OOC Thread

[Cognomen]

Thanks everyone! JadedDM, glad you allow kits, and I'll let you know if I have further questions (oh - how do I roll starting gold, given that I wouldn't be starting at level 1? Most of my experience has to do with starting at level 1).

Got a busy day ahead of me here in California, but I'll think about the possibilities and try to get at least a preliminary character sheet up here tonight (JadedDM, do you have a preferred system in terms of character sheets - I mean mythweavers, or something like that?)

Looking forward to putting something together!

[Nuke]

Welcome.

The only thing I'd say is that is ought to be another female! But, play what you want.

[JadedDM]

For starting gold, go ahead and roll what you normally would for your class if you were 1st level, then add 250 GP to that total. That'll put you about even with the rest of the group, in terms of wealth.

As for your character sheet, you can post it here or PM it to me. We don't do anything formal here like Mythweavers, although I suppose you could if you want to.

[Breila]

I have played a druid who turned swanmay once, so I would be interesting what someone else makes of the concept.

But HorizonsDream's advice is perfect, so I'll support it!

[Cognomen]

Hi everyone - just wanted to confirm that I'm still interested - I've been unable to post a character concept because I'm dealing with an unexpected rl situation. I should be able to get something up tonight, though. A swanmay druid sounds interesting!

[Jenara]

Swanmay huh? Interesting...

[JadedDM]

No worries, there's no big deadline to this thing.

I was going through the Druid's Handbook and looking through the different 'branches' of druidism (plains, forest, jungle, swamp, etc.) and wanted to mention the idea of a 'sea druid' since this party seems to spend a lot of time at sea. I came up with one years ago for Horizon, she played one in an old game of mine. If you're interested, I can give you the details, but it's up to you. I don't want to push anything on you.

[JadedDM]

You guys are free to do what you like until the ship departs; mingle, interact, meet new people, return to town for some quick shopping, etc. When you're ready to move on, just let me know.

[Breila]

Ouragana will stay on the ship, looking at everything she is allowed to watch, trying not to interfere with proceedings and helping out where necessary.

[Jenara]

Arei wants to leave the island asap...

[HorizonsDream]

I think we are all ready to go.

[JadedDM]

Just wanted to mention, Jocelyn performed a healing check on Areilon last night (it failed), meaning there's nothing more she can do for her aside from magical healing at this point.

[JadedDM]

Shortest chapter so far. I'll get up XP, updates and my notes soon.

[Jenara]

Yay!
1d6=3 3hp...

She'll learn the crossbow, light one of course as a WP.
And NWP... Not sure yet, can I choose one from the thieves handbook?
Add 15% to open locks, 10% to read languages, 5% to find traps.

[JadedDM]

We have level-ups. Everyone is now ready for Arc 2 except Ouragana, who only needs a couple hundred more XP or so.

Jenara, roll 1d6 for Areilon’s new HP total and distribute your 30 thief skill points as you like (but no more than 15 points can be spent on any one skill.) Nuke, from you I need 1d10+1 for Val’s new HP total. You both can train new proficiencies when the arc ends.

(EDIT: Oops, Jenara beat me to the punch again. To answer your questions, you can pick any NWP found at this list, and I do believe there are some from the Thief's Handbook in there. There won't be time to train for new proficiencies until the arc ends, though, so there's time to think about them carefully.)

I’ve updated the Places and People thread, as well as the Calendar thread.

Here are my notes for the last chapter:

The title refers to the Clockwork Horrors, an enemy found in Spelljammer that are very similar to the ones faced in this chapter, but much more dangerous.

Brock's gifts were meant as a reward for helping him earlier. Had that not happened, he'd have still been in his drunken stupor over his daughter's death, and would never have showed up at their room after the battle at all.

I'm surprised it was Val of all people who kept bringing up the idea of getting the wardens involved, as that would have been a lawful action and she's the most chaotic of the group. Had the party gone to the wardens, they would have been immediately arrested for breaking curfew. The adventure would have been over, as the party would have spent the night in jail while the wardens took care of Frisno.

The story of Frisno and how this whole quest started is a bit interesting, at least to me. I had originally planned on the murderer being a necromancer. He would kill young women for their 'spare parts' because he was rebuilding his lost wife, a la Frankenstein. It wasn't very original, but it was all I could come up with at the time.

Then came the faithful day when Tialis, Hubert and Frisno were all introduced. I rolled them up randomly on the spot. I told you before, when I rolled for Hubert, I got personality traits like 'lecherous' and 'crude' and also got a very high reaction with Areilon. But for Frisno, interestingly enough, I got rather evil traits like 'scheming' and 'cruel.' It was at that point I started considering him as the murderer.

After Areilon's little scene with Hubert, things just fell into place. Hubert was a ladies man, and Frisno was his quiet, jealous friend who women all ignored. I decided to twist Frisno into the ultimate 'nice guy;' the sort of fellow who acts like a jerk and a creep but never realizes it and then blames women for not wanting to be with him because he's 'nice.'

Hubert, I decided, had no idea what was happening. He was a big red herring to throw the party off. All evidence pointed to him. He had a relationship with all of the victims, and his surname was Diamondeyes (the cryptic clue the party learned was that the killer had 'eyes of diamond' which referred to the spiders glass eyes). Of course, had the party zeroed in on Hubert, and had him killed or arrested, the murders would continue since he had nothing to do with them.

The only real clue that Frisno was behind it was the fact that the spiders were clockwork. But honestly, I wasn't sure if the party would even remember Frisno at all. I always kept him in the background and rarely had him speak. I was deliberately trying to not call attention to him, in fact.

Had Areilon actually slept with Hubert, she would have become the next target. Because she didn't, I decided to have Frisno target her (and the others) for snooping around too much instead. They didn't bother hiding their intentions at all when they were conducting their investigation and they are a very conspicious group. My plan from the beginning was to have the spiders break into their room that night. It was sort of my fallback plan, in case the party failed to come up with any leads at all, so that things wouldn't just peter out.

Tialis, I decided, was something of a dark counterpart of Areilon. Indeed, they are much the same, but Tialis is of a higher degree. For instance, Areilon often tries to do things on her own, without the party's help; Tialis refuses to work with anyone else whatsoever. I kind of wanted to illistrate what Areilon might have become without the party's influence. The darker path not taken, so to speak.

She had been tailing the party for some time, using Potions of Invisibility. Hence why Areilon sometimes felt she was being watched--she was. Tialis was theorizing that Hubert was the murderer. In fact, that was the third clue that the party never found--her diary. Areilon broke into her room, but refused to open the chest under Tialis' bed. If she had, she would have found her diary, among other things, which would have directly pointed out that Hubert had had a relationship with each victim so far.

So when Tialis overheard Dahn and Frisno talking about how Areilon basically jilted Hubert, she assumed he would kill her for it. Thus, she tailed Areilon, hoping to catch Hubert in the act. Of course, Hubert wasn't the murderer, but the party stumbled upon the correct one and Tialis decided to take the credit (and the treasure) anyway.

There had actually been several planned endings for the quest, depending on how the dice went. Tialis could have killed Frisno, which is what happened, of course. Frisno might have killed Tialis instead--in which case the party would have had to fight him (taking him alive or killing him). The party could have then looted Frisno's treasure, as well as find the key to the chest underneath Tia's bed on her body and loot her stuff, too. And had the two been unable to kill one another at all (they both keep missing, for instance), until the party mopped up the spiders, Tialis would have tried to escape but would not have been able to steal anything.

In any case, there was a secret door next to where Frisno was standing that had a small cache of gemstones (worth more than what Tialis stole, actually), blueprints for the clockwork spiders (worth a ton, if sold to the right person), and four hearts in jars--outright proof that Frisno was the murderer. Unfortunately, the party didn't find it.

Had Ouragana actually attacked Tialis like she threatened, it wouldn't have killed her (she had way too many HP for a single magic missile to kill her), but it would have pissed her off and she would have sworn revenge. As it stands now, I'm not sure how the party will react if they meet her again. I would have thought they'd be miffed at her little double-cross, but they all protected her when Kilak demanded to know who killed Frisno.

If you're wondering about the other rooms in Frisno's house, there was nothing there. A kitchen, a workshop, and another storage room.

"STOP RIGHT THERE, CRIMINAL SCUM!" was what the wardens shouted when they showed up on the scene. It was a reference to the Elder Scrolls games.

I thought it was interesting how the party seemed to think they would be forgiven their minor crimes (violating curfew, breaking and entering, vigilantism), for performing a greater good--stopping the murders. That's the Chaotic alignment for you. But that had been my plan all along. The only path the party could take that didn't involve breaking the law was to do nothing at all; stay at the inn, send word to the wardens, and let them take care of everything. I assumed the party wouldn't do that, so they had to break the law--so I intended to have them exiled all along. (Originally, the idea was the party would break up after leaving the island and join up again a year later for the next arc; since Ouragana wouldn't be level 3 yet by that point, I decided to add one last quest on the Bullring first.)

Sierra and Terra are unique among NPCs, as they are the only characters I've created for this game with intent--all other NPCs so far have been rolled randomly in terms of appearance, personality, gender, race, and so on. I am hoping the two will become reoccurring characters in the game, because I find them pretty interesting and fun to play. But we'll see what happens.

Now some thoughts for each of you, individually:

Horizon
As the party healer, it's always important to keep an eye on everyone's HP totals in the Character Stats thread--but that includes yourself, as well. Jocelyn would not have fallen in that last battle if she would have withdrawn and healed herself instead of swinging away with only 2 HP left.

Breila
I admit, the reason I had Brock give her a Wand of Magic Missiles was to give her something to do in battles besides minor cantrips. Hopefully she won't forget she has it in future battles. :p

Jenara
Okay, now that the whole quest is over, there is a question that I've wanted to ask this whole time. Why the lighthouse? I never gave any clues (or indeed, mentioned it at all) during the whole game, so I was curious as to why Areilon was so convinced the lighthouse played some role in the murders and needed to be investigated. (It didn't, though. It was just a lighthouse. Had Areilon found a way to get to it and searched it, she wouldn't have found anything.)

Nuke
Between the farming (I didn't even know you were a farmer) and the new girlfriend (I vaguely remember having one of those once), seems like you've got your hands full at the moment. Hopefully, you'll get a little more freetime soon.

Anyway, one last chapter to go before the end of the arc. I have some a big, cool finale planned. Hope everyone survives!

As always, any questions, thoughts, opinions, feedback, etc., are welcome.