In the immortal words of Han Solo: "Bring 'em on, I prefer a straight fight to all this sneaking around."
Uruelleth thinks she did not make a strong case for us leaving her alive.
I agree with Uruelleth. Granted Vorya would rather not kill her, but I'm in favor of showing her we aren't screwing around here.
O.k, because Talia is not really all that ok with killing this guys love of his life right in front of his eyes. Thats some pretty bad morality there. Sure, I suspect her heart isn't in the right place, but I'm under a forced time crunch and unable to make him see this. So, if the agreement is to kill her and trigger a fight with the entire pirate crew - then that's fine, it would be great getting a full ransom.
That said, I would really struggle to find a reason for Talia to participate in the fight against Zera, (defending herself against rest of pirate crew is a different matter), because she hasn't found any good reason to kill her - its a fair offer from her initial 30/70. The only thing "wrong" is that Zera is a "pirate" and even then, she hasn't treated her hostage badly.
If the majority wants to go ahead, like please do so and provoke init - I’m all good with it ooc, but personally I find it hard to justify in character killing this pirate when the guy really likes her.
IDK maybe it’s just me that feels this way.
Yeah, I agree with Talia. I'd rather not kill Zera and abduct this guy. It's unnecessary, and keeping him under control afterwards will be a huge pain in the butt. Plus, Kilarra's just way too nice for that deep down in her jaded little heart.
Okay, I don't see a way we're going to be allowed to leave this ship with our skins. Perhaps Zera will think we can collect the ransom, but how's it going to be split? Who gets paid, since I don't think either side will pay the other half the spoils. Zera surely wouldn't, and I can't imagine that the mom is going to trust us to deliver the ransom to begin with, even if we have every intention of passing along the ransom to Zera. We tell Mom that her son has gone all Stockholm on his captor, I don't know if she'll pay us.
Another dilemma! Isn't it fun?!
I hope I've provided a dilemma that's enjoyable or at least interesting. The onus is on you to continue the conversation, but I want you to reach some sort of consensus, or at least majority, before continuing things. Not every challenge needs to come in the form of combat. : )
I'm taking the family off on holiday till Aug 2nd. I'll have intermittent (slow) internet so my posting might be less frequent than usual so please bot as needed.
Thank you for the heads up, Talivar! Have a good time.
I'll give y'all at least another day to discuss your plans for the next in-game day. Hopefully we'll hear from Vorya soon.
GM how long would it take to meet with Jungle Runners etc?
Is that like a full day trek / task?
Just to meet with them? Not long, assuming they're in town. They're based in the Westergreen, so you'd have to get by the wall again, but it's just a short walk from there.
Jaxira is also out of town as well right? Might be an idea to do two birds with one stone if we are making a trip outside the wall. Don't want them being too suspicious.
Also GM since I already worked out what my visions will be, posting them here.
My first vision is kinda a waste, but I'm checking out how Captain Easton treated his last (female) passengers once passage is booked and ship leaves port. Just checking he isn't some kind of slaver or creep. I'm checking for Kilarra.
Second vision is checking out what Makori is doing, because she isn't back yet, its been a couple of days now, and I guess I'm making sure she isn't like, dead or anything. If memory serves, there was a fire the morning when I was talking to the Priest Captain and I bet thats Makori's doing, so I want to see a vision of that. So I'm going to retrace her movements and see if everything is fine.
Jaxira is within Ilizmagorti's walls. She lives in the Songbird Preserve which is located on (and part of) The Three Sisters islands in the middle of the harbor.
Thank you for the update on the visions!
As for the vision with Makori, you'll need to be more specific. I thought the circumstances of the fire were clear, but I guess not. You would have heard about it in rumors if nothing else - the fire was from the Hospice. It burned down mysteriously after you left. Hence why you'll need to be more specific. If you still want to see if Makori was involved in that, that's fine, but I wanted to make sure you knew the location of the fire. Part of the problem with getting a vision of Makori is you also have to be looking for a specific event. Since you don't actually know where Makori is or has been, that could be difficult in this case.
Oohhh I thought it related to the note she left before going. Darn I got my wires crossed there. Could I spy on where she went after she left her note, or still not specific enough?
The wording of the spell is ‘specific event,’ so yeah, it would need to be more specific. She likely went more than one place after leaving anyway. I suppose you could guess possible events, then know whether or not they happened based on if you get a vision or not... or you could always pick a different event. : )
Hmm going waaay back, can I have a vision of that scene where that Hermit saves us when we shipwrecked. Kinda want to know a little more about him. This is instead of Makori
Well, I'm an idiot.
I went through and read the entire thread from start to finish, trying to make notes where I could. I might have missed something, since I started getting kinda zoned, but I did miss:
-What was the secret the Vernai guy captured by the monarchs knew about the Mistress (who we now know to be the Blood Mistress) but couldn't remember. I totally forgot about it. I should have used my visions to spy on that event ages ago!
I should also look into Vernai Korana (who sent the first Red Mantis assassin after us), and I should scout out Chessin, who wouldn't mean much to anyone but he was the personal Red Mantis assassin I had a bit of history with.
There was also a Pirate Meeting aboard The Misty Shimmering that I should look into, and if any of us really hate slavery, we could go after Goldshackle who was the slaver that would have taken our crew.
Also, someone mentioned Alayna to us (Talivar's wife iirc) waaay back as a taunt to him. I could use a vision on her and see how she is doing, but that would probably need to be implemented by Talivar since idk, its kinda...rude(?) spying on his wife without his permission.
DARN I cannot believe I missed that hook though.
Talivar's wife Maria was assassinated (in front of him) and they stole his daughter Alanya. She's probably a silvamilik pleasure slave. Talivar is very much NOT cool with that.
Yeah Goldshackle needs hanging too.
I can check if she is ok if you like Talivar, but its entirely up to you.
Please do. The answer is likely no! Or worse she's fine and becoming one of them. Either way it's a plot hook.
Yeah, I'm on board with all of those plot hooks and suggestions.
Yeah, and I'd also be completely fine if you decided to start spying on events in our lives as well. Well, mine, anyway. To check our "loyalty" to the pact, for example. It could be fun writing up a vignette on Uruelleth's days as an orc or gnoll!
Lots of potential plot hooks. No shame in not following up on all of them at once.
And I think everyone doing their own flashback visions sounds great, should Talia choose to delve into those areas.
That would be a blast.
Yeah, I'm perfectly happy doing some flashback visions, I have just held back up to now because I didn't want to break into someone's privacy.
I could do a vision of Rue's reincarnation, which is an event I know happened because it was referenced earlier.
I could do a vision of Kilarra being framed, because I know of that event as well.
Visions for Vorya and Talivar are harder since there hasn't been much referenced yet.
Talivar would be interested in how his wife's assassination was arranged, who was there, what did they say? He's pretty certain it was the lumber consortium who paid for it but was it Payden who did the deal and who from the Mantis was there?
How much unclaimed loot is there currently?
I'm thinking I should get Talivar some pages of spell knowledge to help with sneaky missions. Invisibility, glibness, adjustable disguise or some of the stronger illusions.
I think Talivar should definitely get pages of spell knowledge down the road, but I'd prefer it for spells that we plan on regularly casting, or always want to have available.
Those situational, one off spells I can kinda pick up with the Lore Spirit, but don't really want to resort to picking them up every day.
Sorry, I'm in NYC this weekend.
Looks like we've stalled for a bit :(
I was going to mention something along those lines. : / We heard from Talia, but is everyone else doing okay? I know the plot is a bit disjointed at the moment, but I'm hoping everyone will be back together for the next in-game day, assuming you're planning to go hunt dinosaur eggs.
Still here, just not finding much reason to post at this moment. I'm sure that'll change once we're hunting dino eggs.
Yeah, I'm going to try to speed us up to that point once Talia and Vorya have spoken to Jaxira.
Could we in parallel see the sailors off?
Yes, absolutely. If you want to have any last words with them and/or start to escort them there, that sounds great (along with whoever else wants to come).
Talia is so nosy.
Yeah! Just wait for the fireworks when she starts trying to peek into Achaekek's apotheosis (presumably such things are not so simple or safe to divine). We do need her to do that at some point because it could well reveal weaknesses we might exploit.
Damn right she’s nosy
And paranoid
And a control freak
And...
Are you sure you don't want to finish that thought? No telling what others will insert for you...
Just letting you know I’m currently suffering from an intense bout of vertigo. I’ll try my best, but I might not manage to keep up with posting over the next few days. Feel free to bot me if needed. Sorry for any potential hold up. And thanks for understanding.
Thank you for the heads up, Kilarra. I hope you get to feeling better soon. Take care of yourself.
I probably don't need to actually say this, but given the... unstable... nature of the website the past couple days, I'll hold off on an update till tomorrow night (assuming the website doesn't go down again).
Holding off on an update to give Talia and Vorya another day to post.
The site appears to be back up. For now, at least. Given it’s unreliability as of late, I may hold off updating us till Monday (assuming it doesn’t go down again).
On a related note, the site’s recent outage has made me seriously question the long term viability of Paizo’s site as a medium for pbp. Has anyone tried a different site?
I'm fine waiting until Monday just in case it goes down again. I've got a busy weekend starting shortly anyway.
I know nothing about other sites. If we switched venues... I would think about it, but I'm not sure I'd be in for switching.
I've been on these boards since 2011, and this is the only time I can recall that bad of a site meltdown. If this is the shape of things to come then I might change my mind, but right now I don't feel like trying another site.
I'm aware of PbP on enworld and giant in the playground. One player in one of my games talked about RPOL. I've not tried any of them but my faith in this site is shaken, this is far from the only time the forum has been down but it's the longest.
In case the website decides to go down again, just wanted to quickly say that the game is on pause till the website decides to cooperate for at least a couple days in a row. I can’t in good conscience push things forward when most people can’t even post.
Yeah. I think I'll do the same with my games.
Alright, the website *seems* (famous last words) to be stable for now. Can I get a sound off of everyone that's back from the outage? I'm hoping we can get back to our normal pace by mid-next week, but I'd like everyone to at least be around. Still need to hear from Talia and Vorya in the gameplay thread before pushing things forward anyway.
On the topic of switching sites... I don't want to knee jerk switch, but I've seen more than one other GM consider the possibility, so I do think it's something we should seriously consider if something like this happens again. I'm not particularly confident in things improving in any meaningful way.