Protectors of Golarion (Wrath of the Righteous AP)

Game Master Sensen

Adjusted the stats as requested, and my sympathies Merixia. Hope it gets there for you sooner rather than later!

EDIT: Before I forget - the Sword of Valor is protected by a dimensional anchor effect. So teleporting out with it is impossible - the party would know this. The command staff is assuming you're doing the teleportation in (and out) for the purposes of a quick strike.

My banner is back to unbuffed. It looks like everything is right, and matches what you have. The asterisks on my saves are because I have a few bonuses that may apply depending on the effect (which haven't been added in). I get +2 vs any confusion/insanity effect, +2 vs any effect with the [evil] descriptor, +1 to any fort or ref saves caused by evil outsiders.

Before I forget - the Sword of Valor is protected by a dimensional anchor effect. So teleporting out with it is impossible - the party would know this. The command staff is assuming you're doing the teleportation in (and out) for the purposes of a quick strike.

Oh. Well, this is important information that changes what we should do quite a lot, I think. Even if we discover the general location of the banner by triangulating with locate object, there's no point trying to teleport in for a quick retrieval if we can't actually retrieve it. Gaseous form + invisibility might still work, but the creature carrying the banner would need to know his or her quickest route out or else risk getting lost in the fortress. I guess if it's close to the outside already, there's also stone shape to create an exit.

Yeah, sorry, that's a goof on my part... or the AP's writers, because it's not super easy to find that information. Anyways, I apologize regardless.

EDIT: I also want to remind you that the alter self scale gives you bonuses to masquerading as evil creatures, so that's an option as well. (We've been using it for stat buffs for so long it's hard to remember.)

(fwiw) I wasn't suggesting that we teleport in, grab the banner, and teleport out. I'm hoping we can teleport in and kill all the people in charge, and then fight our way out (which should be easier than fighting our way in, since the defenses will all be set in the wrong direction, and some enemies may just take off if/when they realize that we've killed their leaders).

Also, on a completely different topic, I recently stumbled across the gancanagh for the first time (or, 1st time I remember, at least), and it immediately reminded me of the capricious romantic interests that Azira had early on in the game. That prompted a couple of thoughts. First, even though it has no actual bearing on the game (mechanically, at least), I'd like for her celestial ancestor(s) to be gancanagh, if there are no objections; and, I feel like maybe she would know that because of the significance her parents placed on knowing their lineage (which had been drilled into them by their slavemasters before they were freed). Second, I don't want to distract from the actual plot (or place any more on the GM's plate), but I would like to bring back some of Azira's interest in finding a romantic partner (or series of partners, giving her capriciousness), even if its almost entirely 'off camera'. (If it's alright with you, GM, I could even just include occasional brief scenes between her and otherwise-unnamed NPCs--written all myself so you don't have to invest the time/energy--and passing references to like bringing so-and-so to her tent at night, or kissing them goodbye in the morning?)

And, thirdly, I suppose, I don't know that this would even come up in the game (unless maybe Verene or Thesius wants to take a stab at it, lol), but I feel like her ideal actual mate would be something like a gancanagh, or someone with the 'many forms' archmage path ability: someone who can use something like change shape or alter self as often as they want for as long as they want (so that she could enjoy some variety while remaining faithful).

Edit: or, a greater hat of disguise... if I ever have 12,000 extra gold just kicking around (or 6k, and about a week of free time from Verene)

Yeah, going in, hitting the leadership, and then getting out is absolutely viable as far as the command staff knows. It's just darting in, grabbing the banner, and teleporting out isn't an option. (It's also why the demons can't grab it and teleport out before you get to them, for the record.)

The ancestral choice is fine by me, Azira, as is the somewhat capricious romance options. I'll see what I can find - probably some of the freed prisoners are rather more chaotic than the paladins of Iomedae, I think.

Doppelgängers, that's your ideal mate. :P

Doppelgängers, that's your ideal mate. :P

lol- do we have one of those kicking around somewhere?

Her partners wouldn’t have to be chaotic at all (though she’d be far more open to that than I suspect most paladins would be)- by “capricious romantic interests” I didn’t mean that she was (necessarily) attracted to mercurial people but that she herself is rather fickle with her affections (quick to fall for people, and to move on if interest isn’t immediately reciprocated, or if the other person doesn’t do enough to maintain her interest).

I was thinking, if she exists in this worldstate as in the video game, someone like Arueshalae might be an interesting (and admittedly, somewhat humorous) romantic choice. Succubi have at-will alter self. And you'd end up in a kind of reverse situation with the Succubus being very hesitant about sexuality while the paladin wants a lot of it :)

Uhh… as amusing as it sounds like that could be (and as much as a succubus could be a great fit for what I described) I’m not sure trying to seduce a demon to switch sides is really a tactic Azira would be quick to try. I mean… I am very good at diplomacy, so maybe I should, but she’s really more of the vanquishing evil type.

Apologies, it sounds as if you're unfamiliar with her backstory/character, and if so I shouldn't talk about it or potentially spoil anything more - assuming she exists in this worldstate.

I am completely unfamiliar with her, but (based on your last two posts) you can color me intrigued…

Ooh, if Arueshalae does exist in the AP, you're in for a treat! I ship it.

@Verene- please let us know how you report the information about what’s going on in the chapel. I’d like to post a reaction but the specifics may vary depending on whether you sensor it at all, or offer any speculations or anything.

(fwiw) I wasn't suggesting that we teleport in, grab the banner, and teleport out. I'm hoping we can teleport in and kill all the people in charge, and then fight our way out (which should be easier than fighting our way in, since the defenses will all be set in the wrong direction, and some enemies may just take off if/when they realize that we've killed their leaders).

No, I know you weren't, but Verene suggested it because if we can activate the Sword of Valor, we should do so absolutely as soon as possible. We know that it "[W]arded Drezen against demonic deception, attacks, and teleportation, and bolstered crusader morale with its magic." So, it would both give us a huge advantage in fighting the rest of the demons in the fortress, and ensure that reinforcements can't teleport in for them. It seems like an obvious priority. Picking off the leaders is clearly important too, but we could probably only get one per in-and-out teleport, so per day. (Out of character, we can be pretty sure they aren't all going to be in the same area, because if they were, that encounter would be way too hard. In character we should probably be careful not to try to fight them all at once, but to get them alone if we can.)

Based on what you describe for Azira and relationship goals, I also think Arueshalae might on paper be a good candidate for her as far as NPC romances go, but there would definitely be... challenges*. From certain previous Azira posts, I thought her dalliances before were supposed to be an expression of grief and emotional instability rather than a stable part of her character, but if not, that's fine. At least, assuming it's fine with all her flings that her interest is so short-term... otherwise, things could get messy.

Hope the descriptive post gives you enough to respond to. :)

I mean, I don't have any doppelgängers planned for now, but you never know where they might show up...

I mean, I don't have any doppelgängers planned for now, but you never know where they might show up...

Turns out Thesius has been a doppelgänger this whole time!

I'll be getting caught up on discussion later today. Busy week.

The one night stands were definitely an expression of her grief and instability but, in my mind, it wasn't so much a departure from her character as it was an element of her character being pushed to an unhealthy extreme. I'm not looking to get back to one night stands but I do think someone who naturally has a certain freeness with her heart would probably continue to desire and even find comfort in companionship and affection, whether that lasts a few days or a few weeks or turns into something longer term.

That spoiler tag is sorely tempting, but if there's a succubus in our future that Meri is currently shipping with Azira, I think I'll wait and be surprised, lol.

Espescially since this current desecration scene probably has lust Demon of sorts masquerading as Iomedae...

Just a quick confirmation - Zuhra Aponavicius is actually a female, right? Since she's a marilith? And we know both of those things, since Galfrey referred to her as a her, and Verene's Knowledge check result back in that meeting also confirmed that she was a marilith.

Verene: Correct. Not sure where I got the male pronoun (which I'm pretty sure I used when Nurah mentioned her to Thesius) from. Probably the "-us" ending. Regardless, she's a marilith.

So, it sounds as if our plan is unchanged, with us flying into the commander's quarters and going from there with the intent to subdue their leadership asap? Shall we forward to the next day and go to the action?

Up to you folks - there's still more that Verene can learn from her scouting, but I don't mind moving us forwards, either.

If/since we’re waiting until tomorrow to go in, I’m in favor of learning as much as we can from Verene’s spell.

That said, I'm entirely sympathetic if you're feeling like your characters can't do anything at the moment - hence the willingness to move us onwards.

I'm fine with moving on if you'd like to summarize the things Verene sees and relays within the rest of the arcane eye duration, GM.

As a side note, I'll be traveling from Saturday the 21st through Monday the 30th. I'll have my cell phone and should be able to make some shorter posts that way, but please don't hold up any party decisions up for me, and please do bot Verene right away if it's been my turn for 24 hours and I haven't posted.

I don’t want to sidetrack the decision making at all, but, does Tarendelev have any children? Or, maybe I should say offspring (adult children). I just remembered that silver dragons (along with most other metallic dragons) have the change shape ability. I think they’re limited to 3 times a day, but I believe each has an unlimited duration, so that would be more than enough variety to make for an appealing love interest

Terendelev doesn't have any canonical children, but that doesn't mean I won't make one up if you're interested. Admittedly, I'd need to figure out how to balance that with the whole "crusade besieged" thing...

Understood Verene, thanks for letting us know.

As for me, I won't be able to post on October 3rd or 4th, or on the 17th or 24th. Just as a fairly early warning.

Sorry for the delay. Multiple birthdays in a short time frame and my niece being up this way has caused part of my normal free time to be used up.

I'll have a post up later tonight, but please don't delay on my part. If the team is fine with bringing Nurah along, he will talk to her about the opportunity and try to convince her to join if she is willing.

Grats, Thesius!

On the scouting, this might be a mood point since the spell just ran out, but OOC I respectfully do wonder if the information we gain from it is worth the Real Life time delay, with the rest of us more or less forced to stand by while it happens (though in this case, Thesius could talk to Nurah instead). Personally, I also find it a bit hard to visualize or infer where these discovered rooms are supposed to be on Aaron's map of the citadel, and we don't know if the main targets/commanders will be in the same locations when we actually attack.

That said, it is a cool tactic to employ and novel to see used efficiently.

You don’t have to insert a dragon just for me… but if you wanted to, we’d probably have to wait a while. A young adult silver dragon, which I’m guessing is probably the minimum age category for a romantic partner, is cr13. That would be a pretty powerful ally at our level. That might be a more realistic option once we’re into double digit levels and have a few more mythic tiers under our belts.

Regarding the RL time vs IC benefit of magical scouting, it seems like a shame to take away such a significant ability from a diviner, but it does slow the game considerably. Maybe in the future Verene could just declare a single guiding principle (like ‘always taking the rightmost unexplored option’ as one example) and then everything she learns could be in a single info dump?

Regarding the RL time vs IC benefit of magical scouting, it seems like a shame to take away such a significant ability from a diviner, but it does slow the game considerably. Maybe in the future Verene could just declare a single guiding principle (like ‘always taking the rightmost unexplored option’ as one example) and then everything she learns could be in a single info dump?

I agree with Azira. Scouting ahead is a major part of the diviner's skillset, and what sets them apart from other wizards. But going turn by turn has slowed the game considerably given the PbP format. Giving her the info in one post might be a good compromise.

I tried to give actual descriptive dialogue for people to respond to, but I do recognize that handling the arcane eye this way slowed us down by about a week of real time. However, it seems like the information received was also much, much better than the previous time using the arcane eye, where the results were all given in one post. Worldwound GM was tracking the location of the eye on the encounters map of Citadel Drezen the whole time, so I feel confident about which room is where. We now know to protect against mind-control magic for the chapel, the exact room where Staunton Vhane presumably spends most of his time, that he has two fiendish minotaur guards, and where the stairs down to the underground level are. It was a lot of description that I just don't think we would have gotten from asking the GM to determine what information Verene sees overall in one shot.

Even just now, collapsing the latter half of the spell into one info dump post resulted in a lovely great big post that was clearly a lot of work for the GM, but the only really useful thing in it was the location of the stairs. (And I guess we know to avoid the two rooms with just books/maps/guards as a distraction from our goal of taking out the commanders and retrieving the banner.) But if I had been in control, I would have spent the entire remaining duration trying to get the eye downstairs, because Aron has no maps at all of anything down there. That mismatch seems like a pretty common result. If we do it that way all the time, it would make scouting this way feel frustratingly nonreactive. At the same time, it would have been a truly unreasonable amount of work for GM Worldwound to give us that and all the previous stuff in a single post.

I don't have a good answer. I think it doesn't make sense in character to not want all the information we can get beforehand, when it takes so little in-game time. But when the other players don't have something to do, solo reactive scouting does feel way too slow for the PBP format. Basically, I guess either everyone else needs something to do at the same time (making more work for the GM); or else we should just not bother with the divinations, and go in blind but together.

I'm fine with skipping ahead to dimension-dooring into Staunton's office, but we need to decide whether we're taking Nurah first, and what day it's happening. And Verene would want to be personally involved in the conversation with Nurah about whether she would actually want to be a part of infiltrating the citadel.

I agree with Verene - it's a hard question to settle on. (Also, I didn't actually realize she was looking for the stairs down, which didn't actually show up, insofar as I recall.) Bold assumptions that you can avoid threats in various rooms, though. :P

I'd like to give everyone more chances to do stuff while divinations are happening, too, but I'm not sure how to ensure that happens every time.

Elliot is also correct in his assumption that the leadership may or may not be in the same places when you teleport in, but I did enjoy sharing information with you as it happened. It's a tough question, which I'm not sure how to handle.

Also, as a final minor correction - half-fiend minotaur guards. A bit more threatening. :P

I'm going to move you onwards to the next day, where you can be speaking with Nurah.

Got up an initial post from earlier interactions. I'll get up another here shortly based on your earlier update.

Sorry for the delay, it's been a hell of a few days. Not feeling up to writing coherently right now, please bear with me.

Hope the rest of the week is less stressful for you, Merixia. No worries, we'll be here.

GM, between the army's supply wagons, the crusader gear we've gathered from defeating especially the Southbank army, and the gear from the 25 or so killed or out-of-action Knights of Kenabres, can we not source a Small cold iron shortsword and Small shortbow with some cold iron arrows? Most people in the army and that we've been fighting are Medium, but I know at least one of the Knights is Small — Janis, the halfling Verene made friends with before. So presumably there are some others too. Bards get proficiency with both shortswords and shortbows.

I don't anticipate that Nurah will need these weapons much if at all, but Verene cares about her being armed appropriately just in case.

There's also, I guess, Resize Item to make a weapon small for 24 hours. However, only Verene can cast it.

Out of curiosity, how is Verene teleporting everyone with one cast of Dimension Door? Reading the spell, it seems to only move yourself and one other creature per 3 levels. Which at CL 9 would be 4 people I believe? Of course, we can do this and have others fly invisibly or such and have a somewhat similar approach still.

If the GM is feeling magnanimous, maybe Verene could have used resize item last night (on yesterday's mythic points) in preparation for bringing Nurah today?

Out of curiosity, how is Verene teleporting everyone with one cast of Dimension Door? Reading the spell, it seems to only move yourself and one other creature per 3 levels. Which at CL 9 would be 4 people I believe? Of course, we can do this and have others fly invisibly or such and have a somewhat similar approach still.

That's true for regular dimension door, but the main upgrade of the Mythic version is that it increases the number of transportees to be 'the caster + a number of designated creatures equal to your caster level.' She'll be using a regular 4th-level spell slot to conserve uses of mythic power. So, by spending one use of mythic power to cast the mythic version of the spell, she can transport herself plus seven others. I got permission when we leveled to 7 to take dimension door as one of her tier 2 mythic spells, since even though technically tier 2 hit when we were still level 6, we then leveled to 7 on the same in-game day, so practically at the same time.

Hm, I'd say that there's probably a small shortbow that Nurah can use, and of course arrows are (unrealistically) one-size-fit all, I think. Or at least one size fits Small-Medium-Large. Not so fortunate on the cold iron small weapons, and Janis isn't eager to turn his weapons over to a traitor.

And yeah, if you want to have spent your last mythic point from yesterday to resize weapon, Verene, we can say you've done that.

Does the crusade by chance have a cold iron longspear to spare? If so, I suggest we resize that for her so she does not have to be up front attacking. That will leave Thesius with his as well. This should help as we move through hallways too.

Yes, there have been a few cold iron longspears you've found, I believe.

*Sorry, herself plus eight others. I keep forgetting we're level 8 now.

Happy to use Verene's second-to-last mythic point from yesterday on resizing a cold iron long spear for Nurah. Her last would be spent on a wand recharge, let's say her cure light wounds since it's getting low.
Wand recharge 9/16, cure light wounds: 1d10 + 2 ⇒ (9) + 2 = 11 + 21 = 32/50 charges remaining.

So for this expedition, Nurah has a Small cold iron longspear, Small shortbow and 20 cold iron arrows, and a sling with two dozen cold iron sling bullets. Plus her +1 armor, curing scroll, and her native spells and abilities. Good enough for me.

Since we're in camp (with tents/fires) or inside most of the day now, do we still need endure elements today, GM?

You don't need it, no, but it'll probably be uncomfortable at best. Unless you're spending a lot of time outdoors, you'll be fine.

lol- I just stumbled across the shikigami style feats and now I can’t stop thinking about how funny it would be (in a game with no paladin) to make a monk who uses Radiance as an improvised weapon. At 5th level you could have all 3 style feats and it would function as a +5 weapon, while you’re whacking people with the pommel and whatnot!

edit: oh man… a LN Asmodean monk just beating down demons in the name of order, and causing some very mixed feelings amongst the Iomedaean forces, hahaha

re-edit: “hey, should we maybe give that holy relic to the paladin commanding the army?”
“Why, it’s working just fine for me.”

As a quick reminder: I will not be able to post on the 3rd, 4th, 17th, or 24th of October. I should be able to post normally at all other times.

And the 5th is Saturday, so definitely no post. Have a good holiday, and we'll see you on the 6th-7th, GM!

Re: Azira's IC question, exactly how many people were in the chapel orgy room? I just reread the post in question and it only said "a group of humans." The number of them is important to how Verene answers.

If there were three or more total people (counting the fake Iomedae), Verene can't count on getting all of them and all of us (with Wulfric and Nurah) out with one spell. Even if we didn't take Wulfric or Nurah, she has only four extra slots, so if there were five or more total people in that room, she can't say with confidence that they can all be included.

Is there any chance at all that we could bring someone else with us who could dimension door them out (and could just stay out with them after)? Could Aravashnial do that, maybe? It’s probably too late now to make a dimension door scroll, but is there any chance there might be one floating around in the camp somewhere?

I'm pretty sure Aravashnial's max spell level is 3rd-level spells. He could use a dimension door magic item if Verene scribes a scroll, the army happens to have one, or we find that tiefling mage again and take his wand of same. It's also a bard spell, so likely Wulfric could use the items too. However, at likely caster level 7 and no mythic points, one spell could only take Aravashnial and two other people.

What seems easier to me is either a) counting on Staunton having a key that unlocks all these locked interior doors in the fortress (not being able to move around your own citadel as a commander would be silly, right?) or b) trusting Thesius can unlock them. If you look at the encounters map, it's a really really short distance from the chapel to the broken wall, and thus to freedom. Two sets of doors and two corridors, that's all. Both were completely empty when the eye floated through them yesterday.

If we can overcome whatever demon is with the prisoners while preserving their lives, and then either convince them to come with us or knock them out, we should be able to just walk them out of there. We could maybe ask for a group of paladins to be on standby near that broken segment of wall, to take charge of getting them back to our actual camp.

Verene is correct in that you could probably escort the mind-dominated prisoners out without too much trouble, assuming you don't get more attention from the surrounding areas.

Aravashnial is definitely less suited to teleporting people in/out than Verene is, despite being a conjurer.

As to how many people there were in the orgy room, there were... seven, I think, including the Iomedae-a-like.