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original  [SLOG! SLOG! SLOG! SLOG!]

2nd [new classes, races, lore and legal issues]

3rd [Abort/Retry?]

3.5 [proper patch]

Pathfinder

4e [totally not tabletop WoW]

5e [streamlined]/[I want my immunities and floating modifiers back!]

[hedgie]

I've been terribly bad at providing updates for the game I'm playing in, so I don't even know why I'm being masochistic enough to be putting things together for starting my own game, with character creation beginning next week.  This forced deadline requires me to do a *lot* of writing between now and then, to at least have a bare outline of various nations/peoples, as well as the main pantheon.  It's fun work, but also a bit tiring at times.

So far, I have four people, with what's looking like a fairly balanced group comp, with an Inquisitor, Bard, Wizard, and some sort of purely martial class.  Ideally, I can find a "real" healer, but just in case, I rolled up an NPC druid with crippling social anxiety (giving me a good excuse for him to remain mostly quiet and have the players lead).

[Gyrre]

Best of luck to you, Hedgie. Here's hoping your campaign doesn't break like ours did.

The game I'd been playing got super broken, so we opted to drop it even though we were in the last boss fight. Suffice it to say our DM was requiring a time rewind as part of defeating the final boss, and the only two PCs that could hit him were the power-gaming munchkineers. My warlock couldn't cast high enough for the boss to fail a save when my Spell Save DC was +16! (We were level 24.)

So, we did the planned DM rotation, and now we're playing the next campaign picking up from those previous two sessions.

Umpen has gone through a few changes as well. He's now a Gloom Stalker so I can avoid any munchkinning to get sneak attack (also it makes more sense). 'Umpen Welber' is now a pseudonym since he's on the run crom that pissed off duergar queen. And, he may be a quarter water genasi to explain the fact that he has dark blue hair and green freckles.

[hedgie]

Thanks.  Over the weekend, I was able to extend the amount of Lore I've written (excluding the gods) from seven pages to 13, including a "new" race[1].  I still need to add aspects and non-human gods to the pantheon, but I can just write that later this week, and just use what I have as a reference for players.


[1] I never liked drow, so I eliminated them and made the "bad" elves live on the surface and be more Lawful Neutral or Lawful Evil, so they are actually a frighteningly efficient and cohesive empire.  They're still theocratic, but not without good reason.

[Gyrre]

Neat! I still need to make myself sit down and get to the 3rd page.
I think I already posted my tweaks for Kalashtar here. Nope, I haven't.[1]

Also, I've narrowed down real names a fair bit. Velsignar for his first name (nickname is 'Velgar' which sounds a bit like 'Welber'). For surname; I've narrowed it down to Jadetwister, Lapispinner, and Spinalspindel. All three seem to fit someone very loosely based on Ned Kelly. I'm leaning towards the 1st two.

EDIT: I think I'll hang on to Spinalspindel for a dwarven artificer; Soothtooth Spinalspindel. Now I need a given name for a dwarven fighter whose surname is Nickelknuckle.

[1] ‘Half remembered dreams given form and voice.’
'Half remembered dreams given form and reason.’
'Half remembered dreams given form and thought.’

Each would correspond to a subtype of dream; nightmare, premonition, and normal. And, each subtype gets a spell-like racial ability that can be used once per long rest (fear, augery, major image).

Furthermore, the Kalashtar would have some vestigial physical trait(s) that resembled the race of the creature whose dream they came from. A Kalashtar formed from a Tabaxi’s dream might have cat ears or a cat tail the same color as that Tabaxi’s. A Kalashtar formed from an elf’s dream might have ears the exact shape of the elf’s. It might even just be something as simple as sharing the same hair color or having an identical birthmark. Maybe even having vitiligo progressing in the same spots at the same rate.

[hedgie]

Nice.  I've hit some speedbumps along the way.  We started character generation last night (a bard and an inquisitor), but lost two players (leaning wizard and a martial class or rogue, respectively).  One 'cos he got sacked from the venue I'll be running from, the other because he decided last minute that he didn't want another game at the moment (and he was leaning rogue or some martial class).  Thankfully, I got someone who wants to fill in the latter role as a physical character, but she's entirely new, so I don't know what else about concept or class yet.  I'll talk to her about different ideas some time, today most likely.

Edit: She just texted me to say magical, so there's a whole fuckton of classes on that spectrum in PF.

Still going to need to put up some new flyers and edit my lore docs for clarity and to clear up some mistakes I made.  Thankfully, the resident lore-junkie is very helpful pointing that stuff out.  When she remarked how well I take constructive criticism, I had to point out that I went to art school for two years.
two  that are leaning barbarian.  also got a half-orc magus (fighter/wizard).  The only drawback is right now, there's no one who is a full caster, save one who is leaning that way.  Even if she doesn't main doing healing, at higher levels, she'll most certainly have to contribute in that regard.

Edit again:  Looks like our last person is going Shaman, so we not only have a full caster, but one likely attached to the life spirit, so a so probably a dedicated healer

[Gyrre]

I'd offer to join if I were out that way*, but I'm in KCK.

Speaking of character creation, there's a long form questionnaire I came across the other day for helping someone figure out their character's personality and disposition.
100 Warm-up DnD Character Questions.

EDIT: *Granted, I have no idea which way that would be.

[hedgie]

Thanks for the link, I'll check it out (both as a player, and a GM)

So, in terms of the game I'm running, what I have officially are human bard, half-elf paladin, wood elf shaman, and shadow elf inquisitor.  One player leaning ranger or monk, and another (who will be able to join later), zen archer.  The shaman's IRL kid will be joining, as well as someone who knows the paladin's player.  No full-arcane casters as of yet, and I hope that one of the two ladies who will be joining will fill that gap.  It looks like there will be a good balance between melee and ranged classes, and nearly everyone will have some casting ability, so I suspect when all gets figured out with buffing and such, I might have to scale up some encounters.

In other news, the game I'm a player in has the rogue as the official butt-monkey.  About two weeks ago, she gets killed immediately by a hostile wish.  This week, it gets weirder.  We have to neutralise a bloat mage (basically Baron Harkonnen with lots of magic), in a popular eating establishment, hopefully without causing casualties.  My witch does *not* like the plan, which involves creating, then making sure that he is dosed by the rogue with an alchemical roofie, then try and lead him "somewhere private", before we either kill him or knock him out.  Not only is she grossed out at the idea of having to flirt with something so loathesome, but because of his power, without wearing any magic gear that'd trip detection.  To her, she'd rather strip nude but with all of the magical protections in place.

 Well, things started out pretty well, as the rogue disguised herself as a waitress, but *she* was the one taken to a semi-private dining area to be leched on by his floating fatness.  It turns out, though, that once the sleeping poison had taken effect, a devil possessing the mage left, and he was more or less normal but heavily drugged.  We managed to get him out back, where the actual mage recognised my character, and begged for salvation.  We're able to teleport him to relative safety, but when doing a head count amongst the group, notice that the rogue is missing, as the mage tells his story.  I send my imp to get the priests, while he plane shifts us to fight the devil, presumably in hell.  We end up on the ethereal in the big bad's bedroom instead.

We at least took time to buff, and found the rogue in the buff, getting the slave Leia treatment from the devil that had firmly mind-controlled her.  Her razor whip was nearby, and she and the devil attack the party immediately.  The devil wants to mind-control us all, but most of us have strong will saves, and even the remaining one who doesn't has a high resistance to mind-controlling effects between his intelligent ax and a past encounter with an artifact.  We resist the mind-control attempts by the big nasty.  The rogue is smart enough to not attack the necromancer or her minion, who would have no qualms killing her outright to get her out of the way, but not smart enough to sneak attack me instead of the monk after my attempt to sleep her and the devil failed.  I didn't pull any punches thrge next round, where I just blinded her for 5 min, and took her out of the fight entirely (can't sneak attack when you can't see).  Some barbed devils popped in, but we mostly ignored them (except for healing through the damage they caused and me crowd-controlling).  The main baddie changed tactics and grappled a couple of people to drain the life after them, especially after the gunslinger hit it with my holy sword and pissed it off.  so, the good cleric banishes one devil, I knock another out, and the other two are hit with a retribution hex which bypasses all damage resistance and does half the damage they do right back to them.  I'm almost disappointed that despite crowd-controlling and hexing, that I wasn't directly targeted by anything.  I'd *think* that  this dude would have considered the elf chick who isn't holding a weapon or wearing any armour as a threat, but I guess not.  The monk got pretty hard, and needed to get a "heal" spell from the cleric to avoid dying, but basically by the point where the bastard went back into the mage Harkonnen, the fight was entirely under control.

Now we just need to find a way to get to the mage again, and hopefully not kill him in getting the devil out.

[hedgie]

Crap.  I forgot that the one player's daughter is a minor, and technically isn't allowed into the venue where I'll be running, at least at night.  She's really enthusiastic and wants to play a witch (which is a really fun class).  Thankfully, there are a couple of options to include her.

Edit: The larva is allowed in the bar if we need to play there, but we're most likely going to game at the mum's house, where it'll be more quiet and not disrupt other people by taking over the entire upstairs, as well as allowing me to set mood music if needed/wanted.  And those nights, I'll be able to get 2 for 1 pizzas from a place that has good stuff, so that ought to keep the group well-fed.

[Gyrre]

Criminy! That's quite the situation to find one's character in. I'm guessing you all managed to break the mind control. Good luck fighting that devil!

BTW, I had settled on 'Jadetwister, but my DM had assigned Lapispinner (just as cool) "for regional purposes", whatever that means. And, he sent me this YouTube link and told me that's roughly what Velsignar hear's when he uses Speak with Animals to talk to whatever is inside the egg. Whatever it is, it's from the Underdark and not an Aboleth. I'm wondering if it's Mothra with the serial number filed off or something else.

EDIT: fair warning, the music does contain segments with high-pitched theramin parts.

[hedgie]

that sounds, well, rather strange.  We didn't really break the mind-control so much as make the devil run off and cancel it.  The blinding was what took her out of the fight entirely.  I'm pretty sure that we'll be better equipped to fight the devil when we have better spells prepared for that ordeal.  Both other casters and I had prepared our spell lists for fighting a human mage, not a fiend from hell, so we were somewhat at a disadvantage.  The only reason that I was personally so successful was because I had the blinding spell prepped to keep him from targeting, and my witch hexes (which are always ready).

Edit:
Then again, healing and crowd-control are what my character does most often in fights. 

WRT the game I'm starting, I didn't count, and let too many people in.  I kinda hope that 1-2 people will be stuck adulting on any given session (I plan on giving collective XP, even to those who aren't there).  Still, it seems as though we have a good mix, but interestingly enough, all but 1 are likely to roll some sort of person with spells.

[hedgie]

So, the first session will be on Tuesday, and I'm mostly prepped and ready to go.  I figure that I'll have the ship that the players on will be attacked by pirates, to give the 6 newbies (out of 8 in the group) a taste of mass-combat where there are npcs who would be able to help out, as well as dealing with saving throws from grapeshot, and maybe sleep poisons.  Once the PCs make landfall, I plan on running a short mystery, to get them acquainted with their non-combat skills and abilities.

After that, I'm probably going to take a vote as to what direction things will go, whether to have a single over-arching plot, or various plotlines as things advance.  Regardless, I'm not going to introduce any long plots until the characters are 4th or 5th level, so that they can just explore the world and develop their characters a bit.

[Gyrre]

I think I'll have to borrow that sort of start for a campaign. Though. i think the max group size I could manage would be 4 or 5.

We ended up in the next town I asked a druid/naturalist what the egg was, no idea. So I asked a pissy blue bird[1] at a druid's shop and it identified the egg as being a caterpillar egg. So it very well could be Mothra with the serial number filed off. We also met a surly artificer with a sketchy hobgoblin guard[2]. I managed to trade my sacrificial dagger Book of Training Wolves and Eagles for a green dragon scale ring, though.

At the tavern, we met a kenku and half-elf totally-not-smugglers who informed us of a band of 200 orcs mounting in the east. I successfully yanked an arrow out of the kenku. He wasn't happy about it, but he's better now.

Then we spent far too long farting around with a weird gazebo. Turns out it's linked to the Elemental Plane of Fire, and we got  some interesting magic items. Including a Rock of Procrastination. It literally makes people procrastinate. Our noble has it now.

[1]It didn't like that I was a bluish gray in color with green freckles
[2] I saw him carve some theives cant into the side of the wall and it disappeared. Don't know what it meant, just that it's bad.

EDIT:removing redundacy

[Pilchard123]

But was it a Dread Gazebo?

[Gyrre]

But was it a Dread Gazebo?

Sadly, it wasn't a mimic (that we know of). Though, it did seem to have some setience to it. The gazebo was built by a crazy architect named Ferrick(sp?) the Mad. We also suspect it might link to the Abyss, but nobody in the party speaks Abyssal. Oddly enough, it's our Drow cleric of Lathandar[1] who speaks Ignian.

[1]He was created before The Mighty Nein met the queen of Xhorhas(sp?). He's actually based on Solair from Dark Souls.

[hedgie]

At least it wasn't designed by Bloody Stupid Johnson.

[hedgie]

So, in working on the pirate battle, I found a potential future plot-hook that the PCs may want to pick up, especially since we do have a halfling PC.  In the background info-drop, I mentioned that pirate/slaver kingdoms have been encroaching upon the mainland, and have taken to raiding and encroaching upon halfling lands, taking many as slaves and creating a bit of a refugee crisis.  The human empire nearby isn't yet acting because thus far it doesn't affect them, and that pirates/slavers aren't the targets of their Inquisition.  Some go to one country that is primarily agrarian, but as that place has a long coastline on the seas where the pirates play, others are making the long journey to elven lands, where they're basically invited.[1]  So, the pirate ship is full of halfling slaves doing grunt work, and will use goblin slaves as an expendable boarding party.  Obviously, the goblins will have terrible morale, and will probably switch sides if it looks like the PCs' group has a chance of winning.  The best ending to this scenario is that the "good guys" take the pirate ship, and free the enslaved halflings (the not so good ending is just driving the pirates off).

I'm not too worried about the PCs doing something horrible here,[2] especially with higher level NPCs around running the ship.  The primary moral dilemma that they can influence (and it'll take some persuasion) is what to do with the goblins, such as kill them immediately, take them in for trial, or put them on a boat with some provisions and send them on their merry way.  Unlike the humans running the pirate ship, the gobbos were forced into it, and will likely enough help the party, and that may earn them their lives.  The freed halflings will want them dead, since the goblins, when kicked, would then do it to them, and were responsible for much of the abuse.  The captain is amenable to the idea of letting them go[4] at a higher DC, or imprisoning them (with the PCs keeping watch) at a lower DC, if the party argues it.  This is mostly for me to figure out how each PC will react to the situation, and even if the goblins are summarily executed, it'll be by kosher even by the paladin's rules.

If the pirates get away, they will most certainly be back as baddies, and I'm also going to keep the captain and first mate of the ship the PCs are on if they don't get killed.  The captain is a CG swashbuckler, who goes for every Flynn moment he can get.  The first mate is love-struck, not with the captain or any person, but with the idea of being one herself, and will be grateful if she gets to take the pirate ship as her own.

[1] Well, the high elves anyway, since the grasslands are in their border region, and they don't see the small folks as a threat.  The shadow elves are just a little too spooky and militant for their empire to be the first choice.
[2] Even the token evil teammate, a shadow-elf[3] inquisitor isn't likely to cause a problem here
[3] I never liked drow since they're a race of OP murder-hobos.  My "bad elves" are organised, and only evil due to their methods.  Their aims are actually fairly lofty, but they will avoid, gut you or disable you (whatever is easiest) if you get in their way.
[4]

[hedgie]

That went about as well as it could have given that I'm about 20 years out of practice running a game, and I had a cat-herd full of new players.  The scripted combat went really well, and the PCs, while killing a few goblins in combat unwittingly got them on their side as they primarily targeted the overseers, and apparently, half the party could speak goblin which left the gobbos in a debate amongst themselves about what to do (especially when the pirate captain was charmed, which added confusion to their whole ship).  With the PCs' rolls, and some failed saves by the NPCs, the goblins ended up switching sides (one player's larva who is also a player gave a good speech and rolled high on diplomacy), figuring that they could get away from their captors.

Unfortunately, the halflings enslaved on the pirate vessel had other ideas, but the party (even the halfling) ended up deciding that it'd be fair to let them go, although WITHOUT the human slavers that they requested as provisions.  Those will be turned over for trial.  Even though the session focused on combat, the real thing was what would happen after, with the morality play.  The pally was given two acceptable choices, one more lawful, one more good, and chose good.[1]  The halfling ended up being okay with letting the goblins who abused her people go,  and taking the actual slavers in for trial.  Everyone did amazing, especially since only one person had played Pathfinder before, and everyone was confused about the dice and their abilities, but when it came to their characters and their interactions, everything went perfectly.  Which was brilliant, since it has been too long since I've herded cats, and this clowder could figure out how to make decisions as a group that were at least tolerable to all.


[1] Well, *more* good.  He would have been justified helping the captain summarily execute the pirates, and even the goblins.  He chose to take them to port to face trial.

[Gyrre]

Well, guess who'se party had to go to the Faye Wild andeal with riddles and randomly changing seasons BS.

We also fought some weird faye "dog" things that looked sort of like they had a man's face. We had to go looking for the only other blood hunter in the area's nephew. The little idiot [1] wanted to make himself a blood hunter and ran off to get the rest of the materials he needed. We tracked him down to some Weaver ruins and found a portal to the Faye Wilds. Despite having 150ft darkvision (super from deep gnome +30ft from Umbral Sight), 'Welber'[2] mistook the four of them for raccoons at first and only sort of managed to pacify them. Our drow cleric of Lathandar was agitating them. After killing the lot of them with surprising ease, we determined that the kid had gone through the portal.

Once there, we found ourselves in a rimg of trees, each numbered and having a door. Naturally, the rope we had tied to a rock came through the portal along with said rock. Attempts to chuck the rock out of the portal resulted in the rock fwashing back into the clearing from the opposite side. In the middle of the clearing was a stone plinth with a riddle along with an old well. When we looked in the well, a hidden voice said "Now now. No entry without saying the magic word." Saying 'please' result in a Bigby's hand being summoned and attacking the three characters that said it.  One of figured out that the answer to the riddle was 'hand' (I'll add them later), and one of the doors opened. I don't recall any of us going down the well, but one of our new party members[3] fired his bow to test the wrap around. It fwashed around 3 tomes before we heard it strike a little purple guy who proceeded to gasp "Why.....?" before falling out of the tree he was hiding in.[4] Anyways we solved the next three or so riddles easily enough [5] before getting the hard one.

There were signs of struggle and strands of spider silk with blood on them going up to the canopy. While everyone debated on an answer, 'Welber' decided screw it and wrote his on the plinth with blood so he could do two at once. 'Pain' and 'blood' were both wrong, so he got attacked by a floor-cloaker-thing [derp]. He evaded the first two attacks but got swallowed in the third round. Thankfully we managed to kill it and correctly answer the riddle, but not before two more wrong answers. Still not sure what bearing those wrong answers will have. But, we found the kid in the next room wrapped up in spider silk. "What do mean the answer was 'floor'!? How's anyone supposed to get that right???"[6] we also looted some other corpses in spider silk to close out the session, but I forgot what loot we got.

[1 high Int, low Wis
[2]] his real name is Velsignar
[3] kobold arcane archer
[4] We forgot to see if he was dead or not. Crap.
[5] and I got a 'leather vest that feels warm' when getting a frosted branch for one
[6] our current DM acknowledging that it was a hard riddle

[Gyrre]

For my backup character, I  made a storm sorcerer Tortle named Jiao-long.  The the totally-not-Optimus-Primal warforged druid probably wouldn't fit into this campaign as well as I'd hoped.

Originally I wanted to go with the urchin background, but now I'm not so sure. I've been recently been looking at Hermit, Inheritor, and Archaeologist. IDK, playing high Wis - low Int is a bit weird for me. I usually go for high in both or at least middling high for one and high for the other. I've got 3 possible voices worked out, each has it's own personality quirks thanks to enclothed cognition.

If I went with the urchin background, it'd pretty much have to be the heavy Brooklyn accent[1] — which likely says something about my own presuppositions.

Anyways, if it helps any, he's got some mild draconic features thanks to a bronze dragon grandparent/great grandparent. His tail is longer, he's got six horns[2], nubby chin spikes, and a pair of foot-ish long or so vestigial wings that stick out of his shell like two long spindly fingers. I'm not sure is any of that helps with imagining what sort of background he might have or how he might sound.


[1] The other two are a Ringo Star impression, and a pretty good imitation of the Cantonese accent several of my cafeteria coworkers in college had.
[2] the zygomatic and mandibular horns fuse into a single pair.


EDIT: I've been poking around, and it turns out that Tortle sorcerer is one of thos rarer race-class combos. The high number of monks and druids didn't surprise me, though.

EDIT2: I've got a rough sketch done of Jiao-Long. Ignoring all previous statements about accents, what would you guess this guy would sound like?

[hedgie]

So, session 2 went well as could be with only half the player base able to make it.[1]  I had to toss the party a red herring that a few halflings were being re-enslaved by an 8' tall half-ogre who runs a local inn and tavern[2], but it was enough to get the plot going.  I had written so many NPCs that when the party split, I let them play some of them to keep everyone involved, and just due to some amazeballs rolls, they managed to find who is responsible for the arson of the half-ogre's stables and a plethora of other crimes.  At first, when the stable manager (a secret druid) wouldn't talk to the elves in the party, and blamed them for the fire, they started gunning for the fanservice girl[3] playing at the bar, and was ramping up paranoia all night until they managed to crack the who, but with no way to prove it yet.  I threw in one combat, just so that I could toss them some XP at the end of an incomplete session, and the simple farmer they saved gave them an interesting item.  Everything is primed for next session, and people had a blast despite most of the players being exhausted from work || finals.

[1] Seriously, if people know of some rituals to make things right, one player is incommunicado, and living in a major fire zone.  The lure of game and awesome food was not enough.
[2]  nah, they're just the newest employees of someone scary enough to protect them and pay them above the prevailing wage
[3] her costume is literally held on by alchemical/magical adhesive

Edit: Player is safe and sound, and I'm glad that even the exhausted players that made it had a great time.  We ate until we were all bloat mages, and even after giving away food to their housemates and others, I'll be fed for the next week.  It was also perfect timing that we broke when we did, since the PCs were getting close to other combat encounters, and after the paladin nearly died against the boar, even the nerfed NPC baddies seemed a bit much.  Thankfully, this group is pretty good at working efficiently and knowing which plot threads they want to take.  Well, all bits of the same plot really, but it's not railroading if they jump on the train and enjoy the ride.

[Gyrre]

Dang! Sounds like a heck of an RP session.


I've been asking around about possible accents for Jiao-Long based on his appearance, and I've gotten a couple of answers for Slavic, a couple for Spanish, one for "gravelly Cockney", a western Baltic, and one for Russian. I'd like to throw in Nuatl just for the hell of it.

Any thoughts on what he might sound like?

Part of his backstory is that he got carried off by a nasty wind storm when he was little and deposited in the city where he grew up an urchin taised by another urchin a few years older than him.

[hedgie]

Cockney is overdone, I'd probably do Scouse (although it'd take a serious Red Dwarf binge for me to get there).  And the RP was great, and I'm glad that I don't have to do prep work for at least the next session.  Outside of a TPK, nothing could go too wrong.  I'm also glad that I have a group large enough that missing four players didn't force me to cancel (especially after spending my last $50 on ingredients for food and a day cooking).

[Gyrre]

Jiao-Long is the guy in the sketch 4 posts up.
Scouse, correct me if I'm wrong, would be something Beatles-y, right?

EDIT: regardless of accent/dialect, he's definitely on the lower register being that he's 5'10" (170 cm). Like mid-low barritone to basso profundo (which I sadly can't do)[1].

[1] I'm a barritone, but I can do low alto to middle bass.

[hedgie]

Beatles, or Lister from Red Dwarf

[Castlerook]

Scouse accent can be difficult to do properly and without driving people cracked.

Just to give you an idea of what it can sound like. Also it tends to be a half octave higher than what you would normally expect.

Honestly, I would suggest the accent that's easiest on your throat and the one you can stay in character with.

[Gyrre]

Okay, so it turns out that the region he grew up in is based on eastern western Russia, Ukraine, and that general area. The area we're headed to is based on the US east coast. Glad to finally have that clarified this past weekend. In order to better maintain his Ukraian/Lithuanian accent (still need to decide), I've changed his name to 'Kruat'[1]. Not sure about having him refer to himself in the third person or not. More experimentation needed.

Anyways. Welsignar is still alive for the time being, and barely just. The one individual in our party with heavy armor[2] alerted a patrol of 11 kobold to our approach through the area. Thankfully, we had the rest of the caravan[3] hide while we scouted ahead. They got a surprise round on us, but Welsignar was the only one to get hit[4]. I decided to have him go the diplomatic approach and actually got 2 nat20s back to back!

Knowing that the area was under the control of an ancient copper dragon and an "erstaz" dragon[5], he told a terrible joke in draconic. "What do you call a three-eyed sled dog?" Performance check, nat20. Persuation check, nat20. I have 10 charisma. To which the kobold charging towards me in the green barrel[6] responded, "I don't know how, but they're with the dragon. Let them pass." Then we clarified that it was just our small group as the "erstaz" dragon wouldn't want 70-odd people coming to bother them at once.

Being that we thought the erstaz dragon was a young red dragon with some health problems, we decided to kill it. Unfortunately, I was 5 minutes late so I missed that group decision. Anyways, we found the erstaz dragon in a smaller cave and heard muffled cursing as it paced back and forth. New guy opted to shoot the dragon, triggering initiative. Confused at what was happening, I had Welsignar shout "This wasn't part of the plan!" In draconic before repeating it in Common, of course[7]. Once our bloodhunter explained what was going on OoC, Welsignar joined the frey. Bad jokes didn't work this time and he got scorched.

We beat it in three or 4 rounds (was super tired) and our spore druid's Moonbeam outright killed at least half of the kobolds inside of the dragon construct. 6 were named and reduced to 0. We tied the 6 that were bleeding out up, stabilized them, and I gave a goodberry to each whilst we did some looting. The DM forgot to have them wake up, so we got to loot uninterrupted. I found a two-faced coin with a grinning kobold face on each side[8] and 3 50gp diamonds which I turned over to our cleric. The kobold-powered ersatz dragon had two permanent Tensor's floating disks in it (made from metal) and a flying broom that's seen better days. I forget what all else we stole "found" apart from some metal and wood working tools.
For God-only knows what reason, we decided to take the dragon construct with us to the rest of the caravan. But in order to do so, we needed to do some minor repairs. Luckily/unluckily, we found the prototype covering to replace the one we burned a huge hole in. It was procured from Mildly Cursed Eddie's Mildly Cursed Emporium. We ignored the "ABSOLUTELY DO NOT USE! CURSED!!!" sign that was on the chest, deciphered the instructions that were in Orcish[9], and successfully attached the outer covering. The one that was "mildly cursed" and the wrong friggin color; a muddy black.
Our druid then proceeds to climb in to try to pilot the thing and promptly fails his save to avoid being cursed. He know thinks he was a grand dragon in a past life and that he needs to "become the half dragon he was always meant to be." After a round of facepalms and reconoitoring with the caravan, the PC party brome into 2 groups (i know, I know); trap disabling and DISTRACTION FORCE! Being that we opted to go the route furthest from the compoumd (laden with traps) and convinced a chunk of the kobolds we were with the dragon, Icm not entirely certain the distraction force was necessary, but that's where we left off.

[1]Yay for fantasy race name generators. "Crew-ought"
[2] one of the new guys. I forget what he's playing.
[3] 75-ish people looking to resettle some far-flung run-down town. They're all "level zero" characters.
[4] 3 arrows. Easy enough to remove. The DM rolled crap on their attacks against the 5 of us.
[5] turns out our DM has trouble saying "ersatz".
[6] Their tank. He had a flap to stick out his small crossbow, too.
[7] He did spend two years living with kobolds and exclusively speaking Draconic before going topside after all.
[8] Still need to get that identified
[9] apparently things from this store always come with instructions in a language that nobody in the party can read (barring eyes of the rune keeper).


EDIT: herp-derp. Wrong side of Russia and typos.

[hedgie]

The only witnesses to the arson are horses and barn cats, so the party gets it into their heads to grab one of the feral moggies and use it to sniff out the elf, or elves responsible.  They knew that the mute half-ogre was good with animals, but were able to get it out of him that he could actually talk to them (he's a druid).  First, they go to Ms. Fanservice who is performing a magically-enhanced musical act at the inn in which they are staying.  She was clean, and I gave enough of her backstory that she'll probably show up again in the future.  So they trekked over to the inn/tavern where they knew the owner was involved, and had the cat sniff the elves that worked there.  The cat hissed and struggled, and the half-ogre said that these were the elves.  It wasn't enough for court, but they did feel justified in executing the warrant that they had to search any business in town, found the secret room, and incriminating map.  So the next step, of course, is going to the watch, who'll lend them a couple of men to search the tunnels.  Of course, if they go in the tavern way, they'll soon discover that it's heavily booby-trapped, and they have no rogue.

[Gyrre]

The only witnesses to the arson are horses and barn cats, so the party gets it into their heads to grab one of the feral moggies and use it to sniff out the elf, or elves responsible.  They knew that the mute half-ogre was good with animals, but were able to get it out of him that he could actually talk to them (he's a druid).  First, they go to Ms. Fanservice who is performing a magically-enhanced musical act at the inn in which they are staying.  She was clean, and I gave enough of her backstory that she'll probably show up again in the future.  So they trekked over to the inn/tavern where they knew the owner was involved, and had the cat sniff the elves that worked there.  The cat hissed and struggled, and the half-ogre said that these were the elves.  It wasn't enough for court, but they did feel justified in executing the warrant that they had to search any business in town, found the secret room, and incriminating map.  So the next step, of course, is going to the watch, who'll lend them a couple of men to search the tunnels.  Of course, if they go in the tavern way, they'll soon discover that it's heavily booby-trapped, and they have no rogue.

"Triggering the trap still counts as finding it."

[hedgie]

Exactly.  They've already learnt that while combat isn't really the focus of my game, at least *someone* should have any valuable skill, since I do have a few skill-monkeys in the group.  I think that most have pretty high perception, which'll help, and the group has been rocking their diplomacy rolls (with good RP as well, so I've been giving situational bonuses). 

This last part is going to be their first actual dungeon-crawl, though.  For the human and the halfling's sake, I hope they remember to bring a light source.

[Gyrre]

I've got updates. Oh, do I ever have updates. This'll have to be two posts.

First things first, I made a new dice. My original goal was to just make something collapsible. But...it wound up being a transformer of sorts. I also made a collapsible dice tray (dice pen?) thing.
Storage/star fighter mode:

Dice tower mode with dice tray/pen:


I call it the DTV-3 'The Ricochet'. Tower mode has a few kinks to work out, but that should be easy enough assuming I can find a 2x4 flat plate to put at the bottom of the tower. The bushing wasn't enough to prevent cocking.

[hedgie]

That's pretty cool.  My players are just wrapping up their first adventure, and I bumped everyone to level two.  I am afraid, though, of unravelling the universe.  Three of the players have intense manic energy, and thus far, only two have been in the game at the same time.[1]  But some time soon, all three will be in one room.

[1] Just two were enough to cause the party to go and fight the epic Battle of the Feral Cat.

[Gyrre]

Speaking of destroying things, you know that one 'we screwed up bad' story nearly every party/gaming group has? We had that two weeks ago when my Saturday group finally managed to temporarily break the hiatus.

After recapping that we had ended up beneath the castle of a local lord that had been acting quite suspiciously, and that we had blown up the prison area along with a sizeable chunk of the castle and some illithids we found working down there[1]. We managed to sneak into a secret sub-basement and tunnel network. While sneak around invisible, our rogue-bard (Aphellus) found what was basically an illithid war room. She came back and gave us the run down, and we came u with a plan. Aphellus managed to rig the warroom door to funnel them through one at a time.

One of them got a lucky shot on our goblin assassin NPC, Droop[2]. Droop hadn't been healed since the last bit of combat, so when his goblin hit points ran out, he reverted to his draconic form. His 30ft wide, platinum scaled draconic form. Found one of the missing gods.
The rest of the illithids were crushed to death and we barely survived because their corpses were cushioning us. Bahamut asked us to accept the Modify Memory spell because it was going to happen willing or not. We all figured this was probably something important[3]

After that, we found one of the holding areas for humans. All the ones we saw were in a stupor and had suspicious piles of bones in the corner much akin to the ones we found after killing the ooblex. With one exception. The townie was someone our fighter's sister recognized and begged for us to let him out. But, being naturally suspicious of the whole thing, our cleric cast Zone of Truth. And that's when the intellct devourer hopped off of his former body. We got what information we could from him, but he didn't want to be very helpful, so we left him in his glass cage. In the same room, we also found one of their computer subsystems.

Bergell (artificer) was the omly one with any idea how to work it[4], and he found the rest of the holding cells we watched as blue dots became purple dots and purple dots became red dots. A good chunk of the town was down here, and a good chunk of them were humanm/humanoid anymore. Since we couldn't do much from this console, Bergell located the main control console.  Which just so happened to have a weird symbol that only Bergell and Grim[5] recognized next to it. Neither of us rolled nat 20s, so we just knew 'this is very very bad and dangerous' and that it was in the wrong place[6]. Bergell also found a pre-calamity ship, which he determined could cause an explosion big enough to clear out this tunnel system.

Our plan was to remotely set the ship to overload, use Sending to warn the head priest at the temple of Bahamut to clear out, and book it from the tunnels. We managed to make our way there with little trouble, but Bergell and our bardificer were going to have to sneak across the room to the main control console. They just had to sneak past the Elder Brain in the center of the room. Three checks for each, Bergell blew his last check plugging his tablet into the console and had to quickly take control of it to keep the Elder Brain in contained by a blast door. He fought it from coming back up three times as he hacked the ship and disabled one of its cannons. We were going to have to blow it from the ship manually.

We made our way to the ship. Most of us made it past the two functional arcane cannons, but we lost our fighter along the way [7]. Once on the ship, Bergell accessed the computer and barely missed locking the blast doors on an older more powerful ithillid. Low on spells, health, and healing potions, we barely managed to kill it. And then we ran.

We had to make several checks (7?) to escape from the underground. We lost our bardificer along the way, but the rest of us remaining made it out of the tunnel exiting next to the train station. We watched as the city collapsed and burned. Out of spells, and half of us conscious. The ithillid spawning base destroyed and the city with it.

And that was where the session ended. I'm admittedly a tad fuzzy on some of the details since that session was just over 3 weeks ago, and I've been pecking away at this recounting for a week now. So, sorry if any of this doesn't make any sense.

[1]We had used all of the TNT barrels our artificer had made along with liberal use of Fireball and Shatter.
[2] It might have been mindblast? Either way, the player controlling "Droop" rolled a total of bad for his con save and so did the DM reluctant to reveal this twist early on.
[3] we had 3 high imsight checks, but no nat 20s so no idea as to exactly why, just that it was important.
[4] pre-calamity tech
[5] my PC
[6] According to what Bergell knew, what that symbol meant, it was usually on a Pre-Calamity ship.
[7] Storr sacrificed himself to save his sister, who is now that players PC.

[hedgie]

I was frightfully unprepared for running last week, and basically, we did food and levelling.  Two players were gone, and I really wanted the full group for the next planned adventure[1], since due to the location outside of the city and the dimensional stuff going on, it'd be hard to bring them in.  So I came in with some rough guidelines for a city adventure, involving "Piss Harry" from the Discworld series, and his people being on a garbage strike due to a wererat problem. I think that I'll actually run with this next session, since it helps flesh out the world a bit more, and can introduce not only Harry as a power-player and potential ally, but get the PCs used to creatures with damage reduction[2] and introduce two new antagonistic forces.  One will be the wererats, the other will be a rat king composed of cranium rats who resents that these wererats won't obey them, and is flat-out beyond the PCs' power to deal with.  They can be a future Big Bad, but in the short term, may be negotiated with, since Harry and the rat king have a mutual enemy.

[1] The first one really to introduce the main plot
[2] They have the money for silver weapons, especially after they collect the bounty on the pirates, have a magic weapon, will have to learn to retreat sometimes, etc.

[Gyrre]

Made some spells for the Hell of it. I'll post the Sunday campaign updates in one big post next week.

Vapor Wave - lvl 1 Illusion
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Self (15-foot cone)
Components: V, S
Duration: 1 minute, concentration

A burst of light and distorted music bursts from your hands. Each creature in a 15-foot cone must make a Wisdom saving throw. A creature takes 1d6 psychic damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one. While in the cone a creature must make an additional Wisdom saving throw, taking an additional 1d6 damage.

Creatures who fail their saving throw will have disadvantage on all attacks and Perception checks. Targets will see the world in bright pastel colors, perceive all other creatures as white marble statues, all floors and ceilings as polished white marble tiles, all non-decorated vertical surfaces as having a grid-like pattern. Targets will also hear distorted versions of popular songs from a bygone era.

At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 2nd level or higher, the damage increases by 1d6 for each slot level above 1st.

Spell Lists. Bard, Sorcerer, Wizard

An explanation of the above spell >

(click to show/hide)

Shadow-Bolt

Evocation cantrip

Casting Time: 1 action
Range: 60 feet
Components: V, S
Duration: Instantaneous

You hurl a blister of shadow at a creature or object within range. Make a ranged spell attack against the target. On a hit, the target takes 1d10 necrotic damage, and the target is Blinded until the start of your next turn.

At Higher Levels. This spell’s damage increases by 1d8 when you reach 5th level (2d10), 11th level (3d10), and 17th level (4d10).

Spell Lists. Artificer, Sorcerer, Wizard


EDIT: I'm also still tweaking a spell based after the Desolate Dive ability from  Hollow Knight. It's kind of like a reverse Thunderwave?
EDIT 2: Whoops! Forgot to drop Shadow-bolt to a d8.

[hedgie]

The party made it to the Big City, and are meeting with folks from the Watch (all poorly-disguised Discworld expies) to hand over the captured pirates for trial.  Of course, the first district that they can reach in the city is the slums, which is undergoing a sanitation strike, due to having had workers killed or go missing, and not wanting to risk any more lives.  Refuse and shit are piling up, and conditions there are worse than usual.  Thankfully, the work stoppage is confined to that one part of the city, as the wererats responsible figure that it's easier to muscle in to a territory where no one important will care enough to deal with the disruption caused by the process,  and they can establish a proper foothold.  To this end, the wererats were killing workers in the sewers, and hiring thugs to beat , scare off, or kill workers in the streets.  In a few days, when conditions in the slums get close to a riot, that's when they'll now have these same thugs working as scabs. 

So there's the background.  Now, half the party wants to investigate this, knowing that there's money to be made in solving the problem.  The other half decided to go shopping, and they did not make plans to join back up.  Now, if the PCs can't come up with a reasonable way (and they have the means) of finding the other group, there is a "werewolf ex machina" in the form of the Angua expy, and she will want them to be able to collect their reward in a couple of days. 

Normally, the cranium rats would have no problem handling the wererats themselves, and could easily crush them with their mental powers.  However, they would lose enough of their number in the ensuing fight that they would be diminished, and other "kingdoms" of cranium rats would sense weakness and move in and assimilate what remains of *that* hive-mind.  So for now, they're biding their time, and will drop clues to the PCs that encountered a swarm when trying to find lodging.  I figure, half of next session will just involve getting the group back together and getting them to coordinate and share info.  Now, if the group stays split, they can each make individual progress, it's just going to be a PITA for me.

[Gyrre]

Poorly disguised or not, Discworld is a great series to nab expys from.

Well, I lost the post I'd been trying to work at[1], so I'll just condense things from 3 sessions.

 Made it out of the Laughing Hills with 7 NPC casualties[2]. Picked up two kobolds, an artificer and a chef. Found a hidden undercroft containing a reasonable wraith. He and his now skeletal platoon were stowed here as a backup that never triggered during some old war. They're still loyal to Luxheim and agreed to meet us there. The fight with the skeletal wyvern messed up Welsignar [3]. Worstening weather lead the carvan to shelter from another storm. My eldritch knight Bug [4] was introduced and we fought a fossilized catoblepas and a dust beholder[5] and successfully harvested 5 flail snails' shells. We passed some important underwater ruins guarded by turbine golems. We made it to the town where the cultists jumped Bug. He was still wearing the ceremonial helmet[6] the cultists had put on him because he hadn't thought to take it off. Upon recovering a few memories, he deliberate kept it on to unsettle the non-cult townsfolk for not doing anything about the cult. Saved a soldier from being nabbed by the cult as a sacrifice by being "enticed" away. Killed 6 cultists in two fights, and cut off the wereboar's head. Some of our NPCs managed to make it to level 1[7]. Bug and a random twnie ate the kobold chef's golden curry. Bug made his wis save, townie did not [8]. Managed to make it to Luxheim w/o any further complications.

Once we got to Luxheim we found that the people living their were some of the monstrous races along with some humans, half-elves, and gnomes or halflings (need to check notes) in an encampment outside of the city's main wall because the place has plenty of dangers within them. Characters had 3 weeks of down time with the 2nd and 3rd being interrupted. Bug mapped out as much of the city as he safely could, making note of buildings and monster sightings. A beholder shouting about justice whilst vaporizing some poor kobold in the temple of Tyr, and strange laughter from The Billowing Dress (burlesque house) were the only two I can remember off-hand.  He heard "something that sounded green" when he trained to map the sewers, so he vamoosed. At some point during this, Moss[9] was accompanying him in a subterranean section and they found the city's mine shift. Moss found a weird green 18inch long crystal that faintly glowed and had air bubbles trapped w/i. Both of them failed to identify it.  Welsignar went out and identified the other monsters, mostly monstrosities at several important buildings. The Abbey of Scrolls, however, has Yuggaloths.The lvl 1s found out what "sounded green" in the sewers. The PCs successfully saved the brigand and the bloodhunter from the slimes, and we all booked it before the froghemoth and toad men could get past the wall of fire. We also found the cities mine entrance.

Met the coastal wizard[10] the lvl 1s found as they were scouting the area around the city. Got some stuff identified and made Con saves. Roland failed his and ended up with a contact high. Turns out Bug's "weird hat" is a drunkards hat and was in fact not telling him where important things/people were, but instead indicated the nearest source of booze. He's also got Bracers of Mutual Destruction[11] and the common sense to not use enchanted weapons or armor w/o knowing what it is first[12]. The wizard agreed to work with the town if we paid him in gold or gems along with silverleaf[13]. Once the wizard and Roland started stoner talking, Bug left to have a sign conversation with wizard's crab.

The dwarf fighter managed to contact some dwarves from the Hematite Hills. They'd had been speculating on gold in the area anyways, so we ended up doubling the cities population. Thankfully our craftsmen had managed to get the makeshift walls repaired by the time they showed up so the place didn't look too shabby. Garry (kobold chef) managed to get in touch with the local kobolds who managed to get him enough supplies to start a tavern before the dwarves showed up. The dwarves arrived at the city in their [fantasy ironside steamboats]  on the wrong side of the city in the mysteriously frozen harbor. Realizing this, Moss got up on the highest point of the wall and held the mysterious crystal aloft to try to signal them with its refractive light. After rolling percentile die, the DM asked Moss's PC if Moss had any music stuck in his head. "I dunno, the Flash Gordan theme I guess? He is a dwarf." "Congratulations, you get their attention when that song starts blaring from the crystal like it's a boom box. You've found a wild magic crystal, by the way." And that's where the most recent session ended.

[1] Yay depression spike
[2]Very badly injured dwarf druid assumed to be an 8th. Player is playing the kobold chef
[3] He had Silksong (sonic moth caterpillar) with him and lost 2/3 of his health, so opted to take it easy for a bit and focus on Silksong.
[4] Amnesiac goblin archaeologist, was nearly killed by a cult of therianthropes and left 90% mute. Chalkboard dialogue is kind of fun.
[5]ancient undeads
[6] made of leather, boar tusks (top and bottom), and a pair of two-point buck deer antlers. It resembles the helmet of The Knight/"Ghost" from Hollow Knight.
[7] Bard: Rosie the awakened rose (single potted rose, not the maliscious bush), Cleric: forgot her name (drow's apprentice), Bloodhunter: Roland's apprentice who's name I also forgot, and a Ranger: that brigand we scared into joining us. I don't remember his name despite Welsignar being the one training him.
[8]The DM informed us we may have an awakened warlock on our hands in the future.
[9] dwarf fighter who joined the caravan. Real name is Bohala, but I'll remember his nickname.
[10] I'm quite aware of the pun.
[11] add lvl to the damage you roll once per day. Take double the damage you rolled.
[12] Requires Wis of 11 or higher. Bug has exactly 11 for wisdom.

[Gyrre]

Unholy crap! That took forever to type. I'll proofzread it later, I'm sure I'll need to make corrections.

If the other game coms off hiatus, I'll have to remember to use a different text color. We may be starting it back up on a once per month. We've also got a discrod that nobody's RP'd in yet (despite prompting).

[hedgie]

That last bit sounds familiar.  BTW, what text editor do you use? 

For writing game stuff, I've found that doing everything in LaTeX with either TexMaker on Mac, or Kile in vi-mode on Linux is the easiest way to keep the document properly broken down, and easy to read when printing.  It was just a little of a learning curve to pick the language back up.

[Gyrre]

That last bit sounds familiar.  BTW, what text editor do you use? 

For writing game stuff, I've found that doing everything in LaTeX with either TexMaker on Mac, or Kile in vi-mode on Linux is the easiest way to keep the document properly broken down, and easy to read when printing.  It was just a little of a learning curve to pick the language back up.

.....I don't know what those things are. I've just either been punching these into an open browser on my phone (why I lost the first 2 of these 3 sessions' summaries) or I type it up in Wordpad or Libre Office Text.

[hedgie]

Oh, I'm an idiot!  I thought that you were talking about what you used to write stuff that you used for game.

[Gyrre]

Oh, I'm an idiot!  I thought that you were talking about what you used to write stuff that you used for game.

No you're not. Don't worry about it. It's been a miserable couple of days weatherwise and my brain was half melted with these damned bump caps. Nearly had a heat stroke Tuesday.

Anyways, I don't suppose you have any recommendations as to the style of scale mail ("maille"?) a goblin archaeologist with a 17 strength would use? There's so many more styles and configurations than I thought. Jackets, mantles, whatever the style that's basically a breastplate is called. Pauldrons, no pauldrons, even one that's a gambeson(?) with only part of the torso covered in scale.

EDIT: I imagine the scales themselves would likely be black or dark grey leather. Partially because the Hollow Knight basis, and leather because goblin. I think. Need to go to sleep.
EDIT 3: changed color of lime green text

EDIT2: I'm guessing the programs you mentioned are recommended things for organizing DM stuff?

[hedgie]

Far from it.  More like what people in the sciences use to typeset their thesis.  I've just found that having to use a markup language in an editor that makes switching between sections and subsections a breeze makes my life a bit easier.

[hedgie]

The players have made it into the sewers, and encountered both the Rat King (and mongrelmen in their "faction"), as well as fought the CHUDs  used as shock troops by the wererats.  Meanwhile, above ground, the elderly orc who is Harry King's second in command is going through employees with military experience and who don't have loving families to form a militia, and just storm the sewers themselves, killing anything that gets in their way.  They became aware of this latest NPC action after having lunch with Mr. King at the poshest place in "The Tops"[1] I have determined that without PC intervention, this will succeed, albeit with a high casualty rate, and a lot of collateral damage.  Suffice it to say, the mongrelmen are pretty much innocents who have an unfortunate symbiotic relationship with the Rat King,[2] and even the CHUDs are being abused and exploited by the wererats who dominate them with a mixture of fear and awe, and on their own, too fractured to be a real threat.  The party as a whole plans on helping Harry's men after largely determining that the Rat King and mongrelmen aren't really bothering anyone, and will at least be able to direct the small army towards the wererats' forces, while they sneak into the keep and go for the head of the beast.  Of course, the Token Evil Teammate has other plans, may drag the paladin into it, and make even more of a mess of things than a rampaging orc-lead militia would do on its own.  Thing is, that she's an shadow elf Inquisitor.  Her entire raison d' etre is to rid the world of anything associated with the Rift,[4] as well as their influence.  Good and noble aims, but her evil isn't out of greed or malice, but in the sort of methods that the Inquisition is willing to use.  After the paladin used his slaydar on the Rat King, and got knocked on his arse by the power of the thing's aura, and her own detection methods had similar results, she knew that the party couldn't face the Rat King on its own, especially with most PCs having a fairly relaxed attitude towards a creepy extraplanar hive-mind that is fairly content to "Watch and Wait" for an indeterminate time, and unknown reason. 

The mongrelmen are caught up with it, because occasionally, it needs hands, and in return, provides safety and directs them towards vital resources.  Now, the Inquisition is officially over in this human-dominated country, ever since the shadow elf occupation ended a decade ago.  However, her people, like their more good, or at least neutrally-aligned human counterparts to the west, show little regard for things like "jurisdiction" and "national borders" when it comes to pursuit of their mission.  They're empires, dammit, so very few people that matter will say anything about it.  Now, she wants to call down the wrath of the Inquisition to cleanse the sewers of this evil influence.  Given that they're religious fanatics, and still *do* have frequent strike teams encountered in this country, they'll have no compunction to invading the underground where no one on the surface will raise a stink.  Given the resources at their disposal, it'll only take 2-3 days for a team to travel the couple hundred of miles and make quick work of things.  Problem is, that their idea of a holy cleansing will mean not only killing the rat king and as much of the swarm as they can, but also start killing mongrelmen in order to purge the evil influence entirely.  The wererats and CHUDs aren't even on the Inquisition's radar.  Now, if the paladin gets dragged along with this (and he's the most likely to support going after a Big Evil, he'll need an atonement when he finds out how many innocents will get killed along the way.  Unlike the orc-lead militia, the Inquisition will not negotiate with any group, nor show qualities such as "restraint" or "mercy.".  They'll be satisfied with getting rid of the wererats and scattering the CHUDs back into just being an annoyance, rather than a threat, which cannot be said for the elves.  Malhul (the orc) is also perfectly willing to negotiate a treaty between Harry King and the Rat King for mutual benefit, which is probably the most peaceful solution.  The wererats are power-hungry and impatient, and the sister is rapidly infecting as many drunken men who are looking for a date as possible.[5]  If the party really screws things up, pretty much all of the sewer dwellers will be wiped out, and business in the over city will return to normal, with very few people being any wiser as to what happened.  If the party succeeds, Harry will be grateful, and provide a powerful patron in the City, Malhul will be grateful (and generous) at the prospect of losing far fewer men, as well as the chance to make work underground far safer. 

Sad thing is that if the Inquisition does go down there, even with the party helping Harry, it's still not a "best ending", since the surviving mongrelmen will be forced to become refugees topside, and even more miserable, since now, they won't have their own homes, and instead be paying rent and working whatever jobs are available to those who look like they're cobbled together out of spare parts.

[1] The nickname for Elfrest, which is an enclave within the ultra-wealthy Lakes District.[3]
[2] A literal rat king made up of dire cranium rats who is at the heart of the swarm.
[3] also home to the University
[4] An big tear in the fabric of  reality in her homeland, which has smaller satellites popping up elsewhere, and from which spew evil extra planar things, sapient undead, and the dark fae
[5] Her brother is running the startup in the streets, and she is trying to take over the sewers and establish a fiefdom there.  The leverage they use against those she infects is the promise of a "cure" for any who serve them.  Any others are disposable, and likely to become CHUD chow.

[Gyrre]

CHUDS! CHUDS! CHUDS!   

Seems like the current game is going on hiatus again. Half our party are focusing on their classes (2 in high school, one teacher).

But hey, Bug got to fight a 50ft long celestial shark fused to a water elemental and ridden by a kua-toa priest. We were supposed to fight it in the city, but that's the monster the DM rolled to be attracted by the dwarven ironside's cannon fire. I also found out that it was Umberlee who spared Bug from bleeding out. Thankfully the bloodhunter's player opted to do a religion check because I got a nat1 and Palor saving a goblin sounded off to his character.

It took me a bit to figure out why Umberlee --a goddess of the ocean and chaos not known for mercy-- would save bug, then I tried doing one of those non-standard alignment charts and it dawned on me. His list of recent antics is kind of long, so I'm just going to be lazy link the chaos list post I made to tumblr. link

[Gyrre]

Well, upside of the hiatus is that I got to play Kruat finally. It was a horror oneshot ran in the open game at a local game store.

The DM was running a homebrew she had tweaked for messing with murder hobos and was quite surprised when she wound up with three players who not only weren't but actually tried to solve the mystery and help the locals being plagued by undead. I wish I had gotten more sleep prior so I could remember more of it. But, the undead seemed to be coming from the sea along with the thick fog, and all of the water sources on the island were tainted or turned to toxic sludge.