swils

Been that way for a week now

Pull a Gerudo Desert/Lost Woods on the party, requiring a compilation of hints from previous npcs, or a compass to guide the proper path, else they (unannounced/subtlely (sp?) ) get sent to square one each time they stray from the pathNPC along the way tries to sell them trinkets and things, among them a Magic Compass. As the party leaves, the NPC calls after them, letting them know that he'll still be there when they are tired of getting lost. Eventually party comes back to buy a compass. If you want to be really generous, hide an npc up ahead who has some reason to buy back that compass from them. It's only unrealistic if you're not creative with it. /shrug

Catching Hoke's glance, Thormanil shrugs. "..Well thats a first, heh. Anything you think he wouldn't miss?" he laughs, leaning back in his chair.

"Mighty fancy cloak there, Arthur. I've done plenty of work for the house, all I ever got was this little guy!" he laughed, reaching to pull Arx away from the cloak he was trying to bundle himself up in, "Wouldn't trade him for anything now, though. C'mon, Arx, quit foolin' around with Arthur's new cape." Arx reluctantly unwrapped himself from the embroidered cloth. <"Really? Because I'd trade you for a cloak this nice in a heartbeat!"> "Haha, would ya now? Well maybe Fabian can rig you up something fabulous."

...Yes, we're playing along like that for Arthur's benefit. Wouldn't want him to feel foolish! It's been a long week. Let's just go.. retcon that.

"Ey there, Arthur. Alex," he chuckles, "Yes, nice to meet you." It had only been a few weeks since hatching, but the dragonling had noticeably grown. He looked up at the new man, seemingly an old friend of Thormanil's, <"Dastan? I've been with Thormanil since I hatched, here in the freeport and then tangled up in a political mess with the greenskins in Baltarok. Warmongering bunch, they were. Shame there wasn't more action! Or more loot!"> Arx let slip a toothy grin. Thormanil followed suit, asking Arthur, "Heh, you catch any of that? I'm still gettin' a handle on it myself. So, who's the secret admirer?" he nods towards the fancy box Arthur was unwrapping.

Seeing Arthur return to the Hall, Thormanil stands and tries to catch his attention, haphazardly juggling a bottle of Bright Polish a ways behind the dark haired druid.

Immediately thought of:

I like the idea of a class based around throwing weapons. I don't know if books really fit, especially as a throwing weapon, but in my head I picture someone throttling a big baddie with a several hundred page, ancient tome, and I can't help but laugh. Books as weapons should definitely be a thing! For flavor/rp's sake, maybe they could be upgraded in a unique way. Maybe each scholar just gets a (very well bound and reinforced) journal upon joining the ranks. Each distinctly unique enemy species the owner kills could be added to the journal and boost its knowledge-base by one. Knowledge contained within the journal would be to WP as experience is to level. Initially there would be a huge power spike as the journal fills up quickly (imagine a fields run) from wp1, but at wp10 it takes two unique pieces of knowledge to gain one wp, etc. Given that its a lv30 class, the early spike wouldn't be so bad as it would really just be catching the scholar up to the strength of their previous weapons. The issue of "well, what's a unique species" could fall to QM discretion. Taking an old rat battle into consideration, they're all rats so it would only be +1 knowledge. The onus would be on the player to keep an up to date list of knowledge somewhere. Reading back over it and thinking about it, that would get really complicated really fast. Maybe a simpler alternative: every completed quest (in the future and retroactively applied) gives +1 knowledge, and at the discretion of the qm, events within future quests could award a knowledge point. Things like encountering a new faction or meeting an important person, or facing a legendary beast, etc. Smaller plot points along the way could be grounds for a knowledge point, such as when we learned about and had to participate in Marga's ancient practice of negotiation by blood. For bonus awesomeness, players could keep an actual journal somewhere (maybe on your bio page for eb) where they keep such entries. Just a small tidbit, a few lines describing the thing they got a knowledge point for. It wouldn't be necessary, but would really go well with the idea of being a scholar. And then as the pages stack up, the journal becomes a more and more effective bludgeoning tool! I know its a huge deviation from the norm, but it makes more sense than taking a tome to Anwyl and asking him to reforge it to be stronger. Plus it would give qms another way to offer neat little rewards throughout the quest, perhaps rewarding players for taking the time to delve a little deeper into the back stories they have prepared for their players. Edit- And they'd still have their throwing weapons if they'd prefer to upgrade by normal means!

No, you have to acquire an artifact that has the immunity already, or acquire a scroll of that particular effect and imbue it into an artifact in order to get the immunity (see: Marketplace thread)

A new notice pinned to the quest board catches Thormanil's eye. House-sitting for the Shadeaux. It had certainly been a while since he had worked for them, and how much trouble could he possibly get into while house sitting? "Quite a lot." he jokes to Arx, chuckling as he signs his name under Quest 103. In addition, he posts a notice of his own on the board, hoping some clever wording will actually draw some attention:

No, those masks are for far, far greater purposes... If only I could get my hands on the proper equipment, heh.

Yep, passed them off to Fabian and "inspired" him to come up with a new line of fashionable fighting footwear, as a result.

Sorry about that, the day got away from me. Stats updated according to the trade.

The delay is on my end, Flipz. I'll get to it later today.

If you're aiming to go on Kinto's Shadeaux quest, Flipz, I can serve as your intermediary. Unless you expect your trade to exceed 1800 gold, heh.

"Shoot, I dunno. I thought we were really makin' progress in Baltarok. We kept a bunch of hot heads pretty calm during their clan meet and reunited the clans, we quelled a warmonger and stopped her little invasion. Heck, I almost thought we'd swayed 'em to the idea of a fresh start with the Kingdoms. But then when Imaestym was laid to ruin..." he sighed, "I just don't know. The tension's eased for now, but only time'll tell. They've got Haldor now, and I know he'll provide good counsel to the Orcs. Hopefully he can help guide both sides of the bridge to a peaceful future."

Thormanil pays a visit to Anwyl's stall, requesting that the topaz be pried from its socket on his Thundering Totem. "How's about you keep the axe and we call it even?" The dwarf points to his sign "How's about you pay me the difference." "Heh, fine, fine, ya miser." Thormanil slides 5 gold across the counter along with the axe. After a short while, Anwyl hands him back the Topaz. Remove Topaz, -50. Sell Thundering Totem(WP9), +45. Net: -5 gold (1973 -> 1968)

"I can do 150. Pleasure doin' business."

Thormanil slides into the Hall, burdened by a big back of toys and trinkets. He spies Nerwen across the room. "Don't think I didn't notice you eyeing this sword as you passed it to me, heh. It's shiny but I've got no use for it. Who's got time to meditate during a battle, anyway?" He rests the finely crafted sword against the table, a soft glow emanating from its blade.

Let me say, up front, that the Baltarok trilogy was, overall, a great series to be a part of. I'm also really sorry for my bouts of inactivity. First there was finals, then I had to move out of the dorms (to my dad's house with limited internet), and *then* I got a call offering me an amazing summer internship opportunity. I just had to pack up again and move a few hours out of town to a much smaller town, where I then had to wait a few days to get settled into more permanent lodging. It was a turbulent few weeks, and I recognize the negative impact it had on my participation in the quest, especially as things drew to a close. I could go on and on about the positives, so I hope you'll excuse me if I just skim them. Wonderful backstory. From the Orc side, the whole country felt alive. The characters were really well developed, introduced, and played out. CMP, we spoke midway through the quest, and you were concerned about the pacing and balance of RP/battles. Throughout, I felt as though both generally were pretty good. My biggest gripe would have to be the final battle. I wish the neutral victory hadn't been announced. Assuming things played out in parallel to reality, the heroes who sided with the Kingdoms should have had the onus of persuading the Orc-siders to help defend against the horde. As Zepher noted, it probably should have been lospided at the start, and if we didn't want to get trampled in the end, we should have had to fight the orcs back out of the Central Tower, or similar. There was also a lot of confusion. I understand that it comes with the territory of a large battle/party, but it doesn't detract from the disappointment when a good plan is thrown out due to a few mistakes. By the end of the battle, I really was growing tired of it and just wanted it to end. I was burned out, it had gone from a fun challenge to a chore, and that definitely contributed to the quest taking a backseat in my priority list once real life stepped in. The mechanics were also a bit choppy. Honestly, I thought that the horses were meant to be targets for our lower level party members, rather than having health counters. These two things have been harped on already, though, so I don't feel the need to. Additionally, the row/section system got really messy. I'd originally understood it to mean that we could move one section per action, but that consumed the action. Apparently we were allowed to move as many sections as we wanted, but it took a turn. Throughout the fight, people had been able to move and act in a single action (myself included), and the healing/item use... Blah. There was a lack of consistency between rounds and without a set standard to reference (aside from the rules, which were obviously open to some interpretation on both the QM and Player sides), it made the later stages very difficult to properly plan around. I think the fight was set up well and was good in concept, it just needed some refinement and clarification earlier on. The Diplomcay event. Oh, this one. I loved it, in concept (I find myself saying that a lot!). In practice, as you noted yourself, you didn't account for our wealth of influences when you offered the actions. That somewhat trivialized the event. But beyond that, I really did try to guess characters' alignments based off of their words, and often found myself thoroughly surprised when their true alignments were found/revealed. At the moment I can't pull up any exact quotes, but there were a few times where I thought I had thoroughly nudged them into their role based on what they said, and they were actually on the opposite end of one or both spectrums. I'm not sure if it's just a result of you having to arbitrarily assign alignments to them after having already established the characters, or what, but something was off. I want to stress, again, that overall I really enjoyed the quest(s). I thought they were very well put together, and even if some things didn't play out as well as hoped, the concepts behind them were great and I'd love to see them reappear elsewhere. I had the chance to play Arx off of Benji for a bit, so that was a nice RP spot, and lots of other players really fleshed out/expanded their characters and relationships with other characters. Bravo, CMP, Zeph, and WBD. Thanks for the great quest!

Thormanil follows the rest of his crew onto the ship. I am so, so sorry for my inactivity these last few days. Real life came at me in a big (good) way.

Am I the only one seeing odd pictures popping up instead of the character portraits in Baltarok?

Primary: 60G + Tarok's Wrath Secondary: 60G + Sword of the Warrior of the Light + Consumable (prefer Emergency Essence) I believe Thormanil should have an extra 0.25 exp gained (0.25*2*3, 35.25->36.75, rather than 36.5)