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Message: <blockquote data-quote="darkbard" data-source="post: 8937921" data-attributes="member: 1282">Obligatory Bookkeeping Update:*Chanvati will select Acrobat Boots as the Reward for completing the skill challenge. Chanvati now has Acrobatics +3.*Both PCs now have 2 APs, all Daily Powers; all Encounter Powers refresh.*Loot beyond mundane gear: 200 GP residuum, 226 GPs (+15 starting GP secreted by Pa’avu), 250 GP jade hairpin; as a slave, Pa’avu has no “ownership” of goods, so Chanvati holds all wealth for the two, excepting as noted.*XP 3340/3750 needed for L4 (Pa’avu has 1 less XP)[HR][/HR]Focus shifts from Bita-Bousseh’s frantic attempt to salvage a command and control center and structure for the 2nd Nation to her realization that the dissident group is already dissolved, requiring desperate new plans of escape from Bantouk. During this, Pa’avu informs Chanvati of the plight of the slavegirl destined for service to Omthala and entreats him to set in motion a scheme for her deliverance.Chanvati separates himself from the milling dissidents, deep in their utterances of despair and frenzied ideas for escape. He sits cross-legged on the cold, damp stone of the tunnel and withdraws from his satchel a pinch of the rare herb “mouse mint,” an intoxicant to rodents, to entice a common sewer rat to his presence. When one unfailingly obliges, he whispers over and over again a rhythmic chant while the rat nibbles the herbs from his fingers, ensorcelling its mind to his service.* * *Several hours later, a skinny rodent wriggles its way through a chink in the door into Ibhea’s chamber in the Sanctuary of Light. The Lucent Messenger sits at a desk, scribbling purposefully with a stylus upon a sheet of papyrus. A half empty bottle of arak sits beside an oil lamp, and the priest raises it to his lips and takes a mighty swallow. Then another. He grumbles something incoherent: “His Radiance <something something> the Goddess besieged <something something> unlikely bedfellows.”His mind is so numbed by the drink that he almost doesn’t notice when a rat crawls up the leg of his salvar, its claws digging into his calf and thigh, and scuttles up onto his letter. The rodent cocks its head and speaks with Chanvati’s voice, “Omthala Acolyte, taken as plunder from Issyc Sehari, enslaved to Burning Row merchant. My slave intuits something special about her. Investigate. Will contact again. Chanvati.”Ibhea shakes some clarity into his head. Could this be connected? There had been several reports of pogroms against the outlying villages of Issyc Sehari, temples destroyed, priests put to the sword. Who would seek to take on an organization with the might to check an Empire? Indeed, he would make his investigations and locate if he could this slavegirl to learn what she knows. [HR][/HR]This is use of the Animal Messenger Ritual for an automatic success in the Get the Girl to the Sect of Omthala Skill Challenge. Nature Skill check r(7) +2 = 9, so 6 hours duration and 10 gp of rare herbs expended. Enough to reach Ibhea within the city. We will then suspend the SC again for a later time, picking up with your reframing of the fiction once Ibhea has located the slavegirl in Burning Row.[HR][/HR]As for the current situation, mechanically we see this as a Skill Challenge rather than a combat, for taking up literal arms against the state would surely undo any goodwill Chanvati has earned in helping deliver “heretics and traitors” for Inquisitorial judgment. (Though, obviously, combat may be necessitated as part of the SC.) I think the overall goal would be to convince Bita-Bahlin and his masters that Chanvati’s interest in the 2nd Nation was feigned so as to infiltrate the group and then expose their plans to the Inquisition, for anything that threatens the stability of the state threatens commercial endeavors—particularly since House Audaseie relies upon open trade routes under its control to ensure lines of transport for the phase spider silk harvest, so central to the family’s refinement into production of arcane residuum; clearly he never would be in favor of a conquest of the city by the Legion of Ruth. But first, we must get the remaining members of the 2nd Nation and their families safely out of Bantouk, ourselves included. So that is the present Skill Challenge: Help the 2nd Nation Make Exodus from Bantouk. The Win Condition for this challenge would be for Chanvati, Pa’avu, Hazard, Bita-Bousseh, and her Minotaur Stalwarts to evade Imperial capture long enough to arrive in Chomrok, outside of Imperial ability to do them or their properties harm. I imagine an uncomplicated (if rather unlikely) full success would ensure the same for all/most members of the 2nd Nation; micro-failures would likely diminish the number of 2nd Nation members who succeed or bring political reprisals against family/assets remaining in Bantouk.House Audaseie controls a caravanserai several days’ travel outside the city to which we will flee, either collectively or, more likely, in small groups that might better evade Imperial notice. If making exodus en masse, however, doing so under the cover and protection of a House Audaseie supply detail could be a possibility.First, though: to rally the flagging spirits of the failed dissidents and then lead them stealthily through the labyrinthine city while evading Imperial forces. To prepare himself for this, Chanvati spends the necessary minute and 10 gp of alchemical reagents to perform the chant and plying of zills that comprises the Glib Limerick Ritual.[HR][/HR]The frightened faces of the gathered, once so bold as to challenge an Empire, turn imploringly to the Merchant-Mystic. Bita-Bousseh asks, “What do we do, Chanvati? Where will we go to escape the sprawling reach of the Empress. Or whoever controls her,” whispering the last.“You are right, Barrister, the Empire is powerful, and its reach is long. Yet because of that reach, the dozens of intricate political games it plays every day, the 2nd Nation was but a minor nuisance, whatever we here may have thought. If we can but get out of Bantouk for a while, yes, with our families safely along, the Empress’s gaze will turn from us to these other, more pressing threats to her power. Soon, all will be forgiven as the resources of those assembled will prove far more useful to the Empire than if we were to set ourselves still against it.“Put aside your fear, your doubts. You were willing to fight great powers for your beliefs. My family controls a caravanserai but a few days out of Bantouk to the west, Chomrok; believe that you are strong enough, resilient enough to follow my lead out of the city, where we and our families will receive refuge and respite from those who hunt us now.”[HR][/HR]Chanvati is making a Primary Skill Check Bluff in the Help the 2nd Nation Make Exodus from Bantouk Skill Challenge to convince the gathered to take heart and follow his lead, rb(10,16) +8 = 24 vs 16 L7 (L+4) Moderate DC. Success.</blockquote>

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