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Yeah actual formal environmental assessments, at least half the time you're sitting at the computer you're removing text you've already written or fixing formatting or the like. The actual writing paragraphs that are worth holding on to part is miniscule compared to triple checking sources and contemplating implications and making tables and maps. But I do feel I write these slower thaN my reports in school.
Okay, I honestly do have a reason for the silence this time—my computer has been repeatedly crashing since sometime after Christmas, and it's not restoring my BLEEPIN' sessions. I'm still around! It's just that between that and school starting, it's been really easy to forget about things. I'm still around and still planning to get back to PbPs soon. Just sorting out the chaos.
You just need to turn that chaos into nice, cuddly Chaos, KC, you can do it!
It is a little known fact that slaad enjoy a good cuddle.
DankeSean, this is KAOS. We do not 'cuddle'.
Anyways, expect a post up tomorrow! Things are normalizing once again. I'm going to try to do some basic recapping and resolve this whole sequence so we can move on to the fun stuff—formal dinners! :P
Yay! Farrukh gets to do more talking to important people!
Woohoo!
Yay! Farrukh gets to do more talking to important people!
Boy are you gonna be excited for the final installment, where the character with the best Armor Class has to talk down Kyuss and Dragotha in a novel-length dialogue.
Oh, and might as well do roll call, just to be safe: Are we all still here?
Ding!
Marco!
yar
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Y'all can correct placements on the map as you see fit. Farrukh and Astraden are currently considered to be squeezing.
Three Faces of Evil Recap:
During the events here, you dealt with agents of the Ebon Triad, who believe that they can combine Vecna, Erythnul and Hextor (NE, CE and LE gods) to create an "Overgod". Kyuss is the herald of the Age of Worms, which will allow the Overgod to rise.
Farrukh totally kill-stole from Tanith when he cut Theldrick down, after Theldrick killed Carina. Grallak Kur was killed by Cuetzpalli, but brought himself back as an embodiment of corruption. And then got killed again. The Faceless One self-destructed. As a kenku you captured told you, Grallak Kur was much more interested in the worms than the other two leaders, and may have known more about the Age of Worms than they did.
You have been given reason to doubt the veracity of the Ebon Triad's general belief, and in a Harry Potter-esque afterlife scene between Tanith and Well-Documented A!++$!& Theldrick, it was suggested that the Ebon Triad members might be getting duped by some external power.
Carina also died and got better. This had the consequence of separating her from her yugoloth half, which has since been haunting her.
Blackwall Keep Recap
Ilthane, a black dragon alchemist, tried to create a war between the lizardfolk and the encroaching human colonists, and also tried to create a spawn of Kyuss outbreak. You later helped convince the Free City's military leader to leave the lizardfolk alone and step off the marshes.
You also resolved things with the survivors of Kullen's gang, and they decided to stay at the marshes and help out the locals. Astraden has been helping them rebuild.
Hall of Harsh Reflections Recap:
You reunited with the necromancer Filge, who appears to have tried to reach out to you before getting captured. Filge was relatively helpful.
You met your super cool squid friend Zyrxog (Cuetzpalli wasn't here for this). Zyrxog made an offer of "alliance" to stop the Age of Worms, which you rejected. You killed all his babies and wrecked his lab, and he teleported away.
Zyrxog had been seeking to interrogate old enemies Filge and Smenk for intel on you, and ultimately killed Filge and tried to use Smenk as an incubator for his tadpoles. Tanith mercy-killed Balabar. You have since seen Filge out and about in Alhaster buying ingredients.
Astraden's a half-orc now. Cuetzpalli died, and Spiny went into the care of a friendly druid named Anlathi.
Phase Spider Subplot:
You met an evil phase spider warlock who lost his mind due to the encroaching Age of Worms. You killed him to help out Anlathi. It was a fun mystery. Rodrigo the summoner became a benevolent slumlord, and Tanith had a shrine to Kord constructed!
The Champion's Games Recap:
You joined the games and fought a froghemoh. Tanith probably has action figures made of him now. Oh also you killed a giant undead-mass-producing worm monster and captured Raknian and had to crawl through sewers a lot. You narrowly averted an apocalypse in the Free City. This has been speculated to be part of a prophecy, though it didn't come true.
Raknian has since been murdered in his prison cell by a mysterious figure Carina's mother called "The Hierophant".
Carina's "Other Half" allegedly met up with an ally of Raknian's, Bozal Zahole, another yugoloth tiefling, who addressed Carina as "Sister". You killed Zahole, of course.
You met the wizard Eligos, who gave you lots of entry-level Age of Worms lore. Zyrxog later killed him and ate his brain, but you reincarnated him as a dwarf. Xyrxog appears to be using xill as his servants now, and is frequenting the Ethereal Plane.
A Gathering of Winds Recap:
You killed Ilthane the Black, who revealed with her dying breath that she was the pupil of "Dragotha".
You met a highly emotional kolyarut named Clunk, learned about the Wind Dukes—who may be connected to something called the Order of the Storm—and met a cool intelligent ghoul named Moreto. Man, Moreto was awesome. What a great guy.
Spiny ran away from the Free City and was last seen heading north. Apparently, he's continued to grow.
Spire of Long Shadows Recap:
Cuetzpalli came back. So did Zalamandra, after a brief stint on the Elemental Plane of Fire. Even extraplanar beings like salamanders are worried about the Age of Worms.
You met the archmage Manzorian in Magepoint, along with your old buddy, the eladrin Celeste, and Manzorian's main agent/caretaker, an adventurer named Cymria. Manzorian sent you off to retrace the footsteps of the biggest expert on Kyuss in the world—Manzorian's old friend, missing in action, the wizard Bucknarde.
In Kuluth-Mar, you met a worm naga named Sruggut and cut a deal where Sruggut gave you a great deal of information in exchange for escape. Sruggut had met Bucknarde before, and made a similar deal only to be betrayed.
You met and eventually defeated the Harbinger, a spellweaver lich—and Kyuss's former mentor, now trapped in the ziggurat. He intimated that some of you, but not necessarily all, are heroes whose destiny is interwoven with that of Kyuss and the Age of Worms.
Recap of what you and Manzorian learned about Kyuss's past. History seems to have been scrubbed clean of much of Kyuss's actions of late, and only those who predate Kyuss's ascension can remember it (hence Sruggut's usefulness).
You learned that Manzorian was Tenser, and that the Circle of Eight led by Mordenkainen is so far trying to stay neutral in this whole Age of Worms thing.
You learned that Dragotha is now a dracolich, and have a hunch where she might be. Information on her is nearly impossible to find, due to the strange hole in history.
General Modern Recap
Eight days ago, Tenser sent you to Alhaster, continuing to follow Bucknarde's trail.
You are mainly trying to visit Lashonna, a woman who knew Bucknarde and may have been one of the last people to see him alive (assuming he is dead). She is hard to access, as a very influential person in Redhand. From what you've gathered, Lashonna is one of a small number of people in Alhaster who knew ex-paladin Prince Zeech before he fell from grace and became a Hextorian.
Alhaster hates the Ebon Triad. Like, hates.
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Ah, and the prophecies. Those are important. These are what signal the coming of the Age of Worms, and you heard/saw them during your visions in Kuluth-Mar. A number of these have already come true.
They are shown here. Notably, Carina identified the hand in one of the visions as the Hand of Vecna.
(Manzorian explains them a bit more here)
Anyways, it is currently the 9th of Harvester (September), Year 595. Something wild: When this day started, it was the 8th of September IRL.
The Banquet is scheduled for the 10th. I.E. tomorrow. You are investigating Sinner's Sanctum for any lore it contains on the Age of Worms—such as a big vault, a super cool book, a bunch of avolakia pictograms...
Oh, also, don't forget that you have a pretty cool text with you already: The Apostolic Scrolls. They're an intelligent minor artifact that has made a very specific deal with you (particularly with Carina). Among other things, it has told Carina who her birth mother is.
Eben has spoken to it since then. It has commanded Carina to never let Eben handle it again.
Oh, yeah, also, Eben's girlfriend. We haven't seen her in a while, have we? She indicated she might be coming to Alhaster at some point to set up a shop.
Whoo... thanks for the recap, KC!
What, no inclusion of The Whispering Cairn in your recap? Lonsoc the rat's death is the fulcrum around which this entire campaign turns!
(e) RIP
Yeah, nice recap. I had forgotten at least 70% of that.
We've been going a long time—five years, come this March. I didn't even get into all the little tangents, like how Anlathi was the old druid Nogwier's adopted sister, or Niniane the advanced quasit, or all the Rod of Seven Parts stuff (since you gave it to Tenser to get the pit fiend's goons off your back).
Is that a record for this site? I dunno if it is...
...but it makes you think.
Last time I checked we were number three in total posts, against games with constant open recruitment and stuff like that.
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We are currently number two in total all time gameplay posts.
This thing has a ridiculous 61k posts.
We have 21,442.
Then the third game has 20,951.
Most of the other most posted games are no longer active it looks like.
Zahvroma has always been absolutely bonkers—my best guess is they all know each other IRL and keep each other posting regularly that way. Tragically, Aubrey's Eberron Campaign (one of my favorite ongoing games) ended recently. I need to catch up on that.
Because of this, yeah, we're now third place—second place if you don't count Avalon, which is both kinda hiatusing right now and also an open enrollment high school roleplay, so not quite the same as what we're doing. It's cool that we finally passed Aubrey's Eberron Campaign, though!
In terms of "longest-running", of course, we're nowhere near—five years is pretty good, but Aubrey's Eberron Campaign almost definitely holds the spot at almost 12 years, and Aubrey has the runner-up with his ROTRL game at 11 years. :P
Which just means, even with slow downs, we've been posting around twice as fast as most games, which is its own accomplishment.
Thursday's both the day with all my regular due dates and all-day classes, so I think Wednesday and Thursday are good days to expect some inactivity. I'll look to get a post up either tomorrow or Friday!
As a basic reminder, Grin is the right-hand-man of the theater owner/madame, Miomay of Miomay's Playhouse. He is a hobgoblin wizard who prepared illusion spells today due to some "other business", so he's actually pretty short on useful stuff aside from a couple buffs. He does have some items, though—one scroll of dispel magic, one of gaseous form, one of pyrotechnics, one of passwall, and a couple high-level healing potions. He also has a wand of magic missile. He's maybe a bit stingy about his scrolls.
He went over this stuff with the party beforehand, of course (everyone knows all adventurers think to explain every buff/item they have in advance to avoid wasting time later).
Grin is not going to be doing much in this fight, but if anybody wants him to do anything, he'll be willing to assist.
I noticed that you left out the part where we all pretended to be dogs in your recap, KC.
Because I forgot about that until I saw the Dog Key on the map. XD
Tonight I got kidnapped and forced to watch Great British Bakeoff. I'm still here, I promise, just as flaky as a properly-kneaded pastry at the moment. Homework's been sort of piling up, so there might be some stormy waters over the next few days as I scramble to catch up while helping to arrange a friend's move.
On the bright side, I'm finally back on ADHD meds after a couple weeks' effective hiatus. So I'll at least have a set of functioning oars when navigating said waters. Looking to post tomorrow, and if not tomorrow, it'll be Monday!
Oh, we're back online. Let's get a post up, then, shall we?
EDIT: It went down twice more, but I got it up. And I think I killed Cuetzpalli again, which isn't very nice of me.
I think we've got two separate breath of life sources on tap, so he's not going to get too much of a chance to party on with Kord.
Ah, that's right, you have Carina.
See, I was worried because if my math is right, Astraden's one AoO from going down, and she's still chilling in what has been scientifically labeled "The Why Would You Even Be Here? Side of the Room" of the battlefield. But if you have two sources of Breath of Life, I bet it's fine!
Also, refresh my memory—Eben died in the Spire of Long Shadows, right? Breath of Life'd back to life? Or was that an Action Point retcon?
Oh, so Cuetzpalli did about 400 points of damage in one round in a fair, DR-free world, I think?
I like how this is the point where we all just sort of collectively agree that we've entered into some strange RPG version of Russian Roulette where "balance" is more about making sure everyone's gun has at least one bullet in it. Pathfinder gets wild around now.
The system really a lot of work for the DM after level 10ish with any kind of reasonably skilled players. I found that just increasing the monster's HP, saves and AC arbitrarily is usually enough. Or if they have having trouble hitting, which he doesn't seem to be, give them a +10 bonus to hit or whatever.
Also, my HP in my bar didn't include Astraden's healing. I had 55+31 = 86 before the onslaught. So 69 would not have dropped me, and the last hit would have gone on to me as well, meaning I took 108. Which means I'm at -22 and very dead, especially if you think about my rage ending on top of that.
Make sure to calculate your total HP, since breath of life is a thing.
Obituary entry added.
At this point, the death toll:
The Whispering Cairn
Erip, died to acid beetles
Three Faces of Evil
Carina, killed by Theldrick
Hall of Harsh Reflections
Astraden, killed by invisible stalkers (and Carina)
Gattel Watam the investigator, killed by doppelgangers (while saving Cuetzpalli)
Cuetzpalli, killed by doppelgangers
The Champion's Belt
Nobody!
A Gathering of Winds
Nobody!
Spire of Long Shadows
Astraden, killed by Wormcaller (retconned by Eben, officially quick-rezzed by Carina)
Eben, killed by negative energy darts (quick-rezzed by Carina, immediately tried to drink worms)
Astraden, killed by worm naga coup de grace (quick-rezzed by Carina)
Prince of Redhand
Cuetzpalli, killed by Overgod
In case you all are wondering, Astraden holds the party record of being killed 3 times, and Gark has been through 5 PC deaths in total, not counting Lonsoc. Many of them have been connected to acts of heroism and/or other party members' mistakes.
Runner-up is, of course, Cuetzpalli with 2 deaths (but Rodrigo died in our hearts when he left).
Oh, and a different metric: Kidnappings! Eben has been kidnapped once, Zalamandra twice.
With the rage ending I think I'm at -61, I need to get healed 48 by breath of life. I think I'm probably dead, Jim.
... I think Cuetzpalli might just explode when he dies now. Sounds like it might be reincarnate time. I promise to let you spend an Action Point to reroll if it's a kobold. Maybe you'll get troglodyte and you might finally surpass Astraden in stinkiness.
That said, I'd also allow you guys to spend an AP to combine both breath of lifes (breaths of life?) in determining whether or not he comes back, but arranging it might be more dangerous if the Overgod isn't dead yet. And c'mon, everyone knows reincarnate is way more fun. ;D
Yeah, went back to check, and Eben's SoLS death was an actual death/breath of life save, not a retcon. (To be fair, there were a lot of retconned deaths in that dungeon, as I recall. Along the lines of 'no, wait, don't forget you have this buff and this buff, oh, I forgot I can give you a reroll," etc.)
Rereading the bit about the fountain reminds me that we still have all those jars of knowledge worms hanging around. I'm surprised Eben's the only one who's used one, to date! I mean, we have Astraden standing by if things go wrong.
And, not to detract from KC's mad fantasies about what Cuetzpalli might roll up, Astraden does have access to raise dead at this point. Not like we're impoverished little 3rd-level adventurers trying to finagle a way around a reroll anymore! (Though I could see Astraden insisting. 'What, it was good enough for me, Carina, and Elgios, it's good enough for Cuetzpalli! And it's CHEAPER! Diamonds don't grow on trees, you know!")
Welp, it's gonna have to happen now. I jabbed Cuetzpalli and didn't roll high enough.
Besides, one more death and I think he gets a free sundae. XD
I actually have one thing I can do to potentially save Cuetz, but given it relies on an opposed attack roll, it's a long shot. I can attempt to block any or all of the Overgod's attacks with iron Defender's Riposte and my 1/day ability (or is it twice now? I've never used it...) to extend a Counter and use it repeatedly in a turn.
Would you mind if I rolled my Counter(s) at this stage, or have things moved on too far with Carina's attempt to save Dead!Cuetzpalli?
Is it a "use before the attack is resolved" ability, or a "use after the attack to negate it" ability? If the latter, go ahead—if it's supposed to be announced before the attack is rolled, though, no dice.
All "opposed to attack roll" Counters are after attack is made, after result is revealed, before damage is rolled. We've been kind of ignoring that last bit since they don't function in PbP otherwise.
Relevant text:
Counters are immediate actions that you attempt during an enemy’s turn. Usually, your foe must make a specific action, such as an attack against you, for you to use a counter.
If a counter is compared to an attack roll, then it is initiated after the attack roll is made and the result is revealed but before damage is rolled. A counter that replaces a saving throw or other roll is used before the roll in question, and cannot be used retroactively. Other counters may have specific triggers (or not have triggers at all), as noted in their descriptions.
Yeah, go ahead and try, then.
It sounds like I should wait for Farrukh to try his trick that may save Cuetzpalli
It failed. =(
If any of those attacks hit Farrukh applies -6 to hit for the round?
And we know 38 doesn't hit? Ouch.