Post-Glitterpuss Plans

[Tahlvin]

[Eliahad]

I want more information. There is A LOT of space between where we are and where we're headed. And while, yes, a goodly amount of the people we will be seeing will be 'evil,' they may be the kind of evil that is, 'we're just some guys you know, we fleece off our bosses a little and steal some office supplies and are willing to sell out our friends for a chance at corporate advancement, but we're not going to kill anybody,' as opposed to the kill it dead evil.

You know, a little evil.

Anyway, I just want knowledge, I don't want to kill anything. Scout the path between ourselves and our next objective. See if there's a place we can get a good drink. See if there's anyone else not giant-size apart from Mr. Potato Head.

[bralbovsky]

What about as a group semi-hiatus taking a recon pause?

Yes, the more scouty stealthy segment of us could do the actual no impact recon, and decide how evil is too evil to live, and which might be bargained with
.
The crafty segment could spend a few days working on stuff, which we're always behind on

The smashy part of the party could assist Morgiv in mopping up the undead in his territory. That might hasten that process, make their safety and survival more assured, reveal intel of its own, and make Morgiv's people collectively more inclined to help us.
I put Hal and Dwyn in this category, Sam may go here too, if only because of her distaste for undead and the whole sihedron thing.

[DMDarcs]

If you want to scout, that's fine. I will need to have a plan for WHERE you want to scout. If it's not any of the labelled areas, that's cool, so be a little descriptive. Narrow it down to one or two areas.

If you want to split the party, that is fine.

I will need some direction by Monday though. Sections of this city, as the authors wrote it, vary anywhere from "fully fleshed out" to "uh, yeah there's some of those over there". I need a little bit of a plan from you all to make the next session an enjoyable experience. Otherwise the session will quickly devolve into me being completely unresponsive for 10-15 minutes (making a map and tokens for a fleshed out area) to the rest of the session (as I scramble for something and pull things out of my butt).

[Mike]

Dothan is flipping through her memory journal again, "I've never met a yeti, but I'd like to. I don't think they're the monsters the stories make them out to be. I just have a feeling.

"And I know you're all gonna be jumpy and cautious, so fine... let's scout the yeti from a distance, and then we you see that I'm right, we'll make a cautious approach. If they accept us, then we can stage our next actions from there. If not, we fall back.

"Either way, the next step is scouting the giant encampment and getting a look at the Tangle there. After that, we assess what we've learned and decide on next steps. I feel like that heptaric locus is going to be dangerous and important. And with the dragon's position, it feels like some sort of gatekeeper for the mountain and for Karzoug. I'm hoping it's just an opportunist with no loyalty to the Runelord, but we may have to deal with it before our final move.

"The important part though is that we need to go meet some yetis!"

[Tahlvin]

We can certainly have a vignettes/montage session where the party chills and splits up for a day or two, with some scouting, some crafting, and some bashing vampire leftovers. It sounds like the focus for scouting will be on the yetis first, then the Tangle, and just work our way north through the city. But first focus will be on the yetis in preparation to face them first as a group once our vignette episode is complete. Sound good? DMDarcs, does that give you enough to prepare for next session?

So who wants to do what? Sounds like Thor and Illian at least will be scouting, Hal and Dwyn will be vamp smashing, what about the rest of you?

[Eliahad]

[As far as places I would like to check out are: the crossroads neighborhood that is to the west of the Hidden Beast label. And then the crossroads neighborhood that is to the Northwest...about halfway-ish between the Hidden Beast and the Yetis.]

[bralbovsky]

I like where this is going in terms of specifics...Yetis are the next waypoint, but between here and there we get some intel and other stuff fleshed out.

Can I add one task to our list, and it might be accomplished with Morgiv's help: I'd like to keep an eye on the giant camp we have already passed. I'd hate to make whatever progress we're thinking of and turn around only to have to do it again in reverse. I'd love to have a stable six, is what I'm saying, especially if we are planning any supply/upgrade missions to punctuate our conquests.

[bralbovsky]

Some marvelous scouting by Eldthor, Illian and Kay....Followed a clearly coerced work party of giants from the camp into the city...task/purpose as yet unknown...(My speculation: renovation and reclamation in preparation for Karzoug's return.) It seemed a little ad hoc. No revelatory undersea missile base under construction. Just some smaller giants being bullied by bigger giants to do something incremental. Speaking of the bigger giants. Huge, glassy well armed types, possibly holding the others in thrall. ***Could we unbalance things if we could break this spell?

Also visited this domed acropolis thing with yetis. A little off the beaten track and no giant traffic. One yeti apparently doesn't live here but visits from headquarters, higher up, periodically. If we can snag him, maybe that's a way not to have to murder all of these basically mindless but hungry creatures nb: they have constructed an altar or effigy, so they're not really mindless...probably just dead evil....(Hal is fine with eliminating them, they're just dangerous in large numbers, this many together isn't natural.)

Another flight of vulture archers headed south. A) must remember they're there as we exit B) there's a huge reserve population of creatures here to draw from.

If I missed anything, let me know. Analysis is in a separate post.

[bralbovsky]

Preliminary thoughts: There are more archer bird demons, there are more giants, there are more glassy giants, there are more yetis.....and we haven't seen any spiders or other things that we've been warned about yet.
As far as talking or co-opting these apparently disparate and potentially disgruntled groups, it seems that someone has already charmed, enslaved, coerced or blackmailed them into service. That leaves two options: Unlock them somehow - which means finding the key to their enslavement and freeing them (let's not debate here whether a wave of freed yetis is something we want loosed on Golarion) or finding a way and the grit to destroy enough of them to make a clear path for ourselves.
We generally tend toward finesse troubleshooting, so if there's the possibility, I suggest we decide on appropriate rules of engagement. There's apparently an emissary established from headquarters who visits the yetis. Maybe we can just deal with him, and let the rest live....

Hal is particularly dubious about the prospect of repatriating anything that is presently choosing to serve Karzoug. Having said that, it's a metropolis of evil, and some finesse might be in order. Just like killing the hidden beast opened an area pretty efficiently, I think if we can decapitate the leadership, the footsoldiers will be much less organized and dangerous. I'm formulation some questions for the quill, for a separate post.

[bralbovsky]

Something re-occurred to me this afternoon, and I had to check the dialogue to make sure...All this rune stuff...Does it refer to actual markings?

We know the earlier sihedron sacrifices were all marked, and that the markings had something do with whether their deaths fueled the pools we encountered.
Are the runelords actually marked with runes?
Are they just called runelords because they have control of runes (which power somehow has been lost to our use or otherwise eludes us)?
Are the rune giants just really freaking huge or do they have markings...
AND
if there are markings which confer or direct power, either on creatures or at the disposal of these lords
Is erasure possible or viable?

If you take the rune off of the victim does he feed the pool?
If you remove the rune from a giant is he still in thralldom (or is he still empowered to enthrall other giants?)
If you somehow dispel or erase (it would be hilarious if the key to this was a first level spell) the runes, does that equalize things?

I don't know if the weeks of research we have already done, or other resources can reveal the answers to these, and other questions.

Next posts: quill questions, please jump in.

[bralbovsky]

Questions:
Since Hal has been wrestling with the potential and limitations of this artifact, I thought it appropriate to note some of the precautions/context with which he has come to view it.

Before each session, deep, focused prayer to Iomedae, asking for guidance of course, but also asking for insight about the nature of this thing, a warning perhaps or anything she might know about the provenance of its divination. (Considering zealotry, or whatever it's called as next feat, but can't seem to find the daily gifts Iomedae offers, so it's tough to evaluate.)

No success in training the quill to draw maps or lay out a path. It seems firmly fixed insofar as being limited to linguistic responses. (This indicates that if it has ego, it's badass, because while Hal is not Anna, a 13th level Paladin isn't typically a pushover)

#1 Are there populations in Xin Shalast, in addition to Morgiv's people, that would like to ally with us?

#2 (If yes) What species or creatures are they?
#2 (If no, or if they are giants) By what means or spell are the giants enslaved? (A further version of this might be whether any other groups can be persuaded to rebel, although a rebellion isn't guaranteed to aid our goals.)

#3 What is the counterspell or method to break the giants' thralldom?

#4 What emissary guides the Yetis? (I'm thinking if we want to act in our more typical, subtle way, we can ambush and coerce or replace this emissary and give the yetis instructions that there's no more food, or that the lamia took it all, or the rune giant. There may be bloody civil war in that case, but even though it doesn't reduce numbers very much, it might prove sufficient distraction to allow us to progress.)
#5 When does it next arrive to meet with them?
#6 From where does it approach? (This may be optional. given further scouting, another question might be what company does it travel in? or is it alone?)

That's as far as I got, the rest is off the top of my head.
#7 How many Rune giants are there?
#8 Is the dragon vulnerable to any particular spell or element?
#9 Are there particular wondrous items that would assist us in our goals? (I have a gut feeling that, like the loot we just got for Sam, that this place has multiple troves of items that would really make a trip back home to purchase upgrades unnecessary. I had a totally baseless intuition about the yetis having something cool, no details, just a twinge, maybe gas.)
# 10 YOUR QUESTION HERE

[Tahlvin]

Similar to the giants, I'm not convinced the yetis (or is the plural form also yeti? Yetii?) are evil per se. Or are they just natural creatures/beings who have been duped by an evil power to serve that power's purposes? DMDarcs, can Thor make a knowledge-nature check, with bonus for favored terrain, to see what he knows about yetis?

Questions I would have would be something along the lines of:
What do we need to get through the occluding field to reach Karzoug?
What is the safest path to reach Karzoug? (Not looking to draw a map, but can we get some verbal cue for how to approach K?)

[bralbovsky]

That's excellent, and I didn't even consider the occluding field, whatever that is...I now recall it being mentioned, but whew..
So that for #10

The path question is going to get basically a one word answer from the pen. Hal tried to train it to draw, but it likes words.

I have rafts of short answer and essay questions of all kinds, like did anybody ever try to stop these mad wizards? Were there Thasilon paladins? who came closest or was most successful? can we commune with her/his spirit? and on and on...but this is maybe the last module of theoretically a seven part series...right? So the rabbit hole is one of those bottomless chasms

[Tahlvin]

We can also check with Morgiv about the best path to reach Karzoug, see what he knows. Is there a back door that avoids marching right past the fortress full of giants?

[bralbovsky]

So we have ten questions and I only managed to waste one, not bad

Are there groups who want to ally?
There are groups who would want to use us for their own purposes.
......wouldn't want to be in a bad spot and have a group take advantage of our vulnerabilities because suddenly we're not useful to their ends......

What keeps the giants in thralldom?
The charm monster spells of the rune giants
.......a dispel charm or other counterspell might create good conditions. The wasted question confirmed this. Whether we test without telling the enslaved giants, whether we message them right as it happens, whether we attempt to elicit their cooperation ahead of time, those are open questions. My opinion is to hold a blind test, message them if they appear unaware, eliminate the rune giant and get an assessment of how tough the whole process is. If it turns out we can scale it, that's a game changer.

Rune Giant barracks
Labeled in Morgivs map...shahlaria

Yeti Emissary?
Voorgoor, scheduled to meet in five days (likely) coming from Pinnacle of Avarice
.....We could arrange an ambush

Dragon vulnerabilities
None

Passing the Occuling field?
Need sihedron symbols, like the amulets or ring

comments welcome

[Eliahad]

Illian wants to scout out paths to the Yetis, the Tangle and the Heptaric Locus.

After figuring out the best routes to get to those places undetected. He wants to move further north and see if he can find inhabited areas of the city as well, and see if there is some semblance of a working city.

Finally, if there's time, he wants to know where the giants are working, just to see why they need so many of them and what they're working on.

[Phoebe]

Bingo. If whatever they're working on is necessary before they can march to reclaim their land, then maybe we can interfere with whatever that is? On the theory that sabotage would be easier than confronting a whole marching army with their successful work product (?).

[Eliahad]

Also, I'm remembering a golem in a library somewhere. Is there anyway that Anna or Sam could nip back there with Dothan to answer questions? Is that option cut off for us because of the whole extra-planar thing?

[Zen]

Kay agrees with Illian's plans.

Oh... not sure if they can get to the library... weird that we were typing at pretty much the same time...