same happening here... weird stuff... like posts I've read, or even ones I've written, being tagged as new and unread... the constant logouts (not happening so much on my computer anymore, but every time I open chrome on my phone I have to log in. sigh ... getting real tired of it.
Sorry all. Was sick all weekend and had a 12 hour marathon at work today. Tomorrow should be back to normal.
Hope all is better now and if not, that it will be soon!
It’s veen an insane week. Making everything worse, a stretch of the subway near us is shut down, turning my normal 1 hour commute into 2+ (each way).
I got spoiled with a quiet summer.
Sorry for my absence. On Black Friday my PC died and a couple of days ago my laptop's adapter died. Only now did I get the replacement power supply delivered. Yeah, great week u_u
Ouch. At least they died when the most sales are going on. Glad to have you back
Yeah, well, here in the Netherlands some stores tried to mimic 'Black Friday' and 'Cyber Monday' but the discounts aren't comparable to those in the US. The only discount I managed is a few Euro's off on my new mechanical keyboard, haha.
Has anyone seen Price? Her player hasn't posted (anywhere, so far as I can tell) in nearly a month now.
Yeah, I'm going to keep Price's spot open in this game, but I'm having to replace him/her in another game. :-( Not sure what's going on.
First, TIMO, congrats on the impending anniversary. That's awesome.
Second, if I haven't said so already, please forgive me if I'm a little slow in posting updates the next couple weeks. Work is absolutely crazy right now and likely will be through the holidays. We're short-staffed and it seems like everyone is trying to finish their cases before the end of the year.
No prob. Finals are coming up for me, so I'll be a bit slow anyway.
Also, of course, congrats Timo.
Finally got my pc (and laptop!) up and running again. That and the fact the 5th of December is a holiday here delayed me a bit. My apologies. Oh, and work *grumbles*
Will catch up tomorrow morning (+/- 12 hours)
congrats on the anniversary Timo....
sorry if I'm slow posting the last few days and the next few as well... We are suffering from high winds and surrounded by fires in all directions. Constant power outages from the winds and service outages from both power problems and the fires are playing hell with my connection. I will post as I can, but please bot me if necessary.. thanks.
Like I said in another game, be safe man. That’s some scary stuff out there. . (And thanks for the update.)
Ideally, Daidalos would have tried to gather all the crew closer to Kargeld before making his move (hence him trying to get the captain to gather his crew up), but this does work. I put up the area I'm targeting with Flurry of Snowballs on the map, as well.
If you're in one of my other games, this will sound like a broken record, but just want to apologize. I came down with food poisoning Friday night when knocked me out for Saturday. Sunday was spent catching up with RL. Going to try to keep with regular updates this week but work is likely going to be crazy.
hope you are feeling lots better now... and don't worry about keeping up... this week is likely to be a bit crazy for everyone!
Food poisoning is no joke u_u I've only had it the once, but I never wanted to know a man is able to projectile vomit the way I did. Hope you're all better right in time for the xmas festivities.
I'm ever so sorry for taking the Improved Grapple feat, but with us going down the covert ops route I felt it is both suitable for the campaign AND fitting for a sociopath with STR18.
Also Daidalos, I might be able to pin him down. Do whatever wicked thing is on your mind x'D
Happy new year everyone, and all the best you can wish for!
Happy (belated) New Years!
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It might be handy if we create a google doc that we can all access and use to put in the info/rumors/gossip/tidbits we acquire through our research, conversations and exploration. I'm not sure how big this part of the adventure is, so maybe it's overkill, but I guess that's something we'll simply have to find out. So here it is, said document!
> SAID DOCUMENT. CLICK ME. CLICK ME!!!!
I set it so anyone can edit it (open sans font, type size 11, line spacing single) and add/remove stuff. If it doesn't work, let me know.
Looks cool! I have my homegame tonight, but I'll have a closer look at it tomorrow.
Asturu, want me to link that on the Campaign Info tab?
Also, it may be more efficient to settle on a strategy here in OOC discussion. Happy to let you guys handle it however you want, but just offering it as a suggestion.
There are a LOT of ways to go about this phase of the campaign. I can spell out a few of them more explicitly if you like, but it's really a sandbox approach about how to infiltrate a castle and bring down its defenses.
Actually, that sounds like a good idea. A big contributor to why I've been quiet recently is because a big, in-character post is something of an undertaking and kind of daunting. Holding it in discussion just sort of seems to open up a more bit by bit. That said, I'm still going to try and stay in character with my thoughts, so I'll be making leaps in logic and ignoring points that I would otherwise avoid IRL. (spoilered to avoid casting wall of text)
So, in bullet point form,
● The chapel is either highly warded against evil and consecrated, or contains a hidden celestial presence of some sort. Definitely worth further investigation. (Send Luke in bat form?)
● Try and capture some of the captains alive, if possible. They may know information that could be useful in the future, and the castle does have a torture chamber….
● Luke and Kiffex will be invaluable in all this. They are the most able to get into and out of the castle undetected, meaning they could potentially do a lot of sabotage before the rest of us even step foot inside.
● Neutralize as much of the command as possible.
● Infiltrate the castle
● Cripple as much of the fortress as possible before being caught
● Cut off message systems
● Isolate and divide the keep as much as possible; if we can catch each member
● Disable any internal alarms, to give us as much of a head start as possible.
There are several ways to infiltrate the castle.
● Guards returning from a night of drinking can be expected to act oddly, and wouldn't raise as much suspicion if they can't find the way back to their bunk- from there, wait until everyone is asleep and cut half the garrison's throats.
● Servants would be an easy way to gain access to many parts of the fortress, be it cleaning, cooking or delivering meals. Lots of potential for sabotage, though weapons may be hard to come by.
● I feel obligated to mention we could try and infiltrate/replace the actors as they come into town, but that idea just seems to have a ton of issues, despite the fact we may be able to spend a day or two in the castle as opposed to a single night or day that the other methods are likely to give us.
● Find an unguarded entrance into the castle, and sneak in regularly to slowly weaken the fortress.
There's also the possibility of a more… obvious attack.
● Or just storm the thing. This is a terrible idea, yet it is still theoretically possible, I suppose.
● Locate a weakness in the walls and exploit it to send them crashing down, then storm the castle. Still not a great idea, though.
● Find out which captain goes on patrols.
● Find out when the next patrol will be, to plan around it. (if we do it right, we can negate six men and a captain without lifting a finger)
● What kind of defenses the fortress has. Siege engines? Pots of boiling oil?
● Ideally, we could get an exact tally of how many people work at the fortress, to ensure that not a single piece is out of place, but that seems a bit unrealistic. Close estimates on the numbers of servants, guards, clerics, scribes, engineers (there's got to be engineers in a place like this), guard dogs, and the might of the castle's defenders are all
● What's the size of Aldencross when it comes to trading? How expensive of items can we find?
● Were there no more rumors of a secret passage into the castle? Or did that just seem like too big of an attention-grabber for Daidalos to bring it up?
● What exactly does 'magister' mean in the context of a fantasy world? Are they much the same as our world, where they're just learned individuals, or are they essentially the court wizard? There's a big difference between a scribe and a wizard when it comes to making battle plans, after all.
● How do you get from Level 1 to Level 2 in the keep? I just can't find any stairs connecting them (other than the one in room 2, but that doesn't seem big enough to be it)
In the meantime, maybe we should continue our in-game play, assuming our planning happens in the background while we continue our checks?
And finally, we really need to decide who we're giving the cloak of resistance. I have the lowest saves by a mile, so I'll gladly take it if nobody else wants it. But I also need to save WBL for a scroll of planar binding in a couple of levels, so if somebody else wants it, I have no complaints.
It reminds me a bit of a certain Paizo module called 'something something the Baron's Tower' where you need to infiltrate a town and, in the end, somehow infiltrate the Baron's keep and take him out. Had a busy work day, will sink my teeth into 'what to do' tomorrow and make a lengthier post.
Asturu, just a thought, you could spend this time making alchemical items that might be useful in our attack. For a covert attack, silence dust would be pretty useful, and alchemical glue has a ton of possible uses for dividing up forces and general sabotage.
This is a solid idea. Asturu is pretty terrible at social stuff, but happens to be quite amazing at alchemy. With that MW alchemical set, the extract/spell Crafter's Fortune and the skill bonuses from his class, he'd be rocking a massive +18 Craft Alchemy. A 'take 10' would turn that into a 28.
There's also the option of making poison, but going by the rules as written, that tends to take forever and ever.
Timo may be able to go undercover as a guard. Maybe have a story that hes a bodyguard just passing through town and needs some coin. Would possibly give us someone who could get close to the guards/captains and give us a real indicator of the fighting force.
Timo- Worth a shot, I suppose. What's the worst that could happen? And once you're in, we could slowly infiltrate the watchtower, with you giving us information on who could be replaced easily (who stays quiet and doesn't interact with others much and whatnot) as we get into place.
It reminds me a bit of a certain Paizo module called 'something something the Baron's Tower' where you need to infiltrate a town and, in the end, somehow infiltrate the Baron's keep and take him out. Had a busy work day, will sink my teeth into 'what to do' tomorrow and make a lengthier post.
I ran that as a plug in for my Skull and Shackles group. Loved it! Followed it up with Chimera Cove, which was also a blast.
Hmmm... Might be fun to assassinate and replace Tacitus if he's always shut up in his tower working on something.
Also, four captains? Good to know. Any way to get info on how often the patrols are? Once a month? Every week? Every other week?
So.... anyone else? How are we doing this?
Hello? Are we still going?
Affyria- Something I thought of is that Kiffex has Commune, so we could use him to get answers to yes/no questions. Stuff like "Is there a secret entrance?" "Is 'x' plan likely to work?" "Are there celestials living in the chapel?" "Will the patrol be out on 'x' day?" and similar questions. Just a thought.
Also, Luke hasn't posted in a month. Did we lose him?
I think we'll simply need to take it one step at a time. There's a multitude of angles we can take, the most obvious being 'find a weak spot and get in, do the thing, and get out'. We got some deceptive people amongst us, but to act on that, we'll need a bit more info, more social ties and to find a solid way of getting them in to get the job done.
Perhaps the problem is that there's too much choice and we need to try and narrow it down so we can stay focused =)
Yeah, that's one of the possibilities I thought of. It's part of the reason I keep pushing it forward, as I know firsthand how much this sort of thing can be the death of a PBP. Hopefully, we can get to a more straightforward section.
Maybe our best bet would be to handwave a week or so of information gathering, outline what we want to do for prep, and then execute our plan?
Speaking of which, what would our plan be? I'm personally partial to the idea of us impersonating a group of drunk soldiers, but I don't know about everyone else.
Sorry... Personally as a player I've never been great at the open sandbox areas. I get a bit of action paralysis. I'm personally good moving with whatever plan people want. Impersonating drunk soldiers works fine for me.
And I think we're also missing JAFO/Luke. Hopefully his back issues haven't gotten too serious.
If you prefer, I can take the thoughts presented here and put them on some light-rail tracks to give some forward momentum. :-)
So, hopefully to help provide some guidance, here are a few possible scenarios you can pursue. Other opportunities may present themselves over time.
1. Infiltrate the Watchtower by impersonating some guards.
2. Infiltrate the Watchtower by impersonating the dwarven engineers.
3. Infiltrate the Watchtower by impersonating servants.
Other opportunities and things to consider
1. One or two tragedies might be dismissed as coincidence. A string of them will raise suspicion.
2. You have heard rumors of an affair between one of the captains and another captain's wife. Can that be exploited?
3. There is a troupe of entertainers coming, putting on a play likely to be enjoyed by the town and garrison alike. Is this something that could be exploited?
4. Are their supplies in the Watchtower that could be used to weaken the defenses (either the fortifications or the personnel)?
Ultimately, your success or failure in preparing for the invasion is going to be measured by certain events for which I'm going to be awarding points behind the "screen". Once you set off the flare to alert Sakkarot to attack, I'll tally up the accumulated points and that will determine the outcome.
Timo- I get that. Personally, stuff like this, with strategy and planning and figuring stuff out, is my favorite, so I thrive in this sort of setting (it's also why I love playing spellcasters), but I totally get the reverse as well. I'm hesitant to outright put out a plan for us to follow, but if presenting a linear structure would help, maybe doing this:
Step 1: Exploit the affair. This has the potential to eliminate up to half the captains if it goes well, and wouldn't raise suspicion. We would need to find some sort of proof and then get that proof to the relevant person (such as the husband), then watch the fireworks. I suspect Kiffex would be useful here, whether by sneaking into the castle and watching Captain Eddarly for some time and looking for some form of proof, or by utilizing his Commune SLA to find a place that Captain Mott could find the lovers together. (Affyria? This one's up to you.)
Step 2: Infiltrate the tower. We might be able to do more prep work, but I think it's best we push on. Now, we could try different guises (a servant, two guards, a dwarf, etc.) or all go at the same time (drunk guards or servants). Either way, we should likely lay low (finding a hiding spot in the castle) for a little while, and see what we can do without being at noticed.
Step 3: Destroy the defense. Finally, just before the alarm is going to be raised, we sweep through the entire fortress in one night, killing any survivors.
We could, of course, do steps 2 and 3 at the same time (drunk soldiers, go to bed, and coup de grace probably half the guards before the alarm is raised), but it could prove a strain on resources, especially if we're facing a high-level paladin as a 'final boss,' and have to go through a fire wizard, a cleric, and a hundred guards before him. In that respect, a night attack is still our best bet.
4. Are their supplies in the Watchtower that could be used to weaken the defenses (either the fortifications or the personnel)?
their/there AUGH! :-o
*Consoles Snowheart*
There, their, they're. It's okay.
My suggestion is that we take out the mounted captain first, I think we learned that he often stays out for days on end with his patrol in the countryside. We can try and see if we can gather information on where they usually camp and set an ambush to take them out. It'll probably be days before anyone starts missing them, which gives us time to continue tearing the place down.
Not that I have a vote, but in the absence of a strong preference to the contrary, I think that sounds reasonable! Given some ingenuity, who knows... you may be able to delay discovery of the captain's "disappearance" indefinitely.
Hmmm.... I like the idea. It would give us something to do, if nothing else, beyond sandbox ideas for attacking. It would require us to move a bit sooner than initially planned, though, unless we ambushed them on a later patrol (how often do they go?).
And besides, we could always trail them one time, then attack the next, once we know their patterns.
Ambush sounds good. Perhaps after hes dealt with, have someone return as a wounded member of the party with a story trying to get a second group to be sent out that could then also be ambushed?
I've updated the slides. There is now a copy of the compact you signed with Thorne, a map of the Lords Dalliance Inn, and (assuming that's where you're heading) a map of Freeman's Rock.
So, should we assume that this is next week's patrol, so we've had plenty of time to prep and scope out the area? As in, this is when we're starting the 'sabotage' phase?
GM- would it be okay if we sort of play fast and loose with time for this next bit, where we are gathering information one week, and then immediately following up with that information in an encounter the next week? That way, we can stay focused on one thing at a time, while also not worrying about how long we're taking between steps and how that might be suspicious and that sort of thing. Does that make sense?
Up to you. Recall a clock is ticking. That said, mentally I was thinking you were in town a day after Varning’s patrol had left when you got this information (and in town a total of three days yourselves). If you moved quickly, you could still get to the Rock before him and scout it out.
Well, like what I was asking is that we essentially switch back and forth between two different times, like this:
All of our information gathering happens week 1, so our planning, scoping out, trailing people, and that sort of thing happens now. However, we don't actually do anything with our plans until....
Week 2-3 is when we actually execute our plans. All of our planning has already happened, and now we're doing stuff one at a time.
However, once we plan for a specific event (say ambushing the weekly patrols), we don't actually do it until week 2. However, say our next target is ousting Captain Eddarly for having an affair, then we zip back to week 1, when we are planning out what we are going to to. Then fast forward to week 2 (after we had ambushed the patrol), when we actually execute our plan.
That way, we can focus on one event at a time, such as ambushing the patrol, without having to worry about having absolutely all of our attacks already planned, scouted, and prepared before we actually see any action.
In practical terms, it would mean that after we ambush the patrol, we return to week 1 (before the patrol was ambushed), when we can plan how to oust Captain Eddarly, then go forward in time to the day after we ambushed the patrol, and actually oust him.
Sorry, I'm having trouble explaining what I'm trying to say. And if you do want everything to stay in chronological order, can I ask everyone else if we could make sure everything is planned out before we actually start to do anything?