Jin En Mok's page

Thinking it over, the God-Eating-Fox And Their Priestess idea seems to yield ideas mostly oriented towards mutual-incomprehensibility dialogue comedy and visual/body-language comedy, which is interesting but hard to make the core of a PbP. Might make a amusing manga one-shot ('I Want To Snuggle Kami-Sama!'?), but I can't see how to make it gameable.

The Exorcist And Their Kitsune seems to have more dramatic meat to it, more potential for long-term relationship-building and interesting plot hooks for fantasy adventuring. Which of the Monkey King/Tang Sanzang, Simon and River Tam, or Edward and Alphonse Elric ideas strikes you as having the most potential?

Health issues have made it impossible for me to continue. I'm very sorry about my absence and lack of communication: I know that ghosting a game like I've done here is a shitty thing to do. My sincere apologies.

You could build a fair-sized merchant house on the strength of that alone. The possibilities of instant travel across the length and breadth of the Tablelands, without having to form long caravans, sweat across endless desert, fight off hunting cacti and bandits...

I'll need to come back here, somehow.

She's tempted to stop and ponder on it- but she can't bring herself to take her attention from her food for too long. Even having access to fresh fish to be able to make sushi to begin with is a rare treat, but she's never been able to make it with fish like this: pristine, unpolluted by the magical and biological wastes of the strange Nibenese fish-farming process.

"This place and- mmh!- and its wonders are absolutely fascinating, but I fear we're getting somewhat off-track. We were discussing how we could collaborate- and I think sharing map information would be a good first start.

How much of this complex have you explored? That horrible thing and its minions must have curtailed your expedition somewhat. We can map out the path taken from the surface."

After Jin carefully washes the poison off of her hands, the fish has to go in first- it's the ingredient in the biggest lumps, and they'll have to be in the hot-pot the longest to cook through. Jin momentarily pauses when she sees that Rokan hasn't been separating the flesh from the bones, as she'd have done instinctively- but, really, a bit of texture is scarcely going to be noticed by a creature with a maw that more closely resembles a siege weapon than anything else, and the bones will increase the richness of the stock. After a few minutes for a light crusting of salt to settle in, into the enormous vessel they go, for a bit less than ten minutes: then the cabbage, the long onions, the mushrooms. Ideally, there'd also be some crunchy root vegetable, and there are a few in the cavern, but taking the time to clean and peel enough would take far too long. It's a bit of a mad rush to get all the ingredients into the pot quickly enough- but on the bright side, the enormous scale of the thing means that they don't need to be delicately chopped into bits of the right size, but rather tossed into the pot whole after just a bit of cleaning.

The next bit would normally be tricky: a nabe on an ordinary scale would cool down quickly enough that the whole thing would be done just as the broth reached an edible temperature. But three hundred qafiz of broth will take a fair bit longer to cool down than one. Jin fishes out her cauldron from the bottom of the vessel with a long, hooked rod, and with a muttered "Bardi", the broth inside cools as swiftly as it first heated. Lowering the cauldron back down into the vessel and swishing it about for a bit with the rod is somewhat awkward, but a reasonably good way of stirring-

"And this one leads to the outskirts of the Free City of Tyr, among the sugarcane plantations of the nobility."

Jin curses and fumbles the cauldron, barely catching the rod at the last instant and singeing her fingertips in the hot stew.

"I, wha- excuse me, what was that last one?"

Her focus wavers, but with the broth brought to temperature, the hotpot is so close to finished that it'd be a waste to stop now. A sprinkling of aromatic herbs on top, a final tasting, and it's finished- the rich, savory smell satisfyingly refuting her fear that the stock would be stretched too thin. The texture, of course, is atrocious from the point of view of someone her size, with everything in chunks that are far too big. But it ought to be perfect for the hulking drakes, and the freshness of the ingredients makes it deliciously savory.

"Allez cuisine, your highesses!"

They'll have to either improvise their own utensils or take turns sipping directly from the huge, wide-mouthed earthenware vessel. It's a flaw, but Jin isn't about to spend another hour chopping down a tree and whittling a titanic pair of spoons: she joins the others in enjoying the meal, and approaches Ito with dolmathakia in hand and a questioning look on her face.

"That Tyrian portal, in particular, might help explain something that's been puzzling me for some time now. The last thing Tyren and I remember, before about thirty hours ago, we were in Tyr: we seem to have lost about a week of time, but that's not nearly long enough for us to have been brought here by conventional means. Is there any possibility that these portals have recently been used without your noticing?"

"We're...hup..."

Leaving her spear stuck in the behemoth for the moment, Jin leaps lightly down from the nearly vertical rock face she was clinging to.

"We're here for more or less the same reason you are, actually. A sorcerer-king, long thought dead, now looks for knowledge and power in the ruins of Kalidnay to restore themselves to glory and lay all else to waste. We're here to stop them.

Yours is Sielba. Ours is Dregoth."

She stretches.

"Incidentally, that thing isn't destroyed- just...suspended, until something wakes it up. Does anyone have a good way to finish it off now that it isn't struggling?"

"Are all warriors in these times as powerful as ye?" he asks, awed.

Wait, the kreen *actually* thinks they're from another time? And...the way his conversation with Kchac'Thraa went makes a great deal more sense if they actually *are*.

This just keeps getting stranger.

Jin grits her teeth and grimly hangs on to the shaft of her spear- the wood creaking and twisting under her grip as she capitalizes on the hole she's made to the thing's interior with short, sharp spiraling motions.

I'm going to have to replace the edges after this. Obsidian on metal is going to cause a fair bit of chipping.

Her unseen companion continues wearing the thing down, as well.

Holding on to the spear as her companions wail on the thing is a challenge in itself: when Amunet-Ra somehow manages to throw the colossus, she's forced to flip entirely end over end to keep her grip. It's difficult, but forcibly keeping the barbed thing in the 'wound' as the robot is moved around it is just as damaging as if she'd twisted it herself.

One who makes extensive use of drow poison, and one who uses a lot of different poisons. It's very possible to see a single monster get CC'd to death if it's of the wrong type.

The intent for the drow poison is less to be a 'lolno' on encounters of a certain type (Jin has a fairly broad ability to bypass type immunities) and more to add a low probability of knocking out an opponent with every strike, with a somewhat higher chance for mooks or stereotypically poor-Fort enemies. DC 25, which is close to being the highest I can possibly push it, is pretty much natural-1 bait for a boss encounter at our power level. (Espeically for Fort saves, which tend to be the highest monster save.) Only in absolutely ideal circumstances (poison applied with Poisoner's Stance, Iron Fang used to attack, in a sneak attack vs. a sneak-attackable opponent) will she be able to be really threatening with an effective save-or-die.

The rest of her poisons are status-effect and ability-damage stuff rather than straight-up encoutner-enders.

At this point we are hacking d20 so heavily that I almost wonder if something looser/more flexible would be better-suited for Seb's artistic vision. GURPS? Mutants and Masterminds?

OK -- the droid was stunned if Amunet-Ra's ability did that -- and maybe poisoned too.

I need everyone to double check their location before I post next. The line up of the characters will be crucial to what is about to happen.

Jin and Gu are definitely where they're supposed to be.

(Revised actions to account for the lack of the cloud)

"Gu: kill."

Jin darts forward as if shot from a bow, vaulting over a few of her friends as she invisibly closes with the behemoth. Her unseen path takes a gravity-defying turn as her feet impossibly stick to the vertical, water-slick cliff and she charges up it...

As she runs up, she concentrates, layering a spiritual poison onto the speartip above the physical ones already present- and the moment it twitches to unleash some fresh hell upon them all, her long, cruelly hooked spear lashes out once, twice, and she blinks back into visibility.

A wisp of shadow follows on Jin's heels- impossible to pinpoint or track, striking out at the droid with the psionic essence of fear.

It seems like robots shouldn't be susceptible to poison? But I can't find anything. Anyone know?

The Alchemy Sphere talent Specialized Venom permits you to ignore the poison immunity of a certain creature type/subtype chosen from the ranger favored enemy list. I've got it for the Plant and Construct types.

I like to think it works rather like this.

Everyone, just ignore what I wrote about the acid cloud -- I'm waiting until everyone has finished going before deciding on the droid's actions. I'd delete that post if the system let me.

Just saw this, can't edit my post anymore.

Chief changes to my post are to not delay, since Tyren Faerie Fired it into visibility, and to use the swift action I have again to activate my Dizzying Venom Prana boost, staggering my target with no save and forcing a DC 26 (first strike)/DC 24 (second strike) Fort save to avoid suffering 3 Wis damage for 2 rounds, 1 save cures. (Reminder: failing both saves will extend the effect by 50%/1 round and boost the DC for subsequent saves by 2, rather than have it take effect twice.)

Conveniently, and somewhat goofily, I think the fact that it acts twice a round means I get twice as many HO Mythic Combat Reflexes attacks on it per turn for 'starting its turn in my threatened area', and also that poison acts twice as fast on it.

Does that aura work when it's attacked with a wooden-hafted reach weapon?

"SEIYA!"

A moment's meditation on hatred and a pulse of ki pushes the worst of the cloud of acid away from Jin- and her skin momentarily takes on an metallic shimmer as she reflexively hardens it. Nonetheless, the pain is fierce and burning- but not debilitating.

"Gu: kill."

Jin darts forward as if shot from a bow, vaulting over a few of her friends as she invisibly closes with the behemoth. Her unseen path takes a gravity-defying turn as her feet impossibly stick to the vertical, water-slick cliff and she charges up it...

As she runs up, the glowing droid's form emerges through the murk- and the moment it twitches to unleash some fresh hell upon them all, her long, cruelly hooked spear lashes out once, twice, and she blinks back into visibility.

A wisp of shadow follows on Jin's heels- impossible to pinpoint or track, striking out at the droid with the psionic essence of fear.

Hamza Mīnakshi wrote:

I've got us all covered. I'm about to eat dinner shortly, then I'll work on getting up my post. There's a lot of things going on, so it's going to take some time. Definitely writing it up on google docs, so I don't lose it, LOL

Is Hamza still incorporeal during this attack?

If this is Shadow Lord incorporeality, it applies only during movement. So they'd be incorporeal during the attack, but since you can't move when it isn't your turn barring immediate-action schenanigans, they'd pop back to corporeality right afterwards.

All right, the sheet in my profile link has been edited with the final versions of Gu and Jin's revised sheets.

CHANGELOG
-Added an Initiative score to Gu. (I misunderstood what you meant by 'block init': previous GM did a version of that where initiative was simply unrolled.)
-Added the Stone of Alliance to Gu
-Fixed Jin's initiative to include the Amazing Initiative boost from her mythic tier
-Spell-Like Ability was not properly marked as Horrifically Overpowered on Jin's sheet, making her 1 over the limit for HO feats: also, I lacked the Improved Initiative pre-req for another of my Horrifically Overpowered feats, Super Speed. Fixed both problems by swapping out Spell-Like Ability for Improved Initiative.
-Added a bunch of mundane equipment to Jin.
-Changed Jin's default extract loadout to include two Ant Hauls daily rather than one to carry around all her stuff.

Okay, if you've got Faerie Fire, let her rip. You act before Jin does anyway.

Since I've already got all my cooking supplies laid out, my first planned action in the combat, once I manage to close, is to hit the thing with a bag of flour.

Flour Pouch: This deceptively simple burlap satchel of flour is tied loosely on purpose. While it could be used to bake a loaf of bread on a particularly long expedition, its true purpose is to locate invisible opponents. You can attempt to strike an invisible opponent with a flour pouch as a touch attack. You still must pinpoint the target or choose a space to attack into, and the normal miss chance for total concealment applies. If you hit the target, the pouch bursts open, spilling white flour over a portion of the invisible creature. You can also throw a flour pouch as a splash weapon; any invisible creature standing in the space struck is covered in flour, as are all other creatures within 5 feet.

Coating an invisible creature in flour lets you keep track of its position and reduces the miss chance to 20% (instead of the normal 50% for total concealment). While an invisible creature is coated in flour, its bonus on Hide checks is reduced to +10 if the creature is moving, or to +20 if it is not moving (PH 76). If the creature moves through water, is subjected to a gust of wind, or spends a full-round action brushing the flour off, all the flour is removed from its body.

A gentle rain will probably wash it off in a few rounds, but that should be enough to do some good work, and it'll pre-empt most of the argument about what the rain does.

Jin will delay until just after the Scorpion's first action, hoping that its actions will let her better pinpoint its location.

Forgot to specify that in Jin's buff period, they would've reapplied Arcanotoxin to their spear and fists, putting her at 7/12 daily uses of Arcanotoxin. (I misremembered that they worked like ordinary poisons, staying on until used, but Arcanotoxins are unstable enough to last only a minute.)

On a related note: everyone whose weapon Jin poisoned in the last encounter still has a weapon with DC 22 Drow/Elf Poison on it, poison that works just as well on Constructs as it does on plants.

What I'm concerned about regarding some of these companions might outshine and overtake some of the PCs.

Does Gu look over the top?

Initiative: 1d20 + 18 ⇒ (2) + 18 = 20
Gu: 1d20 + 15 ⇒ (14) + 15 = 29

As the nature and extent of the incoming trouble becomes increasingly clear, Jin momentarily excuses herself to a secluded spot to 'relieve herself'...and a minute later, her spear and shield are nowhere to be found...

I think posting slowed somewhat because we're expecting to be imminently attacked by this thing. Contextually, though, it's been there for a while, and if it hasn't noticed that it's been made, an attack might not be imminent.

Does anyone want to kick things off by initiating this fracas themselves- perhaps letting our host know what's up before we do that?

"Ack!"

As the rain begins to fall, Jin hurriedly covers the food with a bit of oilcloth- then, as the curiosity of such an event happening indoors hits her, inches towards her spear...

By the way, since several characters have commented on it- Jin isn't so much 'unimpressed by all the water' as she is a very focused person, and one perhaps overused to concealing her first impression of a person or situation until she's totally confident it's safe to do so. When we crossed the barrier, the water was relevant mostly as a demonstration of how powerful this potential foe was, and as concealment: she was treating it as part of the tactical Problem to Solve. Now the drakes and their companion are part of a social Problem to Solve instead, and expressions of awe and wonder are an acknowledgment of the strength of their position and an implicit admission of weakness. Once negotiations conclude (as well as our surprise fight), *then* the seen-it-all facade will crack.

"You really don't seem to know much about Kalidnay though. Kalid-Ma was a man, he had a wife, Thakok-Ma."

Jin looks up from her cooking for a moment.

"I've heard legends with either sex, actually. And it's not as if shapeshifting is beyond the abilities of even a moderately talented defiler: gender could well have been optional for them."

You know, around the time Kalak was overthrown the templars were handing out these spices in lieu of more expensive ones that the masses cannot afford. Soylent masala, they called it. Perhaps this can be our secret ingredient! I have a bit left.

Jin blinks. For a moment, her expression is utterly, carefully blank.

Does he know how that was made? He doesn't seem the type for...halfling eating habits.

And if he's got 'a bit more', then he's been eating it for a while. If he doesn't know, I think it's best that he doesn't learn it from me.

She reaches out, hesitates for an instant-

...and I suppose that with Kalak's death, consuming it now won't create a market for any more.

-and accepts it.

"A rare delicacy indeed. Thank you, Rokan."

Jin's fingers dance over bottles, pouches and boxes, careful to taste as she goes. This much dill, a little more parsley, half again as much mint because it's wilted somewhat, dice and combine them with the rice with a pinch of pepper...

...wait a minute.

The mint has wilted.

She bought that mint fresh from the pot from Ghazi, forty-eight subjective hours ago. It usually takes about three days for the leaves to curl in on each other like that, and perhaps another three for it to get quite so dark. That's useful to know.

Oh, and that would mean- yes, the odor hits her the moment she unwraps the erdlu. There's no making kebab out of that slimy mess- but blessedly, the onions are fine, the bell peppers are elderly but serviceable, and the sucuk is a sufficiently dry sausage that it's survived the week perfectly intact. Jin pivots smoothly to making kebab with that, and the warm, pungeant scent of toasting cumin mixes with the savory sausage to produce a truly mouthwatering aroma.

The drakes' nabe takes a bit longer: she finds an enormous earthenware jar that their hosts apparently brought a water supply with them when they weren't sure whether this grotto provided water year-round or merely seasonally, fills it with help from Rokan and others, and solves the problem of how to quickly bring the tremendous amount of water to a boil with the curious expedient of tossing her magic instant-boil pot into the bottom and setting it to heat. The boiling water rises to the top, cooler water rushes in to replace it, and before long the entire thing has been brought to a boil just as Jin returns laden with a double armful of dark, leafy greens. Now Jin is busily mixing in enough bonito and sardines for three months' worth of her own meals to make dashi as Rokan butchers the two great fish into fist-sized chunks...

I am very surprised by the liberties taken regarding fish, water and other things.

From the GM it is one thing, but everything in that direction goes completely against the setting in my eyes and heavily runs the risk to destroy the flavor of the setting.

I was running with Seb's earlier declaration that Nibenay mapped to Japan/China. That's rough, culinarily, without some kind of seafood.

It's already established that you can get some pretty remarkable results in locally defying Athas' environmental issues if you're willing to defile the shit out of somewhere else. I was envisioning some kind of incredibly dense, filthy, factory-fish-farming-meets-H.R.-Geiger kind of thing, probably powered by the life-force of sacrificed rebels, not actual Nibenese rivers and seas to fish from- and not something available to the hoi polloi, something restricted to Nibenay's upper crust. Presumably Jin learned how to cook with fish when she had to assassinate such a person.

My last draft sheet wasn't quite complete, being almost altogether lacking in mundane equipment not related to killing stuff. But it beggars belief that someone with a light load of half a ton would go walking around with nothing but knives, spear, shield, poison, and alchemist's lab, and I've been working on the assumption that I *have* stuff appropriate to my skillset. Including ingredients, hence this scene. Now working on a complete equipment loadout: ready by the weekend.

Furthermore: it occurs to me that, as Jin rifles through her pack and finds all the ingredients she needs, it will give her a better idea of exactly how she came to be brought to these tunnels. If she was basically teleported to these tunnels from Tyr, losing only most memory of when and how, then the herbs will be fresh, as will the erdlu. If she was rendered insensible and brought there by slower means, then the things in the pack have aged somewhat, which will be readily apparent. And if there are groceries there that she doesn't remember buying recently, then it will tell her that she's lost a substantial amount of time through either psionic memory modification or good old fashioned head trauma.

What does she find?

Jin claps her hands, rubbing them together in anticipation.

"Very well, then. The suggestion of Tyrian street food is an excellent one, since that's what I cut my teeth on learning to cook- but with the rare privilege of fresh fish close at hand, I don't think I can resist the temptation to give a bit of Nibenese cuisine a try after all."

"A bit of each, I think."

The temptation here is to try to serve up impressive food- some grand feat of highly ornamented palace cuisine. Jin knows enough to resist that impulse: such things are for those with every tool imaginable at their disposal, an army of assistants, and hours to prepare, not a few chefs with a waiting group that's hungry *right now*. Erdlu kebab with the meat in her pack, basic sushi...Are those grapes? Dolmathakia, then, and the grapes themselves. And, let's see...every scrap of bonito and every sardine she has ought to be just enough to make a base for a heroic nabe suitable for a drake. Vegetables and protein...let's see what there is to find.

She withdraws a cooking pot of substantial size from her pack, dips it in the clear, clean waters to fill it a third full, and sets it up.

"Rokan- could you help by seeing to it that the rice cooks well while I get the fish? And- ah."

Jin makes a sour face.

"I am a poisoner of considerable skill. Sworn as I am to serve this Company, intentional betrayal is out of the question....but it occurs to me that the circumstances of my joining you do not firmly rule out some malign psionic suggestion. Supervise me as I cook, please. I'll taste everything as I add it: if I fail, remind me.

Nar-Maraq."

?! The cauldron instantly begins to boil, not twenty seconds after having been filled and without any hint of fire: leaving Rokan with this minor miracle and a large bag of rice, she goes to fish. In a trice, Jin's shoes are off and she's stripped to the waist, with only a wrapping to preserve her modesty. There's a moment of uncertainty here. It's a rare resident of the Tablelands not blessed with Nibenay's extensive aquaculture who's familiar with cooking with seafood, and Jin manages to be among their number. But it's a rarer resident of the Tablelands who knows how to swim, and Jin isn't a member of that exclusive club- but she finds the right place to deal with that weakness, a crystal-clear portion of the waters no more than waist-deep and teeming with fish.

That's odd, though. She doesn't have any tools. How is she planning to-

"Gu."

The black-furred wolfdog is abruptly there, lounging on a rock where there was only a hint of shadow before.

"Kill. Kill. Kill."

She points at one fish, a second, a third- and with no hint of motion or indeed interest from the dog, each one in turn simply...dies.

That's somewhat disturbing. Still, whatever it did, there isn't a mark on the creatures, and they're perfectly preserved for making a meal of them. Jin wades in to scoop them up - two of the milky-eyed cave fish and a kind of bream she recognizes from her time in Nibenay's fish markets- and returns them to a flat rock set up next to the cauldron.

"You said the big, dangerous ones kept themselves to deeper waters?"

This at our host: at the responding nod, she cocks her head to the side in thought, heaves up a remarkably heavy stone under one arm, takes a deep breath, and-

Jumps in?

Fifteen seconds pass. Thirty. The surface fish scatter as a faint red tinge spirals up from the depths, and Gu makes an unhappy canine noise of concern...before Jin breaks the surface again, thrashing inelegantly but powerfully and dragging some kind of enormous sturgeon half again as big as she is.

"This one looked good!"

Before long, this to is deposited next to Rokan, and she's jumped back in to repeat the procedure, bringing back a second just as large. These ones do have a wound on them, but it's difficult to see how she could've made such a wound, barehanded as she seems to be: it looks more like the thrust of a spear than anything. The mystery swiftly resolves itself as she deftly and efficiently cleans and dresses the creatures: she uses a flake of sharpened obsidian wrapped in a scrap of leather for the finer work, but she's fully strong enough to thrust her fingers into and through the flesh of the titanic creature, crack open the ribs, and tear it practically in half by hand- strong greatly out of proportion to her frame. Her skin must be unusual, too, for her fingers not to be torn up by the scales.

From there, things are less unusual, if still done with self-assured competence. The rice is separated into two portions- the greater portion mixed with fragrant parsley, dill, and mint, a handful of pine nuts, and lemon juice, wrapped in grape leaves, and sautéd for a time in olive oil, with onions adding to the aroma and anticipation. The lesser part of it is carefully rinsed, seasoned minimally but with care with salt, sugar, and rice vinegar, and hand-pressed into small mounds, on which are placed carefully-selected slivers of wholly uncooked bream, sturgeon, and cave fish. (After a swift but thorough check for parasites.) The speed at which she prepares it all is remarkable, though there's something subtly off about her movements: she positively vibrates with energy, seemingly unable to keep still even in the rare moments she's waiting for something to cook without finding some other task to do in parallel.

These serve as finger food and appetizers, along with the grapes, and she urges the others to indulge as she samples a few herself and turns her attention to the more substantial part of the meal...

Aw yiss, Dungeon Meshi time.

Jin grins cheekily.

"With lunch, perhaps? That horrible shadow-thing implied that you've been locked in a stalemate for some time- and while this is plainly a remarkable place, to be able to sustain you for so long, it isn't exactly a trading city, teeming with the world's spices, meats, ingredients and cuisines. Miraculous lifeshaped flora or no, your meals must be dull and routine- and while I don't have, for instance, the fresh fish I'd need to do something authentically Nibenese, I've the ingredients and skill for quite a variety of dishes. And there's nothing to create amity and friendship among strangers than breaking bread together.

Perhaps there's some cuisine you fondly recall from your time before you came here, something that you haven't been able to create with what's on hand? I'd be happy to try my hand at cooking for the drakes, even, though for them I'd have to put a new spin on the ingredients you have here rather than offer something from my comparatively meager stores. Would you say their palate more closely resembles that of a ssuran, dray, or yuan-ti?"

Gu already got a natural 20 on one of the reroll-take-the-highests she gets when looking for divination sensors, and a 10 on the second attempt to look for generic magic auras. If a 37 isn't within the range of 20 + CL, she can't possibly find any divination sensors...and as for general magical auras, that's something that Cae or Tyren or someone who actually has Detect Magic ought to have done when Jin explicitly asked for someone to check Gu's work in that regard.

Jin gives Jimbli a nod.

"It seems like introductions have been successful. Go ahead and take us over, please."

A little more successful than we had any right to hope for, really. How many times has this happened, anyway?

Disreguard the last part of my previous post. I'm assuming that we have the partywide mindlink Ri'Kli'Klek says they'll be able to provide when their rebuild is done. Italicized text in asterisks is telepathic communication.

Jin peers through the waterfall, trying to catch any hint of recognition or alarm by the bathing figure.

*If, as seems highly likely, the bathing figure is the drake we're looking for, why don't we simply announce ourselves- perhaps after giving those of our number effected by the spell the time to recover somewhat? I don't think it's terribly likely that we'll all be able to get past that trap, and whatever other security measures are in place, without making ourselves reasonably obvious. And trying and failing would make us an obvious threat, and could make any subsequent attempt to negotiate with the drake much more complicated than it needs to be.*

Hamza triggered a mechanical trap while incorporeal?

"--!"

Jin takes a deep breath, and lowers her voice.

"...we may not have time for you to recover, actually. There's someone out there that...could be the drake. Not drake-shaped, but we've been warned they're a shapechanger."

After a moment's thought, she begins improvising a white flag to hang from the shaft of her spear. This may not be the first group the horrid shade has sent through this entrance with promises of power in exchange for the drake's head. Best to get things started on the right foot-

!?

"...what was that?"

It being apparent that all possible chance of a quiet approach has been lost, Jin charges out from behind the waterfall herself, the butt of her spear held high with a flopping, half-tied, soaked white cloth attached to the end. Hopefully it will send the right message.

"Sonofab*%%#!"

The power of the vitality-draining magic hits Jin like a rampaging bull carru, and for a moment, her knees buckle and threaten to give out from under her-

Gu barely succeeds. Jin will fail with a 31 even though I neglected to account for Aura of the Moon's +2- but I'll spend a use of Mythic Power to fight it off anyway. Surge: 1d6 ⇒ 6

-before she grits her teeth, widens her stance, tenses her body, and barely throws it off.

"Did everyone make it without-"

She glances at the others.

"-no, clearly not. Rest while Hamza and Amunet-Ra scout things out: I'll be on watch."

Jin regains martial focus after a minute of rest. This is where Gu actually does their searching, BTW. Jin's on-watch Perception: 1d20 + 17 ⇒ (6) + 17 = 23

It is a classic Athasian elf-and-half-elf conversation, isn't it?

Yeah, I know it's odd from a Watsonian point of view, but from a Doylist point of view, the players need something to do while we wait for Seb to get our Fort saves and start narrating.

Tyren, you bolloxed up the roll for the Fort save. Gotta make it again.

As far as economic stuff goes, Jin has the interesting niche of being able to put together alchemical items like a small army of trained craftsmen: in particular, as far as poisons are concerned, in all likelihood she could independently satisfy the demand of the whole of the Tablelands, given sufficient trading pipelines.

"That's a wonderful discovery! [...]The Grey seems especially useful for you, as it's a direct counterpart to the cycle of death, which means [...]"

Jin raises an eyebrow.

"I'm not sure you're completely following. I can't directly tap the Grey or the Black- merely exploit others' connections with it, as with other ways to power. An existing environmental remediation program, I could help along. I've done it before...but it ultimately can't change the fact that using magic to make a barren place bloom is a long-term, difficult, complicated slog, if you don't care to reduce twice as much land to dust and ash in the process."

So you essentially gather the stool of people in a city hoping you can extract magic remains from it? And then you transferred the flesh of a dead person into your dogs nose to give her special abilities?

She looks slightly disgusted.

"A dead beast, not a person. Like a kank or an erdlu. As for shoveling shit..."

She shrugs, seeming utterly unbothered.

"Yes, it's unpleasant. So is gaining power by other means. I've trained spearmanship until the wood of the waster splintered under my grip and stained my hands red with blood, run under the desert sun until my lungs burned and my muscles screamed, tempered my hands every day until I could scarcely pick up a meal to eat- and didn't stop until they hardened into deadly weapons. What's a bit of smell, after all that?

Ultimately, I don't ask you to respect the process- just the results. Let's speak again on this once we've traveled and fought together, and you've seen what my methods allow me to do."

Out of curiosity, how many of us have some capability with poison?

Hamza has access to some poison based maneuvers via Steel Serpent, and it seems both of our new players are poisoned focused (to an extent at least).

Mechanics-wise, Jin began as an exercise to see how much poison stuff I could cram into one character. About 60% of available optimization resources- class levels, feats, traits, racial and pseudoracial stuff- have been devoted to that end. Basically the only poison-related things I didn't take were bardic Hypertoxins, because both Alchemist and a Steel Serpent-focused Warder got me more poisony stuff, and enough purchases of the combat talents that would otherwise let me bypass the poison immunity of everything- because I wanted room for growth and places for her to struggle.

The other 40% are mostly devoted to being an AoO-baiting reach monster meleeist. Side gigs include being an okay skillmonkey, being reasonably mobile, being surprisingly durable especially against crit-fishers and creatures reliant on HP-damaging single attacks, Alchemist casting, sneak attacking, having some tanky/aggro-management stuff, and loving her doggo.

Can I assume everyone made these comments after they passed through the barrier then? There's a mechanical issue I have to deal with -

100%.

Jin will opt to expend her martial focus on this, treating it as if it were a rolled 13- or 29. Gu will just Fort: 1d20 + 21 ⇒ (13) + 21 = 34, use her trait to reroll if it's a failure (Fort: 1d20 + 12 ⇒ (1) + 12 = 13), and Mythic it away if it's *still* a failure.

So Jin, you are using poisons and your dog magic? That is most weird.

"My own talents lie either in spearfighting, poisons, or in the further reaches of the study of the nature of substances- the simpler tricks of which are often called 'alchemy'. The more advanced things I can get up to...I'd call it 'natural magic' if that weren't likely to invite misleading comparison to druidic and elemental practices."

She smiles openly, happy to have found an interested listener.

"'Found magic' might be a closer description: the life energy that conventional defiling drains from plant and animal life can be concentrated by processes both mundane and exotic, and with sufficient legerdemain, made to produce useful effects in the process of transition to another state, rather than outright destruction.

Furthermore, neither defiling nor druidic magics nor elementalism are perfectly efficient processes. The remains of consumed potion-fruit- inedible stalks and cores, even the remains of the fruit's digested flesh in stool- can be purified and reprocessed for some remnant of the original effect. Sand exposed to powerful displays of an element can retain traces of that element's fundamental nature, traces which can be greatly magnified. And, most valuable and useful of all, some small portion of every spell cast by a defiler remains in their body tissues, which- once removed- can be used as catalysts for all manner of fascinating purposes."

She grimaces.

"Working the kinks out of that took eight defilers over the course of three months. Almost lost my research notes when the templars caught up to me and I had to leave Raam in a hurry. It doesn't take a lot- a fingertip can last me a week- but the bodies lost their potency distressingly quickly. Despite its promise, I was beginning to worry that the method was more trouble than it was worth before I hit on the happy idea of mummifying them, which works like a charm if the proper salts are used. I'm almost always running a comfortable surplus these days."

I've actually been putting a fair bit of thought into being an Alchemist on Athas, since the setting makes something of a point of traditional alchemy and potion-making being almost unheard of, taking a back seat to potion-fruit and the like. The solution I settled on was that Alchemy- at least the potion-making, extract-producing kind of alchemy- is commensally or parasitically dependent on an ecosystem of other spellcasters. If Jin taught two or three others to use her methods, they would begin to put a serious strain on the amount of magical waste available to harvest in that city-state.

"Gu's abilities are mostly psionic, actually- he taps into the collective fear that all prey hold for predators and projects them upon others. The magic-smelling trick is, well- have you even heard of a disenchanter? Curious jungle creature, mostly extinct: it can actually eat and metabolize arcane magic. There's some speculation they're a product of some long-ago druidic breeding program for a weapon against the sorcerer-kings.

When Gu was a puppy, I transplanted important portions of a disenchanter's nasal structure into his own snout, sealing the wound with healing magic. That's where that trick comes from."

Jin lights up at that suggestion.

"Oh, that would be perfect. I was toying with the notion of somehow leaving them a false corpse, poisoning that, and finishing them off once it had weakened them."

A sly grin.

"It's why I asked to keep the hide. Easier to pass off the body of some other great beast as a drake if it's skinned, butchered, and not recognizable as what it once was."

Jin leaves with the rest, on high alert for any hint of treachery. Once in the tunnel, he walks in silence for a time, waiting to be behind multiple bends.

"Gu."

The wolfdog precipitates out of the shadows, inches from Ri'Kli'Klek.

"Search."

It circles the group, sniffing about. Several times it hesitantly looks toward one of the Company of the Tablet and indicates them with a 'point', motionless with one leg in the air and muzzle pointed at them: Jin dismisses each with a nod and a wave of the hand, and it resumes its rounds. Finally, it returns to Jin with a 'wurf.'

"Good boy. Clever boy."

She gives the creature a bit of bacon from a pocket.

"Now: search."

The entire procedure repeats itself, complete with bacon.

Should the check come up clean:

"Gu can smell spying magic- and, obviously, eavesdroppers. We are unobserved and can speak freely. Those of you with the capability and inclination to double-check that, do so now: she sensed magical auras on a few of you, and while most of them are likely your doing, she isn't sufficiently familiar with your magics to distinguish between those and something new. Look for an unexpected divination effect."

A beat.

"We're killing that thing, yes? It is plainly as amiable, trustworthy and benevolent as a maddened cobra. I don't feel safe living in the same world as one of those, let alone being in the same tunnel complex."

Hmmm. That last SoH roll makes me nervous. Am I getting any circumstantial bonus for passing along a small item, for a distracted onlooker, anything like that? I might want to Mythic-boost the roll if it's straight SOH vs. Perception. 1d6 ⇒ 5

Jin seems possessed by nervous energy, unnerved by the appearance of this shadowy apparition. She paces from spot to spot, drinks a little something to fortify herself, fiddles distractedly with a bit of string and then, briefly, Hamza's chained kama.

There's not much call for subtly poisoning someone else's weapon, but it actually is something she's practiced: mostly, to frame others as a poisoner, to draw suspicion away from herself or, once, to invalidate the results of a high-stakes gladiatorial match. A single, innocent-seeming brush, and both of the kama readily take on the poisonous gloss.

Then, she rounds on Rokan, speaking low but not too low to be overheard.

"Come, now- what's the matter with you? That expression... it's unlike you. This being is not so terrible as to unman you, is it?"

Jin clasps the man's hand reassuringly...and in that instant, passes on a nasty little gift. A vakulak or 'bard's rope', a length of rough, nearly flesh-colored twine just long enough to be wrapped twice around the knuckles of one hand- designed to open small cuts with the impact of a punch, just enough to admit the poison that Rokan can feel the thing is soaked with.

"Hmmm."

Jin regards this latest development with a carefully blank expression. Only a moment's frazzled glance at the others betrays her discomfort.

Oh, they could not be more sinister if they tried. How many more screaming red flags do they need to wave in front of us before we nod, smile, tell them we'll do everything they want, then slit their throats once they've turned their backs?

Rather than engage with this new and horrible being, she leaves the others to continue negotiating and begins idly examining Amunet-Ra's branched spear- testing the edge on her fingertip, feeling where the blade meets the shaft, comparing its length and design with her own. An instant of clumsiness, and it's momentarily knocked into the elf's line of vision...where the characteristic light green of a thin coating of elf poison is momentarily visible, before it dries into a gloss imperceptible against the weapon's obsidian edge. What could she be playing at? She introduced herself as a master alchemist, and she must know that standard elf poison won't work on a mushroom-creature...

...but standard elf poison doesn't swiftly dry into a gloss, either, and she alluded to experiments with a poison that would work on zombies earlier. Perhaps she's overcome that limitation?

The Wrathful Creature template.

Reread the background. 'LE' in this case means 'fanatical extremist cheerfully willing to do things to slavers and her enemies that would turn the stomach of a modern observer'. She's more or less sane, social, and dislikes the capital-E evil guys in the setting like defilers for more or less the right reasons.

In day-to-day life, she's not recognizably evil- she helps the Veiled Alliance, tips the waiter, heals the sick and injured when she comes across them, all that kind of thing. It's just that she goes home from her day job of being a Veiled Alliance agent and picks up her long-term plans to kill the most prominent slave-owners and slavers of Tyr in a matter that involves a maximum of suffering.

I dunno- on Athas, that might qualify as 'LN with evil tendencies'? It's a dark setting, and she's a dark person, but on the right side most of the time. Evil in the means she employs, not her ultimate ends.