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Vano swings his scythe at the lowly rat as if mowing wheat.
Seeing that "Short Hair" and "Petra" have one rat pinned down, Vano strides across the room and slashes at the other with his scythe. Its honed edge looks capable of cutting the vermin in half.
What a waste, thinks Vano. A rat that size would make a fine meal if Luneca could go to sleep afterwards. "Kill, Luneca! No dinner!"
Sure, let's do this.
"Guard me, Luneca." Vano brushes himself off, then pulls his bulky mantle back on, then his pack, then hefts his scythe and plants himself near the door out, alert for sudden intrusions.
The druid finds the climb tight and uncomfortable.
Luneca is our most replaceable team member, is low enough to the ground that she shouldn't provide cover from missiles to enemies in combat with her in many situations, and needs to be able to close distance quickly. I propose putting her towards the front and Vano near enough to give her orders. Incidentally, if anyone can think of a way to get Mage Armor on her with our current lineup, let me know.
"No more pranks, Luneca!"
'V' pauses briefly. "So, you saw the serpent's face on that creature too! Good. I was afraid I might have hallucinated it. But do not trust that creature no matter what fair form it takes! It is surely just trying to manipulate us." The druid wrings his hands a moment, then squirms into the ducts. The folks behind can hear him still talking as he shoves and crawls his way along. "Now, if she looks agitated, Master Slip, the secret is to stroke her nose with two firm fingers..."
"If you feel something tickling your toes, little friend," 'V' calls into the duct, "It is only Luneca's little pranks! She is always licking my bare feet to seem me jump! Ha, ha!" As the snake disappears into the ducts, Vano doffs his mantle again--it will be a narrow climb, after all. He adds it to his bundle of possessions and pushes it all ahead of him up the ducts.
The druid eyes 'Ardent' warily...the half-orc seems too keen by half to set a fire underneath them. "Perhaps we shouldn't set fires until we're sure there are no other prisoners." He grimaces and pulls at his beard. "I wish we could run that creature down and end it! But who knows if it is fleeing, or going for reinforcements? Wiser to go for help ourselves." He hesitates again. "We were all caught up in that nightmare together. There's no drug, no disease for that! It has to be some curse, some web of the Fair Folk's. I've heard stories about the unseelie stealing mortals' skins and living inside them, playing out deranged versions of normal human lives. Could this be something like that? Could it...they...have stolen our memories to play with?" He shudders. "For just a moment, I thought I saw its face change, but maybe...did any of you see that?" With visible effort, the druid draws a steadying breath and steels himself. "Help, right, get help first. Luneca will be right at home in the ducts." He snaps four times in a pattern, catching the snake's attention. "Guard, Luneca. Guard the little man." He indicates the wriggling bottom half of the slip, disappearing up the furnace.
"I'd rather go up than down, if possible. Sooner or later we should run out of up and be free."
Noticing the little one going still at Luneca's approach, the druid grins and bends down to put his face in front of his. "She'd be prowling if she were hungry, trying to get at some of the vermin in here. You can relax." Then he turns and resumes his search of the pile. This whetstone is his, as is this embroidered blanket. The great mantle of bear hide is his too...but why is its hem nearly purple with old bloodstains? He shudders, but puts it on...armor seems like a very good idea right now. Turning to the trunk, the druid eyes the whistle. Is it his? It seems mostly familiar. The pouch though, that is definitely his. He picks it up for a closer look, and gives a cry of excitement. "V.M.! Those must be my initials! Right?" His face turns uncertain. "Well, I've nothing better. Call me V." He clears his throat awkwardly. "You know, I had a dream, just as I was waking up, and you were all in it." He laughs in a self-deprecating way. "Did, ah, any of you experience something similar?"
Joy leaps to the druid's face when he hears a hiss like a steam kettle from the other room. "Luneca!" He rushes in, and heedless of any caution starts levering the crate open with the blade of his scythe. Thank the gods--she's not a hallucination after all.
The druid has been pacing the room, searching the walls and floors for subtler clues. Finding none, he joins the others by the furnace and the pile of cryptic gear. He pulls a long bone from the furnace and examines it for toothmarks.
"So many before us...how did we manage to escape their fate, I wonder? Perhaps the doctor wasn't prepared to have so many prisoners at once. If we were all captured together...you all seem familiar, though perhaps that means we were imprisoned together for a time..." He shakes his head. "Not too long, as our gear isn't covered with ash from the furnace. " The druid plucks a clay mug from the pile. It feels right in his hand. He flips it over and finds initials. "KtP"? They mean nothing to him--if they were his, wouldn't they feel as familiar as this mug? Perhaps they are an artist's signature. "Our condition might be caused by poison, or disease, or a curse. Not injury, the chance that we were all struck just the same way seems too unlikely. Lost memories, lost time--those sound like faerie pranks to me. Dark faeries play evil games." A familiar-looking stout wooden handle protrudes from one side of the mound. The druid pulls it free and finds a great iron scythe glinting in his hand. He tests the edge on his thumb and finds it sharp. "Cold iron. Evidence that we were expecting trouble from the Fair Folk, perhaps."
DM Monty, is the pouch in the trunk distinct from Vano's spell component pouch, which I assume would be in the pile by the furnace?
Vano releases Simza's nose and studies it from different angles, wondering what might have caused the bleeding.
The druid then moves to examine the injuries of the woman strapped to the table. Since her bleeding has stopped, there's little more he can do without supplies. While he was acting as a healer, his movements were brisk and self-assured, but once he completes his examination he becomes hesitant again. He reaches for the woman's bonds, then freezes. "Ah...you are well? If I let you go, you won't hurt us?"
Something about her seems familiar, and she's not frenzied. Vano starts undoing the straps before she can finish answering.
I am fine with you rolling initiative for us, DM Monty, or in any situation where there's not really a choice for us to make, in order to save time.
Seeing Simza take the keys, Vano moves with her to the cell door. With the steadiness of someone accustomed to bloody work, he grabs her nose as she works, his strong fingers pinching the right spots to stop a normal nosebleed.
Varo wakes with a start, heaving up from the stone floor into a crouch. His long hair is plastered to his face with fear-sweat. He grabs at himself, searching for phantom wounds, then darts his eyes frantically around the unfamiliar cell. A hospital? A prison? Both? It's all too easy to think of reasons he might be confined and amnesiac. Lycanthropy. Possession. Fey abduction. Hag-ride. Ustalav is home to a thousand curses. But is he a mere victim? Or is the enemy within him too? He raises his scale-tattooed hands before his eyes "Luneca? Luneca?" Not here. Lost? Held elsewhere? Dead? He fights back the dread in the pit of his stomach. Have to get a grip on this! The druid draws himself up to his full height and advances on the others. "You...do you know where we are? You know me, right? What is going on?" He hears the screaming woman, turns, sees the uncanny doctor with knife and trowel.
He makes a snap decision. The monsters are outside, not in. He ducks and lunges between his companions' legs to grab at the doctor's, his arms darting like snakes through the bars.
Is my animal companion present?
I hope everything comes out okay, Demrakas. Thanks for not simply ghosting. Could we nab one of the former applicants while we're still in this first scene? My vote would be for Talindra Misraria.
Vano's mind roils, ricocheting between two repellant thoughts. Is it madness? Or is it death? Which would be worse? Surely it could not be both.
A nightmare, then, thinks Vano. But if so...why can't I wake up? Fear grips him, but his dead heart stays still.
If his senses had touched some undead thing, some cruel fey spirit, some beast of the pit...one of those, perhaps, Vano could have faced. To touch instead this unknown, unknowable menace... "Heel, Luneca! Quickly now!" The tall druid rushes into the fog after the others, trusting that the constrictor will follow.
Vano presses his back against a wall and digs his fingers into the crumbling bricks. Not a dream: It's too vivid. What is going on? Why can't I remember? Is it this damned fog, or some spell? His eyes grow wide with alarm as Cole sets his blade burning. He feels the menace from the footsteps too, and yet...with this disorientation, can they trust their feelings? Their senses? What if the steps behind them are some passing innocent or a member of the city watch imbued with menace by whatever has bewildered them? On the other hand, what if it's not? "Stay your blade a moment, friend! We don't truly know what is behind us. Don't rush off into this eerie fog either! Give me a moment to figure out what is going on." Vano closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, trying to thrust aside the turmoil in his mind while he concentrates on feeling out the presence approaching. Before he loses himself in the trance, he whispers a command to Luneca: "Guard us." Vano uses the Menhir Savant class ability Spirit Sense, which works like Detect Undead except it can detect the presence of undead; fey; outsiders; and astral, ethereal, or incorporeal creatures, and detects all of these creatures rather than trying to detect one kind. He directs the cone of detection in the direction of the footsteps this round.
I'm curious in game-world how Simza would react to the epithet, if that's a direction that the table is interested in exploring. My feeling is that it doesn't fit with Golarion, any more than calling someone a "mutie" or a "mudblood" would. The ethnicity doesn't exist there, and Ustalav is predominantly Varisians who gave up the nomadic lifestyle of their ancestors for feudalism (and Desna worship for Pharasma). Calling her a "moth" or mistaking her for a Sczarni would make more sense, if a slur were intended--but Cole's player just wanted to refer to her nomadic appearance, so we probably should move on.
Cole, there's no Romani in Golarion any more than there are Belgians or Etruscans, and the word you used is a real-world racial slur. I'm not angry or anything, just letting you know--lots of folks don't realize that.
"What...where?" Vano stands frozen in shock, his mind spiraling out in a hundred directions for an explanation that doesn't come.
How do you prefer I handle initiative for Vano's animal companion and/or other minions, going forward? Should they share his, for simplicity, or would you like each to have their own?
Why not take Extra Traits at some point, Erebrus? That way we can have your help and your Knowledge: Arcane, and I'm sure there's another trait out there that will come in handy, Supportive or Resilient or something.
Here's Vano Martoff, my proposed addition to your campaign, a human druid who couldn't possibly be insane...right? His crunch is in his profile, as well as the RP info below. Description:
Vano is a tall and somber middle-aged man whose thick black hair and beard are shot with silver. His skin is light for a Varisian, and totemic serpent tattoos cover his body. The sight of one of these, a skeletal ouroboros inked on his throat, makes Vano feel unsettled and ashamed, though he cannot remember why. In his worn but well-mended traveling clothes, Vano could be taken for an ordinary caravan tinker or trader. But when he dons his ceremonial mantle of hardened bear hide, he is unmistakably a druid of the oldest ways. Wearing the hide gives him a sense of comfort and belonging, though he flinches a little from its old stains of charcoal, woad, and blood. Vano speaks hesitantly, and walks with his head cast down. There is little confidence in the way he carries his large frame. Background:
Vano Martoff believes he is cursed. Nothing else makes sense. Why should he remember the names of stars and the constellations they form, but not where he learned them, or who taught him? Why should he feel such warm familiarity and fierce loyalty to his constrictor companion Luneca, but have no idea how they met, or why the patterns of scales on her back are tattooed on his hands? It must be a curse. He must have angered a, a...someone. Something. Something is angry at him, that much he can remember. Can't he? He has a few jumbled memories that he thinks are more than dreams--the memories of a child. An angry man, shouting at him about the stones, the stones. He's written on the standing stones with chalk. What of it? There are old words carved all over the stones. The angry man's eyes are wide, his face red, spittle flies from his shouting mouth and spatters Vano's face just before his hand slaps it. A naked woman, her hairy parts startling. She's rising from the river, dripping wet. She's covered with black butterflies and violet flowers. She laughs when she sees Vano in the bushes, and he runs, ashamed. A rabbit in a snare. A valley wreathed in mist. Wrapping ribbons around a pole. Shivering as snow falls by a campfire. Slipping down a rocky slope, blood on his palms. Stripping the silk from an ear of corn, finding beetles writhing inside. Each memory fragment is fraught with old emotion, but none of them tell him who he is. Since his memories have failed him, Vano grasps at any hint of his identity. He speaks Varisian with a slight Hallit accent that other Ustalavics say is peculiar to the palatinate of Vieland, far to the northwest of Versex. His tattoos are all in the same style, perhaps the work of a single artist. His hair and beard and nails are long, but recently groomed. He has calloused feet from much walking, calloused hands from much manual labor. He knows how to set bones and brew tea to ease a fever. He knows exactly how and when to feed Luneca, how to keep her warm, how to save her shed skin for...something. In a place deeper than memory, the old magic coils inside him, primal, instinctual. He can call animals, raise plants, produce water and flame. He is a druid, a druid to his bones. He can feel the life of the world flowing in ley lines near and far. But nearer still, he feels things not meant to be in the world--unnatural things, cruel things, things that could drive a man mad. Vano Martoff believes he is cursed. Not mad. Please, let him not be mad.
Likes:
Stargazing. Naps. Hot springs. Folk music. Being listened to. Dislikes:
City folk who shave but don't wash properly. Formal social events. Not knowing why the hem of his ceremonial hide is stiff with dried blood. Quirks:
Insists despite the lack of any evidence that Luneca constantly does funny, charming things. Speaks for the snake in a silly voice when he thinks no one is listening. Phobias:
Numerophobia. Has mild anxiety about counting change and other simple math tasks. Having to think about large numbers is worse, a brush with an existential dread. Worst of all is complicated geometry, charts and signs and angles that make him think that maybe the lines of the world aren't as straight as they seem, and something might be hiding between here and there. Also, he really doesn't like the idea that he might be crazy. Writing Samples:
I intend to focus on summoning with Vano. I took the Eye for Talent alternate race trait so I could make his animal companion intelligent enough to take a wider selection of feats, which should pay off well in a EitR campaign.
Congratulations to those that made it in, and good luck!
Well, if I can't heal ya fast enough, I can at least reincarnate ya.
Similar idea but went the path of makeshift scrapper. If you haven't played Darkest Dungeons, you might not know your character apparently has a sister.
I am sticking to my guns and only having classes from the Core Rulebook and the Advanced Player's Guide. This was an oversight by me, but thankfully we are all in this together and you brought this to my attention. Mr. Clint, if you like Mythicman19's concept, could you offer him a short extension to rework the character's mechanics into, say, a vivisectionist alchemist or makeshift scrapper rogue? I don't want your job to be any tougher, but I don't mind the extra competition, and it seems generous to give folks a chance to fix honest mistakes.
Just flavor, I didn't apply the aging rules. I'm not opposed to using them if you find that more interesting.
I like Vano. Nice writing. Oh, how kind! Thanks.
Here's Vano Martoff, my proposed addition to your campaign, a human druid who couldn't possibly be insane...right? His crunch is in his profile, as well as the RP info below. Description:
Vano is a tall and somber middle-aged man whose thick black hair and beard are shot with silver. His skin is light for a Varisian, and totemic serpent tattoos cover his body. The sight of one of these, a skeletal ouroboros inked on his throat, makes Vano feel unsettled and ashamed, though he cannot remember why. In his worn but well-mended traveling clothes, Vano could be taken for an ordinary caravan tinker or trader. But when he dons his ceremonial mantle of hardened bear hide, he is unmistakably a druid of the oldest ways. Wearing the hide gives him a sense of comfort and belonging, though he flinches a little from its old stains of charcoal, woad, and blood. Vano speaks hesitantly, and walks with his head cast down. There is little confidence in the way he carries his large frame. Background:
Vano Martoff believes he is cursed. Nothing else makes sense. Why should he remember the names of stars and the constellations they form, but not where he learned them, or who taught him? Why should he feel such warm familiarity and fierce loyalty to his constrictor companion Luneca, but have no idea how they met, or why the patterns of scales on her back are tattooed on his hands? It must be a curse. He must have angered a, a...someone. Something. Something is angry at him, that much he can remember. Can't he? He has a few jumbled memories that he thinks are more than dreams--the memories of a child. An angry man, shouting at him about the stones, the stones. He's written on the standing stones with chalk. What of it? There are old words carved all over the stones. The angry man's eyes are wide, his face red, spittle flies from his shouting mouth and spatters Vano's face just before his hand slaps it. A naked woman, her hairy parts startling. She's rising from the river, dripping wet. She's covered with black butterflies and violet flowers. She laughs when she sees Vano in the bushes, and he runs, ashamed. A rabbit in a snare. A valley wreathed in mist. Wrapping ribbons around a pole. Shivering as snow falls by a campfire. Slipping down a rocky slope, blood on his palms. Stripping the silk from an ear of corn, finding beetles writhing inside. Each memory fragment is fraught with old emotion, but none of them tell him who he is. Since his memories have failed him, Vano grasps at any hint of his identity. He speaks Varisian with a slight Hallit accent that other Ustalavics say is peculiar to the palatinate of Vieland, far to the northwest of Versex. His tattoos are all in the same style, perhaps the work of a single artist. His hair and beard and nails are long, but recently groomed. He has calloused feet from much walking, calloused hands from much manual labor. He knows how to set bones and brew tea to ease a fever. He knows exactly how and when to feed Luneca, how to keep her warm, how to save her shed skin for...something. In a place deeper than memory, the old magic coils inside him, primal, instinctual. He can call animals, raise plants, produce water and flame. He is a druid, a druid to his bones. He can feel the life of the world flowing in ley lines near and far. But nearer still, he feels things not meant to be in the world--unnatural things, cruel things, things that could drive a man mad. Vano Martoff believes he is cursed. Not mad. Please, let him not be mad.
Likes:
Stargazing. Naps. Hot springs. Folk music. Being listened to. Dislikes:
City folk who shave but don't wash properly. Formal social events. Not knowing why the hem of his ceremonial hide is stiff with dried blood. Quirks:
Insists despite all evidence that Luneca constantly does funny, charming things. Speaks for the snake in a silly voice when he thinks no one is listening. Phobias:
Numerophobia. Has mild anxiety about counting change and other simple math tasks. Having to think about large numbers is worse, a brush with an existential dread. Worst of all is complicated geometry, charts and signs and angles that make him think that maybe the lines of the world aren't as straight as they seem, and something might be hiding between here and there. Also, he really doesn't like the idea that he might be crazy. |