The Gossip Board

[Dracos]

Did random demon minion just try and seduce Knight?  I think he did.

[Anastasia]

He claims to be slaad-blooded, not a demon. There is a difference!

[Dracos]

I am amused that the issue is his blood and not that I just called him a nameless mook. :D

Knight, you are mook-loved. :)

At least until he tries to tear out my throat.  Then he'll be upgraded to Butler Mook.

[Dracos]

Man, there's a full six.two-five hours till gaming.  Cursed Chronos, his slow plodding ways get in the way of our excited arguing and the revealing of Adail's masterful sacred fist technique.

[Dracos]

Well, seems at least one thing is resolved.  Hey we've got two Knights now :P

[Carthrat]

So we have a mansion containing an unknown quantity of enemies. The back house, as I understand it, is magically protected and sealed somehow, so we're assuming that whatever is there is something the present residents of the mansion wish to protect. As they are our enemies, it behooves us to steal or destroy anything they think is important. We believe one of their commanders is in the top floor, though this isn't certain and may well change if we wait too long before attacking.

I believe I favor attacking the manor from the top and attempting to subdue one of their captains, as previously discussed (making a hole in the roof to attack from shouldn't be hard.) We'll force them to show their hand and ideally be able to assess the quality of their troops on the go, and since we'll be able to fly, we're in a position to make a quick getaway if necessary. It may also bunch most of them inside the mansion, which if we're up to it, we can then set ablaze, hopefully hurting them, splitting them up, and making them easy pickings for us to gang up on one by one. If we're able to defeat them cleanly, all good.

If, however, they prove too strong for us to completely defeat, we have a backup options if we're curious about the house. Mari could disguise herself as a cultist or whatever, and sneak inside; Adail could do something similar, I believe. I think Mari's actually less likely to be discovered in the first place, but Adail is more likely to stay alive if he is found out. The idea here would be to get in, figure out what's going on, and then escape. If sabotage is possible without being detected, that's a thing to do, too. Of note is that we must be prepared for this in the first instance; that is, I think if we want to pursue this, we have whoever is going to do it hide while the rest of us go start a fight, and then sneak in while it's happening. If we defeat everyone, we can catch up; if not, you have to make your own way out.

[Dracos]

Mostly agreed.  Though really those two plans are slightly exclusive.  Or at least, can't be tried in direct sequence.

If adail or mari are properly sneaking in, they can't be in the midst of the combat melee.  We can wait afterwards (which you may be intending) and then send them in.  Eh, maybe not.  But I suspect our enemies are wielding weapons that will give distinctive wounds, and as such odds are any wounded individual is going to have trouble infilitrating.

Anyhow, I still think the core of the plan is ideal.  Hit hard and fast from the top, disable, eliminate, separate.  If we can cause trouble elsewhere to keep them separated so we can nail them individually, all the better.  Truthfully it might be good to set fire to the magically protected house.  Yes, crazy idea I know.

But here's the thought... It might be flammable stuff in there, it might not.  The protection may protect against it, it might not.  Either way, guards for it will likely go there.  At least one.  Hopefully more.  Why?  Because that fire could be a cover for someone breaking into their magically protected vault and they might not know whether that's going to destroy it.  We don't either, but either we destroy something they wanted protected and hidden or we capture it, and in either case we hinder their ability to really answer a sudden surprise attack from the upper floors in the main manor.

[Carthrat]

The idea is that anyone sneaking in does so while we fight.

Setting fire to places we are also sneaking inside seems like it brings more problems than solutions...

[Sierra]

The top priority here is getting a leader to question, right? We have an idea of where one is right now. The longer we wait around, the less chance he'll stay there. I figure we smash right through the roof or wall and disable him as quickly as possible. Once that objective is secured, we can start worrying about anyone else around. I do think eliminating as much of the cult as possible (hopefully all of it) is desirable and should be attempted unless the odds are highly against us. But without having any idea of the enemy's numbers, it's kind of pointless to speculate. I figure we focus on doing a smash 'n' grab as quick as we can and evaluate how much else we can get away with based on the immediate response to that fight. If we've all got Fly active, escape is theoretically not that tricky.

The problem with starting a fire as some kind of distraction, I think, is that our potential prisoner is almost surely going to move from his current location the moment he hears something going on. If we can time things to be perfectly simultaneous? Maybe, though that likely means someone's off setting fires instead of helping us with the fight. Fair trade? I dunno.

If we do get chased off early on, I fully support chucking a fireball at the magic building on the way out, of course.

[Dracos]

Well, that's why I meant by slightly exclusive, they're not taking part in the curb stomp, which makes it less of a curb stomp and run.  Taking adail and mari both out of combat is not a small amount of damage per round that we're discussing.

Well, it's two buildings, and I'm just saying to set fire to the important one.

[VySaika]

I don't think we need to set fire to anything, frankly. It's more likely to destroy things we may want(documents and records, perhaps?) then even really inconvenience someone of a viable threat level to us. Not to mention that those a fire would be most dangerous to, any prisoners or other actual innocents that might be in there, are the people we'd like to avoid hurting.

Top priotity is definately grab a leader sort, with secondary being to check out anything else of interest like the sealed cellar. If we can do the grab fast enough, we may have time to check it out? If not...eh, it's existance is at least some information and perhaps we can get an idea of what's in it from the guy we grab.

Also, to clarify, the smaller building itself does not have a magicked door, it's the exterior cellar access of the smaller building that does. The cellar is also 50ft deep and solid stone, so any fire set on the smaller building itself will do diddly-squat to whatever's in there.

Yeah, overall I don't think a fire is nessesary or even desirable. It'll alert our target that someone is attacking before Flying Knight(or Kam I suppose, but I assumed Gem is what we'd use for can opening here) just smashes the wall/window/whatever open. So either we time it to happen at exactly the same time, in which case Nik's better served getting ready for the fight then bombing another part of the house, or we do it before in which case it becomes probable that the target will move. The more I think about it, the less of a good idea I think fire is.

[Sierra]

Really inclined to agree with Gate on...pretty much everything. It was mentioned that there might be prisoners, wasn't it? I would rather not risk incinerating any present.

[Carthrat]

Feel free to fireball people running from the little house to the big one after we raid it, though. <_<

[Zephyrus]

I think I can handle that.

So to recap:

1. We are doing the Death From Above Plan.
2. Presumably our heavy hitters, Knight and Kam, are going to be assaulting the top floor via Fly while the rest of us cover the exits and/or make our way up from the bottom?
3. Also, I think it would be a good idea to have someone hovering over the manor to act as a look-out for anyone attempting to flee on foot.

[Sierra]

If we're trying to take someone alive, Mari should probably be there to help. Nonlethal sneak attacking.