Darn. We didn't even get to see which of Zrair and R!K would die first. I hate to throw away what was shaping up to be a fun party dynamic, but I guess there's nothing for it. Ya'll take it easy.
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Zrair squeezes in between Johnson and R!Kktik. "Just like home, baldtail?" he nods facetiously to his fellow alchemist.
"Couldn't have said it better," Zrair gripes.
The alchemist stands up straight, having recovered from the wave of nausea brought on by the ooze's aura of stench. "I have no desire to examine this foe," Zrair shakes his head. He consults the map again, but can make no more sense of it than before.
Thanks for pointing that out. I didn't realize the Int bonus damage was part of it as well.
As in "the Gathering," or as in "Castle"?
The catman nods at Shelai, his smile a jagged crescent. "For all you know, this is how we haze the new recruits. Those actors we hired to play the cult put on quite the show, eh?"
Survival roll:
Perhaps, but no one has Handle Animal either.
To keep track of this sort of thing, I put together a spreadsheet organizing our various skill and language abilities which anyone may edit: The skill list isn't complete--I didn't feel like calculating 200-odd modifiers, so for everyone else it only shows those ranks that are actually on our profiles. Feel free to fill out the rest for your own PCs. The skill name backgrounds indicate who has the highest rank, and black indicates trained-only skills that none of us possess.
Sit by the fire, children, and I shall recount for you that blood-chilling tale... the story of The Party Without a Face!
"It does appear so," Zrair replies to Kirzon. "And without a cure, we're all tied to the same raft. A question of weeks, at most." He coughs into an elbow, hurriedly wiping the specks of blood from his lips. This sickness is beyond his own skill to heal, of that the alchemist is certain. But I might stall its progress, and that is still more than my father could do, he notes with sour pride. But even this grim prognostication might prove optimistic, if the fallen now roamed the streets. The alchemist scrunches his brow, trying to make sense of the stained map taken from the dead men. "The inn, this must be." He traces a claw along the red-inked path, pointing to one of the terminal points. "This route doesn't align with any of Maer-Varza's avenues. They must have come through the sewers, but the Reaper take me if I can tell from where." He shrugs, and turns his head to listen to the street commotion. "Though it may be our only recourse. And we may yet earn that bounty, if a guild remains to collect if from." To the sewers after all... Zrair wrinkled his nose at the sensory assault he was sure awaited him in that dank river of effluvia. He really had meant to acquire that jar of terrap sap. "And the rest of the chattel?" He gestures to the late cultist's gear. "The cloak's purpose escapes me, but the sickle at least is of traditional magic enhancement. I have little use for it, however." He opens a clawed hand in an explanatory gesture.
Zrair snarls reflexively, at the thought of his biological bounty going to waste. "You are right again, wizard," he begrudes, "I suppose." He throws up his clawed hands in frustration. "There won't be much we can learn about this malady from that bunch, if they didn't get a chance to endure its influence more than a few moments." He looks back to their captive, and crosses his arms. "But I remain opposed to disposing of this one so readily. We have a prisoner, a guilty one no less, complicit in the same attack that afflicted us no more than a few minutes ago." The alchemist glances back at the stairs that lead to the main floor of the tavern. "His friends we let off easy. Now he may pay the tab."
Zrair follows the rest of the party into the cellar, pausing, for the moment, his inquest into kobold anatomy. "I'm with our wizard on this one," he nods to Virtus. "If he won't lead us to their lair, at least his example may prove... edifying, as our mutual affliction takes its course. A guinea pig for potential treatment, if nothing else."
"That benediction of yours may help us find the purpose of these objects," the alchemists suggests to the cleric.
Zrair grins as his companions fell most of the attackers. "Save at least one of those -hack- minions from complete evisceration," he pleads. The alchemist has never had the chance to dissect a kobold. His arts must wait, however, with some potential specimens still quite alive. The crimson-cloaked woman, in particular, who has so far withstood their spells and blades. Tossing his sling aside and drawing a bludgeon from his belt, Zrair springs toward the apparent leader of the group.
Zrair springs up at the commotion, knocking over his bench and mug both. He opens his mouth to curse, but inhalation of the vile fumes preempts his invective. Snarling in between coughs and spits, he draws a sling from his pack and steps toward the ambushers. He spins the leather thong about his head and releases, whipping a smooth stone into the fray.
The gender, race, and classes/levels fields all appear in the header with independent character limits. I have Zrair's normal stats under race, and the class field for his mutagen stats. I don't know if I like it taking up so much space with the spoiler, though, might just add it on only when it's in effect.
Zrair looks up from his fireside table, where he had been idly tracing the wood-grain with a claw. "If free rounds are folly, then we'd all be happier fools," he volunteers, his mood mellowed by the paired warmth of hearth and mug. "But if you prefer you keep your sour mood, we'll have the sour stout."
The white-muzzled mercenary squints down at his chittering companion. "Don't tell me what I'll like, baldtail," he snipes, "unless it's a rat-sized jar of terrap sap." But after he has taken his mug of Stirge, Zrair does choose the closest chair to the nearest fire. His fellow alchemist might be vermin, he had decided in the early days of the company, but through their profession and their studies, he has a fair bit in common with the unpronounceable fellow. Stretching his legs by the glow of the hearth, he laps lazily at his beverage, watching the door as the new arrivals make their entrance.
Thanks for the pick, and congrats to R!Kktik, Johnson, Kirzon, Shelai, and Virtus. Looking forward to a fun and perilous table. A quick question for the GM before we start: Among Zrair's starting gear is a big bundle of alchemical items. Would it be alright to assume that he has had sufficient time to craft some of these alchemical items for himself (at 1/3rd base cost)? I'd only be applying this to items he can craft by taking 10, i.e. only those with a DC of 18 or less.
This is Zrair's profile, as mentioned before. Updated his background with the final part that was lost in the earlier transition. Background:
”Why is Loggy still in bed?” The white kit yanks at his father’s tail. He has learned this is the best way to get an adult’s attention, so Zrair is surprised when the he does not even turn to face him. He replies, after a moment: “Logrethe isn’t feeling well, Zrair, she needs to rest. Go outside, and play with your cousins.” “I don’t want to. They’ll climb trees and throw the needlecones at me again.” His father rises from his stool, and set the pestle and mortar on her place. Zrair didn’t struggle as he lifted him up by his scruff, to set him down outside the healer’s hut. He make to walk back to toward the main square, but after a moment turned and crept back. Quietly, he pushes the flap slightly to the side. Straining to balance on his paw-tips, he tries to catch a glimpse of his older sister. Loggy must be faking it, he decides, scared to join their mother on her first hunt. But as their father rises again from the stool and clears the view, Zrair can’t imagine how even that dedicated trickster could fake the bare patches of skin dotting his sister’s arms and forehead, or the suppurating sores exposed beneath. He closes the curtain, and goes off to find his cousins. ... “You have barely begun your apprenticeship,” his father replies in a weary tone. "You may be my eldest child, but you are still just that: a child. Your studies are not for you to direct.” “The study is ancient superstition,” Zrair hisses back. “Herbs and chants, and the spirit will heal the sickness? It’s blind mummery!” Before his father can chasten him for the outburst, the young apprentice turns and sprints out of the healer’s hut. He is already in the treeline by the time his father has moved to to the Zrair heard his name being called from the village, but he paid it no heed. He slinks around the pines and thrashes through the undergrowth. A minute after the voices have faded into the distance, he stops, and bends over to lift a rock that leans against a rotten stump. He reaches into the damp darkness, and draws out a crude wooden box. Brushing aside the leaves and needles from a small patch of forest floor, he sets down the container and lifts the lid. The strong stench of decay fills his nostrils, but his muzzle does not wrinkle. From one compartment of the box, he withdraws a stubby bottle capped with cork and half-filled with a clear liquid. He removes the stopper, and the strong smell of lye mixes with the drifting putrescence. Extending a claw from his other hand, he pokes at sparrow lying in the second compartment. Dead, he observes, but less decomposed, and no maggots. He notes with curiosity the thin, white, gelatinous layer coating the inside the compartment. That substance had not been there with his previous specimen. He tips the bottle carefully, dripping a few more drops onto the partially decayed corpse, then recorks it and sets it back in its original compartment. Leaning back against the stump, Zrair withdraws his journal, bound with string to a thin charcoal pencil, from the inner pocket of his shirt, and sets about to recording the results of yesterday’s experiment. ... "I know." His father doesn't look up from worktable, continuing to grind herbs. Zrair is taken aback. "What do you mean, you know? I said, I'm leaving. Renthel took me along on his last trade mission to the city. There's an apothecary there, and she's taking on apprentices. I'm leaving, today, and-" "We found your labratory in the forest, Zrair." Now the young catman was speechless. How dare they follow him, stalk him like some vermin, when he was doing nothing wrong? He shakes away the surprise, and re-adopts his determined air. "I'm going to Maer-Varza, father. They actually teach alchemy there, the whole science, not this colorless witchcraft you call healing. When I return," if I return, he wants to say, "I will bring back with me the true arts. I will be of better service to the whole village." "No." His father looked up now, and Zrair was surprised for the third time. This speech had not gone at all how he planned it. "You are still my son, a scion of our people, but these arts you speak of will never be welcome. You may return whenever you wish, child, but you will provide service to no one. The mantle of healer shall pass to Frash, your uncle's son." Zrair's eyes narrow, and his lips draw back. Forever his father had denied him respect, and truth, and knowledge, and now he was denying him his last moment of rebellion! "Your mantle," he spat back at the still-seated figure, "is less than a rat's rotten hindclaw! You are an old, blind fool, and your skill is like that of an armorer who has never held a blade. How can you guard life if you know nothing of death? You cannot--you could never have..." He stopped himself, not willing or not needing to voice the final thought. His father shifts back to the workbench, claws clacking against the stone pestle. Zrair spins about and strides stiffly outside. He pushes aside the flap to the healer's hut, and this time he does not turn back.
Neato. That's quite the scenario, eh? I'm running a Mists of Mwangi game at the moment, once that and Beckett's game wrap up I might try my own table. Keeping up with the Blakros theme and all that. The racial interaction wasn't the main reason I picked catfolk, but it certainly crossed my mind as a distinct advantage. Distinct disadvantage: only one male catfolk forum avatar. There are a couple of cat-like rakshasas, but that's the full extent of it. |