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Garethane's strike is true, dropping the large wolf.
Out of town on business until Friday. Still intend to post, just will be later in the evening.
DM Rolls:
Both Garethane and Celebeth are savaged by the wolves nearest them as they get to their feet.
After getting to their feet, Azen and Garethane each wound their respective wolves, Rhiannon strikes fiercely twice, ending the life of the wolf caught between she and the Baroness of Elkmark. Celebeth casts her spell, covering the wolf in a fine twinkling dust, based on the creature's reaction, it would seem a significant portion of of the dust got in the wolf's eyes.
Awakening, Tove utters a quick prayer to Old Deadeye, while Rhiannon keeps her bow trained on the glints of light in the darkness. A series of low growls surround you as you see five wolves and one particularly large specimen close in on you. DM Rolls:
Chicago is a big place. There is certainly a bit of latitude to make things up. As far as a map goes, for most places I'm pulling from real world maps of Chicago.
Sorry for the delay, while the family visit is done, I seem to have picked up some sort of bug that has me somewhat less than fully functioning.
Sorry for the delay, while the family visit is done, I seem to have picked up some sort of bug that has me somewhat less than fully functioning.
Family in town. Posting will be spotty at best until Sunday evening.
The Investigator and the Guard: Knowing the problems inherent in any organization the size of the Korvosan Guard, at least in terms of those who would seek to benefit themselves regardless of whomever else those actions might harm, Gregor nods and begins to speak to Hammond in a hushed tone. "There is a small group, possibly a gang that I have been investigating for a personal matter. It would seem those individuals encountered a pair of Mantis recruits in the alleyway in the Warehouse district who were harassing a pair of locals. The targets of my investigation did what they could to help the locals - their motive unknown to me. While I was watching, I felt a blade at my neck and turned to see an alluring woman, well would be alluring save for the mantis-head mask she was wearing." Gregor explains. The investigator continues, "She did not give a name, but did refer to the targets of my investigation as 'would-be-heroes'. She claimed to watch a game...a recruitment test of sorts. Outside of that, I do not know why they are here, but they are here nonetheless."
Tove burns away some of the creature's bulk with a beam of light. Rhiannon manages to fight off the creature's paralytic poison, but is not able to land a meaningful blow on the tendriculus.
DM Rolls:
Cayde, as subtlety as a barbarian can, sidles up next to one of the "statues" and cleaves deeply into the creature. Only the magic in his blade prevents the blade from being partially deflected by the creature's rocky hide. Emenius follows up with a solid blast of fire to the creature's chest as both "statues" come to life, brandishing razor sharp claws and fierce fangs.
Back home, but arrival was quite a bit later than anticipated (Let's hear it for delayed flights). Will resume posting tomorrow.
After tonight I will be out of the country for a few days and not likely to post again until Wednesday.
Entirely up to you and how you feel Calliope would handle this. Would she be prone to staying back and letting Jack take the lead or would she be more aggressive about this? If she does take a more active role in the scene is it though physical action? Innuendo? Overt language? Discipline use? Most scenes in this system are roleplay driven and the dice are there to help (or harm) as the case may be. Does that make sense?
Cayde rushes in passed Tek and hacks into the multi-tentacled, worm like creature stuck to the ceiling. The creature redirects its tentacles toward the barbarian but misses its strike. DM Rolls:
Alexander:
Your direct lineage knows a great deal about the city.
Grimm, your sire, is a technological magician, able to utilize his computer skills to find just about anything on any computer. Grimm's sire, Wauneka, is the eyes and ears of the streets of Chicago. Wauneka's sire, Cedric Calhoun, is well known for being the man you go to when you have to know something, although it usually comes at a significant cost. Finally, there is Khalid, Cedric's Sire, and the Nosferatu Primogen councilor - if anyone is to know what this Elysium is about, it would be Khalid - but geeting an audience with him has become difficult these nights. Rather than continue to potentially get themselves into trouble at the Succubus Club, Calliope, K, and Jack call up an Uber - after discovering the car K had previously swiped was not where he had left it. Some thirty minutes later, you are at the front door of your coterie's communal haven.
Morning arrives and The Arrow sits in water on the banks of the Tuskwater. Supplies are being loaded on board when "Captain Wahl" arrives. "Tis a good lookin' ship." he says approvingly. Looking out at the Tuskwater he adds, "It's not the open sea, but it'll do for now."
Well that sounds unpleasant at best. Hope things get better soon.
Tove and Azen head down to the banks of the Tuskwater where a few fishermen have their modest boats pulled up on the shore. Talking with one older fisherman, named Albert, confirms that he built his boat, but that was many years ago and he simply doesn't believe that he could physically do the work any longer, but he would be happy to provide any guidance he could in helping you build yours.
Azen: You know of a few local fishermen that have smaller boats, but nothing large enough for the normal traveling party. It's possible that one of them built their own boat.
Perhaps the leaders of the factions, but to put the crowns in the hands of a particular faction could cause issues.
"Star-elk" withstanding, once the Kingdom building is done (we're taking D5, right?), are we ready to move on?
Feel free to make a roll that you feel is appropriate with the understanding that I may disregard the results if I feel a roll was not warranted. Success on the die is 6 or better, so 1-5 is a fail, 6-10 is a success. Most rolls in this game are a pool of dice. In this case you would roll Intelligence + Ettiquette, which would be 4d10 pool. Because your current Hunger is at one your would separate it into rolls like this, where one of your dice is replaced by a Hunger die.
In this case the roll would result in 2 successes. If I call out a particular difficulty, that is the number of successes that are required to pass the die roll. Hunger applies to most rolls in this game outside. If it does not apply, I will state that in the request for a roll. Critical Successes - a roll that has a pair 10s, instead of that pair counting as 2 successes, it would be counted as 4 successes. To receive that doubling it must be a pair. 3 10s would be 5 success, but 4 10s would be eight. Where Hunger comes into play is the concept of Messy Criticals or Beastial Failures. A Messy Critical is certainly a success, but it is success with a complication in which "the Beast" gets a little zealous. A messy critical occurs when a pair of 10's occurs and at least one of the 10s in question. A Beastial Failure is bad news, "the Beast" is truly behaving badly and will causes your Clan Compulsion to exhibit at minimum, sometimes something worse. Fortunately these are rare, as it require a roll that results in 0 successes and at least a single "1" on your hunger dice. Up to 3 Non-Hunger dice resulting in a failure can be re-rolled by spending a point of Willpower.
Quite the commotion is heard throughout the village as a strange, but seemingly auspicious portent for Elkmark appears midway through the month, just as the Ruling Council is making its decrees for the month - a large herd of elk appear at the edge of the woods to the West of town. The herd stops to graze and is not easily frightened by the approach of humans, then seemingly as suddenly as the herd arrived, they were gone. The townsfolk take this as approval from Old Deadeye on the direction of the nascent settlement.
- Yes - Beneficial kingdom event - Natural Blessing Natural Blessing: A natural event, such as a bloom of rare and beautiful wildflowers or a good omen in the stars, raises your kingdom’s morale. You gain a +4 bonus on Stability checks until the next Event Phase.
First post will be up this evening after I get home from work.
- None this month, 75% after next month's build.
Okay, looks like everyone but our latest to join is ready to go. Viktoriya, please get your character finalized by the end of the week. I will start the game in earnest on Monday.
With the turtle harvested of its flesh, skin, and shell and nothing else of note to be found, you saddle back up and continue north. Just after sunset, you find yourselves just outside the Stag Lord's former fort that you now call home and is the center of your nascent nation.
XP is really more for advancement of your attributes / abilities / disciplines. Go ahead on spend them on things that you want Calliope to be a bit better at. If you have questions around XP expenditure, just ask.
Garethane carefully lines up two shots and procedes to sink both arrows into the turtle, one into each of the beast's eyes. For its part, the massive turtle slumps to the ground dead.
There are still a few Brujah in the Camarilla, so no real need to switch that if the group goes the Cam route.
I'll talk to our two errant players as one is my kid and the other I see most Saturdays.
@Greycastle: "Found" Spellbook - Loading up on ritual spells like any good wizard should. (6) 1st - Alarm(R), False Life, Identify(R), Tasha's Hideous Laughter, Tenser's Floating Disk(R), Unseen Servant(R) (1) 2nd - Tasha's Mind Whip @Mell: That works for me.
Deciding to continue eastward you ride along the Little Sellen's southern bank through the low rolling hills. Mid-day arrives with little change in the terrain as you continue to follow the Little Sellen upriver. Finally in the mid-afternoon, there is something of note. The river takes a decided turn northward. On the far side of the river you see what appears to be a cave mouth in the side of a large, rocky hillock on the far side of the river. Around the cave mouth are the tell-tale signs of some sort of large predator or scavenger - bones strew here and there and significant ruts in the earth.
A more thorough investigation of the building and the surrounding grounds reveals little, beyond an old ledger tucked away in an old, nearly collapsed desk in the corner of one of the rooms. The pages of the ledger are moldy and brittle. What little you can make out from the writings on the pages, it was a simple accounting ledger from roughly thirty years ago, when this was an operational ferry. One entry does catch your eye - a deduction in the amount of fifty gold to Nugrah. Apparently, the Stag Lord's father had a bit of a protection racket going back then.
Lucian steps to the right side of the of monstrous undead beast and with a quick backhanded strike of his blade, he lands a solid blow to the werewolf's spine causing the creature to reflexively arch back in the memory of pain. That is all the more opening the ranger needed, spinning back around and driving the tip of his blade up into ribcage of the fetid werewolf, and continuing to drive the blade up into and out of the great beast's throat. Only the weakness of the creature's rotting flesh prevents Lucian's blade from being ripped from his hands as the creature falls backwards, the length of the blade bursting from the now truly dead beast's chest. Snarling and nearly growling, Lucian turns his attention back to the more mundane zombies.
Recently is a relative term, based on the state of the food bits, it may have last been used during the Stag Lord's reign. Azen's careful search of the building yields a coin pouch containing forty-five gold pieces tucked away in a concealed hole in one of the interior walls.
We'll call it "glitch" caused by the boards being down with the Paizo site being crushed yesterday after the ORC License announcement. :)
Myev's strike would have easily crushed a creature made of more solid stuff, but in this case, it only further wounded the shadowy beast.
The djinni touched woman glides into the room and takes aim at the shade in the northeast corner of the room, and shreds the creature's tenebrous form with a bolt of magical force and thunder. One of the remaining shades claws at the priest of the Morninglord, who had so badly wounded them, while the other strikes at Myev - simply out of proximity. Myev is able to dodge the claw of her badly wounded assailant, but Silas is not so fortunate as the shadowy claws seem to pierce his very soul, rending life force and strength from the priest's body.
DM Rolls:
Azen goes a bit further upstream along the river, assuming that Munguk had not been there yet as you hadn't seen him on your journey while you were previously travelling along the Shrike. After a bit of searching and about half an hour's travel, Azen does indeed find a small patch of wolfberry bushes. If making moonshine from the berries required similar amounts of fruit to other fermented fruit juices, if she were to take all the berries available, somewhere around 10 gallons of Munguk's preferred drink could be produced.
The giant gives Tove a cross look, he exclaims before scratching his head before more quietly adding, "Usually next to river..."
Seeing the gray glob lurch out of the pot, Vashrin's hand immediately falls to the hilt of his rapier, only to stand in confused amusement as the glob shapes itself into a cake and ooze its way out the door. Standing silently for a few moments, the bard shakes his head. "Gods this place is f&#!ing weird." Turning to Willow he asks, "Shall we follow the 'cake'?" before heading for the door of the hovel.
Utsuri rushes in and with a sweeping kick sends a number of rats hard against the wall of the chamber. Silas, shooing everyone behind him unleashes gouts of flame from his hands, searing rat flesh and creating a rather unpleasant smell of burnt hair in the air. The few remaining rats scurry into small holes in the base of the wall in an attempt to escape the same fate as their brethern.
I will be traveling starting the 19th and return home on the 24th. Unfortunately, this adventure is something I only have in hard cover, so I'm not too likely to update the thread again until then. Sorry for any inconvenience.
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