Kesperex: King's Land Scoundrels

Game Master Nathanael Love

What do our characters know about resurrection? Is this something that is common knowledge, and does our town have the resources to do it?

I've never actually had this situation before. But I believe it costs 5000 gold for raise dead, and 2000 gold to get rid of the negative levels? How much gold did we get here?

Also worth noting, someone's going to need to tell Vargas.

If we get some downtime, can Karak modify his armor into fortress plate? He has craft armor as a trained skill.

Fortress Plate: 2100 gold
Plate: 1500 gold
Nimble Modification: 1000 gold

That's a 1600 gold difference. And I think that by doing it himself, he could get it done for 800? If so, his total AC will drop from 21 down to 20, but his touch AC will go from 11 against firearms up to 16. While overall it's a downgrade in my book (AC16 is still pretty easy to hit. Those musketeers were rocking +9. Still, hitting on a 2+ or a 7+ is a big change), it makes alot of sense IC for Karak to start taking firearms seriously. I figure that if I do this, he can later get +2 Dexterity (from somewhere) to get him back up to his current AC. But that will further improve his touch AC.

I'm also trying to figure out a way to get a higher touch AC. Best I can figure out to get some protection is missile shield. However, that's a 2 feat investment which Karak just isn't able to meet.

Yes- though you may find time a more precious resource than money at some point!

So, is reincarnation possible, or does Vi need to make a new character?

(also raised the possibility in gameplay of taking the body to a city)

I'm PMing her and looks like we have a solution in place for until you get to whichever location you chose to raise her.

(I'll let her spring the specifics on you)

I'll reveal the secret when the time is right.

Well now I'm just curious. :P

And on a different note, suddenly 800 gold doesn't seem like that much of a stretch.

Should I build my character to level 3 or 4- or to one level lower than the rest of the party?

Level 3 to start.

So. Thinking about this abit, I have an idea. Would like to hear some thoughts.

We have 20,000 gold! That's alot. We can't spend it in town, but we can leave town to spend it.

(1) Mercenaries. This...doesn't feel like a long term solution to me. CR 1/8 mercenaries cost 2 gold per day. Assuming we needed 100 to protect the town, that's 200 gold per day. Even if we find mercenaries, we would burn through it quickly.

(2) Kingdom Building. This one could be interesting. My idea for it goes like this. We use our 20k gold to encourage settlers to come. Karak, for one, would love to get Hill Dwarves to flock to the town. With the idea being that our sleepy little town lies right dab in the middle of two warring kingdoms. If we can fortify the town and protect it, well...it becomes a natural trading ground between two hostile powers. There could be alot of gold in that.

Lyre of Building

So we spend 13k gold on this, for example. Lets us quickly build things like walls for the town, and then houses for new settlers. Not sure if this is the best use of gold, but it would speed things up.

For this idea, we'd use our 20k gold to tell settlers with skills that if they come we can aid them in building homes and businesses. With the provision that they swear loyalty to our town and join a militia, which we will arm and train. Having a walled town, with cannons and a trained militia defending their homes would make it formidable for either kingdom to attack.

We could also get away with the initial part of this by hiding behind Karak's title. If our current occupiers say we can't do something like arm our people, then just have them wear his house colors and say that it is his right. Could still be problems, but I think that we'd have a colorable enough excuse on building up our military force.

I think that with the kingdom building route, we could claim titles for ourselves to add that air of legitimacy to our move. Karak already has a noble title, so that's easy enough. But everyone in the group could get a title, based on what their interests are in the town. Become the defacto rulers of the place. I'd say that this is my favorite option, because after we've accomplished this it leaves us with responsibilities. Such as dealing with the fey problem we have going on.

(3) We continue messing with one kingdom exclusively, to get them to withdraw from out town to the point where the war front moves away. It would give us peace, for the most part. Though it would mean being swallowed by one kingdom.

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Anyways, that's all I can think of on how to go about this. Would like to hear from other people on how they see us progressing.

My thoughts later, but small correction, we don't have TWENTY thousand, we have TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND gold. Lyre of Building is small potatoes.

Yes we could buy a kingdom....

When I was typing that I originally wrote 200k, but thought "no, that can't be right..."

:P

We are rich!

@ Karak

1, as you said, I think mercs are a nonstarter. Money, loyalty, etc, but also I think if we hire mercs, we face immediate reprisal/open war from the occupying force, which imo, we want to delay as long as possible.

2, I think that working to improve the town's standing is a great way to A, launder money, B, protect Burrowdar. I think that your noble title is a good way to do it behind the protection of the law, but that the rest of the party assuming our own imo betrays the point of being scoundrels? Not to speak for everyone, but -shrug-

3, 100% no for me; I think that throwing our lot in with either side even temporarily also betrays the narrative and I'd prefer to delay that as long as possible.

MONEY

Lyre of Building is a good idea, but I think that anytime we make any big purchases with these coins we'll need to launder them, but Viatrix is not smart enough to come up with how. Also, she's dead.

DM, how much gold should I build my new character with?

Also, if we don't cut Harlan in (and tbf he does not have to know what we were doing or why, also he was down the whole fight), we have between 33,333.33 and 40k each depending on whether or not we pick up a 6th party member to replace Auggy

How about 20k each on spending, with focus on things to keep us hidden and safe? +1 weapon, armor, shield, amulet, ring and cloak is 9k. So 11k left for things like glamered, comfort, ring of sustenance, etc. Should be plenty to play with. Trust each player to spend it wisely.

That leaves 100k for the town. Lyre of building, buy weapons for militia, hire people to train them, recruit settlers...money to bribe officials. Could spend through it fairly quickly. Especially with resurrection money or paying off our Npc

Build your temp character at 3K (that he or she will retain when you return to being Viatrix).

Harlan agreed to join without a split in exchange for the favor (which is going to be a plot arc in a bit).

Fun fact about they lyre of building! If you can make the pitifully easy performance check and you have some way to avoid fatigue, you can play it indefinitely! One of my characters who didn't need to eat, sleep or drink, and didn't age went off and played one for 200 years straight.
Will look into seeing what I can do to help someone stay up indefinitely playing the lyre. Lesser restoration and a ring of sustenance would do the trick

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Incidentally, we are still level 3, right? Because if we hit 4, I can do some cool stuff like get infusion!

Yeah, still level 3- even an encounter that cool and difficult can't level in one fight!

Personally, I think Vi's brother will talk. Bad idea to tell him if we don't have to.

I think you can be vague enough about it that he won't blab. Also I would like to be part of a roleplay scene before my character shows up.

Is your new character Vi's brother? If so, then of course it makes a lot more sense to talk to him. :)

My character will show up regardless of whether or not anyone goes to tell Vargas, but I definitely think that not telling him would have far worse consequences should he find out.

Seems like it could have astronomically bad consequences if we do tell him... he's got a boyfriend in the occupying force. He's going to mention it to him. Those facts get connected, and we have people with guns down our throats.

Now if there is a meta reason for it, I'm totally in... but not seeing how it is more dangerous not to tell. Viatrix is a drunk, and they just had a fight... plenty of reason to assume she's just passed out somewhere, or even off with her buddies. Less dangerous not to tell, and saves him the pain of thinking she might not come back.

The primary meta reason is he will find out anyways, this is our chance to guide his actions and reduce their impact.

Makes the most sense to see the witch first. If we Rez her...then no harm no foul. No different than how others went into negative HPs. Vi can then tell him herself. And if we TPK in the process then we’ll all be too dead to care. But if we need to make a long journey? Then let the brother know.

Out of character, Vargas will react worse if he finds out not from y'all (e.g., from V), I know that Viatrix will also be mad if no one told her kid brother she was dead, and I think this possibility would at least occur to y'all. But I hear the argument.

Wouldn’t occur to Karak! He doesn’t know V that well, and never met her family. ;)

Malik has the diplomacy for it, Cra'rak has the bluntness of having this often be his job for it. Either way, I do think that he deserves to know. Say that she ran into bandits on the road, and that we only found her body later. Then if he blabs to his soldier boy, he can connect the dots that there are murderous bandits around.

Sorry, yesterday was very busy, I'll post today when able

Hey all, posting will be slow for a while; I work in the tourism and hospitality industry in a city where St. Pat's is 1000% everything, apologies as we go into this next week

Best of luck!

Also, yeah- still complete radio silence from Augustus. I checked around and his other GMs haven't haven't heard anything from him either.

Howdy, y'all, hell week is over, but today another of my grandparents died which makes three in six months. Will be catching up in these next few days. Thank you for your patience

So, are we just attacking the witch, or are we going to try to figure out if she really is bad first? Honestly, this whole adventure has my character feeling morally compromised. I'd rather at least see how bad she is first. Is she really a cannibal? We don't know, do we?

I think that we're attacking her. As far as Karak is concerned, witches are evil. The one we are dealing with is evil. The one we are killing is evil. The entire situation is sketchy, yes. But that's what happens when you deal with sketchy people At the very least, though, our group will be removing a threat to our town and will be bringing back a (sketchy) companion.

Is the situation perfect? No. Are there better alternatives? Again, no.

I love the moral dilemma in being sent by one evil hag witch to kill another evil hag witch- isn’t that exactly what you expected when we named the game “scoundrels”?

Well, now that you've told us for sure that she's an evil hag witch, there is no moral dilemma. All we had before that was the word of the questionably honest person who sent us.

... and my character is good, so if the whole thing is meant to get her not to be, then she'll probably bow out at some point.

No that’s definitely not the goal- but yes, she’s a green hag- absolutely chaotic evil and dangerous

No that’s definitely not the goal- but yes, she’s a green hag- absolutely chaotic evil and dangerous

The other one, also evil is what we will call a looming threat for higher levels

Mine is good as well. But not everything can be good.

We have killed soldiers. People who certainly were not all “evil”
We stole an army’s pay, making ourselves rich. That’s an arguable action
We are working with a hag (evil by nature) and are being sent to kill a hag (evil by nature)

None of this is “good.” But I think that Karak has remained LG in alignment as he has worked through these moral dilemmas. And I hope that Kazell stays, because good people are needed when right and wrong isn’t clear

I understand that the fight to preserve the town is morally questionable... she's trying to justify it by telling herself that they are in the middle of a war, and she is very aware that killing the soldiers was probably killing good people.

--She didn't identify the creature as a hag, so she doesn't know that part, but is definitely questioning that person as untrustworthy,

--I wasn't threatening to leave the game if I didn't get my way. :) I was just stating where my character was at. If she leaves, I would probably just make a more morally ambiguous character and jump back in.

Well hope you don’t. I like Kazell, and would prefer that she makes a stand on her morality.

I wouldn’t worry about it- this is about the point on the line where it will stay; don’t worry there will be much morally unambiguous plot lines and battles to come.

The whole “hook” of the King Lands themselves though is a LG and a CGbKingdom at war over the differences between that- meant to be kind of England vs France in the Hundred Years’ War or The two sides of the War of the Roses.

We should RP it out imo.

Cra'rak is a pretty yucky alignment of lawful neutral, but I never really saw him as being the moral center of the group :) He wasn't going to recommend killing the other spooky witch in her presence, but was certainly thinking about it, after we get our friend brought back

Malik, as we know that a 20 misses, and Malik has +5 to hit, maybe it would make more sense for using Aid Another as the combat option? Giving Karak or Cra'rak another +2 to hit would probably make more DPS as a group.

Yeah, that's probably a good idea- I'll see where the combat goes next round and see what needs doing...

Good news, y'all! I am still here

The bad news, is that I lost my cell phone on the airplane on the way to my grandfather's funeral, and have been unable to log into any of my accounts until now. But I am back! I am very sorry to all that I missed the ENTIRE month of March. I am still ready and willing to return if you will still have me; thank you AGAIN for your patience and understanding.