ZEITGEIST The affirmative action racial recruitment team of the RHC

[RangerWickett]

Hm. Yeah, we were intentionally limiting access between PCs and Nicodemus until after the convocation. You shared a flashback that's queued up for adventure 8, so that makes it much easier to figure out.

As for how he'd respond? He'd squint, cock his head like he didn't hear it right, and then say something like, "I wasn't the one who named the proposal. I believe the title is meant as a warning that those who think they know how the world works will sometimes take a step too far, and be punished for it."

And if they press about him being Miller: "I suppose when you're part of a conspiracy, it's natural to think everyone has secrets. I'm not if I should be flattered by the comparison, but no, I'm not the ghost of William Miller."

 

[Andrew Moreton]

Definitely my own fault she may have guessed without it but that bit of information which was meant to be harmless and flavorful has caught me out as it is a key in the current logic chain, but at least my players are paying attention to the things I say!. Thanks for the answer

 

[hirou]

Ricardo Montalban, actually.

So... I just realized that I can use pictures of Khan Noonien Singh for pseudo-evil half-brother of Harkover in my campaign. This is unexpectedly awesome.

I'm not the ghost of William Miller

The truth by technicality is the best Bluff.

 

[Andrew Moreton]

I was going to use Khan for 'Evil' Harkover under the Ob's control (Because the picture of Khan has to be used when its available)

 

[Andrew Moreton]

We started up after the Christmas break and after reminding people where we were we settled down into a discussion of the various planar configuration options and if Nicodemus was Millar. We had one undecided to convinced he was and one who thought it was too tidy if he was but that the logic was good he is holding out for Nic being some kind of extradimensional infiltrator although not a Gidim. There was also discussion if he was a ghost or something else , and if he was something else was Millar just another of his identities which tied the extradimensional infiltrator further into the Millar hypothesis but they decided they did not have enough knowledge.
They did not do much about the murder apart from a brief theory that Romana was behing it all so William tried talking to her in an attempt to convince her to lure/have him lured out of the main hall and murdered , persumably he was counting on the other pc's stopping the murder. I never really understood the scheme and as Romana was innocent did not bother following the logic that deeply.
They did decide to talk to the Godhand and find out where he was for a later rescure they in the end sent Padme to do it as her cover ID is the Crissilyan murderer and they felt that he had in character reasons to talk to the man to see what he knew about the criminal operations in Crissilyr and incidentally give him more information about them if he escaped. Once they knew about his location and security they decided that in the event things fell apart they would have a go at rescuing him.

The interviews with Nic went well, Manuel and Ulvaar said as little as possible to get things over fast as neither of them had any social skills and both were afraid to gestalt in case they lost control as they have weak will saves so getting the interview over ASAP before they blew things was good. Nevla and William decided to try and talk to him both being secure in their better social skills. William went first and got him talking and realised that Nic wanted to talk to someone who could sympahise about the hard choices he had made and the important of doing it right , but made a few mistakes and a bad diplomacy roll to try and smooth them over and blew it but was able to brief Nevla before she went to talk to Nic. She went in prepared for the avenue of conversation and both supported Nic and made it clear she was a Millers Pyre supporter who had a few issues with it mainly the lack of planar protection , they talked for quite a while including a trip back to the real world (her diplomacy smoothed over a few slips by the player) and she came away convinved further Nic was William Millar , that he really did believe he was doing this for the greater good and whatever he was saying he was firmly behind Miller's pyre and that it would be a serious mistake to go against him by backing Collossus , she though he was much more tolerant of the Panarachists , watchmen and arbatoreum as they were also selfless attempts to improve the world.

Shortly after that I called the vote. Manuel and Ulvaar voted arbatoreum while William and Nevla voted Millers Pyre , Padme voted Collossus as her cover certainly would but planned to be 'convinced' to change her vote by the second vote. They did not take much part in the immediate discussion of alternatives instead retiring for an early night.
Woken by the rattling of a note under their door it took a moment for them to realise who was sending the note when they did they read it and immediatly Padme and Manuel were despatched to spy using invisibility although lacking gear and Goblin bonuses Manuel declared himself to be the late afternoon at best. Still only Vicemi came close to seeing them.
They listened to the conversation with interest it did not tell them much knew except to make clear the importance of Kasavarina and Nic let slip that with special precautions he or Han could scry other Ob members but they had not the time here and at least in Kas's case they needed to go somewhere special. (I let this slip so the players knew why the Ob could not defeat it's own anti-scrying system and solve the murders , it fits with what they will find out later). They also found the warning about choosing a more popular option for Leone ominous and began to suspect that Nic was going to kill everyone who disagreed with him.
Then came what was a big suprise to them the attempted murder of Leone. As they discussed all they had learned they heard frantic rattling from Leone's room and rushed in to help catching Macbennin doing his Vader impression and choking Leone.. He first tried the line about this man is voting against you he must die but when he saw that was not going to work out he told them that even if they defeated him the Ob would still be defeated they the constables of the RHC . at this point 3 out of 4 players were preparing to kill him , in an unusually impulsive move(normally she agonises about this sort of decison for ages) Nevla blurted out that they were the constables! The other players all thought she had jsut screwed up and prepared to try and kill macbennin before he could raise the alarm and were completely wrongfooted when he released Leone and asked her to prove it.

Part 2 later possibly next decade

 

[Andrew Moreton]

The others and Nevla tot some degree were shocked that MacBennin seemed to consider that they could be the constables and allies. Ulvaar demonstated his rare abilities and they demonstrated the depth of their knowledge about the incidents in Flint. He then explained that he had always thought he was working for Risur and since his death he had learned the truth about the Ob and was working on messing up the convocation hence his murders, at this point the checked he did mean murders plural and discovered he had killed Dame Constance . They regretted this as she had seemed to be one of the better Ob officers but agreed that given his plan killing her was a good idea as it did raise tensions. However they agreed no more murders as it seemed best now the constables were here to let them get out of here with all their information and an ally on the inside. He revealed he had a curse prepared to stop someone reincarnating but as his main target was unavailable he had planned to use if on Vicemi , he and the constables agreed that actually killing Nic seemed unlikely. They parted with him agreeing to back them if anything went wrong.

Returning to the morning politicing they examined the various proposals the Watchmen was clearly going nowhere , MAP was ok but lacked planar defense and Colossol Collossus was in their opinion and attempt by some Ob to rule the word. They set out to push an amendment for MAP to MAAP adding Nem as the plane of time instead of Illocus their arguements that this was not terribly important to the MAP ideal but would protect the world against the enemies of the Ancients was effective and combined with their charisma they were able to get it adopted and win over almost all the adherents from the Watchmen leavining Amiella as the lone supporter of that faction.

Then Nic made his speech and immediatly the constables got a bad feeling that going against him would be a mistake, the votes went in and all the pc's voted MAAP leading to a tie 24,24, their feelings got worse . Then the lamps turned blue , everyone except Ulvaar resisted the effect but they all went along with filing out into the hall were the lack of guards and the overwhelming presence of the Ghost council meant th perhaps a mind wipe or something else less extreme would work. Sadly Nic told them that the only man who could have done that had betrayed the Ob and that there was no other way if the Ob was going to maintain its focus on a better world. The constables stopped their arguements and did a quick mental check and realised no one they liked was going to die and two of them (Romana and Aloicus ) were guilty of a mininimum of high treason and would have been arrested and execcuted at the earliest convenience. Manuel noted that Aloicus did not even make very good steam suits.

Then Pemberton interrupted , the players had not guessed which person was the duplicant but realised it now made sense and that Manuels long conversation about science with him had undoubtably been what gave them away as McDruid lacked the knowledge of Manuel and in the debate Manuels natural style had taken over. Pemberton introduced the constables to Nic told them to start fighting and started to tick

Conveniently the session had reached an end and mass violence will follow next week


The players enjoyed the convocation and the players agreed trying to build a new worlds planar links would be fascinating even though in character they opposed changing things as they could not get world wide consent. They also enjoyed finding out the Ob's goals and confirming that most of them were not just typical villains but instead horribly misguided idealists.

We have 2 votes for Nic is William Millar, 2 votes for he is something else which may also have been William Millar

And I forget to mention it but the Humble hook ened up with Nevla , it was a close call with William but she is a cleric .

 

[Andrew Moreton]

With Pemberton Ticking and the Ob leadership looking at them the Constables thought they were in trouble, particularly as their normal bodies with all their combat gear and magical combat boosts were still the the absurdist Web. Most of the Ob representatives scatterred and ran, The host council and Cula charged into the main hall with the other delagates, Vicemi departed to alert the guards and Nicodemus prepared to wipe out the constables , only to start arguing with his own body , realising he was not in a fit state to fight he teleported out. The constables ran into the lounge much to my suprise leaving the delegates with the wrong opinion to be slaughtered.
As they switched bodies they stuffed the confused hosts into the web , a quick discussion among them decided that this evidence Andrei was still alive in the body was good as it meant they could rescue him later, for now they decided to rescue the God Hand and then get to their ship, a sending was sent and they knew the ship was en-route as soon as it came close to the island it would shift to the Bleak gate and they would dimension door out to it. Grappa went in the web as they could not dimension door more than 5 bodies and he was a none combatant.
Heading around the coner to rescue the God Hand they were attacked by a senior ghost councillor and a showlisk. Nevla cast day light before the counciller attacked Ulvaar, then Manuel shot the Shadowlisk with a Nock gun blast nearly killing it, Ulvaar and Padme started attacking the shost councilloer annoyed that he took neither crits or sneak attack damage , William as the Champion King Broyan charged down the corridor and stabbed the poor shadowlisk a lot more then was needed it died before it acted. At this pont the Ghost counciller died to retroactive combat maths as he suddenly realised he had triggerred an attack of oportunity and died.
As Nevla rushed to rescue the God hand the Ghost council swarmed in and attacked moaning and inflciting damage on everyone, Manuel Power punched it down the corridor, and it was stabbed by Ulvaar , Padme and William , but kept fighting. Nevla blessed Manuel's cannon and he fired ghost touch grape shot into the council so they decided to run away, leaving 2 senior ghost councillers behind who struck from ambush hurting Manuel and Nevla before being cut to pieces by the party in a counter attack.

The God hand was freed and a hole blown in the wall with a demolition charge and the team ran towards the cliff as they did do Manuel put an explosive cannon ball into the top of the light house to try and stop that doing any lantern tricks. Then Vicemi came around the corner with a Golem, some monks, some Ghost councillers and Macbennin.
The cloud kill spell from Vicemi was a mistake as it left the constables able to see though it and ignore the poison from their protective magics. But he was able to go first and struck the God hand with a flesh to Stone which failed. Padme, William and Ulvaar started to charge though the cloud kill while the God Hand went around it, Manuel sniped the golem with a rifle and started to load his cannon , Macbennin hit Vicemi with a misfortune curse and Nevla hit him with burst of radiance blinding his sight but not his life sense, the three ghost councillers and the Golem charged Ulvaar, William and Padme. The Ghost council emerged to attack Nevla and Manuel dropping a wall of force between them and the rest of the fight, Nevla cast detonate and prepared to explode at the Swarm, Vicemi hit Padme with a finger of death leaving her on the verge of death so she began to retreat, William and Ulvaar settled down to figh the ghost councillers and the Golem , William dropped a counciller. Macbennin cast a curse on the council turnint it corporeal in time to eat a truly lethal blast from the Nock gun of Manuel and it departed to reform later, Nevla blew up somewaht suprise not to have a ghost council to maim. The mellee continued and the Golem went down to Ulvaar and one of the Ghost concillers became unhealthy , the guards with Vicemi were locked in combat with the God Hand and he did something to someone which was pointless because they saved. He also flew up to prepare to deal with Macbennin this was a mistake. As he got level with Macbennin he gave manuel a line of sight, so Nevla blessed the cannon again and Vicemi went down to a vital striking cannon ball in the face.
As he announced he would return Macbennin saluted the pc's then stabbed himself with a spectral knife permently slaying himself and dragging Vicemie with him to the after life. The party and Manuel in aprticular think they should build a statue to commemorate Macbennin and have requested a posthumous royal pardon for him.
The Ship arrived and they teleported over, before returning to the normal world. The God Hand was quickly transfered to a patrol ship of the local navy and began organising an assault on the island which was destroyed by a massive earthquake and he began to track down Ob inflitration of the clergy.

The constables sailed away. Drelft joined them a day later , to discuss strategy. They learned of world events, got their ships radio delivered and reported in. The demonic terror attacks in Drakr gave them a general sense of worry as did the reduced Fey activity. Apparently Primo has not appeared in any Final fantasy games any of them have played.
When delft said he continued to think something big would go down in Flint they thought about it and none of them could think of any further precautions to take there as the only issue they could find was industrial unrest and they had people working on that.
Tracking down Kasavarina was agreed as the next plan.
They discussed Axis island but it looks like it will take a war to crack it they have asked for the fleet to be assembled but have not tried to convince the king to attack yet .

They also got a letter from the king discussing the fact that he intended to abdicate once the current crisis was over and suggesting that one of the constables would likely be his successor and they should discuss this and think about it.
Ulvaar and Manuel ruled themselves out they are both sadly lacking in charisma and felt they could not be a monarch leaving William or Nevla
William is slightly less famous than Nevla , and both are seen as fey traditionalists but the King thinks they may be able to do a better job or balancing technology and tradition with the advice of people like Manuel. William has slightly better ties to the Unseen court but Nevla could help unite Risur and its Elfaivar colonies with the Eladrin enclaves there and make a better nation for everyone.
We will see who becomes monarch. They did check that there were alteratives in place who could succeed quickly of the king was assassinated while they were awayy tracking the Ob and were assured the head of the RHC or his bodyguard could become Monarch although the King felt they lacked the vision to lead Risur forward, then again William and Nevla have centuries left so could succeed after them.

 

[RangerWickett]

vital striking cannon

That is some style there.

So, what's the general aftermath sense among the players regarding this adventure? I was worried writing it that it would be too weird and nontraditional.

 

[Andrew Moreton]

So was I.
They enjoyed it , they found it very interesting to get into the heads of the enemy and learn about them. The player of Manuel regretted that in character he could not really make as much of the opportunity to try and plan a new world for two reasons , one was that he felt in character that the Ob had not done enough testing and quality assurance so no matter how good the plan he could not sign off on it,a nd the other being that Manuel had no charisma and would not be listened to.
He was the driving force behind the players getting Nem added into MAP although the others agreed and pushed it.
They also really appreciate having thoughtful and intelligent bad guys whose motivations are often good although their means and methods are evil , rather than another wannabe evil overlord

 

[Andrew Moreton]

The start of Chapter 8
First they remembered the Absurdist web still had Kvarty and all the slaves they rescued from the Icy wastes in it. They discussed for a while and eventually decided one of them had to take the Web to Risur and drop everyone off , no one else could take it as the Web is on Loan from a faerie and giving it to someone else may be insulting. Fortunatly William has just learned to teleport so he could take the people back.

They then seriously discussed borrowing a few hundred troops and storing them in the web for emergencies, Manuel calculated they could hold about 36,000 people in it. They in the end decided it was better to just keep the troops on standby then if needed William could teleport load them in the web and bring them back, this was after they realised troops in the web would still need paying.

They then turned to trying to work out where Kasavarina was . William , Nevla and the lightning Weasel agreed Asraby could be linked to three Enclaves all of which were somewhere in the area of Rationalis. Their first conclusion was that trying to sail to the Danoran colony was asking for trouble so instead they headed towards the Crissylian colony on the opposite coast. This meant I could not justify the Danoran Navy ambush as there was no reason ships would be in that area in advance, they are following the pc's and if they leave by ship then the ambush is on.
Next they decided that the combination of Kasavarina's abilities, being in an Enclave, Asraby working for the Unseen court and Kasavarina's Ob membership they had not conceivable way to use divination to find either of them. So they sent a message to El Extrano via sending to see if he could help, , writing this reminds me they have not shared information on the conclave with him I think this means he will be waiting for them in Sentosa,, He did not reply immediatly although the next morning Manuel found a note in his breakfast cereal from El Extrano telling him not to be impressed , but he had anticiapted the need to communicate and hidden magical notes in the ships supplies which could be filled in when needed. They were impressed . The note told them that his agents had observed Ob and Danoran agents at Akravan and Bharat but they had abandoned those sites and now they still had agents working at Rumah Terakir. They decided this meant Kasavararina was probably there , then they had to work out how to get there. This proved difficult.

They could not teleport as they had never been there before, Long range travel magic like Overland flight or Wind Walk were not practical because Avilona was weak, they could the point of getting a better plane of air. Shadowwalk needed an 11th or better level wizard they did not have one and William could not fake it well enough to get 6th level spells, he could get Tree stride which would have helped but in the end they decided to use the Aburdist web again loading the pc's in and having Manuel fly from the coast to the city on Roger.

They arrived at the city which I described as being a larger Angkor Wat and spent some time looking around Nevla wanted to visit the temples and was dissapointed the temple of Ssrama had been desecrated. They remembered the legend of the Arsenal of Dhbisu while looking at the temple of Hewhenharimau and William decided to try for it as it was the perfect weapon for him. He had taken on the aspect of King Broyan the warrior champion and challanged the Guardian who was very suprised to be sliced to pieces in a single round (I should have upgraded the guardian I forgot how good the pc's are at violence)

They also looked at the temple of Ingatan and discovered the secret writing and will be spending time this week looking for obscure and powerful 3rd level spells from weird caster lists.

Their scouts then found the Danoran scholars and decided the archway must be the entrance to the enclave. Sadly the Soldiers could not spot William, Padme and Manuel moving into position and two sentries were bashed over the head while the 2 artillerists on duty found themselves looking at a cannon. Taken by suprise they Danorans yielded as they realised they would be wiped out before they could properly arm themselves, the wizard tried to teleport from his tent but Padme counterspelled with Greater Dispel magic and he failed to escape, The soldiers went in the web and the scholars were questioned they learned this was an entrance and about the ten headed lion.
Nevla intends to appeal for admittance to try and avoid them having to damage the guardian.

Next time they meet Kasavaina (or get eaten by a ten headed Lion)