AAR [4M]: Community Service (2021-07-09 2300 GMT)

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bronzemountain
Posts:606
Joined:Fri Feb 21, 2020 10:02 pm
AAR [4M]: Community Service (2021-07-09 2300 GMT)

Post by bronzemountain » Wed Jul 07, 2021 4:41 pm

LFG: Community Service
GM: Dvarim
ECR: 4
Difficulty: Medium

Rumor: Odhapur is a little village just south of the Throal mountains. It is a recent settlement, its roots no older than a year. Each of you have, over the course of your adventuring career, passed through the village and each of you, for your own personal reasons, has come to the conclusion that this village is at risk. An unhappy community makes for a happy Horror, as the saying goes, and you've decided it's time for some preventative care.

Notes:
- Adventure runs at 7:00pm EST on Friday, July 9th
- As always, I run groups of up to 5 players.
- While there will quite possibly be a combat in this adventure, the focus will be on RP and helping the community, and will include some experimental systems.

Sign up format:

Code: Select all

[b]Name:[/b] Character name
[b]Date of Last Game Played:[/b]
[b]Circle:[/b] Circle of your character
[b]Discipline:[/b] Your character's Discipline(s)
[b]Unique:[/b] What your character is bringing to the table.
[b]Downtime:[/b] Talents and Skills that other characters can use over downtime: [Talent] [Step including +Karma Step if appropriate] ([Rank]) ([Further Details])
Last edited by bronzemountain on Sat Jul 10, 2021 1:51 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Sharkforce
Posts:527
Joined:Thu Feb 28, 2019 8:39 am

Re: LFG [4M]: Community Servicee (2021-07-09 2300 GMT)

Post by Sharkforce » Wed Jul 07, 2021 5:27 pm

Name: Orlam
Date of Last Game Played: July 2
Circle: 5
Discipline: Elementalist 5
Unique: healing boosts, combat buffs and debuffs, comfort, navigation, and evidence analysis. (downside: he sucks at damage).
Downtime: Item History (Talent, Rating 5, step 16), Research (Skill, Rating 2, Step 9, +3 available for 20 sp in the Great Library).


This sounds more like a job for Orlam than Garak to me, but if needed I could bring Garak instead.


Name: Garak
Date of Last Game Played: Still July 2
Circle: 3
Discipline: Archer 3
Unique: Failure is not an option - it is mandatory. The option is whether or not to let failure be the last thing you do.
Downtime: Nope.

verse86
Posts:269
Joined:Tue Jun 16, 2020 11:16 pm

Re: LFG [4M]: Community Servicee (2021-07-09 2300 GMT)

Post by verse86 » Wed Jul 07, 2021 7:49 pm

Name: Z'mokki
Date of Last Game Played: 2021-07-02
ECR: 4
Discipline: Thief 4
Unique: A boisterous and bragadocious thief.
Downtime:

ChrisDDickey
Posts:1011
Joined:Sun Nov 27, 2016 10:02 pm

Re: LFG [4M]: Community Servicee (2021-07-09 2300 GMT)

Post by ChrisDDickey » Wed Jul 07, 2021 8:16 pm

Name: Caesar Bonaparte
Date Player last played: July 2nd
ECR: 3
Discipline: Illusionist 3rd Circle - Human.
Quote/Unique: now notice that at no time do any of my fingers leave my hand.
Notable Abilities: Illusion
Downtime: None.

Anoush
Posts:160
Joined:Wed Feb 22, 2017 10:53 pm

Re: LFG [4M]: Community Servicee (2021-07-09 2300 GMT)

Post by Anoush » Wed Jul 07, 2021 10:23 pm

Name: Keel
Image
ECR: 4
Last Played: June 28, 2021 [Bloodbeat II]
Discipline: Elf Sky Raider 4
Quote/Unique: De’abor abora!! (While we live, let us live!)
Notable Abilities: I bash things with my sword.
Downtime: n/a

predajey
Posts:344
Joined:Mon Jun 15, 2020 9:27 am

Re: LFG [4M]: Community Servicee (2021-07-09 2300 GMT)

Post by predajey » Thu Jul 08, 2021 2:39 pm

Name: Orfen
Image
Date of Last Game Played: June 28
ECR: 4
Discipline: Elementalist (Circle 3)
Unique: Hair. There's a lot of it. Most of it is unkempt. Some of it is blonde, some is red. Also, possibly our best Physician with rank 5.
Downtime:
  • Item History ESR 14 (Rank 3 + Step 7 PER + Step 4 Karma)
  • Alchemy ESR 11 (Rank 4 + Step 7 PER, but no kit or lab yet)
    • Booster Potions

ChrisDDickey
Posts:1011
Joined:Sun Nov 27, 2016 10:02 pm

Re: LFG [4M]: Community Service (2021-07-09 2300 GMT)

Post by ChrisDDickey » Sat Jul 10, 2021 9:24 am

From the journal of Caesar Bonaparte. 

Odhapur is a little village just south of the Throal mountains between the Serpent and the Coil. It is a recent settlement, its roots no older than a year. It is on the old pre-scourge land route that skirts the southern edge of the mountains. I passed through it a few months ago traveling that route. In Odhapur I met a lovely young lady named Silvia who makes beet moonshine and serves it out of her back room and garden, which the village calls "the shine house". At first the beet moonshine seems like vile stuff, but it grows upon you. When passing through the village a 2nd time I decided to tarry a while.  By coincidence there were several other Adepts in the village at the same time: Orlam, Garak, Z'mokki, and Orfen. We compared notes and decided that there were problems in the village. Nothing obviously major, but we felt that the village was at risk. There is the old saying "An unhappy community makes for a happy Horror", and we all decided it's time for some preventative care, so all agreed to stay a few weeks and help out. 

There was a lot of sickness in the village, but there did not seem to be anything in common between them. There were dozens of sick people, all with different symptoms. Investigation revealed that people were getting sick at only a normal rate, it was just that none of them were getting better. There were also several people with recent injuries. A person who lost their leg to an accident, someone else who got burned when the local kiln exploded. Some of the residents were nervous about some Trolls that moved in nearby a few months ago. They were sheep ranchers with big sheep, and obviously lowland trolls, but many villagers were nervous anyway. The village did not have much in the way of industry. They had a kiln where they made bricks for use in the village, but despite having access to a stream that looked navigatable and that emptied into the coil not far from kampug gauga, they do not export any. 

The villagers were friendly. The Headman is a Dwarf named Gagari Bhen. None of us talked to him very much more than to say "Hi" to, but he seemed concerned that the village did not have enough hope, and was sliding into despair. The leader of the trolls was the sheep rancher Mogrin Velhalt. Many of the villagers viewed the Trolls with suspicion, and we felt it would be best if trust was established between the two peoples. The female Dwarf Herbalist Raman Seriman was overworked due to the health impairment of the people under her care. An older female Ork named Ogala Bukhal was the unofficial sheriff of the community. She was dealing with the community's fear and sense of security. The other community leader was the male Dwarf Dhavankar Astameen, lead brickmaker, the community hopes that he can lead them out of poverty into prosperity. Other residents of note that we dealt with were the young female dwarf scout Vela, and of course the lovely Silvia, owner of "the shine house". 

Keel and I visited the Trolls, and learned that they had opened their nearby kear a few months ago. They were indeed lowland trolls, utterly uninterested in raiding. They found the villagers to be untrusting, unfriendly and unwelcoming. They tried to buy some loads of bricks, but felt the prices were unreasonably high. Their mountain sheep were amazing animals, and their wool was long and fine. The yews, having lived underground for so long were out of synch with the seasons, and some were birthing in the fall, which means the lambs will need to go back into the kaer if they hope to have them survive the winter. They were about to do their first shearing since leaving their kear, and had not yet arranged a market for their wool. We told them that there was a person in the village that had a pair of messenger bats that could send messages, so they could inquire about prices in various markets. We also discussed the steps of turning raw wool into finished products, and they said that while they had a few craftspeople that processed the wool into finished goods for the village's own use (he showed us an amazingly soft and warm mitten) they did not have the infrastructure to process the wool to be sold. He explained to us the many steps that need to be done. The shearing, cleaning, sorting, carding, spinning, dieing, weaving or knitting, and finishing. We talked about how much better and more profitable it would be if most of these steps were done locally. I think he is going to build some huge cleaning tubs and the paddles and whatnot to clean the wool, and possibly write to Throal or Travar to purchase some more carding and spinning equipment. 

I talked about how I was organizing a harvest festival, and Mogrin said that by coincidence the Trolls had a festival the following week, Their festival was called Illaganafjorgenblarg .(I might have gotten the Throalic spelling wrong). He invited all the villages to attend. When I got back to the village propper the first thing I did was tell Silvia that I would buy all the casks of beet shine she could make that week. I also talked up the festival to everybody who would stand still to hear my pitch. I also browbeat some people to perform a skit that I wrote at the festival and made sure the village musicians were all going. 

In the meantime we continued to investigate the reason why so many people were sick. It was not that more people than usual were getting sick, the problem was that people who caught minor ailments, were not getting better. The trolls who lived about 3/4 of an hours walk up the hillside reported that they and their animals were fine. And the village animals also appeared fine. It was just the namegivers. We asked some questions and found that none of the sick people were sleeping well, and they woke up feeling unrested. We tried two things. We had the village herbalist prepare three strong sleeping draughts. And we made arrangements with another three of the sick people to observe them in their sleep. During my watch I heard a low hum that made me feel drowsy, but did not quite put me to sleep. I then saw a creature (or rather minor horror) creep in the window. It looked vaguely like a monkey, about 2 feet tall, with an oversized lumpy head. It approached the bed and placed its long crooked fingers upon the sleepers' temples, where it kept them for about one minute as the sleeper seemed to thrash a small bit as if in nightmares. After the minute the Horror seemed to be finished and started moving towards the window. I shot it with an Ephemeral Bolt, which just caused the creature to leap away and vanish. And I do mean vanish, it disappeared in a shimmer of air halfway to the window. I looked for it with both my eyes and Astral Sight, but could not find it. 

We did spot a silk cocoon in the rafters. It was large enough that it could have held a medium sized dog. Thinking back on the incident, the humming I noticed probably came from the rafters. It looked as if something had forced its way through the thatch roof, cocooned itself or was cocooned, and then emerged, hummed to make the victim drowsy, then forced its way back out though the thatch. We searched the houses of other sick people and found many more cocoons. 

We obtained the services of Vella the scout for tracking, and she followed the tracks left by one of the cocoon things, led us to a grove a half hour outside the village, where we found a fought 4 Palid Silkworms (the size of good sized snakes) and a Kreescra. We drove them all away, but managed to track down and slay all the silkworms. The Kreescra we were unable to track. During the following week we mounted several more expeditions against it, but never managed to bring it to bay again. 

The Illaganafjorgenblarg festival went off without a hitch. I hired a dog cart to bring 5 small casks of shine up the hill. The play we put on was a success, but I think that everybody just enjoyed the music and the dancing. Once enough of the dwarves were liquored up enough to try some of the trollish dances I knew the evening was a success. 
Last edited by ChrisDDickey on Sat Jul 10, 2021 11:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

bronzemountain
Posts:606
Joined:Fri Feb 21, 2020 10:02 pm

AAR [4M]: Community Service (2021-07-09 2300 GMT)

Post by bronzemountain » Sat Jul 10, 2021 2:05 pm

AAR: Community Service
GM: Dvarim
ECR: 4
Difficulty: Medium

Player Rewards:
Orfen: 2,200 LP, 375 sp, 3 TIPs
Keel: 2,200 LP, 375 sp, 3 TIPs
Caesar: 2,200 LP, 375 sp, 3 TIPs
Z'mokki: 2,200 LP, 375 sp, 3 TIPs
Orlam: 2,200 LP, 375 sp, 3 TIPs

GM Reward: Youghdel - 2,200 LP, 375 sp, 3 TIPs

Downtime:
Orfen: Item HIstory 3/14, Alchemy 4/11 (Booster Potion; no kit or lab yet)
Orlam: Item History 5/16, Research 2/9 (+3 w. 20sp)

Summary:
Odhapur is no longer sinking into despair, though there is still much work that can be done. The Adepts discovered that the health issues in the village were caused by insomnia caused by a minor Horror. They have destroyed the Nightworms and driven off a Kreescra, though it remains alive. They also helped launch the inaugural Illaganafjorgenblarg (Harvest) festival, which brought the Odphapur and Troll Shepherd communities closer together and will continue to do so in the years to come.

Future Adventure Opportunities
Find a market for Odhapur's Bricks.
Odhapur vineyards?
Building up a yarn-making industry for the Trolls
Dealing with the rash of accidents
And many others.

Odhapur Stats (Current)
Spoiler:
PD: 7 | MD: 7 | SD: 8 (includes bonus)
PA: 0 | MA: 0 | Resilience: 45

Trust
Rank 1: The town holds an annual Harvest Festival which brings different people together to learn about and enjoy different cultures. The community gains a +1 bonus to Social Defense.

Fear
Rank 1: The residents of Odhapur are Jumpy as the community has suffered a long string of accidents. Any attempt to affect Odhapur with a Fear- or Intimidation- based ability gains a +1 bonus to its test.

Sharkforce
Posts:527
Joined:Thu Feb 28, 2019 8:39 am

Re: AAR [4M]: Community Service (2021-07-09 2300 GMT)

Post by Sharkforce » Sun Jul 11, 2021 1:43 am

Orlam Rolfsom, Journal Entry # 14: Community Service

After an extended absence, I returned to to the small village of Odhapur to continue my studies of the migration patterns of the local reindeer herds, a breed distinguished by their legs being almost an inch longer than other reindeer. Of course, when I say "my" studies, I really mean that I'm attempting to earn the favour of Restan Porrel, a well-respected Scholar who I hope will sponsor my own attempted application, by doing the most mind-numbingly boring job you could imagine. I had been here several months ago until I had been replaced by another intern, who it seems could not stand the sheer tedium of being in the exact middle of nowhere, so here I am again.

To be clear, it isn't that it is such an awful place by any means, there simply isn't much happening here is all. The locals have a single watering hole, and while I can't particularly recommend the taste it does numb the senses quite effectively. Apart from that,just about the only thing to recommend the place is that nobody goes there, if that's the sort of thing you need, in spite of it being not that far off from major trade routes in the area.

I was staying with Dornath the Elder (not like a village elder, he just has a son who is also named Dornath) who I had contracted last time I was here to keep a messenger bat so that I could keep in touch with what was happening in Throal. I mean, ostensibly it was to report back to Restan, but there isn't much that needs regular reports, and it isn't like the bat was doing anything the rest of the time. Anyways, seems the fellow had invested in a second bat only to find that there was not really any need for it... unsurprising in a place this small, I guess, but still, not good news for him. He'd been hoping to have some nice light work for his retirement, and it just wasn't working out. Well, I can continue to use his services, but I don't think I've got enough to keep two bats busy full time.

The news since I'd last been through (though there was plenty of what passes for news in this place otherwise) was that the kiln had exploded recently, seriously injuring a worker, Radha Seriman (the local herbalist) was badly overworked as people weren't getting better, and a group of Trolls had recently appeared, shepherds. Dornath was concerned that they might be trouble, but I don't think I've ever heard of Highland Trolls that are big on being shepherds, so I suspect they're just regular Lowland Trolls.

I was also surprised to hear that a number of other Adepts were in town... Orfen was there to help with the overworked herbalist, Keel was there to visit a family she had befriended, as well as a pair that I had not heard of previously named Caesar Bonaparte (a Human Illusionist) and Z'mokki "the great", a T'skrang Thief who held a very high opinion of himself. They were both a little vague on why they were there, actually. This many adepts is quite unusual, since as previously mentioned this place is the absolute middle of nowhere.

It seems the locals are a bit down on their luck, and the others want to see what can be done. I have to say, some of what seems to be going on in this village does seem rather odd, to say the least, with people simply not recovering from illnesses and terrible accidents happening far more often than you'd expect. I'd just come in from a round of following reindeer for a week, and this certainly sounded far more interesting than my other prospects.
So, lacking anything better to do, I agreed to lend a hand where I could. This turned out to be for the past, as I'll explain shortly, but at first it didn't seem I was making much headway. Dhavankar Astameen, the lead hand at the brickworks, didn't have much information of use, and as expected, I couldn't find evidence that anyone had somehow managed to sabotage the kiln. Z'mokki came along trying to find work for his friend (who, it seems, had already been offered a job and turned it down). I resolved to consider summoning some spirits to have a talk about the local clay, see if there was anything odd about it, but something else came up (more on that in a minute).

First off, Caesar and Keel had gone up to speak with the leader of the Trolls. As expected, they were not raiders, but shepherds, and actually wanted to invite everyone to come to a festival which they called (the word here is illegible, looks like someone "accidentally" spilled some ink right here). They had some sheep which produced high-quality wool, which they unfortunately (for them) had no idea what to do with. Personally, I sensed a business opportunity, and since I'm going to be stuck here for a while anyways...

But I digress. More importantly, Orfen had found something in her investigations. Well, sort of. She had found that they weren't recovering as they would expect, and asked me to examine one astrally, at which point I noticed that they seemed almost as if they had been drained of their ability to recover. We speculated that it might be that they weren't getting enough sleep, or (what seemed more likely) some sort of creature was draining them. And by "creature" I mean "Horror", because normal creatures don't generally do that.

We prepared some sleeping draughts for a few of the people who did not recover, and set up watches for a few others. Well, come morning the sleeping draughts had not done their work, and also, some sort of weird monkey-looking thing had snuck in where Caesar and Z'mokki were waiting, and there was a weird sticky cocoon in the thatching and signs that something had pressed through and then returned, which was far more compelling evidence. The thing never came where I stood watch, and our charge woke up feeling much more refreshed, but it had managed to do something to the others, and they still didn't recover. Caesar says he say the monkey thing press it's fingers against the sleeping victim's head as well.

We hired a local tracker to follow whatever was in the cocoon in the thatch (after finding evidence of cocoons in other people's thatch, though mostly not as fresh). Ogala Bukhal, who led the local militia (and also *was* the local militia, being the only member) asked us what was happening (which we didn't know a huge amount about, but she agreed creepy-looking monkey-things sneaking into people's heads and doing something was bad) and recommended Vela, a young dwarf, as the village's best tracker.

She was as good as promised, and led us to an unassuming copse of trees filled with cocoons. I figured this would be an excellent time to prepare to fireball (which honestly comes up far less than people would think), but before I could do anything a bunch of long, pale, sticky worms came out of the cocoons and started attacking each other. Happily, my Frighten talent did it's work and they were mostly rendered ineffective, apart from one that managed to entangle Orfen and give her a paralyzing poison. Also, the strange monkey-thing made an appearance, and unfortunately got away, so that problem still needs solving. It was quite frustrating, as it seemed to have the ability to disappear into the astral where we could not find it, in spite of our Astral Sight.

On the plus side, the festival was quite enjoyable. Keel put together a better path leading up to the shepherds (it was a fairly challenging hike), Caesar put on a nice play, and I hired some locals to provide some of their finest dishes, which were quite pleasant. I think that should be the beginning of a good friendship, and if I have anything to say on the matter, a business relationship.

predajey
Posts:344
Joined:Mon Jun 15, 2020 9:27 am

Re: AAR [4M]: Community Service (2021-07-09 2300 GMT)

Post by predajey » Mon Jul 19, 2021 2:43 pm

Crammed in a corner and covered in dust is a dense book detailing the travels of Orfen. Amidst the myriad of the Throalic handwriting are a few nuggets of relevant thought from her. It would take a researcher hours just to determine if there is any information worthy of note. The text remains unaltered to maintain its authenticity (Certain terms and names written wrong to keep in character). As you begin reading the entry, a nearby scholar looks at what you're reading, eyebrows raised, and simply says, "Good luck" as they resume reading. It takes about 3 hours to read the entire entry.

"I was exploring a supply route from the Cliff City a few months ago, and on my return trip, stopped in on a small village called Odhapur. I tended to the residents back then, so I returned to follow up on how they were doing. Their ailments seemed to have healed, but then this other Adept named Keel, another elf, asked me to look at some old dude that was about to bite the big one."

"With so many people sick, I decided to help Radha Seriman with the long line of patients. There didn't seem to be any unique cause as to why they were sick. The residents weren't even affected by illnesses out of the ordinary. They simply were not recovering from these ailments."

"Sadly my Astral Sight is non-existent, but Orlam was able to look at the nearly dead old dude astrally to see that he was severely fatigued, preventing him from recovering from his illness."

"We handed out sleeping draughts to three of the patients, but this was a temporary solution. I proposed we watch some of the patients who didn't have sleeping draughts."

"Caesar and I watched as a strange big headed monkey crept into the room, then we tried to fight it, but it ran away."

"Above in the rafters were these weird cocoon remains. We could use that to track down whatever came out of those. Some of the guys thought they might be where the monkey thing came from, but I was certain there were two different things."

"We killed the Kreescra and its Pallid Silkworm minions. The patients began recovery as normal."

Other bits were found amongst the ramblings that weren't really relevant to the journey:

Included is a list of all the ailments of the villagers, including their treatments, illness durations, where they were suspected of obtaining the disease, along with each patient's race, age, height, weight, gender, skin color, hair color, eye color, body fat percentage, blood pressure, heart rate, respiration rate, lung capacity, diets, and much more information that doesn't seem relevant to the journey.

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