Nerd Pride Radio

I know some of this out of character, but don't want to give anything away that my character wouldn't know. So I'll wait for Darcs and/or Dothan/Mike to decide what we do and don't know in character.

Dothan knows some stuff.

You're guessing they're probably not undead as the cold iron caused them to scream in pain, and blood has been splashed around - particularly when the one redcap had half his back flayed off.

Redcaps are vicious, horrible little fey creatures. They are not undead or demons or anything like that. The red caps they wear are dyed with the blood of their enemies and augment their abilities. They are mean and sadistic and full of hate.

The caps on spears may just be extras or signs that more are lurking about. Although I've always been under the impression that a redcap has only one cap at a time and it is personal to them because of the whole blood-of-your-enemies thing. But I could be mistaken

And yes, fey in general are vulnerable to cold iron.

Redcaps are also vulnerable to Good holy symbols. Like a fear effect on them, I think.

Ugh, they're horrid. It's weird that all these armies of evil creatures are assembling. What are they trying to do? They don't need this much to attack a little place like Sandpoint. So what's up? It surprises me a stone giant is the big evil leader, too, since they're not inherently evil, right? Some are OK, like Dothan's buddy, or at least stay off your lawn if you stay off theirs? The lamias made sense as evil leaders, but all of this stuff is weird. What do they want?

Are they doing some kind of big ritual, the way Ironbriar's people and Nualia before that were trying to do???

I only have 4 cold iron arrows now, so I hope a giant smash still works on them! Or I'll keep trying to sunder armor and weapons to make them softer targets for y'all archers.

The wyverns, dragon, redcaps, and even the undead spider things, may not necessarily be parts of Mokmurian's army. It could just be that they were denizens of Jorgenfist when Mokmurian showed up, and made convenient guards for the back door, so he let them remain where they were.

As for giants being involved, keep in mind that were dealing with something from ancient times, related to the sihedron rune. When you think about other ancient things we've encountered, there has been the giant statue at Thistletop, and the massive bridge in Magnimar. While giants may not be inherently evil in modern times, some evil giants may well have played a prominent role in ancient Thassilonia, and with the early history of the sihedron rune. There may be things at play here that we won't become clear for another book or two.

As for the redcaps, as Mike said, they make their caps by dipping them in the blood of their enemies. What I would worry about is that the four caps by Kay are newly made caps that are drying in the blood of their victims, which means there are four more redcaps nearby about to get involved in the melee.

Yep, I'm guessing there are more otw, but who did they recently kill?!

From what we've seen of ancient Thassilonia, almost ALL of their leaders would have probably qualified as evil by our standards. If I had to guess, the culture fell due to corruption and infighting between the various powerful villains at the top!

In the meantime, I'm feeling kinda alone here between these creepy hats, so I really want to know if I should run back or burn a storm-step spell to get across?

Not sure. I would think it takes them a moment to manifest and don their equipment, unless they somehow are made invisible to sleep, or they ... who knows. The real question is whether any of us can get to you before that happens. Dwyn can't get across that narrow strip of land quickly, but others might, and most of us can fire arrows across. Dwyn will be delayed by needing to pick up her weapon she dropped, etc.

As far as the ancient civilization goes, I hold out hope that some aspect of it was good, but so far we've only seemed to encounter the evil. Maybe that's just because the only ones who are trying to stir it up again for their nefarious purposes are themselves evil. Yet the things available to be stirred are usually disturbing at best - like the Skull's Crossing dam with the trapped demon. We don't know that an evil wizard created that battery system, but I don't think a perfectly good person would have devised such a thing. The ponds that generate nasty creatures and such might be put to some good purpose too, who knows, but we keep seeing them used for evil. It would be interesting sometime to experiment and see if a good wizard or cleric, of which we now have a pair, can do anything else with those ingredients. I'm thinking in particular of the stones too - the ones we just discovered via the Sandpoint Cathedral. Anyway, until we get some sign of anything besides evil associated with Thassalonia, Dwyn holds all of it in deep suspicion. She does NOT like those artificial stars that help people stay alive, either - they help us, yes, but if it can preserve a dead body unnaturally? Brrr, ick. She does not favor the unnatural stuff.

no idea who their last victim was. There are over a hundred giants outside. No telling what prisoners they might have or whether these guys are even on the same team.

K, as far as next, I'd toss the caps in the chasm while we attempt to cross. If there's more and they show up they get a pretty good buff from having them.

If you prefer, you can cross again, but there's a passage that we might need. Second, if we're going to safety rope this crossing for those in armor or just for a guarantee, you'll need to be there to receive the rope.

Sounds good. I'll work on getting some caps over the cliff and secure the rope.

The fact that there IS a secret passage in this cave at all makes me feel like we're on the right path, because there was no way I saw forward to fighting through hundreds of specialized giants and other baddies. I mean seriously, how was that going to end other than certain death? But if we can sneak our way around, we might still not make it, yet being able to deal with enemies in small groups in a narrow corridor is a lot better than fighting a giant army down on the plain.

critical question: do these guys have any sihedron markings?

Nope.

weird, somehow expected. How many more things that perhaps predate the giants? How large is the wyvern opening? Could we perhaps set a snare or other trap to catch or kill them either when they are returning to the lair or as they leave?
If we're going to run into random stuff as well as giants, I'd try as hard as we can to make a clean sweep of the place a) so that we get to keep whatever ground we take, b) so that if we need to make a hasty exit we have perhaps multiple choices c) so that we collect any resources that might be useful in what looks like a hard struggle, This might sound a little lawful (or anal) but I'm uncomfortable wandering around with things showing up behind us. Regardless of whether they're connected to our target or not.

Good thinking. What kind of abilities do people have that involve obstructing the passage (except to us) or setting traps? Me = nothing great.

It will never work!

So the path we are on presently ignores the wyverns. If it circles around, and their lair turns into an alternate exit, that's great.
They might live on a day/night cycle that makes them vulnerable.
It may be that their lair is a dead end, and totally isolated from this complex.
In that case, it might make it a good choice for a place to rest (which we will eventually need) so let's keep in mind to save enough firepower before we make camp to build ourselves a refuge.
If we can't trap them, we'll want to either go in when they're gone and stage an ambush, or try to stealth in while they're resting. Flight is energy expensive. Does anybody have a legit knowledge roll on wyvern biology? Bard?

How big are they? If we are essentially clearing out this passage area, and the entrance to some area is too small for them to penetrate, maybe we can overnight in here somehow. I have little sense of where we are in the day, but eventually we will at least need the spellcasters to have new spells.