Volcano's Land - A New Beginning

Game Master Miner Cotren

Wow- Very sorry to hear about crazy weekend! I loved what your sleep-deprived mind found though!

Do you watch Critical Role? I saw Percy in there.

I vote to let Kallik dress the group, nice finds! I just had a quick chance to look at her thoughts for Ibinu and yeah, that's honestly dang spot-on. I'll make a few adjustments to scale it up to formal wear but it won't be much different.

Yeah this weekend sucked!

I am listening to the most recent episode right now. I love Critical role! It is a wonderful thing!

Ibinu you flatter me. And that was a more simple one that I had used in a game and was two lazy to look up better ones. See the bottom of this post.

Critical Role page If my sylph's don't know what is being referenced here is their youtube page. There are two campaigns on there. And it is amazing. They just finished out a kickstarter that got over 11 million for an animated show about their first campaign. I am so excited!

Relic and Rarities She played Twiggy. This is the most amazing set and I want to steal it. And she is an amazing GM.
LA by night this is an amazing Vampire the Masquerade game. The characters are wonderful.

Clothing things

This coat is magnificent!

Freaking velvet is lovely!

You could lean into the creepy

Lava dress!

Oooh, he could pull that dress off. He's quite fetching in red... oh wait, that was for Inam? :D

Okay, that nailed it. Again, excellent taste. You are definitely our group outfit designer!

The coat in link 1 is exactly what I was hoping for. Either with the outfit shown there or in the prior link. No guns though, but who needs 'em when you have that intense STARE!

Apply you liked them

To go off the questions in your post in Gameplay Ibinu -

--The coat from 'this coat is magnificent' could have subtle, curved daggers where the diamond-shaped studs are now, pointing up and down the border. In between the dagger are one or more shallow bowls, following an elegant pattern.

--The symbol over his heart would be a very simple rending of the cauldron, done in a minimalist fashion, maybe cross stitiching: a squat X on the bottom for the logs ; five triangles of geometric flame above that ; and the bowl of the cauldron on top. This all done in black silhouette, save for a splash of crimson on the triangles.

(change the details as you will, but that was the image I got)

Fantastic post Kallik! I can only favorite it once!

Thank you! I love crawling into Kallik's head because it is a choice between how I would react or how I would want to react. Somehow she is the character that is closest to how my brain works, short of the dirty thoughts. That was a different character.

I'll need some time to write up a visit to the richest family in Hearth, so expect a new post Sunday, like Sunday evening. Feel free to RP a bit in the meantime, or we'll pick it up outside House v'Enturi at the end of the weekend.

Ah cool, I’m busy tomorrow anyway.

I had almost forgotten about that cab ride with Egret, Kallik. Thanks for reminding me of it - that's a scene I really liked.

and speaking of Egret, I cannot remember this and I cannot find it - did Kallik whittle something for Egret way back when? If so, what was it?

I do not recall doing so but I might have. I will try looking though previous posts later.

I could just be crazy :)

I will neither confirm nor deny that ;)

After a wild week and hectic weekend, I am back on the webs. I have a stack of work to catch up on.

As time allows, I'll get caught up.

Very glad to see you back :) No rush - take your time, as always.

We have no monks, so this doesn't affect you guys, but I always like to share world-building notes between tables.

It struck me that having oread monks wielding a bunch of eastern weapons as their signature was a bit odd, because just like African tribes they are very roughly modeled after, intricate weapons like nunchaku and double chained kamas really don't fit their hunting lifestyle, and those sort of weapons would be coming from, if anywhere, ifrit forges.

SO! Here is the note I gave the other table:

***************
So on monk weapons:

Monk weapons are weird, because some of them are terrible, and some of them are straight up worse than others (the siangham is identical to the kama except it doesn't get trip, and they are both exotic for some reason?)

So I'll be doing a few weapons that I found interesting and iconic, but aside from that I'm letting most of the giant pile of monk weapons (like eastern weapons) lay fallow unless there is a great desire for a translation of one or two others.

Shuriken ---> Njiga, the african throwing dagger
Njiga

Stats: thrown weapon, ranged ; 30 ft ; 1d6 ; 19-20/x2

-------

Siangham -----> Nimcha, african curved blade
Nimcha

Stats: same as siangham, but give it 19-20/x2 so it is not strictly worse than kama

----------

Cestus ----> Ngigolio, the african finger dagger
Ngigolio

Same stats as cestus

------

Kama -----> Trumbash, a highly curved short blade
Trumbash

Same stats as kama

------

Temple Sword ----> Rungu, a big african curved beat stick
Rungu

Same stats as a temple sword, except bludgeoning.

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

Nunchaku ---> Sjambok, an african leather whip
Sjambok

Same stats as nunchaku, can be used to disarm.

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

Reach weapons like the kama double chain ----->Assegai, a spear

I'm taking some huge liberties here because I wanted at least one "cool" weapon, so this will act like double spear with the reach quality. You cannot use both the "double" quality and the "reach" quality in the same round.

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

Among other weapons monks receive proficiency in, clubs, daggers, handaxes, javelins, spear, shortspear, quarterstaff, and sling remain unchanged.

If Kallik kicks the bucket the monk is goals. I have only ever been killed by monks and they are complicated but interesting. Though I am pretty sure oread is not what I wanna be. And I love that you are so nerdy about this!

I love it! We have a dragon!

Even though pathfinder dragons normally cannot assume humanoid form most people do it anyways because of the lore and cause it is cool!

I rarely play things by the book... :)

Friendly announcement - the site has been noticeably slow since whatever maintenance stuff they did a few days ago, so always remember to save your posts before submitting! I have managed to more or less never lose a post (except a few minors ones), which makes me very happy.

Hey All!

Do any of you have an idea for a fourth player for the table? Someone you know is a good poster and might enjoy a game like this? I have to admit, it's way easier to keep the flow with discussions, etc when there are ~three consistent players (no offense Inam! RL is always more important)

And to be clear, Inam is still in the game as far as I'm concerned - I'm botting just temporarily. Take all the time you need!

I think Karoff would be your fourth party member (or fifth, if you count Etrah. Or sixth, if you count Krz.) More on that to come.

Thoughts?

Minor correction, it should really have been:

"Karoff, borne of Ssarkofaugos" (not sired)

Brought to you by things only the DM cares about! :)

Hmmm... I do not know anyone who would be a sufficient enough poster or would be able to take to the time to learn all the lore and world stuff.

Yeah, I know it's a long shot. But I'd rather have someone recommended rather than open random recruitment, because I have no idea who I'm getting.

I can ask. There are some awesome people I game with that will hopefully work out better than Bian. Any preference on what they could bring in besides no full casters?

No real preferences, but

--Not duplicating the class of the current PCs is good

--Aside from that, we'd just have to work together on what would make sense to be powerful enough to reasonably accompany the Blessed - my thoughts go toward like a hunter or inquisitor, but I'm pretty open to whatever ideas a player might have after reading through the setting (assuming they don't run away from the sheer volume of lore)

Seems that Karkoff is leaning towards bard or skald in gameplay and either of those would be a significant boost in combat for two obvious melee and a third sometimes melee.

It's funny, I didn't start off thinking about him as a skald, but I had some character traits in mind which in retrospect are obviously skald-y

Skalds are so complicated and awesome! Also he is precious

Question - with the Blessed trying to show and act out the 'gentler' side of Volcano and the Lady etc with Inam's help:

What would you do with the punishment squares? They were designed by the temple to shame minor acts of theft, drunkeness, etc. It is simple, sweaty work, that also serves a purpose for the every hungry armies of the west and east. Things like peeling potatoes, doing tack repair, leatherwork, minor armor repeair, whetstone, maybe packaging ashflour for the frontlines.

There were also more severe areas that were used for murderers, etc.

Thoughts on what you would do with either of these? The milder squares were quite useful in terms of material production, but I don't want to make any presumptions on how you would do that.

Well, I'm not sure we are all about being gentler, the degree on that gentleness would be up for debate. I know that we are all about not killing so tell me more about the murderer's squares? Are they more of a holding location until execution or something else?

I do actually like the idea of public shame combined with valuable work completed. Even more could be done on that front, including having the work actually lead towards teaching a skill that could be used once the criminal serves their time.

Ha, that's true, Ibinu is here to make sure things are done the right way, with the Lady's approval. Okay, the murderer-squares:

--Note: This is for like child murderers and really bad things, not deaths from bar room brawls and duels etc.

Here is your knowledge local Ibinu:

The Long Sacrifices were blood-draining stations. The most heinous criminals would be put in a cast iron coffin more or less, given water and nutrients intravenously, and bled for as much magical power as they possibly could be.

Those sort of crimes are very, very rare in Hearth. They weren't being used when you arrived.

anyway, the reason I brought them up is because that's the third thing Karoff will see as you are going toward the Temple. So you can tell us what Ibinu decided to do (or not do) with them.

Wyrm Singer works incredibly well for Karoff. I'm considering the Bacchanal as well, but we'll see.

Any word back from anyone regarding a 4th player? I'm not wild about the idea of doing open recruitment and sifting through multiple submissions (or getting no one)

I will poke the one that said it seemed interesting. I only asked in one game but I have a few others I can check in.

The answer i got was "wow that is a lot" and it might take a little while to read though all the lore. So long as she is still interested after some reading do you want me to send her here?

Yes, but if she's like "k no thx bye" that's ok too!

And if Karoff the Skald doesn't appeal as a PC, we can definitely work something else out. He just so happened to appear in the narrative so he's convenient, but I'm not going to shackle a newcomer with something they don't want.

Not sure she is wanting to take over Karoff. She said something about an oread hunter or huntress. You know cause oread's are the coolest :D I will let them know they can jump over here when they are ready.

Awesome! And yes, an oread hunter/huntress would be very cool.

Just me as Karoff, but I thought he deserved an NPC slot for now.

Hi there! Thank you for the invitation

This would most likely be the profile I'd be joining under/character I'll be developing. You've got quite the impressive and comprehensive world going, pretty amazing.

I'm reading through things now to get enough of a grasp of things, but as Kallik said, I'm trending toward an oread huntress, so reading through the oread stuff first.

Awesome! So happy to have you!

Some things to consider:

--Which major tribe did you grow up near? (north, east, or west)

--Which minor tribe did you belong to? (or do you belong directly to one of the major tribes?)

--Many hunters/huntresses act as the 'priests' (for lack of a better word) of the oreads (there are no clerics or warpriests in this setting, so each race uses a different class as a priest stand-in.) Were you being trained as the next in line for your tribe? Did you flee your responsibility? Or are you on an important mission?

--Lots and lots of crazy stuff has been happening in Hearth over the last few months, and Hearth is the de facto capital of the land, so I could definitely see someone being drawn by A) the danger and interest B) the need for the tribes to see what those crazy ifrits are up to or C) some other agenda we can work on

--One thing that would be of major interest to most oreads: a Quiet Elder (a very large tree, roughly like a demi-god to oreads) has started growing directly in Hearth (a Quiet Elder has never grown this far south before)

Anyway, I could prattle on. Let me know if you have any questions or anything I can help with.

And here are the character creation rules, pasted for your convenience:

(gold and starting level will be different of course)

1st level
20 point buy

Alignment: no evil

2 traits, no flaws

HP: Max at 1st level, average (round up) after that

Starting wealth: 150 gp

Leveling: No XP, you will level as appropriate to the story and the challenges you face,

Source material: Core is fine, 3rd party is not, check with me about other PF material (not just the book, but specifically what you want from it)

Background: 10 minute background, be sure to include appearance and personality. Note that you will all be starting in the ifrit capital of Hearth, so make sure you either live there, or have a reason to be visiting at the open of the campaign.

Skills: Every character gets one extra skill point per level in a Craft, Profession, or Perform skill of their choice. I want you to have some kind of flavorful/cool background skill, but I don't want it to come at the cost of a better skill.

I know you will all be trading out Elemental Affinity (which is completely worthless in this setting), and I am open to exchanging it for cool abilities that are not directly listed as being tradeable for Elemental Affinity (like Treacherous Earth for oreads, usually only traded for Spell-Like Ability)
Other minor tweaks:

--Oreads are not Slow.

--Undines get a swim speed, so to make all the races roughly equal RP:
-Ifrits get Sprinter (Members of this race gain a +10 foot racial bonus to their speed when using the charge, run, or withdraw actions.)
-Oreads get burrow speed of 10 ft (dirt only!)
-Sylphs get Climb (Members of this race have a climb speed of 20 feet, and gain the +8 racial bonus on Climb checks that a climb speed normally grants.)

LANGUAGES

All of the "elemental" tongues (Ignan, etc) are simply called Ifrit, Oread, etc.
In addition, there is a more esoteric dialect of each language that must be learned separately:

-High Ifrit (mostly used by the Church)
-Benthic (used by the Swem)
-Maker Script (used by the Mithral Makers)
-Sedime (pidgin used by various minor oread tribes)

There are two 'outsider' tongues: Geni (roughly equivalent to Abyssal) and Eleme (roughly equivalent to Celestial). However, neither of these languages is available to starting characters.

All races start with Common and (native language) for free, then bonus languages for high Int. Low int loses race language (common is much easier to learn, and universal)

Only when I paste it do I realize again how much info it is...

And finally, let's say you start at level 7, with about 20,000 gp worth of items. I don't want this to be super overwhelming (making a 7th level character from scratch plus the lore plus the items) so roughly just getting your normal +1 attack, saves, armor, etc items will put you roughly on par with the rest of the party.

(last post for a while, I promise!)

Okay. Maybe not be on too much today (it's my birthday) but will think about the questions and start building

Happy birthday! :)

And absolutely no rush.

Happy Birthday! And yay you are joining! Woot!

Also the East Tribe is made of butt-holes. Kallik is from there and they are butt-holes :D Though despite the butt-hole's Oread's are awesome ;)

And for those still interest and since the GM requested I share.