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On a Spider's Advice...
- Thread starter Kelleris
- Start date
Uwohali
First Post
"Roo is my friend. He has a vast store of knowledge about many things. I'm going to see if he knows anything about this Orrery. We can use my house for now, depending on how much space we'll need. I'm sure Roo can help us, or at least find someone who can. For now, we need to find out which pins have been moved and what that means.
"Kaz, who is Roo's sister before you ask, can sketch what the Orrery looks like now. Keys, can you go to the library and find a detailed picture of what the Orrery looked like before? Skaith, Roo and I are probably going to be busy. You're going to have to fly solo for a while and look through these books. We need to know what was affected by the moved pins. I'm sure whatever has been affected is not completely visible right now, but I'm sure if the pins keep getting moved, we'll find out."
After her long schpiel, she began descending the stairs with all the books. "Wait, why was he so adamant we register with the secretary? Keys, what was your first impression of her?"
"Kaz, who is Roo's sister before you ask, can sketch what the Orrery looks like now. Keys, can you go to the library and find a detailed picture of what the Orrery looked like before? Skaith, Roo and I are probably going to be busy. You're going to have to fly solo for a while and look through these books. We need to know what was affected by the moved pins. I'm sure whatever has been affected is not completely visible right now, but I'm sure if the pins keep getting moved, we'll find out."
After her long schpiel, she began descending the stairs with all the books. "Wait, why was he so adamant we register with the secretary? Keys, what was your first impression of her?"
Keys grins, "I'll go do some box cuttin' in the library, and avoid the secretary if you can. She'll knock your bone-box I'm pretty sure." Heading off to the library to find an accurate set of schematics of the Orrery, she'll definately take a few moments to appraise anything she comes across that looks a little interesting, also checking out open doors and the like.
Kelleris
Explorer
Okay, in the interest of getting a move on - because this hook was a long time in coming, unfortunately - I'm going to make a fairly long post sometime tomorrow, early afternoon or early evening, depending on when I have the time. Post if I'm wrong, but:
Skaith is checking over the books you've already looted,
Keys is checking out the Library for more information, and
Tyndra is asking Roo for advice?
Assuming I don't get any corrections on that agenda, the post tomorrow will get all the way through each little side mission, as per my side quest rules in the Rogue's Gallery thread. Sorry it's taking so long to get off the ground, but you should be well-endowed with information when we get to the meat of all this.
Skaith is checking over the books you've already looted,
Keys is checking out the Library for more information, and
Tyndra is asking Roo for advice?
Assuming I don't get any corrections on that agenda, the post tomorrow will get all the way through each little side mission, as per my side quest rules in the Rogue's Gallery thread. Sorry it's taking so long to get off the ground, but you should be well-endowed with information when we get to the meat of all this.
Uwohali
First Post
Kelleris, that's pretty much it. I want to check with Roo (my first or second contact) to see if he knows anything at all about the Orrery that could help us. His sister (since they're twins, are they considered one contact or two? They both live with me anyway.) can go and sketch what the Orrery looks like now. We'll cross-reference that with whatever Keys comes up with at the library. After I talk with Roo, I'll help Skaith sort through the books.
Kelleris
Explorer
Okay, as per my side-quest house rules, here's everyone's set o' d20s:
Tyndra: 2, 5, 7, 15, 3, 15
Skaith: 8, 6, 4, 17, 16, 7 (10)
Keys: 20, 8, 3, 9, 12, 17
Hmm, no extraordinary successes, and Tyndra's is going to be painful... Anyway, one paragraph per roll, so you'll know how these line up with events. All told, everyone's going to be schmucking about in various ways for 5 days.
Tyndra: [sblock] After sending the others on their merry way, you set about the long trip back to you home, a couple of days' walk away at the border of the city. As you leave the Tower Sorceire, however, you meet with some unexpected resistance in the form of the mysterious ominous presence, which turns out to be quite a bit more solid than you would have hoped - as soon as you reach the threshold of the Tower, you feel a sharp crack on your spine that sends you sprawling to the ground, almost downed with that one blow.
Keeping your wits about you, you retaliate with a crushing despair spell, recognizing the invisible stalker for what it is. Luckily, your magic distracts it long enough for you to limp away from the tower before it can really get a bead on you. You seem to have left an enemy behind at Sorceire, however.
With your injury, it's hard to make it back to Roo's place with any speed, but a pressing sense of urgency drive you on regardless. You make it there by evening of the second day, taking all the shortcuts you know. You try to hide the wound, but Balto's experienced eyes can't help but pick out the limp and stoop your injured spine gives you. Goaded on by some unknown drive, you talk him down and head into Roo's room.
After an hour of speaking with Roo, the two of you manage to piece a few possible answers to the puzzles together. The imp is hard to place, but after hearing about it's mysterious selective invisibility, Roo thinks it might be just slightly offplane - sometimes some people are more sensitive than others in these matters. Or, he adds with a smile, you could just be going crazy. In any case, the only thing the minor damage you described would do is hide the "weather" in an area, making it invisible to anyone using the Orrery to check out the planar confluxes of that area. Before you leave, Balto gets Roo to apply what healing he can, easing the pain by diminishing the extent of the injury only a little.
Afterwards, you head back to the inn Skaith is staying at with all haste, but are waylaid on the way by a pair of common street thugs. They flee after a few cuts from your razors, but you sustain a knife wound to your arm in the process. This is shaping up to be a downright horrible week.
It takes so long for you to get back to the inn that you haven't got much time to help Skaith before the three of you are reunited, and you actually spend much of the remaining time convalescing and wishing that the healing spells you had a chance to learn hadn't been so darn boring. End result: You're 13 hit points down when we start up normal play again, and you grant +3 to Skaith's last d20 roll. Plus the info you got, of course. [/sblock]
Skaith: [sblock] You head back to the inn, unsure what to do with yourself, though Tyndra seems to expect a boundless knowledge of matters arcane to be waiting for her when she returns from her trip. Trying to avoid the attention of the glowering secretary, you leave in a staggered progression. You familiarize yourself with the books you've quasi-stolen, reflecting ruefully that you seem to have traded a contact for a small library. Unfortunately, a growing hunger prevents you from giving your full attention to the tomes.
Eventually, it grows too great to bear, and you begin prowling for a snack that you could take without sullying yourself overmuch - a prowler or mugger or rapist, preferably. Despite the bustling urban terrain, you have no luck the first night, and your hunger builds rapidly until it is almost unbearable - two nights pass dreadfully uneventfully, and random passers-by start to look more and more appetizing.
Finally, you come across a group of street urchins taunting a foppish-looking young man. His clothes are just a bit dingy and out of style, though, so he doesn't have the customary bodyguard; as a result, the gaggle of urchins grows more and more bold, eventually throwing stones and calling for the young man's purse. Watching dry lips, this looks good enough for your purposes, and you wade in. A brief scuffle ensues, leaving you in a deserted alley with an unfortunate street urchin, eyes wide with fear. You take what you need reluctantly, driven by a need to slake your thirst, and return to the inn with the brat just on the edge of consciousness.
Buoyed by the taste of blood, you work quickly and skillfully on the books, books with titles like Ibn Kurzod's Concordat and The Mechanics of Quasi-Elemental Convergence. After working for the whole day without need for rest, you feel sure that you can read the Orrery, given enough time to study the device, as long as you have the annotations from your books on hand.
Another day's dedicated work results in an increasingly large sheaf of parchment, with notes in a carefully spidery hand from edge to edge. By the time Tyndra returns and is able to assist you with your work, you have the books cross-references well enough to use them to read the Orrery with a fair degree of skill. So focused are you on your work that the guilt of your recent hunt and Tyndra's acute limp almost escape your attention.
They do finally come back to you, though, now that your research has plateaued somewhat. You split the last day before Keys returns between adding the finishing touches to your carefully-collated notes and trying to keep Tyndra from exacerbating her injury in her enthusiasm. You don't get a lot of work done that day, really, but no matter. You are confident that you can do what needs to be done next to investigate this mystery. End result: You are now in possession of a few masterwork items. Your notes are a user-friendly guide to the Planar Geometry skill, allowing you to make checks with that skill untrained, and the books are high-quality for that skill for you, granting a +2 circumstance bonus to Planar Geometry skill checks. If you finish your cross-referenced notes and keep the books, you will have a dedicated to a purpose masterwork item that grants a +4 circumstance bonus on Planar Geometry checks to read the Grand Orrery. This bonus wouldn't stack with just the books, though. Oh, and you haven't made any friends around here. [/sblock]
Keys: [sblock] You leave the Tower quietly, hoping to avoid the tight-ace secretary on your way out, and get out of the building without further incident. Once you're standing in the sunshine of the street outside, you start to wonder why you've fallen in with this lot. Boredom? Then, just out of the corner of your eye, you see the imp again. Hissing with frustration at the little bugger's antics, you turn and stalk after it. It's gone by the time you get there, though. It's left something behind, though, a note written in a flowing archaic-looking script. It starts off with words of abuse, making clear just how frustrating your attitude is, and then gets to the point - "I did not go to the trouble of contacting you without the intention to provide a reward, blighter! Just get to where they want you to go and I'm sure you can handle the rest..." The note is not signed, but it comes with a bag containing 50 platinum pieces. Looking up, you see the imp smirking down at you, clearly pleased with himself.
With at least little more fodder to appease your boredom, you head to the Library for the next few days. You find some maps of the area that show recurring weather patterns, but nothing about the Orrery itself, which is apparently considered sensitive information. What little you can dig up corroborates what you've already been told about the device, however.
By the third day in the Library, you've antagonized all of the librarians and book-fairy assistants, and your research has come to a complete standstill. What's worse, somebody's found some trivial crap to charge you for and your recent windfall is diminishing slowly but surely. You're already had to shell out 171 gold pieces for various fees and "services." After a bit more of this, you decide to hell with this nonsense and that you'd better put your real talents to good use...
That night, you arrive at the Library with a plan to break into the restricted-access wing. The guards here are pretty lax, and the alarm and glyph of warding spells pose an almost disappointing lack of challenge. Unfortunately, the area is organized differently than the main library, and it takes you several hours to find the relevant documents, by which time the early risers have already started to arrive. You spend the next day playing hide-and-seek with the dignitaries and mages that haunt the restricted-access rooms during the day.
Despite this setback, you take the time to pilfer a few basic works on planar geometry, just in case the vampire wannabe can't hold up his end of the bargain. Most importantly, nobody finds you lurking in the area - but then, how could a bunch of magelings and politicos manage that feat anyway?
After night falls - again - You find what you cam here for: schematic plans of the Orrery, down to the last pin and needle. With these, you can tell exactly how the imp altered the construct, and see what area of Dromus he cloaked by so doing. You take your time studying them, because you might not want to share this information with the others, and you certainly don't want to be whipping classified documents out in public. Final results: You have a user-friendly guide to the Planar Geometry skill, allowing you to make the check untrained. You also have a net of 329 more gold pieces, mostly in platinum, and the odd note. The schematics for the Orrery are also in your possession. [/sblock]
If there's anything out of character in what I put up there, feel free to alter the details when we get back to the main course of events.
Tyndra: 2, 5, 7, 15, 3, 15
Skaith: 8, 6, 4, 17, 16, 7 (10)
Keys: 20, 8, 3, 9, 12, 17
Hmm, no extraordinary successes, and Tyndra's is going to be painful... Anyway, one paragraph per roll, so you'll know how these line up with events. All told, everyone's going to be schmucking about in various ways for 5 days.
Tyndra: [sblock] After sending the others on their merry way, you set about the long trip back to you home, a couple of days' walk away at the border of the city. As you leave the Tower Sorceire, however, you meet with some unexpected resistance in the form of the mysterious ominous presence, which turns out to be quite a bit more solid than you would have hoped - as soon as you reach the threshold of the Tower, you feel a sharp crack on your spine that sends you sprawling to the ground, almost downed with that one blow.
Keeping your wits about you, you retaliate with a crushing despair spell, recognizing the invisible stalker for what it is. Luckily, your magic distracts it long enough for you to limp away from the tower before it can really get a bead on you. You seem to have left an enemy behind at Sorceire, however.
With your injury, it's hard to make it back to Roo's place with any speed, but a pressing sense of urgency drive you on regardless. You make it there by evening of the second day, taking all the shortcuts you know. You try to hide the wound, but Balto's experienced eyes can't help but pick out the limp and stoop your injured spine gives you. Goaded on by some unknown drive, you talk him down and head into Roo's room.
After an hour of speaking with Roo, the two of you manage to piece a few possible answers to the puzzles together. The imp is hard to place, but after hearing about it's mysterious selective invisibility, Roo thinks it might be just slightly offplane - sometimes some people are more sensitive than others in these matters. Or, he adds with a smile, you could just be going crazy. In any case, the only thing the minor damage you described would do is hide the "weather" in an area, making it invisible to anyone using the Orrery to check out the planar confluxes of that area. Before you leave, Balto gets Roo to apply what healing he can, easing the pain by diminishing the extent of the injury only a little.
Afterwards, you head back to the inn Skaith is staying at with all haste, but are waylaid on the way by a pair of common street thugs. They flee after a few cuts from your razors, but you sustain a knife wound to your arm in the process. This is shaping up to be a downright horrible week.
It takes so long for you to get back to the inn that you haven't got much time to help Skaith before the three of you are reunited, and you actually spend much of the remaining time convalescing and wishing that the healing spells you had a chance to learn hadn't been so darn boring. End result: You're 13 hit points down when we start up normal play again, and you grant +3 to Skaith's last d20 roll. Plus the info you got, of course. [/sblock]
Skaith: [sblock] You head back to the inn, unsure what to do with yourself, though Tyndra seems to expect a boundless knowledge of matters arcane to be waiting for her when she returns from her trip. Trying to avoid the attention of the glowering secretary, you leave in a staggered progression. You familiarize yourself with the books you've quasi-stolen, reflecting ruefully that you seem to have traded a contact for a small library. Unfortunately, a growing hunger prevents you from giving your full attention to the tomes.
Eventually, it grows too great to bear, and you begin prowling for a snack that you could take without sullying yourself overmuch - a prowler or mugger or rapist, preferably. Despite the bustling urban terrain, you have no luck the first night, and your hunger builds rapidly until it is almost unbearable - two nights pass dreadfully uneventfully, and random passers-by start to look more and more appetizing.
Finally, you come across a group of street urchins taunting a foppish-looking young man. His clothes are just a bit dingy and out of style, though, so he doesn't have the customary bodyguard; as a result, the gaggle of urchins grows more and more bold, eventually throwing stones and calling for the young man's purse. Watching dry lips, this looks good enough for your purposes, and you wade in. A brief scuffle ensues, leaving you in a deserted alley with an unfortunate street urchin, eyes wide with fear. You take what you need reluctantly, driven by a need to slake your thirst, and return to the inn with the brat just on the edge of consciousness.
Buoyed by the taste of blood, you work quickly and skillfully on the books, books with titles like Ibn Kurzod's Concordat and The Mechanics of Quasi-Elemental Convergence. After working for the whole day without need for rest, you feel sure that you can read the Orrery, given enough time to study the device, as long as you have the annotations from your books on hand.
Another day's dedicated work results in an increasingly large sheaf of parchment, with notes in a carefully spidery hand from edge to edge. By the time Tyndra returns and is able to assist you with your work, you have the books cross-references well enough to use them to read the Orrery with a fair degree of skill. So focused are you on your work that the guilt of your recent hunt and Tyndra's acute limp almost escape your attention.
They do finally come back to you, though, now that your research has plateaued somewhat. You split the last day before Keys returns between adding the finishing touches to your carefully-collated notes and trying to keep Tyndra from exacerbating her injury in her enthusiasm. You don't get a lot of work done that day, really, but no matter. You are confident that you can do what needs to be done next to investigate this mystery. End result: You are now in possession of a few masterwork items. Your notes are a user-friendly guide to the Planar Geometry skill, allowing you to make checks with that skill untrained, and the books are high-quality for that skill for you, granting a +2 circumstance bonus to Planar Geometry skill checks. If you finish your cross-referenced notes and keep the books, you will have a dedicated to a purpose masterwork item that grants a +4 circumstance bonus on Planar Geometry checks to read the Grand Orrery. This bonus wouldn't stack with just the books, though. Oh, and you haven't made any friends around here. [/sblock]
Keys: [sblock] You leave the Tower quietly, hoping to avoid the tight-ace secretary on your way out, and get out of the building without further incident. Once you're standing in the sunshine of the street outside, you start to wonder why you've fallen in with this lot. Boredom? Then, just out of the corner of your eye, you see the imp again. Hissing with frustration at the little bugger's antics, you turn and stalk after it. It's gone by the time you get there, though. It's left something behind, though, a note written in a flowing archaic-looking script. It starts off with words of abuse, making clear just how frustrating your attitude is, and then gets to the point - "I did not go to the trouble of contacting you without the intention to provide a reward, blighter! Just get to where they want you to go and I'm sure you can handle the rest..." The note is not signed, but it comes with a bag containing 50 platinum pieces. Looking up, you see the imp smirking down at you, clearly pleased with himself.
With at least little more fodder to appease your boredom, you head to the Library for the next few days. You find some maps of the area that show recurring weather patterns, but nothing about the Orrery itself, which is apparently considered sensitive information. What little you can dig up corroborates what you've already been told about the device, however.
By the third day in the Library, you've antagonized all of the librarians and book-fairy assistants, and your research has come to a complete standstill. What's worse, somebody's found some trivial crap to charge you for and your recent windfall is diminishing slowly but surely. You're already had to shell out 171 gold pieces for various fees and "services." After a bit more of this, you decide to hell with this nonsense and that you'd better put your real talents to good use...
That night, you arrive at the Library with a plan to break into the restricted-access wing. The guards here are pretty lax, and the alarm and glyph of warding spells pose an almost disappointing lack of challenge. Unfortunately, the area is organized differently than the main library, and it takes you several hours to find the relevant documents, by which time the early risers have already started to arrive. You spend the next day playing hide-and-seek with the dignitaries and mages that haunt the restricted-access rooms during the day.
Despite this setback, you take the time to pilfer a few basic works on planar geometry, just in case the vampire wannabe can't hold up his end of the bargain. Most importantly, nobody finds you lurking in the area - but then, how could a bunch of magelings and politicos manage that feat anyway?
After night falls - again - You find what you cam here for: schematic plans of the Orrery, down to the last pin and needle. With these, you can tell exactly how the imp altered the construct, and see what area of Dromus he cloaked by so doing. You take your time studying them, because you might not want to share this information with the others, and you certainly don't want to be whipping classified documents out in public. Final results: You have a user-friendly guide to the Planar Geometry skill, allowing you to make the check untrained. You also have a net of 329 more gold pieces, mostly in platinum, and the odd note. The schematics for the Orrery are also in your possession. [/sblock]
If there's anything out of character in what I put up there, feel free to alter the details when we get back to the main course of events.
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