Flipz

A most devilish thought just occurred to me: what would be summoned if Alexis got her hands on the Zirconia? My vote is Cthulu or some other Lovecraftian horror.

YES. Perfect. Thank you so much! ...out of curiosity, would Sealing do anything special to said character?

"If he catches on, we threaten to kill him, and if he refuses to cooperate, we follow through. Simple as that. Someone had to help the rebels get established here, and it's likely him."

Quest 31 is like that, too, but with less shopping. If Doc and WBD ever do a dual-QM thing, though, I seriously do not expect the Quest goal to be reached, or even regarded. AT ALL. And I want in. My hat is off to both of them for their improvisational skills.

"If you have need of us, do not hesitate to call. We know the Rebels are allied with Wren, or they were at last we heard of them. Taking her down would indeed be within the scope of our mission, so I hope our paths will cross again in Dastan. If not, consider me a given asset in the future; should you require my aid, you shall have it, no questions asked." "And as to the Emperor...if he is a traitor, perhaps these Rogue Lion disguises will fool him, at least long enough to get the information we need out of him."

Arthur nods thoughtfully. "That might work for Roland, but we should still use the disguises on the Rebels. We won't get anywhere fighting battle after battle, we need to get in there and kill the leaders already. We can slaughter the rest afterwards if necessary, along with anyone else who get's in our way. I'm sick of being pushed around, it's time we did some pushing." OOC: See my previous edit, alexandre.

"That's correct, yes, unless you can have them done before we see him...actually, it's fine. We'll just wait for the disguises to be prepared before we go see Emperor Roland. In the meanwhile, if you have an empty room, I'll rest, I suggest everyone else with a bedroll do the same. Actually, Alexandre, could you lend Luke your bedroll so he can regain his Ether? Luke, you should heal Hans and Alexandre so you don't waste Ether." OOC: And assuming I can control Luke in Skrall/WBD's absence... Luke heals Alexandre and Hans.

Wait, what? We actually know things the other Questies don't? It certainly doesn't feel like it. Four, soon, considering how confused Arthur and Alexandre are, we are not going to put up with any guff from the people we're going to see. (It's with great difficulty that I decided not to have Arthur wring Alandri's neck for his complete lack of help so far. )

Arthur grins devilishly. "Agreed. We have next to no knowledge of what's going on in this land, and we need some answers. Once we're done here, we will...persuade Emperor Roland to talk." "yer highness, is there anyone in Drakencourt who might be able ta give us some answers? Yer head of intelligence, a shady information broker in the back alleys, heck, a particlarly attentive bartender would give us some information. An' if we can't investigate tha break-ins, then what would ya like us ta do?" "Infiltrate them?" "Wha--?" Arthur shrugs nonchalantly. "It's how I had planned to sneak into the Cultist base with Isabella, before Vipera took her and Skrall. Darkness spell to hide us until we could steal uniforms, then sneak around and wreak havoc. Though I do like your bartender idea." "...an' wha' is with tha obsession wi' alcohol all o' a sudden?" "Never mind that. Your highness, what informants can you send us to?" OOC: In order, we'll: visit Alandri's informant, if he doesn't have one, we'll visit Emperor Roland, and after that we'll get some disguises and prepare to infiltrate the Rebels. EDIT: "Actually, you know what? Never mind. We're going to see if we can get Emperor Roland to talk, we'll bring back word before we leave the palace again. In the meantime, could you please see about having your men prepare some Rogue Lion disguises so that Alexandre, Luke, Knyghton, Hans, Sir Poletad, and I can infiltrate the Rebels?"

OOC: I drank one of those Tonics already. "There have been some...difficulties. We should start at the beginning; first, a man by the name of "Russel" apparently duped another group of Heroes into taking weapons from Fort Drakon. When we parted ways, they were preparing to return here to report to the Emperor they were assigned to; I believe this was Emperor Roland's group, if I am not mistaken. We then attempted to follow the traitor, but along the way we met Hans and Sir Poletad, here, who assisted us when Lady Wren appeared. She is working with the Lion Rebels, your highness, though it is apparently a temporary alliance. She mentioned that the Rebels were planning to send someone by the name of "XX" to oppose us, but she took his place. Wren revealed that the Cultists were on the verge of awakening the Chimaera, and that the Dragons of your land are nearly wiped out; they did not have the strength to oppose the Chimaera, and in fact have abandoned your people entirely. Skrall, Hans, and Poletad's young friend Vipera was the only one of the dragons who wished to face this threat; just minutes ago, Vipera took Skrall and Isabella to face the Chimaera. If they fail, the whole land is doomed..." "On tha bright side, Wren, XX, and tha Lion Rebels seem ta be opposed to tha Cultists; Wren asked us to stop the Chimaera, and we know she's working with tha Rebels, and according to Sir Poletad, she's also been working with another assassin, a U'Kin named U'Vires. There's three--no wait, four, things we need ta know. First, we'd like to know if ya've heard anythin' about Rogue Lion activity in tha area; we know Sir Lyons, one of Loren's right-hand men, is in Drakencourt or the surrounding area, thanks ta Sir Poletad's intelligence." Knyghton smiles at the frog paladin before continuing. "Second an' Third, we need ta know everything ya can tell us about this XX character and this U'Vires person Wren's been workin' with. Fourth...accordin' ta the intelligence Sir Poletad gave us, one o' tha three Emperors has been declared a traitor? Any information ya can give us on tha' would be most appreciated."

Question: For classes that do not gain additional Ether per level, do they lose access to Ether if they started with it, or do they just keep the amount of Ether they already had?

"I thought he liked us just fine. I was probably too busy reading those books of his to notice, though...I hope if the others come across them at the Cultist hideout, they'd pick them up for me."

That's...an excellent way of putting it. This is why I didn't keep Arthur in the bar, even though it would be more in-character to be indecisive. I (suddenly) realized he is now acting Party Leader, and decided to push him a little out-of-character so the Quest could move on and be fun for the other players. And you know what? It turned out better than I thought. Yeah. I'm definitely doing it wrong here.

Note that said darkness gem is useless if the Hero using it can't roll a hit with it.

Frowning at the price of the Dwarven Ale, Arthur buys a Mead and thanks the lady. "So, gang? What now? We've lost our Hunter and our Rogue, which means we can't Track anything Down and can't Flee if things get too hot for us. What were we even supposed to be doing here?" "...I don't suppose ya remember anythin' about tha Rebels?" Arthur's expression is unreadable but seemingly angry. Suddenly, he claps Knyghton on the back. "I knew there was a reason I liked you. Alright, then, let's go visit the Emperor and see if he's had any better leads than we've gotten." "Aren't you going to drink that Mead?" "Nah, I'll wait 'till we're through with the Emperor. Besides, if our luck keeps running like it has, it'd likely do nothing anyhow. To the Palace!"

Yeah. My mistake with Arthur was giving him an arc; it's a great idea in theory, but in practice luck tends to screw you up. Also, I set up a lot of things about Arthur's homeland that no one would ever get the chance to see; true, the place WOULD be an interesting place to set a Quest (I even considered it a while before scrapping the idea), but then it's getting into Sue territory, setting up an entire Quest just to reveal things about Arthur's backstory, and even then there wouldn't be any guarantee that it would end up being revealed (just look at how much I've screwed up Doc's latest Quest). I think this is a trap for people like me who take roleplaying just a bit too seriously; in all of my rush to try and be "authentic", to try and figure out what Arthur would do in any given situation, I've made him too stiff and inflexible, and unable to respond to anything unexpected. Connections. That was the last "c" I was looking for in the section on conflict. I called them "interactions", but it really is connections. There's some irony in there involving me specifically telling players to trust other players to develop their characters, but not taking that advice myself. I broke off Arthur's connections when I should have been building them up, and then I tried to repair them when an antagonistic connection had already been formed by his antisocial reactions. No connections, no character, and I just can't seem to let Arthur go enough to develop him properly--he has a "destiny," and he shouldn't. That's what I'm trying, but it's not working. I actually liked it better when Arthur was rolling "fail" and "damage" all the time, I had something to work with for that path. Then again, that's just copying Khorne...which is another roleplaying mistake: trying to follow in someone else's footsteps. If something fits, it fits, of course, but it should never be intentionally shoehorned in. I've shoehorned in a LOT of things for Arthur, and he's become non-viable because of it. Maybe I should just write another play: "How NOT to Roleplay: The Curious Case of Arthur Justus Regulus VII".

Defeated, Arthur heads for the nearest bar. "Bartender! Your strongest stuff." "Ah, Arthur, have ya ever had alcohol before?" "Not real stuff, just the weak ales they served in the Hall, why?" "...no reason."

See, he knows how to play an RPG! And that settles my IC response, I've blown any chance at a cohesive story for Arthur, might as well go for broke/go out with a bang.

Yeah, good idea. To be honest, that never seemed like the real goal, it smelled like a side plot intended to distract us from what we were REALLY supposed to be doing.

...aaand I think that means I need to abandon Arthur completely once the Quest ends. I relied too much on trying to set him up for the future, and when it didn't come into play, it made him nonsensical and illogical, which makes me look like an idiot. I'll likely keep him around until I come up with someone better, but unless something changes, this will probably be Arthur's last Quest. I really hate to do it, I have some really cool stuff in store, but I've screwed him up too badly. Again. In other news...what the hell are we supposed to be doing, then? Even re-reading the entire Quest, I have no idea what to do.

He had been leading us along them, presumably we can just keep walking in that general direction. And it's not like we have anything else to do, we don't have any more plot hooks to follow.

"Skrall was following some tracks, I think. We were already headed the right direction, and stopped to do some shopping. Perhaps if we just keep walking this direction?" Arthur shakes his head as if to clear it. "Whatever. You guys do what you have to do, I'm going to follow the tracks Skrall had started to lead us along, presumably toward the Cultists. Come with me or don't."

"No!" Arthur cries. He tries to grab Isabella's hand as she vanishes... "We have to find them, to stop the Chimaera! We must do it!"

Quest 31 Spoiler for Zeph and Doc: In other news...erm, what was the plot again?

It's NEVER too early. Damn it!