dev_chieftain (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dev_chieftain) wrote2012-02-28 08:41 am
dev_chieftain) wrote2012-02-28 08:41 am
Lots and lots of gaming. Gaming in spades! Super gaming.
1. Danny's brother noted him yesterday asking him for advice about DMing D&D, which was just about the coolest thing ever. I know it might not seem like much to those of you who yawn and roll your eyes whenever I talk about D&D, but it's pretty damn awesome to have someone who's just getting into tabletop say to you, personally, "Oh my gosh...this game is really cool! Please teach me everything you can about it!" I've gotten that feeling a couple of times when DMing for events at the local gamestore, and it is a VERY warm fuzzy feeling. This is so cool!
2. Dustin's going to be running a pathfinder game on Fridays, so I'm trying to decide what kind of character to play. The setting is a floating-islands-over-ravaged-planet type, with a central goddess that people never really see, but frequently worship; the floating islands were created by mages to save life, since they're higher than the endlessly hungry monsters that ate the world beneath.
Here are what I'm considering playing:
Gnome Bard - Mahi
Description: Extremely dark complexion; dark eyes, and blue-and-indigo hair. She is whimsical in her choice of speech, often rhyming intentionally or being alliterative more than one is naturally inclined to do.
Sea-Singer! (Sort of)
Obsessed with the written and spoken word. Her prized possessions are dictionaries, quills, ink, the accoutrements of writing. She is not the kind of bard who always sings, but she is totally the kind of bard who has limerick-offs with anyone who dares challenge her. Bookmaking, from tanning the hide for the cover to writing the contents of the book in question, is her deepest passion. She loves writing down everything-- even the things people would rather she didn't-- in her books. Prior to her current obsession, Mahi was into rapier-fighting, and she still duels with people regularly for sport (though not to kill). She has no concept of ownership over anything except books-- she would never take someone's books, or tools to make them, without asking or paying first. However, to her food, clothes, houses, money, horses, whatever-- that's all pretty much free for all. Mahi would probably be chaotic good. Possibly chaotic neutral in some situations.
She has long experience traveling. She is likely to abandon a ship if it lingers in the same place for too long.
Human Monk - Aigua
Description: Dark-haired, with sea-green eyes and a darker complexion. She is stocky and muscular, tanned from many years' travel, but not notably short or tall for a human. Friendly, with a tendency to be loud and rambunctious.
Monk of the Empty Hand!
Once a palace guard for royalty, Aigua used to serve as a matter of course, loyally, faithfully, until one day she was inexplicably called to trial for plotting the assassination of the very people she protected. Through her farce of a trial, she was able to see that she had been selected to avert suspicions from a nobleman of the house that was seeking to perform the very assassination she was now taking blame for. She was unable to convince the nobility of her innocence, stripped of her rank, armor and weapons, and cast into prison for several years. The assassination later occurred as the woman orchestrating it had planned, and, gloating, that woman came to taunt Aigua in her cell.
She released Aigua, as apology for using her in the plot to create greater trust between herself and the now-dead lady-warrior that had previously headed the house. Aigua made an attempt to kill her, but years of imprisonment had made her weak, and her opponent was a Witch. Amused by the attempt, she decided to curse Aigua with silence, put upon her a charm that forced her to serve whomever should hold the accompanying charm, and sent her as a house servant to a political ally. Aigua was thus forced to serve around the house of an innocent, but somewhat airheaded gentleman on a faraway island for some years.
By chance, the gentleman for whom Aigua worked befriended a wizard who, unfamiliar with woman of her complexion, considered her very beautiful. After detecting the spells upon her, he offered to remove them in exchange for her romantic affections. She refused, repulsed by the offer, but they became friends because of it, when he realized that she was quite capable of reading and writing, and could communicate with him in that way. She related her story to him, revealing the foul play of the woman who'd sold her to the man for whom she currently worked, and he brought the woman to justice with the power of the ruling nobility that backed him. When they offered to remove her curses as payment for her service in bringing the woman to justice, she agreed.
Having befriended the wizard, and having no particular ill-will to her erstwhile Lord of the house, she began to travel with the wizard. Reclaiming the full use of her voice took a lot of practice, but having been forcibly silenced for so long, she had quite a bit to say. The wizard's ultimately lawful intentions made him dear to her as a close friend, and they policed the land as best they could together, seeking out injustice or duplicity and exposing it. Though she'd once worn armor and fought with a sword, she abstained from returning to the use of them, abhoring weaponry in favor of simply using whatever came to hand.
After many years of successfully working with her friend, they parted ways, partially because she wished to keep traveling and he to settle down, and partially because they did not see eye to eye on what justice or law meant.
I kind of have a half-baked idea that the party is a bunch of airship pirates and they decided to pillage a town she happened to be in, picked her up among the rest of the people and stuff they were stealing, and then she just Could Not Be Bothered With This Shit and decided to join their crew. They were so surprised they didn't stop her.
Personality wise she probably seems much more cheerful / loud / thoughtless than she actually is, and then drops into Okay, Now We Talk Quietly and Seriously when necessary.
Alchemist Dwarf- Vode
Description: Gray-brown haired, with dark eyes and fairly pale complexion. Not many freckles. Slender, with a tendency to frown and a dour demeanor.
Not much for exploration at all, given the choice. Vode grew up in the thick of a big city, working for the guard. She comes from a long line of Dwarven guardsfolk, but her own interests proved to be more scholarly than battle-driven. Where she and her family met and could agree, however, was alchemy: the service of providing the guard cover in battle through the use of bombs. While her favorite uses of alchemical works are extracts and mutagens, she learned to make bombs as well so that she'd get along better with her family.
Vode is completely out of her element on airships, preferring to stay within bustling city streets whenever possible. (Of course, bustling city streets and cities in general want little to do with alchemists unless they're helping the guard to fight off invaders and pirates and all.) She is wily and streetsmart, a fast-talker and deeply fond of games of chance.
Why did Vode join the party? She owed a massive gambling debt and so came aboard the ship to earn enough to pay the debt off. If she doesn't succeed in a year's time, they've threatened to harm her family (children? siblings?).
(If children probably should detail how that happened.)
Cavalier Halfling OR Dwarf - Tanli
Description: Dark complexion, black hair, long and smooth, with gray eyes and a tendency to smirk.
Order of the cockatrice Cavalier
Tanli grew up knowing she was skilled and wanting to show the world that this was so. She always worked extra hard to impress her teachers-- both her parents, who trained her in the arts of battle and strategy, and her masters, who then taught her the arts of history, etiquette, and chivalry. As the only daughter of a family of lowly guardsfolk, who worked around the town doing nice stuff for free and as often as not having trouble managing to put food on the table, Tanli was expected to join the town guard and likely follow in their footsteps. This was not good enough for Tanli, who felt that not only her parents but her entire home village deserved better in life-- as well as herself.
She set out to become famous, and bring back such wealth that people would come from far and wide to see the incredible artistry and beauty of her home. She set out to accomplish as many deeds of notoriety as possible, doing such things as snatching an arrow out of the air to save the life of a kindly priest of the Goddess; rescuing sailors who were falling into the depths of the world from an attacked airship; altering the course of another airship that nearly crashed into an unoccupied, barren floating island in midst of a storm; and other such deeds of bravery. (Indeed, Tanli is not known for challenging people to battle very often, it seems.)
She makes a point of offering her services to anyone who seems to need them, and while she always requires payment, she is never unfair about it. She carefully maintains her image as one who is noble, willing to right wrongs, and is deserving of reward. She may hope to someday serve the Goddess directly.
I mostly thought this would be fun because the idea of playing a dwarf or halfling cavalier sounded too cool to pass up. Dwarf works for the serious, Justice! side, but Halfling works for the ridiculously nice, I'm Super Friendly! side.
I might be willing to go another route than order of the Cockatrice, but I kind of like it. Order of the dragon is probably the best for the party though, so whatever.
Mounts: Either a wyvern or a kirin?
A wyvern mount might be kind of hard to explain, but I like the idea of Tanli having rescued the wyvern's nest of eggs or something from certain destruction, and the wyvern then choosing to befriend her as thanks. (Or something). A kirin is really easy to explain-- young kirin are specifically hotheaded enough to go around helping out cavaliers-- but it's up to Dustin whether either of those is ok.
If he says no, I'm pretty sure I want to ride a Giant Frog with a flying saddle on, since we'll be on an airship as far as I know. I don't know if there's such a thing as a flying saddle, but if there isn't, and my mount can't fly, I'd like to make one up. Giant Frogs are like the best mounts ever. Ribbit!
3. And most importantly, D&D is tonight! So here's what I'd already written up of last week's summary:
So we were docking in Ular, and the "port authority" asked what our business was and how long we'd be staying. (In retrospect, I now suspect he might not have been the port authority-- well, we'll get to that.) We told him that we were here to meet with Red Alexandra, because I guess we were feeling especially callous, and someone-- possibly Llewain-- forked over a couple of coins to get rid of the guy so we could go on about our business. Esra had planned to get some snacks for Lily, Reginar and Sylvia while we were off-ship but we forgot as we passed through the town of Ular and off on a two-day trek to the cabin where Red Alexandra presumably lived, led by Xenocrates. Upon reaching the cabin we introduced ourselves at crossbow-point to the old woman who lived there, and inquired as to whether she was Red Alexandra or not.
She relaxed after that, allowing us to enter and explaining that no one had called her that in quite some time. While old and scarred now, it seemed likely she'd been a bandit or pirate in her heyday. We expressed our desire to learn more about the magic of dreamwalking (or whatever) so that we might defend ourselves against an attacker of that realm, and she agreed to teach us at least the basics, asking that in exchange we gather some food from the surrounding area and help her make a nice dinner. Denar went out hunting and brought back three rabbits*, which were then skinned and gutted and added to a stew. Following dinner, we all settled in to sleep, planning to enter Asha's dream for practice once we all were brought into the dream realm by Red Alexandra's ritual.
*- It must be noted that sometime in the last three weeks Danny was reading up on slang and found that rabbits used to be called coneys, which slang turned into cunny, so in typical Very Mature fashion he's been calling the rabbits cunnies in-game. To that I say: hyraxes'd be cooler!
Once inside Asha's dreams, we found ourselves back upon the ship and fighting an enormous Iron Golem! The party engaged it in melee combat, Llewain climbing up onto it, Denar striking it with his rainbow mace, Sabine trying to whack at it with her frost blade and Iris trying to aid in the attacks as best she could. Esra pulled out the lightning wand from before, blasting the machine with it and discovering with surprise that it seemed to wound the beast. With that in mind, he kept shooting it until it collapsed just as Asha was arriving on the ship with two beautiful women in tow, looking about as surprised as the party felt.
While he was confused as to how the party had defeated the machine (Asha: That...doesn't usually happen...) he recovered quickly enough, and beamed proudly about. Asha announced that Llewain had done well, so he'd give him a raise- a silver AND a copper, which was quite generous of him!- and proceeded to be rather goofy and overconfident. Naturally, neither Llewain, nor Denar, nor Sabine was willing to let THAT stand.
Asha informed us that we could salvage parts of the Iron Golem to make our ship fly; this would allow him to battle the Seven Birds of Heaven, who'd taken Sulafta hostage. Esra objected, on the grounds that that was silly, while Sabine objected on the grounds that the ship being able to fly was totally stupid! Asha seemed puzzled by our reticence, but eventually shrugged it off; we caught sight of a young woman who looked vaguely like Red Alexandra, who motioned for us to come with her belowdecks. We followed her, leaving Asha and his dream lady entourage to salvage the Iron Golem's parts.
In the mess, Alexandra reminded us that we'd chosen Asha's dream because it was safe, and unlikely his mind would try to harm us as interlopers, so long as we played along a little...
2. Dustin's going to be running a pathfinder game on Fridays, so I'm trying to decide what kind of character to play. The setting is a floating-islands-over-ravaged-planet type, with a central goddess that people never really see, but frequently worship; the floating islands were created by mages to save life, since they're higher than the endlessly hungry monsters that ate the world beneath.
Here are what I'm considering playing:
Gnome Bard - Mahi
Description: Extremely dark complexion; dark eyes, and blue-and-indigo hair. She is whimsical in her choice of speech, often rhyming intentionally or being alliterative more than one is naturally inclined to do.
Sea-Singer! (Sort of)
Obsessed with the written and spoken word. Her prized possessions are dictionaries, quills, ink, the accoutrements of writing. She is not the kind of bard who always sings, but she is totally the kind of bard who has limerick-offs with anyone who dares challenge her. Bookmaking, from tanning the hide for the cover to writing the contents of the book in question, is her deepest passion. She loves writing down everything-- even the things people would rather she didn't-- in her books. Prior to her current obsession, Mahi was into rapier-fighting, and she still duels with people regularly for sport (though not to kill). She has no concept of ownership over anything except books-- she would never take someone's books, or tools to make them, without asking or paying first. However, to her food, clothes, houses, money, horses, whatever-- that's all pretty much free for all. Mahi would probably be chaotic good. Possibly chaotic neutral in some situations.
She has long experience traveling. She is likely to abandon a ship if it lingers in the same place for too long.
Human Monk - Aigua
Description: Dark-haired, with sea-green eyes and a darker complexion. She is stocky and muscular, tanned from many years' travel, but not notably short or tall for a human. Friendly, with a tendency to be loud and rambunctious.
Monk of the Empty Hand!
Once a palace guard for royalty, Aigua used to serve as a matter of course, loyally, faithfully, until one day she was inexplicably called to trial for plotting the assassination of the very people she protected. Through her farce of a trial, she was able to see that she had been selected to avert suspicions from a nobleman of the house that was seeking to perform the very assassination she was now taking blame for. She was unable to convince the nobility of her innocence, stripped of her rank, armor and weapons, and cast into prison for several years. The assassination later occurred as the woman orchestrating it had planned, and, gloating, that woman came to taunt Aigua in her cell.
She released Aigua, as apology for using her in the plot to create greater trust between herself and the now-dead lady-warrior that had previously headed the house. Aigua made an attempt to kill her, but years of imprisonment had made her weak, and her opponent was a Witch. Amused by the attempt, she decided to curse Aigua with silence, put upon her a charm that forced her to serve whomever should hold the accompanying charm, and sent her as a house servant to a political ally. Aigua was thus forced to serve around the house of an innocent, but somewhat airheaded gentleman on a faraway island for some years.
By chance, the gentleman for whom Aigua worked befriended a wizard who, unfamiliar with woman of her complexion, considered her very beautiful. After detecting the spells upon her, he offered to remove them in exchange for her romantic affections. She refused, repulsed by the offer, but they became friends because of it, when he realized that she was quite capable of reading and writing, and could communicate with him in that way. She related her story to him, revealing the foul play of the woman who'd sold her to the man for whom she currently worked, and he brought the woman to justice with the power of the ruling nobility that backed him. When they offered to remove her curses as payment for her service in bringing the woman to justice, she agreed.
Having befriended the wizard, and having no particular ill-will to her erstwhile Lord of the house, she began to travel with the wizard. Reclaiming the full use of her voice took a lot of practice, but having been forcibly silenced for so long, she had quite a bit to say. The wizard's ultimately lawful intentions made him dear to her as a close friend, and they policed the land as best they could together, seeking out injustice or duplicity and exposing it. Though she'd once worn armor and fought with a sword, she abstained from returning to the use of them, abhoring weaponry in favor of simply using whatever came to hand.
After many years of successfully working with her friend, they parted ways, partially because she wished to keep traveling and he to settle down, and partially because they did not see eye to eye on what justice or law meant.
I kind of have a half-baked idea that the party is a bunch of airship pirates and they decided to pillage a town she happened to be in, picked her up among the rest of the people and stuff they were stealing, and then she just Could Not Be Bothered With This Shit and decided to join their crew. They were so surprised they didn't stop her.
Personality wise she probably seems much more cheerful / loud / thoughtless than she actually is, and then drops into Okay, Now We Talk Quietly and Seriously when necessary.
Alchemist Dwarf- Vode
Description: Gray-brown haired, with dark eyes and fairly pale complexion. Not many freckles. Slender, with a tendency to frown and a dour demeanor.
Not much for exploration at all, given the choice. Vode grew up in the thick of a big city, working for the guard. She comes from a long line of Dwarven guardsfolk, but her own interests proved to be more scholarly than battle-driven. Where she and her family met and could agree, however, was alchemy: the service of providing the guard cover in battle through the use of bombs. While her favorite uses of alchemical works are extracts and mutagens, she learned to make bombs as well so that she'd get along better with her family.
Vode is completely out of her element on airships, preferring to stay within bustling city streets whenever possible. (Of course, bustling city streets and cities in general want little to do with alchemists unless they're helping the guard to fight off invaders and pirates and all.) She is wily and streetsmart, a fast-talker and deeply fond of games of chance.
Why did Vode join the party? She owed a massive gambling debt and so came aboard the ship to earn enough to pay the debt off. If she doesn't succeed in a year's time, they've threatened to harm her family (children? siblings?).
(If children probably should detail how that happened.)
Cavalier Halfling OR Dwarf - Tanli
Description: Dark complexion, black hair, long and smooth, with gray eyes and a tendency to smirk.
Order of the cockatrice Cavalier
Tanli grew up knowing she was skilled and wanting to show the world that this was so. She always worked extra hard to impress her teachers-- both her parents, who trained her in the arts of battle and strategy, and her masters, who then taught her the arts of history, etiquette, and chivalry. As the only daughter of a family of lowly guardsfolk, who worked around the town doing nice stuff for free and as often as not having trouble managing to put food on the table, Tanli was expected to join the town guard and likely follow in their footsteps. This was not good enough for Tanli, who felt that not only her parents but her entire home village deserved better in life-- as well as herself.
She set out to become famous, and bring back such wealth that people would come from far and wide to see the incredible artistry and beauty of her home. She set out to accomplish as many deeds of notoriety as possible, doing such things as snatching an arrow out of the air to save the life of a kindly priest of the Goddess; rescuing sailors who were falling into the depths of the world from an attacked airship; altering the course of another airship that nearly crashed into an unoccupied, barren floating island in midst of a storm; and other such deeds of bravery. (Indeed, Tanli is not known for challenging people to battle very often, it seems.)
She makes a point of offering her services to anyone who seems to need them, and while she always requires payment, she is never unfair about it. She carefully maintains her image as one who is noble, willing to right wrongs, and is deserving of reward. She may hope to someday serve the Goddess directly.
I mostly thought this would be fun because the idea of playing a dwarf or halfling cavalier sounded too cool to pass up. Dwarf works for the serious, Justice! side, but Halfling works for the ridiculously nice, I'm Super Friendly! side.
I might be willing to go another route than order of the Cockatrice, but I kind of like it. Order of the dragon is probably the best for the party though, so whatever.
Mounts: Either a wyvern or a kirin?
A wyvern mount might be kind of hard to explain, but I like the idea of Tanli having rescued the wyvern's nest of eggs or something from certain destruction, and the wyvern then choosing to befriend her as thanks. (Or something). A kirin is really easy to explain-- young kirin are specifically hotheaded enough to go around helping out cavaliers-- but it's up to Dustin whether either of those is ok.
If he says no, I'm pretty sure I want to ride a Giant Frog with a flying saddle on, since we'll be on an airship as far as I know. I don't know if there's such a thing as a flying saddle, but if there isn't, and my mount can't fly, I'd like to make one up. Giant Frogs are like the best mounts ever. Ribbit!
3. And most importantly, D&D is tonight! So here's what I'd already written up of last week's summary:
So we were docking in Ular, and the "port authority" asked what our business was and how long we'd be staying. (In retrospect, I now suspect he might not have been the port authority-- well, we'll get to that.) We told him that we were here to meet with Red Alexandra, because I guess we were feeling especially callous, and someone-- possibly Llewain-- forked over a couple of coins to get rid of the guy so we could go on about our business. Esra had planned to get some snacks for Lily, Reginar and Sylvia while we were off-ship but we forgot as we passed through the town of Ular and off on a two-day trek to the cabin where Red Alexandra presumably lived, led by Xenocrates. Upon reaching the cabin we introduced ourselves at crossbow-point to the old woman who lived there, and inquired as to whether she was Red Alexandra or not.
She relaxed after that, allowing us to enter and explaining that no one had called her that in quite some time. While old and scarred now, it seemed likely she'd been a bandit or pirate in her heyday. We expressed our desire to learn more about the magic of dreamwalking (or whatever) so that we might defend ourselves against an attacker of that realm, and she agreed to teach us at least the basics, asking that in exchange we gather some food from the surrounding area and help her make a nice dinner. Denar went out hunting and brought back three rabbits*, which were then skinned and gutted and added to a stew. Following dinner, we all settled in to sleep, planning to enter Asha's dream for practice once we all were brought into the dream realm by Red Alexandra's ritual.
*- It must be noted that sometime in the last three weeks Danny was reading up on slang and found that rabbits used to be called coneys, which slang turned into cunny, so in typical Very Mature fashion he's been calling the rabbits cunnies in-game. To that I say: hyraxes'd be cooler!
Once inside Asha's dreams, we found ourselves back upon the ship and fighting an enormous Iron Golem! The party engaged it in melee combat, Llewain climbing up onto it, Denar striking it with his rainbow mace, Sabine trying to whack at it with her frost blade and Iris trying to aid in the attacks as best she could. Esra pulled out the lightning wand from before, blasting the machine with it and discovering with surprise that it seemed to wound the beast. With that in mind, he kept shooting it until it collapsed just as Asha was arriving on the ship with two beautiful women in tow, looking about as surprised as the party felt.
While he was confused as to how the party had defeated the machine (Asha: That...doesn't usually happen...) he recovered quickly enough, and beamed proudly about. Asha announced that Llewain had done well, so he'd give him a raise- a silver AND a copper, which was quite generous of him!- and proceeded to be rather goofy and overconfident. Naturally, neither Llewain, nor Denar, nor Sabine was willing to let THAT stand.
Asha informed us that we could salvage parts of the Iron Golem to make our ship fly; this would allow him to battle the Seven Birds of Heaven, who'd taken Sulafta hostage. Esra objected, on the grounds that that was silly, while Sabine objected on the grounds that the ship being able to fly was totally stupid! Asha seemed puzzled by our reticence, but eventually shrugged it off; we caught sight of a young woman who looked vaguely like Red Alexandra, who motioned for us to come with her belowdecks. We followed her, leaving Asha and his dream lady entourage to salvage the Iron Golem's parts.
In the mess, Alexandra reminded us that we'd chosen Asha's dream because it was safe, and unlikely his mind would try to harm us as interlopers, so long as we played along a little...
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Also, yay summaries!