The Gossip Board

[Anastasia]

Zeph/Mari: What times tomorrow are good for you. Normal game time is out, Cid can't be up that late. Can you guys make an earlier time? If not we'll just lead off Tuesday with this.

[Sierra]

I have all day off work, so I'll let Zeph suggest something. I'd rather avoid normal hours just because doing that two days in a row is painful, but it could be I'd rather do that then hold up the whole group on Tuesday.

[Zephyrus]

I have a few things to take care of today, but I'll try to pop in sometime this afternoon/evening so we can do this.

[Dracos]

So...

Reading Mari's log, I would suggest we not wait.  Once we exit the lich's domain, before we begin our crusade, call in a favor for tam toward the goal of rescuing her sister and get advice from that angle as well.  Not to do it immediately, but more importantly to give time for our allies to work rather than expecting they can pull instant favors out of their hat.

It seems like (at the least), next session has:
Adail vs Death, Arrival of the Sacred Fist
Departure from Lich.
The Party Fight - What are we really going to do about lich and nikki long term.
Heading into a town near the border of our target region and getting the story from another source.
Doing a sending for Mari to various allies to start stuff spinning.


Truthfully there's really a few possibilities with mari's sister (In Drac Order):
1)We assume that Mari's sister is totally in danger and take the same sort of angle we did with the Lich, only with there being a 'ASAP' on it.  Going for a dramatic on rails rush to not only take out the plague priest, but immediately gate into the abyss and go and save ami could be pretty epically awesome.  
2)Mari's sister isn't in immediate death risk.  We can reasonable take our time and then go there.  This is the route we were taking before Lich spoke up.
3)We're assured to be too late.  Still, probably should rush.  But our venture is more 'how do we rescue someone from the lake of fire' then how do we rush out and kidnap someone in the middle of the blood war.
4)We go 'Lied' to the Lich, get a gate and take care of Mari's sister first and come back to face angry lich and even more powerful plague priest.  Possibly have to deal with lich sabotage down this route, though it would probably teach her to choose her carrots better (*xenosoundeffect* JERK).

I think 1 would be pretty cool, but we probably have to discuss IC and it depends how epic Yugoloth Plague Priest is.  As I recall, we DID pay for a gate that we did not use.  We could do a sending to said wizard over in Shivra, saying we'd like to use that now but with a different location and plane direction.  :)  To do 1, we'd have to manage not to get chewed to bits like we usually do in our major quests though.

[Carthrat]

1) we can't cast Sending on our own, can we?
2) we don't know anyone nearby who can cast it, except maybe the lich
3) a plague hit the land as well as an invasion that apparently killed most of the people who would be able to cast it
4) we don't know where any local portals are
5) so basically I have no idea how we can logically contact our allies at this point, presuming you want to keep it secret from her lichiness
6) that diabolic army was marching to besiege a demon fort, right when the lich showed it to us, if you didn't act RIGHT THEN you probably missed the chance to ensure Ami doesn't actually reach that battle. better cheer for Baator!
7) and even if we did have a scroll of sending or whatever, do we really know Ami well enough to describe her and her location to some dude casting gate in 25 words or less?
8) heading into a town will surely result in us getting diseased and that is something to be avoided as long as possible, because we don't know if it can be cured for good

Basically I think we're going to be stuck solving the plague issue in the immediate future. It is plausible that we'll find some caster dude who can help us out in the process of doing so, however. I guess we'll discuss it, yes.

[Sierra]

I am personally skeptical that what the lich showed us was 100% accurate. I am hoping that it's not, obviously. But she did show a willingness to say anything necessary to get Mari into her service and I can't help but wonder if that extended to some visual trickery.

Mari will be pushing to get stuff done as quickly as possible, of course. Did we actually pay that wizard in advance for the Gating and then forget about it afterwards? Would be convenient. Certainly easier to get a Sending to him then to find someone else who knows Gate (Sending's, what, one of those mid-level spells? I think it's possible someone in the kingdom capable of casting that could've survived). Thread/logdiving should happen to confirm this (I don't mind doing it, but noooot tonight, thanks).

[Sierra]

Oh, and:

7) and even if we did have a scroll of sending or whatever, do we really know Ami well enough to describe her and her location to some dude casting gate in 25 words or less?

I think so? Otherwise agreed on all points--I don't think we'll actually have a way to do anything on this front until we've cleared up the plagueoloth mess. Anyone local who might be capable of helping us won't be in a position to do so while that's going on.

[Dracos]

Are we really intending to go special forces on the word of the lich without even trying to verify her story?  I suppose we were, but I don't think it's that outlandish to find a place that's safely outside the plague boundary that can also verify the story as well as potentially get more information on how the plague cult is seen/known about within there.  If it's really 'everywhere outside of lich castle is covered in horrendous plague' then we have good reason not to, but of course I'm hoping we're not starting within the plague boundaries right off the bat.

[Carthrat]

Well, I planned to contact Rogue, who is immune to disease, and double-check the story through him and get him to basically handle the interaction-with-peasants side of things, because my god I don't want to get sick, nor do I want to split us up.

[Anastasia]

Drac wanted some books on Amlyn and some info. The Lady provides books that tell you the following:

Amlyn is a prosperous duchy on one of the countless Prime worlds. Knights in full plate armor ride on noble stallions, while an age of enlightenment and learning sweeps the duchy. It is ruled by Duke Anthelos, though he was getting quite old. The Duke is an absolute ruler, though one with mercy and temperance.

Amlyn is a plane dotted with forests. Small villages and farms are scattered all about. There are the normal problems - goblin raids to the south, occasional drow raids for slaves from the surface world, dragons, that manner of thing. But it's not a nightmare or a bad place to live from what Kamvakua can infer.

The main religion is to the Skyfather, who is said to be the ever-bright sun who gave birth to the sky, then created the earth below to imprison the Oppressor-In-Chains.Kam, you can make K:R if you have ranks here. The main church is the Sun Cathedral, which is within the greater city of Amlyn.

To the north, there are goblin lands, to the west and south are more human lands, and to the east are dwarves and gnomes, locked in an ancient war.

[Carthrat]

Hey, how large is it, and does it have neighbours?

[Anastasia]

The local unit of reckoning is the length, Amlyn is 3000 lengths or so from east to west and 2000 from north to south. Roughly.

As for neighbors read up, Knight.

[Anastasia]

Addendum: Drac dug up the post saying you paid for a Gate. If you can contact the wizard in question you may be able to call this in. Of course that's the trick.

[Dracos]

Kam isn't religion saavy really, but he asks Adail about it who rolls 24 toward "Who is the Skyfather or the Oppressor in Chains"

[Anastasia]

The Skyfather is an obscure name for Lathander, a god of the sun and dawn. He's part of the Faerunian pantheon; what he's doing here under that name is anyone's guess. Adail would know this is pretty obscure knowledge, in all his studies he only knows a little bit about it.