Another game bites the dust.
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Well, you'll get xp for casting color spray...
"All right... yes, with a little time and a rock I could shave off some bits of my fingernails."
"Like... the whole nail? Or just a piece?" says Sienna, not liking the idea of having to peel off an entire fingernail.
"What? No," whispers Sienna back. "Usually they... wait, what is it that you want, exactly?"
Sienna has a sour expression throughout the experience. "All this hard work to avoid being enslaved, and here we are," she says bitterly.
Story time! I played in a game where a player made an evil thief named, and I am not making this up, Mesteal Yostuff. After a lengthy and difficult expedition, he stole all of the treasure and fled, and the DM ruled that he got all of the treasure xp, leaving the rest of us with nothing. Freshly increased in level from this haul of ill-gotten loot, Mesteal happened to run across a higher-level group and joined up. In that group I played the cleric, and Mesteal decided he "just didn't like" me and slit my cleric's throat while the party was sleeping, then fled again. So I don't play in groups with evil characters unless I already know the player and have worked out conflicts in advance, or it's a determined "we are all evil but we are forced to work together because..." group.
... aaaaand out.
Cassiel: I'm in! I'm in! I'm in! Dickie: I hope things clear up for you soon!
Someone could always flex the character tree rules, too.
Sienna is usually scanning the sky or the horizon during the hike, rarely paying attention to the rocky lands or the desert itself. She doesn't seem to have much in the way of tracking skills - instead, her attention focuses on the majestic roc as it flies over the mountains. "So..." she says as the group reaches the rough path. "Should we set up a base camp here and then hike up, or try to make it higher and camp somewhere on the mountainside?"
Chillin'.
Everyone but the DM, looks like.
"He sure flashes around a lot of money. For a seemingly simple errand. I'm not sure... that kind of wealthy extravagance speaks of a noble who has no care in the world. I just... I guess we should be careful, just in case he's not what he seems, but maybe we got lucky for once?"
"Food, climbing gear... should be straightforward," suggests Sienna.
Sienna uses her minor magics to tend the wounds of the team while they travel across the dunes; more surprisingly, she uses her spells to call down blessings of rain that fill their canteens with refreshing, clear water from out of the air! As the group approaches the city, she becomes more guarded, and explains, "If my... talents... are discovered, it's likely that I would be enslaved by the templars, both as a heretic and so that I can be sold to some noble to use my magic for their gardens and foot-washes. So I try not to draw too much attention when in the city."
"I'm... not averse to earning more money," says Sienna guardedly, "though I'm not a skilled climber, and aren't rocs found high in the mountains?"
Sienna cocks her head, then says, ”Better than staying out here, I suppose.”
I’m all for moving forward, but something must happen to move the story forward. We have no direction to go and few supplies, we aren’t driving the story anywhere.
Sienna frowns slightly and says, "Is there even any reason to pick a fight with these things?"
”This is the only water for miles around. I expect plenty of things and people will be coming this way,” says Sienna.
If I switch characters, my alt has thief levels.
The woman says, "Sienna - my name is Sienna. Like the red-brown color." She gestures to the ruins and says, "I hope you brought food and water. The oasis near here is the famous Oasis of Black Water, renowned for its death-curse upon anyone who drinks from it. And it's not particularly wise to cross the wastes like this by yourself - did you come with anyone else? A caravan? A mount?" She gestures for Ekee to come over and meet the new arrival. "The half-giant - Jaryx - was overcome by the mental anguish of a banshee that we encountered. While enraged and out of control, he killed one of our companions, a man named Ludi. He couldn't deal with the guilt and left," she explains. "This is Ekee - a former gladiatrix. Our group has been exploring these ruins in hopes of finding some way to survive, as we were lost in a sandstorm and wound up here with only a limited amount of supplies. Now we're trying to find out if these ruins have something useful, or if we should pack up and try to get to another settlement somewhere along the roads."
Sienna brushes back her hair and affixes a bandana about her head loosely, then she looks to the sky.
Seeing a lone cloud, she sits in the corner of the ruins and closes her eyes. Occasionally she looks back up to the cloud, murmuring something, and every once in a while she decants a small amount of water from her waterskin onto her fingers, then flicks it into the air so that it comes back down on her in tiny droplets. After some time of this she stands and makes one last flickering of her fingers, after which a slight grayish pallor comes over her skin. From time to time it seems to move and darken in places, like shadows cast by clouds above.
Finally she shoulders her impaler and strides through the heavy sand to the stranger. "So. Who are you, and what brought you to this cursed place?"
Sienna sleeps well under the shade of a ruined wall, and only slowly rises later. She looks up to the sky, shielding her eyes and blinking repeatedly, before she seems to re-assert her location. She wipes away sand and carefully brushes out her clothes and armor. She dabs away at her face with a small amount of water - some might say wastefully - then armors up and, at last, picks up her impaler once more. She makes a slow circuit around the collapsed ramp, looking up wonderingly at the bucket assembly, then finally gives up. Drawing forth a small piece of hard jerky, she chews on it relentlessly for quite a while before she says to nobody in particular, "Well, we only have so much food... what's our next move?"
The worry is that eventually as word gets out, powerful forces will arrive to try to capture the area. Hamanu wanted this region so that he could use the oasis to feed and garrison a large army, which would let him extend his power further east and directly threaten Raam, Draj, and Nibenay. Other sorcerer-kings and queens would try to stop him from doing this, as it would be a fundamental shift in the balance of power of the Tablelands. Merchant-houses would try to take the place to turn it into an oasis and fortification for their trading travel from east to west and back, while raiders would want it as a base so that they could raid caravans along that same route. Basically this is a rare opportunity where a large, lush oasis is now free from outside control in the middle of an otherwise unoccupied valley with many ruined buildings around, and EVERYONE WANTS A PIECE. Could be an entire campaign, just a group of characters slowly building up and protecting a free town and rising to the occasion of ever-increasing threats. ;)
The biggest problem with staying in the Yaramuke area is that there just aren't a lot of resources. There's the oasis with water and a little bit of plant life, but the city itself is so badly ruined that unless we dedicated a lot of time to hauling rocks and digging out sand it would basically be living in tents in the desert. Of course if the team wants to try that - make a new settlement, eke out survival in the desert, fight off monsters, deal with the consequences as word slowly spreads that the Curse of Black Water is over and now there is a free oasis where people will flock - we can certainly go that way!
Well, if we stay here, I will probably keep playing Sienna for a bit. If we move on, I will swap to my alt for the overland travel.
”A miracle indeed,” says the injured, tired woman standing in the rain next to an impaler in the mud. ”Thanks be to the spirits of rain.”
That is the actual end of the module! There are some other bits in the module but a lot of them are bad. There's a location that is supposed to be an ancient art installation, but it gives direction to the DM that it should be described to the players as some kind of puzzle - you are literally supposed to screw around with a bunch of colored blocks for an hour and get nothing from it. There are several rooms that are completely extraneous (our good DM skipped many of them) and in the initial version of the mod it explicitly has a big setpiece battle between two NPCs where the DM is supposed to just roll dice behind the screen and make the PCs think they are going to die and not let them do anything. We got lucky :)
Sooo what's next for our heroes? Do we try to cross the desert and find somewhere to go, or are we hunkering down here now that the oasis is cleansed, or... ?
"I'm not sure yet," says Sienna, the gray chalky dust usually on her face to protect against the sun all smeared by the rainfall. "This oasis could be a great place of prosperity if it's nurtured properly, now that the curse is gone. Is there a druid tending these lands? If not they need to be protected against those who would exploit them - defilers and the greedy and wasteful." "But that may be too tall a task for someone like me."
As the undead minions collapse and the whole drama comes to an end, Sienna's swings of the impaler slow, then her arm sags and she simply breathes, tired, under the heat. She looks up, surprised, as the rain rolls off her face, then lets out a heavy sigh. The impaler slips out of her hand and her head rolls forward as she simply breathes and gets her bearings once more.
Yaaay! (Better for everyone really)
DM: May I use cure moderate wounds from Spells & Magic? Level 2, heals 1d10+1.
Going to level 3 also means my current character tree alt Jezebel goes to psionicist 2/ranger 2/thief 3. -> 1 hit point
Not a complaint! Just making sure it was clear why I didn’t keep all of the awarded Xperia’s. Once I reach level 4 it’ll all be worth it. Assuming I stay alive. ;)
Per DMG 2nd edition p. 71, I can only advance one level, and the excess is lost. That puts me at 2,999, and next time we gain xp I go up to cleric 3.
Overflow xp, the bane of dual-classed characters!
Impaler goes up, impaler goes down. Nothing happens.
Hey DM, since I need to replace a node on my character tree, how do you feel about the barbarian class (from the Complete Barbarian's Handbook) in DS? Personally I like the vibe of an adventurer from a tribal village that doesn't have the amenities of the big city-states, but not everyone likes how the class functions.
Presumably after we finish this horde of zombies scene. :)
Continually battered, Sienna does her best to keep up with the relentless tide of undead. = AC 5
-> succeeds exactly Sienna keeps fighting, as there's nothing else to do about it. = AC 12
Sienna lashes out at the incoming zombie next to her with her impaler.
Metal short sword = 10 gp (= 1,000 ceramic pieces, which is the denomination of your starting currency) Bone weapon = 30% cost Bone short sword = 300 ceramic pieces This is why I (and the levies of the city-states) typically use spears and clubs, which can be purchased at no markup as they're assumed to just be made out of wood and bits of bone or stone already!
My PC internet connection is dead and I don’t know when I will have it fixed. This will prevent me from participating in evenings.
Sienna takes up a position just north of Farcluun, by the water. She wipes a drop of sweat from her brow, and as the shambling hordes approach, she flicks it outward in a tiny sparkle. "Begone, creatures, washed away like detritus in the rain."
Let's just fight our way out and see if we can make it back to the Black Water Oasis and lift the curse! ... incidentally, lifting the Curse would mean that Yaramuke's ruins would be habitable again, and a character might be inclined to stay and try to make a new home in a place with abundant water... |