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Upon hearing the noise and putting two and two together, she calls out to the rest. "We need to get out of here. Now! I think there's a massive wave coming from the north!" Estella rushes to the proprietress and offers her hand. "It's panic outside, ma'am. Come with us, we'll keep you safe!"
"Call it adventurer's intuition, ma'am." Estella calls back at her. She steps out the door to get a better idea of what's going on.
"There's water flowing already?!" Estella has a bad feeling. "I'm with Sherman, we should go."
Coming week I'm gonna get back on the GM seat, running an online Quest for the Frozen Flame campaign. It's been years since I last GMd, wish me luck!
Estella leans towards Ceven. "I think some scouting might be in order, yes. Something about this storm..."
Seeing an opportunity to do a little bit of prying of her own, Estella answers the lady's question. "We're doing a bit of traveling and exploring. Heard there was a big ancient dam here, might be worth checking out, right? Are there any other interesting places around here?" Like, for instance, a casino boat? Her head shoots up by the loud thunder. "Whoa, that was close. Does this happen often around here?"
@GM Sphen: Good to note for the future in case Tarphrex is separated from Ceven and a crossing can't wait. I simply wanted to share that this gave me the mental image of one of those river crossing riddles, you know, a wolf, a sheep and a cabbage need to be ferried over the river, but with the party instead. It amused me.
I'll also try to keep track of things better and offer healing more. If there's ever a need for it, feel free to request heals from Estella!
Estella lets herself be carried by Ceven with great amusement. "I'm shocked at how effortless you make it seem, Ceven." She settles by the fire, dried and slightly warmed up and immediately in much better spirits. For now, her very deep suffering has ended. She gives a bit of a smile. "Thank you, Tarphrex. Between the flight and this, this group can make even traveling through a rain like that somewhat pleasant." Once settled and dried a bit, it's time to get back to business. While Sherman is discussing with the lady, she turns to the rest, talking a bit low. No need for the lady to hear about this, after all. "We should probably poke around tomorrow, see what we can figure out about how this town connects to Lucrecia's plans." Her thoughts flash to Kaven. "... But I'm a bit worried about drawing too much attention. If the Black Arrows betrayal is any indication, then anyone we talk to might be in on it."
Estella hates this. She's left home a decent while ago by now, so this isn't the first deluge she's had to walk through, but she never gets used to it. Even with all the life-or-death situations, all the nights spent camping out uncomfortably, it's at crappy rainy days like this when she most feels the urge to just drop everything and go back home to her family's mansion in Korvosa. When Ceven offers a quick skip over the river, she's quick to agree. "Please, by all means. The sooner we can get out of this mess, the better. I'd kill to sit by a fire for even a minute."
I've been making sure I have the Cure Wounds spells in my repertoire, though I could probably stand to use them more often. However, single-target heals is all I've got. I don't know how much healing Healing Burst offer, if it's good stuff then an AoE heal could be pretty huge, but if it's just OK heals you might get more mileage out of the maneuvers, I think.
As Jakardros sees them off and passes his advice, Estella simply nods in silence. For now, she was simply glad that the whole mess ended well, at least. She considers reaching out, but thinks better of it. Perhaps with time, the bad will have faded away better than the good. "Let's be off, friends." --
As they travel, she mentions what she knows of Turtleback Ferry. "It's a quiet little riverbank town, but it has something significant nearby: a big dam back from Thassilonian times. It's called Skull's Crossing." That night, after travel, she looks at the clouds with narrowed eyes. "Think there might be a storm coming?"
Alright, that takes care of that. Quick overview: - Fortitude and Will boosts,
Working on my level-up today, apologies for the hold-up!
Sorry for missing out, as you might expect the season has been busy, but Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you all as well!
When Shalelu guides them to the luxurious room, Estella struggles between staying quiet or trying to discuss what happened a few hours prior. She decides against it; better to give it some more time to cool down. Instead, when she enters the room, she immediately starts poking around. "The ogres mentioned Lucrecia in their panic when they fled. Based on what we know about her, I wouldn't be surprised if this was her room."
Apologies for my somewhat absence! Work's been crazy stressful, and I'm not even in one the job sectors where that makes sense during these holidays. My heart goes out to people working retail right now. Always prioritize warmth over looking 'nice'. Perhaps you can get away with wearing one of those gaudy christmas sweaters... Sledding! It's been so long since the Dutch weather allowed for something like that... And even then, the place is so flat, there's barely any good sledding to be had anyway.. That's a wonderful lineup of games, by the way, GM. Have a good time!
Estella takes a quick look at the letters before shrugging frustratedly. "Best I can tell you is that it's not Common. I'm no linguist, but I think it's Sylvan? Or maybe Draconic."
Feel free to share anything, don't worry about it! I hope he'll have many more victories, small and big, to celebrate in the future :)
While Tarphrex inspects the items, Estella can't contain her curiosity and she opens the box.
No snow nor Thanksgiving here... though I did make a decent curry udon so there's that, at least!
"With pleasure." After Tarphrex offers some additional preparation, she jabs her spear into a gap and tries to break it open.
"Elisani, you wanna take a look here? I'm no expert, but this looks like it could be trapped."
Estella nods. "Let's see what we can find around here, though I'm afraid she might be long gone. The good news is, we probably know where this mystery spellcaster, this Lucrecia, went to, right?" She permits herself a sly smile, but it falters quickly. "Best we can do now is focus on our chase. Maybe we can smooth things over with them later, but otherwise, it's not likely our paths will cross again for a while. Though come to think of it, we might be dealing with those giants at some point..." For now, Estella simply starts looking around the room, trying to see if she can't perhaps find the place the spellcaster was speaking to us from.
Regarding our mystery spellcaster, I figured it might be a good idea to bring up a clue we pulled up over a year ago: On the The fleeing ogres mentioned a Lucrecia, and the spellcaster's voice also spent her one line gloating and insulting her sister. With the silhedron involved, there's a lot of signs pointing to the spellcaster being the same Lucrecia from the letter. So even if we don't catch her now, we do have a lead to follow up on.
I think there's a lot going on here: we may have pressed a bit too hard without concrete evidence and we've failed to get our facts straight. At the same time, it was Shalelu who shared Jakardros's worries that Kaven or Vale might be a traitor, causing us to be vigilant for it in the first place, so our concerns getting seemingly dismissed so easily came across as somewhat unexpected to me as well. Somewhere down the discussion things must've gotten muddled and mixed-up which created the idea that Kaven was cutting off the tattoo mid-fight. I don't think anyone from our group was actively trying to lie about it... but at the same time, I kinda like that it happened? It feels very human that a misunderstanding like that would happen during this sort of heated argument. I think we've bungled this, which is a shame, but I've been loving the roleplay that came out of it. Maybe we've burned this bridge. Maybe we can fix it later. Heck, who knows if we'll even meet Kaven again or really figure out what his deal is. When writing my last post, specifically the part about how Kaven wouldn't actually have really achieved anything by hiding the tattoo from us, it made me think that it really is possible he was just being a douche, a red herring. Of course, by that time, we'd already been hammering on the guy! All this yapping to say that while I of course wish things had gone better for us, the entire Kaven thing has been incredibly engaging and I've been having a lot of fun.
Estella closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, then turns to Jakardros. "We came here to help Shalelu save you and this fort, so I think we can call this a mission accomplished." She offers a smile. "Far be it from me to try and sow further discord if your mind is made up. What happens next to the Black Arrows is, after all, none of our business." She (with some reluctance) takes the piece of skin Kaven tossed her way and eyes it carefully. "This is, though. This is the trail we're following. A trail that has left many good people dead in its wake. I've barely started walking it myself, but I know it goes back further than any of us, and it might stretch beyond any of us, too." She turns to Kaven. "I trust my own eyes. I've seen you take a step back while your ally called for you to flank. And as you and your fellows trust each other, I trust mine. If Elisani says you tried to hide this from us, I believe her. You've said yourself the symbol means nothing to a giant hunter, but it means a great deal to us." She turns to Vale. "That is where my suspicions come from." "At the same time... Had Kaven truly hidden it, we would have still found the symbol on the chieftain as well. We would have still heard the voice we just heard gloating. If it was his goal to hide the connection to our own trail, he would've failed nonetheless. So I cannot in good conscience press the matter. Kaven's actions do not seem to have actually hindered us on our own trail." She turns to her party, with a glance at Ceven that seems apologetic. "Perhaps we should take their offer, rest, regroup and simply be on our way. Let the Black Arrows handle Black Arrow matters, and us handle our own."
Estella wasn't going to have an outburst like that, so for me as a reader it was VERY cathartic to read ahaha
I don't think it's been up for more than a day so it wasn't even that huge of a delay :) Eager to get back into it! Did anyone else feel like they were missing out on the campaign progressing even though, logically, no-one at all had access to the site?
Estella's not planning on letting him get off that easy. "Team player, you say? I couldn't help but notice, while your comrades were risking life and limb to take down that chieftain, you seemed preoccupied with stabbing the spellcaster's corpse. She was 'stirring', you say? I have my doubts, but even if she were, I can't imagine prioritizing her over the chieftain who was doing a lot more than stirring. Care to explain that?"
"So... that's it? Huh." Estella asks confusedly, as if she didn't have a brush with near-death just a moment before. She gives a grateful nod to Jakardros. "I suppose I shouldn't have expected any different from a skilled mercenary group. I couldn't have dreamed of such a perfect surgical strike myself. As for help, it seems by helping you we've already helped ourselves anyway." She doesn't elaborate while potential traitors are still around, but in her mind she's connecting some dots. Connections between the ogres mentioning Lucrecia, the voice taunting them mentioning a sister, and the letter they took from the naga in what feels like an eternity ago now. Elisani would be proud! She thinks, anyway. But, first things first. When Tarphrex suddenly asks Kaven something, Estella immediately jumps into the conversation. "Did you find some sort of clue, Kaven? Let's see it!" She steps closer towards him.
Estella nods in return and faces the door. Little more she can do right now without seeming suspicious.
Estella gratefully accepts Sherman's healing. She moves up to the door entrance and braces her spear, forming a block at the door entrance right behind the hole. That should keep the room secure enough to put the intimidation plan into motion. As she settles next to Ceven, she looks him in the eyes and begins silently mouthing something. For Ceven: "Kaven."
Estella keeps clamoring, boosting the rage further.
DM:
I'll leave it to you to decide whether Kaven's spirit wisps actually attack or not. Then, with a furious flurry of thrusts, she presses the attack herself.
Estella dodges out of the way from the first attack at the last possible moment, but the second attack slams right into her. She recovers, but weakly. That came WAY too close to killing me... She gathers herself and continues her chant.
At that moment, the spirit wisps surrounding the party slam into the enemy.
Estella, meanwhile, takes a step back, building some distance between her and that awful ogre. Then, bolstered with Tarphrex's haste spell, she strikes!
Neever mind this, I mixed up Elisani and Estella >_< (and not the first time, even) Honestly I'm not quite sure it hasn't ever happened to me, ahaha. For complete transparency's sake, here's my AC calculation as I understand it. Armor bonus: 4
10 + 4 + 2 + 2 + 1 + 2 + 1 = 22.
I didn't check in for this weekend and I did everything in my power and pored over everything I could looking for something that could help, anything I'd missed. Thankfully, it turns out I did miss something really big? Back of the Crowd (Ex): At 3rd level, an urban skald has learned to maximize the defensive benefit of being near allies. He gains a +1 dodge bonus to AC when adjacent to 2 or more allies. This bonus increases to +2 at 9th level and to +3 at 15th level. I don't think I ever realized I had this feature. It's hidden at the bottom of the urban skald page, underneath a feature meant for level 10, so I think I missed it while making the alias profile that I always use to check my character. My deepest apologies for missing out on this, it's honestly a huge boon that I just missed out on all this time. If the Black Arrows count as 2 adjacent allies (are they both truly allies? Does diagonal count as adjacent for this feature?), I actually have +1 AC for a total of 22. Enough to dodge the first hit. That would mean Estella lives. phew
Sensing the fight escalate, and realizing that with the thunder crashes and the reinforcements, the time for quick-and-silent is probably out the door, Estella makes a decision. "Ah, to hell with it." She suddenly calls out to her allies. "COMRADES! Let not these wretches hinder us! The Black Arrows deserve justice for the cruelties performed here!"
The enclosed leaflet: The following boosts all apply as long as the party member can hear Estella:
Controlled Inspired Rage: +2 Morale Bonus to strength. Lesser Spirit Totem: Small spirits surround every party member and make one slam attack (+9 to hit, 1d4+4 damage, these modifiers are static and can't be buffed) every round against a living foe adjacent to a party member. Spirit Totem: Any ranged attacks and melee attacks made by non-adjacent enemies (reach for example) have a 20% miss chance The following boost only applies if the party member is within 30ft and can see the banner. Flagbearer: +1 Morale Bonus on attack rolls, weapon damage rolls, and saving throws against fear and charm effects. Only within a range of 30ft and if you can see the banner.
Estella steps forward, placing herself tactically behind the Black Arrows before thrusting her spear between them, into the ogre.
Pacific, I'm pretty sure. Otherwise I'm posting on hours I usually am not awake for.
Estella rushes in with the others putting herself between the ogre and the rest. When she gets in position, she quickly claps Vale on the shoulder and says "You've got this.", an arcane glow in her hands.
Immediately adding Big Bone Lick to my list of places to visit. Great name, no notes. Gonna wait and see if either Sherman or Elisani has anything clever they can do to make our invisible ogre foe visible again.
Apologies for the delay, but happy birthday! Glad to hear the trip was nice! Confession: it took me a little bit to realize Death Valley was an actual park in California and this wasn't some extended bit between you guys that I didn't get ahahaha
Don't sweat it, hope everything's going okay!
Hastened by Tarphrex, Estealla wastes no time and charges ahead, flag billowing. She lines up behind Vale and expertly thrusts her spear past him, into the ogre.
Estella holds her spear tight, ready to fly its banner into battle.
Estella also agrees
Ah, thank you! I really couldn't put my finger on it but being able to invis 7 people at once felt wrong to me, but I struggled to interpret it any other way. Thanks for setting me straight, all good to move on with the plan as discussed.
Unless I'm misreading the spell (very possible) but it says "Target: you or a creature or object weighing no more than 100 lbs./level" and that would be caster level, not spell level, right?
Oh wait wait, my Invisibility spell targets 1 person per level so we can replace all those Vanish spells of Tarphrex's with the single cast of Invisibility I'm already doing. Really sorry for making this take longer, I don't know how I missed this when reading Tarphrex's plan.
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