The Father of Waters

Game Master Fighting Chicken

The meta-consequences are too real for me and my psyche, haven't done spoilers since the Boydak fight or earlier. Though Drazan did follow someone to keep an eye on them once, a spoiler within another's spoiler.

I do enjoy this pbp very much, and find myself from time to time going back and re-reading older posting chains. Everyone's characters come to life in this terrific setting with interesting characters on GMBP's part and the only thing that is missing is the greater number of posts I wish I was making. I look forward to Drazan and Isitiel's bond growing and evolving, Drazan's post tramatic stress from killing Rigel (skinstealer Rigel), seeing where Imix, Oios, and Drazan's relationship goes because Drazan's got law issues ;)

I heaven't gotten to see a lot of others stories play out due to the roles we have chosen to fill and my stance on spoilers, but what I do pick up is very fun and interesting.

Very cool, I hope we continue, and that no one dies.

I did for a while, but I stopped when GMBP asked us not to for the Boydak fight.

In general, I don't mind (heck, I do it in our CC game from time to time). I asked in that specific instance because I was going for a horror vibe with the encounter, and I'll specify in the future if I really don't want you all to read something.

I do enjoy this pbp very much, and find myself from time to time going back and re-reading older posting chains. Everyone's characters come to life

Hey-o thanks for the kind words! I agree that you all have done a fantastic job of bringing your PCs to life - I had gamed with you all in at least one game before, and you'd all created very memorable PCs in those games, so I knew you'd do nice things with this world.

Very cool, I hope we continue, and that no one dies.

My intent is to see this through for a couple more years at least, and hopefully to completion, however long that takes. Though, my original estimate for part 1 was around 500 posts, and we didn't pass it until what, 1800 posts, so my original timeline may be off a bit.

Sorry for the slower pace lately. Lot going on here. Running a department gives me less time to good off at work (there's always something else I should be doing). And having just bought a house, and might as well spill this now too - with a baby on the way - my weekends and nights are a lot more busy.

So, I'm hopeful that I'll be able to pick up the pace a bit more in the near-ish future (especially once this large off-site project is finished that takes me away from my office twice a week). For now though, unfortunately I don't see things changing in the near-term.

Thanks for sticking with things as we've built a rather unusual game, I think, and I'm looking forward to the future.

Oh, I realised, I just got out of the habit

Busy day today, I'll get an update in tomorrow afternoon.

Same here... good thing Istiel is just standing around, looking stern, and pretending not to understand her native language.

Hard work to be sure, but easy to describe.

with a baby on the way

Forgot to say something before, but congratulations!

After this we'll stop splitting the party and make your job easier!

Ah, more important job, new house, baby on the way. Congrats on all the amazing things GM. Take your time and hope we can provide an occasional break for you BP.

Thanks, Istiel and Oios! No need to stop splitting the party though!

Oios, I imagine I may have some questions - this is our first, we're a little confused!

Don't drop it is my advice.

That's good advice!

It is going right above "don't lose it" on my list :)

Huh. I missed that bit somehow. Congratulations!

Seriously though, any questions you might have I'm more than willing to answer to the best of my ability.

Seriously though, any questions you might have I'm more than willing to answer to the best of my ability.

Where do babies come from these days anyway? I'm assuming you just order them off of Amazon like everything else.

The traditional stork delivery business is already hurting but they'll really be in trouble when Amazon stars delivering babies via drone I think.

Huh. I missed that bit somehow. Congratulations!

Thank you!

Sadly, it isn't all good news. Went to get my Texas Driver's License yesterday and found out my old DL had expired the month before. Now I have to retake the driver's test. I took the knowledge test and have a conditional permit that only allows me to drive if someone with a license is in the car. Ha!

Then I went online to schedule my driving portion of the license exam, to find the first available test is 7/19. My conditional permit ends 7/2.

:/

I feel like I'm 15 again!

I'm working offsite today so if I update it will be tonight, otherwise tomorrow.

Lol, oh no! This is terrible!

But how will you drive your date to senior prom now?! Your parents will have to drive with you! It will be so awkward and they'll probably have an entire album of baby pictures! PROM IS RUINED

Sorry to hear that. Is there not some way to get an exemption?

Haha, prom is totally ruined! I wish I would have thought of that objection at the DMV.

Sadly, no exemptions. It is my own fault, really.

Working overnights for finals tonight and tomorrow night, so expect weirdly timed updates.

Getting caught up on my games and regular old work. I'll get everyone together on Desus 4 tomorrow, May 12.

We are a bit of a circus, aren't we?

Seems pretty straightforward- we keep moving until we reach the cliffs. which path are we going to take? We have a lot of people depending on us, so perhaps the faster path isn't really the best option.

With the absence of our water sorceress engineer... who would have known exactly what to do... maybe we can rely on our two NPC guides and Imix to come up with a clever plan IC? IC Oios can't really help and OOC I can't either :). I leave the in depth travel stratergerizing to other players!

Which scenes are Imix and Oios in, please. I've gotten confused...

I actually read the spoilers for once, and I'm pretty sure the party is together at the split in the canal.

Also Oios delegated you to choose the " 6 potions of spells from the PHB level three and lower." (holy s#@!, thanks BP)

Istiel looooves potions of mage armor, fyi, but you can probably think of way better spells than that. Some cure wounds potions would be nice too.

I am going on a vacation for a week starting tomorrow! I think I will be able to keep up with a once a day pace but maybe not!

Anyone want to help me brainstorm?
I know they're not spectacular, but Remove Blindness and Remove Curse might be good. We're one encounter off PERMANENT blindness without access to a healer.
Tongues could make a huge difference when we meet the people downriver.
Fly and Water Breathing are very situationally useful - more Fly than Water Breathing though.
Ablative Barrier comes pretty close to making someone invulnerable for a while - but that's just HP.

Excuse my ignorance here, what are you brainstorming exactly?

Imix was asked to pick out 6 potions level 3 or lower from the core rule book.

Hmm, my top picks would be-

Remove Curse
Remove Disease
Remove Blindness/Deafness
Tongues
Fly
Lesser Restoration

That's for the group's benefit. Istiel (and Drazen I imagine) is a fan of Mage Armor, Bull's Strength, and Bear's Endurance! Honestly I don't like Ablative Armor, Mage armor or Bear's Endurance is better.

On another note- Is our group haversack up to date in the spreadsheet? Istiel is taking a potion of Cure Moderate Wounds from it. We had 5, so now we have 4.

If it affects your calculations, I have Sphere talents that would do most of the Remove/Restoration spells you listed.

Wahoo!

I think we're currently outside of Nat's spellcasting range, sadly.

Nat stops you, looking into the treeline, avoiding your eyes. "Oye... Oye think Oye'm going to stay. There's soimething here, that Oye need toi see through." Drawing a thin scroll-case from her shawl, the priestess presses it into Oios' hands. "Soime scribblings Oye made last noight. Rituals, prayers, tha loike. Make sure that Issy gets it. Oih, and this." Taking the shawl from her slight shoulders, the Tooyah woman folds it neatly and leaves it with the Shadow.

Looks like she stayed behind?

Unless we can ask Issy to do it, but... she won't always be around either.

Nat stops you, looking into the treeline, avoiding your eyes. "Oye... Oye think Oye'm going to stay. There's soimething here, that Oye need toi see through." Drawing a thin scroll-case from her shawl, the priestess presses it into Oios' hands. "Soime scribblings Oye made last noight. Rituals, prayers, tha loike. Make sure that Issy gets it. Oih, and this." Taking the shawl from her slight shoulders, the Tooyah woman folds it neatly and leaves it with the Shadow.

Well, that was obviously a skin stealer what with the horrible imitation of Nat's accent and all.

You'll be seeing Nat soon(ish).

It would make a difference.

On the other hand, Remove Blindness is pretty situationally useful. I'd be inclined to get a potion rather than have you use one of your very limited sphere talents to pick up the power. Same for curses, and disease; unless you have them already?

I'm assuming Imix doesn't really pick from a cornucopia, but instead this is what they happen to be. Otherwise there'd be no OOC knowledge involved!

I'd be happy with that list. Great minds and all. This is a one shot lifeline - I don't want to spend them on things that just give a bump to a stat.

Honestly, at this point I'd be looking towards more Tongues. We know we're going to meet at least one other culture, possibly more. The ability to turn an encounter from hostiles to allies is worth an ENORMOUS amount.

I'm assuming Imix doesn't really pick from a cornucopia, but instead this is what they happen to be. Otherwise there'd be no OOC knowledge involved!

Exactly. The stuff you need just happens to be in Rato's house. The gods giveth.

Woo! Excited to see Nat again!

The ability to turn an encounter from hostiles to allies is worth an ENORMOUS amount

Istiel has a multi-round spell that turns hostiles into XP, which is still pretty useful.

imix wrote:

The ability to turn an encounter from hostiles to allies is worth an ENORMOUS amount

Istiel has a multi-round spell that turns hostiles into XP, which is still pretty useful.

Drawbacks: Draining Casting (risk of lethal hit point damage), Extended Casting (barring 1-shot criticals), Material Components and Somatic Casting.

On the plus side, you never run out of spell points.

EDIT: also, on an unrelated(?) note - am trying to play a TWF character under the "chained" rules. I take back (nearly) everything bad I said about the RAE...

To check: Is Imix on the Keelboats as per yesterday, using his 'crocodiles' to push things along?
If so, I'm guessing he'll miss this opportunity, but might be a second chance to catch those being washed away by the river?
If there's no need for the crocodiles any more, then I'm happy for him to be walking, though in that case he'll have left his armour on the boat (because it slows him down).

If I recall our plan, Imix was going to use the haul-o-diles in the canal, and then stop once we reached the river proper because we're now going with the current and they're not needed.

Instead he was going to be making food I think? So I'd say you're with us for this tradegy.

BP: When would you like me to start tracking resource consumption? You said we weren't going to be using food up the canal thanks to Imix's constructs, but that boon has ended...

I'm assuming we'll start using the refugee/camping rules as well?

I recall Imix was going to use the walk-o-diles still, but didn't have to be on the keelboat. But, feel free to retcon how you want. I wrote it so that everyone is here at the scene (to assist the walkers). I would assume that walk-o-diles could plod along the channel's bank and in the shallow edgewater, as they're heavy and wouldn't easily be upswept by the current.

If you keep the walk-o-diles for now, resource tracking doesn't have to happen until you descend the cliff. If you don't, it starts now (as I assume you leave extra food at the canal head).

Ohhh I forgot about using walk-o-diles on the banks later (never trust my memory).

Great! Happy to be in one place. I've set the status line to assume he's healed up, spent half his spell points on food (which is only 7*3*3=63 people) and then animated the walk-o-diles (who often swim) and at night would normally feed another 4*3*3=36 people. Total people = 99 people. That may not be enough to offset everything, but I think there was some causal fishing and foraging going on to help.

Sorry about the ooc tag, I tried to edit to put it in spoilers but the board was having none of it.

At a conference today, long day of meetings and now I have to go be social. I'll get us an update tomorrow.

Should be back up to speed Tuesday.

Oios will be shouting at people to get back from the bank though.

Back. Oios can't really do too much to help here though.

Welcome back!

Shouting can be helpful, especially if it's serendipitous!

Hi all, just dropping in to tell you that I'm still alive and here - just deluged with work and life at the moment. I hope to get above water, much like our NPCs, soon - tomorrow or the next. Thanks for your patience!

Our patience is limitless... Because quality is timeless.

What I'm trying to say is- you'll never be able to get rid of us. ;)

It's all good. Thanks for keeping us in the loop.