|
|
Post by reefwood on Oct 21, 2010 14:15:05 GMT -5
Day 27
Nemedor dispatches a 100-person battalion from Verdas. The battalion will march 45 miles northeast and includes 10 ship builders, 30 sailors, and 60 soldiers. It will take 3 days (27, 28, 29) for them to reach the shoreline just southeast of the Blackfens.
On Day 30, they will chop down trees from a nearby grove and prepare the lumber.
On Day 31, they will build 6 rowboats that can each hold 10 people.
On Day 32, the 6 rowboats will set off with 24 sailors and 36 soldiers toward the dock that sits near the eastern base of the northern head, just north of the Blackfens. They will steer clear of the Blackfens, so their boating route will be about 60 miles in length and should bring them to the dock by early afternoon on Day 33. The rest of the battalion will begin to lay the groundwork for a new dock at the launching site and continue building more boats. More personnel will be sent to this location once Verdas is secure.
Half of the force (30 soldiers) that boats to the northern peninsula will be sent to assist exploratory teams from New Briar that will search for resources deeper in the Blackfens. The remaining soldiers and sailors will maintain and guard the dock.
The dock will be the primary means for Nemedor to transport people and goods onto the northern head, and it will also be where any P.O.W.s and refugees from Ione are received.
[OOC: This is the overall plan for Nemedor. As you can see, this includes no details of your mission. That will be in the next post.
The battalion has a normal speed of 20 ft but marches through open plains, so they move at 15 ft (3/4-speed) instead. They march for 7 hrs, hustle for 1 hr, and do a forced march for 1 hr to cover 15 miles per day, so they cover the 45 miles to the shoreline in 3 days.
The 10-person rowboats have a top speed of 20 ft and will be rowing in 4-person shifts all day and night, so it will take them 30 hrs to reach the dock. If they leave at 7am on Day 32, they should arrive around 1pm on Day 33.
Rowboat: Seats up to 10 people. Rowing requires a standard full-round action. 1 oar is located at each corner of the boat. Oars are normally locked in place, and a move action is required to lock or unlock an oar:
- 4 people are required to row at the top speed of 20 ft
- 3 people can row at a speed of 15 ft
- 2 people can row at a speed of 10 ft
- 1 person cannot row the boat row at a speed of 5 ft by using a full-round action but must be able to move to both sides of the boat]
|
|
|
|
Post by reefwood on Oct 21, 2010 19:38:12 GMT -5
Mission Info
Dragon Dock was built as a joint effort by New Briar and Ione to create a shipping lane between the marsh town and port city. When war came to the Hydrahead, the Ionese forces immediately returned home to defend the port city and only a skeleton crew was left to maintain it. Dragon Dock is also from where the New Briar reinforcements set sail to Ione.
The current status of the dock is unknown. What is known is that the dock sits atop a rocky cliff line that rises 30 ft above the grassy plains, which themselves come to an end a few miles before the cliffs. The dock consists of two wooden piers, two stone buildings, and a lighthouse. There are also two wooden buildings at the base of the cliff line.
The escort assigned to Captain Nola Whimsir will be relieved, reinforced, and sent to secure Dragon Dock. All threats must be neutralized to ensure that the Nemedoran boats reach the dock safely.
Specialist Ni Mwa Lu will teleport to New Briar with Sergeant Coppertin, Corporal Nimarious Steerhelm, and Private First Class Bodyguard. Sergeant Coppertin will oversee the preparation of the first batch of mithral for Nemedor and provide payment. When the mithral is ready, Specialist Ni will teleport it to Verdas and return again to New Briar with soldiers to relieve the escort led by Master Sergeant Brion Shaw. Corporal Steerhelm and his bodyguard will join this escort.
The dock must be secured by noon on Day 33 because the Nemedoran boats are expected to arrive shortly thereafter.
Road to Dragon Dock: 30 miles
- 15 miles north to Feather Falls
- 12 miles east to Avan'ti
- 3 miles east to the Dragon Dock
|
|
|
|
Post by reefwood on Oct 22, 2010 14:46:37 GMT -5
Day 27 - Gala at the Villa
The Nemedoran envoy throws a gala at their new embassy villa to celebrate the union between Nemedor and New Briar. Invites are sent to members of the Council, Guild House, Ministry, and Lady Karryx. This is a total of 19 invitations. Nearly all the members of Council showed up, including Chancellor Brock with his personal guard and the Mayor with his staff. Archcleric Stoneroot did not attend but sent a member of his staff. Representatives from all members of the Guild House and Ministry showed up. Lady Karryx stopped by at the end of the night with Nimuux.
This is the list of every person or group that received an invitation:
Mayor Reegan (+staff)
Guildmaster Moonleaf
Archcleric Stoneroot
Chancellor Brock (+personal guard)
Mining Guild
Smiths Guild
Banking Guild
Farmer Guild
Architecture Guild
Weavers Guild
Mercenary Guild
Church of Abadar
Temple of Erastil
House of Iomedae
Temple of Torag
Church of Saranae
Temple of Shelyn
Monastery of Irori
Lady Karryx (via Mages Guild)
[OOC: Guild House members listed in green. Ministry members listed in blue.
Brion used 19 out of his 20 sheets of paper. This left him with 1 piece of paper. If he wanted to leave New Briar with more paper, he can retroactively spend gold from his income to have bought it in town before leaving.]
|
|
|
|
Post by reefwood on Oct 22, 2010 19:02:51 GMT -5
Day 28 - Prisoners, Spoils, Etc.
All of the gnomes and half-elves have insignia of some sort which resemble the Ionese flag on the boat at the dock. Also, I rolled a couple rounds of stabilization check which was enough to stabilize or kill everyone who was dying, so the current status of the enemy troops will not change unless you do something to change it. However, untended creatures often die on their own within days if not treated with first aid.
Prisoners
Half-elves
1 conscious (surrendered)
6 stable but unconscious (below 0 hp)
13 dead (2 skeletons)
Gnomes
3 conscious (1 dominated, 2 escaped)
1 dead (seagull)
Boars
3 conscious (1 w/ dominated gnome, 2 on the run)
1 stable but unconscious
The topic of prisoners came up in an earlier chapter, so to remind everyone on the overall Nemedoran outlook... the army is trying to conquer Vallest but with the notion that most of the current people will continue to live here under the new rule, so the Nemedoran army tries to take control peaceably when possible, but it does use force when necessary. Therefore, taking prisoners is preferred, but those who do not submit are often killed. Killing enemies who no longer pose a threat, however, would go against standard policy and doing so may result in consequences. Which isn't to say it doesn't happen, and on the flipside, it is usually understood when circumstances warrant an exception to the standard policy.
Equipment
1x Green Dragonscale Chainshirt Barding (Medium quadraped, 25 lb)
20x MW Breastplate (25 lb)
20x MW Buckler (5 lb)
20x MW Longsword (4 lb)
20x MW Composite Longbow [Str +2] (3 lb)
20x MW Ranseur (12 lb)
20x Backpack (2 lb)
20x quivers (1 lb, each holds 20 arrows)
1075x Arrows (0.1 lb each)
20x potion of cure moderate wounds [2d8+3] - (0.1 lb)
17x potion of cure light wounds [1d8+1] - (0.1 lb)
20x potion of shield of faith [+2 deflection for 2 minutes] - (0.1 lb)
17x tanglefoot bag (4 lb)
20x thunderstone (1 lb)
This does not include the equipment of the dominated gnome or her boar. Her character sheet will be sent to icnivad because he is the one controlling her.
Additionally...unless you kept track of all your arrows fired...each Archer Ranger at the dock must deduct 10 arrows from his total (which should bring their total down to 10), and each Fighter (Swordsman or Bodyguard) must deduct 5 arrows from his total (which should bring the Swordsman to 25 and Bodyguard to 35). I don't think any of the PCs used arrows, and I know these numbers aren't exact, but it seems like the best way to guesstimate arrow usage. I used a similar method for the enemy NPCs, and there are plenty of arrows left to take from them.
Misc
The first thing that needs to be decided it what to do about the boars. Once that gets figured out, we can move on to the subject of the dock, prisoners, and spoils. And remember, you haven't really explored any of the buildings yet.
Are you going to continue chasing the boars down? If so, we can just say you cut them down over the next few rounds, and you can decided whether you capture them alive or dead. Then, we can just focus on the dock.
Are you going to just let them go and do nothing about it in the near future? Then, we can just focus on the dock.
Are you going to let them go for a little while (rounds? minutes?), and try following them soon? Or let them go for long while (hours? days?), and try tracking them later? If so, we need to figure out the plan.
As it stands...Sergeant Shaw, PFC Hunter, PFC Sahme's Archer, and PFC Nim's Bodyguard are in pursuit. Sergeant Sweetwater was ordered to also join the pursuit but is worried about his fly spell running out. Corporal Steerhelm is at the dock, and PFC Shaw's Fighter has been left in charge of the dock by Shaw.
Since we have a couple weeks, it'd be nice to cover some of this online, but we don't get to it here, we'll just start here at the next session.
|
|
|
|
Post by icnivad on Oct 24, 2010 12:54:39 GMT -5
I think bodyguard is leading the chase and his intention would be to kill the boars as quickly as he could. Although shaw is probably close enough to yell a contradictory order, which would take precadence.
And if nim thought that there would be repercussions of killing the prisoners, or that that would be highly looked down upon within the army, he would refrain.
|
|
|
|
Post by Rabbit on Oct 24, 2010 19:07:36 GMT -5
Sweetwater would also be content to just kill the boars and be done with them (our mission was to secure the dock and except two renegade druids we have that covered.) Better to secure the docks. Though if Shaw gives the order to pursue without killing Sweetwater would follow it.
[In a meta-gaming way I would rather just say we killed the boars because I think the dock is where the real story is and I am not sure the boars could lead us to anything useful.]
***
I spent some time considering how Sweetwater would feel about the undead/ slaying of prisoners that will now persist with icnivad's new character.
Sweetwater (and Shaw) worship Gorum who is Chaotic Neutral and only concerned with the matters of war. Looking up info about the god I came across one legend;
So there is a specific case where Gorum (through one of his oracles) used undead to aid his champion, and therefore I think both Sweetwater and Shaw would not only be ok with using undead but encourage it. This detail might be an interested did bit in incivad's necromancer's outlook on what he does...
|
|
|
|
Post by michael on Oct 25, 2010 21:15:39 GMT -5
I just realized Brion has no confirmation the battle at the dock is actually finished, so he'd chase down the boars as fast as possible, kill them, and bring their corpses back.
As far as events at the dock while the boars are being chased down, Shaw only left his fighter in charge of because he didn't know where Corporal Steerhelm was, or if he even survived the fight. It would be assumed that the Corporal would take command as soon as he joined up with everyone else, so it's Icnivad's call as to what happens next.
|
|
|
|
Post by icnivad on Oct 25, 2010 22:35:13 GMT -5
Yeah. Actually, as I think about it, I think Nim would not know that the battle was over either, so his primary goal would be to raise a bunch of undead in case the fighting was still going on. Since there are a bunch of dead bodies, I don't really see any reason to kill any more half elves. He would kill the boar, though, since it can be raised into a slightly more powerful undead and since, as an animal companion, it probably isn't very rehabilitatable nor useful as an information source.
|
|
|
|
Post by michael on Oct 26, 2010 17:35:22 GMT -5
While Brion's group is chasing down the boars, Fighter 2 (hereafter known as Private Vargas) would take one of the cure light wounds potions off of the corpses and given it to Private Boho. (He was at -2 HP, so at a bare minimum that would make him conscious.)
The soldier that surrendered would be taking off his own armor, then stripping gear off of his surviving companions. (Or that's what he's been told to do, at least.)
|
|
|
|
Post by reefwood on Oct 26, 2010 21:20:14 GMT -5
Day 27 - 4:05pm First off, let me say that the legend found by Rabbit is pretty awesome! Although, I will emphasize that those undead were created from warriors who were already dead. But yeah, it makes sense that a Chaotic god who is Neutral on the Good-Evil axis would be okay with dipping into some evil for his cause. Second, PFC Boho is healed for 8 points from the potion of cure light wounds. Third, the riderless boars are dead. It didn't take long, though, it is good that several people went after them. A grunt alone probably would not have returned and may have not even killed one. I'm not worried about over damage for this part because I'm guessing that Brion will do at least one more healing burst to get everyone back up to full health, and any damage done to the horses by the boars will have probably be healed by this anyway. That being said, everyone else keep track of your current damage until any actual healing is done. Fourth, the conscious half-elven prisoner removes his equipment and is working on disarming the 6 unconscious half-elves. This will take several minutes (10ish) to complete, so he is still working on it.
SkeletonsNimarious can use animate dead to create up to 18 HD of undead per casting and control a total of 36 HD of undead created by this spell. Additionally, he can attempt to control up to 9 HD more of undead via the Command Undead feat. Each bloody half-elf skeleton counts as 2 HD for creation and requires 2 onyx (25 gp per onyx, so 50 gp total). Once created, however, each one only counts as 1 HD for controlling. Each bloody bore skeleton counts as 4 HD for creation and requires 4 onyx (100 gp total). Once created, however, each one only counts as 2 HD for controlling. - Nimarious used his 1st casting of animate undead to create 2 bloody half-elf skeletons that used up 4 HD of the spell and required 4 onyx (100 gp).
- Nimarious can use his 2nd casting to create up to 9 bloody half-elf skeletons for 18 HD to max out the spell and 18 onyx (450 gp).
- Nimarious can use his 3rd casting to create 2 bloody half-elf skeletons for 4 HD of the spell and 4 onyx (100 gp) as well as 3 bloody bore skeletons for 12 HD of the spell and 12 onyx (300 gp), so a total of 16 HD and 400 gp.
Once created, the bloody skeletons count as their normal HD to control them. 13 half-elves and 3 bores give a grand total of 13 HD + 6 HD = 19 HD, which is well within Nimarious' animate dead control limit of 36 HD, so they are now all under his control. Also, the grand total onyx cost is 950 gp since making them bloody required using double the resources, so they counted as 38 HD for creation (38 x25gp = 950gp). I believe Nimarious started out with 1,050 gp worth of onyx, so he will now be down to 100 gp worth of onyx.
If all this is acceptable, let me know what, if anything, you want to do next online. Also, here is an updated list of prisoners and equipment.
|
|
|
|
Post by icnivad on Oct 27, 2010 18:25:32 GMT -5
Hm. That's a lot of gems. If it's not too late, let me raise the three boars (4*3=12 gems) and 5 half elves (5*2=10 gems) for a total of 22 gems, which should leave me 20 gems for future badasses.
I'll have to make a point to stock up on gems a bit more next time I have a chance. Didn't realize it would be so easy to burn through them on these double hd bloody undead.
-Talik
|
|
|
|
Post by reefwood on Oct 27, 2010 20:15:28 GMT -5
Hm. That's a lot of gems. If it's not too late, let me raise the three boars (4*3=12 gems) and 5 half elves (5*2=10 gems) for a total of 22 gems, which should leave me 20 gems for future badasses. I'll have to make a point to stock up on gems a bit more next time I have a chance. Didn't realize it would be so easy to burn through them on these double hd bloody undead. -Talik Yeah, I was also surprised how many of the gems were used up. Adjusting the amount is fine, and I'll note the changes next time I update the prisoner/body tally. |
|
|
|
Post by michael on Oct 28, 2010 18:05:33 GMT -5
As he rode back towards the battleground at the dock, Brion confided his first officer. They'd served together for less than two weeks, but they were men of Gorum, and this was their element; the bonds formed through combat formed fast, and strong.
"Quite the invigorating afternoon, eh Sahme? Days of haggling over mineral rights, planning banquets, being led through the swamp with bags over our heads for cloak and dagger nonsense... I can't tell you how relieved I am to finally have a problem solved with blood and steel."
The two officers continued to talk as the scene at the dock came into clearer focus.
"Tell me, Sweetwater, does that look like a squad of Ionian half-elves shambling alongside Boho and Vargas?" Shaw smiled, "Our new corporal seems to have handled himself well."
As they arrived at the dock, Shaw shouted out his orders. "Form up! We get organized and tend to our wounds, then secure the area." [Healing bursts ensue.]
"Corporal Steerhelm! Your man more than earned his share of the glory today! And from the look of things, so did you. Well fought."
Sergeant Shaw then turned his attention to their one conscious prisoner. "You! Half-elf. What's your name?" [Waits for a reply] "Well, [name], my men need to secure these buildings. If there are any unpleasant surprises waiting for us, we'd all benefit by you telling us now."
|
|
|
|
Post by reefwood on Oct 28, 2010 18:12:22 GMT -5
Sergeant Shaw then turned his attention to their one conscious prisoner. "You! Half-elf. What's your name?" [Waits for a reply] "Well, [name], my men need to secure these buildings. If there are any unpleasant surprises waiting for us, we'd all benefit by you telling us now." [ OOC: This will require a Diplomacy or Intimidate roll. I can make the roll if you don't have dice handy. Just let me know which one to do.] |
|
|
|
Post by michael on Oct 28, 2010 18:51:24 GMT -5
Let's go with an Intimidate check (+14), and follow up his response with a Sense Motive (+10).
|
|
