Lords of Taldor: Ascending Majesty: Act 2

Game Master Phoenix Hunter

He's an archdevil, not a demon.
Geez, everyone gets that wrong.

Anyway.
Yeah, I'm not going to hide my religious affiliation (read: still gonna wear red/black, carry my holy symbol. The pentagram on the staff of fire was flavor, I can take it off if needed), but I'm not going to pull any of the usual rituals in public.
Anything I do perform will be in PM to Leviathan, or in a clearly labeled spoiler if it's important.

Reminder, he's not actually big-E Evil anymore.
And I hope to show that through his actions.

I don't have a problem with only posting with aliases here.
It makes it easier for me to keep up with what character is asking about what.

Checking in! Playing with an evil character will be interesting but I've seen how it can be done well. My favorite pbp game to date has been a Way of the Wicked game with all evil pcs. My tieflijg started as neutral but turned evil n after seeking magical power in all the wrong ways.

Still need to figure out Constantine's cohort. Possibly a former lover now second in charge of the Blackspear mercenaries. Oberyn was my wife and Is favorite character in game of thrones. It'll be challenging and fun.

Yeah... Valignatir's kind of like a guy walking around America in 1940 with the Japanese flag printed on his t-shirt. Sure, he's got a letter from the president personally stating that he's not a spy, which will keep him from actually getting arrested, but if he stops too long in one place he's going to get in a lot of bar fights.

Also, we are inquisitors of enemy gods.

Constantine—if you're not sure what to do with cohorts or followers, feel free to invent extra members of the extended family. Lord Rook stopped counting after his first grandson was born, but he's also got a vast family of lesser nobility on his wife's side, to the point where his cohort is married to his niece and he's currently living in their guest house.

Ok! Wow that was an amazing, and tense recruitment!

I wrote out a pro's/cons list for each character, and honestly, at the end of it, I had Lucas, Barnette, Ruatria, and Valignatir left sitting on the table and it came down to what I felt in my gut.

I wish I had enough moxie to just take everyone that applied and make a gigantic game, but alas! I'm not emotionally or mentally prepared for that kind of struggle.

So, here we are a week before the game actually begins!

What I need to do next is Estate audits to make sure it's all done correctly. So, what I need from you guys is a list of which estate items you've purchased, and how much money you've spent on it. If you've listed this in your profile, that'll be easiest for all of us.

In the meantime, take this week to streamline or tweak your characters and cohorts. Get them all perfect and shiney. I trust in each of you to make sure all of your math works out fluidly.

I will be gathering my wits, a daily struggle for me, and publishing the posting requirements and forming expectations this week as well. I don't think we really have anything to worry about in that regard though.

Are you guys as excited as I am?

Eh, Inner Sea Gods has Irori having a "minor rivalry" against Iomadae, Cayden, and Norgorber, because he thinks they "cheated" their way to godhood.

Not sure what this has to do with what I'm trying to say here, but still.

I'd say your example is slightly off.
A closer comparison would be an American waving an American Flag in Britain in 1783.

America had the same kind of relationship with Britain that Cheliax has with Taldor.

Now that I'm thinking about it, I'd use your Japanese-America example to describe Qadira-Taldor.
Japan was kinda getting aggressive, and America was looking their way for an attack. Seems really similar to the Qadiran/Taldan relationship right now.

@Leviathan-

Would Constantine and I be able to see that list of pros/cons, perhaps sent to us via PM?
I figure it'll be good to see what you see as the good aspects and bad aspects of our characters, although I can imagine what the cons would be of mine.

Also, will work on the estate calculations soon.

Honestly, I'm not sure I've ever been excited for anything more than this game.
It has so much potential to be such an epic story, and I am glad to be writing it alongside the rest of you.

Yes! Taldor and Cheliax are at peace, while Taldor is constantly watching its borders for a Qadiran invasion force to come matching out of Ketepesh.

As a note, you are both inquisitors of gods of law. I don't know if Irori, being lawful neural would actually be in opposition to Asmodeus, so long as As did whatever sinister plot he'd laid by the books.

Well, as I said, Inner Sea Gods has Irori as having an ongoing feud with Asmodeus, but fails to mention what it's about.

And Asmodeus' doesn't even mention Irori, so I don't know what's going on between the two.

Truthfully, your only cons were character related, not player related.

And to Constantine, I didn't have any cons to speak of.

Likely the way As bends the law to his interpretations then.

Is it a hot feud, or just a simmering dislike, I wonder. Whatever! Drama for the game if you guys would like. I've got to get ready for work. I'll be back in a few hours though.

Well, just reread ISG, and it states that Irori dislikes the whole "sell your soul for 'perfection'" scheme that is a theme in Asmodean worship.

"Power equals success, whatever the means."

As for my cons, I was referring to character cons.
I didn't think you'd have any player cons for me.

Constantine didn't have any cons? That's awesome!
Very nice, Constantine.

I think having an "evil" character will make for an interesting group dynamic!

I hope I can deliver on these expectations!

I'll have to come up with an estate sometime today/tomorrowish. As well as some backstory for Argos, my Magus.

Do our characters know each other any? Aside from the two rooks.

I feel we would have heard of each other, at least.
As someone said earlier, it's pretty much impossible to not be known at this level of power and prestige.

If anyone wants to build a relationship with their friendly-ish neighborhood devil-worshipper, send me a PM!

I think it's also that Irori is all about free will, human struggle for perfection, etc., and Asmodeus wants to do his darnedest to remove all free will from the universe? Something like that—our characters probably aren't going to start the game as friends.

If Constantine's got his own ideas for estate, he can handle that separately—I'm thinking the only estates I'm still managing in my old age are the ones going directly to my eldest son when he dies and those my cohort lives in, with the rest already parceled out.

That's actually fine by me, Lord Rook, as I was not expecting to have any "friends" in the beginning.

I have to earn your trust, and you have to earn mine.

I "sold" some extra/overlapping rooms from the castle and cathedral I bought, so I have to figure out the calculated cost for everything.

While I had some ideas, I think I'm going to change them.

I'd like to have a personal mansion/house in Oppara and a separate estate elsewhere...but he's not a land owner so he wouldn't have his own so much.

Would Lord Rook allow his son to both house, organize and run a mercenary group from the ground around the barony?

Thunderbeard, how did you manage to nest spoilers within one another?

Probably not for free, but if Constantine had the necessary funds to "lease" the land from him, or build a new keep/barracks somewhere in the Barony, he'd be okay with it.

Also, you can't give nested spoilers a title; they have to just be [spoiler]

Let me know when you guys are ready for me to review your holdings, and I'll proceed.

Just FYI, next weekend (Fri/Sat) is my mom's pinning and graduation ceremonies, so I may be preoccupied. I'm hoping my first gameplay post will go up on Saturday.

Game play thread open, please go place a DOT!

Should our cohorts act through our primary character or through a separate alias?

Should our cohorts act through our primary character or through a separate alias?

As I understand it, separate aliases.

Not sure, though.

Stealth dots achieved. You can review my holdings, though I might run them through a spreadsheet or something to double-check later.

Right!

A separate alias will be needed, and Make organisation easier on the story.

Probably not for free, but if Constantine had the necessary funds to "lease" the land from him, or build a new keep/barracks somewhere in the Barony, he'd be okay with it.

Also, you can't give nested spoilers a title; they have to just be [spoiler]

Thank you, you rock. And yes, the plan was for Constantine to have his own buildings, just using his father's land. The company would be built in 2 garrisons. As an aside, I've got like..10 grand left over. Need anything built that Constantine would find interesting enough to pay for? :D

The goal is to have my character and cohort finished this evening. I'm kind of waiting on the whole estate thing until I can corner the GM or our friend the Pirate to help me.

Also, as far as who knows who in game, I agree that we assume we have all at least heard of each other.

The Rook's obviously know each other.

I know Nev and Gabrielle know each other, and that Nev has at least met Valignitir. She also likely knows Lexarius, if not Kyra, due to her relationship with Eutropia.

I'm working on Lady Gabrielle's estate... Does anyone have any tips on how to build one step-by-step? The text seems pretty daunting.

-Matt

What I did, personally, was bought the buildings (in my case, a castle and a cathedral), then "sold" the rooms I didn't want/need, and then bought the extra rooms/other stuff I did want, including two trebuchets to defend said castle.

So, I really didn't use the step-by-step process, so to speak, but it worked.

Someone in the recruitment talked about a spreadsheet tool that was apparently helpful.

Thanks for the tips. The estate is in-progress. Gotta shave off a few things and work out teams.

How relevant will Lady Gabrielle's family lands way up north by Cassomir, the Verduran Forest, and Andoran be for this game? Should I put more effort into the Oppara holdings or the country estate?

My entire castle-estate is just south of Cassomir, on that little peninsula you can see on the Inner Sea map.

So, if yours aren't, mine won't be either xD

Question, once you hire teams, do they work for you forever?
If not, how long?

Looks like the three of us all basically live in a row.

That's great! Does this mean that Nev and Gabi can say ominous things like "The North remembers?"

Meanwhile, Val is the loner looking in, wondering what the North actually remembers...

*pop*

I feel like one of the fairy odd parents... Gizmo? Yea, something like that.

Just got off work, checking in on you.

To quickly answer your question, because I'm on a dying phone and going to see the person who should help get me all trained on estates, what you provide to me can/will be used for the story and your benefit. I don't see building winterfell, then spending every waking second in the Red Keep, you know?

I'm out for a bit, I'll get on my computer soon though!

Alright, cool.

Because I basically went to extremes to make sure my castle would be able to defend itself.

Kinda felt weird buying the trebuchets, but if they're used, or even mentioned, I'd be alright with that.

In other news, working on my estate purchase prices.
Not sure I'll get it finished tonight, probably tomorrow morning.
We'll see!

P.S. It's Cosmo and Wanda. Just saying.

Finally started touching on the estate stuff. Uhg its sooo complicated.

So far I envision having a rather large mansion/villa in the Worldbreaker District for the family. The Rubicons also own a small early factory which produces a large portion of Taldor's military supplies - arms, armor, etc. With a pier/waterfront to enable shipping. Additionally with Kyra's performance bent, they have recently acquired a theater and a guildhall, with Kyra getting a bunch of performers to act as her orchestra and acting organization. Still thinking of more. Maybe a Brewery?

Wondering if I should even get a castle what with everyone and their grandma having a castle.

By the way, can downtime rules be used to construct a ship?

Honestly, Kyra, I just bought the four I wanted to have.

If you're talking about building them real time, I think you'd use craft (boats) or something, and use the silver pieces crafting rules. Not sure, though.

Hmm, we're a little further away—Castle Rook is a week's ride East of Oppara, on the other side of the mountains; I'm guessing Constantine built his fortifications about a day away from the family estate.

Basically, the way I'm handling it is: Caste Rook is basically like the house on Downton Abbey, but with more fortification and guards; the local nobility live in the family and collect taxes from the surrounding area, but aside from some quantity of farmland, roads, and river access associated with the estate, the rest is split up into smaller land holdings only nominally associated—what I'm counting as "Lord Rook's" estate is only the bits directly controlled by him and his eldest son, with the rest parcelled out or freely-leased to his other children.

Constantine, if you've got another 10k of stuff you want to build, farms (to feed your mercenaries through sharecropping out to the local peasants) and watchtowers (to secure the border with the World's End Mountains) are what I went with.

* * *

Boats you'd handle through Craft checks, but you can have many individual craftsmen (your followers, or hirees) working on separate parts at once—and if a few of them have Shape Wood or Fabricate (or you do), that speeds things up by quite a bit.

Alright!

Oh! Cosmo! Maybe I was thinking gremlins! XD

Sorry, I was out WAY later than expected, assisting a buddy with his Dark Heresy RP character. I thought I'd get the chance to check in with you while I was out and investigate your questions and come to a ruling. That was not the case, as apparently I'm too far south of a Denver for anything with Wi-Fi to be open later than 7pm on Sunday.

I know downtime rules are complex, and I hope by tomorrow night I will be more versed in them so I can assist you with their usage.

Per ship purchasing, I believe there is a listing for pricing somewhere in the Skull & Shackles AP. If not I'll find the board my F2F group was using from the OP boards. It was nicely laid out and fairly detailed.

For the Room estate do you mean beyond the southern mountains?

Okay, how the heck is that estate spreadsheet on the recruitment thread suppose to work? Is anyone using it?

I'm not using the estate spreadsheet, as I don't have money to pay for herolab, and I assume the estate bit is an add-on. I haven't confirmed this.

Constantine: was this a question for me? If so can you give it context?

I will have a much better understanding of the downtime system in about 6 hours.

Err, no, still on the West side of the mountains.

Take note, too...

So far as I have been able to tell, Taldor is about 2/3 the size of the U.S. that's a TON of room. Measured out is something in the neighborhood of 1200 miles at the longest.

If you guys have a better understanding than me, please correct me.

I tend to take Paizo measurements with a grain of salt. The various maps Paizo provides are not internally consistent, Brevoy was one of the nations I tried to measure out which was dramatically larger in the Kingmaker AP (dedicated to said region) compared to the generic Inner Sea map.

But, Taldor could reasonably be expected to be that large. Though maybe smaller.

Yeah... apparently, based on scales given on different maps, Taldor could be anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand miles wide (and it's very unclear how populated the nation is as a whole). It's up to the GM, but I've usually gone with the classic "Avistan is about the same size as Europe/Middle Earth/Westeros," which makes the part of Taldor west of the mountains about the same size and shape as Italy, 100-200 miles wide and 500-1000 tall (though there's a huge chunk of Taldan-owned desert in Casomir that nobody actually lives on).

(for comparison, I'm looking at a map of Varisia with a scale right now, and it's just over 200 miles from Magnimar to Riddleport, which is approximately the distance I expect between Castle Rook and Oppara)