DM Lament Configuration's Carrion Hill (Inactive)

Game Master electricjokecascade

On the one hand LYS YOU DID IT YOU ABSOLUTE MADLAD

And on the other hand the next day is going to be interesting. We may have to trade hats.

This turned from "Lys don't you die on us" to "Lys don't you solo the final dungeon without us" very quickly.

Outstanding job! Lys is officially the party's deadliest lady.

Heh. I was burning through Grit like nobody's business, so I don't think that was ever on the table.

Also, I got pretty panicked a couple of posts, and I completely forgot to respond to the cavern conversation when I was thinking of responding to both Mihaela and Kolthis. :( Managed to contract some of that dread over the internet and in PbP! Good job, GM!

That's coming down now, better late than never, I suppose.

And the band's back together again! Well done, Lys. Things were indeed looking hairy for a second there, but you pulled through in fine heroic fashion.

Btw, I also want to give kudos to everyone rping at the inn - excellent, excellent stuff all round. I feel a distinct need to traumatize you all further so that more amazing rp can result.

Briarstone is of course where the Strange Aeons AP gets started. My headcanon is that Walter spent a few weeks there after catastrophically failing a SAN check in the Affair of the Countess and the Orphans. He left well before things got... crazy.

I'm now picturing Lys's adventure in the style of a Bloodborne speedrun.

So I'm updating my sheet, have we all picked from the loot available? I wanted to double check on everything before we finally cash in and work out how much we'll have to work with - I'll throw the wand of chill touch into the sell pile unless somebody wants it, I don't think I'll get any use out of it.

@GMLC - With Myre dead, does his ring still count as bonded?

Posting to all my games: My grandmother died Sunday and I'm not in a great headspace for posting. Plus I have to travel home for the funeral, help with arrangements, that sort of thing.

I'll try to get a few posts in, particularly if my character needs to do something in order for the party to move forward, but probably won't manage much in the way of RP or helping with decision-making for the rest of the week. Please bot as needed. I hope to be back in form by next Monday.

My condolences, Yelena. Please don't worry about the game - focus on your family and taking care of yourself. We'll be here whenever you're ready.

@Maritine: No, his ring is no longer bonded.

All my condolences Yelena. We're here if you need anything.

I'm very sorry to hear it!

So sorry to hear that. My condolences. Stay strong and take all the time you need!

Just checking in with everyone - was that last post too dense, and holding up folk's responses?

If so, we can move to discussing the elf's intel here in OOC.

There's a lot to break down in the post and I'd love to go over it in small parts here - I really didn't feel like I gave a good response to it while trying to keep the focus on the RP.

No worries, I sensed that I may have dumped too many logs onto the momentum-fire and caused things to gutter out.

Complete tangent: dang, there are a lot of cheap flights and hotels right now.

If I'm going to get coronavirus anyway, maybe I'll enjoy it more in a heavily discounted 5 star hotel in Venice?

I mean, without going wildly off tangent on it - if you could handle a super flu, sure? I guess?

Real life aside - So given Lys's awesome solo shenanigans, GM is there anything you can tell us about what that means/does to the asylum?

And I am all to keep on just going with downtime RP if thats where we're all at.

@Yelena Really sorry to hear. Take all the time you need of course.

Nothing too dense that's holding up responses for me, just more that I haven't gotten home earlier than 9pm since last Friday so there's been some time issues. But I am also down for some continued RP - no need to rush I think.

I had just bought tickets to get to Paizocon the week before this COVID business got super out of hand, I'm only slightly upset at the price differential haha. Hope you're all safe!

I live in Northern Italy, and I might add that as an added bonus, you would be able to walk though the streets without being swallowed by the usual throng of tourist. Things are getting quite surreal — wasn't used to seeing the streets so empty. Everybody's doing the bare minimum to keep the whole thing going.

Regarding the asylum: it looks like we might have to fight our way through inmates and orderlies alike. Not sure how we want to deal with the former — assuming they are simple mooks, we could simply suck up the attack penalty and use non-lethal damage against them (if we have access to spells like sleep, that would be even better).

Don't know how much sleep magic we have access too, but I have tanglefoot bags and depending on how much time we have between resting and going back to the asylum might be able to make a few similar crowd control items, that way if we struggle with non-lethal.

I haven't played a full spellcaster in ages, can sleep be used against a group? Or would we need something different for group management?

I have one good group management spell.

True. Do we have a good non-lethal crowd management spell? I can't see burning down the asylum working out for us one way or another.

And to nudge things a little, is the door Lys entered on the map? Thinking up some plans for when we go to the asylum while doing my best to ignore real life - virus panic has finally hit where I live and oh boy is this a welcome distraction.

I think the door I entered by is bound to be locked and guarded now, we didn't really make the quietest of escapes!

I have some blunt bolts, and I can probably afford taking the -4 penalty with them for asylum patients.

Stay safe, Maritine, it's all going crazy here in South England, too, and I've grown pretty reclusive until it dies down.

Just checking in. Things have slowed down in the game a lot since my last post. How do you guys want to proceed? I'm happy to continue with rp posts, but if so, we're gonna need folks to pick up the ball and run with it.

Then again, both Yelena and Lys have stated they won't be posting frequently. Is this just a good time to take it slow?

Indeed, sorry for the protracted silence, I think we were all trying to elaborate the elf's hefty infodump and weren't too sure about how to respond to it.

I for one am against overthinking it too much, and in favor of simply storming the asylum with guns blazing, à la Walter. Not that I'm lacking spare time, as I'm now officially quarantined (along with everyone in Italy).

I'm good to continue, there's just a lot to work with the infodump - and that's not even bringing real life into the equation. I have a flexible time schedule for the moment so I'm good either way.

If we do go guns a-blazin', I can prep up invisibility and true strike potions to give us an extra edge or emergency buff. I'm gonna dig a little more into the potions list and see what else is available and would be useful.

Mihaela I have no idea what to say except that I hope it all passes as quickly and painlessly as possible.

As far as crowd control goes, I can get sound burst or burst of radiance at 2nd level, not so much anything at 1st level.

Things have been hectic here - people being quarantined, family issues, and prepping for a 5 day audit at work that's going on all this week. I definitely do want to continue with the rp and story, it's just been difficult to dig any time up.

I do hope everyone is doing well <3

Hang in there, Mihaela :(

OK, well it sounds like we should move things forward to the next morning, when folks are ready to assault the asylum. I'll let folks get in any wrap-up posts (especially Lys, as she's yet to post a report from her return to the asylum) and then I'll move things along.

Thank you all for your patience. It ended up taking a little longer than I'd thought, but for the most part things seem to have settled down. I should be back to my regular schedule.

Apologies if my week-long absence contributed to the game slowing down. I think once we start assaulting the asylum things should pick up again.

Yelena! Welcome back!

I still don't mind if we kick around the RP some more (I'm working on a post, just distracted) but I also get it if we want to get back on track. Anything to distract from conspiracy theories and essential oil hucksters.

Hey guys, sorry for not being active recently but currently I'm not feeling very well — shouldn't be anything serious and just to clarify I have no respiratory symptoms whatsoever — I hope I'll be able to pick things up as soon as possible, in the meantime by all means, enjoy this game and feel free to bot Mihaela as needed!

Checking in on y'all since everything's kinda stabilized where I am and it's weirdly comforting on a small scale. How is everyone?

I'm still around, though it's been a difficult few weeks. Yelena doesn't really have much to add at this point in terms of RP, so I'm ready to move onto the next day.

Sorry everyone, been a bit overwhelmed with the virus over here in North Carolina - not affected personally, but staying at home and wrangling the kids. Also... been just kind of generally bummed out, you know? It's been hard to muster much enthusiasm for my writing, much less my rp. But! That said, I think I'm coming out the other side. If everyone's game, I'll move things forward to the asylum today.

Post is in, apologies if its a little messy - things just won't slow down for five minutes.

Pinging Walter, Mihaela, and Kolthis. You guys still with us?

Moved to work-from-home, been distracted for a few days settling into the new routine. Should be back now.

I'm here. Been preoccupied with most of my family being sick, moving to work from home, and taking some mental health time. Should be good going forward.

In preparation of what's sure to be some fun combat, I've prepared a few different things that I just wanted people to be aware of: Sound burst because stunned is pretty good, and Life Pact in case we get into a particularly worrisome spot.

Team: a Wand of Suggestion! That could be very useful.

Do we have anyone who has high Stealth *and* Use Magic Device? (Or who has Suggestion as a castable spell, better still.) Because if yes, that person could sneak around, find an orderly or someone, zap them with Suggestion, and bring them back for questioning.

I have decent stealth and UMD, Mihaela might be better but she's been understandably quiet lately and I don't want to volunteer her.

I also want to give a heads up that I am probably unavailable the entire weekend - semi-official quarantine goes into effect where I live next week and I think official full quarantine won't be far behind so that' something to look forward to.

Almost too easy...? Well: I say we head straight down.

It's hard to keep doors secret from a party of six, at least two of whom are Perception monkeys.

Suggestion: Trapfinder examine the door if we have one, otherwise someone with good Init / good Reflex save open it.

Soon as I get a second we'll move forward.

Do we have any trapfinders? I thought I had it but it got traded out by my archetype.

If no trapfinder, then person with best Perception (and a good Reflex save is also good).

Either myself or Mihaela then. Curses, the one time we need a rogue and we ain't got one!

Lys can disable traps, but if there's magical ones, she won't be able to find them. That said, post coming up.

Yeah, you don't see a lot of straight Rogues around. Unchained made the Rogue playable, but still not as cool-fun-sexy as all the new classes. They really needed to get a lot more creative with the Talents IMO... I mildly wonder if the 2e Rogue is both balanced and fun.

I can't really speak for balanced, but I'm having a lot of fun with the 2e rogue I'm playing in PFS. Especially out of combat, because (as usual), rogues get all the skills. In addition to getting more at character creation, they also get to train a new skill/grab a skill feat every level, instead of every other level like the other classes.

My rogue is decent in combat, (and good with traps of course), but the extra skills/skill feats mean you can do just about anything with them. The group I play with regularly doesn't have a cleric, so I've trained up Medicine and taken some healing-related skill feats. Boom. Healer. Need a face? I gotcha. Random esoteric lore related to the legal system? Took that too, because why not. At level 5 there are exactly three skills that I haven't trained, and it's not been for lack of opportunity.

For someone who loves skill monkeys, (which I do), the 2e rogue is basically heaven.