DreamLyrics™ Play-by-Post Forums Fantasy SKT: The Storm King's Thunder OOC thread

As Arus said, it's been an honour and a pleasure, my friends. Not just in STK but playing Chandan in LMP too.

Thanks, Neptune, for all your hard work and crafting a world in which to play. And again for helping me bring both my characters to life, for which I must also thank you other players too.

Sad to see you go Nem.

Agreed. Sad to see you stop playing with us.

Thanks for the campaign so far and sorry to see you go, nem!


Speaking only for myself, the original hint indicated we needed all 10 of us to complete this side quest due to the danger, which put us on edge. However, before we even got to the town we got somewhat "ambushed" and limped into town injured. So I was expecting yet another ambush and just trying to survive being in the town long enough to complete the necessary side quest/delivery.

As it's well known that I have been co-DM'ing I apologize if anything my character has said has swayed anyone in any particular direction. I'm as clueless as the rest of you, and less experienced with Nep's evil plans to boot.

OOC matches my IC statement. I'll support whatever everyone wants to do. But perhaps I should be less paranoid of an ambush around every corner...

All the best Neil.. and if the bug bites you can always bring Arus or another character back into the game. Or bbetter still, run one yourself!

As I recall we tried to talk to several folks in the Inn and were basically rebuffed at every turn.

I think Davroar and Bern are forking off at Noanar's Hold too, iirc.

Here's the plan of our trip I wrote back in 2022!

https://www.dreamlyrics.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1033815#Post1033815

First, thank you Neil for playing in LMP and SKT. You're a terrific player and I loved DMing for you. I echo Gypsy's words I would never turn down a chance to play with you. Chandan and Arus were terrific characters and I wish you the very best.

That old 2022 post is an excellent outline for the characters that are not headed into the woods.

The fork into the High Forest is Zindra, Bern, Jaliera, Davroar and Pavel.
The rest are taking the path outlined by Nem.

Hmmm. Not at every turn. Jaliera seemed to learn something. I don't recall having to ask anyone for a persuasion, deception, intimidation or investigation roll. Hmmm.

I recall Jaliera talking to someone but I do not recall ever learning what it was about. Yes, no rolls were asked for but it seemed like every question was met by stony silence or the person we were talking to simply turned around and left, so little opportunity to engage.

Yes, that is what happened. Exactly.

It has been a pleasure and a delight, Neil.



As for the current adventure, Kriv is, and always has been, very transactional. 'Cold hard gold, cold hard truth, and cold hard steel I live by', enshrined on the sheet since the very beginning. He was along in the first instance out of loyalty and obligation to the group, together with shared objectives. Regarding Arus as a friend and helping him to fulfil the obligation to deliver the items got him this far. In his view, the undead have never particularly been worthy of singling out, negotiating as he did with a wizard with undead sentries and trading words with a banshee in our prior escapades.

He's said his piece already. What's our best tack to convincing him otherwise?

Oh well. Can't keep beating a dead horse. Though I am tremendously disappointed that a party composed mostly of supposedly "good" aligned adventurers would consciously choose to run away from a group of Undead who are terrorizing a village of innocent folks. And yes, I know some of us are "Neutral", but those alignments are more for interactions with humanoids. Undead are an abomination and usually call for extermination anywhere they are found by anyone who has the ability to do so.

well ... some times the 'mission' has to 'overcome' what the 'group' might rather do <shrug>

MikeD - Dealing with this would be a day or two at most and we are NOT under a critical time crunch (Don't want to delay forever, but a couple of days here and there along they way doesn't seem to be critical.). In fact we don't really know much about what we're supposed to do re:Giants other than continue to gather information. This mission is going to take months and months of game time.

I am toying with options.

OK. It looks like the party has decided to skip on this town, which is perfectly fine.

On a related note, my wife and I are setting out on a 3-week trip to the New York area from our home in Florida next week. The next few days are crazy hectic but I'm sure to have some time to write up posts when my wife's behind the wheel. Our daughter-in-law is having a c-section on Aug 13 and we're full-time baby sitters for a large portion of that time. So spotty posting is to be expected. I might velocipost or disappear. I'm sure there'll be some of that. We leave Wednesday and will be on the road for 3 days.

Now that we're "9" characters (with Zindra and Aubric) and we're splitting, The group going into the High Forest with Aquadyne DMing that includes Bern, Davroar, Jaliera, Pavel and Zindra is 5 and the group I'm DMing is 4. That's perfectly fine. Aqua's group is heavily nature in nature and Pavel offers the strongest magic using for that group. The other group, Kriv, Aubric, Sindar, and Zhu also has good balance. So I'm inclined to move forward like that but we can open discussion.

I suggest that the party figures out where to meet again, how to communicate if need be and any other logistics. Aqua and I will open new threads this week, one each for the two groups.

Oh well. We will miss the Holy Avenger +5 and the Ring of Multiple Wishes hidden in the tower here, but que-sera-sera <g>.

Have fun Nep!

Bern is. He has a doppelganger to take care of!!

Zeim, you are operating under an assumption. Yes, there are things that point to the lords of the keep being undead. But we have absolutely no concrete evidence. Because of that, it means angering someone to investigate. Once we investigate, if we determine we have done the wrong thing, say they aren't undead, then what do we do? "Oops, my bad." No, that just doesn't fly. We will have invaded sovereign territory without any actual right.

While we as PCs can wiggle it this way and that, the bottom line is to invade or not. Do we invade on an assumption? Good people don't just step on other people's rights and toes for the sake of "gosh, this might be wrong." No, they are good; they need a real reason.

That is my 4 cents.

That is why I asked for our Paladin and Ranger to find out so we could be certain. Also, Zhu is within her rights to ask for an audience with the Lords. Yes they could decline, but that would brand them as possible criminals.

Asking for an audience is entirely different than breaking in (sneaking in) to see if they are undead.

As I said, let's make the call. Aqua and I are non-voters. Arus is out.

Option #1 is to split.

Option #2 is to stay and investigate or infiltrate or whatever. If this option is chosen, you'll decide what to do as a group.

Bern is against splitting the group

The group =is= splitting, but the question is when; now or eventually.

Zhu is in favor of dealing with whatever these Lords turn out to be. She'd suggest the Paladin and Ranger check to see if they are Undead first.

I am going to meta-game for a minute here. I have played D&D since Chainmail and one thing I know for 100% certain is that the DM does not send you to a place unless there is something there to do that will advance the party's mission or abilities, such as magic items or clues to find. Arus would NEVER have been given a mission to deliver harnesses here unless there were things to do. We have more than enough clues to highly suspect Undead are involved. Now dealing with this may not be absolutely critical to the overall mission but typically doing what the DM has laid out for you is usually worthwhile.

However, it seems those who want to leave have already begun doing so so leave it be, we're headed towards Silverymoon anyway so she'll report it there. IC I can tell you she is terribly disappointed with the group. If we were not playing a D&D campaign she would be leaving you here and figuring out how to help these people.