Seraphimpunk's Way of the Wicked

Game Master Seraphimpunk

yeah, i would like to move into the tunnels. I'll give a shot at quietly picking the lock, sneaking into the basement, and entering that night. Anyone else want to come with me? If their show is Starday night, we may want to be in a better position to sneak in than the camp outside. Victor can stay with camp since he's being a sulky b&+&!.

I'll pad my armor carefully and pack it in my bags, and sneak in with Ash. Can you prep two invisibility extracts in case we have to hide?

You'd previously had information that the troupe was performing Moonday evening, or sometime next week. It seems that information was incorrect. They'll be performing Starday evening, and leaving Sunday. The actors aren't staying at the Dalliance, and must be rooming in their wagons outside Balenytne, or somewhere inside the Watchtower.

Ok, well, that changes the plan. We can go back to the scapegoat we've always wanted to use: the dwarves. Any reason that impersonating the head dwarf instead of the caravan master in my previous plan will fail? And do people like that plan or would they rather just cut the old woman up and throw her in the stew? Or we could actually use the old lady as a scapegoat and pin it all on her. That would be amusing if not productive.

Unless anyone has designs for them, I care nothing about the caravan now and plan to ignore them.

Let's stick with productive. I think we can do the dwarves without a problem.

Vincent what do you need from us as far as checks go?

sorry. just been busy packing and waiting for you guys to decide what to do. So, you're going to forego any sabotage during the Ye Merry Men performance, and wait for Moonday to kidnap Mamma G' and poison her soop, disguised as Dwarves. Do I understand correctly

That's my vote, but haven't heard from Neji or Forsythe on the matter. If they have clever ideas for causing havoc during the performance I'm all in favor, just don't have any myself.

I've heard of a play by post rule of thumb. If two people decide to do something, go with it

I'm mostly just worried that Alan got busy and/or died. He missed gaming on Monday (which isn't unusual anymore) and he's been abnormally quiet on both his campaigns.

Still, that's a good rule, we can move forward.

just dead. no worries. ::fluffs hair:: no biggie.
XD

lol. casual casualty.
very nonchallant.

ok, i'll post tonight.
for those that will be sneaking in to kidnap Mamma G: stealth checks.
( am i having deja vous? did i already ask these and then forget? )

Sorry, I've been on gaycation.

It's going to take me a while to catch up, so just assume that I agree with whatever Temperance says until then.

Unless it involves me dying or doing something stupid.

kill her!
said temperance.
a little while ago.
ok never.

I use my alter self ability to look like a short, swarthy fellow, then do a disguise self to look like the dwarven captain guy. It's unclear if my alter self ability will let me appear as a different race, so I assume no. Therefore I'm only counting my +10 bonus f/ disguise self, not a +20 from disguise + alter (which would normally stack).
Dwarven Disguise: 1d20 + 23 ⇒ (6) + 23 = 29

Stealth: 1d20 + 2 ⇒ (15) + 2 = 17

You sneak over to Mamma G's small cottage in town, staying to the shadows and remaining innocuous, but being seen for the dwarf you are if you do get noticed. You peer into the window, and just see her sitting down to a small meal for one, darning some clothes by the firelight in a small chair.

Entering around back through the garden, you hop the fence. 1d20 ⇒ 18 Some twigs snap by the winter succulents in the garden, and you hear some noise inside as mamma G sets down her stuff, and gets up from her chair, soft heeled footsteps scuffing as she walks to the window, peering out into the garden.

it may be all the OITNB, but lets just say that Mamma G looks like Janeway/Red. But with her auburn locks held back in a large braid over one shoulder.

Freezing for a second, you can't tell if she saw you or not.

Seeing she's still awake, I sneak back and whisper with my companion (who has the best disable device?).

I think we should wait till she's asleep. I'm not all that stealthy or particularly good at breaking into houses. It will be much easier if she's not on alert.

were you able to rouse Victor for it? or is Ash your Pick for breaking and entering after bedtime ?

presuming me for speed

will drink my mutagen for dex today.

Ash's stealth: 1d20 + 7 ⇒ (12) + 7 = 19
Ash's Disable Device: 1d20 + 11 ⇒ (12) + 11 = 23

you wait until later, with your Message up, quietly relaying things. She putters around the house. cleans a bit, and then sets out a basket with a few herbs and things in it on the counter, and goes to bed.

you wait a while, until you're comfortable that she's asleep. Ash creeps forward and stealthily picks the lock, and then motions you and anyone else that's going, inside.

Victor, we have work to do, I need your skills to help break into a house and poison the soldiers' soup.

I'm busy, um, scribing spells. Leave me alone.

Seriously? Again? It's not even that hard, we just need you to help us hold this old lady prisoner in her house while we impersonate her and poison the troops.

Oh, you mean I'll have her all to myself?

Er, uh, yea, I mean I guess that sounds alright.

I don't even want to know. Just keep her quiet and don't too anything too bad to her. Then when I give you the signal, you make it possible for her to escape (and in the meantime you should get out of there!).

The signal will be simple. Keep an eye out her front window and I'll use this small mirror to flash sunlight at it in a pattern

We discuss the details of the simple pattern I'll use. Something like morse code, but since that doesn't exist in the pathfinder universe it's probably subtly different.

Wait, why are we going the day before anyways, has she even started on the stew yet? If so, then that's great. If she starts in the morning then we'll have to like wait on her to start cooking before ambushing her OR make it ourselves. I'm guessing if we're going at night it's because she started the night before. Any good stew requires long cooking time anyways, so that seems reasonable.

Hey Ash, you've been excited about doing this poisoning, when does she start cooking usually? Are you confident you can finish the job on the stew given the ingredients and recipes she has on hand? I want to make sure it's believably like her normal stew. I'd hate to get pinched because the stew doesn't taste right.

Fast forwarding from the Victor convo to now...

I follow Ash's motion inside and sneak in as quietly as I can. Assuming I see/smell a stew cooking I continue in and motion for Victor to go in and knock her out good with a sap.

A new stealth roll in case my previous one is expired...
Stealth: 1d20 + 2 ⇒ (6) + 2 = 8

Oops, looks like I bumped into the table...luckily I don't move in past the kitchen.

On seeing Ash's motion in and Temperance's motion to knock the old lady out, I sneak into the room and move quietly by her bed, then pop her in the head. If she wakes before I get a chance or when I hit her, I stop sneaking and move quickly to her.

Stealth: 1d20 + 3 ⇒ (2) + 3 = 5
I'm talking to myself about how sneaky I am and how I'm totally going to sneak up on this old lady as I approach her.

Attack roll is auto-hit since she's helpless, I believe.
Sap Non-Lethal: 1d6 - 1 ⇒ (2) - 1 = 1

I'm distracted by the way a beam of light reflects off her auburn hair and barely hit her. :-(

Assuming I hear Victor fail to successfully sneak up on an old woman and knock her out, I rush into the room:
You idiot. Can you succeed at nothing? Now I hav to go with a cruder approach.
..,and cast hideous laughter on her. DC 22 Will Save.

I'm guessing you don't want to go into formal combat to knock the old lady out, but if you do, I'm happy to go in initiative order and move and cast and all that. Otherwise I'm just typing ahead for how I think things are likely to play out in case I'm not on for a bit.

Come on guys, knock her out but don't kill her. I'm going to be ready to deal with any guards that may show up from hearing her maniacal laughing.

As I leave the room, I shift into her form. If anyone knocks at the door, I'll make some noise like I'm getting up and coming to the door, then answer it and talk them down. Tell them a story about these penny dreadfuls and how funny they are and how sorry I am that I bothered them.
Disguise + Alter: 1d20 + 33 ⇒ (2) + 33 = 35
Bluff: 1d20 + 17 ⇒ (17) + 17 = 34

i have no idea why you people want to bother this woman at night. something about kidnapping her to make the stew and watch it get poisoned by dwarves?

ash looks around the kitchen, and responds in the message.

there's no stew cooking here, it looks like she's just got herbs and stuff from her garden, there's no meat or broth or anything. she must do the cooking on site at the Watchtower. kinda makes sense, stew for a garrison must take huge pots, more than a lone woman would transport a mile to a keep, even with help.

will save vs. hideous laughter: 1d20 ⇒ 16

no, we don't need to do combat. even if victor is incompetent, he can provide a flank, and a nonlethal sneak attack from ash should be enough to subdue her.

she's knocked out. while the noise may have been enough to startle her awake, and consequently start giggling, you doubt it would have been heard by any neighbors this late at night.

you easily tie her up and assume her form.
its just after midnight, so like 1 am moonday morning.
from rumors, you've heard that she starts cooking early moonday morning on the stew for lunch.
if she doesn't cook here, they may start the stew at the keep earier, and she just seasons and adds finishing touches. you could wake her and question her to find out for sure.

Ash, wasn't this your idea in the first place? You wanted to buy the poison and then cut her up and cook her in it, remember?

Ok, so apparently now I have to convincingly make some stew laced with poison that tastes close enough to the real thing to not get me caught before I leave the keep. Awesome. Good thing I have no idea how to cook. Ash, you're going to have to play a very helpful servant and help me out. I assume you're a decent cook with all your alchemy experience...

Sorry for being offline, I was at corporate training for the past couple weeks. Catching up now. Did we win the game?

Reading the above was some perfect Three Stooges or a mild Laurel and Hardy, your pick. Thank you for the laugh .

Noticing I had apparently slipped into a deep sleep I regal the party with my dream of how I was a drone for a foul beast called "a corporation" which demanded my loyalty via a series of tests regarding Knowledge Linux. Upon this dark portent I drop to my knees and I pray to the Gay Master, darkest and lightest of the four legged lords, mighty in his scruff, in the pantheon of delicious old socks, to deliver upon us a montage of our path thus far, in righteous bleating. Oh bad breath lord it appears many of us are confused to our plan, opportunity and timing. Lead us to the garden of favourable things to crew on. Ah goat!

Yeah, i figured we'd sneak in and poison it before it was served. Not cook it. Hope you're a decent chef. =D

Crap. what have I gotten myself into. Cooking is so... women's work. Take Forsythe with you, maybe she can cook.

Women's work? Women's work? What kind of redneck backwater did you grow up in Ash, that taught you such misguided and misogynistic societally constructed gender roles?...

..Tempy rants at Ash for about 5 minutes, in the old lady's kitchen, before getting control of herself again...

I was going to copy paste a wall of text from some article on the term and have her say all of that. But I couldn't find anything appropriate in a 5 minute google search, so you'll have to settle for me saying she ranted at him.

Anyways, thank you for mentioning your very reasonable idea AFTER we've broken into the lady's house and knocked her out. Just sneaking some poison in as a servant would've been a much better idea. But here we are. You are perfectly qualified to cook, or in this case, a perfectly qualified assistant, because I will have to do the cooking since I'm going to have to be disguised as her. Go digging through the kitchen and see if you can find a recipe for stew.

Tempy is cranky, but I love the DM PC being all "well, I would've done X" after it's obviously too late to act on his clearly better and simpler solution.

::now i understand why Victor spends all his time mast... ering his spells away from you::

perception to search: 1d20 + 7 ⇒ (20) + 7 = 27

what luck! it appears that she keeps a handwritten copy of the recipe, to share with cooks at the watchtower and double check that everything is in order.

Ready to infiltrate the keep? =D

Will anyone else be infiltrating the keep Moonday morning with Ash and Temperance while they do this?

Excellent. Now to blame this on the dwarves, then on to the keep. I shift back into my altered-disguised dwarven form. Victor, you will be X; Ash, you will be Y; I will be Z.

X and Y are actually legit dwarves names of people in the dwarves company, Z is the leader guy. I know Z was mentioned earlier but I think that was it. My pref is that X/Victor is named Vince and Y/Ash is named Falin. But open to any dwarves names.

Then I cast daze on the old lady, while having Victor use the smelling salts on her...thinking that way she'll wake up even more out of it than you'd expect for having a headache. Hoping as she comes to she'll think she's eavesdropping on us.

As soon as I see her coming to I start bragging to my companions...

Well, our plan is almost complete. A dwarf should never have to submit to the rule of human overlords, particularly not dwarven worshippers of Urgathoa. I will poison their guards and then raise them as zombies!

Insert overdone maniacal laughter here...

And the best part is that they will blame this old crone for poisoning the garrison and she will hang for our crimes.

I act like I just noticed her waking up

Ah! You're awake! You think you could just lay there quietly and overhear my plans? Well it doesn't matter. They'll never believe you. I can be subjected to any form of magical truth detection and my story will hold true. I'm a dwarven cleric of Urgathoa, there's no way paladin magic will work on me. And you’ll never find a trace of evidence, my room is completely clear of any evidence of my worship.

Insert more overdone maniacal laughter...

Now, walk me through how you normally make stew on Moondays. And if you don’t talk or decide to say something incorrect, my good friend Vince (point at disguised Victor) will make sure you regret it.

Disguise to be the dwarf: 1d20 + 13 + 20 ⇒ (8) + 13 + 20 = 41
Bluff to make it seem like my story is real: 1d20 + 17 ⇒ (20) + 17 = 37
Intimidate to make her talk: 1d20 + 9 ⇒ (5) + 9 = 14

I'll help infiltrate. I'll need help with the disguise mein temperance.

Yea, the old lady may or may not talk. Don't care all that much. Hoping we'll do well enough from the recipe and improvisation to make this fly. So from a plot-moving standpoint, I think we can start infiltrating once Vince gets on and gives us some synthesis of the woman's reaction. Unless she says something particularly unexpected, shouldn't need our input pre-keep.

oh, she talks, she pleads for her life, and gives careful instructions on how to cook the stew, you think you've successfully intimidated her and fooled her into believing you're a dwarven cleric of u know who

Sense Motive f/ Tempy: 1d20 + 0 ⇒ (15) + 0 = 15

Sense Motive f/ Victor: 1d20 + 2 ⇒ (6) + 2 = 8

Victor of course immediately trusts her. Tempy may be more skeptical if the old lady is actually lying and only faking being intimidated. Assuming that doesn't trigger, I'll take what she says as fact.

After the interrogation:
Alright, let's go make some stew boys.

you lay her out and tie her up and whatknot. Ash decides to try and break into the Inn so he can enter the watchtower from within, disguise himself as a kitchen servant, and meet up with Temperance inside. `you're looking foxy today Mama` will be his passphrase in disguise. He stops back with the others to let them know before going, in case anyone wants to join.

leaving for the watchtower early Moonday morning. Temperance, disguised as Mama Giuseppe, who typically travels alone up to the watchtower, embarks. Anyone traveling with her, list your disguise/appearance.

Assuming no one else joins Mama directly. Roll your disguise for mamma. and a bluff check for keeping casual and acting natural, despite never having been in the keep and only having studied the maps before to find the Kitchen. you're at -2 for the situation to the bluff.

The early morning journey up to the watchtower with herbs and recipe is uneventful but cold. you walk the mile, and the guards greet you warmly and you'd swear they start drooling as a pavlovian reaction to seeing Mamma Giuseppe. Inside, and 2nd door on the right isn't hard to hold on to, for more, you'd probably need to pull out the copy of the map.

I stop back at the camp to let everyone know we're heading off to poison the stew. grab the bag with all the arsenic. and give anyone that wants to come a chance to join me through the secret tunnel.

disable device: 1d20 + 11 ⇒ (19) + 11 = 30
stealth: 1d20 + 7 ⇒ (5) + 7 = 12
i'll drink my invisibility and detect secret doors before going in. incase i attract attention. And i stop

if anyone comes with me, they prob just need to hide in the shadows while i open the door.

hopefully everyone's asleep inside. I carefully creep down the stairs to the basement, pinpoint the secret door and go up the hidden passage to the watchtower. In the next basement, invis and extract worn off, I'll adopt the disguise of a kitchen servant.

disguise: 1d20 + 10 ⇒ (2) + 10 = 12
bleh. well hopefully they don't look too closely. its early in the morning.

I'll check my copy of the map. should come out the storeroom, into #2 on the map. I don't think it'll be good for me to explore the other rooms. so i'll just try to quietly go to the hallway #8, and into the kitchens #10, and get to work either cleaning or cooking, before Mamma G arrives, hopefully not many people around.

stealth: 1d20 + 7 ⇒ (2) + 7 = 9 not super quiet, but I have my disguise on. hopefully just the sound of a noisy servant.

i may as well come too, as backup in case something goes wrong in the keep. i won't have my armor on since i'm going to the kitchens as a servant. i'll conceal a dagger on myself.

stealth: 1d20 + 6 ⇒ (7) + 6 = 13
disguise: 1d20 + 18 ⇒ (20) + 18 = 38

there's three guards in the hallway. they look up as the two servants come out and down the hall. One of them gives Ash a funny look.

I'll flirt a little and try and distract them as we go by.

bluff: 1d20 + 8 ⇒ (17) + 8 = 25

as you come down from the tower apparently, Ash clomps along stomping his feet, and one of the guards looks up from a quiet conversation in the silent hall. Leo notices and looks over at Ash nonchalantly as he adjusts his disguise's cleavage, and accidentally makes eye contact with the guard. catching him staring, Leo gives him a wink and a smile as the guard turns away, caught in the act.

You go in the kitchen, where two servants are boiling beef bones and peeling potatoes. They look up, curious what you two are doing here it seems, but they're barely awake and don't mind being relieved as they're dead tired on their feet.

Leo's bluff/brush off: 1d20 + 8 ⇒ (2) + 8 = 10 enough that they don't care. They stick around for a few minutes to wrap up what they're doing, and then accept the excuse to go sleep. There's a large stewpot going on a low flame that seems like its the main meal for the day, the prepwork has mostly been done already for Mamma G's famous food. Ash, curious, you sample a little bit, and it just tastes okay. Whatever she does in the morning apparently makes all of the difference.

Victor stays behind with Mama Guiseppe. I give him loud orders to not cause any physical damage, since injuries would make our story suspicious. As I'm leaving I whisper that he should have fun, but at least make sure she's not too messed up. She needs to escape and get to a guard after all.

Double disguised (alter + diguise self) as Mama Pavlov:
Disguise: 1d20 + 20 + 13 ⇒ (6) + 20 + 13 = 39

Bluff to seem cool and confident, like I do this every week:
Bluff: 1d20 + 17 - 2 ⇒ (2) + 17 - 2 = 17

I enter the 3rd door on the right by mistake (or whatever, don't have a keep map in front of me atm), but apologize to the occupants and make some comment about losing my mind in my old age.

The two guards at the back gate let you in, the three guards in the hall greet you and rub their bellies saying they'll see you at lunch. Everything goes smoothly and you're in. Once in the kitchen, you see two kitchen staff boiling bones and peeling potatoes half heartedly. Someone comes in to check on things and greet you , she acts like she owns the kitchen a bit, and seems a bit off put that you're there, but greets you fake-warmly.

I trust that everything is to your liking? good. I'll expect my kitchen back in tip top shape when you're done.

After that you set about doing the actual work of cooking a stew, following the instructions and using the supplies in the larder. The place seems pretty busy after the woman checks in on you, you have a second to drop pretext and greet Ash and Leo. Looking around, its a large kitchen area, a large chimney vents up, and there's a connecting door to the pantry (#11). Its full of foodstuffs for the garrison, even so, it only looks like it holds enough food for another day or so. Another door connects to the empty mess hall (#12).

You brought the wine, onions, and herbs harvested from her garden, and there's beef a plenty in the pantry for the stew, as well as the broth cooking.

so give me a professon (cook) roll , you can assist eachother. and you'll probably need to. i'll give you a +5 circumstance modifier to each of your rolls for having an alchemist with you and the recipe. we'll just take the highest roll, and count the other two as assists since its a forum and we can move along faster that way.