Way of the Wicked (Inactive)
Game Master Nostrus

First post up, feel free to make your introductory posts and any reactions to Hurak being hauled out of the jail cell.

It's pretty late here, so I'll have a post up in the morning.

@Nostrus: so how do you want to run the 'party trick'? Just so we both have a clear idea of what to expect. I intend on taking the ragoe talent for rolling perception to track people, just FYI.

I'm not 100% sure yet, but I'll probably give you small non-plot breaking snippets. Some might give you clues to secret areas, others might give you an idea on how to lean on people so you can get a small bonus to Intimidate, etc.

Sounds good. We can always tweak it as the game progresses.

Dot of Diabolic Joy!

Should any of us know what the 'party trick' is?

Also, DOT

Don't worry, I'm sure you'll figure out what it is in due course, old boy.

So I have a couple of questions that pertains to the future of my character.

I'd trust that 'hello' more if your name didn't bear the 'Deceitful' appellation. :) Howdy yourself.

Here is a laundry list of general questions that may or may not need answering depending on how hard our escape will be:

How long have we been in the prison?
What time of day is it?
If meals are served... when and how?
How are we dressed? Still in the clothes we were captured in? Prison issue? Naked?
Where are we branded - i.e. is it concealable?
Are we under or above ground?
Is there a window?
The walls are stone, yes?
How are we secured? Manacles and chains? Hand and foot? Are we chained to the walls or 'free' to roam the cell?
What do we know of the area surrounding the prison? Wilderness? Mountains? In the middle of some Mitran stronghold?

Based off of the initial post:

Doh! That's what I get for seeing the Quote tags and assuming it was a restatement of the initial Recruiting post. Apologies all around.

But it would be good to know if the brand is easily concealable - upper arm - or is harder to hide on the lower arm or wrist area.

Its all good. And who knows, maybe I was lying?

Anyways this is going to be an interesting game, not really sure where exactly I want to go with the character besides a lying manipulative witch, but that is mainly just the skills.

I have a selection of feats, hexes, skill plans, and spells that I am thinking of taking posted on the profile at the bottom. If anyone wants to give suggestions based off of the current party structure, maybe trade out some of them to help meet the needs of the party.

And THAT should give you a clue as to what I meant about a 'party trick'.

On a side note, what sort of languages should I choose for my talented criminal? I have like, five to pick (Intelligence 18 + Linguistics 1). Suggestions?

Forgive me if I took too many liberties with it, I tried to not go too far.

So I have a couple of questions that pertains to the future of my character.

Do you allow the Leadership feat?

Would you allow me to attract a Hag as a cohort at some point?
The reason I ask is that I was thinking of taking the Coven Hex and attracting a Hag cohort and a Witch follower.

The last thing is a question I asked that I believe got lost in the recruitment thread.

Is it possible for my familiar to be within 1 mile of me outside of the prison?
This just determines the emphatic link and whether I get the +3 bonus to bluff.

But other than that, hello everyone.

1. Leadership will be permitted at the appropriate level. You'll need all the help you can get.

2. I'll need to look into the cohort rules as I've never run them before.

3. Yup, your familiar can be within a mile of the prison awaiting your hopeful release.

I'd trust that 'hello' more if your name didn't bear the 'Deceitful' appellation. :) Howdy yourself.

Here is a laundry list of general questions that may or may not need answering depending on how hard our escape will be:

How long have we been in the prison?
What time of day is it?
If meals are served... when and how?
How are we dressed? Still in the clothes we were captured in? Prison issue? Naked?
Where are we branded - i.e. is it concealable?
Are we under or above ground?
Is there a window?
The walls are stone, yes?
How are we secured? Manacles and chains? Hand and foot? Are we chained to the walls or 'free' to roam the cell?
What do we know of the area surrounding the prison? Wilderness? Mountains? In the middle of some Mitran stronghold?

1. Less than a week for all of you. Justice is swift in Branderscar.

And THAT should give you a clue as to what I meant about a 'party trick'.

On a side note, what sort of languages should I choose for my talented criminal? I have like, five to pick (Intelligence 18 + Linguistics 1). Suggestions?

Forgive me if I took too many liberties with it, I tried to not go too far.

Languages available are the standard languages in Pathfinder, sans any Golarion-specific languages, i.e. Varisian.

Languages available are the standard languages in Pathfinder, sans any Golarion-specific languages, i.e. Varisian.

I knew that bit, I was more looking for suggestions. Alexite is something of a scholar, so he'd probably know most of the languages in common use, and then one or two offbeat ones.

I guess it depends on what you're trying to accomplish within the group.

You can spend those languages on some of the exotic languages a few of us have in the group, thus allowing us some hopefully private communication even when we're in public. Cain has Draconic, and I've seen Celestial and Aklo on some other character sheets. Those aren't likely to be spoken all that commonly in Talingarde, I'd think.

Your other option is to look for languages the rest of us don't have covered, to make it less likely that we run into situations where we can't understand our victims.. er... the npc's words. :)

we can't understand our victims.. er... the npc's words. :)

LOL! Nice.

Languages are an interesting question. It would be nice to work towards all of us getting one really obscure language - Undercommon or something like that - for communicating in code. Given the Mitra-heavy influence - there are probably a fair number of clerics in town that speak Celestial. I also wouldn't doubt that most of the Mitran Inquisitors speak Infernal, so those two are definitely out.

@ Elis

I'd love to be able to suggest spells and hexes but I'm not really knowledgeable on the Witch. I'll take a look through the class and see if anything really stands out.

@ Nostrus

Thanks for the info! One follow-up question - or perhaps this is a question that can be done IC with any characters that have K:Local or connections to the 'underworld' - Alexite perhaps? - is there a Thieves Guild and are they actively oppressed?

@ Gideon: What do you say we make our new relationship interesting. I wrote that Cain was the bloody hand behind an event known as the King's Road Killings, something that would have happened five or more years ago. I think it would be fun if you were part of the church's effort to get to the bottom of it... ya know, before you were fallen?

That way the two could recognize each other, but not necessarily know from where. Maybe it comes out in the story, maybe it doesn't. We can just see.

What do you think? :)

Thank you, I shall help you with it were ever you need. Here are links to the Leadership Feat and the rules for Monster Cohorts.

The only problem I can see is that the cohort can't have an opposed alignment and since I am Lawful and most Hags are Chaotic by RAW I can only get a Night Hag, which is CR 9 which could end up being to high a level to get. So either I can become Neutral Evil or I can attract an odd Hag that is not Chaotic but Neutral.

But in the end it is your call and I respect all decisions you make. If I can't do it then I will just change around a couple of feats and hexes.

I'd imagine that any Thieves Guild would be prosecuted actively, but as they are not necessarily evil devil-lovers, they'd be lower down the scale.

I'll look into the Hag thing and see what I think.

Interesting proposal, Cain. It does offer a possible explanation as to how Gideon vanished and came into contact with the devil he made his pact with. As far as the two recognizing one another, I'd have to think more on the circumstances. And Cain doesn't seem like the guy who'd leave survivors, so a meeting in battle probably wouldn't work... we'll see.

Oh, i didn't mean in battle.. more like Cain didn't quite make it out of town before the investigation began. So they kind of recognize each other, but don't really remember from where. Maybe one of us can all of a sudden connect the dots at an opportune moment.

I'm really loving this 'seamstress' angle for Price. I know the game has officially started but (with your permission Nostrus) I'd like to switch one of her skill points from something to Prof:Seamstress. It may be a waste of a point but I think it fits her character as it develops.

Let me know if that is OK with you.

Does that mean you could whip up some club jackets for the party? We'd just need a mascot.

@Cain: Hm, sounds like a reasonable enough scenario. It could be one of those things that nags at the back of his mind.

Considering the way Alexite has managed to alienate the entire group, the mascot could probably be his corpse. But don't worry, he's jyst shooting his mouth off because he's bored (and he likes the sound of his own voice).

He just needs a chance to prove he's useful and I'm sure everyone else will like him better.

Does that mean you could whip up some club jackets for the party? We'd just need a mascot.

LOL

Well, someone has to create the 'Team Evil' letter sweaters. :)

Hey Corvis,
No response to my comments before I left?

Also, so far you haven't annoyed, aggravated, pissed me off, etc. Your too far beneath me for that.

Naah. He'll keep his mouth shut for the time being. The mere mortals are beneath your notice, eh Haruk?

On a side note, are these manacles escapable with a handy escape artist check, and would attempts alert the guards?

You could always try and see what happens.

Considering the basic manacles in the PHB have an escape DC of 30, probably not.

Stupid Spark spell stating the object has to be flammable. I was thinking of using it to heat a link in the chain round after round till we could snap it. But unless the GM decides that metal chain links are flammable then I am out of luck.

I like the way you are thinking. Never say die. :) I have acid splash. If the DM rules that acid bypasses the hardness in metal manacles... and I can get off the somantic gesture while chained... then that might weaken them a bit.

Frankly, I'm hoping that some of the manacles (due to age or whatnot) are weaker than others. There is no reason to assume that all the manacles have the same stats or use typical stats.

Yeah, I was checking Spark specifically cause it is either Somatic or Verbal but not both. But at the moment I can't cast it cause my mouth is full and my hands are tied. And it wouldn't really help anyways.

Yeah, not the ideal spell-casting situation. :)

Well, we do have a few balls in the air. When Nostrus posts hopefully a few of them will land well for us. I'm curious to see what's up with Haruk's veil... prison map, magic item, or what?

To be honest I think it contains items. If you look at the symbols you have a spell component pouch, potion, two daggers/swords, holy symbol of Asmodeus, thieves tools, rope, lantern, and the other two look like a window and gold.

So maybe it is a Veil of Useful Items? Does an item like that exist, I know of the Robe but not a veil.

If such a veil didn't exist before, I'd say it does now. I'm kinda waiting for Hurak to be all: "hey check out what I just scored!"

At which point, Alexite can do some nifty lockpicking.

Anybody got any brilliant plans here? Down to 1 guard and I have the cell door bottlenecked.

Gideon, I realize you don't have rage to use, but you might be able to break your own chains. I don't know how closely I made the DC, though.

If we can disable the second guard, we should have a pair of keys to get everyone else out.

Thoughts, anyone?

I'll probably try to break out as soon as I get the chance.

Which reminds me, are we only posting actions in initiative order?

I guess that's the DMs call. I usually try to, if for no other reason than that usually means I can make the most of each round. If I post too early, sometimes another player's successes or failures will open up opportunities that I miss.

But that's just me, and sometimes everyone waiting their turn can slow down a pbp somewhat.

Nostrus, you have any thoughts on this?

When in initiative, post your action and if anything changes I will try and make the action as close as possible.

Where did this Grumblejack come from? I don't remember reading anything about this since the game has started.

Also there shouldn't be a difference about if he is an Ogre or Half-Ogre as they are both Humanoids.

Also did we actually find out what the Veil did, cause I don't remember reading that either. Are you guys using a bunch of player knowledge or did I just miss something? I am kind of feeling really lost, is this a bunch of stuff that was discussed in the Recruitment thread before I joined?

Hey Elis, Grumblejack was mentioned once in the main thread HERE - just below the Prison Level stuff in the OOC text. I missed seeing it as well among all of the other interesting stuff surrounding it - the veil, map of the prison, etc.

We haven't learned what the veil does yet and Haruk hasn't had a chance to tell us about it. I'm speculating based on the veil's picture.

I'm not using player knowledge - if you mean familiarity with the module. After having missed a few things by not reading every post thoroughly, I've just gone through it all several times to make sure I'm seeing everything.

OK, it just seemed to jump really fast from we were freed to release the Ogre and use the Veils magical power to get out. I was like, uhhhhhh, wait, what?

I completely missed Grumblejack, but now that you point it out. Yeah, lets free him. I might be able to convince him to help us, if I get the chance.

I know it kind of sounded a little harsh when I said it, but I didn't mean it badly. I just wasn't sure if I missed something mentioned in the Recruitment thread or somewhere in the Game thread (which I did).

I am just kind of "new" to PbP games as all the ones I have ever attempted over the years have all been kind of drab or died really fast.

Hey, dont sweat it. It's easy to miss (or just forget) stuff.

And I think if you're able to Charm the ogre, that would be incredibly useful. Let's have Haruk ask him what he's in for.

One thing, though.. what language do ogres speak. Cause I'm fairly certain charm is language-dependent. Even if it's not, giving him orders/suggestions sure is.

I didn't read anything you wrote as 'harsh'. It seemed to me that you were just trying to figure out what was going on. I've had a few "What? Wait..." moments in this game as well... so don't worry about it. :)

Language shouldn't be a problem as I have giant, but beyond that I wouldn't be using a spell, I would be using my hex, which doesn't say anything about being language dependent. But it only improves his attitude by 1 step, which if we free him may be higher as is. Then I can use bluff if I need to to "promise" something good once we get out or something close to that.

Sounds like Elis would be best in dealing with Grumblejack, as I don't have Giant(don't think I chose languages, opps).

I have Bob charmed for two hours, so that's taken care of. Also, I can cast Daze three times as a SLA, which could be useful.

I have Daze prepared so as long as I can get some wool for the component I can cast it. I guess I should ask what are our clothes made out of? Would they suffice as my component for the spell?