[Tome] Murderhobos in the land of the Immobile Sun.

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[Tome] Murderhobos in the land of the Immobile Sun.

Post by Lokathor »

Episode 01: Goblintown Blues

The Reaches are considered to be an Infinite Material Plane, like many others, but unlike many others this one is not a planet and star configuration. Instead, the sun holds a fixed point in the sky, casting a 500 mile radius circle in bright sunlight, followed by diminishing light as you travel out beyond that, until there's no sunlight at all beyond 1,500 miles from the center. As life is wont to do, the people of this land have adapted to this strange situation.

In the middle, known as the Sunwell, are three great city-states: Threll, Othron, and Valeer. They issue their own currency, plot against each other, and everything else you'd expect a major city-state to do.

The shadowy portions beyond the Sunwell are known as the Twilight. Here be many villages that attempt to scrape out a living. Between the villages are monsters and other dangers, keeping travel to a minimum. Anyone who goes from place to place is automatically known as an "Adventurer", because anyone not fit for the title would quickly get eaten if they tried to travel.

Adventurers are viewed with a natural mix of both fear and desire by the folk of the Twilight, because they bring with them either the power to protect the village or the power to destroy the village. There's almost always some money to be made in a village, because they almost always want some nearby source of danger eliminated as quickly as possible.

This brings us to our cast of characters:
  • Tibellus: The Spider Lady (sheet). (TL Note: a Tibellus is a type of spider) Feytouched Totemist with weird non-functional spider eyes and stuff. Wears cord armor, uses a cord shield, throws a net, and is just generally set for any situation that requires a rope. Plus of course all the glowing blue soulmelds. She's really crazy, always in a good mood and overly confident. Her dream is to some day topple kingdoms and then pick up all the pieces and rule over everything.
  • Biggunegi, the [foolish] Samurai Warrior (sheet). (TL Note: Negi is japanese for "green onion", so his name is literally a bad translation of "big green onion") An Orc, he uses the natural ancestral weapon of Orcs: a Greataxe. His town was recently destroyed, as happens to many towns out in the Twilight, and he has come to wandering.
  • Sugita Hotaru, Hobgoblin Dragonfire Adept (sheet). Grew up in a monastery of some sort on the dark edge of the Twilight, but instead of learning the art of punching things, he learned the art of breathing fire at things. Now he does the whole "walk the earth" thing.
  • Urist McFuck, Dwarven Knight (sheet). Has a warpony and lance and all that, but also a greatsword for when you gotta go into a cave. No family, on account of being an asshole.
Tibellus, Sugita, and Urist approach a town of several hundred people (pretty large for as far out into the Twilight as they are), simple wooden wall around some farms, with the village at the center. The group approaches the wall, and goes left around until they get to a small gate with a single guard.

Tibellus: I talk to him.
GM: Okay, what do you say?
Tibellus: You should, uh, let us in because... we have come here to... seek business in your village.
GM: He eyes you up and down, notes your many eyes and your very peculiar outfit and your blue glowyness.
Guardsman: Ehh... who are you agian?
Tibellus: I Charm Person! DC 16 Will save.
GM: Heh, okay. Uh, *rolls*, you wave your hands, and say a couple words, the guard blinks a few times, attempts to shake it off.
Guard: Hey! Hey there! Hey! Watchu tryin?
Tibellus: What am I trying? I don't know. What's going on?
GM: Bluff check, would you?
Tibellus: 24
GM: Huh, oh.
Guard: That was really weird. Was that some sort of greeting ritual?
Tibellus: That was really weird, wasn't it? I'm from the sunwell, we do crazy things there.

So we sign the guestbook, go on in, and talk to the leader of the village (Cassandra). We find out that the village discovered a nearby iron mine, but that once they started digging there were a bunch of goblins that came up from the mine and attacked the miners and their guards. So we agree to win back the mine in exchange for as much iron as we can carry off at the end. Then Cassandra goes off to handle other business.

Authentic interaction with the NPC locals (so villager. wow.)
GM: So, there you are, standing in the middle of town, people gawking at you.
Sugita: Hey, we look totally normal except for Tibellus.
GM: A little kid comes up to you and starts tugging on one of your ropes.
Tibellus: True... so, there's something tugging on one of my ropes?
GM: Yeah, a little kid.
Tibellus: I... I, uhm...
Sugita: You can't Charm him.
Tibellus: Uh, what do you need, child?
Child: Ah! You're all covered in ropes!
Tibellus: I am indeed.
Child: Why are you covered in ropes?
Sugita: She's a crazy rope lady.
Tibellus: Well, uh, some people wear clothes, and I do not.
Child: *tilts head* So, you've never worn pants?
Tibellus: Never once.
Child: Mom tells me I always have to wear pants.
Tibellus: You should always wear pants, but I should never wear pants
Child: You mean I shouldn't wear ropes?
Tibellus: That would.. uh... that would be up to your mother.
Child: Would I glow if I wore ropes?
Tibellus: Oh, I wish, but I'm afraid not everyone can glow.
GM: His face sortof falls, like "awh"
Tibellus: It's okay child, maybe one day you will gain the power to glow.
Child: Do you think so? Really!?
Tibellus: Anyone can if they try hard enough. You have to believe that you can glow.
Sugita: I dunno. GM, does the kid look tough?
GM: Not really.
Tibellus: ...were you gonna mentorship him?
Sugita: I mean, if the kid looks tough then he could learn how to glow, but if he's not tough then he won't make it.
Tibellus: I'm just gonna lie to him then.
GM: Well done.
Tibellus: Move on scamp, move on.
We're tired at the moment though, so we stay in the town's guest house for a few hours to rest. There we meet Biggunegi, and he joined our war party. A while later Cassandra's clerk delivers us a map to the mine, and off we go. About 20 miles or so.

On the way we get attacked by a swarm of Stirges. Classic! Sugita get some of his blood drained (3 con damage), and everyone else was fine.

Once we get to the mine we rest in a shack outside the mine for a bit. Tibellus goes on watch between the shack and the mine entrance. Meanwhile, Biggunegi gets woken up from his sleep by the sounds of an approaching giant spider (well, like cat sized, which is giant for a spider I guess). Everyone is about to get into a big fight with the spiders until Tibellus runs back into the shack (called by Biggunegi's wild and unstoppable screaming), does a Wild Empathy check to convince the spiders to be cool, and then shoos all the spiders to make them walk away. Normally Wild Empathy wouldn't work on vermin, but since Tibellus's feytouched aspect is being part-spider, then it was fine.

After all that we finally go into the mine. There's a room with a bunch of human blood on the wall that says "humans stay out!" and also the bodies of the humans that died when the goblins attacked the miners are all over the floor. We quickly search the bodies for anything we might want (nothing but wooden armor), and then decide that, since we're not human, the warning doesn't apply to us. Onward!

As we march forward, Sugita at the far front so as to not be within the light from the soulmelds, everyone else just in a group, there's a pressure plate that doesn't get spotted. Sugita gets chopped into with an axe for 7. When factoring in the con damage from before, Sugita has only 11 hp, so he's down to 4. "Fuck this cave, I'm out". He goes back to the surface and waits in the shack. The rest of the group presses on. Urist goes first this time, searching for traps as they go. There's a left/right split, so they go left of course. A trip-wire gets spotted, and they carefully step over it. Did I say stepped over it? That'd be the normal thing to do! No no, instead they all step back, and then Tibellus whips at the trip wire with a rope from 15ft away. Once triggered, the trap collapses the entire corridor, leaving that path inaccessible. So instead they take three more lefts, going down the other branch.

They come upon a group of goblins hiding behind a little spike wall thing. There's like 6 goblins. One gets hit with a net from Tibellus, five of them throw javelins at Tibellus.

GM: Two of them hit you.
Tibellus: ...for how much damage?
GM: Let me figure that out... uh, a total of 7 damage.
Tibellus: I have one hp left.

So some more battle happens (about 3 rounds total combat length), and then two goblins get killed, and then the party gets out of there.

After 12 hours of rest or so (2hp healed, and also 2 con damage healed on Sugita), a goblin pops up from out of the mine and sees Sugita (who is a hobgoblin, as you'll recall). After an argument which revealed the goblin to be really dumb, Sugita went with the goblin to meet their leader, "Chief Gruel". Turns out that Chief Gruel is also a hobgoblin. After a discussion about future plans, proper timing of attacks, the value of goblin life compared to "a real person's" life, and so on, Sugita accepts an offer from Chief Gruel to work for them against the village. Not that our heroes would side against the village, they've got far more power than the goblins, and you should usually side with the winning team, but the party was able to rest up to full health in the shack without being bothered by the goblins in the mine. Then it's decided for sure that the goblins are goin down.

GM: So you go into the goblin village, and the goblins are like
Goblins: yay! yay! it's the big goblin! yay! yay!
Tibellus: This is so sad.
Goblins: It's happy time!
GM: Uh, and you folks can get a surprise round if you like.
Tibellus: I dunno, I'm too sad.
Biggunegi: I immediately--
Sugita: Wait wait wait wait wait; can I gather all the goblins together in front of me?
GM: uhm, sure.
Sugita: Can I be like, "hey goblins, everyone come here"?
Tibellus: Oh, god.
GM: yay! big goblin! yay!
Tibellus: This is horrifying!
GM: So they all come out and crowd around you a bit. Even the hobgoblin.
Chief Gruel: What? What are you doing?
Sugita: Well, we have an important announcement to make.
Tibellus: God...
GM: He eyes you.
Chief Gruel: Go onnnn...
Sugita: And then I breathe fire and I hit three goblins at once... wait, four.
Tibellus: Oh, god.
GM: DC 16? One saves, the rest of them roast.

Dwarf explodes a goblin, Tibellus moves into position, Chief Gruel throws a javelin.

GM: Biggunegi, he hits you for 8 damage.
Biggunegi: Do I get any kind of save on that?
GM: No, he rolled an attack roll to hit you.
Biggunegi: Oh, alright. How much bonus health do I get for having a +1 Constitution Modifier?
Sugita: 1
Biggunegi: Okay, then I have 1 health.

Again with the 1 hp left thing. Well, there's more fighting, more breath weapons, goblins run away screaming, nets thrown at Chief Gruel, other goblin gets charged, Chief drinks an invis potion, breath weapons, ash rat totem is activated, people running around, more breath weapon attacks, eventually Chief Gruel goes down because of the ash rat cloud, more dead goblins. Victory.

We collect all the stuff, which is to say we don't collect too much at all. From the hobgoblin we get a mysterious black granite case, a (masterwork) longsword, some jewelry. From the goblin citizens we get some crappy metal armor from the goblins, some shortswords. Upon opening, the granite case seems to have slots for 9 daggers, but only 4 daggers are to be found. Naturally we don't touch them because they're obviously cursed. We grab as much of the goblin food as we can carry and head back to the human village.

Telling our tale to the locals, they take us out for dinner. We tell the tale to the mayor lady and she approves of our work. We trade some of the goblin goods (all the scale mail and 3 of 6 short swords) for a horse and cart. The only catch is that there's no iron or iron ore available at the exact moment, so we stick around for a week or two and join in with the villagers on the mining tasks until we get enough iron in our cart to make our way to the next town.

~~So Ends This Episode~~

[*]Bonus House-rule Used: all the PCs get some extra skill points at the end of each session, in addition to their normal skill points per level. Because that way you can keep your maxed out skills from your class, and then also get small bonuses you can throw around into things that can be more trivial. Several skills are duplicated with just 1st level spells anyway, so whatever.
Last edited by Lokathor on Sat Mar 08, 2014 8:14 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by OgreBattle »

Neat world, how does that world handle stuff like agriculture, I imagine it's like underground farming or something with shutters, and the center of the world is filled with lizards while the darklands have more mammals and owls.

Man, them goblins. Did you get into stuff like "and upon opening the next door is their nursery, wat do"


Any reasons for starting the game at level 1 and not 3 or so?
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Post by Lokathor »

World Building: I was told that they just build farms on the sunny side of hills and then build huts and stuff on the shady side. Since the shade angles never move after all. I just assumed that all the plants were adapted to continual sunlight... maybe? I dunno, it was all kinda vague. If it were an earth-like material plane then eventually all the stuff in the sun would keep heating up forever and the stuff in the shade would cool off. Maybe there's regular slow winds out from the center that move hot sunny air out into the shadows where it cools again. Honestly, I'm not entirely convinced that a climatologist has ever given this world setup an examination.

Goblins: Naw there were like a dozen adult goblins and that's it. A particular point of contention during the discussion between Chief Gruel and Sugita was that Gruel hadn't seen another hobgoblin in years and he only had like 14 goblins with him, so when we killed 2 in the initial fight he took it pretty hard. Gruel thought goblin life was actually worth something, like they were his children or whatever. Sugita told him we'd just go get some more goblins if it was a problem, but he didn't even wanna do that. Obviously totally crazy. So that was a second reason that Sugita had for siding against him (the first of course being: team up with the bigger faction, eg, the human village).

Starting Level: Uh, just cause? Our group never picked up on the "start at level 3" trend.

Edit: Now that I think about it, our group has never in 14 years played a campaign of DnD past level 4. Well, in 4e we did once, but 4e isn't really the same game after all. So there is that.
Last edited by Lokathor on Mon Feb 17, 2014 10:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Lokathor »

Episode 02: Stray Shadow Strut

Recurring Cast
  • Tibellus: The Spider Lady (sheet).
  • Biggunegi, the [foolish] Samurai Warrior (sheet).
  • Sugita Hotaru, Hobgoblin Dragonfire Adept (sheet).
  • Urist McFuck, Dwarven Knight (sheet).
You know that thing in shows where the end of one episode makes it look like things are all gonna be great, but then the next episode things are actually way less cool than the characters thought? Yeah, well here's the deal: I thought we were gonna just have a montage between episodes and then we could leave the town after the montage with a whole bunch of iron bars and ingots in the back of our free cart:

Image

Instead we had to wait around a bit for the iron to be mined, but Tibellus and Biggunegi were too impatient to just wait around for valuable goods to be obtained and delivered to them. Instead, we bartered to get a lot of "lumber", since that was what was available, and then the lumber we got wasn't even pre-cut lumber, they just gave us raw logs:

Image

And it was kinda a disappointment I'd say. The logs were worth an estimated 200-300gp if we took them over to a desert region without any local wood and sold it there. So that's what we decided to do.

It'll be a day and a half of travel time a little spinways (clockwise) and rimward (not that there's a literal rim of course, just go with it). Along a river for most of it. It may seem odd to have "days" even when the sun stays in place forever, but spell-like abilities and spell slots still only regenerate every 24 hours, so, as with other Tome stuff, customs that affect the high-power characters just get picked up by the low-powered populace too.

After six or seven hours, an arrow thunks down on the ground near our feet.

then we argued with a bandit
GM: A voice calls down from the trees
Voice: 'Ey, you, there.
Tibellus: 'Hello.
Sugita: In a common tongue?
GM: It's in common, yes.
Sugita: Alright. What do ya want?
Voice: Uhm... whatever valuables that you have mostly.
Sugita: We got no valuables. No valuables for you.
Voice: Well as I figure it, you folks are coming from Maduin. No adventurers come through there and don't come with nothing. 'O course, you appear to have walked away with with part of the forest!
Sugita: Only a slight forest. We'll get more forest later, you know? Can't be too greedy.
Voice: Well, you seem to be walking through it, so chances are that you'll pick up more of it as you go along.
Sugita: Well, no, this is finely crafted forest. If you're looking for some excellent quality lumber sir, we're here to sell.
Voice: Well, I might take it off your hands if you pushed me.
Sugita: Well, what sort of price are we talking about?
Voice: Uhmm.... Know what? I'll spare your life, how's that sound?
Sugita: No, I'm not interested in that price, not interested in that at all. I'm looking for at least 200 gold.
Voice: You'll have stuff to live for sir, live for next time.
Sugita: Nooooo, definitely looking for at least 200 gold.
Voice: You're a very poor sort of negotiator, I must say.
Moments later, Sugita was shot! In the knee! With an arrow!
*everyone rolls for initiative*
Then Sugita gets shot again! -2 HP! Woooo~~~
`Urist gets close, Tibellus gets close, Biggunegi bandages Sugita (failing), Sugita bleeds, bandit shoots Tibellus (misses), Urist backs up and grabs a rock and throws it (missing), SO EXCITING.
`Tibellus throws up an Ash Rat cloud! Bam! Minor amounts of burning everywhere.
`Biggunegi manages to stabilize Sugita with the "honorable tradition" of stuffing mud into the wound until it stops letting out blood. Sugita spends an exciting turn unconscious but stable.
`The bandit jumps down from the tree, runs off somewhere. Urist readies a charge and waits on the west side of the cloud, Tibellus slowly moves to the edge of the the south side of the cloud looking around. As soon as she gets to the edge a readied action from the bandit puts an arrow into her for 7 damage (of 9hp). With an action remaining, Tibellus throws a net onto the bandit.
`Lacking an understanding of what's going on, Biggunegi spends a turn trying to get on Urist's war pony that's pulling the cart. He fails his handle animal check though, so the pony snarls and he stays on foot.
`Urist moves south, can't get in melee range, and throws another stone (keep in mind that Urist has the Weapon of Righteous Destruction feat, so these count as Magic Flaming stones), but misses again.
`Here's the dramatic moment: the bandit draws an arrow and critical hits, despite all the penalties from the net, dealing 13 damage to Tibellus (-11hp). We'll say that our hero is only at -10 though, because bow criticals are a little unfair. Biggunegi runs to Tibellus's aid, but movement is his only action that turn.
`Urist finally charges. Because the bandit didn't accept the challenge, the Knight damage applies as well on this flaming greatsword attack, 4d6+5 damage, a 22 is rolled, bandit explodes.
`Tibellus fails to stabilize, the ash rat cloud disappears. She's given one more round to try and live. Biggunegi tries to bandage Tibellus up, it doesn't work. Urist attempts to bandage Tibellus up, and fails. Tibellus attempts her final roll to avoid dead, 10% chance, and makes it.

So two of us are down because of sudden arrow double-taps. Damn. Oh well, we take the bandit's stuff: Studded Leather, high quality bow, iron dagger, arrows, money. We rest for quite a while. Biggunegi keeps watch for others while Urist buries the bandit body to prevent it from smelling up the place and attracting predators. Except... we have no shovel. Can't use Biggunegi's great axe, that's a sacred object and all. Can't bother to whittle a shovel out of a branch. Instead, Urist just uses the dagger as a trowel and digs a grave that way. For hours and hours and hours.

A bard approaches, begins to chat about how it looks like we've had some trouble, and then uses some mystical healing herbs to heal both of the negative hp party members up to 1hp. Since he's just traveling back to the place we came from, and we're badly hurt, we go back to the town with him. The bard sings badly the whole time. Six hours of singing.

We chat with the bard and share some stories. Turns out that Threll (one of the three major city-states) is gathering an army along the border to twilight, some sort of invasion. Gives us an an amazing idea that we could go in and smash up the place while they're gone. Also we might be able to get Valier or Athran to go in on a "ruin everyone's day" plan. The bard also expands out our map a bit, filling in landmarks and such.

We rest for several days until people are fully healed (just over 2 days). Biggunegi practices how to dance. Urist obtains a shovel and adds it to the pile of stuff in the cart. Tibellus doesn't do much but rest after having nearly died.

More Authentic NPC Interaction
Sugita: I am going to sit outside the guest house, and if anyone tries to come and wants to learn the secret arts of Dragonfire I'm gonna give 'em the Dragonfire Tests. Then if they can pass the tests I'm gonna tell them how to get to the monastery.
GM: Alright. Do you advertise this fact? Or do you sit outside and wait for people to come up to you?
Sugita: I'm just gonna sit outside all awesome looking, and I'm sure that the right people will know to approach. If they don't know to approach they're not the right people to begin with.
GM: The first person to approach is a young woman. She looks at you and is like
Woman: Uh, you look very badly injured. Do you need any help?
Sugita: Well, there was a minor highway robbery. It involved some dude with a bow, and it involved a few arrow shafts, but I'm sure they'll go away.
Woman: Sounds terrible!
Sugita: It was terrible, it was terrible at the time. But, since then, things have rapidly gotten better. So, we can't dwell on the past too much.
Woman: Yes! Everything is always better when you're with friends and family... or friends at least I hope. Do you have friends in this town?
Sugita: Well, I have some friends inside. I am traveling far from home.
Woman: Oh, uh, how, how did you arrive here? Our town is not very famous or prosperous.
Sugita: Well, uh, I'm sure you remember from a few days ago a great glowing spider warrior, and she has been attempting to lead us down a righteous path.
Woman: Yes, yes I remember the strange woman, with the ropes. I didn't approach her though, she was so frightening.
Sugita: Indeed, she is very frightening. Very frightening. Even if you know her, it does not go away.
Woman: How do you stand it then?
Sugita: You have to embrace the fear, and know when to let it drive you to correct action.
Woman: Hmm, I think I understand.
Sugita: Excellent. Excellent.
Woman: So, are you just sitting out here and watching then?
Sugita: I am waiting for the correct people to approach. That they might seek the ways of Dragonfire.
Woman: The correct people? How will you know that they're the correct people?
Sugita: They must pass the Dragonfire Tests.
Woman: You don't look like anyone special. You can breathe fire? Like a Dragon?
Sugita: Not as a full dragon, I am only a beginner. But, in time, I will learn the full Dragon's breath.
Woman: And a beginner is able to teach?
Sugita: No, I would administer the tests to those who seek, and then I would send them off to the monastery. There, they would learn from the true masters.
Woman: What is this test?
Sugita: Uhhhhhmmm... I'm not entirely sure GM. I'm gonna make up some Dragonfirey Stuff and I'll explain it later. Probably something about focusing yourself, and, you know, thinking as a dragon would, and then attempting to breathe fire, and obviously you wouldn't actually breathe fire on your first attempt. But it's like, how you handle your attempt at the first attempt that actually matters. And using my Draconic Mind class feature I would obviously be able to identify the right people... in some arbitrary way. Probably people with a high Con score. Or high Charisma score.
GM: Alright, well she wants to try, because why not? That all sounds sufficiently awesome.
Sugita: Alright, I'll explain how to do it and she can try. She can sit around and try all day.
GM: Alright. You explain how to focus, and how to bring the power you have inside in your guts and your lungs up and out. She sits down, tries breathing. I guess let me make a check for her, cause why not? Oh, no, she doesn't get it at all. She can breathe, she's breathing, but she doesn't really get how to draw the power out of your body's center like a true Dragonfire Adept would.
Sugita: Does she look like she might be able to get it?
GM: Nope, not really.
Sugita: Awh, that's unfortunate. Well, I'm afraid I'll have to send her on her way. She'll have to learn some other way to kill thousands of warriors.
GM: Ahhahaha, she thanks you anyways.
Anyway, we take a moment to note that even though the sun doesn't ever move the people would still track "days", because that's how often magic refreshes, and so spellcasters track it, and so everyone else ends up tracking it too.

After two days one of the town guards comes up in a panic, demanding to speak with us right away. We bring him into the guest house and have him tell us what's up.

Guard: I... I don't know how to tell you this but... Cassandra, she's dead!
Tibellus: Oh my!
Biggunegi: Oh well.

At first we deny having any special skills to investigate, but we look into it anyway. Partly because we're suspects. We'll say largely because. The last part is because they agree to pay us a second time. We get to keep Cassandra's magical full plate at the end if we solve the situation. A basic discussion seems to indicate that she was seeing shadows in the mines, then she came back, and now she's dead. But no one saw any shadows going into the town or anything.

Wild New High Level Goal Appears!
Tibellus: What if these shadows hid in her shadow while she was coming back? Unlike me, most people don't carry their own light source to make sure that Shadows don't follow you in your own shadow. Which is a terribly common affliction out here in the Twilight.
GM: Hey, who turned out the lights?
Tibellus: Exactly.
Biggunegi: No, really, who turned out the lights?
GM: Ha, that'd be hilarious! Ah, no, afraid not. The light doesn't go off here.
Sugita: Actually, Tibellus, that's our new high level goal. First we're gonna topple some kingdoms. Later, we're gonna put out the sun.
Tibellus: Oh my god!
GM: Ha ha! You wanna go full Dark Sun on this huh?
Biggunegi: Yep.
GM: Great. Anyways, uhm, we'll deal with that when we get there.

We take stock of our character class abilities and decide that we can indeed fight shadows, so we go to Cassandra's house. Things are quiet. We send in the Samurai first. Everyone has a look around for clues. We all roll poorly, and decide to just take 20 instead. Tibellus hears strange voices from upstairs, and so we make our way up the stairs. There's a dark swirling moving through the loft, and lots of Kingdom Hearts jokes are made about returning to darkness and stuff. The voices keep saying spooky things until they reveal that we have "what is theirs"!. Since everything we have is clearly ours then we don't have anything of theirs and if they're just gonna lie to us then we're not gonna bother trying to talk to them. Instead we decide we gotta take it down.

Except the shadow goes first. It misses and floats into the wall. The Knight can't challenge it while it's in the wall, in fact almost none of us can do much while it's in the wall, so we all just ready actions. It goes for Tibellus, Tibellus runs around, we chase it all around the house. Then it gets to Biggunegi. He chops it to bits in a single swing.
"you have what is ours, and you are already dead~"
The shadow dies.

Tibellus: GM, I just gotta ask... what do I even have?
GM: What do you even have?
Tibellus: As far as equipment, 'cause like, I literally didn't pick anything up in that cave.
Sugita: Maybe it's obsessed with the dirt still on your foot?
Tibellus: Oh my god the daggers! I just realized!
Sugita: Well, I think I know what we have to do.
Tibellus: Sell the daggers?
Sugita: Yep.

So we decide that we'll make someone other than us touch the daggers first in case they are cursed, and then we take them to the village clerk (who is temporary mayor). We blame the daggers for it all. He examines a dagger closely, turns out it's made of clear glass (not obvious while they were in the dark black case). Then he gives us a story about "Cassandra didn't mention any daggers and she wouldn't leave that out" and we give him a story about "Clearly the shadows were mind controlling her".

Sugita: I once heard an epic saga about a hobbit that kept a golden ring in a cave for five hundred years because that's what the ring told him to do.
Clerk: What's a hobbit?
Tibellus: Halfling.
Sugita: Yeah, Halfling.
Clerk: You've got the strangest slang.

We agree to take the daggers away from the town as soon as possible to "prevent any further curses". The bard from before speaks with us before we leave. He gives the daggers a look and says that they're some sort of "athame" ritual daggers. Very wizardly. If a dagger gets used by a wizard to cut up spell components and arrange spells for years and years then they soak up background magic and turn into an athame, I guess.

Anyway, the bard travels with us when we say that we're leaving town. Episode ends, and we've manage to move a grand total of nowhere compared to where we were at the start.
Last edited by Lokathor on Wed Feb 26, 2014 5:34 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by OgreBattle »

These are great, the NPC dialog is candid goodness.
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Post by Ikeren »

Sugita: Uhhhhhmmm... I'm not entirely sure GM. I'm gonna make up some Dragonfirey Stuff and I'll explain it later. Probably something about focusing yourself, and, you know, thinking as a dragon would, and then attempting to breathe fire, and obviously you wouldn't actually breathe fire on your first attempt. But it's like, how you handle your attempt at the first attempt that actually matters. And using my Draconic Mind class feature I would obviously be able to identify the right people... in some arbitrary way. Probably people with a high Con score. Or high Charisma score.
Seriously? How was it not "I set you on fire and see if you survive"?
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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

Sugita: Uhhhhhmmm... I'm not entirely sure GM. I'm gonna make up some Dragonfirey Stuff and I'll explain it later. Probably something about focusing yourself, and, you know, thinking as a dragon would, and then attempting to breathe fire, and obviously you wouldn't actually breathe fire on your first attempt. But it's like, how you handle your attempt at the first attempt that actually matters. And using my Draconic Mind class feature I would obviously be able to identify the right people... in some arbitrary way. Probably people with a high Con score. Or high Charisma score.
"Test the First: You must eat a whole chili pepper!

Good, perhaps you have what it takes, but now it is time for test number 2! Compose and recite a poem about how cool dragons are while keeping a straight face! You have 5 minutes, and you can't do anything to get rid of the chili burn.

Uuuh, that's acceptable I guess. Now! I've set up 3 targets. Here is a glass of lantern oil and an alchemical match. You need to burn all 3 of them by spitting oil through the match flame."
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Post by Lokathor »

Ikeren wrote:Seriously? How was it not "I set you on fire and see if you survive"?
Because then no one would ever pass the test because that'd just kill all the folks who try. :tongue: Even once you're a Dragonfire Adept you don't get any kind of special resistance until level 7.
Avoraciopoctules wrote:"Test the First: You must eat a whole chili pepper!

Good, perhaps you have what it takes, but now it is time for test number 2! Compose and recite a poem about how cool dragons are while keeping a straight face! You have 5 minutes, and you can't do anything to get rid of the chili burn.

Uuuh, that's acceptable I guess. Now! I've set up 3 targets. Here is a glass of lantern oil and an alchemical match. You need to burn all 3 of them by spitting oil through the match flame."
Okay this is really good. There's probably a competing sect that uses this as their testing method.
Last edited by Lokathor on Thu Feb 27, 2014 2:26 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by OgreBattle »

Ikeren wrote:
Sugita: Uhhhhhmmm... I'm not entirely sure GM. I'm gonna make up some Dragonfirey Stuff and I'll explain it later. Probably something about focusing yourself, and, you know, thinking as a dragon would, and then attempting to breathe fire, and obviously you wouldn't actually breathe fire on your first attempt. But it's like, how you handle your attempt at the first attempt that actually matters. And using my Draconic Mind class feature I would obviously be able to identify the right people... in some arbitrary way. Probably people with a high Con score. Or high Charisma score.
Seriously? How was it not "I set you on fire and see if you survive"?
Archie & Jughead's Dragonfire Adept Discovery Contest, Archie has set up a kissing booth, Betty is being kissed, Jughead exclaims "That's a HOT one right there!", Veronica looks impatient in line.

Reggie is a ways off, looking pissed that he's not a Dragonfire Adept.
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Post by Prak »

Actually if you just doused someone in lantern oil and lit it with a tindertwig, or prepped a pint with a fuse and tossed it at them, it'd only do like 1d3 damage per round for two rounds. Even a commoner can survive that.
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You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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Post by Lokathor »

Actually it's somewhat more intense than that
SRD -> Surroundings, Weather & Environment -> Environment wrote:Characters at risk of catching fire are allowed a DC 15 Reflex save to avoid this fate. If a character’s clothes or hair catch fire, he takes 1d6 points of damage immediately. In each subsequent round, the burning character must make another Reflex saving throw. Failure means he takes another 1d6 points of damage that round. Success means that the fire has gone out. (That is, once he succeeds on his saving throw, he’s no longer on fire.)
I mean I guess they'd "survive" in the negatives maybe, but eh.
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Post by Lokathor »

Episode 03: Honky Tonk Spider-woman

Recurring Cast
  • Tibellus: The Spider Lady (sheet).
  • Biggunegi, the [foolish] Samurai Warrior (sheet).
  • Sugita Hotaru, Hobgoblin Dragonfire Adept (sheet).
  • Urist McFuck, Dwarven Knight (sheet).
NPCs
  • The Bard (I seriously don't even know if he has a name)
We join our heroes as they leave town, once again trying to get to the desert and sell some wood to make a profit. They head off along a river, upriver, north (rimward) towards the base of a mountain. The desert zones of this world are naturally always on the shadow side of mountains, so the party has to get to that mountain and then go around to get to the desert.

Remember that the sun never rises or sets. So after just a while of walking along the river the party moves away from the river and camps for a bit. Sugita takes a watch. Tibellus takes a watch. There's clearly something in the underbrush. Tibellus wakes everyone up. A wild black bear is after all the food in our cart!

Tibellus throws a net! and misses... So after the surprise round, Tibellus throws a net again! by believing in the "heart of the dice", the net hits. Sugita shoots the bear, with a gun; a bow shaped gun. 8 damage to that bear. It's the bear's turn, and the bear is pissed off, but the bear is entangled so it goes at half speed and can't charge. It lumbers to the orc and claws ferociously (6 damage). Urist counter-lumbers and swords ferociously (foonum damage and it dies). Free bear meat! And Urist uses a dagger to craft a bear pelt.

Off, up the mountain pass. We decide to go to the middle of the desert to offload our trees, and then we'll go to the back of the desert to buy some yak milk. The best milk is always at the back. Then we're gonna go to Threll and the army and all.

We meet up with some scouts from a village and introduce ourselves as merchants, so they bring us inside the town after examining our goods to see that we are indeed actual merchants. We haggle over how much they're gonna pay for the lumber, and in the end we get 170 instead of the 200 to 300 we were expecting. He also charts out where to go to find some goat and yak herders and obtain the milk.

Village Guy: I can put that on your map, but you got a quill and ink? I don't got any of that out here.
Sugita: I do not. Tibellus, did you write down that you have any of that stuff?
Tibellus: Uh, I guess I didn't write anything, but I forgot to write down the map as well. So, I'm typing that now, "map".
Sugita: Just keep typing, just keep typing that you've had a quill the whole time.
Tibellus: Alright, "quill", "ink", boom.
GM: Done. He updates your map.

So the guy updates the map and offers for us to stay and enjoy a meal with him. He cooks up a bunch of meat and we pay him 3 gold to make our bear meat into smoked bear meat while he's at it. 25 pounds of smoked bear meat!

We set out and find the tracks to the herders. They're easy to find. We say that we're out to buy and they escort us right to the middle. There's yak and goat cheese, yak and goat butter, and yak and goat cheese. The cheese keeps the longest they say, so we buy a bunch of cheese to sell later and a little milk to drink right away. The milk is 3sp per pint. Biggunegi immediately buys 6 pints of yak milk, and immediately begins to chug it.

A fort save is involved and a fort save is failed.
GM: Drinking a large amount of yak milk is apparently able to make you yak up. Perhaps that's why it was called such.
Biggunegi: I immediately begin licking it off the floor.
GM: You're outside, and so it's sand essentially.
Biggunegi: Yeah, that's fine. The milk shall not be wasted!
GM: She stares are you.
Milk Seller: Should I be helping him? Is there something wrong with him?
Biggunegi: Milk!
GM: She looks at you Sugita.
Sugita: Uhmm..... no..... there's nothing wrong with him.... it's uh...
Milk Seller: Are you certain? This looks like there's something wrong with him.
Sugita: No..... that's just how he is.
So we buy 70 gold of yak cheese ("a wheel and a half"). She also offers to trade us half a wheel of goat cheese for the smoked bear meat, which we accept. With nothing left to do at the yak herding place, we set off for that city, Threll. At the moment, the party is 960 miles from the center, and so they're about 460 miles from the Sunwell boarder. Threll is inside the Sunwell, so we have to travel at least that far and then a little farther to get there. Looking up the overland travel speeds, we apparently travel at about 16 miles a day (20ft speed). So it's gonna take us about a month to get there. The whole army thing might have even already calmed down by then, but we'll see.

"You head up towards the pass through the mountains when you hear some yipping in the rocks above you"

Well, there's a bunch of kobolds in the pass now. They showed up yesterday, and they already licked it, so it belongs to them under the Koboldish Codes. We try to argue with the kobolds about some sort of time-share where we collect tolls on some days and they collect tolls on others, but they're not having it. They're also equipped with a bunch of large rocks to drop on the path. Which we'd probably be able to evade as characters, but the cart would have totally gotten smashed. So then it's revealed that they kobolds are going to move on the next day anyway, so we get ready to wait them out.

Suddenly, important bartering happened out of nowhere!
Sugita: Unless you're interested in buying some goat cheese then we're just gonna sit here until you're gone.
Kobolds: We'll accept goat cheese in place of gold. You can't eat gold.
Sugita: I'm afraid we need fair market price for this goat cheese.
Kobolds: ....fair market price? What does that even mean?
GM: There's some murmuring from above.
Kobolds: How much is a wheel?
Biggunegi: It's one unit of goat cheese.
Sugita: Uhm, one wheel of goat cheese is 200 gold.
Tibellus: One unit, hehehe.
Kobolds: 200 gold!? What do you think we're made of?
Sugita: They're really big wheels.
GM: They are pretty significant wheels.
Tibellus: They don't have to buy the whole wheel.
Sugita: Yeah, they could buy a quarter wheel for 50 gold.
Kobolds: Minus your toll for going through the pass and we'd pay you... uh...
Tibellus: No tolls.
Kobolds: We'll pay you 50 gold for the whole wheel.
Sugita: No, we gotta uh..
Biggunegi: Didn't we pay 70 gold for all of it?
Sugita: What?
Biggunegi: Didn't we only pay 70 gold for all of the cheese?
GM: 70 gold and the bear meat for a wheel and a half of yak, and half a wheel of goat.
Biggunegi: That doesn't sound like that bad of a deal.
Sugita: Okay, I wasn't clear on the details. Do we have to give them the yak? Or can we give them the goat cheese?
GM: Uh, they probably won't know the difference, frankly.
Sugita: Okay, I'm gonna give them the half a wheel of goat cheese, then we go through the pass, and then we get 50 gold, right?
GM: Yep, pretty much. (note: this was not at all the original deal, Sugita just swindled them out of half a wheel of cheese)
Tibellus: Fair enough.
GM: Alright, a troop of them comes down from the pass.
Kobolds: You try anything funny and we got other kobolds up there who'll push down rock on all of us if you do anything funny.
Biggunegi: Oh, they're kobolds?
Kobolds: I don't fear death!
Biggunegi: Should, should we try and murder them instead?
Sugita: No.
GM: Anyway, yep, they hand you 50 gold and you give them the goat cheese; or was it yak? question mark?
Sugita: Uh, no, after this we have 1.5 wheels of yak left in our cart; we give them the goat cheese.
We head back down to the forest area on the sunny side of the mountain. We're going "South", I guess, since I guess we're in the "top" part of the map (according to the DM's world map, which still hasn't been drawn out and shown to us). It'll take about a month to get where we're going and investigate that army movement stuff.

We decide to put Urist and Sugita as the standard watchers, 4 hours each during rests. They also rest in the cart during some of the travel and it works out to no one getting too tired or anything. Also we decide that we'll need to get another horse so that one can pull the cart while the other is being used for mounted combat. At some point later on we might be able to get a barge down the river and speed up our travel, but not yet.

GM: So, you folks travel down the river. About four hours into traveling and you folks see a bunch of crocodiles. On a beach on the river ahead of you. They seem to be sunning themselves, and not paying you any mind currently.
Sugita: Well...
Tibellus: I could make myself some sweet crocodile-head armor.
Sugita: If they're not paying us any mind, and they're not going to buy any cheese obviously, I think we can just pay them no mind.
GM: They could be awakened crocodiles who love cheese.
Sugita: But, do they have hands to deal in gold coins?
GM: Ah, not so much, no.
Sugita: Ah, then I don't think I can sell to that.
GM: They could be awakened telekinetic crocodiles who love cheese.
Biggunegi: Oh!
Sugita: Some sort of crocodile naga? Uhm...
Tibellus: I don't think I'd know about that though, so I don't think I would expect it.
GM: Ha, no, no you probably would not. Alright.

Later, suddenly, Biggunegi takes a step and falls 20ft into a hole as the roof of an underground room collapses under his feet. Incidentally, he takes more damage from that fall than he did from the bear. He's in a strange underground room with beast faces carved on the wall. We begin to explore the hallways, come to a door, open a door, darts in Sugita's face. Damn. He goes to the back. Inside the room there's a bunch of old benches/pews and a silver orb and scepter on an altar. There's also a hallway leading off from the room.

The two items have runes on them, but none of us can read what they say. We're hurt, so Tibellus says "we're about to run away", Sugita immediately runs all the way out of the dungeon, and Biggunegi just goes near the room exit. Tibellus also goes near the room exit and then yells, "take it and run, Urist!"

As soon as the items are picked up, the dust on the benches rises up and collects into skeletons. There's a lot of chopping, Urist does the best because his sword is flaming from his feat. Urist gets knocked unconsciousness because all the skeletons gang up on the person who took the items. It's kinda boring really, skeletons aren't smart so there's no real chance of anything unusual happening. They all get chopped down and then we roll a bunch of Heal checks and wait a bunch of hours to heal up.

Also this is where the episode ends and we all level up! No one goes into any new classes, we just go to second level in our current classes.

Fun House Rule: Roll for hit points, but reroll all of your hit dice each time you do it. If you get a higher number than you had before then keep it, if you don't just stay where you are. Everyone ends up really average for their hit dice overall, but the odds of being screwed over by getting 1s and 2s a few levels in a row pretty much disappear, and still a little random.
Last edited by Lokathor on Fri Feb 28, 2014 8:14 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Ikeren »

I love this game, and this house rule, and your dialogue. I miss playing...
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Post by Cynic »

a seriously awesome read.
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Post by Lokathor »

Episode 04: Celestial Shuffle

Recurring Cast
[*]Tibellus: The Spider Lady (sheet).
[*]Biggunegi, the [foolish] Samurai Warrior (sheet).
[*]Sugita Hotaru, Hobgoblin Dragonfire Adept (sheet).
[*]Urist McFuck, Dwarven Knight (sheet).

NPCs
[*]The Bard (he's now officially named "bard" from now on)

Last we saw, our heroes had beat feet from an old dusty room full of pews. There were magic items and skeletons and dart traps. Then a level up! Tibellus can call upon new totems, Biggunegi can break hordes, Sugita can spit waves of cold, and Urist's skin has become hard as a barbarian's.

Back in the buried temple, our heroes look over the options. From the entrance room with the hole in the roof that they've been getting in and out of:
[*]One pathway slopes up and is full of rubble, blocking it completely. They suspect that this was the actual entrance, not the hole in the roof that they've been using.
[*]One leads to the temple room that had the items, and from there an additional hallway leads further into the complex.
[*]One leads down some hallways that don't go anyplace right away.

Actually our heroes don't look over their options. Instead they fiddle around with heal checks and bullshit.

Bickering
GM: Alright, you climb up out of the hole to rest and make camp.
Bard: Oh! you look a little rough there.
Tibellus: Oh... there were some... encounters.
Bard: Encounters? Anything I should be worried about following you up out of that hole?
Tibellus: Ha! No. None can stand to us.
Bard: Good to know. Well, I caught some fish while you were down there, happy to share.
Tibellus: We bed down, we long term care.
GM: etc, etc. If you'd like to long-term care then someone should make a check who is not themselves resting.
Tibellus: I figured Bard could do it, since he's got the skills.
GM: Ah, let's see.
Sugita: He's got theoretical skills.
Tibellus: He feels like he has skills.
GM: He has no ranks in the heal skill but he still has a point of wisdom mod which he can attempt to leverage into long-term care! He gets... uh.. what does he need?
Sugita: 15
GM: Oh, well this time he's not doing so great. He's too distracted by all this delicious fish he just cooked.
Tibellus: I don't make it. Sugita?
Sugita: Huh?
Tibellus: d20!
Sugita: I'm not even gonna bother. We heal 4 hit points per day even without long term care, it's fine.
Tibellus: Whatever, fine then. Nyyyeh.
GM: Nyyeh
Biggunegi: Nyehh
Tibellus: Sugita is a dickhole, nyehhh
Sugita: I don't have any heal bonus, so it's just +0.
Biggunegi: "I don' wanna heal me, nyah nyah"
Tibellus: "I'm not gonna roll, 'cause rolling a dice is hard!"
Sugita: If I roll, I don't count as getting the complete rest bonus, I'd only heal 2hp
Biggunegi: *looks at the battlemat* You're not even fucking hurt.
Sugita: I was hurt, but I've already skipped to the part of the game several minutes in the future where we stop bullshitting and say 'fine we're healed'.
Tibellus: Fine, we're healed. Jesus.
GM: Fine, you're healed, gosh, see if I care.
Tibellus: ha!
GM: Alright, well, you all rest a day and are healed, but Sugita pointedly refuses to do anything all day.
Sugita: Now that we're level 2 I can freeze all your wounds, if you want.
Tibellus: You're such a dick. Anyway, I go back down the hole, and I command the others to follow me.
We go down the same path as before, and then go to the extra hallway. The Dwarf goes first, so that hopefully his special stone senses will save us from deadly traps. We collect the orb and scepter, which had been dropped earlier after Urist (who was carrying them) fell unconscious and then we scurried away. Now that Tibellus has spent some skill points on knowing Celestial she can read the runes on the scepter: "Blessed are those who wield this scepter, they shall inherit the powers of Ward."

Tibellus: Uh, know what? Since obviously I have the right to rule, I'll hold on to this, and wave it around, and not hit people with it, but point it at them when I yell probably.
GM: Do any of you have Knowledge(Religion)?
Biggunegi: Know what? Sure. I do. I have a spare point I'll spend it on that.
Tibellus: I have Appraise
Sugita: I have Arcana, Nature, and Dungeoneering.
GM: None of those help, unless you want to Appraise the monetary value of this scepter.
Biggunegi: *rolls check*
GM: Okay, Ward is a not-too-common but not-too-uncommon protector deity among The Reaches. The patron of guards, protectors, those who defend others. More commonly worshiped towards the outer edges of the reaches than towards the center.

So that's one probably-hollow silver orb, and one runed silver scepter. Tibellus keeps both, "they seem like they're a set". Then we send Urist down the next hallway.

Coming to a T-section, we go left (obviously). We take another left and come to a stone door. Dwarves are all about stone doors. This one has a handle marked "pull", so we pull it open. There's a big room with some pillars and statues. Obviously, don't touch the statues. Except they come to life on their own anyway!

Biggunegi starts to chop into the statues. The statues go, and they attack the person with the lightest armor (Tibellus; cord armor). They've got swords made of stone, not too sharp but plenty hurtful. Tibellus takes some bashing. Sugita breaths fire on them. At first there's a confusion over if constructs have hardness, and if they do if they also get the "half damage from fire" benefit that inanimate objects get, but then it's decided that they will get hardness but they won't get the half fire damage. So they're a little singed. Tibellus goes on total defense, and then Urist chips away at a golem.

Biggunegi chops a golem, killing it, and cleaves into another golem, killing it! "The secret is to aim for the knees". A golem misses Sugita. Sugita rolls max damage on a breath attack, but it saves and so not much damage happens. Then Tibellus throws a net, and Urist charges, chopping a golem but not killing it.

Biggunegi power attacks a golem while flanking it, then kills it. The battle is over, and Biggunegi collects some of the stone swords. He keeps taking weapons from things that we kill and then strapping them to his body. At this point he's got a masterwork longsword, 3 scimitars, two stone swords, and a crowbar.

So the doors are still locked, even after killing the golems, and Sugita points Biggunegi at the doors and tells him to go to work. While the doors are being chopped up, Sugita explores the room for stuff. A small box of money is found. Everything else is basically rotted away. While we're waiting for a player to get back the GM brings up that chopping all the way through a stone door would probably make it dull or something. Except it's the Samurai Ancestral Weapon axe, and so it has Hardness 17 and 30 hit points. Making it the toughest "member" of the entire group.

Once that's all done a shadow appears in the room. Sugita immediately breaths fire at it, just a tiny bit of fire.

Then we had a long talk with some sort of trans-planar entity
GM: Alright, you breathe fire at it, and Tibellus hears a voice in his head.
Shadow: Stop! Stop! I only wish to speak!
Tibellus: I yell at them to stop. Biggunegi
Biggunegi: HAI!?
Tibellus: Cease combat. Sugita, it wishes to speak with us.
Sugita: ...okay yeah, but, isn't it like, controlling your mind or whatever? So shouldn't we not listen to you?
Tibellus: No, it's over there. I'm over here.
Sugita: Yeah, uhm...
Tibellus: You don't know how it works.
Biggunegi: Don't you know how mind control works?
GM: Yeah, you have to touch them to mind control them, of course.
Tibellus: So, so, okay guys we all cool? We all cool? Okay.
Sugita: I mean I'm just saying as someone who can actually do mind control, I know that that's not how it works. (Note: 2nd level Dragonfire Adepts get Command 1/day among their spell-like abilities)
Tibellus: I can also do mind control.
GM: Wanna make an issue of it?
Tibellus: No, "so what do you want?", I say to the thing.
Shadow: I merely wish to talk, and to retrieve the knives. My companion appears to have been too forceful in his attempt.
Tibellus: That's very true. What's the deal with these knives? Also what language is he speaking?
GM: He is speaking celestial.
Sugita: Is he actually speaking celestial? Or is he doing more telepathy?
GM: He is doing more telepathy.
Tibellus: That works. So, what's the deal with these daggers?
Shadow: The daggers are incredibly dangerous; ancient artifacts that could shake the pillars of heaven themselves.
Sugita: Wow, we're keeping these.
Shadow: You must return them mortal, before anything should happen to them.
Tibellus: Ehhhh.... why are you trustworthy with these?
Shadow: We are the guardians of the daggers, entrusted long ago to watch over them, lest they fall into the wrong hands. Alas, we were deceived and the knives were stolen from us. Five of them have been recovered, but four of them remain in your world. All of them in your possession. We must have them from you.
Tibellus: Could we go to where the other five are... and give-- sorta combine the collections?
Shadow: That would mean moving you across the planes themselves. A feat which I cannot accomplish for any but myself.
Tibellus: I got this plan, where we wait a bit.
Sugita: Huh?
Tibellus: I'm saying this to the guy still, so you can't understand me. We wait a bit, and then once we can move through the planes, cause i have a feeling like we'll be able to do that pretty soon, I've got a feeling in my not-quite bones.
Sugita: Exoskeleton?
Tibellus: My spidery bits. Uhm, well then we'll bring you the knives. Because how can you bring the knives anyway, if you can't go through the planes?
Shadow: If you give them to me then I can carry them back across the planes myself, back to their resting place where they shall once again be safe.
Tibellus: You seem like a shady guy, a shady shade.
Shadow: Only but a fraction of a fraction of myself can reach this place, so far from my home.
Tibellus: Where are you actually from? What's y'er home?
Shadow: I hail from Celestia itself, a realm of light and goodness.
Sugita: We live in a realm of light, it's not that good.
Tibellus: True, true. Uhm.... will you give me anything 'cause I brought you the daggers? Also, why couldn't you retrieve the daggers before, when they were with that hobgoblin?
Shadow: The case they are in shrouds them from our view. It is part of how they were stolen from us. When you opened the case--
Tibellus: No, I get it. I get it. I'm thinking. How about... just got anything you could give us for bringing you back your knives?
Shadow: Give you? *blinks* I have nothing to give you other than the satisfaction of having done a good deed.
Tibellus: Screw it, I'll just give them back to you so that you shades stop following me around.
GM: Alright, you pull out the daggers.
Sugita: Wait, wait, wait, what's goin on?
Tibellus: Also the daggers are back at the cart.
GM: Oh, I assumed you'd carry them with you.
Tibellus: No, they'd be at the cart, because we just left that case in the cart.
GM: Alright. Funnily enough, he wouldn't know that, because he has no idea where the case is. Well, if you try to take that second door there you'll find it's locked.
Sugta: That's fine.
GM: Gonna go all the way around then?
Sugita: Wait, what's this story? All I heard was a lot of not-talking and then suddenly--
GM: The rest of you see Tibellus and the Shadow staring at each other for a while, and then Tibellus goes over to the door and tries to open it.
Tibellus: I gotta say guys, I got so many powers that you don't even know about, it's ridiculous. I can talk to some people with my brain, and I was talkin' to him, and we decided that I'm gonna give the knives to him, because I'm tired of these shadows following me around, talkin' to me.
Sugita: Okay, here's a thing, Biggunegi can chop him down in like one hit, so I don't see why we shouldn't just chop him down.
Tibellus: 'Cause, I just don't want... they're bugging me.
Sugita: I mean, look, why do they want the daggers?
Tibellus: They said they're from the celestial plane, and they're speaking to me in Celestial, and he's saying, "I've got to defend the daggers!", 'cause they do a thing and there's nine of them.
Sugita: Okay, Item One: a lot of people speak Celestial, that doesn't mean he's a celestial, 'cause you speak celestial. Item Two--
Tibellus: But I'm a bad ass.
Sugita: Item Two: If they want these daggers, we want them too. Because for whatever reason they want them, we could use them for that same reason, and probably for other reasons.
Tibellus: Alright, you try to be a good person, but I guess in the end...
Sugita: I mean, are we getting paid for these daggers?
Tibellus: Naw, he can't give us anything.
Sugita: Can he like, tell us some super secrets or something, even if he can't give us something?
Tibellus: Hey, shadow.
Shadow: Yes? What do you require?
Tibellus: Can you tell me any... secrets?
Shadow: I am not native to this plane. However, I can answer questions for what you wish.
GM: Treat it as a Commune spell.
Tibellus: Alright, what questions you got?
Sugita: Okay, obviously we should ask what's up with that army in Threll, is that still going on?
Shadow: What questions I may answer can only be done in short sentences or with a yes or no; The army from Threll has still exited the city, and is still marauding through Twilight.
Sugita: Do they... hmm...
Tibellus: What's their destination?
Sugita: He said it has to be yes or no.
Tibellus: Or a short sentence.
GM: A very short sentence.
Tibellus: A very short sentence like, "tell me what city they're going to".
Biggunegi: Pretty compelling argument.
GM: They seek no city.
Sugita: Oh, oh, Question: Is a different city-state going to attack Threll in the mean time?
Shadow: Most certainly.
Tibellus: Do you know which of the two it is?
Shadow: No.
Sugita: Do you know if the attack will happen within the next month?
Shadow: Yes.
Sugita: It will attack in the next month, hmm.
Shadow: No, I know if it will attack in the next month.
Sugita: ...will it attack within the next month?
Shadow: No.
Sugita: I guess that means we have enough time to get to Threll, and mess with them. So, alright this seems fair. What do we gotta do with the daggers? I've got no more questions.
Shadow: Now then, I've answered your questions, give me the daggers.
Sugita: We just hand them to you?
GM: He doesn't speak to you, only to Tibellus.
Tibellus: Alright, we gotta go back for them.
GM: Alright, you guys troop back through the tunnels and up to the cart, where the Bard stares at the shadow behind you, like
Bard: Eeeelgh, Guys?
Biggunegi: Sup?
Bard: What... what are you doing?
Tibellus: We're gonna give those daggers to this here shade.
Bard: It's uhm, it's got red eyes. Is that normal?
Tibellus: You know, all the ones that I've seen have red eyes.
Bard: Uh, very true, very true, can't disagree with that logic. Don't normally work with such things, but whatever you like.
GM: He cowers most cowardly on the other side of the cart from the shade.
Tibellus: Let's have Biggunegi stand near the thing when I give it the daggers, in case we need to suddenly murder it.
Biggunegi: Reasonable.
GM: Okay, you get out the case, and you get ready to hand it to him, he says
Shadow: You must open the case, I cannot touch it.
Tibellus: I open the case and just set it there.
GM: Very well, he reaches out with a whisp of shadow and grasps the knives all in one shadowy tendrel.
Shadow: Thank you, mortal. You have been most helpful.
GM: and it whisps away into nothing.
Sugita: We messed up.
Tibellus: Yeah, probably something really bad is gonna happen.
Biggunegi: You mean something fun?
Tibellus: I mean... it doesn't matter. We'll come back to this later. When we're higher level we'll just murder that guy, but on his plane where he's super powerful. There will be like, it'll be like some sort of anime scene.
Sugita: Lines of tron energy shooting everywhere and stuff?
Tibellus: I was thinking of, you know when there's pressure in the air, so that everybody's hair is billowing backwards, outward from one point? That's what it'll be.
So, after all that, there's another stone door and an unchecked passage. Can't just leave stuff unchecked.

We go to the stone door first. It's some sort of priest's quarters and prep room. Skeleton in a dilapidated bed. Closets and stuff along the walls.

Sugita: I take all of the skeleton's stuff. Anything I can't take I'll burn down.
GM: Alright.
Biggunegi: You're just a horrible, horrible person, aren't you?
GM: Quite
Tibellus: He wanted to rule the evil daggers, and I'm like, naw man, that's not neutral enough for me. I like neutral stuff.

50 gold, holy symbol (of an unknown deity), and in the cabinets there's an un-rotten silk robe.

We made the orc try it
Sugita: I tell the Orc to put it on.
GM: The hobgoblin turns to you and is holding a set of priest robes and he says "put these on!"
Biggunegi: You are most dishonorabu. Convince me.
Sugita: Alright, if you put them on they'll increase your samurai powers by eight fold.
Biggunegi: I don't uh...
Sugita: Bluff of 23 says you do believe me.
Biggunegi: Well, I believe that absolutely and put it on.
GM: Alright, you put it on, it feels like silk, feels nice.
Tibellus: Keep wearing it, it's cute.
Sugita: Is it cute?
Biggunegi: Uguuu~
GM: Yes, uguu~; It's robes, on the list of things that are cute, robes aren't terribly high on that scale.
Sugita: Come on, shrine girl robes?
Tibellus: I'm gonna find some cute robes, hold on.
GM: I'm sure there are some cute robes, but robes themselves are rather obscuring.
Biggunegi: So do i feel different?
GM: You swing your axe some, but no.
Biggunegi: We will have to test this in combat.
Urist also notices a secret door that leads back into the presentation hall, for like dramatic entrances I guess.

Anyway, we go to check the final section of the complex. The door is also trapped, but Urist opened it this time, and the darts go over his head. There's a bunch of coffins inside, like a mini catacombs.

Obviously we loot the room
Tibellus: You know we're gonna defile this crypt.
Sugita: We're totally gonna defile it. I defile it first!
GM: Sugita gets in and gets the defiling started.
Sugita: Alright, who has the highest Search check bonus? I've got +1, Urist has +3. Tibellus what do you have?
Tibellus: +0
Sugita: Alright, well, then we'll end up getting a Search of 29, with maximum defilage.
GM: Alright, you go for maximum defilage. The first coffin is empty, the next one has a corpse, looks like there's still a lot of flesh on those bones. As you shift the lid up, it lets out a creaking, groaning, awful sort of noise, and rises up before you.
Sugita: Oh no!
GM: Oh nooooooooooo~
Biggunegi: Is this a skeleton?
Sugita: It's a zombie.
Biggunegi: Awh
Tibellus: It's a Zmobie... can I paralyze a zmobie?
Sugita: No, all undead are immune to paralysis.
Tibellus: Are you fucking kidding me?
Sugita: It's.... no?
Biggunegi: You could still net it.
Sugita: Of course undead are immune to paralysis, they don't have muscles to be paralyzed.
Tibellus: It's like a weird magic effect! Also, vampires totally have muscles.
Sugita: Immunity to poison, sleep, paralysis, stunning, disease, and death effects. Right there in the type.
Tibellus: Also, Ghouls have muscles.
Sugita: They're like, magic powered though.
Tibellus: Whatever, so...
GM: Well, roll for initiative I think.
*we all roll*
GM: Okay, let me put some icons on the map.
Biggunegi: All I saw was a half-rotten butt.
GM: It was enormous! Why are all these icons so enormous? Damnit it!
Biggunegi: Can you not just shrink down the tokens?
Sugita: Yeah, you can just resize it.
GM: One sec, I know what's wrong
Bigguenegi: Whatever it is, don't fix it, this is too hilarious.
GM: A single giant zombie! Rrrawr!
Tibellus: Way too big.
Sugita: Well, no, all the parts are each in a different sarcophaguses, and they all whirl together like Voltron.
GM: You know what? Alright. Sure, let's do this.
Tibellus: Oh god.
GM: You shift open the lid and the thing rises out, and as you do you hear the grating of stone from the other lids, which also tumble slowly open. The first one stands up, mouth agape in a soundless scream. The other bits zoom towards it and whirl around it, grafting themselves on until you are facing a monstrosity.
*puts a Huge sized token on the map*
GM: Sure, it can be that size, whatever. Right there. Great.
And so we begun the battle with the Huge sized zombie. (obvious music)

Urist attacks (missing), and designates. Biggunegi is up, but several squares back. He can't charge because of a coffin in the way. The whole battlefield looks like a Sylladex. Biggunegi just walks up to the zombie (no AoO since the zombie hasn't acted yet), and hits him in the face. BigguZombie swings at Urist, but misses, leaving a crater in the floor.

GM: Next up then is Sugita
Sugita: I breathe on the zombie.
Image
GM: If you breathe on the zombie from here, you will hurt your friends.
Sugita: No, because I will go like this
Image
GM: Oh, okay, sure.
Biggunegi: hahahaha
Tibellus: You're the cheapest motherfucker.
GM: Reflex save... oh, better than I expected. He fails though.
Sugita: 11 damage.
GM: The zombie gets partially roasted. It smells terrible
Biggunegi: I vomit.

Tibellus is up, except this zombie is too big to net. She reluctantly steps up and lashes out with a Flame Snake.

Tibellus: This seems dangerous
Sugita: Oh, it's dangerous.
GM: Oh, it's so dangerous. When I said crater, I literally meant that there's a crater in the floor where the zombie hit it.
Sugita: Urist is running interference here, so.

Alas, a Natural 1 misses.

~Round 2~
Urist, having his challenge unmet, opens up a can of what-for and cuts off a large chunk of zombie. Biggunegi power attacks for 2, and then misses by 2. BigguZombie smashes Urist for 10 damage. Sugita is up, but now all three slots in front of the zombie are taken up by allies. Luckily, the zombie is taller than they are, so Sugita breaths a fire attack up over his allies into the zombie. Tibellus, given the situation, bravely 5ft-steps back and uses Total Defense.

~Round 3~
Urist misses. Biggunegi power attacks again, and rolls even worse than before. BigguZombie deals 19 damage to Urist (who only had 18hp at the time), and Urist goes down. Sugita does more fire breath, but only 4 damage, and also the zombie made his save.

Tibellus: I'm trying to think what I can even do in this situation.
GM: You can try to trip him, it would be very hard.
Sugita: You could 5ft-step into Urist's square, pick up his greatsword as part of your movement because of your BAB, and then swing the greatsword into the zombie. Assuming you have no other melee weapons.
Tibellus: Fuckin, sure. Seems like a crazy plan, but.
GM: Are you proficient with greatswords?
Tibellus: Is it part of the base package?
GM: It's part of the Martial Weapons package.
Tibellus: I don't think I am... let me open the book again. Hmm, nope. I'm proficient with Simple Weapons.
Sugita: "Simple Weapons, as well as the Trident, the Kukri, the shortsword, the gladius, the light and heavy pick, the shortbow, the longbow, the pincerstaff, the net, and the guisarme"
GM: God damnit, Frank.

Tibellus swings (attack total of -1) and misses. So clumsy.

~Round 3~
Urist bleeds. Biggunegi rolls a Natural 20 and chops it to bits.

Biggunegi immediately throws the silk robe back at Sugita, because they did nothing to help at all. The rest of us scramble to get a successful Heal check. Fail, Fail, Fail, Success!

We search all around the room for loot. Masterwork chainmail, Masterwork longsword, and 35gp of assorted gold and silver coins. We carry Urist back to the exit.

The bard was almost incredulous
Bard: Oh, what happened this time? No more specters I hope.
Sugita: We fought a zombie as big as your house.
Bard: Wow! Uh... you people seem to lead very interesting lives. Are you certain you should be going down into old, abandoned temples and fighting zombies the size of houses?
Sugita: Is there any other way to live? I don't think there's any other way to live.
Tibellus: I think this will increase my lifespan, in the long run.
Bard: I've lived for quite a long time without fighting any zombies as large as a house.
Tibellus: I mean, that's your thing, and that's your biz, but my biz is much better than your biz. I'm going to rule the world. *brandishes her new scepter*
Bard: Oh, shiny, where'd you find that?
Tibellus: Down there.
Bard: With the zombie?
Tibellus: With the skeletons earlier on.
Bard: Oh, skeletons, you didn't mention skeletons. Let's get this straight: There was a bunch of skeletons, and a bunch of zombies as big as houses, and a specter who you brought up here and gave something to.
Tibellus: Also, moving statues.
Bard: Oh, moving statues. This makes everything better.
Tibellus: Yeah.
Sugita: Yeah.
Biggunegi: *pats his stone swords proudly*
GM: He eyes them.
Bard: Those look very blunt.
Tibellus: You hit people with them.
Biggunegi: You could also use them to hold things, like a table.
Bard: I suppose you could. Alright, we've been here half a week. You guys done with that? I've just about fished out the damn river.
So we put Urist in the cart and move off. Into the sun that never sets. Towards the Sunwell.
Last edited by Lokathor on Sun Mar 23, 2014 6:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
[*]The Ends Of The Matrix: Github and Rendered
[*]After Sundown: Github and Rendered
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Post by Lokathor »

Episode 05: Ballad of Fallen Golems

Recurring Cast
[*]Tibellus: The Spider Lady (sheet).
[*]Biggunegi, the [foolish] Samurai Warrior (sheet).
[*]Sugita Hotaru, Hobgoblin Dragonfire Adept (sheet).
[*]Urist McFuck, Dwarven Knight (sheet).

NPCs
[*]The Bard (he's now officially named "bard" from now on)

We head down the river. After we camp, Sugita hears an "ominous splashing" in the water. Like normal splashing, but spookily different. He tries to toss a rock or whatever to wake up Tibellus without being obvious about it, but rolls a 1 on his Sleight of Hand check, and so the rock lands on the shovel with a loud clang. Everyone immediately wakes up, and the splashing immediately approaches. No worse than just shouting "everyone wake up!" I suppose.

A crowd of Troglodytes starts to crawl up out of the river... (go go battle music)
~Round 1~
"What do my Orcish eyes see?"
"They see a band of deformed humanoids crawling up out of the river, all sorta scaly"
"Dude, they're you from that one After Sundown campaign."
"Oh, yeah, I'm gonna kill myself then."

Biggunegi stands up, moves, and then screams loudly. Sugita hops off the cart and breathes on 3 trogs. They move up and attempt to stab Sugita, and their stink aura sickens Biggunegi and Sugita. One Trog goes to attack Biggunegi. Tibellus, stands, 5ft steps, throws a net, and hits a dude. Urist stands and moves towards the battle. Bard stands up and flees bravely away from the battle.

~Round 2~
Biggunegi murders his trog. Sugita breathes on all his trogs (killing 2). The last trog lets out a super scream, calling more out of the river, and stabs Sugita lightly. Tibellus throws a net at the mostly dead guy. Urist chops down the trog.

~Round 3~
Biggunegi moves and then screams again. Sugita readies a breath attack. Trog attacks Urist, second trog attacks Urist (putting him at -1), and a trog attacks Biggunegi. Sugita's breath goes off. Tibellus swings a Flame Snake and hits. Urist bleeds.

~Round 4~
Biggunegi misses. One trog grabs Urist and drags him 15ft towards the river. The other trog hits Biggunegi (dropping him to -2). Sugita moves and breathes fire on the one dragging Urist (killing him). Urist bleeds on the river shore, but isn't underwater or anything. [Tibellus didn't actually go this round, due to us not paying close attention. Tibellus's player had been also running Urist, so we forgot that he needed to do both]

~Round 5~
Biggunegi bleeds. A trog starts dragging Biggunegi into the river. Another trog tries to stab Tibellus, missing. Tibellus draws an AoO as she moves away from her melee (it misses) and then she throws a net at the one dragging Biggunegi (hitting).

Sugita: Uh... let's see. I'm going to draw a very careful cone.
Tibellus: What!?
GM: A careful cone? Alright, impress me with the carefulness of this cone.
Sugita: Okay, so this is the 5ft section, this is the 10ft, this is the 15ft section, at 20ft it's like this, At 25--
GM: This cone is so lop-sided!
Sugita: That's my plan.
Biggunegi: I guess technically...
Sugita: It is as wide at each step as it is far, so it's a valid cone.
GM: Know what? I'll take it, just for ingenuity. Go ahead and roll it.
Image
Sugita: *rolls* 4
Biggunegi: I'm gonna get dragged into a river!
GM: Let's see... 4 damage... that's not enough to finish it off, Sugita.
Sugita: Ohhhhhhh~

Urist bleeds.

~Round 6~
Biggunegi bleeds. One trog drags Biggunegi farther into the river, and the other uninjured trog moves and stabs at Sugita (missing). Tibellus throws yet another net, this time on the uninjured trog. Sugita rolls low yet again, but finally roasts the trog draggin Biggunegi. Urist bleeds.

~Round 7~
Biggunegi bleeds. Tibellus sees that Biggunegi is in the shallows but probably isn't gonna float away, so she Flame Snakes the uninjured trog near Urist. Sugita does a breath. Trog drags Urist into the river (his head is underwater).

~Round 8~
Tibellus goes again (I guess we've skipped keeping track of bleeding for a moment), and throws a lasso around Urist to prevent him from being dragged any farther into the river (Opposed Grapple Check for the trog to make progress, +3 to Tibellus because of the lasso). Sugita breathes fire.

Urist is stabilized, Biggunegi is stabilized. Battered down, our heroes made it through.

Sugita: *rolls a natural 20 on the heal check*
Biggunegi: Boom!
GM: Nicely done.
Sugita: Well, I remember the time when he stuffed mud in my wounds and it worked, so I stuff mud in his wounds, and it works.
Tibellus: That's how we know that it truly is an honorable tradition.
There's some healing and resting. Some folks float down the river towards the town we're going towards, so we tell them to tell the town we'll be showing up soon enough. After a bit we make our way to the town of Marilith. It's very small, given the number of people we're seeing here. There's lots of visitors for some reason.

A guard directs us to see the mayor. As soon as we get there, the mayor is already waiting for us. Suspicious.

Inside, there's a Tiefling waiting

Introducing!
[*]Vaiken, a Tiefling Monk (Sheet).

He offers us all drinks. The Tiefling doesn't drink Tea, sadly. He, and Urist drink booze, Sugita drinks tea, Biggunegi drinks the (now expired) yak milk (immune to ingested poisons, after all), and Tibellus drinks water. The mayor is about to snicker at the water drinker, but Tibellus flashes the soulmelds and is just generally crazy seeming enough to keep the mayor on his toes.

There was a shady negotiation
Mayor: Great, great, the rest of you got here just in time. I've been waiting for you, let's see, 1, 2, 3, 4, yeah you all got here, perfect, all in one piece.
Sugita: Waiting for us you say?
Mayor: Yeah, that's right
GM: He narrows his eyes at you
Mayor: You are the folks I've been waiting for, right?
Tibellus: Yeah, that's me.
Sugita: Yeah, I mean, how long have you been waiting?
Mayor: You were supposed to get here today, you're right on schedule.
Sugita: Oh, excellent, I thought we might have been delayed.
Mayor: Good, good, don't want any misunderstandings. I guess you don't have the details, I only sent you the thing about a week ago.
Tibellus: Yeah, tell us the details.
Mayor: Here's the dirt guys, here's the dirt. There's a crazy old mana alchemist that lives outside of town. outside of everywhere. outside the protection of any town or city. oh, a good 20 miles from here. Normally he doesn't let anyone in, a real secretive kind of guy. But in a few days, for whatever reason, he says he's gonna open up his doors and allow in a few of the gentry folk, from the area, to sample his wares. ...catch my drift?
Tibellus: ....right...
Sugita: So, we sample some and bring some back, I assume?
Mayor: Naw, naw, that's small thinking. This mana alchemist, he's gotta have a spell book, he's gotta have a recipe book somewhere. I want you to get in there, I want you to steal it, and I want you to bring it back to me. When you do, I'll pay you the agreed upon rate.
Tibellus: Can you read magic?
Mayor: Don't worry about that friend, I'll handle that.
Tibellus: Okay, okay, welp, you'll need to give me a map, because I love maps.
Mayor: Not that this'll be hard, we'll get you all dressed up so that you look like gentry yourselves. You'll just go in with the rest of them when they open the doors.
Sugita: Oh, good, good, now--
Tibellus: Wait. Wait, I have to wear something else?
Mayor: Is that a problem?
Sugita: I'm afraid our college here wears only the finest quality ropes, and unfortunately nothing but ropes. If you have some silk ropes in town I'm sure she'd have enough time to fashion a fancy looking version of this garment that she's wearing already.
GM: He gives you the once over. You feel greasy just being looked at by him.
Mayor: Huh. Maybe. We could dye some ropes? Something... have to figure it out.
Tibellus: Yes, you will.
Mayor: You can't go in looking like that, you look like a hobo.
Sugita: We'll wash her up.
Tibellus: I put on my most intimidating flames. I just really, really amp up the blue flame.
GM: Make another check.
Tibellus: Do I get a bonus for all the flames at once?
GM: Sure, a +4 say.
Tibellus: *rolls*
Mayor: Woah there! Holy shit!
Tibellus: I am royalty!
Mayor: Don't set the house on fire, alright?
Sugita: Look Tibellus, we know that you're royalty, but you're elf royalty, and elf royalty doesn't have the same standards as the royalty that we seek to meet.
Mayor: Can you at least take a bath?
Tibellus: *long sigh*
Mayor: You smell like three week old fish.
Sugita: Well, that has to do with the thing that we thought we might have been delayed with, but we solved that. We're gonna have it under control. Just tell us how many days we have to get ready.
Mayor: Three days.
Sugita: Alright, is there a blacksmith in town? We need some armor to be adjusted before we go and meet with this guy.
Mayor: Certainly is, but he's more of a blacksmith and horseshoes kind of guy mostly. He might be able to fix up some armor.
Sugita: We'll be ready in three days then.
Mayor: What kind of armor is this though? You can't go tromping about into that place in flashy armor unless it's real flashy.
Sugita: It's been worn by a former mayor of a nearby village. It was won as a prize for a successfully completed task.
Mayor: Huh, long as--
Tibellus: Ever heard of Maduin?
Mayor: I have of course, we trade with them every now and then. They send logs down river when we need the high quality stuff.
Sugita: It comes straight from the forges of Maduin.
Mayor: Interesting.
Tibellus: You know Cassandra? This was her armor.
Mayor: No bloodshed over it I hope.
Sugita: Well, uh... there...
Tibellus: We did solve her murder.
Sugita: There was an unfortunate investigation into her murder, yes.
Mayor: Dead you say? Most unfortunate news.
GM: He strokes his chin.
Mayor: Huh. Now uh, who's in charge of it now?
Tibellus: Well, as soon as we go back, we are. But we left the clerk and the head guard in charge while we're gone.
GM: He strokes his chin more and you see a calculating look come into his eyes.
Mayor: Alright, alright then.
Tibellus: If I hear of someone trying to take over my territory, words will be had.
Mayor: Of course, of course, I wouldn't dream of it.
Sugita: Tibellus, he's already dreaming it!
Tibellus: I know, I'm gonna kill this guy.
Sugita: Let's stop giving away all the info.
Mayor: Anyways, anyways, I'll get you guys setup at the inn. I'll get you sent some things from the store I suppose. Clothes, and ropes. Ms... what's your name?
Tibellus: Tibellus
Mayor: Tibellus, perfect, perfect. We can work on dying something. Favorite color?
Tibellus: Purple, the royal color.
Mayor: Purple dye is not easy to go by, and by that I mean that I just plain can't get it. I can do red or blue fast.
Tibellus: Blue. It'll match my flames.
Mayor: Alright, perfect.
So we go to the blacksmith and arrange for the Magic Full Plate that we have to be adjusted into dwarf size, and we'll pay him later when we come to get it back.

We consider talking to the alchemist, and then murdering the mayor instead. Except we have to wait a week for the armor to be done. And the alchemist party is in 3 days, so we have that timing issue. If we don't get the spellbook, the mayor will be suspicious. If we kill him, we have to stay in town for four days after and maybe get discovered.

We get in-character acquainted with Vaiken. He's officially invited to our plot to take over the world.

Then we talk about killing the mayor some more, and it's brought up that the mayor is strong enough to be in charge despite the fact that we're probably not the first to come up with the idea of "kill this dude", so we need to be careful. But also, the alchemist is strong enough that the mayor sent us instead of doing it himself, so we need to be careful there too.

We also purchase a second horse to pull the cart so that Urist can ride his horse. Plus some herbs so that Bard can make more healing tea. And some heal checks are also rolled and such.

The mayor comes to us later on the first day. He's got some ropes dying, and he's got some clothes, but we ask for surcoats instead. Doesn't matter to us if some of us gotta pretend to be bodyguards instead, we wanna keep our armor on. The mayor has an excess of blue dye it seems, so on the second day we get a delivery of blue "clothing" items. Vaiken gets a blue robe thing, Tibellus gets blue ropes that she quickly spider-weaves into a new suit of cord armor, and the rest of us get blue surcoats to put overtop of our metal armor (two chainmail users and one guy with a breastplate). We also realize that we've kinda got a matching outfit thing going on, so we're probably gonna keep the outfits from now on, particularly when we terrorize the general populace.

We give Vaiken the fancy silk robe that we found in the tomb. He puts it on, and we fiddle around with it, and discover that it's a Magic Silk Robe of Endure Elements. It's got a plus to armor, so we have Vaiken keep it, since he's the only one that can even put it to use.

On the third day the Mayor shows up and send us off with the traveling party (about 40 people) that's going to the alchemist's manor. He reiterates that we're to sneak in and steal the spellbooks, then return them in the evening.

We show up at the mansion. It has two golems watching the front door. They're made completely of bread. They're also inviting folks to come right in, so we do that. There's an entry hall with some doors that lead off other places, and then at the end of the entry hall it opens up into a grand ballroom type of deal. There, in the middle of the room, in the most foppish hat you could imagine, is... The Alchemist... he's just a guy, it turns out.

So we decide that Vaiken is the sneakiest, and the rest of us will be distractions.

Then, Tibellus, you go up to the table where the guy's sitting...
Alchemist: (he's got a voice like Choose Goose) Oh, hello there. How ya' doin?
Tibellus: I'm doing very well this day, I, uh, for some reason have a man's voice suddenly!
Alchemist: That is most disturbing, you should watch out for that sort of thing around here!
Tibellus: haha, I know, right? It keeps happening.
Alchemist: Only three days ago I had a woman's voice, for a whole week!
Tibellus: I know! And you still do! Because that was only three days ago!
Alchemist: haha! quite!
So small-talk is made, and we're invited to sample the wares all around. Tibellus asks to be shown around personally, and then the rest of us have a look in the parts of the room that the Alchemist isn't in. Sugita spots a small staircase that platters are floating up out of, and he waives Vaiken over and points it out to him.

Vaiken slides down the narrow staircase, dodges past a platter that's floating up as he goes down, and makes his way into the basement. There's a bread golem there. The bread golem is not amused. It says some stuff about "restricted area" and tells Vaiken to leave through the door to the East, and to not go through the door on the West. Naturally, Vaiken suddenly wants to do the exact opposite. First he punches the bread through. He hits, then wins initiative, and hits again. One golem crumbles. There's a second golem in the room though. Since there's nothing to hide behind in the room, Vaiken just pushes his way through the West door. The golems begin to continually shout "Mam, this is a restricted area!" over and over. "I'm a dude!";; "Doesn't matter, they just always shout mam"

This is where Vaiken suddenly became almost the perfect character for this mission. His Monk stance benefits are the "+4 Dodge Bonus to AC" and the "No AoOs from moving into someone's square, or through a threatened square". So, instead of having to carefully go through the door and through the next room, he just moves in straight 30ft lines and ignores all the creatures in his way. The next room has bread golems and floating sausage strings getting food ready, putting it on flying platters and such. They all turn to fight him when he intrudes, but he just walks by like they're not even there.

He busts into the next room, and it's an office. There's six books on a shelf, and he just scoops them all into his backpack. He dashes out, through all of the enemies. Then he takes the East door, which the golems had claimed to be an exit. Through the East door there's a full-sized set of stairs. He takes those stairs, but he's in a room with a door he can't unlock.

Tibellus: Wait, Vaiken, you failed at Metal Gear, because you killed one of your enemies.
Vaiken: Shut up!
Sugita: You're never gonna get Fox Hound rank!

Around this time the jig was basically getting all kinds of up. The alchemist finally notices stuff going on, and starts yelling at his creations. Sugita, Biggunegi, and Urist all begin eating the sausages. Tibellus too. The alchemist tries to go downstairs to check out what's going on, and spots Vaiken, but this also means that the door Vaiken couldn't get past before is now open. So he runs off yelling and the alchemist cancels the party, saying he's been robbed.

We all keep eating stuff, and we scoop candies into our bags, and keep eating until the bread golems physically push us out of the house. Then we go back to town.

Back at town, Vaiken has returned on his own. The mayor demands the stuff right away, but Vaiken tries to say that they should wait for the others to get back before any stuff handing happens.

Mayor: Come on! Give me the stuff.
Vaiken: No, you see, this was a group effort--
Mayor: Then why are you back here by yourself?
Vaiken: Because they're still coming back, because I kinda had to get out of there. Have you ever played Metal Gear Solid?
Mayor: Metal... Gear? Some kind of... mechanical works?
Vaiken: Sure, we'll call it that. This was a Sneaking Mission.

Vaiken tries to pull out the books and show them off without handing them over, but the mayor just snatches them up. They're exactly what he's looking for, so he offers Vaiken his payment now, or later.

Sugita: Wait for the group, he's gonna stab you.
Tibellus: Have you ever heard the words, "Your eternal reward"?

Vaiken gets handed the money, 2,000gp, and is told to get out of town. Vaiken gives each of Sugita, Tibellus, Urist, and Biggunegi 200gp, then tells them that the mayor is a sleezebag. Sugita reminds everyone that we're now getting into the "actually that's fucking heavy" quantities of gold, so instead Tibellus, Biggunegi, and Urist all put their money share into the communal "merchant fund" that we had going for merchanting stuff. Because we're also playing Spice and Wolf. Vaiken offers his "210 now because i started off with 10", minus 50 he's going to keep. At which point we suddenly question Vaiken where the other thousand gold went.

Vaiken divided very badly.

So we put the extra thousand also into the community pile. Tibellus doesn't care about gold, she deals in land. Biggunegi doesn't care about gold, he cares about honor. Also we're gonna pay for Urist's armor refit out of the merchant fund, so it's all good. We rest for a day to get ready for stabbing this Mayor in the face.

The next day though... the Alchemist comes into town. With twenty bread golems at his side. The Alchemist begins speaking with the Mayor, and the golems wait outside. Tibellus sneaks up to the back of the Mayor's house but isn't able to hear the conversation well. After the Alchemist leaves she goes in the back and asks what's up. The mayor says he didn't give anyone away, but to leave town immediately.

Well we didn't do that thing. Actually we did the opposite.

The golems inspect around. They inspect our cart. They try to tell Vaiken to pull back his hood.

Tibellus: Book it!
Sugita: No, I have a better plan, we kill all of them.
Vaiken: Well, where am I and stuff?
Sugita: Yeah, battle mat all this out.
Tibellus: Battle mat the whole town and all 20 bread golems. Rock and Roll.
Biggunegi: Is it time to murder?
Sugita: There are twenty people on the murder list!
Biggunegi: ooh!
Vaiken: But they're all made of bread, so--
Biggunegi: oooh!
Tibellus: Twenty-one. You get to eat twenty of our kills though.
Biggunegi: oooooooh!

He doesn't book it, the golem begins to shout, pulls off his hood as he tries to dodge, and shouts loudly that this is the guy who stole the stuff. Welp.

(music)
~Round 1~
Urist does a ride-by attack, missing.
Biggunegi charges a golem, killing it in one hit. [19]
Golems go. All the ones that attack Urist miss. Some charge Biggunegi, hitting him to 1hp in a single, 10 damage attack.
Vaiken deals 12, which doesn't kill a golem, but 14 damage had killed Biggunegi's golem, so all the golems have either 13 or 14 hp. Good to know I guess.
Sugita carefully makes a 5ft step...

Sugita: I'm gonna 5ft-step... that way.
GM: That's a fairly long 5ft-step.
Vaiken: That's the biggest 5-ft step I've ever seen.
Tibellus: Incroyable!
Biggunegi: It's like a 20ft-step! but it's only 5ft!
Vaiken: That was a 60ft-step.
Sugita: ...I can't tell if you're all messing with me or not, or if my client is de-synched.
GM: I think you're de-synched.

Sugita refreshes the page and then the game continues. A proper 5ft-step is made this time and then some golems get nearly roasted (also 12 damage).
Tibellus readies an action to attack whoever approaches her with a Flame Snake, but doesn't wanna actually herself approach anything yet.

~Round 2~
Urist takes a mighty swing, killing a golem. [18]
Biggunegi hits a nearly dead one, kills it, cleaves the next, kills it, cleaves the next, kills it. [15]
Bread Golems hit Sugita [6], then another charges Biggunegi [3], dropping him to -2hp. The rest of them come from around the corner and all pile up right in front of Sugita. Perfect for us.
The Alchemist throws a vial down the street, it smashes on the ground and explodes into a 20ft cloud of super-garlic, sickening everyone except Tibellus, and it counts as an Obscuring Mist as well (or as a weaker Stinking Cloud, if you wanna imagine it like that).
Vaiken moves a bit and misses with a punch.
Sugita 5ft-steps, then breathes a 14 damage cone over a ton of bread, killing 5 of them.
Tibellus moves and readies her Flame Snake again.

~Round 3~
Urist makes a golem explode with 24 damage.
The golems hit Tibellus [4], and then don't do much else.
The Alchemist moves around out of sight (because of the garlic cloud)
Vaiken punches a golem standing over Biggunegi's body, missing.
Sugita breathes on some golems and also the alchemist gets caught in the area. Then he moves at half-speed to sneak (20) into another part of the cloud.
Tibellus moves into the garlic cloud and becomes sickened, but can't make it to Biggunegi.

~Round 4~
Urist misses, sadly.
Biggunegi bleeds.
The Bread misses, but the Alchemist casts a Burning Hands which includes Biggunegi's body in the area! Oh, no! Vaiken takes 3, Sugita and Tibellus take 6 (puts Tibellus at 0), so does the bread, and Biggunegi makes his unconscious reflex save and takes only 3.
Vaiken drags Biggunegi 15ft away from the fight.
Sugita does a breath attack, hitting the alchemist in the process.
Tibellus moves to a corner of a building (this is all happening in the street remember) while staying in the cloud, and just waits. We actually don't have any healing methods, so she's out of the fight essentially, but as long as she stays at 0 we don't have to run over and stabilize her too.

~Round 5~
Urist explodes a golem into bread flakes.
Biggunegi bleeds.
Bread Golems go, one hits Urist [1].
Sugita moves and fails his Heal check.
Tibellus 5ft steps to the other side of the building corner.

~Round 6~
Urist chops down a golem
Biggunegi bleeds
Golems miss.
Vaiken drags Biggunegi farther away
Sugita moves and successfully stabilizes Biggunegi. Once again using the honorable technique of "stuff mud in the wounds so blood can't keep coming out".
Tibellus waits.

~Round 7~
Urist chops down a golem.
Biggunegi is stable.
The golems keep coming, but not doing much to Urist.
Vaiken double-moves into position so that he's flanking a golem with Urist.
Sugita moves and then hides behind the cart because he can't get in range.
Tibellus waits.

~Round 8~
Urist explodes a golem.
A golem gets a strong 7-damage hit in on Urist, but he's still doing okay for now (12 hp left).
Vaiken kills a golem.
Sugita toasts a single golem with his breath attack, just barely not hitting Tibellus
Tibellus shouts "Oy! I'm standin' 'ere!", and then keeps standing.

~Round 9~
Urist chops a golem.
The final golem attacks Urist, dealing 9.
Vaiken moves to flank, minor hit [5].
Sugita goes to grab Biggunegi and move him towards the cart.
Tibellus wanders up toward the cart.

~Round 10~
Urist hits, crumbling the golem.
Then we load all the wounded into the cart and get the cart horse out of the inn stable and we all begin to leave town for the outskirts. The garlic-cloud vanishes as we're doing this, and the lone alchemist is left standing in the street, looking at the carnage (well, bread carnage) around him. He looks up at us.

Alchemist: You destroyed all of my bread! How could you do this!? I'll be back to get you later!

and then he drinks an invisibility potion and runs off.

The guards are like "get out of here before you cause more trouble." and we're like "keep bugging us and we'll give you all the trouble you need" and then we move out stuff to the edge of town. Sugita hands some money to Bard and Bard goes to buy some herbs if he can.

Also we leveled up to level 3.
Last edited by Lokathor on Mon Mar 24, 2014 4:21 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Ikeren
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Post by Ikeren »

This game is hilarious and awesome.
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OgreBattle
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Post by OgreBattle »

Trog drags Urist into the river (his head is underwater)
If he started drowning you wouldn't even need to stabilize him.

Tibellus is also the least lewd high CHA spider-themed bondage dress lady I's seen in D&D so far.
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Lokathor
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Post by Lokathor »

Technically yes on the drowning thing, but if you're going to follow the rules that literally there's no way to end the drowning status either.
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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

This is great, and it's really making me want to play a magic chef in my next Tome game.
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Post by AndreiChekov »

This is really amusing and awesome. I will be watching for updates.
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Post by Lokathor »

Previous episodes have been via audio-call. Due to technical difficulties, the next episode was played out entirely via the roll20 chat thing. It'll probably be a lot more verbose of who said what, since it's already written down and all. Still need to do some cleanup to have it make readable sense to an outside audience, but it should be up in much less time than the last episode took to do.
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Post by Lokathor »

Episode 06: Sympathy For The Mayor

Recurring Cast
[*]Tibellus: The Spider Lady (sheet).
[*]Biggunegi, the [foolish] Samurai Warrior (sheet).
[*]Sugita Hotaru, Hobgoblin Dragonfire Adept (sheet).
[*]Urist McFuck, Dwarven Knight (sheet).
[*]Vaiken, a Tiefling Monk (Sheet).

NPCs
[*]Bard

Due to audio errors, my recording of this session was lost. Thankfully, we also had to do it in chat because GM's connection was being crap, and the recordings were basically just an OOC/Group Chat kind of thing. So, the events themselves have been safely saved.

Alright, so our group goes to the outskirts and rests a day. Then, a villager comes out to talk to us.

Villager: What exactly are you going to do?
Sugita: We'll handle, it, we can't say too much, you might even be his agent
Tibellus: you stay with us
Villager: If I were, I wouldn't be here. What benefit is there to him in turning you against him? He's nothing if not cunning.
Sugita: Only an expert in turning people against people would know the answer to that.
Tibellus: I tire of this nonsense, go back to your village if you will and speak to no one of this.
GM: He shrugs.
Tibellus: go now

So the villager leaves. We rest a day, healing 12hp. Then, a town guard arrives.

Guard: Hey, you guys have to clear out. Mayor's orders. He doesn't want troublemakers near the village. Creates too much trouble.
Tibellus: we'll come back in a few days to finish the business we had here
Sugita: we'll be here one more day
GM: He shakes his head.
Guard: Mayor said you have to get out now. More than my job's worth to let you stay
Sugita: More than your job's worth to make us move on too, 'naw mean?
Guard: And I don't know how much he'd want to let you back in. Didn't look like he's very pleased with hordes of adventurers fighting bread monsters in the middle of town.
Tibellus: Listen, we can just leave for now and come back in a few days like I said, we just need to pick something up.
Guard: Nah. I'm the warning, so to speak. The crushing forces comes later, see.

So we leave for the woods with a "We'll be back later" and just hang out for 2 days. Then Sugita goes back into town to pick up the armor, figuring that it'll cause less of a disturbance if there's not a whole war squad.

GM: Alright. So you walk back into the farmed area, and one of the guards calls down from a watchtower
Watchtower Guard: Hey, you!
Sugita: Yes?
Watchtower: You're one of those hooligans who caused all the trouble a few days ago!
Sugita: I am. Here to pick up an item.
Watchtower: Mayor's orders: no hooligans, ne'er-do-wellers, or troublemakers! You might be all three, so you're triple-banned.
Sugita: I'll give you 10 gold right now to shut up and stay out of my way.
GM: He contemplates this.
Watchtower: Well... I might just have been looking the other way. As long as you don't cause any trouble. Or hooliganry.

Sugita sets 10 gold on the ground and goes into the forge. Well, he makes his way toward the forge, because he gets stopped at the last minute. Literally the rest of the guard is standing exactly outside the door into the forge.

Lead Guard: Ahhh. We were hoping we had seen the last of you. How about you come with us?
Sugita: You have seen the last of me, just as soon as I pick up this item from inside. I'm going to pay for it, then he'll have more money for the mayor to tax, and then the mayor will have more money to pay you with. [Diplomacy 17]
Lead Guard: Oh, the armor? Very nice, it is. Mayor confiscated it of course. Evidence and all that.
GM: He smirks at you.
Sugita: how many guards were there you say?
GM: Half a dozen
Sugita: and where were they standing you say?
GM: One sec... Yeah, like this.
Sugita: alright i do a breath attack on all of them except the far left one
GM: Alright. DC? Oh. Uh, one sec. Let me put down something that might change your decision slightly. There ARE villagers milling about. Rubbernecking, now.
Sugita: are they in the way?
GM: A couple of them
Sugita: they're actually between me and the guards?
GM: Alright, there we go. They're not between the guards and you (none of their rubbernecks are THAT powerful), but there are some at the back of the guards trying to peer over shoulders.

So, Sugita just flies off. He might have killed a lot of them with a good damage roll, but it wasn't anywhere close to a sure thing. It wasn't even a highly confident thing really. As he's flying off he gets hit with a single arrow, and shoots back a line of fire that nearly drops the offending archer. Fuck that one archer.

GM: Okay. So the dragonfire adept shows up without any armor, but a nice arrow sticking out of him.
Sugita: Fuck, the mayor stole the armor
Tibellus: I feel even more hatred
Urist: fuck that guy
Sugita: alright we're gonna do a night raid
GM: A ... night raid?
Sugita: yeah, at night.
GM: Hmm.
Sugita: we'll go in at night, and none of those stupid human guards will be able to see as much... oh.
Tibellus: yeah
Sugita: right
Tibellus: Reaches
Sugita: no night
GM: Not unless you've got an eclipse in your back pocket.
Sugita: ...I'll build it later.

So we go back to town as a partial group. Bard stays at the cart, and Biggunegi stays to guard him. Thankfully, Biggunegi's 'superior' orc musical ear protects him from any permanent scarring as a result of this.

Tibellus and Vaiken walk into town, Urist rides up alongside them, and Sugita is 100ft in the air. Tibellus burns bright and shouts a lot about, "We're here to kill the Mayor, anyone who wants to stop us can try but anyone who doesn't want to die, get out of our way!" [Intimidate 24]. It's at least enough to keep all the watchtower guards from bothering us while we go into the middle of town.

The Mayor comes out of his house and starts in with the "what's all this then?" but sees us and basically give us an "oh... it's you..." (music)
~Round 1~
> Tibellus moves up and blasts off a Corollax cone, 1 round of stunning to a bunch of guards and one villager.
> Mayor casts a Charm Person on Vaiken, and it works.

Mayor: Vaiken! My old buddy, old pal. You remember how much I paid you? More could be yours, and you wouldn't have to stick around these awful nasty people.
Vaiken considers this, it does sound convincing.
Mayor: You just ... need to make the problem not be a problem. With your fists.
But Vaiken resists that order with a charisma check on the grounds that he did get a magic robe from these guys.

> Urist swings and hits, 15 damage to the leader of the guards, some guy with a fancy helmet.
> Vaiken decides to do nothing at all on his turn.
> Sugita, in a grave tactical error, decides to focus on just the Mayor. He uses a Line breath and deals a chunk of damage [17]. What he should have done is be on the ground with the rest of the group and use a cone breath on all the guards.
> Two of the melee guards swing swords and miss. There's three archer guards as well, they all shoot at Tibellus. One crits Tibellus for 22 damage. Tibellus has 11hp and 10 Con; even with the extended death threshold of "you die at negative ConScore", Tibellus is still instantly dead. It turns out, these funkies aren't NPC Warriors that don't have feats or anything, they're NPC Fighters with Tome feats that have Precise Shot and Point Blank Shot. Suddenly, Sugita's decision to ignore them is revealed to be a very very bad one.

Well, GM gives Tibellus the "Focus Sash" rule on this one, so he'll get one chance to stabilize during round 2, then he'll die on his turn during round 3 if nothing else has happened since then.

~Round 2~
> Tibellus doesn't stabilize with her roll, so she's doomed to die at the top of round 3 if nothing is done. We've got those herbs though, so things might be alright.
> Mayor shoots a Glitterdust at Sugita. Sugita is so surprised that Glitterdust is a Medium range spell when he thought it was a Close range spell that he fails his save in shock. Suddenly Sugita is blind for 4 rounds and things don't seem like they're going to be very alright.
> Urist tries to fast-dismount and fails, but feeds Tibellus the herbs potion thing, which heals like 5hp or whatever small value, so she's still unconscious but she's at least stable. Also we remember that the war horse can fight to, so it flails about with kicks and bites and ends up biting the fancy hat guard for another 2 damage. Fancy Hat is still standing, but worried about possible Horse Fever infections.
> Vaiken (still charmed, since having your allies attacked doesn't break the charm, it only breaks if you yourself are attacked) moves up and drags Tibellus away from the combat.
> Sugita, blind, flies off at a right angle to the street's direction, so that he's out of LOS of all the archers on the ground, then just keeps going off into the distance until the blindness wears off, at which point the battle is over anyway.
> Fancy Hat swings at the horse and misses, two sword guys swing at Urist and miss, the archer that Urist had challenged hits him, but the other two miss.

~Round 3~
> Tibellus is stable at least.
> The mayor will shoot the most frightening spell ever at Urist: MAGIC MISSILE. 6 damage to poor Urist.

At this point we take a moment to debate amongst ourselves how to get out of this one at all, it's not looking so good. Until I notice that Vaiken is totally strong and can just pick up Tibellus instead of dragging her everywhere.

> Urist fails at a fast-mount, and then moves away 60ft. (AoOs miss)
> Vaiken picks up Tibellus, activates his fighting style, and then starts walking away.
> Sugita continues to fly away
> The guards chase for a bit
(Musical Change)

GM: You get back to the cart, the guards in hot pursuit. You ARE notably faster than them though.
Sugita: alright, i get back to the cart first, i immediately tell biggunegi and bard to pack up, hitch up the horse, etc
GM: Wouldn't Urist get back first? 60' horse versus 40' flight?
Sugita: i guess he would, well then, i get back second
GM: They actually are already packing up as Urist gallops in. Bard knows from deep experience - when you see some guy running, it's usually best if you start running too.
Sugita: Bard is the best
Vaiken: that is the best
Tibellus: Bard is THE best
GM: So they have everything in the cart and the horse hitched up by the time you guys arrive.
Sugita: okay, well, then we move towards Vaiken and pick him up a little earlier than waiting for him to go all the way back

The guards chase us a bit but decide that leaving the village totally undefended isn't the best plan, so they break off. We use the second batch of Herbs on Tibellus and she ends up at -1.

New Plan: We're just going to pick off each watchtower one at a time, and then we'll pick off guards one at a time. Until nothing stands in our way against the Mayor.

We get up to about 200ft away from the tower, and Sugita and Urist both shoot a shot at the guard, killing him before he can blow his horn. Then Sugita moves in and sets the tower ablaze. This of course is very obvious, and brings some guards. The group moves back and then approaches the next tower from another angle. After the second tower goes down the guards all withdraw and just start patrolling in squads. Sugita proceeds to burn down all the watchtowers despite them being empty, just for offending him.

The party moves and engages one of the squads with only 2 archers in it.

(music)
~Round 1~
> Tibellus delays until after Sugita
> Vaiken activates his fighting style and double move in, but the engage distance on this battle was something fierce
> Urist does a mounted charge and drops a guy.
> Sugita does a line breath that drops two more.
> Tibellus moves in some.
> The 2 remaining guards immediately surrender.
GM: The sword guy flings himself at Urist's horse, sobbing and begging not to be killed. The archer guy just very carefully and slowly puts down his bow and puts up his hands.
Tibellus: you can join us in defeating the mayor
Vaiken: they have to fight the mayor with us then
Tibellus: if you betray us we will seek swift justice
Sugita: also, I go over and stabilize the two that I did the breath attack on
Archer: But you guys want to destroy the village. We won't help you do that!
Sugita: No, we're just out to kill the mayor
Tibellus: just the mayor, the people can live
Archer: Then why have you been burning down watchtowers? Those guys are just trying to protect villagers.
Sugita: Because those watchtowers were protecting the Mayor. Nothing can stand in our way against him
Tibellus: he betrayed us, thus, swift justice
Archer: You're mad. You would expose dozens of innocent lives to great danger for a grudge?
Sugita: Yes, we would. We are mad. Isn't that why you should get out of our way?
Tibellus: the mayor has given me the bloodlust, and nothing can stop us.
GM: He shakes his head.
Archer: I cannot, will not help you. I can't stop you, but no moral man would follow you.
GM: The sword guy is of a different opinion. He's fine with taking out the mayor.

So we tell the archer guy to just watch the wounded and wait for another patrol to find him and help bring the wounded back into town. We take all their weapons and armor to a safe location so that they can't be used against us in the meantime, and promise to return them when this whole matter is over.

Then we get set to find another patrol, only this time we're gonna talk to them first!

Next Time!
Last edited by Lokathor on Sun Mar 30, 2014 1:39 am, edited 1 time in total.
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AndreiChekov
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Location: an AA meeting. Or Caemlyn.

Post by AndreiChekov »

I like how vindictive everyone is. REVENGE!
Peace favour your sword.

I only play 3.x
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