Sorry for the delay. I've been picking up hours as I lost a member in the office. Horrible timing for it.
Also, From August 14th to August 18th I'll be attending Gencon, and will likely be unable to check the forums with any regularity. I'm pretty much telling all my games I'll be gone during that time. Sorry in advance!
All right, guys, can we use the GenCon hiatus to get some firm plans made and ready to put in motion when the DM is back? Seems like we might be able to seed some dissension if we make it look like Eddarly's discreet affair with Mott's wife is becoming less discreet.
AK, I know you're busy, but if you have any ideas, they'd be welcome.
Other than Bostarg's schemes to make the town mistrust one another and drive wedges, the way I see it we have a case of divide and conquer. We don't want to take the fort on at full strength.
This means catching Captain Varning out with his patrol and slaying them to a man. If possible, spread some misdirection about his death, plant some evidence that implicates another faction is preparing to launch a frontal assault on the keep so that they are looking outward for threats.
That's when we hit them from inside the fort itself, using the tunnel Aedorn found.
This is our main objective. Secondary objectives should be pursued if they will either (or both)-
1. Reduce the strength of the fortification in some way.
2. Reduce the strength of the armed force opposing us in some way.
Bostarg should be used to set up kills wherever possible; in particular the captains.
Varning patrols beyond the Wall, yes? Do we have any way to communicate with the bugbears and have them take care of him? We certainly can't have him coming back and reporting bugbears massing on the other side of the Wall. If he's at all good at what he does, you'd think he might notice.
After Pharast 31, the Bugbears are in position and thus you could speak with them if you find a way across (not really that hard for one or two people).
The gate we're supposed to have open is 19a on the Balentyne map? And also 8b?
But we have to get to level two of the gatehouse to open it, it looks like.
The gate we're supposed to have open is 19a on the Balentyne map? And also 8b?
But we have to get to level two of the gatehouse to open it, it looks like.
8b isn't as secure as the gatehouse but that does help. The gatehouse has two primary items, open the gates/raise the portcullis, and lower the drawbridge at 18a. That's what is needed to get the bugbears through.
Hi all- off to a wedding tomorrow morning, will be out of action until monday most likely. Bot as necessary!
The GM's at GenCon through Sunday anyway ... but I nominate Alazandaru for any suicide mission that might come up! ;)
M-kay, with the way AK rolls, the only way he would lose is if he had to roll against himself. :P
Need I remind you of the giant frog incident already? ;)
Lol! :D Okay, okay, fair enough. It is highly probable giant frogs are your kryptonite. :)
All super-powered people have a some type of weakness you know. ;)
I am back from the con and working on catching up to my games. Sadly my return to work was more eventful than I cared it to be following a vacation, including a visit from the president of the company on short notice (I learned while I was gone).
I'll try to get things moving forward tonight. Also, noting the need to include more giant frogs.
So, in the interests of 'stirring up some Desna vs. Iomedae tension,' I suggest that Morthos be seen in the guise of someone from the home temple, carrying Sir Eldon's fancy holy symbol, maybe stroll around the shared temple here looking unhappy; I believe he's the best sneerer in the group. Then we can start spreading rumors that the Desnan rite is to be evicted from the holy place.
Looking over things, do you want a little more time to plan, or would you like to try to advance things a bit according to Bostarg's list? Could get to Pharast 29 with a few die rolls, but the birds will require a bit more than that.
I'm okay with fast-forwarding a bit.
Sounds good to me. And I like Joana's idea. She's right you know. Morthos is the best sneerer. :)
As above ^^.
So good and bad news.
At work I've finally gotten the requested help hired and training begun. Problem is now I have to have that training completed ASAP (blargh). So my work days are going to be long through the end of September getting that completed (and possibly into October).
What that means is that slow updates will be a thing through that timeframe. I'll have time this evening to update, but probably not again until Saturday. So I'm leaving this up to you guys. We can do another hiatus until then or deal with slow updates.
I do apologize for this.
AK is working on a 15,000-word dissertation due sometime in September so is going to be scarce for a while anyway. (Well, scarcer than he already is, I suppose. ;)
What if we fastforward to the day before Marlowe's arrival, if you have the time to do so, and then take a break? We could still do some planning to fill in Bostarg's calendar in the OOC thread in the meantime.
Sounds good to me, I'll do up a post to get to that point.
So, considering the bare essentials of our mission -- i.e., to open the gates for the bugbears -- what if we got into the fort via the secret tunnel, disguised ourselves as soldiers with the iron circlets, and just marched straight up to the second floor of the gatehouse to "relieve" whoever's in there? Then we barricade ourselves in, open the gate, maybe have Alazandaru Disable Device it so it can't easily be closed again, and hope the defenders are distracted enough by the monsters pouring in that they can't focus their efforts on getting at us.
Sounds pretty solid to me.
No fuss, no muss. :)
Morthos won't like it. He'd love to strike these goody two shoes down. But having to take down more than 100 soldiers is probably enough to convince him to go with that plan.
Probably. ;)
So, considering the bare essentials of our mission -- i.e., to open the gates for the bugbears -- what if we got into the fort via the secret tunnel, disguised ourselves as soldiers with the iron circlets, and just marched straight up to the second floor of the gatehouse to "relieve" whoever's in there? Then we barricade ourselves in, open the gate, maybe have Alazandaru Disable Device it so it can't easily be closed again, and hope the defenders are distracted enough by the monsters pouring in that they can't focus their efforts on getting at us.
I was running that idea through, trying to see what information you all have discovered, and with the map copy acquired from the dwarves would be able to determine that the gatehouse is the area being worked on. The controls for both the drawbridge and the portcullis are both located in the gatehouse as well.
Remember it will take 1 hour for the bugbears to arrive after the firework is lit. That's how long you may potentially have to hold it, unless you come up with something else.
One hour?!?! Man that's a crappin' long time. Yeah I think we need to find a way to dwindle some numbers. And Morthos wouldn't object to removing some of those leader types either.
I wonder, could we convince the crowd that the fireworks and Bostarg are part of the pre-game ceremony for Marlowe? Do the whole thing in a festive, street-performer manner? Those of us "relieving" the gatehouse guard could be doing it as a favor to them so they don't miss the show.
Of course, to the extent that Bostarg is mixed in with everyone else when the bugbears arrive, he's in as much danger from them as the soldiers are, I would think. The head bugbear guy might recognize him, but he had a hard enough time keeping his followers from slaughtering us all for fun when they weren't worked up into a blood rage.
Who has spider climb? Or are we planning on buying a scroll?
Personally, I think Mad Martin and the Widow Dressler are too eccentric a couple of personages in the town's eyes for us not to pin some of our crimes on them.
The enthrall bit's a pretty dang good idea. Marlowe's Production would actually be the perfect time for the perfect crime.
Those of us "relieving" the gatehouse guard could be doing it as a favor to them so they don't miss the show.
I like this idea too. That's a great reason.
The Spider climb is gonna be tricky. I'm not sure how we're suppose to go about buying that one. Is there a wizard shop in town? I've completely missed it if it was mentioned. Or just forgotten(which is far more likely).
Arcane scrolls up to level 4 and divine scrolls up to level 3 are available for purchase in town.
I'll setup the birds encounter tonight.
On that topic, I wanted to offer a differnt possible alternative to the google doc I'm using now for the map. On Sundays I play on Roll20 with my old homegroup. I helped to get that setup and have played on it with another PBP for PFS. If people would prefer to try that out instead, I just started using it with the other WotW group I'm running. Just a suggestion, and will only switch if everyone is okay with that.
I got no problem with Roll20. Another DM is using it in my RoW game. I like it. Either one is fine with me though.
However you wanna roll with it works for me, bud.
Right - got a post up in the main thread. Lets piecemeal this out:
1. Marlowe's arrival and Bird Slaying
2. Work on Mott and Eddarly
3. Get the dwarves drunk and rowdy
4. After Varning leaves, stage the blacksmith murder
5. Get involved in riding out to confront / slay Varning (and hopefully some other guards as well)
6. Marlowe's Production - enact Tatya's bait and switch.Sound good?
Sounds good to me.
I've never used Roll20 so have no opinion about it one way or another. If it's more convenient for you, DM, I have no objections.
I'll be responding to stuff this afternoon
I sent an invite to everyone for the Roll20 map. If you have any issues, let me know and we can work to resolve them.
Room 43 on the map is the rookery itself.
Just to confirm, the plan is to have Tatya (and Morthos?) cause a distraction for the soldiers while Alazandaru Spider Climbs the side of the tower and lights the rookery on fire? Just need an affirmation and a few dice rolls on it (Stealth from Tatya [and Morthos], as well as stealth and perception from Alazandaru).
Based on a suggestion, I went ahead and added a link to the short description above.
Works for me. I'm already using roll20 in another thread so it's all good.
But the map is a little messed up. Where it says 'Tower level 3' and 'Tower level 4' on the map... you've got blank squares there. A ton of them.
If you go about 4 squares below the words "Tower level 2", from there it goes all the way to the bottom of the map with blank squares. And it's about 8 squares wide all the way down. It's a massive blank spot. But the top 2 rows are about 20 squares across before it shrinks to 8 the rest of the way down.
"The Dwarven Vault Beneath Balentyne" is smushed together. It's unreadable.
"To the Lord Dalliance Inn" is gone within the blank squares.
While I wouldn't necessarily call it intentional, it is known.
I tried copying the entire map into Roll20 at first. But trying to get things lined up properly proved to be an exercise in frustration. So I then just cut it up into pieces and pasted those individually. I intended for it to be just black spaces, but that didn't work as intended either. As it stands, the important bits are there.
In the end, it takes a little longer for the map itself, but the advantage is that I can place tokens for enemies where needed as I have time, and putting them from the GM layer to the Player layer is much easier than adding them into the google doc, which is the real time saver (that and tracking hit points).
About to head to bed tonight. I've added tokens for the four of you, and assigned ownership for Morthos and Alazandaru if you want to try moving them about.
Looking at the timetable, it looks like the plans for Varning and slaying the blacksmith are part of the schedule. When do you want to enact 2 and 3 (Eddarly/Mott and the Dwarves)?