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The Flint Irregulars, whose portraits you may have seen
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<blockquote data-quote="Ajar" data-source="post: 8901298" data-attributes="member: 85901"><p>Update! Reginald's player couldn't make the get-together, but we still had a week where we played more D&D than usual, and he joined remotely for our sessions. The remaining time was filled with lounging around, board games, cocktails, and cooking.</p><p></p><p>We lined things up so I ran the Flint Governor's Island combat sequence and the immediate aftermath in that time. The party is just about ready to depart for Bole, but a few things have diverged a bit from the baseline in the text. The recap:</p><p></p><p><strong>Return to Flint</strong></p><p></p><p>The party rode to Flint from Slate as quickly as possible, arriving the morning of the day before the ritual. They quickly set about contacting allies using feathers, and carefully exploring the city, focusing on the shoreline, and learning more about the Danoran blockade and why the Flint portion of Risur's fleet was still docked (including the Coaltongue) instead of at Axis Island as they had planned with the King and Pemberton. They took some time to make their plans, but did also make contact with Beshela and learn that She-Who-Writhes was awake -- a problem for after the Governor and ritual.</p><p></p><p><strong>The Great Eclipse</strong></p><p></p><p>The party used scrolls of Water Breathing to approach the Governor's island from the bay, and then used Reginald's earth moving power (he's an Urban Empath) to tunnel into the moat and then into the storeroom off the dining hall. From there, I ran the fight as written, except without a short rest between the main level fight and the rooftop fight, because that's just how my party rolls. They were able to persuade the stationed troops that the Governor's orders were in conflict with the King's, and once the area was secure the soldiers made sure to let them know about the staircase mimic (which, miraculously, no one had stepped on for the entire battle). They teleported to the rooftop (Reginald has a daily group teleport), sent a feather off to Gale to request support, and then engaged in a pitched battle with the Governor's incarnations.</p><p></p><p>The first ~6 rounds of this fight were everything I want from a 4E battle -- high threat, high stakes, big swings. They managed to get the most dangerous incarnations under control without losing anyone, and then whittled away at the remaining incarnations until Gale arrived. She used her whirlwinds to help them shut off the lighthouse while the squad took down the remaining incarnations, all while keeping an eye on the perilously close falling star. By the end, they were out of healing -- no leader powers, no Second Winds, no surge potions, and not even any surgeless potions (like Cure Critical Wounds).</p><p></p><p>Cue the Great Eclipse.</p><p></p><p>In the wake of the star's explosive landing, a rakshasa stalked out of the mist toward them. Viveen recalled Nevard's vision (yes, her player actually remembered and found it in her notes from way back in The Dying Skyseer). They didn't pick up on the obsidian hint, but the First Blade of Srasama made it clear to Vesta that it wanted to be drawn, and when Vesta struck the rakshasa, it exploded into ash.</p><p></p><p><strong>What the Actual F***</strong></p><p></p><p>In the wake of the Great Eclipse, it was clear that Flint would need a new Governor. The party bandied about a few ideas before someone (I don't remember who) said "what about Gale?" This was met with universal acclaim, and they decided to ask Delft to be Lieutenant Governor so Gale would have institutional support from someone familiar with the workings of the government.</p><p></p><p>Most of the party took some time to deal with the immediate consequences of the Great Eclipse -- hivemind formations, recovering use of their abilities... but as soon as they learned that they could all teleport significant distances, Vesta took off for Ber via overland teleportation.</p><p></p><p>As refugees started arriving from Bole, they tracked down some sources and learned that all of the Fey Titans save the Voice of Rot were now awake and active in the Waking. They believed that having just defeated the Voice of Rot in the Dreaming, it was probably stuck there, and were relieved at having one less titan to worry about... of course, we know how that will turn out in the end. Viveen also had a surprisingly prophetic tarot reading from one of the sources, which I gave while very drunk using a randomized source for card drawing: 8 of Cups, Queen of Wands, and the Star. I don't know the first thing about tarot, but it certainly fit the narrative circumstances!</p><p></p><p><strong>My Boyfriend is a Head of State</strong></p><p></p><p>I think I've mentioned before that Vesta has been having a romantic dalliance with Bruse Shantus. After the Great Eclipse, he was very worried about the state of Ber, and the Bruse. We did some back of the envelope calculations to figure out average teleport distances and work out how long it would take Vesta to get from Flint to Seobriga. Upon arrival, he was relieved to find the Bruse safe, but Ber was dealing with the same hivemind issues as Risur. Vesta was able to give some advice on that front, and then took some time to catch up with Shantus and El Extrano. When Vesta mentioned the seas being cut off and the need to find out what had happend on Axis Island, El Extrano brought up the plan to try using undead whales to evade the wrath of She-Who-Writhes. Vesta suggested that it would be a lot faster if the whales could launch from Shale instead of Seobriga, if Ber would be willing to send a diplomatic necromantic contingent back to Flint with him -- by stashing themselves in the Absurdist Web while Vesta used Seobriga's teleportation circle to return to Flint. They would then travel overland to Slate, and then Shale, connecting all four cities for both countries, and shortening the distance the whales would need to travel. Shantus not only agreed to this, but asked to come to Slate himself, to confer directly with King Aodhan and the party on how best to handle the problems facing the contient: lack of sunlight, lack of overseas trade, the possibility of war, and the whole world falling into the Gyre.</p><p></p><p>Vesta took Shantus, a diplomatic contingent including some necromancers and Brakken, and stopped in Flint to pick up Viveen and Reginald before using the same overland teleportation technique to travel (slowly) from Flint to Slate. There, he held up his end of the bargain with Shantus, and gave him a full rundown of the assault on the palace, as well as meeting and soiree with the King and Harkover. Shantus was also quite alarmed to learn that the long-dead dragon tyrant Venkio was now undead and on the loose. He said that Ber had been developing anti-dragon artillery weapons, but would welcome Risur's expertise in ramping up production.</p><p></p><p>Needless to say, the eladrin and the minotaur did also get to spend a little quality time together during all of this. I think it's going well on that front!</p><p></p><p><strong>Talking to Statues</strong></p><p></p><p>Recalling Pemberton's statues in the Vault of Heresies, Reginald contacted Risuri intelligence to see if there had been any follow-up on their report covering the possibility of spy statues in Risur. There had! But so far, none had been found. Reginald recruited two other lower level Spirit Mediums from the military and set about canvassing the remaining unchecked statues in Slate. He found a duplicant statue in a public square outside the Slate RHC office, and after about 90 minutes of trying various things to trigger it, Pemberton happened to check it (he had been checking all of his Risur statues regularly since figuring out how to take over his duplicants again with the new planar physics) and greeted Reginald with "Well, aren't you a sight for sore eyes!" Reginald quickly shaped a column of earth and stone around them for privacy.</p><p></p><p>After clearing up why the hell a huge chunk of Risur's fleet was a no-show at Axis Island, Pemberton explained that he hadn't been able to stop the ritual, but had managed to take over, and was cleaning up remaining pockets of Ob resistance. There had been some kind of explosion at the Axis Seal site that had even managed to damage and seemingly immobilize the colossus, but he hadn't had time to investigate yet. He welcomed the undead whale plan, and said that he would try to get his network across the northern nations reactivated so that he could share some intelligence. He also invited the party to come to Axis Island, although Reginald said they had some fey titan business to deal with first. Pemberton laughed and related the tale of his last encounter with the Father of Thunder, and then they settled on a plan for Reginald to arrange for one of Pemberton's smaller statues in Flint to be placed in a suitable location -- perhaps even into the Absurdist Web -- to enable more regular check-ins.</p><p></p><p><strong>Supporting Governor Soliogn</strong></p><p></p><p>Bela focused his efforts on safeguarding the functioning of government institutions against the formation of hiveminds. Being a career bureaucrat, this was in some ways against his natural instincts, but he took to it well enough to put in place some insulating procedures -- rotation of squad membership in the military and RHC, increased time off so that groups of individuals wouldn't be spending too much time together, limiting squad drills, etc. He also ensured these best practices were shared with the media and industrialists to help mitigate formation of other workplace hiveminds.</p><p></p><p>Next he went to see Tinker to brainstorm ways to get across the sea that might be faster than raising whales from the dead -- or more sustainable, since the supply of dead whales was presumably not infinite. Bela wondered if it might be sufficiently safe to staff a boat with duplicants, or whether She-Who-Writhes would destroy anything resembling a seafaring vessel. Tinker's approach was "why sail at all, when we could fly?" and shared a quick outline of a "wingsuit" concept, with the idea being that you would put the suit on and then be shot out of a cannon. The players loved this, and Bela's player especially thought it might be a good match for the "travelchet" concept he previously came up with when thinking about how to turn universal teleportation into long-range transit -- a trebuchet to launch you into the air to extend your line of sight for teleportation. But the question then was, what about momentum? The wingsuit + travelchet concept had real promise, and Tinker immediately redirected his research agenda to this promising avenue, shelving his work on electrical breakthroughs that might help Risur compensate for the absence of the sun.</p><p></p><p>Lastly, Bela was aware of some backlash against the appointment of Gale to the Governorship, even with Delft going out of his way to make public appearances with her to signal support. Delft also confided in Bela that he couldn't manage this much PR work while also running most of the government as Gale got up to speed, so Bela took it upon himself to seek out Rock Rackus and ask him to lend his weight to Gale's governorship. Rock agreed enthusiastically, although he perhaps didn't pay quite as much attention as Bela would have liked to the admonitions about hivemind formation -- Rock's concerts for the next several days resulted in small hiveminds popping up all over the city. But Rock's efforts did increase public confidence in their new Governor -- after all, if their working-class hero was behind her, then she couldn't be all bad!</p><p></p><p><strong>Monarch Storytime</strong></p><p></p><p>Viveen spent a great deal of time with King Aodhan. For the first time she could remember, King Aodhan was actually looking his age. And in private meetings with the monarch and the heir alone, he confided in her that he wasn't confident in his ability to deal with the awakened Fey Titans. Viveen was surprised -- the King had always projected an aura of confidence. But it was clear that sustaining the realm through the planar shift had taken a lot out of him. They discussed the Fey Titans, and agreed to a plan: they would work together with the rest of the party to try and resolve the situation with the Ash Wolf first, and if that went poorly, the King would consider stepping down and remaining as a monarch emeritus / advisor to Viveen, who was in full possession of both her youth and her powers.</p><p></p><p>This led to some questions, notably, <strong>when was each Titan last subdued, how, and by whom?</strong> That information is present in the campaign for the Voice of Rot and Granny Allswell, but I haven't found it for the others yet, if it's in there. I'm certainly game to make it up, of course, I just don't like contradicting information that's in the text if I don't need to, since I refer to the text quite often and want to avoid making lots of amendments to it that I'll inevitably forget. Reviewing the text for info on each Titan is my homework for this week. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ajar, post: 8901298, member: 85901"] Update! Reginald's player couldn't make the get-together, but we still had a week where we played more D&D than usual, and he joined remotely for our sessions. The remaining time was filled with lounging around, board games, cocktails, and cooking. We lined things up so I ran the Flint Governor's Island combat sequence and the immediate aftermath in that time. The party is just about ready to depart for Bole, but a few things have diverged a bit from the baseline in the text. The recap: [B]Return to Flint[/B] The party rode to Flint from Slate as quickly as possible, arriving the morning of the day before the ritual. They quickly set about contacting allies using feathers, and carefully exploring the city, focusing on the shoreline, and learning more about the Danoran blockade and why the Flint portion of Risur's fleet was still docked (including the Coaltongue) instead of at Axis Island as they had planned with the King and Pemberton. They took some time to make their plans, but did also make contact with Beshela and learn that She-Who-Writhes was awake -- a problem for after the Governor and ritual. [B]The Great Eclipse[/B] The party used scrolls of Water Breathing to approach the Governor's island from the bay, and then used Reginald's earth moving power (he's an Urban Empath) to tunnel into the moat and then into the storeroom off the dining hall. From there, I ran the fight as written, except without a short rest between the main level fight and the rooftop fight, because that's just how my party rolls. They were able to persuade the stationed troops that the Governor's orders were in conflict with the King's, and once the area was secure the soldiers made sure to let them know about the staircase mimic (which, miraculously, no one had stepped on for the entire battle). They teleported to the rooftop (Reginald has a daily group teleport), sent a feather off to Gale to request support, and then engaged in a pitched battle with the Governor's incarnations. The first ~6 rounds of this fight were everything I want from a 4E battle -- high threat, high stakes, big swings. They managed to get the most dangerous incarnations under control without losing anyone, and then whittled away at the remaining incarnations until Gale arrived. She used her whirlwinds to help them shut off the lighthouse while the squad took down the remaining incarnations, all while keeping an eye on the perilously close falling star. By the end, they were out of healing -- no leader powers, no Second Winds, no surge potions, and not even any surgeless potions (like Cure Critical Wounds). Cue the Great Eclipse. In the wake of the star's explosive landing, a rakshasa stalked out of the mist toward them. Viveen recalled Nevard's vision (yes, her player actually remembered and found it in her notes from way back in The Dying Skyseer). They didn't pick up on the obsidian hint, but the First Blade of Srasama made it clear to Vesta that it wanted to be drawn, and when Vesta struck the rakshasa, it exploded into ash. [B]What the Actual F***[/B] In the wake of the Great Eclipse, it was clear that Flint would need a new Governor. The party bandied about a few ideas before someone (I don't remember who) said "what about Gale?" This was met with universal acclaim, and they decided to ask Delft to be Lieutenant Governor so Gale would have institutional support from someone familiar with the workings of the government. Most of the party took some time to deal with the immediate consequences of the Great Eclipse -- hivemind formations, recovering use of their abilities... but as soon as they learned that they could all teleport significant distances, Vesta took off for Ber via overland teleportation. As refugees started arriving from Bole, they tracked down some sources and learned that all of the Fey Titans save the Voice of Rot were now awake and active in the Waking. They believed that having just defeated the Voice of Rot in the Dreaming, it was probably stuck there, and were relieved at having one less titan to worry about... of course, we know how that will turn out in the end. Viveen also had a surprisingly prophetic tarot reading from one of the sources, which I gave while very drunk using a randomized source for card drawing: 8 of Cups, Queen of Wands, and the Star. I don't know the first thing about tarot, but it certainly fit the narrative circumstances! [B]My Boyfriend is a Head of State[/B] I think I've mentioned before that Vesta has been having a romantic dalliance with Bruse Shantus. After the Great Eclipse, he was very worried about the state of Ber, and the Bruse. We did some back of the envelope calculations to figure out average teleport distances and work out how long it would take Vesta to get from Flint to Seobriga. Upon arrival, he was relieved to find the Bruse safe, but Ber was dealing with the same hivemind issues as Risur. Vesta was able to give some advice on that front, and then took some time to catch up with Shantus and El Extrano. When Vesta mentioned the seas being cut off and the need to find out what had happend on Axis Island, El Extrano brought up the plan to try using undead whales to evade the wrath of She-Who-Writhes. Vesta suggested that it would be a lot faster if the whales could launch from Shale instead of Seobriga, if Ber would be willing to send a diplomatic necromantic contingent back to Flint with him -- by stashing themselves in the Absurdist Web while Vesta used Seobriga's teleportation circle to return to Flint. They would then travel overland to Slate, and then Shale, connecting all four cities for both countries, and shortening the distance the whales would need to travel. Shantus not only agreed to this, but asked to come to Slate himself, to confer directly with King Aodhan and the party on how best to handle the problems facing the contient: lack of sunlight, lack of overseas trade, the possibility of war, and the whole world falling into the Gyre. Vesta took Shantus, a diplomatic contingent including some necromancers and Brakken, and stopped in Flint to pick up Viveen and Reginald before using the same overland teleportation technique to travel (slowly) from Flint to Slate. There, he held up his end of the bargain with Shantus, and gave him a full rundown of the assault on the palace, as well as meeting and soiree with the King and Harkover. Shantus was also quite alarmed to learn that the long-dead dragon tyrant Venkio was now undead and on the loose. He said that Ber had been developing anti-dragon artillery weapons, but would welcome Risur's expertise in ramping up production. Needless to say, the eladrin and the minotaur did also get to spend a little quality time together during all of this. I think it's going well on that front! [B]Talking to Statues[/B] Recalling Pemberton's statues in the Vault of Heresies, Reginald contacted Risuri intelligence to see if there had been any follow-up on their report covering the possibility of spy statues in Risur. There had! But so far, none had been found. Reginald recruited two other lower level Spirit Mediums from the military and set about canvassing the remaining unchecked statues in Slate. He found a duplicant statue in a public square outside the Slate RHC office, and after about 90 minutes of trying various things to trigger it, Pemberton happened to check it (he had been checking all of his Risur statues regularly since figuring out how to take over his duplicants again with the new planar physics) and greeted Reginald with "Well, aren't you a sight for sore eyes!" Reginald quickly shaped a column of earth and stone around them for privacy. After clearing up why the hell a huge chunk of Risur's fleet was a no-show at Axis Island, Pemberton explained that he hadn't been able to stop the ritual, but had managed to take over, and was cleaning up remaining pockets of Ob resistance. There had been some kind of explosion at the Axis Seal site that had even managed to damage and seemingly immobilize the colossus, but he hadn't had time to investigate yet. He welcomed the undead whale plan, and said that he would try to get his network across the northern nations reactivated so that he could share some intelligence. He also invited the party to come to Axis Island, although Reginald said they had some fey titan business to deal with first. Pemberton laughed and related the tale of his last encounter with the Father of Thunder, and then they settled on a plan for Reginald to arrange for one of Pemberton's smaller statues in Flint to be placed in a suitable location -- perhaps even into the Absurdist Web -- to enable more regular check-ins. [B]Supporting Governor Soliogn[/B] Bela focused his efforts on safeguarding the functioning of government institutions against the formation of hiveminds. Being a career bureaucrat, this was in some ways against his natural instincts, but he took to it well enough to put in place some insulating procedures -- rotation of squad membership in the military and RHC, increased time off so that groups of individuals wouldn't be spending too much time together, limiting squad drills, etc. He also ensured these best practices were shared with the media and industrialists to help mitigate formation of other workplace hiveminds. Next he went to see Tinker to brainstorm ways to get across the sea that might be faster than raising whales from the dead -- or more sustainable, since the supply of dead whales was presumably not infinite. Bela wondered if it might be sufficiently safe to staff a boat with duplicants, or whether She-Who-Writhes would destroy anything resembling a seafaring vessel. Tinker's approach was "why sail at all, when we could fly?" and shared a quick outline of a "wingsuit" concept, with the idea being that you would put the suit on and then be shot out of a cannon. The players loved this, and Bela's player especially thought it might be a good match for the "travelchet" concept he previously came up with when thinking about how to turn universal teleportation into long-range transit -- a trebuchet to launch you into the air to extend your line of sight for teleportation. But the question then was, what about momentum? The wingsuit + travelchet concept had real promise, and Tinker immediately redirected his research agenda to this promising avenue, shelving his work on electrical breakthroughs that might help Risur compensate for the absence of the sun. Lastly, Bela was aware of some backlash against the appointment of Gale to the Governorship, even with Delft going out of his way to make public appearances with her to signal support. Delft also confided in Bela that he couldn't manage this much PR work while also running most of the government as Gale got up to speed, so Bela took it upon himself to seek out Rock Rackus and ask him to lend his weight to Gale's governorship. Rock agreed enthusiastically, although he perhaps didn't pay quite as much attention as Bela would have liked to the admonitions about hivemind formation -- Rock's concerts for the next several days resulted in small hiveminds popping up all over the city. But Rock's efforts did increase public confidence in their new Governor -- after all, if their working-class hero was behind her, then she couldn't be all bad! [B]Monarch Storytime[/B] Viveen spent a great deal of time with King Aodhan. For the first time she could remember, King Aodhan was actually looking his age. And in private meetings with the monarch and the heir alone, he confided in her that he wasn't confident in his ability to deal with the awakened Fey Titans. Viveen was surprised -- the King had always projected an aura of confidence. But it was clear that sustaining the realm through the planar shift had taken a lot out of him. They discussed the Fey Titans, and agreed to a plan: they would work together with the rest of the party to try and resolve the situation with the Ash Wolf first, and if that went poorly, the King would consider stepping down and remaining as a monarch emeritus / advisor to Viveen, who was in full possession of both her youth and her powers. This led to some questions, notably, [B]when was each Titan last subdued, how, and by whom?[/B] That information is present in the campaign for the Voice of Rot and Granny Allswell, but I haven't found it for the others yet, if it's in there. I'm certainly game to make it up, of course, I just don't like contradicting information that's in the text if I don't need to, since I refer to the text quite often and want to avoid making lots of amendments to it that I'll inevitably forget. Reviewing the text for info on each Titan is my homework for this week. :) [/QUOTE]
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