So, of the choices of where to go next, I'm inclined to pick Arvandor. The 'lord of midnight feathers' is a pretty distinctive title, and if we find him we find our guy, so it's probably the easiest one to hunt down right now.
I'm game for that, if we can find portals to do so easy enough.
I hate you guys. (might as well)
So I'm going to spend time at home getting people jobs! I'm sure Stephanie, as a rich and absolutely charming merchant, already has the local knowledge and contacts to start making things happen.
I figure I can hook the faeries up with a theater house, they're sufficiently novel (and presumably skilled) that getting them a shot in some common play should be pretty easy. Same sort of plan up for the Modron, too, except instead of theater, I imagine he'd be better off working with his hands/appendages/hooks. I'll try to find him someplace that could use specialized help of his nature (an actual dollmaker? a machinist? hell, if one won't hire him, I can front him rent money for a while and he can start his own shop. Although he'll need a business adviser, surely. To handle the marketing and such. Hmm.)
I've got no clue at all with the zombie, but he seems savvy enough to know what he wants and could just ask for it. Maybe Julia could help him find a place instead, he's more up her alley (but I do want the portrait!)
I'm confident I can come to a suitable arrangement with the gith over conditions and compensation~
I'll give Morgan my card in case he changes his mind and wants to Clear His Name (tm). Stephanie is surely better with the fairies, but I can probably help her look for a suitable spot for the robot.
And I guess I'll offer the old woman a place, but only until we leave for Earth. It can't be helped. It also sadly takes up all my available space so there is none left for roaming undead.
Unfortunately Julia isn't part of a necromantic cabal nor does she have contacts with the undead union. Still, she can throw some mostly covering sheets over Alistair and say he has an infectious disease that the sheets are warded to keep from spreading?
Oh, for posterity, I want to pay some informants to keep an eye on Morgan, and I'll let the church+leah know what his situation is.
Also!
I'll make some inquiries of Darla and try to figure out what sort of stuff people really need on the Plane of Earth, but is scarce. (My aim is to buy up high-demand stuff here as cheap as possible, and then either sell it for profit or undercut the Dao.)
Darla replies that luxury goods in general will see you in good stead. It's tough enough feeding one person on the plane of Earth, much less a whole town of them, and there's no reliable local source for things like fancy clothes, exotic fabrics, sweets and spices. The local diet is mostly mushrooms, and with the lack of fodder for livestock, fresh meat is a rarity.
You'll find no market for jewelry or weapons, though--with ready access to plentiful mineral resources, producing both is much of the town's livelihood.
Generally noted with regard to the various transplanted misfits you've installed in new lives in Amaranth. No doubt they will have much to say (or others will have much to say about them) when next you return.
I want to catch up with my foster father and give him the cool portrait I've got! And also talk about things with him?
Other than that, I want to go see how Ron's doing, and check up on that Morgan guy.
I want to check the market for houses, both for myself and for Julia. Also, check in on my gith majordomo to see if she likes the job.
I want to get a house, kit it out as a necromantic lair of evil, and then work on my army of the dead.
Oh! And I want to go to a merchant guild and try to arrange them to open a route to Earth.
So we can ask the city 10 simple one word answer questions. And also track a person down with magic if we like. Any ideas for questions we might want to ask?
Stephanie hopes to establish a trade route between Peridot and Amaranth, and thus reap the proceeds of interplanar commerce.
She's asked Thela to be the caravan master, on account of her knowledge of the plane. The responsibility for organizing defences, selecting goods, and the like will be placed upon her. She seems to know her way around gold, after all.
Stephanie will try to partner with a local guild of some sort, who ideally will match her investment and help provide logistical services. She'll try and pull in other investors as well. She'll also put in a good word at the Temple of Pelor to see if she can't get some cleric assigned to travel with the group, because survival and success rates in most ventures seem to increase when clerics are present.
I'll invest 20,000gp into this, which should be ample money for hiring guards and purchasing sufficient merchandise.
Rosey is more than happy to second Steph's recommendation to the temple, of course!
Otherwise, duly noted, results later~
Before we plane shift, can I ask the stone in the overseer's office what happened?
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/stoneTell.htm
Maybe we'll hear anything about Galina and her intentions/allies.
The stone remembers foremost that it was once a great mountain. You have to wade through reminiscence of rain, wind, snow, and tectonic upheaval before it can be coaxed into remembering something more recent. In the time after it was pried from its home and laid here as a floor--and how did that happen, anyway, it was so quick by a mountain's reckoning, hardly the blink of an eye, who'd have thought gnats could undertake such work as to break down a mountain?--it recalls three principal mortals which frequently trod upon it:
-One, the resident of the room, walked with purpose. Stolid, surefooted and relentless. Pacing often, resting but little. When pressed, the stone that was a mountain carefully describes your vision of Polaris (yes, that particular vibration of harmonics was the designation all her underlings used; this other name was never spoken here until you arrived).
-Another, recognized as demonstrating advancing years (by a mortal's standards, long enough to register perhaps a brief yawn by a mountain's reckoning). Slow of gait, feeble, decrepit. An old man with glass over his eyes.
-And the third? Young, erratic in its movements, fervent. Obedient to the first. Recognized as different from the first two in a way the stone has difficulty identifying. Mixed kinship? Some mongrel sedimentary rock, someone should it teach it to parade its dirty boots around here--
Of their schemes, the stone that was a mountain does not comprehend, the murmurings of mortal windpipes being but the buzz of a fly in the face of its comprehension of eons, but it relates that their residence here lasted a duration which with some translation you could work out as two years. Similar reckoning implies that the facility was abandoned shortly after a conflict instigated by one of the little metal boxy creatures, and probably because of it. The stone that was a mountain approves of regularly-shaped boxy things, but not so much cold metal appendages rattling about over it without cease. It is satisfied that the metal devices bolted into the room below are gone. It was not comfortable with their presence. They made it question its nature.
The stone that was a mountain recognized the metal boxy creatures as operating according to orders of the resident of the room. Its terms are difficult to parse in mortal phrasing. Not servants, not partners, but...neighbors in their nature? The one igneous rock poured into molds and cooled, the other metamorphic, reshaped and reformed by tremendous pressure...but in the end of harmonious composition.
The stone that was a mountain approves of regular composition. The stone goes back to dreaming of days when it was a mountain, and it was one.
As reminder post of things mentioned long ago and more recently, Azure presently plays host to the following loose ends:
-Vigilia is resident in the city at last report. A quick Sending from Rosemund provides the update that Vigilia is now residing at the Concordant Union temple.
-Aria Granville, sorceress late of Peridot on Earth, is reported to reside here. Her house on Peridot was mysteriously demolished and subsequently watched over by modrons (known to be employed in Polaris's outpost on Arcadia).
-The mercenary company known as The Furies resides here (as per Masuko, in "The Titan's Carcass"). There has been talk of hiring them for the rescue mission in Baator.
-The little information Brijid was able to recall after her rescue on Earth indicated that a member of the Sagacious Brotherhood named Wilfrid might be of some consequence in finding Polaris.
-Marcus reported that Galina and her group visited Azure in their journey of retribution. Nearby residents of Air confirm that a woman named Ione Demetrinous is most likely able to provide information as to who or what Galina's group was involved with while in the city.
Some of these threads could easily be picked up solo if there is inclination and/or time this week. Please confirm if interested/available, as I imagine it more efficient for pacing than sending the whole team everywhere for every errand.
I'd be happy to visit the Furies (to explore the possibility of having them grab Jill from Baator) or Vigilia (to find out more about Polaris and invite her on a rescue mission to Pandemonium).
I don't know if I'm available, sadly. But I'd be happy to go follow up the various leads on Galina. Perhaps starting with Aria Granville?
I'm generally available for a couple of hours after Dune's game. As for what to get involved in, Julia's most interested in catching up with Vigilia, though she could also follow up the Sagacious Brotherhood lead on Polaris.
Okay. Eb, I could catch you Tuesday or Wednesday since Cor's availability is basically limited to Thursday/Friday? Rat, yeah, pretty much the only time for me to synch up with you is Sunday morning (your evening) sadly. I can PM stuff if Steph wants to go GI running on her own.
Anyone dragging a particular NPC along for the ride?
Where Julia goes, so goes Battersby.
Dibs on Rosemund~
I'll diplomify, or try, my way to Aria Granville.
[20:54] <Serith> Kallen roll for Serith < 15 > [d20=3]
Assuming approval of Julia's level up, both her advanced learning spell and her feat involve using XP, which we don't have in the game.
Animate Dread Warrior (http://dndtools.eu/spells/unapproachable-east--33/animate-dread-warrior--3468/) takes 250xp per hd of undead created (template here (http://www.realmshelps.net/monsters/templates/dreadwarrior.shtml)) and Elemental Grafts use XP to create in the same way as any other magic items do.
Will we just do a conversion for money with the spell and have grafts cost the purchase price rather than the crafting price?
Yes to the above, Eb.
Cool.
I don't think using a feat and paying full price is worth much for generic magic items unless you need something specific and can't get it made, but I doubt anyone would trust a random NPC to go grafting shit onto them.
The necromancer is much more trustworthy! (To say nothing of forcing grafts on unwilling captives before killing/minionising them)
I dunno, man. I think we will have ethical problems unless they're animals or something. It's one thing to murder someone and use their corpse for giggles/literal meatshield, but it's another to drag them to a lab, strap them to a table and then do invasive medical surgery so that they'll be more useful when they're dead. At least to me.
I doubt I'm up for becoming a magical cyborg, too, dunno about Franceska/Rosemund.
I really don't want to be a killjoy here but how do you see this working out in-game?
I like the flavour and some of them are kinda useful. The water-elemental tongue one cures lots of inconvenient conditions and I like the idea that by having that when Julia becomes undead herself she'll still be able to taste things. Giving Thing the power to set things on fire by looking at them is pretty cool and could be useful when he's around but I wouldn't be able to leave him at home without expecting the place to burn down.
Hmm. I guess if it's really sketchy I can take a different feat, but it's late so I'll think on that tomorrow.
I don't have a problem with you grafting yourself or Thing!
It just hits me in all of the morals if we're kidnapping sentient people and Frankensteining them.
(demon-shaped outsiders and and unintelligent magical beasts/animals/etc don't count as people. succubi and erinyes do, though.)
I guess I'm also a bit worried about where the grafts come from- murdered elementals?
Plenty of dickish elementals out there, though. And still no problem using bits off our enemies.
We are all going to hell.
Reanimating people that tried to kill you so that they might serve the greater good is one thing, but Rosey would probably have objections if you started capturing people alive for the purpose of experimenting on them. (Thing doesn't count. That's basically his reason for existing.)
Hmm, it's mostly fluff but yeah I'd mostly want to graft people who are potential minions since any outsiders I summon/kill/animate will have their own neat powers that surpass the grafts.
I'll swap it out for Mother Cyst which gives a bunch of fun spells.
Evil spells mind, but what adventurer doesn't like blowing dudes up in gory showers and having their animated organs attack their buddies?
Updated sheet now with Mother Cyst replacing Grafting.
Cid, some stuff I kill with cyst spells will turn into skulking cysts the turn after. The monster details are on page 120 of Libris Mortis as well as here (http://www.realmshelps.net/cgi-bin/mainlist2.pl?name=Skulking_Cyst), though the latter writeup doesn't detail its SLAs (darkness 3/day and necrotic cyst 1/day).
Notably they aren't automatically under Julia's control, so she'll take care not to explode people her friends are currently in melee with!
That's much better! Sullying your soul (and body, eww) with evil magic is totally okay.
(don't get any of that rotten ichor on the talent or we'll have words)
Though we didn't quite get through all the local odds and ends I thought we would today, I should mention that Rosey will insist on going home to check in with her aunt and the temple before going to even more awful places where terrible things can happen to people. In light of this, it has been my anticipation that the party has some downtime at home due to them in the immediate future. Correct me if I'm wrong on this, but it's the impression I got IC this morning as well (2/3 PCs say we're going home? We're probably going home).
In light of this, I'd like to know the following:
-Who you plan on hanging out with once you get home.
-What you might do there while Rosey tries to sort herself out.
-Any unfinished Azure business you'd prefer onscreen rather than handwaved.
Some of this I already know for plot-related reasons, but for planning purposes I wanted to be thorough and a get a sense of everyone's IC desires in Amaranth before we get there.
(Additionally, I am going to be out on the 27th of this month--though I have the weeks surrounding the weekend scheduled for vacation. So we'll definitely miss one group session in the near future but there's ample opportunity for side sessions around that time if desired.)
-spend time with Rosemund
-show Marina around (possibly both at the same time)
-plant the dryad and ask Rosemund's help with the magic
At home Julia will stock up on spell components and try to planar bind Opal. (she'll have to buy a wand of magic circle vs evil too).
That's about it for her, barring summoning/killing/raising misc demons and devils which may or may not happen.
edit: Also getting Battersby and Maeander home will potentially be an issue. I guess hiding them in nearby forest and sneaking them in under cover of darkness works best?
There's not a lot I want to do in Azure.
At home, I'll try to find out how Thela has been doing and see if she hasn't brought us a tidy profit. I'll also be having a crisis of faith and spend a lot of time at church in prayer, and am prepared to furiously argue with anyone who gives Rosemund any shit (or me, come to think of it.) A lot happened lately that made me think. No doubt I'll drop in on Dad as well. Remaining time will probably be spent at seedy bars, picking fights.
I'm deeply torn over whether or not I want to try and become an air elemental and will be thinking about it. If I choose to do it, home will be where I drink the potion.
Oh, and I'll drop by and pay Franceska and Julia personal calls at some point. If we have time and stuff.
So what's next?
I want to work out the Air stuff, see if Ione can make some headway with the Queen. That would pretty much decide for me if we're killing her or storing her in some stunned state or leaving her for therapy.
Then, we return to Solata and send a message to our friend the treacherous mage. Arrange a meeting somewhere, try to strike a bargain for the location of Leah's corpse. Possibly get evidence to try him in a court of law!
For the planar adventures, Pandemonium is next if everyone's cool with that.
And from the side stuff, see if our favorite drow has more memory marbles for us to give to Ione.
That all sounds good to me.
Also see if there are quests back home about rampaging dragons/hydras/warlords.
And I need to figure out some way to give Friday her cha score back before sticking the demon heart inside her, or that unholy toughness goes right to waste. Either that or find a new vessel for my experiments, but I really want to stick with her, since she has the living wings and all.
Party guest list (everyone can bring their own pals as well)
Marcus Massif
Thalia & Melpomene
Calixta
Ron
Marina Marigold
Mercedes
Charlotte
Brenna (if she can spare the time from her heroing)
Thela Ilvari
Ione Demetrinous
Vigilia
Anton Levesque (if we can find him)
Lorice? (maybe only invite her if we can't get Brenna and Vigilia)
Midnight Alice
Let's not invite Lorice.
I'll add Flora to that list, though. And the Alcembrons, if Ione can work some magic with Brigid.
Being the one undoubtedly transmitting invitations (via Sending), Rosemund is in a position to resolutely state that she will not be inviting any demons.
FFFF
I was immune to critical hits!
I forgot too. (Geez you have no idea how much stuff I forget all the time.)
You can have that hero point back due to GM stupidity.
Let's talk options! I don't mind going for the geas route if I get to work out the phrasing of the geas. OOC, I think that the geas would be probably safe but unleash something terrible (that only Julia will possibly need to deal with within her lifetime) and that the brain drain is probably treatable. IC, I'd be okay with trying any solution.
What does Rosemund prefer? Vigilia?
Can we use divinations to narrow down the location so that Worm goes back into play as another option? If so, we have the three existing options and the fourth option of going away and leaving the elf to his suffering.
Heal cures insanity right? What if we use heal on one of the wandering lunatics, and then make him/her pay it back by donating to the Skirl?
Eb's idea seems the most palatable to me, actually. We could even heal a few and spread the damage out. I am really nervous about being geassed into completing strange tasks for weird beings.
In fact, after going over the logs IC, Steph would think the Collective is a horrible affront to life and sanity and would be a bit opposed to helping them out on principle. The Skirl is by far the ancient cluegiver(tm) she likes the most, so I'd like a solution that helps her out over others.
I'm also interested in what Rosemund and Vigilia(+Tiel) think since our personal stake in this hunt is actually pretty low, let's hear it! Maybe we can talk Vigilia into making the sacrifice if other options don't pan out.
Also, the collective reminds me of those conjoined elf soothsayer twins, and that's no good either.
This universe is a terrible place!
Heal does cure insanity. Rosey approves of a plan where you might help people while helping yourselves.
Tiel strongly opposes any bargain that would regress Vigilia towards the native state of Pandemonium; Vigilia herself appears content to let the archon speak for her in this matter. Neither is comfortable with any aspect of the Collective's offer. Tiel finds the worm somewhat less distasteful; Vigilia considers that the corpse eater is performing little more than a basic ecological function, but wouldn't be happy about killing someone just to feed it.
Rosey might point out that Remove Curse can lift a geas, if you wanted to avoid paying anyone; however, she doesn't personally know the spell, and she also adds that the divine caster must be notably more skillful than the caster of the geas in order to break it. She isn't prepared to speculate about what the Collective's capacity might be in this regard.
Divination can occur. Who would you seek out about this?
We could tap the Church of Pelor. Surely they have clerics of sufficient might.
So I think we're settled?
Visit the Church of Pelor, divination get, then if that doesn't work we go punch out some maniacs, heal them of their wounds and insanity, and proceed to gather infos?
I'm sure Julia can find a corpse or two lying around to donate for the cause, too.
We rely on her so much. Julia is simply the best.
Well you know what they say. "A stranger is a corpse you haven't killed."
Hey, I did want to do one thing on Pandemonium still; see if I can track down that merchant back at Howler's Crag. Wat the Worm said he was sending people to the tower? That's worth a stabbing.
...and I want his merchandise, but it's about justice guys honest.
I suppose I should make sure he's actually scum rather than take the word of a thing that eats corpses. Do we have any quick wins for truth-determining here?
Corpses don't lie.
I imagine it fairly obvious by this point that my mind hasn't much been on this game the past couple months. Through combination of burnout with managing high-level characters and real-life problems that don't warrant elaboration here, GMing this year has felt more like a distracting chore than a worthwhile hobby and I've concluded that I would very much like to be able to direct my creative energies elsewhere.
However, this is not a game over post. I know from experience that an unfinished story is a source of perpetual regret, and it would be doubly unfortunate to stop this one while reasonably close to its conclusion (and said conclusion remains a thing that I genuinely look forward to, however unenthusiastic I've become about the daily business of getting there). I intend to see that this story gets an ending—but it's become a pressing personal need to get to that ending as quickly and efficiently as possible.
So this preamble serves in part as apology for what I have little doubt will be a rushed attitude on my part towards whatever unfinished threads we still have, and part as a request for people to decide what IC affairs they most need to have in order before the final confrontation. I admit my personal concern at this point is just properly wrapping up the plot, but I will try to find time for whatever individual business people want to sort out before the end if it can be neatly arranged without extensive diversion.
The principle things I personally see it necessary to resolve before the end are:
-Bringing the Queen back home to confront Leah's killer.
-Actually locating Polaris.
Otherwise I feel like the game's already made all the arguments it needed to make. Please sort out amongst yourselves what (if anything) else you'd consider it vitally important IC to resolve.
I regret any pall this disclosure might cast over the remaining sessions, but I thought it better to have it out in the open so the concluding events could be arranged properly rather than stewing in silence and covertly trying to steer people away from every possible distraction. At the start of the year my estimate was that closure could be here by June; with a lot of missed/half sessions behind us recently, I'm no longer 100% certain that's possible, but I'd still like to make every effort to shoot for wrap-up by the start of summer.
Once everyone who needs to die in Hell dies, I'd like to resolve some things.
The two things you listed are a given.
Some stuff back home could probably tagged onto that.
I'd like to have my father, the erinyes tracker from Pandemonium and any contacts I've made do something about my mother. I have enough resources and human resources for him to operate, and he owes me so....
Maybe we can save the last dude from the Beastlands along with Jill?
I just want to attain elemental mastery, and possibly go on a hot date.