OOC: The Quest of the Missing Quill

[JadedDM]

Oh, this is going to end well, I can just feel it.

If the tensions between orcs and imperials is that bad, what are the odds we'd be attacked on sight if we actually did find the village?

What skill(s) would be needed to find the village on our own? Survival? I'm guessing diplomacy would be used to get information from the barracks?

[Haahque]

Well according to the hunter that Jasmine talked to yesterday, the orcs are unlikely to attack you on sight unless you're imperial soldiers. However they might be a little short tempered, and they do love fighting.

And yes, if I go for strait skill checks and not role-play the answers, finding the orc village would be survival (modified by what you want to do to increase the chances) while asking the barracks would be at base diplomacy.

[JadedDM]

Alright. When Gaheris returns from selling the loot, looks like he'll have to talk to the party about how they're going to pull this off.

[Haahque]

Happy to go, assuming we're ok for foodstuffs.

Unless you do something stupid like feed all your food to forest animals and get hopelessly lost in the woods and end up wandering around them for days, you should be fine. As we discussed above, it should take less then 1 day to get to the forest, and perhaps 1-2 days to find the town in the forest. The least-provisioned party member has 3 days of food on them. Most people have a week's worth.

[Chris1234]

All good then. Ty

[JadedDM]

(Jaded, would you like to roleplay out some bartering with him, or just sell it for an amount determined by your appraisal roll, his mercantile cheating skill (all merchants cheat, duh) and his appraisal of the gem).

Roleplaying haggling is super boring to me, so I'd rather just rely on the dice.

[Haahque]

Sounds good!

You figured the gemstone be worth something between 10 and 100 gold
(Rolls for jewelers appriasal and cheat/merchanting): The jewler proposes you sell the gem for 20 gold
(Rolls for Gaheris's sense motive and diplomacy for haggling): Haggle's the price up to 25 gold. You sell the gem for 25 gold.

[JadedDM]

Was the gem the only piece of loot remaining to sell? I looked through Gaheris' inventory and didn't see anything else.

He'll split the 25 GP equally between himself, Jasmine, Zurgo, Ishan, and Benjamin. He'll also turn in the key to the room he rented last night.

[Haahque]

Ok, both of those done now.


At some arbitrary time, if no one posts an update that would prevent it, I'll post an update assuming that you start your march towards the forest.

[Chris1234]

Hiho!
So is the general gist, pen got stolen, orcs seen running away, so go look for orcs?

[Haahque]

Yeah that's the general gist. You got in pretty close to the beginning after all ^^.

Some extra notes:
- Mantacores are extremely rare (and also dangerous), mantacore quills therefore are very hard to find.
- It is suspected (at least by Mazzart) that mantacore quillls possess some magical properties that could further the study and knowledge of magic

And the expected difficulty associated with this:
- While the orcs and the empire aren't at war, they're pretty much in an extended period of hostilities without intents of conquest by either side. An imperial patrol might attack a group of orcs and not expect significant retaliation, while similarly an orc raiding party might attack an imperial patrol or steal some cattle from a farmer and the empire won't do much about it. Meanwhile, both sides are still open enough that merchants can (and do) trade between them, and civilians can travel between the towns for recreation purposes as long as they're not military or otherwise closely affiliated with the other's leaders/government system. No one in the party currently has any such affiliations (yet), although Benjamin being a drow means he's rather unwelcome in empire and orc territory (merchants will raise prices when they see him, imperial soldiers won't help him out if they have a choice, certain Sliths might pick fights with him...) Similarly, Zurgo as a half-orc, really isn't too welcome anywhere (even the orcs don't like the half of him that's not orc).

[Chris1234]

Thanks Haahque, that's a huge help.
BTW what's a Slith ?

[Haahque]

Slith is the slang term for Slithzerkai, a lizardman-like race from the campaign world I started creating this adventure in (See Jeff Vogel's games, specifically Blades of Exile)

Sliths are huge, strong and smart, they lived in the underground world below the empire and the surface world, where they were encountered, fought and eventually befriended the people that the empire sent into exile in said underground world. Eventually, when there were enough (and powerful enough) people down in exile, some of who were sent there for felonies that their great-great-great grandparents commit (there was no way out, so people started families down there), the exiled peoples, as well as the Sliths, came up to the surface world and eventually learned to live peacefully with the imperials, integrating back into the empire as regular citizens.

More information about Sliths here: https://encyclopedia.ermarian.net/wiki/Slithzerikai

In my basic info thread I wrote up stats for anyone who wanted to create a Slith character, in case anyone was interested.

[Chris1234]

Thank you, that's a really good fill in. Are they they the ones that oppose Githyankis? (at least in some worlds)..

[Haahque]

By the history of the world via the games, no, I'm not sure if Githyankis would even exist.

Well the world of Exile isn't the standard D&D world, really the races outlined that have created kingdoms/empires is rather short in the exile series: Humans, Sliths, Nephilim, Vahnatai, and... that's pretty much it. Furthermore, in the exile games, Vahnatai are secluded and keep their dealings out of the affairs of Exile or the Empire, so the race choices for players in the Exile games are just those 3 (human/Neph/Slith).

However, Vogel left most of the world unexplored, and created tools for creating your own scenarios in Blades of Exile, so I took the initiative to create a more D&D like setting while I was creating this scenario, I added, very specifically, orcs and drow in this scenario, explaining them as kingdoms on the far-out reaches of the empire that were just recently discovered. When I was re-tooling the scenario to become a D&D campaign, I figured I might as well players to create characters of any of the standard fantasy races, giving the excuse that some other parts of the empire must have found/integrated these races into the empire at some undisclosed time in the timeline.