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Lokathor
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Post by Lokathor »

Episode 07: Heavy Metal Armor

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

The episode begins with our heros, having just taken some weapons and armor from the last encounter back to camp, turning around and walking into town again. Because of who showed up, Vaiken is left in camp and Biggunegi goes with the group this time.

Tibellus, Urist, Sugita, and Biggunegi, still all dressed in blue ropes and blue surcoats as you can recall, are the tiniest army as they approach the village once more. The farmers of course spot them and run away spooked. A patrol shows up, but not with the mayor in tow, so we decide to stop and talk with them a moment.

Tibellus: I wanna shout, "Parley"
GM: Oh, alright. One of the sword guys goes to the middle, you go to the middle I guess.
Guard: Hmmph, what do you want to parley with?
Tibellus: I wanna parley over, uh, you know, we're not here to destroy your town. I just want you guys to know that right off the bat.
Guard: Really? You've been doing a good job of it anyway.
Tibellus: Well, I understand that, but that is because we were betrayed by your Mayor, and we are here only for the Mayor.
Guard: ...what do you charge the Mayor with?
Sugita: Illegal Confiscation of Magical Goods.
Tibellus: Yes, that, the guy shouting behind us. He was correct. Illegal Confiscation of Magical Goods.
Guard: What proof do you have?
Tibellus: We're the ones who brought that armor with us.
Sugita: Yeah, your town guard admitted to confiscating the armor from the armorer.
GM: He scratches his head.
Guard: I'd have to ask the commander about that, afraid he isn't with this patrol.
Tibellus: Well, how about we wait here--
Guard: You could come back with us though... Well, here's the thing stranger. There isn't much of a courthouse in this town. Any judgements come down from the mayor or his lieutenant.
Sugita: Doesn't that seems a little bit, uhm, one-sided?
GM: He shrugs
Guard: He pulls out his sword, and he makes the decisions.
Tibellus: The man we have a problem with is, in fact, the Mayor. So if he's making the decisions...
Guard: Yes, I understand. I'm trying to explain to you why that might be a little problematic to resolve through normal channels here... which is why the alternative would be to convene a village council. We get the elders from all the different households around, get 'em all together in a big circle. Talk it out.
Sugita: That's almost acceptable.
Guard: You'd have to explain to them your position and provide evidence of his wrongdoing and so on and so forth. Understand, he's been our Mayor for quite a while now, almost four and a half years! Hasn't been anything terrible since then.
Tibellus: Have you ever met the guy?
Guard: Hmm?
Tibellus: Have you ever talked to him? He's kinda the worst.
Sugita: Have you ever talked to him one on one?
Biggunegi: The most dishonorabru!
Guard: I admit, he comes off a bit poorly. Uh, rather poorly. I'm certain he's a blowhard.
Sugita: Look, I don't know about your human laws, but over in the Samurai Lands where we come from, if you do a dishonorable thing, you get your head cut off. If you can walk away from that, you're fine. If you can't, then that's all there is to the matter. It's very simple.
Tibellus: We're not here to kill you, or your friends, or your townspeople.
Guard: Ah, but see, who decides who does the beheading?
Sugita: Uh, we have this guy, his name is Biggunegi, he specializes in beheading.
Biggunegi: Hai!
Sugita: Biggunegi, show him your axe! Show him your axe!
Biggunegi: Schwing!
Guard: Not so strange then.
Sugita: Yeah, look at that axe, that's perfect for beheading.
Biggunegi: Sparkle, sparkle.
Guard: Well alright, well you understand how our system works then. Sounds like your system works exactly the same way.
Sugita: Well... yes, I suppose.
Tibellus: I'm just saying that there is a choice to be made here. We'll walk away and give you a few minutes to decide, but the choice is that you can either leave our way clear, or get in our way. And the options have clear outcomes. Uhm, we can go about our business with the Mayor with or without you.
Guard: You realize that, if we just gave in to bandits, there would be nothing left of our town in short order.
Sugita: We're not any local bandits. We're people that have been stolen from by the local government, and we are demanding compensation.
Guard: Yes, yes, in which case you have to come to the village circle if you want anything to be done.
Tibellus: Have you ever heard of the Bushido code?
Guard: Bushido... hey man no swearing around here.
Tibellus: Well, it makes it so that we are honor bound to defeat the Mayor, in mortal combat.
Guard: Your bullshito code is?
Tibellus: Yes, bullshito code.
Guard: Alright, I'll take your word for it stranger.
Tibellus: Well, we'll give you a few minutes to decide.
Guard: I'd be perfectly happy to call for--
Tibellus: Sugita, hmm, Biggunegi actually. Biggunegi, you will be the man to decide. Do you want to speak to the villagers?
Biggunegi: ...the Mayor is the guy with all the crazy bread people?
Tibellus: No, the Mayor is the guy who made us fight him, basically. Then he kicked us out of his town and stole the armor.
Biggunegi: Most dishonorablu.
Sugita: When we got kicked out of the town, we went back later at the appropriate time to get the armor, but the Mayor had already taken it out of the forge.
Biggunegi: Yeah, that fool needs to die.
Tibellus: Yeah, so, let's go to the town council, and our position will be that the Mayor needs to be killed, does that sound acceptable to you guys?
Sugita: ...sure... I'm not entirely confident that we should walk right into the middle of them.
Guard: Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait stranger. If we convened a circle it wouldn't have to be in the village. We could convene it in one of the outlying farmhouses, for example. And, of course, because the guards would all be involved, we would not bother you, assuming that you come in peace and good faith.
Tibellus: Yeah, yeah. I'm gonna tell you though: if we see the Mayor we're gonna see red. Nothing will stop us.
Guard: He'll have to speak for himself, of course. You can't expect a man to be tried and hung without being present for it.
Tibellus: alright, fiiiiiine, jeez... where should we go to wait for your council?
So we're directed to a farmhouse about half a mile away (the "worthingtons"), and we wait. And wait and wait. It takes 12 hours to get this thing set. We temporarily discuss if we should just kill the mayor on sight or not. Tibellus is for the plan, Biggunegi is for the plan if there aren't too many guards around, and Sugita is against the plan (on the grounds that, once you've agreed to enter into a legal proceeding, honor demands that you see it all the way through).

We drink moonshine and tea. Again, for 12 hours of waiting. Old guys show up, slightly less old guys show up. The place gets crowded and some of the younger guards get shooed out to make room. There's about a dozen villagers in this "two-room house" thing. The Mayor shows up last, and his fancy hat lieutenant is with him. The lieutenant is wearing the stolen armor. This is an affront to all of the gods if ever there was.

Well, so, they all show up and the Mayor is like... (the most obvious music)
Mayor: This just goes way beyond the pale. These criminals have called a village circle!? How could you allow this!?
Sugita: The Mayor seems to have adopted the Alchemist's voice.
Guard: They're leveling charges against you which you'll have to answer for.
GM: Oh, come on...
Mayor: I don't even know what you're talking about.
GM: There we go, more into it.
Mayor: Let's hear these charges so that we can get on with it.
Sugita (mayor style): Yeah, less nasally and more just sleezy, you know?
Mayor: Yeah, yeah.
Tibellus: The armor, right there, that your "Lieutenant", air quotes, is wearing. Are you kidding me!? That's clearly our armor.
Blacksmith: Yes, indeed. They brought the armor to my shop a little over a week ago. Asked it to be fitted to be Dwarf sized. Then just a couple days ago the Mayor came in and had a sit-down talk with me. Said the armor was part of an ongoing investigation into the bluecoats here. He said he was taking the armor so as to not let it fall into the wrong hands.
Mayor: Well, you see here friends, as it happens, these individuals, these criminals, they went and caused a bit of a stir up at the Alchemist's mansion back on the day he held the big party. Quite a stir. All of you here saw him come down, something he has not done in living memory.
Sugita: Yeah, but you paid us to do that!
Mayor: all those golems, causing a ruckus in the streets, looking for these guys. Know what? He was so upset that they'd stolen his spellbooks that I had to pay the guy off, with the town funds no less. And when that happened, I figured, you know what? these people don't deserve the basic goodness of life we're extending to them, or the hospitality. So, it made sense that to compensate us for our losses, we'd take the armor back from them.
Tibellus: Tibellus can Diplomacy better than I can in real life. How do I have her explain, uh...
GM: Just go ahead and make your Diplomacy check, and if you don't feel like doing it yourself.
Tibellus: I failed on the die, but I have +19, so, I did okay.
Biggunegi: Could have been worse.
Tibellus: I'm a little flustered because I'm angry.
Sugita: Alright, before Tibellus says anything, I stand up and shout, First of all, we were paid by the Mayor to do that whole "Alchemist Trouble Causing" event, so if anything he's double at fault. Then I pass to Tibellus. So she gets my Aid Another, so she's up at 24 now.
Mayor: Lies and slander friend! These criminals would do anything to turn a buck! Look at the destruction they've caused to our watchtowers. They've knocked down our guard members, taken away their valuable arms and armor, they've stolen from us, friends.
Tibellus: Sirs, we are going to give the arms and armor back, as soon as we have taken what is rightfully ours.
Mayor: Of course, of course, we have your oh so good word on that.
Tibellus: You, in fact, do. (oh no, my microphone...) But yes, my 22, aided by his +2, do I get anything for that?
GM: Alright, you pipe up and explain that you had arrived in the village completely unaware of the Mayor's plans, and you describe exactly the things he did for you. After all, he did prepare suits and dye them for you, obviously you had dealings with him before you went up to the mansion. The greybeards all hmm and nod.
Greybeard: At that point, it's your word against his. What do you say we call in one of the local clerics, one of the guards, he can cast a Truth Spell. Would you agree to that sirh?
Tibellus: Yes.
Sugita: Yes.
Mayor: Yeah, yeah sure, why not?
Cleric: *comes in* Alright, I'm gonna cast a basic spell here called Zone of Truth. What happens is, if it all works properly, none of you should be able to lie. Alright? Let's do this.
GM: You folks can make a Will Save, if you want to try to resist it.
Sugita: Oh, I don't.
Tibellus: I don't even need to lie.
Sugita: I think the Mayor is gonna resist it, 'cause he's some sort of chump.
Biggunegi: I'm gonna resist it, 'cause I can.
Tibellus: You don't even say lies, you just yell your own name. That's the truth of any situation.
Biggunegi: Yeah, but I want the option to be able to lie.
Sugita: Tibellus, have you considered that perhaps his name isn't Biggunegi? Perhaps he's actually some other name, and he's been lying about his name the whole time?
GM: Gasp!
Tibellus: It's the biggest twist!
Urist: I also resist, 'cause i'm a fuck. *rolls a Natural 1* Damn, I can't lie. I'm Abe Fucking Lincoln.
GM: DC would be 15, so I guess that Biggunegi can't lie either.
Biggunegi: Dangit.
GM: So, Biggunegi, what was your name again?
Biggunegi: ....Smalluneggi.
Tibellus: That's the biggest plot twist we've had so far.
Mayor: These fellows did this all by themselves, I had nothing to do with it.
Tibellus: We didn't, you had a lot to do with it. Clearly your Cleric is still just messing about, and not casting a Zone of Truth correctly so that you can get away with this.
Cleric:I cast the spell correctly. It doesn't always work, but I cast it correctly.
Tibellus: Clearly we're both saying opposite things.
Cleric:*sigh* It's just supposed to help. I did my best, they're still contradicting each other. One of them wasn't affected.
Tibellus: As you saw, I made no effort to resist.
GM: They can't tell really. You can see with your Arcane Sight that the Mayor was unaffected, but no one else can.
Tibellus: I can tell with my Arcane Sight that the Mayor was unaffected. I can see magic damn you! And then I blue glowy my eyes, like a god damned fremen.
GM: Make an Intimidate check.
Tibellus: I guess that's only a +7... hmm... A god damned fremen!
Greybeard: I've heard of people being able to see magic with blue eyes, such strange things.
Sugita: Can't the cleric just cast Detect Magic too?
GM: Uhm, he didn't have it memorized. He wouldn't normally need it.
Sugita: What a chump.
Tibellus: He had Zone of Truth memorized, but he didn't have Detect Magic? What an ass.
GM: He had like 10 hours to pick spells, he chose Zone of Truth, but he didn't think about Detect Magic. That poor fool.
Sugita: What a fool.
GM: Anyhow.
Tibellus: Our story stands, and it's clear that the Mayor is very deceptive, and will do anything to get away with this crime.
Greybeard: What did you do with the spell books?
Tibellus: We gave them to the Mayor.
Greybeard. You did hmmh? Sir, I must ask that we be allowed to search your premises, just a cursory thing.
Mayor: Friends, of course, that seems like a most invasive thing of privacy. These folks claimed that they gave me the spellbooks, shouldn't you search their wagons first?
Tibellus: He's also trying to hide other stuff, I'm sure. This guy is super sleaze. But yes, you can search our wagon, because we have nothing to hide.
Sugita: Search his house first, we don't want him moving it before you get a chance to look there.
Tibellus: Everybody stays here while the search happens.
Sugita: Nobody gets a chance to move anything, now that we know a search is going on.
Tibellus: Especially the Mayor, and those guards.
Mayor: Alright, alright friend. No trouble.
Greybeard: Alright, then, Snapjaw boys, you two, you go to the wagons, and you two you go to the Mayor's house.
Tibellus: Anyone got Sense Motive?
Biggunegi: Yeah I'll do it.
GM: It doesn't take much to see that they're large, strapping, and not terribly bright guys, but they're very well intentioned.
Sugita: We'll give them a map to the wagon, yeah.
So we wait for the envoys to go search the cart and search the Mayor's place and come back.
GM: Alright, they come back from your cart first. It's a little farther away but much much smaller to search. They didn't find anything of course, though they brought all the weapons and armor that you took back.
Sugita: Seems fair, we'd promised to give it back later anyway. This should all resolve things one way or the other.
GM: The other two come back from the Mayor's place. They found some stuff that he "probably shouldn't have", but no spellbooks. Nothing big.
Mayor: Friends, friends, we all have our comforts now and then. You can't begrudge me that.
Tibellus: If you don't give us the armor, the matter will be settled by us.
Greybeard: I say, quite true that the armor was taken from you most rashly. What do you have to say about the Alchemist though?
Tibellus: We were on a job from the Mayor. We were being paid to steal artifacts, and we did such.
Greybeard: Even if you did so, you cost our village dearly.
Sugita: How did we cost your village anything? We destroyed all the Alchemist's bread golems and now he's a weaker faction. You could go take down his whole manor if he's any danger to the village.
Greybeard: Why would we wish to do so? He's been nothing but peaceful to us.
Bigguenegi: Now you get a bunch of free bread.
Sugita: So if he's been nothing but peaceful to you, then how have we cost you anything?
Greybeard: Obviously he demanded some recompense for the tomes you stole, and later you, of your own actions, burned down watchtowers, and killed at least one guardsman.
Sugita: Well, we did do that.
Tibellus: We did do this, and I do not deny this, we did this, uh--
Greybeard: It seems that in most similar circumstances, you'd be balancing murder against thievery, if all charges are true.
Sugita: Alright, if you rule in our favor, then we will go and fix the Alchemist problem, if there's any Alchemist problem. How about that?
Greybeard: If you could recover our town funds without causing the Alchemist too much of a stir...
Sugita: Oh, funds? You just want payment?
Tibellus: Those funds were payment for a job that we did do, so I'm afraid we can't just give that back.
Sugita: Hold on, if it's a matter of money how much money are we talking about here?
Greybeard: Mayor? How much of the money did the Alchemist take?
Mayor: Oh, friends, he took most of the warchest. He took three thousand gold.
Sugita: Alright, we'll go get three thousand gold back from the Alchemist.
Greybeard: Alright, you resolve this amicably and return the gold to us, and we will return your armor.
Sugita: I'm not sure we can resolve this amicably, we may have to eat the Mayor.
Greybeard: Eat the Mayor!? You would add cannibalism to your charges?
Tibellus: Cannibalism? We're not human!
Sugita: Yeah, none of us are human.
Greybeard: Uh...
Sugita: She's part spider, I'm part dragon, he's part samurai, none of us are human.
Greybeard: Well, you must understand me when I say that we cannot allow the eating of humans.
Sugita: Alright, alright, what if he just dies but then we don't eat him.
Greybeard: Why should he die? Even if he did steal from you, then, well, you killed a guardsman. If it were crime for a crime then we should take one of yours--
Sugita: LOOK little peasant man, don't push your luck here. We're helping you out, out of the goodness of our hearts, and honor-bound-ness, but if you push us too far then we'll just set everything on fire.
Tibellus: We are allowing you to live.
Greybeard: You said you came to this meeting in peace?
Sugita: We did come to this meeting in peace, and we're trying to solve it peacefully, but ultimately there is a priority here, and the priority is that we get our armor back, and then we leave your town. Probably kill the Mayor too.
Tibellus: We'll leave without killing any more people. And if you rule against us, then we'll still walk out of this building without doing so, but we will come back to your town, again and again, until we have our armor. Regardless.
GM: He sighs.
Sugita: So you can give us the armor now, or you can give us the armor later with a bunch of dead bodies at your feet.
Greybeard: Very well. Fine. I dislike you most intensely I must say. But, we will take this deal.
GM: He looks at the others and they stroke their beards and nod at him.
Greybeard: Yes, it is done. Bring us the gold and the armor is yours again. But don't cause any more trouble in the village. If you harm anyone else the deal is off, and we will use whatever power that we can to destroy you.
So we're off to the Alchemist to recover 3,000 gold and then basically spend it to get back the armor that is already rightfully ours even though, yes, we could probably just buy an entirely new set of armor for 3,000 gold anyway. Oh well.

A single lonely bread golem is at the door. Biggunegi chops the golem in half, and eats him. The golem screeches as it dies, and the Alchemist looks out the 2nd floor window. He tells us to go away, and we demand the town's money back. He says there is no money. We ask him to come with us and testify to that effect and we'll get him his books back and everything will be all cleared up. Also we explain that the Mayor is the one who hired us to steal from him in the first place. Suddenly the Alchemist starts to understand a lot more of the situation. He asks if he should bring any more golems and stuff with him when we go back to town, and we say yes indeed. So we go inside and eat some sausages while he gets that ready.

Biggunegi eats 25lbs of sausages. He passes his Con check and keeps them all down.

The Alchemist brings out his newest creation, it's some sort of chocolate pudding monster.

The guards come out as we approach the town, but the Alchemist offers them sausages to stand down, and they happily eat the sausages. Greybeard demands to know where the gold is, and the Alchemist says there is no gold. The Mayor is forced to resign on the spot, and we get our armor back. The Mayor is exiled instead of killed. Tibellus and Biggunegi decide that they'll need to do a steakout. Well, a sausageout.

The chocolate pudding monster has its function revealed, it slurps into the mayor's home and sniffs out the missing spell books.

We also check Urist's sheet after putting the armor on him and he's at like -9 to Swim, so he's basically a Goron. Whoo. The Blacksmith offers to add a blue lacquer to the armor so that it'll match our blue uniforms as a way to apologize for handing over the armor to the Mayor in the first place. Well actually, he arranges to have it done by someone else and then pay for it. It'll take about a day.

Tracking the Mayor is a Survival check. So even though in theory Sugita could fly up and try to track him down, he's actually really bad at it. So Sugita stays with Bard and the Cart, and Urist, Tibellus, and Biggunegi go off to hunt down the Mayor. They buy some extra horses so that they can keep up with him (the townsfolk gave the Mayor a horse when they sent him away).

They track him for a bit and catch up after about 3 hours.

After trying to determine encounter distance with a spot check or something and laughing at the horribly silly "-1 per 10ft" spot rule, they end up a little ways away from the Mayor and his Lieutenant at the start. The NPCs go first, so they make Ride checks and dash away. Well, they dash away at least. The Lieutenant scurries off but the Mayor gets thrown from his horse. They close in and roll for initiative.

~Round 1~
The Mayor gets a good spot and then shoots a Color Spray at Urist (and the horse). Urist saves, but his horse does not (blind+stunned for 1, then stunned for 1).
Tibellus shoots a Corollax stun cone, but the Mayor saves.
Biggunegi does a charge attack, and hits.

Biggunegi: Uh, I have this thing called Kiai?
Sugita: Oh, yeah, use Kiai on him.
Biggunegi: I'm gonna do that.
GM: Alright, Kiai him up.
Tibellus: What does that do?
Sugita: Automatic critical, so roll your damage two more times Biggunegi... so that's 41 damage.
GM: That kills him outright.
Biggunegi: Fuck Youuuuu! Good.

So then Biggunegi takes the Mayor's dagger, adding it to the collection of weapons that he's got strapped all around him. They sift through his other stuff using the Arcane Sight of Tibellus to find that the Mayor's hat is magical in some way, and also that the Mayor is holding all the magical books still.

The group hands over all the books to the Alchemist, and get him to agree to protect the village until they return to rule over it.

Biggunegi: Is there like a magey guy in this town?
GM: You killed the last one.
Biggunegi: Uggggghhhh.
Sugita: What did you need?
Biggunegi: I wanted this dagger identified.
Sugita: I can do that... next level.
Biggunegi: Uggggghhhh.
Tibellus: Yeah, so, we chill out for a bit, I dunno if you guys wanna add some flavor text stuff..?
Sugita: I, using my crafting powers, will help rebuild some of their stuff. Well, I don't have much that would help them I can't do wood. Uh, I'll just build them new armor.
GM: Scrap metal?
Sugita: Yeah, sure. I got Armor, Alchemy, Weapons, and Cloth. I can make them some armor.
GM: They ask for some suits of Studded Leather to be made since that won't use up too much of the metal.
Tibellus: This is our apology.

Then we all ride off into the sun... just "the sun", because it never sets.

And by ride off, I of course mean that we took a barge. The bargemaster is a racist and doesn't let anyone stand near each other on the barge unless they've got a similar trait. Also the GM warns us about some trolls that eat pizza inevitably getting in our way. At the end of our journey, after saving all 625 members of our clan, there'll just the same fireworks as always, no special movie or anything. It will be the height of disappointment.
Last edited by Lokathor on Sat Apr 19, 2014 7:58 pm, edited 2 times in total.
[*]The Ends Of The Matrix: Github and Rendered
[*]After Sundown: Github and Rendered
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Avoraciopoctules
Overlord
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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

I love adventurer diplomacy. As always, fun read.
Ikeren
Knight-Baron
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Post by Ikeren »

Great campaign journal. makes me look forward to my game tomorrow.
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Lokathor
Duke
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Post by Lokathor »

Episode 08: Waltz for Triton

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

We paid 200 gold to the Bargemaster. We've got 1420 gold left in our big "merchant pile". We load the cart and all of us and our extra horses all onto the barge. It'll take us about 8 days to get to the Sunwell, plus two stops along the way that are a day each. We could pay for them to skip the stops, but we decide to skip doing that. It was gonna take us 30 days to get there anyway so we're already ahead of schedule.

Bargemaster: So what brings you to the sunwell?
Sugita: Intrigue.
Bargemaster: Intrigue? How... intriguing. Any particular intrigue? I'd like to say out of the way of it myself if I can avoid it.
Sugita: I'm afraid the spider queen over here is in charge of it all, she's just leading the rest of us around.
Bargemaster: Oh? Er, what'shername? 'Fraid I didn't ask, how rude of me.
Tibellus: Tibellus.
Bargemaster: Ms. Tibellus. Looks like the villagers back there had some trying times. What happened?
Tibellus: Well, there were some trying times for all of us, but in the end we were victorious. Because we, we are the rightful rulers of this area. Unfortunately we have to go to some areas that we do not rule over.
Bargemaster: Most unfortunate... what's your economic policy with regards to the riverlands?
Tibellus: Well, I let my underlings take care of the policy.
Sugita: Free Trade Prevents Wars, that's our economic policy with regards to the riverlands. No tariffs.
Bargemaster: I like you already. You have my full support.
Sugita: Excellent, Excellent.
Tibellus: I look at big picture things, like being blue.
Biggunegi: She likes to blue herself, a lot.

We come to super small settlement of about 20 people. They trade in hardwood and shellfish. We sell the cheese to get a ton of shellfish (along with some tools) and construct some Lobster Mail armor for Tibellus to wear (provides underwater breathing).

We're just outside the town on our way back down the river when there's a "bump" on the bottom of the raft. Biggunegi stomps on the boat and yells at it to shut up. It bumps again, harder, and everyone has to make a balance check. Steam begins to come up out of the water all around us and several watery creatures crawl up onto the barge...
~Round 1~
`Vaiken readies an action to hit anything if it comes onto the boat.
`Sugita breathes a cold blast onto a Mephit attacking the captain.
`The Mephits blast out a bunch of steam breath weapon attacks.
`Tibellus throws a net and hits a Mephit.
`Urist makes a 5ft step and then takes a swing at a Mephit, knocking it down onto the deck.
`Biggunegi chops a Mephit down.
`Bard flees into the cart.

~Round 2~
`Vaiken moves around and readies another action.
`Sugita does another Frost Breath.
`The Mephits do some stuff, but we can't see what since there's steam everywhere.
`Tibellus throws another net.
`Urist double moves and pulls out a knife.
`Biggunegi jumps off the raft and swings at a Mephit in the air. Well, he would have, if he'd gotten a better jump check (got a 6, needed a 10). Instead he falls into the water. He also sees four Triton as he lands in the water, and they all stab at him immediately. Two of them hit him and he goes to 2hp. Since he only ended up using a move action during his failed jump he's still got a standard, so he swings at a Triton. He hits, uses Kiai, kills it, cleaves into the next one, uses Kiai again, kills a 2nd one, and misses on his attempt to hit a 3rd one.

~Round 3~
`Vaiken does a jump punch, also almost fails, but because of Abundant Leap he makes it.
`Sugita does a frost line to hit a mephit.
`The mephits blast some steam
`Tibellus tries a Corolax blast, but both Mephits save.
`Urist drops his sword and dagger, draws his bow, and then fires, but misses.
`Biggunegi misses a Triton, and does a 5ft swim.
`More Triton approach from underwater. The two near Biggunegi stab at him, one hits for 9 (putting him at -7). One of the new ones stabs at Urist, missing, and one stabs at Vaiken, also missing.

~Round 4~
`Vaiken is about to drag Biggunegi into the raft when it's suggested that he just 5ft move into the raft to avoid AoOs and then Tibellus can use a whip/lasso to get Biggunegi into the raft.
`Sugita cold blasts the last Mephit as it tries to get away.
`Tibellus nets Biggunegi and drags him into the boat.
`Urist shoots his bow into the water, missing.
`The Triton try to stab at Vaiken but don't do anything.

~Round 5~
`Vaiken punches a Triton
`Sugita breaths frost on all the Triton
`Tibellus uses a Heal check on Biggunegi, failing.
`Urist misses with his sword because of the penalty from the steam blast he got hit by.
`Triton stab at Urist and miss

~Round 6~
`Vaiken punches a Triton.
`Sugita steps to the side, and then uses a Heal check on Biggunegi, stabilizing him.
`Tibellus hits with a Flame Snake attack, dealing 6 damage and 6 poison damage to Str/Dex/Con, nearly dropping a Triton.
`Urist misses.
`The Triton retreat underwater

~Round 7~
`Vaiken jumps into the water and fails his swim check, forcing him to flail around in the water. He attacks anyway, but misses.
`Sugita hops into the water while holding onto the edge of the barge, then does a frost blast. Two Triton die, and one survives.
`Tibellus throws a net into the area of the Triton, but misses.
`Urist shoots his bow, missing.
`Triton swims at top speed to get away.

~Round 8~
`Sugita does one final line breath attack and kills the last one before it can escape.
We get 3 dead Triton bodies, 3 Mephit bodies, 3 tridents, 3 light crossbows, a sapphire. We skin the Mephits and Tritons, intending to sell their scales and wings and such when we get a chance. Biggunegi straps two tridents to his body to mark his two kills and Urist keeps one of the tridents to go with a shield he plans to pick up soon.

We go down the river and get to a larger town that has some equipment for us to buy. Local guards seem to wear Blue and Gold. In town there's a single Red Dragonscale Shield for us to buy, so that goes to Urist. He also gets a Longsword because that's a little better than the Trident. We go back to the barge and there's a messenger headed for Threll that booked passage as well. We head off, down the river.

So ends the episode of almost nothing but bad rolls for everyone.
[*]The Ends Of The Matrix: Github and Rendered
[*]After Sundown: Github and Rendered
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Post by radthemad4 »

Wow, it's been a while since the last episode. Scheduling difficulties?
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Post by Lokathor »

Well, we were playing all this time, but I was busy with other stuff for a while, so I've got a big backlog of session recordings I'll try to get through. This one was just a fight with no real metaplot advancement. As far as I recall the next one is also light on the plot advancement, it just sets some stuff up. Then there was a good mirror match thing, then some intrigue, then a sneaking mission, then a pair of harrowing fights as we made our escape.
[*]The Ends Of The Matrix: Github and Rendered
[*]After Sundown: Github and Rendered
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Post by radthemad4 »

Ah, that's cool then. Looking forward to future sessions.
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Post by Lokathor »

Episode 09: Jamming With Merchants

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

NPCs
[*]Bard

Biggunegi is on death's door (it's made of obsidian and ivory, by the way) and so we make some heal checks for him while we travel down the river for three days. Sugita also completes the Lobster Mail Armor for Tibellus. In putting it on, her natural totemic spirit automatically converts it into being made of blue lobster shell instead. The whole suit of armor lets her breathe underwater, though it doesn't give her any special swimming powers.

The captain of the barge is gonna stop at a small town and sell some of his stuff, so unless we want to pay for him to speed along without stopping we get to wait a day. This is a perfect opportunity because there's a lot of things we've been holding on to that we can finally sell.

There's a lot of soldiers all about, ordering people around. Tibellus needs to know what's going on, so she saunters up to a soldier that appears to be in charge. Then she rolls a Gather Information of 8.
GM: You're about as obvious as an Ogre trying to pass itself off as a Halfling.
Guard: Hey, just down the river?
Tibellus: We are going down the river, but what do you mean by 'just down the river', huh?
Guard: You're going down the river, right? Sorry, I forgot how formal some of these Fringers can be.
Tibellus: Yes, very formal, as you can tell from my outfit.
Sugita: Most of us still look pretty normal, Tibellus, maybe you should... look...
Vaiken: Look normal?
Tibellus: I should look as crazy as possible all the time.
Sugita: Maybe you should stand in the back for like 10 minutes.
Tibellus: I'm like the psychotic leader of this band.
Biggunegi: Look, we have a crazy flaming demon lady covered in lobster shells, a guy with like ninety swords on him...
Guard: If you could give me a good excuse to get out of palisade duty I wouldn't mind.
Sugita: We're here to buy and sell, where do we buy and sell?
Guard: Oh, I'm new here too, we just got in. The Weary Crossing is famous for being a bit of a trading post.
Guard: That's also where my commander has setup his whole operation, so I don't really wanna go there.
So we roll the cart off of the barge and take it through town to the place. There's a lot of soldiers all about so it takes a bit to make our way through the crowd. We assume that this is a detachment of those soldiers that we heard about before, though don't quite ask around about it. The Weary Crossing is a large lodge surrounded by a few smaller buildings. Nearby there's a whole ton of tents spreading out over a large field for the soldiers and stuff.

Inside, we are greeted by an Aasimar and a Human. Plus some underlings and other customers and such.

(Music)
We sell a Bear Pelt (the one made by Urist way back when) [45gp], the Yak Cheese [500], Chainmail [75], Candies [gone rotten, we fed them to Biggunegi], Masterwork Chainmail [150], 5lbs of spare shells [75], Triton Scales [100], Mephit Wings [100], and a sapphire [950]. After all the sales our money pile is at 3015 moneys total. We get ready to buy a Healing Belt [750 market], but the demand is high so the price is high too. Tibellus does some fast talking to try and bring the price back down, and the merchant tells us something about a task we could go do to bring the price back down. Before even hearing about any special mission stuff, we double check that there will be a Healing Belt and some Dragon Scales available for purchase at the end of the whole thing. Merchant says that the mission will be several days, so we just pay 900 for the Healing Belt right away and skip the side trip. There's also a little info about a dragon's location, for a price. In terms of dragonscale that'd on hand, the going rates are that we'll get totally gouged and pay 300gp for the materials to build one Dragonscale Shield [350 market].

While deciding if we should pay to hear about the dragon or not, it's reasoned out that the price on dragonscale stuff is way up because everyone around here is already buying all the dragonscale stuff. So, instead of going and killing a dragon, we just have to go and kill someone walking around town. And we don't have to pay for any secret info either.

So, we pay 600gp for enough (blue) dragonscale to build 2 shields. For 700 we could have just had the two shields outright in any other place, but that's what high demand gets you.

Also, we still kinda want to know where to find the dragon, so we decide it's time for another check. This time instead of a Gather Information check, we go for more of a Threaten Information check.
Tibellus: (as Jack Bauer) Tell me where the dragon is... TELL ME WHERE THE DRAGON IS!!
Villager: D-d-d-dragon!? Where!?
Sugita: Yes, we need to know where the dragon is. That's exactly the problem.
GM: He runs away scared.
Tibellus: No, I was roughing him up, holding him by the shoulders and stuff.
GM: Well, then he collapses in a pile and pees on himself.
Tibellus: I am a terrifying sight to behold.
Biggunegi: (as Batman) Where are the drugs?!
Villager: Oh gods! At least there are soldiers here, we should be safe from dragons.
Sugita: Tell him we're hunting the dragons.
Tibellus: We need to know where the dragons are to hunt them down. Just point us in the right direction.
Sugita: Actually, for character reasons, I suddenly think that we shouldn't hunt red dragons, we should hunt every other kind of dragon.
Tibellus: Oh, cause you're like a red dragon guy?
Sugita: Uh, yes.
Tibellus: Aren't you not specifically a red guy cause you breathe all the elements?
Sugita: Well, right, but maybe we can just find another kind- we can, we can- why don't we just go back to the plan where we kill the soldiers in the middle of the night and steal all their stuff?
Tibellus: Alright, we gotta find out what army they're fighting for before we murder them though.
Sugita: Yeah, that's also true.
Tibellus: Because, my character is like a murderer, but she doesn't murder everybody, and she feels bad about it sometimes. Because, what if these would someday be my peasants?
Sugita: These already are your peasants, Tibellus. They just don't know it.
Tibellus: It's that lack of knowledge that caused their death.
So we send the villager on their way as we decide on what to do next. We wander around a bit and find a guy that looks super important with a map on a table and everything wearing a big suit of Red Dragon Plate, and all his lackies have Red Dragon Suits.
Sugita: I suddenly don't like these guys. I'm gonna go up to them and be like, "Hey what's up guys? What's up with all the red stuff? You some sort of organization? Because we're sorta a blue organization, and we take offense at that."
Biggunegi: This is how 2Fort was born.
Tibellus: The birth of a nation... but a little less racist.
Soldier: Yeah, where have you been all your life?
Sugita: *breathes some fire straight up into the air* Practicing.
Tibellus: I just want to note, out of character, that whenever we go to any place I'll always claim to be from the opposite place, so that people don't question that I'm such a fucking weirdo.
Sugita: Totally legitimate tactic.
Soldier: Where did you learn that trick?
Sugita: You gotta go out far beyond where the sun shines, and train in a monastery. I can send you to the right location, but it's pretty far. And you guys look like you're sorta busy with this red organization you got going on. I usually send like one person at a time, I can't send all you guys. And you'd have to pass the tests.
Tibellus: It's sorta a life calling sort of thing for him. Because he's awesome, you know.
Soldier: We're from the Threll Rear Battalion, 3rd regiment.
Sugita: Oh, that's interesting, that's interesting, we're from the Icarion Company, Pleisar Regiment. That's good, that's good for you. You know, maybe some day you'll be good enough to join the Icarion Company.
Tibellus: Tibellus Company. It's all me.
Sugita: We can't name it after you.
Tibellus: Why?
Sugita: Because Tibellus being in the Tibellus Company wouldn't make any sense.
Tibellus: I'm not part of the company?
Vaiken: We're Team Tibellus.
Sugita: Tibellus is the leader of the Icarion Company.
Vaiken: We're team Spider-taur.
Tibellus: Or could it be Tibellus, Leader of the Tibellus Brigade?
Sugita: ...maybe...
Tibellus: And then when we change leadership, it would become the Dai-Tibellus Brigade.
Soldier: So... you're not from one of the Three Cities?
Sugita: You're right, we're not from one of the three cities. We're actually out to... help, you know, as you say, mercenary-like, uh, for the high bidder. We're looking for bids at the moment, if you care to put in a bid.
Soldier: Hmm, what do you got?
Sugita: Let's see, there's me. The Orc who can chop down like 4 dudes in a second. Uh, that Spider Lady you see. The Demon Guy. And that Dwarf.
Tibellus: I have powers that people can't even imagine!
GM: What about Bard?
Sugita: Well, no, Bard doesn't go into a fight. We don't put Bard on the combat list.
Tibellus: Bard is our secret trump card, we don't tell people about him. He's our ace in the hole. He's the Alucard of our team, you don't bring him out until all your other guys are dead.
Soldier: Well, you could join our army I guess, we'll even let you skip most of the training since you seem to know what you're doing in a fight already.
Sugita: Look, Threll Real Battalion 3rd Regiment, that's good for you, but we're more of a Special Tactics operation.
Tibellus: Haven't you ever heard the term "This Is A Sneaking Mission"?
Sugita: (We're actually really bad at sneaking.)
Tibellus: Sugita... Tactical Espionage Action! Look soldier guy, you can do things with us and people won't know that we're related to you because we wear blue, and you wear red.
Sugita: Yeah, it's pretty obvious.
Soldier: Perhaps you should speak to the commander, he's had some troubles recently.
Sugita: Alright, point us in that direction.
We pause a moment to turn those dragonscale supplies into dragonscale shields. This takes two days and means that the barge has gone on ahead down the river. We'll have to arrange alternative transport if we want to get deeper into the sunwell.
Tibellus: That's the guy we saw before. See, Sarge has Red armor, and Donut has Light Red armor.
Sugita: Oh, okay. Well, is the commander busy right now?
GM: He sure looks busy.
Sugita: Busy with what?
Tibellus: He's literally never gonna not be busy.
Sugita: Yeah, but is someone standing right in his face, or could we go stand in front of his face?
GM: There's a bit of a loose line you could try to jump in on...
Sugita: We cut in line! Yeah! We cut in line!
Biggunegi: Fuck you everyone else.
Sugita: Alright, I don't breathe fire exactly when I cut in line, but I snort fire out of my nose so that people know we mean business.
Biggunegi: Also, demon, lady covered in crab armor, and guy covered in swords.
Sugita: Yeah, we pretty much mean all the business.
Tibellus: I lobster up to him and I tell him how we're mercenaries and how... fuck, we can take care of-
Commander: Well you clearly think that your business is of utmost importance.
Sugita: Yes, we do think that our business is of utmost importance! Our business...
Biggunegi: Tibellus, I have no idea what your helmet is made out of, but I like to imagine that it's just a lobster sitting on your head.
Sugita: Yep! That's what it is; It's a live lobster.
Tibellus: Well, I can't speak as well as Tibellus the character can speak, so, boom, 30 Diplomacy, "We need a job".
Sugita: We're gonna tell him that we heard about some trouble going on. That we're here to solve his problems, for the right price.
Tibellus: We don't even need to say "for the right price", we just need all the loot.
Sugita: Yeah, if it involves killing people we might not even need to be paid extra.
GM: His frown clears.
Commander: Ah! Adventurers! Perfect.
Tibellus: You can tell by the lobster on my head.
Sugita: Yeah, I know it seems ridiculous, but the best way to defend myself is for this duck to sit on my head, so, I'm gonna let it do that.
GM: He stands up, and prods the guy you knocked over to his feet.
Commander (in Colonel Tigh's voice): Go get a drink soldier.
GM: He turns to you.
Sugita: Oh man! Wait, I didn't mean to knock over anyone when I was cutting in line. Aw, man, I shoved some imaginary character to the ground. I was just gonna like, step in the way, awh.
Tibellus: Can't go back now.
Sugita: Can't go back now.
Tibellus: You've gone too far!
Sugita: I have gone too far.
Tibellus: He has turned to us so hard.
Sugita: He has turned to us SO HARD.
Commander (Southern gentleman voice): What I need is very simple, but I'm afraid the Rear Battalion is on a schedule and cannot turn back and deal with the issue. A group of deserters stole some rather important documents from me before they fled, and they need to either be killed or brought in to meet the council's justice.
Tibellus: What happened to being Colonel Tigh?
Sugita: Look man, I decided to go with an L. Bob Rife angle because I can actually do that more consistently.
Tibellus: Plus, we're talking about deserters stealing documents, so that's kinda an L. Bob Rife thing.
Commander: Of course, we will have moved on by then, but I can give you written orders, and a writ for compensation when you reach Threll.
Sugita: That sounds excellent.
Commander: If you recover the documents before they are sold then you'll receive a worthwhile bonus.
Sugita: Alright guys, these documents are worth selling, so we'll have to consider later on if we want to sell them. But since our master plan is to make Threll fall by betraying it, then this seems like a perfect in.
Biggunegi: How convenient.
Tibellus: We don't need to necessarily make Threll fall...
Commander: The deserters fled just as we left the sunwell, camping out on the causeway. That's the stone highway you see stretching out behind us. We searched for them and our scouts noted that they'd fled back into the sunwell. They went widdershins but more than that we do not know. As for compensation, there were five deserters, and you'll receive compensation of 500 gold for each of them you bring to justice.
Sugita: That seems... maybe low? Maybe high? There's really no way to tell.
Commander: An extra 1,000 gold if you recover all the documents.
Sugita: That's what we're looking for.
Tibellus: Sugita... a sweet five on five fight. It's like that episode of ReBoot where they had to fight all the evil versions of their same classes in the DnD game.
Sugita: I remember that.
Tibellus: This is gonna be sweet. This is gonna kick so much ass.
Also, before we head out, we have Bard copy down the military's map info onto our map to expand out our geographic knowledge. It takes a few hours but whatever, it makes all of our map be in the same handwriting that way instead of having two maps that would be at different scales and all that. It would just be terrible to have two maps like that.

We go down the causeway for two days, putting us a day out from the Sunwell Border itself. We see some naked half-lady monsters on a tree above the road. Harpies or something like that probably.
Monsters: Hail traveler~ What brings you this way~?
Tibellus: They're speaking sexy at me... and I want to bring sexy back.
Sugita: Do you have the receipt? You need the receipt.
Vaiken: Them other boys... don't know how to act.
Tibellus: What Sugita said amuses me. I can't bring sexy back, and return it, unless I have the receipt.
Monsters: Don't you want to come play with us?
Biggunegi: I feel like if we stop to play with them, we'll get murdered in the face.
Tibellus: Yeah... but...
Vaiken: I would be okay with turning into a frog.
Monsters: Yes, well we saw five others pass this way, going the way you're headed.
Sugita: Uh... know what? That's fine, that's fine.
Tibellus: Well the point is we need to know if this is the five that we're looking for.
Sugita: Of course it is. We're looking for five guys, there's five of them in that group that passed through. There's never been a group of five guys that wasn't the group that we're looking for.
Vaiken: Our group has five guys.
Sugita: I know, and if we could bring in our own heads, and sell our own heads to Threll to get money, then we would. But, that doesn't work so.
Tibellus: But these five guys have the documents, Sugita. The documents!
Sugita: Those documents are worth a thousand gold.
Sugita: Alright, so... these dirt caked women on the trees, there's like two of them you say?
Tibellus: And they want to fuck us.
Sugita: or three?
Tibellus: There's two.
Vaiken: Wait, is there and STD system in this game?
Sugita: Yes.
Tibellus: There is in FATAL.
Sugita: ...right; So anyway. Uhm... we need to... go past these dirt women, and go down the road. We're not gonna play. I say, "sorry, we can't play either, we gotta go and get those guys who already passed by"
Vaiken: Wait, we have two horses right?
Sugita: We've got, uhm, we've got several horses.
Vaiken: We should let them ride naked on our horses.
Sugita: No, Vaiken, they're obviously harpies and they're gonna try and kill you at their first opportunity.
Vaiken: I don't wanna get herpes.
Sugita: No, harpies.
Biggunegi: What happened? I was getting pizza.
Sugita: Vaiken tried to get herpes.
Tibellus: We're undecided or not on what to do with these harpies, who will clearly try to murder us, because they're just there to kill people.
Sugita: We are gonna go down the road. If they're not gonna accost us or whatever then we're just gonna pass on through.
Tibellus: What direction did these guys pass in? The same direction we went in.. but like, are we...
Sugita: It's a road, I think we just follow the road.
GM: The harpies begin to pout
Tibellus: Aw man, they're pouting?
Sugita: Look, I bet their skin wouldn't even be worth anything on the black market. It's all covered in mud.
Harpies: Are you sure that you can't stay and play?
Sugita: We're definitely not gonna stay.
Tibellus: Are you sure?
Sugita: I am really sure.
Tibellus: Vaiken, Biggunegi, how do you feel?
Vaiken: I feel that we should let them ride naked on our horses.
Tibellus: Biggunegi?
Biggunegi: They are naked, and most dishonorabru.
Tibellus: I'm going to leave the decision up to the man who knows more about honor than any of us. So we just walk on and don't speak to them any more because they're dishonorabru?
Sugita: Yeah, we just go on without speaking to them.
Tibellus: *siiiiigh* Goodbye encounter~
Sugita: Then we go down the road.
Tibellus: We could add to our crew, with these ladies, and have Bard sing minuets.
So eventually we reach the Edge of the Sunwell itself. From here on in, the sun that hangs eternally within the sky is as bright as full daylight at all times.
Sugita: Is there like, an actual border or something? I thought it was just that things were maximally bright within a certain radius.
GM: There's a sign.
Sugita: Oh cool, a sign.
Tibellus: If only we had a little box with a demon in it that could paint us pictures.
Sugita: I'm gonna carve "Gary was here" into the sign.
Tibellus: Don't you also have to put, "ash stinks"?
Sugita: "Ash is a loser".
Tibellus: Ash is a loser!
Sugita: That's right, I carve "Gary was here, Ash is a loser" into the sign.
GM: So there's a lot of other people on the road as you go, but they won't talk to you unless you talk to them.
Tibellus: I actually do talk to the other people and ask them.
Sugita: Yeah, every time we pass by folks we should ask if they've seen the people we're looking for.
Tibellus: The people who we still don't know what they look like. It's okay, my character does.
Biggunegi: They're just some guys, you know? Just some guys.
GM: Nylar Lat, a male human cleric of the sun god. Blonde hair and light blue eyes.
GM: Yosame Radklo, female fighter, black hair, black eyes, wields a longsword.
GM: Nis Luod, a female fighter known for her technique of drawing on intense bursts of strength.
GM: Warlan Inali, a male sorcerer who channels the power of darkness from beyond the edge of twilight.
GM: Asini Enser, a male fighter with black hair and green eyes, wields a spiked chain.
Sugita: Alright, five people, five targets to set on fire. Seems pretty obvious.
Tibellus: Shoot the spellcasters first if you're using your fire. Because we saw what happened there in the town. Though if they group up shoot them in a group actually.
Sugita: Alright, so do we bump into these guys eventually or what?
GM: No one has too much to say. They haven't seen any other groups of five, other than your group, which isn't really five.
Sugita: There's five of us!
Tibellus: There's also Bard, so there isn't five.
Sugita: He's the secret zeroth member, so there's only five of us.
Vaiken: Who doesn't start with 0 when they count? Jesus.
Biggunegi: Do you not start at -10? Fuckin weirdo.
GM: Most passed this way with the army days ago, but one guy tells you he saw a group of five in Waterdown, about 2 miles away.
Sugita: Threll thanks you! and I give the man a coin. A gold coin! Not a Threllish gold coin really, just a normal gold coin.
Old Man: Blessed be, and may the Sun watch over you.
Sugita: I'm gonna kill the Sun some day.
Tibellus: Don't say that to him.
Sugita: Alright I don't say that to him.
After a while we get to a village that looks to be the place we're after.
GM: You go down the road, take the turn, arrive in a smallish village under a waterfall.
Sugita: I ask a local if this is Waterdown.
Villager: Who's asking? Why do you want to know?
Sugita: We have important orders for a military detachment that came through recently. Could you direct us after them?
Villager: Oh! The Military! Wonderful, used to be in the military myself, come and have some soup, rest a while.
Sugita: Nope, important orders, gotta keep moving.
Soldier-Villager: Ah, I'd like to stay moving, but with my age my knees give out some time.
Sugita: Well, then go far from here beyond the edge of twilight, to the Dragonfire Monastery, and seek the secrets of Dragonfire, and if you can the teachings of dragons then your knees will be healed. If you can't manage the task, then I can't help you any more than that.
Tibellus: Use the map.
Sugita: I show him on the map. If your knees are already bad maybe ride a horse instead of walking.
Soldier-Villager: Wait, if you're with Threll why are you wearing blue stuff?
Tibellus: We're Special Operations.
Sugita: I'll let you in on a secret. This spider-lady here is kinda in charge. She does blue flames, so we all do blue stuff too.
Biggunegi: Are you part of Special Operations? Do you know how they work?
Sugita: Yeah, we're as obvious as possible so that all trouble gets drawn straight to us instead of bothering anyone else. We draw all the big fire.
Tibellus: It's like a pun too, because of the actual fire. Anyway, we gotta go, so you find that monastery. Sugita, do the flame thing, people love that.
Sugita: I do the flame thing.
Tibellus: You finally recruited somebody, the other attempts have all failed.
Sugita: There was only one other attempt!
GM: 1 out of 1 other attempts were failures. That's 100% of all other attempts.
Tibellus: Alright, let's move on instead of harping on this all day.
Sugita: Yeah! I wanna find these fools!
Tibellus: Know what? If they're betraying Threll, let's talk to them first.
Sugita: I mean... no.
Biggunegi: Murder them, then betray Threll ourselves.
Sugita: Wait, no, Tibellus has a point. Her points wasn't what it thought it was, but we need to find out who they're betraying Threll to, then we kill them and take the documents. Then we decide if we also want to give the documents to those people, if it's worth a thousand gold lost.
GM: The trail goes deep into the thick of the trees, you might need Survival checks to not lose your way.
Tibellus: A-ha! We will use Survival checks from Urist.
Sugita: Hold on guys, we're gonna have to leave Bard in the town with the Cart for a little while. We can't take that Cart into the jungle.
Tibellus: True. We'll ask that guy we talked to before if he has anyone trustworthy in town we could have watch after Bard and the Cart. I trust him. Even if I didn't trust him, Vaiken could sense his motive, cause he's all over that.
Vaiken: Yeah, it gives me a hard-on. And then once I've sensed their motive, they can sense my motive, and it's to get a hard-on.
Sugita: Vaiken is like +7, and we're all +6.
Vaiken: +11
Sugita: How did you get +11?
Vaiken: I put in my points, or whatever.
Sugita: Do you mean you have Move Silently +11? That's what it says.
Vaiken: I mean, same thing.
Sugita: They're not the same thing, they're not the same at all.
Vaiken: They're totally the same.
Tibellus: Alright, bye Bard, we'll be back in a while.
And with that, off into the jungle.
Urist: 16 to follow the trail!
GM: The trees are really thick here, but they've actually hacked a path into the jungle to go this way, do it's not too hard to follow them right now.
Sugita: Oh. How thick are these trees? How thick is the canopy? How tall are the trees? What I want to know is, if I flew up would I be able to see the hacked path?
GM: They stretch up about 40ft above the ground.
Sugita: Probably can't see them much.
Tibellus: You can freeze all the trees though.
Sugita: Couldn't I burn them?
Tibellus: No this is a jungle, they're all wet and full of water. Gotta freeze them.
Sugita: Alright we proceed at ground level through the wilderness.
Tibellus: Jungle.
Sugita: We can be on our horses, so we should catch up eventually, since we're on horses and they're chopping up stuff on foot.
Vaiken: I'm on a horse.
Tibellus: I'm on a horse with Urist, because he is my bodyguard.
Sugita: We need to get Urist a better horse actually.
GM: Well, that's a good place to call it for today then.
Sugita: Damnit.
Tibellus: This was gonna be epic though.
Sugita: It was going to be epic.
Tibellus: 5 v 5.
And so our tale stops there for now. Next time: Othron Elegy.
Last edited by Lokathor on Sun Dec 27, 2015 6:49 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by JigokuBosatsu »

This is pure gold. I hope my next campaign is as jolly.
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Post by deathdealingjawa »

The legend continues! Glory be!
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Post by Aryxbez »

Having discovered this thread, I find it to be quite a quality experience. The detail in this campaign is amazing, and props to the DM's quality for providing all these middling details, truly does add to the experience (I assume DM might be Lokathor, but yeah). Also Tibellus reminds me of Koumei, and totally see that as a character she would play.

However I do find the crafting times for various stuff to be rather lame. As well I'm surprised how much Urist was getting dropped in fights, and that combats would go into round 7!

All around, definitely the D&D experience I wish all D&D campaigns could strive for, including my own. so I happily look forward to reading more.
What I find wrong w/ 4th edition: "I want to stab dragons the size of a small keep with skin like supple adamantine and command over time and space to death with my longsword in head to head combat, but I want to be totally within realistic capabilities of a real human being!" --Caedrus mocking 4rries

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Post by Lokathor »

I am actually not the GM of this operation, though I am one of the players. Nor is Koumei a member of the squad, the GM is the only other member of this forum in the group.

Crafting rules are loosely based on a Crafting Rewrite I did. Do you find the times to be too fast? It's not very interesting to have downtime, and so we're just using some super fast crafting times and having Craft be a skill like 3e perform where you buy ranks and then can have 1 style per rank. Either way, we're woefully under-equipped for basically forever so it's not really something we're gaming really hard or anything. I suppose it could be a problem in some other campaign.

As to going into round 7, yeah I dunno. Folks around here seem to just assume that a combat is 3 rounds on average, which means that some combats are even less than 3 rounds, but that's pretty rare for us. In other games I've played in with other groups it's usually 3+ rounds as well. Maybe folks should start collecting data on their DnD battles and we could try to come up with what actually happens more often.

I would say that Urist goes down a little more than might happen otherwise because the actual player of that character is gone most of the time, so it's actually played more like Urist is a cohort of Tibellus. Biggunegi just totally disregards all safety, which is why he goes down so often. When Vaiken wasn't available to play we usually had him stay back at the cart instead of get run by the rest of the group, so he's not in as many battles all the time. Similarly, when Biggunegi wasn't available to play he insisted that Tibellus be in charge because Sugita isn't "honorable" (read: kamikaze) enough.

Campaign Status Update: Though there are some more stored up adventures that might be transcribed in the future, the game seems to have gone on indefinite break. The GM is not particularly interested in running it any farther than where we got to. Which is a damn shame, because we got right up to a cliffhanger moment. I will (slowly) continue to transcribe what's stored so far as I get the time. We got up to "Episode 15" before the hiatus began. However, I'm also splitting a lot of my RPG time between other projects (such as Sentai Fhtagn of course, and a BECMI DnD Hack that's based on a retroclone called Dark Dungeons, with some 3e mechanics grafted back into it where possible. I'm working on that because I want to run some of the original dnd boxed adventures, which will of course get its own thread if that happens.)
Last edited by Lokathor on Thu Nov 27, 2014 8:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Aryxbez »

Do you find the times to be too fast?
Ironically, I posted in that thread you linked awhile back. It's moreso the opposite, I've found them way too slow. For anything that benefits Urist's character, it looks like he's getting the shaft in the crafting department (let alone combat as well). Given how long it takes to make any given set of armor, though I guess even if take one I suggested, and scaled Heavy armor back a step, it'd still likely take several days without investing well into Crafting.
Folks around here seem to just assume that a combat is 3 rounds on average,
That's because it IS the average, even in my crappier DMing Days, combats didn't go past round 3 usually (maybe 3-5). I call that "crappy", DMing aside, regards Fighter-level style tactics, where Dragons would land and full attack spread the party, Fighter front, Rogue flank, caster fireball & cleric heal. So that's extremely strange that your experience differs. It's my guess the party isn't as optimized maybe, but I've enjoyed the combats having retreat as a viable option, and enemies exhibiting behavior consistent with their nature.

Lastly, that is indeed a damn shame, I'm guessing all the content the DM put into, got tired of planning for? I was really hoping the campaign would go longer than it seems to. All I have now is the transcribing of those episodes as a consolation prize. Hopefully he had a raisin for wanting to quit it all, as good as it was going.
Last edited by Aryxbez on Thu Dec 04, 2014 2:05 am, edited 1 time in total.
What I find wrong w/ 4th edition: "I want to stab dragons the size of a small keep with skin like supple adamantine and command over time and space to death with my longsword in head to head combat, but I want to be totally within realistic capabilities of a real human being!" --Caedrus mocking 4rries

"the thing about being Mister Cavern [DM], you don't blame players for how they play. That's like blaming the weather. Weather just is. You adapt to it. -Ancient History
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Post by Lokathor »

In terms of equipment, a few days to make a suit of armor seems fair enough. At low levels you're sometimes bound by the "Realistic" when doing things. At higher levels you could use Fabricate to make any item from its raw materials in a single round (though you still always need to make the Craft check, under my rules). It's not really the worst thing to say, "okay a few days pass". How often are you expecting people to swap around the armor that they're wearing anyway? I'd say that across 5 levels, most people upgraded their armor type from a starting type to a better type just once each.

Regardless of the time taken for crafting though, we were pretty poorly equipped most of the time. We were not fully a armed and operational battle station. Here's the complete list of all the non-basic stuff within our group by the time we get to level 5 (spoiler, a new guy joins later named Yamada Taro)
Sugita:
Masterwork Red Dragonscale Suit
Blue Dragonscale Shield
Masterwork Comp. Longbow [Mighty+1]
Magic Dagger (no extra)
Spot Bonus Amulet (extra: can't be flanked)

Tibellus:
Lobster Mail
Blue Dragonscale Shield
Masterwork Composite Longbow [Mighty+2]
Silver Orb (i forgot the effects)
Magic Hat (i forgot the effects here too)

Urist:
Magic Fullplate (no extra)
Dragonscale Shield
Anti-teleport Gem

Vaiken:
Healing Belt (+Heal checks scaling, and heal 2d8 3/day)
Magic Sword (literally says 'magic sword', i assume it's a longsword)

Yamada Taro:
Magic Mithril Shirt
Masterwork Small Composite Longbow
Masterwork Small Rapier
Masterwork Steel Shield
Magic Silver Light Mace (extra: CLW 3/day)

Biggunegi:
Ancestral Greataxe (class feature)
Masterwork Composite Longbow [Mighty+6]
Masterwork Longsword
Mind Flayer Tendral Helmet
In terms of 3 round being the average combat length: I mean an average isn't the only result after all. So, how often do combats actually go above or below that? For every combat that's 1 round long, there's going to be some combats that are 5, and though it can't go shorter than 1 round it can go longer than that, so the distribution isn't totally even.
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