By the way: I worked on this.
For those interested in such things. I did the races section and a bit of work on the monsters specifically.
Sadly my name is not on the credits because the work was so long ago I was sort of forgotten. I reminded the owner though and that will look to be corrected.
So yeah I'm about to have my name in the credits next to Richard Pett and Owen "motherf+&%ing K.C. Stevens.
And all I had to do was genocide several races and turn humans towards their very worst aspects. :)
By the way: I worked on this. And all I had to do was genocide several races and turn humans towards their very worst aspects. :)
Nice work if you can get it lol.
Looks a pretty interesting setting to-boot, am presuming such a world is pretty lethal?
Are the races all new or Apocalypse variants?
Set: Glad his idiosyncrasies are appreciated :)
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Went to see the second Hobbit movie tonight as we had a rare opportunity to get a babysitter in... I immediately regret it and will update tomorrow to spare the bile from my opinion of the movie tainting the thread.
Happy Hogmanay my Blackhearts and most dark overlord!
Have a great one and here's to a more nefarious deeds with you all in 2014.
Skal!
Oh dear... this could go badly...
Tag-teamed by the Oozeos!
Eh, I think the 5 devils can take them with Albina makes her save at least. The two will ahve to eat thir way throuhg several piles of mindless sacks of DR, acid resistance and slashing damage. Suddenly Shendalyn's pawns became the MVP's of the day.
Man that's a high save...
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Yeah, a primary ability DC of 21 is appropriate for a CR 12 encounter, so this is a bit higher than average for our CR 6 selves. :)
Still, we'll see if the Lemures can keep them distracted until we start recovering. (Since they probably can't hurt each other, since the Lemures do slashing with their claws, and the oozes probably do acid, to which each other are pretty resistant or immune...)
mmm, Mi'Dre's going to have to get creative
In the words of Gunny Highway: Improvise, adapt, overcome ;)
It's just a little ooze :)
FYI - Just riding out a busy time at work and with visitors at home - so I'll get a post in when I can.
Finally emerging from the haze of busyness that's suffused me over the last week. Have had parents visiting (they fly out tomorrow) and work hit a conflux of activity (culminating in a four hour meeting on Friday afternoon that resulted in a forty page program for me to write over the weekend - and am currently 85% through).
Should return to normal service this week with my apologies and thanks for your relative patience. So I shall have the next in game post up within 24 hours.
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Take your time; most of us are still sleeping ;-)
Dreaming dear boy, dreaming...
Gastro family over the last couple of days - updates coming over the course of today.
Shendalyn? *nudges*
Just as I sat down to update yesterday... had the rig call with an issue that consumed the rest of my evening through to 2 AM. Tonight I'm more hopeful :)
So the gold and items in the vault are the only real valuable loot we've found right? We've found plenty of other things that'll help us with minions and defending the horn but not much else from what I can recall...
So I think we need to talk ideas, we've got (again going off memory):
Alchemical Golem, 3x Minion Rituals, 2x Cuestodaemons, 3x eyes for ritual, 1x horsemen dude for ritual, unlimited unholy water for ritual, preserved minotaur corpse, throne teleportation system, boggards (including crazy high priest who probably needs to have an 'accident'), pool of acid.
Things we need:
Onyx gems for Cruxcarr (undead army ftw, just need one more level for animate dead right?), components for alchemical golem, components for minion rituals (plus for Mi'Dre's ritual), Mitran priest, descendant of the Victor, trustworthy and/or expendable masons, carpenters and other builders (including a trapsmith unless we've got that covered ourselves?), establish some of our own minions in farholde (in addition to having the other (8th?) knot and the Baron since we don't really trust either of them)
I'm sure this is not a complete list, feel free to mention things i've missed and make other suggestions.
I think the first order of business is probably to head back into town and make some discrete inquiries, Cruxcarr and Jethryk both have good Knowledge (local), but Mi'Dre can help out with that too. I forget if we already came up with a cover story for our presence here?
Albina can animate dead right now. Why wait?
We'll also need to look at reach weapons for some of us. Swords are nice but more and more I'm starting to fall in love with the idea of spear walls and fodder minions.
PArtiularly since in another game me and a paladin with combat reflexes and long axes uttterly annihilated an encounter with 6 or 7 darkmantles with a move action and a readied attack.
We need to get a hold of our friends and squeeze them for info. The guy we "unstoned" ought to know about what's coming. We also have to plan for inevitable betrayal from our "allies" both out and in the horn.
Ahh, very good point about Albina. Worth talking to the cultist dood yeah; Mi'Dre can do that if you want him bullied/tortured but otherwise someone else will have to do that, I think he'll probably be somewhat cooperative since we're helping to free his master (he doesn't know we have to sacrifice him after all :p)
Mi'Dre also needs a celestial for his transformation ritual, but I'm guessing that will involve waiting until one shows up. He might try it out with a high ranking Mitran if we can our hands on two of em before something else appropriate shows up :p
EDIT: Oh, another thought about potentially unlimited free minions (at least as many victims as we can round up, potentially untrustworthy ones too), we could round up a bunch of commoners and feed them to the wraith in the vault. We'd probably have to negotiate with him first, but Wraiths are LE so it could work since our goals (for the moment anyway) are aligned. Then could use the bodies for zombie hordes too (not sure about that, animating the skeletons by themselves may not work, been a while since I've bothered looking at necromancy)
EDIT2: Looking through potential undead. We could steal some kids from the orphanage and try and create some attic whisperers :D I love those things, super creepy.
Ehhhhhhhhh no.
Because what happens if he decides we've served our purpose?
mmm, like I said, we'd have to come to a suitably binding arrangement (being representatives of the god of contracts after all).
Also, we need to grab that lightning elemental corpse and squeeze the blood out of it for the alchemical golem apparently.
Also also, for easy reference the cultist's name is Halthus the flayer, vault contents, alcehmical golem reagents.
1 ton of silver = 2000lbs *5(50 silver coins per pound=5gp/lb)=10,000gp of silver.
600lbs of gold *50(50 gp per pound)=30,000gp
So 40,000gp in gold and silver ornaments, plus however many coins are in the 6 chests. We identified and distributed the magic items in there already I believe, except the plates (they were identified on the following page)
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I dont think any contract would be suitably binding enough to make me comfortable with allowing the big scary incorporeal guy to have as many little incorporeal guys as he wants.
I'm reminded of a player who had a wraith pet.
HE eventually got it killed on purpose when he realized that he had to forcibly control it every several days. Sooner or later he'd simply be overwhelmed.
After that he got a fast zombie chuul.
I was not a fan of Mr. Pinchy and his grab attack. Not a fan.
Did we happen to find the daemons "leash" or do I have to pry the iron plates off the mural or something?
I feel like i missed soemthign important. Guess that just matches the Wis score.
Oh another couple things on the to do list (thanks to past Jethryk).
3) Plate mail wearing skeletons - ripe for reanimation.
4) Iomedean shrine - needs Desecrate.
Well there's a difference between trying to control him and coming to an agreement though.
As to the 'leash', like I said I already spoiled that bit for myself, so I can't really say anything further without giving it away. We have come across them though, so yeah you're missing something :p
Some of the gold might need to be earmarked for the rituals, depending on how many you might want to do. Values will be forthcoming after you make contact with civilization again.
can we get a count on the coins in the 6 chests?
The coin in the chests is worth 5,500gp.
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I kind of want Jethryk and Cruxxcarr to ahve a "work room".
That way a drunken Shendalyn can meet guests and stumble them into it.
The look of horror on said adventurers faces before they're forcibly conscripted into furthering their craft would be priceless.
I don't know that things would play out that way... :p
So, 45,500gp. Not bad :)
Aw, but we're all quite personable. :(
So then, now we have more or less everything we need (just waiting on prices for the rituals I believe), what does everyone plan to do? Mi'Dre is happy to help out with shopping to get ingredients for the rituals. I think we should establish a proper cover story in town as to why we're ordering and transporting stuff out into the wilderness in which we're spending a good 7 months. Lastly but most importantly, Mi'Dre needs to try and track down a celestial of some sort to capture for use as a sacrifice. Really want to get that done asap so I can rework Mi'Dre into something more suitable for this phase of the campaign (like not having a massive negative to Charisma :p)
Cruxcarr wants to pull together more resources for his golem. He's a few levels away from actually getting the thing up and running. Apart from that the gluttonous one will require mixed and varied "materials" for his fellmongering... so more than happy to find a nice orphanage, church or invite some pilgrims to supper ;)
Work room sounds peachy heh.
Uber Mi'Dre doubly so...
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Any idea how long these ritual critters would last? The hell hounds, nightmare, mud men?
Mud men would only make sense as a defensive measure, to protect the Horn from intruders while we're staying here and doing the ritual, since they aren't really portable. AFAIK, nightmares and hell hounds are outsiders, and we wouldn't have to feed them (which could be a literal nightmare...), but also would have to be kept on a tight leash, to keep them from running around and drawing too much of the wrong sort of attention to our location.
Albina, being a cleric to an evil god, can't help Mi'Dre with the celestial summoning (and couldn't summon anything other than a lantern archon for about 30 seconds, at the moment, even if she wasn't), but Shendalyn might have access to lesser planar binding soon, if not as a spell known, perhaps being able to cast it from a scroll or something.
Healing is still proving troublesome, so Albina might attempt to do some spell research, to create a spell that allows specially prepared living targets within the area of her channeled negative energy to be healed instead of harmed. A 3rd level spell that lasts 1 day / level and affects a single target, or that lasts 1 day and affects 1 target / level, could work (in either case, costing her 1 3rd level spell slot / day with our five man party), and allowing her to cut loose with damaging channel energy blasts to heal her allies (and still damage foes). Once the spell is created, she could then attempt to fashion a magic item of that spell to give to allies, a silver holy symbol to Asmodeus worn on their person, for instance, and eventually (once she has crafted 5 of them) no longer have to cast the spell every day. (That would, obviously, require her to take Craft Wondrous Item as her next feat, so it might be a long way out, compared to the spell research, and might not be possible, practically, or financially feasible, in any event.)
After that, any future plans that don't involve trying to be as effective as a good cleric is out of the box might include crafting some sort of spell or item that causes her negative energy channeling blasts to set people on fire or something appropriately wicked like that.
As for relations with the townies, it might be best to just let them think we wandered off and died, and only return there in disguise for any necessary purchases (or thefts, or kidnappings, or whatever). If we do need to kidnap some folk for sacrifices or whatever, choosing people in outlying farms on the opposite side of the community from where we are might serve to draw attention away from our location (or selecting folk in areas already subject to bandit raids, etc. and planting whatever evidence we need to plant to frame the usual suspects for whatever shenanigans we are up to).
You know you do have a number of things you can do to make yourself more effective right?
I don't know if you remember that big gigantic "thi group can work as long as we play like the total bastards that we are" pm I sent.
But, let's pretend for a moment you cannot heal. At all.
I mentioned that you can create undead. Among those undead include burning skeletons. Undead that are immune to fire and explode on death. You can fireball into a whole pack of them without worry and choose to heal them without any problems either.
You can also cast Prayer which will give everyone a luck bonus to attack, damage, and saves that will literally hit everyone.
You can also cast chain of perdition and stone shape which is actually damn useful given where we live. You can seal up that big ole hole in the side of our horn.
Don't feel like just because you shoe horned yourself into a channeling focus means you ahve to stay. Mark may allow retraining if you want out of that club.
I'm also hoping other's have taken to heart what I said and are looking towards those ideas. I for one am getting a longspear/cestus. Shendalyn's manly, but he's not the sort who finds charging at a being of pure lightning with a big metal rod particularly intelligent. ;)
I think that they'd be permanently called/created after the sacrifice was made, but I may be wrong. As long as they last the ritual's length that'd probably be enough :)
Hadn't thought of calling something, I figured we'd probably have to find something lurking around the horn (another 'protector' like the treant perhaps?). Taking a look at LPB our best bet would be a Hound Archon, which would make a suitable sacrifice I'd say :) a scroll would cost... 5x9x25=1125gp which isn't too bad, we could handle the circle and dimensional anchor spell ourselves.
Mmm, fast healing is awesome, but not great for emergencies. If Mi'Dre can help with said spell research (probably as a guinea pig) then he will do so.
Mmm, I guess that could work, but we'd have to steal materials, tools, etc. for our kidnapped/coerced craftsmen too. I dunno, it seems like we've got the gold so having an 'official' reason would just make things smoother and draw less attention. We still might have to disappear the workers at the end of their contracts, but I'm sure we can cloud that in suitable mumbo jumbo.
Don't feel like just because you shoe horned yourself into a channeling focus means you ahve to stay. Mark may allow retraining if you want out of that club.
Certainly got enough time and resources to do so :)
Minions are permanent... or at least until they get killed or you find something better.
There are a number of ways and means (both passive and active) that Mi'Dre can draw upon for his angel blood / skin / sacrifice.
Mark will allow either retraining or just free character adjustments for Albina any which way. I'm also open to ways that you'd think to allow for similar healing utility as a 'good' cleric would have - either through minor magic items or other means.
Perhaps something similar to the 'Caravan Bond' of a Varisian Pilgrim archetype - as in you designate a group of like minded Asmodites, you share a little ritual, and then they are treated as undead for your negative channels and inflict spells?
Pricing for rituals will be available after you at least head back to town for sourcing, etc. I'll be breaking into collation time soon but not just yet.
Are you headed out as a group? - just one or some? - hanging around for a few days? - what are your intents with Halthus, the boggards, how do you solve the ceustodaemon issue, etc.
IC if possible, even if it's a summary style post.
Well, I can't speak for the ceustodaemons, but I believe we were going to use the boggards as a convenient 'buffer' on our front doorstep, and I think the intention was to use Halthus as part of the ritual. If another suitable target presents itself in time, of course, I would not mind hanging onto him as a cohort when we hit 7th level, though.
Dibs on Halthus' brain for my golem :)
As far as the ceustodaemons I'd say Tark just needs to go back over the last few pages and see if anything fits with what we already know about them (that we need to find out their true names of which we have half of each).
Boggards I suggest we actually give them some martial training, maybe spend some gold to turn them into guards or elite guards (from the downtime rules) or maybe even soldiers if we want to get really fancy. I seem to recall getting told it, but don't remember when, so how many boggards do we have available to us VoV?
Halthus I believe we need for the first step of the ritual so shouldn't be a concern for too long, and I suspect his brain might be a little... old if you can't complete the golem for another couple levels. I believe we still need to question him however, we should get as much info from him as possible. I'd say Albina (given her diplomacy score and gender) is the best one to talk to him. I doubt we're likely to find another worshipper of a long defeated cult lurking around, so you're probably out of luck as far as a cohort goes, but who knows :)
So my suggestion is for at least Jethryk and Albina (having the best Knowledge local and diplomacy respectively) head into town to ask around about supplies and look into some discrete and/or expendable craftsmen. If we go ahead with training the boggards then we'll probably want to get some equipment for them too.
Mi'Dre would also like to go into town and smooze around the bars for any rumors of blessed groves, lucky shrines, legends or anything else that might hint to the presence/interference of a celestial on the island. Really want to rework Mi'Dre asap.
Also VoV, how far are we from leveling, gotta be close right?
Aye - close to levelling, and will likely occur soon after we break to summations.
News I have and it is both excellent and foul.
On the positive side, after working pretty much nine months without taking any leave... I get to take some! I'll be off to Australia (Perth -> Adelaide -> Sydney) with the family for visitations of elders and newly borns and what not. Much fun will be had and I'll be away from home from roughly 24th March through to 10th-ish April.
The bad of it is that during that time I shall be thoroughly unable to run any PbPs, so the games will need to go on temporary hiatus; and be kicked back into gear upon my return to Malaysia.
I know that I've been lagging over the last while(in the vernacular of the talented Tim Minchin 'like a blind man clapping in a pharmacy trying to echo-locate the contact lens fluid'), and a fair amount of that has to do with work related burnout. My trip downunder will refill the Farmer's Union reservoir, satiate my desire for bacon and egg muffins and the clean air should banish the last of the haze coating my lungs.
Game will continue through till the weekend, then pause until I get back before flaring back into incandescent life once more. So bear with me, and we'll keep on trucking in the long haul.
Guss I need to read through and see what I missed.
Old brain? It'll be pickled dear boy... I'm sure Shen drinks surgical spirit so all will be well.
Failing that we can find a suitably unbalanced mind to insert into the construct of doom...
Shendalyn - it isn't too hard to spot.
Enjoy the trip Mark... try not to fall off the radar too much though (cough... ;)