Ok. So my players like heists. They really like heists. A lot. And in a new game I started they're starting to delve into tech, so in seeing the hijinks coming around the bend, they are going to try to steal the larger tech so they can be self sustaining. So that means they're going to try and 'Carmen Sandiego' a generator or two, they'll try their best to do the same to a lab or two if they can mange it. I would honestly expect them to obtain an airship or alchemical dragon to cart off with a generator if possible.
So my questions revolve around the relative size, heft, and portability of generators and the lab equipment. The guide does call the generators out as being very large and cumbersome to move, but I'd love a more concrete definition or statistic if there is one floating about somewhere.
As frustrating is it is when they forget the plot and get stuck on stuff like this, it's amazing how many hoops they're willing to jump through to get their prize. It helps that they typically run 'wrong thing for the right reason' sort of characters, at least.
Name: King Yurigo(myself)
Race: human
Classes/levels: Gestalt Fighter(two handed)/ Artificer, lvl 17
Adventure: 'post' War of the River Kings
Location: the late Irovetti's Throne Room
Catalyst: Given the party and King Yurigo's actions in the past, they have managed to dredge up a number of enemies most people wouldn't have to worry about. Some of these people they have either crossed or gone out of their way to anger. Some, such as the leader of Brevoy and the Technic League of Numeria were worried more about their ungodly acquisition of territory and growing armies. Others, like the Old Cults, were simply mad for being ousted from the country. So, some of these enemies pooled a bit of money to hire killers.
Gory Details:
they were shadowed into the castle by hired killers, a lvl 18 rogue(with two brilliant Daggers), lvl 18 antipaladin, a lvl 18 Cavalier, and a lvl 18 Wizard. These three individuals waited patently for the party to expend all they could fighting irrovetti's guards(of which, were augmented from what was in the book) and waited until the players thought they had won. Once they killed Irovetti and let their guard down, the assassins sprung into action, materializing seemingly out of thin air, spells and abilities at the ready.
Going first for the heavy hitter, the King, the rogue landed a series of grievous injuries upon King Yurigo, but he still stood standing until the mage cast Disintegrate, rolling unluckily for maximum damage, which was more then sufficient to ash the king and all his equipment. The mage then cast a quickened spell on the group, the cavalier getting a lucky crit on the other melee'er with a x4 weapon, and the antipaladin did his evil channeling, and forced the group to break. After that the rest of the group regrouped and dispatched the assassins with no small measure of difficulty, getting a break when the enemy wizard prismatic-spray'd everyone and accidentally Stoned the Cavalier.
After the fight, only one seemed to suffer any loss for the dead king. one character, Stephania, even remarked on how it was a good day when two dictators die.(Stephania was quickly becoming an up and coming aggressor, secretly rallying forces for a civil war. Stephania believes that Yurigo will become the stardard evil-bastard dictator later in life if 'allowed to live'). Immediately there was squabbling over who had the throne, given they had all forgotten about his queen.
Much to their surprise, and my own, one player in the group remembered something only casually brought up months ago, something everyone had forgotten: Yurigo and Beriku(the spymaster) had teamed up and paid heavy bags of money for Clone Spells for the both of them around 2 years(in game) ago, 'just in case' as the both of them were the moneymakers and tended to take near lethal amounts of damage regularly.
Many notes were sifted until the transaction was sure enough found. So, as they came back to the Capital, the party was slack jawed at their King, sitting(bereft of all the hard earned items) sitting upon his throne. Now, the only truly loyal person, the royal assassin, secretly informed yurigo of the comments and squabble for the throne, and he is immediately beginning to lay plans for disposing half of the country's council within the next month. He is going so far as to hire several high level assassins from Daggermark, and plans on providing 'maintenance' on all of the dissidents' equipment.
However, the royal assassin, a gunslinger/rogue(sniper) with greater called shot who just so happens to be a heart-shot enthusiast might not wait for his plans to come to fruition before taking out his increasingly aggressive competition, as she has requested a brand new +4 rifle with the Distance, bane:human, and speed qualities out of the blue, and blood crystal greater burrowing bullets 'just in case'. So who knows, there might be a list of dead sometime in the next month due to heart-obliterating gunshots. Vordecai is also siding with yurigo, as the other half of the party wants him dead as well, and their General, Sootscale, and their warden Akiros owe not only their position, but their lives to Yurigo for sparing them the blade, as he was the only one to consider them worth the risk of keeping alive.
Ironically, this was the last segment I was running before finishing the war and handing it back off to the last player for GMing the 6th book(they spent most of the time while I ran War of the River Kings restructuring the fights on book 6), and I assassinate my own character. As a note, they actually managed to spark a war with Brevoy at the same time as Pitax, given their dealings with Restov. They hammered through as much of pitax as fast as they could, but half of brevoy still marches into the boarders as we speak, but Brevoy has been skillfully manipulated by the spymaster to collapse into a full blown civil war, tearing the country in half.
Adventure: between Blood for Blood and War of the River Kings
Location: hooktongue slough
Catalyst: a double dose of idiocy, and a bad random encounter.
Gory details:
This character, being completely confident in their abilities, especially with the enhancing gear they all have, decided to finish exploring and mapping this section of the map, rather then deal with the problems at home.(everyone had a small solo story arc drawing from their backgrounds). This might not have been an issue, except for the fact the Marshal did not gather the rest of the group, a troupe to lead in exploring, nor even did he hire a mercenary to accompany him. No, this brave soul struck out into the marsh alone. This might not have been a problem, as the sniper-like behavior served him well in dealing with some boggards and a series of animal encounters. The problem, however, came when he stumbled upon 4 adult black dragons arguing about something in their strange tongue. As he spotted them several hundred feet away, and they were quite distracted, he could have simply slinked away from them and they would have been none the wiser. But, alas, Zander's confidence in his own abilities proved his downfall. After a number of shots, he did manage to take one of his targets before he was melted into a pile of flesh by the streams of acid of two of the remaining dragons, and chopped to bits by the claws of the third, then promptly stripped of equipment and eaten.
When Zander failed to report in, the rest of the party tracked his items back to a black dragon's den, where the items were found, but the body already well past digested. Since the recovery of his things, and the failure to find a resurrect-able body, he has been promptly replaced by an intelligent automaton of the King's manufacture, as the position seems to have an abnormally high fatality rate. This position has seen 3 different people in it's seat, two lost to creatures in the wild, and one to an assassin.
In other ourobouran news, Oleg has been retired from Treasurer, as his degenerating mental condition has forced his retirement, and Svetlana is considering stepping down to care for her husband.(a joke about how the person that ran the 1st book played him. long story short, his nanometer long fuse blew, and subsequently ruined the pc's ambush on the thugs in the first encounter before they were in position. And again at each subsequent encounter with enemies at the fort. He would run up, punch one, and run away. Repeatedly.)
My group is starting blood for blood, and they've already emerging into a large kingdom. We round robin the GMing between myself and two others,(we also solve disputes and issues of play as a tribunal, quite nice.) I specifically requested book 5 when I saw the war. I think I might just need to use your remodel of Pitax, Turin. As written, pitax is a paper tiger.
Given the size and carefully micromanaged growth the players in our game have, their kingdom can currently take out Pitax a book early at year 3. With the player's luck on d20 kingdom rolls and their king's borg like absorption of every threat yet, I don't dare field the book's pitax.
Strangely enough, I don't know if it will be enough, since they're the type to find all the little chinks in the armor of an encounter... I fully expect half of them to sneak into Pitax, blight their crop fields, burn or poison their granaries, firebomb critical buildings, and/or steal from the treasuries, while the other half lead the honorable side of war blissfully unaware of the maneuvers of the darker half of the group. They're that kind of group.
Regardless on whether or not they can find a way to cut pitax's feet out from under it, I'm planning to increase the pressure by hammering them with a second war breaking out with Brevoy once they start fielding armies against Pitax. Perhaps 3-6 months in, depending on how they deal with it. Our players have been poking at the issian-restov tension with a stick with arms dealing, under the table deals with both restov and issia, and other such things, so fully arming would definitely cause issians to war.
Only the King and Vordakai are evil per se, but the spymaster is a LN and CE Master Chymist(given the split personality that picking up Chymist caused this level.). The rest of the party is constituted of NG's and CG's who have been riding down slippery slopes into neutral territory. This slow slide into neutrality and evil has mostly been caused by the king. His silver tongue and iron clad reasoning proves to win out more often then not, even with them trusting him very little.
King's last evil acts:
So far, the Good characters are sticking to it because it's 'for the good of the people', and the King is keeping volumes of his black-book research out of sight and mind. However the King always manages to show his true colors every once in a while and unnerve the group. Three months ago he signed an infernal contract along with the leader of a local threat, which not only damned both of their souls, but forces the enemy leader to get his own people wiped out.
Last month, the group learned they had a infestation of Old One worshipers, and the king divided the cabinet in half, half part of the sting undercover at the Candlemere ruin, himself included, and the other half with the paladins leading the attack on the upcoming ceremony. However, it was confirmed during the ceremony the cultists put together that the King was an old hand at such dark rituals.
...It is uncertain to this day whether or not the sneak attack the marshal made on the King during the height of the ceremony was to sell the act, or to kill him, as it very nearly was our second player death.
And since some of the cultists survived the assault on Candlemere, the guise of the split in the house remains, but who knows if it will become a reality. I can say with certainty the King is the only one preparing for that eventuality right now. Insidiously, too. As the groups magic item crafter, he's planning to slowly phase out other magic weapons for Brilliant energy weapons in the future in the guise of efficiency. This way if they turn on him when he goes Lich, they can't use anything against him, or his slowly growing construct army. With their dependance on him to identify and explain all items magic, they'll be none the wiser. With tensions rising, trust guttering out, and Blood for Blood starting next week; I might just need to add another obit soon.
Well, the adventure path is more of a startup for us, as we will likely leave the path behind after War of the River Kings. We do have a second plotline going on that leads into a possible cataclysm event in the distant future, so Vordakai in our campaign has more to gain with the heroes then without. However, only the GM knows where his loyalty will lay in the future.
more on the game:
As it turns out, since acquiring Vordakai as a Magister, the king(a LE damphir with strong azlanti traits Named Yurigo) and Vordakai have become something approximating friends, and they are sharing their magical insights and yurigo's workshop. He's already caught up to the player's level, and just had his phylactery restored with the help of yurigo.
This group has been amazingly dedicated to turning every obstacle into a resource. Sootscale sits on the post of General, the lizardfolk serve as a river patrolling army, and are fed by the regenerating bodies of Hargulka and Nagrundi, as an example to the rest of the trolls in the region not to screw with the kingdom. In addition, their town was recently attacked by a dragon, and they're stripping it for crafting parts, and planning to use spells and artifice to keep it regenerated for more parts later. currently the group is keeping the remains on ice with gentle repose.
There is no small amount of different opinions between Vordakai and Yurigo, they constantly talk about how to deal with the bleating masses, with the two talking about overt oppression and ruling by fear(Vordakai), or using propaganda and innovative design to make the populace idolize the rulers. But it seems as though Vordakai is content to be Magister at the moment. Though likely due to the fact the king is already plotting with him and the spymaster to take over as much of the world as they can manage. However, Yurigo doesn't trust anyone, so everyone has their own personal bodyguard construct, with secret orders to observe and report.
Up to this point, Lyla, the kingdom's buffoon of a Magister had managed exactly one successful action, which was setting a boar on fire, with the only other notable actions being summoning up a sulking water elemental to put out fires she started, and burning a dead tree. All other attempts to engage foes either went wide or hit teammates the whole adventure. It didn't help much that the player missed 2/3 sessions, and didn't make any effort to have the character bond with anyone in the party. Worse yet, the GM has a tendency of bringing in extra foes from a character's history, and that person wrote in double crossing an elite mercenary army, that was then camping on our kingdom's doorstep, waiting on us either fighting to the death, or handing them the character's head.
So, during the fight, she ate a bad crit for just less then maximum damage, and went down like a sack of potatoes due to bad HP rolls all game, leaving the character at -6 and paralyzed.
The King of the country was fed up with the magister already, so after defeating Vordecai, told the rest of the group to check the next room. Then proceeded to offer him a choice to live with a new identity, with the former character's position as Magister, in exchange for his services henceforth and the secrets to lichdom. Vordecai, out of spells and options, accepted, and the King ever so discreetly finished off the still-live comrade without the others ever aware. The party then brought the head to the mercenaries, saving the kingdom from being burned to the ground(Either from her, or the mercenaries.)
