Father Jarad, you find the wizard's body still lying where he fell when he was slain by the sword through the throat. Kneeling next to him with an expression of regret on your face, you summon the spell needed to commune with the dead.
Your spell succeeds - not one of your cleanest spells, but Boran willing, it succeeded. However, the result astonishes you. No spirit answers your calls. The body does not reanimate. The vessel is empty. The wizard's soul - the soul your spell called out to - isn't dead, just gone.
I'll answer the questions that make sense to you, Xha.
1)Tally material resources. What goods are freely provided? Food? Healing? Weapons? Horses?You haven't seen any stables or horses since entering the Tower, besides the clay terracotta horses that were left behind in the labryinth. You spy a fletcher's shop that sells replacement ammunition, and there may be additional weapons available there as well. Food is present and in abundance, though you note that nobody who is feasting has the audience watching them. Probably wouldn't make good television. You see Father Jarad making his way to the chapel tent, which doubles as a healing center.
2)Gather information: What do the survivors know about the palace and the GKing? What have the other groups faced on the way here? What have their interaction with the Agents been like?Gathering information of this sort would require asking somebody, like you did with Antonius earlier.
3)Who are we? How many folks in the horde? What specialties/equipment of note can they bring to the fight?Your "horde" consists of about 150 adventurers of varying races, sizes, and shapes. Your newly-appointed General of the Left, the enormous Centaur warrior, identifies himself as Wrathion the Tall, and offers to round up the "special" candidates from each adventuring party. It will take a bit of time, but he goes from nonhumanoid to nonhumanoid, taking a tally.
4)Who are they? Where does the food/gear come from? Can we take control of the supply? It it a way out or a way to bypass the Gking.You study the attendants, the people who are working to serve the adventurers their food and drink and picking up trash around the encampment. For the most part they are human, with the odd dwarf and halfling scattered here and there among the servants. They are universally recognized by the Tower symbol emblazoned on their...
Reposting my previous post because the gameplay thread switched pages and I don't want it to get lost.
The wizard's soul - the soul your spell called out to - isn't dead, just gone.
"Brom, stop this. We both lost. Let's regroup and..." the old one starts, before the swordsman lunges wildly and stabs him in the chest! With a furious growl, the swordsman pushes the sword deeper and deeper into the old man, shoving him to his knees with the force of his stab.
Lightly, ever so gently, the old man's fingers reach up and touch the swordsman's face. Brilliant blue light shines from behind the eyes of the swordsman, whose face contorts in sudden surprise. He opens his mouth to shout, and brilliant blue light shines from there too, and his nostrils...
The light fades and the old man slumps to the ground, blood pooling under his body. The swordsman watches him slide off of his blade, seeming to stare at nothing, his mouth still hanging open, the tip of the blade in the dirt.
IC, Galadin has an inkling - whether anyone else noticed or made note of that is up to each of you.
[ooc]I'm sorry but why are my questions never answered? I've stated "I'm looking for peopel who aren't with us really and looking for a big dumb guy to poison" and I never get any sort of feed back from the GM to actually play Cappy the way I want. Xha gets to make speeches and the other players get the info they ask for. So can you PLEASE tell me if there is a mook I can poison with Goldenroot (which YOU gave me, btw). Woudl really like to be allowed to do my thing or at least be given something to do. I don't post often if you don't engage me. If not then I can wander off to the discard pile. Thank you.[ooc]
Though Xha managed to sway enough of the crowd to get a general following, not everyone is entranced by his words. A thin man with a thin scarf and a rapier on his hip stands some distance apart from the crowd, watching them all with an expression of distaste. He's wearing a trilby hat and glasses, but he doesn't appear to have taken note of you in particular. Behind him is a bugbear who appears to be his "muscle" and another human, this one female, wearing goggles on her forehead. She's frowning, looking concerned, but with none of the outright scorn on Rapier-guy's face.
Cappy slides up to the groups and attempts to ingratiate himself. He elbows the man in glasses and says"He's awful excited about throwing other peoples lives away, isn't he? (pretending to notice the rapier for the first time) Ah! Do a bit of fencing myself (pointing to his own), glad to see not everyone here thinks bashing things is the way to go, but still never hurts t be prepared (thumbing to the Bugbear). Name's Cappy, mate! Pleased to meet you."
The man's glasses are thick enough to obscure his eyes from being easily visible as he glances down at you. "Amazing, another adventurer who can see what's as plain as the nose on his face," he says, sarcastically.
"Who's your friend?" the woman with the goggles asks, leaning her head forward to look over at you. The thin man rolls his eyes and scoffs. "His name's Cappy," he indicates with a casual over-the-shoulder thumb. As an afterthought, he turns to you and mutters, "Name's Ordway."
"A pleasure, Miss! So what's your all's take on this Go-Lem King?? Seems like a tough nut to crack if he's kept this many folks at bay, did you and yours run into him, Ordway?"
He shakes his head. "We waited in a hiding spot and watched as another party of adventurers threw themselves at him and were promptly wiped out. This show we are apparently starting in doesn't mind a high rate of attrition, it seems. The party was completely routed in..." he checks a notepad, "Yes. Less than 45 seconds."
Cappy makes a mental note of both his thick glasses and his notepad and then scoffs "How exactly did he do that? Does it fart lightning bolts?"
Ordway narrows his eyes at your crass comment. "Typical halfling..." he mutters under his breath. "No, Cappy, he did not 'fart lightning bolts.' As the eminently wise warrior with the cracked skull noted," - his voice thick with sarcasm - "the Golem King makes use of his eternally rebuilding castle in combat." He shows you his notebook, where he had drawn some sort of sketch. He touches one finger to the corner of the page, and by some magic, the sketch animates; showing a crude retelling of the Golem King's last battle with a group of adventurers who challenged him. In the moving sketch, the Golem King waits for the adventurers to approach him, then throws both arms out to either side, crumbling the surrounding walls to rubble and causing huge chunks of masonry to tumble down on the adventuring party. In short order they are sent running - those who still can run, anyway. The Golem King crushes any adventurer who remains behind.
Jarad will go around the camp asking about the orchird, to see if someone knows anything or if the castle has another entrances.
You speak to several adventurers who all confirm that the castle walls are seemingly perfect - aside from the main entrance, no other way to enter the castle exists. Your wandering and questioning eventually leads you to Ordway and Cappy - Ordway shakes his head to your question. If there are answers to be found, it seems they died with the old wizard.
Xha carouses while the other characters do the real work.
The encampment is at the base of the castle entrance - some of the vendors' tents come right up to the castle gates, although nobody seems to be too keen on actually feasting there.
You spy an oldish-looking man in the crowd who is drinking wine from a wooden mug, and approach him with your question. The corners of his mouth turn down.
"Most are left where they lie, if they die in the Golem King's castle. Other groups of adventurers never see them when they invade the next day, so something must be happening to them."
He points off to a quieter section of the fairgrounds. "A few brave souls were able to drag off the bodies of their friends or allies when they died. You can pay your respects over in that direction, priest."
Jarad will keep walking towards the direction the old man pointed, looking for a body of an adventurer or if there is a survivor paying his respect to the dead, he will approach him to talk.
No headstones, no official plots, nothing even marking it for what it is besides a sign with "Graveyard" crudely carved into it. There are about a dozen or so graves here, dug fairly recently, and marked only with holy symbols of the Lady of the Dead shaped from carved wood. There is nobody there.
Cappy rubs his chin and remarks Now there's a neat trick, eh?Following the bald head of Father Jarad out of the corner of his eye he exclaims he has to "water the flowers" and wanders away from his new friends to follow the good Father as he searches for a body. If he can catch him he will relay the message.Hey! Father, listen up, word on the street is the big Go-Lem King smashes his castle on top of you if you attack 'em. He caves the walls and ceiling down on ya, then finishes off the wounded survivors. He's a dirty cheat, because the castle rebuilds itself, knits itself back together like. Take a good look at the bodies, see if they died from being crushed to death. Don't ask me how I know this, just trust me." with a wink he disappears back into the crowd.
Cappy, as you disappear back into the carousing crowd, you narrowly avoid getting crushed by a half-orc fighter that is already unconscious from drinking before he even hit the floor. This party's starting to get rowdier and drunker, the general noise level is growing, and jostling stomping feet are everywhere.
Sounds like a defy danger. I'll try to dart between the brief islands of safety in the sea of legs.
9, what's my complication? To be clear I am trying to get back to Ordway's group.
Your complication is that you got a little drool from a drunkard on the cloth of your shoulder. Fortunately, you sidestepped him when he gestured wildly overhead, so he didn't actually crush your feet, but it was close. You find Ordway sharing a smoke with a few other adventurers not far off from where you left him. He doesn't acknowledge you're back, talking instead with his goggled female companion over a tankard of beer. They appear to be discussing King Vesteri, the goggled woman saying that all this Tower of Light business was a brilliant idea to centralize the world around Westervale.
Jarad will kneel and make a pray for everyone in here that has lost his live to this show,
To think this is just for entretaining...there has to be more to that...all these lives...
Jarad looks for a grave where the dirt seems more fresh, hoping he can talk to the spirit, he sits at the base of the grave and starts his prayers,
"Spirits of the dead, brave adventurers, souls of courage...I need your knowledge to defeat this Golem King...please answer."
Unfortunately, the spell fizzles and fails. Your gaze is drawn skyward, wondering why the spirits of this Tower are so difficult to commune with. Mark an XP, and I've advanced a Front elsewhere that will negatively impact the party.
His efforts to commune with the dead were in vain, so Jarad will go to the living.
Looking around for survivors, he will ask some questions:
"They were more doors inside the castle?"
"Did you saw stairs going to a basement?"
"Did you saw something like a garden?"
When their glasses get low I offer to get the next round. I'm trying to eventually get the Goldenroot into Ordway to get him to trust me and let me look at his book or find out what else he knows.
Cappy: No roll required, Ordway allows you to freshen his drink for him and you can add your Goldenroot without being discovered fairly easily. When he drinks it he smacks his lips and his eyes become slightly unfocused.
Jarad: From discussing previous excursions into the castle with various adventurers who have entered it at different times, you learn that the configuration of the castle sometimes changes somewhat when the Golem King destroys it and allows it to be rebuilt.
Nobody mentions seeing any garden, but you're able to determine that the entrance to the basement varies. On the bright side, it seems to follow a set pattern of always being on the right hand side of forks in the hallways.
"I have found that the castle always change as the Golem Kings destroys it and rebuilds it, but the basement entrances is always to the right hand side, and for what I've heard Xha has an army now..." Jarad shares what he has found about the orchrid, the castle and all,
"I say we take them all and look for this orchid to defeat the Golem King, lead them to victory and not to death. With all these hands it should be easy to find that thing and we will benefit from it." Jarad looks at the others,
"What you guys think?"
Cappy stands in front of him and tries to make sure he's focused on him. "Hey buddy! Hey! You all right there?" He's trying to insure he doesn't look at some random stranger.
Quill approaches the bald priest after watching him talk with several other adventurers. "Greetings. Saw you out there mucking about by the graves with word and gesture. You a necromancer of some sort?"
The woman standing infront of Father Jarad is tall and powerfully built. The little of her that isn't covered in battered scalemail is sun darkened and weather worn. Gruff and grit aside, her face holds a friendly expression.
"Hello..Oh no, I'm not a necromancer, I'm a priest of Boran the god of restoration and healing. I was trying to speak with the souls of the fallen to learn more about the castle and why is it so dangerous. I have some leads on how we can all move foward and finish this place." Jarad greets the woman and shows her his holy symbol, after a little explanation about his god and how he came here as a self imposed mission to help other adventurers he realizes he hasn't really presented himself,
Oh, and my name is Jarad, Father Jarad is you would be so kind. It was hard to get the title." The chubby father put his hands over his belly and laughs, "We need more help in our group, some of our other teammates died or just went missing. Jarad plays with his beard and looks at the woman from head to toes, "Would you care to join us?" he asks.
Cappy: Ordway looks down at you in confusion. "Wha..what?" he mumbles.
"More's the pity then, father. If we could pull all the dead back up out the ground here we'd likely have ourselves an army hey?"
A small grin edges its way on to her lips as Father Jarad mentions his connection to the divine. "Used to be a believer myself, a lifetime or so ago. I found I'm better off relyin' on my wits, but that's just me." She pulls a flask out of her belt while talking with the man, twisting the cap and taking a quick nip. An observant eye might notice a worn symbol on the dented and dusty flask. One that's well read might recognize the mark as the symbol of...
"I'd be glad to join up with you and yours. Seems the lads I arrived with didn't fair as well as they expected to." Her friendly demeanor cracks here ever so briefly, letting a flash of regret and guilt through. She takes another pull, this one noticeably longer, before replacing the flask. "Been bashin' and gettin' bashed on back just about my whole life, so I ain't no stranger to bein' in the thick of things. Name's Quill, by the way. You and your friends lookin' to get back in soon then?"
Xha is still carousing.
Soon he will be drunk and start dancing on the tables and trying to climb the tent wall using only his lips.
"So Ordway old buddy, that's a pretty nifty book you got there. Anything else in it worth taking a peep at?" I'm not trying to steal it from him just yet and I don't think Cappy knows to be looking for an Orchid. Looking back I don't think that info was relayed to him but he is just fishing for info and to pal around with Ordway.
Ordway blinks slowly again, his eyes focusing on you with difficulty. "Oh," he says in a lilting voice, "That old thing? It preserves my spells. Oh, and I remember recording something about a painting that responded to magic, in the castle, between two suits of armor and flails..." his eyes roll up slightly as he recalls, the notebook hanging loosely in his grasp.
"Yes, Quill. We will go to the castle tomorrow, now get some rest and prepare yourself. I'll do that myself." Father Jarad goes to the healing tent dedicated to Boran to help with some of the injured and get some rest.
The partying goes on for hours. Every time it seems like the action is winding down, a new fight will break out that draws the more thuggish adventurers into a huge spectating circle. It's not until nearly 7 AM that most of the carousers have passed out.
It's basically the following morning and not everyone made it to their tents. There are unconscious bodies lying all around, and it's the special kind of quiet that follows a night of intoxication. Where are all of you and what do you do?
Jarad wakes up, makes his morning prayers and helps around the tent for a little while after he will go searching for his other companions.
In the early morning light, it's easy to forget that all of this sky is an illusion within the first level of the Tower. You're the first to awaken the following morning; you stumble upon : Xha first. Unsurprisingly, he is at the center of a huge mass of sleeping people, spread out all over the ground with empty tankards near their unresponsive hands. The ground is sodden and wet. What do you do?
Quill wakes up and pulls a hairy and tattooed arm off her face shoving it back toward whichever drunken lout managed to snuggle up with her after she passed out. She staggers to her feet, "A copper to the soul who finds me my trousers, and a gold to whomever has a pot of coffee set."
After reassembling her kit Quill, steaming mug in hand, looks about for the Father from last night, hoping he'll introduce her to the rest of his companions. "Ready to be about the delving if you lot are." She says when/if she finds him.
With laughably little difficulty, yes. Your goldenroot poison was very effective. Also he would probably be quite amused at being referred to as "the Ordway".
Xha stands and wipes his face with a brown cloth seemingly tangled round his arm.
He looks at the cloth.
"Here, these will do." Xha tosses the dun colored trousers towards Quill.
"Yes I would see this Golem King's fortress with my own eyes."