Talk:RP: Shameless Self-Promotion

Al's Questions

• How far are the refugees from the city?
  • I've uploaded a map that answers some of these questions.[1] Between you and Quin and Germain and Mose, you have the geography of the region to consider it "home turf" and know some pretty detailed information in regards to distances, terrain, etc. So, I've tried to include it, I can add more.

• How many soldiers are between them and Wydmoor?
  • Good question, and it depends on how you count it. Thanks to information you've gained from the turncloak, you have some pretty solid numbers. The lines around the city seem to be about 12,000-15,000, with another 1,500 or so outriders protecting the supply lines. There is a garrison at Yalmrinth of about 500 soldier folk, plus a substantial number of healers and hospitalers. A garrison of about 200-300 occupy Iros Forge, protecting an unknown number of workers and engineers trying to get the Red Iron flowing again.

• Is Wydmoor completely surrounded?
  • See Map. No, one of the reasons Wydmoor has been able to so defensible is because the rear part of the city is only a mile or two from the city walls in some places, meaning that it's very difficult to lay a complete siege.

• How many refugees are there?
  • Unknown. Reports from the Geese smuggled in indicated some pretty horrific death tolls, and those reports are several weeks out of date and from when the plague bombs were only just beginning. Upwards of 20,000 were displaced after the fires and locked out of the city. Now? 10,000 would be optimistic. It could be as low as one or two thousand, or even zero, for all you know now.

• If there was no war, how long would it take all of the refugees to walk from where they are to Wydmoor?
  • Not sure of the math. It's about 10 or so miles, as the crow flies, from Onrarch to the Castle Wydmoor, and few miles more between the Castle and the city walls.

• Is Wydmoor the only option for relocation?
  • Good question. Map can be a good guide as to where you can take people. You can assume so long as they are plague ridden - and maybe even after - that nobody is going to want them without some sort of coercion.

• How far from the city do the sewer tunnels go?
  • They drain on the swamp and river sides (the lowland direction, plus wetlands and rivers are better to drain into than the front of the city. There are some pipes that are grated with some pretty hard core steel grates, plus enchantments. Most likely, the clerics passwalled through these, but physically destroying the grates or whatever would probably set off all kinds of alarms.

• They have to have an outlet somewhere, right?
  • See above.

Germain Pondering

What does germain ponder? --Msallen

 ??? You tell me?? I would say that whose support you would need would depend on the scheme you cook up, yes?

I guess I was just looking for some sense that Germain would have from personal affect and body language and stuff that I don't have about who might be supportive. I'm pretty sure Edrell would be, and I'm pretty sure about the merchants too. Naprid/Ralth sort of deferred to the Mayor and claimed that their hands were tied, but I don't really know from text chat what their "vibe" was. --Msallen

Gotcha Gotcha. FWiW, direct questions - even a ton of them in bullets - will get better and quicker responses than something very open ended. I'd say you're right so far. The Aristocrats are currently presumably in a hole somewhere infighting and scheming. OR they could have all fled, but unlikely. The Merchants would probably like to have some customers back - most of the people still in the city are clients and loyalists of the "old order" (people tied to the fortunes of the aristocrats) and might support you out of general principle. You only know the Pawnbroker, really, and as you might imagine for the cities top mercahnt, she's one of the few people you find it almost impossible to read.

As far as Naprid/Ralth, their one and only desire is the continued independence of the city (or, failing that, the Bog Wraiths themselves since Naprid did once suggest the Wraths abandon Wydmoor as an outpost and move HQ to the Bandit Kingdom).

In general, they can be relied on to do anything that will make *the cities* position stronger. That means they will likely oppose anything that is too upsetting to the current balance of power or anything that brings risk to the city. They will likely support anything that makes life difficult for the Odessans or strengthens the city's position.

The City Guard is half filed with thieves' guild people, and so anything they involve themselves in will almost certainly make its way back to The Boss. Likewise, you know the current Sheriff by reputation and mild acquaintance, and she is above all things a cautious survivor and not likely to take sides in anything too drastic.

However, you *do* at least have the option of paralyzing the Watch into temporary ineffectiveness since it is also riddled with your own loyalists.

Anyone else I'm missing?

No one's talking about the owlbear in the room? LOL! --Msallen

It's much clearer in the original Gnomish. -gm

LE's TL;DR Translation

(I had to go through like this or else it was just too much to take in.)

Germain: I'm dissatisfied with our relationship with the Guild and the Wraiths.

Al: Me too! Let's Robin Hood it up.

Kim: Yes!

Quin: Didn't we already try that?

Egg: What's our goal?

Germain: We need a goal. Save the refugees? Destroy the Guild? Destroy the Wraiths? Build a Traveller's Temple? Align with Alexia? Fight in Celstia?

Mose: Our goal is spreading Good. I want to continue fighting the vampires and Thieves Guild.

Germain: Destroying the Guild will take months.The refugees will die and the Odessans will regroup. I think we should focus on helping the refugees.

Al: How?

Germain: We bring them into the city and release the grain the Mayor has been hoarding.

Al: Are you sure that will work?

Kimika: The refugees need housing and healing.

Germain: They trust us and we can help them. It's the right thing to do and will make us heroes.

Kimika: We could help them build a Traveller's Outpost settlement where they are now.

Egg: That is too big for us to handle. We need a powerful person to support us, whatever we do.

Quin: Can we smuggle the refugees into the city? Tunnel or fly? Edrell could help us.

Egg: We have to make sure they're free of disease before bringing them into the city. The tunnel sounds like a great idea. Edrell cares about these people. We need to be discreet but figure out a way to transport them all.

Germain: Edrell has a magical non-tunnel we might be able to use.

Egg: That would work if Edrell cooperated.

Quin: We could be even more stealthy with a badger tunnel. Can we bring everyone to Dadtim for healing?

Mose: A tunnel like that could collapse. We also have to make sure we're only bringing friendly refugees into the city. Germain, do you have any ideas about how to get rid of the Thieves Guild?

Quin: Could we get dwarves to help us with tunnel safety? We could also attack the Guild.

Egg: Mose, how would you plan to attack the Guild? They're led by an ancient powerful vampire and have spies everywhere. They probably know we're alive.

Quin: We should rig the place with traps so when they come back we can capture a hostage.

Al: The tunnel would be difficult and impractical. The refugees would be vulnerable.

Quin: We could still use the not-tunnel.

Al: The tunnel could work if we could hide the dirt.

Egg: We have thousands of hands to move the dirt. Collapse is a bigger problem.

Mose: I want to destroy Mantatlus and the wererats. They are probably trying to kill us again right now. We rule, Mantatlus drools.

Germain: Mantatlus is not the leader. We need to destroy the Guild from the inside out. A full on attack will not work.

Kim: Mantatlus does drool. But let's help the refugees. We could get them over the walls. Mattie has a sexy box.

Egg: We need a few solid options for a plan before going to Edrell.

Al: Why don't we just take the food out of Wydmoor and bring it to them? Bag of holding!

Quin: Good idea! We could help them settle temporarily.

Egg: Moving the grain will be just as difficult, and probably expensive. Better to bring them in the city so they can't be ignored.

Some other OOC thoughts

• The Church is probably hurting for money or at least worried. From what I recall they made a whole lot of their income from pilgrimages which are shutdown. How is the church fairing? Is it making side deals, etc, to stay afloat? Perhaps we can negotiate something there, or perhaps there's a traitor there. (I dislike   Oscart.) -Mattie
• We have a lot of new "evils" to bring to the Temporal Authority if we wanted to try to make a case again. Here's what Mose was going to say, but I thought better of it:

If I can't convince you guys to remove this evil, perhaps the Church will help us.

I know I read on the Stones of Law thing out there that an Arch-Warden, a person driven by Alexandria's Wisdom, granted Wydmoor its right to be a separate government. I'm not sure what all that entails, but surely the Church is going to want to understand to what extent Odessa is intending to violate that decree.

I believe there's sinister evil afoot here, evil that should warrant even The Stand's attention.

• Odessans are violating the international Church decree made by the Stones of Law.
• Odessan priests violating their oaths and attempting to poison an entire city of man, women, and children.
• Massive pilgrim and refugee abuses, far beyond the scale of what we mentioned last time.
• Infestiation of powerful vampires in the city of Wydmoor, that have assassinated priests (and others) and have infiltrated the minds of members of Wydmoor's ruling council.
• Region-wide cursed rain that we detected to be evil, magic on a scale that may indicate more sinister things afoot.
• Befouling of the ancient turtle temple, awakening massive dragon turtles that awoke to defend the area. It's possible the Church leaders don't even know of the temple and perhaps it is some holy site lost to the ages?
• Finding of the great evil undead that we slayed in the temple in the swamp.

Further, I can offer the ancient recovered armor and weapons to the Church as a sign of my integrity and hope that it is enough to gain audience with members of The Stand or Marrwyn to plead our case. Surely they will send Holy Militants or other forces to help rid our city of the evil vampires, help the pilgrims, and restore order.

-Mattie

• Could we start pressing/negotiating for a surrender or a peace? Perhaps we should become emissaries to get negotiations started with Odessa? Germain's political ability may make this successful. I mean we don't even really know the details of why they're waging the war and what they'd accept for negotiations... -Mattie
  • Ironically enough, Matt Allen and I were just griping over the situation and I came up with a primer that might be instructive here for that last part, at least

Oh, yeah! Absolutely! And, now you have a classical he said she said thing.

Naprid: I only did that as a response for your invasion!

Odessans: Bullshit, it's the whole reason we invaded!

Repeat. I honestly somewhat regret that scheme, only because instead of making everyone a little suspect it made Naprid too easy to see as the root cause of everything. But, no, itll be all good.

But, ambiguous is right. The Wraiths have been working with the Odessans for years, keeping order in the part of Alexia Odessa can't reach and doesn't really care so much about.

Review of Odessa/Wydmoor Relations. May or may not be useful. Sequence of events is from memory, so could be a little off. Also, variable amounts of time passes between each of these.

1. Odessa goes into hock to Bank of Wydmoor, rasing tons of money for unknown reasons. Possibly to continue to pay for occupation of Alexia. Possibly to pay for this very attack. Or, possibly for some unknown reason.

2. The Odessans had been contracting with the Bog Wraiths for many years, hiring them to maintain order in the Alexian Capital and surrounds.

3. The Bog Wraiths, in order to neutralize the Bandit Saint, take him into the Bog Wraiths company, but relocate him and many of his men to Alexandria City

4. Ralth leaves for Wydmoor and the High Command, is replaced as one of the Arch-Warden commanders by Bandit Saint.

5. Odessan invasion and subseqeuent.

The Odessans, when they finally gave reason for the attack, the accusation was that the Bog Wraiths and Bank had colluded and been intentionally funneling money and support into making Odessa's occupation more difficult in Alexia, for the purpose of forcing Odessa to take out loans to pay for said occupation.

I think that's the gist of what you said?

OOC: Mose and Germain

MattA, if Germain's goal isn't to make Mose storm off and do something rash, then Germain is doing a very poor job of it. Your Sense Motive meter should be going through the roof that Mose is pretty much through with being belittled and he's adamant. As a player, I just assumed in your haste you didn't care much about adding the RP sparkles, but now after a few tries, my only conclusion is that it's on purpose, so I'll need to role-play the conclusion. I'm really trying to give Germain a chance to diplomagic Mose, but unless Germain says something more teamworky, things have to come to a head. Mose's little brain honestly cannot think of any upstanding reason to ignore the vampires without risking Silverwalkers lives (and therefore, he believes, the city's future). Germain knows how to babble but Mose knows how to battle-- and Mose's battle sense is very keen that we're all in grave danger and he won't be brushed-off about it. If that's your OOC plan to tilt Mose, then you're doing that great. If it's not, speak up, and we can assume that Germain soothes Mose with better wording... -Mattie 18:09, 29 July 2011 (EDT)

I think its fair to say that, if this were a format more suited to a back and forth, Germain would have held Mose's hand a little more though an explanation. But maybe you are also reading this different from I am, so let me spell it out how Germain sees it. Mose has made the exact same point, often in a disrespectful or frustrated way, four times now. The first three times, Germ and Egg made a genuine attempt to point out that, while we agree in theory, there significant issues with it in practice: we don't know where to find them, we don't know a target that isn't basically a lackey to our real enemy, and solving these problems will take a lot more time than we have. I think we've made good points without being dismissive, so if you're willing to fill in the gaps and assume we spent a little more careful time with Mose, then maybe he's stopped bulldogging the issue.

Otherwise, as written, Germain absolutely thinks that Mose is making stubborn and short sighted demands that are not supported by the party and will lead to the deaths of all the refugees and the loss of the war. He would prefer to drive Mose off so the party can figure out how to save the day without his toxic, disruptive influence, and then we calm him down once we have a plan in place. From Germain's perspective, he's tried to be diplomatic, but if Mose simply refuses to even try to listen or understand, the conversation is better off without him. It's kind of in your court, I guess. Germain certainly isn't going to make a huge effort to placate someone that is being completely unreasonable, but I do think some of the terseness comes from the format of the wiki rp limitations. --User:Msallen

Your response does help clarify. I think the confusion lies in a difference of perception. We've been attacked and almost killed by wererats in the last three game sessions, and so it's all very immediate in-game. Maybe it has a different feeling to you OOC because you got some of those sessions secondhand? Or maybe you think they're going to leave us alone? They just ambushed us openly in the streets of Wydmoor and nearly killed Kimika. Do you have some intel that says they won't be ambushing us again any second now? Mose isn't saying kill the Thieves' Guild but wants to stop the ambushes once and for all. I think Mose would be happy to help refugees instead, etc, if someone gave him some indication that you were taking this immediate threat to our lives seriously, since this all just happened to the party and we're still reeling. But this time Germain walks in, changes his tune, and now we're ignoring this imminent threat? Regardless, even when Germain sees things differently, every other time a different position came up, Germain was willing to compromise and brainstorm. -Mattie

Anyway, this has gotten Mose into such a headache of an RP position. Would Germain agree that the wererats and Mantatlus assassins are a real threat (or confuse Mose enough to think they're not) and propose some steps we can take to protect ourselves while we pursued other important goals? Even saying something like "We're not ignoring them, Mose-- it's all part of my plan. The best way to find them is to bring them out after us again. As usual, let's stock up on See-Invis potions and Silversheen, and [other items useful fighting these undead]. When they inevitably come to ambush us again, they won't survive a fight where we're actually ready for them. Drawing them to us is the best option we have until we have real info gathered from our sources." Or maybe I can coax Quinalin or Egg into saying that if you feel it's not a good situation for Germain to compromise on. Mose would be very much on board if there wasn't this unrealistic dismissal of what has transpired the past few days in-game. -Mattie

I'm sure I also only hinted at some of the things you are saying, but they are all part of the G-man's plans that he mentions. As I read the Most posts, they are pretty heavily focused on attacking so that's what I responded to mostly. It's fair to say that the geese and the walkers will be trying to dig into the history and background of the guild and the vampire of Wydmoor, as well as gather information about its activities, so we can hit them in the future. Also, that point you mentioned about how they are vulnerable when they step out of the shadows to strike at us isn't lost on my boy--he definitely thinks that is the best way to hit them now. I still hold my point on Mantatlus on account of we don't know where to hit him and I don't think he's really that important to the guild anyways. I think in conversation more of this would have come out, but when I'm just trying to reach a goal on an RP while I am at work, I didn't really have time to go so deep into things.

I might have missed something about the last few encounters. I thought we attacked the guild in most of those (in the turtle temple, the sewers, and here). The only time they attacked us was when they killed our prisoners, and they fled once that was done and didn't really push that hard on killing us. Am I wrong? --Msallen

That is true, the attackers ran away once the clerics were dead and the party put up mild resistance. The attack was not pressed. -gm

Daniel 13:15, 30 July 2011 (EDT)

Could someone please check out what Quin said about trying to capture someone coming to investigate the trap and have them lead us back to the next person up who was responsible?

We've really gotten nowhere with all this debate and the game tonight is gonna be a little sad if we don't have any chance of doing something that feels even moderately useful.

I'm down for a try on that, but I'm not sure that the sort of person who can summon giant Elementals will need to send a flesh and blood human to see if we lived. Like Egg was suggesting, he probably has a live feed. Al and Germ can check the place for tracks, though. In any case, I think we are in good shape for the game? Does it seem like we (mostly) agree on a plan? Expect a bit of a test wall from Germain at start of game. --Msallen