Mottul Marches on Fina's Lands

[Chris the Bigger]

After you take the gate Fina sent throught a heavily fortified force to hold the gate. She also sends word that she needs to speak with you on an urgent matter and bids you jion her at her caslte using the gate.

the force she sends looks very capable of holding the gate and includes a great deal of healers, clerics and mages. The figthers all look to be stout and set about placing defenses repairing the roof damage while the clerics start concecrating the ground and casting numerous defensive spells. it seems that they will be able to tacke care of themselves and you can feel secure that leaving the portal will not result in loosing the portal.

Seeing your reluctance to leave, Rexel (the messanger and apparent leader of the party) assures you that it will be sometime before an effective counter attack can be mounted and that the meeting room with Fina is close enough that you can be called if needs be.

Fina greets you as you pass through the portal and shows you to a near by room filled with refreshments. She bids you to tell her of your battle for the portal and congratulates you on your victory.

After you have had a chance to unwind a bit, Fina unveils her plan. She will divide her army. The large part will be tasked with taking Lyko and securing the other portals that link to the allies of the royal family. Those that are contesting the rightful heir will not be reconnected until things are sorted out.

The smaller part of her army will remain and ride out to meet the Mottul army. The timing of the attack on Lyko must coincide with her forces attacking the main force of the enemy. Plans have been made with other nobles to corral the enemy's forces and destroy them. However, if the FF is not taken quickly Mottul will be able to reinforcethe the main army and even if we can destroy it the losses we will suffer may leave us funeralble to a counter attack.

Fina is believes that if the mottul FF is not caputured or destroyed that her plan will fail. She is tasking you with the defeat of the Mottul FF since you showed such excellent skill in taking the portal without losses. She offers her military advisors for your coucil and matches your spoils with a like amount of gold (assume book value for the items taken). The assult will take place in two weeks. you have until then to plan. Once Fina's forces are committed she will have no reserves to defend her captial if the battle goes ill.

 

[Haltherrion]

First the loot- just to be clear, we can convert all loot to gold at 100% of book value, right? Is that what you meant by match? Or is she paying us some sort of loot bounty?

On our plan, while "get her" has always stood us well, first order of business is to learn more about the castle: where it is, how it operates and its floorplan. These FFs are extremely old and it is likely we can find accounts of previous visits, possibly even maps. That is worth one of our scholarly types researching. Ah, yeah, we don't have any scholarly types. I guess Draeca can try. Or maybe Princeps mage buddy.

Alot of our planning would depend on what that initial check of information revealed. But a couple of things come to mind:

• Getting to a FF is tricky. We can obviously fly but that leaves many of our heavy fighters behind. Draeca can cast airwalk which would work if they are reasonably close to land. Might be interesting to enter it from Mottul through their own portal: enter, close the portal, take the castle. Simple three point plan.
• We have seen three red dragons associated with FF and should expect to deal with them. Word of caution from Draeca who has some dragon lore: most red dragons have low maneuverabilty and breathe fire but there are feats that can change both these things. We shouldn't assume just popping some prot-fires will make us all well.
• We can expect a Mottul FF to have lots of nasty demons and dragons with hordes of undead fodder...

More I think about it, the more I like going through Mottul. It has advantages:

• Good chance of surprise
• We don't need to know where the fortress is, the portal will take us right there
• We don't need to approach through the air, which might be rather dangerous with dragons and flying demons
• Potentially, we just need to gain control of the control room and move the fortress somewhere where some allies can help us rid it of pesky Mottul-ites
• We can put more forces on the FF through a portal than we can by flying a force to the FF

Of course, there is the disadvantage that we have to go into Mottul and we need to know where the portal is to this FF and how to activate it.

So, in addition to researching the earlier stuff, I think we should research Mottul in general and the portal to this FF.

Remember that until the counter attack from Mottul, possibly even now, Eidos had a force on Mottul and many of you war-heroes actually battled there. It isn't impossible to go to Mottul or operate there.

Some things to look for:

• Allied arcance caster (metagame: might really slow things down to add one to the party)
• Creature summoning magic
• Magic to defeat wards, glyphs, symbols, locked doors
• A rogue might be real handy (anyone have any rogue friends?)

 

[Haltherrion]

One more thought- I guess we just need to disable the fortress, not necessarily capture it.

• Fly it into a lava lake
• Foul its mercury pool
• steal its control rod

 

[SuperBeast]

I like the plan of going to Mottul and using thier portal to get to the FF! It has definate suprise factor. One more thing to consider on that plan, what if the portal on the FF is inactive? Can we tell if it is active before we start our covert operation?
If we decide to do this, perhaps we should look at spending some of our loot on one-shot magics that will help us defeat undead/demons/dragons?

 

[Haltherrion]

I like the plan of going to Mottul and using thier portal to get to the FF!

Yeah, but are you happy to be part of it?

It has definate suprise factor. One more thing to consider on that plan, what if the portal on the FF is inactive? Can we tell if it is active before we start our covert operation?

That's a very good point. We should check with the Pathfinders. Also, since this is a rather important point, if our pathfinder buddies aren't quite sure, maybe we should check with the head pathfinder herself: Draco.

If we decide to do this, perhaps we should look at spending some of our loot on one-shot magics that will help us defeat undead/demons/dragons?

Draeca is miffed that you need anyone but her to deal with undead

Yeah, good idea. There may be some specialty items like certain wands, staves or rods that might be worth investigating here as well. Might also want any super-holy stuff too (permanent holy aura?). Maybe there are some artifacts we might borrow or acquire. Guess we should research that. I'll check the book-standard stuff (including supplements). But we should do lore checks and check our friends (both portfolio and Fina) to see if there is some artifact that might be of use.

I think there are some blast undead things we might want to acquire. But Draeca really is rather effective against undead (among other things, she just gained an ability that lets her do 8d8 damage to all undead within 100' for 2 turning attempts; plus she can disintegrate up to 18HD undead these days. Since she has quicken turning, she can do both in one round: 8d8 to clear out the lower level riff-raff and a turn to zap the higher level remainder.). We should look for anti-demon stuff even more than anti-undead. Maybe there is a weapon of demon slaying we can find, for one thing. Can't imagine that would be all that rare in this world. Similarly, anti-evil dragon stuff might be worth it. Might be worth a detour before the 2 weeks are up to find some of this stuff.

 

[Haltherrion]

Review of magic items

Reviewing magic item options in the various books, I didn't come up with too much. There are some items that let you blast undead a finite number of times per day but their cost doesn't seem worth it given that Draeca can do much of that already.

It would still be worth looking for artifacts or relics that could be of use but Chris will have to assist with that.

Otherwise, I suggest we:

• Acquire potions and scrolls
  • scroll options: many useful ones. I can work a list
  • potions: cure, death ward (this is a biggy), oil of align weapons (if someone needs that)
• Big deal: some way to silver our weapons or, alternately, some silvered, holy weapons
• Wands of curing, restoration, death ward, remove fear (I think many of the PCs/NPCs can use these, like Aura, Gel, etc. Anyone with these spells on their spell list)

On adding NPCs to the group, it would be logical to add a rogue and a wizard. But as a practical matter, this will make our lengthy combats even lengthier. So, for metagame reasons, I'm not so keen on that but I'm open to it if you guys are.


BTW while researching the above, I found that you can redeem evil items: basically turn unholy to holy. This requires the expenditure of XP and timeequal to that needed to create the item but as it does not require anything else (gold, spells, feats), it is actually a cool way to get some interesting items. We should keep it in mind rather than tossing evil items out of hand. If you redeem an item its evil looking features mellow somewhat: a demon's distorted face might look more like a howling hound archon, for instance. Other powers remain and unholy converts to holy.

 

[Haltherrion]

Scrolls

For Draeca:

• Dispel magic, greater (from high level caster)
• Heals
• Greater planar ally
• Summon monster IX
• Implosion
• Wish

Wands

For Draeca or any paladins:

• Cure serious or moderate wounds
• Holy sword
• Restoration
• Deathward (too high level for potion)
• Dispel magic

Potions

• Invisibility
• Cure moderate or serious wounds
• Bear’s endurance
• Lesser restoration
• Shield of faith (up to +4)
• Spider climb
• Gaseous form
• Haste
• Greater magic fang (up to +5)
• Magic vestments (up to +5)
• Barkskin (up to +5)
• Keen edge
• Oil of slivering edges (I made that up but it sure would be nice)

 

[Chris the Bigger]

First the loot- just to be clear, we can convert all loot to gold at 100% of book value, right? Is that what you meant by match? Or is she paying us some sort of loot bounty?​

Fina is giving you an additional amount of gold equal to 100% of the value of the loot you picked up. She will also buy the loot you have at 100% book value.

She Explains:"There is great risk in what I ask you to do. Not only will taking the FF be difficult, failure of the plan will me thta Mottul will take over my lands and leave me with nothing. i give you this money to prepare your party as best you can. Spend it Well. Speak to no one of this. Few out side of my most trusted friends know my true plan. To all else it shall be known that i am preaparing to defend the caslte to the last."

On our plan, while "get her" has always stood us well, first order of business is to learn more about the castle: where it is, how it operates and its floorplan. These FFs are extremely old and it is likely we can find accounts of previous visits, possibly even maps. That is worth one of our scholarly types researching. Ah, yeah, we don't have any scholarly types. I guess Draeca can try. Or maybe Princeps mage buddy.​

Fina did offer her military advisers. They will research the Mottul FF lay and defenses for you.

Fina coucisl against going through Mottul:"Draca your arguments are sound and that may still be the best approach but if Mottul is using the portal to send reinforcements its stands to reason that they will be poised to go through. This might prove to be a hard fight and worse may ruin the surprise. In the end it is up to you to decide your road."

Fina also offers some reliable scouts to keep tabs on the MFF. It is currently keeping pace with the Army martching this way according to her scouts.

The force on Eidos is still in place. By last report they were fending off a heavy assult. I think that portal went through Lyko and if so is still held by Mottul.


Azz speaks up:"we can use both Mythgaurd and Castelleon to attack the Mottul FF. even if we were to enter through their portal we have little chance of sucess without landing troops on the surface. i wouldn't mind Going through Mottul. never been there before."

 

[SuperBeast]

Azz brings up an interesting point, attack the motul FF with our FF's. Altough this seems like a very risky propisition, what if we lose one of our FFs? In anycase, I am not sure what kind of magic it would take to conceal a FF, but if we can visibly bring in one FF to attack the mottul FF and then suprise them with the second one, that would surley give us a great advantage. Of course with 2 FFs flying in, we can bring hordes of warriors in!

Let's look at some logistics,
How long would it take to bulster and position these FFs?
Is it possible to use a FF as a ram? Would we be willing to sacrifice one of our FFs for one of thiers?
Is it possible to "cloak" a FF?
If we attack from an FF, we should think of ways to attack from above and below at the same time, then we can pinch our enemy in the middle. Don't all FFs have a shaft out the bottom?

 

[Haltherrion]

Azz brings up an interesting point, attack the motul FF with our FF's. Altough this seems like a very risky propisition, what if we lose one of our FFs? In anycase, I am not sure what kind of magic it would take to conceal a FF, but if we can visibly bring in one FF to attack the mottul FF and then suprise them with the second one, that would surley give us a great advantage. Of course with 2 FFs flying in, we can bring hordes of warriors in!

Let's look at some logistics,
How long would it take to bulster and position these FFs?
Is it possible to use a FF as a ram? Would we be willing to sacrifice one of our FFs for one of thiers?
Is it possible to "cloak" a FF?
If we attack from an FF, we should think of ways to attack from above and below at the same time, then we can pinch our enemy in the middle. Don't all FFs have a shaft out the bottom?

Well, I guess I'll defer to Fina on this but "go get her with two FFs" seems to be somewhat problemmatic to me. The FFs don't move very fast (few mph) and they weren't intended or used for ramming (due to their slow speed and manueverability).

If they are moving our way, we could probably position ourselves in the path and rise up into their way but this seems like a recipe for a vast battle, one where both sides will have plenty of time to reinforce.

One of the virtues of going through the Mottul side is that we shut down the portal after using it so that they can't send any further reinforcements through. if they are see our FFs mosying up at 10mph they will have plenty of time to get defences ready and send reinforcements through if they need to.

What exactly would the plan look like if we approach with both FFs? are we talking lots of NPCs accompanying us in the raid? I'm willing to explore it but not sure what we'd do. It seems like we could use one or both as a flying base to launch a raid from. There are two basics paths: sneak close and launch the raid (maybe at night? Darkvision is not infinite range) or get close and launch an armada at it. I think the armada approach is a non-starter: with a working portal they can infinitely reinforce and besides, a huge number of NPCs would make for a very unwieldy battle.

Are we thinking we'd sneak up on them with a FF?