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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lylandra" data-source="post: 8073094" data-attributes="member: 6816692">(caution: long post ahead)Thinking inside the chimney (Or: Obscon, Part1)One by one, we retrieve the other unconscious Obscurati agents from the Absurdist's Web and let Grappa perform the ritual of possession. During this process, we learn that Kiov Hetman worked for an ancient ghost called Vicemi Terio, and that Kiov is terribly afraid of said spirit. The name Joe Pena floats in his mind as well and Carlyle understands that the guy who tried to mess up our mission in Ber could have been this very same Vicemi Terio. So we all agree that this guy is someone we should be cautious about.Regarding Livia, we're surprised to find out that she harbors second thoughts regarding her affiliation with the Obs and that she's kind of secretly acting as a double agent. Being originally  aligned with Ethelyn and skeptical about technology, she gathered information about King Aodhan and his royal powers as Monarch of the Masses, but had second thoughts about selling all of this to an unknown group of people. So she left a note for Harkover Lee detailing what she has learned and done should she not return from this convocation.Auryn is very much intrigued about Livia's motives, but no matter how hard she tries, she fails to gain a link to the subconscious Livia sleeping inside her mind. So we decide to postpone the questioning of this interesting woman and harbor the quiet hopes that she may act as a mole in the Obs after the convocation is over.Ken Don appears to be an overall nice guy, a librarian from the Jenevah Library who's fed up with the Clergy machine and its rules and preaching of water to the masses while drinking wine in their fancy offices. When Margit tells us about the man and his contact to Beregeron and Ottavia, we understand that Ken might be an honorable member of the Obs who truly believe that what he's doing might be best for the world.She then complains a bit that this body feels a bit weak compared to her own and blames Ken's bookishness and lack of exercise.“And now excuse me...” she adds “I have to learn how to relieve myself with this new... appendage. Or else I'll be instantly suspicious.”Meanwhile, we carefully store our own bodies in the Absurdist's Web. Being slightly disturbed by this last look at our fragile selves, we hope that this convocation may be over soon so we might return to who we're used to be.(Regarding the ritual's mechanics... we understood it but thought that there simply was too much math, RNG and numbers involved for what it was worth. Would have been easier if the game just assumed that Grappa cast the spell and then the PC has to make a saving throw depending on who they are currently possessing. I understand that the mechanics are meant to discourage players from possessing giant strength creatures, but making it inaccessible to low/mid-level players would have worked as wellOh and we totally skipped over Oscan Ligurio... he just didn't seem interesting enough even if we knew that the Familia would have really been interested in the knowledge of this spy among their ranks.Also, I remember someone discussing that the Mortal Possession might be abused by clever players who'd love to have more powerful physical stats. While this is surely a possibility, I highly doubt that there will be more than one player who'd leave their character's body on a regular basis. At least not as long as these are “characters” and not mere “toons” with cool numbers and abilities. I can see some character who might be upset with their own body failing them – someone very old, maimed or frail – be tempted to use the ritual for a new body, but this would be totally okay, especially as it does have moral implications. One of the reasons why I'd say that ZEIT is an AP for mentally mature players)We then discuss where to store our bodies during the convocation. First, we talk about having them in the RHC as we might use that as a quick way of escape should things go south. But then we guess that this convention might very well take place in the Bleak Gate and Grappa is not really sure whether the soul transfer would be able to cross planar thresholds and we really don't want our souls to become stuck in the Bleak Gate. So we'd just carry them with us in the Absurdist's Web which should be fine as long as no one knows that they are inside it.Regarding equipment, we go the safe route of storing the too powerful stuff like the Matriarch's crown or the Godmind Urn with our original bodies and go for regular weapons. Kiov hides two mundane kukris inside a dwarvish battlestaff, but he feels really clumsy using them.(this is a short nod to his original idea of using a double sword hidden inside a walking cane. Unfortunately, double weapons, while really cool, are rarely worth all of the feats)As soon as we feel relatively comfortable in our new bodies, we return to the inn where the other Obs officers are still sleeping. The next morning, we all board a ship near Sid Minos and travel to the island of Mutravir. There, we're brought to a run-down mansion via carriage and meet up with other Obscurati officers before being greeted by someone we really didn't expect to be here: Han Jierre. It appears as if he studied the names of all of the new arrivals beforehand as he greets every one of them individually and then explains that we'll have to cross the threshold to the Bleak Gate via iron amulet.Then Han's assistant lights up a lantern which emits a faint glow and enables us to travel to a Bleak gate pocket, revealing an intact and very much polished mansion. The sky, however, is pitch black and the only illumination is provided by small lamps. Then Han Jierre proceeds with his security check and we do our best to appear as relaxed as we can. Everyone makes a small gasp as a shadowlisk comes close to our group and places its magic destroying gaze upon us. And to all our surprise, one of the other Obs changes in what appears to be a Godhand. The very moment this deception becomes clear, the shadowlisk appears to burn the man into a black shadow on the wall with another, radiant gaze.(“Just a shadow on the wall...”)Some of the Obs start to panic and we're very much disturbed by the creature and its abilities. It appears that the former-clergy-former-Godhand or his shadow are somehow still alive though and Xavier Sangria, one of our fellow Obs, immediately demands to know why they'd keep and use such a monster here as this is the opposite of what he came for.His demands are immediately answered as a group of ghosts appear. One of them, a tattered vile looking one that Kiov recognizes as Vicemi Terio, explains that this man was a Clergy spy and that they'll surely get their answers once they'll peel himself out of his shadow. We got nothing to fear from these beasts though. He is quickly joined by another figure we know – no one else but the ghost of the deceased Mayor Macbannin who jokes that he'd expected even more spies.Macbannin then pulls the Godhand out of his shadow and drags him off to the dungeons. We take a few moments as we finally understand why the seal of Macbannin on Cauldron Hill was weakened so much as its central component, the Mayor himself, was missing. Then we're asked to enter the mansion, but Kiov takes a few more seconds to comment on that really beautiful lighthouse right behind the mansion and talks quietly about just having to visit that one in his leisure time.We're then being led inside and upstairs by a few servants while Margit/Ken and another Clergyman are being questioned about the spy. We don't want to look suspicious, so we leave the group and believe that she'll do just fine. We're then being assigned to rooms, and both Livia ask for one room with a lighthouse view. She, because she thinks it'd be romantic and him because, y'know, he just loves lighthouses. So we end up in the constellation we wanted to: with rooms directly next to each other.After getting rid of our luggage, we take some time to wander through the upper floor of the mansion and come to a cozy communal room with a beautiful fireplace and stained glass windows. There, we see a person smoking leaf of Nicodemus and as we're coming closer, we're both shocked for a brief moment, as this person appears to be none else but our missing Andrei.(Wow, this was harsh. And yep, Tiz didn't use this scene in the teaser as he wanted to play on the Andrei is missing in action mystery a bit more. Definitely made the tension level rise 100%)Fortunately, who appears to be Andrei on the first glance notices us just a mere moment later so he doesn't catch our faces go blank for a split second. He raises his glass of wine to greet us and gestures over to the other leather chairs. With a smile, the guy introduces himself as Nicodemus, the one who summoned all of us here and asks us to sit down and talk.Thankfully, Nicodemus is nothing alike Andrei and appears to be the same, charming and thoughtful persona when we first met him under the guise of Doro. So we can split our images of Nicodemus and Andrei quite well and manage to keep up our appearances and thank him for this invitation and opportunity to know more about our organization's true goals. Even though we deep down know that our Andrei must be trapped somewhere inside his own body, probably just as unconscious as our own hosts.Nicodemus appears to be glad to hear that and he hints that all will be revealed with the upcoming presentations during the conference. Kiov politely asks Nicodemus whether he'd be able to visit the lighthouse during his stay. Nicodemus rubs his goatee for a moment and then promises that he'll tell the security officers to arrange a visit for the drakran expert.“You probably should think about inviting Herrn Zoltan too, I strongly believe that he'd not want to miss this opportunity either”, Nicodemus adds.He then excuses himself as he got more guests to attend to, but asks us to make ourselves comfortable and just ask the servants should we need anything.(All in all this scene was pure gold. Nicodemus can appear to be that likable and charming person while at the same time you're being constantly reminded that, right now, he's abducted and possessed one of your dearest friends. Which created such a strong cognitive dissonance that you really had to think hard about how your character would act and react and think about this whole situation. It's just... wow. And it turns much harder later on)Shortly after, Leone/Grappa joins us and mentions that he's going to enjoy the brief time he has left before his preparations to chill and drink fine wine at the fireplace. This is when we suddenly hear a loud, female voice calling out Leone's name in surprise. Unlike us, Cardinal Testamenta managed to find a servant to carry her luggage for her and now she's reacting almost gleefully once she spots dear Leone near the fireplace.“There you are, my dearest. I'm so glad that we got the opportunity to be together again so shortly after our reunion in Vendricce.”She then picks up a chair and places it next to the very surprised looking Leone, grabs his hand and caresses her own cheek with it. And while we still look at each other in bewilderment, it seems as if Testamenta is on the brink of making out with Leone in front of us. Leone puts up his most perfect pokerface and tries to play along, but we almost physically feel his discomfort when she kisses the poor guy and drags him off.(Yeah, poor Grappa. Not like Testamenta is unattractive, but I don't see him as someone who'd be interested in physical relationships, lest not with a total stranger.And now that I think about it, I'd rather paint him to be asexual with his love of making artificial children... a bit like Gepetto I guess)So after a while, we decide that it is time to join the new arrivals downstairs to get a feeling for the other Obscurati members and find out more about their work and agenda. As we're about to move down, we suddenly see the familiar silhouettes of Luc and Ottavia on the middle level of the now illuminated lighthouse...Downstairs, we meet up with Ken Don again who's chatting with a Pater Hevnir. The Pater thanks him for giving him access to secret information. Ken acts as shy as his persona requires and mumbles that he's just living up to the Teachings, Verse 103 where sharing is divine as long as it doesn't apply to your favorite fishing hook. He then recites a poem about hooks and the Pater moves along. Ines Shilubi catches up with the Pater as she recognizes him as an archaeologist who she accompanied to an ancient elfaivaran ruin once.Guiscan, the bariton singer in our group, has apparently found a dragonborn fangirl who's begging him for a duet, but he doesn't seem to be so keen on performing right now. Then, we both hear a rather familiar voice as Director Zoltan hails his dear colleague Kiov Hetman. The two dwarves share a quick chat, but then Zoltan kind of forces Kiov to tell everyone a cruel anecdote about the police chief of Trekholm and his and Zoltan's dogs. Carlyle manages to remember said story from Kiov's memories, but the whole thing leaves him utterly disgusted at the thought that someone might find delight in this sort of cruelty.Meanwhile, Livia comes across another person we know and she's very much surprised and alarmed to see none else but Catherine Romana, accompanied by her cat familiar. The two women greet each other and it seems that even Livia didn't know about the fact that Romana appears to be an Obscurati officer. Now these are dangerous news indeed.After a while, Kiov manages to leave Zoltan and his merry dwarves and he takes some time to gather information about the other attending officers. He spots one halfling Eschatologist who appears to be taking notes on several people. He pokes the man who panics briefly and then explains the halfling that he isn't really keen on being on some godsdamned list as this kind of defeats the purpose of the Obscurati in the first place.When the halfling doesn't see any fault in his notes, Kiov calls for the security and demands that this man should be stopped from whatever he's doing right now as he might just be another spy. As Kiov is very much insisting, the security staff summons Macbannin to clear things up. Kiov makes his point once again and Macbannin demands to see the notebook himself and orders the man to stop taking notes on other Obs. During this process, Kiov is able to get a peek into the notebook and finds that most of it is wavey, snake-like lines anyway.Livia mingles with the other guests and gets the impression that many Ob officers use this convocation as some kind of support group regarding their shady dealings. She gathers some stories here and there which are filled with lots of unscrupulous deeds, up to making fun of murder to cover up Ob activities. Both Auryn and her Livia personality are appalled by this lack of decency, so she just moves to the background to listen.Doing so, she bumps into Kiov again, who just started a conversation with another dwarf by the name of Erskine Haffkrüger. The dwarf talks a bit about his job as botanist doing research about the planar influence on plants, but we basically have to drag every word from his nose as if he's really not in the most talkative mood. On top of that, he appears to be quite the loner anyway.After a while, Auryn, being a botanist herself, realizes that this guy's knowledge about plants isn't as profound as it should be. Also, the dwarf seems to be much stronger that the average dwarf, especially if one considers his presumed occupation. A few moments later, Carlyle gets used to his new, dwarf nose and smells something that seems strangely familiar, but yet not dwarven at all. He then suddenly raises his eyebrows as he realizes that this is the faint smell of both Fordren and Gradiax.Then, it is Haffkrüger's turn to be surprised as he hears a mental note: “Didn't expect you to be here. Trying to find out more about the Obscurati?”“Ah, the constables. Of course you are here. All of you, I guess.”When Kiov nods briefly to Haffkrüger, then to Livia and hints that he may continue with his mental conversation, it seems as if Gradiax had just been waiting for this invitation. He quickly falls into a draconic rant about the fact that he found this dwarf among his employees who had been working for the Obscurati whilst being paid by him. So thanks for the tip. Of course he was enraged when he found out, so he squeezed every little bit of information from the dwarf before turning his brain to pudding. He then took the guise of Erskine Haffkrüger to gain personal insight into the Obs and here he is now.All of this makes Gradiax pretty angry again, so Haffkrüger excuses himself as the long and unfamiliar trip by boat still pays a heavy toll on him.“Just remember this, Mr. Carlyle: I WILL put an end to their organization one way or the other. So don't stand in my way when the time comes.”Then he stomps off.“What a strange man...” Livia says in confusion as she didn't understand how or why the botanist would suddenly become so upset.(Not really sure how Gradiax would have managed to sneak into the convocation. As this version of him agreed to destroy the duplicant technology, he went there morphed into yet another humanoid form. I do guess that Tiz changed the way draconic polymorph works to an extraordinary ability, otherwise people like Harkover Lee would have drawn too much attention with their strong transmutation aura. Still the shadowlisk would have been able to see through this and probably the duplicant tech as well. Just dragon stuff I guess. Or a well placed mind blank.)She doesn't have too much time to think about the dwarf though as they are soon joined by a jovial tiefling ghost by the name of Amielle Latimer. We instantly remember the name as one of the heroes who helped King Lorcan defeat the witches on Cauldron Hill over a century ago.“It is an honor and a surprise to have such a legend among us today”, Livia says to Amielle as the real Livia should probably remember all of the stories about the risuri kings.Amielle appears to be happy that someone finally remembers her name, so she offers us cigars and stays for a little chat. We learn that she joint the society named “the ghost council” after her death 80 years ago when Nicodemus returned her as a ghost. She doesn't know too much about this group's origins though and briefly mentions that Terio is their most senior member.She then floats off and we're called to the grand banquet room where dinner is served. Nicodemus appears briefly and welcomes us all to the grand convocation. He teases that there will be a big reveal in the keynote speech tomorrow morning, so better not get too wasted. After all, the organization needs all of our mental agility in the upcoming day. He and the senior officers (Leone, Han Jierre, Amielle and an unknown half-elf clad in elfaivaran garments) leave dinner very quickly and it appears as if they got stuff to prepare for tomorrow. To our surprise, Lya Jierre, her brother Luc and Ottavia are missing out this night.We return to our rooms a bit earlier than most of the other officers. Luckily, we find out that Kiov and Livia share one chimney between their rooms, so hushed conversation appears to be possible between the two rooms. We take the opportunity to recap this day's events, starting with what would be the most disturbing reveal about Andrei's fate.We both agree that rescuing our dear friend from Nicodemus' possession would be among our top priorities, even if we cannot be sure whether regular methods of exorcism would work on such an unusual spirit like Nicodemus. Carlyle just sees one of his worst nightmares come true: That Andrei's super strength and stamina could fall out of control, even though he wouldn't have envisioned it to turn out that way. Still, we cannot risk to blow our cover yet as we need to know what the Obs are planning. Neither of us seems really content with this solution, but we understand that we need to be patient in this one.Then we talk about our experiences with the other Obscurati and both come to the conclusion that most of these people are fishy at least and downward immoral at worst. We don't really get why they'd even join a society that would try to improve the world if they literally walk over dead bodies to complete what must be only a tiny piece of one big puzzle. Also, how blind must Ottavia and Luc have been to not see what kind of people they'd associate themselves with.Next is the issue of Han Jierre. We wouldn't have dreamed about the possibility that the sovereign of Danor could be a member of the Obscurati, even if we know Lya to be among their ranks. We agree that this complicates matters between Risur and Danor a lot and we don't know how King Aodhan would react to this revelation. But now that we know that sovereign, nephews and niece are part of the secret society, we guess that it might be likely that being an Ob could be a Jierre family tradition.(Ah, how perfectly spot on they were...)Regarding Macbannin, we are not really sure about his role in this ghost council. Both Carlyle and Auryn are quite sure that he's only convincingly playing a role as the charming-but-cruel ghost we saw earlier, so we should maybe try to contact him somewhen to see whether out gut feeling is right. Still this has to be postponed until we're either more sure or can more easily risk our identities.Last, Carlyle mentions Erskine Haffkrüger who might just be a strange ally, even though he is quite sure that this guy will cause a lot of chaos some time during the convention. When Auryn responds in confusion as she just thought him to be a not really bright botanist who might be hiding something, Carlyle drops the ball and reveals that this dwarf is just “Fordren in disguise”.When Auryn reacts extremely surprised by this revelation and asks him how he'd know about this fact, Carlyle explains that he just had a mental exchange with the man after he smelled a faint sniff of Fordren on the dwarf. Which leaves Auryn speechless for a moment.“So... you were the one who contacted him? How?” she asks, still in confusion.“I talked to him telepathically.”“You... what?! Then tell me, why are we talking through a chimney again?”“Umm... maybe because it is romantic?”“Maybe it is. But even then... why didn't you tell me about this ability? We're on a secret undercover mission and this would be a very handy thing to use. Also, does he know about me and my identity?”Realizing that Auryn is hiding some sour tone right now, Carlyle promises that he'll be available for telepathic communication from now on, so she'd just need to give him a hint that she needs to talk. He also confirm that Fordren/Gradiax will most likely know who she is right now and that we'll have to see how things will turn out. He'd keep an eye on Erskine for any kind of trouble, that much he promises.“Well, that's a start. But I have to sleep now. Good night.”(Ouch. This one really hurt her a lot and it came on top of everything that happened that day – Andrei, the Jierres and Macbannin. Basically, Carlyle hat pulled a Delft on her despite that fact that there were lovers and shared everything. Remember that one time where Carlyle forgot to tell Delft that he could teleport and both of them ended up in the Duke of Slaughter's assassination attempt? Delft was furious, but Delft was merely his boss.This time, Carlyle had not only not told Auryn that he could talk telepathically – we used this perk of the 4e version of the Spirit Medium – but he also used this ability to contact Fordren of all people without telling her beforehand. And waited the whole evening to tell her about his presence at the convocation. Oh and yes, knowing about it would have come in handy when we prepared our secret identity mission. So having one royally pissed Auryn as the result is kind of understandable. And this is just where the rift of adventure 7 starts to crack...Regarding Gradiax, she wasn't really sure whether he would keep his promise to Risur should the Obscurati plan turn out to be valuable enough for him to hijack. Auryn hoped that this wouldn't happen, but she didn't rule out the possibility that her old enemy would make a face-heel-turn and try become leader of the Obs...Oh and for the post's title:[MEDIA=youtube]Zn8YrKnpbfA[/MEDIA] )</blockquote>

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