MoF's Hells Rebels

Game Master MordredofFairy

Keeping his eyes firmly on the still-nameless ghost, Boros addresses Nezari's question. "As long as he's quiet and doesn't try gettin' loose, I'm perfectly fine with leavin' him alive when we're done here. No doubt feelin' sorely put upon by us, but alive to complain nonetheless. But right now, we need a place to rest up and we're really not in a place to just trust that he won't lead trouble right us that we don't need."

"But how's he to know us to be true to our word? We're seeming no different than brigands from his side. Man, I'm starting to think I'm not cut out for this hero business if it's like this. This ain't sitting right with me at all." Nez still doesn't seem comfortable.

"Yeah, yeah...listen to your lady friend, Mister Thug. Tying up won't be necessary. Nor those weapons. Let me welcome you as guests. I hate visitors but I can be hospitable. I have some rabbit jerky and I can brew a mean mushroom tea. We all sit at the fire, sharing absolutely no information about each other, you move on, I stay here, everybody remains happy.", the man is hasty to take Nezari's side.

Sense Motive Check: 1d20 + 9 ⇒ (2) + 9 = 11
Ugh...

The soldier points a warning finger at the "ghost" while speaking. "You don't get a say in the matter, so hush." Turning his attention to Nezari, he continues. "Well, we'll see what the others have to say before we do anythin' he can't walk away from. Will that settle your worries?"

"Geez.. You suck at first impressions." Miranda mumbles, probably at the "ghost". Mostly at the "ghost" at least.

Sense Motive?: 1d20 ⇒ 3

Now she wasn't the best gauge of persons - and the scene was quite antagonistic already. So she felt bad about making it worse. But also, if someone were hostile before, they certainly had all right to be so now.

"We hmm could tie some bells to him instead? That way we'll hear if you try to murder us in the night. And less 'tied-up-to-be-stabbed' energy." Miranda suggests.

"Do we really feel so safe that we weren't planning to watch in shifts even if this guy wasn't here?" Nez asks. "Still, I'm okay with the bell plan if you are." She offers the ghost.

"Well, obviously we'll have someone standin' watch," the soldier replies to Nezari. "But we've also no way o' knowin' what kind o' magic he's got in that head o' his. Maybe somethin' that'll have us all driftin' off to sleep. But if he's trussed up like a market piggy, that's less chance for him to do anythin'."

Stepping well back, he gestures down the hallway with the mace, clearly intending for the ghost to get moving in the indicated direction. "And tyin' some noisemakers to him ain't a bad idea either, provided we can find some."

"Oh come on. What, you gonna get scared if I turn translucent again? I'm a pacifist, you cretin."
He makes a step towards the indicated direction, but mostly to place Nezari between himself and Boros, then turns to the ladies:"I dislike that, but you are welcome to take temporary possession of my component pouch. I'd certainly welcome that over getting tied up in a corner."
He turns to Boros again: "And if you're still worried, we can go downstairs. There's only one door leading up, and you're welcome to sleep leaning against it for all I care. Just let me go first, there's a trap." He turns to Miranda, before proudly speaking up:"I installed it myself!"

While the others are busy on their escapades with some illusionist, Varuzhan sneaks his way off to the basement, looking to secure the location. He moves quietly and peers closely.

Perception (dim/dark): 1d20 + 14 ⇒ (9) + 14 = 23
Fort save?: 1d20 + 5 ⇒ (5) + 5 = 10
Stealth (dim/dark, ACP): 1d20 + 12 - 4 ⇒ (1) + 12 - 4 = 9

Confident in his darkvision, Varuzhan makes his way downstairs. About where one would expect it, there is a cellar beneath the mansion - a storage room. Most of it seems unused, but there are 2 baskets with apples and turnips in the back, and a table is full of dried mushrooms and 2 bowls of berries and nuts.

More interesting than all that, however, is that next to those things, there is a opening in the wall that leads further downstairs, concealed by some linen hanging between two racks but not fooling the Strix darkvision.
This tunnel seems to have been made after the building - the steps are set with stones, but the walls and ceiling are earthen, supported by wooden beams. About 15 meters diagonally down, the wooden beams end in a doorframe with what appears to be a sturdy, closed door.
Halfway down the stairs, he hears a barely audible 'click' as a hatch in the wooden beam above him opens and some mushrooms rain down, exploding in clouds of spores the moment they touch V, the walls or the floor.
The Strix attempts to dodge them, but suddenly, the world turns black as he loses consciousness.
You did roll extraordinarily bad on that :) But that way we'll go with the original script, just that you are waking up again faster than planned. Well, as soon as the other party members decide what to do with the 'squatter'.

What are the NPC tagalongs up to at the moment?

The man remained in the lobby, setting up camp, preparing dinner, that kind of stuff. The lady and the Lector went to backtrace a bit to hide any trail that might lead to the house and setting a false trail, just in case.

Nez would be staying with the guy for the dual purposes of protecting the party from him and him from Boros.

Turning actually invisible and stabbing someone was more of a worry on her mind - but let's not share that idea. Besides it was *her* idea. Was mildly curious about the trap though ...

I *think* as long as we have a guard - and we ought to have that anyhow - taking the pouch and tying some bells to him should be good enough. If he can turn invisible this ought to at least help us pin him down. And if he can teleport well he'll be out of here anyhow.

If he can teleport, we're very lucky he's a pacifist. :P

Geez, you're acting like Boros is going to start foaming at the mouth, crack the guy's head open with the mace, and start eating the gooey insides. He's just interested in making sure that the party doesn't have to deal with any threats when they're at their weakest. No brain eating, promise :D.

"Yes, fine, let's just get on with this," the soldier grumbles with a roll of his eyes as he divests the prisoner of the aforementioned pouch. He's rather disgusted by how readily Nezari seems to have responded to the man's attempts to find a friend among them, and can only hope that Miranda and Varuzhan prove more resistant and suspicious. After all, it's not paranoia because people really are out to get them, and Boros has to keep that firmly in mind as long as they're outside the city with that dragon.

"ZZZZZzzzzzzzzz......"

Time for a little nap.

Maybe not that but pre-emptive kneecapping could also give us a bad rep :p

You return to the main lobby room, where your travel companion informs you that V returned from the perimeter and was currently checking the stair down to the basement.
The mage you captured rolls his eyes, commenting :"More people. Great. Just how many of you are there?", before heading for the basement, with some urgency:"Your friend had better not ruined my trap. It's a pain to reset."
He puts a hand in his pocket, then freezes as Mace and Blade both are ready to strike. Very slowly, he retrieves a Ioun stone, explaining:"For light. My eyes don't do so well in the dark."
He lifts it towards his head and releases it, where it starts shining like a torch.
He moves through a storage basement towards a second set of stairs, then two or three steps down comments:"Of course. Worst day ever. Well, good news and bad news. Good news is you don't need to worry about that trap. Bad news, I'll have to reset it and add a new one once you left. And in "I don't give a f~@%", that Tengu of yours is taking a nap at the bottom of the stairs."

Seeing Varuzhan out cold on the floor, Boros doesn't respond much to the man's obvious displeasure beyond a dismissive grunt. He's more concerned with how long the strix is going to be in that condition, and says as much. "Yeah, yeah, we've inconvenienced you, poor you, life's hard and so on. How long is he goin' to be out like that, and is he goin' to have any problems from whatever it was when he wakes up?"

"Yeah. Hell is other people.", he comments to Boros first statement. Then takes a few more steps down, unlocking the door and nonchalantly stepping over the passed-out Strix. "Couple hours. And don't bother slapping him, he's entirely elsewhere. Oh, and he'll have trouble remembering the last couple minutes before it happened. Besides that, no problems, unless he broke a wing or something while descending the stairs. Or shat himself while dreaming about a toilet."

He steps inside the room, then to the side to let you enter:"Welcome to my laboratory and bedroom."
The room is larger than expected, about 30 feet wide and 40 long, with the same earthen walls as outside and two wooden pillars supporting a wooden ceiling with 2 holes for smoke to rise up.
One wall is filled with storage units that contain all manner of contents - Bowls with mineral powder, animal body parts in jars, alchemical components - the back wall away from the door is lined with tables, there are some books, but also vials, beakers and other equipment. On the third wall, there is a makeshift bed - it looks comfortable enough, but was certainly not in the top 10 of what effort was spent on in this room.
"I CAN help your friend come to his senses a bit faster, if that means you can leave faster, but it'll take a bit to prepare. Who wants Tea?"
Unless stopped, he fetches some chemicals and a few mushrooms from the storage shelf and approaches the lab tables, holding up and waving the mushrooms.

"Ah, tea for everybody. Excellent.", he gets to work brewing tea with a setup including multiple sources of flame heating multiple glass containers that are somehow connected with one another, while humming a song to himself.

Miranda will grab a blanket from her backpack and make sure Varu doesn't freeze while "napping" at least. "Unless that tea of yours can dredge up the sun a bit earlier, that won't help. Sorry." And seeing the effect *something* had on Varu, she wasn't overly keen on ingesting/inhaling anything offered. "Let's just endure this and we'll be gone."

"Oh, lass, trust me, I am absolutely brewing this tea in hopes of making the passage of time hurry up to sunrise."
After a few minutes, he blows out a candle heating one of the vials off to the side, then checks the crystallized remains of the liquid that was inside.
"Smelling salts, and a bit of this liquid here. Should get your birdman right up. He'll feel like he's molting, but he'll be awake."

He hands both to whoever will take it, clearly not intending to be next to Varuzhan when he wakes up.

"Also, you'll forgive me for the oversight, I don't have guests here normally, so you can either fetch some cups from upstairs or provide your own liquid containers into which to pour the tea. It's almost done."

"No, no tea for me," Boros says with an annoyed expression, staying well back from the man and his concoctions. He's well aware of just what sort of trouble even a half-competent alchemist can manage, and is keeping a very careful eye on everything going on.

"Suit yourselves.", he shrugs, before pouring a cup. He drinks deeply, almost downing the hot mushroom elixir in a single gulp.

Then he places the cup back on the table, sits down on a bench, and turns around.
His pupils are visibly dilated as he asks:"Any of you play an instrument?"

Also, just to re-iterate that, he DID give you the potion and salts to wake up V - if you want. You can also not trust the potion and decide to fast forward to the morning at this point. If so, is there some watch order? What do you tell Octavius and his elder-couple buddies? All down here might be crowded, and the couple at least had been eyeing the bed upstairs.

Yeah. Pass on the tea. They'd need all their wits when there was a dragon looking to snack on them. Miranda will test the other concoctions though on V. Carefully. And preferably with one of the healers by her side!

---

"Boros plays percussion sometimes. But we've already agreed to not do that." Miranda sticks out her tongue at the pair. She wouldn't mind learning an instrument herself one day, but she could hardly afford such hobbies in neither gold nor time.

---

If we split the party we'll need more watches I think. One with an eye on Mr Mage and one taking a careful peek outside once or twice. But there's plenty of us, so ... We can probably have two people on each watch. Less likely a sneaky Charm Person or something screws us over anyhow. Other thoughts?

Varuzhan comes to his senses. He has an intense headache, and no recollection of the last 58 rounds(about 6 minutes) before he triggered the trap. He was likely doing his perimeter check outside, preparing to head back in and check the cellar, telling Lore to keep watch at the entrance.

Your host just sits, sometimes giggling, or watching his hands for what seems a dozen minutes or more, unless interacted with or addressed.
However you set your guards, there is no trouble during the morning.

Did you plan on doing anything during the day, or just wait until nightfall?

Watching the man get his brains soaked with mushroom juice has Boros shaking his head in disbelief. "Well, whatever, long as it keeps him quiet and amused," he eventually says with an aggravated grunt before looking to see if Varuzhan is ready and able after his unplanned nap. When it comes to the matter of how to pass the time, Boros visibly hesitates--he really does want to see if there are some good books in that library--but eventually decides it's just better to stay down in the basement, get some rest, and keep a watchful eye on their "host" in case the mushroom tea hasn't quite left him as impaired as it seems.

A very groggy Varzhan rubs his head as whatever nasty trap that hit him slowly wears off, realizing that his allies had discovered him and, thankfully, a troublesome resident. "Ugh, and I thought I was keeping you safe," he says.

He looks into the darkness he was intending to explore. "We should see what's down here first. No resting until we secure this space."

Not sure if there's that much more to this basement, but V would want to check.

"I figure we might be safer if we don't and just leave the traps intact. There's somebody what's been squatting here, and I figure the more we break his stuff, the more likely we're to have a fight." Nez offers a different approach.

To be clear, you are ALL down in the basement at that point. Unless someone carried Varuzhan up the stairs and placed him somewhere else. Even so I believe at least two people remained downstairs with the mushroom mage, the fun fungi foreseer, the conjurer of caps, the shaman of stems, the thaumaturge of tea.

"Oh, so this is someone's home?" Not at all what Varuzhan had expected. "Hope they're keeping this place safe. We'll find ourselves a quiet corner and rest, then."

He trudges back up the stairs. "Glad this place isn't haunted."

"Oh, sure, you do you.", the former Ghost speaks up when Varuzhan opts to walk up the stairs. Despite imbibing his own mushroom tea, he does seem quite alert. Even while 'phasing out' he quickly takes note of any disturbances or changes in his surroundings.

Question is, are you staying over the day? If so, do you tell him anything? Due to Boros's threats he is too afraid to ask questions, but the implication seemed to be that you are here to rest - if you stay until the next watch cycle and at night, he will...grow nervous, not knowing what your thing is.

I'm all for telling him nothing. It means we won't have to bop him over the head to make him dead quiet :p.

Yeah, shutting up but keeping an eye on him sounds good to me.

I've lost track of time, when are we trying to gain entry to the city again? I remember there being a three day cycle.

Aye that's our greatest concern imo. We might want to let our host know when we are leaving, if we need to stick around. Just so he has something to look forward to and not do anything dumb(er) :p

I had to look it up too, it seems that you have one more day to waste - the next night should be the one with the right shift.

So yeah, you'll just have to pass the day. If you do not say anything, you'll find that he grows increasingly nervous as the hours pass.

Regardless of how much you decide to interact with the squatter you took prisoner, how DO you intend to spend the day? Just pass the time, do something "productive'?

Also, to what extent will you interact with what your prisoner considers his? He does have a fully stocked alchemy lab in the cellar, he has quite a bit of stored food, and the library is surprisingly well-stocked. Of course, aside from the fact that he will not fondly remember you either way, how much you "invade" into his stuff might influence just how much loathing he will feel for you once you depart.

Do give a short input and let me know how you spend this day - I'll assume you break camp and move to the city walls after nightfall, and will move us along once the day is over.

Voting that we at least give him the departure time to look forward to. And don't steal anything unless we have to. Miranda is up for reading a bit in the books and/or play some dice/card games to pass time.

Nez doesn't wanna bother the poor guy. She's been in that lifestyle. :P

Yup, we can just chill.

Boros will go up to the library and nose around for anything of interest on the shelves. And yes, reassure the poor mushroom drinker that we're not homesteading the place as his new forever roomies or anything :D.

You spend another day at the ruined Mansion, passing the time reading, chilling, playing.

After all the trouble, the fights, prisons, sewers, swamps, dragons, patrols...it was good to just take it easy for a bit.

So much so, in fact, that some people might be pondering if all of this was really worth it, if risking their lives for the good of the City under such detrimental circumstances was really what they wanted to be doing.

Opposition to Thrune was one thing, being in open rebellion a different thing altogether.
But each member of the party had time to ponder by themselves, or simply enjoy the day.

As evening approaches, you assure your unwilling host that you plan on departing, and he seems visibly relieved.

You gather your belongings, break camp, and make you way towards the city wall, taking a moment to decide on your approach.
Will you all go together and hope "your guys" are on shift? Does a single person approach? In full equipment? Or do you convince the Lector to take off his arms and armor?(There is still martial law inside - aside from the fact he is a man being looked for)?
(The later would take some attempt at convincing - if confronted he'd prefer being ready to go down fighting, not being unarmed and helpless and waiting in a prison to be murdered. Any of the social skills can do depending on how you word things(i.e. you can also "intimidate" him into compliance by presenting the dangers and outcomes, rather than your character being the source of the intimidation))

"I gotta plan, I'll go first what, and if it's all clear, our guys are on shift, after I get to the other side, I'll shoot glitter into the sky!" Is Nez's plan.

"Glad to be done with that gnome," says Varuzhan in relief.

He nods at Nezari's plan, then turns to Lector. "You will need to take off some of your fancy armor, and hide the rest under clothing."

Varuzhan himself begins looking around for a sturdy branch that can serve as a new walking stick / quarterstaff, as he uses his Hat of Disguise to assume the appearance of an older man for the return.

"It's a good plan. Hmm. Maybe something more discreet then glitter? Feels like one of the things Thrue would outlaw given a few more days to think..." Miranda chirps. Though they *probably* hadn't outlawed glitter. Right?

"Agreed on the dress. Some sort of robe or could work; maybe just blankets. You could borrow mine, though it might be a bit small..."

Someone should still roll a social skill check. He won't block you, but to what extent he'll comply depends on the result.

How did we get out with our armor and weapons again?

Lol social check? Hope this is not a check to "improve a creature's attitude toward me," otherwise -5 penalty.

Diplomacy: 1d20 + 1 ⇒ (20) + 1 = 21. Crit!

"Your girl will thank you when you make it through to see her," he mentions, hoping to persuade the fellow.