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 Post subject: Part 6: The Absent-Minded Demon
PostPosted: Thu Oct 20, 2011 6:24 pm 
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Our story opens on Consonance 2, the second day of summer.  Parhep Miitos, the captured Vailix pilot, along with his Vailix are at the gate, under the control of Lithonian and the Lithonites.  After the guards head out to interrogate them, they get to meet MORE guards on the way in, these guarding the southern gate of the city.  Their bronze dogs howl a mechanical howl, and the guards quickly summon wizards, who disassemble the Vailix.  Inside, they find a large alchemical bomb.  The Vailix is confiscated, though it remains the shared property of the heroes.  Just, you know, it’s at the impound lot, in the section for suicide hover chariots (the Vailix is kept outside of the city in an underground storage area, but the PCs don’t know the exact location).
 
Remembering that their list of common goods includes “Keichi© brand corpse”, they do what everyone does with dead friends-  drag the body to the High Temple of Zem, and try to finagle a free resurrection.  When that doesn’t go so well, they are met by Lady Sarah Ann, who offers a mission of high value to Grand Duke Ravalis.  Tanta, the ancestral capital of Tantaset, is a populous and prosperous town in the western province of Tantaset-  and a prime holding of the Grand Duke.  In the last year, there have been difficulties, it seems, in the collection of the Lord’s Portion of farmed goods.  While small at first, the areas now not sending their due have over doubled in size, and stretch to the south of Tanta.  Would the heroes be willing to go there, find the supposed charismatic leader, and persuade him to cease his activities?  The heroes, understanding that this brand of persuading will likely not be Alenka sweet talking an old farmer into paying his taxes, but more the things following the initiative roll, agree.  Grand Duke Sen Ravalis finances the True Resurrection, and the PCs are teleported by a wizard who is looking forward to being paid for drinking for two days straight while waiting for the PCs to return.
 
They rest in the reasonably mundane city of Tanta, noting the architecture is much tamer and uniform, and the populace much less cosmopolitan.  They opt not to make any waves socially, but head south after finding that they are looking for a Drethist Genhar, a farmer from the south who has made some very appealing points over the last few years.  Travelling south, they find his location rather easily, a well guarded farmstead.  Upon arrival, they spot and eliminate a guard, and then are blocked on their way in, as Drethist sees Rigby and threatens him, whilst the rest of the group is blocked by rebel warriors at the entrances.  Eventually, the group breaks through the defenses, and the pixie, desperately worried about being attacked by someone who can both perceive and potentially damage him, immediately fires off his most powerful weapon, a memory loss arrow.  Moments later, Delim-Sharno, a Glabrezu demon is revealed!  “WHY AM I IN THIS FORM”, he shouts, immediately resuming his natural form, and attacking the shit out of his allies, thousands of years of memories erased by a pretty poor saving throw.  The battle is won!  The PCs wait for the murdering to finish, and Delim-Sharno leaves.  The group picks up everything that they can (I still owe you guys armor-  they had a bunch of leather and some chain), and heads on back north.
 
The group immediately begins training.  During their leveling, they take a break at the request of their noble benefactors to see a play on the 8th-  but this play is interrupted by the assassination of Baroness Wendy Astarran.  The group, lacking some of their weapons, immediately begins to attack her assailant.  The pixie casts a scroll of glitterdust, which he spends a moment of concentration to eliminate.  Mogrim then hits him with glitterdust as well, because FUCK ME THAT’S WHY, and then he flies towards a stage exit.  Keichi intercepts him, figuring that he’s liking the dying thing, it’s worked pretty well so far.  However, the sparkling assailant’s blow is parried.  Keichi finds that the sword is possessed of some kind of energy-  he can feel the latent vibrations through his own weapons-  and it seems faintly familiar.  Alenka moves into position, and then Rigby fires a sleep arrow.  OF COURSE THAT ALSO WORKS so Narso is captured by the city guard, his weapons and magical items placed in statis, and he himself is locked into the shifting planes of the tower of Zem, safe and secure forever.*
 
A bit of information gathering reveals that alchemical supplies have been expensive recently, especially some exotic materials purchased in the preceding month, but Alenka finds out nothing more, and Alenka is apparently the only one with any frigging gather information, so that is that.
 
Keichi desires a small green door, as his monastery had one on their small green dollhouse, but it got lost, and there’s no eBay, so instead he’s negotiating with Margraive Exxe, who is initially unwilling to part with something he perceives to be of great power.  Lady Sarah Anne sweetens the deal offscreen, offering some unstated form of political capital, but the group still accepts a mission that he has been looking for adventurers for- the elimination of an ogre mound.  Before they leave, the wait  for the 12th, when Them Fommemem arrives in town.  The Seer who they helped earlier discover the location of the Voriphan invasion fleet is being held as an Agent of Dulal (because he helped them militarily), having been seized by Duke Brodish when he disembarked in Northport.  With Octessa’s help, they visit him in Zem tower, and deliver a vaguely worded promise to help him escape.  Sure enough, as he is being transported from the tower to his trial at the Great House of Nobles, Rigby makes use of benign transposition, at which point Morgrim casts dimension door, and Ash throws invisibility on him.  He happily strolls away, and eventually informs them of his successful escape.  Everyone was disguised or invisible except  for Morgrim, a fact which hasn’t come up… yet.
 
(I of course had a big list of contingencies that the PCs might do to rescue him, which differing possible results.  Naturally, they chose something I had not considered, though at least I knew what dice to roll for the guards.)
 
The group marches with Duke Exxe to his border province, where they engage the dominant ogre mound, full of ogres and three ogre magi, who have migrated north from the Teryeal Expanse.  Upon seeing it, the group has time to prepare, as the ogres are cooking, masturbating, or sleeping.  Some fires burn with a strange blue light.  The group engages, and the ogres just come running out like a bunch of dummies.  Which, to be fair, they are.  The ogre mages fly out of the mound, invisible.  As they enter the area illuminated by one of the blue fires, they see them outlined, but then they arrive near the PCs, who are standing away from the  fire.  Cone of Colds commence, and devastate Lithonian, while the fighter laugh and high five each other  for making sure to take two levels of rogue.  The battle is pitched, and very close-  a memory loss arrow eliminates one of the ogre mages, and the others are blasted low enough that they flee, but the ogres are not so easily dissuaded.  Morgrim scoops up the unconscious cleric of Latukefu and dimension doors, at which point, some of the ogres break off to punch them to death.  Eventually, Morgrim ends up holding them off with mirror images and his dwarven training against giants, while Ash expends spells fluidly to help him and his allies, Rigby pelts them as best he can with arrows and spells, and Alenka and Keichi hold back to back against a horde of ogres, eventually cutting them down.
 
It is Consonance 40th.  The PCs receive the green door from Margraive Exxe, and they are in Cerren Keep (which looks over the Cerren border providence in the central west of the Zemnian Empire).  They have yet to open the door, and I think have enough XP to train.
 
 
*safe and secure forever, of course, means that the day after the PCs left town, he was sprung from jail, his item removed from stasis, and the best the wizards have come up with to explain it is “chronomancy”, which the PCs have mostly decided to mean “The DM hates us.”.
 


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 Post subject: Re: Part 6: The Absent-Minded Demon
PostPosted: Fri Oct 21, 2011 7:28 am 
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cfalcon wrote:
The pixie casts a scroll of glitterdust, which he spends a moment of concentration to eliminate.  Mogrim then hits him with glitterdust as well, because FUCK ME THAT’S WHY, 

Hey Rigby, I think that we both need to learn Spectral Hand, so that we can do some arcane high fives after such an awesome tag-team.

cfalcon wrote:
The group marches with Duke Exxe to his border province, where they engage the dominant ogre mound, full of ogres and three ogre magi, who have migrated north from the Teryeal Expanse. Upon seeing it, the group has time to prepare, as the ogres are cooking, masturbating, or sleeping. Some fires burn with a strange blue light. The group engages, and the ogres just come running out like a bunch of dummies. Which, to be fair, they are. The ogre mages fly out of the mound, invisible. As they enter the area illuminated by one of the blue fires, they see them outlined, but then they arrive near the PCs, who are standing away from the fire. Cone of Colds commence, and devastate Lithonian, while the fighter laugh and high five each other for making sure to take two levels of rogue. The battle is pitched, and very close- a memory loss arrow eliminates one of the ogre mages, and the others are blasted low enough that they flee, but the ogres are not so easily dissuaded. Morgrim scoops up the unconscious cleric of Latukefu and dimension doors, at which point, some of the ogres break off to punch them to death. Eventually, Morgrim ends up holding them off with mirror images and his dwarven training against giants, while Ash expends spells fluidly to help him and his allies, Rigby pelts them as best he can with arrows and spells, and Alenka and Keichi hold back to back against a horde of ogres, eventually cutting them down.

This was a great paragraph.



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 Post subject: Re: Part 6: The Absent-Minded Demon
PostPosted: Fri Oct 21, 2011 8:50 am 
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I left off that the ghostly blue fires are the result of burning a form of ghostly plant, but no one had enough knowledge nature to be super helpful on the issue.


Coming from a tactics-only standpoint, I really liked both large encounters. Both stressed the PCs, and made their choices important. I felt that if you guys had made worse choices round by round, you would have ended up losing people (in the first situation) or losing MANY (in the second situation).

The first encounter was trivialized because it had one very powerful opponent who ended up failing a save, as memory loss on the demon pretty much ends the whole deal instantly. However, any encounter with one powerful opponent can end quickly with a save-or-lose effect, so this is fine (the memory loss was hilarious, but if the demon had ended up blinded or unconscious the encounter might have dragged on a couple rounds as the minions fell, but the effect would not have been in doubt).

The second encounter was fucking FANTASTIC because it had many elements of an interesting fight:
1)- The PCs got to pick the terms of engagement. You had all the time in the world to buff, or to try to sneak around and preemptively off a few ogres You chose to buff up and start picking them off at range, knowing that on their path in there would be too many to finish off in this way.
2)- It was a classic "heroes versus horde of enemies" scenario. Strictly by CR, of course, you had no chance at all. But in practice, I know that such an encounter is eminently survivable if the players use their tools cleverly- CR doesn't take into account that you guys get to pick the encounter space, for instance.
3)- A shocking surprise- the three simultaneous cone of colds fucking WRECKED your plans. That was simply too much damage, over too many players, to be repairable in a single round. It necessitated a change in strategy
4)- Round to round choices that matter- when players are making small adjustments to improve their AC (or when being a dwarf who has trained versus giants matters), that tells me that the tactics are in people's heads cleverly. I'm not saying your play once you made the decisions was perfect, but it was very good. In a lot of genuinely threatening battles, such details often don't matter.
5)- Expend your spells to some effect- Like almost all encounters, I try to frame things generically. In this encounter, a caster who had a bunch of buffs, would get to cast them. A caster with powerful single target debuffs would put them on the ogre mages. A caster with area snares and disables would put them on the ogres. A caster with area damage would wait for the ogres to be bunched, then use them. Wall effects can be used to mitigate, delay, or damage. In this encounter, pretty much every spell ability would be useful if timed correctly.
6)- Good to have AC
7)- Good to have +hit
8)- Good to have +damage

Those things are hard to see all matter in a fight, and this fight was relatively fucking simple, and also didn't mess with anyone's set of strangeness. Nothing about that fight felt like the fight was overdesigned or unrealistic.

I don't know, I just was really happy with both fights, but the second just managed to have all those elements, just out of some stupid ogres!



BUT BACK ON TARGET- You guys are pretty far from Emerald. You have your Green Door, and you haven't told me that you are going to use that magical disk key to head to the Proditial Region of Air. Any plans for what's going down next, so I can design that space with more detail?


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 Post subject: Re: Part 6: The Absent-Minded Demon
PostPosted: Fri Oct 21, 2011 8:56 am 
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I will comment more later, but for now I'll say I am disinclined to attempt the air thingy just yet.



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 Post subject: Re: Part 6: The Absent-Minded Demon
PostPosted: Fri Oct 21, 2011 10:52 am 
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cfalcon wrote:
Drethist sees Rigby and threatens him

Do not like! Technically, no one saw me. I only heard someone say they could see invis and I bravely GTFO.

cfalcon wrote:
Moments later, Delim-Sharno, a Glabrezu demon is revealed!  “WHY AM I IN THIS FORM”, he shouts, immediately resuming his natural form, and attacking the shit out of his allies, thousands of years of memories erased by a pretty poor saving throw.

I have a feeling his demon buddies are going to have a lot of fun with this when he gets back to the appropriate level of hell. We all like to tease the retard, but a sense of decency stops us. I'm guessing that sense of decency doesn't exist there.

  The battle is won!  The PCs wait for the murdering to finish, and Delim-Sharno leaves.  The group picks up everything that they can (I still owe you guys armor-  they had a bunch of leather and some chain), and heads on back north.
 
cfalcon wrote:
The pixie casts a scroll of glitterdust, which he spends a moment of concentration to eliminate.  Mogrim then hits him with glitterdust as well, because FUCK ME THAT’S WHY, and then he flies towards a stage exit. 

You love to throw impossible odds against the players and then see how they pull through.

cfalcon wrote:
Rigby fires a sleep arrow.  OF COURSE THAT ALSO WORKS

I'm not sure if you've realized this, but those pixie arrows can be pretty strong.

cfalcon wrote:
so Narso is captured by the city guard, his weapons and magical items placed in statis, and he himself is locked into the shifting planes of the tower of Zem, safe and secure forever.*

My rage is building.
 
cfalcon wrote:
Sure enough, as he is being transported from the tower to his trial at the Great House of Nobles, Rigby makes use of benign transposition, at which point Morgrim casts dimension door, and Ash throws invisibility on him.  He happily strolls away, and eventually informs them of his successful escape.  Everyone was disguised or invisible except  for Morgrim, a fact which hasn’t come up… yet.

Technically, Morgrim did invisibility and dim door. Ash did Non-detection.

And don't go pretending that there aren't a whole lot of wizardly dwarves. He could have been anybody.
 
cfalcon wrote:
(I of course had a big list of contingencies that the PCs might do to rescue him, which differing possible results.  Naturally, they chose something I had not considered, though at least I knew what dice to roll for the guards.)

It sucks, doesn't it? But that's why it's better than a video game.
 
cfalcon wrote:
The battle is pitched, and very close-  a memory loss arrow eliminates one of the ogre mages, and the others are blasted low enough that they flee, but the ogres are not so easily dissuaded. 

Don't forget a Fire Blindess arrow got another one.

cfalcon wrote:
Rigby pelts them as best he can with arrows and spells,

With my limited selection of spells, this battle, along with the prison break, made me think Benign Transposition was indeed the right call. Though I had a couple methods for getting Ash out of the situation of being flanked by 4 ogres, this was by far the easiest.
 
cfalcon wrote:
They have yet to open the door, and I think have enough XP to train.

These wankers get sleepy around 2am. And yes, we have the XP to train.
 
 
cfalcon wrote:
*safe and secure forever, of course, means that the day after the PCs left town, he was sprung from jail, his item removed from stasis, and the best the wizards have come up with to explain it is “chronomancy”, which the PCs have mostly decided to mean “The DM hates us.”

My rage is fully constructed. I wanted to kill that guy but I let you convince me out of game that it was the wrong call. You're an uberjerkface, and your world will soon have far to many forgotten instances of blind people tripping over sleeping people.


PoorAssRacing wrote:
Hey Rigby, I think that we both need to learn Spectral Hand, so that we can do some arcane high fives after such an awesome tag-team.

I feel this is an appropriate use of a spell. When we get to higher levels, perhaps we can use Rigby's Crushing Hand and the like and see how loud we can make it.



Good summary, uberjerkface. It was a good reminder of what we did without causing you to spend 3 days writing it.



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 Post subject: Re: Part 6: The Absent-Minded Demon
PostPosted: Fri Oct 21, 2011 11:28 am 
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Zem wrote:
PoorAssRacing wrote:
Hey Rigby, I think that we both need to learn Spectral Hand, so that we can do some arcane high fives after such an awesome tag-team.

I feel this is an appropriate use of a spell. When we get to higher levels, perhaps we can use Rigby's Crushing Hand and the like and see how loud we can make it.

At first, I was all "oops typo", and then a split second later, I was all "lolomgsweet".



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 Post subject: Re: Part 6: The Absent-Minded Demon
PostPosted: Fri Oct 21, 2011 11:36 am 
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The fact that Bibgy isn't in this world will do little to stop me from using my bluff check to instruct people on the proper names of many spells.



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 Post subject: Re: Part 6: The Absent-Minded Demon
PostPosted: Fri Oct 21, 2011 10:51 pm 
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Quote:
Do not like! Technically, no one saw me. I only heard someone say they could see invis and I bravely GTFO.


Technically true! I mean, he DID see you, but then it sort of slipped his mind.


Quote:
You love to throw impossible odds against the players and then see how they pull through.
...
I'm not sure if you've realized this, but those pixie arrows can be pretty strong.


Well, that was mostly so you could see Narso in action. The pixie arrows are fine. Narso had excellent odds of saving, except for fort, where his odds were merely very damned good. You'll recall I rolled a 3. In any encounter with the five of you only, Narso would likely be able to pick off one before dying (or having to escape), but clearly his strategy was to leave, given that the area was surrounded by civilians, wizards, and guards.

Quote:
And don't go pretending that there aren't a whole lot of wizardly dwarves. He could have been anybody.


Lol. No, there's a DC to fuck you guys over. It's moderately high.
 
Quote:
Don't forget a Fire Blindess arrow got another one.


Well, you used two status effect arrows successfully, and eliminated two ogre mages. That, I thought, was a pretty good use of them.

Quote:
My rage is fully constructed. I wanted to kill that guy but I let you convince me out of game that it was the wrong call. You're an uberjerkface, and your world will soon have far to many forgotten instances of blind people tripping over sleeping people.


I didn't talk you out of it out of game. I simply explained your situation- guards rushing in. The place has nobles in it, there aren't many rounds of guard-free situations. Killing him would be counterproductive anyway- lot of questions to ask that sort of fellow. And of course, his cell was hidden in a fully secure tower of differing dimensions. No danger at all!


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