GM Harrow’s Curse of the Crimson Throne - AE

Game Master GM Harrow

It’s worth a shot. Elric will keep covering with his bow, in case some of them pop up.

Maybe with Agile Maneuvers, dex to attack, and dex to damage when using stakes, Pava will be able to roll dex here? :fingers crossed:

I'll allow it.

I'd like to give Audria a chance to Stake-Umm if she wishes before shifting into combat mode, so I'll post for Round 1 sometime tomorrow. Since it doesn't seem like we're in a basement with coffins on the Roll20 map, I assume the coffins are quite close together almost directly below the trapdoor (especially since Elric could shoot into one from the top of the ladder) and we're playing this out theater of the mind style. If any of that's wrong, please let me know.

Since the ladder shaft is narrow and deep, everyone would have to descend into the crawl space to have line of sight. I don't have a map for the basement, sorry. The coffins are spaced out enough that a person can stand/crouch between two of them comfortably.

Oh, I see I missed where Elric said he was following Audria and Pava. Okay, so we're all down in the crawl space already, and the coffins have about five feet of space between them / on each side? Got it, thanks.

Could Audria just burn them with holy fire instead? We'd be doing everyone a favor. We do not need another Twilight and while I can't speak for the others, Audria and Tally are not attracted to stalkers.

'Persons skilled at stalking,' very possibly. 'Stalkers,' definitely no.

Apologies for the radio silence. Catching up now. Audria will stake a sparkly-boi.

And yes, I have read Twilight and I hated ever page of it.

I have scattered fondness for the films, and for the drinking game I used to play with the book :-p

I only know of Twilight from internet memes. Also - 3000 posts, yay!

Woo!

Wow, what a milestone!

I came in late, but am glad I got to contribute :)

Well done us! I’m really happy that I got to be part of this great story and that we have kept it going through a changing cast of GMs and players.

By the way, should we handwaive the rest of the current encounter? Any vampire that as much as twitches gets a holy silver arrow in the chest that should push it deep into the negatives, long enough for us to drag all four coffins into the daylight.

How fully kettled/blocked in are the demonstrators? And if there's not a good way out there, how many Maidens and Guards are we talking here?

Pava won't just get themself killed, but they will cause themself long-term problems rather than watch a massacre.

Hm, I may have misinterpreted what is going on here. From the description, I thought the shouting people were locals, i.e. the people who live on this block, arguing with the Queen's Physicians and Gray Maidens (/Korvosan Guards? Unclear if they are also here) setting up blockades around it. They are blocked into this geographic area, but can freely leave the street and escape the Gray Maidens by going inside their homes or the other buildings here. Am I wrong, GM? If I've misunderstood it and they are instead trapped with nowhere to go between Gray Maidens and buildings they can't get into, that would change what Shrike says and does here.

The people are indeed locals who are protesting the quarantine of their block by the Gray Maidens.

I hope Shrike doesn't mind Shane's helping out. It's all he could think of even if it might be over the top :)

GM Harrow, if I need to roll a stealth roll for Shane to 'slip off' unnoticed or a bluff roll for 'Blackjack' let me know. I was afraid the dice would betray me if I tried . I've been burned before ;)

Yes, please roll Diplomacy or Bluff. :D

Yes, please roll Diplomacy or Bluff. :D

Done and...

Next chapter: Blackjack sues Shane for Trademark infringement in a story we could only call 'Copyrights, and Copy WRONGS'

So after the House Drake Messenger Network we will have the House Drake Delivery Network? And then in Book 3 they unionize. :D

Just keep in mind that they are tiny and cannot carry very much - plus we're talking a hundred-odd people here. But you could try to organize the people in the rest of the neighbourhood to deliver food and water to the ones quarantined.

The house drakes being only cat-size would make it really hard on them, I agree. Finding a few trustworthy volunteers among the neighbors to find out and deliver what is needed to each door (if whoever is enforcing the quarantine can be convinced to let them in), or else convincing the Sable Company or Korvosan Guard to bypass the quarantine to essentially airdrop in supplies, seem like the best options here. But we don't have to discuss it to death. We can just bring it up to Kroft when we see her and make a decision then. I wanted to give Elric an RP opportunity to weigh in here, but we can also just move forward with the story.

Yeah, it wasn't meant to be a workable solution :-p

Pava is honestly more than a bit out of their depth with 'stop an epidemic,' but is also bad at doing nothing.

Same. When we found out about the coin purse, I went down this whole rabbit hole that I often go down about "What does the average person know?"

"Okay, should these characters with no specialist knowledge understand sterilization? Germ theory? Different forms of disease transmission? Incubation periods? Or do they think in terms of the four humors and bad air like actual medieval people? But in this world you can just literally ask the gods of healing for accurate information... But how fast and well does the accurate information spread? Wait, are there printing presses in Golarion? [Yes.] But do some people still think inaccurate things because there are in fact many exceptions and magical diseases etc. that have rules that don't correspond to anything in the real world?"

Eventually I threw up my hands and decided on the compromise that like many other unspoken cultural mores and assumptions in our high fantasy society, it should map roughly to the average nonspecialist's understanding in the current day, purely for reasons of convenience. So that's why Shrike understands disease as an invisible but physical thing that gets worse in a person over time, and everything that follows from that: touching or being too close to infected people or handling dead bodies can give you a disease; you can be infected and infectious before you feel sick; it can be present on objects but cleaning with alcohol or soap and water usually gets rid of it; water can transmit disease but boiling it before drinking it makes it safer; and wearing barriers like gloves and masks when touching infected things or people, and washing yourself with soap and water afterward, makes it less risky but not totally safe.

Disease-as-physical-contaminant is actually a really modern understanding that in our world goes hand-in-hand with developing knowledge of germ theory. But you don't have to know about microorganisms to know about these best practices, was my reasoning.

I'm mainly pegging Pava's level of understanding of care a good bit below that.
Basically: Diseases can be catching, especially if you get too close; healthy people mostly don't get as sick; sick people more often get better if they get support, but if they're getting worse get someone who knows more. Support and being too close to a catching disease are in a great deal of tension, so it's essentially up to a family to take care of their sick unless they all fall sick and then it's up to family friends to do what they can or get a healer.

If a disease is too lethal and too catching... You hope the spirits are feeling helpful.

Loot: 1500 gp for the Urgathoa book.

Nice! There hasn't been a good time to sell magic items and so on yet since yesterday morning, but this puts our party cash from investigating the Direption and the Vampire Toy Shop at around 2500 gp. Do people want to split it out five ways now, or wait until we sell those magic items too?

I'm fine waiting.

Waiting is fine. We’re getting to a level where the gear we need costs more anyway.

Use it to buy more real estate! Deaths are high and land has never been so cheap with so little competition in a plague ravaged city! It's a buyer's market! When the dust settles, we'll be land lords over a fifth of Korvosa!

*checks Shane's alignment* Oh, NOT Lawful Evil.

Let's just wait then :)

Okay, sounds good. We'll wait for when we can fit in a full sell.

Apologies for not posting, I've been really busy with the move and other personal stuff. I'll try to post tomorrow and move us on to the Citadel and talking to Croft.

No worries, GM, and thanks for keeping us updated.

So I actually looked up what Vendra's punishment might be under the city laws as detailed in Guide to Korvosa, but I couldn't find anything that applies. They might arrest her for endangering public health, but anything further would need to await the results of the alchemical analysis and the final punishment would be decided by the courts, not the Field Marshal.

In other news, I won't be able to post for a few days as tomorrow is moving day and we won't have internet until Wednesday.

Take care and good luck! We'll try not to burn down the city while you're gone. ;)

Interesting! Con artistry isn't that big a crime?

Good to know, says the Illusionist with the bluff score, good to know ;)

As for moving day, thanks for letting us know and take it easy on your back if you can

Considering that the Paladin is contemplating treason, I think con-artistry is way down the list of what will get us into trouble. :P

So I actually looked up what Vendra's punishment might be under the city laws as detailed in Guide to Korvosa, but I couldn't find anything that applies. They might arrest her for endangering public health, but anything further would need to await the results of the alchemical analysis and the final punishment would be decided by the courts, not the Field Marshal.

In other news, I won't be able to post for a few days as tomorrow is moving day and we won't have internet until Wednesday.

Right, it seems something like this would one of those things that's going to be left to the GM. It's not necessarily that cons like this wouldn't be illegal, it's just that the ten crimes and punishments given as examples in the Guide to Korvosa are just a selection, not all-inclusive, since the full legal code fills "multiple thick volumes," etc.

Although, even with the highly regulatory state of Korvosa it's not a certainty that it would be illegal to make false claims in one's advertising and sell snake oil as 'medicine,' either. After all, who is supposed to evaluate any given alchemist's or herbalist's claims of efficacy? The Alchemical Remedy Standards Administration? Consumers might be completely on their own.

Good luck with your move, GM! I hope you will be very happy in your new place.

I'd imagine that this would be something handled by some analogy to a tort claim, but Korvosa might consider fraud in matters of public health to legitimately be a crime against the state instead of just a matter between private parties.

I think if Shane discovers Lavender's is going to get off easy, he might simply start assuming forms with disguise self and start slandering the place with a bluff score...

"They told me it would protect me from the plague, but all it does is cause Shrinkage... and yes, EXACTLY where you think!"

"You can barely see my horns at all now!"

Apologies, everyone, this move has wiped me out. It took 12 hours (not counting the lunch break) to move everything, then it was nothing but problems: electricity wasn't working, hot water wasn't working, the internet company mixed up the installation dates so I'm still without internet until potentially next Friday. And then my computer broke, but fortunately I found A Guy™ to fix it on the same day.

I will try to get a post in tomorrow.

Yikes, that is rough. Take however long you need. I don't think we're going anywhere.

Sorry it's been such a pain and thanks for keeping us updated, GM. I hope your internet is installed soon!

Sympathies, and like Motel 6, we'll leave the light on

I admit, I really wasn't expecting the Lavender's Luxuriant Liniment to actually be effective as a medicine, just based on that newspaper ad. But if it is, it makes sense to drop that thread.

Still, I'm not sure how I feel about skipping us forward two whole weeks. We had things planned to do as a group that probably shouldn't be glossed over. We were first going to the Bank of Abadar, then to investigate the Old Fishery (again) and the Vaults, as well as the informational feelers we've put out with the wererats, house drakes, and Urgathoan priestess at the Pantheon of Many. Should we understand it that none of those efforts bear any fruit or result in any combat or discoveries during that time?

Not impossible that it's taking some time - even friendly eyes and ears are usually less willing to throw themselves into danger than PCs :-p

Thank you for reminding me, the Bank of Abadar is definitely something you can do the next day and we can play that out. For the rest, that would be extra material I would have to come up with (in terms of combat); as for discoveries, I've already given you everything you are supposed to know at this stage, but I also don't want to disappoint you since you've all been working so hard to investigate.

I'll have a think about it. Maybe there have been sightings, but by the time you get to the location they're gone. There just won't be anything actionable for you yet, as this part of the AP needs some time to breathe and for certain aspects to develop.

Okay, thanks GM. I'll also think about what Shrike would be doing during the whole time period and try to have a post up by tomorrow. Scouring the Vaults and gathering information with Audria/Pava/Elric as well as independently, probably. Chasing down sightings (of who?). Checking in with the party, wererats and house drakes every day. Perhaps staking out the hospice set up by the Queen's Physicians that she heard the rumor about, to see if it looks like they're actually curing anyone with their physicking.

With Sable company and the guard faltering, Elric may want to check in at the Marine barracks, especially if the group has significant downtime. But he's still clear that his current mission takes priority.

I've had a busy week, but I'll try and collect my thoughts and get an IC> post up tomorrow.

Okay, I am way too muddle-minded to write. I'll try to get a more detailed post up tomorrow.