEONE punches him in the face as he lands. It might or might not have been a ninja. We don’t know. Regardless of what hit him in the face, he plummets back down to land about where he started from. The Nobleman reaches down, pulls him to his feet and holds him in a Full Nelson facing the dwarf. About this time I arrive and punch out the last prone opponent Gav is wrestling with. The swashbuckler picks himself up, dusts off, sweeps a drink off the closest table and prepares to enjoy the spectacle to come as the dwarf winds up.

The owner of the drink he swiped promptly sweeps Gav off his feet, catches his cup out of the air and pours said drink out on his face. Gav’s response it to bark a laugh. “Thank you sir, may I have another? Nice sweep, by the way.”

The other man smirks. “Crane style.”

CRUNCH! The dwarf knocks the poor soul held by the Nobleman into unconsciousness. He MIGHT need those ribs. "I hate bullies. Stop being one."

We are quickly and quietly ushered outside by the management. “Thank you for taking care of that. Now get out.” Urgrim gave the barkeep half a luna (dwarven common currency, used pretty much everywhere) per unconscious fellow.

The peasant starts babbling about his village. After genuinely shaking the Nobleman’s hand, (“Never met a noble who enjoyed a good brawl. Like you better already!”) Gav spontaneously and rather rudely lifts my mask and peers at the face beneath, so we don’t notice that the peasant has stopped and is looking up at the sky in horror. When we do notice, we see sparks and ice dancing across the sky. Dark clouds cover the sky from horizon to horizon. Lightning is flashing.

Quite suddenly, Yhennon has to make a Fort Save. He fails, being a frail old man, and he begins emptying his stomach on the earth. In the middle of the vomit is a single brilliant emerald, which is pulsing… slowly at first, and then faster and faster until it’s eventually just a solid glow. The pulsing is accompanied by a sound that eventually becomes just a powerful hum. Yhennon picks up the emerald, examining it. As the glow and hum reach a peak… the gem crumbles to dust, the wind blows the dust away, and the earth heaves. All but Gav and I are immediately thrown to the ground. We’re thrown to the ground the next round.

Yhennon is able to identify what’s happening. It’s happened a couple of times before. The Umzamo Comet has arrived. The elements go out of control and magic dies… society tends to collapse for the 25 years that the Comet is in orbit. Hell comes to the world.

With the heaving earth, we notice fire all around the city. Buildings are collapsing, boulders are bouncing around, and the sky is an odd greenish shade. The teahouse begins collapsing, and Gav and I try to help people get out. Yhennon tries to create a brace to support the side of the building. He desired to create “solid organic matter.” Instead of the braces he meant to create… it summoned three plant demons. Three spined, vined plant demons. They fall upon the remaining crowd inside the teahouse with terrible efficiency, obliterating groups of them in single actions. The walls are quickly coated --dripping-- red. The Crane Style master who tripped Gav orders his students to “Go, tell the master! I will hold them off.”

He strikes a combat pose and faces down the demons, ignoring Gav’s cry of “Are you insane? Get your butt in motion!”

We’re torn between conflicting instincts of heroism and common sense. Thankfully, the ground isn’t heaving as much as it was, so we can stand without further Acrobatics checks. Gav and I attempt to pull people through the door away from the demons. Yhennon is still a little stunned. Urgrim runs around the building to where the wall is sagging to try to distract the demons. The Nobleman pulls himself to his feet.

The wood demons overwhelm and grapple the Crane Style master and begin to pull. This… doesn’t look good. I attempt to shoot one of them to get them off, but my arrow bounces off harmlessly. Gav throws a rock, which shatters against one of the creature’s “heads.” It’s a beautiful toss, but it has no visible effect. Urgrim runs around the side of the building, pulling out a bottle of rotgut and tearing a strip of fabric from his shirt, stuffing it into the bottle neck. The Nobleman throws a bottle of wine at the closest demon. Yhennon decides, probably wisely, that remaining here forfeits our lives, and shapeshifts into a Medium sized bird and runs. The town isn’t a pretty sight. Fire, screams (“There’ll be good eating later,” his predatory animal instincts tell him) and general chaos from all directions.

Urgrim begins to light the flint and tinder, and the elements-in-chaos decide to lend a helping hand… lightning arcs down, exploding the bottle, setting everything in a small radius on fire. Urgrim thankfully, senses the lightning coming and throws the bottle, so he isn’t struck directly, though he does catch aflame. Unfortunately, his effort is one round too late; inside the teahouse, the demons rip the master apart, and one of them reels back into the wall. This, combined with the blast, weaken the wall enough for it to collapse --outward, onto the dwarf. Rather than roll Reflex to avoid it, Urgrim attempts to reduce the damage of the wall falling on him by essentially Bull Rushing the falling wall. What’s more? It works. One of the demons falls into a sinkhole that develops where the wall used to be. While the rest of us begin to rush past him (and promptly double-take) Urgrim runs and LEAPS across the pit, almost clearing it. Sadly, he doesn’t quite make it, but he trails enough flaming matter and splashing rotgut (practically oil) behind him to begin to singe all three of the demons. That entire corner is now ablaze, dealing damage to each demon and Urgrim. He is, by the way, completely calm and composed (underneath his activated barbarian rage anyway) kind of like this isn’t the first (or worst) time this has happened.

The rest of the party is kind of in shock. Gav readies an action to leap back from any attempted grapples and hurries toward the pit to attempt to reach our crazy dwarf. It was a good decision; the demon in the pit with Urgrim immediately attempts to grapple the approaching human, sending him scuttling back.

This is one less wood demon to grab the dwarf, however, which is exactly what the other two further within proceed to do. Remember the bottle of wine the Nobleman threw at these guys earlier? Word to the wise: don’t grasp flaming dwarves when coated in alcohol and made of wood. It takes some additional fire damage. The cellars vent some flame, dealing more fire damage in the area.

I run to the side of the building, drawing rope from my pack and tying it to one of my arrows. Back at the entrance through which we escaped, the Nobleman tries to get a better look at the city (it isn’t pretty.)

Yhennon/Bloodhawk likewise tries to determine best routes of escape and keep an eye on the peasant, who is crawling away in a sort of frenzied panic.
I fire the rope-arrow to give Urgrim a path back. Gav, (wisely) unwilling to charge through an inferno and leap a ten-foot-wide pit containing a wood demon, rushes around to the entrance by the Nobleman. Rather than fight the grapple, Urgrim climbs up out of the hole and essentially helps the two pull him, readying an action with another bottle of rotgut from his bag. Yhennon changes back into human form and rushes toward me, yelling “Fire in the hole!” before collapsing like the tired old man he is.

I interpret Yhennon’s message as best I can; I crouch and shoot through the flames into the hole. Using my Fairy Godmother feat, (yes, I did just say that. Ask me afterward) I strike one of the demons in the “eye.” It is more of a spongy fungus than any sort of organic matter, and it releases spores into the air. Urgrim makes his fort save against… whatever… effect they would have. The spores, however, ignite, dealing more fire damage.

Speaking of… Fire damage keeps ticking every round when, in the immortal words of :vaarsuvius: “So once again, Probability proves itself willing to sneak into a back alley and service Drama as would a copper-piece harlot.” This is natural fire, dealing 1d6 damage a round. When Tam rolled for fire damage for everything in the room he rolled a natural 15. :mitd: Truly. :mitd: The die landed on a corner and stopped with the 4, 5, and 6 faces up. One of the fire demons lashed to the dwarf dropped then and there.

One tethering force suddenly gone, Urgrim launches toward the other, and activates his readied action, smashing the bottle of rotgut squarely into the demon’s ‘face’, setting off another miniature explosion, and then using the broken remains of the bottle to begin ‘scooping’ large chunks of its eye out.



Yeah, that’s what we thought too.

The demon in the pit lashes onto Urgrim’s legs and begins to pull. The Nobleman sees that now victory seems possible. He rushes in to strike with his scythe, but fails to connect. Gav follows him in and, activating his own Fairy Godmother feat, critically strikes a demon on a power attack, bisecting it and freeing the dwarf’s arms. Urgrim, sensing an opening, attempts to use gravity for an improvised charge, impaling the remaining demon on his pickaxe, also killing it. The three party members inside quickly vacate the building, Gav glancing at the dwarf and commenting “Crazy git!” under his breath --in admiration.

We remind Urgrim to stop, drop, and roll. “Right. I’m still on fire.” He takes the last bit of fire damage… and then, that very round, his rage wears off and he falls unconscious from non-lethal damage. (He is mysteriously healed over time by a Unicorn-style user --essentially ki-healing-- who may or may not be a ninja.)

Yhennon is utterly aghast and somewhat dazed, from a combination of the Umzamo comet’s effects and the utter insanity of his newly acquired associates. “You’re crazy. You’re ALL CRAZY!” he repeats in various levels of voice and disbelief.

Gav claps him on the back and chuckles. “Welcome to the life, friend.” He turns to the Nobleman and (ostensibly) the ninja. “So. Name’s Gav Jagger. Ever heard of me?”

Session Break.



Chapter 2: Eh, It's Just an Apocalypse.


http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9359396&postcount=81

Chapter 3: Setting up Shop. Or: So a Medium-Size Bird and a Cave Gnoll Walk into a Bar…
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9384293&postcount=105

Chapter 4: A Brilliant Bargain
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9408852&postcount=129

Chapter 5: A Brazen Attack. Or: Plots Poison and Plague, Oh My!
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9614443&postcount=157

Chapter 6: It's Not a Matter of Where He Grips It!
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9678014&postcount=174

Chapter 7: Quandary in Solace Or: Another One Bites the Dust!
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9772028&postcount=187

Chapter 8: Odds, Ends, and Oni
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10151959&postcount=198

Chapter 9: The Secrets of the Famous Gav Jagger. Or: You Thought I Was Serious?
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10448671&postcount=207

flabort
2010-08-28, 10:27 PM
Awsome. Great to see this up.
So this is the non-magic campain? hmm.
And the mage barfed up an emerald when calamity struck. nice touch.

...how long before he has to reroll a character, I wonder?

Eternal Drifter
2010-08-29, 12:32 AM
Interesting start. I will be keeping an eye on this...

The_Werebear
2010-08-29, 01:32 AM
I'm just sad there isn't a "being on fire" style. It tends to happen an unfortunate amount with some characters.

Feichi
2010-08-29, 01:52 AM
'allo. This is Yhennon Dei's player speaking.

Yes, I am a crazy man for choosing to play a mage in the campaign where magic goes away. My logic is as follows:

"Just because magic is going away, doesn't mean mages will. They'll just be very grumpy."

I knew from the beginning that choosing to play a mage in this campaign is the worst possible idea ever. As someone who classifies himself as a powergamer or a min-maxer, I wanted to try something opposite of my modus operandi for my first gaming session, just to make it an even more unique and memorable experience for me.

I can assure you, however, that I have no intention of dying. Dei is far pluckier than that, and has survived worse than what we're seeing here. (As you will come to find out in good time.)

Until then, I hope you enjoy the journal and have wonderful, happy days!

~Dei

Bharg
2010-08-29, 04:04 AM
Very quick and well done update, Fayd.

I am sure this one will quickly turn out pretty epic as well. Also, I approve Feichi's character, because playing a mage in this setting seems very interesting - roleplaywise. But you probably won't survive Tam's later encounters. Maybe you could start using elemental bending or something like that.

How close to death was our heroic dwarfen friend?

Are all your characters foreigners? Is this region actually "asian", people "asian" looking?

The notion unicorn style is pretty hilarious by the way. :smallbiggrin:

Fayd
2010-08-29, 10:10 AM
Very quick and well done update, Fayd.

I am sure this one will quickly turn out pretty epic as well. Also, I approve Feichi's character, because playing a mage in this setting seems very interesting - roleplaywise. But you probably won't survive Tam's later encounters. Maybe you could start using elemental bending or something like that.

How close to death was our heroic dwarfen friend?

Are all your characters foreigners? Is this region actually "asian", people "asian" looking?

The notion unicorn style is pretty hilarious by the way. :smallbiggrin:

Urgrim got to... about maybe a quarter health? Regardless, due to how negative HP works in Umzamo... he was still a LONG way from death. He has an awesome CON. The reason he dropped unconscious was the non-lethal damage he took in the barfight. If he hadn't gotten punched in the nose in the barfight, he would have stayed conscious.

As for subraces: Technically, both Yennen and myself are Conns, natives, ironical, to the area around where Doomriders took place, or at least close by. Gav is Illian, oddly, just like Cade was (this was an accident.) The Nobleman is Qen, a Chinese/Japanese type of people. The Ninja is... probably somewhere around here.

And Unicorn Style is just one of many martial arts styles, some mystic, some decidedly not. They are all named after magical animals if they are a mystic style or normal animals if they are not.

Feichi
2010-08-29, 10:14 AM
Well, that's why I took the shapechanger route. Magic is still down, but I am still a shapechanger. It makes me more 'combat' viable. Being a mage still sucks mind you, but without being toooooo cheap, I don't intend to let myself die.

Mostly, my magieness will be spent utilizing my knowledge of magic, religion, and history. I mean, really, every party needs big knowledge checks. ;P

Oh, and planning ahead, both for prepping for combat and trying to find ways to keep the group alive.

Bharg
2010-08-29, 11:06 AM
The vine demons appeared to be more dangerous to me since they shreddered this master so quickly. How much health does he have?

I really like the idea of naming some styles after magical animals other than the dragon, maybe. Totally fits the setting. The Unicorn style stances have to look pretty fancy.

SO shapechanging is not affected? Is it not magical? First I kinda expected you to end up as a bubbling puddle or something like that. :smalltongue:

Fayd
2010-08-29, 11:12 AM
The vine demons appeared to be more dangerous to me since they shreddered this master so quickly. How much health does he have?

I really like the idea of naming some styles after magical animals other than the dragon, maybe. Totally fits the setting. The Unicorn style stances have to look pretty fancy.

SO shapechanging is not affected? Is it not magical? First I kinda expected you to end up as a bubbling puddle or something like that. :smalltongue:

Dunno how much health he had... The demons were 3rd level though.

Shapechanging as magic is affected. Shapechanger as the Feat is not.

Grimlock
2010-08-29, 11:27 AM
I'm glad this new campaign is continuing as crazily as Doomriders ended! Hurrah! :smallsmile:

Snowstar
2010-08-29, 01:32 PM
Why did you start without me?! You can count me out from now on. :smallmad:

2xMachina
2010-08-29, 01:35 PM
Dwarfs on fire? And does not appear to mind it? And booze explosion?

Very DF.

RdMarquis
2010-08-29, 03:57 PM
Lighting yourself on fire and attacking plant demons. :smallamused: Now that's a great way to start a campaign.

Do you think you could post the details of this system later? I'm DMing for some friends and it'd be interesting to run a martial arts based campaign.

The_Werebear
2010-08-29, 04:27 PM
Dwarfs on fire? And does not appear to mind it? And booze explosion?

Very DF.

I hadn't thought about it, but you're very right. Maybe I should invent a style and call it "Demon Elephant"

RdMarquis
2010-08-29, 04:38 PM
You should add the word "Drunken" to the title, since it involves alcohol (unless the dwarf plans to light himself on fire with other stuff).

Cade Rentyr
2010-08-29, 06:46 PM
You should add the word "Drunken" to the title, since it involves alcohol (unless the dwarf plans to light himself on fire with other stuff).

Well, there is a Drunken Monkey style. 'Bout what it says on the tin, really --bonus dice to pretty much everything concerning fighting so long as you are inebriated. :smallbiggrin:

Kaulesh
2010-08-29, 07:03 PM
All the guy needs to do is go monk/drunken master and rename himself Fistbeard Beardfist.

I love that the dwarf is basically all of the tropes out there rolled into one.

Snowstar
2010-08-29, 10:10 PM
Never mind.

Cade Rentyr
2010-08-29, 10:15 PM
Why did you start without me?! You can count me out from now on. :smallmad:

:smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown: :smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown: :smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown: :smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown: :smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown: :smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown: :smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown: :smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown: :smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown: :smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown: :smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown: :smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown: :smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown: :smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown: :smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown: :smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown: :smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown: :smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown: :smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown: :smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown: :smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown::smallfrown:
:frown:I'm sorry.:frown:

Fayd
2010-08-30, 11:34 AM
I'm glad this new campaign is continuing as crazily as Doomriders ended! Hurrah! :smallsmile:

Well... that's kind of an interesting point. Last campaign, we ended by stopping a Demon Lord from getting onto the Material. This campaign starts with one already here. That's right: The Comet is a Demon Lord. Or something like that... or something that controls the comic. The evidence is in the Tiefling Heritage feat... in addition to the Extraplanar and Evil subtypes, they also gain a "Gift" from one of the Demon Lords... one of the gifts being the Gift of the Comet...

Though I should make it clear that this is a personal hypothesis, not certain fact.

Bharg
2010-08-30, 11:51 AM
So you could actually go and visit grandpa if you would have taken this feat in this campaign?

Is a Shapechanging feat alone strong enough to make mage dude playable?

Fayd
2010-08-30, 12:45 PM
So you could actually go and visit grandpa if you would have taken this feat in this campaign?

Is a Shapechanging feat alone strong enough to make mage dude playable?

Not sure what you're asking with the first question, but with regard to the second... yes. Yes it does. By and large because it essentially gives him a second character sheet. He still has to be REALLY careful with regard to HP and such, as damage will transfer between forms. But he's playable this way.

Feichi
2010-09-01, 04:41 PM
Lo' upon these words, thoses wondering why, despite the 'death' of magic, the mage can still change shapes.

His ability to change shapes is not an entirely magical one, but rather deeply rooted in the nature of his very existence and the shape of his soul. In fine, by way of magical accident prior to the beginning of the campaign, Dei's soul was mostly destroyed. Only two fragments of his soul remained afterward. One resided bound to his familiar, the other bound to the Emerald Tower's school of magic where he had conducted his research. After the accident--an event that will probably be explained later--occurred, in order to save him the remaining fragments of his soul were pieced together. This had the side-effect of fusing him with his familiar, Bloodhawk. Now, the two minds effectively share one soul and one body--the form of which being determined by which of the two is presently "driving."

Does that make more sense now? :3

Yhennon Dei's player,
~Feichi!

Cade Rentyr
2010-09-01, 04:51 PM
How is it no one has commented on the nat 15 on the d6 yet? Do these freak accidents of probability happen to everyone? Is this not as jaw-dropping as we think it is? :smalleek:

Feichi
2010-09-01, 04:57 PM
No, no. It just still hasn't sunk in yet. The WTF factor has not yet worn off.

flabort
2010-09-01, 08:29 PM
actually I missed it. going over the story again now, just to find out what your talking about with that.

Edit:
Ah, I see. as a coin lands on it's edge, so can a die balance on a single point. Jolly good show, I never thought a poorly tossed die could roll so well.

LordShotGun
2010-09-02, 06:11 AM
Is all magic completely dead? Or do wands and scrolls still work since they are not actively drawing on the "source" of magic but are simply drawing on previously stored power.

Fayd
2010-09-02, 08:31 AM
Is all magic completely dead? Or do wands and scrolls still work since they are not actively drawing on the "source" of magic but are simply drawing on previously stored power.

An excellent question, and something I don't know the answer to! Out of game, I know the entire world is at -5 CL... I don't know how far that extends to previously going effects... it didn't kill Yhennon immediately (due to his hybrid state) for example. If we find a spell wand or scroll, I'll be sure to let you know.

In a world where max mortal level is 10... -5CL hurts. But thankfully, there is a feat that can boost you CL... it just can't boost it past your Character Level. But due to how the math is applied, Yhennon CAN (and probably WILL) take it to improve his CL.

2xMachina
2010-09-02, 08:41 AM
So... -5CL, take feat to negate it?

starwoof
2010-09-02, 08:52 AM
How is it no one has commented on the nat 15 on the d6 yet? Do these freak accidents of probability happen to everyone? Is this not as jaw-dropping as we think it is? :smalleek:

I think my brain just refused to accept that as a fact, heh. :smalltongue:

Fayd
2010-09-02, 08:58 AM
So... -5CL, take feat to negate it?

Well, it'll only boost CL by (at the most) 2, so you're still feeling it and for a while. And the second CL boost (going from 1 extra CL to 2) only applies at 6th level. So... magic is very screwed. And will be for a while. The comet only lasts 25 years!


I think my brain just refused to accept that as a fact, heh. :smalltongue:

Yeah, ours did too, for a while. And the die was well thrown too... it was rolling and just sort of stopped on a corner. It had filleted corners, if that helps to explain what happened.

starwoof
2010-09-02, 09:04 AM
Man I had to look that word up to see what the heck it meant in relation to dice, but yeah that makes... a little more sense.

flabort
2010-09-02, 09:41 AM
Don't go "fixing" past events because of this, but if one of my dice had landed in a corner like that, I would have taken the number pointing "out", away from the corner.

But 15 on a d6 inside a tea-house/tavern makes sense... what with all that flammable stuffs the dwarf spilt.

Cade Rentyr
2010-09-02, 02:16 PM
So... -5CL, take feat to negate it?
Sort of. The feat Fayd is talking about is called Magical Talent, and at its absolute best it grants you a maximum of +2 CL, limited by your character level. Normally, then, there is absolutely no reason for a mage to take this feat, since they have full growth in CL anyway (10 CL +2 = 10 CL by character level limitation).
However, since the -5 CL effect is applied before any other considerations, Yhennon taking it this campaign will effectively be playing at only -3 CL. Still a massive handicap for a mage --barely better than a magic swordsman under normal circumstances-- but that's where Yhennon's alter ego becoming a Winddancing Juggernaut Desert Griffon steps up to compensate. :smalltongue:

Fayd
2010-09-02, 02:33 PM
That... explains it better than I did!

Cade Rentyr
2010-09-02, 02:48 PM
Don't go "fixing" past events because of this, but if one of my dice had landed in a corner like that, I would have taken the number pointing "out", away from the corner.

But 15 on a d6 inside a tea-house/tavern makes sense... what with all that flammable stuffs the dwarf spilt.

I think I have to clarify here.

Tam rolled the die into the middle of our map, a large, flat, space made of vinyl, with no crevices or bumps or irregularities. (darn nice map)

Tam rolled only one die, and it was a very clear distance away from anything else on the flat table, our character figurines included.

The die came to rest exactly on one corner joining three faces of the die --minimum possible surface area touching the ground. Only the fact that the die's corners were filleted allowed it to stay upright at all.

Due to this one-in-a-million balancing act --following an entirely fair roll, mind you-- the die presented us with three faces up --like a d4 does naturally.

Seeing this, Tam naturally concluded that he must take the sum total of the three faces (which happened to be 4, 5, and 6, making for maximum conceivable damage, 15)

Because of these [rude hand gestures] of probability and chaos, the wood demons, who had a weakness to fire, took 30 damage each from one tick of fire damage, rather than the 12 that should have been maximum possible.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is likely the only reason that our dwarven barbarian survived session one.

Feichi
2010-09-02, 03:43 PM
To further clarify my madness with the feat "magical talent," I shall offer up yet more explanation.

It gives me a +1 caster level until epic, and then a +2 once I've hit epic.

Meaning my caster level progression from level 1 to level 10 (6 being epic in this system,) will look something like this:

1. Effective CL 0 (2 cl -5) (Mage CL 1 + Magical Talent.)
2. Effective CL 0 (3 cl -5)
3. Effective CL 0 (4 cl -5)
4. Effective CL 0 (5 cl -5)
5. Effective CL 1 (6 cl -5)
6. Effective CL 3 (8 CL -5) (This is where magical talent becomes +2)
7. Effective CL 4
8 CL 5
9 CL 6
10 CL 7.

This is to say, until I hit level 5, one below epic, I won't even be able to cast the magical equivalent of a pre-comet level 1 mage's spell.

At level 6, I'll be able to achieve magical effects equivalent to a pre-comet level 3 mage's, and so on.

This is why the shapechangerey will likely be my saving grace until epic, and even then, it is highly likely that I will switch between my two forms depending on the circumstances. My original plan for combat once I re-obtained my magical abilities is to modify the field of combat and then turn into the bird and take advantage of my modifications. (Recall the ice-slide I created during the first session, if you will.)

~Yhennon Dei's Player,
Feichi

Fayd
2010-09-02, 07:01 PM
I would like to extend a public Thank You to starwoof for my avatar. :smallbiggrin:

starwoof
2010-09-02, 07:48 PM
I'm flattered you like it so much. :smallredface:

Feichi
2010-09-02, 10:59 PM
I rather like it too. :3

Fayd
2010-09-03, 07:58 AM
Due to a scheduling conflict (Ninja is going to go be a viking for the weekend) we will be playing... at a different time than usual, and thus the next journal entry will be slightly delayed. My apologies.

LordShotGun
2010-09-03, 05:17 PM
Due to a scheduling conflict (Ninja is going to go be a viking for the weekend) we will be playing... at a different time than usual, and thus the next journal entry will be slightly delayed. My apologies.

No offense but anyone who had been reading your other campagin journal regularly knows not to expect anything by a hard and fast schedual.:smallbiggrin:

Fayd
2010-09-03, 09:17 PM
No offense but anyone who had been reading your other campagin journal regularly knows not to expect anything by a hard and fast schedual.:smallbiggrin:

Heh. Fair enough, I suppose! We're going to (try to) be better about that.

Keito
2010-09-03, 10:49 PM
First of all I'm playing "the nobleman" in this campaign, the reason he was "the nobleman" was because I only had enough of my character sheet done to actually play the game, meaning no name, little backstory, but all the required numbers/feats/skills to play.

After that night the character sheet was deleted :smalleek: but the skills remain, so I had to redo the entire character sheet *sigh*. Currently, the character sheet is all done, and I'm finally getting down to figuring out a name, and flushing out the background story.


btw heritage/class pathing inspiration for my character comes from Tsukune Aono, the protagonist from my favorite manga series always, forever, THE END, Rosario+Vampire. So if you want to find out more about my character read some of the manga (but don't watch the anime [they took away the reason to read the series the comedic ecchi moments *shakes fist*])

Tam_OConnor
2010-09-04, 12:06 AM
Ladies, gentlemen: the wiki (http://umzamo.wikia.com/wiki/Umzamo_Wiki).

Fayd
2010-09-04, 01:16 AM
Ladies, gentlemen: the wiki (http://umzamo.wikia.com/wiki/Umzamo_Wiki).

Feel Free to post questions. I'll answer what I can, and if I can't, I'll have Tam field them (or he'll field them before I get to them, or something. It'll work. I promise!)

RdMarquis
2010-09-04, 05:01 AM
Ladies, gentlemen: the wiki (http://umzamo.wikia.com/wiki/Umzamo_Wiki).

Nice! I've got to test this out when I get the chance.

Feichi
2010-09-04, 10:11 AM
Now that the Wiki is up, we could probably do a little expose on our feats at some point or another; alternatively, a "guess the feats" game could be amusing too. XD

Fayd
2010-09-04, 07:50 PM
Nice! I've got to test this out when I get the chance.

Just let us know how it works out for you.

RdMarquis
2010-09-04, 07:51 PM
Sure. Might take a while, though. I'm in the middle of running an Eberron game.

Dragonfire
2010-09-04, 10:49 PM
Ladies, gentlemen: the wiki (http://umzamo.wikia.com/wiki/Umzamo_Wiki).

Yes! I'm going to give this a try, thanks for posting it!:smallbiggrin:

Bharg
2010-09-07, 10:24 AM
Sure. Might take a while, though. I'm in the middle of running an Eberron game.

TPK FTW? :smallamused:

flabort
2010-09-07, 11:02 AM
I just realized... FTW is WTF spelled backwards...
although TPK isn't anything spelled backwards...
Kill Pink thing?... Kingly person's table?...
nope. got nothing. the other one is cool, though.

Feichi
2010-09-07, 01:24 PM
So, I recapped session one at the beginning of session two with the following series of Haikus:

Please, enjoy.


Gav sang in tea house
People didn't much like that
Thus ensues a brawl

Mage makes an ice slide
A peasant seeks some help
Knight falls on table

Then all hell broke loose
"I want organic matter"
cries out the old mage

Organic Demons
They kill almost everyone
The dwarf gets pissed

Fire-dwarf fury owns
15 damage on D6
Fairy-powered crit

The PCs survive
No thanks to the scared mage
Gav's not famous yet

RdMarquis
2010-09-07, 02:19 PM
So, I recapped session one at the beginning of session two with the following series of Haikus:

Please, enjoy.

That's some nice work, but have you considered using the format of a drinking song (admittedly, you started out in a tea house)? :smallsmile:

Fayd
2010-09-07, 02:55 PM
That's some nice work, but have you considered using the format of a drinking song (admittedly, you started out in a tea house)? :smallsmile:

True, but the entire campaign has a bit of an eastern/kung fu flavor, which is why we ended up going with haiku.

Cade Rentyr
2010-09-09, 02:06 PM
That's some nice work, but have you considered using the format of a drinking song (admittedly, you started out in a tea house)? :smallsmile:

I'd like to point out that the entire town we were in was incidentally governed by a martial school that banned alcohol, meaning that the teahouse served absolutely nothing intoxicating.
I learned this fact after session, which means that I made Gav's fake drunken-idiot act even more socially obnoxious completely by accident.

I am having WAY too much fun on the Chaotic side. :smallbiggrin:

Fluffy the Orc
2010-09-10, 12:03 PM
Yes. Speaking from experience, Chaotic is FUN. :smallwink:

MountainKing
2010-09-10, 02:06 PM
Speaking as a player with a history of having to clean up after Chaotic players, I have to say that no... No, they aren't. :smallsigh: It seems like it doesn't matter what I try to play; even my Chaotic characters end up changing alignment, because Chaotic players tend to just... break... everything...

I once made more progress on a quest playing a CN BARD than the Lawful Evil gnome wizard and the True Neutral elf ranger did COMBINED. What were they doing? Using Invisibility Sphere to infiltrate a house of ill repute.

...in a campaign where arcane magic was outlawed...

...and punishable by death...

:smallannoyed: <--- That was the look on my face.

Fluffy the Orc
2010-09-11, 08:02 PM
I once made more progress on a quest playing a CN BARD than the Lawful Evil gnome wizard and the True Neutral elf ranger did COMBINED. What were they doing? Using Invisibility Sphere to infiltrate a house of ill repute.

...in a campaign where arcane magic was outlawed...

...and punishable by death...

Yeah, I suppose that wouldn't be much fun. Tam got around that issue using a very effective method. He would just casually mention, "Oh, so you would LIKE an alignment shift?"

That immediately made us reconsider our actions.

MountainKing
2010-09-11, 09:37 PM
Yeah, I suppose that wouldn't be much fun. Tam got around that issue using a very effective method. He would just casually mention, "Oh, so you would LIKE an alignment shift?"

That immediately made us reconsider our actions.

I've tried that while DMing... but I've never had a DM who would do the same... I envy you so much now. Like, I almost want to start begging you guys to play near a computer so I can join you via Skype or something.


I was one of two DMs my groups have ever had at the table, and the ONE TIME I actually enforced alignment shifts for people doing crazy things... Well... Long story short, the party wizard (not the same player or character as the previously mentioned wizard; this one, was supposedly True Neutral) said "I cast *insert AoE fire spell here* at a random building!"

I said, "Any building at all?"

"Whatever one looks most flammable!"

He was apparently very upset that I told him his alignment had shifted for burning down the poorest, worst constructed, most flammable building in the town: an orphanage. I hear he complained at length for a good three weeks. :smallannoyed: Nevermind that he was the one burning random buildings, AFTER he summoned a Huge centipede in the middle of the town, ordering it to eat any villagers nearby. Nevermind that he was in a party that condoned the actions of the THEN Neutral Evil Dragon Shaman who strictly adhered to the creed of "Try twice, then breathe acid on it" in regards to ANY obstacle he faced (which, in this case, involved the melty deaths of innocent villagers). The Dragon Shaman I shifted to Chaotic Evil, because he started the whole mess; the wizard I shifted because while he at least TRIED, he didn't bother to try to STOP the situation either (and in fact, he did far, far worse than the shaman did).

Chaotic players are the bane of my existence. :smallannoyed:

2xMachina
2010-09-12, 06:29 AM
... That's more Stupid Evil than Chaotic. I really wish people won't use the Chaotic alignment to do stupid things.

Fayd
2010-09-12, 10:17 AM
Ironically, most of the party is chaotic, and, for the most part, we're being fairly intelligent in our decisions. ...ok, to be fair, some of my strategies sucked, but the decisions themselves are alright.

LordShotGun
2010-09-12, 11:54 AM
Chaotic does not mean ALWAYS stupid. It means that you don't play by the rules and will do whatever you can to get what you want. That means you can be chaotic AND smart.

MountainKing
2010-09-12, 02:39 PM
Chaotic does not mean ALWAYS stupid. It means that you don't play by the rules and will do whatever you can to get what you want. That means you can be chaotic AND smart.

I did make a distinction between Chaotic characters and Chaotic players, though perhaps it wasn't clear. My bad. However, that last part? I've yet to see it in person; to me, that's a myth. :smallwink:

LordShotGun
2010-09-12, 03:05 PM
I did make a distinction between Chaotic characters and Chaotic players, though perhaps it wasn't clear. My bad.


Well some people think characters need to be played to the max of thier good or evil, lawful or chaotic sides. Ergo,some people take the Lawful Good Palidan stick up their rear approach to EVERY combinations of alignment. This is common but not always done.


However, that last part? I've yet to see it in person; to me, that's a myth. :smallwink:

In a real life, perhaps we look at some of the best/worst politicians (depending on how you view their chaotic activites)

For a smart FICTIONAL chaotic person, look at batman's Joker character. He is about as chaotic as they come but hes still smart about it (and evil to boot).

For a fictional CG character...maybe Robin hood? Or heck any of the anti heros that are liberally sprinkled throughout our culture.

Still, I agree, it would be unusual to get the average teenage male to focus on creating a more complex character then

1. Can I kill it?
2. If I can't kill it, can I have sex with it?
3. If I can't kill it or have sex with it, does it have a quest for me?
4. If I can't kill it, have sex with it, and it does not have a quest for me, then can I run away from it? :smallbiggrin:

MountainKing
2010-09-12, 05:57 PM
Well some people think characters need to be played to the max of thier good or evil, lawful or chaotic sides. Ergo,some people take the Lawful Good Palidan stick up their rear approach to EVERY combinations of alignment. This is common but not always done.

In a real life, perhaps we look at some of the best/worst politicians (depending on how you view their chaotic activites)

For a smart FICTIONAL chaotic person, look at batman's Joker character. He is about as chaotic as they come but hes still smart about it (and evil to boot).

For a fictional CG character...maybe Robin hood? Or heck any of the anti heros that are liberally sprinkled throughout our culture.

Still, I agree, it would be unusual to get the average teenage male to focus on creating a more complex character then

1. Can I kill it?
2. If I can't kill it, can I have sex with it?
3. If I can't kill it or have sex with it, does it have a quest for me?
4. If I can't kill it, have sex with it, and it does not have a quest for me, then can I run away from it? :smallbiggrin:

I don't think you're understanding the difference between a Chaotic aligned character and a Chaotic aligned player... You tell me how using Invisibility Sphere to infiltrate a whorehouse in a world in which arcane magic is outlawed and punishable by death is in any way Lawful Evil; I can assure you, he was breaking the law, and he did not have a malicious or diabolical reason for his actions. He just did it. The character is the one performing the action, yeah, but the player is the one who decides what that action will be... and in my experience, I find myself constantly cleaning up after chaotic players. That's what I was trying to say.

Also, I've never been at the table with anyone under the age of twenty. No teenagers here, no sir. :smallwink:

LordShotGun
2010-09-12, 07:38 PM
I don't think you're understanding the difference between a Chaotic aligned character and a Chaotic aligned player... You tell me how using Invisibility Sphere to infiltrate a whorehouse in a world in which arcane magic is outlawed and punishable by death is in any way Lawful Evil; I can assure you, he was breaking the law, and he did not have a malicious or diabolical reason for his actions. He just did it. The character is the one performing the action, yeah, but the player is the one who decides what that action will be... and in my experience, I find myself constantly cleaning up after chaotic players. That's what I was trying to say.

Also, I've never been at the table with anyone under the age of twenty. No teenagers here, no sir. :smallwink:

I fear you misunderstand my statements good sir. I was not attacking you posititon at all. I was more responding towards Fayd's comment about how his chaotic characters just HAPPENED to have intelligent ideas. If chaotic characters are more fun then nonchaotic you will have to say for yourself.

MountainKing
2010-09-12, 08:15 PM
I fear you misunderstand my statements good sir. I was not attacking you posititon at all. I was more responding towards Fayd's comment about how his chaotic characters just HAPPENED to have intelligent ideas. If chaotic characters are more fun then nonchaotic you will have to say for yourself.

But... that's not how quoting people works... :smallconfused: I'm not saying you were attacking my position, but I was replying to you anyway... because you quoted my post... :smallconfused::smallconfused::smallconfused:

You're hurting my head. :smallfrown:

LordShotGun
2010-09-13, 06:18 AM
But... that's not how quoting people works... :smallconfused: I'm not saying you were attacking my position, but I was replying to you anyway... because you quoted my post... :smallconfused::smallconfused::smallconfused:

You're hurting my head. :smallfrown:

Look at how I responded to your quotes. I did not quote your story about the invisibility sphere (I agree with your statement BTW) but I did quote you talking about how people play chaotic people like they are stupid. I agreed that most people play chaotic like that but it is not completly nessacery to do so. Like how some people play the Palidian.

So yes I did quote you but not in the manner I think you think I did so.

Either way this conversation is silly and off topic. Let it go. I certainly plan to.

MountainKing
2010-09-13, 08:25 AM
Look at how I responded to your quotes. I did not quote your story about the invisibility sphere (I agree with your statement BTW) but I did quote you talking about how people play chaotic people like they are stupid. I agreed that most people play chaotic like that but it is not completly nessacery to do so. Like how some people play the Palidian.

So yes I did quote you but not in the manner I think you think I did so.

Either way this conversation is silly and off topic. Let it go. I certainly plan to.

But that's not what I'm saying at all. Chaotic people don't play Chaotic people, they can play any alignment of character. That doesn't mean they'll actually play to their alignment, which is the problem.

LordShotGun
2010-09-13, 09:07 AM
Either way this conversation is silly and off topic. Let it go. I certainly plan to.

WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Bharg
2010-09-14, 05:47 AM
Real people don't have alignments, right?

No update? :smallfrown:

Fayd
2010-09-14, 08:27 AM
Real people don't have alignments, right?

No update? :smallfrown:

Working on it. Currently just starting the editing phase... our professors gave us a LOT of work to do over this particular weekend. However, it shouldn't take too long, I think, to finish the next 2.

Bharg
2010-09-14, 09:45 AM
So you are playing regularly now?
How many sessions did you already play?

Fayd
2010-09-14, 12:11 PM
So you are playing regularly now?
How many sessions did you already play?

Yup, we're getting regular now. We've had 3 sessions thus far and the next chapter should be up... soon. My gut says today, but I'm not 100% sure. Cade and I don't have any work for tomorrow!

Grimlock
2010-09-14, 12:49 PM
An update! Maybe today!
JOY:smalltongue:

Feichi
2010-09-14, 01:39 PM
Know that I'm also planning at some point once proverbial stuff stops hitting proverbial fans writing an IC journal or something from the viewpoint of both Bloodhawk and Yhennon Dei. It'll maybe give you guys some insight into what both sides were thinking during several events and give the bird, less inclined to speak due to his nature, the opportunity to express himself to you guys.

If nothing else, it'll be a series of short dialogues between the two regarding certain situations when their psyches were particularly pitted against one another or if something Yhennon did made little sense to Bloodhawk.

Also, a fun note: every time I make an action directed by the mage while still in the bird-form, I roll opposing will-saves for the two personalities. This prevents me from too often playing against the nature of the animal. Yes, he's a very smart bird... but birds don't typically try to parry things, for example. Or do nonlethal damage. It's kind of... against his nature. Maybe as he grows, it'll be less of an issue, but right now... he's smart bird and little else.

Cade Rentyr
2010-09-14, 08:11 PM
Concerning the quest to find an example of Chaotic Good yet Smart To Boot, I'd put up Captain Jack Sparrow for consideration. Setting debates about the second and third movies aside, his role in the first movie is surprisingly clever; he comes across as a bumbling, over-confident oaf (Chaotic Stupid) but if you watch the movie closely he's actually subtly manipulating events toward his ends the entire way. (Taking the Dauntless to trick the Commodore into giving him the Interceptor, for example)

And as far as taking the Paladin stick-up-arse role to the extreme, ironically my core concept behind Cade Rentyr in the Doomriders campaign was that he was specifically trying to go against that stereotype --he fled his clan of Knight Templars because they were too 'Smite the Infidels!'
(The biggest irony of all, of course, is that he still wound up being probably the most arse-stickish of all of us, but less because of his 'LAWFUL GOOD' alignment and more out of exasperation at Fluffy's antics, a prankster healer, a danger-prone mage, and an ever-present ping on his evil-dar. :smallannoyed: It's a marvel he was able to keep his sanity intact, really, let alone his relatively-tolerant outlook.:smallwink:)

Now, as Gav Jagger, I can confidently say that I intend to break stereotype again. I managed to roll an 18 INT stat for him, which I actually feel is correct in character, if that tells you anything. He is happy-go-lucky, and he definitely comes off as flippant and rather careless, but he also knows when to play his cards; +8 modifier in Knowledge: Tactics at level 1 is as much roleplay as it is mechanical benefit.

Concerning the other Chaotic characters in our new party... well, I'll let their players speak for themselves. :smalltongue:

Fayd
2010-09-14, 11:24 PM
Chapter 2: Eh, It’s Just an Apocalypse.


We pick up where we left off: the town is a mess. It is also on fire. Admittedly, most of the damage to the town was caused by the earthquakes and not the fires themselves. Gav immediately jumps into helping the people of the town, digging people out, carrying them out of moderately safe burning buildings and the like. Urgrim also decides to help, though his standard for moderately safe is a bit… lower… than Gav’s. The Nobleman also aids with the rescue attempts, being fairly brave himself. Yhennon (or more accurately, Bloodhawk) and I also assist in the rescue efforts, though we, being more feathered-thus-flammable and weaker than our compatriots, respectively, we tend to stick to buildings that aren’t as much on fire. If I find people that didn’t survive, I quietly empty their pockets of any loose change. As they say, you can’t take it with you. Yhennon and I also try to help the peasant, named Marko, keep calm. We really can’t, but we’re doing the best we can. Urgrim finds a general store, which, surprisingly, is in good shape. He goes in to make sure people are fine and ends up getting a free shirt out of the deal. As the sun is setting, we meet up again.

We discuss our options for a time, and decide to head off to Marko’s village after we check in at the White Crane School. This region, Adanar, is “ruled” by a king who is really more of a figurehead and chief diplomat than true authority. Actual governance is handled by the five primary martial schools. Rimtown, where the party is currently, is ruled by the White Crane School. Students of the schools act as government enforcers and guards as well as supplementing the (strangely small, all things considered) army.

The school sits precariously over a cliff, which, given the recent geological activity, is no mean feat. Yhennon can tell that the building itself was (at least partially) shaped by magic. The entire compound is surrounded by a tall fence. Urgrim boosts most of the people across the wall and then starts using his “Dwarven Lockpick” (his pickaxe) on the door. He decides to take 20 on the check… so while he’s hammering away, we walk casually over to the door, unbar it, and let him in.

The White Crane School had a beautiful meditative garden. We assume. Now the only thing people would be contemplating is how to get the mud out from between their toes. The earthquakes broke the banks of the decorative ponds, turning the entire area into a soupy mess. Urgrim starts pushing through, while Gav and I just run ahead of him. We knock incessantly at the door for a bit, and it finally opens, revealing an older fellow, who promptly shuts the door on us. Urgrim sticks his hand in the door and eats some damage for his efforts. The old man slams the door again, and Urgrim gets his hand smashed again. Without so much as a word yet the old man winds up to slam the door a third time, and Urgrim, deciding he’s had enough doors slammed on his hand today, puts his whole shoulder in the door, convincing the old man that we REALLY want to talk to him.

“Could we talk to you or whoever else is in charge here?” Urgrim asks.

He just sort of stares at us like we should know this already.

“Well, for all I know, you could be the gardener or something.” I reply. This earns me quick retribution as the old man attempts to sweep my legs out from underneath me. I deftly dodge the attempt, and he asks me if I practice Falcon Style. I don’t, incidentally, but he tells me I should try it out with my reflexes.

We then fill him in on the situation with Marko’s village, and he gives us several small white gemstones in response… these stones make us effectively deputies, capable of exercising the Law of the White Crane. He even gives one to Marko, who by this point, may or may not be experiencing extreme emotional whiplash. (His village pays taxes to this school, after all, so his day has gone from finding saviors from bandits, to the end of the world, to those adventurers slaying unholy abominations and saving many lives, to those same adventurers breaking into the governor’s estate, and finally to him being deputized in a powerful political office, with very little downtime in between.)

We set out that night to try to get to Marko’s village as quickly as possible. …We are horrible judges of distance. It’s a 10 day journey. …Yeah. We get a ways out in the wilderness and half of us near collapse from exhaustion. (Gav and the dwarf decide to call the competition of Endurance checks a draw, for the rest of our sakes.) It also starts to rain. There are no clouds in the sky, and lightning is arcing across it. The weather has gone crazy. We can now clearly see the comet, which is a radiant blue-white about half as tall as the moon, and several times longer.

Bloodhawk and Urgrim go hunting in order to feed themselves and I would have joined them had I not absolutely failed on my endurance check and just sort of collapsed on the spot, half dragging out my tent and just sort of propping it over my solipsist mule. (It grew up in the Primal Plane, around the Seelie Court, if that offers any sort of explanation. After having its ears lit on fire enough times, it just stops caring.)

We make our way slowly, barely getting by on food (with the exception of the Nobleman, who has a mule, a cart, and enough food for a month. He doesn’t offer to share, but we also don’t ask… so…) Along the way, I apparently get on the Nobleman’s nerves with my chatter, and he gives me a luna to shut up. I accept… and being bound to my word, hum and mumble to myself for the rest of the day. Eventually, we come to the sudden realization that we haven’t been thinking about Marko at all… he’s starving. The group’s reaction can be summed up thusly: “HOLD IT!”

We spend a whole day hunting, and since I lend the Nobleman my saddle (due to his armor and a trait he has a 20ft move speed) our speed picks up enough that we actually get to the village ahead of time.

The village is a small cluster of houses, without even a main road. There’s one well on one end and fields surrounding a row of mud bricks houses. Marko brings us before the headman, who, by the look of his hands, is also probably the village blacksmith. We don’t waste any time and get right down to business. The raiders, who appear to have no distinguishing characteristics, are not of a single race, are a mix of cavalry and light infantry, and don’t even have the same weapons (though double broadswords, like The Last Airbender’s Prince Zuko uses, are fairly common).

I sense that he’s not telling us everything and call him on it… he’s still adamantly refusing, when Urgrim intimidates out of him what I cannot charm: They’re Talmari taxmen. The village is located roughly halfway between the town of Rimtown, where the White Crane School is governing, and Talmar, where the Lion Talon School rules, and along a caravan route, which, apparently, has also been getting taxed heavily. They find themselves in the undesirable location of Smack-In-Hazy-Border-Area, in the undesirable situation of being taxed by two states. Furthermore, the taxmen seem to be pushing for more than usual… and what with the end of the world last week on top of an already lackluster growing season, they don’t really have much left to give.

This changes our strategy significantly. We had thought a simple ambush when they came back… at harvest time. This evidently, will not work --chasing off bandits is one thing, but if we beat back a government party we’re just going to call the armed forces down on our heads. We begin brainstorming simple, if violent, solutions, until Yhennon interrupts us with a far more elegant solution. We go to Talmar, bringing news of plague and disease and asking for help… poorly enough that people don’t want to bother with the village, but well enough that people know which village we’re talking about --at least well enough to know which huddle of huts to stay away from.

The local hag may be able to provide us with the information we need to pick our poiso--er, plague, and fake up appropriate quarantine… and symptoms, for our ersatz woe-bewailers. :smallwink: I even get the brilliant idea of using my natural talent to convince the taxmen in town that we’re really from this village. After all, I can take on any person’s face if necessary. I demonstrate that I can make this plan even better by transforming into Marko on the spot.

Erm, oops.

Marko stands petrified while the headman dives for cover screaming “DEMON! DEMON!” I roll my eyes and continually repeat “I’m not a demon! Really! I’m not a demon” The headman pulls out some scrolls and begins reciting the Iron Lord’s “A Guide to Outsiders (http://umzamo.wikia.com/wiki/A_Guide_to_Outsiders).” These are a series of mnemonic poems to help peasants remember the strengths and weaknesses of various outsiders. The Iron Lord is the (dead) Demiurge of Iron and Vengeance against the Fey. The fey thought these poems were hilarious (until they started working.) And I HAVE met some face-stealing spirits. (They were kind of jerks.)

I don’t steal faces and am most certainly NOT a demon. I’m rather indignant, but we do devise a solution: The local hag does a simple ritual that should “Confine” or “tame” the demon. Essentially, she wraps an iron chain (tightly) around my neck.

Gav stays behind for this errand to use his natural charisma to (somewhat) calm the headman down, convincing the poor blacksmith that HE isn’t a demon, and the DWARF isn’t a demon, and the mage is… probably not a demon, so the odds of the face-swapper in our group being a demon --or at least one we haven’t tamed-- is minimal. This turns out to be extremely fortuitous timing, as Yhennon and Urgrim lead me back into the hut, leashed by the iron. Eventually Yhennon has to prove a point and he hands me my chain (the headman freaks out) and then offers me a “Silence Luna.” The headman never truly gives up the thought that I’m a demon, but he does seem to think now that they can be trained.

In an effort to prove myself, I hand the “Silence Luna” back and prick my thumb with the stiletto I keep in my boot (for when enemies get a little too close). When I bleed and don’t freeze or burn, he takes a much larger steel knife and deals 4 points of damage to me to be absolutely sure… It hurts, but it’s worth it in the end.

“Ooh, demon blood,” murmurs the headman to himself, collecting my dribbling vital fluid in a bottle and gleefully setting it on his shelf.

Or not worth it…

Yhennon patches me up a bit and we actually use the blood and bloodstained bandages (made from the excess material of Urgrim’s slightly too-large shirt) to make the plague markers more intimidating. (Plague markers: animal skulls on sticks with cloth tied around them.) Yhennon and I spend 7 hours at the hag’s hut getting information about diseases and… her pets… and the villagers… and I bet you can see where this is going.

We rest up to head out the next day. Yhennon keeps me chained up next to him so I don’t cause any “trouble.” I’m slightly indignant, but there’s nothing I can really do… it really is for the best.

We get a couple days out of the village and spend a day hunting, giving us enough food to make the trip into Talmar. We break session right before we get to the gates of Talmar.

Fluffy the Orc
2010-09-15, 02:02 AM
Nice. I like the plague idea - an elegant solution for a more civilized age.

RdMarquis
2010-09-15, 02:28 AM
I love the title for this episode. Things really do seem to be rather...normal considering what looked like a planetary upheaval. How long are they making you wear that leash, anyway?

LordShotGun
2010-09-15, 06:12 AM
I am sure in a world where demons and fey are quite real and do occasionally EAT villages, that a little apocalypse won't matter much to the common folk. At least till blood starts raining from the sky and other such crazyness.

Fayd
2010-09-15, 09:36 AM
I love the title for this episode. Things really do seem to be rather...normal considering what looked like a planetary upheaval. How long are they making you wear that leash, anyway?

Until we leave the village. And yeah, the villagers didn't USE magic in the first place, so they're not terribly concerned by it going away. They're far enough inland and away from rivers that the village didn't flood, their huts are made easily enough that the earthquakes didn't overly trouble them, and they kind of LIKE having storms...it waters their fields.

Feichi
2010-09-16, 12:35 AM
WARNING: LOTS OF TEXT FROM THE MAGE'S PERSPECTIVE ON SEVERAL EVENTS IN SESSION TWO. ZOMG. WORDY MAGE IS WORDY.

Eh, mostly I just decided to bump the thread by going into detail about my dealings with this hag character. ...and also maybe mentioning what Bloodhawk was thinking during all of this.


So, my friend, if you thought the dagger thing was amusing, it gets better.


The hilarious thing about the leash situation is that before we slept that night, the rest of the party advised me to stake the chain to the ground so that if Guy decided to run around in the night, cavorting with the locals, I wouldn't be blamed for it.


I therefore chose to most definitely NOT stake him to the ground, instead opting to hold onto his chain while we slept.


In that way, if he did anything stupid, his companion (meeee) would pay for it too... and despite his sometimes "hands on nature," he's a good person and wouldn't do anything to hurt his friends--(the ones that won't intentionally light his ears on fire, at least.)


And oh, that hag I mentioned earlier-- she was hilarious. When we first got to her hut, she looked at us and shuffled over to get a coin and handed it out to me.


I told her "Oh, we're not here to collect taxes. We're here to help you."


She just kind of grins up at me with her old, tired eyes and just kind of forgets how to hold onto the coin, dropping it with her hand outstretched as if she hadn't noticed the coin falling to the earth.


I bend over and pick the coin up and hand it back to her, telling her again that we weren't there for her money.


"You're a nice young man," she tells me in a totally senile old-lady voice. At this point, I get the straaaange feeling she's messing with us and go along with it and start laughing. She's probably all there and just having too much fun pretending to be dull from age.


We explained to her that we were there to learn a little about the village and specifically about any plagues that had befallen it.


(OOC: The rest of the party just kind of looked at me and blinked. The DM laughed and said, "you're asking the really, really old lady who lives outside of the small village to talk about diseases? Oh you're in for it." I cracked my knuckles and said "as an academic, I look quite forward to it.")


The old hag invites Guy and I in and offers us some bitter tea and we begin in on listening to her utterly vivid descriptions of every possible disease she can think of for hours upon hours. I consider it likely she probably embellished a little to see if she could get interesting reactions out of her guests. Guy was perhaps a tad uncomfortable.


I however, having realized that she was probably less senile than she let on, appreciated this grand prank she was pulling on the pair of us and laughed along. After what could have been mind numbing seven hours of descriptions of diseases punctuated by senile ramblings about the names of all of her pets, their lives, and the names and former lives belong to each of the random skulls littered about, I thanked the old woman for her company and returned to the village proper. (I finagled getting some knowledge[local] for the village out of that encounter. Wewt!)


From there, Guy and I discussed how we would go about what disease we should try to fake in order to achieve our goals. Initially, Guy (and his player) were very zealous about having this disease seem as debilitating and horrifying (mentally and physically) as possible. I went along with this idea for a while, but later reconsidered.


If we ended up making a plague that was horrifying and scared the heck out of Talimar officials, we could end up inadvertently sending a squad of suppressors to the village to burn it to the ground to remove the threat of this disease. Instead, I suggested we make the whole thing less horrifying and a little more inconvenient. Making it not worth the inconvenience and risk for the raiders served to be the most effective solution with the fewest potential opportunities for backlash.


Now, Bloodhawk was mostly quiet during this whole stay at the village, pleasantly napping in the back of my mind. He stirred a few times, but his musings were mostly over food. Occasionally, he mentioned breeding, but then recalled it was a bit late in the season for that and that there probably wasn't anyone compatible in the area.


In a hilarious moment of either of insight or ignorance, however, he once suggested to me that perhaps *I* could follow the typical course of action that Guy might and attempt to handle breeding with one of the local females. They were all humans after all, and he recalled that humans had no concept of a 'mating season,' so any time would work. I informed him that humans have no mating season because it's a matter of opportunity and convenience. Now would be really inconvenient. I also made a point of letting him know that doing so would probably violate human custom and tradition (norms, reason, respect, etc,) in this situation. He tried to get me to explain the intricacies of these human 'traditions' further, but I told him to let the subject drop for now.

Anyway, I grow tired and must rest. I'll continue later if you'd like to hear more of my old stories.



~A recollection of Yhennon Dei.




Hope you enjoyed my contribution! :smalltongue:

Yhennon and Bloodhawk's player,
Feichi.

RdMarquis
2010-09-16, 05:49 AM
Nice to get another point of view on the session, and that was fun to read. What did you settle on as your mystery illness, anyway?

LordShotGun
2010-09-16, 06:22 AM
I really liked that little aside. Feel free to make more of them as the story goes on.

Also, @Fayd, have you read the "Races of Ebberon" book? If so, then what kind of changling mentality does Guy have? It sounds like he has the "Becomer" identity (if you have not read the book, in short it means that he feels that everything and anything about himself is changable including gender, abilities, and even class, due to being able to fake all of thoose so very well).

Fayd
2010-09-16, 08:47 AM
I really liked that little aside. Feel free to make more of them as the story goes on.

Also, @Fayd, have you read the "Races of Ebberon" book? If so, then what kind of changling mentality does Guy have? It sounds like he has the "Becomer" identity (if you have not read the book, in short it means that he feels that everything and anything about himself is changable including gender, abilities, and even class, due to being able to fake all of thoose so very well).

I haven't read RoE, so I'm not really sure. The "Becomer" identity as you describe it kind of fits. He's chronologically, at the very least, VERY old and might be the oldest member of the party, (with only one other possible contender) but that's really only due to time distortions and technicalities. Most of his life, he's had this skindancer ability, and changes faces more frequently than he changes shirts. Everything is mutable, including gender, (apparent) age, and race (just not size category at the moment.) Each and every one of those qualities is more a very specialized tool than anything else. There are advantages and disadvantages of each. Part of the reason I took Craft (Mask) was for Guy to have a more or less "stable" identity.

Another major factor on his personality is that he, for the past XYZ years, has been amongst the Fey. Certain human customs are a little beyond his understanding... things like Property and Morality for starters.

flabort
2010-09-16, 10:41 AM
Great. Now I'm unintentionally shipping Guy shaped into a girl with the mage. Ugh. :smallredface:

MountainKing
2010-09-16, 11:02 AM
Flabort, I've been around the block on this lil ol' internet... and I gotta say, you frighten me. :smalleek: That's not even like, a hobby anymore... that's a bloody superpower.

Shine on you crazy diamond. :smallamused:

Feichi
2010-09-16, 12:36 PM
Hey, I'm glad you guys liked my aside! I'll keep doing more of them then. :D

Also, as a preview, just... expect a man-sized bird to be smacking people around with the broad-side of his face in the next chapter... and some rather amusing internal dialogue between he and his brainmate.

flabort
2010-09-16, 05:55 PM
Flabort, I've been around the block on this lil ol' internet... and I gotta say, you frighten me. :smalleek: That's not even like, a hobby anymore... that's a bloody superpower.

Shine on you crazy diamond. :smallamused:

Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

RdMarquis
2010-09-16, 06:52 PM
And does this mean I can start taking bets on crack pairings again?

Feichi
2010-09-16, 07:21 PM
I put a doughnut on me, myself, and I.

Fayd
2010-09-16, 08:28 PM
I put a doughnut on me, myself, and I.

...You're multiple beings already...

Feichi
2010-09-16, 09:49 PM
I know. Also, I think therefore shipping myself qualifies me for the rare and amazing term, homomesterbationcest.

RdMarquis
2010-09-17, 01:54 PM
I know. Also, I think therefore shipping myself qualifies me for the rare and amazing term, homomesterbationcest.

You might also want to throw in a reference to narcissism, too. Anyway, I give you 3:1 odds on that pairing becoming canon.

Bharg
2010-09-17, 03:22 PM
Getting stabbed with a knife would kinda annoy me, Fayd.

Fayd
2010-09-17, 04:27 PM
Getting stabbed with a knife would kinda annoy me, Fayd.

Eh, I'll get over it. It came in handy too!

flabort
2010-09-17, 06:55 PM
I'd say we'd need the third chapter up before taking bets on crack pairings. So we know a little more about the characters... :smallcool:
:smallbiggrin:besides that bloodhawk thinks humans have no specific mating period, and that guy can change genders.

Bharg
2010-09-18, 04:27 AM
You should like fight for your rights and not just throw them away.

Fayd
2010-09-18, 10:32 AM
You should like fight for your rights and not just throw them away.

2 points of HP damage is worth not getting lynched. Plus, Guy is painfully optimistic. And the bloodied cloth made things work better... too well, as you'll learn in two chapters (probably, and by probably I'm still wondering about the causality of the situation)

Cade Rentyr
2010-09-19, 12:03 AM
Well, we've just completed Session Four on Friday, and things are gearing up to get crazy in a hurry here. If you're wondering how exactly things got complicated... well, Fayd should be uploading Chapter 3 practically as I type this, so I'll let you see for yourself.:smalltongue::smallbiggrin:

Fayd
2010-09-19, 12:10 AM
Chapter 3: Setting up Shop. Or: So a Medium-Size Bird and a Cave Gnoll Walk into a Bar…

We approach the gates of Talmar and begin to execute our respective plans. Talmar is a walled port city and is currently experiencing a massive influx of people due to the recent apocalypse. A massive refugee camp has formed outside of the town, and the people are being used to help clear out the Mangrove forest that takes up this entire coastline. Some of them… don’t come back. Other times, groups of men from the town (one guy and some bodyguards, typically) come and talk to a strapping young man or attractive young lady and bring them to the entrance to the city.

Urgrim (whose player wasn’t feeling well and wasn’t present, but gave instructions on what Urgrim would be doing to Tam) doesn’t bother with the main gates and swims/walks underwater around the walls of the city (it has a harbor). It’s only a half mile or so. The rest of us take the front gate.

Gav walks up first and is charged 5 luna (half of a night’s stay at an expensive hotel) by the gate guards to get into the city. He isn’t too pleased by the price gouging, but he grew up here and has largely come to accept it as a part of life. Surprisingly, they’re members of the Lion Talon School… we were expecting this corruption from the Rat Clan who’ve taken root here, not from them.

I execute my plan. For the entire day approaching the town, I look like Marko, only covered in small sores and coughing piteously. I hobble up to the guard and beg him to send help for the village. “We’re starving and sick. We need your help! Please…” They won’t let me into the city and they certainly won’t send to the village for aid. I keep up my performance and they knock me to the ground. I continue to try begging for a bit and then they throw me into a ditch, where I lay for a bit.

Yhennon attempts to enter the town, but cannot actually afford the fee into town. At about this time, the Nobleman begins to wonder “Wait. Why am I waiting in line?” So, he cuts to the front of the line and physically carries Yhennon into the town, flippantly paying both their tolls.

The Pink Ninja (apparently her formal title) also enters the town and keeps a VERY low profile. Apparently she’s done a couple things that would make getting recognized rather uncomfortable.

After laying in the ditch for a time I beg for the entry fee from the line of people… and fail. Horribly. So, I do the next best thing: I wander into the refugee camp, duck into a tent, and shapeshift into a strapping Illian man, walk up to the gate, heckle the guards, pay anyway, and go on in. From there I duck into an alley and take on my “Normal” appearance (a Connish face, with just a slight hint of elven blood. It looks just a little Fey)

Wandering through town, I eventually make my way over to the merchant’s district and look for some good marks… there are so many options! I pickpocket 14 Luna completely scot-free. It’s a good day! The sun is shining, the comet is shining, and I have more money! The Nobleman and Yhennon wander about the shops for a bit. Yhennon forlornly examines the various food vendors and once again laments the loss of his Creation magic, until the Nobleman stuffs some iron rations into his mouth and hustles him along in exasperation. Eventually, all of us make our way toward lowtown (minus Urgrim, who stumbled upon an adequate rotgut pub on his way out of the bay). Gav gave us the directions; he has a house and shop there.

Or, much to his jaded irritation, had. They’d been torn down and replaced with a tenement (a really cheap apartment complex.) He’d left his tools (he’d worked for a time as a blacksmith) in the care of one of his neighbors, and it takes him the better part of the morning to track down where they’d gotten to. And what happened to his house. The builders, who have Rat Clan ties, (as does most business in this town) saw an abandoned house and grabbed it. They also bought out his neighbor, who’d recently fallen badly into debt. Said neighbor pawned off Gav’s tools to try to pay off his debts.

So, Gav goes to the pawn shop, Jan’s Oddities, run by a relatively cute young woman named Jan. She has mousy brown hair that is going gray a little prematurely. She is also rather busy trying to keep order in her rather busy pawn shop.

Gav asks about his tools when he doesn’t find what looks like his, and Jan replies. “I do have a set in the back, but I’m holding them for someone. A Mr. Jagger.”

:smallamused: “A Gav Jagger?”

“…Ah. That would be you, wouldn’t it? We managed to get everything but the largest anvil out of the house before they knocked it down.”

Gav still has to pay off the tools and though he has no money, he offers Jan his blacksmithing services to make things for her to sell to make up the difference (and perhaps a little more.) At about this time, the rest of the party begins trickling in. Gav goes and sets up his “forge” in the back along with our belongings. Essentially, we form a very open ended contract with Jan where we help around here for a bit, pay her a little, and we get to stay and sleep behind her shop. The expensive items (Gav’s tools) are locked inside Jan’s shop during the night.

I roll a charisma check as I say hello to Jan, but her only reaction is an exasperated “Oh no, not again.” …ow. I rolled well too. Anyway, we sort of bum around the shop for a bit and I try to at least repair my first impression by offering to help around the shop. She has me polish some of the silver items for her. I begin furiously working, making everything very shiny… and start humming and singing to myself, which makes her look at me like I’m insane. Yhennon covers for me: “No worries, he simply has a passion for shiny things.”

“Just make sure he doesn’t take anything.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it!” I interject. “…Okay, I would DREAM of it, but I wouldn’t ACTUALLY do it!”

She sets me to work on a big bronze mirror while she and Yhennon talk for a bit… he’s been interviewing people about what has been going on, especially with regards to the Comet. Eventually, I finish with the mirror and show it off to her rather excitedly. “That’s good dear. Mind the shop for me for a bit.”

She leaves me in charge while she goes into the back with Yhennon to talk undisturbed. Inside, he discovers an apparatus used to make magical potions… apparently Jan was something of a mage before this all began. They trade experiences of when the Comet arrived; Jan had never been to the Gemstone Towers and thus didn’t throw up an emerald, or any gem for that matter, and only felt a little queasy, but she didn’t even really pay much attention to that, as it was that time of the month. They talk for a bit longer while I try to … exaggerate … a little to get Jan a little more money. I don’t really succeed, but at the same time, I don’t cause too much trouble, so that’s fine.

Shortly after Yhennon and Jan emerge from the back room, Jan has me refinish a table… my skill with making masks for myself gives me a small edge in this task. After I’ve worked for a time, a group of five thugs, (judging by the smell, Rat Clan) enter the shop. One goes to Jan’s counter, while the others begin looking around the shop, picking up objects (including vases, a Rat that I keep a particular eye on) and being typical slightly rowdy thugs.

“Well Jan, it’s that time of the month again” the lead Rat informs her. Jan scoots into the back, comes out with a sack of money, and throws it on the counter for the Rat to count. I sidle over and ask the Rat why exactly Jan is paying them… after all, when one pays for something, they get something in return.

He looks at me incredulously and replies that this is so that nothing… bad… happens to the shop and her home. “You’re five Luna short, Jan,” he sneers at our friend.

I think to myself, Of course she’s five short, I just watched you pocket them! and ask him about the five he just put in his pocket… to which he just glares at me and Jan begs me to stop antagonizing them as she goes into the back for the extra five. I tell her to stop and pay myself.

“Such a gentleman!” the Rat floridly bows to me before walking out of the shop with his buddies… and Gav notices that one of them pocketed something from the shop on their way out! He glides out the back and around the alleyway.

Yhennon, realizing he had some questions for Gav, excuses himself, leaving the Nobleman in charge of Gav’s possessions and following closely behind. Apparently Gav had decided to tail the Rats, and they are moving quickly enough that it takes old Yhennon quite a while to catch up. The Rats enter a bar… and by the time Gav is actually close enough to hear them, a bar fight has erupted. He can hear Urgrim yelling something about “HIS NAME WAS ZHAN!” and people are hitting walls, glass is breaking, and tables are shattering… Sounds like all things are normal with our Dwarven friend.

The Nobleman, by this time, is quite bored. He leaves Gav’s stuff in the care of the Pink Ninja and goes to find something to do. He finds a seedy bar and proceeds to instigate a bar fight. Due to his huge AC and DR granted by his expensive breastplate, they physically cannot damage him. The patrons accuse him of cheating, but… what are they going to do, really?

Needless to say, soon enough he’s savoring his victory at the countertop. About then Gav and Yhennon, returned from Urgrim’s raucous melee, poke their heads in and ask if he’d be interested in …another… bar brawl. The Rats apparently came away from the dwarf’s drunken rage better than most; they are only halfway to unconscious, but still there and nursing drinks. Gav has decided he’d like to ‘repossess some repossessions.’ :smallamused: They go back to Jan’s Oddities to collect more allies to make the fight a little easier… I sign on to the mission right away, and in fact, everyone but the Pink Ninja decides to join in… she doesn’t want to take the chance of being recognized. Realizing the advantage, we borrow her ninja-face-mask (Gav wears it), and the Nobleman wears the mask I’ve had for a while, and Yhennon and I won’t be recognized anyway. I ask Jan to borrow her back room for about half a minute so that I can prepare the party for what they’re going to see in the fight.

Once inside, with the door closed, I turn into a Cave Gnoll… a Quaggoth, a bear-man. …And Gav reaches over and honks my nose like one would a clown. :smallannoyed: …He has no respect for personal boundaries sometimes… Anyway, I warn them that I will do that in the fight, and they shouldn’t get too surprised. We’re already used to Yhennon turning into Bloodhawk, but… I didn’t want to take any chances.

I choose to walk to the bar as the same strapping Illian as whom I entered the city. It is now “Rush Hour,” and the bar is much more packed than it had been, but our Rat “Friends” are still present. Urgrim is sitting in front of the bar on a keg of… something… and drinking heavily.

The Nobleman and I approach our targets. I try to be subtle by forcing my way into a nearby table, whose occupants quickly and effortless repulse me. The Nobleman decides to take the much more direct approach --and clobbers the first Rat in the jaw. With a shrug and an ‘eh’, I bloom into my Cave Gnoll form while Yhennon, standing in the doorway, is replaced by Bloodhawk.

Immediately, the entire bar erupts in a cheer and everyone (minus the barkeep, who immediately goes down a trapdoor behind the bar) leaps to their feet and starts punching their neighbors. We question Tam on this, but this is apparently what some people COME HERE FOR. Huh. Everyone’s looking for something different, I suppose.

I eat a few attacks the first round and feel them rather painfully. And my paws aren’t dealing as much damage as I feel like they should… I’m, physically, a bit of a wimp. Especially compared to Gav, who, unable to reach any of the Rats past myself and the Nobleman, is going to town on some of the random bar patrons who tried to jump him from behind… they fail. MASSIVELY. The Nobleman is similarly invincible, due to his combination of high DR and high AC. We begin to work our way through the Rat Clanners, and the Nobleman is proving to be a devastating fighter.

Bloodhawk, in the doorway, is a terribly confused bird. His natural instincts are being constantly overridden by Yhennon’s will (contested Will Saves) and thus does some rather strange things for a bird. For example, he starts the battle by yelling: “The vegetables grow greenly in Adanar!” He parries a few attacks (also an action guided by Yhennon) until a bar patron gets a lucky crit, and does a whopping two nonlethal damage after damage reduction. Bloodhawk trips him for his luck, then intimidating the next poor sod in line with an avian glare… “Don’t do that.” The patrons backed off, wheedling “Nice birdy… niiiice birdy…” and hiding back in the calm(est) corner.

Gav, who has effortlessly handled his two opponents, still can’t reach any of the Rat clanners. Since no one is actively harrying him at the moment, he takes the opportunity to lounge casually against the bar counter and watch the Nobleman pummel and me get pummeled. A few moments later another random patron rushes up to him from the side… and Gav drops him with a readied straight-arm to the jaw without so much as a glance his way.

Around this time some poor fool who was not here this afternoon to witness the carnage decides to take a swing at the dwarf. Another crippling blow to the unmentionables later and the pitiable man is flying over Urgrim’s shoulder into two or three more patrons who were by now minding their own drinks again.

Then… my luck runs out. I’ve been relatively effective in battle, even with my pitiful damage. I at least manage to HIT every round. (Largely by blowing every part of my Fairy Godmother feat…) But this fight wasn’t a rogue’s fight. Or rather, I didn’t approach it that way… I greatly overestimated how effective Cave Gnoll form would be. I get knocked out by bar patrons, and one of them begins to go through my pockets for money.

He is interrupted by a hand on his shoulder. A quizzical glance shows him Gav’s smiling face. “Hi!”

PUNCH! And another one bites the dust!

It doesn’t take much longer to mop up the Rats (Ironically, the bar patrons themselves actually got more of them than we did!) and we advance on the rest of the bar because they don’t quite know when to QUIT. That, and someone had already pick-pocketed the stuff we wanted to get ourselves.

In any case, to assist in the last vestiges of the fight, Bloodhawk (who has been spouting a nonstop stream of nonsense sentences) makes liberal use of his Spring Attack feat; dashing in to bash people and then dashing back to stand in front of the door. Yhennon overrides Bloodhawk’s feral instincts in order to deal nonlethal damage instead of lethal damage. The Nobleman grabs one of the men, and the next round, throws him at the guy who pocketed the 40 Luna that Jan had lost. The hit isn’t terribly strong, though the man who served as ammunition did fall unconscious from hitting the wall after he hit the target. The Nobleman grabs the final fighter on this side of the bar for Urgrim’s famous windup. (wince) Then the Nobleman advances on the rest of the bar, simply so we won’t have any witnesses… or at least coherent ones. Ironically, this was also the reason Yhennon/Bloodhawk was spouting his random gibberish; hopefully anyone with enough clarity to remember this brawl through the concussions and hangovers will dismiss it as a drunken dream.

Yhennon, back in human form, helps get me conscious with the heal skill, and the party goes through the pockets of everyone in the bar, netting the item that was stolen, the 40 Luna from Jan, 80 more from the other stops on the Rats’ extorting route, the 5 that I gave in her place, and 15 more Luna… we distribute the extra Luna to the group of people in the bar who didn’t throw first punches at us. Yhennon admits to his own surprise that this has actually been rather fun --exhilirating, really. Gav gives him a hearty slap on the back and a grin. We also notice that, quite suddenly, the Nobleman and two of the Rats are gone. A short time later, he re-enters the bar with the both of them over his shoulders… and they don’t look good. At all. Almost as if they went from a Con score of 10 to a score of 4 or something. Huh. Regardless, I take everything they have, and I mean everything. I am going to need a disguise for the city, and they’ll work well enough. Especially because these Rats have begun to irk me. However, I can’t be seen as a Cave Gnoll in town, so I transform back to normal… and fall unconscious from the nonlethal damage again. Someone, either Gav or the Nobleman, carries me back… where the Pink Ninja Ki-heals me to consciousness.

Jan only unlocks the door for us before going back to sleep… she’s had a long day.

Gav then drops a … rather large surprise on us. “Well gents, re-robbing Rats is well and good, but does anyone fancy a… tougher challenge?” He taps the side of his head, saying “Get out here Bug, and share ‘our Lady’s’ glorious task with the rest of us.” His voice is dripping with frustration and sarcasm, but we hardly notice that when a Lantern Archon hovers out of his head and pleasantly introduces itself. “Bug,” as Gav calls him, is a servant of Sanselie, the Lady of Command, goddess of planning, strategy, tactics, maps, and vigilance, and Gav is her Instrument. (“More like her suckered patsy…” mutters Gav.) Semantics aside, earlier today Gav was struck with a mission for the sake of the Plan: “Kill Master Tozi of the Lion Talon.” Master Tozi is the Grand Master of the Lion Talon, and administrator of the city. He is probably the strongest man in the city, behind perhaps the head of the Rat clan. We have one week to end his life.

:smalleek:

Session break.

RdMarquis
2010-09-19, 01:13 AM
This was a cool chapter, and it'll be fun to see how you plan to take this guy down (Try poison. It always seems to do the trick with old kung fu masters).

By the way, I hope Pink Ninja isn't descriptive. Otherwise, it'll be very hard for her to sneak around. :smalltongue:

DancingMonkey
2010-09-19, 02:03 AM
Someday I hope my group can accomplish as much per session as you all seem to. :smallbiggrin: It always fascinates me how much advancement there is in each journal entry, or at least seems that way to me. Definitely look forward to each one!

flabort
2010-09-19, 11:14 AM
"Bug".
Nice name. :smallbiggrin:

So your shop hands, helping a pawner so you can buy back what's rightfully yours, and your tasked by a ball of light with wings (Listen!) to kill a guy who is most likely stronger than all of you combined within a week.

a week isn't going to be long enough to gain a level, and your stuck in a shop anyways. :smallannoyed: :smallconfused: I'm worried for you now.

Fayd
2010-09-19, 09:06 PM
This was a cool chapter, and it'll be fun to see how you plan to take this guy down (Try poison. It always seems to do the trick with old kung fu masters).

By the way, I hope Pink Ninja isn't descriptive. Otherwise, it'll be very hard for her to sneak around. :smalltongue:

Pink, near as we can tell, is just some title, not actually descriptive. She's quiet, we're still not sure why exactly.

We accomplish so much through judicious multitasking. Tam is amazing at keeping it all straight in session when the party has dispersed itself through the city.

Bug is a very funny name, we're rather pleased. He doesn't have wings, though you pretty much have the right idea.

As for how we're going to kill Tozi? Well, he's not dead yet (speaking from the end of session 4) but we have made significant progress in that direction. We have had the idea of poison, but can you guys think of any other ways to efficiently take down a ruler who rules through might (and got the position that way) and come out of the town alive?

Bharg
2010-09-20, 02:36 AM
So Snowstar changed from popsicle butterfly to Pink Ranger?

How about starting a revolution to bring that Tozi dude down? :>
Probably he has some kind of treacherous little brother that wants his position... something like that.

2xMachina
2010-09-20, 03:21 AM
Kill him, take his place :P

You're in the position to doppelganger him.

Fayd
2010-09-20, 09:35 AM
Kill him, take his place :P

You're in the position to doppelganger him.

True... but for reasons you'll learn soon, I want to be rid of this town as quickly as possible. That and I have one small issue: while I can look like him, I can't replicate his unique fighting style.

Yes, and Snowstar went from popsicle butterfly to the Pink Ninja.

flabort
2010-09-20, 12:07 PM
Snowstar: Now in stealthed Strawberry flavor!

LordShotGun
2010-09-20, 03:15 PM
Poison seems the best choice. Its hard to find the poisoner, its easy to skip outta town right before his poisoning becomes common knowledge, there are several ways to poison him, (food/drink, poison needle or blowdart, indigious posionous creature), and movie/bookwise, poison has the best track record of killing martial artist masters. (Kill Bill, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon)


Anyway to lure this guy into an ambush, perhaps with some dangerous demon or natural creature? Heck, have your mage just try and summon some more unintentional plant demons near this guy.

Cade Rentyr
2010-09-20, 03:47 PM
Poison seems the best choice. Its hard to find the poisoner, its easy to skip outta town right before his poisoning becomes common knowledge, there are several ways to poison him, (food/drink, poison needle or blowdart, indigious posionous creature), and movie/bookwise, poison has the best track record of killing martial artist masters. (Kill Bill, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon)


Anyway to lure this guy into an ambush, perhaps with some dangerous demon or natural creature? Heck, have your mage just try and summon some more unintentional plant demons near this guy.

The problem with that last solution is that Yhennon's magic isn't just berserk anymore --it's totally dead. He was only able to summon anything at all in Chapter 1 because the comet was just freshly arriving, sending all magic into chaos before shutting it down the entire -5 CL.
But as for poison, that's essentially the route we're most heavily considering as well. In fact, there's an even better reason supporting it than the ones you've listed here, revealed in the next chapter. (Which will be done as soon as I find the time to edit it. Sorry 'bout that.:smallannoyed:)

Bharg
2010-09-21, 01:58 AM
In theory Guy can do whatever he wants to do since he has no own identity. He is also able to change his clothes with his appearance, right? And he doesn't splatter the whole place in blood, skin, hair and teeth and so on if he shapechanges.

I was wondering if there was a way to identify him in this scenario by his Chi or something else.

If someone else was wearing his mask he would also have kind of an alibi...

Did Yhennon actually try to cast something again?

Fayd
2010-09-21, 08:38 AM
In theory Guy can do whatever he wants to do since he has no own identity. He is also able to change his clothes with his appearance, right? And he doesn't splatter the whole place in blood, skin, hair and teeth and so on if he shapechanges.

I was wondering if there was a way to identify him in this scenario by his Chi or something else.

If someone else was wearing his mask he would also have kind of an alibi...

Did Yhennon actually try to cast something again?

Near as I can tell, the feat lets me change my skin (And other external and internal organs), not what I'm wearing.

Thankfully, this isn't a martial school that uses Chi or Ki... but I have no martial arts power whatsoever. It would be fairly obvious that I'm not the guy... deception checks only go so far.

Yhennon has tried to cast something, but absolutely nothing happened.

Bharg
2010-09-21, 10:13 AM
Well, you could also change into something like a Geisha to sneak in...

Did Shapechanging into a gnoll burst your clothes?

MountainKing
2010-09-21, 11:46 AM
Well, you could also change into something like a Geisha to sneak in...

Did Shapechanging into a gnoll burst your clothes?

You know, common sense says it should've, but, technically speaking, Gnolls are still Medium (at least in regular D&D; Tam might've changed that). In theory at least, his clothes (while maybe a little loose from stretching) should be fine.

Gametime
2010-09-21, 12:00 PM
All humans are medium size, too, and I can think of several humans who would tear another human's clothes.

Though if I were a shapechanger, I'd probably buy some loose-fitting or easily-stretchable clothes if they were available.

Fayd
2010-09-21, 03:49 PM
You know, common sense says it should've, but, technically speaking, Gnolls are still Medium (at least in regular D&D; Tam might've changed that). In theory at least, his clothes (while maybe a little loose from stretching) should be fine.

All base races are Medium or lower. It requires a feat to get to Large size, for both monsters and PCs.

As for the armor and such, we aren't worrying about it unless I change a size category, which the feat doesn't allow until level 6 anyway, so... yeah.

I picked a leather coat for my armor for 2 reasons: 1. It was the best thing I could afford. 2. A coat can be tied and reworked to look very different without having to actually damage or remake the armor. (That's mostly fluff, with no mechanical effect whatsoever)

Bharg
2010-09-22, 04:16 AM
3. It's a leather coat! It's awesome!

Fayd
2010-09-22, 09:03 AM
3. It's a leather coat! It's awesome!

Good point Bharg. Good point. I should have listed that one myself!

LordShotGun
2010-09-22, 02:36 PM
3. It's a leather coat! It's awesome!

Unless it rains of course :smallbiggrin:

MountainKing
2010-09-22, 05:33 PM
Unless it rains of course :smallbiggrin:

Properly weather-proofed, a leather coat is amazing in the rain. :smallwink:

Fayd
2010-09-22, 06:23 PM
Properly weather-proofed, a leather coat is amazing in the rain. :smallwink:

And with what I paid for it, it had BETTER be weather-proofed!

flabort
2010-09-22, 08:14 PM
It, uh... most certainly wasn't me who sold it to him! er...
*walks away, snickering over his scam*

Fayd
2010-09-22, 08:30 PM
It, uh... most certainly wasn't me who sold it to him! er...
*walks away, snickering over his scam*

http://i624.photobucket.com/albums/tt328/TheAngrySun/ISEEWHATYOUDIDTHAR.png?t=1285205377

Fayd
2010-09-23, 01:13 AM
Chapter 4: A Brilliant Bargain
It’s a new day and did I have an interesting morning before the party got up. Some “friends” came to visit me during the night: minor Fey powers called Brilliant Archers. “Have you come for the fun?”

“No, I haven’t, actually. Mind telling me what you’re up to, then?”

“What we always do… Glory in their suffering.”

Well. That’s not good. For one, the Brilliant Archers are disease inflicting spirits. For two, they’re Unseelie. (I’m not.) For three, it’s getting to be summer. Why are Winter’s servants in power?

First thing in the morning, I let the party know of my discovery. Yhennon seems the most stunned… “Suddenly, you make a LOT more sense. I’m now VERY glad I made that ice wall!” (About a week before the comet, he’d saved me from a crowd of people who were rather vexed with me. That was also the day I learned other peoples’ pockets are ‘protected’ by something called ‘personal space’. Human customs are so odd sometimes…)

Partway through the following discussion Gav, who has been rather restless, inattentive and unusually quiet, seethes the words ”Find me some @#$% materials. I’ll be back later,” and storms from the room. Curious… the oncoming plague doesn’t seem like something he’d get that upset about.

In any case, we advise Jan to pack up and leave the city as quickly as possible, an idea that doesn’t seem particularly thrilling to her. We generally agree that we need to be rid of this town as quickly as possible, and split up to our various activities.

I’d formulated a plan last (out of game) week to try to spread our plague story and make a little money on the side. I drop my mask into a sewer (it was only going to be a liability at this point, what with the Nobleman wearing it during our attack on the Rats) and buy a cheap white robe, as well as picking up a stick to suffice as a quarterstaff. I ask Jan to borrow her backroom and transform myself into an old, bearded Varaz man, take off my leather coat, and put on the robe. (The Varaz are a now-extinct subrace of human who once controlled a large part of a continent with a magical empire). I walk to the merchant’s district, where I hold a loud street sermon as a prophet of doom. I chose Lo-Tenger, god of sea, earthquakes, and horses as my deity of the destruction of the wicked, using the recent activity as examples and calling the Comet his “Chariot.” I told them that a village between here and Nuntatii’s Fingers (a series of previously-dormant volcanoes) had been struck down by plague for not believing me. I told them to leave their blood money behind with their sins and be washed clean in the sea. I rolled a nat 20. I last 3 minutes before a few guards frog march me to the pier and throw me into the water. I transform into a Merrow (male mermaid) resurface and cry out “YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!”

Unfortunately, this doesn’t have quite the awing effect I was hoping for; rather than be terrified by my watery visage they simply club it over the head with my own quarterstaff for 8 points of lethal damage, sneering, “Go back to Lo-Tenger, fish man!”

:smallfrown:

I sink down beneath the waves and swim away a distance before re-attempting my ominous roleplaying. “YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!”

And the guard attempts to hurl the staff at my head. :smallfrown: Thankfully it goes wide. It might have killed me otherwise, (I don’t actually gain gills in this form yet --I probably would’ve drowned if I’d have lost consciousness) so I’m rather thankful for their horrible aim. I wait for them to turn and leave before I shift myself into a human with a higher Con score and make my way back to land and Jan’s shop, where I ask for something soft to collapse on. Yhennon and the Pink Ninja patch me up via heal checks and Ki-Healing while Gav, who seems in better spirits, makes fun of me. Ah, the wonderful Ki-healing. Ah, friends who kick me when I’m down.

Incidentally, since none of us actually remember to get some forging material, Gav takes some of our ‘recovered’ money and retrieves enough metal to make a couple masterwork shortswords and a profit of around 300 luna, all said and done. I hear from Yhennon that he was still rather uptight when he returned from his mysterious errand, but banging away at some scrap metal (and then on some actual metal) seem to have helped his mood. At some point much earlier, Yhennon did also overhear Bug’s voice asking something like, “Was it made for her?” before Gav angrily cut the archon off.

Speaking of my mage friend, Urgrim went hunting rats with Bloodhawk while I was making a fool of myself (and theology), down by the foundries. They were fairly successful, though they couldn’t make any money off of it. To that particular end they attempted to provide entertainment for the commons. Bloodhawk is rather unlucky and uncoordinated, so on the spot they turn it from a demonstration of prowess into a show of comedy by feeding the bird some of the booze we looted from the bar the previous night. This was mildly more successful.

By now the pair had returned to the shop, where Urgrim hatches another moneymaking scheme: Selling the booze that we … acquired … from the bar last night to the workers leaving the foundries, passing it off as genuine Hill Dwarf brew. (Hill Dwarves are the traditional name for half-human, half dwarf hybrids, and they typically brew some pretty potent beverages.) I roll language and deception to put some “authentic” runes on the side (Urgrim is illiterate or he would do it himself)… Yhennon ALSO rolls a language check and nearly falls off of his chair laughing at what I DID write… I don’t think it was very polite. Regardless, he corrects it and Urgrim and I go off to sell. (I am, of course, looking the part of a Hill Dwarf… Skindancer is such a fun feat!)

Speaking of booze, by the way, the Nobleman has been doing nothing but relax in the shop and enjoy some of our ‘borrowed’ bootleg.

Yhennon goes wandering around the neighborhood looking for information, and ends up finding more than we were expecting. Seven Rat clan thugs are going through the shops here and are headed to Jan’s next. He doesn’t manage to make it back to warn us beforehand…

“So ‘ere’s the deal, Missy: One o’ you @#$% merchants sent someone to nick the last round of collections, and as we don’t know who did it, we’ve come for the monthly fee from all of you again!”

Jan is… visibly frustrated, but she goes into her back room without question.

Yhennon, in an attempt to help with the situation, shifts into Bloodhawk and runs back and forth past the open door yelling, “The Rat Clan can burn in Hell!” :smallamused: Four of the Rat Clan give chase, with only two of them being devoted enough to continue more than 30 feet. Those two, however, are lead ‘on a merry wild goose chase across town’. (This is how Yhennon/Bloodhawk’s player put it before he realized the pun and nearly broke down laughing. :smalltongue:)

Yhennon’s aim was to draw the Rats away and thus avoid conflict, but that ambition evaporated when the Nobleman decided he’d had enough of these thugs. (We’re fairly sure he’s also had a bit too much to drink, but that’s quickly beside the point.) He draws his scythe and hacks at the first thug. Melee now unavoidable, the Pink Ninja vaults over a table and punches the same Rat in the face, killing him instantly. The Rats attempt to retaliate against the Nobleman and fail spectacularly against his armor. On his next turn, he strikes out at another and learns that his d20 is a bit of a pacifist: Great in all non-combat situations; conscientious objector at all the wrong times. He has a little trouble hitting, but eventually shifts into Accurate Attack mode (-3 Damage, +3 attack) so everything is fine. Jan is horrified.

To more effectively combat the Rats, the Pink Ninja leaps, runs across the ceiling and falls into a flanking position, hitting the Rat hard in the ribs, breaking a fair number of them on the way past. (She has the Winddancer feat, which, by and large, turns gravity into a guideline.) The Nobleman turns to the man and nearly bisects him.

During this whole time, Gav has been steadily working away at his forge behind the shop. It takes him a while to notice the commotion through two closed doors, but he eventually does, and investigates. In the doorway to the shop proper he gauges the battle a moment, before neatly stepping out from behind Jan and tossing his cruciform longsword at the nearest Rat, cleanly impaling him. Without skipping a beat the Pink Ninja trips the man and executes him with a quick stomp. The remaining two Rats flee, and the Nobleman gives chase into the street, drawing a dagger and hurling it for a trip attempt. He succeeds by a wide margin, causing not-insignificant damage and is able to calmly stride over and silence the hapless thug. The Pink Ninja takes off after the other man, but unfortunately fails to catch him.

Meanwhile, Bloodhawk has been having quite a time leading his two men through the streets (he has a 15ft higher movement speed than they do) and eventually, he makes it to a (slightly) secluded treeline where he makes his stand. A short scuffle later and he rips one of the two Rats apart, though the other manages to flee. He takes a lot of damage himself, but he’s still alive. He’s also still a little hungry, and since there’s a fresh new carcass available, well… Yhennon is unable to override primal instincts at this time. Unfortunately, he’s also taken enough damage that, if he were to switch back to his lower-con human form, he would immediately have to save against unconsciousness. Since failing that save could leave him to bleeding to death… Fortunately, Urgrim and I have been peddling our alcohol nearby.

Bloodhawk seeks out Urgrim and me. We have been having quite some success in our venture, and don’t feel bad about having to break off early… especially as Bloodhawk informs us that we have to heal him or Yhennon would die. I’m the only one of us trained in heal, and patch him up. …Fey medicine isn’t exactly spectacular. I nat 1 the roll and cause 4 damage to Bloodhawk. My other 2 heal checks (the max he can receive today) manage to fix it so I didn’t actually deal any damage, but nothing else. We have to find some way to get him back to the Pink Ninja for some Ki-healing --until then he’ll be trapped in bird form. Thinking fast, we capitalize on Urgrim’s previous showboating and feed Bloodhawk a little more of the liquor and make a show of heading back.

We stop in the doorway, stunned at what we see. Gav and the Nobleman quickly explain what happened and what they did, including their decision to hide the bodies in the cart for the time being. Urgrim is LIVID. “Why did you put them in the cart?! It KILLS the resale value!” Instead, we leave the bodies (minus some ears as proof) behind some tenements somewhere… With a note I wrote in the local Thieves’ Cant saying simply “Love Tozi” pinned to their corpses. We tell Jan that she has to pack up the shop, NOW, and come with us… it isn’t safe for her here anymore. I offer to help her haul things, and ask her not to freak out when I shapeshift into a human with more strength to make the job a little easier. She asks me to hold still for a bit while she runs and grabs some silver figurine and presses it to my skin. (With HER bare hand, interestingly. Previously, I was half-convinced she was a werewolf.) Convinced that I’m not something nasty, she begins to lead me where I can help her carry books for her. The rest of the party halts me before I can go much farther, as they need me to go lie outrageously for the Nobleman. Urgrim takes my place in the packing process.

I become an old man, who could be some sort of guide or steward for a traveling Nobleman, and we approach the guard tower. I knock for a time with a cane (a stick I picked up) and when the door opens, I start yelling “This city isn’t safe! We were down in lowtown looking for antiques when these thugs ambushed us!”

“And?”

“Well… thanks to the master here, they came down with a rather severe case of the dead.”

“And…?”

“I… just thought you would want to know, is all.”

He slams the door in my face. I knock again and get directions for a rather secure place to stay for the night.

We meet up again and the Nobleman leads the way into Hightown, where we are stopped by the guard and I try to do the same guide/steward act before the party decides that it isn’t being very effective and they hand me a silence luna. The Nobleman says he is here from House Reizei, and they let him in with little to no questioning, and the rest of us with him.

We decide to stay in a slightly less prestigious inn, so as to not attract quite as much attention, and from there, we have 3 rooms: one for the Nobleman, one for the ladies, and one room in the servant’s quarters. We then begin to formulate our new plans; apparently Urgrim’s “subtle” information gathering has told him what he needed to know for his own personal mission, and that will take us to the twin cities of Ada and Nar. Lacking anything better to do, we decide to go along with the idea… especially because of what his quest IS: Urgrim seeks vengeance against the man who led a group of soldiers into his dwarfhold and slaughtered his entire family…

When Urgrim made his first try for revenge the first time they laughed at him, beat him, and lit him on fire. Having been a dwarf for the better part of the day, I can understand a little of what is driving him, and agree to assist. And now Urgrim knows the man’s name and station. He’s powerful, both martially and politically (though here those tend to go hand in hand…) and it’ll be a challenge to defeat him.

But first, we have to eliminate Tozi. Urgrim comes up with another plan and he needs my help for it… he’s going to make a bargain with the Brilliant Archers to strike Tozi down with a disease, and I know how to contact them and can speak their native language (Planar (Court) in case you’re interested) … and so I go off to find a person dying of disease. The most likely spot seems to be the refugee camps, (diseases come out of the mangroves often enough) and sure enough, I find a man in the final stages of Bonerot. I whisper my summons to a Brilliant Archer in his ear, tempting them with a bargain, and a short time later, the body of the man convulses with the sound of bones snapping as he sits up… and his neck apparently snapped, as his head is leaning with his ear against his chest.

Essentially, Urgrim gives away his Dwarven resistance to disease to have Tozi struck down with a plague. I identify our target as Grandmaster Tozi, administrator of the city and its environs so as to not hit the wrong target, and we try to up the ante with the fact that the plague would be starting in the soft nobility, where nobody expects it to come from… wouldn’t that be fun? We roll diplomacy and apparently succeed… he asks for Urgrim’s hand. As Urgrim is holding onto the head so that it’s at least facing us, we voice our confusion… “My mouth…” The spirit bites into Urgrim’s hand, shattering the man’s teeth, and Urgrim has lost his racial resistance to disease. We both have to roll fort saves vs disease (and Urgrim now without his bonus) but both get something VERY high. After we leave, I make a quick heal check to remove the tooth splinters from Urgrim’s fingers. The guard to hightown doesn’t want to let us back in because we don’t have the noble house’s seal I try to explain around it as “quite obviously the master doesn’t like me” and Urgrim does hand him the Rat Clan ear-bag, (they’ll make good chew-toys for the guard’s dog) so he decides to let it slide this one time. But we’d better have identification next time!

We get back to find Yhennon reading in the cart… I ask him what he’s learned, and apparently he’s been researching the origin of the celestial bodies, looking for some information about the Comet. What we can tell: The Moon was made as a prototype to the Sun by Femta, goddess of the forge (and dwarves), mostly for sizing. Then she forged the Sun. The Stars were made shortly before or in the early stages of the first Faerie War (depends on who you ask, one race of humans is still fighting it…) when the god Seseg was slain and his blood splattered against the heavens. (Seseg was a sun god)

As for the comet, the first time it appeared was at the beginning of year 0 of the current calendar, when the goddess of magic at the time, Igela, was slain by her daughter Tyntaragi and sister Tykanria… the current goddess of magic, Ibronka, didn’t come to power until 25 years later, at the beginning of year 1 of the calendar. Also? Each time the comet comes, its reign over magic lasts 25 years.

All very fascinating… I guess. At the moment, though, I have other concerns: Urgrim and I realized we forgot one crucial step when bargaining with the Brilliant Archer: That Tozi needs to be dead within a week. So it looks like we’ll have to try to hasten his death … quickly. Gav has been doing some information digging while we were out, and knows of a restaurant where Tozi has dinner frequently… which gives me a whole host of ideas as to how to deal with this situation. Yhennon does what he can to try to comfort and advise Jan on what to do now that we’ve basically uprooted her whole life...

We break to plan, plot, and scheme.

RdMarquis
2010-09-23, 03:51 AM
Cool fight scene. I hope you don't come to regret that deal with the Archers. The plot is getting good, and I'm looking forward to seeing how things play out.

Fayd
2010-09-23, 08:36 AM
Cool fight scene. I hope you don't come to regret that deal with the Archers. The plot is getting good, and I'm looking forward to seeing how things play out.

Oh, we most certainly will come to regret it, because they're the Fey. But we needed an edge and we have one now.

Fluffy the Orc
2010-09-24, 12:01 AM
Ooooooooh... making deals with the Fey? I can't imagine this will end well.

Also, the Nobleman ROCKS!

The_Werebear
2010-09-25, 01:13 AM
Session Five just finished. It was rockin'.

Anyway, here is a little Rhyme that Urgrim's been working up in his head.


Grandmaster Tozi,
Smelling awfully Rosy,
Limestone, Limestone,
What goes comes around.


Not Haiku, but then again, Urgrim's a St. Dain dwarf anyway.

flabort
2010-09-25, 02:40 PM
:smallconfused::smallconfused:

Keito
2010-09-26, 04:44 AM
Okay, the nobleman finally has a name, I'll get fayd to update that.

Even though that was the case at least 1 week ago. Sorry exams, plus any free time was devoted to my 360 and the shooting of the enemies in the butt with the underpowered weapons in codmw2 to show them they are inferior.

Also have really flushed out my character more.

Knight skills 4+int mod+misc per level, sigh, and the rogue is complaining about how he doesn't have enough skills with his 10+int mod, seriously?:smallsigh:

however I am very scary in teamfights when my ghandi die (<-proven) isn't rolling my attacks, rolling a 4 on 3 out of 6 rolls in a fight?
However since it is a ghandi die I can beat a DC 15 with a -2 mod to diplomacy :smallamused:

Also I love pub fights because breastplate is pretty much cheating, it's like going to a senior citizen/poor orphanage center for a fight and I LOVE IT!:smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin:

Also thanks for the support fluffy!

Fayd
2010-09-26, 10:21 AM
Knight skills 4+int mod+misc per level, sigh, and the rogue is complaining about how he doesn't have enough skills with his 10+int mod, seriously?:smallsigh:

To be absolutely fair: "Not enough skill points" is the lament of every rogue ever. Skill points are all I've got. I'm the squishiest party member (aside from Yhennon), can't wield martial weapons yet (which cost skill points...), don't have fabulous armor, and really only deal damage in combat if I get lucky. ...which, I'll admit, is frequent. But still. "Not enough skill points" is the second motto of the rogue. Right after "SNEAK ATTACK!"

Cade Rentyr
2010-09-26, 01:23 PM
To be absolutely fair: "Not enough skill points" is the lament of every rogue ever. Skill points are all I've got. I'm the squishiest party member (aside from Yhennon), can't wield martial weapons yet (which cost skill points...), don't have fabulous armor, and really only deal damage in combat if I get lucky. ...which, I'll admit, is frequent. But still. "Not enough skill points" is the second motto of the rogue. Right after "SNEAK ATTACK!"

You've not enough Skill Points!
You must construct additional pylons!

LordShotGun
2010-09-26, 06:42 PM
You've not enough Skill Points!
You must construct additional pylons!

You require more vespene gas Experience

Keito
2010-09-27, 08:52 AM
You require more vespene gas Experience

"Your Base is Under Attack!"

Enemy Thor Unit: "Shhh I am TRYING to sneak up on them!"

flabort
2010-10-04, 11:07 AM
So, is this forgotten, or will there be an update soon? :smallbiggrin:

Tam_OConnor
2010-10-04, 01:33 PM
Can't speak for Fayd, but the sessions have been on time.

What I can give you is Master Tozi's backstory.
Tozi was born Feng, to a family of no notable lineage, in the town of Greenore. Greenore abuts the !chan plateau, and was home to a prospering copper mine. While Talmar is best known for the quality of their steel, they do process other ores. Greenore was prosperous enough to warrant a stockade and a small garrison of Lion Talon armsmen to man it.

His family was poor, but not poor enough to accept their lot. Feng's father was frugal and was skillful at his job, raising himself from common miner to tunnel leader. His mother was fruitful, and bore three sons after Feng, the youngest seven years younger than Feng.

Feng often snuck away to watch the garrison drill: double broadswords cutting the wind, powerful legs propelling soldiers upward for singing downward slashes. Feng was entranced by their techniques, and began practicing on his own.

At length, Feng joined his father in the mines. When he was there, he displayed none of his father's talent for finding rich veins. More often though, he would disappear to train. His father's influence could only hold for so long, and Feng was removed from his position, his father demoted back down to miner.

His father confronted him in a rage, and Feng struck him, knocking his father's eye loose. Feng left Greenore, followed by roars that disinherited him. He traveled down the Talmar river in fits and starts, earning his way by odd jobs: acting as a thug there, winning a race here.

Eventually, he arrived in Talmar, only to be confronted by Lion Talon guards who demanded a toll. Having no money, Feng dismissed the possibility of swimming around the walls and entering by the harbor. He had little skill in the water, and he had only one set of clothes and a battered broadsword, which rust would not improve.

Rather than try to enter by subterfuge, or to lower himself to beg the entrance fee, Feng took bold action. He made a running leap, caught the lip of high wall and pulled himself on top of it. Feng was immediately confronted by the wall-guards, and managed to hold his own for a time. Eventually his technique failed him, and the training of the guards overwhelmed him. He was thrown into the dungeons, but news of his leap had spread and he was visited by the then-master of the Lion Talon, Ye.

Ye saw the fervor in Feng's eyes, saw how even Feng's inadequate self-training had shaped his body, and asked a question: "If I trained you, what would you do?"

Feng answered, "I would be a strong son, worthy of a father of your might."

Ye nodded and turned to the jailer. "Let my son Tozi out. I will pay his debt."

Tozi rose quickly through the ranks as a personal student of the master. He led raids and counter-raids against the !chan for five years, and traveled in Master Ye's stead to Nar. While in the capital, he exchanged gifts with the young master of the Pride school, Zhan. Tozi and Zhan sparred, and Tozi was amazed at being evenly matched with the young man, nearly ten years his junior. He complimented Zhan on the strength of his technique. Tozi presented Zhan with a suit of Talmari bluesteel plate, and received a gold-threaded whip in return.

Receiving news that Master Ye was dying, Tozi immediately returned to Talmar and stayed at his father's side until Master Ye's death. Tozi claimed the position of master, defeating his challengers and inviting them to stay and teach.

Rat clan influence steadily grew in Talmar. Some say this was with the sanction of Tozi, others point to it as a sign that the Lion Talon school was soon to be overthrown. Such is Tozi's life up to this point in time.

Fayd
2010-10-04, 03:30 PM
From Cade and myself: We had quite a few exams this week, though things should be on the move here shortly. Thanks for the patience, and I am sorry about the delay.

flabort
2010-10-04, 04:10 PM
'tis okay.
Just got a little worried with the lack of posts, is all.
But, nice to know there's a reason for the delay. And after all, who hasn't been able to do something because of a test?

Keito
2010-10-11, 04:41 AM
bump for great justice!

at least 1 session should be posted this week.

flabort
2010-10-11, 10:50 AM
Well, can't blame them for being busy. After all, its getting close to the monthly test season.

Fayd
2010-10-12, 10:41 PM
You. Have. No. Idea. (Well, you probably do, but this is just for emphasis.)

Thankfully, it is fall break next weekend, so time SHOULD be more accommodating.

Tam_OConnor
2010-10-13, 01:28 AM
As a liberal arts major, I just sit back and laugh. Then I go back to my cardboard box under the overpass.

I will note that this campaign has the potential to become much more political than it has been. We've got twenty-five years under the comet, after all.

MountainKing
2010-10-13, 10:00 AM
The obvious solution is simple: Urgim needs to get hammered, start shouting really loudly, then fly up to the comet and hit it with the Spirit Bomb. :smallbiggrin:

The_Werebear
2010-10-14, 08:23 PM
Your suggestion is noted.

I am now seriously considering taking Winddancer when I have the opportunity.

Keito
2010-10-17, 12:30 AM
@mountain

now I know, why suggestion of "urgrim should just jump and punch the comet out of existance came up this session thx :P"

Also apparently due to my actions I've been told that my alignment switched from chaotic neutral to chaotic evil. :( I REALLY was trying to avoid that while still trying to being chaotic any suggestions to fixing this??

Tam_OConnor
2010-10-17, 12:48 AM
No, Urgrim said that. You're going to trust the dwarf on a vengeance quest to say what evil is?

flabort
2010-10-17, 04:43 PM
:smallbiggrin: I wouldn't trust a dwarf, OR anyone on a vengence quest to define morality for me.
I'd trust an elf to do so less, though. :smallamused:

Fayd
2010-10-17, 04:59 PM
Though if you're really pressed for things, try hugging a puppy or two. :smallbiggrin:

The_Werebear
2010-10-20, 05:13 PM
Hehe, I'll second being an unreliable morality meter. After all, Urgrim did just headbutt legitimate authority on a hunch.

Kaulesh
2010-10-20, 11:11 PM
Hehe, I'll second being an unreliable morality meter. After all, Urgrim did just headbutt legitimate authority on a hunch.

Did he break any of the family jewels this time?

Fayd
2010-10-21, 12:23 AM
Did he break any of the family jewels this time?

Naw, it wasn't that good of a hit. But it accomplished the desired end goal: not getting caught.

Fayd
2010-10-23, 10:53 AM
Thank you all very much for your patience. Enjoy!

Chapter 5: A Brazen Attack. Or: Plots, Poison and Plague, Oh My!

We skip to the next morning. We plot for a bit and have a conversation with Bug. Urgrim wants a verbal contract assuring that he is fed and housed as long as he’s working for the Plan. Bug informs him that the Rats in the city have been debasing the Dwarven coinage with tin, and this makes Urgrim upset enough that he takes his alcohol off of the list of things that the Plan will have to provide for him. Immediately afterward, I go out to gather information about Tozi and his habits. We already know, thanks to Gav, that he frequents a restaurant called the Brazen Bowl, often with a lady friend. Which particular lady-friend varies by the day. His guard is light: it mostly consists of his students who have done well that week. Urgrim goes to stake out the Brazen Bowl, with Gav following shortly behind. The Ninja, The Nobleman, Yhennon, and Jan stay behind.

I find out that the lady-friend of the evening is Adelle, an independent courtesan with Peri blood (and thus, blue hair --“You gotta have blue hair”) known more for her prowess in ‘conversation’ than in the martial arts. They plan on eating at the Brazen Bowl tonight. Politically, there is no obvious successor to Tozi. Martially, Tozi is a very fast fighter, who fights using the Lion Talon double-broadswords, though he incorporates some elements of Wind Fist style into his style. I decide that, given my talents… a visit with Adelle may be in order. But if our plan is to work, I need to know the lay of the land at the Brazen Bowl, so I head back there and (unexpectedly, for me) meet with Gav and Urgrim. I relay what I know and they relay what they know of the geography of the restaurant.

The Brazen Bowl is a three story restaurant, with the kitchens below the actual structure in a (possibly) artificial hill. The first floor consists of private booths, the second floor has a large bronze or brass stage, and the third floor is mostly a balcony to see the stage, with more seating. Mission accomplished, for now, I transform into a young Peri girl with green hair and go to meet with Adelle.

As I’m walking away, a man exits out the kitchen door and begins to make his way on what appears to be a supply run. Gav tails him, while Urgrim continues his vigil (and his drinking.) Gav follows the man all the way to a warehouse in the merchant’s district. After waiting for a time, the man exits, carrying a very small package. He’s also carrying it quite carefully, as if it is poisonous or something. Gav follows him back to the Brazen Bowl.

Meanwhile, Yhennon was reading a bit more on the comet, and we learned that for the next 12ish years, it will progress from the eastern horizon to the western, whereupon it will change directions and begin to fly off the other way, traversing the sky again in another 12 years. Afterwards, he goes to speak with Jan, who is, understandably, still quite upset. He explains more of what is going on with her, bringing in the Lantern Archon and all of it, and they take a bit of a walk, getting lunch together in the merchant’s district. During the meal, Tam took a look at Yhennon’s character sheet and had him roll a d20. (He rolled poorly.) …Ominious... When paying for the meal, Jan still won’t touch any money. Yhennon brings that up far more tactfully than I did and gets the same answer I did. “It’s blood money, and it’s better to not touch any of it.”

I go to where Adelle makes her living, and am greeted by a rather surly guard. “I’ve come a long way to see Adelle!”

“She’s all booked for this evening.”

“No, not for that, I came to visit!”

“Let me guess. You’re her long-lost sister, right?”

“Me? Her sister? Of course not. I’m her cousin.”

A succeeded deception check later: “I’ll see if she’s receiving guests.”

It takes about an hour for me to actually get in to see her. She’s artfully lounging on a chair, and I, playing the excited young cousin, bounce in with “Adelle! Adelle!”

She doesn’t recognize me (obviously, as the person I am doesn’t exist, but I digress) and asks who I am.

I roll a quick deception check for a common Peri name… “I’m Mika’s daughter! I’ve heard so much about you! They talk about you all the time!”

“Well, it’s good to see that I’m famous back home…” Adelle is quite obviously bored.

“I… I don’t suppose you would want to have dinner tonight? I’ve heard of this lovely place called the Brazen Bowl!”

“Oh, that place… I eat there every week…”

“Every… week? … You must really be rich! Would you? I’ve come so far to see you…”

“I suppose I could…” (heavily hinting that she would rather eat her own foot than eat with me, which is actually just fine with me)

“Oh… I guess… I’m sorry for bothering you…” and I leave the room, looking obviously upset.

Inside, I’m actually quite pleased with myself as to how that went, and my mission was, one hundred percent, accomplished. During the conversation, I was studying her face and form so that, if I have to, I can use her face for the upcoming plot.

I meet up back with our small seditious group and we begin phase two: Shopping. I go and get what can pass for a cook’s outfit. It’s cheap, easy to find, and I pay for it myself. Urgrim, after borrowing some cash from Gav, goes to a rat catcher. They’re one of two groups of people in the city authorized to deal in poison, the other being alchemists.

“I’ve got a monster of a rat and I need some poison to get rid of him.”

“What kind of rat we talking here?”

“Two feet worth and smart as a devil. He’s got a taste for poison, knows when I’ve poisoned something. I need something concentrated and tasteless.”

“I think I’ve got what you need right here.”

Two hundred Luna later, Urgrim walks out with a poison that will deal 4 points of Constitution damage for a failed DC 16 Fort save that dissolves in liquid and is completely tasteless, with more saves needed later.

He hands me the packet and I ask them to help me find the right face for this job. Eventually, we settle on something completely nondescript… the most bland looking human you can imagine. I change my human racial ability score bonuses from +2 to CHA to +2 to DEX to help with the Sleight of Hand checks that are coming up.

I sneak my way into the kitchen in full cook garb purchased that very day, and only get a passing glance from the people in charge… My deception score, especially when attempting to pass myself off as a specific person, rocks. I explore the building for a bit, looking for ways in and ways out as well as the general layout of the building (for later…) and then make my way down into the kitchen, where I begin chopping vegetables. Poorly. (Nat 1-ed the Profession (Chef) check…) The head chef rather loudly reprimands me on my methods and I do a little better the next time, but he has me spin the roast boar. “But not too fast!” I apologize quickly - -

“What did I say?! Not too fast! You must be patient!”

I bow and apologize slowly and make my way to the boar while keeping my ears out for the name Tozi, or anything similar. Eventually, I overhear that a special dish is being prepared for Sifu Tozi’s dinner tonight; it was imported specially for him. Fried Basilisk Eyeballs. Bingo. I jump when I hear Tozi’s name and the head chef has me sit down, absolutely still, for 5 minutes.

Before that time is up, a loud disturbance comes through the supply door. Urgrim, acting more drunk than usual, has crashed through the door and is stumbling about, trying to make his way upstairs. He’s pretending to be so drunk that he cannot understand language… when he suddenly snaps a little out of it and “remembers” that he’s part of tonight’s entertainment. A juggler, in fact! SOMEHOW… they believe him, and he’s brought upstairs. But not before he nabs a rice dumpling and takes a bite out of it… and then he puts it back, leaving the head chef gaping in aghast horror. I make use of the very convenient Dwarven distraction and sneak up to the simmering basilisk eyes and stir them evenly and quietly… for a very long time. Nearly the entire meal, in fact. Midway through stirring, I feel a tap on my shoulder and see the Pink Ninja, who insists on asking me what dish I’m poisoning. I whisper “The fifth course! Shoo! I can’t draw too much attention.”

I wait until just before the eyes are about to go for their final steps of preparation (because the heat would do nasty things to the poison) and Sleight of Hand the poison in with a Fairy Godmothered roll for an absolutely huge check. The Basilisk Eyes are plated and brought upstairs. I bide my time, steal a kitchen knife with sleight of hand, and wait for the sixth dish to be going upstairs before I make any sort of move. On my walk through the first floor, I throw the cook’s hat into one corner and my apron under a table.

As I ascend the stairs into the dining area, I hear Urgrim… from the stage… call out “And now for the man I came here to get hit by! Sifu Tozi, if you would honor me?” Color me surprised… I didn’t think this was going to be this easy!

Tozi walks up to Urgrim, breathes a little more heavily he should be, coughs a little bit, and yet gets right into his standard Lion Talon pose and delivers a MIGHTY double-handed jump strike at Urgrim. Urgrim, however, still stands, though I can tell that that had to hurt. Tozi bows to our dwarf (still a little unsteadily.)

“Thank you Grandmaster Tozi! Everyone give him a round of applause!” Urgrim cries out to the gathered patrons. Everyone applauds Tozi and our dwarf as Tozi goes back to take his seat. When he gets about to the lip of the stage, I hurl the knife at him, sneak attacking and critically hitting him for lots of damage.

If you were surprised, you were in good company… so was the rest of the party.

Let’s backtrack to catch up with the rest of the party. The entire party desired to be there this evening, and Gav, the Pink Ninja, and Yhennon waited to watch the other arriving diners for a while before they decided to go in. Tozi and Adelle entered first, protected by three Lion Talon guards. Tozi is unarmored, though he does have a very impressive set of double broadswords in a single sheath at his back and a golden whip at his waist. They were followed by Juntao, a “respectable businessman” and his two gigantic Dhar guards. (The Dhar are as close to Vikings as you will find in our setting… and the shorter of the two was over eight feet tall.) They were followed by a Larlonite Purifier and a Taborite Monk... and this displeased me (the player) greatly. A Larlonite Purifier is an ordained priest of Larlon, god of healing and life. Essentially, a highly-qualified doctor. The Order of St. Tabor is the militant order of the church of Laeros, god of civilization, and are known for their brutal, and unique, halberds.

As the trickle of important looking people began to wane, the party entered the restaurant through their own unique means. The Pink Ninja simply ran up the side of the wall, jumped in through a balcony, and sat herself at an unoccupied table. The Nobleman simply used his status to get in, and he was seated at a comfortable “unoccupied” table. He slightly confuses the waiter by ordering two drinks. Yhennon and Gav take a while to determine the proper method to enter the Brazen Bowl. First, they consider trying to fake their way in as entertainment (an animal trainer.) Then, they consider simply leaping up to the second floor balcony and going in through there. Finally, Yhennon looks at Gav and says “You know what? Let’s just have dinner.” And so they stride right in through the front doors and are seated a table or two away from Tozi. They notice him cough a bit… and it’s the unhealthy sounding chest coughing. It would appear that the dwarf’s bargain has already taken effect…

Speaking of the dwarf, you already know that he entered the restaurant under the guise of an entertainer. This thoroughly confused the night’s scheduled entertainment, a young flautist of indeterminate gender. Urgrim simply asks that he… or she… play some exciting music for his turn on the stage.

The first course comes and goes with little ceremony. There’s some lovely flute music, some lovely food, with the courses planned by the Nobleman’s player; he’s very knowledgeable about food and this sort of thing, so the DM lets him design the courses to complement each other and Tozi’s main dish well.

For the record, when the Brazen Bowl employee came to usher the flautist to the stage, he lingered just a little too long in the waiting room and fixed the strange dwarf with just a little too suspicious a glance… one tackle and he finds himself not quite successfully faking unconsciousness. One very solid kick after that and he finds himself tied up under a table quite some time later.

In any event, during the second course, Urgrim shoos the flautist off the stage. “Welcome ladies and gentlemen! I am a new form of entertainment …a Dwarven Endurer! The idea is to find the sturdiest dwarf one can, and attempt to topple him in a single blow. We dwarves are famous for being tough as nails, and I’m iron among dwarves! Does anyone feel they can fell me?”

Before anyone can respond to the Dwarf’s challenge, Yhennon leaps to his feet, yelling “I have spent many years studying the human body! I will accept your challenge!”

Yhennon strides out on to the stage, studies the dwarf for a bit, and makes an Accurate Attacked punch to the dwarf’s favorite area of attack… for one point of damage. Urgrim berates him for trying such a tactic (and failing at it so hard) and asks one of Juntao’s Dhar bodyguards to try her hand… see if he’ll actually FEEL something!

Vaguely amused, the dhar winds up for a far mightier hit --about a third of his total hit points, to be approximate. “But I still stand, though it was a mighty hit lass!” he makes his way off stage to rest for a bit before trying that again. The flautist, traumatized that his… or her… career has him accompanying an insane dwarf asking for people to hit him, goes back to the stage to play another beautiful melody as the third course arrives. This whole time, the Pink Ninja has been bounding back and forth between the two sets of tables as well as spying on Tozi. Several times, she leaps over the heads of his personal guard… and they don’t notice a thing. The sheer number of times she pulls that off is comedic. Gav, seeking more information about my plan, has her go find me in the kitchen.

The fourth course arrives, and with it, Urgrim takes the stage. Immediately, Yhennon leaps to his feet and demands another try. “As the academic approach didn’t work, I’ll have to try something a little different!”

Yhennon, the middle-aged man, strength score of 9, backs up, and charges, jumps and power attacks down at Urgrim with his elbow, while yelling “FOR ACADEMIA!” He deals 8 points of damage, something his player is rather proud of.

“Better, but I’m still up! Next, why don’t we mix things up a bit!” He points to one of Tozi’s guards and to the Taborite, calling them up to the stage. “I’ll give the two of you a little time to discuss strategy. I’ll be waiting.”

The student is quite clearly terrified to be talking to the Taborite. She’s strong, famous, and apparently rather attractive for her age (she’s about 50.) Neither the crowd nor Urgrim can hear exactly what the Taborite is telling the bodyguard, but there are a lot of rather vicious hand movements involved. They synchronize their strikes, and Urgim takes a hefty amount of (nonlethal) damage from a double handed hit across the face from the student and a knee to the kidneys from the Taborite. Thankfully, he rages before the hit lands and therefore isn’t in any danger of going down. He thanks the two of them and hobbles off the stage, promising to be back when he can feel his back and legs again.

The fifth course is coming out by this point --which includes Tozi’s basilisk eyes. Gav, knowing what to expect from my chat with our Pink Ninja, walks casually over to the Taborite and the Purifier. After a polite exchange of greetings, he addresses the doctor: “It probably doesn’t surprise you that my friend there” gesturing to Yhennon, “is with the circus, and he’s asked me to come and speak with you. While the dwarf can take quite the beating, past the façade he’s certainly feeling the abuse. My friend was wondering if you might come and have a look at him?” The doctor kindly agrees. Gav thanks the Taborite for lending her companion, whom he then leads down into the booth area of the restraint with Urgrim.

“Most of this is internal, so there’s not a whole lot I can do, but…” with a little bit of work, Urgim is healed a little of his damage, and he stumps upstairs to where the Pink Ninja meets him and delivers some Ki-healing… which brings him nearly up to full. Meanwhile, Gav caught the Purifier in conversation (untrained diplomacy check success!) in an attempt to keep him occupied and away from the scene as Tozi takes our potent poison. When he begins to stretch the limits of his diplomacy skill, he thinks quickly and mentions that cough he had a session ago, and once again the friendly doctor is more than happy to give him an examination.

To Gav’s (and his player’s) mild distress, the Purifier informs him that he was right to have his cough checked; he can’t tell what it is without a full checkup, but there’s definitely more fluid in his lungs than there should be… He advises Gav to come see him in the morning at the inn where he and the Taborite are residing. Gav, somewhat subdued, thanks him, and the two return to the dining room.

Meanwhile, while Gav kept the doctor out of the room, Tozi popped both of the (poisoned) Basilisk Eyes down and a minute or so later clutches at his chest, coughing. Adele is a little concerned, but he pushes her away, gesturing that he’s fine. When the Purifier returns to his table (across the diameter of the room from Tozi) he is greeted by the Nobleman, who engages him and his Taborite companion in an engrossing conversation. Tag-teaming social skills for the win! :smallbiggrin:

Oh look, the dwarf is returning for another round; he makes a grand gesture toward Master Tozi and begins to speak…

FAST FORWARD

And back to me, running for my life through the crowd of shocked diners and bursting out the main door. Tozi, who to my utter astonishment is not dead, yanks the knife from his chest, charges the outside balcony and manages to catch me in one round with a single jump strike dealing 25 points of damage --exactly enough that if I’m not healed within one round… I will die. The Pink Ninja, the first to react in the chaos, chases after Tozi and Winddances as close as she can get to me to heal me. This happens to be balancing on Tozi’s head (the only square within range) but she performs the acrobatics check and brings me up to a point where I won’t immediately die.

Urgrim, being the lawful guy he is (he did make an oath to see this through) jumps from the second floor balcony to assist me. He used all his movement that round to get outside. Gav takes a similar approach, though he isn’t able to cross as much distance and he’s trying to maintain the image that he’s rushing to Tozi’s defense, not ours. The Nobleman, the Purifier and the Taborite get up and hurry down the stairs for the sane path to exiting the building. Juntao is protected by his massive Dhar bodyguards, but is looking on the scene with a completely blank face. Yhennon is mosty, like everyone else, standing in aghast horror. As the mass of people around him scramble about, most of them departing in high degrees of haste, he begins reaching for and downing every drink in his immediate vicinity. He also amazingly makes the fort save against the alcohol; in his own words: “Emerald Tower Drinking Parties.”

Tozi’s thought process, near as we can tell, went something like this: “I have a ninja on my head. I should do something about that.” He takes out the whip and uses it to catch the ninja and smash her into the ground. She’s largely in the same state I am (bleeding out) and things don’t look good.

Urgrim does what he can to assist. He lurches from crawl to charge to where Tozi is standing over us, and attacks him. Now, he didn’t roll very well on his chance to hit. He asks Tam if he would have caught Tozi flat-footed, which would have made all the difference. Tam decides to leave it to the flip of a coin. While singing “O Fortuna.”

Urgrim calls correctly. His wild swing connects, dealing 15 points of damage. Tozi’s spine was replaced with the pickaxe head… Urgrim killed him outright. As he falls to the ground, his bodyguards, such as they are, are just catching up through a main door of the restaurant. After watching in stunned silence as their leader falls before their eyes, they scream “KILL HIM!” and all charge Urgrim. They knock him unconscious… not that that was hard. He’d already taken a lot of non-lethal damage.

Then the Taborite comes out of the Brazen Bowl and roars “EVERYONE FREEZE! ON THE GROUND! NOW!” The force in her voice compels Tozi’s students to comply without question. Most of the rest of us were already there. The Purifier and Gav hurry up and, after quickly confirming that Tozi is deceased, start stuffing bandages into wounds to stabilize the bleeding folks… I LIVE! MWAHAHAHAHA!

Inside the restaurant, Yhennon has finished downing his drinks, and he decides to listen in on a bunch of people having a rather heated discussion next to him. Mostly the topics revolve around “There’s no clear successor” and “Oh gods! Can you believe it! Think of the news! We’ll be the talk of the town!” Yeah. Lovely town, Talmar.

Juntao walks casually out of the Brazen Bowl, analyses the scene for a bit, and then silently orders one of his bodyguards to take the Pink Ninja. The Taborite disagrees with this, and she and one of the Dhar nearly come to blows. The Nobleman intercedes, along with some help from Gav, to wait until the story of what happened has come to light. Juntao orders the Purifier to, now that everyone is either stable (or in the case of Tozi, dead) wake us up for questioning. He starts with the Dwarf. (Urgrim mutters something… unkind… about Bug)

“What happened tonight?”

Urgrim answers very honestly. He saw the knife, jumped down, and decided to help the fight.

The Pink Ninja is next, and she says she saw the knife, and hurried after Tozi and the assassin to help. Neither of them state explicitly whom they went to help.

Finally, they wake me. I wake and simply yell “DAMMIT ZIVIEL!” in Planar (Court) … and nobody seems to understand me. (We learned that Ziviel is Bug’s real name... when we asked him what his real name was, he snarkily said that we wouldn’t be able to pronounce it, not having the requisite language. When I asked him “Oh really?” in Planar (Court) he graciously supplied us with his name. Every time we use his real name Gav will insist we can just call him Bug.) They ask me the question they’ve asked the others: “What happened here?”

“Well, how far back are we talking?” I respond.

“The night is still young.”

Thinking quickly, I say (in Court) “Ziviel, get out here, and be careful… come down through the ground if you have to.” Gav had apparently had the same thoughts, for Bug floats out of the ground next to me almost before I’d finished speaking, to the varied surprise of everyone present (--feigned, in Gav’s and the Nobleman’s cases). “Introduce yourself.” Pause… I roll my eyes. “Please.”

He introduces himself. In Court. Roll my eyes again. “In Aurbeski, please?” He complies. “And whom do you serve?”

“I serve the Mistress of Planning, Sanselie.”

I direct a question at the Purifier: “Are you familiar with Sanselie? Can you explain to us what it is she does?”

The Purifier explains that essentially, she weaves and executes this mysterious Plan of hers, supporting the civilization of Laeros (god of civilization.) That last bit turned out to be a particularly helpful thing… I didn’t know that.

“Ziviel, can you explain why Tozi had to die?” I inquire.

“This man would have been a source of great chaos in the days to come. He has been eliminated before he could cause this chaos.”

So, I turn to address the Taborite. “So, ostensibly, we were protecting the city, and your interests with it.” …Roll Deception, did very well.

Juntao pipes up. “I accept your version of events. You are free to go, and you will not be blamed for what has happened tonight. However, she,” he indicates the Pink Ninja, “is coming with me.”

Uh-oh.

“And what is your interest with her?” I ask.

“She is not new to being an assassin. The last time she was in this city, she was hunting someone, and was told never to return. She has returned, and so, she must pay.” We find out that her original target was… him. Ah. Urgrim and I try to get her free by saying that she just sort of fell in with us, and that she really didn’t have any say in this due to Bug, but Juntao conters with the logic that, because of the Comet suppressing magic, everything was done of our own free will.

Thinking quickly, I say, “I have a bargain for you, with critical information that may indirectly save your life --something you would not have had were it not for her presence-- in exchange for her.”

Juntao is skeptical, but agrees to hear me out at least.

“Purifier, how much do you know of the Fey?”

“That they are vengeful.”

“Do you know of a species known as the Brilliant Archers?”

He grimaces. “They’re disease spreading spirits.”

“Earlier this week, I was visited by some of them. They said they were coming to ‘enjoy the fun.’”

I should have stopped there… but I was caught up by my own momentum. “The dwarf and I made a bargain with them --to try to keep them from entering the city…”

Failed deception check. Miserably failed. The Purifier, who is barely containing his considerable anger: “You’re lying.”

“Let me rephra-” Punch! and I’m unconscious again. Well, perhaps ‘barely containing’ is the wrong phrase for this instance. On the other hand, I managed to strain a holy man’s vow of peace! Good work for the evening.

Juntao tells Urgrim and the Pink Ninja (who has been covertly ki-healing herself back to full) that they’ve earned her freedom, after a fashion. “You have 15 minutes to leave the city. After that, anyone in the city will have free reign to kill you on sight.” He then very pointedly dismisses Tozi’s students, who, with one last glower at our trio of assassins, hurry off to their academy complex.

Urgrim responds with some snippet of snark that unfortunately none of us can seem to remember.

“14 minutes.”

Urgrim carries me back to the inn, waking me up along the way. I gather some of my stuff (I am leaving the biggest things, such as the mule) in the care of the rest of the party so I can escape the city as unnoticed as possible. I shapeshift into a form with a higher Constitution and another face. I walk up to the front gate and spin a story about my sick mother waiting for medicine out in the refugee camps. “She can wait until morning.”

“No she can’t!…Would 10 Luna help you change your mind?”

He lets me out through a small portcullis. Victory!

The Pink Ninja simply runs up a wall and vaults over the head of a guard. He notices… something… but doesn’t pay it any mind.

Urgrim gets to the inn and has a sudden revelation. Tozi looked REALLY familiar! Urgrim runs back to the Brazen Bowl and takes another look at Tozi’s face… sure enough; Tozi was one of the men who killed his family. With cursory explanations to the Taborite and Purifier, who were about to move the body, Urgrim says a ritual prayer to Rihissa, goddess of vengeance, drawing three figures in Tozi’s blood, and scratching one of them out. Part one of his quest has been fulfilled.

Then, Urgrim runs to the docks, finds a dinghy, slaps 5 luna down on the dockside and rows around the harbor walls, and is free of the city. We sort of meet up again, and wait for morning when the non-implicated half of the party will join us.

Because, to the sudden realization of astounding irony, exasperating for the character and endlessly amusing for the player, STILL nobody knows who Gav Jagger is. Session Break.

flabort
2010-10-23, 05:18 PM
Wait... :smallconfused:

At the end, when you said no-one knows who Gav Jagger is...
Were we supposed to be worrying about that?

Fayd
2010-10-23, 05:44 PM
Wait... :smallconfused:

At the end, when you said no-one knows who Gav Jagger is...
Were we supposed to be worrying about that?

The character is trying to become famous, I think. And despite this being his mission... he didn't get associated with the end results.

Cade Rentyr
2010-10-24, 10:03 AM
Wait... :smallconfused:

At the end, when you said no-one knows who Gav Jagger is...
Were we supposed to be worrying about that?

Gav's been asking pretty much everyone we meet if they've ever heard of 'the famous Gav Jagger' and getting shot down every single time. The reason for this is that I took the Unremarkable trait, that makes deception easier at the cost of reputation. Since he's already a swashbuckler, I wanted to go for a Captain Jack Sparrow-ish joke: "Has no one ever heard of me?"

So far, no one has. And in a twisted sort of way, Gav is extremely irked when he realizes that he's entirely the reason we just assassinated a city leader but he still doesn't get even a little famous for it. :smallannoyed: :smallannoyed: :smallannoyed:

:smallbiggrin:

flabort
2010-10-25, 01:09 PM
Ooooohh...
"Nobody" not meaning nobody in the party, but actually meaning no commoners or anybody who isn't in the party.

Ok, I get it now. Seeking fame and fortune, and being completely unable to attain the "fame" bit. :smallbiggrin:

Fayd
2010-10-25, 03:15 PM
Ooooohh...
"Nobody" not meaning nobody in the party, but actually meaning no commoners or anybody who isn't in the party.

Ok, I get it now. Seeking fame and fortune, and being completely unable to attain the "fame" bit. :smallbiggrin:

Or, ironically, the fortune bit! Money is NOT something we have in any great quantity.

MountainKing
2010-10-25, 03:24 PM
Or, ironically, the fortune bit! Money is NOT something we have in any great quantity.

Didn't you just get paid for your assassination job? :smallconfused:

Fayd
2010-10-26, 08:30 AM
Didn't you just get paid for your assassination job? :smallconfused:

I really wish so, but the assassination quest was given by a deity, and as such, there wasn't much in the way of material reward.

flabort
2010-10-26, 12:29 PM
Too bad XP isn't really tangible, then, right?

Fayd
2010-10-26, 12:39 PM
Too bad XP isn't really tangible, then, right?

We did level up from this, which is nice.

stabbitty death
2010-10-29, 07:00 PM
in your first campaign did you take a feat to get those 2 cantrips at will, and if so what is it called?

Fayd
2010-10-29, 07:40 PM
Nope, it was just a part of how the old magic system worked. Things are a little different now that we've moved to something completely different, but... Yeah. No feat. :smallbiggrin:

stabbitty death
2010-10-29, 09:42 PM
too bad, presdidigitation at will=win:smallbiggrin:

stabbitty death
2010-10-29, 09:44 PM
how do you determine the challenge level of monsters?

Fayd
2010-11-01, 09:56 AM
Ummmm... Not sure. Tam?

flabort
2010-11-01, 10:56 AM
Say, uh, How's morchana doing?
I know she's in a different game, but, it would be nice to know.

Kaulesh
2010-11-01, 01:03 PM
Say, uh, How's morchana doing?
I know she's in a different game, but, it would be nice to know.

Seconded, and Fluffy.

Fayd
2010-11-01, 06:38 PM
Next chance I get to talk to them, I'll ask!

Chapter 6: It’s Not a Matter of Where He Grips It

We leveled! A lot of people got fun new toys from class features or feats (I mostly just got skill synergies. Rogue 2 is a little boring, but Rogue 3 makes it all better!)

Urgrim, the Pink Ninja, and I spend the morning sitting out in front of the city waiting for the party to arrive. They, for various reasons, take their sweet time leaving. Yhennon goes to buy a healer’s kit while Gav and the Nobleman (now revealed as Reizei Yukio, Reizei being his surname, and I will now start calling him by one or the other) paid a social call to the Larlonite Purifier and the Taborite monk. Gav also wanted to take the Purifier up on the offer of getting a thorough checkup.

This turned out to be a very good idea. The Purifier took 20 on the heal check and diagnosed Gav with a case of a disease called the “Weeping Pox.” Acts and spreads similar to a cold, has the nasty oozing sores of something like smallpox. Tends to leave permanent scars, and once you’ve had it you gain immunity –like with chicken pox. Nasty thing, especially if you get a particular strain later in life. The Purifier gave Gav a treatment and instructions on how to prepare more when Gav remembered that Yhennon is a skilled healer.

With their errands complete, the other half of the party (and Jan) decide to leave the city. They meet up with Urgrim, Ninja, and myself, and we begin to make our way up the switchbacks that lead back up onto the plateau. Towards evening, Tam has us make observation checks, and we, as one, turn back to the city. A large group of people with weapons left through the front gate of the city and were beginning to surround the refugee camp. After they had finished surrounding the camp, they lit it on fire and began cutting down the refugees. After a very short time, the entire camp is destroyed. As the soldiers reform and march to the front of the gate, they are all killed by a hail of arrows from the gatehouse.


It would appear that someone is taking some rather extreme measures to protect the city from plague and exercise his newfound power at the same time, as well as potentially eliminating his competition --those soldiers definitely looked more Lion Talon than Rat Clan. It was a great move. Terrible, yes, but great.

And there’s nothing we can do other than shudder and move on. We leave Talmar at our backs (Gav makes sure to spit in its direction before it falls out of view) and head towards Rimtown along the caravan route, making sure to stay away from the village we “helped” on our way in. We’re not sure if it is necessarily a safe place to be, what with us hypothesizing that the plague markers helped attract the Brilliant Archer’s attention. Yhennon is performing Heal checks on Gav to help him throw off the disease along the way, and he is doing very well --Gav winds up shaking it off before it even really gets started. Along the way, we see a Lion Talon guardhouse. We’re running low on food, so we decide to trade what we have (a massive amount of booze from the barfight) for food. There’s only one guardsman here, and he’s more than willing to accommodate a trade. After the trade, just as the guardsman is beginning to drink from the first bottle, Urgrim tells him that Tozi is dead.

Cue spit-take. When he learns that Juntao is almost certainly in control of the city the guardsman promptly decides to desert and head north. Then again, upon hearing that we’re heading that direction ourselves, he figures he might as well join us. This means only one thing --a near-seraphic cry of joy resounding in the hearts of every adventurer: “STUFF!” We strip the guardhouse of everything valuable and all of its supplies (which comes out to a decent supply of food and several sets of leather armor and double-Talmar-broadswords --standard Lion Talon armaments) and begin making our way to Rimtown with our new friend Gao, formally of the Lion Talon. He doesn’t have any PC levels but he’s definitely built like a fighter, so in our spare time we take turns sparring with him --yes, even Yhennon goes a round on occasion, if only for the sake of learning how to handle himself better in melee.

…We only get a few days out though, before we have to stop. Urgrim and I both caught the Weeping Pox.

Personally, I blame Gav. (In all actuality, it was probably Tozi’s dead and diseased body or our foray into the refugee camp to bargain with the Brilliant archers, but this way is more fun.) I eat some damage (to both my Constitution and hit points) the first day of the disease, and immediately ask Yhennon for help. (Yhennon has already had the disease as a child, so he’s in no danger.) The first day, it doesn’t quite work and I eat a second bit of damage (thankfully, I can increase my constitution. The group decides to stop for a time until we’re better, and Yhennon works on healing us up. His dice are HOT. He rolls 3 nat 20s in a row to help Urgrim and I throw off the disease. (There were also several nat 20s for Gav’s treatments.) On top of his already high Heal modifier… we’re back on our feet and mostly back to normal after a week or so of travel.

We realize that the caravan route isn’t being particularly rich in food for us (in fact, being forced to scavenge for food and slow down for the pox turned an 8-day trip into something closer to 14), so we decide to go offroad a bit and find a village to purchase some food. Urgrim knows of a village somewhere along a branch of the river leading to Rimtown. Jan’s heard of it, and happens to actually know where it is. We leave Gao flexing menacingly at the cart while we see what we can negotiate, which turns out to be a fair share, actually; the village is willing to provide food and transportation to Rimtown for us for the cart, the mules, and some swords and armor from the Lion Talon Guardhouse. We were rather pleased that the cart got us so much… We weren’t expecting it to have much resale value!

There’re only a couple speed bumps in the plan: Gav is adamantly opposed to giving up his mule, Git (“He may be a dumb ass and an ugly git but he’s the best companion I’ve had for years now. No, I’m not forgetting about you,” he says, tapping the side of his head irritably) and I have a small attachment to Pugnox, (though I’ll let him go if things are too difficult.) After suggesting butchering the mules for food --twice-- Urgrim comes up with a rather ingenious solution. He constructs two harnesses and puts the mules out over the side of the raft. One would think the animals would be uneasy swaying suspended over open water, but Git (at other times known as Stupid Git, Smelly Git, Ugly Git and Lazy Git, Gav proudly informs us) hardly bats an eyelash, and Pugnox… Well, after surviving (probably) a few centuries of Fey amusement on their home plane Pugnox is fairly convinced everything is an illusion anyway, especially concerning his master, yours truly. :smalltongue:

While the boat owner goes to go get someone to pilot the boat for us, Gao begins gathering up and concealing as many swords as he can, leaving only 2 behind (because we did only promise swords --we creatively failed to specify beyond the plural :smallamused:). Reizei, who is handling things on the other side of the cart, suddenly asks Gao if he’s wearing armor.

“Yes?”

“Is your armor wearing armor?”

…:smallamused:…

And so we only leave 2 swords and a single set of leather armor behind.

The trip is largely uneventful… until the last day, when we feel an earthquake strike and the river quite suddenly begins to swell. Our boatman is quite skilled and he manages to ride the wave just fine. (Though Gav does laughingly bestow his mule with his new nickname of Sopping Git, getting a tail flick to the face for his trouble.) We come around the bend headed into Rimtown and are a little surprised by what we see.

Or, perhaps more accurately, what we don’t; the city is gone, and in its place, there’s a large waterfall where the lake has apparently begun draining into the mangroves below. I’m of the opinion that there’s nothing to be gained here, so I want to move forward. The party desires to at least poke around for a bit, and they outnumber (and outvote) me, so they get off the raft and explore. Our boatman heads back upriver. Looking down at the mangroves, we can see the destruction of the city, and several people notice something very surprising: people are moving down there... and not the kind of twitching of the mostly dead, but honest to goodness walking around. They appear to be the students of the White Crane school, based on their robes, and Yhennon decides to go pay them a visit… Bloodhawk regained the ability to fly when he leveled up, and it’s only 4000 or so feet down.

Down below, the White Crane Master, in armor with huge ornate wings attached to the back is drilling his students as well as trying to have them gather supplies from the remains of the city. In short order, Yhennon and the Master devise a plan to get the students back up to the top of the plateau. The Master, as frustrated as Yhennon is by the comet (if it wasn’t there, the wings on his armor would work and he could fly out of the situation) orders his students out of the trees… Every one of these students has the feat Winddancer, making gravity an option --so long as you’re standing on something solid at the end of the round (at feat-level base). We (the party) are going to gather rocks and drop them down at a steady pace so that the students (and the Master, of course) can leap from rock to rock and climb up the cliff. It’s only 4000 feet or so. Jan, being the only one amongst us with ranks in perform, keeps rhythm for us.

The party begins making preparations for this, with Urgrim, Gav, Gao, and Reizei gathering rocks. I’m trying to gather information from any Fae in the region, but, as has been typical thus far, I’m getting nothing… aside from the fact that there’ll be a waterfall spirit here in about a century or two. Yhennon, also wishes to help with the gathering rocks process, but he doesn’t have many reliable methods of breaking rocks apart. His most powerful weapon is Bloodhawk’s face, after all. He does ask if he would be able to fly up with some big rocks and drop them to break them into smaller rocks, but as Reizei’s player slyly put it: “It’s not a matter of where he grips it…”

“…it’s a simple matter of weight ratios!” chimes in the rest of the group.

On the way up, 5 students missed a rock, which meant missing a Winddancer step, which would have meant plummeting to their dooms. The Master, probably after rolling his eyes and muttering something about training, waited, caught a falling rock, and threw a rock to each student to get them back in the ladder. 4 of the 5 manage to recover their Winddancing stride, but one stumbles and continues to fall. Bloodhawk tries to catch the guy… and the poor NPC probably would have survived had he not broken his leg on Bloodhawk’s back. Ker-splat… :smallfrown:

Bloodhawk, feeling the impact himself and unable to reattempt the rescue, flies back up to the cliff, where he requires some healing before reverting to human state.

We deliver our report about what’s happened since we last saw each other, while Gao tries to hide his origins (and his rather distinctive swords). The Master, in addition to saving 4 of his flailing students and getting back in the ladder himself just fine, did all this while carrying someone; a new student, a woman without the Winddancer feat in really nice bronze chainmail apparently was carried down by the Master when the town collapsed, and he carried her back up. Urgrim seems to suspiciously recognize her and has me try to talk to her to glean some information, to see if she’s one of the people on his list. I can’t really get much out of her other than where her armor came from: Hoboblin smiths who delivered their goods to Ada (or Nar) through the !chan plateau. The !chan are a race of people still fighting the Faerie War. The Hobgoblins are the “Bronze Fist of the Fey Courts.” Yet somehow they got commerce through? Something is fishy here, but there’s not enough for me to make a call on.

We break about here for the evening.

Tam_OConnor
2010-11-02, 02:03 PM
I don't use the Challenge Rating system anymore. Mainly because with the new system, opponents of equal level are a fairly good challenge (since the various monster types have their own level progression). The only other thing I have to keep in mind is how powerful the individual classes are:
Humanoids: 10 points
Animals: 15 points
NPC Classes (Adept, Armsman, Expert): 20pts
PC Classes and most monsters: 25pts
Dragons, Outsiders and Undead prestige classes: 30pts

There's also the optimization angle: I can build monsters/NPCs to be synergistic and whatnot, or not. For horses, for example: your average riding horse isn't that well optimized. Your average warhorse is devoted to milking every extra point out of its identical point value.

But in general, I just eyeball it. The PCs taking out Tozi was one of those things that they really had to ponder: trying to go toe to toe with him took two characters to negatives in as many rounds.

On Morchana: Her new character is Brunhildr, a Dhar Valkyrie Swanmay trapped in the mad, mad world of the Underdark. She's turning to alcohol to deal with it, as pushed on her by the ship's cook, Kiaran. Kiaran's a drow mage with a vow of indulgence. A few sessions back, Kiaran painted the town red, and visited some truly strange establishments. All I'm going to say is auto-erotic self cannibalism. Kiaran has ties with Vinnie, the attercop ex-slave who makes his home in the crow's nest, from which he occasionally catches bats. Jiles (played by Fluffy's player) is the resident mad surgeon, with a set of enormous bunny ears grafted on. He's got at least two more grafts in the docket. His mother had strange taste in men, and he could charitably be called a half-zombie. Jiles is hunting an enormous orange whale, Gurgatron, who ate his dog, Nemo. Steering the ship is the merrow Pulse, a prince among his people. His dad was around when Aurbesk sunk beneath the waves. Pulse has a brother named Adanar, which creates some interesting implications. Until recently, they were also accompanied by the demigob Jaebu, who has since retired from privateering to wander the weeds (player got tired of him, is rolling a new character).

To date, they've captained the dwarven slaver Gotta Catch 'Em All as a prize crew for the dreaded pirate No-Beard. After arriving in port, No-Beard informed them about a drow treasure fleet, and they sailed out to ambush it. While waiting in ambush, they signed a deal with the dwarven privateer Kelad, securing a place in his battle-line. During the battle, our 'heroes' took possession of the elven holk The Silky Hammock, and sailed the treasure ship back to their home port, dealing with the horrible curse laid upon the mountains of treasure in the ship's hold. That treasure went towards buying them a modified surfacer vessel, fitting with a drow propulsion system, submersible capability and extra-dimensional interior.

Morchana
2010-11-02, 05:56 PM
On Morchana: Her new character is Brunhildr, a Dhar Valkyrie Swanmay trapped in the mad, mad world of the Underdark. She's turning to alcohol to deal with it. . .

I have also helped to melt a ghost and have set up a blacksmith shop on the ship. I think I am the only good-aligned character on the ship. It's a terrible place, and not even that seaweed grog makes it any better. . . and the spiders! :smalleek: Ick! :smallyuk:

I did go to an opera and got paid to kill convicted criminals on stage. It was glorious. :smallsmile:

flabort
2010-11-02, 06:16 PM
demigob
Got a typo, there, Tam. :smallbiggrin:

Gotta Catch 'Em All
What a coincidence! I was just watching the series on Youtube!



So Fluffy's player is playing a half-zombie with Bunny ears! :smalleek:
That's... That's... That's got more potential for hilarious than an "omni"-vore.
:smallbiggrin: :smallbiggrin: :smallbiggrin: :smallbiggrin:

Tam_OConnor
2010-11-02, 06:41 PM
No, no, that's not a typo. There are three kinds of goblinoids: Goblins (also called dinner), Hobgoblins (the civilized sort) and Demigobs (Bugbears; or goblin-ogres).

Did I mention the part where the reason Jiles has bunny ears is because they killed a twelve-foot tall bunny that oozed cuteness? (Not literally, but its DR was fluffed as 'you just can't bring yourself to hit something this cute') It's a little bit silly.

RdMarquis
2010-11-04, 12:11 AM
Nice to see you pulled of killing Tozi, and that was an awesome way of getting up a mountain.

On another note, the secondary campaign has one of the weirdest cast lists I've ever read. I'm not sure whether to laugh or be creeped out. :smalltongue:

Fayd
2010-11-04, 06:29 PM
Nice to see you pulled of killing Tozi, and that was an awesome way of getting up a mountain.

On another note, the secondary campaign has one of the weirdest cast lists I've ever read. I'm not sure whether to laugh or be creeped out. :smalltongue:

Aye, I'm still surprised it worked! (The killing Tozi bit. And the getting up the plateau bit.)

The cast does sound hilarious. From the bits I hear of things, the campaign is full of all kinds of silly.

Fluffy the Orc
2010-11-05, 12:11 AM
Yeah, Adanar is Tam's serious campaign, Wispwater is Tam's silly campaign - and I think we have only scratched the surface of what is to come.

Don't worry, I've been taking notes about what's been happening each session in the Wispwater; we just need to turn my chicken scratches into a story and then there will much enjoyment for everyone.

Back to Adanar --> I think we can all learn a valuable lesson here. Don't mess with Martial Arts Masters. . . unless of course you have poison, daggers, and a drunken dwarf on your side.

The_Werebear
2010-11-11, 04:32 PM
Seconded on the martial arts thing.

Getting kicked in the face hurts.

flabort
2010-11-12, 10:35 PM
Fluffy, No matter which of your persona we're talking about, your so-called "chicken scratches" must really hurt. Like, half the face gone? :smallbiggrin:

Feichi
2010-11-14, 05:58 PM
Fun little preview: the bird is now two levels higher than the mage... and is large sized.

Horse-sized bird. Now... what do birds eat? ...what do giant birds eat? Ta-dah, preview-fu!

Kaulesh
2010-11-14, 08:22 PM
Horse-sized bird. Now... what do birds eat? ...what do giant birds eat?

Whatever they want! (http://instantrimshot.com/)

flabort
2010-11-15, 02:42 PM
When I first read that, it looked like "house" sized bird. a "horse" sized bird isn't as scary... but it's still scary enough.

Fayd
2010-11-15, 10:24 PM
Chapter 7: Quandary in Solace Or: Another One Bites the Dust!


The White Crane school (and their guest) leave to the north. We converse with the Master a little bit before he leaves, find out where he and his students are going --off northward to ‘get some peasants’ so he can rebuild Rimtown-- and we get our next mission: Find out who is in control of what. We also finally remember to do formal introductions: The Master of the White Crane, Master Nianzu, and his guest, the Mistress Liang. They depart, Winddancing over the river. We… are not so lucky. The Pink Ninja could get across, along with Yhennon (or rather Bloodhawk), but the rest of us are stuck for a bit. The rivers in our way are slowly dropping as their output over the waterfall exceeds their input. We estimate it will take a couple of days for it to drop, so we stay and hunt in the area, gathering enough food to hopefully make it up to the next significant town without having to do too many more Survival checks along the way. Yhennon, being able to go up and down the cliff at will, explores the destroyed town looking for useful things. He only manages to find a box of clothing and a large amount of hemp (meant for rope, just unwoven as of yet) over the course of two days. We ask Jan if she wouldn’t mind making the hemp into rope. With a sigh of “I suppose it’s not too late to learn another profession…” she gets to work. And rolls a nat 20 on the craft check, producing about a hundred or so feet of decent rope. We stare in dumbfounded amazement when we get back with our hunting that night… “That’s amazing Jan! Where did you learn to do that?” I ask.

“It’s a little like braiding hair?” she sheepishly responds. Whatever the reason, she did good work.

Once the river has dropped a bit, we ford it; using some rope to help guide ourselves and the mules… it takes us the rest of the day to get to another river and cross it. It’s a DC 5 strength check, and nobody fails (though Reizei got rather close. He nearly lost a boot.) We spend our time alternately starving, marching, and hunting our way to the next town on our path: Solace. The town is the retreat of the “king,” as well as a quiet place for rich nobles.

Along the way, we get to a point where two rivers used to meet (as one of them is now flowing the other way, well… yeah.) There’s a rice farming village here, and they’re… paranoid. To say the least. They won’t let us in, but they do bargain with us from over the top of their freshly constructed wall. We trade away some booze, some weapons, and some of our newly crafted rope to get food, a boat, and once we remember it, a boatman. The town has been having some major trouble with bandits, and we offer to help, but they don’t seem inclined to believe us. The boatman, a shaggy haired fellow named Wu, is informed that he “shouldn’t come back until they’re sure he’s not dead.” Or something like that. He’s just as confused as we were.

We take our time going upriver, but we have enough food for all of us, so it’s an enjoyable trip, at least as compared to the trip thus far. I spend some time trying to gather information from the local Fae… the most significant of which is a rice pixie. They’re small, insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and not very bright. They don’t really know anything new, but they are the most significant Summer Fae I have met so far.

Which is really a disturbing concept, if you stop and think about it, because we are approaching the height of summer and I’ve been looking for them at every opportunity. These things are only Summer Fae because it IS Summer. But, even though they know NOTHING that can aid my cause, I ask them about their interests (the plants and flowers) and they buzz around me for hours telling me every little inanity about the fields.

The trip up to Solace is rather quiet and uneventful. Once there, we have Gao and Wu watch the raft, while I don the appearance of a butler (with the nasty white robe from the city, but it’s the best I’ve got to look the role) and we all approach the city through the artificial hill in front of it.

Once we get to the front entrance, a pair of hill dwarves (human/dwarf hybrids) swing out into our path and ask us for our business. Between Reizei and myself, we bluff our way past as upper-class travelers seeking rest. The entire structure is designed to protect against assault. It’s dark, so much so that only those of us with low-light vision or another supernatural sense can really see for any amount of distance (and Urgrim’s the only one of us with an applicable one) but whatever the case, the entire structure is designed to be very difficult to get through if the dwarves don’t want you here. The tunnel is curved to prevent ballistae from being effective, while the walls and ceilings are covered in murder holes.

At the end of the tunnel, we send a runner into the city to find (hopefully) a guesthouse of House Reizei or at least someone who might possibly be willing to entertain us.

I suggest having the rest of us take a tour of this lovely little bastion while we wait. Gav stays behind for our reply. The tour is… odd. Our guide, another hill dwarf, won’t really say anything, which leaves it up to Urgim, the only one of us who can even begin to understand the dwarven mind, to explain things. He does so moderately well, but gets more and more sullen as the tour continues, eventually ceasing to explain things and continuing on in silence. When we meet up again with Gav, Urgrim requests leave and Reizei grants it to him. (The rest of us are posing as his entourage, as we lack anything near the political clout to be past the front gate here otherwise.)

While there is no representative or holding of House Reizei in Solace, we are offered a place to stay by one Baron Lucan, someone apparently sponsored by the Lady Lillis. I don’t know if I should be worried the name Lillis or not… but she’s not apparently home at the moment. She left on urgent business to another continent recently. The manor is nice, and the servants are rather gracious. The Baron himself is ancient, and is currently occupying himself with a rather large book. In fact, most of the walls of this manor are covered in bookshelves. We make our formal introductions, and sit to talk a while (they bring out one too few chairs, the one problem with Hide in Plain Sight. Gav very specifically ignores his seat to go study the tomes and almanacs so the Pink Ninja has somewhere to sit). Yhennon and Jan take a fascinated look around the room at the volumes on the shelves. …Yhennon spots something on the shelf that has him flabbergasted. Sitting on the shelf are the PERSONAL LAB NOTES of Indar the Seventh, the Last Mage-King of the Varaz. (A fallen Empire of magic users.) Jan spots something else that is equally amazing: A book on !chan ritual magic detailing their rather nasty and effective anti-fae rituals. (“They don’t MAKE written accounts of these magics! How did you find this?!”) There’s even a book on The Ecology of Genasi by some Ruby Tower mage, assisted by an Emerald Tower mage, with divinations provided by the Diamond tower, though that isn’t terribly interesting to our case, all things considered. (Easter egg…)

When Baron Lucan freely lets them browse his vast collection, they are in heaven. They spend the rest of the day (and a good portion of the night) reading and translating books back and forth for each other as Yhennon speaks ancient Varaz, and Jan knows !chan. The kindly Baron Lucan gives us all new clothes (I even get a nice scholar’s outfit, complete with what is basically a bishop’s hat, robe, and stole!) and feeds us for the evening. I spend time integrating myself with the servants of the house, trying to pick up any information I can. The only bit of new information I learn is that the “king” has “left” suddenly.

Gav gathers information around the town, and notices an odd pattern: There’s music going on. All the time. And it’s never overlapping, even by a second, nor is there ever a gap. People just suddenly break out into song while walking down the street. Weird.

In any case, we learn a good deal more about the city: the main part (almost all of town) is the noble’s district, which is hemmed in by a very thick wall riddled with all the facilities needed by the town guard --a force almost entirely composed of dwarves, oddly enough.

The Martial School of Five Point currently rules in Solace. The school concerns itself with the manipulation of energy within the body; they can block it to inflict some nasty statuses (Basilisk Style, similar to Ty Lee’s fighting style in Avatar: The Last Airbender) or they can ease its passage (Unicorn Style, the healing martial art). The School’s leadership is hereditary. The current Master, Egil, is too young for his position, not yet nearly as talented (a leader or a fighter) as his late father was. Partially as a result, the Five Point school is losing both students and influence, and their control of the city is starting to be challenged by Ikini the Architect, a eunuch mage and the leader of the resident population of hill dwarves.

We’ve yet to see Urgrim at all… Turns out that he spent his night drinking himself into a stupor. The tour of the hill dwarf homes reminded him a bit too much of his own lost family. He’d been relatively sober the entire trip up from Talmar to Solace; at the first tavern he can find he quickly makes up the difference. He drank FAR more than he could pay for and woke up in a completely dark holding cell. He owes the management 50 lunas by the time he leaves the city or … well… let’s not think about that.

While he’s sleeping off his bad hangover in the prison pits, the rest of us go our separate ways in the morning, and ironically most of our ‘separate’ ways lead to the Five Point Academy, for various different reasons (Though Jan and Yhennon remain behind in the paradisiacal library, absorbed into the greater Nerdvana. We’re fairly certain they haven’t slept or eaten. Gav is fairly certain they haven’t noticed). When we get there, the students are practicing with the Master Egil, and Baron Lucan, The Pink Ninja, and Reizei join them. Of course, Reizei has absolutely no idea what he’s doing, but he tries to stay in the back and remain mostly unnoticed. Urgrim also meets us here, and he tells me that one of his family’s murderers is here --one of them was wearing Five Point Academy robes. From what he could remember of appearances, the man of the hour could be any one of three people present today… two students or the master himself. I promise to investigate for him, as I tend to have a bit of a lighter hand in these sorts of things.

After the class completes, Egil has a chat with Baron Lucan and Reizei… he doesn’t want me to listen in on it, so I don’t. Next, he speaks with the Pink Ninja, surprised that she knows so much about his school, and especially that she learned in Talmar. (In fact, she can tell that he doesn’t know much more about the style than she does. He is a little more versed… but not much.) Finally, the Master speaks with me, and I come as a bearer of news. I begin to inform him of what happened with Tozi before he decides to take the conversation indoors.

Urgrim, meanwhile, is steadily boring a hole through any of the three people he can with his glare, sitting out in the middle of the practice field. Some students try to get him to move, but when he curtly asks them if they need the exact space he’s standing in, they decide to make a point of sparring around his unmoving form. As the style focuses on precise hand motions, it’s actually rather good practice. And so long as Urgrim continues to remain completely still, he’s almost guaranteed to not get messed up physiologically.

The conversation with Master Egil… could have gone better. I accidentally contradict myself a couple of times, but Reizei picks up the slack and we manage to at least come off as not totally threatening. Thanks almost entirely to Reizei, in fact. Well, THEY don’t. I do. But… We even manage to get a job out of it. Master Egil wants the same thing that Master Nianzu (the White Crane Master) wants: information as to who is currently in control of what. He even lends us his yacht and gives us 80 luna to provision ourselves.

Now, this isn’t to say that I’m a COMPLETE social failure this time around: I do manage to get out that he does at least know all of the other masters, and is none to upset by Tozi’s death. He wasn’t much of a nice guy. He briefly alludes to traveling with the other Masters for a time, and that’s all I need for my suspicions to be confirmed. When I get outside, I inform Urgrim that the Master is indeed one of his targets, but urge him to think this through: he seems to have felt genuine remorse about the situation (at least from what I could gather about his mannerisms) and… well, if anyone is going to be able to give him more information, Egil is it.

Now, we broke the session right here… however, Urgrim’s plan was to go do his vengeance quest without the rest of us, so, in the interest of expedition, he and Tam decided to do this bit this session. Urgrim waits until we have left the town so that we will not be connected to… whatever happens. Nevertheless, we left Gao, Wu, and the raft behind so that he could get to the next town and rejoin us. Once we’re gone, Urgrim waited until Egil left his tower to confront him, and it turns out my gut was right, on most counts too. Egil felt true remorse for what happened, and for what it’s worth, he didn’t kill any dwarves. “You didn’t stop them either.” Urgrim notes.

“What could I do? Zhan could kill me with one hand!” Egil replies. Ah, association by peer pressure; it seems most of those involved were both shameless monsters and quite a bit more powerful and experienced than our newly-named Five Point Master.

Urgrim, will not be placated so easily. Egil, however, has had enough. “I’ve never wanted this anyway.” He agrees to disappear, to essentially “die” to the world, give up everything he has, and give Urgrim the names of everyone else involved in the murders. Urgrim asks for some blood to repay the debt, and Egil offers his arm. Urgrim is, all things considered, rather gentle. Urgrim leaves the Five Point Academy with Egil’s bloodied robe (its owner strangely relieved to have ‘died’) and another step on his vengeance quest completed.

Alleine
2010-11-16, 03:53 AM
Wow. So how many people does Urgrim have to kill in order to have his revenge, and are they all basically masters of a martial art? Seems like it could be a wee bit tough.

Fayd
2010-11-16, 09:41 AM
Wow. So how many people does Urgrim have to kill in order to have his revenge, and are they all basically masters of a martial art? Seems like it could be a wee bit tough.

I think it's 6. And no, they're not all masters of a martial art. One of them is a master of a gish school (a magic AND martial art.) Though it appears that that one is retraining to become a master of a martial art. And they're almost all masters of a city now. So, a fair number.

Kaulesh
2010-11-16, 11:13 AM
So Urgrim is basically a medieval Travis from No More Heroes.

The_Werebear
2010-11-16, 04:49 PM
Yeah, I did not know that they were all city rulers. OOC, I was kinda :smalleek: when I figured that out.

Alleine
2010-11-16, 08:02 PM
Well, the world is already in turmoil from the comet. What's a few murdered city leaders?

The_Werebear
2010-11-17, 03:05 AM
Weeell, it's less the destabilization and more the fact that to run a city in Adanar, you have to be a badass. And Tozi was able to wipe the floor with us while poisoned, diseased, and ambushed. And the logistics of even getting close to them... It's quite a lot for one dwarf.

LordShotGun
2010-12-30, 09:39 AM
Did this thread die?

Fayd
2010-12-30, 12:23 PM
A little bit. Both I (the writer) and my editor got absolutely slammed with work. However, it's break now. Which means... LOTS OF TIME TO WRITE! I'm beginning to make steady progress to claw my way back up to present.

flabort
2010-12-31, 04:04 PM
sweet!
got an estimate on the next update?

LordShotGun
2010-12-31, 04:05 PM
I'm beginning to make steady progress to claw my way back up to present.

Plenty of time to play but no time to write eh? :smallbiggrin: Thats fine, we all have been there before.

Fayd
2011-01-13, 10:05 AM
First of all, thank you all for your patience. We are going to be doing what we can to get caught up to present. It may be that we have to skimp a little on the detail to do it, but we want to make sure to get caught up. I hope you all don't mind.


Chapter 8: Odds, Ends, and Oni

Yhennon’s player was absent this week, so at any given moment assume our resident bookworm is glued to his notes from the tomes or texts Baron Lucan let him study.

The trip from Solace to Ferdfurt was a short, rather pleasant two day cruise for everyone in the first party, though Gav doesn’t seem particularly thrilled with our choice of destination for some reason. The second party, namely Gao, Wu, and Urgrim, had a grueling four day trip up a lake on a raft -without oars. (They had to use poles instead.)

As the rest of us have gotten into town early and have to wait for our companions, we occupy ourselves with various pursuits. Yhennon, Jan, and Reizei pass most of their time around the inn, though Reizei does, of course, seek out the local pubs. I decide that someone has to pay for all this, so I spend the days pickpocketing, and doing a marvelous job, slowly taking on riskier and riskier targets. I am able to pay for the inn, our food, and extraneous other charges, and I even start making a profit. :smallbiggrin:

Gav just sort of disappears; none of us ever see him around town, but he appears at the inn each night with a little more information about the town and current events thereabout.

It’s… an odd city, to tell the truth. It has no walls, for it needs none. It sits on the top of two mini-plateaus, connected by a bridge. The Wind Fist academy takes up most of the second plateau, and for good reason… you see, periodically, Oni (demon-ogres, typically with an elemental theme) come crawling up out of some portal or spawning pit or something, through an elaborately constructed labyrinth, and the Wind Fist school uses them for training.

The Wind Fist School focuses on running really fast and punching people from 30 feet away. It is run by one Mistress Chen who sounds like the hard case no-nonsense sort of person. She currently has a lover called Master Fang, a shaggy haired !chan warrior who we know has connections with some of the Wolf styles.

In any case, the school sends its older, more experienced students into the tunnels to harass and cripple the Oni while they inexorably plod their way out of the labyrinth. Once the weakened Oni emerge into the little arena surrounding the only exit, the younger students finish them off. Rather efficient, all things considered. Another useful function of the students, due to their running training, is to have them act as message runners and scouts, especially because horses can’t really survive in this region due to diseases from the mangroves. In fact, at the moment the school is stretched pretty thin at the moment; due to the Apocalypse a while back Mistress Chen has dispersed most of her students across the entire continent, for the most part to contain the inevitable tide of refugees in an effort to prevent outbreaks of plague. (Apparently they didn’t make all the way down to Talmar in time…) It’s not much of a stretch to imagine that these messengers are also doing exactly what we are for various parties –surveying the political climate, finding out who’s who and what’s what.

Once Gao, Wu, and Urgrim arrive, they tell about their last four days. Urgrim says that Egil committed suicide, but he did get the names of every remaining person on his List-o-Doom. Included on the list are Tozi and Egil, both already taken care of, as well as… Mistress Liang of the gish school Fairy-Heart. Dang it. Shoulda listened to my gut; the Crane Master’s guest in the hobgoblin armor was in fact who I thought she was, and now we’ve missed an opportunity. With the Comet in orbit she’d have been weakened too –our best guess is that she’s studying under Nianzu because she’s in the process of retraining in a style that isn’t crippled. Urgrim assures me it’s no problem and that there will be other opportunities before continuing with his list. Next is Master Fang, the !chan lover of the Windfist’s Mistress Chen, so we have a lead right here in town to pursue… Finally, there’s General Zhan, whom we knew about already, the Ghost Eater Duyi, Master of the Hungry Void (a martial school focused on grappling… sometimes grappling incorporeal foes… sounds pleasant) and one Cadmus Corrick.

Suddenly Gav’s head whips around. ”What was that?” he demands. When the rest of us are taken aback, he shoots to his feet. ”The name. What was that name?!”

Urgrim gives him a strange look. “Cadmus Corrick,” he repeats gruffly.

After one very long, uncomfortable pause, Gav says nothing, turns, and stomps out of the room, slamming the door loudly behind him.

Well. What in the world under the comet was that all about? Urgrim and Reizei are content to let him tell us in his own time, but I’m just too curious; while the rest of the party make our tentative plans for the next few days, I go after Gav.

He’s not too far away, staring moodily at the horizon at the edge of the city-side plateau. With no idea how to begin, I simply ask if he’s alright.

He looks completely surprised when he turns to me. “Yeah, of course. Why do you ask?” :smallsmile:

I’m not buying it, friend. “Just… that outburst back there was so abnormal for you.”

“Oh? So tell me, what is normal for me?”

The question catches me off guard, and I realize just how little I know about the ‘famous’ Gav Jagger. When I don’t reply for a moment, he smirks, turns, and walks off along the plateau’s edge. Not to be deterred so easily, I pursue. “But what is going on? You had a very strong reaction to that name, that Cadmus Corrick--”

Suddenly Gav claps me on the shoulder. “I wonder if you might help me out with something,” he says with an easy smile.

“What’s that?”

“Well you see, I’ve been wondering just how quickly someone could get to the base of the plateau from here…” The hand that isn’t clamped like iron on my shoulder gestures to the 100-some foot near-vertical drop right next to us.

I’m sensing that Gav would really rather not talk about this subject.

As any further attempt to question him results in more pressure to my shoulder and no further words, I give up and call it a night. Near as we can tell, Gav stays out wandering another hour or two before turning in.

Now at this point, someone has mentioned the Windfist’s arrangement with the Oni tunnels to Urgrim, and he has a rather capitalistic idea. Due to the lack of horses, caltrops (typically anti-cavalry weapon) aren’t very common; since the school is stretched so thin, the barbed little devices (scaled to proper size) would be ideal to help cripple the ogres in the meantime. And we even have two party members who can make them! Gav agrees to the plan and helps whip up the sample batch, but firmly refuses to accompany Urgrim to make the pitch at the school. Even so, the Academy is rather pleased with the results and orders a large batch –enough for our group to make a sizable, legal profit.

Even while I’m out making an illegal one. :smallamused: As it turns out, my particular craft inspired yet another money-making endeavor; Gav asks Reizei and Gao if they feel like going out ‘Thief Thumping’. The three of them proceed to wander through town, identifying the pickpockets out of the crowd, trotting them off into side alleys and mugging them for their ill-gotten goods. Fortunately, they never meet up with yours truly.

The next day, however, Gav is occupied smithing up his half of the enormous caltrop order. Without his particular set of skills, Reizei and Gao are significantly less successful at picking out pickpockets properly. Once they become aware of this fact, Reizei turns to Gao and asks “Want to flex?” And they do. For an hour. Reizei’s player asks Tam if they could make a little money off of this by making it a perform check of some kind. Tam agrees, saying that they should each make a Strength-based perform check. They roll phenomenally. “The crowd is appreciative.” Tam says calculating the results. Then he rolls to see how much money they made. “… VERY appreciative.” They make about 18 Luna… quite a lot of money, for the effort and (lack of) forethought involved.

Meanwhile, I’m getting an odd feeling. My gut says I should take a day off (or perhaps outright stop) with the pickpocketing, but I decide to ignore that feeling and continue. I make 45 Luna before I feel a hand on my shoulder. A rather firm hand that starts walking me through the city… Yeah. I got caught. What surprised me is that I got a 31 on the Sleight of Hand check!

Thinking quickly, I say “Ah, wonderful! I was hoping to talk to someone like you!”

“Oh really? And just who do you think I am?” my guide asks.

“A guard, obviously.” He just :smallamused:’s

First, he takes me to the Oni arena, where he is slightly disappointed that there are currently no Oni to throw me to… apparently a common punishment here in Ferdfurt. I am then marched to what is apparently the guard station, where I am plopped at a desk in a dark, windowless room and manacled to a chair. The guard, who is by this point apparently more than just a regular guard, begins peppering me with questions. I try to use my skills in deception to avoid implicating the rest of the party. In fact, I attempt to spin my larcenous spree as a “Job offer” of sorts to the city of Ferdfort and Mistress Chen in particular. “I’m particularly talented with infiltration, and I bring news from the south.” I relate what has happened so far, Tozi’s death, the ascension of Juntao in Talmar (“Great, as if my job wasn’t hard enough” the guard interjects), the fall of Rimtown, and Egil’s apparent suicide.

I “was trying to gather money for a gift for the Mistress.”

He seems willing to entertain the idea that I’m doing this out of some sort of infatuation with Mistress Chen, and I’ll roll with it for a bit. She’s 50 years old, and already called for, but… whatever. “What aspect of our Mistress Chen was it that so captivated you that you decided you had to do anything to be in her presence?”

Thinking quickly and ignoring the dripping sarcasm, I respond “Her power.”

This catches him a little off guard, as it did the rest of the group. (Meanwhile, this whole time, Urgim’s player is saying that this is one of the WEIRDEST interrogations he’s ever seen –and he’s the longtime, seasoned player, so that’s saying something.) “Why not find some young noblewoman up in Ada or Nar?”

“Ah, but information is power.”

He rolls his eyes, “Oh good, we’ve got a scholar.”

I continue to try to bluff for a long time, especially with regards to the identities of my fellow party members, and do a rather remarkable job. I even try to lighten the mood a little bit, and answer his questions to the letter. (“Does this Dwarf have a name?” “Yes, he does.”) At one point I observe casually that I would feel like answering the questions a bit more if these manacles weren’t so chafing. For some reason he humors me and they get replaced with silk. Just as tightly bound, but still. Silk manacles.

Eventually though, I go just a bit too far and, still wearing that same vaguely indulgent smirk, he brings out a loaded crossbow, plants it on the table, primed mere inches from my chest, and invites me to continue the smart talk, as it would make his job a lot simpler this afternoon.

I just can’t keep up the bluff for 5 hours. (In game, not out of game) Eventually I can’t think of any more ways to dodge or block him (the crossbow is quite the convincing argument) and I spill. Everything. I try to make it clear that these people are traveling with me, not working with me, to try to spare them in the event something bad could happen to them. I start with “Have you heard of the Famous Gav Jagger?”

“Interesting… What’s he famous for?”

“I’ve no idea… he mostly just tells me he is.”

From there, I mention everyone in turn, being rather descriptive and formal. “A traveling scholar, named Yhennon Dei, a mysterious woman who is referred to only as ‘the Pink Ninja,’ a nobleman of the House Reizei, an ex-Lion Talon student named Gao,” (“Ah, the flexing ones.”) “Wu, a boatman, a former shopkeeper from Talmar named Jan, and… Urgrim, the dwarf I’ve mentioned before.” He forces a description and location of our inn out of me and then I’m left to sit by myself for a while. Not wanting to make things worse than they already are for my friends, I stay put.

Meanwhile, it has gotten quite late and most of them are asleep inside our inn. Gao, Wu and Urgrim are awake in the stables (it was marginally cheaper) and Gav is mulling about at his forge. The guardsmen arrive in force, and most of the party gives themselves up without a struggle. For his part, at first glance at our visitors Gav merely sighs, “Yeah, I wondered how long it would take.” None of us catch the significance of this yet.

But I said most of our party, didn’t I. Out at the stable the guards tell Urgrim, Gao and Wu that they’re being brought in for questioning on “a related incident.” The dwarf’s had “related incidents” happen before and isn’t keen on going forward with this… so he rushes one of the guards and delivers a nasty headbutt, while yelling for Gao and Wu to resist arrest. Wu… yeah, that’s not happening. Great guy, really helpful… not that brave. Gao would… if his broadswords weren’t in the other corner. Then Urgrim runs off and the guards… can’t catch him. They’re rather embarrassed on the whole to be outrun by a dwarf.

As everyone except Urgrim is marched single-file into my interrogation room, the guard who captured me is watching us. Suddenly his eyes narrow further, his face darkens, and he begins punching an empty palm menacingly.

Gav meets his eye unflinchingly. “Evening, Captain,” he says flippantly. Cue groans from the rest of the party. They have history. Wonderful.

Silent glare. *PUNCH. PUNCH. PUNCH.*

Gav smirks. “Been a long time, hasn’t it Boss?”

*PUNCH.* “…Yes. Yes it has.”

Uhh… okay. That wasn’t the sort of ‘history’ we were expecting.

Session break

Grimlock
2011-01-13, 10:49 AM
Hurrah! The next Chapter!
I shall read it now!

Oooooooh, finally the Famous Gav Jagger is about to be unveiled! :smallsmile:

Fayd
2011-01-13, 11:46 AM
And I just updated the first post. Yes folks, there IS a new chapter!

Feichi
2011-01-13, 11:57 AM
Yikes, is this really all the further we've gotten in regard to posting journals? Eeeep. Way behind is way behind.

Well, as a teaser for you ladies and gentlemen, we all officially hit level 4, and we're all still alive, SO! This means that the mage has thus far survived AND, in one level, will theoretically be able to use magic again. :3

Also, from a technical standpoint, the bird's tendency to both OBLITERATE things and also substantially slow down gameplay due to the sheer number of rolls needed to attack things, he (by way of the feats he had) have been significantly nerfed (read as: balanced.)

As it stands, I had him take a feat that gives him a +3 to all will saves, making it easier for him to resist/beat the mage's if he so chooses.

Alleine
2011-01-13, 04:19 PM
Yaaaaay!

Those are some mighty interesting new developments.

I think you might want to start listening to your gut a little more. Eh?

flabort
2011-01-13, 05:05 PM
History... Well, while a lengthy backstory is great, Always hope the DM doesn't revisit it on you.

Cade Rentyr
2011-01-14, 01:24 AM
History... Well, while a lengthy backstory is great, Always hope the DM doesn't revisit it on you.

Oh believe me. Gav can't wait for a certain second meeting. :smallamused: (Hint: this isn't it.)

flabort
2011-01-16, 11:31 AM
Oh, no. So, even though the populous know nothing about him, the 'famous' Gav Jagger has met so many folks that he really could be considered famous?

I hope the 'certain second meeting' is not related by blood.

Keito
2011-02-24, 06:50 PM
So I got this snake.... but you'll see that in a later chapter =P

Fayd
2011-02-25, 06:07 PM
All right! New chapter up! YAY! The plan as follows: Due to being so terribly far behind, the next chapter I'm writing is a catchup to present. That isn't the next chapter you'll see, but them's the breaks. We're going to try to get you guys up to speed as quickly as we can! (Really)

Chapter 9: The Secrets of the Famous Gav Jagger. Or: You Thought I Was Serious?


We pick up with every party member (save one) and tagalong NPC neatly bound in these chairs with handcuffs built into their backs. (Well, okay, I’m in my nice silk manacles, but that’s beside the point.) The guard in charge, apparently one Captain Malcolm, leaves us to stew for a while. There are several curious glances toward Gav and several disapproving glares toward me, but he’s ignoring them and whistling what sounds like a jailbird theme and I can’t seem to look apologetic enough. I even tried switching into a couple sadder-puppier faces, but to be frank, the party isn’t exactly happy with me or their current situation. I would try to assure them that they’re only here for questioning and should be perfectly safe, but I wasn’t counting on someone actually recognizing our ‘Famous’ Gav Jagger…

Meanwhile, Urgrim is still on the run. He crosses the bridge to the plateau with the academy and knocks on the door. When the bleary-eyed gatekeeper answers (it is getting to be later hours), Urgrim asks him for “political asylum.” The man at the door nods, and brings him into a room down a couple hallways. As he shows our Dwarf through, he calls in after him, “This one wants ‘political asylum.’ You know what to do,” and swiftly closes and locks the door. Instantly, the eight Wind Fist students in the barracks sit up and begin punching Urgrim from their beds. He bashes in the door with his pickaxe and barges through and over the startled gatekeeper on the other side, taking off down the hallway. He gets about 20 or 30 feet before they knock him unconscious via nonlethal damage.

While Malcolm is absent, Gav wonders aloud if an ‘old trick’ he remembers still works on these chair-manacles. Slitting his palms with his thumbnails, he greases his hands up enough to slip them free. Wu, encouraged by this sign of success, struggles mightily against his own bonds… and to the surprise of everyone present (himself most of all) he breaks free as well. Once loose, however, he can’t seem to figure out what to do with himself, so he rights his chai—well, now it’s a stool, and waits, looking as meek and flighty as usual.

Gav, of course, has seated himself squarely on the interrogation table, legs swinging and whistling flippantly.

The Captain returns shortly with two or three guards carrying our unconscious dwarf. Noting and ignoring our table-dwelling swashbuckler, Malcolm has Urgrim fastened into his own chair. Apparently none too soon, either, because the other guards have only just departed and the Captain just resumed his seat when Urgrim wakes, in about the state of mind you would expect.

After immediately trying and failing to break free of his bonds, he promptly and viciously demands that the captain draw closer so that, first: Urgrim can bite off his nose, and second: the captain can immediately set him loose of this confounded chair so he can march back to that Windfist dormitory and beat every single one of those (dwarven expletives) backstabbers into a bloody pulp --from up close and personal, as it should properly be done.

Malcolm remains entirely stone-faced, waiting patiently for the end of the tirade. Yhennon notes with resigned frustration that he has no free hand with which to facepalm, and asks for assistance. Shrugging, Gav hops off the table and obliges him.

“Thank you,” the mage says flatly. A moment later, he realizes, “Wait. Now there’s blood on my forehead. Wipe it off, please.” Already reseated on the table, Gav flashes him an agreeable grin -and wipes his own palms clean on his trousers.

“So,” Malcolm begins, spreading his palms almost casually, save the hard expre--wait, he always looks like that. “What are you doing here?”

Before any of us can speak, Gav gestures for silence, sneaks over to a nondescript patch of wall and kicks it, hard. “Hey!” he shouts. Behind him a few of us exchange looks and raised eyebrows. “Don’t think I forgot about our little room. This is one ‘interrogation’ you don’t get to listen in on --clear out!”

There are muffled exclamations of disappointment from beyond. His ear pressed to the (apparently rather thin) wall, Gav waits a moment, kicks again. “You too, Tomás. Yeah, I know it’s you. Out.”

One more drawn out, disappointed sound. Satisfied, Gav plops back down on the table. Malcolm patiently tries again. “So.”

And the floodgates open; Yhennon and I compete to relate our entire (mis)adventures up to this point, mixed with consistent commentary of various shades from our deeply disgruntled dwarf. Reizei silently nurses his hangover, our ninja may or may not even be in the room in the first place, and Gav simply reclines back on the table, offering a casual correction or two. Wu simply cowers, trying and succeeding to be unnoticed, while the setting on Jan’s customary irritated dial lingers at around 11 (13 whenever our story mentions her shop).

Malcolm listens through all of this with unnerving aplomb, only interrupting to ask for clarifications now and then. He raises an eyebrow (and somehow manages to make the tiny gesture both palpably significant and intimidating) at the mention of Tozi’s planned assassination in Talmar, causing us to force Gav to exasperatedly show off Bug and their arrangement once again.

“You said I ought to get closer to my faith and background as a guardsman,” Gav haphazardly suggests.

The Captain pins him to the table with that glare of his. “Not remotely what I meant.”

When we get to the point where I threw the first knife into Tozi’s gut Malcolm shoots his former subordinate another glance, but I get the rather strange impression that this is one of professional disappointment. Gav reinforces this sense with a disbelieving gesture in my direction, as if to say “I know, right?”

:smallsigh: I’m never going to live that one down, am I.

The Captain says nothing at Master Egil’s ‘murder’, and once we wrap up with our arrival in Ferdfurt he merely asks what our plans had been. We tell him that we were on our way up to Ada and Nar, for various purposes--

“But mostly to remove Zhan’s liver through his nose,” supplies Urgrim bluntly. Malcolm makes a few comments that leave the impression that, as a guardsman, he cannot approve or condone our proposed course of action… but as he also believes the stories of General Zhan’s regicide and usurpation, he wouldn’t be too zealous about capturing and punishing the perpetrators of extremely unfortunate events in that man’s life.

Afterward, he fixes our swashbuckler with yet another unflinching stare. “I know that look,” sighs Gav, finally pulling himself off the table. “What you’d really like to know is why I’m here.”

Malcolm nods. “What with you supposed to be both dead and banished, yes, I’d like to know why you thought you could come back to town.”

:smalleek:

Wait. What? :smallconfused:

Gav is strangely silent for a long time. When he finally speaks, there is not a trace of his usual mirth or sarcasm.

“Cadmus Corrick.” He bites the name out with a quiet bitterness none of us had seen in him before.

What followed was a touching, emotionally profound and revealing explanation of the tragic and thought-provoking story behind the ‘famous’ Gav Jagger. Hearts were bared, tears were shed, and none of us will ever think of our poor, deeply troubled swashbuckler without a pang of sympathy again. Even Urgrim, gruff and hardened by the ghosts of his own past, wept openly for our dear friend. It was a truly beautiful event.

Unfortunately, in the interest of expediency and getting this journal quickly back up to date, and not wanting to deprive you, the readers, of even an ounce of the dramatic power of this literary event by diluting it or spending any less time than that required to relate it in its perfect potency, Gav’s player (who is certainly NOT the one at the keyboard right now typing these words) has decided to skip it in its entirety. He regrets that he must keep the epic tale of the famous Gav Jagger under wraps for now, and wishes to reassure you, the faithful readers, that if in the future he is presented with adequate time to set his masterpiece to written words he will hasten to share it with you.

Until then, too bad, so sorry, and good night. Over and out. (Fayd, don’t you dare mess with this section!)



…Yes. Well. Incredible cornball antics aside, the long and short of it is that the Gav Jagger we know is actually an assumed name --his former identity was ‘executed’ for treason. The character’s nemesis, for good reasons (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Understatement), is Cadmus Corrick, an assassin in the Rat Clan. We found out both that Gav has Oath of Hatred individualized on his character sheet (+2 on everything versus this person --at base level) and that every time he’s disappeared in a new town or city he’s been attempting to track the man’s movements. Most recently, here in Ferdfurt, he’d heard that Corrick had passed through town and headed northward.

Gav glares at the Captain upon sharing this particular tidbit, eliciting an irritated scowl in return. “I have my hands full enough keeping order with the local miscreants,” says Malcolm. “He didn’t kill anyone while he was here this time, so he never came to my attention.” He clears his throat. “But speaking of local miscreants, it’s time we figured out what to do with you lot.”

“You could let us go?” poses Yhennon hopefully.

“Given your recent propensity for… ‘encouraging new leadership’, no, I don’t think I’m about to let you loose on my town.”

Gav is quick to protest. “Hey, I’m not about to let anything happen to Mistress Chen.”

“She’s not even on the List!” I add quickly, referring to Urgrim’s List O’ Doom.

“But Master Fang is,” adds Urgrim casually. The rest of us facepalm. Yeah, real helpful there buddy. :smallannoyed:

“Oh, so the standing death threat is not against our city’s leader but against her lover. That makes me feel much better.”

Gav suggests simply throwing us to the Oni and ‘forgetting’ to take our weapons and armor --if we live we go free. This seems almost suicidal, but there is a point to it; on top of the nice XP we’d be in for, if there really is a portal at the bottom of the labyrinth Bug COULD utilize it to our advantage. But not all of us think we could survive the gauntlet that far, so we’d rather not get thrown to the Oni.

After talking for quite a while, Malcolm proposes a solution that pleases everyone. The party is to go and take control of the mines down south along the !chan plateau where Talmar gets the iron it uses to make its famed bluesteel, as well as other lovely mineral resources. After the mines are in our control, we then ship the ore northwest instead of south, cutting Talmar, and the Rat Clan, out of business quite neatly. Ferdfurt would love to get into trade with the region, but it would be too risky to attempt open confrontation with Talmar. If, however, the region unified under a new banner and declared independence, and approached Ferdfurt for trade, the Windfist would of course be pleasantly surprised and open to talks. Malcolm is careful to make it clear that, officially, we do not exist; Ferdfurt will deny any involvement with us. You know, standard spy stuff.

He says we are “absolutely not authorized” to take a cart he has prepared at the base of the tower, “absolutely not authorized” to get our gear back, and when the concern of supplies is brought up, “absolutely not authorized” to take a couple of months worth of supplies. As we are now level 2, Tam decides that: A) we suck (as players) at preparing for journeying out. B) The survival stuff is just taking too long to resolve and isn’t really adding anything. C) The characters probably would be pretty good at this by now.

Ergo! Food = Yes. Food will continue to = Yes until Tam says otherwise.

We make our way east and south along a river. We don’t encounter anything of note along the way. We arrive in our little sub-region, and get ready to plan out how we’re going to take this region over. The closest thing is a guard “tower” (it’s only a couple of stories tall) and we decide that, in addition to being rather close by, it is also a great place to rest up.

The tower is called Thornguard, and its purpose is to protect the trees of the Thorn Forest from being poached. It is Windfist property, after all, and the extreme edge of their presence in the region; beyond here, we’re officially on our own. The place is deserted, and has been for a while --most likely the Windfist recalled all available members for their mass messenger and information gathering operations. Dust has gathered everywhere in large amounts. The place looks more like a hunting lodge than a guard post.

We break here for the evening. It was a short session due to lots of factors.

flabort
2011-02-25, 06:32 PM
Trying to keep from laughing. Trying to keep from laughing.
Awe, too late.
Kid's behind the wall, eh? Gav's certainly an interesting persona.
I hope the kids aren't his. :smalltongue:

Cade Rentyr
2011-02-26, 02:06 AM
Trying to keep from laughing. Trying to keep from laughing.
Awe, too late.
Kid's behind the wall, eh? Gav's certainly an interesting persona.
I hope the kids aren't his. :smalltongue:

Kids? Those were grown members of the watch, though they may not act like it. :smallbiggrin::smalltongue: