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Hey y'all. I've sent mdt a PM to this effect as well, but I'm going to be bowing out of this campaign. I've enjoyed playing with you all, but I've just found it difficult to get into this campaign style, and I want to yield my playing opportunity to someone who would appreciate it more. I'm going to figure out what the best way to extricate Tolla would be with mdt. Best wishes, maybe I'll see you in future games. :)
Having failed to repair her wounds in any significant manner, Tolla lets out a long, frustrated breath. Turning to Abbas, she asks incredulously, "Geniekin? I swear, are Palomia and I the only humans here?" This rhetorical question having been declared, Tolla seems to have vented off some of her annoyance and now feels mostly just her injuries. "I don't think it's safe to camp here, if there are more beasts around, but we also have no clue as to where would be safe. I don't know if I could survive a fight with a goblin, let alone the monsters we've been fighting. I could really use one of those potions, at least to get me a little further from dying."
Hey y'all, sorry for the absence. It's been a mix of fatigue and work and not feeling so hot, but I'll try to get some posts up soon.
Tolla slides out of the scorpion's claws, willing the her blood to stay hot and angry until the poison stops hurting quite so much. She then lays limp on the ground, breathing heavily. When she gets her breath back, she raises her head to look at Abbas, her brow wrinkled. "What...the hell...are you?" she asks, before lying back again and trying not to hurt herself by moving too much. "...Somebody get me the healer's kit..." she mumbles.
Tolla feels herself grow weaker from the poison, and groans in pain as the scorpion squeezes her despite her greased clothing. Seeing Abbas' acid-coated arms (in both senses), her eyes widen as she shouts, "What in the nine hells is that?" Not letting herself be too distracted from the task at hand, though, she lashes out at the beast holding her.
We'll just have Gniell build us a train!
Order : Palomia, Scorpion, Everyone Else
An interesting fact about my world: I mostly grew up in Hawaii (and also have a terrible sense of direction), so I don't have a good sense of how big any given state is. Especially all the squiggly east coast ones.
Someday Tolla will be a better grappler...one more monk level and then all of her planned levels will be considered full BAB for combat maneuvers. Edit: Hot dang Grease is good. And I don't think it impedes my own offensive grappling either. Maybe I'll just punch the scorpion instead, though...
"Put me down, you overgrown sand-lobster!"
I'm just hoping that wrestling a giant scorpion is a good idea. :)
Tolla wrestles with the scorpion, kicking at it while she does. She roars as the scorpion thrashes, drawing on deep reserves of strength to hold on.
Tolla quickly drops into her fighting stance as her blood grows hot, then deftly snakes around Abbas to charge the giant scorpion, attempting to restrain the beast to make it easier to kill.
So, what do you all think are the chances that we'll be able to find civilization any time soon? Should we poke through the edges of this Big Hex to see if one of the ones around it are, like, City World instead of all this Savannah stuff?
Tolla yawns and stretches. "I'm sick and tired of all this wilderness. It was one thing to roam the countryside looking for beasts when I knew I was gonna get paid for it, but I never realized how nice it was to have a dingy little hamlet to go to if I wanted a roof. Just thinking about those nasty little hay beds used to make my skin crawl, but what I wouldn't give for even a barn to sleep in. Now I'm tired. I'll take second watch, but I need to at least take a nap now..." With that, Tolla lays her head on her pack, and is soon snoring.
"All right, fair points," Tolla concedes. "Still, I think we should keep moving. We'll try to avoid whatever got Relas, but I think we have a chance of finding some people somewhere. We should keep widening our search." Gods, I hope we find some civilization soon, Tolla thinks, flashing the ever-stretching grass an annoyed look. She looks up and touches the strange crystal on her forehead, then quickly takes her hand away with a shudder. I hope taking this second chance wasn't a mistake. I don't think I want to know what happens if we die here...
"Any image, huh?" Tolla asks with a smirk. "Maybe you should have it be a copy of you. They always seem to go for the shrimpy ones first," she teases, chuckling.
Tolla frowns in thought. She takes a deep breath through her nose, then releases it, saying, "I say we press on, and keep an eye out for whatever it is that took down Relas. I think we'll need more of those crystals if we want to stand a chance. Plus, better we take the fight to it before it ambushes us, right?"
Tolla examines the strange crystal coins, trying to determine what they're made of, and asking her more magically inclined friends if they're magical at all. ----- Tolla's brow knits with concern, her eyes angry. "Well, can you summon him back? I know it takes a lot out of you, but do we still have some of those weird squishy crystals? We can heal him up and ask him what he found before we stumble into the same."
"I think there are some fishhooks and plenty of string if you want to try fishing," Tolla replies. "I'm going to go mark out where this platform is on the other side of the wall. I'll be right back." Tolla heads outside and sees what she can find in the way of large rocks, or anything else that is heavy, abundant, and of no consequence. She stacks the rocks until they show above the grass as a way marker, indicating the end of an invisible perpendicular line with the center of the landing platform on the other side of the black wall.
Here's the list of questionable things:
Went through our stuff from the pallet and assigned weights to things (lump sum, not each). Some stuff I couldn't find in the d20 SRD, though.
"I think making something to haul more camp equipment would be good. At least so we can carry more rations and more healer's kits," Tolla says, looking at their piles of gear. "I still think we should try to find signs of civilization. That wagon didn't come from nowhere. I think we should keep exploring, but we'll be more careful. Relas will make a good scout, and I'm actually pretty quiet when I try; we weren't supposed to talk after dark at the monastery, so I became decent at sneaking around."
Tolla continues to provide care for the injured Palomia.
Tolla bites into some prepared rations, glad to be done with nearly a week of eating lizard stew, roast lizard, fried lizard, and any other way to prepare the lizard meat to keep from getting too sick of it. She nods at Abbas, chewing thoughtfully. "We should at least mark the entrance to the docks on the outside," Tolla says, talking with food in her mouth. "I think we need to figure out a better plan than just wandering around. Perhaps we could establish a camp further out. Or figure out a way to move all of our stuff. Who knows if there's even any civilization out here! Although there was that busted wagon. If there is any other civilization nearby, maybe we could start a big signal fire to see if we can't attract something other than plains predators."
"Yes, unfortunately. Now lie back, you should be okay as long as you get plenty of sleep and water," Tolla says, obviously concerned.
"Are you all right, Palomia?" Tolla says, limping over to her newly awoken friend. She gingerly places a hand on Palomia's forehead, and her face grows concerned. "You still seem like you're running a fever. I say we stay here for a while until we get a bit healed up." Tolla uses supplies from her healer's kit to treat herself, then spends the day caring for her injured friend, refusing to let her do anything but recover.
Sorry, I was busy yesterday with moving the last of the stuff out of my apartment. It took longer than I thought. Moving is blech.
"You could have told me if it looked like I was wrecking my legs. Damn it," Tolla says, painfully grimacing. "But I guess I seemed all right, so I can't really blame you. Ouch. We really need to get to the ship..." Tolla attempts to stand, slowly testing out her legs to see if they'll hold.
Tolla looks down, her fingers stained with her own blood. She gently places Palomia on the ground before sitting herself. It takes a little while to realize what she's done, but when she does, she cries out in pain, one sharp scream rising in a crescendo before it's cut off. She forces her ragged breaths to be slow, just looking on at her legs and occasionally swearing and wincing. "I think...I have...to stop for a little while. How did...my legs...get this way? They were...fine...after I ate that thing..."
Psh. Healing. [/2cool4healers]
"It tastes a lot better than it looks!" she says, quickly standing. "I don't know what these things are, but I feel amazing! Let's get Palomia back to the ship. I'll carry her!" Tolla puts on her pack, then strides over the the limp woman, picking her up and cradling her in her massive arms. She heads off back west toward their landing, wanting to use her newfound energy before it fades.
Tolla looks taken aback at Abbas' offer. "You want me to eat that?" she exclaims, wrinkling her nose is disgust. Relas did say it tasted good, though, and the pain in her legs suggests that anything that could help would be worth it. "Well, I guess it's worth a shot..." Tolla takes the crystal, gently squeezing it with obvious displeasure. She sniffs it, and finding it not too offensive , takes a small nibble.
Tolla's legs feel like they're on fire--worse than just flesh wounds would be. But she grits her teeth against the pain, and with a long string of swear words manages to resist the worst pains of it. What were those things anyway? she thinks.
Tolla wakes up slowly, aching all over, but alive. She groans as she sits up, wincing and gingerly touching her thrashed legs. She shakes her head--she should never have allowed those lizards to get ahold of her, but her mind must have been somewhere else in that fight. She looks around to see Gniel and Abbas, and the unconscious Palomia. Tolla eats some rations for breakfast to regain her strength, then digs through her bag for the healer's kit. "We should get Palomia up, and back to the ship to recover for a few days. Besides, I think Relas has some of our supplies." Tolla sets to work on Palomia, and the warm touch of her forehead has Tolla worried that the other woman might have a fever...
Have Abbas or Palomia shown any obvious signs that they're not human yet? Not that Tolla can notice at just this moment, but she would certainly react to it.
Tolla lets her bloodlust vision fade, and her sustaining rage slips away. Tolla takes a deep breath to calm herself, as the monks taught her. She then falls unconscious with a stern look of victory on her face.
I understand, don't worry about it. This is the first time I've made a character who can grapple, and I haven't been using it in fights, so I'm not going to expect you to know all the details of a build that requires a flow-chart to understand half the time! :P As far as backgrounds go, I like them better in a PbP setting. As a new PbP GM, I like them as a sort of writing screening. Length matters often, but it's definitely not everything. I've accepted some shorter backgrounds because I liked the writing style, and generally I find that those ones are people playing to type, and doing it well. Longer ones tend to be better than shorter ones, but I've seen some lengthy ones that were poorly written, or that embraced a kind of narrative that I personally found problematic. And there are some that are long because they're long-winded and not very narratively interesting. I'm still working on writing good background for my own characters, because I generally work on character creation from a more face-to-face gaming perspective, which is to say that I focus more on personality and mechanics. I don't want to write a hugelong backstory in a setting where no one is going to read it or react to it. I generally haven't played in any meatspace games that dealt with complex character growth or background story plot incorporation.
Tolla struggles against the lizard bloodying her legs. If it weren't for the rage boiling over in her, she'd have succumb to the wounds. She pushes through the pain, though, and reaches down to try to grab the lizard's neck.
Grapple Stats: -2 Dex (instead of -4), so CMD and AC -3 (from Dex and rage)
-1 to attacks and non-grapple CMB checks (instead of -2) Can make attacks of opportunity (not against something already grabbing her, but further attempts to grapple or grab provoke
Darn, I wish I had known these things had grab. Since you already went through a few rounds, it's obviously too late to go back and change everything, but for future knowledge, Tolla has some special grappling stuff from being a 2nd level Brutal Pugilist barbarian, and getting the Savage Grapple ability. Essentially:
Tolla slips between Abbas and Palomia, then delivers a swift flurry of kicks at the middle lizard.
Hey PbP friends, I'm moving this weekend, so I may be without internet and time to post for a couple of days. I'll do my best to get on and post once a day, but we'll see what time permits.
Seeing her new companion fall to the lizards, Tolla grits her teeth and her eyes become fiery. Tolla shifts into her fighting stance, then charges at the lizard biting Palomia with her hands curled into claws, her run similar to a more graceful version of the low reptiles' run, before raking at it with a vicious strike while shouting obscenities.
After I came up with the idea, I went around asking my friends what race/class their moms would be if they were D&D characters. Nearly half of the people I asked said "cleric," and I'm curious why. I was originally going to make Tolla my mom's height (5'2"), but my Bred for War trait requires her to have a huge build. The personality is essentially the same, but adjusted for a fantasy adventure setting.
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