What's coming up?

[Anastasia]

While there's some remnants to deal with, like Neve's fate, several of the current stories have wound down. Esthan's defeated, the Jungle Ruins are cleared and no particular enemies loom. So what are you guys going to do next...and how are you going to do them? In particular, you've lately been working more as mini-groups than a full group. Many of your problems are things that could use your full powers to investigate, however. Doing them together could be productive, too.

I'd also like a bit of a timeskip to move you deeper into winter, just FYI.
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Known Hooks:

Explore two more levels of the gnomish ruins with your new Resorts

Pros: You power up and can get powerful boons by undoing seals.
Cons: It's dangerous. It's also a dungeon crawl, which is good or bad depending on what you want to do.

Chase the Green Dragon in the Jungle

Pros: Dragon. Dragon horde. Dragon.
Cons: You may fight a dragon. This dragon ain't picky on what it gets it on with, so this could be a very big con. The jungle is dangerous too.

Kesse

Pros: You could help prevent a messy war that may be in the offing and expand the Baronies' power. Stopping a war of that scale and bitterness would surely save countless lives.
Cons: The entire area is gray and you're debateably defending the side that deserves to be attacked. If things go poorly, it could be like sticking your dick into a beehive full of angry bees.

Research the Dark Six

Pros: They may have had something to do with the portals in the area and they also may have attacked Alicia with a formidable monster.
Cons: It's fishing for information. If this is a cabal of  powerful wizards, finding information is going to be a bitch.

Exterminate Agares

Pros: You'll go to Hell and kill a (fallen) Duke of Hell. Killing a member of Hell's true nobility is a way to break into the big times on the cosmic stage. Devils tend to have good loot. You'll be members and commanding part of the Heavenly Host, if that's your thing.
Cons: You're going into Avernus with a war party. Shit is going to be ugly even without counting Gods only  know how many plans you're going to have to wade through. Chances of dickery are around 10000000 percent.

Face the Destroyer

Pros: If you kill the Destroyer you'll have access to endless piles of virgin land and all they hold. It's also been hinted you'll make out well for doing it.
Cons: It may be the Tarrasque. Tarrasque is a shorthand way of saying TPK.

Kill the asshole efreeti

Pros: Seira gets vengence, as does Deniz and all those poor sailors. The multiverse is minus another evil outsider asshole.
Cons: If he's in the City of Brass, shit's gonna be complicated. There's a chance of devil dickery too, since Baator and the efreeti are butt buddies.

Explore bounds of the world

Pros: You might find something interesting. You may find loot.
Cons: You might not find something interesting. You may find something deadly.

Explore the underwater seal

Pros: It's a seal underwater beneath a sunken ship and a child ghost set to rest. Odds are there's something interesting there.
Cons: It's underwater and protected. There's no guarantee it'll be worth the trouble.

Work on teleport circles

Pros: Easy teleport between faraway places. Massive prestige for the Baronies.
Cons: Expensive. Casting Permanency is a pain in the ass. Little chance of loot.

Work on some/all of Deme's prophecy

Pros: If you can decipher parts of it and use it to your advantage, you'll likely gain some benefit.
Cons: There's no guarantee of success and prophecies like that are hard to figure out.

General Planar Explorations

Pros: You can usually find something interesting in the planes.
Cons: It's dangerous as fuck depending on where you go. Your soul can be at stake as much as your life.

Kraken questions

Pros: Finding out what those damned Krakens were doing might be worth knowing!
Cons: It's a giant fishing expedition, no pun intended. Odds of tentacle rape rise.

Hugo's Mom

Pros: If Hugo's angelic mother is still alive, finding her could be greatly appreciated.
Cons: It's a long shot with no guarantee of reward.

Pale Night's Eladrin

Pros: You could save a bunch of innocent celestial children from the Abyss. Doing so would surely earn you vast reward from Arborea.
Cons: It hasn't been solved in millenia so it's a tall order. The Abyss is a cast iron bitch.

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I'm sure there's more and I forgot a few. Anyway, point is: What do you guys want to do coming up?

[Anastasia]

If you're curious, basic NPC attitudes on various things:

Antenora

For: Anything anti-devil or anti-evil.
Against: None in particular.

Donald

For: Anything.
Against: None in particular.

Pollyanna

For: Deme's prophecy
Against: Green dragon.

Latha

See Antenora with an added interest in finding Hugo's mom.

Amaryl

For: Green Dragon, teleport circles.
Against: Planar adventures of any stripe. She's ambivalent on the good aligned planes, let alone the evil ones.

I can list the others if you'd like by all means. I just hit the currently popular NPCs.

[Ebiris]

Gnomish Ruins
This is a fairly safe bet, although we do risk loosening Daa-vid's confinement before we're ready to take him on. At most I say we do one of the seals in the immediate future.

Green Dragon
If a dragon feels like sitting around in the jungle and screwing the wildlife, I say we let him. Or her. Whatever, I don't want to know about it.

Kesse
While I'd be willing to assist in overseeing negotiations, there's not much more I can do. I'm adamantly opposed to fighting on behalf of either side, here.

Dark Six
This would be helpful. Perhaps we could look up the devil Anty mentioned as having worked with them previously and interrogate him?

Agares
The timetable is contingent on Latha's boss, but when it comes up I'm all for this.

Tarrasque
Not until we have Wish/Miracle.

Efreet
Could be fun to do some politicking in Brass, but I don't have any burning (fnar fnar) desire to follow this up.

Explore World
Random exploration doesn't really appeal to me. If we have a lead on something cool, sure, but we have actual real issues to deal with before we go striking out into the great unknown.

Underwater Seal
I remember this, although I'd forgotten until reminded. It wouldn't be too hard to dig through the collapsed passage we found last time, and it could be productive.

Teleport Circles
I'm against this in general, so would rather not be involved.

Prophecy
Not quite sure how we can work on it besides sitting in a room and scratching our heads...

General Planar Exploration
Hits on what I said about exploring the world. I have plans to visit specific planar locales to power up Hell Striker, but that's just an on again off again thing whenever the opportunity arises.

Krakens
As far as we know they aren't bothering anyone. Leave them to it.

Hugo's Mom
This could be nice, but it's not a priority. Hugo is fine where he is, after all. Nothing to stop us asking around to get leads on angels who've been molested by gnomes next time we're in the heavens.

Eladrin Children
I doubt we can solve this yet, but I'd be down with visiting to get the lay of the land and smite some demons to take the pressure off the kids to buy them time for a more permanent solution.

[Corwin]

I'll try to tackle this in order of appearance.

Gnomish ruins. There's plenty of reasons to wait on them. My personal one is that I kinda want to materialize my actual divine boon before more are handed out to people who are not me. I've been putting off the dragon quest for a while, but I might as well do it this level.

Green dragon. Uh, I guess we could, but it feels kinda mean-spirited. I mean, it's not hurting anyone (sentient), and we don't make it a point of attacking beings who are rich just because they can be a fun fight and have loot. If traumatized sea elf half dragons appear or something I'll reconsider.

Kesse. It was kind of something I took on myself, so it would be cheap of me to try and get others involved this way. If anyone else is interested in any part of that project (be it only diplo or only war if/when it happens) I won't turn the offer to help down, but I didn't work towards that goal to force other PCs to tag along with my plan.

Dark Six. Researching is very important (much like the Destroyer research), but unless we're talking epic planar quests to Mechanus's infinite library I'm not sure what we can do here beyond casting a few buffs and rolling several knowledge rolls. If I'm missing something, now's a good time to fill me in.

Agares. I kinda want to wait on epic planar quests until I'm capable of planar shifting us if things go wrong? Which is next level. Relying on a oneshot ring for this is a bit risky for me without sufficient need (since it doesn't seem that time-sensitive).

Efreet. This is actually something I'd like to try, and if anyone wants to come along it might be fun. But again, I don't want to force people to tag along and kill my enemies for me, it feels kinda lame.

Exploration. Eb doesn't seem interested, though if Tai is, it might be fun for a quest or two. Not everything has to be an epic adventure, I figure. I do have places to try and explore, in case Tai bites. If not, I'll put it off, since there's too much I want to do on my own as is, and this is low priority.

Underwater seal. I was under the impression that we did, and it contained fiends and then broke. Was there more to it? Can we really do more than roll a few knowledge/spellcraft checks?

Teleport circles. Umm. I suppose there would be brief IC scenes where I chat with people who are involved and then recruit awesome mages to watch over me, but it's hardly a quest or a hook, is it? Unless you mean shopping for them, which is more targets of opportunity for me when I travel for other reasons.

Prophecy. I actually think that doing other things here is the best way towards solving more prophecies. Think about it. The third one was about solved (unless we're stupidly wrong) due to my trip east. It seems the superior method to me.

Planar exploration. Not really that into other planes, Amaryl doesn't like them much either. Maybe in the future? Outsiders are freaks anyway.  >_>

Kraken. Have to agree with Eb, have they actually harmed anyone?

Hugo's mom. Since Hugo's staying with Alicia, I won't intervene myself. If she wants to look for her and asks me, I'm there, but it's her call.

Eladrin. Uh, I must've missed the point where I can do something about it. At all. Didn't we go over it during the prophecy phase? We're totally not ready to fix this yet.

[Corwin]

While there are also several things I want to do, possibly pre-skip, they aren't really well-suited for a group. How about fixing the portal to the plane of water, though? I have most of the components, and a way to get the gith to part with the silver which is the last component. Best part, we could all go if there's interest.

Related to this, while looking for the portal of fire is something difficult for people not me (and Anty, actually), looking for the air one also works for us as a group.

[Taishyr]

Gnomish Ruins: Mmm. If Seira/Alicia want to hold off, then sure; Deme's guessing we aren't ready to have all five unsealed, and would want to warn people unlike last time. This one can be a "rainy day" one, so to speak.

Green Dragon: I'd like to check in on the villagers in the jungle just to make sure they haven't been plagued by it. Otherwise, yeah, it can be left alone.

Kesse: I don't really know on this one. If diplomacy can weather things any better, I wouldn't mind seeing that done, but... kinda with Alicia on this, it's not really in the sphere of interest as it stands.

Dark Six: Uh, sure, though I'd imagine this is as it goes?

Agares: Me and devils. I'll go when Seira/Alicia decide it appropriate, will not suggest it myself at all.

Tarrasque: We don't have the materials to kill it yet, I don't think. Let Seira ensure the townspeople do not try anything foolish and focus our efforts into being able to. I'm also admittedly disinclined toward this because it's something I can't really be of any help with.

Efreeti: Butt buddies? Really, Dune?

Anyways, eh. Iunno, on the one hand something should theoretically be done, on the other hand it gets into preset alignment people and that just goes zonk.

Explore: Kinda frankly I'm always up for this OOC. Find it more interesting than any of the other options, at least.

Underwater seal: We could look into this while checking in with the former stuff, sure. Deme'd be curious on this one.

Work on teleport circles: This'll come with time/as we do other stuff, so.

Prophecy: See Alicia and Seira both. It'll no doubt be at least somewhat useful and I'll be keeping an eye on it, but at the same time as we do stuff we'll understand it more, so.

General Planar Explorations: I think my stance on this boils down to "Prime Material planes are interesting, everything else is varying degrees of feh".

Kraken questions: See Alicia/Seira.

Hugo's Mom: I'd support looking whenever we stop in on those planes, but trying to devote a lot of time into it seems counter-productive in part.

Pale Night's Eladrin: Oh god, Deme has to deal with both eladrin and demons? What do you mean this isn't a specialized form of hell?


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As for what I personally want to do, I'll be kinda blunt; I don't have a clue at all. Exploration's grabbing at me the most but that's also really damn generic.

Would like to do one thing before timeskip (check in on Dad, bring Polly if possible) but.

[Anastasia]

Pre-timeskip stuff is fine, most of that can be handled in a few days.

Anyway, there's a few obvious leads here. I'd like you guys to choose a few to work on together. I mean, okay, not all of them appeal to everyone. Still, you guys are fun together and it is a party-based game.  Having to constantly deal with 2-3 rooms and juggling a bunch of things gets tiresome, you know? I understand this occasionally means you get to deal with something that isn't all that interesting for you(Deme and outsiders, for example), but part of this game is working together. It goes both ways, you help them on those things and they can help you with other things that interest you but don't interest them.

[Ebiris]

How about we hit up the underwater seal, first? There might be a whole underwater dungeon past the collapsed passage we found. If not it's no great loss and we can quickly move onto something else. Assuming we do find nothing, we could hit the ruins next and undo one seal? That'll hopefully give us some nice buffs and loot and put us in good stead for whatever comes next.

[Corwin]

The seal could be a good first choice, I agree, if there's anything at it (I was under the impression that we checked all we could). But again, I don't want to head for the ruins just now. I wouldn't be able to whine adequately if I didn't do my dragon quest beforehand and it turned out different than I expected it to.

I'd prefer to tackle the portal search&restoration next, but if that doesn't pan out, how about doing our job? We're the fantasy Team America, World Police, so there is surely something requiring our help. We could look into that cornugon's actions, if any are out in the open. Traveling incognito into Malmuth, the Fiefdoms or any of the far-reach countries could be nice. Even if in the same area as Kesse, it would be unrelated to that hook that's my responsibility, and merely focus on helping ordinary people. That's pretty satisfying, and improves the world we live on one person at a time.

Exploration is also one of my favorites. It's not aimless or random, if you expect to find something past the rainbow~

[Anastasia]

As clarification/reminder since it's been awhile, you guys didn't explore past the cave in. Marie wasn't there and I even think Alicia said something like that. Marie could likely go incorporeal past it or you could manage other means at this level. I think all of you just forgot about it or wrote it off mentally as a dead end.

[Taishyr]

We could check the seal, sure. I've no issues with doing that.

EDIT - and if it wasn't clear, I have no issue going along with most of this, and will only (slightly) grumble if we do devilstuff. >_> (me and debils. the usual.)

[Anastasia]

Okay, what's your revised planset/agenda? Could you guys chat it over and get it straight?

[Corwin]

Due to random demon attack, how about a quest to stab Gurlan in the face, followed by underwater seal, followed by either exploring the region past the wastes or Kesse's neighbors, perhaps incognito?