DM Elanmorin's Hell' Rebels

Game Master Nathan Hartshorn

This thread, as usual, is for discussion, chatting and everything that needs to be said about the game but is not of immediate gameplay concern.

Meliandri here! I'll see if I can get a proper post up before work, but it's probably not likely.

EDIT: Mel is definitely here to keep up on current events, though she's likely to get carried away. She's meant as a support bard, though I'll probably be taking a level in Swashbuckler (inspired blade) at 3 so she can be a better flanking buddy for Veccio in melee.

As far as skills go, she'll have diplomacy and bluff covered fairly well, a decent score in Knowledge (anything) by level 3 or so, and a decent acrobatics score as well. If there's anything else you all think is needed, let me know; I'm flexible.

Happy to be here and can't wait to start. Should be fun in the beginning because of how standoffish Izzy is. Also for the protest bit that the player's guide makes reference too, I figure Izzy would fall under "looking for trouble."

Checking in. I don't have an alias for Veccio yet, and it's currently really late for me... But I'll see what I can do!

Hi All,

Thanks DM Elan Morin for the selection! I'm really looking forward to this AP.

Abigail is a sorcerer with a focus on illusions and skills. She can be a decent face for the party.

lol, i think i may be the only one who won't make a good face. but I'll probably make a good spy master once we get the rebellion going since i got a good dex score and I'm paranoid.

Just looked over the reasons to protest again and realized "looking for trouble" isn't what i thought it was. So instead she would most likely fall under "to protest the government" since she doesn't like all this oppression going on.

Hello my dearest friends. Let us pool ressources to replaces those in control of our city with people who are ... better suited.

oh man. OH MAN! Cleric of Asmodeus! dude, oh man. This is going to be fun. Izzy hates the church of Asmodeus. She's ex-Asmodean. Maybe we can work our backgrounds together somehow.

None of the avatars fit the image I had in my head. Always the case. But, I like this guy's smirk.

Thanks for picking me, GM; can't wait to get started!

EDIT: Just so's ya know, Veccio's also ex-Asmodean. He's also hot-headed and short-tempered. This'll be fun :D

Well Aerodus is very much devout, but he has realized long ago that pushing his religion down people's throats doesn't lead anywhere. They will realize the truth in his words with time anyway ;)
Aerodus has cut ties with the church two years ago and lives a rather simple life in Villegre.

Therefore we might well know each other - but even then, I think you guys finding out where Aerodus gets his power from after some time will work better. Exquisite moral dilemma ("Oh no, I should hate him, but he is such a nice guy!")

I envisioned Aerodus with loose hair at first, but I found this avatar and it just looks classy XD

@ DM: How do you feel about variant channeling rules?
I toyed with the idea of going with Rulership as a theme.

Sounds good to me. I dunno if you breezed through my background but her relations with the church aren't the best. She and her brother were essentially slaves, working a lot for little food and meager shelter. She eventually was taught about the way of Ragathiel and left the faith. her brother was killed for it. She took her revenge by killing an initiate at the church.

Maybe we don't actually know each other, but Aerodus did help you out in the past by dissolving a rather tricky situation before violence was used. Maybe you were angry about some very visual display of slavery? Could have well ended up arrested or worse had he not come to your help.

A +11 bonus to Bluff (+12 vs Humans) should be helpful in such a situation ;)

So we are not friends, but you could go "Oh, I know that guy! He helped me deal with slavers once!"

well i had never planned on our characters being friends cause Izzy's real paranoid about anyone who's not her dead brother. It was more if you studied at the same church She "worked" at, she might recognize you and have some added hostility and mistrust that we would eventually overcome through the acts of rebelling. But since you want your Asmodeus worship... not a secret, but not the main topic of discussion, it's fine. You'll just get the usual hostility and mistrust. lol.

should work as well ;)
There is just one big church of Asmodeus in Kintargo, so the propabilty is actually quite high that you have seen him there during his time as an Acolyte.

The worship is not a secret for now. Should it become a necessity because of other rebels being very suspicious of Aerodus, he might well go for the "stealthy priest" angel and mascarade as a worshipper of Abadar.

If anyone else wants to use my "I know that guy!" idea from above, just let me know. I find it rather hillarious :)
Veccio maybe? Hot-headed, check. Getting into trouble, check!

Nice. I don't really have a time frame on when it all went down so it can work if it's cool with you. Maybe the other Acolyte i killed was a friend or something. *shrugs*

Aerodus had no real friends there, or anywhere. But this way you have a nice reason to hate his guts once to are able to place the familiar face.

He will have propably forgotten you, as the event didn't seem important at the time ;)

Nice. That should make her feel awesome.

Hi everyone, and welcome!

We'll be starting as soon as everyone has reported in gameplay and presented his/her character. For now just tell me if you can check the map out and place your characters on it please.
I confess this is the forst time I use google docs for this as the GM, so I might very well be a bit clumsy at the beginning.

I'll try to post tonight or tomorrow morning. Sorry for the delay...

I can see the doc fine, but you have it set to view only so none of us can edit it with our characters and stuff. i've used google docs before so i can tell you how to get an editable link if you need.

I can see the doc fine, but you have it set to view only so none of us can edit it with our characters and stuff. i've used google docs before so i can tell you how to get an editable link if you need.

Seems like I need e mail adresses in order to allow you to edit the file.

Isabella Calligaris wrote:

I can see the doc fine, but you have it set to view only so none of us can edit it with our characters and stuff. i've used google docs before so i can tell you how to get an editable link if you need.

Seems like I need e mail adresses in order to allow you to edit the file.

Nah, there's another way. click share, then click get sharable link in the upper right corner. on the drop down menue, change "anyone with link can view" to "anyone with link can edit."

DM Elan Morin wrote:

Isabella Calligaris wrote:

I can see the doc fine, but you have it set to view only so none of us can edit it with our characters and stuff. i've used google docs before so i can tell you how to get an editable link if you need.

Seems like I need e mail adresses in order to allow you to edit the file.

Nah, there's another way. click share, then click get sharable link in the upper right corner. on the drop down menue, change "anyone with link can view" to "anyone with link can edit."

Ok try it now please?

s'all good now. Next question. which is the front of the crowd cause Izzy's kinda in the back.

People are basically gathering in front of the Opera House, the place Barzillai requisitioned and turned into his own base of operations and personal lair. As such the crowd is facing the entrance of the Opera and giving the back to the park itself with its small artificial ponds behind you.
If you are looking for an easy way out just in case things get out of hand you could try to make a run on your left or your right following the street that divides the Opera House from the Park. Otherwise you could try to escape through the park itself. Anyway, the best way to eascape in case Barzillai decides to unleash hell on you depends from the place the opposition will come from, and what it's made of...

Thanks, I'm all set up now.

map of Kintargo doesn't work. well it does but it says i need permission.

It was work in progress... I wasn't sure about what map to upload... I don't want to give you too much information before it's right to do so... :P but it should work now.

Also: Abigail, Aerodus and Veccio, please edit your profile with your stat line clearly visible. Do as Isabella and Meliandri have done, either way works perfectly for me.

and it does.

Place yourselves on the map when you are ready. Possibly at a short distance from each other. Remember you are just a bunch of strangers (and a couple of friends) casually meeting each other in the middle of a protest against a tyrant who supressed freedom in your home town less than a fortnight ago and has the support of the forces of Hell as well as his own regiment of fanatical thugs and hired mercenaries...

What could go wrong?

Hi! The maps seem to be working fine for me.

Is anyone going to have a problem with Meliandri having an accent? She's not exactly native-born Kintargan, and I do love the fake French accent when typed.

feel free to fake ;)

@DM: I do see the maps just fine.
Did you see my question above? Gonna copy it so you don't need to search.

How do you feel about variant channeling rules?
I toyed with the idea of going with Rulership as a theme.

GM, I should be able to do that tonight. I'm actually heading to work now. This is probably a good time to mention that I'm in Australia, at GMT +9:30...

I had a good chuckle at Mel's accent. It doesn't bother me in the slightest. (Check out Aramis, in my aliases, who also has a fun accent.)

I might be able to post once I get to work, since I'll be there a bit early. We'll see!

Haha, hey there Anton - Natasha here ;)
T'is a small world.

Edit: Whoa that's some serious fake accent XD

Small world indeed! Good to see familiar faces, though.

-Posted with Wayfinder

Edit: Whoa that's some serious fake accent XD

Haha, if that's directed at me... It was a dumb idea from the character's first appearance in a "high-powered drunk pirates" game. When I ran her in PBP, I just had to roll with it. It's stupid, but fun.

-Posted with Wayfinder

@ Aerodus: no variant channelling sorry.

@ Veccio: no problem, post when you can but please also add your complete stat block to your character page, thanks.

So... to sum it up:

Meliandri is a noble scion of house Aulamaxa who's followed her friends Lucca Avalanti Veccio Mezinas to the protest. She doesn't like Thrune and would like to see him leave the city, but has no concrete plans to get rid of him (she's tagging along).

Isabella has joined the protest against the new opressive regime (she's protesting the government). She's a convert of Ragathiel who recently lost her brother Sean to the church of Asmodeus and killed an initiate in retaliation. Even if she seems to have gotten away with it showing her face at a public rally might not be the wisest of moves, considering how she believes her brother was killed because of her own conversion...

Abigail's story is not that much different than Izzy's: her beloved husband and son were taken from her less than a week ago. She's determined to get them back, although at the moment she doesn't even know where they are imprisononed or even if they are alive still.
When the crowds began to move towards Aria's Park she decided to join their protest (so she's protesting the government too)

Aerodus is an ex priest of Asmodeus (at least in the eyes of the city's clergy... his diabolic patron seems to disagree with them and empowers Aerodus still, although who can say for certain what place a mere mortal holds in the schemes of the prince of darkness? If indeed he's the one sharing his blessings with Aerodus and not some other entity altogether...). As many of the others he's protesting the government as the idiot Thrune clearly (?) defies the will of Asmodeus...

Veccio Mezinas is a young man besotted with Meliandri. He followed her to the protest as her bodyguard, so he's basically tagging along.

Veccio is definitely tagging along. And yeah, I'll put my full statblock in my profile as well. I was at a board game night when you announced the successful applicants, got home at half eleven, and have done everything on my phone since. I'll be back at a real computer tonight, and will do all that tricky formatting then. Thanks for being patient! :)

-Posted with Wayfinder

Pretty much for Izzy, except she believes that no one knows she killed the initiate.

@ Veccio: That avatar makes me giggle a little, Veccio.

@GM Elan Morin: That seems about right, more or less. She's like your standard politician: All the rhetoric, none of the concrete plans.

@DM: I just realized that deities grant specific subdomains while excluding others. Was under the impression that you could pick any subdomain from the god's domains.
Are you ok with the Innuendo subdomain (Trickery) even though Asmodeus doesn't grant it normaly? It fits soo well!
For the separatist domain I picked Nobility, so that would basically be a houserule on top.
Basic trickery domain or deception subdomain would be ok as an alternative, but I would prefer keeping innuendo for purposes of being a manipulative chessmaster putting thoughts into brains.

Also I expected you would say no to variant channeling - wasn't really important ^^

@ Izzy: Yes, but she thinks they've hanged her brother because she converted to Ragathiel, right? If they went to such extreme measures against her brother... what would they do to when they get her instead? That's of course IF she's got this right and that's what happened. Perhaps her brother was hanged for another reason altogether?

@ Aerodus: Go for the innuendo subdomain. And know that every choice shapes the character's future ;)

I'll be stealing from a lot of actual speeches for my Perform (oratory) checks. That was Mario Savio's "Bodies on the Gears" speech from the 1960s at University of California, one of my favorites. The name seemed like it could fit in a Taldan/Chelaxian region like Andoran, so I kept it as-is.

Yeah I'm really curious how he ends up. Depending on the circumstances and the plot, he might even go LE again, even though I don't think this will happen.

Could well turn into an oracle at some point should he abolish his god and get the attention of Sarenrae & co.
Ex-Clerics are a nice blank slate.
I'm Getting greek-drama vibes. Let's hope this doesn't come with built-in TPK like in the source material ;)

Oh! A little about myself, I guess.

I graduated from college in 2014 with a bachelor's degree in history (focusing on South Asia but with a working knowledge of both US and European history), and am currently employed as a teacher's aid at a local elementary school. When I'm not working or updating games, I read and re-read a lot of fantasy and casually follow United States and world politics.

I've been gaming, on and off, since roughly 2006ish, including DMing a little bit of 3.5, but I didn't get into the play-by-post stuff until about a year ago. I'm currently running a Kingmaker game that Veccio is in, and have characters in 5 other PbPs including this one. I have a weakness for high-dexterity/high-charisma characters, which is odd, since I'm clumsy and a bit shy in real life.

I've been playing RPGs for years as well, jumping into the DM's shoes out of necessity after moving away from my group seven years ago and got stuck in the role ^^.
Was doing some play by post a few years back, but quit after all my games disintegrated for various reasons. Now back on track and it looks better :)
I'm also running two games myself on a different forum for a first time, but they are still in the starting throes.

My main gaming group is going through the Way of the Wicked Adventure Path from Fire Mountain Games currently, a campaign for Asmodeus-worshipping overlords to be.
Therefore I find it very amusing to play Hell's Rebels myself!