One silver coin is reasonable wages for a day of semi-skilled labor. Call it $20.

The magic on a third-tier named weapon costs $3,600,000 to set up. Selling it on the black market, you might be paid anywhere from half to 10% of that value. Mundane materials and workmanship are rounding error by comparison.

An exodimensional sanctum is like a bag of holding, but bigger. Instead of a cargo wagon inside a bag, it's a whole building inside a doorframe. No weight limit, air inside doesn't get stale when it's closed off. Typical price is $1000 per square foot, furnishings sold separately, so by Gary's description, the place ought to be worth more than $2,500,000.

Eswic thinks something's seriously wrong with the place, but is having a hard time articulating exactly what.

So, taking the deal? Haggling? Ignoring it for drunken revelry and flirtation with barmaids, or other typical now-that-we're-back-in-town activities? Garibald's willing to give guided tours of the sanctum for two people at a time (but not the ogre, for obvious reasons) plus Eswic, before you make up your minds. It's parked outside by the stable.

On a more OOC note, new characters still being accepted, instructions at the start of thread one. A traveler's inn out on the frontier is one of the best places to meet up with random new potential teammates.

Wiki link: http://tgchan.org/wiki/Please_do_not_Take_these_Organs

rolled 2, 3, 4 = 9

---

>>730777
Before we even consider trading something that expensive or that large we should at least look it over. See what shape it's in, how the spells are holding up, if it's full of contraband even we're afraid to touch, etc. (Not sure if the prince they were referring to was their dark prince, or the more mundane local ruler).

Marijke would want a look at it herself (pity I don't have appraise prepared, but I do have mage sight and bartering skills), Nico's area of expertise seems to at least partially be extra-dimensional spaces (even if he's usually summoning from them, not storage). Our new alchemist / tinker might reasonably have some kind of insight, as might our extra-dimensional alien. (Those seem the most obvious people likely to spot a glaring flaw, but I certainly wouldn't stop anyone else from looking it over. Than's eyes might pick something up, and who knows what Letkra knows).

Inside the wagon in question, under a tarp and some empty barrels, there's a surprisingly normal-looking cellar door, eight feet long by four feet wide. It opens up to reveal stairs down, with a handrail on the left side, leading straight into what seems like the taproom of a small tavern, dusty as if neglected for a few months. Ambient light level is equivalent to a cloudless full-moon night, with no obvious source. The entry hall is 20' square. There are three apparent exits: a door to the kitchen, straight ahead behind the bar, and arches with beaded curtains on the left and right walls, at the corners furthest from the bar.

In terms of magic, main thing is something weird under the stairs, but it's hard to get a fix on, as if the wood were too thick to scan through.

Which two are going in first?

Riv is fairly studied and skilled in identifying precious materials, herbs, and other such likes. In addition, she is extremely interested in viewing the extra dimensional space and taking as many notes and measurements as she can- if she has any share of the loot available to her she is interested in obtaining specialty tools for recording notes and formulai and reading measurements, as well a scribing kit for map making and writing/brainstorming/planning

>>730836
At the general store nearby, one gold coin can be traded for 20 silver, and fifteen silver gets you a full set of equipment for precision measurement of angles and distances (dioptra, surveyor's cross, forty yards of wax-stiffened cord, pair of 10' poles marked with feet and inches, set of pitons stamped with numbers one through twenty; the whole kit weighs forty pounds). Map-worthy vellum is three silver a pound, which would be about fifty 8"x12" sheets. One silver would buy a gallon of iron gall ink, far more than you'd need in any kind of a hurry. Two and a half silver for a simple but elegant portable writing desk.

The shopkeeper notices Riv gazing longingly at some glassware and points out that, for just two more gold, you could purchase all the basic lab equipment you'd need to refit a typical kitchen into a modest but serviceable alchemy workshop.

>>730630
I thought Than had the rod and the ring. Where's the spiked mace again?

>>730818
Considering a previous cult had the wagon, if it's something undead Than can probably just go in and shoot it if need be. No rolls for action yet though. Who else is coming with?

>>730859
That can be saved for when we have the wagon...or didn't we have some form of storage? We could keep it in the chest we still have...right?

>>730862
>I thought Than had the rod and the ring. Where's the spiked mace again?
Eswic was referring to who pried the items from Mesifin Styx's cold, dead hands, rather than who happens to currently be carrying them.

>didn't we have some form of storage?
Rixxil Kas's cashbox is only six inches square and a foot long, and has a lot of fiddly little internal partitions. Mesifin Styx's rod of office is a little over eighteen inches long, and as such, couldn't possibly fit inside.

Apart from that, you've got a reasonable assortment of bottles, jugs, backpacks, scabbards, holsters, bandoliers, and burlap or canvas sacks, as implied by the ability to effectively carry all your other equipment, but no bigger boxes, nor dedicated load-bearing gear even as advanced as a wheelbarrow. If you're interested in acquiring such things, now might be a good time. A wheelbarrow, for example, would be three silver, and weighs eighteen pounds empty, but then you can load it up with 350 pounds of stuff and four-fifths of that weight rests on the ground instead of your shoulders.

A sturdy watertight 'sea chest,' five cubic feet, bronze fittings for rot resistance, decent quality lock, would cost you 35 silver and weigh 100 pounds empty. Structurally, that could hold three-quarters of a ton of plunder, if it's high density stuff like coinage and ingots, or in an emergency someone reasonably skinny and flexible could hide inside.

If you want to move bulkier stuff, an oxcart is seventeen silver, oxen sold separately (there aren't any livestock for sale at the moment). Could probably be refitted into an ogre-scaled wheelbarrow-equivalent without too much trouble.

rolled 2 = 2

---

>Eswic was referring to who pried the items from Mesifin Styx's cold, dead hands, rather than who happens to currently be carrying them.
If we're being strictly accurate, I think Garaile pulled the rod from his hands, and Than doubled back to pry the ring from his hand.

(And I'm not 100% sure we recovered the ring in part or whole or not after Rixxil tried to cheat us).

>Which two are going in first?
Flipping coin.
1: Marijke and Nico: captain and quartermaster inspect potential large purchase
2: Than and Riv: eagle eye and obsessive look for trouble and map the place

>not 100% sure we recovered the ring
Riv left the outpost with the ring on her finger. She would have handed it in upon request although the platinum could probably be a useful component in her mechanisms.

>Could probably be refitted into an ogre-scaled wheelbarrow
Riv is in favor of this idea

>Flipping coin
>rolled 2 = 2
Riv questions whether the purchase of tools that could be useful in plotting the place and looking for anomalies, either mundane or magical, should be procured before the examination of the wagon.

>>730884
I meant the alchemy kit. Not the rod.

>>730890
>strictly accurate
Eswic may have made some imprecise assumptions about what Ms. I-don't-know-from-pirates-but-if-captain-gets-paid-extra-that-has-to-be-me, most faithful and spider-spewing follower of the God of Greed, was doing while all three acolytes were cowering in the warehouse/slave quarters.

>ring
On Riv's thumb, as mentioned, and intact. Riv got orders to disassemble it at almost exactly the same moment she decided to stop obeying orders and escape. Things moved pretty quickly after that.

>>730908
The glassware only weighs about twenty pounds, but it's bulky and fragile. Holding off until you know how you're going to carry it seems wise.

>Riv and Than going in
The bead-curtains across the entrances to those two narrow hallways seem to do something odd to echoes, and slightly distort perspective. They also snap abruptly back to the flat surface when pushed aside, like lodestones to iron or corks to the surface of water, rather than swinging in all directions equally as might be expected. Still plenty of rattling, though, which makes them an effective low-key privacy barrier and alarm. Than can see that these phenomena are a result of some sort of flaw in space itself, though it is beyond her current skill to strike effectively.

So, what do you want to see first? Left side bedrooms, right side bedrooms, or the kitchen?

Riv will head towards the left hand bedrooms; still unsure whether I have measuring tools and writing equipment at my disposal though.

Than will head towards the kitchen. If there is something there, it could use utensils for weapons.

>>730984
Hallway to the left-hand bedrooms is 3' by 21', with two doors on the right wall and one at the far end labeled "employees only," which leads to the servants' quarters. The second bedroom door, further from the entry hall, has been nailed shut and marked with a prayer strip. Sobbing is audible from inside.

Gary explains that there's an attic whisperer sealed inside. "The absolute most pathetic variety of corporeal undead I've ever seen, or even heard of. Hands-down, no question. They're not even a disease vector. Kindergartener with a knife is more dangerous."
>"Hey, speaking of which, you remember that yaegoph who tried to 'rescue' Goris?" says Eswic, reminiscing.
"Big gold sunburst on his breastplate, fancy teleport-y cloak, shanked in the knee halfway through his overblown speech?"
>"Yeah, that was classic. She's done even better since then, if you can believe it."
"Tell me some other time. Anyway, attic whisperers are motivated by loneliness and loss rather than the more typical hunger, malice, or reckless arcane curiosity, so they'll barely even fight in self-defense. Absolute worst case, somebody gullible comes down here, they get lured in, play with the monster, get breath-drained into a coma when they try to leave, you smash it when you find out, drag the vic to a curse-breaker. Basic dispel, really common third-circle effect, fixes the problem. Full recovery in a day or two, assuming you find the little munchkin before they dehydrate, which... under an eternal sleep effect, in a comfortably cool and humid environment like this? That'd take a couple weeks, minimum."

Than can see that his assessment of the attic whisperer as a negligible threat is sincere, but he's trying to avoid some other subject.

>measuring tools
Yeah, unless Marijke's got some strong objection. Small piece of the pie, obvious strategic uses, and even if it turns out to have been a bad deal, the expensive bits aren't consumable. You could just magically repair any damage and resell 'em.

>>730985
Gary's escorting the two of you for a tour, so, while you could split up, it's fairly rude. Want to go to the kitchen next, or roll to sneak away?

Without looking up from her writing, Riv asks how did it get there? Who created that seal? Need to see inside bedrooms next, than, still capable of handling creature?

>>731121
>how did it get there?
Might have gotten in like a rat, but they also form spontaneously in abandoned places.

>Who created that seal?
Some licensed exorcist back in Passholdt. Garibald installed it himself. Basic off-the-shelf household ward against walking dead, just as an extra precaution.

>Need to see inside bedrooms next
"Sure, sure. All four are on the same 10'x18' plan, cozy cotton sheets for the bed, cedar cabinets to keep the moths off your clothes, silvered mirrors for the, makeup-desk thing, whatchacallit..."
>"Vanity."
"Right, of course. Chamberpots and portable bathtubs, since there's just no way to finagle plumbing into a space like this. Overall, might be a bit cramped and plain by the standards of high nobility, but not too shabby for a camp out in the wilderness, eh?"
Nothing's obviously wrong about the other three bedrooms. Comparable to the nicer private rooms at the inn, albeit currently staffed by cobwebs and mildew rather than cute barmaids. Each bed is easily big enough for two humans, maybe three if they get along really well, or half a dozen cuddly kobolds.

rolled 3, 3, 1 = 7

---

>Yeah, unless Marijke's got some strong objection.
None here.

While milling around outside, maybe Marijke can ask one of the other acolytes how well they know this Gary character.

Or discuss possible structural integrity issues with Nico. Prating comes with a certain degree of danger, how study is this kind of space warping? Wouldn't want something that will violently implode or explode should it take a knock.

rolled 4, 2, 4 = 10

---

>>731101
Kitchen later then.
"Is there anything else with the attic whisperer, or did something happen in there?" Than asks out of genuine curiosity, as it's better for herself to be prepared.

>>731165
>ask one of the other acolytes how well they know this Gary character
Altsoba and Goris were both less than twelve years old when they last saw him.

>possible structural integrity issues
If a pocket dimension of this size is more than three weeks old, that means it's got some sort of internal structural bracing, which is probably going to be stable indefinitely unless deliberately sabotaged or subject to some obvious magical cataclysm. A shoddy structure might deteriorate over months or years, but that could be diagnosed and repaired as it comes up, same as for an ordinary building. Consider carefully before knocking out any walls that look like they might be load-bearing. Bringing a bag of holding inside is probably safe, but you definitely shouldn't try anything that might violate the warranty while it's in there. If you want to be cautious, just leave any exodimensional storage items out in the 'ground floor' of the wagon. The door itself is just an access point. If it's broken, the interior will remain approximately as stable as it would be otherwise, and it would still be possible to rescue anyone stranded inside via interdimensional travel. At least, in theory.

>>731175
>did something happen in there?
"Not to my knowledge, though I can't be held responsible for what a false god might have gotten up to in her spare time. Everything was nice and tidy, within reason. That whisperer only showed up after a couple months. Keep any place boarded up and vermin move in eventually."

>Kitchen
About twenty feet square, including the pantry, which is empty but has a few slabs of unmelting ice bolted to the walls. Big cast-iron stove, all the pots and pans and ladles and knives and whatnot that two cooks and some associated support staff would need to prepare quality meals for thirty people and clean up afterward. More than enough extra counter space to set up an alchemy lab, although there might be concerns about cross-contamination if it's also still being used for food prep. Only other apparent exit (other than the chimney-pipe for the stove?) is a door on the back wall leading to the servants' quarters.

Riv, sketch out the map as best you understand it so far, and gimme a 3d6 roll for some combination of Cartography and Mathematics (Surveying). On anything but a critical failure, I'll point out any egregious deviations from my description, and for each point by which you succeed I'll note some subtler problem.

The servant's quarters are another 21' square room. First thing you see is a T-shaped corridor outlined by plain white (or possibly very pale brown) curtains hanging from a grid of hooks in the ceiling. Door from the kitchen is at the bottom of the T, 'employees only' doors from the bedroom areas are at the ends, and the wall along the crossbar is made from great slabs of gold-flecked marble, rather than wood like all the other structural elements so far. In the center of that wall, a massive pair of double doors, each 5' wide and 8' high, with elaborate wrought-iron handles that double as brackets, should the door need to be barred shut. No bar is in evidence.

Behind curtains, the room is further divided into six 6'x9' sleeping areas, each with a much smaller and plainer bed, cabinet, and so on. Suitable accommodations for a monk or domestic servant.

Through the disproportionately grand double doors, the library at last. It's a bit of a maze, packed floor-to-ceiling with over a thousand linear feet of shelving. Three chairs, a small circular table, and a hooded lantern holding a permanent illusory flame. Clear recurring themes among the books are local history, building codes and architectural best practices, and applied geometry... banal enough in themselves, but relevant to siege warfare.

At the back of the library, there's a final door. Behind it, directly under the entrance stairs at the front of the tavern-room, is a second flight of stairs. They lead down. Not down TO anywhere in particular, just... down.

The door at the back of the library is bound in chains of heavy bronze,
and cold steel,
and silver wrought with thorns,
and mournful dried flowers,
each chain linked to the other three and to the frame by a set of five padlocks,
and further barricaded with stout beams of oak,
pear-wood,
cloud-pine,
rowan,
mahogany,
and teak,
each beam warded with cryptic luminescent runes of gold,
adamant,
antimony,
ivory,
and lead.
Garibald explains that those padlocks are the collective masterpiece by which an orc hunt-brotherhood attained full membership in the (predominately Dwarven) locksmith's guild, and as such, must have been weighed and measured and subjected to the finest scrutiny any mortal could hope to apply, without the slightest flaw being uncovered. In a cold sweat, he further assures you that the... precautions... go far beyond industry standards, up into nebulous heights of 'best that money can buy,' and as such will surely be sufficient. Than can see that he's only lying about that last bit, and even then, mostly to himself.

So, deal? No deal? Counteroffer? Somebody else want to have a look around?

rolled 6, 4, 2 = 12

---

>So, deal? No deal? Counteroffer?
Well the people who hold the purse-strings haven't even been inside, yet.

>bag of holding inside a bag of holding safety
Marijke isn't exactly sure what's happened to her amulet, or if it currently counts as extra-dimensional storage, but to be on the safe side, she's not going to be taking it down the cart's basement.

I'll hand to Letkra before the others come out.

>Somebody else want to have a look around?
After the first group returns, Marijke would like to take a look around with Nico.

In general, I'm going to be making a bunch of search / spot checks on the place with mage sight.

In particular, the sealed bedroom and the weeping not-ghost inside deserves a closer look. The library as well. (Check if any of the books jump out as magically, or if there's any reading material that jumps out as pertinent to her interests, or particularly valuable).

The door at the end is going to earn a full stop, stares, detailed magical scrutiny, and clutching her idol. (And probably trying to calculate what it's worth in her head).

"Exactly what are you trying to sell us custody of? Is the false god still down there?"

>>731485
>Is the false god still down there?
"No, no, she was just an adventurer running a long con. Last I heard, safe and sound back in the lands of her birth, five hundred miles or more up north. This place is, more or less, the near-end pilings of a bridge she crossed to get home, then burned to deter pursuit. Literally nothing is down there. There's not even really a 'down there' for anything to be in!"

>mage sight
A few enchanted trinkets, such as the lamp in the library. No big surprises there. The warded doors are both as magical as they ought to be.

>sealed bedroom
Only so much more you can do without unsealing it, in which case Garibald would insist on being paid for the tedious ritual maintenance necessary to re-close the ward after.

>any reading material that jumps out as pertinent to her interests
In one of the books on architecture, a diagram of a two-story house with an enclosed staircase down to a riverside wharf, the outline looks strikingly similar to Rixxil Kas caught in the act of kneeling to drink from a pool on the ground. The descriptions of various rooms could be parsed as an obfuscated metaphor for organs.

>valuable
One of the geometry textbooks is a first edition, which... okay, no, that block-print on page 93 isn't even pretending to correspond to the step-by-step proof on the facing page, it's clearly some kind of summoning diagram.

A comprehensive review of the library could take weeks, but just scratch the surface, and already it's festering with occult information.

>what [the library ward is] worth
Finest padlocks go for over a pound of silver ($1000) each; a matched set, story behind them attesting to legendary unsurpassed quality, could be significantly more. The workmanship and enchantments on that long, tangled silver chain probably push it's value well above the equivalent weight of plain coinage. Rune-carved wooden beams are harder to evaluate, on account of the limited secondary market, but nothing encrusted with gold and adamant is likely to be cheap. However, taken together? Better to keep it all in place, holding back whatever it was designed to. Strip-mining otherwise functional infrastructure isn't Brem Marst's way.

>search
On the inside surface of the library's great stone doors, spanning the line where they meet, there's a scorch mark. It outlines an elvenoid silhouette, 5'8" tall, medium build, flared-top boots consistent with a style that was fashionable two or three years ago. The figure's left hand is the most sharply defined, raised to shoulder height, index and middle fingers tightly together, the rest splayed out. A gray smudge on the stone across the base of the ring finger is identifiable, under alchemical analysis, as platinum. The right hand is held higher, slightly above head level, and blurrier around the edges, possibly clenched into a fist.

rolled 5, 2, 3 = 10

---

>>731557
>occult stuff everywhere
>possibly something nasty sealed away

Garaile is also interested in taking a spiritually-enhanced look around to make sure there isn't anything truly vile still lingering about. Extra-close scrutiny on the library, seal, and stairs.

>>731581
"Sir" Garaile can sense something unclean moving around in the sealed-off bedroom, consistent with a moderately powerful undead creature. More potent than a basic non-sapient skeleton or zombie, weaker than some ancient vampire lord or spell-slinging lich. There are also 'invisible stains' around certain books and embedded in the tiled floor of the library, particularly at spots where the tiles are discolored, and the previously-mentioned scorch mark. Wouldn't normally expect those to persist more than a week, even for off-the-chart auras like Marty. Not possible to get a clear reading on the stairs, since there's lead incorporated into the wards.

>>731588
Garaile won't touch anything until we've confirmed we're actually going to buy it, but will pass along this information to Marijke.
As for the scorch mark: "What the hell happened haere?"

rolled 1, 4, 1 = 6

---

Eswic is along, it might be worth asking her opinion on the attic whisperer. Undead are Orcus' domain, right?

>This place is, more or less, the near-end pilings of a bridge she crossed to get home, then burned to deter pursuit. Literally nothing is down there. There's not even really a 'down there' for anything to be in!
Ah. So this is sort of a settlement on the outer edge of a sundered wormhole. And that's... the plug that keeps everything from unraveling down into nothing. (Or eldritch horrors from climbing up the rent in reality from places between).

Marijke would very much like to know what Nico thinks about this. He's the closest thing we have to an expert in messing with extra-planer phenomenon.

>However, taken together? Better to keep it all in place, holding back whatever it was designed to. Strip-mining otherwise functional infrastructure isn't Brem Marst's way.
Well yes, but what's the point of having nice things without that warm tingling feeling of knowing just how much of a fortune you're sitting on?

>scorch mark
The fact that the mark is sharp enough we can still make out the cut of the boot seems unusual to me. If we assume magical fire or a wall of heat (and not more exotic effects) it had to be at least 1,768°C to melt platinum. But it was short lived enough not to melt or deform the stone doors, or for the contents of the library to ignite. That's a lot of power, and precise application thereof.

(It's possible this room hadn't yet been converted to a library when this happened, but the spiritual residue splatter on the books as well as tiles suggest otherwise).

>What the hell happened here?
I'll second that.

>>731599
>And that's... the plug that keeps everything from unraveling down into nothing. (Or eldritch horrors from climbing up the rent in reality from places between).
The wards in the library don't appear to be load-bearing, and if the place was structurally unstable, Than would have noticed when she was examining the folds in the structure. So, more likely that second thing.

>warm tingling feeling
If the place never had a second entrance, and was completely unfurnished, it'd be worth one and a quarter tons of silver ($2,500,000), just for the space. Domestic furnishings might be another hundred pounds of silver, and easy enough to find a buyer anywhere houses are being built, but the price-to-weight ratio is unfavorable for conventional long distance shipping. The actual books in the library, though... a library of this size on completely mundane subjects would cost over two hundred pounds of silver to assemble. If as many secrets are buried in there as it seems like, somebody who really needed the information in question (say, if they were planning to summon an army of demons to besiege the city of Passholdt) would gladly pay ten times that. Maybe a hundred times, if they had the cash to spare and no other practical way to find out.

Overall, the place could quite plausibly be worth as much or more than the three-point-six thousand pounds of silver typical of a third-tier named weapon. It has problems, both intrinsic and extrinsic, but then again, so does Mesifin's mace. There are two big open questions:
1) How much more useful to your group will it be, to have portable shelter with vast cargo capacity, relative to a weapon which is baneful to all things good? Silver's great, but you can't eat it, so eventually the calculus of profit always has to come back around to actual utility.
2) How much of a liability will the "nowhere" behind the sealed door (and whatever's leaking out of it) be, in practical terms?

>What the hell happened here?
Okay, maybe three questions. 'What happened' is intimately entangled with 'how do we stop it happening again,' though. How are you going to go about breaking those big questions down into smaller pieces?

As for NPC resources, best way to summarize it might be that you're at the fantasy-medieval equivalent of a truck stop/gas station/motel/qwik-e-mart complex. Local economy consists almost entirely of providing services to long-haul cargo transport: mostly riverboats, some wagons. Only spellcaster for hire (other than random adventurers passing through) is Ulman Dark, Unlicensed Necromancer, your one-stop shop for no-questions, no-promises, cash-up-front medical care. His wife, Kanndra, is a bounty hunter, which is all you really need to know about how they met, and why he's set up shop out here, rather than a proper town with a market where there'd be more business.

>sharp enough we can still make out the cut of the boot
To be fair, it's a really distinctive shape, protruding almost a handspan out beyond the natural line of the calf. Impractical, but when has fashion had anything to do with practicality?

>That's a lot of power, and precise application thereof.
Yep. Wouldn't want to fight something like that with just what you've got so far.

>what Nico thinks

"What has fallen, may rise again." Theoretically, someone could repair the 'bridge,' possibly by linking it up to some other pocket dimension. The two entrances, if sufficiently far apart on the outside, could then provide casual foot traffic between two distant cities.

Same-day transoceanic trade, with volume and cost per pound comparable to the unskilled labor of moving stuff through a warehouse, all under your exclusive control? Fresh fruit and live fish, of the sort you'd been scrounging up for free on the coast, might be worth their weight in silver (or more!) to the upper-crust nobility of some city deep in the desert. Wealth beyond the dreams of avarice.

rolled 2, 5, 2 = 9

---

"So, are you SURE the attic whisperer didn't become something worse or something else is in there with it, and anything behind that door didn't get out?" asked Than insistently once more towards Gary. A little afterwards saying "I could kill the attic whisperer myself if there truly hasn't been any changes with it."

Then afterward that conversation whisper to Eswic, "Do you feel any eldritch horrors that used to be around here, if not behind the door?"

"So, are you SURE the attic whisperer didn't become something worse or something else is in there with it, and anything behind that door didn't get out?" asked Than insistently once more towards Gary. A little afterwards saying "I could kill the attic whisperer myself if there truly hasn't been any changes with it."

Then afterward that conversation whisper to Eswic, "Do you feel any eldritch horrors that used to be around here, if not behind the door?"

strange error, sorry. i backspaced weird and the text was already there in the box still

rolled 4, 6, 4 = 14

---

>>731592
>>731624
Garaile, indicating the scorch mark with a hand, would like to ask Garibald, to his face, the exact words: "What the hell happened here?"
Gary is attempting to sell a product to us, and therefore is obligated to answer our questions if he wants us to consider buying it.
As nice as the space is, if the seller of all people cannot provide any sort of explanation for the horrifying scorch mark of a person being vaporized, then how can we ever feel safe when inside the space?
Garaile, for one, would prefer not to be incinerated by an unknown threat.

Rolling for answers.

>>731624
>Okay, maybe three questions. 'What happened' is intimately entangled with 'how do we stop it happening again,' though. How are you going to go about breaking those big questions down into smaller pieces?
I'm confused. "What the hell happened here" seems a perfectly reasonable questions for a potential buyer being given a tour of a property when they stumble across the lingering and obvious stains of a murder. It's the kind of thing that tends to effect property values, and a buyer's interest!

Do I really have to be more specific or rephrase? (If it helps, I'm asking specifically in reference to the discovery of the elfin wall art).

>points 1 and 2
And you summarize the exact problem very neatly. Obviously, the cart has far greater utility than the rod to our group, and is immediately accessible, whereas pawning off the dark artifact would take further time and effort. The sticking point is determining just how safe our pirate crew's would be land-ship is.

>>731646
Tempting. The biggest sticking point is drawing the ire of the mage capable of actually setting the bridge up in the first place, if they're still on the other end and not interested in authorities on this end having access. And/or dealing with who controls the other beachhead.

>>731669
Gary has no objection to you destroying the attic whisperer if you're going to buy, but if you're still thinking it over, please don't. He's got reason to believe those 'soggy monks' would prefer to speak with the poor thing.

Attic whisperers don't metamorphose, at least not on such a short timescale, and absolutely never reproduce. In fact, their population is sharply self-limiting, by the very nature of loneliness.

>>731689
Garibald reluctantly explains that he had a... friend? Co-conspirator? ...who did most of the work of covering Marr'Yana's trail. After the 'bridge' broke, but before the current wards were installed, something appeared in the library. Just being in the same room with it, even facing the other way, was like staring directly into the sun, and it gave off a telepathic roar like the sound of tearing metal, with only occasional coherent concepts. Gary's partner died in a delaying action, so now part of the 'business with the soggy monks' is a resurrection.

>>731697
>the mage capable of actually setting the bridge up
Nico hasn't figured out the entire effect just yet, but is confident he would be able to do so repeatably as a fifth-circle spell, possibly sooner (albeit in less reliable and more costly ways) with elaborate ritual preparations, supporting equipment which Riv could construct, and assistants.

rolled 1, 5, 3 = 9

---

>>731751
"Look sir, I've almost been killed or horribly maimed mentally or physically multiple times now. I've got a gut feeling that there's something wrong with that attic whisperer." while Than gives him a stern look.

>>731763
Garibald stands firm under Than's accusatory glare. "I'm trying to cut a deal, here, not holding a knife to anyone's throat. If you don't like what I'm offering, go ahead and vote your shares. But if you're just 'once burned, twice shy' about almost being maimed,"
He throws his hood back, revealing eyes of solid obsidian black, set in a face half-melted by horrific burn scars. "Go look at what Ulman Dark has to offer. He set me up with a new pair of retinas, and, sure, it took a little while to get used to blood looking the same as boiled spinach, or window glass being opaque as lead, but overall I'd say they're a big improvement. All kinds of details that I would've missed before, cracks and stains, the secret colors of flowers, even by starlight."

>>731767
"Is this a now or never offer to buy this extra dimensional area?" Than asks inquisitively.

Her thoughts are to not buy now, if that's possible.

>>731769
In the very first post of this thread, Gary says he's planning to barter it away to somebody at the monastery on the edge of the swamp. You've got until the next boat headed downstream arrives, probably a day or three.

rolled 2, 4, 1 = 7

---

>>731751
>an orb of fire was loose in the library.
I've played Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup enough to find that appropriately terrifying, beyond the simple prospects of a primordial horror slipping in between crack in reality or having open flame near so many books.

>>731763
Marijke is going to ask that Garaile calm down about the undead. It is not an immediate threat to anyone, and is safely sealed. And the crew possess more than sufficient power to destroy it (or make use of it) should that change. Objection noted.

>>731767
>revealed hidden disfigurements / surgical corrections
As an amateur medic and surgeon by this point, this catches Marijke's attention. If she witnesses this, rolling to take a closer look / study what she sees. (Sight only, not going to get in his face or start poking and prodding him. Bad for negotiations).

I will offer some conciliatory niceties to Garibald "I apologize for my companions, their last few negotiations ended with that regrettable business about ritual sacrifice and a disagreement over property rights with eel-ticks. They're understandably wary."

>Out of character
A land-equivalent tardis pirate ship is immediately and immensely useful to us, we can hide disagreeable party members instead of bribing every guard we pass, there may be secrets in the library, and we avoid the time and effort to liquidate the rod on the black market.

Sure, we run the risk of attacks from the deep, but we'd risk that on a proper ship anyways, or random encounters in any form of travel.

I'll probably haggle over it, but I'm thinking we should take this deal, unless there are serious objections?

>>731781
>Marijke is going to ask that Garaile calm down about the undead
That's not Garaile, that's Than. Garaile is more concerned about the extraspacial supermonsters than the sealed undead creature.

>Actually taking the deal
Despite the inherent risks, Garaile agrees it will be much more useful than the nasty cursed rod, and votes to take the deal.

>>731781
> If she witnesses this, rolling to take a closer look / study what she sees. (Sight only, not going to get in his face or start poking and prodding him. Bad for negotiations).
>conciliatory niceties

Garibald accepts the apology with good humor, and greets Acolyte Goris (who shares Marijke's enthusiasm, but not her restraint) as an old man catching up with his estranged teenage niece, elaborating grisly details of nerve and tendon like a farmer musing on soil quality.

Acolyte Altsoba, meanwhile, arrives at the stable in a headlock, having been subdued by hazel-eyed Tallie, the innkeeper's daughter, who asks "Is this one yours, captain?"

>>731793
Hmm. Somehow I read that as Than echoing Garaile's concerns, but looking again, he says nothing for her to echo. Mental short circuit, I suppose.

>Acolyte Altsoba, meanwhile, arrives at the stable in a headlock, having been subdued by hazel-eyed Tallie, the innkeeper's daughter, who asks "Is this one yours, captain?"
Cocking an eyebrow, mirrored by Eadric cocking his head, Marijke replies "Aye?" and waits for the innkeeper's daughter to elaborate.

>>731888
With a mischeivious grin, "How long can I keep 'em?"

Altsoba, blushing, mumbles something about a formal request for portions of loot to be paid out, and shore leave.

>With a mischeivious grin, "How long can I keep 'em?"
This earns a short laugh and a smile. "At least a day". (I figure it will take that long for everyone to explore what they want to here and spend a little coin, probably longer to move into and fully outfit the ship-wagon-bridge, assuming we buy it).

>mumbles something about a formal request for portions of loot to be paid out, and shore leave.
Granted.

(Had we sussed out far enough how loot distribution worked in dis enough to automate / abstract it, or do we need to go back into the nitty gritty?)

>>731976
>automate / abstract it
Nope. Nobody wrote up a charter yet, nor counted votes among informal proposals. Killing each other over petty cash, for lack of well defined procedures, still remains an alarmingly plausible outcome.

>>/questdis/100712
All in favor of the proposed charter?

Least-common-multiple'ing everything up to integers, that charter's terms would be
40 shares to Marijke,
28 shares to Nico (mostly reserved for operating expenses),
5 shares each to Lektkra, Riv, and Than,
4 shares each to Dimitry, Eadric, Goris, and Rixxil Kas,
3 shares each to Altsoba, Eswic, Garaile, each of three kobolds, and the ogre.
Zero shares for Rixxil Kas's mind-bondaged octopus, who's still way back out on the coast complaining that the river "smells icky."

Conveniently that adds up to 120 shares, and you've got 600 gold coins on hand, so you can pay out a dividend of 5 gold ($2000) per share without having to liquidate anything. Assuming the ogre doesn't get too rambunctious, and nobody sets fire to anything important, that would mean crew can pay basic room-and-board for approximately one year, or less time along with some very substantial equipment upgrades (such as properly fitted plate armor). Possibly more time if somebody outright buys rooms for them to sleep in, instead of having to rent.

This would leave Marijke personally with 220 gold coins, some of which technically belong to her parrot familiar (who is, incidentally, 40% of the way to comprehending simple sentences in spoken Humish). Less than she first extracted from that rancid pool, but still almost four and a half pounds. That's more money than most baronies have on hand, even right after taxes come in. Enough to spread out across a bed and pretend to be a dragon. Maybe enough to buy a seaworthy ship, and keep it in working order for a useful period of time? Certainly not a very large or fancy ship.

>>732134
Is Llyr receiving nothing while Riv gets 5 shares due to the perceived friendly-fire incident? Even Rixxil is getting 4 shares, and she was actively trying to cheat us.

>>732156
Llyr should definitely be getting something. The 4 share common rate seems reasonable, since he did participate in the raid.

And personally I would think Riv would only get 4. In character, she sided with us, but she didn't choose to put herself in a riskier position for the sake of the crew or the mission. (Although I suppose that's open to interpretation and who's deciding shares).

>even Rixxil
Yeah, I get where that feeling comes from, but remember it lost a heck of a lot more than it earned back. And unless we want to set it aside a permanent lesser / other / slave, we gotta treat it like everyone else. Which honestly feels like the better policy to me. More honest, less simmering resentments. Maybe.

>Eadric and the octopus
It almost seems almost silly to give the a familiar a share, but I guess they're sapient enough, and with all the non-humans drawing lines would be weird.

Makes me wonder if anyone would honor it if a bird flew up to a counter somewhere and tried to make a purchase, though.

>Less than she first extracted from that rancid poo
Really? What costs more than offset what we earned here? I remember donating to the goblins, 4 to bribe the guards, and 1 to Marty the Gull, although Letkra recouped that.

>Enough to spread out across a bed and pretend to be a dragon.
...Marijke might well try that, once in possession of a secure enough bedroom. (Say, if/when we buy the cart).

Let's leave it at she's in a very good mood, with a spring in her step and a gleam in her eye.

>>732156
Crap, I honestly forgot about Llyr. Well, we could maintain the easy math by giving him Eadric's shares, and taking a parrot's cost of living out of Marijke's generous portion.

>>732192
>What costs more than offset what we earned here?
Main cash is 250 gold from the pool + 350 from Rixxil's box. Marijke keeps 200 for herself, which coincidentally is 20% less than she personally fished out of the pool, while another 400 is spread among everyone else.

>sided with us, but she didn't choose to put herself in a riskier position for the sake of the crew or the mission
Rescued herself, at personal risk, early in the raid, retrieving loot and disrupting enemy command structures in the process, as opposed to being rescued by the crew later on and then immediately initiating a friendly fire incident.

>>732199
Huh. I wasn't even considering putting the money from the pool in the common loot pool, since we didn't even have a pirate crew then. And if we did split it, I would have split it among people who were actually there, not who joined two encounters later.

But you know what the loot distribution works, I'm not going to mess it up advocating for my character's greed. She's made it through the dungeon intact, she' got a pile of money in her pocket, and a pack of pirates at her back; she's already pretty high on life right now.

>>732208
So, while everyone's getting their hard-earned R&R, where are you planning to go next? The closest known dungeon entrance is that big stone hillside carved to look like a demon's face, with a staircase down in it's mouth. Less than half a day's march south of the inn.
If you want some profitable violence without quite so much complexity and commitment, there are rewards for eliminating various woodland predators - bears pay the most, if you can bring back the whole carcass fresh enough to be butchered for steaks, panthers almost as much for just the pelt, and wolves about 40%, again just for the pelt. No pay for wild pigs, ever. Tricky to figure out exactly how much the reward is, in familiar coins, since it's discussed in terms of 'store credit' or paper money denominated in honey and cheese, and the inn staff is forbidden by law to provide exact conversion factors.
Following the Stoneheart River upstream, of course, there's the big city of Passholdt, nestled among mountains with the desert beyond, and downstream there's the coast. Following the old coast road north takes you back toward more civilized lands, or you could go south about thirty-five miles to another bridge over the Wild Edge River. Beyond that, no more routine patrols, no more reliable maps. The coast road continues on beyond the horizon. Maybe dragons remember who built it, or at least where it goes, but they aren't inclined to say.

Anywhere's fine with me. As long as it doesn't involve me being some sort of death magnet again.

Other little plot hooks at or near the inn:

*White Snake notices Gary's replacement eyes are similar to his own, consults with the unlicensed necromancer in pursuit of higher ambition.

*Than realizes Gary implied that 'soggy monks' can be hired to bring people back even from an extremely thorough demise, and are eager to study and/or consort with the undead. If true, she should probably be haring off to destroy the monastery in question.

*"Sir" Garaile is called upon to "defend" the three kobolds from another barmaid, who's been "baring her teeth" (smiling) and attempting to "grapple" (pet) their adorable little scaly heads. They already tried appeasing her with kind words, and as much money as she'd usually expect to earn in two or three months, but that just escalated the attention further.

*Ravenous Llyr is disappointed to learn that, while the inn's culinary options are otherwise adequate, including basilisk, a few different sorts of fish and poultry, and even great meaty slabs of whale, horse, cow, or bear as seasonal availability permits, there is never any bacon, nor ham. Pigflesh cannot be had at any price.

*A wondrous pair of boots recently became available at the general store. Self-cleaning, unnaturally durable, perfectly comfortable even on people with different-sized feet, buncha little traction-spikes in the underside that nobody's figured out how to extend or retract on purpose. Asking price is 160 gold ($64,000), with plenty of room for haggling or barter.

rolled 1, 1, 6 = 8

---

Marijke is going to spend the evening enjoying the relative comforts of civilization and having plenty of coin in her pocket. Sleeping in a bed, getting a meal not made of preserved mushrooms (nor seafood).

The next day she'll likely meet with Garibald again to try and finalize the sale of the rod and purchase of the wagon, maybe see if she can barter / haggle out a better deal (since the exchange is one rod for one cart, it's hard to effect the price. I suppose it would come down to what extras I could get him to throw in)? Then we'll see how long moving in and properly setting up, divvying up living space, storage, and supplies takes. (Coordinated with the quartermaster). I figure that will probably take her a day? (Although that still leaves most the crew free to follow up local hooks).

>where are you planning to go next?
I suppose the medium-term goal is to travel to the coven and cash in our favor, but there's certainly room for distractions on a trip that length. And it would be awful inefficient not to try and make some cash along the way.

Hunting wild game seems to be a good pass time for Than, because she used to do it before all of this.

>>732344
Also those boots. Those boots would be something she could use. Not enough gold though herself. If Marijke could barter it for Than, then she could take the shares of gold that were used to buy the boot until the debt is paid off. Not sure what her response is though.

>>732675
Llyr is very interested in / good at hunting for food and would be delighted to accompany Than in hunting whatever is edible in the surrounding area, if she's at all willing to put up with him.

>>732615
Garaile will accompany Marijke tomorrow in acquiring the wagon, and will assist in moving and setting up the group's possessions and supplies. Surely those muscles are good for something.

>>732675
>Boot buying
Marijke is the only person who could strait up purchase those without liquidating anything else. Without haggling down, that would be 70% of her spoils, though.

Uh, if we assume the seller can be haggled down to half price, Than can cover a third of that out of pocket, meaning Marijke would have to front the other 2/3rds of the cost. Without any interest, that would mean the debt could be repaid in just two encounters of comparable profitability, which isn't too bad. (Much longer to repay than that and the debt is starting to look a bit long term to chance on a pirate's income, or to have standing between friends). Possibly better than that depending on what the seller might be interested in bartering.

Marijke would probably charge interest, though. Or at least some kind of favor in place of interest.

I'll see about rolling for it / writing up a proper response after I see how rolling for cart negotiating resolves. (And if the inn manages to avoid accidentally poisoning me with shellfish).

>>732728
Than probably won't mind because she thinks Llyr attacked her because of insanity. She became insane during that encounter, and she assumes he became so as well. She'll only discover it later as bloodlust while hunting.

>>732938
Well, Than doesn't necessarily need any gold to live. She can hunt her own food and do just fine. It will increase her ability to survive with better gear though against hazardous opponents.

Riv will invest her time in re-equipping herself with the money she has (assuming 4 shares aka 20) she sets out with a shopping list:
>Knife
>Lantern & oil
>Lab supplies, as stated before
>Scribing kit
>Lightweight chains she can drape over herself in an X pattern. Good for anything chains are good for, + the links make it easier to carry any gear that can be clipped onto or hung off of them. Like a bandolier but with extra uses
>A skeleton key if it's not overly expensive- having a 1 shot item to get into any lock kinda deal
>Block, tackle, fishing net, hooks and wire, everything you'd need to fish and stitch someone up basically
>Climbing supplies including 150 of silk climbing rope, a few grappling hooks and pitons
>A bear trap, provided it would be easier to buy than manufacture
>A map of the area
>A mirror
>A signal whistle
>Light weight 10 foot pole suitable for acrobatic use, which she plans on modifying to have a detachable hook to hang lanterns and other such nonsense off of
> bag of marbles
> healers kit
> whetstone
> crossbow or crossbow components of its not too difficult for her to assemble one herself
> lastly, if she has the money, the ingredients she would need to make black powder and a small fire-arm. Riv knows full well that these kinds of things are forbidden, so she will do her best to be discrete, but she is interested in making herself a projectile weapon

Riv 2016/07/01(Fri)22:55 No. 733210 ID: cea69d
File 146743894369.png - (1.01MB , 640x1136 , image.png )

Almost forgot- she also needs a large cloak and wide brimmed hat, something similar to the outfit in the image. She's looking for something distracting and flow-y enough so as to disguise her extra limbs, as well as waterproof to keep her dry and protect her from the sun

>>732615
>extras
Garibald doesn't have much else of tangible value that he'd be willing to part with, nor magic of his own, but he does have potentially valuable information, thief/assassin/heretic sorts of skills in which he could offer some tutelage or even an outright apprenticeship, and contacts to whom he could write a letter of introduction. Or, of course, some promise of future cash and/or favors, with the caveat that you'd have to figure out some way to get in touch with him again in order to collect.

>>732938
>Marijke is the only person
Actually, with a starting purse of cash, the 'rich bastard' multiplier on that, and her share of loot, Letkra could afford them as well. That'd be all her personal cash on hand, though, even after a discount for her immediate familiarity with operation of the retractable crampons and toe-spike (since that makes the shopkeeper suspect someone stole them from her in the first place).

>>733209
>knife
Tiny little dagger, just a sharp point with no cutting edge? One silver, weighs a quarter-pound.
Small knife? One and a half silver, weighs half a pound.
Big scary knife, edging up toward handaxe or shortsword? Two silver, weighs a full pound.
A sheath is included; going without reduces weight a little bit, but you'll run into problems with wear and tear. Prices can go up to 10x base for better quality steel, which holds a sharper edge and is less likely to break, or a little less than half base for blades scarcely better than jagged scrap metal with a leather wrap on one end to stop it tearing up your hand. If you want to let everyone know that you can afford to spend more than one gold per knife, there are also various decorative embellishments available.
>whetstone
Free, with purchase of any decent-quality knife. Unless you mean one of those thrice-blessed Philistan foehammer whatsits, that dwarven commandos use? Out of stock. They'd be 25 silver apiece in peacetime, but given all the skirmishes with the gugs you'd be lucky to find one for less than 50 right now.
>Lantern
One silver, weighs two pounds, one-pint internal reservoir of oil lasts for 24 hours with the minimal stable flame, or as little as six hours if you dial the wick up high for signaling purposes. Two silver for an enclosure around the flame, either an elegant glass chimney, or reflective metal to focus all the light in a 60 degree cone (for signaling and/or stealth purposes). Three silver, and double the weight, for the deluxe model: sturdy wire cage around the glass, elaborate system of baffles to regulate airflow so the flame (supposedly) won't blow out even amid hurricane-force winds.
>oil
One silver gets you ten pints, container sold separately.
>Lightweight chains
One silver gets you five feet of jewelry-grade copper chain, which weighs 0.03 lb per foot and isn't really designed to bear significant loads, or nine feet of the lightest grade of iron anchor chain, which weighs 25 times as much per foot and is rated for two tons. Anything in between you'd need to special-order, but Passholdt has an absolutely immense, and well-diversified, metalworking industry, so really it's just a matter of the delays involved in sending someone there with the money and back with the goods.
>skeleton key
Two and a half silver for a basic set of (reusable) tools that could be used, by an appropriately qualified professional, to open locks on your own personal property for which you happen to have misplaced the key. If you should dream up alternate applications which might be any less legal or ethical, for liability purposes the shopkeeper would prefer not to be informed.

Magic items exist which can undo any mechanical lock, and break (or at least temporarily suppress) many magical seals, but they're rather more tightly regulated than mundane tools. Ten gold gets you just the parts for a single-shot 'skeleton key,' and then you'd need a specialized workshop for the actual assembly, completely separate from the alchemy lab. Mostly the sort of tools that a clockmaker would use, plus two or three polarized lenses, some gossamer torsion webbing, an anvil as close as possible to aetherically neutral, that sort of thing. A proper valgrind coupler would make the process a lot easier, but you could rig up an adequate substitute from mostly zinc and turnip juice.
>silk climbing rope
One silver gets you 40 yards of 3/8" rope, weighing 6 lb, rated for loads up to 300 lb.
>grappling hooks
four silver, 2 lb, rated for the same loads as the rope
>pitons
Half a pound each, one silver gets you twenty
>bear trap
Seven silver, eleven pounds for a spring-loaded leghold trap rates for actual bears. Could make a workable version yourself, given bar stock and blacksmithing tools, but it's a fairly standard item, so you'd be competing with mass production.
>map
Five silver, 0.1 pound for a detailed, accurate map of a well-known area, or sketchier charts of anywhere someone's known to have returned from alive. What scale?
*cosmology
*broad strokes of geography, major kingdoms
*trade routes, major cities and landmarks
*dirt roads, individual towns (this is the largest scale that identifies your current location as something more specific than "between Passholt and the sea")
*one cell on my 12-mile hex grid map, covering an entire city and it's immediate surroundings, or as much wilderness as could be scouted in a day or three
*one square mile, with every building marked and some detail on the major ones
*a few city blocks, large farm, or dungeon level, including every door and window
>healers kit
Ten silver for all the basic tools and reagents needed to keep your own half-mummified physiology in good working order, and a fine selection of first aid supplies as well. Whole set weighs 10 lb, including a small water-resistant satchel.
>10 foot pole
Surveyor's kit (already purchased for checking out the "basement," and yes, I'd still like you to try drawing up that map) includes two. Purchased separately, without calibrated markings, two silver gets you five and they weigh 5lb each.
>marbles
Glass beads, close enough to perfectly spherical that they'll roll freely on a smooth surface? One silver gets you three pounds, enough to pose a tripping hazard across five or six square yards of otherwise clear floor, if cheap green glass is acceptable.
>crossbow
Basic wooden model is seven and a half silver, six pounds, and another half-silver per five bolts. Steel spring model for hunting big game is thirty silver, twelve pounds, needs a cranequin to reload (maybe an ogre could pull it back by hand, with heavy gloves on). Ammo is interchangeable between the two. Broadheads are the default, effective against most targets and messy to remove; bodkin points make a deeper but narrower wound, so they're preferable when you need to penetrate heavy armor, or can confidently target some vital area deep inside.
>signal whistle
One quarter of a silver coin
>hand mirror
Three quarters of a silver coin
>large waterproof cloak and wide brimmed hat
Four silver, six pounds, if you don't care much about looking stylish. The cloak also presents some potentially interesting options in combat, which Garibald could teach you how to employ effectively.
>black powder and a small fire-arm
Hooboy.

Charcoal, of course, you can buy off the shelf as fuel. One silver gets you forty pounds of charcoal, or a single pound (ten uses) of nitrate-infused fungal tinder, or six dozen sulfur-encrusted pine splinters, none of which are especially suspicious as firestarting equipment for an expedition. To produce an actual explosion, you'd need much higher purity reagents than that, which means either a visit to a dedicated alchemical supplier (which would create a paper trail) or a massive supply of low-quality materials run through various distillation and filtering processes by your own labor, before you can even start experimenting to figure out the right ratios. Then, as for gun barrels... those aren't just hammered out from bar stock. That kind of project requires some heavy-duty metalworking, with supply lines that can't be hidden in a basement.

Really, if you plan to develop firearms, you'd want a whole town or small city supporting the enterprise, completely outside the Drakocracy's influence... say, carved out of wilderness far beyond the frontier, or deep underground. Just setting all that up is a heroic task, so, good thing you already found some ambitious friends.

>>732728
>good for something
How would you feel about working your way up from "sir" to, say, Baron, or maybe even Margrave? First, you get rich somehow, probably through further adventures: 2500 gold can buy one point of Capital, a single chip in the big game. You can then spend it to claim territory, build farms and forts and mills and mines and cities, and get even richer by collecting taxes on the activities thereof.

>>732675
>hunting
Roll for it. Also, which way are you headed? Without crossing a significant body of water, your options are limited to the 120-degree arc between due west (along the road to Passholdt, beside the Stoneheart river) and south-southeast (along the bank of that tributary which you took a ferry across to arrive at the inn).

rolled 6, 2, 5 = 13

---

>>733271
>Llyr
Hunting roll for Llyr, accompanying Than's roll. Will let Than decide where to go. Before that though, Llyr wants to buy that big scary knife, with sheath and whetstone, if he has the money for it.

>Garaile
The quotes around "sir" are ironic/sarcastic. Garaile has never actually been knighted and is not a noble. Being rich would, at best, result in being a wealthy landowner, not a barony. It's a moot point anyway though, since Garaile can't go on adventures, being on eternal koboldsitting duty.

>It's a moot point anyway though, since Garaile can't go on adventures, being on eternal koboldsitting duty.
You realize that's entirely self imposed, right? And even if he chooses to protect / look after the, that doesn't mean he has to spend every waking moment with them. Especially if say, we're at a moderately civilized area where they're not in constant danger (smiles aside), or there's anyone he trusts to ensure their safety when he's out doing something else. (Technically, they are being treated as members of the crew, so they have the same basic protections from inner squabbles and external attacks that would be afforded any member of the group).

Heck, becoming a playing in noble politics or a wealthy landowner could actually both play into the kobold-sitting. The political power angle is to work for kobold rights, the landowner angle is simply making a safe place for them.

>>733274
>if he has the money for it
He's got twenty gold. He could possibly blow all of that on the biggest, fanciest knife possible, inlaid with precious metals and encrusted with gems and elaborate embroidery on the sheathe and so on. For plain utilitarian bladesmithing, one gold is about the upper limit; anything more than that is getting out of 'knife' territory and into 'sword.' Not to say there aren't swords available! Two gold for a blade of middling quality that weighs seven pounds and is almost four feet long, which a STR 18 sharkzerker could swing one-handed (inefficiently, but at full accuracy). Two and a quarter gold if you want the tip to be sharp in addition to the edges. The upper limit for how much you can spend on a masterful sword is significantly more than the money Llyr has available.

>Garaile can't go on adventures
What? No! The kobolds are in no real danger at this point, just suffering a bit of confusion and culture shock now that they're customers rather than servants. You could explain that to them, or ask Ysbel the barmaid to treat them differently (and she'd be quite willing to, within reason), and then your obligation with regard to the kobolds is entirely fulfilled. Abandoning them at a random cave in the howling wilderness would've been bad, but this is very different. They've got more than enough cash to cover the necessities of survival for the forseeable future, and they're as safe from bandits and monsters as anyone else at the inn, which seems to be pretty safe since it's on a major road with regular patrols, and there's a high stone fence with an iron gate across the nicely defensible little tongue of land where the rivers come together, watched by a few guards with spears or longbows who answer directly to Odo the innkeeper.

So, yes, Garaile can go on adventures at this point.

>Being rich would, at best, result in being a wealthy landowner, not a barony.
In the modern-day real world, where the UN got together and decided that "conquest" isn't a legally valid way to acquire title to land anymore, yeah, that'd be true.

In this game? Go pummel a barony-sized chunk of virgin wilderness into submission, strangling owlbears or de-haunting ruins or otherwise neutralizing problems until it's safe for some peasants to move in, then convince them to build infrastructure and pay taxes in exchange for your protection. After all that, officially identifying yourself as a baron is just a formality; you've got as much claim to the title as anyone who inherited. You don't need the seed money to buy land; you need to pay soldiers and surveyors and lumberjacks and architects and masons and clerks and everybody else, to turn anarchy and unclaimed natural resources into a functioning government.

If you seem like you're generally capable of doing that sort of thing, one or more dragons will loan you some of the assets you need to get started, usually around fifty Capital if you're building up from scratch. In exchange, they expect to be paid back over time, and things tend to work out better for all involved if you follow other little suggestions. That's what being a king means, in the Drakocracy: the crown on your head was a ring on a dragon's finger, and will be again when your time's up.

>but he does have potentially valuable information, thief/assassin/heretic sorts of skills in which he could offer some tutelage or even an outright apprenticeship, and contacts to whom he could write a letter of introduction
Information is probably what we could make the most use of. Assassin/heretic skills are potentially useful to Marijke (I can imagine various scenarios where those would pair wonderfully with mind manipulation), but I don't know if he's going to be around long enough to teach her much before his ride gets here.

Any chance I could get more detail on the available options, here?

>having Lektra along would put an immediate discount on the boots
If Marijke is in any way aware of / Lektra's familiarity, she will be dragging the golem girl along to the bartering session. (If you're buying weird mechanical boots, why not bring the person who can tell you if they're in good shape and working order?).

(Although I'd like to finish sussing out the deal with Garibald instead of trying to do two negotiations in parallel).

>>733293
>more detail on the available options
For political connections, the most interesting option might be those spider riders, given that they're not on good terms with the church of Orcus anymore. As for skills, he originally saw more haphazard mentoring and on-the-job experience than formal study, so it's hard to assemble a point-by-point list. What kinds of things do you want to know? Acrobatics and escapology? Lock-picking and traps? Larceny and smuggling? Underground etiquette? Scrounging, panhandling, and surviving the "urban jungle"? The darker side of comparative theology? Applied anatomy? Malicious pharmacology? Interrogation and intelligence analysis? Small-unit combat tactics among tunnels and rooftops?
>don't know if he's going to be around long enough
Twelve to sixteen hours of intensive training in some skill is, at least, a step above the "saw somebody do this on TV once" level of proficiency, and establishes enough awareness of the fundamentals to set your further independent study off on the right foot. Or, if you want the equivalent of a college semester, you could wait a week or two for the business with the soggy monks to be wrapped up and then, if all went well, he could come back.

>>733287
>big knife
Okay, 1 gold for a Crocodile Dundee-level knife. Maximum danger and minimum decoration, please. Llyr wouldn't know how to use a sword, and he already has a spear as a primary weapon anyway.

>>733281
>koboldsitting is self-imposed
By an oath from a former paladin. Not something you go around breaking every day. If they're genuinely safe here, Garaile could consider leaving them behind, but the whole being-kidnapped-and-sold-into-slavery thing seemed like a pretty relevant and major issue in the last thread, and was the reason Garaile even took the oath in the first place. Given what Garaile knows, leaving kobolds in the care of random humans seems like a bad idea overall.

>taking out a 125,000 gold loan and creating a national safe haven for kobolds
I'll put this down as a long-term plan.

>>733271
Okay, went through and the whole thing leaves me with 12g and 15s. Here's the list + maths
2 gold for alchemy leaves me with 18 gold, or 360 silver. -15 for the mapping equipment leaves me with 345
>Small knife 1.5 s (343.50)
>Normal whetstone, free with knife (343.5)
>Deluxe lantern, 3 s (340.5)
>Oil, 1 s (339.5)
>40 ft of iron chains, 5s (334.5)
>Skeleton key, normal tool kit, 2.5s (332)
>80 yards of silk rope, 2s (330)
>A grappling hook, 4s (326)
>20 pitons, 1s (325)
>1 bear trap, 7s (318)
>4 maps, 1 cosmology, 1 broad strokes, 1 trade routes, 1 dirt roads, 20s (298)
>Healers kit, 10s, (288)
>10 ft pole, not needed provided the mapping one can support Riv's weight
>3 pounds of marbles, 3s (285)
>Crossbow, 7.5 silver, 75 bolts 7.5s (260)
>Signal whistle & hand mirror, 1s (259)
>Cloak and lessons, 4s (255)
Riv is all down for any sort of free knowledge.
>Black powder & gun parts, not currently feasible unless the captain wants to start a black market explosives trade, which is up to her.
Riv will look for the rest of the things on her list now, with some added items:
>Scribing kit, for detailed notes on formulai and the effects of magic, etc
>Fishing supplies, including block, tackle, fishing line of a high enough grade to make stitches in a pinch, a net and fishing hooks
>Containers, including waterskins for holding anything liquid like oil & glass bottles which could be smashed if need be
>Leeches, if available. Edible, useful if you want to scare the squeamish, and medically quite useful. Stored in a seal able container of some kind, like a heavy duty clay jar or such
Lastly, she needs to know how much a beast of burden would cost, and consult with Marijke if it would be useful to purchase any considering we have both an ogre and possible soon a portable home base.
Anyone else think of things we might want to have in stock? Now's the time to buy, and we have no shortage of cash.

On a side note, Riv is curious as to what Rix is occupying their time with.

>>733325
>Maximum danger and minimum decoration
Easy enough. Anything else?

>long-term
Just letting you know about the usual career track for glory and reknown.

>>733334
>3 pounds of marbles, 3s
Three silver gets you nine pounds.
>10 ft pole, not needed provided the mapping one can support Riv's weight
>>/questdis/100990
You might want a clean spare.
>Scribing kit
Already described here:
>>730859
The folding desk includes an inkwell and a metal pen that lasts indefinitely. No need to resharpen or replace a quill every 20 pages.
>Fishing supplies
Two and a half silver, negligible weight for the basic hook and line, pole sold separately. A net on the upper end of what one person can usefully throw around is two silver, 20 lb.
>beast of burden
Ten gold for a pack-hippogriff, plus food, and at least an hour of skilled grooming for every day of work. Oxen are a better deal, but even if any were on hand, they're mammals and thus can't be simply purchased with cash.
>Leeches
None immediately available. Ulman Dark usually buys that kind of thing from trolls in the swamp on the opposite side of the river. There's a four-seat bark canoe available for eleven silver, oars included, if you want to go out there yourself.
>Containers
I've got a whole chart: cloth bags, wicker baskets, wooden barrels and boxes, leather pouches, glass, iron, bronze, porcelain, various degrees of reinforcement and/or compartmentalization, in sizes ranging from a quarter cup to 120 gallons.

A basic one-gallon leather waterskin is four and a half copper (20 copper per silver), and weighs 0.75 lb. Two-gallon would be seven and a half copper, 1.25 lb. Half-pint glass bottle is one and a half copper, 0.4 lb. Biggest glass bottle available is a two gallon carboy, comes with a wicker enclosure as padding and a more convenient handle, whole assembly costs two and one-fifth silver and weighs 7.5 lb.
>maps
Fair warning, I'm pretty sure my OOC artistic ability isn't up to the task, at least not in any kind of hurry. Feel free to ask questions about what the maps depict.

rolled 1, 3, 2 = 6

---

>>733271
Along the Stoneheart river it is.

On a side note since I already rolled, any materials for a good mask or someone who can make one for Than?

>>733302
I don't think I can justify waiting for him to come back from the soggy monks on just those merits. Perhaps if the crew gets entangled in something and we stick around that long, but I'm not going to tie us down myself.

I'll take the info on the spider riders, and if I rolled well enough to get two things out of him, Marijke will spend some hours discussing Malicious pharmacology. She's already an amateur medic, might as well expand on that and/or ways it could be used to other ends. (Possibly opens up more spite / harm type anti-healing, or provide inspiration for stuff I could have Riv make).

And that should seal the deal on the cart and we can move in.

>Applied anatomy?
I'm going to assume this is more bone breaking than bone-setting.

>everyone shopping
For her own purposes, Marijke would probably want to replace her tattered clothes with traveling clothes that are sturdier / in better condition. She might need a hat, too. Pirate captains are supposed to have hats, right?.

...is anyone selling anything small and nasty? Like say, caltrops? A vial of alchemist's fire, or other chemicals / poisons? (Looking for something small and easy to carry, but that can be combined viciously with Bite-the-Pinecone Curse if need be). The necromancer might have something for sale that fits this category?

If her volume / weight of gold has grown past what will easily fit in a coin purse, a chest of some kind to store gold in the cart might be in order.

Also Nico should be buying proper provisions for the cart. Some foodstuffs that will keep that aren't fermented mushrooms.

>>733302
>By an oath from a former paladin.
By an oath of someone who was retconned to have never been a paladin within the scope of the universe.

Personally, I still think you're taking the terms too literally. There's no known, specific threat against the kobolds that requires giving them a personal escort 24/7 in order to keep them reasonably safe. I mean, you can play Garaile as a particularly paranoid guardian if you so wish, but I don't think you by any means have to. Go out, seek a little glory, trust your crewmates to keep the fuzzballs from getting kidnapped or murdered. (After all, anyone who attacks one of ours is free game, and hey, those are our kobold slaves)!

>Already described here
Whoops, missed some of that! 6.5 silver extra deducted leaves me with x
>Three silver gets you nine pounds.
yes to nine pounds of marbles, sorry that was just a typo on my part
>Ten gold for a pack-hippogriff, plus food, and at least an hour of skilled grooming
Can we learn to groom, or does that require the hireing of an extra griffon hand or something of that nature? either way, it's a bit pricey for Riv's coin purse, can the quartermaster fiance this? Also containers for the party would probably be useful if Marijke wants to approve of a mass purchase of those, spend say a gold to get us fully decked out in all the storage we could need.

>vial of alchemist's fire, or other chemicals / poisons
Riv the alchemist way be able to save you a trip to the shop there, would I have the capabilities to create anything like this now that I have the glassware and materials I need? Still, either way, caltrops are for sure useful and probably beyond my smithing capabilities.

rolled 6, 5, 2 = 13

---

(OOC: It's been a pretty rough/complicated week and I don't snap back into this, nor read a missed backlog, nearly as quickly as JamesLeng. To the point that I just realized this is my first post in thread 3... eep. As such, even though I just caught up, I'm not sure exactly where Letkra was during some of the information gathering or how much she's privy to- like who was talking to Gary/Garibald about what out of earshot, who's been to what shops, etc. So I'm just going to rattle off a list of opinions and goals she would have, if she actually knows the relevant information about these subjects, which she might not, in which case she wouldn't be able to have these reactions.)

(Also I'm not sure what the dice roll is for. Information gathering from Garibald, maybe?)

> Regarding the charter/wealth distribution
Letkra has no qualms with the charter, though she's still a little puzzled at why it would be more complex (and why everyone cares so much about it) than "equal shares of what is gained for all persons currently present". She doesn't press for that or anything, she's just confused about the cause for concern/imbalance. So that's an "in favor" vote.

Perspective: Letkra's expectations come from post-scarcity, and thinking of money as little more than a resource you can easily grind up more of just about anywhere. Not even a little bit life or death; and she doesn't consider the latter half of that a plausible issue, either...

> Regarding buying the spooky extradimensional wagon

On even basic knowledge of the idea:
"Oh yeah, this party is definitely big enough that we should have a wagon to stay in."

Upon learning of the incredibly fancy, bigger-on-the-inside interior:
"It looks alright. But it's kinda weird that it's not cleaned correctly."

Upon learning that there may or may not be a functional interdimensional bridge inside:
She desperately implores Garibald, kneeling. "How does it work!? Please tell me everything you can! Is there any way to direct this door to a specific dimension? Any way at all?"

(I don't know if this has any reaction modifiers given context and so on, but a bikini-clad girl is kneeling in front of Gary and asking him a bunch of near-weepy, desperate questions.)

> Regarding destroying the Attic Whisperer

"What? Why?? It sounds cute! Are you sure that's even a monster??? I mean, if they're just hiding quietly in a corner and not attacking..." Letkra is confused, and a little worried. After all, battles (of the formal, proper variety) are all well and good and obviously happen all the time, but people keep wanting to attack in ways that seem kind of... disorganized, and involving people that don't seem to be adventurers or monsters. She's starting to distrust pretty much everyone's approach to combat around here, just a little bit.

(That's her in-character opinion, just to be clear. OOC, Attic Whisperers actually are kinda cute / moe / pitiable, but it's also entirely in-character for Than to want to purge it so I have no qualms with her pushing for that; it's just that Letkra isn't seeing it as an enemy.)

If Than attempts to destroy the Attic Whisperer unprovoked, and she sees it happening, she means to intervene (in much the same way she tried to defend Riv in the previous combat).

> Discussion of slavery, Garaille's worry for the kobolds

If Letkra hears any of this she's going to be very confused and start to get worried. "They can just say no, if someone tells them to be a slave and they're not interested... r-right?"

> Shopping list

Letkra seems to think she's sensibly dressed and is in no need of clothes; she says something about most of her nice stuff being "back at home" and something about how she'd rather wait to dress up for her wife, blushing a little.

She'll instead check for available weapons, armor, and shields, to see if there's anything better/comparable to her high-tech alloy swiss army glaive and personal force field. Presumably she'll finds nothing of the sort, certainly not within her price range.

The boots seem reasonably common to her, but on the other hand, the terrain "around here" (which includes everywhere she's been so far in this world) can be really unpleasant for some reason, and almost nobody seems to be selling convenient stuff like this. (She's a little horrified to learn that everybody else is wearing crappy boots that don't self-adjust, provide that kind of comfort, etc.) Most importantly, they may allow her to climb up something she can't normally get past (or so she figures), so she wants them, and is willing to do the math on that.

(How's her oil supply, though, before she commits to such a big expenditure? Is she going to be completely cleaned out on money? And is she buying them alone, or as a joint purchase? She hasn't put much thought into who gets to use them when, either. Because again, post-scarcity mindset.)

In any case, upon finding, say, a junk drawer (or an actual junk store or thrift store), she'll be shocked to find they have stuff like keys, "important-looking" statues and stuffed animals and tin badges and other such miscellaneous trinkets, a single lone glove (which makes it seem more important than a pair; she seems to think it will help her lift or break rocks..??), and so on, and is willing to buy quite a lot of this weird stuff. She will probably return from shopping with a bagful of this stuff, giggling madly.

"Can you believe they just SELL keys at the STORE here?!"

>>733382
Hour's walk upstream there's another little tributary, shallow enough to be easily forded - barely even knee deep. Following that about half a mile, you spot a black bear drinking from a small lake. Pick your target (brain? neck? chest vitals? a limb?) and roll to hit.
>>733383
Porcelain mask, styled like a fox? Two silver, one pound.

>>733409
>Malicious pharmacology
>more bone breaking than bone-setting
Assassination, counter-assassination, counter-counter-assassination, it's all an elaborate dance. When you're engaged in violent intrigue and both sides have access to true healing, winning the attrition game means figuring out how to quickly and cheaply cause damage that's costly to repair, even if at the expense of direct lethality or debilitation, and also how to respond when the other side does that to you. So, yes, some bone-setting and other field-expedient surgery is part of the skill set. How to put a tourniquet on an individual finger, for when you slip up and cut yourself with a poisoned knife. How to pick out a variety of mushrooms such that at least one of them is likely to kill whoever eats it (finding definitely-safe mushrooms is much trickier). Recognizing common symptoms, mixing in other complications to create misleading sets of symptoms.
>anything small and nasty
One silver gets you five 4-ounce beeswax candles, molded and dyed to closely resemble apples. You could cut 'em open, load something inside, and then seamlessly reseal with Rhyme of Mending. Bite-The-Pinecone Curse only makes someone actually eat something if it at least vaguely resembles food. They won't try to swallow a jagged piece of metal, for example... unless you dress it up appropriately first.

Caltrops are fairly cheap, like a lot of low-end military surplus equipment right now. Do you want the regular anti-infantry kind, or bigger ones for cavalry? Either way, one silver for a ten pound sack, enough to cover twenty square yards (bigger ones spread more thinly).

>you can play Garaile as a particularly paranoid guardian if you so wish, but I don't think you by any means have to.

This is correct. I was hoping to set up something humorous with the barmaid, not a gotcha-DM PTSD flashback. If Garaile runs off on an adventure at this point, guilt for harm to the 'bolds from anything that goes seriously wrong in his absence goes on the innkeeper's conscience rather than his own. That's the other side of the sacred hospitality thing.

>>733510
>Can we learn to groom, or does that require the hireing of an extra griffon hand or something of that nature?
You could figure it out yourself, especially if you're not in a hurry. Marijke's got enough veterinary experience to notice something going seriously wrong before it becomes irreparable. Hiring an actual teamster might be more efficient if you're moving a lot of stuff, though.

Speaking of which, have you been adding up the weight on all that equipment? Riv's pretty scrawny, only so much she can carry on her back.

>would I have the capabilities to create anything like this now that I have the glassware and materials I need?
Oh, absolutely. Alchemist's Fire is easy to make. Only tricky part is packaging it, while avoiding spontaneous ignition from exposure to air. Get a cauldron, enough cooking oil for a thick layer across the top, fill the rest with urine, and keep boiling 'til it glows. If insufficient urine is available, or the noxious 'Breath of Amon' is an unacceptable side effect, next-best option starts with the powdered bones of almost any creature that died from thirst. How big a batch are you going for?

>>733645
Garibald does not have the slightest idea how to build an interdimensional bridge to a specific target. It's like asking for advice on organ transplant surgery from someone who was having trouble with bandaging and antiseptic.

>oil supply
Adequate. This is also an excellent opportunity to refill: two and a half gold for a 40-gallon barrel of whale oil, which weighs about 350 lb (easier to move around than that might imply, since it can be rolled rather than lifted or dragged) and will keep Letkra going for three months or more. Rations and fuel probably come out of the quartermaster's budget, anyway.

>an actual junk store or thrift store
The general store has a suitable selection of eclectic detritus, much of which was left behind at the inn by adventurers and vagabonds who disappeared with bills unpaid.

rolled 4, 2, 6 = 12

---

>>733645
No sweat, we've been mostly dicking around in town, anyways. Hope things are going more smoothly for you now!

>like who was talking to Gary/Garibald about what out of earshot
I think we pretty broadly abstracted that considering he only ever had two PCs with him at a time. The only way the subsequent conversations would have worked was if the groups shared info / discussed in between asking Gary further questions.

>"They can just say no, if someone tells them to be a slave and they're not interested... r-right?"
Marijke will reassure her. "They're members of the crew. If anyone tried to enslave them, they'd find themselves forced to confront the rest of us."

>Bite-The-Pinecone Curse only makes someone actually eat something if it at least vaguely resembles food. They won't try to swallow a jagged piece of metal, for example... unless you dress it up appropriately first.
Ah. So a pinecone, for example, could sort of look like some kind of fruit or loaf. A dagger looks enough like a dagger to snap them out of it.

>One silver gets you five 4-ounce beeswax candles, molded and dyed to closely resemble apples. You could cut 'em open, load something inside, and then seamlessly reseal with Rhyme of Mending.
I'll buy two silver's worth. I'll probably only end up carrying a few and leave the rest in the captain's quarters on the cart-ship. (Gives me a little excess if they get used up, or if I manage to ruin any manufacturing them).

Marijke mutters to herself "poisoning apples, ha. I've become a stereotype."

In a day or so when I can have mending prepared I'll preload a few with sharp bits of metal, but I'll wait to see what chemicals my alchemist can come up with / suggests for the others.

>Caltrops are fairly cheap, like a lot of low-end military surplus equipment right now. Do you want the regular anti-infantry kind, or bigger ones for cavalry? Either way, one silver for a ten pound sack, enough to cover twenty square yards (bigger ones spread more thinly).
Ten pounds seems like more than I really need to booby trap a few apples. And the anti-cavalry type might be too large to contain in a wax apple?

>Than and Letkra both interested in the boots.
Okay, rolling for haggling down the seller. Let's see how low Marijke can get the price.

If two members of the crew are interested in them, though, they need to figure out who's getting them. (Letktra can buy them without a loan, so if they deadlock, that's probably the deciding factor).

>Assassination, counter-assassination [...] misleading sets of symptoms.
So was that the lesson then?

>teamster, animals
That reminds me, do we need to purchase a beast of burden to pull the cart? (Or could the ogre just do it?).

>>733664
Ogre's about as big and strong as an ox, but hasn't got quite the same traction. Still, if the wagon is mostly empty, that's no trouble at all. The "basement" is actually a separate piece, weighing 70 lb, but safely extracting it from the wagon's frame would require several hours of carpentry work (and spoil the concealment).

>snap them out of it
No, if you used the curse to give somebody a knife, or anything else that looks like a tool, they'd wield it, perhaps taking inappropriate actions before realizing their hand was no longer empty. If you gave them a knife already in a belt scabbard, or anything else that looks like clothing, they'd put it on, though that becomes less reliable for armor and elaborate courtly garments where the process is complex and/or counter-intuitive.

>seems like more than I really need to booby trap a few apples
They're being sold by the pound, barely better than scrap, so take as much or little as you consider appropriate. And, hey, what if you need to booby trap a few staircases?

>haggling
Eighty gold, plus those bolts of silk cloth?

>the lesson
Discussion of malicious pharmacology is training toward skill with poisons, just like Eadric's progress toward spoken Humish.
Any friend of Eswic's is a friend of Gary's, so he's happy enough to share old war stories, and share or refine the associated techniques. That's barely even a price, far as he's concerned, since it's so unusual to have an eager audience. If you want him to stay around here and provide further training long-term, he'd be willing to for the cost of room and board, at least until something else urgent comes up. Main extra thing from the rod/wagon trade was a letter of introduction to the spider riders, which he's still composing, but promises to hand over before departure toward the monastery.

>They're being sold by the pound, barely better than scrap, so take as much or little as you consider appropriate. And, hey, what if you need to booby trap a few staircases?
I suppose the cart has room for excess and we might find a use for it someday. I'll take a silver's worth.

>Eighty gold, plus those bolts of silk cloth?
Seems a reasonable price to me. Before we can close, the question is how Than and Letkra resolve competing interests, first. ("First dibs" versus "but I can afford it").

>pay Gary to hang around
If the group decides they want to stay here a few days, one additional room and board is pretty cheap. Depends on how plans shake out, though.

>>733359
>anything else?
Does Llyr still have the fishing supplies from his starting kit? If yes, he's probably good to go. As long as he can fight and hunt, he'll be satisfied. Otherwise, pick up any missing necessities for fishing/hunting. He's more of a lightning bruiser than an armored hulk, so he'll avoid wearing any kind of armor that would weigh him down enough to reduce agility.

Garaile feels pretty satisfied in the group's non-combat supplies for the time being, but would still be interested in equipment maintenance and/or replacing worn equipment. How is the Raaxe holding up? Garaile can borrow that whetstone to sharpen it if it's a little dull. If it's too beaten-up to be reliable, a fresh axe may be necessary. Garaile also only has a chain-shirt, so acquiring more armor would be awesome, to really reach peak tankiness. That said, armor gets spendy fast, and Garaile received a reduced cut in the last encounter, so value should be prioritized over quality.

>>733645
>Letkra thinks slavery requires consent
Garaile squints a bit at Letkra, unsure if she is genuinely that naive, or simply making a black-hearted joke at Garaile's expense. Finally deciding on the former, Garaile smiles bitterly. "A bit o' force changes paeple's moinds quick."

>>733379
>>733510
>purchasing a pack-hippogriff
We're already having food concerns with an ogre on board. I think we should avoid acquiring more mouths to feed until we get a more self-sustaining way of accumulating food.

> have you been adding up the weight
The whole ensemble weighs upwards of 136 pounds by my calculations, excluding the alchemy equipment, which is far more than Riv can carry. Assuming she weighs in somewhere around 100 lbs then I would rate her carry weight at 25/50/75 based on her strength- sound okay with you? Either way, that's kinda the reason I was asking about a beast of burden. Otherwise Riv might need a partner to assist her- perhaps the quartermaster, since we're looking into food and storage?
In regards to poison, Riv's character was a grippli in a past life who secreted a natural poison through her skin- 1d4 con damage once per round over 12 rounds. Would I be able to concoct something similar? Otherwise, I'd say alchemist fire is a pretty good surprise to bite into.

>>733766
>Does Llyr still have the fishing supplies from his starting kit?
Yep.
>How is the Raaxe holding up?
Just fine. Skull seems to have gradually shrunken and into a fist-sized lump of solid striated stone, but it's still a recognizable shape, and thus an adequate trophy.
A spare might be good, though, since those gouges slightly compromise the structural integrity of the handle. 25 silver, 4 lb for more of the same, 20 silver, 2 lb for a little hatchet, or 50 silver, 8 lb for a massive unwieldy greataxe - more damage and longer reach, but definitely requires both hands.

>armor
Chainmail sleeves for both arms and both legs would be nine silver, 24 lb altogether. Equivalent coverage in plate armor starts at five gold, 35 lb, assuming they've got a set that already approximately fits, plus a few silver (and days of tedious work) for fine adjustments.

Current chain shirt weighs 16 lb. Adding some length to the lower end, so it covers the hips and groin (but is less concealable), would be four silver and nine extra pounds. Scale armor to replace it would be 21 silver, 35 lb. A steel breastplate would be 25 silver, 18 lb, and provide slightly better protection than scales... but only from the front. Back-plates are out of stock right now.

A brain-bucket sturdier than the current candle-holder would be five silver, 5 lb, or seventeen silver, 10 lb for a great padded jousting helm that covers your face and neck but leaves you peeping out through a tiny eye-slit.

Speaking of which, if Than wants a fox mask made from armor-grade steel instead of brittle porcelain, that'd be four gold, 2 lb for a really beautiful design, with meticulous detail worked into the snout and ears, all covered with vivid fur patterns in red, white, orange, and black enamel, and tempered glass lenses. It'd provide protection equivalent to a basic metal helmet (for the face only), a watertight seal against anything that might otherwise splash in your eyes, and a little bit of resistance to bright lights, at the cost of reducing low-light and peripheral vision to roughly human level.

>>733776
With strength 8, by GURPS rules, she'd be able to carry 13 lb with no encumbrance, 26 lb light, 39 lb medium, 78 lb heavy, and then 130 pounds would be the most she could hold up for more than a few seconds without hurting herself. So, sounds about right.
>12d4 con damage contact poison
Wow. That's... okay, probably the closest you're going to get to that level of lethality on short notice, without dungeon delving, would be to head down to the swamp and hope black lotuses are native to the region. If they aren't, the swamp's still a good place to scrounge. Just collect samples of everything that's small yet aggressive, or colorful yet expecting to be left alone.
Strongest stuff you can buy over the counter is ratslayer oil, one silver per dose. It's an anticoagulant, intended to be applied to an open wound (most likely by being smeared on the blade which inflicted that wound) or combined with bone splinters and either moldy bread or slightly rancid meat, left out as bait. Sometimes lethal, but no faster than bleeding out normally would be. Mainly a tracking aid.

>>733409
>If her volume / weight of gold has grown past what will easily fit in a coin purse, a chest of some kind to store gold in the cart might be in order.

One pound is too much for a purse, never mind four. Fortunately Rixxil Kas has that fancy cash box with the elaborate multi-key lock (which any idiot could bypass using a prybar).

Once everyone's been paid, had a chance to wash off the road-dust, get drunk, or otherwise relax, and the shopping is mostly wrapped up, Rixxil Kas asks once again about the possibility of formalizing it's submission to Captain Marijke with a proper telepathic bond.

rolled 2, 4, 6 = 12

---

>>733798
Hmm, Let's try sense motive?

"And why are you so interested in binding yourself?"

(Is Than around? Her glimpse of madness was supposed to eventually let her eyes work on it, although it probably hasn't been long enough yet).

Eadric will give Rixxil a funny squint at the mention of forming a bond. Is this bug thing competition?

rolled 4, 2, 2 = 8

---

>>733647
Buy the mask and shoot the bear in the head.

>>733764
It would probably be a more "tell me how to use it" from Than towards Lektra.

In Than's mind, she seriously doubts Lektra will do anything good with it, especially since that remark with the attic whisperer. For someone who has seen much death and meeting someone with naivety is unsettling.

>>733804
Than shouldn't be around unless Llyr is still around. She would have accepted an offer to hunt together as "fellow temporarily insane people" not knowing it was actually bloodlust.

>>733804
>why are you so interested in binding yourself?
"Because it's improper, humiliating, having to be ordered around verbally, like any old piece of meat in the common labor pool! Mistress, you managed to defeat me despite all the typical human mental deficiencies, but shouldn't I at least be permitted to prove my worth in direct service to you? If... imagine if you were in a formal sword duel with someone who previously lost both arms above the elbow, and wielded a rapier between his toes. Imagine further that you lost, decisively, and duelist's etiquette required you to signify concluded hostilities with a handshake. Wouldn't that put you in just such an impossible position, particularly if the victor then stubbornly kept both feet on the ground?"
>sense motive
It seems sincerely confused and distressed.

>>733812
>buy the mask
Metal, or porcelain?

>shoot the bear in the head
Solid hit, target slumps over forward into the watering hole and is finished off by drowning. Quick and painless. With Llyr's help you drag the carcass back to the inn well before nightfall, collect the reward, and the whole crew has bear-meat steaks for dinner.

>>733795
Alright, let's upgrade Garaile to scale armor, with sleeve, hip, and groin coverage, as well as a standard helm. Plate/Joust is tempting, but a little extra protection probably isn't worth the severe mobility/visibility loss. If there's a nice metal shield to replace Garaile's wooden one, grab one of those too. Might as well pick up a spare axe, just in case, although if the Raaxe is sundered I'll weep for the lost character fluff. With all that armor on, where does Garaile sit as far as encumberance?

rolled 6, 2, 4 = 12

---

>>733818
Well, that's consistent with what it argued before, and it [i]seems[/s] sincere. And it does seem to make sense with what little we saw of their social structure / culture. Middling sense roll, but given that Rixxil's previous attempts at deception were somewhat clumsy, and it doesn't really seem to have a great understanding of non-telepathic interpersonal communication, I'm not thinking it's likely that it's a great actor / liar.

What the hell. Marijke will risk it.

>although if the Raaxe is sundered I'll weep for the lost character fluff.
If the worst happens, keep the pieces. Song of mending might work.

>>733818
Porcelain. It's more to cover the face rather than armor, if it really comes to it later she'll consider an armored mask that looks like it's made of softer material

>>733862
A suit of scale armor covering everything but the head, neck, hands, and feet, would add up to 44 silver, 70 lb. Only iron shield available is a spiked buckler slightly bigger than a pie-plate, for 11 silver, 21 lb.

Figuring strength 14 for "Sir" Garaile, up to 39 pounds is no encumbrance, 78 is light, 117 is medium, 234 is heavy, and anything beyond 390 is back-breaking. So, probably medium encumbrance, meaning movement speed reduced to 60%, and -2 on rolls for anything that requires fancy footwork, such as dodging or moving silently.

>>733866
>risk it
Forming the familiar-bond was like having another floor added on to your house while you slept, and the vomited-up spider swarm was like kicking a little barrel around on the ground. This new connection is somewhat comparable to both, but distinct from either. First of all, there's a rush of power, the mental equivalent of tearing apart a fortress gate with your bare hands. Then, inside, a wondrous alien garden where every blossom unfurls and curtsies, every stalk kneels and shudders at your mere whim.

In practical terms, a slave-bond has unlimited range on the same plane of existence, or both participants could roam within about a fifteen mile radius from opposite sides of a stable portal. Communication bandwidth is comparable to speech, so you can't, for example, look directly through Rixxil Kas's eyes, or ransack a lifetime of memories in minutes, but given enough time extremely complex concepts and images can be conveyed without abstraction or ambiguity. Orders will be obeyed to the letter, without the possibility of disobedience or even hesitation for anything less than certain death, or similarly profound violation of self.

>>733944
>Buckler
Can Garaile Dark-Souls-Parry with that thing? If not, it's probably better to stick to a thick wooden shield that has a little more blocking area.

>Medium load for Garaile is 117 lbs
Armor - 70 lbs
Shield - 21 lbs
Axe - 4 lbs

That's 95 lbs, minus whatever the difference is between the metal and wooden shield. What else is Garaile carrying? I should be able to shed items down to a light load if it's that close.

>>733950
The water jug, the other axe (you just bought a spare, right?), probably your share of the gold, one ear, maybe some rations, spare candles, rope, and according to your creation post way back in the first thread, a shovel.

You're also carrying a deep and abiding love of kobolds, but encumbrances of the heart are another matter.

>>733944
Interesting.

So out of curiosity: is this bond the kind of thing that could cause problems if it's discovered in civilized areas?

Am I still picking up confusion and distress, or has its mood improved?

>>733950
>Dark-Souls-Parry
Not quite sure what you mean by that. Shields protect in three ways: they can be actively swung around to block attacks, they limit the angles from which enemies are likely to attack (makes dodging or parrying easier), and they're partial cover through which an unguided attack might have to penetrate (better the shield be splintered than your ribs or skull).
Small metal shield w/ spike provides a defense bonus of only 1 for purposes of those first two factors, but for the third factor, it's half again as thick as typical plate armor. Also, pretty decent secondary weapon.
Medium-sized wooden shield is only 15 pounds, unpainted replacement would be three silver, defense bonus of 2 (big enough to cover your whole torso), damage resistance roughly equal to plate armor but flammable.
Large wooden shield is four and a half silver, 25 lb, defense bonus 3 (shoulder to shoulder and neck to knees, or you could hunker down to hide completely).
Shields bigger than that are available, but impractical for conventional use by human-sized folks in hand-to-hand combat. Ogre might benefit from such a thing, though.
>>733971
>still picking up confusion and distress, or has its mood improved?
Definitely improved, like a wanderer in the burning desert who just gulped down a bucket of ice water. Still has some pretty serious non-emotional internal injuries, though.
>is this bond the kind of thing that could cause problems if it's discovered in civilized areas?
You could probably pass it off as a summoned servant. Might make people nervous, the equivalent of walking around with a big slobbering pit bull on a leash. Won't set off some kind of holy war as long as you're clearly in control and nobody's getting hurt.

rolled 2, 5, 4 = 11

---

>Still has some pretty serious non-emotional internal injuries, though
Beyond what a least true healing can fix, I assume? I could hit it with a free sample, maybe the link gives enough insight into the actual injuries for a bonus.

Beyond that I'd need to see if that book in the library helps, or we'd have to a hire a higher circle caster. (The local necromancer, maybe).

>>733971
>>733995
>current and new equipment
I'll stick with the medium shield Garaile already has. There's no need to lug the water jug around anymore, now that we have a wagon for portable storage. The spare axe can also go in the wagon until necessary.

Taking rope and shovel weights from Pfsrd:
Armor - 70 lbs
Shield - 15 lbs
Axe - 4 lbs
Rope - 5 lbs (or 10 lbs if hemp rope)
Shovel - 8 lbs
Total: 102-107/117

So Garaile can sit neatly at a light load with 10-15 lbs to spare for misc. items like candles.

>encumbrances of the heart
Despite overwhelming evidence, no one can prove Garaile is into kobolds.

>>734035
Between 0 and 39 pounds would be negligible encumbrance, 39 to 78 is light, 78 to 117 is medium.

>Rope - 5 lbs (or 10 lbs if hemp rope)
>PFSRD
I'm mostly using GURPS numbers, which is six pounds for a shovel and five pounds for ten yards of rope 3/4" thick, rated for 1100 lb loads. Plenty more of that for sale, one and a quarter silver per 10 yards, if you want to stock up. You've also got access to that strand of treated cave fisher filament, twenty yards long for only one pound.

>>734017
Yeah, the link lets you share sensory information, just not all of it at once. Vast improvement on a diagnostician's "where's the pain" routine. Healing magic fixes actual tissue damage, which is why Rixxil Kas is still alive at this point, but there's something sharp inside, inflicting new damage both directly and as a rallying point for infection.

Than left some of her spare arrows behind for the bear-hunting trip. One has spinach-green neogi blood down the shaft, and a missing head.

Major surgery on a creature whose anatomy you know so little about, without even a wound channel through which to work, would be... unlikely to succeed. Extracting the arrowhead without surgery would require some method of teleporting small objects from beyond line of sight, which is at least a 3rd circle effect. You've got the rest of the arrow, though, which is probably equivalent to a blood sympathy link, and the formerly-jade amulet, and many other interesting semi-relevant things, so it might be possible to weave together some ritual-empowered workaround.

>>734064
Well, shit. I guess Marijke has a side project.

Rixxil is getting the healing anyways, to repair the latest batch of internal cuts. And it's being order to rest and light duty to try and avoid agitating the arrowhead until it can be dealt with. In fact, it's getting a daily free sample of least true healing until the situation is resolved.

Arrow-arrowhead connection is solid. Connection to the bow (and maybe displacing it elsewhere) through the amulet, although I'd really like to have Than summon her bow and see what (if anything) happens with the amulet. Nico is our sort-of expert on summoning things. We have the book in the library that seems to describe neogi I should probably go over in more detail. Probably should talk to Riv, she if she learned anything about her hosts during her time as a slave that might help.

Not sure if it would be easier or just riskier to attempt a teleportation / shift ritual inside the pocket dimension of the cart-ship (we should christen that at some point, probably).

Another approach might be to try altering the arrow-head- transmute it to something the body can break down, or at least alter the shape to take away the sharp edges. I don't think we have anything really help us got that route, though.

Is there anyone in the crew (or who is easily accessible) who has experience cobbling together ritual magic?

>>734076
>Not sure if it would be easier or just riskier to attempt a teleportation / shift ritual inside the pocket dimension of the cart-ship.

Most likely easier, being able to literally approach at the problem from more angles (although it'd be advisable to review and further revise that map in the discussion thread first). Worst-case botch outcome is more severe, but that's true of many powerful tools.

>Another approach might be to try altering the arrow-head- transmute it to something the body can break down, or at least alter the shape to take away the sharp edges. I don't think we have anything really help us got that route, though.

Transmuting metal tends to be difficult in general, and is particularly less compatible with beyond-visual-range than teleportation. Probably a sixth circle effect, with precedents such as Disintegration and Stone To Flesh.

>Is there anyone in the crew (or who is easily accessible) who has experience cobbling together ritual magic?

Riv, of course, is ideally suited to magical gadgeteering. Eswic drunkenly insists that the three acolytes should operate as a team. Goris is already tapped out for the day, scheming with White Snake and Ulman Dark. Altsoba and hazel-eyed Tallie retreated to a private room three hours ago, along with a plate of sandwiches, a jar of hot mustard, half a lemon, a teaspoon with a sharpened edge, a polished steel hand mirror, and several heavy leather straps. They probably shouldn't be interrupted just yet, if the noises are anything to go by.

Not sure about Nico, as it's been so long since his player replied. Anyone know how to proactively contact CalimariGod?

rolled 4, 4, 2 = 10

---

>>734176
The current unavailability of 2 of the 3 acolytes isn't a problem. I figured we'd at least want to wait to the next day before attempting anything so participants could have relevant spells prepared, and that we're better off trying to plan something out than attempt immediate intervention.

>Than went bear hunting
>which involved summoning her bow
Wait, did anything noticeable happen to or with the amulet when the bow was summoned? (Rolling for spot check I guess).

Assuming we want to wait for Nico to reply, or give Marjike lead if it seems as if we're not going to hear back from them, I'll assume shopping is on hold and not yet completed- after all Riv could hardly carry that all. Better to wait for the buisness of the wagon and a pack animal to be sorted out.

In the mean time, Riv would like to approach Marjike with a suggestion for the removal of what is presumably an arrow tip lodged in Rixxil Kas. Having taken note of the mending spells Marjike has access to, and hearing mention of teleportation as an idea (presumably Marjike mumbles to herself or something of that nature), Riv wonders if she can modify the spell just a bit to work to their advantage, in the form of a spell I dub Scavengers Tool Kit. The premise of the spell is that it spontaneously mends or creates small, shoddy tools- like an arrow per say- out of nearby materials. Need to make an arrow snappy? The twigs and rocks on the ground are a good enough start as long as you've got a quill in your back pocket. Need a knife in a hurry? There's flint in the ground nearby, and a piece of your shirt can become a loose handle easily enough.
The key would be that it takes nearby materials based on how well they would suit the tool, and an arrow head + broken arrow haft would be exatly what you need to make an arrow, so cast Scav's Tools and suddenly the 2 pieces mend together, outside of Rix's vitals.

Outside of Rixxil and more importantly in the casters hand- sorry; I was intending for that to be the effect but realized I never stated it outright.

>>734341
>The current unavailability of 2 of the 3 acolytes isn't a problem.
All three are unavailable, since Eswic is not only hammered, but unwilling to work alone.

>I figured we'd at least want to wait to the next day before attempting anything so participants could have relevant spells prepared, and that we're better off trying to plan something out than attempt immediate intervention.
Majority of the crew is now engaging in various carousing and debauchery, with a per-person budget varying between 15 and 25 gold. If a fairly successful peasant farmer or tradesman sold off all their worldly possessions, they might be able to scrape together ten gold. So, this party is probably going to last more than one night, or even one week. Just reeling everybody back in enough to start serious planning may be a challenge.

>anything noticeable happen to or with the amulet when the bow was summoned?
The tiny figure inside now has distinct ursine characteristics.
>>734436
>Scavengers Tool Kit
Sure, that could work as a 2nd circle effect. Problem is, without some sort of teleportation, it'd involve ripping the arrowhead out of Rixxil Kas's body in a straight line, without regard for intervening tissues, which is just as risky as the surgery option.

>which is just as risky as the surgery
While Riv has no real love for Rixxil Kas, it is more useful to everyone if it remains alive. Riv will confer with Marjike in greater detail about this matter
since this discussion will require a lot of questions and back and forth between James Marjike and Riv I thought any further discussion about options might be better pursued in the disc thread, so as not to clog up the main channel.

>>734504
I'd rather have that more or less in-character discussion, of what you're going to do next, happen in this thread. Save the disthread for 'meta' subjects, or possibly longer-term plans.
>>/questdis/101250
>1) teleportation spell. Don't know what circle of magic this would be
Estimated at least third circle, as mentioned here:
>>734064
Tactically useful teleportation, on the order of sending one or more people a few hundred yards, starts at the fourth circle, so a more limited 'preview' version should be possible.
> stone meld
As previously discussed with a rock-swimming elemental,
>>/questarch/724307
objects embedded in a creature's body are carried along with them when melding into stone.

Ah so if the stone is carried in it would also be carried out, correct? I was thinking if a spell made a creature essentially incorporeal to stone, then something else might more easily pull the stone out. It was mentioned before I could modify the properties of objects- if perhaps I made the stone inside Rix magnetic would it be feasible to pull it out via magnetic force while stone melded? Or would it still be trapped inside it

>>734509
Rixxil Kas has an iron arrowhead, not a stone, in it's innards. A powerful enough magnet could indeed extract the arrowhead, but any such direct approach would have the potential to do serious damage.

Magically melding Rixxil Kas's body into a larger mass of stone would have no more effect on the arrowhead than it would on stomach contents. Speaking of which, the neogi hasn't eaten much at all over the past three days, and is visibly weak and shaky.

Remembered Retrevial: Teleports a small item, such as a knife or a flask or idol to a location it's been recently, like your hand, your pack, your cart, or the end of an arrow shaft.

>Just reeling everybody back in enough to start serious planning may be a challenge.
Inconvenient our bard's player is afk. Although I half expect the prospect of an experimental magical surgery might be interesting enough to draw in participation even on leave.

>While Riv has no real love for Rixxil Kas, it is more useful to everyone if it remains alive.
The crew also did just ratify a charter that included reasonable medical care. Which means we technically have an obligation to do more than just let it die.

>>734508
>discussing how the ritual works
I was thinking it would be a hybrid of mending and teleportation.

The arrow and the arrowhead were once whole- that's a sympathetic link. Whatever pattern or structure that a mending spell recognizes and uses to stitch together pieces of a whole is still there. So by using the beheaded arrow and an adapted mending framework we get the targeting aspect of the ritual, which allows us to lock onto the arrowhead, and not the rest of Rixxil's organs.

(And hopefully bypasses anything like a manton effect which might be protecting creatures from having low level mages blink their insides outside).

The trickier part of the ritual is the actual removal. We have the amulet, which already made one arrow disappear. It also has some kind of link to Than's weapon, which is either stored in extra-dimensional space, or is a magical / spiritual construct that is materialized and dematerialized at will (the semantic difference being in what manner the bow still exists when not in hand). What we want to do is mend the halves of the arrow, but to pass through that space, rather than materiel, physical distance separating them (and Rixxil's flesh). Some kind of summoning invocation / setup, mediated through the amulet. Send the parts after the other arrow, and/or back to the bow that fired them.

...of course, what I'm saying is equivalent to art student trying to describe how engineering works. I can get across the broad idea across, but it' rather short on mechanistic details as to how we set that up.

>Speaking of which, the neogi hasn't eaten much at all over the past three days, and is visibly weak and shaky.
Hmm. Alchemy might be more immediately useful in brewing something fortifying it can keep down.

Makes sense- the arrow will naturally want to mend its 2 parts together; we just create a path of least resistance and suggest it use our bridge instead of trying to wiggle its way through someone's body. We make a bridge using the amulet as a tether to make a more appealing path through the alternate dimension rather than passing through Rix

In terms of whipping up an alchemical brew for Rix I certainly wouldn't mind whipping something up- equivalents for things like bloodblock, body balm, soothsyrup or stillgut, but I'm betting we don't know enough about Rix's anatomy to effecticly treat it other than food and liquids. If we need to give it sustenance it probably knows what it needs better than us; asking it what to do wouldn't be a bad idea

>>734548
Bow affects arrow in some way, not vice versa. The bow is magical, arrow is not but can become magical. No link whatsoever between the two after the shot lands. Try asking Rixxil what corrosive substances he is (if there are any) immune against and try to melt down the arrow?

Going to assume the only connection the bow has with your amulet is it gives you the souls of whatever it kills. Maybe an extra summon?

Still not sure if Llyr and Than are back with the group yet.

>>734548
>short on mechanistic details as to how we set that up
Picture a whiteboard, with an eraser stuck to it by magnets, right in the middle of a circle drawn in dry-erase marker. You've got a team of very clever ants, assorted office supplies, and a coil of copper wire ready to be plugged into a car battery for a one-shot electromagnet. Your goal is to move the eraser away from it's current position, without smudging the circle. Your ants might be able to lift it, but then again, maybe not. Maybe they'd smudge the circle with their feet just by walking around.

What would be helpful is a second dry-erase board, close by and parallel to the first. Then, you could use the coil to launch the eraser exactly perpendicular, detaching it from it's current plane and sticking it to the other without any lateral motion whatsoever. Better still, a whole Cartesian coordinate-grid of such boards, around which you could construct a stabilizing channel.

How's that map of the "basement" coming along?

>>734574
>medical alchemy for Rixxil Kas
Overall, very dangerous, pending comprehensive understanding of Neogi biology. I mean, for surgery, at least there's a decent chance you'd be able to recognize a major blood vessel when you're looking right at it. When the blood inside isn't even the right color, any given drug is vastly more likely to be harmful, or at best functionally inert, than to have medicinal effect. You could figure out basics in about a month of full-time work, given a well supplied lab and some healthy subjects to run unconscionable experiments on.

One exception, relatively safe to attempt even without full understanding, would be somehow infusing nutrients directly into the blood, bypassing crippled digestive organs. Man cannot live on bread alone, but water, sugar and salt is better than nothing. You'd have to do some tests on a blood sample to figure out exactly how much salt, and what sort of sugars are safe.

In GURPS terms, the setting is TL 4, with the notable exception of lacking gunpoweder, but TL 6+ medical techniques, such as defibrillation, intravenous fluids, and trauma maintenance, are possible with relatively modest magical support.

>>734603
There's a causal link. The bow acted up the arrow, placed it where it is, defined and propagated it. There's also something of a sympathetic resonance in that bow and arrow are haves of the same larger archetype, and meant to be used together.

Granted, it's not the same kind of strong link as "here is this one thing rent in twain."

>Maybe an extra summon?
Maybe. I haven't even explored what first servant invocation even does, yet.

>>734606
So... we need a destination for what we're extracting. Some prepared area / target for it to land, likely with some kind of metaphysical similarity to Rixxil.

If we need to contain a path, I wonder if we should include Than in the ritual. She's a non-caster, but we could probably ritualistically invoke her 'firing' the arrow, thus defining a path.

>other idea for treatment
Does shadow armor have to come with sharp edges? One possible mitigating treatment would be to cast shadow armor on the arrowhead, creating a kind of blunt-edged shadow cyst around it, and stopping it from cutting up Rixxil any more in the interim.

(Casting shadow armor on the organs themselves is probably a bad idea. It would be a lot more complicated, it would use up a lot more room in it's insides, and some organs (like lungs) need to be able to move / expand).

I think our best bet is to use than as the other whiteboard- her inter dimensional space she can access to store/retrieve the bow would act as the other channel, with the amulet acting as the spring that jumps it between the two plans, both from the space and then back again- although the back again part really isn't important as long as it's out of Rix.
as far as the map goes, my first day off in like a month is Tuesday. I've been struggling a lot with the fact that it's not all on the same plane but there's little to indicate where any changes of elevation might be, and because so many things have doors linking up, I need a good 4 hours or so to sit down and try to puzzle this out. For right now though I'm stumped and haven't had the free time to figure out how the hell this is layer out.

>>734739
Than is, metaphorically, one of the very clever ants. The whiteboard is a 2-dimensional metaphor for the 3-dimensional space within which you're operating, to help contextualize problems of moving outside that space.
>>734608
>Some prepared area / target for it to land, likely with some kind of metaphysical similarity to Rixxil.
Emptiness may be more important quality to evoke than similarity to current circumstances. An arrowhead's not like a tree: it's comfortable being moved around with abrupt application of force. You need somewhere that you can thoroughly purify, and isolate from outside influences, preferably with a big, hard, flat surface to draw chalk diagrams on, accessible from all sides so that any ritual assistants can avoid tripping over each other. The wagon's kitchen might be good. And, you'll need another space parallel to that, with Rixxil Kas sitting at a corresponding focal point. Further diagrams and attendants in perpendicular spaces would be a nice bonus, reducing the chances of catastrophic failure, but not strictly necessary for the core effect.

>cast shadow armor on the arrowhead
Touch range, so you'd need to do some surgery to open Rixxil up and reach the arrowhead. Then, the spell would parse the arrowhead as part of Rixxil's clothing-and-equipment, and wrap around the whole creature just as if it had been cast on any other part of the body. Same reason shields don't usually work very well against touch-range attack spells and rays.

Sorry, bad choice of words. I meant to say that Than stores/summons her bow from an extra-dimensional space outside of our plane. The suggestion is that we move the arrow into that plane, and then back out, mimicking the jumping magnet metaphor. Now that i think about it, I'm not sure how exatly than gets an arrow into her bow. When she snaps her fingers does the bow appear and she loads an arrow? Or does he just point and fire, and the arrow comes with the package? Because if it's the latter, it seems like having Than shoot the broken arrow would be the best way to teleport our problem arrowhead, as long as I understand how it all works

>>735048
Summon bow, nock arrow, shoot. It's rather quick because she's used to doing it often.

>>732287
>The closest known dungeon entrance is that big stone hillside carved to look like a demon's face, with a staircase down in it's mouth.

Lots of rumors and people trading stories about raids on the Mouth of Doom. Consensus (and your own past observations) confirms that the lower end of the stairs is in the center of a 60' square room, with a fifteen foot high ceiling. There are six doors, more or less equally spaced around the room's perimeter, each set in the back of a 10' cubic alcove. Lintels over the alcoves are each carved with symbols (in clockwise order: fanged goat's face, a skull, a pentacle, a hand, and a wolf's head in profile), except for the northernmost which initially appears blank.

When someone approaches within ten or fifteen feet of the northern alcove, stone flows apart to reveal an eerie crystal eye, a fist-sized translucent red almond, pointed end down. A pair of lips in mid-air just below it begin to speak. They have no apparent color, texture, shape, or even size, yet somehow produce sound and present a sharp visual sense of movement.
"Welcome, friends, to the healing hall of..." there's a brief nails-on-chalkboard screech "...ter masks, respect the inherent dignity and physical limitations of your fellow petitioners, and remember that the white zone is for loading and unloading only. In today's announcements,"
The smooth crystalline voice changes to that of a wheezing man, half-crazed.
"It's loose! We were fools to even make the attempt. So many already dead..." There's an extended coughing fit, punctuated by unintelligibly phlegm-choked prayers. "...kruzhili nado mnoj. Still, some hope. Baiting the core into a quarantine cell. Whoever hears this, turn back, get word to our Yrthakite allies, but whatever you do, don't touch th..."
Crystalline voice abruptly switches back in.
"...and the feast day of St. Ysbel is next week, so get your berry pie recipies ready! That concludes the daily announcements. Please remove any cloaks and footwear, then wash your hands before proceeding further inside."
Message complete, the eye closes seamlessly, and the non-lips vanish into the background noise of imperfect sight. If left alone for a couple hours, sometimes less, and disturbed again, it'll repeat from the beginning.

St. Ysbel is traditionally depicted as a young woman of typical haltan features (medium-brown skin, spiky green hair, orange eyes), clad in white robes and a purple sash, or otherwise adorned with horizontal stripes of violet and white. She carries a hooked sword in her left hand, and a basket in her right. The basket contains berries, bread, olives OR pears (never both!), salt, and colored glass. Her lips are blue. Portfolio is something to do with... hospitality? Or maybe rodents? Some people use magic bound into a statue of her to keep mice off their grain, as a dubious alternative or supplement to keeping cats. You're not aware of her having a specific feast day, certainly not one that was widely celebrated in the past decade or two.

>>/questdis/101511
>dimensions of the cart
It's a cargo wagon. Picture a wooden pickup truck, with a small bench and a draft harness instead of a cab and an engine. Fifty cubic feet of cargo space under a tarp, rated for half a ton but you could probably pile on about three times that without breaking the axles (though it wouldn't do speed any favors), just barely narrow enough to squeeze through a 10' wide gate. Apart from the "basement" it's worth at most two gold, and even then only if those barrels are watertight and in good condition. Weighs 750 pounds empty, with the "basement" installed, so the ogre's currently showing off for a small but enthusiastic crowd by laying on his back underneath and repeatedly lifting it.

Surprised the ogre is drawing fans, considering it's monstrous appearance. It seems we still aren't totally sure on the plan for surgery yet, so Riv will ask Rix what it Eats/drinks normally, as it still hasn't been looked after in the nourishment department.

>>737082
>Surprised the ogre is drawing fans, considering it's monstrous appearance
An ogre can almost pass for an exceptionally big, ugly human or orc. They're not native to the area, and this one in particular hasn't committed any visible atrocities yet, so people are more or less treating it like a show put on by some circus's strongman.
>ask Rix what it Eats/drinks normally
After running through a whole menu of gourmet meals requiring otherworldly ingredients, which Rixxil itself has no real idea how to obtain nor prepare, the most practical options seem to revolve around carmelized meat, or fish pickled in lye. Raw meat is regarded like candy, or milk: a treat for children and fools, which tends to give otherwise responsible adults indigestion when they overindulge. Certain vegetables, stones, and berry paste desiccated by Nico's giant ants, may also be needed to provide supplementary nutrients.

>>737386
Riv would suggest we stay away from meats then. No sense wasting resources when other, far more accessible foods are available. Although, if hunting goes well, we should have fish and meat for a decent while. Probably worth feeding to Rix.
>>101800
>at least +1
That +1 is technically a minus 1, correct? If I remember correctly you try to roll under a stat or DC in gurps, so lower numbers are better.
Asside from that, Riv votes to feed the creature. We should have access to fish and hopefully meat as stated before, as long as Than and Lyr are successful. Desiccated berries should be in stock. Riv has the materials she needs for her alchemy lab via the 2 gold in the shop, correct? If so, do I have what I need to attempt to take a blood sample and replicate it? Or do we need to procure other specialized tools? Note, this is wondering specifically for drawing and replicating Rix's blood. I understand we could purse other magical tools to improve the chances of surgery success, but it seems like time is worth it's weight in blood here, so I'm mostly inquiring after mundane tools that could be purchased before the shops close for the day.

An additional inquiry- does looking directly at Rixxil Kas still cause an overwhelming sense of blood-lust? Or because it's tied to Marjike does that ability no longer pose a threat? Or perhaps, does it pose a threat to some of the crew, but not all? How much information about this is Marjike able to gather? We already determined that Rix doesn't have in-depth knowledge about why we go berserk, so I'm assuming we need to either do tests or talk to our resident Captain, since her bond with Rix should provide more information than much else we can do.

>>737390
>That +1 is technically a minus 1, correct? If I remember correctly you try to roll under a stat or DC in gurps, so lower numbers are better.
Low rolls are better because you're trying to roll under your effective skill. For skills, higher numbers are better. For example, the surgery might currently require a 6 or less on 3d6 to succeed, and superior tools would improve that to 7 or less, while adequate knowledge of neogi physiology would improve it to 12 or less.
>do I have what I need to attempt to take a blood sample
Yep!
>and replicate it?
You'll need distilled water and potash, which are straightforward but time-consuming to synthesize. Should be ready by noon tomorrow, assuming you're allowed to scavenge ashes from the Black Boar Inn's hearth, obtain charcoal and table salt at the quartermaster's expense, and build a fire in the wagon's kitchen. Go ahead and roll for it.
>>737393
>does looking directly at Rixxil Kas still cause an overwhelming sense of blood-lust?
Never did. Only the big beetle-monsters produce that effect, not their comparatively diminutive masters.

rolled 6, 3, 3 = 12

---

>Go ahead and roll for it.

rolled 2, 5, 6 = 13

---

>How much information about this is Marjike able to gather?
>since her bond with Rix should provide more information than much else we can do.
I suppose can answer that question by rolling for that. Simple gather information check, assuming that Rixxil would better be able to convey these concepts telepathically than in what is probably a second (or higher) alien language.

Assuming I get useful physiological / biological / medical / nutritional / whatever date Marijke could dump in on Riv with a charge of Lightning Lecture Atemi to save on time (and to reduce the risk of corrupting alien input by parsing them overmuch through subjective perception and spoken language).

As a reference for timekeeping, you arrived at the inn late afternoon on day 7, investigated the extradimensional space over the next few hours, and Marijke figured out the hypercube thing around dawn on day 8. Shopping happened overnight, because when some maniac shows up at your store with half a dozen friends, a battle-damaged axe in one hand, sack full of gold in the other, wearing a necklace of ears, it's not closing time until everybody's satisfied with their purchases.

>>737513
Direct access to the memories of particular flavors definitely helps nail down which foods have all the right nutrients vs. what's unnecessary, or potentially toxic. Some aspects remain stubbornly counter-intuitive. Neogi definitely seem to be obligate carnivores, but, as adults, they progressively lose the ability to digest raw meat - at some point it has to be thoroughly cooked, or they might as well be gnawing wet cardboard. And they can't reproduce until well after that point! How could they possibly have survived as a species long enough to develop a civilization? Rixxil Kas is neither a doctor nor a historian, and dismisses such questions as either above it's pay grade or heretical. The neogi have always been, and will always be, superior merchants and pirates (the two are mentally referred to as not only pillars of virtue, but near-synonyms, like "an officer and a gentleman"), therefore all worthwhile things will come to them in due time.

>>737562
As of noon on day 8, Riv has brewed up a gallon jug full of goo that should, theoretically, be adequately compatible with neogi blood chemistry and basic nutritional requirements. That's enough (if doled out, along with bed rest) to last two or three days, undoing the past three days of starvation in the process. If this first batch doesn't have horrible side effects more or less immediately, and you can obtain a steady supply of refined sugar, should be set for three months or so. Next question is, how are you going to get the goo in there? Tubing and a hollow needle, or split into single-serve containers and test-fire a teleport ritual in reverse? Either way, another roll is required.

>needs a steady supply of refined sugar
Would you look at that, I got a hummingbird after all.

Riv suggests that if they're testing teleportation, it shouldn't be on the already critically wounded creature that they need to preform risky and complex surgery on. She says she will prepare to preform the insertion, preferably with Marjikes help, once she and Rix confirm they are ready

rolled 1, 2, 3 = 6

---

Seeing Gunderbag the Ogre lifting the wagon (on her way to the inn), Letkra is impressed, and says: [code]"Whoa, you can lift the wagon? That'll probably be important later. I bet you could move it over a rock, or a small river!"[code]

Staying at the Inn is very important and part of what she came here to do, so, after some confusion that no one else is doing so (she wonders if there's an inn inside the wagon? But it certainly didn't sound that way), she'll proceed with laying motionless in bed for exactly 8 hours. The next morning, she sits up with a musical *ding!* sound.

If Letkra sees Ravenous Llyr and Than bringing back a bear corpse, she's going to be confused and weirded out, because on one hand, "we were in a field, a bear appeared, and we had to fight it" seems like a pretty legitimate situation, but on the other hand, why's there this creepy messed up bear laying around afterwards? (and what are they planning to do with it? Do they have some kind of relationship with this bear, perhaps? She'll certainly think so if they start to skin it.)

Nevertheless, Letkra thinks going to the dungeon is Important, and she's (one of the only ones, along with Ravenous Llyr, who's) never been there (that she knows of, at least). So after she's done sleeping at the inn, she'll go around asking if anyone in the party is planning to go there. Preferably everyone in the group (one by one if need be), if they're available.

She suspects Garaille is feeling down, and tries to encourage him somehow, but isn't entirely sure where to start.

She's also not terribly sure why Rixxil Kas is still ill, and wonders if they should be going on a Quest for something it needs for a cure, like a leaf of Yggdrasil or something like that.

(Rolling for social stuff- be it diplomacy, gather information, persuasion, or whatever is appropriate.)

rolled 3, 4, 5 = 12

---

Alright, here we go.
Garaile, who has likely been doing quite a bit of drinking at the inn while keeping an eye on the kobolds, is going to finally piece together the idea of actually teaching the kobolds to defend themselves instead of spiralling slowly into abject paranoid madness. When their business at the inn is done and they retreat back to the relative privacy of the wagon, Garaile will pitch the idea to them. A little hard training every day under a seasoned (if somewhat off-kilter) Soldier, and they're sure to develop some basic combat abilities, gain a bit of self-confidence, and be able to enjoy some semblence of peace of mind.

It's all voluntary, of course. But if they accept, Garaile is not going to let them back out halfway through. There will tangible results.

>>738531
>"Whoa, you can lift the wagon? That'll probably be important later. I bet you could move it over a rock, or a small river!"
Gunderbag is easily flattered, but not so enthusiastic about the prospect of hard work, unless the labor involves despoiling something beautiful, or at least destruction in general. He'd much rather smash a rock to bits than climb over it while carrying a heavy load.

>go around asking if anyone in the party is planning to go [to the dungeon]
Good roll, so it shouldn't be too hard to drag everybody away from the carousing. In fact, given the group's evident successes (lots of cash and other valuables, no obvious curses, dismemberment, or mourning) you could even do some recruiting. http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2008-03-20

If you're looking for heroic NPCs, describe what your selection criteria are, in terms that you can observe, and which could encompass potentially valid PCs. As an additional option, you could look for dynastic sorcerers based on family reputation and/or their own claims or demonstrations of power.

If you want greater numbers, let's talk in terms of 10-man units. With your current social connections and industrial base, you could recruit and support bowmen, light cavalry (mostly bandits), light infantry, medium infantry, miners, pikemen, or swamp trolls. As for naval power, you've got three options, each of which is more expensive than the previous by a factor of 8: big polynesian-style canoe (holds two 10-man units and their gear), sailing ship (holds five 10-man units above and beyond the actual crew, plus cargo including food and other supplies for six to ten months), and merchant galley (similar carrying capacity to the sailing ship, but works by oars instead of wind, thus maneuverability and sprint speed at the expense of endurance, and prow reinforced for ramming). Any of these can start with B-, C- or D-rank gear, and C- or D-rank skills, and be hired either as permanent parts of the company, or contract mercenaries. Prices for specific combinations and support infrastructure will be calculated upon request.

Conventional social networking could open up gryphon knights and other career soldiers, along with better gear. If the acolytes had a fully-qualified priest and a suitable ritual space available, they'd add battle magi to the list, and possibly unlock skill upgrades or other modifiers for infantry. Similar investment in Nico Nashville's obsessions would allow permanently summoned giant ants, and stranger things. Conquering a settlement (or preventing someone else from conquering or destroying it, decisively and directly enough as to amount to the same thing) could provide troops who serve within certain conditions without having to be paid at all.

rolled 2, 1, 4 = 7

---

While waiting for Marjike to approve on the needle and tube method of nutrition, Riv will grab a medium sized urn that can be sealed air-tight, as well as her knife. She will then sit down in front of Rix and address it:
Thrall, what do you know of constructing bodies and simulacrum?

>unless the labor involves despoiling something beautiful
Well I suppose we all need our hobbies.

>>738793
I wasn't aware I needed to rubber stamp that as part of the medical treatment / blood test, but okay.

Assuming Marijke would have told Rixxil to cooperate with Riv, it's probably going to answer your question, too.

>>>737813
>she will prepare to preform the insertion, preferably with Marjikes help, once she and Rix confirm they are ready
Was referring to this- she and Rix are both your crew members, emphasis on the word your, and she doesn't wan't to do anything to Rix without your prior consent.
posting from a different device but yes it's still Riv

>>738821
>would have told Rixxil to cooperate
"I should cooperate with my boss's other subordinates, particularly when they're trying to give me life-saving medical care" was among the most reasonable of Rixxil's implicit assumptions, but reinforcing it with a direct order doesn't hurt.

>>738793
>rolled 2, 1, 4 = 7
After some clever improvisation with gold foil, a quill pen, beeswax, spare glassware, and select bits of a dead bear's urinary tract, Rixxil's intravenous food supply is all set up. No apparent side effects apart from chills (which subside when the mixture is adequately pre-heated) and mild nausea.

>what do you know of constructing bodies and simulacrum?
Of alchemical homunculi? Almost nothing of technical use. Wizards of old would supposedly grow replacement bodies for themselves and their allies or concubines, some mockery of druidic forced reincarnation refined to blasphemous perfection. A few great sages in the modern day claim to do the same, and those that aren't lying will gladly pay certain extortionate prices for certain specialized reagents, presumably necessary to the process.

Or do you mean constructed bodies in the sense of statues-of-war? Passholdt is rumored to have built many of those, most recently the venomous iron variety. Exports of sculptural-quality clay to their northern allies have dropped off, though, suggesting that something is denying trade access to the subterranean headwaters of the Stoneheart River.

Riv begins to cut her hair with her knife, shortening to a length that cannot be grabbed or snatched reasonably, saving the clippings and clumps of hair in the urn she brought
What of Neogi? Your people possess no different knowledge, even without the stifling hand of the Dracocracy subverting and destroying the progression of knowledge?

>>739096
The neogi as a whole have many secrets, but Rixxil Kas personally is a merchant, not a technician or even a librarian. If you want to, say, learn how to build, maintain, and repair skyships, go back to the crash site and capture or subvert either Azri Voqq (the engineer), or Urqo Zar (the political officer). Or, of course, whoever captured and claimed Neex Hist, the group's administrarch, would thus become the new administrarch.

Riv grimaces at the creatures lack of in depth knowledge in the creation of artificial life. However, it was not a complete waste of her time. She approaches Marjike:
Mistress, our immediate goals have revolved around ensuring Your Servants health and devising what has happened revolving around Your Amulet and Masks bow. Have you given any consideration to where you would direct Your Resources after the crew have had their fill of "shore leave"? If not, I have some suggestions as to how we could obtain a greater level of power and further facilitate the goals of everyone in the crew.

As Letkra goes around looking for people to ask about dungeon-delving, she walks past earshot of Rixxil Kas and Riv.
>>739153
"Crash site? What crash site? I heard there's Stairs Down a little ways to the south, with some sort of medical thing. How many different places are there around here?"
>>735622

>>739410
>What crash site?
"The skyship crash site," says Rixxil Kas, head drooping onto the table with an audible thunk, "down by the coast? You're saying you completely forgot the battle where I was defeated. It hasn't even been a week. What is wrong with you people! One minute you're giving me medical care, then shares in your enterprise, then this whiplash back around to less-than-garbage neglect."

>>739370
Go ahead and spell out your actual suggestions.

"Oh, that was a crash site? (wait, this skyship you're talking about- is it still there? Do we need to go back and float it up out of the sand?) I do remember those events, but I thought that place was just some sort of cove, maybe with some docks out in the back. I must've missed when the actual crash happened." She's also a little confused and worried. "Sorry, I didn't realize asking about it would upset you." (She doesn't really get why it did.)

>What is wrong with you people!
To be honest, I was half-curious if Rixxil was even going to react to her as a "person" at all, since as an artificial life form she might not ping its telepathy at all.

>>739435
Most neogi don't have general-purpose telepathy, and even if they did, precautionary shielding against their enslavement power could make otherwise normal minds difficult or impossible to detect. It's assessing Letkra as a "person" partly on the basis of how her actions displayed intelligence and volition, and, perhaps to a greater extent, because Marijke ordered it to extend at least minimal respect to the other signatories of the charter, of whom Letkra is one.

So, where to next? Some known adventure sites, in decreasing order of proximity:

The Mouth of Doom, your basic starting dungeon. Animated skeletons, giant rats, weird little slime things, scarier stuff as you go deeper.

That monastery.

The crash site.

Passholdt, where you could find a buyer for Rixxil Kas's excessively elaborate clockwork cashbox, and any other big-city fun.

The coven, far down the coast.

Riv narrows her eyes upon hearing Letkra's comments, drawing her cloak closer.
We already know there are several points of interest in the area. While it appears that some are interested in risking their lives for senseless conquest, I would like to believe that you have greater ambitions than leading us to a cold, dark grave.
Consider this: The Dracocracy keeps a close eye and a tight reign on it's populous. Knowledge is stifled, stolen, and those who possess it have the life crushed from their bodies. If you desire power, power that can acquire wealth, power that can surpass wealth, we cannot gain such underneath their rule. You shouldn't have to count gold pieces, track every silver to ensure you have room and board. You know you are capable of greater status than captain of a wagon. I have seen the way your eyes glimmer, inspecting your library. You know knowledge is power, and power is money. Our goals align.
Your Thrall was part of a downed air-ship; the combination of my skills and their knowledge would be more than enough to get it air-born again. If we are able to subvert their crew, and bind their leader to you, your resources would more than double. The knowledge they possess could lead us to areas outside the Dracocracy's control, and allow us to make our claim and build your forces without interference. Queen of an empire suits you better than captain of a crew, does it not?
If we consider our options, the "soggy monks" mentioned before hand likely possess great power if capable of reviving others. Not only that, we know they will soon be in possession of a powerful and valuable weapon. Either of these strongholds offer an opportunity for strategic gain, and taking on one after the other could offer a greater cut of the available resources.
With power comes gold, and with gold comes power. Rather than risk our own necks, gathering a force to enter the dungeons could eliminate a significant portion of the risk that we ourselves would have to incur otherwise. I owe you and your people, but I have little interest in playing doctor forever. You are my mistress and as such I will follow your orders, but consider reaching further than the caves in front of you

>>739504
>The Dracocracy keeps a close eye and a tight reign on it's populous. Knowledge is stifled, stolen, and those who possess it have the life crushed from their bodies. If you desire power, power that can acquire wealth, power that can surpass wealth, we cannot gain such underneath their rule.

This isn't so broadly true. Most drakocratic cities have solid public education systems, reasonable levels of privacy, personal autonomy (except for slaves, but even that has checks and balances, and Marijke doesn't have much moral high ground on the issue), and social mobility, particularly opportunities for people with practical skills to advance to positions where they can make good use of those skills. Most dragons don't enjoy micromanagement for it's own sake, and see the long-term benefits of keeping people happy and productive rather than miserable and oppressed. It's just that they classify chemical explosives and certain sorts of deep magical research as 'doomsday tech,' like modern nuclear weapons.

>>739511
Riv is aware of this, but is personally offended by the things they do keep under wraps. Think more "conspiracy nut" and less "valid concerns about censorship"
Her deep seated interest in research of the arcane and and material worlds, combined with her paranoia that people are constantly and actively trying to kill or take advantage of her leads her to feels that she is under surveillance and does not have free reign to peruse her questionable pursuits. Combine this with incidents like towns being destroyed by fiery oil rain which she is certainly convinced was a plot by dragons to keep knowledge from spreading and you get someone who FEELS like they're living in an oppressive government, surrounded by sheeple who can't see the wool in front of their eyes, hence her wish to subvert them, or at least move outside of their circle of influence.

>>739424
Yeah, in Lektra's defense, it's not as if it being a "crash site" was common knowledge. Since Riv was enslaved into doing repair work she might well have had enough info to realize how the neogi got there, and Goris and Snake saw (what I presume to be) the ship and might have guessed, but anyone else would have needed secondhand information to connect the dots.

>>739504
Marijke is of the opinion we got very lucky in our initial raid on the neogi, and is disinclined to push her luck returning back and attempting to take over outright. Not when we have gold in our pocket, goods to sell, and a favor with a powerful coven to cache in. We kicked a hornet's nest there, and they're likely still riled up. (Maybe after we've leveled, or are otherwise more prepared?).

>where go
Marijke' immediate personal priority is probably working on preparing for the ritual, but there's no reason that has to involve the whole group.

I certainly wouldn't object to sending a group to cut their teeth in the local dungeon.

If we head to the monastery, we need a reason more than just accompanying Gary, I think. How does the trip benefit the crew and charter- is there a moneymaking opportunity?

Passholdt seems like the obvious next bigger destination to me. We can sell our fungible loot, and there's lots of things in a city for people to sink gold in.

Then we probably turn towards the coven, and see what opportunities there are to make money on route.

>>739518
Fair enough.

That being said, the recorded message in the unmarked lintel in the first room under the Mouth of Doom strongly suggests there's at least remnants of some unsanctioned research down there, most likely medical.

The neogi skyship crash site might be more time-sensitive, but on the other hand, if the coven raids that place and captures everything before they finish repairs, you could probably take a lot of the technical info and reverse-engineerable doodads, either calling in the favor you did by opening it up to them, or paying actual cash and/or items of interest.

>>739537
So, who do you want to send on an expedition, and who do you want to keep for the ritual prep?

Since the wagon can (just barely) fit through 10' wide corridors, and the ogre can lift it, it's conceivable you could actually bring the whole thing into the dungeon, and thereby avoid splitting the party too much. There are some potential downsides to that approach as well, starting with the fact that the 'basement door' is made of wood, NOT magically indestructible.

Riv will once again protest:
The only thing lacking from your previous attempt was knowledge: with a detailed layout of the ship and caves, and Rixxil assisting us in knowing patterns and behaviors we are more than equipped. Before my capture I was working on creating a serum to render one invisible. Given time and resources I could infiltrate the compound, force a surrender. Surely you can see that there is more profit in an airship than trading bolts of silk like a petty merchant. The monks possess a weapon worth thousands of gold - there is plenty of opportunity for capital gain, not to mention that Eyes would be an asset. We do not lack supplies- what do you seek to buy in passholdt that we do not have? Anything worth possessing has a far greater cost than our current funds can support. This town has all the stock we need to support ourselves. A dungeon certainly provides valuable materials; wealth knowledge and experience are all valuables carried within these forgotten halls, but if you die then you gain nothing. Let others take the risk for you, and then reap rewards beyond the pay of short sighted grunts. If you are so concerned with moving clockwork boxes and such, then take heir price out of my share and give them to me. I'm sure I could find a use for such a device. But do not waste your time squabbling in the marketplace when their is so much more to be gained

>>739540
>expedition
Regardless of where Marijke deems fit to send us, Llyr, hungry for action and/or flesh, volunteers to be point man/shark.

>bring the cart into the dungeon
Garaile strongly recommends against this, reasoning that the majority of the group's current resources should not be gambled on a single expedition. Should a hasty retreat be necessary, the cart should remain as an external mobile base camp to which the group can safely retreat to lick their wounds. The members of the party who are not yet combat-capable (such as the kobolds) will be staying in the cart when not in range of civilization, and needlessly exposing the cart to danger also threatens their welfare. Naturally, Garaile will stay behind to help defend the cart at least until such time as the noncombatants of the group can be trained into combatants.

>>739573
Rixxil Kas points out that if you're going to consider returning to, let alone assaulting, the crash site, bear in mind that Neex Hist is a sorcerer capable of no less than the third circle. In battle, would you have any answer for lightning bolts thrown like javelins, or fuel-less fires hot enough to melt bronze, or inerrant razor-winged obsidian butterflies?

In response to Rixxil's statement, Riv scoffs
I doubt your mage is so great as to assault us with these spells while unconscious.

>>739731
And how do you propose rendering the administrarch unconscious? Or for that matter, dealing with the remaining umbers, and the terrible floating eye in the ship's hold, while Neex Hist is out cold and thus unable to order them to stand down?

>>739684
I would agree with that tactical assessment. The cart stays outside the dungeon, no need to invite it being interrupted.

>>739573
>>739745
The last time we took down a third circle mage he was abandoned by his allies, and goaded by anger into using his resources poorly.

In addition to other threats, Rixxil has yet to mention that which would concern me the most: between the neogi's mental control, and the insanity their larger allies inspire, we would find ourselves fighting our own crew. Even if we should find ourselves victorious (and that's a big if) I do not think the charter would survive the consequences of that.

Riv, I understand you feel a desire for vengeance, I see you want to reclaim your own work rather than leave it in the hands of others, and believe me, I know greed. But piracy is about balancing risk and reward, and though the reward you propose is great, the risk is greater still. One does not raid the dragon's treasury simply because they have more wealth.

>>739750
>The last time we took down a third circle mage he was abandoned by his allies, and goaded by anger into using his resources poorly.
You also had that giant snail as an expendable heavy, and were invited inside and provided with food and rest immediately prior to the battle, rather than having to march overland while dodging patrols and then breach a guarded perimeter.

So, who's staying for ritual prep, and who's going on the delve? If Garaile wants to stay back with the kobolds, and the three acolytes are your experts at preparing ritual magic, and Riv is the inventor (probably needs to babysit the life-support machinery, too), that leaves Marijke as the only available field healer.

Are you going to keep the wagon parked at or near the Black Boar, for perimeter security and easy access to any last-minute ritual supplies, or haul it out near the dungeon entrance to simplify retrieval of loot and wounded?

>>739765
>you're the only available field healer
Marijke really wasn't thinking this expedition thing through, was she. Although I suppose there's some tactical value in having her be in the separate group? So long as she and Rixxil are alive, that allows for ranged communication between the teams.

Doesn't Nico have healing too? Or was the self-target only.

Snake's going to stick by Goris, which means he's going to be babysitting the ritual doers I suppose.

I feel like the ritual is probably higher risk than low depth dungeon diving. I think it would probably be better to secure the safety of the cart and caster team by leaving it behind?

>>739803
>Doesn't Nico have healing too?
Nico's only healing spell only works on the King. He could summon that "meat elemental," see if it has healing powers, if you're really desperate.

"Sir" Garaile is both a front-line fighter and has some healing abilities, but doesn't have much to add to the ritual, so it might be worth the trouble to talk him into going on the expedition. If it helps, there are rumors of more kobolds down there. A prankster named "Niknak" even came out and stayed at the Black Boar Inn once, rigged a door to drop a bucket full of tar and centipedes on somebody's head.

>Snake's going to stick by Goris
The two of them talked it over, figured their safest option would be to keep mr. walking wild-magic zone outside the actual ritual space. Snake's going to be on or just outside the wagon, as a lookout... unless you have some objection, captain?

>The two of them talked it over, figured their safest option would be to keep mr. walking wild-magic zone outside the actual ritual space. Snake's going to be on or just outside the wagon, as a lookout... unless you have some objection, captain?
No, that seems good. Yay for intelligent / reasonable npcs.

>"Sir" Garaile is both a front-line fighter and has some healing abilities, but doesn't have much to add to the ritual, so it might be worth the trouble to talk him into going on the expedition.
I suppose I could try.

"Could I persuade you to accompany the forces investigating the dungeon? They would be safer under your care, and you have my word your charges will be looked after in your absence."

>>739881
You could accompany the persuasion attempt on Garaile with a roll, if you'd like.

>Yay for intelligent / reasonable npcs.
Rixxil Kas mentions, telepathically, that Goris seems notably more inclined than the other acolytes to take initiative, act without (or against) instructions. It's worked out well so far, but... maybe keep an eye on her.

Riv will withdraw into her cloak- it covers everything but her eyes, so her body language is not quite easy to read, but needless to say she is unhappy.
I will defer to your command mistress. Unless I am needed, I shall pursue personal arcane research. I trust this is acceptable, considering the drunken foolishness the others have participated in.
On her way out, she will hiss a command to rest of the crew, pointedly directing at the others and not Marjike Do not disturb me while I work. I expect that if you trust your judgement enough to pass off the logic in my words as petty scrabblings for revenge, you can govern yourselves without my assistance. When the captain is ready to pursue real work you may see fit to leave me responsible for ensure it's proper execution.
She will then storm off in a huff, muttering to herself about wasted potential and short sighted buffoons, etc etc. Until called upon by Marjike she will isolate herself from the rest of the crew and begin to work on creating a functional clock-work concierge to act as her lab assistant and familiar. Let me know if she needs to purse specialty parts from in town to make progress

>>739935
Simplest way to get any necessary parts (from a technical standpoint, at least, not necessarily socially) would be to cannibalize the elaborate locking mechanism on that cashbox. Going to go with that, or get permission first, or try to think of alternatives? Either way, roll for it.

Riv offered to buy it from Marjike using her current and/or future pay. Unless Marjike offers it to her or takes her up on that offer, she will pursue parts elsewhere

>>739945
Again I say, roll for it.

rolled 1, 6, 5 = 12

---

Whoops, sorry! Forgot the dice command doesn't work from my phone

rolled 2, 5, 5 = 12

---

>>739909
I wasn't sure if rolls were appropriate for pc to pc dialogue since that might result in forcing a player to do something over role-playing interactions, but okay.

>>739935
Man, you grow up enslaved and paranoid and it turns you into a full blown drama queen.

>>739945
>>739988
Uh, can Riv afford that, currently? The lock was rather pricey, as I recall, and more for it's value as a beautiful and masterfully assembled work of art than the gross value of the components. Not the most efficient way to spend your money.

If Riv can outright afford it, Marijke will shrug and make the sale. If Riv would have to incur significant debt / future pay garnishing, Marijke will say no. A pirate's life is too uncertain for long term debt to be a good investment.

(And I want to guess a 12 isn't good enough to make the prospect of a risky investment appealing to her).

...If people are going to keep approaching me with offers like this, I might need to start researching ways to make playing loan shark more appealing. A contract geas, or maybe some kind of compulsion through Rixxil until repaid (assuming it survives).

rolled 4, 6, 5 = 15

---

>can Riv afford that, currently?

Riv has 12g, 8s, 15c if I remember conversion rates properly. She was assuming that she couldn't afford it outright, but would be able to within the next pay-day. Rolling to appraise it's value unless our GM wants to provide a more concrete value

Conveniently, you've got an example of the finest locksmithing money can buy in Passholdt (which is itself both a major city and famed for fine metalwork, and thus a reasonable place to find the greatest smiths in the known world) available for comparison, in the form of the five padlocks on the ward in the library. Based on that, the mechanism inside the neogi cashbox is either an extremely well-maintained artifact of some lost age, or the product of a distant and technologically superior civilization. In either case, it's technically priceless, but extrapolating the exponential price curve of lesser locks would give it a lower bound of roughly 750 gold. Far more than Riv has on hand.

Of course, since Riv is a member of the crew, and the box is plunder, she technically already owns a 1/24th share of it, and other things as well. So, obvious options:
1) Take out a loan against future loot and/or salary, on Rixxil Kas's terms (bad idea, but it's an option)
2) Trade Riv's share in the "basement" for exclusive right to the clockwork bits, and possibly other considerations, but then pay rent to sleep there and use the lab space
3) Further successful raids, increasing the total value of plunder, then buy the remainder of box with Riv's ahare of everything else
4) Challenge Marijke for captaincy and take the box as that 10x lion's share

>>739992
>start researching ways to make playing loan shark more appealing. A contract geas, or maybe

First full night's sleep after settling down to feast on fine wine and bear-flesh, Marijke has a nightmare. Eadric's scared, and maybe hurt. Marijke looks down to see jewel-colored tail feathers extending from her treasured chest. She's barefoot and half-naked in the cold, and down to a single silver grain that can barely be contained between blood-slick hands. She meets a man in a gilded mask, who sits behind a table. He cracks apart a walnut, or maybe a rabbit, hollows it out with tongue and teeth. Under one half of the shell, he places that which she wants. Under another, that which she needs. That which she already has, but cannot keep, goes under the third. The confident man chews, messily and noisily, during the explanation, but she already knows the rules of the game. The choice is meaningless. She flips all the shells, walks away with all the spells.

Marijke is now 4th level, with a total of 4x 1st circle and 3x 2nd circle slots, and one new free sample-like ability (choose from s) Maniacal Laughter, b) tranforming Eadric into a gemstone and back, c) alchemy, d) teamwork, or e) flight) and Eadric has three new 2nd circle spells. "Tesserflecked" aka "shell game stance" produces an array of images of herself, so anyone who can't see through illusions won't know which one to shoot.
"Penalty clause" is cast immediately before certain other spells, like a glove, allowing the effects thereof to be instantly revoked if the party of the second part knowingly and willfully violates some condition, chosen by Marijke at the time of casting, although it's only enforceable for a few days.
"Least astral courier" is short-range, small-object-only teleportation. If you'd had this one before Rixxil Kas got shot, it would have been a lot easier to retrieve the arrowhead. Unfortunately, now that it's in there without a suitable mark on it, the planned ritual is still the easiest way to go.

Speaking of arrows, there's a hole through the back of Marijke's nightshirt, a corresponding hole in the mattress, and alarming quantities of her blood on the floor under the bed.

rolled 1, 2, 6 = 9

---

>>739881
>forces investigating the dungeon would be safer under Garaile's care
"Thaey're able-bodied warriors prepaered for combat. Between them and the noncombaetants left behaend, who needs protection more, eh?"

>charges will be looked after in your absence
"And who, exaectly, will be looking after moi charges? It's all well and good to say thaey'll be safe, but it looks to me like everyone'll be working on thaes fancy ritual instead o' keeping a proper watch out. Sorry, cap'n. Oi naed a more definite arraengement if Oi'm to be runnin' off anywhere. Someone trusty on defaense, and serious consequences should they fail. This is important to me."

Counter-roll vs manipulation.

rolled 1, 5, 1 = 7

---

>>740025
Riv will do none of these things. However, if the subject is still open for discussion, which, knowing Marjike's love for profit, I assume it is, she will counter with it's functional value. The lock box is so complicated that currently only Rixxil can open it if I remember correctly, and even that took several minutes. In addition, as stated, anyone could bust it open with a crowbar. What good is a lock that doesn't keep anyone out? Riv counter offers with a price just for the locking mechanism on the front which could easily be replaced with a pad-lock or magical ward that does the same thing, still allowing a useful lock box. 10g for the clockwork parts only, and a promise that when she completes her concierge it will be more than worth it.
She does state that while she is interested in the clockwork parts, as she mentioned before wealth is power and by trading it between herself and Marjike neither of them really gain anything, except in the case that Riv runs off with her share, which she has already pledged not to do. Marjike can probably see having an alchemist with a functional lab is probably for the benefit of everyone. Riv has pledged her services, and is, at least in her own mind, obligated to do pretty much anything the captain tells her to. She points out, directly to Marjike that if their is a buyer within passholt who will pay anywhere close to that much for the lockbox it would be much more beneficial to sell it in town. Her intent is not to pursuade Marjike to do anything, Riv simply offered because she knew the captain was interested in selling the box. If no one in town is going to buy the box then it's likely worth more to Marjike with a slightly less elaborate lock.
Lastly, Riv hardly sleeps, which no doubt affects her perception after too many hours without rest. However, she would likely have been awake while Marjike was having her dream. Would she have noticed anything threatening or magical occurring?
Rolling to see if Riv notices anything strange during the night, not to persuade Marjike, she and I can decide that in character without dice. Riv doesn't even really want to persuade her of anything, just saying that if Marjike wants to liquidate the box Riv would be willing to front gold for it

>>740032
>And who, exaectly, will be looking after moi charges?

Odo the innkeeper has half a dozen armed guards on staff, hardened veterans all. The Black Boar Inn was last attacked a couple years ago, on which occasion the only injuries among guests were those who willingly joined the fighting, all of whom survived. Fully half of Corrak's Brigands were slain, and the remainder have reputedly been running scared ever since, going to some trouble to acquire a Catgut Legion so they have a new hidden, fortified campsite every week, out of concern Odo might come after them to finish the job.

So, the kobolds could stay at the inn.

>>740038
>10 gold
Even shattered scraps of the clockwork puzzle would probably be worth at least 50-100 gold.

>rolled 1, 5, 1 = 7
Riv was examining the formerly-jade amulet at the time, in hopes of alchemically synthesizing a similar spirit-binding crystalline structure. An arrow flickered in and out of existence, transfixing the amulet somewhere between three-quarters and four-fifths of the way down the shaft, just before Marijke woke up screaming. The flickering seemed to follow a pattern of ripples, proceeding from narrow, green-black, square-cross-section tip toward the brilliant red-gold fletching, each ripple about half a handspan wide, and moving as fast as the eye could follow while the arrow itself remained stationary. The amulet was balanced on edge for the duration of the phenomenon, with the tip of the arrow touching the beaten copper counter, but there was insufficient time (perhaps ten or fifteen seconds) to confirm whether it was otherwise tangible before it fully disappeared.

rolled 1, 3, 4 = 8

---

>worth at least 50-100 gold
Acknowledged; Riv changes her offer to her current 12 gold + the entirety of her next share. Again, not really looking at buying seriously, as Marjike would likely get significantly more in town if she can find a buyer, which Riv would have mentioned to her. Up to Marjike whether she feels that facilitating RIv's pet projects outweighs the significant gold value of the box.
>just before Marijke woke up screaming
She will scurry towards Marjike's position, and try to assess her condition. Rolling to see how much Riv can gather about the events concerning the amulet in conjunction with Marjike's wound Riv is assuming the two are related, she doesn't tend to believe in coincidences , as well as to see how badly Marjike may be hurt. If it seems like she needs medical assistance I'll make a separate roll, as Riv may choose to get help before attempting anything.
Marjike, hop over to the discussion thread, I have a question to ask you

>>740047
>Rolling to see how much Riv can gather about the events concerning the amulet in conjunction with Marjike's wound
>rolled 1, 3, 4 = 8
What wound?

There isn't so much as a scratch on Marijke's back, apart from a few bug bites. If she'd bled out anywhere near as much as that pool on the floor, she'd be deathly pale and delirious, at best. Instead, she's blushing with embarrassment and outrage at the abrupt violation of privacy, which is inconsistent with any significant blood loss.

Riv concludes time travel is somehow involved.

rolled 3, 4, 3 = 10

---

>>740038
I should point out, that technically, the lock box is not Marijke's to sell. It's loot that rightfully belongs to the crew, that will be broken into shares as soon as we have the opportunity to liquidate it at an appropriate price. It's value lies not in the ability to secure goods, but as a way to make payroll.

Allowing Riv to buy out everyone else's shares on a large extension of credit is not only a poor business decision, but dereliction of duty (by being grossly irresponsible with the charter's resources).

If the lockbox is worth 750g and Riv made 12g in the last engagement, it would take 63 similar hauls to pay back the credit extended! Many of the crew might have moved on or died before their share is paid back, if Riv herself survives long enough to pay off the debt.

...and there's probably a circumstance penalty for pushing on after being rejected on once. (Or else anyone could take 20 on the captain till they got what they wanted).

Riv's asking for more than she'd probably get selling herself back into slavery, without the decency to sell herself into slavery properly.

>there's a hole through the back of Marijke's nightshirt, a corresponding hole in the mattress, and alarming quantities of her blood on the floor under the bed.
Was Marijke asleep in the inn, or in the cart-ship? In the former case, I think I'm going to need to leave a larger tip for whoever has to clean that up, in the later case, I'm going to need to find someone to clean that up. (I can fix the mattress with rhyme of mending, at least).

>large puddle of blood
>inconsistent with blood loss
Marijke will be hitting herself with a free sample of least true healing, just in case.

>Instead, she's blushing with embarrassment and outrage at the abrupt violation of privacy
Seems apropos.

>rightfully belongs to the crew
Riv seems to have little genuine interest in the welfare of the crew, although she is more than happy to provide for the general welfare as it gives everyone a reason to keep her around. She doesn't really care who it belongs to in spirit because Marjike is currently in charge of deciding what happens to it.
>circumstance penalty for pushing
Again, Riv is not attempting to persuade you. While she would like the box, she understands she has little that she can barter with, and it is entirely illogical to gift it to her, or have her take out a loan for it. She recognizes this and was simply discussing the worth of the box with Marjike, knowing she's not really going to get it.
>violation of privacy
Again, Riv lacks compassion or concern for others feelings. Upon seeing that Marjike is seeming okay, she will wordlessly scramble out of the room, grab vials and then rush back in on all six and try to gather as much of her blood as she can, while rapidly explaining her experience with the amulet and her suspicion of time travel.

>grab vials and then rush back in on all six and try to gather as much of her blood as she can
(Pfff-hahaha).

I think Riv has used up the frazzled lucre-witch's patience for the night.

"OUT!"

>>740072
>more than she'd probably get selling herself back into slavery
Actually, Rixxil Kas knows that a master-level alchemist, with lesser skills than Riv has demonstrated when cooperative and motivated, would typically be worth 225 gold as a slave. So, 750 or more isn't out of the question. Thus the willingness to extend a loan.

>Was Marijke asleep in the inn, or in the cart-ship?
Up to you.

>hitting herself with a free sample of least true healing
No more visible bug bites. Itching subsides, but is not quite completely gone. A few other minor aches and pains are banished. Overall, seems like a bit of a waste.

rolled 6, 4, 4 = 14

---

Riv will scurry away once more and begin running tests on the arcane properties of Marjike's blood, attempting to see if she ascertain anything else about what happened, and if there's any personal benefit or use that she can implement the blood into. Perhaps somehow gaining some of Marjike's magic from it, or working it magically into her dagger to train it to seek out blood, or use it in a spell tattoo or potion.

>>740103
Results are inconclusive, likely because the sample was severely contaminated.

So, whoever's planning to lead the next expedition to the Mouth of Doom... which of the six doors are you going through first, what's the marching order, and who's handling the map?

>>735622
>(in clockwise order: fanged goat's face, a skull, a pentacle, a hand, and a wolf's head in profile), except for the northernmost which initially appears blank.

Letkra is willing to defer to the decisions of the group (or of the leader), but says she thinks there should be a systematic search of the whole dungeon, starting with what seems like the most straightforward first part; the blank, talking door.

(but her reasoning should probably be questioned by more cautious, sensible types.)

Letkra is also willing to be either towards the front, or rear guard, as she's got the fancy shield, so somebody squishier (or who un-squishes more poorly than herself) should probably hide behind her.

So, roster of who might or might not be involved:

--- Definitely going
Ravenous Llyr
Letkra
Gunderbag the Ogre (I think)

--- Definitely not going:
Riv (Doctor)
Rixxil Kas (Patient)
White Snake (guarding the wagon)
Acolyte Goris (helping with ritual, won't separate from white snake)
Acolyte Eswic (helping with ritual, won't separate from Goris)
Acolyte Altsoba (by extension)
Rixxil Kas' Octopus (back at shore)

--- Undetermined:
Marijke? (probably doctoring Rixxil Kas?)
Nico Nashville (maybe that un-muting surgery wasn't successful?)
"Sir" Garaille (if the Kobolds can stay at the well-guarded inn and/or with those doing the ritual, it's a chance for him to go out and seek glory and smite monsters and such)
Than (I think was leaning towards coming along? Does Than have a usable weapon? There was some mention of Than having an opportunity to fight ghosts, I thought)
Kobolds

(...doesn't that include the first few players, sans Nick? I'd think there'd be some kind of "do we want to try that again?" questioning going on.)

>>740155
She can go. Unless you already left.

ooc I was just mostly lurking because SCIENCE

rolled 4, 2, 3 = 9

---

>>740155
Than can still use her weapon, proven by that bear she killed.

>>740155
I think Marijke would probably prefer to be helping with the ritual, but if Garaille doesn't agree to go, the dungeon group needs a healer (just in case) and she's the one the ritual group can spare (the acolytes need to be kept as a set, and Riv is needed for her equipment).

...I should probably spam Fool's Luck on the ritual participants before I leave, just in case. And probably buff the delvers when we reach the dungeon as well. (Yay for 0th level +1s).

In-character, Nico is pretty interested in weird magics, and would probably be much more interested observing and/or assisting with the ritual, I would assume.

>b) tranforming Eadric into a gemstone and back
Any further details learned first hand, assuming Marijke spent some time this morning experimenting with this ability? (How does Eadric react to it, any notable properties of the gem, how do his sense / perceptions fare while transformed, etc).

>>740232
>Fool's Luck on the ritual participants
Luck manipulation in general doesn't work on rolls for magic, and Fool's Luck in particular doesn't work for anything meticulously planned. Also, it only lasts sixty seconds.

>And probably buff the delvers when we reach the dungeon as well. (Yay for 0th level +1s).
This will likely be more effective. Remember to specify when you're using the bonus, everybody.

>b) tranforming Eadric into a gemstone and back
Any further details learned first hand, assuming Marijke spent some time this morning experimenting with this ability? (How does Eadric react to it, any notable properties of the gem, how do his sense / perceptions fare while transformed, etc).

Main thing is, the transformation is under Eadric's control rather than Marijke's. He can orbit around Marijke's head, or attach to her clothing at aesthetically suitable points, but is otherwise immobile. He cannot make noise while in gem form, and feels nearly blind, although initial testing suggests normal human visual acuity out to ten yards. More detailed analysis may have to wait until next level, when the empathic bond improves.

>>740232
>Fool's Luck on the ritual participants
Luck manipulation in general doesn't work on rolls for magic, and Fool's Luck in particular doesn't work for anything meticulously planned. Also, it only lasts sixty seconds.

>And probably buff the delvers when we reach the dungeon as well. (Yay for 0th level +1s).
This will likely be more effective. Remember to specify when you're using the bonus, everybody.

>b) tranforming Eadric into a gemstone and back
>Any further details learned first hand, assuming Marijke spent some time this morning experimenting with this ability? (How does Eadric react to it, any notable properties of the gem, how do his sense / perceptions fare while transformed, etc).

Main thing is, the transformation is under Eadric's control rather than Marijke's. He can orbit around Marijke's head, or attach to her clothing at aesthetically suitable points, but is otherwise immobile. He cannot make noise while in gem form, and feels nearly blind, although initial testing suggests normal human visual acuity out to ten yards. More detailed analysis may have to wait until next level, when the empathic bond improves.

>>740042
>>740155
Fine, Garaile will begrudgingly accompany the exploration party. However, before setting off, Garaile will make perfectly clear that if any harm befalls the kobolds during this absence, there will be hell to pay.

>>740286
The brownsmith/porter kobold overhears that White Snake is staying behind, realizes that nobody else on the crew seems to understand mechanical traps, and, accordingly, volunteers to come along.

rolled 2, 6, 5 = 13

---

As everyone prepares for the excursion into the dungeon, Riv will delve back into research. Rixxil Kas still needs roughly 2 days of feeding to recover, which Riv will check on 2-3 times a day. She instructs the others who are not going, rather bossily, to instruct her if anything goes urgently wrong with Kas's care. Assuming the others are competent enough to recognize the importance of this task, Riv's superiority, and that they'll know if anything goes wrong, she begins research into a polymer that is resistant to corrosion and damage from acid, which can be inserted underneath the skin.

>>740305
Acid-resistant subdermal armor? Alright, that'll be tricky, take at least a few days, but it might be possible. Are you trying to make it biocompatible with elvenoids, neogi, yourself, or all of the above?

rolled 1, 2, 6 = 9

---

Myself first. If I prove successful, I can expand the research towards others. This is step on in a 2-step plan. Riv, ever paranoid, want to equip herself with a small vial of acid embedded into her skin, which can be smashed into someones head, manacles, or some other target in a dire circumstance. She would rather burn a hole in her wrist before being captured again. She knows this kind of last line of defense weapon cannot be used without damaging herself- broken glass, acid, etc. However, if she can surround the vial with some sort of shielding that won't be rejected by her body, then she can at least reduce the damage it would do if she ever had to use it. If she can develop this successfully she may look at creating larger plate of armor to protect more of herself, but for now it only needs to protect a small area.

>>740308
Oh, well, in that case you don't need to develop some exotic polymer. Just take an ordinary glass flask of acid, scrub and sterilize the outside really thoroughly, maybe add some gold foil over the wax seal, and surgically implant it in a flesh pocket.

Downside is, any serious impact on the obvious bulge in your skin would introduce caustic chemicals and glass shards to your organs.

Riv is implanting it in the wrist of right hand in the second, smaller set of arms. If she smashes the vial into anything, how much damage will it do to her? She's hoping to mitigate the effects enough to heal any sort of damage from using it with a least true healing and some skilled glass shard removal.

If I follow correctly, the group planning to go to the dungeon consists of:

Ravenous Llyr
Letkra
Gunderbag the Ogre (did he actually say anything about going? Should we ask him?)
Than
"Sir" Garaille
1x Kobold

The following considerations for going there include:

- Is that actually everyone who's going?
- What do we need to bring, and do we already have it? (equipment, food, water)
- How are we traveling to get there? (Walking, presumably?)
- What time of day do we wish to depart? Right away this morning? (If we leave too soon there won't be enough grass for the oxen, but if we leave too late we might not reach Oremor before Winter)
- Did anyone need to finish any business before departing, or are we ready?
- Once we get inside, what are we doing? Marching order, checking for traps, which door do we go in, what do we do next, etc.

>>740317
Over the course of the next few minutes it would definitely cripple the hand, possibly ruin the entire arm, and foul up the rest of your circulatory system enough to leave you bedridden for a month. There's also some risk of neurological damage. That might be much more than one application of Least True Healing can fix, and applying the healing too early would mean the damage continues to accumulate, while waiting might mean passing out from shock.

>>740347
Good summary.
>did he actually say anything about going?
Gunderbag, like Llyr, is not one who would lightly pass up any opportunity for violence.

>>740348
Wow, that's a lot of damage for 1 small vial of acid, I didn't think it would be able to affect much more than the immediate area. Would the acid shield Riv is looking to create mitigate this in any way? Or is that the result with shield?

>>740347
Garaile's marching order recommendation to Letkra is as follows:

Point/Scout: Ravenous Llyr, whose high mobility, toughness, and uncanny instincts mean he is likely to spot incoming dangers and unlikely to be taken out by a surprise attack or ambush.
Front 1: Letkra, whose energy shield can protect the group proper from ranged threats.
Front 2: "Sir" Garaile, as the primary tank/healer, to be able to easily move forward to engage melee threats.
Middle 1: The kobold, in an adjacent position to Garaile. Closest to the front while still being protected by both energy and meatshields.
Middle 2: Than, protected on both sides and able to snipe foes from a distance.
Rear: Gunderbag the Ogre, who has extreme durability but the slowest mobility, preventing any surprise attacks from behind.

rolled 5, 5, 4 = 14

---

>Also [Fool's luck] only lasts sixty seconds.
I assume that's for the active effect? It would have to be able to sit dormant between casting and triggering longer than that, or it wouldn't have shown up as a factor in the last fight. (It has to have been more than a minute for Letkra and Than to walk up and chat with Rixxil before things went bad).

>kobold going
In deference to keeping Garaile's little buddy alive (especially if it's volunteered for the dangerous job of disarming traps) Marijke will give it a shadow armor before the party heads out. That holds up for a while, at least.

>oh and since it's a new day
0 [n/a]: bestow fool's luck, gum-fire, experimental miscellany, staunch bleeding
1 [3/4]: least true healing, least true healing, rhyme of mending, shadow armor (used)
2 [3/3]: demand gift, spit spiders, least astral courier

(I'm planning on mending the mattress later today, but saving the spell for now in case I end up needing it for something more pressing. Say if equipment breaks mid-ritual?).

>Wow, that's a lot of damage for 1 small vial of acid
I think you're disadvantaged by the fact the acid would start out inside your body, and getting to run deeper into the fresh cuts from the glass. You completely bypass the body's first defense.

>>740352
Kobold is less sure about having the ogre as rear guard. In the event of attack from behind, sure, but what if the action is up front?

Gunderbag shrugs and frankly admits that, in tight quarters (like a 10' wide corridor), he'd probably end up trampling somebody.

>>740350
Introducing any significant quantity of weapons-grade acid directly to the bloodstream ain't pretty. Doesn't matter much if you wrap it in some sort of corrosion-resistant membrane first, since your deployment technique involves rupturing that membrane, so it can just leak out through the cracks. Unless you're including enough alkali to neutralize the acid, which would somewhat defeat the point of using acid in the first place. In that case, you'd effectively be blasting one of your wrists off with a vial of boiling salt water.

Generally speaking, surgically implanted alchemical weapons don't make a lot of sense unless you have no regard for the physical well-being of whoever you're implanting them in.

>>740367
Spell durations don't always count down like clockwork, or rather, it's possible to rewind them in certain ways. Lektra and Than went into a dangerous situation with no real plan, and little attention to conventional safety precautions, so Fool's Luck didn't really count down until they started behaving sensibly. Some flight spells have a similar effect, so time spent in free-fall doesn't count against the duration, allowing a controlled landing regardless of altitude.

Marijke can get Bestow Shadow Armor to last four hours now, and it's a two-hour hike to the Mouth. You might encounter some danger on the way to or from, but probably not as much (or at least not as abruptly) as inside. So, going to cast right as you're leaving the inn?

>>740375
The idea was that if a battle breaks out in front and there is ample room, the ogre can easily move forward without trampling anyone. If a battle breaks out in front and there is not ample room, then that makes a rear guard all the more important because the party will have a difficult time repositioning to defend against a two-sided engagement.

If the ogre cannot be trusted to maintain formation, then frankly, Garaile considers it to be a liability to bring along. Assuming it will move to engage any melee threat, (trampling any member of the party in the way) then putting it in the back will cause it to trample the party to engage frontal threats, and putting it in the front will cause it to trample the party to engage rear threats. Therefore, the only position it can be placed in is point/scout, where it will be somewhat apart from the party. This, incidentally, is also Garaile's reasoning for putting Llyr in that position. However, unlike Llyr, Gunderbag is bulky and slow, which makes it a poor scout, and it is also very large, which makes it highly visible to enemies which may be scouting us.

Assuming Gunderbag is being brought along regardless, here are two alternate formations Garaile will suggest:

Substitute Formation 1: "Swap the wild cards"
Point/Scout: Gunderbag the Ogre
Front 1: Letkra
Front 2: "Sir" Garaile
Middle 1: The kobold
Middle 2: Than
Rear: Ravenous Llyr
This will put Llyr as rear guard, which has the same problem as the previous formation in that Llyr is also unreliable in a formation and will move to engage any enemies. However, Llyr is less likely to trample the party members, being both smaller than an ogre and more agile. Gunderbag is also a worse scout for reasons outlined above, but perhaps (and this part is muttered inaudibly) Gunderbag will do us the favor of finding and deactivating the traps for us, thus helping to keep the kobold safer in an alternative way.

Substitute Formation 2: "I'll do it myself"
Point/Scout 1: Ravenous Llyr
Point/Scout 2: Gunderbag the Ogre
Front: Letkra
Middle 1: Than
Middle 2: The kobold
Rear: "Sir" Garaile
This puts both unreliable party members in point positions, allowing them to frolic about like the children they are securely protect the party's front, as well as give excellent advance warning of upcoming threats. Garaile will take up the rear guard position, so that the rear guard will still have a strong melee fighter. Garaile being Garaile, this formation also switches Than and the kobold, so that the kobold is still adjacent to Garaile.

>So, going to cast right as you're leaving the inn?
Well, now that Garaile is with the delve party to provide emergency healing, Marijke was gonna stay to help with the ritual, so yes, I would have to cast it as they left the inn.

Unless the ritual wouldn't benefit from my participation? (Not sure what the actual casting part looks like, maybe keeping the synergy of the three acolytes as a pure unit is worth more than bringing in another person?).

>>740413
Bear in mind that for 10' wide halls, normal-sized people can walk two or three abreast. An ogre in fighting stance more or less fills the whole hallway, but could sidle past single-file humans without trampling them, if they're off to one side rather than right in the middle.

>Gunderbag is bulky and slow
Gunderbag's an idiot, and not particularly agile, but in terms of straight-line running speed he's among the fastest on the team. Longer legs count for a lot.

At the mention of prospective trampling, Letkra suddenly remembers how disorderly combat is around here and tries to think more tactically.

"Well, I can adjust the size and location of my shield, to block a hallway or something like that. (I don't know if it could be trampled through- maybe over?- but it would probably help with that, too.) Does that help with your considerations?"

>>740415
Marijke would have something useful to contribute to either endeavor, but is indispensable to neither. Going along to the dungeon, however, would allow her to maintain communication between the two groups (always a concern when splitting the party) and also get more XP.

>>740424
Sure, sounds reasonable. I can provide communication between the party so long as Rixxil (and I) stay alive.

The shadow armor application can wait till we reach the dungeon, and I'll put Eadric in gem form then too.

Riv points out, rather dryly, that she expects Rixxil to have recovered from its forced fast in roughly 2 days. After that she plans to preform the ritual, and she does not garuntee its health after this. She adds that if Rixxil is incapacitated or killed before the party's return that communication will cease. Further more, the arrow head lodged in the creatures body is continuing to damage the creature, and while Riv could attempt healing magic, with the loss of her notes she is essentially starting from scratch. This is not to say that Marjike, the captain of the crew, and all its able bodied warriors shouldn't wander around in a dangerous, likely monster infested cave with the word "doom" in its name, but just that if she chooses to lead the crew down this path, she should be prepared to face the consequences and potential losses, and weigh them against the projected gain.
After delivering her thinly veiled passive aggression in the form of a warning, Riv will work on enchanting her knife. She takes collected blood samples from herself, Marjike and Rixxil and will attempt to train the edge of her knife to seek blood more... aggressively

>Further more, the arrow head lodged in the creatures body is continuing to damage the creature, and while Riv could attempt healing magic
The acolytes are standing by to do ritual ritual work, and they can easily dole out a few least true healings as Rixxil recuperates.

(And you might be down a day on that count already? I was sort of thinking it was already time for the ritual, but getting the patient in as good health as we can manage probably isn't a bad idea).

I believe the original estimate was 3 days until the fasting H was made up for; I think 1 day has since gone by.

Well, if that's all the preparations for the expedition...

You hike two miles southwest, along the forested ridge which tapers down to the peninsula upon which the Black Boar Inn and associated businesses rest, then round the last corner in the Brambleroot River, and continue due south (where following the riverbank further upstream would lead southwest) four miles, to the barren rocky ridge into which the ever-yawning Mouth of Doom was carved. You arrive there by mid-morning without incident.

Inside, at the bottom of the black stone stairs, there's a large room with six doors
>>735622
which some of you have seen before. The kobold (who should probably get a name someday) says that, in the northeast, southwest, and northwest alcoves - that's goat, hand, and wolf, respectively - the whole floor is one big pressure plate. Other three seem clear, apart from the skull door's hinges being rusty. He's got no reliable way to check for magic.

What do you do?

rolled 6, 6, 6 = 18

---

>The kobold (who should probably get a name someday)
Has anyone asked, yet?

>He's got no reliable way to check for magic.
>What do you do?
Rolling for sense magic / magic sight.

Parrot in gemstone mode, kobold should have shadow armor on now.

rolled 4, 5, 5 = 14

---

>>740487
Garaile will naturally be detecting for evil auras or presences, but with the resigned air of probably being surrounded by evil on all sides.
Also, Garaile will suggest the party take the pentagram door, with the following logic: the goat, hand, and wolf are pressure-plated and therefore activate mechanisms when stepped on. There is a high likelihood these are either traps or alarms to alert foes further inside of intruders, so in the absence of a mechanical expert on the team, we should avoid them. The skull door's rusty hinges suggest disuse, being a product of a lack of maintenence for a long time, which suggests it may house a dead-end trap further inside. It will also squeak noisily if opened, so it could be another form of alarm. And the white (blank) door is for loading and unloading only, suggesting an area both heavily monitored and peripheral in nature. Therefore, the pentagram door is the most rational choice.


Llyr will remove any cloaks and footwear, and wash his hands with a bit of water while he waits for the party to make a decision which way to go.

>>740501
>probably being surrounded by evil on all sides
Pretty much. Not as much as back in the bloodmist labyrinth, but it'd be easier to say what doesn't have trace residue of unholy creatures and nefarious deeds... specifically, the "eye" seems like an untouched relic of some more civilized age, and whatever waits behind that goat-head door is similarly lacking in foulness and corruption.

>>740488
>Rolling for sense magic
>rolled 6, 6, 6 = 18
No headache... Marijke feels fine. Better than fine! The whole geomantic basis of the local tunnel network clicks into place for her, on some intuitive level.

She concludes that the north door, leading to the "white zone," is completely safe, and probably leads to some sort of storeroom, but isn't an easy route to deeper levels since they sealed off the elevator shaft. The south door with the pentagram, however, has some sort of binding-based trap. Nonlethal in itself, but seriously inconvenient if all of the healing hall's original staff are dead or otherwise unavailable, and might make you easy prey for other monsters. To bypass it, just remove your cloaks and shoes, as instructed.

rolled 2, 4, 1 = 7

---

Riv stares at her notes and diagrams with an air of abject frustration. Unable to find a way to safely implant the vial of acid underneath her skin, the disgruntled alchemist resigns to come back to that idea another day. She begins to collect her samples of blood and alchemical reagents, and lays them on the table with along with her knife. She begins the process of enchanting and binding the weapon, infusing it with blood and magic. Knowing that this is an expensive and time consuming process, she decides with confidence that it is worth the risk to attempt to speed this up and cut a few corners if she can get the end result she needs more efficiently.

>>740536
>no headache
I guess I'm just hallucinating then. Or I left myself wide open and got hacked by whatever was left here and it's giving me the information it wants me to have? Oh well, that's all OOC anyways.

Marijke will share her questionable magically gleaned intelligence with the group.

rolled 4, 6, 1 = 11

---

"Well, if the Captain thinks the white zone is probably safe, and you think so too since it has security monitors... it really looks like the first part of the dungeon to me to me, and if it's for loading and unloading, it could have important stuff to find! Maybe we should look in there real quick first?"

(OOC, I'm pretty sure Garaille was actually arguing that the white zone wasn't safe, but I figured Letkra might not get what he meant by that.)

>> The goat, hand, and wolf doors seem to have traps
"We should figure out how to disarm those and come back to them later."

In any case, Letkra will follow along with wherever the rest of the group decides to go.

(not sure what the roll is for, but one is included regardless)

Gunderbag sits his fat butt down on the stairs, bored with the debate over which door to go through.

Wandering monster roll... from the alcove marked with a hand, three skeletal warriors emerge, clad in decrepit chainmail and wielding rusty machetes. They attack the living on sight, incapable of fear or higher reasoning, but are neither particularly competent nor durable. You can almost certainly beat them, it's mainly a question of whether any of you will be injured or otherwise inconvenienced. First, Ravenous Llyr should roll self-control for his phobia of meatless enemies.

rolled 3, 1, 5 = 9

---

>>740656
Shoot for the hands to detach the machetes. Chainmail shouldn't cover that. Also test firing at the chainmail too in any vulnerable areas to detach the head and/or limbs considering it's old and useless.

>>740673
Shooting out the wrists is surprisingly difficult. It's a small target, though not small enough for Than to miss. The real problem is that there aren't any physical tendons to sever, you need to shatter those fiddly little wrist bones. Pointed arrows tend to glance off or slip between them, frog-crotch arrows don't hit hard enough to penetrate a hard surface, and fowling arrows are specifically designed to avoid breaking bones. So, you end up needing two good hits per wrist, and then the damn thing just kneels over to re-equip a dropped machete with it's other hand.

Skeletal warriors advance to melee range. Gunderbag flattens one with a single punch, not even bothering to stand up. The skeleton attempted to parry but succeeded only in embedding it's weapon in the ogre's fist. He picks the machete out of the pile of rusty rings and bone splinters, starts to bend it around his knuckles as a crude iron cestus, ignoring the other two.

The one-handed skeleton seems to be going for an overhead chop at Than, while the one with a helmet moves to stab Ravenous Llyr in his sleek, shark-ly abs, other arm up in a guard position as if it thinks it has a shield, though none is visible.

rolled 6, 1, 4 = 11

---

Our best bet is probably Garaille, Letkra, Lirr or Gunderbag just smashing them. The kobold isn't a fighter, and Than's arrows and Marijke's spell load-out aren't well suited to dispatching mindless skellies.

Uh, in an attempt to be useful (while keeping clear of the melee) I suppose Marijke will cast gum-fire? If I dump it into heat, I might be able to get bone to crack or break, depending on how hot it gets.

I'll try the arm of the one targetting Than, assuming the shark-zerker has better odds of countering at melee range.

Marijke hocks a hot loogie ten yards. It sticks onto the skeletal warrior's remaining functional arm and burns with a dull red glow, but the monster appears unfazed.

It seems unleashing a conical torrent of flames (like what killed Nick) intentionally requires a 1st circle spell slot.
>>740553
Riv carves up one of her own arms, successfully extracting a particular nerve cluster and transferring it to a small vial full of honey before blacking out from the pain. Acolyte Goris watches, shy but clearly fascinated. One component down, thirty-nine to go! With the acolytes' healing magic, regrowing those nerves and fully recovering from the surgery should take less than a week, and she'll be in shape to contribute to the ritual at the same time Rixxil Kas is recovered.

Meanwhile, deeper in the dungeon, Stone has just climbed a ladder up a 50' long vertical shaft and emerged into an octagonal room about 30' in diameter. Four exits, corresponding to the cardinal directions (based on the star chart that blue-grey ghostlight reveals carved in the ceiling, at least), indistinguishable except that the eastern one has a door rather than an open hallway. Stone has been out of laudanum for twenty-one hours, eleven minutes, and lost underground for... probably longer than that. The petrifying curse's effect is still seven finger-widths away from his crotch, so, definitely less than a year.

rolled 2, 1, 3 = 6

---

Letkra attempts to stand in between the skeletons and the rest of the party with her shield at tower-size in front of her, and will attempt to swing her glaive at the one in front of her if she's got a clear shot (that is, enough room from the rest of the group that she's not going to hit somebody else with the thing).

rolled 6, 3, 2 = 11

---

>>740656
>Llyr: Roll vs fear
(Keeping in mind that Garaile's aura of courage is granting a hefty buff.)
Plan A: If he manages to keep it under control, Llyr will obviously go ham on the skeleton trying to cut his guts out, in a fit of fear-inspired aggression.
Plan B: If Llyr instead becomes panicked by the unnatural creatures, he'll flee through the pentagram door, having been previously informed it's likely the safest way to go.

rolled 5, 6, 6 = 17

---

Garaile will also move in to engage the one-armed skeleton, ideally blocking the overhead swing for Than, and following with a counterattack.

Stone is starting to miss the peace it brings- he's used to going a week and a half, two weeks maybe, trying to save coin, traveling through small towns without decent quality supplies; after three weeks though, it's starting to get to him. Craving silence more than anything, he heads to the eastern entrance with a door and opens it, reasoning that it's difference is significant enough to warrant inspection. He just hopes coming into these caves was worth it. It's been a long while since he had a decent nights sleep

>>740773
>>740774
The remaining two skeletal warriors are down, Llyr has kept his wits (partly with vain hope that they might have marrow in there somewhere),
>>740780
and "Sir" Garaile's collarbone is broken, rendering his shield arm largely useless. All that grimy rust in the wound can't be good, either.

>>740784
>three weeks
No, twenty-one hours eleven minutes. Less than a single full day, if the sun were visible, much as it might feel like an eternity.

Through the eastern door, down about seven yards of hallway and through another door, is a much larger room. More than the light can clearly illuminate. Visible exits are a door to the right, and stairs down to the left. Most of the people who've died or been seriously hurt in this room were pounced on from above and then exsanguinated, which would imply either feral vampires, or rafter leeches. In the center of the opposite wall is a 10' high statue of a skeletal figure, head scraping the ceiling, flanked on it's 5' high pedestal by two petrified wolves.

rolled 5, 5, 1 = 11

---

Healbot, activate!

Staunch bleeding for Gunderbag, if he needs it. Free sample least true healing for Garaile. Not sure if I should attempt to remove the rust first? And a collarbone might be kinda tricky to set. Garaile's own ability to purify might be useful in driving the rust out of his body before I close the wound?

If anyone needs reapplication of fools luck, Eadric can turn back to bird to do that, before returning to Marijke and going gem.

Are we taking the pentagram door with shoes and cloaks removed, then?

rolled 5, 3, 4 = 12

---

Even if it summons more skeletons to our position, it'll be altogether better to attempt to handle Garaile's injury now rather than later and get that shieldarm back in working condition.
Garaile will wash the injury lightly, just to get the surface filth off, before setting the bone and allowing Marijke to close the wound. Garaile's divine health will prevent the wound from becoming infected, so that's not a concern.

It'll take up some of the group's healing, but this is entirely recoverable-from.

rolled 5, 4, 3 = 12

---

>>740794
>twenty-one hours
Whoops! More like one rough nights sleep then, especially down in the place. Spirits are abundant here, clamoring to be heard; no one likes to be forgotten.
>exsanguinated
Stone does his best to kneel at the edge of the room, inspecting the dust and flagstones. He doesn't know much about vampires, but he doubts they have very good table manners. More likely to leave splatters of blood and other signs of "life" than leeches. Plus, leeches don't usually pounce. He'll ask one of his ancestors to explore the skeletal figure and the wolves, passing the ghost flame to them. It would be nice to know if it had fangs or anything worth noting, like an inscription or alter. He then looks to see if there's any spare bones or such around the room. There's power in bones. If there's any carcasses or intact limbs, he'll toss one in the middle of the room, towards the statues. If nothing happens then he'll cut his arm enough to bleed some, get the fluid on an bone or old body, and toss that in the room. If it's still quite after that then he'll advance, going to the right. He doubts the way to the surface is down more stairs. Possible, but Occam usually has an impeccable shave- it's best to use his razor when possible. When he passes the statues, he offers a small prayer to The Black One, asking that she guide his spear in returning any dark creatures to their rightful place, and that these creatures, whatever they were, brought death as needed, and in turn were brought the death they deserve.

>>740813
Fortunately the collarbone didn't have some sort of tricky compound fracture. Between the rapid first aid and actual magic, Garaile's shield-arm is now recovered about as much as if it'd spent a week in a sling: usable, but be careful with it.
>>740798
>pentagram door with shoes and cloaks removed
On the far side of the door is an east-west hallway, 10' square. To the west, it continues only about four yards before ending at a door. To the east, there's a door on the far wall, near the limit of torch-equivalent light, and the hallway continues much further.
>>740814
No inscriptions, nothing on the flagstones but mold and lichen. Nobody has prayed to this idol in a long, long time, if they ever did.
>cut his arm enough to bleed some
As the coppery smell spreads through damp, still air, there's a wet thump of something falling from the ceiling. At first glance it looks like some man-sized creature struggling to escape an undersized sleeping bag made from slimy leather.