The Father of Waters

Game Master Fighting Chicken

Nice Oios!!!

You say he won't reanimate the dead, but all you've done is give BP ammo to bait it ;)

Damn, Imix. That'll give them something to think about.

Really nice, Imix. I'm thinking about how to respond. Do you have a figure for how much food you'll be able to raise each day?

I've got most of the leveled items worked out ('cept Oios). Will be IMing them to you shortly.

I've also been thinking about this next stage, how best to approach it.

You'll be passing through a lot of land belonging to small tribes. This section is just a quick interlude to show that they are dispersed, and that the deal that you struck with the first tribe doesn't hold with any others - in other words, you'll have to negotiate with each tribe you find. Rather than play out each encounter, we should just decide how much food and/or goods you're going to give each tribe and tally them up. That is if you're going to give them anything.

Since you're not exploring, we can fast-forward a bit. Is the plan to ride the Cheya through the swamp, or to do something else?

I'll have to crunch some numbers later and see what we're willing to give up.

We've went out of our way to avoid conflict thus far. Unless things get desperate I assume we'll continue this course of action?

Yeah, unless we notice something off, I think we want to move on.

We're looking for someplace to settle basically. That means we're searching for either friendly people that can help or looking for someplace that looks fertile, with water, and with at least some feature that'll make it easier to defend.

Huh, should probably ask Mac that.

The number under the spoiler is about right per day. Assuming the bushes themselves have some nutritional value inherent... 240 people? He'll use up about 8gp of components a day doing this though.

Is the rest of it okay? I'm not sure if you think he would not have been able to pick up enough Beastling for it.

I'm also realising that this fever thing is probably really irritating to everyone else. I like it as a consequence of burning through so much of his power each day.

I am curious as to whether positive energy seems to have any effect on the water and things from the water. Someone discovered the stream tyhe Flame defiled basically seemed to have had all the Life in it replaced with Death. Wondering if massive channels are doing anything to destroy that death, even if it leaves the water "neutral".

I'm presuming the swamp is what our home will look like after the Flame is finished.

Thanks, Imix. I was a bit confused by your spoiler. So, you're casting on the beach and addressing the Beastlings then?

EDIT: I think I understand that the 240 meals is over the length of the trip, and then you're final speech on the beach is an additional casting to wow the beastlings/aid diplomacy?

Oios, our current goal is to reach the old Dwarven capital city, and potentially settle there. That area may be what Maxc is referring to by "tall stone trees", which is also where the water leads.

There will probably already be some kind of peoples at the capital city... If they accept us, great. If not... We may be desperate by that point and have to do a bit of pacification.

OK, so noted.

What are you all offering, if anything, in tribute to the various tribes that you pass along the way?

Hmmm. Simplistically 16 spell points x 4 caster levels x 3 people = 192. With Wizardry in Nature this jumps to 16 x 5 x 3 = 240. If he has to make bushes to grow food on (and I reckon he will) then he spends an SP on that, knocking the number down a bit.

Each day he goes through the ritual (which we agreed on earlier) because I (and Imix) am not keen to see our people eat the stuff that grows in this swamp. My suggestion is that the "component" for this is more food, basically because it means we will still go through our stores, albeit at about a third the rate.

On the 13th he just does what has become his daily ritual on the beach - if you are willing and the other characters don't brain him and the beastlings don't take him down.

While we're on the topic though... there are a lot of people on the boats not sailing, right? Everyone is boarded? Is it possible to get them to do stuff? Do we have supplies that can be commandeered? I want Imix to commandeer stuff and make things... but things cost. Things cost a lot.

We're pretty much agreed on offering food I'm pretty sure.

Yeah sorry, didn't get time to run some numbers on how much food or goods we're willing to offer last night. I promise I will get to it tonight!

No worries! I added a section to the spreadsheet called: people on rafts, since it makes little sense that 68 people would be swimming. We'll say that you've built enough rafts to house the remainder of the people for the journey.

Are you foraging as you go? Are people on rations?

As far as I know, no foraging. This land sucks, it will piss off the beastlings, and we want to travel out of here as fast as possible.

We're going to do alternations between full rations and half rations for the trip.

Also, as we consume food more room on the keelboats open up for people, so the number of rafts will decrease over time.

------------------

Okay so we have 200 people to feed a day.

Imix produces 126 food per day.

Thus we consume 74 units of food a day from our keelboat stores.

We are carrying 1575 units of food in 3.5 keelboats (Before you ask, the other .5 is carrying people).

So we have 21 days of food at full rations. If we take BP's advice (we should) and do a day of full rations and a day of half rations, it would extend our food supplies out to 26.5 days.

I would recommend we give 40 food to each beastling tribe we meet as payment for safe passage. If we were to meet 10 tribes along our journey, that would be 400 food, putting us back at the original 21 days worth of food stores if we did full rations.

In conclusion: Wow, thanks Imix. That's a lot of food. Btw, Jesus was said to produce enough food to feed between 4,000-5,000 people a day. Right now he's like that guy on the pinball machine with the maxed out score, but I think you can beat his personal best one day!

Real Conclusion: We can go to alternating between full rations and half rations and give each beastling tribe 40 food to pass, keeping our 21 days worth of rations if we meet no more than 10 tribes.

FOOD
Imix produces enough food to feed everyone, every day, until we run out of "components". 200 food is easy. The power is ambiguous on whether it provides enough moisture to drink. My feeling is that it helps, but runs the risk of dehydration. On the other hand an all-fresh-fruit-nut-and-veg diet probably means scurvy isn't in our future.

WATER
We should collect rainwater and dew if we can. I don't think we can drink the swamp water, even if we should. Imix's fruits are probably better than dried and smoked food. We might be able to purify water from around here in order to drink it, but in that case put the water around Imix's nightly channels!
Limit washing, I think. Strongly discourage swimming.
@Oios: does your new detection detect the Death in the water? Would be good to know if rain or water does as well.

DISTANCE
Can we get an idea from Mac about how long it will take to get to the Tall Stone Trees? If it is only a week away we probably don't need to ration.

TRAVEL TIME
I'm assuming we don't travel at night, and probably set up at twilight, and wake up at dawn. How many hours do we travel each day? Is there anything in particular slowing us down?

TRIBUTE
How big are the tribes we pass? If there are thousands of people 40 food is a token. If it is 20 people it isn't too bad.
I think the Rafts themselves are worth a bit. Stong trees (like the ones we used to make the rafts presumably) are rare.

WORKING
Is it possible to get the people on rafts to do some simple jobs either while rafting, or sleep on raft and work during the night? I'm hoping to generate some capital for something cool...
I figure a number of the people on the boats and rafts are doing jobs to make us move, and a number of people will be doing guarding work.

Oh sorry, for some reason this morning I totally missed your post explaining how much food Imix can make. 240 is crazy!

Well this changes things. It all depends on how BP wants to handle the spell components at this point. If Imix can make food for everyone every day, we can give plenty more food as tribute.

Water might be a bigger issue, unless we collect crappy death water in barrels and channel positive energy into it?

So from what I gather: We're expending everything Imix has every day to keep fed and watered? That's a fair trade, considering it no longer gives us access to his destructive potential.

@Istiel: I think the issue is that it is polluted & salty crappy death water. Making it polluted, crappy and salted water isn't much help.

Well in terms of tribute, the beastlings seem pretty afraid of us and tribute seems to be tokens of respect and friendship gifts more than anything else.

Just to give BP a number let's say we be generous and give each tribe 50 food. He can give a ruling on everything else, because the Imix situation is complicated and hurts my brain.

I can only play a very little bit of Survival Finder before I set the game mode to Easy and just start button mashing.

It hurts my brain too :) I much prefer narrative, but the nuts and bolts are pretty important here, so I'm glad we're working this out.

Water will be an issue, if you're not going to drink the fouled stuff. We'll treat water as an abstraction of food and not track it as a separate resource to avoid making things any more complicated. Lets say that 1/8 of each person's food intake per day is clean water. You'd know that the water was fouled from your scouting, so you'd plan ahead with water, perhaps only bringing water since Imix can provide the food. As such you're still on a food timer of sorts, as you're losing 25 food (water) a day.

Which is a pretty slow timer. That gives you 63 days to find a source of non-fouled water.

Sound good?

Regarding downtime capital and crafting, Shadeholme has teams, but you don't. Some of these teams will in fact be creating capital on the journey. You can try and commandeer some of those teams for your purposes, but they may or may not go along, depending on what the request is, the reasoning behind it, and whether or not someone else (eg Sarre or Hamfatten) "owns" those teams.

The Fishers are all being pressed into service as makeshift pilots and are unavailable. The laborers can be directed to "work" for you with a diplomacy check, provided there's no crisis (like a boat that needs repairing). Other teams, you'll need to present your case to the NPC and roll a suitable diplomacy check.

Heh. Just realized that Istiel's active conditions are set to "Angsty."

I didn't notice that either! That's hillarious.

Looking at it again, seems like the river has always been fouled in the beastling area, since Mac drank it no problem. Would also explain all the tumors and stuff that the beastlings don't seem to have any problem with.

Which is a pretty slow timer. That gives you 63 days to find a source of non-fouled water.

Sound good?

That's not just good, that's great!

Heh. Just realized that Istiel's active conditions are set to "Angsty."

And it's going to stay that way too, until she gets to punch something!

Looking at it again, seems like the river has always been fouled in the beastling area, since Mac drank it no problem. Would also explain all the tumors and stuff that the beastlings don't seem to have any problem with.

Ding! Ding! Ding!

Though they do have problems caused by the water. They just don't understand them to be problems.

Imix: misunderstanding human morale since 1 Gozrahn.

I think we're just going to ride the river into the stone trees and see who makes contact with us. Don't think we've got any other prep to do.

You taking the whole flight or going in with a smaller group?

Sorry, been really busy will try to post tomorrow. I vote making first contact with our usual suspects.

Will anyone raise an objection to Imix taking silk cloth and thread out of the storeroom and commandeering it? I believe we had a lot of silk when we left... but I could be getting it confused with the trade trip.

OOC I promise there's a reason.

Yes, I want to resolve it before we hit the stone trees.

I'm torn on "just the group" and "take everyone" for the stone trees. I think we should definitely take anyone who might speak Darohm.

The most literate Darohm speakers are Bellet and Fulton.

Yes, I want to resolve it before we hit the stone trees.

What is "it" that you want to resolve?

Regardless of who you take, I can get an introductory post up that won't need an immediate decision.

The names thing. Sent you a message, where I screwed up the url tag and can't edit.

Looks like they're guiding into a harbor, which is nice of them. Everyone can float around while the four of us deal with negociations.

How damaged are the keelboats that ran aground? Will we find out after we relieve them of supplies and try to get them moving again?

Also, maybe we should try to hire some pilots along with a guide from whomever is inhabiting this city.

They're holed, so they'll need patching. A few days delay, nothing more.

Not too bad. Give us plenty of time to rub appendages with the locals!

Also.

Cooooooooooooooooooooooooool. Was not expecting civilized beastmen society in an ancient flooded tower city. Fancypants indeed!

If Drazan turns into a water elemental.... can he be usesd to water plants?

I imagine him soaking into a raised bed or something.

Hmmmn, probably not, unless he's willing to take damage to do so, as he'd be shedding his body to water the plants.

Though I do like the idea of him soaking into a raised bed.

Going to give Drazan and Oios a day to see if they have anything to add.

Drazan can concentrate to maintain the elemental form with fast healing to water those plants then? Imagine the pretty garden he would keep.

Holding off on more for a bit so other people can post.

Wow that was a lot of useful information.

Hmmm. We recieved a LOT of rain while Shadeholme was getting sieged. We all saw it as Dambahllah helping us, but what if it was some other magic keeping the rain from the southern beastlings?

Well, so we've achieved our current goal: Arrive at the old dwarf capital.

It's already inhabited so we're out of luck on settling the place, but this doesn't seeem like a super great place to stay either.

I say we should stay and help out these beastlings for a bit, secure a guide and some pilots, then continue south. The dwarfs don't seem very friendly (though if I know dwarfs they're just trying to reclaim their lost city, cause that's what dwarfs do), but maybe we'll let us pass through thir lands. Especially if we give them that sweet mechanical porno box!

It's already inhabited so we're out of luck on settling the place, but this doesn't seeem like a super great place to stay either.

I probably didn't describe this very clearly, but the city is largely uninhabited - or at least uninhabited by the beastlings, which take up a very small footprint (they call it the 'enclave') within the much larger footprint of the city.

They've strung rope bridges throughout from the harbor to the enclave to be able to move about easily, but the only areas they really control are the enclave (an area the size of a ten or so urban city blocks for reference) and the farms next to it.

Oh!

Hmm

If we do their quest and help them out maybe they'll let us settle in for a while? What do you guys think?

If we can figure out why the water is cursed this might not be a bad place yup live?

I think we could do a dungeon delve to get 'treasures' for the StormReaders. And then figure out what the heck the StormReaders are.

We also should probably try and find out where Harambe went. That crocodile seems to know a heck of a lot. And heck he or she basically smoothed our way with the beastlings before the game even started for the PCs.

Yeah, we owe Harambe a lot. I'm sure Imix has a loootttt of questions.

We also already have:

-3500gp in Darhom coins jewelry, and gems

-Hybridization Funnel

-Formula Alembic* (See gameplay post for rules)

-Sling of Far Shot

That we could give as treasures if we either A) don't find anything of use or B) Want to keep what we find

They also don't know we have a LOT of clean water, and plenty of barrels to collect water when/if it rains.

I don't like the sound of the StormReaders. I know Latha warned us against attacking them, butI think if Imix animated a stone exoskeleton for a shape-changed large Drazan to wear as full plate, we could kill them and their thunderbird.

Serious bit:

I think we should go to the planetarium first and rescue their healer Mparu. Istiel wants to punch some frog people in the mouth anyway.

After that, either the Library or the Aphelion Manor. I'm leaning towards the Manor because it sounds spooky and I love BP's take on horror. Plus Oios will get to flex his new undead detecting muscles if it is haunted. Plus plus, there might be a dragon in it? Istiel can eat its heart and gain its powers.

So then, if you agree to Latha's terms, first thing in the morning of Sarenith 23, you're heading to the planetarium?

Drazan is amenable to the rescue, and seriously though. Stone exoskeleton armor for Drazan when he's shifted is something to behold.

Sounds good. I'm thinking Imix will switch over to Enhancement then - does mean we'll eat into our supplies. Hopefully we can make friends tonight...

Also, remember Imix has been commandeering stuff. Some of that was from the 3500 (which frankly seemed less useful than much of our other supplies)

Okay, figure a few layers of cloth might be enough to keep physical much and bugs out of the marsh water. That leaves bacteria, toxins and Death.
The Death should help keep the bacteria out, though boiling would be a good idea.
The Channeling (47 points worth) should help get rid of the Death, in a small enclosed space with mostly clear water.
We'll need to check for Death (Oios) and toxins (Alchemy?) and probably boil it a bit, but I'm hopeful we can generate at least drinking water this way.
If the process works we can look at creating a dam or something. If nothing else we may be able to fake out the Speakers.

What happens to our guide?