Nope. Remembered that one.
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Yeah. With that bow and the advantages archery has, plus favored enemy, I'm going to put out a LOT of damage for a while here. It should balance out as we increase in levels. ALSO, I screwed up. Please only count the first roll, as I forgot I don't have rapid shot yet...
Switch pulls back on her new bow, releasing a pair of arrows down range at a pair of the bandits.
Sorry about my absence. It's been a rough week for me, between parent-teacher conferences at the school I'm working at, a bit of depression, and some other stuff going on. I'd be glad to take the longbow. Thanks for your patience, and if you wanted to replace me with someone better able to keep up with the pacing of the game, I wouldn't be offended.
"I'd rather we not kill them. I..." Switch pauses for a moment. "I just don't think it's the right thing to do without giving them a chance. If we can keep them locked up until we're sure they're okay, wouldn't that be enough?" She turns around. [b]"I'll get to work calming down their horses. Those could have some value to us."[/b
The walls are just too crowded, so Switch takes a place behind the stables and shed. She pulls back on her bow, scanning for a decent target, and then releases.
Serafina pauses for a minute, looking at the bandit. Her friends in the Gilded Eyes had all had a story of how they'd gotten there, whether it was a hard childhood, a family needing the money, or a military campaign gone wrong. They hadn't been the best people, but there'd been a reason they were who they were. These men hadn't had anything to show that, and the survivor hadn't been interested and explaining himself. After a moment, she heads to the door, turning around quickly. "Just make it fast. He doesn't need to suffer more than his friends, just because he survived the fighting and they didn't." She joins Colwyn as he's finishing up he talk with the horses. "I can't either. It's a bit too close to home for my liking, and what we've just done is a bit too close to my life for comfort."
This is the last time I'm weighing in on this, because alignment is the worst part of the game for me. First, alignment usually doesn't matter that much to most GMs. They're not out to catch you and make you lose your class features. If you're egregiously non-Lawful or non-Good, you're in trouble, but this is easy to justify. Second, justification for execution for Elena. Erastil is the god of community and family. He's not a particularly kind god, but those are the things he's about. This man, admittedly, forsook his community and family to go bandit, which is a mark against him. He also, most likely, killed people, associated with those who killed people, or through his banditry ruined the families of merchants traveling the roads. Further, he's not repentant, there's nothin to indicate he's doing this for a good cause, and there's no proper justice within a days' ride. I'd say this is justifiable to Erastil. I'm done arguing alignment. Serafina was originally meant to be a lawful/evil character, but I changed so she could fit in the game. Alignment isn't worth not playing the game.
I vote we execute him, have a good discussion about it in spoilers while we move the game forward outside of them, and come up with a strategy for how we want to behave, in character.
I am not trying to create a problem for the game - rather I am trying to find a way that I can come to terms with our decision. I feel that a part of my job as a player is to figure out why Elena would support the party's decision Elena doesn't have to support the party's decision, either. This could be a great opportunity for a campfire chat by the fire once we leave the fort, and it wouldn't hold up the game. An event like this could be an opportunity for our characters to discuss what the standard operating procedure with bandits is, and open some characters' eyes to how things are going to be. Overall, massive alignment discussions about the alignment axis aren't that interesting to me. I'm much more interested in how characters actually behave than in what their two-letter-combo says about them. At the end of the day, though, the charter does have a lot to do with how we behave, but it's not the end-all/be-all of them.
Serafina's willing to do the deed and get it over with. She'll have nightmares later when she remembers this could easily have been her, but right now, she's willing to be the one to do it. I think that the characters' viewpoints are worth hearing, and maybe that'd be something better covered in flex-time, spoiler discussions so the story can keep moving. That's what I usually do when I run into this kind of thing in my games.
Switch starts with the live man, carefully pulling off his armor and checking for any pouches or pockets on him. She's not looking for coins, or gems, or anything like that. Instead, she's looking for something that justifies banditry for the man. Once she's done with him, he does the same for the dead ones, recovering her arrow in the process, before returning to the living man. "Why do you do what you do? Give me a reason."
Switch watches as the bandit pushes by, putting arrow to string and drawing it back, not far enough to loose, but enough that a shot would be easy. She speaks much more quietly than Elena does, not caring whether the bandit listens. "You really should."
Switch looses too. It's not her first shot in the heat of battle, and it flies true, punching into one of the bandits' chests.
"In my old job, we'd set up a bit better than Niadroub's plan, but we'd usually pick our spots a few days in advance for our hunts." Switch takes another look around. It doesn't really seem there's a better plan, given what's available, though... "I say we go with the simple plan. Unless we want to wait them out, set an ambush outside, and catch them in the open."
"I wouldn't say there's no one inside. They're just all in the main building. Sound pretty disappointed, too." Switch pauses at the door, slackening off on her bow a bit while she gestures at the door in front of her. "Could use someone tough and ready to open this. I'll cover."
Switch follows the fighting, hoping that the people manning the fort aren't her friends...or members of Brevoy's military somehow. Once the two men are dead, she makes a note of their bodies before putting arrow to string and following her new comrades into the fort. She draws back to her cheek, readying an arrow for anyone coming out of the door she's covering. Readied Action:
Serafina hops off 'Lexis and pulls out her bow, which she strings before testing it. "Be back in a minute. I'm going to look for ways in, and if that doesn't work, see what I can see." Before anyone can really object, she's pacing through the brush, looking down, up, and around every three steps as she approaches the fort's wall.
Something I should mention is that in the last couple of months, there's been two deaths in my family (Grandpa in July, brother in August). Starting now, I'll be unlikely to post until Monday, most likely.
Switch, for her part, doesn't look forward to her visit to Nivakta's Crossing at all. She pulls her hood over her head, quietly slips a few silvers to the boy outside for her horse, and pays for a cot wordlessly. Once it's paid for, she heads over, pulls off her armor, and collapses into it, where she tosses and turns, struggling to sleep. When sleep fails to come quickly, she heads back to the innkeeper, puts a handful of silver on the counter, and looks toward the bottles in the back. "What can I get to drink around here, and how much for a couple of them?"
I'm good with the order, good with setting off, and will be taking care of 'Lexis.
Switch leans against a wall, scratching at her scalp beneath her strawberry-blonde hair and listening to the conversation. Her mind strays to the coin-purse hanging from her belt—full even after giving her family enough to make it through the next couple of months, and she shakes her head slowly. ”Seems a bit foolish to be buying more animals when we have a couple horses and a mule already.” She looks over the group, then offers a handshake. ”Besides, some people have obligations on their coins beyond what they want. I’m Switch. I’ve got three mouths to feed besides my own, and my coin’ll go to them next time I’m in the city.” ”You can use ‘Lexis for your baggage until we get to the trading post. She’s not a pack mule, but I don’t mind walking if I have to, until we're in the Greenbelt and away from the roads. And one other thing. That way isn't the safest. Trust me on that.”
Who's alive, and who's still with us. I should probably stat my horse. Believe it or not, the car was a secondary consideration. I use Behindthename for naming characters, and I wanted a German-sounding name that didn't sound like either a supermodel or an East-German Olympian. As for ethnicity, probably Taldan, honestly. It wasn't important to any feats, traits, or race features I wanted, and a lot of people in this region are Taldan, so...
Thanks for having me. I've stealth-dotted the main thread while I work on a post. It won't be until after work sometime, though.
You don't even need a recruitment thread for the second table. Just make a new campaign in the Gameplay subforum and link the Table Two players to it here.
I'm currently GMing Kingmaker, but I've tried several times to play, with a number of characters. Each time, either I have things come up in my life (deaths in the family, usually) or the GM disappears. I'd love to give it another shot, though. This is Serafina. She's an archetypeless archer ranger. Hoping the background will carry it instead of an overly interesting build. |