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Yeah, unfortunately the allowed lighting levels go straight from Normal (everyone can see) to Dim (normal vision can't see). No such by-the-book thing as a less-than-Normal light that normal vision can see in. (Altho if Jacob wants to jump in here with another "screw the rules!", I wouldn't object :) However, if Guilford were to put his hand in front of the dagger, that would block a lot of the light from being seen way far away, while still lighting up our immediate surroundings... If we let the scouts go about 60' ahead, most of us (ok, most of you) could get to them in 1 round. And our light should be far enough back to not draw TOO much attention (I hope). Just part of the dangers of living in the world, I guess. Even a fantasy one. Ralf : I'm confused by your last comment to FireFox "Is having to do". To what were you referring?
FireFox sounds confused. "Even weshjook...I mean, Fox, can't see in the total darkness, altho he can *sniff* them out. I guess I could have him go along with Malakai. Unfortunately he's only trained to freeze when there's danger, but Malakai should be able to see that clearly, and then warn us. Sound good?"
"Let's try to pull the boards back over the hole from the inside, or find some brush we can pull over the hole. And maybe have the bear lay down near it?
Shall we explore what we can in a couple of hours, hopefully after most of the hobgoblins have gone to sleep?"
I'm enjoying the accents Ralf and Malakai are using, I think it adds flavor... Having just learned Common in the last year, FireFox still isn't sure of his understanding of the language. I'm just playing off of that.
"Or is isolated by cave-in or barricade." Psst! Hey Ralf - don't go giving the DM ideas! :)
FireFox looks puzzled. "I thought I understood this language pretty well, but you sure do use a lot of words no one else does. If I understand you correctly, yes. I can tell him to freeze when he smells them." He kind of whispers as an aside, "Would you mind teaching me some of those words later, so everyone will understand me better?"
Relaying that info to the group, then "So it looks like we've stumbled on a branch of the mines that the hobgoblins and their friends either have not found or are not bothering to use. What do we do now?"
Jacob said : "each month, of which there are 12, is exactly 30 days long, with 3 months per season." And I'll bet the days are *exactly* 24.00 hours long too, yes? My first impulse was to say "how conveeeenient" :) but in a truly infinite universe, there WILL be a solar system with a planet in orbit around it just like that... Also, not to nit-pick (really! - if you want to ignore this or house-rule it I have no problem with it), BUT... Vision and Light (RAW) : "Areas of dim light include outside at night with a moon in the sky, bright starlight..." So if there's stars out, LLV characters should be able to see ok without the moon. (The only reason I bring it up is that as a DM new to 3.5/d20/PF, I'm struggling to understand the Light and Stealth rules right now myself...)
Heh. Gnome? What Gnome? You'd swear there was a Gnome around here a second ago... FireFox also has a gleam in his eye, but you can't tell from what. "Once we get close, let me send in Fox. A tiny woodland creature (and a burrowing one at that) checking out a hole in the ground won't be very suspicious, don't you think?" "And what do y'all think of waiting until dark? Probably more of them will be alseep..."
And FWIW, I (not FF) considered the nocturnal thing, but I would imagine that creatures with LLV and DV are just that way because of their environment, and not necessarily because they're nocturnal. Just look at Dwarves, like Malakai...um, Malakai? You awake? But seriously, if the hobgoblins were *that* nocturnal, wouldn't they have attacked at night? And for that matter, why isn't this entire message in "OOC blue" - that formatting command doesn't seem to be working for multiple paragraphs (at least on my browser...)
"Sorry, I forgot a lot of you tallfolk don't see well at night. But the mines will be dark no matter when we go, and wouldn't it be more likely that more of them would be asleep at night? Hey-it looks like there's 3 of us that can see with just a little light, and 3 that can't-so maybe we could lead you if we need to sneak around without any light?"
"Cool! Sounds like most of us want to go to the caves. How about we sneak in quietly tonight, when they're likely to be sleeping? I could even send Fox in before to check it out, probably lots of animals wander into mines."
Huh - I just discovered that my next-to-last game post (the fox arrives, I ask a bunch of questions) appears significantly different in terms of formatting when viewed in Internet Explorer compared to Mozilla Firefox. It looks like I intended in Firefox, but not in IE. In particular, a "paragraph" of spoken text is correctly bolded in Firefox, but not in IE. How odd.
A big smile crosses FireFox's face. It's hard to tell if there's any maliciousness in it or not. "Yes! Let's go to the caves and blow them up! Wow, what a big boom THAT would be!"
The fox comes running back (looking a bit haggard by now from all the running), and after a quick exchange of barks, tail-wags and talking, FireFox says "Rush is still full of the hobgoblins, big uglies and bull-men, and all the townsfolk seem to be dead. There's no reason to go back there." He looks as dismayed as if he had just heard that his own family had died... "What direction now? Around the town to get to where the big boom tube is? Or do you think they'll be moving in to the town as a base camp? Or maybe the leaders will be moving on to another town? Wait a minute, I'm not sure I understand what information we're supposed to get to who. If it's just that hobgoblins are revolting , we don't need to stick around. We know they're attacking innocent towns, and they've got a big boom tube. Do we need to know more? And who should we get this info to?" "Is there any reason we shouldn't just head off to the next nearest town, to alert them to the danger? Isn't that more important than trying to follow this band's movements or figuring out their plans (and how would we do that, anyway)? There could be other bands like this one out there, heading towards other towns right now!"
Jacob - Paizo : "The master has an empathic link with his familiar to a 1 mile distance. The master can communicate empathically with the familiar, but cannot see through its eyes. Because of the link's limited nature, only general emotions can be shared." I figure I can sense his emotions to tell what's going on : fear if there's any invaders left and/or killing going on. Please let us know the results, or if that won't work.
"So : a guardsman ordered us to retreat,
Does that about cover it? Guilford, any thoughts? Tychus, what kind of 'recon' mission did *you* have in mind, exactly? Let me send Fox into Rush for a quick check, it won't take a minute and we can be heading towards the big boom tube while he's doing that. He's way faster than even you tallfolk. At least we'll know what's going on in Rush as we're deciding what to do when we reach the hobgoblins." With a look and a gesture, the fox goes running back to Rush at full speed. "I think trying to attack them head-on would be...foolhardy. You didn't see how many of the big uglies and bull-men they had, but I did."
TheJeff : I'm pretty sure you need C/C OR to be unobserved to use Stealth, not both. RAW : "Against most creatures, finding cover or concealment allows you to use Stealth." It's the C/C that makes you "unobserved" so that you can use Stealth.
Polo, that was so good on so many levels! THANKS! And to answer the question, its bark is best described as very short and hoarse. Almost like a cough.
Still looking a little confused, FireFox says "How about we check out Rush from a distance to see if there's still any hobgoblins there, and if they've left, we can help any survivors? Then we can go scouting. I could maybe even send Fox in, they might not think that a small forest animal would be anything unusual."
Apologies all, I didn't understand about the built-in die rolling. I thought the formatting example just formatted the text in a special way. Will use it in the future.
Seeing the bear's agitation, FireFox walks calmly towards it. Standing right in front of the creature which towers above him, he starts growling and grumbling, to which the bear seems to respond in kind. [At this point, I have NO IDEA what kind of roll to make. FF doesn't have any ranks in Handle Animal, but he is speaking to the bear in its language, and he has a +3 CHA bonus, and +3 to his Diplomacy. He's trying to calm the bear down. Jacob, if you want to make a decision, I've rolled a 6 on a d20.] [Also note he did not seem to be casting a spell. My understanding from Jacob is that Gnomes are unknown to this area, so a lot of this may seem more mysterious to your characters than to you. Jacob, please correct me if I assume too much.] Whatever the result, he then turns to Polo, and says, "but but but...we've been *ordered* to retreat! How can you go against an *order*?!?!?" [Looking over to Tychus.]
I think Malakai is just envious because their gun is bigger than his...
While being shaken, FireFox shouts "LET GO OF ME!". Whenever he's released, he'll take a step back, and scowling with eyes flashing (figuratively), he says to Malakai, "you need to..." then it's like a light bulb goes off in his head and he smiles and says "lighten up!". Turning to Tychus he says, "um, I thought I understood this language pretty well, but wouldn't 'retreat' be away from that big boom tube?" [FWIW, he seems to be unwounded]
I had to make my Will save TWICE to not end that post with : He then goes over to the fox, cradles its muzzle in his hands, looks it right in the eye and says, "Next time, whoa when I says whoa!". But I thought that would be a little over-the-top. But, if what I DID type reminded you of that, that's good enough. :)
All of you hear a crashing thru the woods, coming from the direction you're heading (back to Rush). The first thing you can see is just a colorful blur, heading high speed towards you. As the blur gets closer, you can just make out a small figure lying on the back of a *slightly* above-average sized fox and apparently hanging on for dear life. The figure has bright red hair and colorful clothing is all you can see. As they get really close you hear "Stop! Whoa! Halt! Please stop! AAAAHHHHH - STOP!!!", and the fox screeches to a halt as the figure flies off its back from momentum, and lands not-so gracefully (Acrobatics 9+2=11) on the ground. (Most of you would recognize the figure now as FireFox, see my Profile - he's probably introduced himself to you and chatted you up at least once in the last couple of months. Twice or more if you seem friendly towards him and enjoy talking about anything and everything [and are pretty patient]. Even if you're new to Rush, you've probably at least noticed him because of his colorful clothing.) He looks around, spots Tychus, jumps up and runs over to him, and salutes! (Imagine this next bit like a kid on a sugar rush AND 2 cups of espresso, but very serious...) "Hello,SIR!Are you Tychus?I have bad news for you SIR!Rush has fallen to the hobgoblins SIR!I was on the other side of the town helping to fight off some of them there, and saw them bring up a REALLY BIG...iron tube on wheels-hey sort of like what he's [points to Malaki] got there only a LOT bigger-and it made this REALLY LOUD noise, and then there was this hole in the town's outer wall and then some...creatures even bigger and uglier than the hobgoblins came in, along with some bull-men, and they started ripping everything and everyone to shreds and then someone dressed like you grabbed me and told me to head this way and find Tychus and tell him what I just told you and that you should stop the flank whatever that means and retreat north.Oh and warn everyone you meet.SIR!"
Already caught that I used the wrong column in the weapon damage lists. Will fix that soon. Anyone have any questions about FireFox (see post in Gameplay), please feel free to ask.
Please excuse the interruption in game flow, this is a "ping" to officially join the game. This is my first PbP character, the info and formatting may be a little shaky. And I don't know anything about PbP procedures or protocol (like what thread to post what info). Please bear with me as I get the hang of this... You can learn more about FireFox (that's his actual name, FireFox42 is just the Avatar name, "FireFox" and "Fire Fox" were taken) from his Profile, but if I have time I will post more in the Discussion thread (and I would assume replies to this message go there?). I don't have nearly as much info in the Profile as most of you others, but I will be adding to it over the next few days. Maybe even changing the icon picture (it was literally on the first screen of choices, and "close enough"). Jacob : I will send you an email with his backstory and other important game-related info within a day. I may not have all his items selected yet, but will update the Profile list ASAP. Please let me know if I've left anything out of the Quick Stats that you needed. Or anything else essential that's missing, or in incorrect format. Also please send me an email as soon as you're about to work him into the story. Thanks everyone for your advice and patience with me getting started! Now, I've got a LOT of reading to do! :) |