Planning & Preparation

[Ebiris]

"I'm afraid my own attendance at social functions has been rather spotty of late," Lavinia shakes her head apologetically. "I could try to find out, though. But do have a care in collapsing any caves - I don't want any innocent people falling into sinkholes or having their homes destroyed on my conscience, and I'd hope you wouldn't either," she adds in a reproving tone as she focuses on Rudy for a moment.

The conversation's winding down here, so I'll leave it to you guys to settle on a plan between yourselves as to what you'll be doing next session. Please post to give me something to prepare for!

[Corwin]

So, a plan, then? I think collapsing things is horrible. I dunno if causing flooding is possible or not. They can clearly flood sections, but is that the limit?

What I'm interested in, here, is why did the baron restrict the tunnels. Beyond the obvious, yes. Do maintenance people regularly go to such places normally? If so, can we manufacture a pretext to send them over? What would such a pretext be? How can we find out more about this stuff?

[Ebiris]

Well you could have Knowledge (local) or Knowledge (Nobility) but since nobody does you'll just have to ask someone. Thankfully Lavinia and Trucy are right there, so yeah.

The landowner is responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of his or her own land, and only a Royal Warrant can supercede that. These are usually issued by the Crown in cases of incompetence, absence, or malfeasance, because generally it's in a noble's own interest to keep their property well tended, and they also don't like having strangers snooping all around in their business.

[Corwin]

So that's a bust. Speaking of people who are around and know stuff, does Lucie know if any of the Snakes are sufficiently stealthy and could be persuaded to help sneak about the lair of the Lotus Dragons?

[Sierra]

"Mort," Lucie says in response to this query. "You met him at the hideout. Had a good leer for Henrietta here, as I recall. Might be he could get in an out without leaving sign if we needed him to. Mind you, his idea of fun tends to leave people dead or bleeding, so if having a look 'round's all you want of him, best make it clear before you send him on his way. If he'll go, that is. Can't rightly speak for any of the gang but myself."

[Corwin]

Okeys. I think that from what we know so far, this is the only thing we can pursue right now.

-Lavinia would take time to find out about the baron's daughter, and events are proceeding on course in the meantime. We, however, would be just sitting on our hands there.

-Blowing up the city is bad, let's not. Even if we could.

-Misusing bureaucracy for our ends seems impossible. I can't forge a Royal Warrant and I don't want to mess with the Crown anyway, that's super-scary.

-Flooding seems extremely difficult, if even possible. We really need to investigate more first before even trying, and by having someone good at stealth do it we might be able to land that info.

From all this and due to us just lacking the right sort of skills (and the right spells), how about we persuade Mort (and/or the rest of the snakes) to work with us on this? If it works, we might learn more about the caverns, and if Mort's discovered then the attention of the Dragons might temporarily shift from their plans to dealing with that incident. Meantime, we could try looking for that underground harbor and for ways for the huge snake to arrive over, if we manage to get the Snakes onboard for this.

If we know more about their lair, about their plans or if we have that huge snake with us, I'd be fine with just forgetting about the baron altogether here and striking back at the Dragons.

[Sierra]

We don't lose much in asking them, I suppose. Possibly some respect! As they don't care all that much about what goes on outside their neighborhood. But it's probably safe enough to ask and I don't really have any other ideas. And taking the fight to the Dragons I'm guessing is not really feasible without some backup.

It'd be totally convenient if we could flood the Dragons out, but I'm not convinced this is even possible. And for all we know Vanthus could be down there somewhere and it's kind of against the terms of the job to drown him.

[Corwin]

Lavinia can rez him if she wants to.  >_>

Rat? I recall you being able to summon all sorts of elementals for more than a few rounds, so if we do look for the underground harbor or try to chart more of the underground network it's really up to you, I figure.

Anyone else?

[Carthrat]

It's only a few minutes, and they're not very smart. However I can summon earth elementals, which can earth glide, which is sort of awesome since I think that means I can summon one on the street above the caverns, have it go straight down, and surprise everyone inside.

[Corwin]

I'm proposing a modular plan, then. We go see Lucie's gang and try to get them to help out. I'll just offer to pay them if all else fails. If that too fails to seal the deal, we'll return to the Dragons's turf and try to add to our map of their lair via elementals. With a bit of luck, we'll either have a better map of their tunnels (and knowledge of defenses, if the elementals survive them and are smart enough to relay them) or a chance to lure some of the Dragons into a trap (if we piss them off with our scoutings).

I figure it'd take us the session to do this stuff, so no need to plan beyond this for now~

I'll go ahead and propose this as our plan of action barring other ideas (but still, post with like 'yes' even if you don't have anything to add, guys?)

[Carthrat]

If we do attack, I think we should use the cistern trap back on them. >_>

[Carthrat]

Eb: As far as flooding the tunnels go.. well, can I? Is is feasibly possible for us to do so?

[Sierra]

If we do attack, I think we should use the cistern trap back on them. >_>

I'd thought about this, but I think it's possible they'd watch for that. Lotus Lady will surely check up on her pets at some point and find them all dead, from which they can only conclude that we escaped.

[Ebiris]

Eb: As far as flooding the tunnels go.. well, can I? Is is feasibly possible for us to do so?

The tunnels are just above or at the waterline, so opening them up to the canals wouldn't spark a massive deluge or anything. Blocking up the drains in the cistern while the pipes were running would cause it to overflow and water to go down the two tunnels, but the flow rate combined with the large area means it wouldn't be a speedy process.

[Carthrat]

Ok, so I'll be going earth-diving with earth elementals for the day. I can get 7 summons a day (and save the last to resummon Myra), and each lasts about three minutes. How should we do this, Eb? I can repost the map and circle the rough areas I'd like to start trying to map, though in this case I'd be just as happy with the routes being arbitrarily decided. I'd rather scout many different places, expanding our knowledge of the overall layout rather than fully explore any one route at this stage.