Fenna maintains her performance and casts a spell that lays down a slippery coating on much of the floor occupied by their adversaries.
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Fenna steps back to get more distance and starts Inspire Courage again. She then lowers her spear and thrusts it at the warrior in front of her.
Fenna's expectations for anything other than future violence are very low. After all, their primary foe can look like anyone and there really shouldn't be actual humans on the island who are aware of who they are and why they have come to the island. But! One's expectations aren't always correct. Also, perhaps it's possible to get some useful information from them before the inevitable violence. After all, they still know essentially nothing about what has been going on. "Well met friends! Who are you and how did you come to be here?"
Fenna fills the others in on what she knows of Amaznen. She wishes something she knew about the goddess from long ago could help her choose the better entrance, but she has to fall back on the general tradition held by many. "Right I think. Right is typically considered more auspicious than left. If I absolutely had to bet money on the preferred entrance I'd put it on right."
I'm fine with either.
Fenna casts, then begins a long diatribe listing out all the reasons why they all absolutely hate these guys by now.
Fenna doesn't see any particular reason to cost Sosche another spell used just yet. She stays on the ground and waits while the statue gets checked out.
I'm dreadfully sorry for disappearing without word for so long. We went to Mexico City on vacation. I didn't figure I needed to mention it because we were staying at an Airbnb with WiFi. The place did have WiFi, but the WiFi did not work. Just flat couldn't connect to it. I didn't try posting with my phone because it was on data and we were burning through so much already we kept having to purchase more at a price that was highway robbery. That hiccup aside though, Mexico City was lovely and fantastic. I can't recommend visiting it enough. Level 8: BAB +6/+1
+1 3rd level spell known: Confusion Critical Research Focus (Ex): At 8th level, the studious librarian threatens a critical hit on a Research check (Ultimate Intrigue 148) with a roll of 18, 19, or 20. He gains a +4 bonus on Research checks to confirm a critical hit.
Skills: +1 K Arcana, K Dungeoneering, K Planes, Spellcraft, Stealth, Swim, UMD.
Not really know what will-o-wisps might consider politeness or rudeness in conversation, Fenna decides to try to ease into getting to the point, starting with something that could be construed as casual. "Do you happen to know what these standing stones once were? What purpose they served?"
Fenna rolls her eyes helplessly at the absolute stupidity of the situation. "Anyone happen to speak Aklo? No? That's what I expected. Hardly anyone anywhere on the entire planet's surface speaks Aklo. They understand Azlanti but don't utter a word in that language or they'll hate you forever."
With a little magical help Fenna tries miming at the things without turning them murderous.
Fenna gives an excellent demonstration of the gap between knowledge and implementation. In practice she does nothing close to what she needs to with the balls of light.
"Sure." Fenna summons four balls of light. She arranges them in a line and then puts them into motion, a circular pattern that makes it looks like she's juggling them. It's the only way Fenna can manage to do anything that resembles real juggling. She has tried to learn a couple of times in the past and she plain sucks at it. "Well, that's the danger isn't it? I won't claim there's no way the ghost lanterns will possibly consider talking to us; but I don't see why they would either. We're a fine meal and luring meals in is kind of the whole point of being a lamp-like ball of light in a swamp."
"Great, we arrived just in time for all the danger. And it's another swamp again. I could have done with the rest." Fenna seems unhappy.
Fenna can't figure out whether wyrwoods have a really strange sense of humor they are willing to to take all the way, or are just capable of selling anything to anyone. Either way it's impressive and weird. She'd happily stay the night, but sighs and says "fine" to moving onward immediately.
Fenna doesn't have anything to trade at present. But she does add something in Azlanti that might pay off in the future, and perhaps even improve the impression the Wyrwoods have of them. "We weren't well prepared for trading since our purpose for coming here is to down the ugothols. But, we now live permanently on the near island and there are more of us there. Perhaps we could come to some agreement that would promote ongoing trade between us in the future?"
Fenna adds some specifics to perhaps make what's been said so far more believable. "We are humans who have recently come to live on the nearby island." She points in the direction of the colony. "We have been infiltrated and plagued by the shapechangers as well. We have tracked them to this island and need help finding them so we can kill them in return for killing some of our own."
"I think that's a very good idea. We're walking around finding plenty of odd things, but they're not adding up to much. Maybe we can find some narrators to tie the pieces to together."
After relaying the haunt news, Fenna cheers Sosche on. She also guesses the machine is the best target since it's the thing she and Vexas have been messing around with.
Fenna's immediate urge is to panic, but the coincidence is hard to square with reality, and an apparition doesn't help to create verisimilitude. She takes a second to really think about it.
Fenna can't find any practical use for calculating the positions of any celestial bodies, but it might be somehow helpful to know what it was last used for. "I wonder if the stalkers were playing around with this while they were here? I'm gonna see what I can find..."
"Sure, let's go." Fenna didn't really have a preference. Looking at the device (or maybe devices?) inside the building, Fenna's reaction covers both the very and perhaps not so very obvious. "This thing is huge! And it seems to be in very good condition. It might even still work with a little tickering." Fenna messes with the mechanism some to see if she can get a response from it. She whistles while she works.
Fenna also gives the statue a good look.
Fenna warns the others. "These are chaos beasts. Their forms are no set so they change in unpredictable ways. Makes them harder to hurt." She casts Haste on the group.
Back in the rear, Fenna tries to figure out what exactly is threatening them.
She also starts speechifying on how the current problem doesn't seem so big compared to many of the things they faced in the recent past, so they should quickly buck up handle this little problem, and move right along.
Fenna isn't picky about her place in line, probably the rear.
Sorry for being away. Being out of town left me very backlogged at work, and also taking care of my dog while she recovers has been just wiping me out. She's about back to normal now though, at least as far as she's concerned. She'll just need to take it easy a little while longer.
Fenna volunteers for last watch. She's beat and needs the uninterrupted sleep.
Fenna relays the table's message to the others and holds to see what happens.
Fenna shifts a bit to her left, looking to get a better angle on the weird talking table. She thrusts at it with her spear, trying to catch a leg.
Yeah, I did get back on the 23rd, at about midnight so I guess I should have said the 24th. But, that wouldn't have mattered much as it turned out. About 2 hours before time to leave for the airport I received a call from the kennel where my dog was staying. She was on the way to the vet hospital. There had been a big dog fight that broke out and she was mauled badly. By the time I got to Portland, she was out of surgery and things looked good. A friend brought her home for me so arrived straight into taking care of my dog while she recovers and getting caught up on the backlog of work a missed week caused. It's been a wild few days but I'm back now. Try getting 6 pills twice a day into a dog who hates pills, has no appetite, has at keener sense of smell than most dogs, and is very clever. Ugh.
Hello! I'm traveling right now and don't have regular internet access. I'll try to keep posting whenever I can, but please bot Fenna as needed. I'll be back home on the 23rd. Sorry the notice is coming late, but I wasn't expecting the difficulty.
Since she knows her spear will be useless and the only other weapon she has is a dagger, Fenna goes with her magic to help out. She begins by informing everyone about the blobbie's strengths and weakness, encourages everyone to hold fast because they will be alright dealing with the threat, and finishes with magic. "Nopeampi pillu kistya tappaa!"
Fenna - 2 questions about Globsters (Large aquatic oozes).
Fenna tries to find ways to help.
It've seen some real extremes in both directions here. One game I was in for a very short time was so beer and pretzels that the GM got frustrated with us trying to talk to NPCs. We were told straight out by him that he would not write replies from anything that did not have its own statblock in the AP books, and he would let us know when we encountered one. I don't think more than two sentences of description were ever given for anything. In another game, actually a Call of Cthulhu campaign, we were given almost nothing to work with when writing posts. The GM would only tell us things about the environment, etc. around us if we posted we were specifically going to or looking around somewhere. This gets really tough if you don't know anything to base a post on. In the first location in the game, we were given a general description of the place we were at. So we looked around and did everything we could possibly think of and there wasn't really anything of note to act on. Once we'd been and done everything there, we were out of ideas about what to do next since nothing to that point had given us any clues about anything. It kind of reaches the point where you're tempted to post "I'm walking south until I see or run into something". ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ If you don't happen to be aware, that's not a great strategy for doing anything at all in a Lovecraftian horror game. Posting slowed to a crawl because we didn't know what to do. I mentioned that filling us in a little more could help. The GM replied he wasn't going to do any hand-holding. Didn't stay in that game very long at all either, even though I absolutely adore Call of Cthulhu.
Fenna tries using the wayfinder again to figure out directions. As the boat gets closer in to the island, she tries to remember anything she can about how currents behave near a coastline.
Fenna helps with keeping the boat together and intact as best she can.
Fenna uses the spyglass for sighting and the wayfinder to keep track of where north is located. Fenna tries to use her head like a protractor, taking note of how much of an arc her head must swivel to look from their island to the new island early on. Later, when visibility is bad, she tries to figure out their path forward by just turning her head the right amount to keep them on their line of travel. It's not a particularly good method.
Fenna doesn't love doing it, a storm at sea is no joke. But it doesn't seem all that far to go. Also, they probably should hurry. "Alright, we won't wait." Fenna transfers anything of hers that shouldn't get wet into her two waterproof bags.
Fenna agrees to go, and agrees it should happen soon. Otherwise the message she sent might be discovered to be fake. She helps ready the boat and get started on the journey.
I think things are fine as they are.
Fenna sends the message then goes back back with the others.
Fenna is truly stumped on the question of replying. She paces, biting on a thumbnail and thinking hard for a minute. "I think we need to answer. If we don't it might seem strange... But, what can we say that won't also seem strange? And, if we say the mission here failed, does it change what they do over there, reacting in some way that's worse? Like, what if they attack if the infiltration doesn't work? It would be good to try to get more information from them, but what to even ask? And again, if we ask something that we should know, we've blown it." Although she's so curious to find out more from their signaling partners it almost kills her, Fenna comes down on the side of caution. "I think we do better by taking no risks, as far as we know at least. Even if we don't get anything more that might be helpful. The most boring and routine thing possible." "How about a very short message just relaying this: 'Received and understood. Proceeding according to plan'. There's barely anything to even think about in it. It's safe."
Fenna mentions to the others that she fairly sure there is a pattern to the flashes. "I really don't think it's natural, like the sun glinting off something shiny. Give me a minute..." She continues to squint, looking out at the flashes while counting verbally to sort longer and shorter flashes, and on her fingers to group clusters.
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