Hu5tru Runs Jade Regent
Game Master Hu5tru

Take all the time you need. It's a terrible thing to have a relative in the hospital, I've had several myself. I'll pray for the best.

Yeah take.the.time/space you need. No worries.

All the best to you and your family. Hope the tests come back negative.

Sending good thoughts your way. That's never easy. Do what you need to do.

Wow, thought I updated this, apparently I did not. Turns out it was a bad reaction to some new meds. The lady is back at home resting, and my anxiety is back to its normal levels, so I'll be picking this back up.

So, do you guys want to wipe out horrible gobbos before they grow up and attack more folk, or do you want to go back to the wardens?

And no, this isn't a "paladin falls if he agrees" moment. I think I've done pretty well showing that gobbos are filthy little monsters.

Glad you're feeling better, Hu5tru!

Wiping out more goblins would help curb further threats, but I think we've done enough to neutralize them for now personally. We destroy all of them, we don't give them a chance for redemption. On the other side of the coin, they'll just grow full of resentment for what we've done if we allow as is.

Of course I'm willing to bet Valcrim's position and would go with wipe 'em out. Probably better considering the nature of the campaign.

Valcrim is for the eradication. Not just because he hates goblins, but because it is the best thing for all involved. Without warriors, they starve and die slow and painful deaths. And none will take care of goblin noncombatants.

His positions is that redemption is something that should be deserved. Those without a spark of decency, who only surrenders when fleeing is not an option, and only to save their own hides by playing on the opponent's moral restrictions, are not deserving.

Rearing goblin children to be good is a futile task. None in the local area would do so, I assume, and even if there were a few benevolent souls, they are still goblins, meaning they would never fit in, and would have to live sheltered lives without much purpose.

Torag is pragmatic first. Idealism is good. Blind idealism is reckless.

Joya would pretty much default to the god squad on the matter.

So we got one maybe from Treygan, an absolutely from Valcrim and a pass from joyabraund. Broderus or yamamoto Seiji want to weigh in.

I'm not going to make you play it out, i'll just sorta smear over it real quick in my "get ye to the next part of the AP" post.

Hope you guys saved up some mojo for random encounters! Tee hee!!

Okay, okay... maybe I won't be malicious.

Welcome back Hu5tru!

Broderus considers himself an honorable warrior, and he won't partake in any slaughter of noncombatants, especially children. His knowledge of goblins is limited coming from Garund, so he harbors no special animosity towards goblinoids. Now if these were charau-ka, he might behave a little differently!

Due to his experience with the charau-ka, he can identify with Valcrim's beliefs a bit, so he won't try to stop the dwarf from doing what he has to do.

Seiji will assist Valcrim in killing the remaining goblins. The task, as he interpreted it, was to end the goblin threat. In his mind, survivors, even if they be young, will pose a threat in the future.

He certainly views it as unpleasant, and will be as merciful as possible.

All right, so...

Okay. no problemo then. Well, slight problemo and it may require a bit of time for me to figure out what to do with the three who are inclined to abstain while the two who are adamant kill the goblin young, but I will do it shortly.

Maybe i'll be a beneficent GM and say "while Father Flinthammer and Yamamoto Seiji take care of business, you three, taking a greater look at your surroundings find (what you missed in the spoilers)."

Ill help, i just.dont care. ;)

Treygan will assist as well. He just won't like it much.

I don't want to belabor the point too much, but I've a bit bothered by the killing of the goblin young and other noncombatants. I can see Valcrim's point of view easily enough given his dwarven heritage and Torag's teachings. Seiji makes sense too considering his Lawful Neutral alignment and understanding of the charter from Sandpoint.

I just don't understand how Treygan and Joyabraund were able to jump on the "killing train" so quickly. The whole killing spree concerns me from both a character and real life standpoint.

With Broderus, I see his worldview in this situation revolving around three rungs. The neutral part of his alignment imparts a strong attitude of "don't bother someone unless they bother you first." Secondly,his father ingrained him with a deep sense of combat honor: "you don't strike someone down who cannot strike back." Finally, he hails from Garund so has little to no face time with goblins.

Just wanted to get that off my chest. I'm definitely open to more discussion, but can drop it as well so we can continue chugging along with the campaign. :)

I do see your point, Broderus. There's a few different ways to approach this, so I'll try to keep the thoughts somewhat organized.

First off is the simple, is good/evil determined based on actions or intentions? In this scenario the intention is that by removing the goblin menace we are saving Sandpoint from future troubles. This is not the preferred method Treygan would want, but it is the one available at present.

Second is the worldview of goblins. This in part is a reflection of the setting, another a reflection of the DM's view of the setting. Hu5tru's statement, it can be viewed that the slaughter of goblins isn't of itself an evil act. This could be that goblins are viewed as a pest, and klling off an entire tribe is little different than killing a pack of rabid dogs, or wiping out a colony of fire ants. Goblins just happen to be more intelligent. Considering based on my reading, Sandpoint has been plagued by goblins numerous times, I could see this point.

A third option is that a driving force of the campaign isn't good vs. evil. Not the best basis here (especially for RP), but since the campaign's focus is on traveling across the world, how do we handle the goblins in this situation? I could see Treygan taking in the goblin young, raising them up to worship Sarenrae, become responsible for them, and that would be a great campaign starter imo. But that's not the game we're playing (though I'd love to roleplay out that arguement with Valcrim, I could see it coming to fisticuffs).

In short, the basis there does exist. Don't get me wrong though, I do see your viewpoint as well.

Okie doke, challenge accepted.

First - any young, good or evil, are not going to survive without adults to feed and defend them. You literally wiped out every single one that remained of the Licktoad tribe. I know it has been a few months, but do bear in mind that this swamp has been home to such evil things as the faceless stalker and the sinspawn you fought earlier "today." There's plenty of cruel and evil sentient beings that could just sweep through and gobble up a bunch of defenseless younglings, or animals, or what have you.

IRL this is the reason why I thought Scott Peterson (wiki it if you don't know) should have gotten the death penalty. The dang jury said it was manslaughter that he killed his child, because apparently killing its mother and leaving it to die wasn't enough to prove intent to murder. Babies cannot survive without their mothers or hospitals and doctors to take care of them. He willfully murdered his wife, why did they reduce the severity of his child?

Second - Sandpoint. Again, has been a few months, but Meta, I will tell you that its greatest defender is its sheriff, who is fighter or warrior 4, something of that nature. I do not believe that its cleric can cast Remove Disease by the stat block, although as a GM, I shouldn't think that a head cleric of a cathedral should not be able to cast that, but that's neither here nor there. Shalelu pops in now and again when the goblin threat is high, and as she also hates goblins, trims them back, but as an elf she's not really to be relied upon. Wathus Proudstump has favored enemy goblins, but he's just one crazy halfling hermit who went in and picked off a few with his bow time and again to keep the population low so they wouldn't bother him in his shack.

Recall the opening of this adventure? Goblins were attacking caravans, and had ground trade to a standstill. Trade a small town like Sandpoint needs to keep itself going. Goblins burning caravans. I chose not to make them hurt anyone, because I thought the entire town suffering on account of the new goblin scourge was enough. People weren't leaving their homes except to complain about nothing being done about the goblins. And three dudes who had gone, (ambiguous on my part, heck they just might have been three drunk dudes who said they were going, then wussed out and high tailed it to the next town over without another thought) had already gone missing.

But, I believe my point has been made, Sandpoint is in a really poor way to defend itself. Hence the bounty on gobbo ears and Licktoad's head.

Could you have left without slaughtering the young? Yeah, probably, and if it bothered you that much IC, you could very well assume that Broderus went skulky to scout that things were copacetic for your return journey instead of standing about being bothered by it, but I know that Valcrim at least was very interested in ending an established threat to his adopted hometown.

Now, as for adopting goblin young and raising them, I will tell you that there is a JR game on this board that a couple of morons have done that and the GM actually uses the goblin as an NPC that they interact with and I think given the quality of that game some other PC might even have sex with for all I know, but that's not the game I'm interested in running. No one in Sandpoint is interested in raising no filthy gobbo young to be good either, and why should they? Gobbos delight in sticking dogs with their shivs, making things bleed, and being generally evil little bastards and why should anyone open up their family and children and heck, their community to housing something like that?

In my opinion, for all these reasons stated above, killing off gobbo young is not an evil act. Torag certainly isn't frowning at Valcrim for delivering the killing blow to most of your foes thus far. He's Lawful Good, not Lawful Nice.

But, given the reaction, I will make sure that any future instances of young being endangered are less ambiguous. Because in this AP there are some foes that will actually eat their own darned young as a delicacy. I'm not really looking forward to portraying just how evil I consider that sorta disgusting stuff to be, but thankfully its a ways off.

I was wondering if this would come up. To be honest, I'm a little sickened having Seiji so easily participate in the killing of the goblin young, but in the end, that is absolutely what he would do. It's a harder decision for our paladin, certainly.

Valcrim's motivation for killing them was one motivated by equal parts pragmatism and mercy.

As said before: There are enough evil things lurking about that would have delivered a far worse end than a decisive blow of a hammer. And if nothing comes to eat them, then starvation is not a nice way to go.

But what if a few of the gobbo young DID survive? Eating their dead kin to stay alive, like CE monsters are not shy of doing, and managing to muscle through the adversity of not having adults to feed them. Those survivors, the strongest and most ruthless of the young, would soon want revenge on the outsiders who had the gall to take revenge for all their parents' raiding, plundering and murdering.

Either way, you are left with no scenario that a LG character can stand for. There is no third option. Capture them? Then what? Who would take in, feed and care for gobbo young? The people in the region rightly hate the little scum.

Swift and painless death is not so bad when the options are slow and painful death, and seeding a new enemy that might succeed where their parents failed.

Sure, according to real world sentiment, this is horribly wrong. Because there is no other sentient race than humans, so all sentient life = human. By THAT logic, this is bad-wrong. But that is just it. This is not american soldiers setting fire to nuns in Nicaragua. This is Legolas, Gimli and Aragorn stamping out those shrieking Uruk-Hai with no other purpose in life than to kill and destroy all that is good and decent, and then have Treebeard and his ilk drown the breeding vats by unleashing the rivers. I am pretty sure none were feeling ambivalent about that.

Apologies, guys. Ran a prelude to Kingmaker for my VTT group today and am feeling rather drained, and it's not a position to be approaching your group currently.

I will get walthus to get ya'll talking about what you found tomorrow. Or, alternatively, you can always show him the pretty map you found.

Oh, did you guys take the box the stuff was in, or leave it? suppose I should have asked that earlier...

Joya would WANT it. He know what it was worth. YOU paladin. Carry that for the little halfling ;-)

Treygan would have no issues taking it (and carrying it if needed).

Okie doke. I ran my Kingmaker group through Oleg's today on maptools so I'm rather tapped as far as GMing goes. Will steam ahead tomorrow, hopefully.

It's a rather crap day family-wise tomorrow, though, so I'm not making any promises.

Just a heads up that this weekend I will be attending a local anime convention to chaperone my youngest sister. My ability to post will be spotty.

Just a heads up that this weekend I will be attending a local anime convention to viciously destroy any who attempt to come within 5 feet of my youngest sister. My ability to post will be spotty.

Oh okay, makes sense :-P

Try to have a good time.

Okie, has been a while since a real GM update on my part and I apologize for such, but by my calculations, based upon what you have faced on the journey thus far, you have earned -

1775 xp

This is for:

Gutwad
15 goblins
clearing the Licktoad Tribe
Sinspawn
Valrog (Shapechanger)
Walthus Proudstump

If I have overlooked something... hmm, I will have to look through such, but recall that you're still in the morning!

Thanks for the experience point update Hu5tru! Character sheet updated. :)

As a side note, I know we're getting close to leveling up, so I was wondering what you do about hit points in your games. Do you have us advance a set amount or do we roll the dice?

Reroll anything less than half. I know this dice roller is cruel. If I were to roll against/for you (husband's rule) we'd probably both roll ones and that would be a travesty.

Sorry guys. Busy weekend this one. Expect to be out til late this evening. Look for an update chock full of BBC coding with initiatives for your combat tomorrow!

Sorry to butt in-
Hu5tru-sent you a private message- just wondering if Shirish will be back in the Zolurket campaign at some point?

I don't know what my problem is. I've looked at the initiative order a few times over the course of the last few days, and for some reason thought I was acting on 5. Ugh.

Sorry again for holding things up.

No big. A PbP is by nature a slower game, and summer is upon us, the season of being outdoors at times :P

We kinda went over it pretty quickly in character, so I just making sure everyone's okay with Broderus pocketing both of the magic potions.

No complaints here. I'm usually pretty easy going on loot though.

Now if a Holy Avenger drops.... ;p

Holy avenger on level 1. How to troll the party paladin 101. Is cursed item, drains all CHA and forces alignment shift to Chaotic Evil, thereby revoking your paladin status.

Nah... Man, I really wanted a cleric with the appropriate craft feat to make one of those once... I dunno how having more than ONE Holy Avenger in the world would do to it, though.

Oh, by the by, I will be out of town thursday through sunday visiting family and it is unlikely that I will post frequently.

I will be traveling overseas very soon, and will be posting less frequently. Our hotel does have wi-fi, so I'll be on periodically, but but I'll also be spending a lot of time romping around London, so there will likely be a dip in my play-by-post activity.

I leave on the 7th, and return home on the 19th.

Sorry about the short notice, but I will be back and posting regularly in a couple of weeks.

Sounds good! I hope you have a wonderful vacation, and I'll look forward to when you get back! :)

And I'm off to London!

I might be posting periodically in the next two weeks, but I should be returning to my regular schedule on the 20th. In the meantime, certainly feel free to control Seiji as you see fit, Hu5tru.

Have fun!!

Jealous! Enjoy!

Gaah, was going to post something to move you around, but my concentration was thrown by chemical imbalances, then today's online game devolved into chooo choo railroading from hell and I am now faced with the daunting task of ejecting a problem player from my regular group.

Short of it, I'm pissed, and I don't wanna hustle something out tonight just to get something out, but I do plan on moving you forward.

I assume that you don't want to fight the spider if you don't have to, so you guys cool with moving through the water?

I'm really... skittish about that much railroad now after hitting the station in our game tonight.

Ouch, sounds like a bad night. Sucks about the problem player. Hopefully the situation gets resolved okay. If I can, I'd recommend a catapult for the ejection. Much easier to get through the city council ordinances in most states than a cannon, or a rocket into the sun.

I can only speak for myself, but I'd be fine with moving forward. I'd rather not fight the spider myself if we can avoid it. Though we get XP for 'defeating the encounter', right ;p

I'm okay with moving on as well. Broderus understands an animal will defend its lair, so he won't indiscriminately kill unless attacked first.

okay, husband is running today, so i'm not going to be distracted from important hanging out time to get a post out in the next few hours. except by the other stuff i have to do to prolong my own life :P

Alright gents. I'm departing from my home at noon tomorrow to make an evening flight from LAX, and will be unable to post again til Monday, sometime, at the earliest. Sorry to do this in the middle of combat, but that's how things work some times. If I'm unable to get my gears running to get another combat post out before wednesday, I'll ask my husband to sub for me just this once, but I don't think it will come to that.

Hu5tru,

Thanks for your comments on the longsword/mace switcharoo. I actually did it on purpose, since I'm not sure Broderus would know about the vulnerabilites/weaknesses of skeletons. I remember Treygan made his Knowledge (Religion) roll on this earlier, but I didn't know if we had a chance to discuss it on the way through the trail and caverns.

How about it Treygan? :)

If Treygan did discuss it with the group,then Broderus stowed his longsword prior to touching the skeleton. He'll go through this combat with only 1 weapon, his mace. I don't have combat reflexes, so alas, no attack of opportunity in either case... :(

I definitely would've mentioned it while traveling, and particularly now. Talking is a free action ;p

Just giving you a heads-up that at the end of this month (July 31), I'll be leaving town for two weeks for work. I don't know the status of an available internet connection while I'll be gone, or how much free time I'll have, but I'll post as able.

After that, I'll only be back for a day before heading to Gencon afterwards, getting back home late the 19th. So between those two dates I'll be sporadic at best, possibly unavailable. Sorry for any inconveniences this may impose.

Okay guys. I'm here in Norway, waiting on actions to post the post round summary, etc, but you're off to a great start!

Also, cider is yummy.

Kidney Stones...don't get those!

I should have an update later today, tomorrow AM at latest.