5E Adventure's in Midgard – North (Reaver's Spring)

Game Master Tareth

Sorry all. Been swamped today following the long weekend. Will get things rolling tomorrow.

Apologies for not posting this weekend. I've been busy and haven't had the energy to put something together. I'll post tomorrow.

Gunnar is waiting to take his turn until the arcana/counterspell reaction is resolved.

My comrade Scramsax did not agree with me on this. He played a thief simply because he didn't have to track spell slots or a limited number of use of things. I however LOVE having a bag full of tricks and things to use and pull out.

Of course as soon as I write that I forget my Hex damage and have to go back and re-re-re edit my dice. ^_^

I have a few tricks up my sleeve, but I don't think illusions are the best use of an action when there's mayhem to be done!

Sometimes I wonder if I shouldn't have gone ahead and come in with Raseri instead. Subtle as a sledgehammer and with a temper to match the heat of her forge. Ah well, I'll figure out how to play Arianna some day. :P

Hey all, sorry for the slow posting, work/life have been really busy these past couple of weeks. And some of these combat posts take a bit of time to put together. I should be able to get the next round posted later today.

Luthael had an unused bonus action last round. Can he have cast Healing Word on Aterro? I thought they were further away than 60 feet.

Thanks

Sure. Go ahead.

Unfortunately, life has decided to be a real pain in the backside the last few days. Had our oven element burn out, a printer die, and the developer of our accounting software at work just decided to 'update' everything and broke a bunch of stuff.

Apologies for the delay in posting, but it might take me until tomorrow or so to get all caught up.

If the softdev fixed three things but broke three things, then according to IT math he came out ahead.

There's a Dilbert comic that says that. I tried searching for it, but there are like a billion Dilbert comics so it proved impossible.

Webdev here. That certainly feels like that some days.

That's enough to turn Gunnar's Dex save into a success. Rocks dodged!

Thanks for the reminder, Aterro. Too bad I think this'll be the last time this fight Arianna could take advantage of it.

How far are the bad guys from Luthael? To maximize the spirit guardians? Flying either 30 or 60 ft away

How badly is everyone hurt? It looks like most of us are only down five to ten. Ingryd's down only 3 according to her status bar.

Aplogies. It's comin' hot and heavy. It's not just that the dryer went, AND the kids start a new summer camp AND it's been too hot so very very hot AND the car is at the mechanics again AND I seem to have hurt myself somehow, but its all these things together.

So feel free to bot me until I can get things back together.

Ugh. Sorry to hear you're dealing with all of that. Totally understand and hope things stop breaking down and you feel better soon.

I would say it sounds like you need a repairman, but it sounds like you need five. Get well soon, bud. Hope the dryer gets fixed.

Hi team

I should have given you a heads up, but I’m travelling on business this week. Thought I could post, but I’m swamped.

Okay, so Taqa is the Heart of the Forest, correct? That means our next stop is taking care of the slaver ring in Blandezig, right? If so, then I say we ask Taqa to get us there as soon as possible so we can make our appointment on time.

After all, ghouls hate it when their lunch-turned-doom arrives late. :P

Sad panda. I thought we were on our way to destroy the evil saint-imprisoning artifact sword which is currently strapped to Luthael’s back, no?

Cheers

I kinda feel bad about leaving the horses behind, but I’ll bet they will have a better life here if the saplings take care of them.

I think destroying the sword was a timing thing—did we miss our window already for this year?

I think we still have a couple of months for the sword. The slaver ring was more time sensitive since we only had ten days to get to the village and take care of business from the time we learned about it. I think we've got one more day before the rendezvous was supposed to happen, but I haven't gone through to count the days since y'all rescued Arianna, which is when we learned about this opportunity.

That said, we don't have the rug, since the spirit that powered it is now Gunnar's familiar, so we could just hitch a ride to the Ruby Sea. It's just that we were taking this route to get to Blandezig in the first place to try and make the area a little safer while we went south to destroy the sword. Then I think the plan was to walk the fey roads to try cutting some time off our journey.

As for the horses, we could ask Taqa to grab them on the way.

Sorry all. I've been a bit under the weather the last day or two and looking at a computer screen isn't helping one bit. Will hopefully be able to get things moving again either tomorrow or Sunday. Sorry for the delay.

No worries. Get well soon.

So, where to? I thought we were heading to Blandezig, but it sounds like Luthael wants to and thought we were heading straight to the Ruby Sea. I'm okay with just doing that. Arianna won't be, but that was because she wanted to hit the slavers and the ghouls again, possibly ending their influence in the area and then use the Fey and Shadow roads to cut travel time to the Ruby Sea down. I would rather not leave this unresolved and I'd like to take the opportunity to hit the slavers and the ghouls, but if we don't, I'll not make a fuss over it either.

GM, I think knowing how long we have for each quest and the travel time to the Ruby Sea if we use Taqa's offer to head for Blandezig first would help us as players make a decision. I know what I want, but this isn't the Adam and Tareth game, this is a game between all of us and I don't want to be the one voice that drowns out everyone. I can be that. I want to avoid being that, and I think knowing exactly what our opportunity costs are would make it so that I'm not that.

If it comes down to it, we can just roll a die and say odds the Ruby Sea, evens Blandezig.

Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, maybe knowing what good we can do in Blandezig would also help. I know it's somewhat verboten to ask the GM, "Hey, can you tell us what the outcome of the adventure is if we succeed," but in this case, I think it would help us as players to know if we'd have any noticeable impact on the ghoul empire's operations if we did go in with intent to wreck shop. I think all of us are pretty good about keeping player knowledge and character knowledge separate, so I don't think knowing would affect our in character decisions beyond where we go next.

If we can get to the right place to destroy the sword at the right time to do the unmaking ceremony, great…but I was thinking it was the wrong time of the year for that…

Same, I think the window's around two months away, but I'm not 100% sure on that and why I'm asking about it.

@Tareth. Can you remind us about the “destroying artifact” quest. Any timing? Destination?

With the size of our sandbox and the duration of these quests, I would greatly appreciate a crib sheet in the Campaign Info tab to help remember.

Thanks

Here are the two 'quests' that you are currently working on.

1. Going to Blandezig to stop/intercept whatever the alliance of the ghouls and gnome slavers were attempting to do. You know it involves others potentially infected with the same demonic parasites as what you've cured/removed previously. As for impact, it could be fairly substantial at least in regards to this current ghoulish plot. (No, you won't stop the entire Empire, but you could certainly deliver a solid blow and knock them down a peg or two in this region.) The timing for this one is fairly quick which is why you were taking the shadow roads. Although not entirely sure how time has differed in the twilight realm vs. Midgard, Arianna and Gunnar's best guess is that you have 24-48 hours remaining to reach Blandezig before the other gnome groups were set to deliver their 'goods'. What exactly the ghouls were planning, you don't really know, although should any group of infected folk reach a town or city much havok could be unleashed.

2. Destroying the sword. This required a few key ingredients. Fire giant blood (which you just recently found among the ghouls.) And the black sand made from dragon bone which can be found near a town (I'll have to find the name again.) on the shores of the Ruby Sea. Then the ritual should be conducted upon an altar dedicated to Khors on midsummer. It is like a 1000 mile trip (again I'd have to double check on the midgard map) from Courlandia to the Ruby Sea. Now I believe we are well past midsummer for this current year, closer to early autumn, so there is still plenty of time for a longer journey. Of course, there are factions looking for the sword and/or you all and it's certainly possible they could catch up with you at some point along the way. But so far, that's not been much of an issue.

Thanks Tareth!

Blandezig, it is!

Oh...

Oh. wow.

That was generous of you GM. I was expecting that I'd have to go with Plan B. I still might because A) It'd be fun/funny and B) It'd be nice to save some of the arrows or at least conserve them for opponents that need the extra oomph.

Anyway, thank you. I was not expecting that and it was touching to me.

Charly: You're welcome.

Oh...and everyone should gain Inspiration for rescuing the treant and reuniting it with the orphans.

Charly: You're welcome.

A strangely garbed woman pops into existence, posed in mid-air as if she were sitting and manipulating something wherever she came from. She lands on her rump with a loud oof. After taking a moment to catch her breath, she looks around with a confused, worried look on her face.

"W-w-where am I? W-who are all of you?" She looks at the strange, bear-like humanoid (Ingryd) "What are you? An alien?"

Psst. DM, I think you got my characters mixed up.

Ha! Oops. Sorry about that. It's been a long week. :)

'Salright. I figured I'd have some fun. :D

Aterro was with us at the start of the fight to free the Treant, or at least he got through the portal, I think. If he's missing, we either left him behind on the Shadow Road or he got caught in the portal somewhere.

I'm half expecting everyone to go Ater-who? and make Arianna think she's going mad. :P

So, there's four of us and who knows how many enemies. I think we'll need to do some scouting and information gathering before we can come up with a workable plan. If we are going to act immediately, I'd say hit the ghouls first. We know they are planning on eating the innocents we saw before the portal was moved back.

What I want to do is figure out if there are any cracks we could exploit. Maybe we can get them to fight each other if we play this right, but we need know where the friction is in their relationship and figure out how to exacerbate it to the point of violence.

Going in posing as slavers/slaves has a risk that the gnomes see through it and decide to play along up until the point they have us surrounded and can easily kill or capture us at their leisure. I'm not sure it's worth the risk.

If we could capture one of the gnomes or free some of the villages, we could get some more information.

GM, do we, in character, know that the gnome's red caps keep them safe from Baba Yaga?

I haven't heard anything from Aterro for a while. I know things got pretty hectic for him and I certainly hope all is okay. But I'm not one for taking on extra NPCs, so for the time being we can say he stepped through the portal with you all, but didn't come out the other side. Assuming he does rejoin us, then I'll just say the portal dumped him in a slightly different location and it took him some time to catch-up/find you all.

About the Red Caps, that would be an Arcana or a History check. Let's say DC12.

Arcana: 1d20 + 3 ⇒ (8) + 3 = 11 Ooooooh, so close!

Arianna knows nothing. Kinda fitting since she isn't from Midgard, perse.

Arcana or a History check. Let's say DC12: 1d20 + 4 ⇒ (7) + 4 = 11

Not to be.

Aterro hasn't posted in another game that we share, too.

And the other game that He and I are in, Tareth runs, so he knows about him not posting there either.

I think the monster known as Real Life has gobbled him up for the time being.

Arcana or History: 1d20 + 8 ⇒ (11) + 8 = 19

Scouting first sounds good—Gunnar wants to try and save the people, but the ones in danger of being eaten are probably the most urgent—but getting more info is helpful first.

We're going on a family vacation this Wednesday to Sunday. My posting will be very limited. Please bot me as necessary.

Cheers

Okay, Arianna has a +9 to stealth and can cast invisibility. She also has a +7 to perception. She can upcast to make more of us invisible, but only up to two more, so someone's going to either go without or stay behind.

Gunnar is loud and clanky in his armor, though not terribly so (+2 total bonus to stealth), so he will volunteer to stay behind.

Luthael is +2 Stealth, too. Same as Gunnar

I have a +1 Though my next pevel is Rogue for the sweet scout goal and bonuses.

Oh boy. Looks like Arianna's best off going alone. Wish we still had Scram with us.