Kingmaker

We have a new player – Tim. Yay! Well … if he turns up again this week, we have a new player. You know how it is.

Dwarf cleric. I like pathfinder dwarves – ran a dwarf monk last game. Cleric isn’t really his bag (man), but we’ll see what happens.

Congrats to my IRL niece for pumping out her first sprog. I am a grand-uncle again.

We stole an egg, and some chicks. We are not sure that the chicks was a good idea. There was a party. We are in the mountains again. There is a dungeon^®. I am excited: it has been a long time since I was in a dungeon. I hope there is loot^®.

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Michael,

Back from the mountains. We recovered the Roc egg, and three chicks. His Grace feels that raising three Rocs is a fine idea and will inevitably turn out well. As you can tell from the snark, I am less convinced of this. But he’s coming along well as nobility – at least so far as expensive folly is concerned – so there’s a positive.

In any case, the egg proved a huge hit at some festival or other and brought a surprising amount of commerce into the duchy. Enough for another statue, in fact. We cleared out the worst of the monsters from around Lake Silverstep – some mud-creatures, some carnivorous plants. It all should be safe for the farmers, now.

More soberly, we are addressing ourselves to the issue of these enslaved kobolds. We host a number of refugees from the mountains to our east, and His Grace seems to have a soft spot for the sneaky scaly little things. I know that many feel that slavery is probably the best thing for them, but that’s not the opinion around here it seems.

As we are heading into caves, His Grace has retained a dwarf – a cleric of Irori – to accompany us. An excellent idea. I still use my belt, but there’s no substitute for the real thing, and his magics will prove invaluable.

As it stands, we are camped in the mountains near a cave entrance which – we estimate – quite possibly joins up with the underground complex that the kobolds describe. Tom seems a little more awake – some of my dreams involve exploration of underground places that I have never been in. Rescuing the slaves is all very well, but we hope there is loot.

As always,
Your sister,
Seldrynn

Kingmaker

Bevis dropped in for the evening, but didn’t get a lot of game in. We spent a while doing kingdom building, then just as things looked like becoming fun, someone cast “summon spouse” and he was yanked away.

We are in mountains, which is very different from forest and cities. There are not many trees and no buildings. There is not much magic, and no people but us. We travel more slowly, because the shape of the ground interferes with her usual mode of locomotion. The horses cannot come here. I do not know why there are mountains, or for what purpose they were made such an inconvenient shape.

We saw a Roc, but not very close. We flew straight down a long way very fast, but I don’t think that was what she intended.

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Michael,

Not really much to say, again. I can’t imagine what kerfuffle my recent … actions may have caused. Be that as it may, I have a certain old hand-me-down with me that you may have heard of in passing, and I have bonded to it. It’s actually been around long enough to have developed a personality. You hear all sorts of things, obviously, but we seem to be getting along well enough for the moment. It isn’t very talkative, perhaps because it’s been dormant for a good while. I might call it “Tom”, after its initials, if I need to refer to it.

As for me, well, we are in the middle of integrating Varnhold. The main issue is that it’s a fair ways distant. We patrol the lands on the road between here and there, but no a lot else, and so we were looking to expand the areas that we control. This means the mountains to the south of Varnhold and in particular Lake Silverstep. The lake is shaped uncannily like a dragon footprint and this has given rise to a number of stories … or who knows, maybe they are not stories. Tom hasn’t told me anything in particular. If there was really a continent-sized silver dragon making footprints, then it was a very, very long time ago.

Anyway. The lake is home to a species of very, very delicious eel. It turns out that these things are somewhat intelligent – about as intelligent as a four-footed animal – and consequently difficult to catch. Rainor was plucking them out of the water, the rest of us fished all day and caught nothing. It seems that you can catch them with berries blessed by a druid, but that’s about it.

I think it would be a fine idea to set up a fishing resort here, to ban the use of magic (unsporting, you know), and then when the fishermen fail to catch anything to sell ’em grilled silverstep eel (which we do use magic to catch) at a positively exhorbitant price. Perhaps license one or two fishermen to use magic, and tax the catch outrageously. All for the conservation of the species, of course, to prevent overfishing.

Anyway. We headed up into the mountains. We found a nice clearing and what do you know, we were promptly attacked by a Roc. Yes, they are as enormous as all the stories make out. It grabbed Sir Prancealot (who was with us) and flew off. I attempted to teleport to the thing in midair to give Sir P a Feather Fall, but calculating range is tricky, and – look, I wound up plummeting from a height of several hundred feet. I did get the spell off and saved myself, but I was out of the combat.

Arrgh! Arrgh! Guess what my character is wearing on her other hand? That’s right: a ring of Feather Falling.

The thing is – I have a Ring of Feather Falling. Have done for ages. I removed it while getting to know Tom, and just forgot to put it back on. It’s going back on, forthwith!

Anyway. I think Rainor shot the Roc a few times and Rainin – who can fly by the way – caught Sir P in midair. Rainor tells me that Rainin saved him rather than me because he was confident that a) I can take care of myself and b) I wouldn’t have teleported into midair without some idea of how I was to get down. Hrmmph.

Dave missed the fact that half-celestials can fly. This will be … interesting.

So. We’d like to find this Roc’s nest. And loot it. My Locate Object doesn’t have the range, but I’m pretty sure I have a scroll of Create Treasure Map laying about. Someone back at Forth Tuskwater wants a Roc egg to make an omlette, and it will be quite fortuitous if this particular one has one. I have a rod of Extend Spell, so I’m pretty sure we can get it back there on a Floating Disk [900 lbs – 9 hours, 18 hours with the rod]. It will be rather egg-on-a-teaspoon. We shall have to find the egg and see. If there is one.

As always,
Seldrynn.

Kingmaker – Giacamo’s notes-for-epic

Hmm. We left the fort and went south, but is not very epic – everyone is talking talking “oh, we don’t really know where we are going”. And worrying about the kingdom. And then they decide to go back home and use Morgana’s cauldron, and maybe go through centaur fields because bracelet drawing have centaur writing on it and maybe to ask them about it. Maybe not very good plan, but turned out good.

And here did victorious Jope turn and speak to his companions, saying: Behold! Our trail ends here – unknown plain and mountain-hex before us. We shall turn home to seek guidance of witch-cauldron, coven of Morgana. But we shall make our way through Nomen-plain, knowledge of strange centaur rune and sigil to win.

And so journeyed he northward, though plain of Nomen until war-party came of centaur bold and free. Parley made he, and conveyed they him to their priest-queen.

Dave mentioned that the diplomacy succeeded just barely thanks to the fact that we hailed the centaurs in sylvan. Lot of role-playing that night, which is good.

Victory-token rendered Jope to Queen: ancient centaur spear hard-won from spriggan-fort. They did take counsel, and learned Jope of death’s valley southward – and priestess-heir there lost. Priestess-queen ancient centaur-ban lifted, and lay quest on Jope to venture to forbidden valley.

Yet Jope, always duty-mindful, delayed his quest, home to return, and counsel to take with Restov-nobles.

Rainor also found a centaur that spoke elven and they had a bit of a chat about the lay of the land. Mastodons. Bullettes. Handy things to know about.

Is not very epic – “Oh, ok, but first we have to do stuff.” I think have to fix this later. We go to Restov and do shopping, and give Report of why

Screw it.

• Giacomo did the epic for the Centaurs. it was not badly received
• We returned whatshisface’s sons sword. Sad story there
• Jope bought a carriage. We went home and did some kingdome building.
• We scryed on the other end of this friendship ring. Dave was totally “oh, one of the players has to be in on it.”, so Switch joined Morgana’s coven briefly. The scrying was interfred with by … something.
• Went to the valley of the dead. Guared by a heavy, which Jope took out.
• Switch was attacked by a thingy on account of she scryed on the valley. Thingy dropped her to a Wis of 0 before … actually, Rainor did most of the damage but Switch kill-stole by way of an Acid Arrow which she had dropped into the thing prior to being disabled.