GM Dak - Shattered Star 1

Game Master Dakcenturi

"So we need to talk to a person that is most likely going to bolt as soon as she sees a bunch of people who she doesn't know invading her hidey hole." she looks up at the others "I am physically incapable of being quite when I walk and rather useless in a foot race." she points out if Anyone had any doubts "Veltariel could scout it out, if she was willing." Sapher turns her dark eyes to the elven woman, "Are you? Willing I mean."

”સ્ટીલ્થમાં કોઈ કુશળતા ધરાવતા કોઈને, મને લાગે છે કે જરૂર છે. હું પાછો આવીશ,” she replies. Before slipping off and ahead, making her way to the building to find the safest route in and looking for traps as well as signs of life.

Elven: ”Someone with some skill in stealth will need to, I suppose. I will be back,”

Stealth: 1d20 + 8 ⇒ (11) + 8 = 19
Perception: 1d20 + 7 ⇒ (14) + 7 = 21

"I assume that was a yes." she shrugs with a smile.

Esrisi starts to talk about how quiet she can be when Caroliss gives her the Are you for real? look and closes her mouth.

When Veltariel goes off to scout, Esrisi waits patiently for about ten seconds before she speaks up. "What's the plan when she gets back? This infiltration stuff isn't really my element, though I must admit I've kind of excited. Do you think we're going to get Natalya to come peacefully?"

She better, for your sake.

Drask leans against a wall as Vel sneaks off. He glances sideways at Esrisi. "Maybe a minute, maybe an hour. Maybe she gets killed." He pauses. "Give her an hour, then we go in." He draws the dagger from his chestplate sheath and begins picking at his fingernails with them.

"I'm inclined to rush in, once we know the layout, we know where she is, and there are no traps between us and her." Sapher answers Esrisi, as her eyes narrow at Drask's comment. It is all well and good thinking someone may die in a conflict, but opening suggesting it a possibility is just seems like bad battle etiquette. "Unless you less armored types want to sneak in, that is. If so I can guard an exit. I'm pretty good at guarding exits." she gives a wry sarcastic smile.

"Months of training, and now on our first mission we are going to find and capture someone. It's hard to believe this is happening so soon!" Caroliss tries to calm her nerves as she waits for Veltariel's return.

Vel sneaks up to the building. Checking the two doors she finds that the one to the south is locked, while the one on the west side of the building is unlocked. She can hear two men talking on the other side of the western door but can't make out their conversation.

Veltariel returns and steps to where the team can see her, and signals for them to come along. She will lead them to the slightly ajar door.

As the group, as a whole, heads towards Vel three men burst out of the other door from the building. One of them shouts "Hold it right there! What do you lot think you are doing?"

Map updated.

Caroliss looks taken aback as the men suddenly appear. "We're just walking on a public street! What do you think YOU'RE doing, bursting out of abandoned buildings? Look, if you're looting the place, that's none of my business. We'll just be on our way now." Her heart racing, Caroliss starts walking toward where Vel is as confidently as she can manage. Perhaps she could just distract them long enough to deal with them.

Bluff: 1d20 + 8 ⇒ (5) + 8 = 13

If Mok wants to surprise round color spray them, I would not oppose.

"Walking." He points ahead of them. "That way, mostly." Drask doesn't reach for his weapons or appear otherwise on edge about being confronted.

In the back of the pack, she cranes her head to the side so she can see past the bulk of Drask. As Caroliss, Drask, and whoever else chats with them, she thinks.

Three men, not Tower Girls then, unless the name doesn't denote the gender.
Can't be a trap, well it could be and these are the most inept ambushers of all time, yelling Hold it when they should be stabbing. But probably not a trap.
So not friends, not sent by the smelly beggar king from before, so either they are hunting their wayward thief for their own reasons, or this is not related to that at all.

Ersisi scuttles between Caroliss and Drask, trying to cool an inconspicuous as possible but failing miserably. Typically one does not see women like her strutting around abandoned buildings after midnight in the gutters of the world.

When Drask plays it cool, Esrisi nods and decides she needs to look tough too.
She starts to strut and across the walkway and bobbing her head and gritting her teeth with a mean expression on her face. When Caroliss leans over and whispers "What are you doing?" she keeps nodding her head and puffing her chest out as she walks.

She slips from her normally proper grammar into a dialect full of contractions and accented Varisian. "I'm gettin' bad. You better get bad, Car. 'Cause if you ain't bad, you're gonna get f!$!ed. If you bad, they don't mess with you."

She looks up at the man who pokes his head and and she reaches out and points to him "That's right. No s#*#. That's right." She continues strutting across the walkway looking completely out of place and more or less looking like an idiot.

Inspiration taken from Stir Crazy (language).

Will do, in a few.

Do they seem to notice me?

Mokhasi removes a few pinches of colored sand from his pouch with one hand. Suddenly, his face and neck glow with five white painted symbols. Mokhasi steps forward and says some words in a language you do not understand, and the colored sand animates and expands, refracting the light in a bright pattern and extending towards the gathered creatures. One of the tunes on his face glows brightly, before becoming extinguished and fading away. The remainder of the runes remain visible.

He is speaking Zanj, but with spellcraft, anyone can identify the spell.

Will-R: 1d20 ⇒ 14
Will-G: 1d20 ⇒ 18
Will-B: 1d20 ⇒ 15

As the colors wash over the men two of the fall to the ground unconscious while the third seems unaffected. However, seeing the others drop he turns and runs in the other direction down the street.

When she hears Adorellan begin working magic, Veltariel steps around the corner and draws her bowstring back, but the thug had already fled. She narrows her eyes as she relaxes her bowstring and returns the arrow to her quiver. She walks towards the unconscious men and draws her dagger...

"NO!" Sapher barks, darting as quick as she can to the unconscious men, she is in no way quicker than the elf woman, so she uses her voice to hopefully make her pause. After the initial bark her voice gets quieter, but no less yeilding "We don't know what these men were doing, and meaning we don't know if they deserve to die or not."

Aw s#%&. Drask watches the two drop, then the other one run off. "Well, I can't catch him." He reaches into his pack and takes out some rope, as casually as if he was grabbing some coin to pay for lunch.

Drask will tie up the two unconscious men.

Caroliss barely has time to blink before the encounter with the strange men ends. It's another moment before Drask and Vel move toward the unconscious bodies, with different ideas in mind. "Vel, what are you doing? We are not murderers!"

Veltariel sighs and sheaths her dagger. ”હું ક્યારેય તેમને મારી નાખવાનો ઈરાદો નથી. હું શોધ કરતી વખતે તેમની યોજનાને સતત મૌનમાં ડરવાની હતી,” she whispers calmly as she grips her bow again. She moves to the now open door without further explanation.

Elven: ”I never intended to kill them. My plan was to scare them into continued silence while we searched.”

Esrisi is indifferent on killing the guards, but she certainly wasn't voicing her approval of anything Veltariel was doing. She slips behind Caroliss and Drask and casually follows them towards the unconscious men. Once they are are there and the men are bound, she asks "What of the one that got away? That's bound to cause a problem, isn't it?"

"Well, he didn't run back inside. That would've been a much bigger problem, I think."

The immediate crisis with Vel averted, Caroliss thinks back admiringly to the other elf's magics. "That was incredible, Mokhasi--knocking out those enemies without shedding a single drop of blood. What was that?"

Sapher relaxes when Veltariel sheathes her blade. The elven woman woman looks quiet capable in a fight, and having it turned on her would not be one of the highlights of her trip to this city.

Sapher nods in agreement with Esrisi "Maybe at least. The man could just be a coward and will run and hide... or he could be going after friends. We should hurry." She grabs one of the bound men by a leg and drags them through the door they came out of. Leaving them on the street is probably the same as gutting them.

"We need to search them too, right?" There was a lot more focus on exploring tombs and writing Pathfinder Chronicles than on this sort of work. Ever perceptive, she tries to do a fast but thorough search to disarm them and in case they had anything that might provide clues for their continued investigation. Perception: 1d20 + 10 ⇒ (20) + 10 = 30

Mokhasi watches Vel approach the downed humans, and his fingers twitch slightly, before she sheathes her daggers. The runes fade in power, and appear to be merely white paint. Distractedly, he turns to Caroliss, "A trifle. Taught to children to help them escape. It loses it's potency quickly but is a valuable tool for times like this. I always attempt to disable foes if I can." Mokhasi smiles slightly, and follows the party's lead.

Esrisi looks around for signs of trouble. Pointing to the warehouse she starts to walk in that direction. "Quickly now! Sapher is right. We have surprise on our side and time is against us, let us quickly push in and find our quarry."

As you drag the men back inside the room from where they came you see it in fact, isn't actually part of the building proper, but appears to be a shed built onto the side of the building, which would probably explain why the last thug ran off instead of back inside.

Quickly checking the two men they are each wearing chainmail and carry a light wooden shield, a light crossbow with 20 bolts, a morningstar, and 12 gold.

Heading to the only other door, the one Vel peeked in side you open it the rest of the way. The entire floor of this chamber has collapsed into the pool of water five feet below. The earthen walls of this flooded subcellar ooze with foul rivulets, and the smell is abominable. Two oozing sewer pipes protrude through the east wall of this pit just above the level of the sewage. Part of the ceiling above the entrance has collapsed, revealing an attic crawlspace above; a rickety ladder leads up from the water into the crawlspace. A door stands in the far wall across the sludge pit. A wooden plank balanced between both doors makes a precarious bridge between the two doors.

Map updated

Sapher grunts in surprise 'Better armed than I was expecting." the combined value of their gear would probably feed a few families in this slum for quiet a while. "But no mysterious letter explaining the mastermind's plot." Sapher enjoyed a good book now and again, hence was hoping.

"So Bridge or ladder?" she asks once she get a turn to peer through the doorway.

Drask grunts at Mokhasi. "How quickly does it wear off?"

Assuming Mokhasi tells Drask the duration of color spray:

Drask nods, then gives each man a good haymaker across the face. If the few gentler-hearted members of the party protest he shrugs. "They'll be fine, don't want 'em getting up behind us."

Will hit them with non-lethal damage until they're unconscious from that as well. Don't need them waking up and screaming their heads off or warning others.

"Mhmm." Drask looks at the room situation. He reaches for the ladder and tests it to see how sturdy it is, and tries putting a foot out on the plank as well.

Wanting to assess how stable each one is. Is this a "be careful or you may fall" situation, or is it "this is going to collapse if too much weight is on it" situation?

Drask has acrobatics and climb both trained, but his armor gives him a fairly hefty penalty. Depending on the difficulty I may need to remove and re-don my armor.

From the map it looks like climbing down makes you go through the nasty stuff below, so likely trying to avoid that option.

Looking at the options and shaking her head, "Disgusting. It looks like we're climbing or balancing to get across this pit. I will go last and offer a blessing for each of you that should help guide you across."

Esrisi will provide guidance to each person before they attempt to cross whatever path into the building they choose. She will attempt to walk the plank and go last.

Acrobatics, Guidance: 1d20 - 2 + 1 ⇒ (17) - 2 + 1 = 16

Drasks reaches over to the ladder and as soon as he puts any pressure on one of the rungs it snaps. It is pretty clear that it wouldn't support anyone's weight. As he puts a foot on the board it seems much more stable, like to support two people at one time.

As far as options now that you've checked the two apparent ones, you can cross the board two at a time, but need a Acrobatics to avoid falling. You could also attempt climbing up the inside walls to the second floor above, but it would be pretty difficult to accomplish.

Veltariel begins moving across the wooden plank...

Acrobatics: 1d20 + 9 ⇒ (7) + 9 = 16

Sapher pulls out a rope from her pack, ready to throw it to Vel once she gets across. "It will be like a handrail, if we both hold it for the others."

Vel gets across the board with ease, though as she reaches the other side it creaks loudly. Shortly after you hear chattering voices coming from the sewer pipes as three goblins emerge and glare up at you.

Round 1
> Mokashi/Drask/Caroliss/Veltariel, Enemy, Esrisi/Sapher

Caroliss cringes as Drask lands brutal punches on the unconscious men. "So much for civilized combat," she mutters to no one in particular as her hopes for non-violence are dashed.

As she hears the chattering ahead, Caroliss moves to gain sight of what has arrived and sees Vel in a precarious state, surrounded by goblins. "Calistria favors you, Vel!"

Using Bit of Luck domain power. Vel rolls twice on all d20s for 1 round.

How far down are the goblins in elevation? Is Vel threatened? Not that it matters for AOOs while they are flat-footed.

They are 5 ft down. They do not threaten on the beam.

Veltariel quickly draws back an arrow and looses it at the goblin, notnwaiting for the group to try and tell her what to do.

Attack vs top gobo: 1d20 + 6 + 1 ⇒ (16) + 6 + 1 = 23
Attack Roll 2vs top gobo: 1d20 + 6 + 1 ⇒ (19) + 6 + 1 = 26
Damage: 1d8 + 1 ⇒ (1) + 1 = 2

Drask would definitely want to go first if possible. Taking 10 if possible for a 12. If not:

Acrobatics: 1d20 + 5 - 4 + 1 ⇒ (10) + 5 - 4 + 1 = 12 A 12 anyways!

As the goblins emerge he snarls. Little gobos. Nasty creatures, never good to see them around. He clenches his fists, white-knuckle gripping his axe. He holds his axe up and closes his eyes, almost as if in prayer. He remains there for a solid five seconds, apparently doing nothing as the goblins arrive to threaten the group.

Brother, blood will be shed. My own and my enemies. Join me. Experience the thrill of life once again, and be at my side.

Then, suddenly, a black shape emerges from Drask's body. It looks like a dark mirror of Drask, existing just next to him. As he begins moving the shadow double mirrors his every move, and in an instant it's impossible to tell which one is Drask.

Full-round action, manifest shadow double. Functions as a single mirror image but never expires.

What weapons do the goblins have? In particular, any ranged or throwing weapons?

They are carrying smalls sacks.

They are carrying smalls sacks.

Bastards. I'll kill them all.

Will post in a bit - was Mokhasi with the party when initiative was rolled?

To Drask
”The duration is variable, but it is usually almost a minute. It depends on the intensity of the light versus the surrounding light, and things like that. The more powerful versions of it have a more predictable duration.” He shrugs.

Mokhasi moves with his long, loping gait to stand next to Caroliss. ”What is it? Oh, those must be goblins. How interesting!” Mokhasi peers past Drask to see down below.

Double move, nothing else he can to. Does Mokhasi have LoS to them down below from his position, so I know for next round?

I would say only people in the room, or directly in front of the door would have LoS.