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Hey all, I have some bad news. Life is intruding in a big way right now. I have some personal stuff that's making it increasingly difficult to post in games, and the fact that I have overbooked myself the last month or so is only exacerbating the issue. I am finishing up the scenarios I'm already in, but I have to bow out of the rest of the round-robin. I know it's really last-minute, since we were just about to start up Pathfinder Trials, and I feel terrible about it. I wouldn't have come to this decision if I wasn't absolutely certain that I need to do so. I had a lot of fun and I hope to play with you all again in the future (maybe even run, who knows!) and I hope this doesn't screw up the rotation too badly. Sedoriku, I updated my RPG Chronicles tab for you. Thanks for running this, I'm grateful I got to be a part of this!
After the debriefing, Rogar approaches Lokaloka looking somewhat chagrined. "Look, erm... Sorry I snapped at you earlier at the mansion. You just had a bad run-in with mind magic, and I'm pretty bad at being, you know... clear. About things. When I talk. Which I'm bad at." He coughs nervously. "Which you probably guessed. So anyway. I'm sorry. I really wasn't taking a jab at you, but I can definitely see now how that might've been how it came across. I just want you to know that I appreciate how helpful you've been on this mission. Moreso than me, most of the time. If there's nothing to swing Skeggøx at, I'm kind of useless." He shrugs. "Ol' Cletus made himself a pretty good friend in you. Next time I see him, I'll tell him you said hey." He looks around nervously, clearly uncomfortable talking this much at once. "Anyway. Sorry again. Hope I see you around."
I'm working on getting the slides finished for the Pathfinder Trials! As to your question Loka, they're not really randomized per se, they're more or less the same four trials, but you can choose the order you do them in. And one of the trials can be completed in a variety of ways, depending on the available skills/abilities of the party, despite having the same set goal every time. Hope that helps! :) For Rogar's downtime:
Rogar snaps back at Loka, "I was talking about the haunt, you daft--" He throws his hands up in the air. "Gods above! Whatever, let's just go." Back at the debriefing, Rogar remains quiet. Description is one of the many areas he's finding gaps in his abilities. When he joined the Society, he had no idea there'd be so much... talking. He feels like he was mostly useless. At Gorm's question, he finally pipes up. "Pharasmins, most likely. The voices seemed to cry out for a priest of Pharasma to put them to rest. A specific priest, that is. I coulda been hearing them wrong, the whole thing was weird, but it seems like Pharasmin followers died there. Lots of 'em, maybe."
Rogar doesn't even have time to react before the goblin leaps on Eldon with spells and fists, nor does he have time to intercede before she seemingly goes back to normal. He gives the goblin a wide berth just in case as he nods his head toward the offending room. "Uh, we good now, or is that thing gonna come back and hit someone else?" If given the all-clear by one of the magicky-types, he pokes his head in and looks around. Perception, +6, DV:
Rogar sighs. "Body down there. Can't get to it though, not without the floor giving way. I don't like leaving a corpse to rot instead of getting a proper burial, but I don't think there's anything we can do. We should report it, though; maybe somebody at the Society can retrieve them by magic." He follows Eldon and Loka to the other side of the building, still keeping his eyes peeled, but stops at a doorway as the other two press on. He listens at the door before opening it up. Perception, +6:
Magi have a neat additional sentence to their Arcane Spellcasting class feature to help them with Spellstrikes:
That means you don't need hands free for the Cast A Spell activity or to make Spellstrikes (since the rules already state the hand doing the somatic gestures does not need to be empty, only unrestrained). However, you would still need a hand free for the scroll, so Sparkling Targe, Inexorable Iron, and Starlit Span would all be unable to use a scroll with Spellstrike unless they had the Striker's Scroll feat. Laughing Shadow, having a hand free anyway, would not have this restriction; nor would a Twisting Tree magus in Arcane Cascade. (They can Interact to change their grip on a staff as a free action while in Arcane Cascade, meaning you could cast the scroll as part of your Spellstrike and put your hand back on the staff to two-hand it as a free action.)
Rogar scratches his nose and shrugs. "Found a big hole. Might as well check it." He pulls out a coiled length of rope and finds somewhere to tie it off that doesn't look quite as rotted as the rest of the place.
He then slowly and carefully approaches the hole, keeping hold of the rope, and tries to see down into the darkness with his innate darkvision. Perception, +6, DV:
Seeing that Eldon has that room covered and hoping for expediency -- not that he's eager to leave the haunted house with murdery ghost hands or anything why would he be how dare you suggest he's afraid he's not shaking it's just cold in here shut up -- he moves over to the double doors next to him and throws them open.
Oh man, I haven't read the Dragonlance books in like twenty years, but I remember gully dwarves and gnomes being the best parts of those books. I remember a story an acquaintance once told of playing a gully dwarf in a game. They nat-1'ed on a Dexterity check to do some acrobatic mumbo-jumbo and ended up face-planting into a sharp rock and taking serious face damage. So the DM increased the gully dwarf's Charisma by 1 because smashing his face into a rock made him prettier. Talk about disrespectful. XD
Rogar scowls at the dilapidated structure. "We probably shouldn't even be going in this thing. Looks like it'll fall over if we sneeze." He looses a grumbling sigh and starts heading up the left-hand stairs. "Let's get this over with, then. I'll go left. And watch your footing, yeah? Probably rotten floorboards around."
Rogar looks at his remaining three gold pieces sitting at the bottom of his coin purse and sighs, producing two of them. He'd be fine swimming back, but some of the others probably wouldn't. And he has no idea how "Uncle Fred" would fare. The creature looks strong, but that doesn't necessarily equate to "knows how to swim." He adds his two to the pile of coins Channary has started.
Rogar is unused to feeling queasiness on the water, and spends several moments trying to figure out what foul sorcery is causing a veteran sailor to feel seasickness. It isn't until he finally registers that his brain is swimmy that he realizes it's definitely not seasickness. "I'll..." He pauses, swallows, then rubs his dizzy head. "I'll go down first. Make sure it's safe." He plods down the stairs, still feeling like the world keeps wanting to spin.
Rogar's chipper mood for the morning is only slightly dampened by the horrifying disease beginning to tear through his body. On the deck of the ship, he coughs once into his hand, scowls, and adds, "I've always said, you should love your pets, just don't love your pets." With that nugget of... wisdom?... he heads down the stairs with Lokaloka so she isn't going anywhere alone. He has Skeggøx drawn but keeps it resting on his shoulder so as not to startle anyone they might meet into thinking he's on the offensive.
Rogar snorts at Channary's comment. "Ayuh, we also sprout fully-formed from giant rocks, don'tcha know." He gives her what might be a wink and might also be a wince as she wraps his ribs. --
The next morning, Rogar spends several minutes secluded from the others as he prays to his ancestors for strength and guidance, then joins the others in the commons room at Skyreach before heading out. "Been a bit since I was on a ship," he says jovially. He's in rare spirits; even a wrecked ship is a ship, and he misses the slow sway of the sea under his legs. He grabs a handful of bacon to eat on the road, the hot grease cooling until almost frozen in his grip. He breaks off stiff bacon chunks with his teeth and chews with significantly more force than he'd have needed if he'd just eaten the bacon hot, but his cheerful visage certainly doesn't drop from such a minor setback. "Shall we?"
Rogar somehow manages to cross his absurdly thick arms over his barrel chest, scowling in thought. This woman nearly got several people killed by her arrogance, and the thought of her ever performing a ritual of any kind in the future makes his blood run cold with fury. But the others have a point. At least the Pathfinders have people who can babysit her, make sure she doesn't get any more innocents caught in the crossfire of her failed experiments. He nods at Tavvar. "I agree. You should go to the Pathfinders. For everybody's safety."
Rogar throws himself in front of the assistant, absorbing the wave of sickly darkness, much to his chagrin. The energy tears through him; he grits his teeth to try to weather it but in the end he staggers from the horrid dark veins of energy that rip at his healthy cells. Then a damn shadow-thingy attaches to him. Frantically he tries to shake it off.
His attempt to shake the thing fails, and he bellows as rage surges through him. The dark veins on his skin from the negative energy frost over into the chill blue of a frozen corpse. The ice carries up the axe practically humming with magic from Denger's spell, and he swings at the tendril. ♦
Rogar doesn't know a blessed thing about magic. He's really only ever been good at hitting things--he's not even a particularly gifted sailor, much to his clan's chagrin. He draws Skeggox and moves into the room near the breach, keeping an eye out for anything he can hit. ♦ Draw greataxe.
Rogar was fully intending to hit a few taverns while they waited, having little productivity to add to the preparation process, but instead he finds himself in a quiet corner of an inn's common room, glumly chewing on a BLT sandwich while Denger fusses over him. No matter how many times he growls "Dangit, I'm fine, man! Leave me be!" the fellow dwarf doesn't relent, so he finally simply resolves himself to his fate. All this tea is starting to make him a little queasy, and he's not entirely sure it's helping, but it seems to make Denger feel better. At long last, dusk begins to fall and it's time to meet up with the rest of the party. He irritably pushes away Denger with another cup of tea--gently, but admonishingly--and says, "Enough of that, Denger, it's time to go. You can dote on me later, we've got a job to do. Honestly! This is why I never married." That isn't entirely true, but it's the excuse he gives himself today. Once at the Blackros Museum, he stares up at its imposing facade and scowls. "Ayuh. I already don't like this place." When the caretaker shows up, he uncrosses his arms and folds his hands behind his back, trying to look as pleasant and generally non-Rogar as possible. He doubts he's very successful.
Rogar keeps to the back of the group as the elf is returned to flesh. The process is discomfiting to watch; he's never been a huge fan of magic, the way it twists reality to someone's will feels... unnatural. But at least this time it's put to good--if creepy--use. When the party discusses their next move, Rogar groans internally. Great. More magic. He forces himself to admit his allies used magic, and to great effect. "Might as well get the ritual outta the way. Don't like the sound of it, but it must be done. Let's make sure it's not causing any damage, eh?"
Rogar begins to Feel Funny. He lets the nastiness of the bite fuel his fury. Gripping Skeggox tightly, thin veins of frost begin to creep up the haft of the weapon, quickly spreading across both edges of the axe head. He strides around into a flank with Thalaasi, and with a bellow that leaves ice particles drifting from his mouth, he slams the axe down toward the daemon to his right.
♦ Stride 15 ft.
Rogar is only slightly convinced they are not frogs.
Rogar moves up to stand next to his fellow dwarf, drawing his massive axe as he goes. "Had to get ugly eventually," he says with an amused grunt. He then slams the flat of his axe, Skeggox, against his chest, making a deep bellow as he psyches himself up.
♦ Draw greataxe.
"Well," Rogar says, ticking off on his thick, callused fingers, "we got the stone man, the dangerous ritual, the old ship, and the spooky house. I'd have voted for the ship, out of personal preference, but everyone else seems eager to help the stone guy." He shrugs. "Makes no difference to me. Why don't we meet up in the morning and head out there?"
Rogar nods soberly at Thalaasi, but having no knowledge of the connection between Kyonin and demons, it's really just sort of a general nod of agreement. "Bad business, demons. All that... other-worldly stuff... is a little too weird for me. I like good ol' Golarion just fine, thank you. The colder the better, too."
Rogar tries (unsuccessfully) to hide his relief at not having to talk about trade policies. He's about as knowledgeable about that as he is about planar exploration, which is to say not at all. When Gorm pulls them aside, he nods and plucks some kind of cucumber sandwich off a tray. It's surprisingly good, despite having no meat in it. Not being a caster, he lets Lokaloka or Dengar handle picking out the scroll. "Happy to help, Gorm." He gives him a nod and heads off to find somewhere he can snag them some more jobs. He spots Eando and Sorrina, takes a deep breath, and shuffles over awkwardly to introduce himself.
After a few more minutes of polite conversation, he realizes he and Channary are basically the only two left with Fola and Lady Gloriana. He hesitates to leave the conversation just yet, however. Weird, we got a job from the first one. Guess Fola doesn't have any irons in the fire right now. Or maybe the Chelish lady's too busy talking her ear off to tell us. Well, I tried. Dunno what else to do.
"Yeah, so I heard," Rogar says with a rueful shake of his head. "You ask me, a weapon's a weapon. Don't matter if it's made of steel or made of... erm... whatever magic is made of." He chuckles. "Lots of traditionalists in the Holds, as you can imagine." Yet another reason why he left. Plenty of human clans in Kalsgard didn't like dwarves with any kind of standing, said it wasn't right. And despite their fierce and hard-earned reputation, the elders of Clan Orgrosh want to parlay with the fools. Pander to them. Not that he supposes an all-out clan war would be any more beneficial. All just one big damn headache, he thinks sourly. Glad to be rid of it. Realizing he's probably scowling, he flashes the Lady a grin.
Don't leave your fellow Pathfinders floundering, you dolt! Do something. You know politics well enough--Kalsgard politics anyway. He steps back into the conversation with Fola and Lady Gloriana, and clears his throat. "I don't know much about local politics, but the holds in the Land of the Linnorm Kings are very, uhm... active. The typical form of negotiation in Kalsgard is 'aggressvie negotiation'." He leans in conspiratorially. "That'd be negotiations with a greataxe." He chuckles at his terrible joke.
Absolutely killing it. You should be an ambassador.
Seeing that the conversation with Bennary and Valais seems to have run its course, Rogar follows Channary over to Fola Barun and the unknown woman, but hearing that it's about politics, he decides to opt out. He knows little about the local politics in Kalsgard, let alone the Mammoth Realms clear across on the other side of Irrisen. He looks around for someone else to speak to, hoping to make up for his previous blunder with the shipping lanes. Seriously out of my depth here, he thinks sourly. He goes to find the punch bowl to refill his drink while he tries to figure out who to talk to that won't end up with his foot in his mouth.
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