Chtonian Chronicles: Carrion Hill (Inactive)

Game Master Runge

Welcome to the Chtonian Chronicles. This Discussion tab should be used as a tool to discuss the game ooc. It is my hope that the use of the out-of-character commentary is kept to a minimum, and posted here separately from the Gameplay tab whenever feasible. If/when we discuss other off-topic topics, this is also the place :)

Before we begin the game, I hope to solidify the Chtonian Chroniclers subdivision a bit more, by expanding on the prologue with your backgrounds.

prologue: ...You are members of, or hired by, the Chtonian Chroniclers, a special Pathfinder Society subdivision dealing with lore related to the Dark Tapestry, and have been assigned to Carrion Hill. Your task is to learn more about the strange monster, and take measures to prevent potential disaster, in case the monster is, in fact, connected to the Dark Tapestry.

My Thoughts: Kevos Iola is the "Old Dog". The Chtonian Chroniclers have used him as an advisor of sorts, and he might even have som field experience. The rest of you are new guys.

Ryder Craw might be hired help, or he might be a member of the chroniclers? It could be either. I need a few more details on Ferratal and his dreams/motivations, as joining the Chtonian Chroniclers takes a special kind of man. Mostly an ignorant or naive one. As for Tsukitaro, the goblin has been sort of "thrown into the mix". Sent from the buzzing and lively city of Absalom to dark and gloomy Ustalav. While his intentions are good, he is most likely met with a high level of discrimination and mistrust from the rest of the group.

I'm thinking the group might have a hard time getting along. At least until they discover that unless they work together, they won't survive.

Your Thoughts?

Woohoo, excited to get started! I agree with all comments about ooc commentary.

So Ryder is trying to break his callous, unlawful streak. Him hearing about the Pathfinder Society would get his interest, since they are an organization that is considered good, pays well, and takes on strange individuals. It would be his first venture into civilized work, so he would be hired help to be an enforcer and survivalist. But as the callous man he seemed to be the Pathfinder Society was reluctant to take him on, but the Chtonian Chroniclers (for some reason) jumped at the opportunity.

How does that sound?

I'm excited as well!

It sounds perfect. Ryder might even have misgivings toward the Chroniclers for what he might perceive as "too easily trusting" or something similar. Of course the true story is simply that they are desperate for manpower, and will take anyone who isn't already a homicidal maniac.

Ryder would be taken on as a survival specialist. In some cases, these survivalists feel a bit like babysitters, in that the average Chtonian Chronicler may be a bit eccentric and have a hard time taking care of themselves in the wild; catching food, building shelter, etc. Luckily, for this group that is not the case. While they may be eccentric, they can definitely take care of themselves.

I'm pretty excited to RP Kevos. We can use the basement of my store as a base of operations, JUST DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING! Hey!!! Who let the goblin in???? PUT THAT DOWN!

Goblin in the house! ^^ Yeah, Tsukitaro will be prepared for prejudice. He'll try to win approval through actions and impeccable good manners - whenever feasible.

Kevos is a bit of a mash-up of Alan Moore, Foul Ole Ron, and every hobby/comic book store owner ever.

Heh, looking through our new members, highest strength score is 11... Hope we don't have to lift anything.

Ferratal definitely is a bit of both, naive and ignorant. His dream was simple; him dancing free of servitude, then flying to Absolam to join the Pathfinders. He didn't even pause to consider how bad this assignment might be, I mean after decades of slavery, how bad could it be, right? ;)

I think he'll be a good naive, optimistic guy who thinks it's all roses and teamwork. He's definitely in for a surprise. I see him as eventually being (or trying to be) the cohesion factor in the group once he gets over the shock of how broken it is.

Heh, looking through our new members, highest strength score is 11... Hope we don't have to lift anything.

Wait . . . That's me. I'm our strongest?

Lol. "It's okay guys. If we just work together, we can lift anything."

Just make sure ya have Communal Bull's Strength prepared as soon as it's available. :D

Well, my ability to deliver Sneak attacks should help out in combat situations.

That and Smite Evil, but that's a once a day deal, so... Yeah. ^^;

Well, I do have bulls strength prepared, but only for one person . . . And only one instance of it.

Sooo... you guys gonna buy anything or what? 'Cause I'm closing up shop soon. Hey, gobbo, put that down! That's a genuine knucklebone of Saint Septicimiex! DC 5 Appraise to recognize it's made out of plaster Elf kid, you break it you buy it! You in the back, I see you have good taste. What you have there is a magic holy water pistol! Very rare, very valuable! 100 gold and it's yours, by the millennium shrimp! Hate to get rid of it at such a low price, but I need to clear out some inventory.

Alright, seems like we have some ideas for play then! I plan to post the first post in the gamethread tomorrow, but it might be the day after.

Without further ado, here's the full prologue. If you have any objections, or if I missed something, just let me know.

Prologue: A city where no city should be, a bastion of strangeness at the heart of nowhere, the city of Carrion Hill has long loomed over the surrounding swamps in eastern Ustalav, yet its rulers have shifted many times. Often enough that only a few sinister scholars and curious minds know the true nature of the hill's original inhabitants—vile and depraved cultists of the old gods. Yet this morning, a dreadful recrudescence rises from the depths of buried nightmare in the vaults below Carrion Hill. A monster stalks the twisted alleys of the city, spreading panic before it and leaving destruction in its wake. Can the Carrion Hill Horror be stopped?

Employed by the Chtonian Chroniclers, a special Pathfinder Society subdivision dealing with lore related to the Dark Tapestry, your task is to learn more about the monster of Carrion Hill, and to take measures to prevent disaster should the monster, in fact, be connected to the Dark Tapestry. Because of the sudden urgency, and the Chtonian Chronicler's limited resources, the chroniclers could not afford to be picky about who was sent—the response had to be swift. The resulting group is a rag-tag band of untested but promising cadets, and a mildly experienced consultant with no real field experience.

The Chtonian Lodge: Beneath Lepidstadt University lies the only Pathfinder Lodge dedicated to Chtonian Chroniclers, The Chtonian Lodge. This lodge is run by benture-captain Doctor Daniel R. Peterson, a young man and an expert in the field, and the writer of the first and only volume of the Chtonian Chronicles. Furthermore, only Doctor Daniel knows the identity of the mysterious person funding the endeavour.

You received the task above within your first hour at the lodge.

I'll just have a look at that. Probably just annihilate the rest of you kids' sanity.

I guess we just have to wait for the gameplay thread then? I'll start reading that book while I wait.

Still gonna be a bit as I'm also writing job applications. It'll be up sometime within the next ~16 hours.

Character introduction time in the new Gameplay thread! :)

My apologies, the post took about 3 hours longer to write than it should, as I suddenly got a call from my mother of all people. It bodes well for you all in this venture.

As for the wayfinders you just received, these are a bit special. First off, they can hold two Ioun Stones rather than the standard single one. Secondly, they allow the ownder to cast the Darkvision spell once per day as a Spell-Like Ability.

Nice!

The post for today will be delayed as I'm in transiit for a family visit. I will update as soon as I have a proper keyboard.

I apologize for the wait. I had offered to help my grandmother with fixing up her summerhome, and this year it took a bit longer than usual as she's getting markedly older. Curse her for not having Wi-fi though, and curse me for not having a smartphone.

Anyway, I will be able to post regularly again, so I hope that you will too, and looks forward to it :)

Hey now, don't go cursing your Granny after helping her out... ^_^;

A slip of the keys, I was cursing her home more than her herself ^^.

I've added a map of Ustalav and of Carrion Hill to the links.

You have some time to make yourselves completely ready. I know that Tsukitaro has a mount of his own he could bring, which is probably better suited for him than a horse. It was left in the interns' care. Does it have a name?

Uh... "Donkey"? ^^;

Alright then ^^

I'm assuming no one has anything more to finish before departure then? In that case we'll just skip the scene with you collecting your donkey and go directly to your return to Daniel's office, and assume you've collected some maps. Does that sound good to you all?

Fine with me! ^_^ Just nobody start nivknaming me "Shrek". ;)

Sounds good to me DM.

I apologise fo the wait. I will post tomorrow. Also, I will be fully available during the weekend, so expect a good amount of posts. Hopefully we can catch up with myself ^^

I'll be umpiring a tournament this weekend, but we have an on-on-off rotation so I'll be available every few hours on my phone.

Just so we're in the clear, I'll take a few liberties in describing what happens when you say you do something, or change your described actions slightly to make it make sense with what I wrote earlier. If I'm ever at odds with anything to you, let me know and we'll work it out :) I'm still new to this, so I will make some mistakes. Part of the learning process.

An example will be my next gameplay post (which you might read before you read this). Ryder described flicking a copper at the merchant, but the merchant had already passed. However, because the merchant is moving towards Cesca, and you're going there to find Warder Romeyl Kaimain, Ryder will perform his described action as you catch up to him.

It is most likely that I won't be able to update the next two days. We're celebrating a good friends passing of an important exam, and alchohol is involved.

Cheers to that! Drink something delicious. Or a lot of something delicious. Failing that, a lot of something cheap.

Is this game still alive?

I hope you will accept my deepest and sincerest apologies.
Some time ago, I was in a fairly small scale accident at work. It's not quite clear what happened, but apparently I had been overworking myself for far too long, and my body finally gave in. I passed out and woke up in hospital, having forgotten a great many "non-essential" things. I had developed a medium-mild case of amnesia.

It is only just a few days ago I started to remember about these PhP games I participated in, and according to my psychiatrist, they were most likely part of the cause/issue.

Unfortunately I won't be picking up the game just yet. My psychiatrist has a hard time evaluating how much energy I put into a PhB game, so he can't condone me spending any energy on it at all. This is somehat of a cop-out on my part as well, as I'm not sure how much energy it takes for me to play online either, and in an effort to avoid a similar experience again, I'm taking the safe route for now.

I am sorry.
I hope you understand.

Hey, don't worry on our account; please focus on getting better! I'm glad you survived and are recovering.

Hey, don't worry on our account; please focus on getting better! I'm glad you survived and are recovering.

Seconded

Alright, so we've lost the cleric (Sorry, I wrote goblin by accident) but I believe we can get through the module as 3 people.

I plan to start it up again friday, so keep your eyes out for the post! :)

Also, I can safely say I'm doing better now than I have for years prior, and I'm ready to kick some RP ass ;)

By the way, I would appreciate it if you would post here so I can see you're updated :)

Could you give us a recap of what's going on?

Of course!

You have arrived in Cesca where you were approached by an old man that directed you towards the temple of Erastil where you were to procure horses from the local cleric, a man called Warder Romeyl Kaimain. You have arrived at the temple, but alas it seems the cleric is not there.

Does this help?

Anyone know how I can get this to show up in my campaigns tab again? Also, are we short a goblin now too? Do you want to try and recruit someone new? I could make a second character, though I could see why you may not want that.

It would seem that we are, indeed, down a goblin too. Of course at this point, it's possible to recruit new people, as we havn't started the actual module content yet.

As I see it, we have some options:
1. Tsukitaro and Ferratal leave you here at the temple, joining Kaimain, and you get 2 new people from Cesca.
2. You each take over one of the characters, playing as both your own and theirs.
3. Go on as 2 people.
4. Get a DM PC (Warder Kaimain).

I don't really mind either way, I just want to have a good time running through this amazing module :)

Also, Kaimain coouldn't beat a roll of 29, so I didn't bother rolling.

I vote for number 1. I certainly don't want to play more than one character when I'm focusing one roleplaying over rollplaying, and I would like a party size of 4.

Yeah, let's do number one. We should at least get someone with some divine casting

Alright, going to open up recruitment tomorrow morning then. Anything in particular we want? Personally I'd like to see one of the occult classes in action if at all possible, but other than that I'm fairly unbiased.

I'm a bit scared that the long break might scare off potentials, but that may be unfounded? I'm not very experienced on these forums though, so all I have is a gut feeling.

I'll be honest with you, it's not a good sign if a GM disappeared from the boards for a long time without warning. But while that may scare away some players, there are certainly many more who don't mind.

So, what do you guys think of the applicants so far?

Waiting to see if more show up before commenting...