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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 1893626" data-attributes="member: 18280">(Continued From Last Post)Most of the factions aren't entirely of one mind. The gnomes that the party was speaking to, for instance, were sincere and were even crated themselves alongside the party. It was the members of the faction who were responsible for loading the ship who actually made the decision to leave the party behind because they still don't entirely trust them and were afraid they wouldn't be able to stop the party if it insisted on taking the artefact elsewhere.(Apparently, this faction had some means of determining which crates contained gnomes, which contained PCs, and which contained the artefact without having to check, and without thereby alerting the PCs.)As mentioned earlier, the gnomes and the party have had a rocky relationship.  But members of both sides have tried to put that behind them and cooperate.  It is noted that the party killed 2-3 of the gnomes and paid to have an unspecified “some” raised from the dead.  At least one PC (Esme) was killed by the gnome faction.  The party has eventually won over most of the gnomes they've dealt with personally.  In the end, they were dealing with two gnomes, one who was already won over and one who was distrustful.  Pretty quickly, the party won even this holdover to their side (even though their long term goals differed).Ambrus states that when the Sense Motive check was made the gnome was truthfully relaying his immediate intentions to the PC gnome (to go talk to the other gnomes involved, arrange a place for the PCs to hide and to arrange the crating details and then to return to retrieve the party). These two gnomes had been won over by the party and were sincere in their efforts. They had themselves crated up alongside the party. It was the members of the gnome faction who they had entrusted to load them onto the ship and their superiors (whom the party had never personally encountered) who made the final decision to leave the party behind.Ambrus states that it didn’t occur to the gnomes the PCs dealt with that they might get overruled by their allies.  He also states that “the gnomes encountered the party and saw an opportunity they weren't expecting.”The gnome faction did consider taking the PC gnome (whom they like and trust) with them but they were worried that the PCs would be able to track them down much easier if he was with them.  The gnomes knew that the party had formed some kind of secret order, but were unaware that they had been geased (the party hasn't advertised that fact).Ambrus states that he “didn't really plan what happened.”  He didn't imagine that the opportunity to separate the party from the artefact would have presented itself so easily to the NPCs involved. The party has become one of the most powerful, unpredictable and dangerous factions involved in the race for the artefact.  One of the other factions simply couldn't ignore this opportunity to separate them from it when it presented itself.  What Ambrus did determine ahead of time was what each faction would do with the artefact if they managed to acquire it.Later, after the party agrees to this plan, gets itself crated up (all in separate crates) and carried around by workmen, the party begins to suspect something is up. After half a day, they bust out of their crates only to realise that they are in a warehouse, still in the city, with their equipment but that the ship, gnomes and artefact are all long gone.Overall, the tone at the end of the game was mostly melancholy, though a few (plural) of the players were quite upset. They had been fighting to recover this artefact for well over a year of gaming.  Returning to the surface made the party giddy with excitement.  Esme says:  “We easily could have found another way to leave the city, but we were so exhausted and fearful to be caught by the authorities…that when the gnomes offered their ship, I jumped on the chance and did not give to much thought to betrayal.”Esme also says:  “It was a big disappointment to loose the artefact, after thinking we could trust the gnomes. It's disheartening and frustrating. I died and came back to recover the item. Noelanie has every right to feel the way she does.”  He goes on:  “hile Ambrus' decision might have been harsh, it was neither cruel, which implies malice and forethought, nor gratuitous, as demonstrated by his concern by our reaction. I think he is an impartial and fair judge of events. In this situation, events just got the better of the party. But I will not blame anyone in the group for feeling the way they do. it's only human.”Ambrus summed up the way the group felt at the end of the session as follows:"Have you ever seen Indiana Jones and the lost Ark?""Yeah, sure.""Well, imagine that you're Indiana Jones and you've worked hard to get this Ark. Then, in the last ten minutes of the movie, nazis show up and snatch away the Ark right out of your hands. That's kind of how my players feel."*pause*"And you're the nazi?""Yeah... I'm the nazi."(End Summary)</blockquote>

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