Any Shasta love then if Benson is going to take a break?
And actually, I'm going on a trip from June 3rd - June 12th, so we can start after that if that's ok with you guys :) Perhaps the 13th, but more than likely the 14th as I try to catch up on things.
Over that break, though, you can discuss scenario of choice. There is the new 1-5, Bid for Alabastrine coming out at the end of the week, and Aspex may high 3rd now and so we 3-7 missions are on the table (Deepmarket Deception or something else you guys are interested in).
And as noted, I'll give the full backstory on what happened when the scenario is fully over to answer those burning questions!
Of course :) Hopefully no level 6's :P
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Thanks. Shasta is now up to 7th level, as I played her several modules in weekly games in town. I have a 5th level Wizard (3)/Investigator (2) but I'd like to keep both him and Shasta available for higher level games played locally.
I would like to get Benson up some levels more quickly than is possible with PBP. That way I'll have three characters to play in games that require mid-level characters, a fighter, a bard, and a wizard.
I have a large stable of 1st levels, however, that I'd love to develop, so anything we can do which would not overpower a lowly 1st-er, would be great for me.
I played Deepmarket Deception recently and found it a lot of fun. That put Shasta up to 7th level.
Sorry for the wall of words on the game-play thread, but it was the best way for me to recap the strange events just prior to our last stand against the bats/cloaker/plants. After all that excitement, we forgot to ask the townsfolk about their bat pets and what they made of the little play. That probably would have revealed something. I get the feeling we missed something like a dark figure in town manipulating events, some grandmaster of the whole deal.
Who wants to take a stab at the official report? I'm willing to write something, although I'd probably do a better job than Benson would.
Condensing things down to a pithy paragraph, I'd say something like this:
We were asked to investigate what happened to Amenira and to learn what shielded the town from the mana storm. We know the former, not so much the latter. Amenira traced the source of the powerful magic to a cave near the town of Mercy, where a cloaker lived. Also in the cave was a strange collection of plants growing in unnatural directions and combinations. Nestled in the plants was a seedling that seemed to have great powers. It seems to be the source of power that protected the town from the mana storm and enhanced whatever grows in the area. This led the locals to believe in a god they called Roberi whom they thought was focused in a large tree in town. The town was also the source of a strange disease that caused plant-like growths; we all contracted the disease, as apparently did Amenira.
Amenira was apparently killed by the cloaker. This cloaker also seemed to control bats and got them to become accepted as pets in the households of the people. Perhaps he had ways of communicating with the bats and used them as spies. He also may be a devotee of Azeroth. We killed the Cloaker, removed the seedling from its nest and when we arrived in the town, everything was dying. We replaced the seedling, which we talked to using a spell. It identified itself as Verdant Spark. Once replaced in the vegetation in the cave, the plant life in Mercy began to recover.
One last mystery: Amenira crafted construct dolls to spy on families in town to try to learn the origin of the illness and apparently, after she died, her spirit seems to have migrated to this construct.
Anyone want to edit this or suggest additions or deletions?
Looks good to me, but I'm GM so my opinion may or may not be biased :)
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Looks good to me as well. In addition to what Hakime suggested, we might also mention that the Spark indicated it was "sleeping," and that if it ever awakened its influence would spread to the entire world. That seems pretty important (and unnerving).
Should we explain that Robori was an intentional fabrication for the comfort of the people versus some sort of misinterpretation, or is there no point in that level of detail?
Many years ago, the Ghoran were created by Nex to become a food source, but eventually gained sentience. The Ghoran, though, do not reproduce, but can only 'plant' their essence into a new seed and become a new entity: the Ghoran population would never increase and each true death before replanting means the total number of their kind would diminish.
In an effort to circumvent this, a cabal of ghoran druids tried to undergo a ritual to create a new ghoran life. However, the ritual was not fully successful and while a seedling was formed with some sentience, but it gave off a form of radiation that caused nearby ghoran to wither and die. Fearful of their creation, the remaining cabalists sealed the seedling in a state of dormancy and left the area.
The seedling has continued to thrive in its sleep, slowly maturing, and its dreams showing it as a great hero and benefactor and as its power grew, it became able to interact and influence the surrounding land across several miles, causing plants to flourish and humanoid creatures to under go a metamorphosis that turned them partially into plants. The first humans to witness and undergo were the original settlers of Mercy.
After the church of Robori was founded in an attempt to keep peace, which only worked as children recovered and became healthier and stronger than before, the village was renamed Mercy and for decades lived on peace and as a strange bastion within the Mana Wastes.
When news of Mercy surviving a mana storm reached Osirion's temple of Nethys, they sent Amenira to investigate why the town survived. She made good headway with the locals, although her occasional nightly travel caught the attention of a cloaker, who due to his deranged worship of Azatoth, saw Amenira as a villain he had to slay to please his crazed god. The cloaker drew out Amenira, who followed it to his shrine prepared to due battle, but she was bested and mortally wounded. She managed to try and salvage some of her soul into one of her dolls, but not completely. Nonetheless, this act frightened the cloaker, who fled, no worried that he failed his Outer God patron. He eventually returned, and noticed the doll was missing, and in a panic, dragged Amenira's body to another cave, which happened to belong to the sleeping Verdant Spark.
When the party arrives, the town is still going about its business, but the cloaker who is always watching, sees the newcomers as a sign from his god that the party will aid it in defeating the doll, and attempted to convey this through use of its shadows.
The bats as pets are just another oddity of Mercy, although useful for the cloaker to gather intel (explaining how it was aware of the party's arrival).
I think that should answer all of the unsolved or unexplained questions, but if you have another question, spoiler it for safety or PM me :)
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Wow, that is a really convoluted backstory. I expect that if we had tried to communicate with the cloaker, we could have learned some of that, but otherwise, it seems unlikely anyone would do better than we did, unless there was someone in town who figured it out and from whom we might have gotten an explanation. Thanks for the summary.
Benson made his profession roll above. Result was a 16.
Sorry, Chronicles will be out later this weekend. If you REALLY need it this weekend for a con, please PM or email me and I'll get it to you.
Yeah, part of the backstory convolution was lost when the initial scenario sent to Paizo was pared down into the final version, leaving out descriptors of stuff. For example, the actual cloaker shadow performance is far more vague in the scenario than what the author detailed, which he described in the GM thread for this scenario. I included some of those elements where it made sense; one of the benefits of doing this PbP :)
The big problem is talking to the plants in town with speak with plants gives some interesting info, including their appreciate of Verdant Spark; 'Robori' is more amusing as he now goes by that name, but doesn't know why other than people call him that. But there's only a single scroll which is best saved for Verdant Spark.
So thank you all for going through with this scenario; it was somewhat interesting and for the most part, I think the party made some good conclusions. I will admit you guys went off the rails trying to go back in town with Verdant Spark and the scenario doesn't offer guidance on what happens if the party attempts that, so you forced my hand there. But now turning some of the people of Mercy into a potential cabal of guardians for Verdant Spark may be beneficial to their survival, or perhaps they may become the henchmen for a plant being gone mad in his quest to improve life in the Mana Wastes. Only time will tell...
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Thank you for moderating this. It was a challenge and players should not always expect to figure out all the things going on behind the scenes. Excellent roleplaying all. I like how Wyeth and Marduk had very different interpretations of some of the religious elements here.
Let me know if/when you next are recruiting for a PFS PBP that can include 1st levels.
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I will admit you guys went off the rails trying to go back in town with Verdant Spark and the scenario doesn't offer guidance on what happens if the party attempts that, so you forced my hand there.
Way back in prehistory I GMed a few isolated games as well as the start of a homebrew campaign. (Benson's player was one of the people who graciously suffered through that.) One of the very hard lessons I learned was that you can never presume to know what the players might do!
And I think you handled our "derailing" with aplomb.
I agree with Benson: Thank you for running this. I've never been very good at investigative scenarios, but I enjoy them nonetheless.
Thanks also to Benson for the effort of collating/composing/presenting the group's report. Well done and greatly appreciated!
Day job roll was 22, from one page back. NO rush on a Chronicle for me, so if you have to defer some, you can make mine one of them.
Well, as with any check, it's one or the other, so you can either roll or Take 10. But with the minor difference in rolls, the Day Job reward is still the same, so no biggie there.
I'll have chronicles out to everyone this afternoon!
Alright, chronicles are out! Thank you for waiting. And you are welcome for the game; any scenario requests for the next game?
Yes, and with Aspex at level 3, we can now do 3-7 modules. First thought is the Deepmarket Deception, a 3-7 Season 7 scenario.
Also, look for a 6th or just 5 man it?
-Posted with Wayfinder
Just a personal note, nothing mechanical, but noting Benson ' s excellent job on the report to Roderus.
-Posted with Wayfinder
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I've started one new PFS PBP game. I'm in the process of starting a new character in a Savage Worlds game. A game that had died is being revived. So I think I'm now at my limit on PBP games.
If anyone's interested in the Savage Worlds System there is a Cyberpunk themed game recruiting. It's probably almost full up, so move fast. Here is the recruitment link: Savage Worlds / Interface Zero 2.0: Ashes of Phoenix (Recruitment)
No worries, if I need an opening later, I will message you to see if your PbP time is a bit freer.
-Posted with Wayfinder
Sorry guys! I'm doing prep for running our local con that starts tomorrow; I will probably be quiet until Monday. Thank you for your patience!
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For my ease of reference
Contraband
1 dose of blue whinnis poison
a pistol from Alkenstar
a bawdy piece of artwork featuring a Gokan celebrity
three jade unholy symbols, one for Fumeiyoshi, Lady Nanbyo, and Lamashtu
and an engraved darkwood box filled with oracular finger bones smuggled out of Po Li
Thanks for the heads up!
Hey guys, have any of you played Serpent's Rise as Marnarius (The Vengeful) and have its boon on ANY of your characters?
Also, do any of these PC's have previous credit as Lantern Lodge while it was still around?