In Which...
Identities are confirmed ⁂ Squirrels are captured and presumably eaten ⁂ Magical items are received ⁂ Plans are made ⁂ Arson is discussed ⁂ The difference between insurgencies and conquering hordes is clarified ⁂ The party determines the benefits and drawbacks of feeding people to ghouls ⁂ Pamphlets are considered
Warning: The following is a transcript of about half an hour of mostly-in-character dialogue. (Multilogue?) If that's not your thing, you're going to be bored.
Annotations provided by Sister Mangata of the Most Righteous Order of Sybarite Isle.
“Just to make sure you’re the people I’m waiting for,” says Brother Appleseed, “can you tell me who sent you here?”
Confusion ensues out of character, as not all of the players remember that there was even a name mentioned in the mission briefing, and those who do don’t remember what it was. They consult the PDF.
“Mother Malachite,” Lyra replies.
“Oh, good, it is you.”
“Then,” Lyra says with relief, “we can put aside pretense and awkwardness.”
“I have a small delivery for you,” says Brother Appleseed, “and I was instructed to let you stay here for as long as you need in order to formulate your plan of attack.”
Little Marco gets excited. “Ooh, ATTACK!”1
“Not necessarily literally.”
Silence, feeling the pangs of his ghoulish hunger, interrupts to quietly-but-urgently ask if there might be any live animals about. Appleseed allows that there might be some squirrels out in the orchard. Gwyneth goes out to set up a snare and try to catch some.
While this is going on, Appleseed goes back to his “delivery” -- he says that certain items came to him via divine intervention, just appearing in his shrine one day, and he believes they are for the PCs. He hands them each a scrap of parchment about the size of an index card, each with the holy symbol of that PC’s god painted on it.
Marco rolls Sense Motive and gets a 5. Marco decides Appleseed might be a traitor, and the party might want to be wary.
Marco OOC: My eyes burn with passionate intensity and suspicion.
Lyra, refusing to trust Marco’s judgment, rolls their own Sense Motive and gets a 23. Lyra believes Appleseed to be exactly what he says he is. The players decide to settle this with opposed Diplomacy checks [sure, why not]. Lyra gets a 14. Marco gets a 21. In a brief whispered conversation, Lyra is impressed by how certain Marco is about this issue.
While Lyra and Marco squabble quietly, Brother Appleseed informs the others -- so, at this point, Harold, Ophie, and an increasingly-distracted-by-hunger Silence -- that these pieces of parchment are basically one-shot commune items; tearing one in half allows the holder to summon a minor servant of their god and ask them one yes-or-no question. 2
The party ask if Appleseed has any further information for them; he says that all he was told is that he should keep them safe and hidden here until they decide what to do next.
Silence: Are we going to kill people?
Marco: Gods, I hope so.
Harold: I think we need to kill the Worm that Walks3. That should be our goal.
Appleseed: That would be a lofty goal.
Out of character, confusion ensues as the players try to work out how to approach their fairly-open-ended quest.
Gwyneth returns from outside, having set up her snares.
Harold asks Brother Appleseed if he knows of any strongholds of New God worshippers in the country, people they might seek out for assistance. A quick die roll indicates that Appleseed has some limited knowledge on that subject.
Appleseed: Only rumors. I’ve heard that there is a certain so-called heretical4 order over to the east that worships the New Gods, somewhere in Lizard Bay.
Marco: Lizard Bay? Yes!
Harold: Sounds like a fun place.
Appleseed: I’ve also heard rumors that there’s at least one coven of Skøtta Blacktooth active in the region. But the only one I know for sure is that we here in this village are devotees of Jivmarana.
The PCs discuss.
Harold: Definitely go to Lizard Bay, because that sounds awesome.5
Marco: I think so too as well.
Silence: I want to recruit a bunch of lizards.
Harold: I want to ride a giant lizard.
Silence: I want to eat a lizard.
Lyra: We have one lizard already.
Harold: You’re going to ruin it for us, Silence.
Lyra: Gwyneth’s a lizard.
Gwyneth: I got you squirrels! Don’t forget that!
Lyra: Have you actually produced any squirrels?
Gwyneth: I don’t know yet.
Marco: I want to acid splash some squirrels.
Lyra, quietly, to Harold: What happens if Silence doesn’t get fed?
Harold, quietly, to Lyra: Well, I have turn undead.
There is some out-of-character discussion of skills and abilities at this point, which contains this gem:
Marco: I can detect poison. Because a lot of people have tried to poison me. They find my demeanor… un… satis… factory.6
Gwyneth checks her snares, and finds she has already caught a brace of squirrels. [Craft (trapmaking): 22]
Gwyneth OOC: TEN squirrels.
GM: TEN SQUIRRELS.
Gwyneth, to Appleseed: Fixed your squirrel problem.
The PCs resume planning.
Marco: How strong is the stronghold at Lizard Bay? Like, what’s the weakest point? What do you think is the place --[Confused discussion follows regarding Gwyneth’s alignment, Byfona’s less-known aspect as Goddess of Arson, and whether kobolds can breathe fire. Gwyneth’s player, upon learning they can’t by default, swaps out one of her feats for Draconic Breath.]
Appleseed: Okay, when we say “stronghold” --
Lyra: Intellectual / ideological stronghold.
Appleseed: Yes. We don’t mean they actually have an impenetrable fortress.7
Lyra: I think we need to start a radical arts and culture movement that favors the New Gods and proliferate it throughout all the major cities. [Sidenote from GM: I’m kind of disappointed this isn’t the plan they went with. That would have been interesting to run.]
Marco: I think we should destroy all the cities, and then we won’t have to worry about it.
Lyra: Well, that’s another perspective.
Marco: I think we should destroy those who oppose us.
[pause as they examine the map, which Ophie’s player has on an iPad]
Marco: Think like a terrorist.
Lyra: Yeah, we need an “insurgency” mentality rather than a “conquering horde” mentality, because we don’t have a horde.8
Marco: We need to find some influential people.
Lyra: By “influential”, do you mean people who can manufacture, like, weapons that can kill large numbers of people?
Marco: Either that, or we need to convince someone who can convince everyone else.
Ophie: We should try to get all the undead onto our side, because they were basically enslaved under the old regime.
Lyra: [Marketing jargon that I don’t understand no matter how many times I rewind the audio] … and I can chant. I can perform chants.
Harold: I’ve got chalk, so I can deface all the Old God temples we see with some chalk.
Ophie: Where are all the undead people again?
GM: There’s a high concentration of ghouls in Clarenfair, which isn’t far from here…
Marco: We could start there.
Lyra: We have a ghoul.
GM: … but they’re not exactly oppressed these days.
Ophie: Well, they WERE.
Harold: Hundreds of years ago.
Ophie: That stuff leaves scars.
Lyra: Are they satisfied with the status quo?
GM: Some of them, probably. It varies from person to person. But they’re not politically disenfranchised, and they manage to get away with eating a halfling here and there, so a lot of them are probably okay with the way things are.
Lyra: We need to find large groups of malcontents whom we can work with.
Silence: And then maybe we can bring the ghouls some people to snack on to persuade them.
Lyra: That is good reasoning.
Marco: We could find the influential people and feed them to the ghouls.
Lyra: I don’t think that’s the way we want to leverage our influence. But if we could form our own ideological stronghold, or find one, we could remove the opposing faction by feeding them to ghouls. Both thin out the ranks of people who disagree with us and bring in the ghoul contingent.
Marco, to Appleseed: How was this town converted to the New Gods?
Appleseed: Well, you may have noticed there aren’t a whole lot of humans in this country [human population is about 7%]. Villages like ours, who are still mostly human, were here before the Necrocracy took over the area, so there’s this sort of undercurrent of general discontent.
Marco: What about the lizards? Are they on our side?9
Appleseed: Depends on the lizard. The lizardfolk don’t have much of a civilization anymore -- they’re basically leftovers from an empire that collapsed before recorded history.
Lyra: That sounds ripe for discontent.
Appleseed: They live in small settlements in the swamp, and probably don’t care about any of this, unless you can think of a reason to get them involved.
Silence: We should manufacture a reason. Tell them that people are going to come and kill them.
Lyra: I have a suggestion that might appeal to everyone.
Marco: We should commit atrocities --
Lyra and Marco, in unison: -- in the name of the Old Gods!
Lyra: Exactly. We could start murdering people, pin it on our opponents, and start manufacturing, um --
Silence: Dissent?
Lyra: Yeah. [Comparisons to U.S. history ensue]
Gwyneth: I’m not comfortable with this idea.
Harold: Neither am I.10
Lyra: Well, it’s actually kind of a Lawful thing to do, using terrorism to create a consensus. That’s how the law typically works.
Marco: We’ve got to find a temple or something. Or a political building. What’s the best place to blow up?
Lyra: I’m wondering if there’s a way -- and this will sate Harold’s desire to not do absolute chaos --
Harold: I just won’t help. I would stand there.
Lyra: I’m thinking if we find something where the target itself accomplishes an objective for us in hurting the Old Gods, so we’re not attacking our own elements, but we spin it in a way that makes them look bad… what if we fabricate fighting between different Old Gods? Letting us short-term destroy an enemy temple, but long-term make it look like both Wee Jas and Hextor… fabricating a dispute between the two of them? Thus not only hurting our enemies in the short term, but in the long term creating instability in their church that we can then move in and say, “this religion is unstable.”
Ophie: There’s a place -- the Brotherhood of Book and Bone -- a monastery dedicated to Wee Jas. It’s not too far from Lizard Bay.
Harold: Maybe we should start making our way there.
Lyra: So we could burn it down and impersonate followers of Hextor. We could preach a bit about how Hextor is going to basically overtake Wee Jas, and judgment is coming for the followers of Wee Jas because Hextor is a jealous god. Then, as ourselves, move in and preach about how the Old Gods are leading their followers to destruction.
Ophie: I like that. And leave a bunch of leaflets. And things that are from Hextor.
Lyra: Does anyone have the ability to make leaflets?
Silence: We should make pamphlets for both the sides we’re fabricating a dispute between and our own side.
Marco: Less about pamphlets, more about arson.
Lyra: No, we maximize the impact of the arson through planning and ideological control. If we just burn something down, it won’t necessarily further our goals and could even be spun against us.
Marco: I don’t see how.
Lyra: I feel the need to point out that, for those of us who aren’t survivors of frequent poisoning attempts from everyone around us, there are certain social skills that make people not want to poison you.
Marco: My experience is that everyone wanting to kill you doesn’t make so much of a difference.
Lyra: Well, you are still alive, which is true, but our goal is not just survival here.
Ophie: So should we head to this place, the Brotherhood of Book & Bone? It’s also on the way to Lizard Bay.
The party agrees that they should do this.
Silence inquires with Appleseed about whether they can acquire mounts in this town. They can. They also inquire about flammable oils, and pamphlet materials. They can get those as well. The party beds down for the night in one of Appleseed’s outbuildings.
1 Yes! Attack the unrighteous! Let the light of the moon scour them from the world!↩
2 A most potent boon! I am certain these doughty heroes will put these items to good use and not forget them in the bottoms of their knapsacks!↩
3 Yes! The foul Duke Thull should be slain at once! We have sent many of our heroes to confront him in his tower of unnatural sorceries, where they have proudly died in the greatest traditions of our order -- doing something noble and brave and true and utterly, utterly futile.↩
4 If by "heretical" you mean burning with the righteous fury of Arraou!↩
5 Indeed, we provoke awe in allies and foes alike!↩
6 As do we. But poison is the craven weapon of cowardly swine!↩
7 Unless you mean an impenetrable fortress of righteousness!↩
8 It is the doctrine of our order than one should always act as if one is at the head of a great horde.↩
9 The lizardfolk of Sybarite Isle certainly would be! Although this "Marco" is a morally repellant creature.↩
10 Neither am I.↩
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