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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 9778193" data-attributes="member: 27780">5 players present. This was a slow one almost entirely taken up by interparty roleplaying. They had a number of options for new missions available to them. They could continue investigating the world on the other side of the gate under Needlespire. (Two of the party independently did this sneakily anyway in downtime, finding it was indeed completely dead now the fungus lord was gone.) They could follow up on the plot hook about the blade of Aknar Ratalla. (General Zetch'r'r had also heard that tale and sent one party after it who never came back, and was very interested on getting his hands on the blade if it turned out divine ascension was indeed part of the lich-queen's plans) They could go for the more prosaic mission of helping to discreetly retrieve General Gythra-Kyharz's silver sword from the treacherous psion Lashmere. Or they could try a heist; Yu’thiol Mansecho had been scoping out the banking system of the free city of <s>Greyhawk</s> Redeagle and though the group might be able to pull off a heist that destabilised the economy of the whole region, rendering them easy prey when the big assault started in a couple of months time. The group was pretty split, but the heist got more votes than any of the other options, so that was their final decision. They then engaged in plenty of nitpicking over the info they had been given before even leaving Tu'narath, wth the drow casting Contact Other Plane to find out more details about how much gold was in there, what the most dangerous traps & guards were and if Yu'thiol planned to double-cross them to get the cash. (not as long as he thought they were still loyal to the lich-queen) They also had to make sure everyone had at least one disguise power active, plus mundane makeup on top, as none of them were of races that would be welcome there except the priestess. (who would simply have to take off the BDSM gear to be unrecognisable <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> ) Once they'd exhausted all the preparations and research they could make without actually visiting, they headed back to Pharagos, making sure they arrived a moderate distance away from the city, came in the road and get themselves rooms at an inn. The binder came up with a surprisingly sneaky keystone to their plan. Use her sentient magic glove as an inside man, open up an account and deposit it there, then retrieve it again after three days and get a full accounting of the various defences it went through on the way too and from the vault. That would give the others plenty of time to scope the place out from other angles and find the best way to do the rest of the job. This nearly fell at the first hurdle as she rolled poorly on her initial diplomacy roll, but her forged credentials (and obvious large quantities of money) were good enough that they eventually let her open an account. During the three day wait to make withdrawing the glove again not seem totally suspicious, the others kept busy. The two kobolds took sewer duty, seeing if there was any way of getting into the bank down there. Unfortunately, while many other big civic buildings did have connections to the sewers, including the wizards academy and the colosseum, there were conspicuously no tunnels anywhere near the mint. They did encounter thieves guild members down there discussing business, but their stealth skills far outstripped that of the NPC's so they just listened to them gossip for a while, hearing both some new info about the state of the city, and distorted tales of their own exploits northwards in L'trel. The githyanki also got in on the stakeout, investing in X-ray vision, which revealed a staircase leading downwards on the north side, but no visible tunnels underneath it, indicating that this was either where the heavy-duty shielding started or they went through a portal. This meant they had a clear target of where to head when they started action, but still no clear way of getting down there stealthily. When they got the glove back, it became increasingly clear that there was indeed still a gauntlet of defences down there that they couldn't see with their divinations, as it had gone through a checkpoint guarded by pyrohydras, several trap systems, a couple of illusory walls and awkward vertical tunnels, to reach a central vault that was guarded by a beholder mage with multiple regular beholders as minions. (see Vlindarian's Vault, another adventure from future issues I've reviewed but haven't been able to post yet) This info would mean they could prepare spells to counter the most obvious problems and weren't likely to simply get stuck, but it would still be a challenge to get in and out quickly without being caught. They debated kidnapping one of the tellers or manager to pump them for further information, but decided against it. Eventually they decided that complete stealth probably wasn't going to happen, but if some of their minions staged a distraction in the lobby while the PC's used passwall to get through the back wall and down the stairs they might be able to keep the number of challenges they face at once to a manageable level. With that resolved, it seemed like a good place to end the session, and make sure that next one would be the action-packed one. We'll find out if their plan survives contact with the enemy next week.</blockquote>

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