@Li Shenron I generally check in via the "Threads with my Posts", under the Community tab. It racks and stacks threads by latest activity, and highlights those I have not checked. But I am not a prolific poster, so there are are not too many to track.
There is a real theme of being lost and clueless on what’s going on. You can lean in to it or be a bit of stability in the chaos and uncertainty. So if you’ve been here a bit or have come specifically for something, then you might have more knowledge.
Lost and clueless is where I am at. I have mimimal experience of the Planes. I kind of left it up to @Nordom to make the call as to how long Sky has been in Plague Mort. It would be nice to have a safe place and a few connections maybe, but thats all extra work for the GM.
Lost and clueless is where I am at. I have mimimal experience of the Planes. I kind of left it up to @Nordom to make the call as to how long Sky has been in Plague Mort. It would be nice to have a safe place and a few connections maybe, but thats all extra work for the GM.
I am a bit wary of "non-good" games. But the interaction between the PC in the IC thread convinced me to put up my hand to join.
I’m not a fan of adversarial parties and we, as a group, did talk about that before the game started. Right now we are trusting each other out of necessity but I kind of hope we build a rapport eventually.
Sky looks good to me and I have enough to work him into the game naturally.
I'm going to have him be fairly new to Plague-Mort, having arrived several days ago on a small assignment connected to his druidic Circle. He's had enough time to establish a modest temporary base and make one or two local connections, but not enough to become an expert on the town or the planes.
That should also make the Wanderer background useful in an interesting way. Sky has personally walked some of these streets already, so if Plague-Mort's geography starts behaving strangely, he'll have a pretty good basis for knowing that something is actually wrong rather than everyone simply being lost.
I'll handle the exact point where he intersects with the current group once the present scene resolves.
@Li Shenron Yes, Grim can see him now. Orris' trick drew him far enough into the broken window to take the shot, so he's currently exposed.
I'd also give Grim advantage on this attack. She's still firing from the shadowed room/partial cover, and although her earlier shout gave away the general direction she was in, nobody actually pinpointed her position. This shooter is also focused on Orris' duplicate rather than searching her window.
So you can either take the shot at advantage, or go after the damaged structure above/around him if you'd rather try something environmental.
@Nordom From what I understand, Dragonborn were a race of draconic creatures native to Abeir, Toril's long-sundered twin. During the Spellplague, a small number of dragonborn were transplanted from Abeir to Toril. On Abeir, the Dragonborn were essentially a race in servitude to the Dragons. So there is no love lost between Dragonborn of Toril and Dragons. (I guess that also means there is little love between Dragonborn and Kobolds.)
I don't have especially deep Dragonborn lore knowledge, so I’m not going to pretend I have a very specific canon interpretation I need you to match. If you want to use that Abeir/Toril history as the basis for Sky’s culture and attitudes toward dragons, I’m happy with it!
The main thing I care about is that it gives Sky a coherent background and something meaningful to react to in play. So distrust or resentment toward dragons makes sense if that’s how you want to frame it. I wouldn’t assume Sky has to feel the same way about kobolds automatically, though. That feels more like something you can decide for the character rather than something I’d impose from the setting.
Grim's arrow crossed the alley almost too quickly to follow. The hooded shooter had only begun to pull back from the broken window when the shaft struck high in the torso and drove him backward into the room. He staggered several steps before crashing shoulder-first into the blackened timber brace supporting the fractured masonry above the opening. For a heartbeat, the old tenement seemed to absorb the impact. Then the brace split with a report like a snapped tree trunk, and the building answered with a deeper sound from somewhere inside its walls. Mortar began pouring from the seams above the window, followed by pieces of stone that struck the street hard enough to burst apart on the cobbles.
The wounded archer barely had time to turn before the entire section of wall lurched outward. The hanging shutter tore free from its last hinge and spun into the alley as the fractured masonry above the firing position gave way. What had looked like localized damage proved to be the failure point for a much larger section of the upper floor. The wall peeled back far enough to expose the room beyond, and for one brief instant Grim caught sight of two additional hooded figures who had remained concealed deeper inside, one crouched beside another firing position and the other scrambling away from the collapsing frontage. Neither made it far. The floor beneath them sagged, split, and dropped into the level below, taking stonework, timber, furniture and all three shooters with it. Part of the roof followed a heartbeat later, folding inward with a roar that shook both sides of the alley and sent a dense cloud of powdered mortar and soot rolling across the street.
For several seconds the opposite building disappeared completely behind the dust. Smaller stones continued to tumble from the exposed interior while shattered wood shifted and settled somewhere beneath the wreckage. When the air finally began to clear, much of the second story facing the alley was simply gone. The shooter Grim had struck lay buried somewhere inside the collapse along with at least two others who had never managed to reveal themselves. No answering bolt emerged from the ruin. Severin remained behind the cover Orris had directed him toward, watching the wrecked building until the last loose pieces stopped falling before allowing himself a brief glance toward the darkened window from which Grim had fired.
"Effective."
A trace of dry amusement touched the word, but his attention was already returning to the shattered tenement.
"Let's not assume they were the last."
***
A few streets away, Clear Winter Night Sky felt the collapse before hearing it. A faint tremor passed through the stones beneath their feet, followed a moment later by the heavy, rolling crash of a building giving way somewhere beyond the surrounding tenements. A flock of soot-darkened birds burst from a distant roofline, and a fresh column of pale masonry dust rose above the neighborhood, briefly distinct even against the smoke already hanging over Plague-Mort. The disturbance was close enough that individual sounds began reaching Sky afterward: stone striking pavement, the prolonged groan of stressed timber, and voices carried indistinctly between the buildings.
The collapse might have been worth investigating on its own, but it came from roughly the same direction as a problem Sky had already been trying to understand. Several days in Plague-Mort had been enough for the immediate neighborhood around the temporary quarters to acquire a reliable shape in memory. The narrow lane ahead should have bent around a roofless stone house, passed beneath an old timber gallery, and opened onto a broader street running toward the palace district. The broken cistern at the corner remained where it belonged, as did the dense coil of razorvine consuming most of the adjoining wall. Beyond those familiar landmarks, however, the geography no longer agreed with itself. The lane continued farther than it should and emerged beside a squat, fire-blackened building Sky recognized from several streets behind this position, while the route behind remained intact exactly as remembered. There had been no mistaken turn, no concealed passage and no uncertainty in the terrain capable of accounting for both places at once. Sky's memory supplied no correction because, as far as that memory was concerned, the mistake belonged to Plague-Mort.
Even the living parts of the street seemed to participate in the wrongness. Near the broken cistern, a section of razorvine had gone gray and brittle across a patch perhaps two feet wide, the dead growth ending abruptly against healthy runners rather than fading gradually from disease, heat or neglect. The surrounding vine had already begun curling around the wound. Above the rooftops, the dust cloud from the distant collapse continued to spread, and through the smoke nearer that same area Sky caught the faintest wash of pink light before the shifting haze swallowed it again. Whatever had just brought down part of a building was happening close to the same place where the city itself appeared to be losing track of its own streets.
The most direct route toward the disturbance passed through the street that should not have been there.
Grim hits with a 25 for 19 total damage, killing the exposed shooter. His impact against the already-damaged support triggers a larger structural collapse that also kills two additional concealed shooters in the upper floor. There is no immediate return fire from the opposite building, although the group still does not know with certainty whether every attacker in the area has been accounted for.
Sky is nearby but has not encountered the group. The collapse caused by Grim's shot is the disturbance Sky hears and the dust cloud visible above the rooftops.
Sky's Wanderer feature makes the geographical problem clear: they have personally traveled this immediate area before, and the streets now physically contradict that memory. Sky can investigate the altered route, the damaged razorvine, the nearby collapse, or something else entirely.
Can someone tell me the 2014 rules. I have spells that are useable 1/day. I know in the 2024 version I can use my slots to power those same spells. Is that the case in the older version?
I’m asking because, maybe, using levitation, we can use the rooftops to navigate past some of the obstacles. But I’ve used my levitation spell for the day. Wondering if I can use my slot to cast it again.
