PH Dungeon's Hyborian Campaign
Game Master P.H. Dungeon

Dorin's AR would be 2 and your ACR would be 7.

For simplicity, if a character is wearing a mix of armour types I would use the AR for the armour that covers the biggest area, which in your case is the leather.

Righto.

Oh, and bar fights are always fun. Sounds like a plan to me.

i think this is much needed discussion. For now I'm just going to monitor it, and once you guys have come to some sort of resolution I'll move things forward.

Good point about the fire. But I still think we can draw them out somehow. All I saw was some dudes in robes go inside and then later the demon come out. We don't know if it's one room, or a labyrinth down there. Perhaps we could trick them somehow, pose as allies. Or more powerful servants of Azoth who were sent by the demon lord to take over after this group failed to sacrifice us.

P.H. Dungeon- Would the guards do anything if we told them what's going on?

Maybe they could serve as a distraction.

What do you mean? The city guards?

Yeah. I'm not saying ask them "hey will you be our bait?" but what would they do if we told them that there was a demonic cult hiding in that building?

Probably not much because in Shadizar most of the temples and cults are devoted to various demonic entities, and it's perfectly socially acceptable. If you could some how convince them that they posed some sort of imminent danger to the city, they might be moved to take action, but given that you guys are far from influential and respected citizens, you are pretty certain that the guards won't be of any help to you.

Juma would most defintely like to get his hands on whoever sold him out (does ge have any idea by the way PHD?) As well, he's not too interested in killing a bunch of mostly innocent guards, he wants the top guys.

Is it likely they are Always in the temple compound? Do they have homes or lives outside of it? If so, prehaps we could follow or track some one of them down. Otherwise he find the ones that sold us and squeeze the info out of them

Hm. I'd contribute a bit more, but Dorin's probably just along for the ride, at the moment. He doesn't know much about the situation, just that he's more or less agreed to help you folk out. He'll go along with whatever the group decides, generally more in favor of the 'kick-in-the-door' plans.

Juma you're pretty sure that bar tender at the tavern where your drink was drugged had something to do with it.

infiltrating a cult is usually pretty easy (at least in the stories).

waylay a group of cultists. steal their clothes and beat a password/religious gesture out of them, slip in with a larger group, etc.

once inside we can cause all kinds of damage. I'd recommend going right for the upper level guys, ignoring the peons, lighting the place on fire and slipping out (still wearing the disguises) while the place is in chaos.

cults without leaders tend to dispurse.

Good idea, lets try that. Maybe the bar tender knows where they hang out.

You and Temur have rogue-y qualities. How about one of the two of you propose it in game. Then we can cut to dealing with the barkeep.

Juma will be very happy to get his hands on the barkeep and the cult leaders

Not sure if Juma would be sneaky enough to think of this, but I picture an awesome scene where Ardeth, perhaps using his stash of fine hashish or whatever, convinces the bartender to come back out into the alleyway, where the huge Juma then steps out of the shadows, at first just his white teeth and eyes showing until he looms more into the light and saying with the finality of the grave "Hello Farzan. Miss me?" (or whatever the dudes name is)

I know I'd probably wet My pants were I that bartender. Getting info out of him then should be no problem at all ; )

I think we could make something like that happen. :)

Hmmm, well That wasn't exactly subtle or putting him off his guard. I thought the idea was to have him Not be suspicious or connecting anything with the rest of us at all. It's almost certaim that he knows by now that we escaped, and if he knows one of the escapees is here, not a big leap to think that others, like Juma, might be nearby as well.

Anyway, guess there's not a lot to be done for it now...

Why would he think anyone else escaped?

Besides, I had to get his attention somehow. :)

Well, the leaders know that more than one of us escaped, and they Did send the demon after. So it seems pretty safe to say that by now, whether by intent or rumour, the whole cult would know that some escapees shut down their whole desert compund

You really think this bartender's part of the cult and not just paid off or being used?

Sorry about the brief disappearance, folks, I've been in and out of town a lot lately, and it's messed with my posting rate. Speaking of which, I'm expecting to be out of town once more Sunday through Tuesday or so, but I'll try to check in via phone at some point in there.

You really think this bartender's part of the cult and not just paid off or being used?

Hmm, you could very well be correct there.

That's the assumption I was going off of. It never occurred to me that the bartender might be in the cult.

I guess we'll be finding out which assumption was on the money ; )

That's the assumption I was going off of. It never occurred to me that the bartender might be in the cult.

Dun dun DUN!

Should I kill this dude?

Up to you. You and Temur probably wouldn't bat an eye (based on your backgrounds and professions). Juma might have a problem with it. Guess you'd have to ask him.

On the other hand, he is an a$$@%%# who's willing to beat up beggars. Somehow I doubt the world will miss him.

Ok, so How exactly is this version of the plan helping to get the Bartender out here? Juma,while he may have no problems beating up this guy, has no interest in killing him.

Easy. When he doesn't come back, the bartender will go take a look. Patience. :)

Yeah, I don't care about his life. It's getting the bartender outside that worries me. I suppose he would probably come outside to check, guess we'll find out.

I think I have a plan for this. We'll see if it works.

Hey, guys, I'm headed out of town again for almost a week, come Monday. There isn't internet there yet, but there may be before I get back, or I may get a chance to sneak out to somewhere where I can post - otherwise, safe to assume Dorin will just go along with whatever Xanos suggests.

Sorry I've been in and out so much, I'm working on a project that requires me to bounce around. Should be over fairly soon.

See now, This is exactly what I had hoped to avoid, a big, messy, potentially lethal fight, now with the town guard, no less, who we have no beef against. Juma has no interest in killing guardsmen who've done nothing to him and who're just doing their jobs. I mean, ya sure, it's Zamora, so they very likely corrupt, but we don't Know that for sure at the moment.

You roused his suspicions right from the beginning Xanos, so of course he's not just going to wander into the ally by himself now. I mean it's just logical. If you'd sent your big burly bouncer to take care of something, and he didin't come back, would you then go by yourself to check it out? I know I sure wouldn't. If instead an appeal had been made to his greed, or lust or some such, we likely could have got him to come out on his own.

Nothing to be done about it now of course, but it's perhaps a (painful) learning lesson for next time. Sometimes subtlety has it's place, don'tcha know. ; )

You guys still got plenty of options. I wouldn't sweat it just yet.

I say you guys abscond with Samus, I'll try to talk my way out of things but if sh*t hits the fan I will run for it. Hopefully I can lose them.

Is that a bad plan?

Well, considering we'd then be wanted for kidnapping and murder by the city guard, who would be witness', unless we kill them too, it may not be the best plan... : p

Well they haven't seen you three yet, and they don't know you're there. Xanos only mentioned me inside...and since I'm covered in blood now, it'll probably be difficult to convince them that I'm just some homeless guy. I plan on telling them that a guy named Mugsy was smoking with me and then that big guy came out and mugsy stabbed him and ran off. Don't think it'll work, but the only other way I can think of to prevent the guard from finding out is to kill all the witnesses. Distasteful, but -shrug-

Also since we're in a city there might be too many witnesses for even us to kill.

I think you might be a little unfamiliar with how the city guard in Shadizar operate. :)

The City Of Wickedness isn't exactly renowned for it's shining civil servants.

Right, 'City of Wickedness', that certainly tempers things somewhat regarding worrying about 'the innocent, well meaning city-guard'.

Anyway, eggs are already in the pan, so nothing now but to fry 'em, so to speak. Course they might get a bit scrambled too ; )

As to the discussion IC re Juma's Grin, I agree and disagree with several things said. I agree that this being a Conan game, pretty much anything said in game should be taken as fitting to the genre and clime of the story. There'll likely be all kinds of things happening in this game that we 'civilized' folk would normally feel to be inappropriate or disturbing.

That being said, PHD's comments were made OCC, so, in my opinion, the above caveat does not really apply.

However, that being said, 1- I did make the comment about Juma's grin PHD was referring to and 2-I happen to know PHD personally, and I can assure you that the very last thing he is is racist. Without getting into his personal life at all, if you knew it though, you would know what I say to be the case without a doubt.

I happened to find the comment amusing myself.

Hopefully the whole matter is water under the bridge now.

PS Nice move with the mugging story Ardeth! May not end up working, but still, nice thinking

I'm white as a saltine cracker, and I laughed when I read it. But I was also like Whaaaaaat, because a few of the black people I know would be offended by something like that. I had forgotten that Juma said it earlier. So yeah, I wasn't offended just pointing out that some would be.

Most of the ones I know would be the ones saying it. :)

I'm out of town until Sunday, and may internet access is a bit limited hence the slow response time.

I'm back now.

I wanted to say that while I know this is a pretty nasty town, and these are bouncers working for the guy that drugged and kidnapped you all, I'm shocked that Juma went for the kill instead of the KO.

I'm not judging at all. I just wanted to mention that it surprised me. In a party full of morally questionable folks, he seemed like the one most likely to frown on killing. Guess he's just as savage as the rest of us. :)

Ha. Actually the error is mine, not Juma's, I didn't really know that knock-out or non-lethal damage was possible.

Can we change that PHD? And how would that work? Like he'd have to use the butt of his spear or something?

The only one Juma is interested in killing is Saul. And he'd really rather not kill the town guard.

Back to civilization am I! Fortunately, doesn't look like there's much that's happened that Dorin would need to respond to, so far.

Question - I don't suppose any of the commotion from outside is carrying noise to any of us in the bar?

There hasn't been that much commotion yet.

But I'm getting the feeling the s$!~ is about to hit the fan.

Uh ya, a good scrap is always fun, but as looks like Sual now has a good chance of getting away, next time bro maybe stick to the plan? Just sayin'

Don't worry. I think we still have this in the bag.

We can just slaughter them all. But that doesn't take us any closer to our goal, so that's my last option.