Got an update for you guys this afternoon.
Gah. The afternoon got away from me, as did the evening. Sorry guys. Tomorrow morning!
No worries :) looking forward to it
No worries :)
And Paizo was down this morning when I tried to update. But it gave me time to make this map. :)
Uh, when and where are the PCs meeting up again? I was going to have Harold brief everyone and push to break in tonight, but I'm not sure where & when to set it. The knowledge lasts a fair while.
Let's say it's early evening and you and Mel have just finished collecting your info. The info the scouts just gave you is up to date. And Kazador is just finishing his shopping right now so you can all meet up in an alley or something outside the shop if you wish.
Holy cow, we found the man with the falcon ring? Here? I was sure he'd be at least one more link up the chain.
Well you may or may not have found him. Depends on Kaz's perception. ;)
You do know that he has met directly with Davis so he's probably not THAT high up the chain.
Just checking in. :)
Since there may be trouble later, I'll not use any resources at this time.
Plan B is still a possibility. And Plan C as well.
Still, here's hoping Plan A works out :)
Kazador is very swamped right now. Shall I just narrate him back to your meetup? If two say aye to this with no nays, then we'll do it.
I'm happy with that. I don't want to hold things up.
I'm fine either way.
Same. Waiting for him in the Fyrtor-run game as well - he does seem swamped.
Personally, I prefer getting botted over feeling guilty for holding things up, so a third vote for aye.
Just to share some personal news. Just moved into our new house! It's been insane. Movers came Saturday morning, and after they unloaded everything we went until midnight unpacking. Sunday got a uhaul truck and brought in new furniture (getting a 300lb couch through the front door was insanely difficult). Now that it's monday, the kids have just started their school year and I'm at work. Will be taking a break to go back to the townhouse we used to rent so I can clean it up before turning over the keys.
Life should be going back to normal very soon. I thank everyone for their patience.
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Glad to hear you're ok, Kazador! Hang in there!
Just to clarify, Mel's proposing that Janus use Suggestion on him with something like "I suggest you come with us, quietly." Since Suggestion lasts hours per level that should give us ample time to walk him to the fighting ring and then to Turick's estate, where we can interrogate him properly.
There's a lot of table variance on what GM's define as "obviously harmful" - following some stranger into a dark alley may be just that, from his perspective.
As opposed to when he is already a prisoner, offering him a way out would most likely be desirable.
There's also shenanigans like suggesting to him that he looks on all things I say in the next 10 hours in the most favorable light that may or may not fly.
For simplicity sake, I would probably Alter Self, then simply try to Charm him, and suggest going for a drink. If that does not work, I can still try the more direct suggestion.
Harold's idea is a backup. Obscuring Mist (or something) if he saves against Túrion's spell. Wouldn't be needed if we can do it in a place with no-one else around.
That's fine -- it'd certainly keep prying eyes off us, though it might make it a bit harder to fight him.
Unless anyone has any strong opinions to the contrary, I think the plan is we follow him first, then we can jump him later if we still think that's a good idea.
Is that the plan?
Harold: Give me a K nob.
Agreed, the only question is do we all follow him, or a select group. Truion needs to go to cast the spells, Harold or I can both cast obscuring mist. I also have euphoric cloud prepped which has a greater range, though it could have consiquences with a sailed save if we were to try to go in. Mel is the least likely to be noticed. Khaz the most likely to bring him down quickly in a conventional man or.
And most likely to be noticed/identified.
I propose Mel follows him, about 60 feet or so back, and that the group follow her about another 60 feet back. I don't suppose anyone has the Message cantrip prepped?
Not preped, I do have pack Empathy ready to go though
I suppose Message was what Harold was referring to?
That said, yeah, I should probably also consider my Cantrips in changing situations, in the future :)
Can I get votes on the following in interest of proceeding? Given Harold's new information (assuming he shares it), do you
1) Wait for the man with the falcon ring to come out
or
2) Something else? If so, what?
Harold will share, and I vote (1).
I'd rather have the man than the treasure.
Oh good, I'm glad Nelly could help out, because I'm not sure anyone in the party can actually post a 40 on a Perception check. Unless Hal is a perceptive old codger and hasn't yet had to reveal it.
Túrion might manage it with a casting of Acute Senses, but I'm not sure he's got that spell.
Hal is pretty perceptive. I'm not sure he's 40 perceptive, though.
Aye, Donald always screams NPC to me because he refuses to even have a statline trying to keep his secrets. :)
But I suppose in a intrigue Arc it's less of an issue.
That said, Acute Senses is not on my spell list, so nope.
Also, not a big fan of those spells providing such hefty boni in form of short-term bursts.
It's like "oh, we dealt with the trouble here, now we're searching for treasure, hidden passages and traps. I know you spent all your life training your sense of perception, but let me just pop this single spell and give the area a once-over better than you could".
From a Flavour perspective, I much prefer smaller boni over extended periods of time. Such large bursts basically seem like a way to bypass the skill entirely -
There's niches, like Glibness, where I think it's flavorful. A bard-only spell, where most bards already have good bluff(seeing how they are CHA-based and it's a class skill) feels different - more like part of the toolkit, also because the DC can go much higher depending on how outlandish your story is.
Oh well, no point in ranting :) I'm just glad we managed to be with you, there.
Technically I could hit a 40, with a roll of 20 with hightened awarness and hunters blessing running, but that combination is rarely practical.
As usual, I'm looking for a first and second on a course of action and whether or not someone disagrees. So let me know OOC what you're doing next when you have some consensus. It's a little tricky for me to track that consensus IC.
This game really feels like it's struggling. We know what our long-term goals are: we want to prevent Iustia from starting a war with the Concordat. In order to do that, we're investigating a group of nobles who appear to be pushing for war.
After that things rapidly get very nebulous. Somebody in Bannerhold is running an elaborate scheme to rob the treasury, but we still have no idea who is behind it, or what their goals are, or even if they have anything at all to do with what we want to accomplish. It might be somebody who just wants money. It might be someone hoping to prevent a war by starving Iustia of the money needed to conduct one. It might be someone trying to start a war by framing the Concordat for the theft. It might be someone gathering funds to hire an expensive high-level assassin to kill the King and blame that on the Concordat in order to precipitate a war. Just to name a few possibilities.
Anyway, we have no clear direction. I've been trying to nail down why, but there's no one factor that's responsible. It's a lot of things.
1) We are too risk-averse. We have been very careful to avoid letting our opposition know who we are, to the point where it's preventing us from taking definite action that might advance the plot. I think a lot of this is me. I'm a very cautious person, and that translates directly into how I tend to play my PCs. I think my own risk-aversion has transmitted itself to the group.
2) Decision paralysis. It's extremely difficult to reach consensus on anything. Plans are proposed, discussed, and then peter out into extended silences without any definite conclusion. That sort of thing would be bad enough if we were playing live in real time. In play-by-post, it makes the pace positively glacial. This is largely on the players, myself included.
3) There's no time pressure. We know -- or can assume -- that if we sit and dither long enough, Iustia will march off to war and we will have failed. But we have no idea whatsoever how close that day is. A month? Three months? A year? A decade? Tomorrow? In the absence of a definite deadline, it feels as though we have forever.
4) We lack allies. As outsiders to Bannerhold, we have to struggle for every scrap of information. None of our backstories afford us any kind of insider knowledge. The lack of any kind of local ally means the GM has no good way to feed us plot hooks or information through an NPC.
As for 1 and 2, well ... that's down to the party. We need to do things. We are the protagonists. Our actions are the primary driver of the story. If we do nothing, it's a pretty boring story.
On 3 -- GM, I appreciate your commitment to preserving player agency, but it wouldn't hurt to be a bit more assertive. PC action is important, but the world does not revolve around us. In a living, breathing world, stuff will keep happening even if the PCs don't do anything at all. The treasury robbery was a good move along these lines. Do more stuff like that. I'll send you some suggestions privately.
That sort of thing doesn't have to be plot-significant. We could overhear snatches of conversation between NPCs just in the course of walking around the city that have nothing whatsoever to do with any of your plots. Perhaps it's somebody grumbling about the weather. Or even just short descriptions of the people of Bannerhold out living their lives, something like "You pass a young wife hauling two buckets of water back home from the public well with a toddler in tow." Those sorts of things would add flavor, keep the city feeling alive, afford opportunities for role play, and deepen the player's knowledge of the city.
On 4 -- I'll confess, I was hoping Count Aral would fill this role, but so far he's been largely uninvolved, and his input has been largely unhelpful. As a man who literally ran the country for years as regent to the young king, he ought to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the nobility in Iustia. He should be able to suggest potential contacts, provide useful info on people of interest (such as Rollinsby), or alert us to tidbits of info he's learned from other people he knows who are still in Bannerhold. I'd like to see him take a more active role. Or else we need to find some other ally, because we are struggling on our own.
Addendum:
I was less active around the time when things still moved more swiftly.
As such, the two leads from me got post-poned.
Both the animal-rearing session as well as the visit to gather information from the red-light establishment got postponed. (as did the evening with Isabella)
I would take a more proactive approach on these matters - as I feel they are "my" leads and it up to me to push them or decide how to proceed.
But currently, we are following up on different leads that someone else learned about. And I feel that more people meddling with certain tasks just increase the risk. If you have one person perfectly capable of shadowing someone to their home, there's little point in having 4 people try simultaneously, you just increase the chance of someone messing up terribly.
I did offer the more direct approach of charming and or suggesting cooperation via magic as an option. But so far, we seem to have decided to play it safe.
I only voiced my opinion that we should not "send" someone off to be held by someone that may or may not be on our side, ultimately - that is, we can still capture and interrogate them, but then gag them, bind them, and lock them in an empty room, occasionally feeding them. Or keep them charmed and cooperative(and locked in a room with a chair, explaining to them it's for their own safety(which it is, actually)).
For an intrigue act, I do actually enjoy the pacing. I just think we need to pick up on posting rate - and if we slow down on one lead, maybe pick up a different one and then come back to this.
e.g. if we do not take decisive action against lord falcon, and 2 people just take turns observing the linen shop, then maybe I could go to the brothel and see if they have any info we can use(we DO have ways for GM to feed us additional intel). But of course, that would mean splitting up and following multiple plots against, simultaneously - not sure if GM's schedule allows such again.
For the record, I consider the current "lead" to be the result of Mel and Harold, so in my opinion, they should have the main say of how to proceed. If I do have objections or suggestions, I voice them(such as with transferring the prisoner), but otherwise I'll follow their suggestion on how to proceed.
I don't really have anything to add here other than to say I like Turion's idea then Mel and Harold take point on this lead.
Intrigue.is tough even in persona I think we're actually doing ok all things considered. That said more posting from everyone (myself included) is probably the most helpful thing we can do.
I agree with Mel that I need to feed more info through Count Aral and describe Bannerhold more. Those are things I can and should do to keep injecting energy.
I also want to remind you that, like any other decent GM, I'm not here to punish player agency as long as you aren't completely reckless. Try something. When Mel broke into Davis's home, it was risky but fruitful, in my opinion. It led you quickly to the linen shop. Do something else. Pull the trigger.
I've played Harold as pretty risk averse (just finished escaping his last time he wasn't careful enough) and fairly passive (just joined the group).
For the record Harold does have allies and contacts here - I mentioned them a few times in passing, but I realise it probably comes across as just flavour. That's pretty much where all the leads Harold has brought in have come from though :)
On my end I've been playing someone with some serious inner demons when it comes to confidence, which he has only recently started overcoming. Adding to that, he's in an unfamiliar environment, meddling in politics for countries that he barely knows. It just didn't seem right for him to be leaping in head first. But I'll try to take a more active approach, as I agree with all of the points made.
So let's figure out what we want to do. I think it may be quicker to do it out of character. Currently we have had the following suggestions made:
A) Abduct Rollinsby and take him to Viscount Turick for imprisonment/interrogation.
B) Abduct Rollinsby and imprison/interrogate him ourselves.
C) Sneak into Rollinsby's house while he's not at home and find out what we can.
D) Break into the linen shop and recover the treasury.
E) Follow the treasury when they move it from the linen shop to find out where they take it.
F) Give up on the adventuring life, get jobs, and grumble to our co-workers about how we used to be adventurers before we took an arrow to the knee.
I am not thrilled at the notion of housing Rollinsby.
F, the answer is definitely F.
Ok kidding aside I think we should go with D, but I don't think we should recover the entire treasury. If we do who's to say we didn't steal the treasury ourselves? We'll only have our word if we were to be caught with it. And with two elves in our group that's going to be suspect to most Iustian authorities.We just need some solid evidence to pull in the cavalry with. Let them do their job. That's my opinion.
As far as Rowlenby goes it sounds like he'll be easy to flip, we just need to keep tabs on him and make sure he doesn't disappear. If he gets wind that the treasury has gone missing he'll like6y run and there goes our info.
The best thing I think we could do is sneak into the linen shop, lift a piece of evidence, confront Rowlenby with it and get a confession. Then we go to the Viscount once we know who Rawlensby is working for. We may not tell the viscount everything we know. He's not really an ally. The thieves might be better help preventing the war. Something to keep in mind I suppose.
I would vote B, then E.
Take him into custody, learn what we can from him - especially how the treasure is moved on - then trace it from there.
If he does NOT know where the treasure is headed and is only a middle-man, we can hand him over to Turick at that point since we'll be one step ahead.
If he DOES know where the treasure goes next, we'll simply have to hold him until such time as we are 'ahead' sufficiently that other interested parties will not be able to predict our next steps.
Túrion is methodical, but lost in this society. He trusts his magic, and Nelly. As such, it seems logical for him to try and get people to cooperate through magical coercion.
That, and follow the actual proof of the crime - the treasure - to it's intended final recipient, which is without doubt someone influential enough to operate this whole network - that is, someone linked or directly linkable to one of our prime candidates/kings friends.
I vote for D first, not taking all of it, but just enough for proof, followed by A or B. Either of those two would work well enough for Kazador. But he'd be most comfortable with trusting in the Viscount, as that is who we are working for.
Just a slight correction: We are working for the Bishopry, technically, to prevent a war.
In this country, one may say we work for Count Aral, if at all.
The Viscount was one of the suspects, himself.
I know you and Fyrtor got closer in on him, but blindly trusting him seems ill advised regardless.
Also, those voting D, please do help me understand the follow-up.
Say we retrieve the treasure(or part of it) - expose the theft and/or get the linen shop raided by royal guard.
Whats our next step from there? If the baddies notice in time that we took something, they may even have moved the goods and make us look like fools(who still have to explain where we got part of the treasury - and I do not want them to run a background-check on most of us.).
I'll go with the majority, not trying to be partisan here - I just fail to see the benefit. Retrieving the treasure or getting the place raided seems to kill off one possible lead, at best.
At the same time it would alert the mastermind behind the scheme to lay low and cut any ties that would implicate him; or in the worst case even make us face scrutiny or place us as suspects(which even if we can clear our names, puts us out in the open, no longer giving us the advantage of operating hidden.)
Do explain to me like you would explain to a dog :)
Current tally:
B: Turion
D: Kazador and Fyrtor
Follow-up actions:
E: Turion
I'm back at home but waiting to here votes from Mel and Harold.
Sorry - only just saw the update notification.
Harold'd be heavily influenced by the others, and hesitant to push, but...
B Harold does have somewhere to imprison him, it is just a one way trip.
As for follow up E sounds good - but there'd need to be a way to cope with the fact it's probably going to be smuggled piecemeal in rolls of linen from various customers. I OOC can't see a way to do that. Failing that, D makes sense. We could even pretend to be the guards.
Harold doesn't have all the context, but I see that (A) a nation with a much reduced treasury might have trouble going to war and (B) framing a [foreign nation/racial group] as having raided the treasury is a GREAT way to precipitate a war. (C) could also be used to discredit a noble.
Given the pieces are supposed to be recognisable, my money is on (B) or (C)... and this is something the group could use to get rid of a warmonger.
Sorry! I've been dreadfully laggard of late. Not only has work been extremely busy of late, I'm busy buying a house for the first time. There's rather a lot of unfamiliar paperwork, people to chase down (the radon mitigation people STILL haven't sent me an estimate), not to mention packing which I've barely begun on despite closing on October 30th and having to be out of my existing apartment by November 1st.
So I haven't had a whole lot of spare time or energy lately.
Regarding the plan, I'll throw my vote behind B, with E as a follow-up.
The main problem with abducting him and holding him ourselves is that we don't have a good place to hold him. As the incident with the guardian devil amply demonstrates, the neighbors are fully capable of hearing any untoward noise at the townhome, and not shy about confronting us about it. I don't see any good way to keep a live captive sufficiently quiet to avoid attracting attention.
What we need is an extradimensional space. A mirror hideaway would work nicely, but I don't think any of us have the spell for that.
As for E, well, sure, the trouble is identifying who's carrying the goods as they leave the shop. It could be gone already for all we know. That worker who left the shop could have the entire treasury stuck in a couple bags of holding for all we know.
To add to the discussion:
Aye, that is one of my main issues - this guy, nor the Linen Shop ones may not know WHERE the treasure goes next. It may be that some guys pick up a certain order, are handed the goods, and leave.
Hence why I am opposed to raiding the place now.
Regarding holding him: You already stated the solution: "any good way to keep a _LIVE_ captive sufficiently quiet".
I can keep him perpetually charmed and cooperative, and tell him blankly that he needs to cooperate(including failing the saves on purpose) to ensure his safety. His previous employs would prefer him silenced, our employers would likely squeeze him for information and jail him.
If he intends to walk out from this as unscathed as possible, he needs to remain calm and cooperative at this safehouse of our choosing.
If he brings undue attention towards himself from people hostile to us, we may need to silence him to protect ourselves.
If he brings undue attention towards himself from people hostile to him now, he brings about his own demise.
A simple conundrum, really, where cooperation is in his own best interest. He may even write a cover-up-explanation explaining his sudden disappearance from his home to buy us more time.
I mean, after we learned what we need to learn, we would not HAVE to keep him alive or protect him - we are doing that for HIM. He should certainly be able to appreciate that to the point of not doing something stupid.