Mira Longustus's page

And after further thinking about it, the extra skills would be as follows:

-Appraise (1 rank)
-Knowledge Local (1 rank)
-Survival (2 ranks) - she's got Heart of the Slums, so I might as well give the party an option to track things, avoid getting lost, and know what the weather is going to be a day out or so for as long as we're within urban or underground settings.

Okay, checked over your first discussion page and I made a miniature list of stuff that'd need changing should Mira get picked.

-Items, needed to be redone for 1000gp, not actually an issue.

-Skills, she'd need 2 more skills since we weren't using Background skills rules. Sleight of Hand and Linguistics are background already, so these could be any skill in the book really.

-HP, We rolled for ours, so that'll need to come back down just a tad.

-Feats, I’d change her skill focus from acrobatics to perception. Her acrobatics was already fine, and you guys didn’t have anyone with trapfinding so this will help more in the long run.

-Slight background tweak, she's still against Thrune for an incredibly petty reason (my favorite bar burned down and you closed my god's church, how dare you), but this time I assume she would have joined the ravens after the fact rather than accidentally starting them. She was at the protest, probably ran like hell because she's got a cowardly streak.

-I also noticed that your player who vanished and my gm who vanished were the same person. That's not actually a change, that just struck me as a weird coincidence. Hope his new job's treating him right.

I was using Mira Longustus in another HR game, when the GM sort of disappeared on us?

Twice?

She's yours if you want her--I'm in another HR game but Mira and that character are super different. I'll be more than happy to redo the gold for her as well, and will have to mess with stuff like feat choices or whatever to mesh, but it'll be an easy fix.

We could try finding a different gm or something, I guess.

I think the gm died. er, again.

Nyarharhar?

Delays happen or something I guess.

I'm around!

Mira follows just behind Amara, ready to dart out and get into a good position to smack things, but otherwise keeping her profile to a minimum.

Nevermind, Mira needs to say something very super important.

"Guys. We need a bard. And a really big drum. And some illusion[pattern] spells. And ghost sound. Lots and lots of ghost sound. I just had the best idea."

Mira waits for one of the castys to cast Light, first off.

"Sounds like a plan..."

Mira goes to grab her sap and make sure the thing is well-maintained. There may be daggerwork ahead, but this is her bread and butter for anything with a brain.

Mira's referenced ROUS's several times, it's a term that's going to stick with her as long as I can let it.

"I do hate Rodents of Unusual Size. Let's go ahead and check it out. Where's the court at?"

Sense Motive: 1d20 + 5 ⇒ (20) + 5 = 25

Mira's known murderers all her life, and as a result she knows the bullshit they say instead of admitting that murder happened roughly as well as she knows the back of her hand. She gives the halfling the most meaningful eyebrow quirk that she can muster, before going straight back to the sweets.

"Right. So then, let's skip the pleasantries and head to the point. I think we're going to start a sort of... racquetball team. Freelance. We need a place to hang out and plan our racquetball strategies. Do opposition research, check on the local tournament scene, review rules... stuff like that. Also to practice. Preferably somewhere where we won't be overheard, since we should be nice to our neighbors and racquetballs bouncing off of the walls can be surprisingly noisy. Know anywhere we could look?"

Pretending that she's competent at subterfuge helps her get her mind off of the impending doom coming just around the corner.

"I have a date."

Her shell-shocked demeanor manages to make the phrase sound ominous.

The answer is terrified, she's going to ruin it, she ruins everything, and come on barmaids only ask people out to get drinks because they get a cut or get more tips anyways, selling booze is part of her job.

Yeah, Mira knows this one. She buys the first round, then the rest come right out of Mira's wallet. Also the food. And the entertainment. And probably a thank you, maybe a smooch...

Cute girls can't be trusted, why is she so damn bad at saying no.

By the time she gets back to the coffee shop she's muttering under her breath in an incoherent manner. The word 'doomed' keeps coming up.

fffffffffffffffffff--

That's okay. Mira is a wondrous bag of insecurity, codependency, and paranoia. She'll find a way to ruin everything, I'm sure.

Okay so guys we need to do some kind of important Rebellion business tomorrow night.

That's not negotiable, Mira is literally incapable of meaningful social anything.

"I... er... yes. Right. I will do precisely that thing. Probably. Definitely. Maybe. For sure."

She has no idea if she is going to do that thing or not (for a variety of incredibly complicated reasons that basically boil down to 'something is going to go hideously wrong'), but she's sure as heck watching her leave with rapt attention.

The second she turns, Mira looks away with her hands in her pockets. "What? How dare you. I wasn't looking. I'd never dream of looking!" Bluff: 1d20 - 2 ⇒ (7) - 2 = 5

...yeah even she can tell that one was obvious, time to change the subject immediately.

"Anyways, I believe someone owes someone else a drink, and I know you guys have some excellent taste in booze."

Drat!

Catfolk is persian.

...

I've got half a mind to smack you across the meowth for that terrible pun.

Note to self: always drink. ...Wait, no, that seems wrong.

She claps her hands together, nodding. "I'll go ahead and get on that, then. Anything for a free drink, right?"

Yes. Drinks. That is what she is after and she is definitely absolutely not staring at anything incriminating.

Taking the rope, she hops her way down to the barrel and goes ahead and binds it up. She's very quick to do it, making sure the thing is secure enough to be unlikely to slip out.

"Alright! Hit it!"

"Ah! Yes. Well. Thanks received." Bright red, Mira looks over at the ashes of the building. "It'd be really bad if someone as cute as you wound up, y'know. Extra crispy."

"The next time I feel the need to yell into the cold uncaring void of existence, I'll ask ya' to listen again."

"Woah woah woa--" She's being hugged.

"Felicia?" THAT'S IT. That's her name! The cat ears reminded her. "I wasn't even there! You were worried? Really? Seriously, you were worried about me?"

I was thinking that Felicia was where you were going with this, but I didn't get a name yet so I couldn't make any assumptions.

Mira is doomed. Doomed.

Mira quickly turns her head when she hears her name.

"Oh, hey there..."

"...you! It's been a while! Just figured I'd take a look around and see what was going on since the place got torched. How's it been in... you-land?" She asks with an awkward chuckle, grinning a bit too wide for it to seem natural.

"Amara, dear, I'm stealing your dress."

"What, so we can go drinking?"

"Oh, uh. Yes. That, too."

She doesn't feel like shelling out for a ferry... but her feet wind up leading her to a familiar pile of ashes.

It wasn't her favorite bar. Her favorite bar's now serving as the vault for the church of Abodar and their little bank. But it was a moderately distant second. Ah--that reminded her. She needed to do the accounting and figure out who had what, who wanted what, and where everything would go.

Another time. She was busy.

Well, since she's here anyways... Time to root through the remains of a building to see if there's anything useable left over...

Clues. She means clues. She's searching for clues to who burned it down. Not loot. Clues. But if she finds loot by accident...

Sore.

Mira's sore all over and it's harshing her more than anything else, even as she stares at the ugly-arse raven that she got from down below. It's a tchotchke, sure, but it's hers and she likes it. The bun earlier was good eats, though, and a bath felt wonderful after all the ick, and to be completely honest none of them had even been hit the entire time, but... still.

She's sore, and paranoid, and this is not a good day to be Mira because of it. Her niggling doubts are being niggled at now that she has time to properly ruminate about the weirdness of it all.

Lemures at the bottom of an area where the Silver Ravens stayed, with chains charged with ether up there that dealt them damage... something tried summoning them recently enough that the Lemures weren't sent back due to the spell ending, but it wasn't one of Thrune's guys since there had been things still to find. A freelance diabolist? That didn't make sense, there would have been signs of a spellcaster or something down there.

Come to think of it, there was the one nest that seemed to be for a creature, off the beaten path and away from the communal hive the rest of them stayed in. Maybe that thing was sentient, and tried summoning devils itself?

But then, where did it go? They hadn't actually fought anything that could talk back. That's why killing them wasn't a big deal. It couldn't have escaped, there weren't signs of a struggle before they got there...

Something wasn't adding up, and anyone standing outside Mira's door get to hear her sudden "AAAAARGH, WHO CARES?!" before the door slams open and she storms out of the room. "I'm going to wander around Jarvis End! I need to clear my head or listen to some pretty girl talk about stuff nobody understands or... or somethin', geez."

"He's..." Hum. "Well, we should keep him in mind for if there's dirty work to be done."

Mira will just pet Gremlin.

Because if the cat is not in her lap, she will sleight of hand it into her lap.

Because I basically have to take combat expertise I am already pro the second one just as a matter of self interest.

"...Good. I was wondering who would have told him about us other than you, and was about to start trying to figure out who to sap."

Mira is ready to follow now as well.

Mira looks over at Rexus next. "Sorry. It seems our pet cat doesn't count you as anything but a hanger-on. Just bear with it for now, please?"

Mira looks from the cat to Alexis and back to the cat.

"Amara. Get me my popcorn. I have a feeling that I'm going to need it."

"Sounds good. We'll give the loot one more once-over to make sure we didn't miss anything once we get there."

Mira follows along as well.

"As for the rest of the stuff in the box, basically just treasure. Nothing major, outside of three statuettes of ravens."

She pulls one out. "They were a key, and they look cool, dunno if they do anything else yet."

>cat is promoted to strategist

>strange gloveman who put us up to this is promoted to sentinel.

>Alexis jump in the recruiter car with me and we shall drive to the Stars.

"And on a related note..."

Mira whisks the stealthcloak on before pointing dramatically at Amara.

"You've got lice. Give it a day, you'll be fine. Or just jump in some water."

Knowledge: 1d20 + 2 ⇒ (13) + 2 = 15

"So... guys, speaking of incessant itches and the need to scratch them, we should talk loot. How are we splitting stuff up? I mean, we're all in it together, so we could give stuff to who can use it, sell what we don't need, and then give gold to the rest for..." She looks at Ramon. "Further projects and upgrades. But we should figure out now if we're doing it as a giant party pool or splitting amongst ourselves."

If we get bonus teams, then we'll work them into the plan as we go. Same goes for random crazy events.

Optimization is preparing as much as possible for the challenges that you can see on the table within the letter of the rules put forward. But since no plan survives contact with the enemy, unexpected situations are when you pray to St Jones and make with your best Indy Ploy.

CASTERS PLS SPELLCRAFT KTHNX

The developers have said that they simplified their systems after Kingmaker.

This was probably a good call, as it prevents people like me from being insane.

Also we will EVENTUALLY want one of everything, just to have one of everything. Our next priority would be either Spellcasters (under revolutionaries, for restorative abilities) Saboteurs (for notoriety reduction, albeit at risk), or Rumormongers (Also notoriety reduction, no risk). Spies are also going to be important for later, I think, but to be honest it'll be a while before Mira really goes into Spymaster.

We can figure out the cloak later.

You guys think maybe the person who sent us on this goose chase might know celestial as well? Worth a check.

Unfortunately I can't give us an unlimited gold exploit this time, but on the upside we also don't have to fund equipment for 17 different PCs this time either so that's PROBABLY not actually a concern. The bigger deal is that the 'raise gold' action is just that: an action. We need a peddler team to take it, and we'd need multiple to do it multiple times. My long term goal is to have two such teams (one in merchant lords and one in black marketer) as quickly as possible to maximize our own economy, and to let us have two (security check * 3) earn moneys available whenever necessary, which will be 'whenever we can afford to.' They'll both be under Septima, who gives them an additional +5 because she's a frikkin' oracle and that's how she rolls, and with Amara adding her STR to all security checks, that's a +10 already. Between them, our group will be able to fund itself and its illicit activities. Additionally, we can call in BMs for 50 gp, and teddy's black market emporium gives us 55% resale value instead of normal 50%, and the merchant lord lets us special order items that we can't craft at 95% of cost if we can wait a while (+900 gp if we want it tomorrow via teleport).

We also need to have a sneak available as team 2, so the optimal recruitment order is peddler > sneak > peddler > upgrade peddlers > upgrade peddlers, otherwise we risk having townspeople killed if the discover cache event is rolled. We will never not have a strategist, and we want someone with good secondary cha/str or con/wis in our sentinel slot (there are no secrecy based random events that we can't avoid by being proactive. I checked, and traitor is the one with proactivity.)

As for focus, either Loyalty or Security is ideal, with Loyalty being better for avoiding actual trouble--but Security being better for maximizing gold gains. I ran some numbers and if we don't have a sentinel, the overall bonus difference at 5, 10, 15, and 20 are 3, 4, 4, and 6. Assuming both teams are tier 3, that's a net gold difference of 18, 24, 24, and 36 gp per turn each time both teams are sent out. If we do have a sentinel, that decreases to 12/18/18/30 gppt.

Honestly, that's a negligible difference and thus I would recommend focusing on Loyalty for safety. Its tests tend to be worse overall for the organization than Security's, and Secrecy has few immediate applications outside of possible use spying on other enemies or possibly setting up traps and caches in the future for operations against enemy camps.

Since we have a clear spymaster/demagogue/partisan for once we get out of the initial recruitment phase, that leaves Alexis as basically the permanent strategist (since she is high int and lacks cha/str and con/wis overall) and one of our npc buddies as our remaining sentinel if possible.

As for initial setup, we want Alexis on Strategist, Septima on Demagogue for the loyalty bonus (we NEED to make our first several loyalty checks), Amara on Partisan for that +5 security (also important for peddler getting), and Mira on recruiter to give us a total +2 bonus to gains. First turn would be spent having our first action be recruit (total +7 bonus, succeeds on 4+) to gain 2d6+2 followers, and then Strategist action to recruit a peddler team (Total +7 bonus, succeeds on a 3+). Later turns would be used to recruit (normal action) and earn cash (strategist action), with our extra action gained at stage 2 being used to first recruit a sneak, then to try placing caches (I recommend something super cheap, like single scrolls or potions of cure or something--their main purpose is to be discovered from the lost cache event). When we pick up another team at stage 3, we'll be able to go into a Peddler/Sneak/Peddler core and grind gold. We'll probably want to just upgrade the peddlers out of pocket, though. It'll do a lot more for us in the long run and it's a grand total of 500 gp of investment and 4 total actions to set up initially.

Thus are my initial thoughts, anyways. If we can get NPCs into roles and wind up with two (one for Sentinel and one for Strategist), then Alexis would make a great recruiter as well for padding our numbers.

...And then I had a question. HEY GM, what's our NPC buddy's modifiers look like, and also our pet cat's? :D :D :D

On a related note, I found a thing that'll be handy.

Hey guys, I've been looking over the Rebellion ruleset that we've been given, and I have an important question.

Do you guys want an analysis of what's important and when, or no? Everyone here has at least heard stories of what I did to Kingmaker's kingdom building rules and I've already made a bunch of conclusions and priority choices for if we want to split this city wide open as well.

I am playing the biggest liar, she's literally elven and celestial away from being able to deal with this herself.

She is totally nerd enough. orz

Mira pauses dramatically as she first lays eyes on the glut of information inside the box. There's so much information in here that it nearly boggles the mind.

"...yeah okay, I'm not nearly enough of a nerd for this." She shoves it at Alexis. "Here. You deal with it."