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Boy, I'm glad I had something really epic ready to justify the wait.
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In hindsight, I shouldn't have subcontracted. When you want a flu shot, you really just have to do it yourself.
Three days after I get my flu shot, the flu found me. I'm doing alright. Meant to post today, actually, just didn't get to it! I'll keep the tab open and do it tomorrow.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! The outages and holidays have hindered my triumphant return, but we'll be back soon. :P
I have been so so swamped lmao but I am excited to get back to updating this! We're starting Chapter Two tonight! Here's a little recap of what happened: - Beating up Ripnugget was all fun and games until he called Aktri a homophobic slur. Olivia exploded him. The Thistletops suck.
They really do. We had so many visitors this month, and now we're approaching the holidays. I'll do my best.
Oof, sorry about the vanishing act. I swear, every time there's a heatwave my brain just decides to enter hibernation.
I'll be busy today; I can "NPC" Clunk tomorrow if nobody's acted for him by then. :)
** spoiler omitted ** Spoiler: A lot of people forget that Hitler at the time was seen as an abrasive moron. It's part of why he was underestimated. The big difference between Nazi stupidity and neonazi stupidity is that American neonazis have been thoroughly poisoned by decades of neocon/libertarian brainrot, so whereas the Nazis were at least willing to spend money to keep their base happy, the Trump administration is off slashing the very strings holding their own government together. There was a strategy to what the Nazis dismantled. I think Hitler was probably closer to Bush-moron than Trump/Musk-moron, but it's a close split.
No worries! It'd be ridiculous to get on your case for not noticing and replying to a small detail immediately when we're going at such a slow pace. For what it's worth, all, I am feeling more able to maintain a steady pace lately, and we'll see if that lasts. I've made my peace with the glacial pace, but it's nice to occasionally strike a better rhythm. Appreciate everyone's patience as always.
Sorry, Jelani, can I get that d20 roll?
We finished Book One tonight! :D I'll try to get another batch of recaps in tomorrow. The town sections are hard to recap, but we'll be in the Glassworks soon enough...
As a note, the boar hunt is Day Four of the campaign--aka, three days after the Swallowtail Festival. Belor will not return until Day Five, because he's gonna run into trouble at the Seven Tooths.
Alright, let's run through the sessions and go over notable changes. I'll do these in small bursts. SESSION FIVE
Meeting with Aldrena:
I played the Aldrena scene pretty straight, using the opportunity to introduce Ameiko's employee, the halfling Bethana Corwin, as well as the atmosphere of the Rusty Dragon in general. I really had to hunt to find out that Ameiko plays a samisen, by the way. Huge pain.
Aldrena asks the PCs endless questions about themselves, flattering them effusively. When inviting them to the boar hunt, she also suggests that in thanks for her rescue, she'd like to take them to Vernah's Fine Clothing and get them outfitted properly. Her treat. Ameiko comes in and makes conversation, setting up her father's illness and generally being her charming self. Meeting with the Sheriff:
The next morning, the PCs are invited to meet with Hemlock at the Sandpoint Cathedral.
Easily the largest building in Sandpoint, the Sandpoint Cathedral is not dedicated to the worship of a single deity. Rather, it gathers under its eaves the six most commonly worshiped deities in the region, providing chapels for all of these deities in a communal forum. The Sandpoint Cathedral is nearly totally empty at this time of day, morning services having already been completed. Nearby, Father Zantus and several other acolytes pace between the shrines, swinging sweet-smoking censers and chanting hymns to the six gods. To the south, facing Sandpoint’s heart, are the shrines of civilization: Erastil and Abadar. To the west, offering a view of the Old Light and the sea beyond, are the shrines of Shelyn and Gozreh. And to the east, offering a view of the Sandpoint Boneyard and the rising sun, are the shrines of Sarenrae and Desna. Father Zantus and the others appear to be casting the consecration ritual that was interrupted two days ago. The previous chapel wasn’t the first holy site in this location. The core of both the original chapel and the new cathedral is an open-air courtyard surrounding a set of seven ancient standing stones surrounding a circular stone altar. It is here that Sheriff Hemlock waits for you, accompanied by Kendra Deverin and, oddly, the gravetender Naffer Vosk. Information covered:
Hemlock seems dismissive of all the inside job stuff. In reality, he’s wary of pissing off the power players, especially as he privately suspects one of the founding families may have been involved.
Without Shalelu or Neeka the Bard, the town is flying blind. Hemlock is planning to take some guards and visit the Seven Tooths personally today. He doesn’t know what he’s in for, but someone’s got to figure out what's going on. Luzane suggests that the party help hold down the fort while he’s gone. Hemlock is annoyed. He’ll be back by tonight, and he doesn’t want to make a habit of appointing deputies without a damn good reason. The PCs are also free to investigate the graverobbing/inside job stuff; the sheriff is stumped, and reluctant to even touch it for now. Hemlock knows his position in town is a little tenuous.
SESSION SIX
Meeting Shayliss:
I wound up playing this sort of straight. Sort of.
Shayliss seeks out an attractive female partymember telling him she’s got a problem with birds in her attic. Big birds. Crows. She just kept leaving the shutters open when she wasn't supposed to, and she doesn’t want her father to know. Could Basil please help her shoo them out? One of them looked awfully big, and she’d feel a lot better with someone with her. Shayliss intends to tell the PC about her situation, but a mix of getting flustered and wanting to deflect will lead to her coming onto them instead—her bodice slipping off and so on. The PC will see a lot of black feathers and a big sheet hung up like a curtain, cordoning off Shayliss’s bed from the rest of the attic. The other side of the curtain reveals a full-on nest and collected trophies, including the object she took.
SESSION SEVEN
Foreshadowing Scenes:
At 9am the next morning, all of you are greeted—perhaps woken—by a set of letters. [Aldrena's future obsession] finds hers tied to the doorknob by a loop of red thread, while most of the others have them delivered directly to the door by an errand boy, or by their innkeeper. Each one has your name written on the outside of the folded parchment, and each addresses you warmly in inviting you to Vernah’s Fine Clothing at noon to prepare for the afternoon hunt.
A character approaching Vernah's from the north will encounter Aldrena herself. As you make your way to Vernah’s, you notice a bit of a scene at the Sandpoint Lumber Mill. An elderly, very well-dressed man is emerging from the mill, tugging at his cravat as he turns to shake his eagle-headed cane at a rugged, good-looking fellow you recognize from that rigged Lighthouse Smash game at the festival. “This is my mill, Harker! My money built it, and by the First Vault, if I think it’s being used to bleed me, my money will tear it right back down! May you never forget it!” “Of course, Mr. Scarnetti.” Banny Harker rolls his eyes. “Got forgetfulness on your mind lately?” The old man’s eyes bulge. “You… you rough-hearted jackanape! One of these days, your own greed’s going to nip you in the rear!” He turns to storm off as Harker slams the door behind him. Aldrena raises an eyebrow at you.
A character approaching from the Rusty Dragon or through the town square: As you pass through the town square—relatively empty today, since it’s not a market day—you notice that one of the stalls has been vandalized. Raw eggs drip from its sides and begin to cake into the driftwood, and someone has crossed out and written over the words on the sign with red paint so it now simply reads, “Murderer Mavvi’s”. A handful of passersby tactfully ignore the stall. Nearby, children prance across hopscotch squares, chanting a nursery rhyme about a living scarecrow. Mumble Mumble Scarecrow,
But when the moon she rises,
And when the dog is snoring,
Paper Dolls:
Vernah’s Fine Clothing is a big, beautiful building, stylized to resemble a red barn with white trim. The red-and-white color scheme pervades the interior, too, giving everything a subtle gingerbread house aesthetic. Aldrena greets you all gleefully as you arrive. Rynshinn looks on with the aiuvaren’s standard bemused half-smile.
The Boar Hunt:
The basic RP scenes are exactly as-written. Aldrena flirts and praises and questions a lot.
The initial pursuit of the boar is a Chase Encounter. Obstacle One: Mud Patch [Requires 3 Successes]
Obstacle Two: Angry Ganders! [Requires 4 Successes]
Obstacle Three: Mischievous Fairies [Requires 5 Successes]
The PCs will chase the boar to a thicket by a pool, where they encounter a giant tick feeding on a dead juvenile firepelt cougar. It gets excitable when so many arrive and rushes to attack.
After the Fight: As the party is recovering from the battle, they will hear someone running towards them from the hill above. Shalelu appears above, pierced through the shoulder with two long silver-fletched arrows. She sees the group, then collapses.
This DC is lowered back to 15 for flat checks granted by an ally providing assisted recovery, provided the attacker is not also that ally’s most hated enemy. These outlines do get harder to write in this area, where so much of it wound up being open-ended improv based on where the PCs decided to go next.
President Mention: I think the American president's attempt to endorse a Canadian candidate by saying he'll make Canada flourish as the 51st state, objectively political poison for the Canadian Conservatives, is a great example of how I temper my fear: As malicious as they are, they are also so, so dumb. America is hard enough to run even when you actually know how to keep allies and do your job well. These guys are gonna launch the Department of Take Over The World And Arrest All Political Enemies And Fire All The Nukes At Whoever Makes Eye Contact and then within five minutes accidentally shut it down and fire everyone in charge and throw all its funding into a pit.
Not to say I don't still take all this dead-seriously. It's just something that brings me comfort.
For what it's worth, I do think we're already seeing the backlash starting to materialize against this in America, and I hope it starts to hit in the UK, too. Montana's strong shutdown of those anti-trans bills gives me hope. Transphobia Talk: I think the thing about a lot of mainstream transphobia is that its malice is incredibly poorly thought out. Passive transphobes--the kinds who don't let transphobia take over their whole identity--tell themselves they don't hate all trans people, they just think things are going "too fast" or are worried about "bad actors". They're still bigots, but they think of themselves as reasonable centrists.
Really, they're just reactionary losers who get reflexively indignant when the world moves faster than them. They haven't considered that protecting their egos here, clinging to what they know, means gambling trans people's actual lives. Mainstream transphobes have given the mask-off transphobes a lot of political power now. But the transphobes in power aren't mainstream. They aren't passive and lazy but vaguely "well-meaning". The transphobes in power know what these policies will do, know people will die, and they want that. I think, in the US, you can see mainstream transphobia starting to trip on its own feet. None of those "centrists" actually wanted the excesses transphobic laws lead to. It's infuriating that they'll act like this isn't what they voted but, but I do believe a lot of them are going to start getting cold feet now that they don't get to feel like the underdogs anymore. Cultural transphobia isn't sustainable in the United States anymore. I hope the same holds true for the United Kingdom.
Alright! I'll try to get back to sharing the changes I've made. We're over thirty-two sessions ahead of the recaps, so I probably won't resume posting those unless there's a lot of interest. I could keep posting the low-effort notes Aktri's player takes, if people like!
Great timing! It is still going, and we're returning from a couple weeks' hiatus today! I can get back to posting, if there's interest. For what it's worth, the party just defeated Nualia after a tense rematch and is now advancing into the lower levels.
Ooh, this is exciting!
We went with yellowjacket ("Yellowcoat"), paper wasp ("Bookbinder"), bumblebee ("Bumbleweaver), honeybee ("Meadowdancer"), and a lazy amalgamation of carpenter bees and stingerless bees ("Coppiceater") that gets a bite attack with the razing trait. All social bugs, since that was key to our theming! I'd love to see someone do a take that's more honed in on the stuff you're interested in here, though.
The "yellowjackets/paper wasps/bumblebees/honeybees" heritages are what we went with, too. Most of the "castes" are expressed as ancestry feats. Most of them are just skill feat+skill training feats, but "Worker Bee" grants a retrainable skill training similar to what elves can get, and there's one or two higher-leveled feats that build on the first-level ones or that allude to the old Thriae monster abilities. We mostly didn't lean on the caste thing a ton, though. It just honestly wasn't the most compelling thing about Thriae/beepeople to us. There's a lot of focus on the prophecy stuff, teamwork, various industries, and the original Thriae's kind of cultiness.
The "yellowjackets/paper wasps/bumblebees/honeybees" heritages are what we went with, too.
I think the Battlezoo folks actually might be working on a mothfolk ancestry, which is super exciting. My partner and I are working on our own, too! And a Thriae ancestry, although we named our version "melisae" and are doing a bunch of stuff to play with/break from the original lore. They're more like fallen Thriae than anything. Oh, also, I'm really bad about finding excuses to bring up this project where it's not relevant, so to be clear--I brought up Thriae because we were talking about Greek mythology, and that's where they're technically sort of from. It wasn't just a complete non sequitur. x)
I've been fiddling with a thriae-like ancestry for a while now, it's gonna be embarrassing if Paizo gets to it before I do.
Honestly, it's weird we haven't gotten sthenos yet. They look tailor-made to be an ancestry. They're probably inevitable.
There's always room for more crab people ancestries, but I believe Eldritch Osiris Games has designed one if you're really itching for it!
623. Skyberry Bush
Skyberries are supposed to taste a little like apricots, but caramelize into a sweet-savory jam which deep gnomes are quite fond of. If prepared properly, the jam can be used to concoct an effect similar to the gentle landing spell.
I'll try to get the post up today! Been very untethered from my work routine lately, but I managed to get in an application to Paizo yesterday and I'm working on reestablishing at least a temporary rhythm.
621. Common carnivorous moss
This species is usually edible, but has little flavor of its own, making it useful mainly for cooking down into soup stock. Its flavor is similar to cabbage, with a hint of umami thanks to its diet and a texture similar to broccoli. It should be noted that depending on what the moss preys upon, it may contain toxins when caught. As such, as a rule, it is recommended to survey the surrounding flora and fauna before deciding to eat wild cave moss.
Still around, planning to get the post up tomorrow. It's been a long month, though. Not all bad, but very long. February's always like that. x3
Just picked up the supplement and I ADORE IT! Especially the little nods to Kingmaker for the Tanglehorns! Oh gosh, I'm so so glad you like it! That's so nice to hear. With any publication you never really know if people are actually reading what they buy, so it means a lot! ^^ Now I'm brainstorming Starfinder spin-off titles. A Constellation of Kobolds. A Corona of Kobolds. A Conjunction of Kobolds. The problem is, I'm just not into Starfinder's weird kobold lore. But that's a topic for my own grumpy "I don't get it" thread, probably.
Kobolds with a planet-sized benefactor could be fun... Wellspring kobolds, do they perchance spread colored substance on their faces before doing heroic suicidal actions? They would just like you to see this cool move they're about to pull off. [they pull a lever, their car immediately explodes in a shower of wild magic and construct parts.] Wow! Pretty cool move!
Unfortunately, no. I was very distracted trying to justify giving one of the tribes baseball for some reason. the flight speed will obviously be reserved for A Conundrum of Kobolds when this becomes a major franchise.
*deranged laugh* I've shown them! I've shown them ALL! (how cool the Remaster kobold lore is and how many opportunities it grants, which I have done by creating a supplement which provides five new unique warrens and a bunch of new feats and heritages to accompany them and publishing it on Pathfinder Infinite) (it is my Pathfinder Infinite debut and the first serious TTRPG thing I have published not under my deadname.)
Sorry, all, I was going to finish the post today, but I woke up to some frustrating emails from a couple commissioners and I think it's knocked me on my ass for today.
Passports are technically federal property, so. It's a whole thing and may well be legal. Definitely infuriating. Just take care.
I've long thought we should add more "teamwork feat" mechanics, but with a bigger emphasis on giving other people reactions and stuff. (I actually had an idea for a set of camping/downtime activities where you "craft" bonds with your allies, granting you little bonuses or reactions or rerolls for select situations. Like, the rogue bugging the wizard with questions while she's preparing spells and later getting some benefit to Arcana checks.)
Nah, that wasn't it. It was just glitching. Checking that option actually prevents me from seeing the option to DM you on your profile.
Alright, I should be able to get up a post Sunday or Monday and get this combat rolling. Aside from the political burnout, I had a very small project to finish up before a deadline.
I hate to bring in bad news here, but I've had confirmation that some federal employees are confiscating passports if you go in for name change stuff. Pass it on and be careful.
Oh, congrats! Getting my hormones on the right track took me literal years, and injections were in the end the answer. They slap. <3
Oh my word that's all so cute!
Sorry for the continued delay, all. It's all been getting to me a bit lately. Stay safe!
Hi, HMM! Is there a list of these somewhere, by any chance? I still need to get you Iggy back, so that's another casualty of the shift. X3
A year later, I've really been missing those days, too! I don't have the gumption for the big conventions, especially the ones halfway across the country from me. But I'm glad Paizo staffers don't all have to pay Seattle Rent anymore, so. It's just a casualty of practicality.
Hi, it just sent! I'm not positive, but I think it might have been glitching because the DM included an emoji?? Usually Paizo just fails to include those, from what I can see, but maybe it didn't agree with the DM system.
And before anyone asks, yes, I tried sending the DM via snail mail, but he kept popping the bubble wrap and telling me I'd "lost 50 experience points".
Hi there! I've noticed a small but confusing problem; I've been trying to DM someone, but it repeatedly gives me an error page and doesn't show it's sent anything. Weirdly, I tested by DMing someone else, and it's worked. It's just this one person. I'm wondering if the issue is that I'm trying to message a Paizo employee? I'd totally understand if there are protections in place for that, obviously. Just wanna know for sure so I can stop retrying! EDIT: It could also be because I've never messaged this person before. I could try messaging someone I've never DMed, but I don't want to be rude. XD
A preview... of what's to come (slow-loading maps)... I think the link in my profile should direct to the actual map. I'm a little swamped this month (truly trying to get taxes done early for once), but working towards getting the combat started!
Shoonies have very particularly Aroden-focused lore. Trying to genericize them into being wider dogfolk makes no sense. This is a ridiculous discussion necromance, but a very late backlogging here made me think about how my friend Marcy and I were working on this dark edgy Golarion AU where Golarion came to life and started eating other planets to keep Rovagug sated and everything in the world was just kind of worse.
I'm bringing it up because we then decided Arazni tried to help the shoonies as an act of spite, the shoonies repaid this by freeing her, and now shoonies are born with all kinds of dog breed aesthetics as her gift to them. Lots of jackal-influenced shoonies, of course. She doesn't really know what to do with the shoonies, but they think she's the bee's knees.
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