GM Harrow’s Curse of the Crimson Throne - AE

Game Master GM Harrow

Hi everyone. I'll probably get started on our story tomorrow sometime. In the meantime, I know there was a question from Audria about magically-growing hair. Let me think about that one. I can't imagine an mechanical advantage to it outside of selling it for a profit, but I may just handwave that by saying it's not worth anything in-game.

In the meantime, it's good to have you on board. I'll be trying to post every day, but I expect we'll miss a weekend day here and there. I'll also let you know if I won't be around for a bit so you're not sitting here wondering where I am. I hope you all have fun here!

Go ahead and dot the gameplay thread. You can delete if after, if you want.

I'm fine with that. I was going for flavor, not anything mechanics wise. To be honest, it could be more of a hinderance than any help depending on what you set as the trigger. Spontaneously growing magic hair is quite the tell.

Thank you for picking Audria. I'm looking forward to this and seeing where the story goes.

By the way, do you want a list of NPCs connected to our characters that you can draw from? I was thinking of doing that anyway to help me keep the names I've got going straight.

Greetings and salutations. A pleasure to make your acquaintance.

I'd love a list of NPCS! I have like 200 for Kingmaker (which is a bit overkill, to be honest), but I'm just starting my lists for Curse of the Crimson Throne, so any NPCs you all have to offer would be great. I'm going to poach all your NPCs from your backgrounds anyways, haha.

Poach away! That's why I put them in there.

And 200 NPCs! How do you keep track of them all?

@Lina: How long ago did you break off association with Gaedren Lamm? Audria was there for about nine years from when she was not quite five until she was just shy of fourteen, a little over two years ago. I'm trying to see if there may have been a connection there at some point.

Thank you, GM Elfriede for picking up Nicolai. I had envisioned Nicolai's missing sister as having been one of Laam's lambs before escaping his clutches and she is now running with the Catsdew Lofties in Old Korvosa

Good evening, dears! Happy to be playing with y’all. I’ll get to thinking on NPCs for you.

@Nicolai: How long ago did Katarina run with Lamm's Lambs? Just wondering if Audria would have met her at some point. Audria had been with him from about 11 years ago to a little over 2 years ago.

Just as an FYI about myself. I really, really like putting images in my posts, so I'll often include links when describing something. If there's essential information on them, I'll include that in the description for them, because I know that can be annoying on mobile sometimes. I'll be using Slides for maps, and will be using either Google Drawings or straight links for my images.

Don't feel like you need to create a bunch of NPCs. If you have a couple in your backstory that are still alive, that's plenty. I'll be generating a couple dozen names soon to give me a pool to work with, plus pulling from the AP.

You're talking to the guy that accidentally made a list of almost two dozen NPCs when he was only asked for three or four. Don't worry, if I make a list, it'll be because I want to, and because I'm going to need it for my own reference anyway.

Speaking of the AP, is it okay if Audria has a pre-existing relationship to one of the NPCs? I am pretty sure you can guess which one.

Hello all! Thanks for the invite. I look forward to adventuring with you all and figuring out who framed my family!

Hello! Glad to have you aboard! Are you sure it wasn't Old Man Jenkins? :P

As I often do with characters, I mocked-up Abella in Heroforge

She and her late sister are identical twins, but their wildly different personalities and lifestyles have left them diverging quite a bit. This is a perfect comparison (Abella is naturally the thin colorless one).

Hi all! Thanks for the opportunity to play with you, GM Elfriede and friends. Looking forward to coming up with ways Shrike could have a preexisting connection with other PCs - or just forging them over the course of the adventure.

I'll think about a few more NPCs Shrike would have strong connections to in the city, besides the obvious two: her mother and brother. There are a couple mentioned in her backstory (as enemies) that were pulled straight from the Guide to Korvosa, and logically speaking she would have a few more that are theater contacts, underworld informants, or perhaps even distant elf relations. I'll try to keep it to no more than six NPCs for now, though.

Glad I'm not the only one who likes having picture references for things. I tend to collect fantasy art whenever I see it and stash it away in folders and subfolders for later use.

@GM Elfriede: List of NPCs now in the profile. Let me know if I need to make changes.

Also, I made adjustments to Audria's build, basically swapped out Skill Focus for Acrobatic.

@Audria
My thoughts have been that she disappeared when she around eight years old and ran with the Lambs until she was 14 when she was getting "too old and disrespectful" for Lamm's taste and she escaped one step ahead of Gobblegut. She met up with the Lofties shortly thereafter and has been with them for about three years now. She would be 17 now, so she was definitely there during Audria's time.

Poach away! That's why I put them in there.

And 200 NPCs! How do you keep track of them all?

@Lina: How long ago did you break off association with Gaedren Lamm? Audria was there for about nine years from when she was not quite five until she was just shy of fourteen, a little over two years ago. I'm trying to see if there may have been a connection there at some point.

Lina would have been with the Lambs until about 16, so 7 years ago. I'm sure they were both Lambs at the same time. Question is would they have formed a relationship. I think it would make sense and be a good tie-in.

Lina would have been an older sister type to most of the girls. She would have kept a distant eye on things even after leaving, the guilt that she couldn't save the rest probably still eats at her. She would have been the type egging the children on do what Lamm asks to avoid punishment, holding the new additions until they stopped crying, etc. Some may have seen her as another one of Lamm's overseers, or seen her as a comforting presence.

When the were kids out on the streets working, Lina would be following from a distance, making sure they didn't get into serious trouble, causing distractions, slipping extra food or coin to them, and hoping not to be seen while doing it.

@Audria: I keep track of them all in a giant Google Doc (really, only 12 pages, 9 point font), where I have a brief blurb about them, where I intend to use them, maybe an RP sample for them so I can keep attitudes and "accents" clear, and a portrait for as many as possible.

Sounds like a lot of you could have been dealing with Lamm at the same time as Lambs or siblings of Lamm's Lambs. Do you want a little more time to work out the details, or should we get started in Gameplay?

I just updated Abella’s profile with some NPCs. I’ll get some art and voice samples for you in the coming days.

As for connections with other characters, Abella is not the kind of person who has a lot of friends. However, her identical twin sister would have been very beloved and popular. She was a member of the Korvosan Guard who went out of her way to always let the Lambs off as easily as possible, seeing shades of herself and Abella in them, and she often gave them gifts and told them outrageous stories. They both came to Korvosa about five years ago.

I’m good to go whenever!

@GM Elfriede: That makes sense. Probably better than the way I tend to do things.

I'm guessing there's no issues with the NPCs I picked and laid out how Audria knows/feels about them.

@Lina and @Nicolai: Yep that works. It looks like Katarina is only a year older than Audria, so they would have likely gotten to know each other well over the five or six years that they were in Lamm's gang together.

As for Lina, I could see Audria remembering her as an adopted big sister who helped protect her and Eliana from Lamm's wrath. Lina would probably know Yargin, Lamm's right hand man during Audria's time with him, given the timeline. Lina would probably know Katarina, though it looks like the overlap isn't as much as it is with Audria and Eliana.

@Abella: How long ago was Cainabeth killed? A month? Just trying to see if Audria would have been a witness, though it seems unlikely.

Re: Starting: I'm good to go! I didn't really see anything else that would suggest Audria knows them or someone related to them.

@Audria: Nope, no issues with the NPCs. In fact, after combing backstories loosely for NPCs and scouring Book One for anyone with a speaking role, I have 36 NPCs.

Gameplay is up and running! I got impatient to be started.

@Audria: Yeah a month was my thinking. Abella is very impatient for revenge and really only waited as long as that because she knew she needed to get clean first

@Abella: Okay. This is going to be interesting, especially if you're playing this more realistically.

Sorry GM, I posted as Verene by accident before realizing and changing it. I'm really going to have to watch that; I haven't had multiple characters on the boards before, to worry about posting as a wrong but default one. Will you be able to remove her easily?

I've read everyone's backstory closely now, and I'm not sure there are good reasons for Lania/Shrike to have interacted with Audria, Lina or Nicolai before. Audria and Lina also probably don't know anything about Lania's brother, Isi, as he was kidnapped only six months ago. Though if Lina keeps tabs on the 'Lambs' even now that she is out, she might have seen him without knowing who he is. Of course, it's up to the GM whether he even is or ever was one of the Lambs, or whether he was killed outright. If Audria makes a living as a singer, she and 'Merula' might know each other very peripherally, but not if she spends most of her time in the temple of Shelyn.

However, because Abella and Garrett have also been out in the city actively investigating Lamm, Lania might have run across them as Shrike before, in the course of realizing how varied his crimes are and how many people he has hurt. What do you guys think?

Still working on making some NPCs.

@Shrike I like that! Abella would have likely been looking much rougher and less put-together than she does now.

@Shrike: Sorry for the delay in replying. Audria has spent most of her time at the Sanctuary of Shelyn, but she and Eliana are occasionally asked to play and sing at other venues. There might have been a time or two Audria and Merula have run across each other.

That said, Talanaliel is going to have something to say about your alias. She's small and probably tasty looking to a shrike. I hope I can at least make it funny.

@Audria and Lina: If you'd like to have stolen the deck originally, it's totally cool if you did, but it was a year ago, so it may be too late for you to have been a Lamb. Zellara's look is more because you both used to be, not because she necessarily knows it's you.

I like not knowing for certain either way. Lina may suspect she did, and wonder if she did, but not knowing is a nice little quirk.

I'm glad you guys seem to have liked the Harrow post. It took forever to write.

I love that stuff! Lots of great imagery.

Agreed!

But the time was worth it, was it not? I love flavorful posts and that one was fun.

I will be traveling to my parents’ for the holiday, but I doubt it will much affect my posting. I write 99% of them from my phone anyways!

I liked the Harrow post a lot too, GM.

Audria, Shrike does support an immediate resort to violence when a child's life seems to be in danger, but I think we can see that the windows aren't easily breakable glass, but "roughly placed planks that cover the empty frames behind them." Up to you if that and/or Shrike verbally trying to stop her would change Audria's actions or not.

A) I apparently missed that detail. I thought they were still glass. She is young and impulsive, so I don't think it'd change her actions much.

B) This entire set of encounters is going to be setting her on edge. There is a loooooot of unprocessed emotions here. She's going be waspish at least until this is resolved. That said, she isn't a complete idiot and I did say that was her actions if no one stopped her.

Also, kinda still getting a handle on Audria. I should have a better handle on things as we play.

All good. If it's not possible to snipe through the windows, we may need to make a big distracting noise and draw the gnome outside anyway. :)

Audria could sneak around to the double doors on the left side of the building and try that way.

Just as an out of game FYI, no children are currently in immediate danger, outside of violating child labor laws. I probably should have mentioned in recruitment that there's less than stellar treatment of children early in the AP, though.

Noted on both counts. I have tried running this AP before and I have both versions, so I'm well aware of how kids get treated at the start.

That said, Tallyfeather ain't the sharpest tool in the shed. She's probably fuzzy on humanoid interactions.

That's good to know OOC, but IC Lania heard "angry gnome is shoving a child into a chute" and assumed the worst, like that it goes down to the river to drown the child or to a pit with hungry rats or something.

I'll hold off on responding to Lina until we have a better idea of what the possibilities are. But if a cursory glance does not tell her that the kid is not in imminent danger, she'll shoot to kill (she is perhaps unjustifiably confident she can do so in one hit) and pull the whole place if that's what happens. I'm not sure we're going to find a better situation than this, anyway. One gang member alone, and we might be able to shoot from essentially behind an arrow slit.

Also, the first three NPC descriptions are done and in the character profile. This is her family/household. Still working on a few others.

Just wanted to mention that Abella is a bit of a caustic personality, but I assure you that my plan is for her to focus 99% of that at our enemies. I'm a more mild-mannered lady and am happy to try to wrangle her into being more placid as needed to not ruin anyone else's fun!

I'm just a firm believer in pushing and momentum in pbp, and I'm especially excited for this game and want us to go the distance! As long as we are pushing forward, I'm happy :D

No worries. I'm just going to be playing up that Doubt drawback I took. :D

As for me. I'm a pretty easy-going guy from Alabama. I've got a weird sense of humor, so I try to keep things clear with emojis.

There's definitely a balance to be struck between planning/preparation and pushing the game forward. I think it's good to err slightly on the side of pushing the game forward. Lania will also be more accommodating in the future when the stakes are less personal. As a player, I didn't realize the walk from Zellara's house to here would be over an hour so Nicolai's mage armor would be gone. Why wouldn't he bring his familiar with him, though?

I'm more than willing to handwave going to get the familiar and whatnot in the interest of keeping the game going forward.

We were told he was there and would bolt if he found out we knew. I think waiting to go after him would go against what we were told in case word that the lady knew his location got out.

Looking at a map of Korvosa, the Fishery is within a mile of Nicolai's apartment in Midland so he still benefits from Nipper's Initiative bonus, just not the Alertness feat.

I'm a little confused, I thought Nicolai and Audria were looking at the double doors on the side of the building and going in that way. Did the plan change or am I just being an idiot?

I'm not sure a plan really crystallized. A few people suggested things, then people started opening doors.

Well, that's the default plan. :P

Garrett did his thing. He figured that others would take his way in or make their own.