Overlord Styled Sandbox (IC)- Blue Rose Society

[Jack_Simth]

The man in a woman's ... well, not quite 'body' ... shrugs "Impressive enough, but... are you sure you want a base that can fall out of the sky if the right person casts a Disjunction on it? My guild hall used linked Genesis demiplanes. The spell's hard to get, so we bought scrolls; if we'd needed more castings... well, I've got a way around needing those, it just takes a bit longer. They're not subject to Disjunction, have no need of Permanency, and are still demiplanes customizable via the Create Demiplane line. We set up about a hundred permanent Gates that way to be used for trade by the guild members who couldn't just Teleport on their own... or who wanted to do more trading in a day than their spell slots would permit."

He continues "So... is the boss man home?"

Spoiler

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Sønderjye: About your hunting... while apparently you can get XP... have you confirmed it's useful to do so? Few classes extend beyond 20th, we've no indication of what XP track we might be on, and there were notes in the recruitment thread about us being fairly static in that regard.... which would mean that for now the only one who can track your advancement is TN.

[Sønderjye]

Spoiler: OOC

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I'm giving the other folks a day or two more to voice whether they want to be introduced to Jack. I wanted to adress the OOC though.

I'll say that hunting serves three purposes. One, and purhaps the most important, is that fighting is fun and gives me a needed break from roleplaying. Another is to gauge the combat abilities of the natives and see how that compares to what we got from Genesis. Lastly it is to test whether we can level, and if so do it.
I'm not really seeing any way of confirming whether we can level or not, aside from actually gaining XP. While the character progression includes guidelines for how to advance beyond level 20 that certainly isn't the only way. Multiclassing is an option, as is going mythic.
If TN is curious I found a single homebrew for epic level PF that seems fairly well done.

[ThreadNecro5]

Magic jar Experimentation
'Oh. Ehm. ****!', were the very brilliant thoughts that crossed Chase's mind after hearing the message. He really hadn't thought this through. Maybe he shouldn't be giving the gods this much flag for their slipups during creation. He wasn't doing a much better job himself.
"At least that strongly suggest that you have a soul", he tries weakly, and after a moment: "How is everyone doing?"

"We're alright, the oracles are a bit confused on what happened, they seem to have been aware in the back of our minds. Current discussions are mostly centring on what might happen once the magic jars end and possible countermeasures for the less ideal possibilities".

"From my research it doesn't seem like the spell is monitoring your thoughts but more so that you were made different from me."

"Good to know, some of us were thinking that. We can probably trust the difference between a permeant and instantaneous effect".

Aftermath

"I'll consider that consent", Scourge yelled before attacking.

If the thing is close enough, Scourge will move and attack.

If not he'll Dimension Hop and attack.

Spoiler: OOC

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(1d20+14)[17]

Attack 1: (1d20+14)[17] [roll1]
Attack 2: [roll2] [roll3]
Attack 3: [roll4] [roll5]

Magus ability lets me uses dimension door and still make a full attack.

Spoiler: OOC

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Go with dimension hop due to the snow.

Also I'm not quite parsing your rolls, it's not clearly labelled what is what and I need to roll a concentration check

Spoiler: rolls

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Initiative: (1d20+14)[17]

Spoiler: OOC

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I'm giving the other folks a day or two more to voice whether they want to be introduced to Jack. I wanted to adress the OOC though.

Spoiler: OOC

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As to where the others are I guess Drack is still experiencing computer issues and the last I heard of Aleph Null he said had finals to study for.

[Sønderjye]

Aftermath

Spoiler: OOC

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The first one was the will save you asked for.
The three attacks were three attacks with a +5 greatsword, first to hit then for damage. Two posts ago I said that she had a greatsword in hand but in retrospec I could have been clearer.

Do you need to roll a concentration check or do you need me to roll a concentration check?
If it's the latter then here's a concentration (1d20+54)[66]
Initiative if you haven't already rolled it: (1d20+39)[52]

Base

"A base consisting of demiplanes were a considerations," Bond's eyes grows a bit distant and his voice becomes almost melancholic: "I remember that there was a lot of good sounding arguments back then. Like how it had a high will save, how if it were hit by somehing antimagic it would just fall out of the radius, how nobody would risk losing their spellcasting abilities permanently by using disjunction, how it's ability to stay hidden and being immune to divinations combined with it's constant moving around made it impossible for outsiders to reach. Ultimately though I suspect that people just wanted a flying castle for the coolness factor and for how difficult the Storm King raid had been. It's been serving us well enough though."

"So... is the boss man home?"

The simulacrum is about to answer when the ground opens about 30 ft. ahead and the original Scourge slowly rises. She looks pretty much identical to Bond a woman in her late 20 with green hair, except that Jack doesn't detect her as a Simulacrum.

"Hey", she greets with a smile that could have melted the heart of a frostgiant. "I'm going by Tollens these days and I am the creator of Bond. You're the first player from outside the guild I've seen and while I'm happy to meet people I have more in common with that those from this world, I am also conserned about what you might do, as you probably gauged by Bond's reaction."

The sim puts a hand up and rubs the back of his head looking awkward: "Whoops"

"Frankly the people who spends their time in VR aren't the most stable and that goes double for those who haven't moved on when the game is about to close. That said I'd much rather that we work together than against each other and I think we share at least some common goals. So as a sign of trust" he untangles his spellpouch from his belt and throws it a little away: "I don't have a weapon out and I've instructed my bodyguards and castle to not ready an attack if you do something fishy. If you have a beef with something I did in the past now would be a good time to let me know."

"I have a few questions myself such as whether you know of other players around, what you've learned about this place and what your goals are but I am sure you have your own."

[Jack_Simth]

Base

"A base consisting of demiplanes were a considerations," Bond's eyes grows a bit distant and his voice becomes almost melancholic: "I remember that there was a lot of good sounding arguments back then. Like how it had a high will save, how if it were hit by somehing antimagic it would just fall out of the radius, how nobody would risk losing their spellcasting abilities permanently by using disjunction, how it's ability to stay hidden and being immune to divinations combined with it's constant moving around made it impossible for outsiders to reach. Ultimately though I suspect that people just wanted a flying castle for the coolness factor and for how difficult the Storm King raid had been. It's been serving us well enough though."



The simulacrum is about to answer when the ground opens about 30 ft. ahead and the original Scourge slowly rises. She looks pretty much identical to Bond a woman in her late 20 with green hair, except that Jack doesn't detect her as a Simulacrum.

"Hey", she greets with a smile that could have melted the heart of a frostgiant. "I'm going by Tollens these days and I am the creator of Bond. You're the first player from outside the guild I've seen and while I'm happy to meet people I have more in common with that those from this world, I am also conserned about what you might do, as you probably gauged by Bond's reaction."

The sim puts a hand up and rubs the back of his head looking awkward: "Whoops"

"Frankly the people who spends their time in VR aren't the most stable and that goes double for those who haven't moved on when the game is about to close. That said I'd much rather that we work together than against each other and I think we share at least some common goals. So as a sign of trust" he untangles his spellpouch from his belt and throws it a little away: "I don't have a weapon out and I've instructed my bodyguards and castle to not ready an attack if you do something fishy. If you have a beef with something I did in the past now would be a good time to let me know."

"I have a few questions myself such as whether you know of other players around, what you've learned about this place and what your goals are but I am sure you have your own."

Ephermial Recollection blinks, and says "First off, you do realize that everything you said applies equally well to yourself, right?" She chuckles "Not that it matters. 'Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows,' after all. Now that there's two of us, though... the Time Stop test should confirm - mostly - whether or not we're running on our own hardware in this scenario... how closely were you listening in on the conversation?" She continues "Regardless... if you cast Time Stop, and I don't experience a discontinuity, and I accept that you're real, then that's proof enough for me that I'm not simply sitting in my gaming room. If I do experience a discontinuity, that tells me I'm still running on my original hardware. I can of course do the same for you, but it will need to wait until tomorrow for me to prepare that spell. I've been largely engaged in charity work today." She briefly sidetracks "Which reminds me... I'll need to find a good source of medium mammalian animals... sheep, maybe... hmm... could just go deer hunting..." she shakes her head "... but I've got a few days until I need the herd, and the situation is stable enough. Not immediately relevant."

She gets back on track "As for goals... first order of business is 'attempt to sort out what's going on'. Proof will be hard to come by, of course, especially as it's painfully obvious from the sims that the event had access to our memories... well, unless they were made post-event, but that doesn't seem likely. I've got three running major guesses, with sub-categories for each, and some ideas for tests to run. I'm guessing you've got a few of your own. Would you like to share notes, and how far in depth would you like me to go? I tend to ramble."

She goes on and on... "Second order of business depends partially on the first. 'Get back home' or maybe 'bring home here' or perhaps 'settle in for the long haul'. Plus I've got some charity work to keep my mind occupied." She considers "Of course, given the nature of some of the tests, first and second order of business needs to be done at least partially in parallel. Hmm." she trails off a bit.

[Sønderjye]

"First off, you do realize that everything you said applies equally well to yourself, right?"

Scourge breaks out in a sad-happy smile. "I know. And my life back on earth wasn't exactly pleasant."

"how closely were you listening in on the conversation?"

"I wasn't actually. I have a policy of not listening in on the other chases unless explicit consent and besides I've been busy. I only got things second-hand though I thing I got the main bits."

"Regardless... if you cast Time Stop, and I don't experience a discontinuity, and I accept that you're real, then that's proof enough for me that I'm not simply sitting in my gaming room.

"Wait, am I the first player you have met after the clock went down?" she asks curiously before answering the implicit question: "But yeah I can do a cast, though I'll need to take down a few contingencies first." She starts walking over to spellpouch, then remembers that neither Dispel nor Time Stop have material components, so she unceremonially cast two of them in quick succession.

From one moment to another everything is frozen over, and a Meladaemon and a Erodaemon is facing off, looking like they are ready to pounce on each other. Scouge looks like she is about to cast another spell but stops as she spots you moving. "Ahh. I never know how long these things last. Shame though, a vulcano in the background would really have put the final touch on the dramatic scene."

Spoiler: OOC

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Rounds stopped: (1d4+1)[3]
If you study the two things you get a will DC 50 to realize that they are only quasi-real and made of material drawn from the shadow plane.

"I'll need to find a good source of medium mammalian animals... sheep, maybe... hmm... could just go deer hunting"

"What do you need them for?", you detect a little disconsern in Tollens voice. Which either means that your sense motive beat her bluff or that she wanted you to know.

Would you like to share notes, and how far in depth would you like me to go?

"Yeah, that would be great and go as deep as you would like. I think that you got most of my high level thoughts from Bond. Bond were born after the clock went down for whatever it's worth."

"Plus I've got some charity work to keep my mind occupied."

"You might want to be careful with doing too much good. Rumour has it that the main god of this plane has a distorted view on capital Balance and will actively screw things up for people who get too much help. He likes struggle you see. Although I'm still unsure of whether that applies to all kinds of help or just the help from specific individuals."

[Jack_Simth]

Scourge breaks out in a sad-happy smile. "I know. And my life back on earth wasn't exactly pleasant."

The Jack in the ghost states "Have... or is that had... a pretty nice one myself; good job, a kind and lovely wife, and a cute little toddler. Getting back to them, or getting them here, is something of a priority for me. Really, there's very little more important than family."

"I wasn't actually. I have a policy of not listening in on the other chases unless explicit consent and besides I've been busy. I only got things second-hand though I thing I got the main bits."

"Wait, am I the first player you have met after the clock went down?" she asks curiously before answering the implicit question: "But yeah I can do a cast, though I'll need to take down a few contingencies first." She starts walking over to spellpouch, then remembers that neither Dispel nor Time Stop have material components, so she unceremonially cast two of them in quick succession.

From one moment to another everything is frozen over, and a Meladaemon and a Erodaemon is facing off, looking like they are ready to pounce on each other. Scouge looks like she is about to cast another spell but stops as she spots you moving. "Ahh. I never know how long these things last. Shame though, a vulcano in the background would really have put the final touch on the dramatic scene."

Spoiler: OOC

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Rounds stopped: [roll0]
If you study the two things you get a will DC 50 to realize that they are only quasi-real and made of material drawn from the shadow plane.

Spoiler

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Constant True Seeing, and they're other creatures post-casting, which means you can't affect them during a time stop, so you're going to have some difficulty Mind-blanking both of them... also; I'm in nat-1 territory on that save. So... eh, may as well [roll0]

The Jack in the ghost continues "Yes, you pretty much are. At first I thought a few of my guild mates were stuck in here too... but it turns out that their forms didn't de-rez when they disconnected. It was a bit creepy. And yes, that'll do for that, one of the simpler tests."

"What do you need them for?", you detect a little disconsern in Tollens voice. Which either means that your sense motive beat her bluff or that she wanted you to know.

He shrugs "I encountered a sea bonze, watched it kill two seemingly-innocent folks right in front of me, so I put it under my thumb and am meticulously disassembling it into the component souls. Which I then plan to restore via the Parasitic Soul spell to place them into animals, and then use Polymorph Any Object to turn them permanently into humanoids. Elves, maybe. For that to work, though, I need live mammalian animals of medium size. Simulacrums don't work, as Parasitic Soul kills the target. So yeah, at some point I'll need to go deer hunting, or maybe purchase a herd of sheep. It's the kind of charity work that tends to spark alignment debates: What kind of an act is using Evil spells towards Good ends? So I doubt anyone will intervene due to Good/Evil balance."

"Yeah, that would be great and go as deep as you would like. I think that you got most of my high level thoughts from Bond. Bond were born after the clock went down for whatever it's worth."

Jack nods "Got any from before? It'll make a useful data point; a more useful data point, in some ways. And... well, you did ask for it..."
He continues "First off: The three main branch guesses:" He starts ticking them off on his fingers, starting with his left thumb "First, the simulation hypothesis. We're all stuck in some form of computer simulation." He moves on and adds his left pointer finger to the set "Second, the many worlds theory. We've slipped into an alternate dimension." He adds his middle finger to the set "Third, the Dream hypothesis. By whatever word, I'm imagining the whole thing."

He takes a breath "Each of these, as noted, have sub guesses; the Simulation hypothesis has 'Accident or Malice?', the speed question, and 'Copy or Transfer?'. The Many Worlds theory has 'Accident, Malice, Need, or Boon?' The Dream hypothesis has 'Coma, Madhouse, or Telepath?'"

He drones on, but at least in that body it's nice to watch and the tones are dulcet "The 'accident' variations should be pretty self-explanatory; a result not intended and possibly not known. I'd thought the 'Malice' variation was self-explanatory enough, but apparently your sim had trouble with the idea that ripping someone out of their lives to be tossed into your sim for your own purposes could be considered a fundamentally malicious act. The speed question should also be fairly obvious; if this is a sim, an important question is 'What's the relative timeframe?' As an extreme example, if we're clocking at infinite speed in an out-of-control quantum computing event, then we're not going to be able to communicate with the operators - if there are any. Lower than infinity, it would take extreme effort to communicate with an operator if we're clocking ten years for every second of real time. If it takes the operator an hour to edit in an answer, that's 3,600 years our scale. On the other hand, at a low multiplier like 10 to 1, communication is only a mild hassle; if it takes the operator an hour to edit in the answer to a posed question, we'd have the answer the next day. Then there's 'Copy or Transfer?' to go with the Simulation Hypothesis. Again, they should be relatively self-explanatory variations - within the simulation hypothesis, if the data that comprises 'us' was copied out of our bodies, then there's no leaving - there's nowhere to go. In the transfer scenario, on the other hand, then our original bodies may still be available."

He moves on to the second major branch "With the many worlds theory, we've got the same 'Accident' as for the simulation hypothesis; 'Malice' is close enough to the same as well; but Many Worlds also has two additional options: 'Need' and 'Boon'. Keep in mind, these are 'as intended by the person or group arranging it.' Need should be pretty self-explanatory: Someone believes that spending the power - whatever was used - to call us here will be beneficial to them, whether that's because they expect us to do charity work, want the chaos we'll cause as a cover for something else, or because they intend to eat us in some sense or other. 'Boon' of course means that it's intended as a gift to us for one reason or another."

He shows very little in the way of signs of stopping "Then there's the 'Dream' hypothesis; this isn't really happening. I'm in a coma - well, you, from your perspective - or a madhouse, or maybe in a dreamscape created by some telepath... and am essentially imagining the whole thing. This could of course also be called the solipsist theory."

He finally seems to be starting to wind down... "As for tests: Start with the simulation theory. To communicate with the operator - assuming there is one - we'd need to modify something monitored in a way that's obviously a communication attempt, and hope for a response. Landscaping visible from orbit assuming they do maps would be a good place to start. Ideally something that a person from inside the simulation would not understand, in order to cut down on tricksters claiming to be the operator. A picture of something well-recognized from the prior world... maybe draw the Statue of Liberty by manipulating terrain to be different shades of vegetation or something, then add a question mark at the end. Then maintain and monitor it for the next ten thousand years. In theory, we'll never find evidence against the simulation hypothesis; anything we find within the simulation that suggests reality could simply be something that the simulation accounted for. We may eventually find evidence for it, but if we do, we can't entirely trust said evidence - it could just be a trickster who figured out they could manipulate us by pretended to be the operator, and just happens to be better at being a trickster than we are at detecting tricksters. Especially as whatever happened clearly has some access to our minds. Speaking of... do you have any simulacrums made prior to the event? Inquiring as to their memories from before - both things they experienced as part of the game and memories of the prior world - would give useful data."

Nope, still not done... "For the Many Worlds test, at least it's faster. Basically, it amounts to 'attempt to get a messenger from one to the other and back'. The Transport Traveler's clause of Wish being likely the best bet. Attempt to send a creature with some instructions to the old world, wait a while, attempt to retrieve said creature; the less magical the messenger, the better. While waiting, attempt to retrieve someone known from the prior world to put them here. Interview them, and send them back. An expensive test - we're looking at four Wishes here - and we can't entirely trust the results; if it is a simulation, the simulation obviously has access to our memories - otherwise the simulacrum could not exist - which among other things means that it could very well simply simulate the results we expect. And, of course, 'doesn't work at all' only tells us that we're isolated beyond what Wish can do. That could just be stronger planar separations, or it could be that the simulation has no access to the real world."

He seems just about finished "The Dream hypothesis is fundamentally untestable - my subconscious - or yours, from your perspective - would simply provide whatever results from any test lead to the result the subconscious desires; much in the same manner as why the simulation hypothesis is untestable."

And finally, a summary "So we can guess at things, but checks are thin and we're not going to get anything 'hard' - ever - but we may get enough results to satisfy us personally as to what we think happened. Might as well try though, no?"

"You might want to be careful with doing too much good. Rumour has it that the main god of this plane has a distorted view on capital Balance and will actively screw things up for people who get too much help. He likes struggle you see. Although I'm still unsure of whether that applies to all kinds of help or just the help from specific individuals."

He laughs briefly "It's the kind of charity work that tends to spark alignment debates: Parasitic Soul has the [Evil] description, so what kind of an act is using Evil spells towards Good ends? I doubt anyone will intervene due to Good/Evil balance. Plus it's not a mass scale. Just about a score of souls released back into the wilds for a time."

[ThreadNecro5]

Aftermath

Spoiler: OOC

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The first one was the will save you asked for.
The three attacks were three attacks with a +5 greatsword, first to hit then for damage. Two posts ago I said that she had a greatsword in hand but in retrospec I could have been clearer.

Do you need to roll a concentration check or do you need me to roll a concentration check?
If it's the latter then here's a concentration (1d20+28)[43]
Initiative if you haven't already rolled it: [roll1]

Spoiler: OOC

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The check was for the monster.

Rolls:
Concentration: (1d20+28)[43]

All your attacks hit. Just to double check your attacks aren't cold iron/equivalent as far as I can tell?
Total damage was 28. Only now do I realise how nasty incorporeal+DR is. Will make a note of that.

You swing at the lupine horror, the substance of it's body flowing around and through your blade. What little harm you do is closing up before your eyes.

It noiselessly swings it's head up and begins exhaling a thick vapour filling the surrounding area for quite some distance and preventing you from watching your surroundings. The mist is even colder than the area was before as your sword ices over.

Now with its advantage to the fight it slips beneath the ground leaving no tunnel or sign of it's presence. The area farther than you can reach is unable to be seen. There is no noise, no vibration and no sign of movement.

Spoiler: OOC

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You get an attack of opportunity

[Jack_Simth]

Spoiler: OOC

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The check was for the monster.

Rolls:
Concentration: [roll0]

All your attacks hit. Just to double check your attacks aren't cold iron/equivalent as far as I can tell?
Total damage was 28. Only now do I realise how nasty incorporeal+DR is. Will make a note of that.

Pathfinder re-implemented the magic overcoming material and alignment DR rule that Wizards dumped in the 3.0 -> 3.5 transition; see Here. With DR/Cold Iron, a +3 or better weapon ignores it. And he needs a magical effect to hurt an incorporeal at all.

DR is much less useful in Pathfinder, although it's still great against brutes.

[Sønderjye]

Battle Royale

Scourge smiles grimly as the swing hits but his smile fades as his attack passes through. Oh well. At least this was a useful point of data, now he knew that incorporeal creatures worked as they did in Genesis. It was a weird 'concidence' how many of the same rules governed this world as governed Genesis. She throws the sword aside, letting it clank hard onto the ice.

He pays close attention to the sounds of the surroundings using his newly acquired ability to see through sounds, however he quickly realizes that he is completely blind to the soundless creature. This was an interesting challenge.

He opens a portal to his left and pull out a staff, from which he conjured an artic storm that completely covers him.

Spoiler: OOC

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Free: Drop weapon
Move: Summon item from cache
Standard action: Casting Polar Midnight from staff on top of himself. Glimpse of the akashi says that it adds CL to damage rolls however it isn't clear to me if that includes spell damage and ability damage. I'll roll without it here.
Fort DC 44.
Damage (5d6)[14] and dex damage (1d6)[2]. Scourge is immune to both types. Edit: I forgot that Crafter's Art adds +10 damage so it's actually 24 cold damage and 12 dex damage.
He then floats 5 feet upwards and tries to hide in the icy storm, stealth: (1d20+88)[89].

Scourge pays extra attention to how the creature reacts once he can see it again (1d20+70)[82].
Scourge have blindsight running but it depend on sound. I am assuming that this doesn't help him.

Knowledge(whatever it's type is): (1d20+59)[63]
Knowledge(arcane) to identify current spell effects: (1d20+61)[81]
Spellcraft to identify the spell cast: (1d20+61)[62]

Glimpse of the Akashic: 4 rounds left

Base

"Have... or is that had... a pretty nice one myself; good job, a kind and lovely wife, and a cute little toddler. Getting back to them, or getting them here, is something of a priority for me. Really, there's very little more important than family."

"Must have been nice", Tollens replies, imagining how his life could have been different.

Spoiler: OOC

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Constant True Seeing, and they're other creatures post-casting, which means you can't affect them during a time stop, so you're going to have some difficulty Mind-blanking both of them... also; I'm in nat-1 territory on that save. So... eh, may as well (5d6)[14]

Spoiler: OOC

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True seeing would detect them as illusions. I'm confused. What makes you think that I would bother mindblanking them or otherwise affecting them?

"Actually now that I have you", he says to the two big demons standing behind him, wondering how things formed from the shadow world worked. "What's hell like?"

"I encountered a sea bonze, watched it kill two seemingly-innocent folks right in front of me, so I put it under my thumb and am meticulously disassembling it into the component souls. Which I then plan to restore via the Parasitic Soul spell to place them into animals, and then use Polymorph Any Object to turn them permanently into humanoids. Elves, maybe. For that to work, though, I need live mammalian animals of medium size. Simulacrums don't work, as Parasitic Soul kills the target. So yeah, at some point I'll need to go deer hunting, or maybe purchase a herd of sheep. It's the kind of charity work that tends to spark alignment debates: What kind of an act is using Evil spells towards Good ends? So I doubt anyone will intervene due to Good/Evil balance."

"While the question of whether an objective morality exist in thie realm, I think I could have communicated more clearly. The god I was talking about seems to care less about a capital Good/Evil balance and more of a struggle balance. In the past he have actively punished people for receiving boons, so you might want to be careful being too helpful until we know more. I'll also advice caution about preemtive action in general when there. Animals have immortal souls so their moral value is significantly higher than back on earth. Is there no options of creating a soul-less being?"

"Got any from before? It'll make a useful data point; a more useful data point, in some ways."

Tollens shakes her head.

I'd thought the 'Malice' variation was self-explanatory enough, but apparently your sim had trouble with the idea that ripping someone out of their lives to be tossed into your sim for your own purposes could be considered a fundamentally malicious act.

Bond sends Jack an annoyed look but Tollens remains neutral. "I think it's more a disagreement of semantics rather than of consequences," she says trying to be the middle man.

She listens through Jacks thoughts and only afterwards comments on the main part: "I've had many of the same speculations. While I am not as willing as you to dismiss the possibility of hard evidence just yet, I'll agree that we should focus on softer evidence and evaluate which category that would stronger predict said evidence. For instance would expect a strong continuity in the first two groups but less so in a dream or a hallucination, so I am assigning that a lower probability. Do you have any tests in mind?"

[Jack_Simth]

The corrupted nature spirit responds....

"Must have been nice", Tollens replies, imagining how his life could have been different.

She gets a wistful look in her eyes "Very."

Spoiler: OOC

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True seeing would detect them as illusions. I'm confused. What makes you think that I would bother mindblanking them or otherwise affecting them?

Spoiler

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Nothing, really. I just have a habit of exploring multiple avenues.

"While the question of whether an objective morality exist in thie realm, I think I could have communicated more clearly. The god I was talking about seems to care less about a capital Good/Evil balance and more of a struggle balance. In the past he have actively punished people for receiving boons, so you might want to be careful being too helpful until we know more. I'll also advice caution about preemtive action in general when there. Animals have immortal souls so their moral value is significantly higher than back on earth. Is there no options of creating a soul-less being?"

She shrugs "They were already dead and subsumed by an undead entity, where they were going to persist until it died... and it was trapped where very little would happen to it and it needed nothing. If anything, this will increase the net struggle in the world. The spell I know about for placing an arbitrary captured soul into a body is based off of Magic Jar; it kills the old, so a Simulacrum would just melt, it needs the target to have something of a soul to work, so it's not feasible to use a construct or something - at least, not without more research. I'm planning on purchasing domestic herd beasts for that, and they get killed all the time."

She continues "As for the gods getting involved?" she shrugs "Good luck finding an action one of them doesn't oppose. If there's a god of famine or fitness, getting anyone - including yourself - fat is a sin for them. Simple eating may be. Good gods oppose Evil actions, Evil gods oppose Good actions; Lawful gods oppose Chaotic actions, Chaotic gods oppose Lawful actions. Neutral gods oppose anything that tips the scales of balance, and so on. Yet people still do things that are good, evil, lawful, chaotic, and so on. I suspect that most of the punishment the gods mete out is more for cautionary tales so folks can learn things than for main purpose."

Bond sends Jack an annoyed look but Tollens remains neutral. "I think it's more a disagreement of semantics rather than of consequences," she says trying to be the middle man.

She shrugs "Or just different life experiences; someone who hates their life will have little problem with the idea of getting pulled from it and sent elsewhere. Hardly matters, though."

She listens through Jacks thoughts and only afterwards comments on the main part: "I've had many of the same speculations. While I am not as willing as you to dismiss the possibility of hard evidence just yet, I'll agree that we should focus on softer evidence and evaluate which category that would stronger predict said evidence. For instance would expect a strong continuity in the first two groups but less so in a dream or a hallucination, so I am assigning that a lower probability. Do you have any tests in mind?"

She sighs "It was also a philosophical problem in the prior world... or perhaps we have a disagreement of what I mean when I say 'hard evidence'. Consider: Suppose for a moment that the many worlds hypothesis were true, that there is no way to contact the prior world, and that there was a very powerful entity which, for one reason or another, wanted very much to convince us that this is a simulation; in such a scenario, what would you expect to find that concretely disproved a simulation? We can go the opposite direction with that, of course, and suppose that the simulation hypothesis is true, feeding off our minds to build the simulation, and 'wants' to convince us it's real; in such a situation, what would you expect to find that concretely disproved a many worlds scenario?"

[Sønderjye]

Base

"They were already dead and subsumed by an undead entity, where they were going to persist until it died... and it was trapped where very little would happen to it and it needed nothing. If anything, this will increase the net struggle in the world. The spell I know about for placing an arbitrary captured soul into a body is based off of Magic Jar; it kills the old, so a Simulacrum would just melt, it needs the target to have something of a soul to work, so it's not feasible to use a construct or something - at least, not without more research. I'm planning on purchasing domestic herd beasts for that, and they get killed all the time."

"What do you mean, kill the old? I never really looked at the flavour of magic jar much. I thought it just exchanged souls?"

"As for the gods getting involved?" she shrugs "Good luck finding an action one of them doesn't oppose. If there's a god of famine or fitness, getting anyone - including yourself - fat is a sin for them. Simple eating may be. Good gods oppose Evil actions, Evil gods oppose Good actions; Lawful gods oppose Chaotic actions, Chaotic gods oppose Lawful actions. Neutral gods oppose anything that tips the scales of balance, and so on. Yet people still do things that are good, evil, lawful, chaotic, and so on. I suspect that most of the punishment the gods mete out is more for cautionary tales so folks can learn things than for main purpose."

Chase looks like he is about to argue more but then shrugs: "I think it's unwise but I guess you do what you gotta do."

"Or just different life experiences; someone who hates their life will have little problem with the idea of getting pulled from it and sent elsewhere. Hardly matters, though."

Bond's body language clearly indicate an increase in annoyance but he bites his tongue. Tollens's friendly face doesn't faulter.

"It was also a philosophical problem in the prior world... or perhaps we have a disagreement of what I mean when I say 'hard evidence'. Consider: Suppose for a moment that the many worlds hypothesis were true, that there is no way to contact the prior world, and that there was a very powerful entity which, for one reason or another, wanted very much to convince us that this is a simulation; in such a scenario, what would you expect to find that concretely disproved a simulation? We can go the opposite direction with that, of course, and suppose that the simulation hypothesis is true, feeding off our minds to build the simulation, and 'wants' to convince us it's real; in such a situation, what would you expect to find that concretely disproved a many worlds scenario?"

"Under a two category system, anything that would make many world more likely is generally things that makes simulation more likely and vice-versa, since probability comes in finite quantities. Things that makes makes simulation are generally related to finite processing power, bugs, contact with the operator, and shortcuts in programming as well as sloppy programming. Things that makes many worlds more likely are less constrained but off the top of the bat I would expect that we could somehow contact Earth, consistent laws of nature when we discover them, and a certain level of overall consistency. Further, I would expect there to be other worlds like the one earth is in."

"In so far as answering your specific question, if there is a nigh omnipotent being whose abilities were unknown to us who spent every waking our with their attention directed as us and intentionally put clues that implied we were in a simulation and blocked or removed clues that implied many-worlds we wouldn't have any way of knowing. If such an entity would become known to us though we could potentially learn it's abilities, motivations and limitations, and learn how to distract it."

"But high level discussions aside, let's try a stap at low level experiments. I'll get some people on a little landscaping. Divination spells doesn't work on Earth so I am reasonably sure that someone or something is either blocking magic going to it or it's in a deadmagic zone. And if earth exist we can be reasonably confident that the humans there have souls given that humans here does, so there's a chance that we might find some in one of the afterlifes. It is similarly plausible that a sufficiently powerful god can confirm that Earth exist. That said I'm down for burning some funds on a few wishes and hopefully this city have just the right trick."

She then shifts his attention away from Jack and telepathically sends: 'Castle! Activate the Jewel and summon wealth!'

Spoiler: OOC

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The casle is to activate Jewel of Everlasting Gold's monthly ability to generate wealth from the elemental plane of Earth. It doesn't specify how much it can summon but given that it can create 50,000 gold, I'd guess it's a lot, and it includes gems so it should be able to make diamonds for wish. Only diamonds for 4 wishes should be transported to their location.

Preparation for the gathering

Once things have cooled down and Chase have a little time on his hands, he'll head back to the castle and enter the secret hideout of the witches.

She walks through the small labyrinth of seemingly innocent hallways before knocking the secret pattern on the stone wall which allows her to enter.

The room is dimly lit although the big letters above the internal entrance declaring that this is the coven of 'the Daughters of the Witches you failed to burn'.

Once entered she'll send a friendly smile to the many young witches that study at the academy by day, and seek out the most powerful of the witches, who technically is a level 15 oracle but that was a minor detail, and quiz her on her personal beliefs and oppinioins.

Spoiler: OOC

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Chase wants to get a better understanding on the oracle, whose soul there is a copy of in the simulacrums. What her dreams and hopes are specifically, as well as general personality. I haven't written a background for her although Chase might have. Should I write out a background?

[Jack_Simth]

Base
"What do you mean, kill the old? I never really looked at the flavour of magic jar much. I thought it just exchanged souls?"

The man in a woman's ... well, not quite 'body' grimances "Magic Jar is a temporary replacement, and mostly undoes things if everyone's still in range when the spell expires, yes. Parasitic Soul, not so much. It permanently places a soul - not necessarily one's own - into another body, and doesn't keep the original around. It's mostly useful for permanently planting your minion in someone else to act as an agent, or to co-opt a powerful enemy's body. But it also works as a cheap raise dead for a captured soul... if you don't care about the prior occupant of the body. Hence why I'm planning on using herd beasts. They're relatively ethical."

"Under a two category system, anything that would make many world more likely is generally things that makes simulation more likely and vice-versa, since probability comes in finite quantities. Things that makes makes simulation are generally related to finite processing power, bugs, contact with the operator, and shortcuts in programming as well as sloppy programming. Things that makes many worlds more likely are less constrained but off the top of the bat I would expect that we could somehow contact Earth, consistent laws of nature when we discover them, and a certain level of overall consistency. Further, I would expect there to be other worlds like the one earth is in."

"In so far as answering your specific question, if there is a nigh omnipotent being whose abilities were unknown to us who spent every waking our with their attention directed as us and intentionally put clues that implied we were in a simulation and blocked or removed clues that implied many-worlds we wouldn't have any way of knowing. If such an entity would become known to us though we could potentially learn it's abilities, motivations and limitations, and learn how to distract it."

He tilts his head "Potentially, yes. But not necessarily. Additionally... there were super-funky things in physics in the prior world. For one example: the heat and pressure at the core of the sun does not make protons sufficiently energetic to actually collide... yet when they get close enough, there's a probability that they'll interact and fuse regardless of the lack of contact. That could just be weird physics, or that could be rounding errors in a simulation. Which goes back to what I mean when I say no 'hard' evidence is possible: We can get lots of 'soft' evidence - things that push our perception of probabilities one way or another - and there will be a point at which we consider it 'good enough' and for our own purposes; but there will always be the possibility of something we're unaware of that would change our minds if we knew about it - a simulation with more resources than we expect producing something seamless enough to not seem to be a simulation, an entity we can't oppose tweaking results to make things look different from what they are, a quirk in local consistent physics that looks similar to a simulation artifact, and so on."

"But high level discussions aside, let's try a stap at low level experiments. I'll get some people on a little landscaping. Divination spells doesn't work on Earth so I am reasonably sure that someone or something is either blocking magic going to it or it's in a deadmagic zone. And if earth exist we can be reasonably confident that the humans there have souls given that humans here does, so there's a chance that we might find some in one of the afterlifes. It is similarly plausible that a sufficiently powerful god can confirm that Earth exist. That said I'm down for burning some funds on a few wishes and hopefully this city have just the right trick."

He chuckles "Keep in mind, we can't necessarily trust the answers, whether that's due to lack of knowledge on a deity's part, a deity lying for their own purposes, and so on."

He considers a moment, and asks "Side note: How are you getting gems in such quantity that you don't care about the cost of four Wishes? I know how I'd go about it, but it would take most of a month for me to get there... well, unless I was planar binding folks or something."

She then shifts his attention away from Jack and telepathically sends: 'Castle! Activate the Jewel and summon wealth!'

Spoiler: OOC

Show

The casle is to activate Jewel of Everlasting Gold's monthly ability to generate wealth from the elemental plane of Earth. It doesn't specify how much it can summon but given that it can create 50,000 gold, I'd guess it's a lot, and it includes gems so it should be able to make diamonds for wish. Only diamonds for 4 wishes should be transported to their location.

Spoiler

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There was some discussion of limits on this thing on Discord when I was shuffling over here... Drack mentioned a limit on the wealth creation, which suggests there was some discussion with ThreadNecro5 on it.

Also: If there is a limit, I've got spells - readied, even - by which we can triple that... and possibly free the wealth from the "can't leave the castle" restriction.

[Sønderjye]

Base

Spoiler: OOC

Show

Jack quoted an old conversation saying that the summoned wealth were worth 200,000 gp so parts of the following is under the assumption that we we'll have diamond worth that ammount of money.

"Magic Jar is a temporary replacement, and mostly undoes things if everyone's still in range when the spell expires, yes. Parasitic Soul, not so much. It permanently places a soul - not necessarily one's own - into another body, and doesn't keep the original around. It's mostly useful for permanently planting your minion in someone else to act as an agent, or to co-opt a powerful enemy's body. But it also works as a cheap raise dead for a captured soul... if you don't care about the prior occupant of the body. Hence why I'm planning on using herd beasts. They're relatively ethical."

"I think you'll find that ethics will need to be shifted significantly if isn't a simulations. Souls have the potential to life forever. The human brain can only poorly imagine a decade, that's why you see that the length of a jail sentence have little impact on how much a crime is commited. So our intuitions don't stand a chance in imagine the moral worth of a being who litterally can continue having experiences forever. Intuitively I'll agree that sentient experience have more worth than that of an animal but they are on the same scale and there 5 minutes of sentient experiences doesn't beat 5 million years of animal experience." Tollens were getting more and more animated but then takes a deep breath before continueing: "I'm not trying to presume that you haven't given this proper thought but I also know that I made an huge ethical mistake shortly after getting here and am still trying to correct it. So I urge you to figure out whether the spell merely moves the soul to the afterlife or actually destroys it. And if it's the latter, explore the possibility of finding or creation something soulless, or using creatures that have a strictly negative utility value in the overall picture."

"Potentially, yes. But not necessarily. Additionally... there were super-funky things in physics in the prior world. For one example: the heat and pressure at the core of the sun does not make protons sufficiently energetic to actually collide... yet when they get close enough, there's a probability that they'll interact and fuse regardless of the lack of contact. That could just be weird physics, or that could be rounding errors in a simulation. Which goes back to what I mean when I say no 'hard' evidence is possible: We can get lots of 'soft' evidence - things that push our perception of probabilities one way or another - and there will be a point at which we consider it 'good enough' and for our own purposes; but there will always be the possibility of something we're unaware of that would change our minds if we knew about it - a simulation with more resources than we expect producing something seamless enough to not seem to be a simulation, an entity we can't oppose tweaking results to make things look different from what they are, a quirk in local consistent physics that looks similar to a simulation artifact, and so on."

"I hadn't heard about those before", Tollens says to the jack in the womans not-quite body: "But that does shift upward the probability that both earth and this place is a simulation compared to the something on Earth running this as a simulation, as well as compared to the many-worlds theory. It's all about what your prior expectation of finding certain evidence under the competing theories and shifting the probability when you find something that are more likely to be find in one compared to another. I'm not really seeing the problem here. We can never know anything with 100% certainty, reality just doesn't work that way. Our job is to accumulate evidence pointing in one direction until we reach a satisfying level of certainty while being aware of possible experiment flaws and trying to correct for as many of them as we can."

"Keep in mind, we can't necessarily trust the answers, whether that's due to lack of knowledge on a deity's part, a deity lying for their own purposes, and so on."

"That", she acknowledges: "Or they could give us the true answer and override our mind, or place a compulsion on us to make us forget whenever we learned the actual answer. I think a really important avenue of exploration is whether the local gods know that a significant number of very powerful beings were just transported into their realm."

"Side note: How are you getting gems in such quantity that you don't care about the cost of four Wishes? I know how I'd go about it, but it would take most of a month for me to get there... well, unless I was planar binding folks or something."

Chase considers for a moment how much information he should share but ends up deciding that he wants to build a trusting relationship with this Jack and trusting included sharing information: "We have an artifact that once a month can produce a lot of wealth from the one of the elemental planes. Jewel of something. We also have a deep well that produces as much gold as you want. None of the material can be removed from the city though. We also have the Book of the Damned if that's rings any bells, and you're standing on the Castle of the Storm King after I made some modifications to it. Which reminds, what kind of good stuff do you have that carried over from Genesis?"

He stands in silence and then a whole in the ground opens and diamonds worth 100k appears on a small pedistal that slowly emerge from the ground. "A sentient castle is useful, whatever the safety conserns", she says with a smug smile: "Let's get started, you got anyone who could be send?"

[Jack_Simth]

Spoiler: OOC

Show

Jack quoted an old conversation saying that the summoned wealth were worth 200,000 gp so parts of the following is under the assumption that we we'll have diamond worth that ammount of money.

Spoiler: OOC for ThreadNecro5 (harmless if others read, so feel free)

Show

Note: That conversation in question was between me and Drack while we were sorting out a few of the details of me coming into this thread. You weren't involved, and Drack didn't exactly sound certain on the number. I was running under the assumption that you didn't want The Jewel of Everlasting Gold making an arbitrarily large amount of spell components all at once and house-ruled a limit on the gems it can make in a PM conversation with a Blue Rose Society member. If I'm incorrect on that, please let me know.

Side note: Is the beast just biding it's time and seemingly skipping it's turn, or have you simply not gotten to the battle yet? If Chase actually manages to get killed, we may need to back up and redo this conversation.

"I think you'll find that ethics will need to be shifted significantly if isn't a simulations. Souls have the potential to life forever. The human brain can only poorly imagine a decade, that's why you see that the length of a jail sentence have little impact on how much a crime is commited. So our intuitions don't stand a chance in imagine the moral worth of a being who litterally can continue having experiences forever. Intuitively I'll agree that sentient experience have more worth than that of an animal but they are on the same scale and there 5 minutes of sentient experiences doesn't beat 5 million years of animal experience." Tollens were getting more and more animated but then takes a deep breath before continueing: "I'm not trying to presume that you haven't given this proper thought but I also know that I made an huge ethical mistake shortly after getting here and am still trying to correct it. So I urge you to figure out whether the spell merely moves the soul to the afterlife or actually destroys it. And if it's the latter, explore the possibility of finding or creation something soulless, or using creatures that have a strictly negative utility value in the overall picture."

Ephermial Recollection pauses a moment, takes a breath, changes her mind, and takes a slightly different track "You're missing something: For this purpose, it doesn't actually matter whether we and everything else here are a simulation or we are in an alternate reality. Only under the dream hypothesis is one freed from moral restraints ... and even then, until such time as one has control of the dream, one needs to operate within it as though it were 'real enough' in order to prevent it from becoming a nightmare. As to the question of 'moving them on' or 'killing them for good'... I suppose that's a good point. At least one spell hasn't behaved quite like I anticipated. To test... I suppose the simplest way would be to get an animal, kill it with the spell in question, dismiss the spell, and then attempt to raise the victim. Doable... would need to wait a bit, though, for me to gather materials. Still, I was planning on saving up for a few Resurrection spells anyway for the next time I run across another 'oops' moment, and souls in a gemstones will keep for a few weeks without much issue."

"I hadn't heard about those before", Tollens says to the jack in the womans not-quite body: "But that does shift upward the probability that both earth and this place is a simulation compared to the something on Earth running this as a simulation, as well as compared to the many-worlds theory. It's all about what your prior expectation of finding certain evidence under the competing theories and shifting the probability when you find something that are more likely to be find in one compared to another. I'm not really seeing the problem here. We can never know anything with 100% certainty, reality just doesn't work that way. Our job is to accumulate evidence pointing in one direction until we reach a satisfying level of certainty while being aware of possible experiment flaws and trying to correct for as many of them as we can."

She nods "OK, so we've cleared up the communication issue, then; we're agreed that it's reasonable that we'll eventually find enough soft evidence to satisfy us, but true hard evidence is unlikely."

"That", she acknowledges: "Or they could give us the true answer and override our mind, or place a compulsion on us to make us forget whenever we learned the actual answer. I think a really important avenue of exploration is whether the local gods know that a significant number of very powerful beings were just transported into their realm."

The spectral nymph considers "... if we're contacting them to ask them things I'm pretty sure they'll know we're here. Got a list of questions? I can get as many Commune and Vision spells as you like in short order. Simulacrum spells too, if you'll want help with the gardening."

Chase considers for a moment how much information he should share but ends up deciding that he wants to build a trusting relationship with this Jack and trusting included sharing information: "We have an artifact that once a month can produce a lot of wealth from the one of the elemental planes. Jewel of something. We also have a deep well that produces as much gold as you want. None of the material can be removed from the city though. We also have the Book of the Damned if that's rings any bells, and you're standing on the Castle of the Storm King after I made some modifications to it. Which reminds, what kind of good stuff do you have that carried over from Genesis?"

She shrugs "I left most of it behind, honestly... I'm not really capable of using the juicier artifacts - the id portraits - myself, and the base itself isn't exactly mobile. I did keep a couple of spawn I'd collected on guild raids - a Mute hag, a Winter hag, and an Annis hag - which I carefully keep under my thumb, as I'd rather not let that chaotic evil crew loose on any world. But with proper application, they're very, very useful. Side note: While the guild lords are absent... I would not advise trying to raid the old base. You might find yourself on a timeless dead magic plane that has no exits if you accidentally trigger the wrong trap."

She also considers the information a moment "... if the gem has some value limit, you may wish to ask for raw, uncut gemstones; I have Fabricate, which could be used to triple your limit fairly readily. The gold well... hmm. I wonder if things Fabricated from the gold have the same limitation... theoretically, the original materials are destroyed because they're components... well, that one's at least easy to check; mind showing me the well? I'll just Fabricate a nice art object out of the gold, then we can toss it over the side of the city and see what happens. I suppose I'll also want to prepare Wall of Iron tomorrow to see if other spell results are tied too.... As to the book: Why would you want it?"

He stands in silence and then a whole in the ground opens and diamonds worth 100k appears on a small pedistal that slowly emerge from the ground. "A sentient castle is useful, whatever the safety conserns", she says with a smug smile: "Let's get started, you got anyone who could be send?"

The nymph considers "Not that fit my major criteria, no. I could have a simulacrum shortly easily enough, but for sending someone, the less magical the better. Are you familiar with any nearby towns? Ideally we'd hire a stock human messenger."

"Oh, also: There was some mention that you're in soul debt to an overpowered extra planar entity? What do you know about it so far?"

[Sønderjye]

"You're missing something: For this purpose, it doesn't actually matter whether we and everything else here are a simulation or we are in an alternate reality. Only under the dream hypothesis is one freed from moral restraints ... and even then, until such time as one has control of the dream, one needs to operate within it as though it were 'real enough' in order to prevent it from becoming a nightmare. As to the question of 'moving them on' or 'killing them for good'... I suppose that's a good point. At least one spell hasn't behaved quite like I anticipated. To test... I suppose the simplest way would be to get an animal, kill it with the spell in question, dismiss the spell, and then attempt to raise the victim. Doable... would need to wait a bit, though, for me to gather materials. Still, I was planning on saving up for a few Resurrection spells anyway for the next time I run across another 'oops' moment, and souls in a gemstones will keep for a few weeks without much issue."

"Good point about", he agrees happy that Jack changed his trajectory: He then offer another advice: "Before you run actual experiments I suggest just studying the spell for a while. We have a rather extensive library in town that I can show you. I don't know how much of the information is true but the transition did give me a lot of knowledge regarding magic."

"... if we're contacting them to ask them things I'm pretty sure they'll know we're here. Got a list of questions? I can get as many Commune and Vision spells as you like in short order. Simulacrum spells too, if you'll want help with the gardening."

"Hmm. I haven't personally used Commune and haven't been in contact with any dieties. It's possible that other players have though. Perhaps it could be a priority to find the other players to coordinate efforts. In theory I'm down for Simulacrums but I am torn. On one hand creating something that enjoys living and overrall contribute to the wellbeing of others should be a good act, on the other hand we are creating something that has a mental compulsion to be our slave. There's going to be a big meeting on that exactly within the next day unless something happens which you're welcome to attend."

"I left most of it behind, honestly... I'm not really capable of using the juicier artifacts - the id portraits - myself, and the base itself isn't exactly mobile. I did keep a couple of spawn I'd collected on guild raids - a Mute hag, a Winter hag, and an Annis hag - which I carefully keep under my thumb, as I'd rather not let that chaotic evil crew loose on any world. But with proper application, they're very, very useful. Side note: While the guild lords are absent... I would not advise trying to raid the old base. You might find yourself on a timeless dead magic plane that has no exits if you accidentally trigger the wrong trap."

"Reasonable to keep them around. Why do you have them though? And is there anything else of big significance that I should know about?"

"... if the gem has some value limit, you may wish to ask for raw, uncut gemstones; I have Fabricate, which could be used to triple your limit fairly readily. The gold well... hmm. I wonder if things Fabricated from the gold have the same limitation... theoretically, the original materials are destroyed because they're components... well, that one's at least easy to check; mind showing me the well? I'll just Fabricate a nice art object out of the gold, then we can toss it over the side of the city and see what happens. I suppose I'll also want to prepare Wall of Iron tomorrow to see if other spell results are tied too.... As to the book: Why would you want it?"

"How would you...", Tollens starts looking confused before breaking into a big grin: "Ha! That's so silly but it should work. Sure, let's do that but schedule it for later testing, there's more pressing matters right now. As for the book what do I know. It was a fun raid and we had already reached max level. I guess if we're ever trying to hide from dieties it would be a good place to hang out."

"Not that fit my major criteria, no. I could have a simulacrum shortly easily enough, but for sending someone, the less magical the better. Are you familiar with any nearby towns? Ideally we'd hire a stock human messenger.

"I'm not really convinced that we can morally send someone unrelated to all of this on a journey that might kill them. If anything we should send one of us. And since you'd wink out in a deadmagic zone I guess it'll have to be me," she says with much more confidence than she actually feels: "Undeads aren't powered by magic per say and even if they are my soul should be ressurectable. Wait, let's test those things out first. You got a deadmagic plane at hand? I want to see whether undeads actually work in there and what happens to the freefloating souls you have."

"Regardless, I should prepare," she saysbefore sending a message to the Network requesting a reshuffle. A few moments later another simulacrum pops into existance and waves what looks like a dorje over him a few times. "Thanks Smith," Tollens says to the sim: "How's things on your side?"

Smith returns the smile before answering: "I'd like to say that it's boring now that the nascor have been put on standby but honestly things are pretty hectic. Folks are still processing everything but the uncertainty is hard. I see a lot of attempts of distraction. A few folks figured out how to recreate a console and the newest GTA but honestly even video games are boring when your reaction speed is so crazy high. I think we'll have more luck with competetive games. Thank gods that I.. we.. chose a crafter class, running out of spell slots would have been incredibly dull otherwise."

"I see," Tollens says looking apologetic: "We have people working on it and have everything ready for the scheduled gathering."

Smith nods and blinks out of existance before Tollens focusses her attention back on Jack as if nothing happened: "If this works though it brings up the question of why noone have travelled there before. There should be plenty malicious entities who'd want a different and honestly rather helpless hunting ground," she suddenly looks conserned: "what if the reason that noone have gone there is that nobody knows that it exist due to the deadmagic or anti-divination properties, and we somehow alert them?"

"Oh, also: There was some mention that you're in soul debt to an overpowered extra planar entity? What do you know about it so far?"

"Right," Tollen says: "It's something of an overarching threat that I need to find a solution to eventually and if you can help I would be thankful. In essense one of the gods here inherited a claim on Scourge's soul due to a retrained class choice back in Genesis. Of the Locust is the name. It's kinda of a swarm god consisting mostly of insects. Domains are Evil, Destruction, Unity, Decay, Entropy. It's currently locked away somewhere but is plotting to escape after which it intends on ending civilization. Despite being caged it influences many if ot all of the planes, including this one and at least two afterlives." A chill runs down his spine at the thought of the massive insectoid eyes that watched him back. "So yeah, even if it hadn't a claim on my soul we should at least understand if there's any real risk of that happening and if possible liquidate it."

Spoiler: OOC

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I previously spend some time studying the simulacrum spell and made a knowledge(arcane) check to get more information about how the spell worked. The library just gives you a +3 bonus(type unknown but I'd assume competence)

Aleph Null used commune earlier. I don't know whether we are still expecting them to return, or if now whether they will be retconned out.

Do we actually want to contact other players? I think there's still too many players for a single thread but it could be cool to group a few in.

The dorje contains psychic reformation and is used to reshuffle some spells and feats.

@TN5, the sims are of course busy with the many tasks they have going on. However quite a number of them have run out of high level spells at this point so they don't have much to do until those are back up again. They therefore spend their time trying to reinvent some of the toys from Earth. They can still burn low level spell slots for the time champer and shades, so Shades to conjure the material, I assumed that it would be possibe to make the nessesary equiptment for being able to play GTA. We're looking at a base 51 roll with 200-400 people aiding for something like a +400 to +800 bonus. Let me know if you would like to handle this differently.

[ThreadNecro5]

Spoiler: OOC

Show

So first of all let me apologise for the delays originating from a number of things. Should be fine now.

Battle Royale
Scourge smiles grimly as the swing hits but his smile fades as his attack passes through. Oh well. At least this was a useful point of data, now he knew that incorporeal creatures worked as they did in Genesis. It was a weird 'concidence' how many of the same rules governed this world as governed Genesis. She throws the sword aside, letting it clank hard onto the ice.

He pays close attention to the sounds of the surroundings using his newly acquired ability to see through sounds, however he quickly realizes that he is completely blind to the soundless creature. This was an interesting challenge.

He opens a portal to his left and pull out a staff, from which he conjured an artic storm that completely covers him.

Spoiler: OOC

Show

Free: Drop weapon
Move: Summon item from cache
Standard action: Casting Polar Midnight from staff on top of himself. Glimpse of the akashi says that it adds CL to damage rolls however it isn't clear to me if that includes spell damage and ability damage. I'll roll without it here.
Fort DC 44.
Damage (1d20+36)[55] 24 and dex damage [roll1] 12. Scourge is immune to both types. Edit: I forgot that Crafter's Art adds +10 damage so it's actually 24 cold damage and 12 dex damage.
He then floats 5 feet upwards and tries to hide in the icy storm, stealth: [roll2].

Scourge pays extra attention to how the creature reacts once he can see it again [roll3].
Scourge have blindsight running but it depend on sound. I am assuming that this doesn't help him.

Knowledge(whatever it's type is): [roll4]
Knowledge(arcane) to identify current spell effects: [roll5]
Spellcraft to identify the spell cast: [roll6]

Glimpse of the Akashic: 4 rounds left

Spoiler: OOC

Show

Glimpse of the Akashic says it effects all damage rolls, so spells too.

Incorporeal creatures make no sound

The creature is probably another wendigo-related being going by the antlers and ice theme. Indeed the fact it summoned a localised blizzard may be telling. As you have seen it also either moves vary quickly or teleports.

It has a permanent true seeing effect and the spell it uses was variant of Obscuring Mist that has an increased area and an effect not unlike a weaker variant of your own polar midnight.

Spoiler: Rolls

Show

Grapple: (1d20+36)[55]

Edit:
Wow, almost at nat20

As you float in the mist the creature reappears from nowhere and attempts to grab you in its jaws. Catching you from a blindspot you barely peal yourself from the lunge. As you escape the creature turns to face you, its own vision unimpeded, while still in flight and then fades again into the mist, not just retreating but outright vanishing.

Spoiler: OOC

Show

Chase wants to get a better understanding on the oracle, whose soul there is a copy of in the simulacrums. What her dreams and hopes are specifically, as well as general personality. I haven't written a background for her although Chase might have. Should I write out a background?

Spoiler: Discussion on the gems gold

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I vaguely recall getting a PM to a limit but don't recall it. 200,000 looks about right though. Diamonds are made.

Spoiler: OOC

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Aleph Null used commune earlier. I don't know whether we are still expecting them to return, or if now whether they will be retconned out.

Do we actually want to contact other players? I think there's still too many players for a single thread but it could be cool to group a few in.

Looking at things it seems Morcleon never posted but I will PM the others.

@TN5, the sims are of course busy with the many tasks they have going on. However quite a number of them have run out of high level spells at this point so they don't have much to do until those are back up again. They therefore spend their time trying to reinvent some of the toys from Earth. They can still burn low level spell slots for the time champer and shades, so Shades to conjure the material, I assumed that it would be possibe to make the nessesary equiptment for being able to play GTA. We're looking at a base 51 roll with 200-400 people aiding for something like a +400 to +800 bonus. Let me know if you would like to handle this differently.

I suppose that could work.

[Jack_Simth]

"Good point about", he agrees happy that Jack changed his trajectory: He then offer another advice: "Before you run actual experiments I suggest just studying the spell for a while. We have a rather extensive library in town that I can show you. I don't know how much of the information is true but the transition did give me a lot of knowledge regarding magic."

The Jack in the ghost considers that one carefully "For that matter, I do have something I would like to look up... ran across a couple of obviously single hit dice creatures that I wasn't familiar with. It would be very interesting if they were in your library, and would tell us something useful about the transition. So yes, I would like to see the library when you've got a minute."

"Hmm. I haven't personally used Commune and haven't been in contact with any dieties. It's possible that other players have though. Perhaps it could be a priority to find the other players to coordinate efforts. In theory I'm down for Simulacrums but I am torn. On one hand creating something that enjoys living and overrall contribute to the wellbeing of others should be a good act, on the other hand we are creating something that has a mental compulsion to be our slave. There's going to be a big meeting on that exactly within the next day unless something happens which you're welcome to attend."

He looks at you askance "There's a very simple order, as old as the stories golems come from, for freeing a being under a magical compulsion to serve you ... although it did get hijacked by some new-age folks in the real world, not that it's of relevance. If you're willing to risk something with copies of your memories running around loose, the order goes like this: 'Do as thou wilt'. Yes, it's Old English, but easy enough to understand. Basically, you satisfy the requirement that the creature obeys you by ordering it to do what it chooses. Very easy for you to test if it works - just give one of your simulacrums that order, then order the same simulacrum to do something you'd never do and see if the second order is obeyed."

"Reasonable to keep them around. Why do you have them though? And is there anything else of big significance that I should know about?"

He shrugs "The spawning process is automatic. If I kill something that qualifies, it pops back up a few minutes later very eager to do what I tell it. And they're a bit annoying to keep down after that."

"How would you...", Tollens starts looking confused before breaking into a big grin: "Ha! That's so silly but it should work. Sure, let's do that but schedule it for later testing, there's more pressing matters right now. As for the book what do I know. It was a fun raid and we had already reached max level. I guess if we're ever trying to hide from dieties it would be a good place to hang out."

Jack makes an obscure comic reference "Old raccoonian saying: If it's stupid, but it works, then it's not stupid. Seriously though, I've got Fabricate prepared, and a 500 pound gold statue is less than a cubic foot; it'll take a single round to cast, then we can cast it over the side of the flying city and see whether or not the treasure is self-burying."

"I'm not really convinced that we can morally send someone unrelated to all of this on a journey that might kill them. If anything we should send one of us. And since you'd wink out in a deadmagic zone I guess it'll have to be me," she says with much more confidence than she actually feels: "Undeads aren't powered by magic per say and even if they are my soul should be ressurectable. Wait, let's test those things out first. You got a deadmagic plane at hand? I want to see whether undeads actually work in there and what happens to the freefloating souls you have."

He shrugs "It's sealed, which means either Wish transport or waiting for me to prepare the spell to link there from a different demiplane... and I'm currently out of prepared Wish spells, as well as the Trap the Soul spell I usually use to put away the hags when I'm done with them. How many gems do you get from that artifact of yours?"

"Regardless, I should prepare," she saysbefore sending a message to the Network requesting a reshuffle. A few moments later another simulacrum pops into existance and waves what looks like a dorje over him a few times. "Thanks Smith," Tollens says to the sim: "How's things on your side?"

Smith returns the smile before answering: "I'd like to say that it's boring now that the nascor have been put on standby but honestly things are pretty hectic. Folks are still processing everything but the uncertainty is hard. I see a lot of attempts of distraction. A few folks figured out how to recreate a console and the newest GTA but honestly even video games are boring when your reaction speed is so crazy high. I think we'll have more luck with competetive games. Thank gods that I.. we.. chose a crafter class, running out of spell slots would have been incredibly dull otherwise."

Jack looks at the sim a bit confused "Why not just change the speed settings in the physics engine until it's challenging again? Should be pretty straightforward if you needed to make the thing from scratch."

"I see," Tollens says looking apologetic: "We have people working on it and have everything ready for the scheduled gathering."

Smith nods and blinks out of existance before Tollens focusses her attention back on Jack as if nothing happened: "If this works though it brings up the question of why noone have travelled there before. There should be plenty malicious entities who'd want a different and honestly rather helpless hunting ground," she suddenly looks conserned: "what if the reason that noone have gone there is that nobody knows that it exist due to the deadmagic or anti-divination properties, and we somehow alert them?"

Jack shrugs "What if you get struck by a meteorite? You can imagine what-if scenarios all the live long day; at some point, though, you need to kick out of analysis paralysis and actually try something. If our simple existence doesn't put them at unacceptable levels of risk, us trying to send someone there shouldn't put them at any more."

"Right," Tollen says: "It's something of an overarching threat that I need to find a solution to eventually and if you can help I would be thankful. In essense one of the gods here inherited a claim on Scourge's soul due to a retrained class choice back in Genesis. Of the Locust is the name. It's kinda of a swarm god consisting mostly of insects. Domains are Evil, Destruction, Unity, Decay, Entropy. It's currently locked away somewhere but is plotting to escape after which it intends on ending civilization. Despite being caged it influences many if ot all of the planes, including this one and at least two afterlives." A chill runs down his spine at the thought of the massive insectoid eyes that watched him back. "So yeah, even if it hadn't a claim on my soul we should at least understand if there's any real risk of that happening and if possible liquidate it."

"Well, the first step is information gathering. Has your goal been done before? Who did it, and how? If the critter engages in the soul trade... the question becomes why? What does it get out of it? If it's doing so because it's feeding... then the best bet might simply be to erase all knowledge of it and let it starve."

Spoiler: Question

Show

A conversation on Discord made me curious as to the ruling for this game:

Greater Shadow Conjouration uses "This spell functions like shadow conjuration, except that it duplicates any sorcerer or wizard conjuration (summoning) or conjuration (creation) spell of 6th level or lower..." (emphasis added)

While Shades says it "This spell functions like shadow conjuration, except that it mimics conjuration spells of 8th level or lower..." (Emphasis added)

Is the underlined section of Shades to be taken as a removal of the class and school limits otherwise inherited from Shadow Conjouration (just like with the changing of the spell level limit, and the percentage reality), or is it to be taken as an editing error? I've seen it argued both as a removal of the class and school limits, and as a simple editing problem. When it comes to anything that's unclear, the go to answer is "ask the DM". Both Sønderjye and I took the spell for our characters, so it's somewhat relevant.

[Sønderjye]

Spoiler: OOC

Show

It's alright. Real life happens.

I see that you quoted my question regarding background of oracle but forgot to answer it.

Looking at things it seems Morcleon never posted but I will PM the others.

I was talking about players from other threads. None of the players in this thread answered when I tried to talk to them on Discord so at this point I've given up on everyone but Drack. It would be nice if they returned of course

Battle Royale

Chase feels a rush of addrenaline as he barely dodges the fangs that surely would have been his doom. This. "This is fun!", she bellows with a wide grin on her face.

She flies a little up while staying vigilant and considers his options. Given it's wendigo-like nature it probably was an outsider rather than an undead. That's good, that meant that it probably wasn't immune to mind-affecting abilities. Immunity to cold for sure and given that it hadn't seemed to suffer from attacking him it probably was immune to dexterity damage as well. That was conserning though, since immunity to physical damage was a classical undead attribute.

Given the lack of speech it probably wasn't sentient enough to have class levels so the lack of continual movements probably implied that it didn't have teleport. It was worth a shot.

Chase tightens the grip of his staff and readies himself.

Spoiler: OOC

Show

Swift: Activate Bardic Performance - Dweomercraft for +4 CL.
Free: fly 5ft upwards.
Standard: Ready to cast Greater Shadow Evocation(Forcecage) next time the creature appears, DC 49, CL 27.

Glimpse of the Akashi: 3 rounds left.

Scourge has mindblank, which I think overrides true sight?

Base

"For that matter, I do have something I would like to look up... ran across a couple of obviously single hit dice creatures that I wasn't familiar with. It would be very interesting if they were in your library, and would tell us something useful about the transition. So yes, I would like to see the library when you've got a minute."

Scourge initially suggests that they should wait until after the wish but once hearing that Jack doesn't have any wishes ready he'll offer Jack to use the library, showing him the way as they talk.

"There's a very simple order, as old as the stories golems come from, for freeing a being under a magical compulsion to serve you ... although it did get hijacked by some new-age folks in the real world, not that it's of relevance. If you're willing to risk something with copies of your memories running around loose, the order goes like this: 'Do as thou wilt'. Yes, it's Old English, but easy enough to understand. Basically, you satisfy the requirement that the creature obeys you by ordering it to do what it chooses. Very easy for you to test if it works - just give one of your simulacrums that order, then order the same simulacrum to do something you'd never do and see if the second order is obeyed."

"That.. might work. They aren't golems though, they are me but in an altered way. From what I learned about the spell they aren't under magical compulsion to do whatever I say as much as they have been fundementally changed to be loyal and not consider situations in which they would be disloyal. So unless an order could fundementally change them again I'm not sure it'll work. Still, worth a shot."

"The spawning process is automatic. If I kill something that qualifies, it pops back up a few minutes later very eager to do what I tell it. And they're a bit annoying to keep down after that."

"That doesn't really explain why you have them," Tollens says with a raised eyebrow.

"Old raccoonian saying: If it's stupid, but it works, then it's not stupid. Seriously though, I've got Fabricate prepared, and a 500 pound gold statue is less than a cubic foot; it'll take a single round to cast, then we can cast it over the side of the flying city and see whether or not the treasure is self-burying."

"Sure, give it a go," Tollens says before casually throwing a bag with 100,000 gp worth of diamonds to the stranger he just met less than an hour ago.

"It's sealed, which means either Wish transport or waiting for me to prepare the spell to link there from a different demiplane... and I'm currently out of prepared Wish spells, as well as the Trap the Soul spell I usually use to put away the hags when I'm done with them. How many gems do you get from that artifact of yours?"

"Huh, that's disappointing. I guess we have to wait until tomorrow then, which reminds me, what are your classes? My main ones are sorcerer and artificer so if you need something built I'm your man. The artifact isn't gated by a certain number of gems but cannot exceed 200,000 gp worth."

"Why not just change the speed settings in the physics engine until it's challenging again? Should be pretty straightforward if you needed to make the thing from scratch."

Smith looks thoughful for a long moment: "That might actually work. Thanks shadowy thing!"

"What if you get struck by a meteorite? You can imagine what-if scenarios all the live long day; at some point, though, you need to kick out of analysis paralysis and actually try something. If our simple existence doesn't put them at unacceptable levels of risk, us trying to send someone there shouldn't put them at any more."

"Who cares about meteorites, I'll just ressurect. We need to be cautious and consider all the what-if scenarios and at least try to take procautions. If we can travel home there must be some reason why our world haven't been overrun and we'd be risking billions of lives as well with our entire civilization. Analysis paralysis is a not an excuse for lack of caution and if Earth's primary defence is that noone have discovered it, someone observing us while we send someone there is exactly the kind of thing that could spawn an invasion or worse. I'm not saying that we shouldn't but we should brainstorm the ways someone can have their eyes on us and take procautions," she pauses for a bit and then continues: "Though I suppose that if anyone were somehow listening in despite the mind blank and other scry-foiling spells they'd probably know about it anyway. Let's not talk about it in front of the NPC's though."

"Well, the first step is information gathering. Has your goal been done before? Who did it, and how? If the critter engages in the soul trade... the question becomes why? What does it get out of it? If it's doing so because it's feeding... then the best bet might simply be to erase all knowledge of it and let it starve."

"All information I don't know. I don't even know if gods needs juice of are selfsufficient yet. Or if they even can die. It's being worked on of course."

Testing

After the conversation died down it was time to do some testing.

Chase called on Bond, told her to "do as you want", watched the reaction for a while and then ordered her to kill a random guard also letting her know that there weren't any particular reason. He readies an action to throw himself in front of whatever Bond throws as the guard if she complies.

Chase summoned his utility staff and blew a few spell slots to create a demiplane with a portal, taking less than a minute to do so. "Ready?," he asks through the portal to the group consisting of Smith, a few human guards from the castle and Jack(if he opts to be there) on the other side. He then waves his slams his staff into the floor of the plane and changes it to become deadmagic.

[Jack_Simth]

Base
Scourge initially suggests that they should wait until after the wish but once hearing that Jack doesn't have any wishes ready he'll offer Jack to use the library, showing him the way as they talk.

The corrupted nature spirit nods, and later once conversation dies down takes the time to try and look up information on the race of two cyclops-speaking humanoids she encountered earlier.

Spoiler

Show

Taking ten to search the library while otherwise waiting until I can re-prepare spells - using Pageant of the Peacock, of course. Results in a 74, assuming the library's +3 bonus applies.

"That.. might work. They aren't golems though, they are me but in an altered way. From what I learned about the spell they aren't under magical compulsion to do whatever I say as much as they have been fundementally changed to be loyal and not consider situations in which they would be disloyal. So unless an order could fundementally change them again I'm not sure it'll work. Still, worth a shot."

Jack shrugs "As noted, it's a really easy test to run."

"That doesn't really explain why you have them," Tollens says with a raised eyebrow.

The corrupted nature spirit furrows her brow "Huh? I covered 'I get them automatically when I kill something', 'it would be too irresponsible to let them loose' and 'they're too useful to permanently dispose of'. What do you mean by the question?"

"Sure, give it a go," Tollens says before casually throwing a bag with 100,000 gp worth of diamonds to the stranger he just met less than an hour ago.

The ridiculously-proportioned woman catches it easily, and sets it aside "That's for after preparing spells... we should start with the unlimited gold..."

(assuming I'm led to the runewell... or to a big chunk of gold created by the jewel, whichever)

She draws out some of the gold with her seemingly-bare hands, forms a chunk into a ball as she cools it off by blowing on it, and throws it away to confirm the confined radius from gold produced by the artifact. She then casts Fabricate, drawing gold from the runewell to use as the material component, forming an intricate gold statue of a diver in flight. She then sees how far away she can get it - tossing it over the side of the city and watching it fall, if it will go that far.

[spoiler]Immune to fire. Spells cast: Fabricate. Taking ten on the craft checks, using Pageant of the Peacock, for a result of 71 as needed.[/url]

"Huh, that's disappointing. I guess we have to wait until tomorrow then, which reminds me, what are your classes? My main ones are sorcerer and artificer so if you need something built I'm your man. The artifact isn't gated by a certain number of gems but cannot exceed 200,000 gp worth."

She ticks up the corner of her mouth as she replies "I've got a fair amount of Oracle and Bard. You could say I'm a Jack of All trades. Give me a day and I can arrange to do most things - mix it up in melee, craft magic items, cast ninth level Wizard spells... whatever. At the moment I'm in my default defensive configuration."

Smith looks thoughful for a long moment: "That might actually work. Thanks shadowy thing!"

The corrupted nature spirit shrugs, and replies with "Glad to help... I'm more curious what happens if you start producing modern power and manufacturing equipment, though. Wall of Iron spells can get you all the metal you want, Polymorph Any Object can tweak that into just about any specialty metal, and of course rubber was originally made from trees, so another Polymorph Any Object can get you large amounts of that in a permanent manner as well. If you then get materials from real sources... well, I'll let you experiment."

"Who cares about meteorites, I'll just ressurect. We need to be cautious and consider all the what-if scenarios and at least try to take procautions. If we can travel home there must be some reason why our world haven't been overrun and we'd be risking billions of lives as well with our entire civilization. Analysis paralysis is a not an excuse for lack of caution and if Earth's primary defence is that noone have discovered it, someone observing us while we send someone there is exactly the kind of thing that could spawn an invasion or worse. I'm not saying that we shouldn't but we should brainstorm the ways someone can have their eyes on us and take procautions," she pauses for a bit and then continues: "Though I suppose that if anyone were somehow listening in despite the mind blank and other scry-foiling spells they'd probably know about it anyway. Let's not talk about it in front of the NPC's though."

The corrupted nature looks at you a bit askance "A meteorite strike was just my go-to example of a low-probability event that you can't do much about in the prior world. The point is that you may want to work on your risk-assessment skills. You're worried about information gathering effects on two mind-blanked folks performing an experiment in the middle of a stealth fortress under the control of one of them... when you've got ... how many? ... reduced-power and ill-equipped copies of yourself running around the countryside just waiting to run across a group with the right combination of abilities to capture, mind-control, and interrogate one of them. It's a far more likely scenario than someone spying on full-power, divination-resistant recent arrivals in the middle of a fortress. There's a reason I don't sim myself. Self-sims are some of the most useful ones you can make... but they're also a pretty nasty security risk. I much prefer to copy arbitrary creatures that happen to have the abilities I want at the moment."

"All information I don't know. I don't even know if gods needs juice of are selfsufficient yet. Or if they even can die. It's being worked on of course."

The corrupted nature spirit nods "Right. But those are the first questions you want answered. If you can get me a list of things you want answered towards that end I can arrange for as many Commune and Vision spells as you like... starting tomorrow, when I can put the coven away again."

Testing

Chase summoned his utility staff and blew a few spell slots to create a demiplane with a portal, taking less than a minute to do so. "Ready?," he asks through the portal to the group consisting of Smith, a few human guards from the castle and Jack(if he opts to be there) on the other side. He then waves his slams his staff into the floor of the plane and changes it to become deadmagic.

Spoiler

Show

Not for that one, no. But if you have a mortal servant that's willing to accept the cost of the immortality I can grant, I can get you a good stand-in. Or maybe just lend one of the Hags for the purpose.

[Sønderjye]

Base

"Huh? I covered 'I get them automatically when I kill something', 'it would be too irresponsible to let them loose' and 'they're too useful to permanently dispose of'. What do you mean by the question?"

"That covered how you got them, not why you care to keep them around in the first place. You mentioned the hags when I asked you if you had some useful stuff carried over from genesis and I'm not seeing the use here."

"I've got a fair amount of Oracle and Bard. You could say I'm a Jack of All trades. Give me a day and I can arrange to do most things - mix it up in melee, craft magic items, cast ninth level Wizard spells... whatever. At the moment I'm in my default defensive configuration."

"Huh? That sounds neat. How does that work?"

"Glad to help... I'm more curious what happens if you start producing modern power and manufacturing equipment, though. Wall of Iron spells can get you all the metal you want, Polymorph Any Object can tweak that into just about any specialty metal, and of course rubber was originally made from trees, so another Polymorph Any Object can get you large amounts of that in a permanent manner as well. If you then get materials from real sources... well, I'll let you experiment."

Smith looks thoughtful for a moment and then turns to Toellens with a smile: "I like this lady. Let's ´keep her around, yeh?"

Spoiler: OOC

Show

I'm a little conserned about this balance wise though. I've been using shades - Major Creation for the stuff which has an expiration date but wall of iron+polymorph any object would seem to give us unlimited material components for both mundane and magic items, which is something I stayed away from at an earlier point.
@TN5, thoughts?

"A meteorite strike was just my go-to example of a low-probability event that you can't do much about in the prior world. The point is that you may want to work on your risk-assessment skills. You're worried about information gathering effects on two mind-blanked folks performing an experiment in the middle of a stealth fortress under the control of one of them... when you've got ... how many? ... reduced-power and ill-equipped copies of yourself running around the countryside just waiting to run across a group with the right combination of abilities to capture, mind-control, and interrogate one of them. It's a far more likely scenario than someone spying on full-power, divination-resistant recent arrivals in the middle of a fortress. There's a reason I don't sim myself. Self-sims are some of the most useful ones you can make... but they're also a pretty nasty security risk. I much prefer to copy arbitrary creatures that happen to have the abilities I want at the moment."

"Perhaps it was a too big of a risk but there are several security measures. One is that they mostly stay hidden and another is a mind blank." Another was that the sims has inspired each other in clusters which gave them a continual status on each other and transfered their senses to one another on a regular basis to check in.
"We need more information, I needed capable scouts and I wasn't really comfortable making copies of any of my friends. More to the point though, I could be scry you right now, so you shouldn't feel so secure. How did you know that I have other sims that Bond out scouting?"

"Right. But those are the first questions you want answered. If you can get me a list of things you want answered towards that end I can arrange for as many Commune and Vision spells as you like... starting tomorrow, when I can put the coven away again."

"I'm more a fan of Vision that Commune. Partly I would like to delay direct contact with gods until as late as possible and partly I wouldn't trust it to answer how to kill it. But yeah, I'll throw a list together."

She draws out some of the gold with her seemingly-bare hands, forms a chunk into a ball as she cools it off by blowing on it, and throws it away to confirm the confined radius from gold produced by the artifact. She then casts Fabricate, drawing gold from the runewell to use as the material component, forming an intricate gold statue of a diver in flight. She then sees how far away she can get it - tossing it over the side of the city and watching it fall, if it will go that far.

"Badass," Tollens comments from the sidelines. She follows the gold statue with attentive eyes as it exits the range.

Testing

Spoiler

Show

If you said that IC, Chase would object against it. This was our problem, not the problem of anyone in this world, so it wouldn't be right to gamble somebody else. For most intends and purposes we are gods, so our ethics need to follow.
If your objection is OOC I can have one of the simulacrums volunteer.

[ThreadNecro5]

Spoiler: Question

Show

A conversation on Discord made me curious as to the ruling for this game:

Greater Shadow Conjouration uses "This spell functions like shadow conjuration, except that it duplicates any sorcerer or wizard conjuration (summoning) or conjuration (creation) spell of 6th level or lower..." (emphasis added)

While Shades says it "This spell functions like shadow conjuration, except that it mimics conjuration spells of 8th level or lower..." (Emphasis added)

Is the underlined section of Shades to be taken as a removal of the class and school limits otherwise inherited from Shadow Conjouration (just like with the changing of the spell level limit, and the percentage reality), or is it to be taken as an editing error? I've seen it argued both as a removal of the class and school limits, and as a simple editing problem. When it comes to anything that's unclear, the go to answer is "ask the DM". Both Sønderjye and I took the spell for our characters, so it's somewhat relevant.

Spoiler: OOC

Show

Shades removes the class and school limits.

She draws out some of the gold with her seemingly-bare hands, forms a chunk into a ball as she cools it off by blowing on it, and throws it away to confirm the confined radius from gold produced by the artifact. She then casts Fabricate, drawing gold from the runewell to use as the material component, forming an intricate gold statue of a diver in flight. She then sees how far away she can get it - tossing it over the side of the city and watching it fall, if it will go that far.

The gold vanishes as it crosses the edge of the castle.

Spoiler: OOC

Show

It's alright. Real life happens.

I see that you quoted my question regarding background of oracle but forgot to answer it.



I was talking about players from other threads. None of the players in this thread answered when I tried to talk to them on Discord so at this point I've given up on everyone but Drack. It would be nice if they returned of course

Spoiler: OOC

Show

As to the Oracle I meant to say to give a background, yes.

As to the other players HARM has been quiet but had three rather active players. the Council of Wyrms has been similar but slower.

Golden Star died quickly with them having a member scry on some wildlife and that's about it.

Battle Royale
Chase feels a rush of addrenaline as he barely dodges the fangs that surely would have been his doom. This. "This is fun!", she bellows with a wide grin on her face.

She flies a little up while staying vigilant and considers his options. Given it's wendigo-like nature it probably was an outsider rather than an undead. That's good, that meant that it probably wasn't immune to mind-affecting abilities. Immunity to cold for sure and given that it hadn't seemed to suffer from attacking him it probably was immune to dexterity damage as well. That was conserning though, since immunity to physical damage was a classical undead attribute.

Given the lack of speech it probably wasn't sentient enough to have class levels so the lack of continual movements probably implied that it didn't have teleport. It was worth a shot.

Chase tightens the grip of his staff and readies himself.

Spoiler: OOC

Show

Swift: Activate Bardic Performance - Dweomercraft for +4 CL.
Free: fly 5ft upwards.
Standard: Ready to cast Greater Shadow Evocation(Forcecage) next time the creature appears, DC 49, CL 27.

Glimpse of the Akashi: 3 rounds left.

Scourge has mindblank, which I think overrides true sight?

Spoiler: OOC

Show

Mindblank would stop true seeing.

You never specified what form of forcecage is used but I'll assume the bigger

The creature appears behind you again but this time you're ready.

It is trapped and disorientated for a time thanks to the surprise.

Testing

After the conversation died down it was time to do some testing.

Chase called on Bond, told her to "do as you want", watched the reaction for a while and then ordered her to kill a random guard also letting her know that there weren't any particular reason. He readies an action to throw himself in front of whatever Bond throws as the guard if she complies.

Chase summoned his utility staff and blew a few spell slots to create a demiplane with a portal, taking less than a minute to do so. "Ready?," he asks through the portal to the group consisting of Smith, a few human guards from the castle and Jack(if he opts to be there) on the other side. He then waves his slams his staff into the floor of the plane and changes it to become deadmagic.

[/quote]

"Can you elaborate on 'do as you want'" asks Bond. "Mostly is that a standing order and in what way should orders be prioritised? Really there are enough ways to interpret things. I think we've even reached a paradox. I am loyal and so do as ordered, I am ordered to do As I wish, I am ordered to kill someone, I do not wish to. You do not wish me to kill this person you ordered me to. I kill this man I betray your desires, I don't and I betray your orders. There are a lot of mental gymnastics here.

Spoiler: OOC

Show

I'm a little conserned about this balance wise though. I've been using shades - Major Creation for the stuff which has an expiration date but wall of iron+polymorph any object would seem to give us unlimited material components for both mundane and magic items, which is something I stayed away from at an earlier point.
@TN5, thoughts?

Spoiler: OOC

Show

I don't thibk that works anyway.

To quote the spells:

This spell cannot create material of great intrinsic value, such as copper, silver, gems, silk, gold, platinum, mithral, or adamantine.

Like any iron wall, this wall is subject to rust, perforation, and other natural phenomena. Iron created by this spell is not suitable for use in the creation of other objects and cannot be sold

[Jack_Simth]

Base
"That covered how you got them, not why you care to keep them around in the first place. You mentioned the hags when I asked you if you had some useful stuff carried over from genesis and I'm not seeing the use here."

The man in a woman's ... well, not quite 'body' ... looks around at the crowd of reduced power clones and asks "You don't find at-will simulacrum spells useful? A standard coven has a lot of at-will abilities: clairaudience/clairvoyance, commune, control weather, dream, mind blank, reincarnate, speak with dead, and vision are some of the highlights. Getting the right hags in the mix can add other useful ones, like Simulacrum... and due to a quirk of how they work, they're all just one round casting times. That's in addition to any abilities individual hags have... a mute hag, for instance, gets the ability to apply a permanent Alter Self to others, and has an at-will cure light wounds. They're balls of hate, but can do a lot of good if they're kept controlled."

"Huh? That sounds neat. How does that work?"

He shrugs "The Spirit Guide Oracle archetype does the heavy lifting, mostly."

"Perhaps it was a too big of a risk but there are several security measures. One is that they mostly stay hidden and another is a mind blank." Another was that the sims has inspired each other in clusters which gave them a continual status on each other and transfered their senses to one another on a regular basis to check in.
"We need more information, I needed capable scouts and I wasn't really comfortable making copies of any of my friends. More to the point though, I could be scry you right now, so you shouldn't feel so secure. How did you know that I have other sims that Bond out scouting?"

He raises an eyebrow "It wasn't intended to be obvious? You've had quite a few running around here, and you've been rather blasé about them; you're acting as though they're a cheap resource, which means they're not in short supply. Add to that the low probability of me just happening to run across the one scout you sent out - given the apparent size of the world and how far from your base - and 'you had a lot of scouts running around' is the safe bet. Plus, of course, you just confirmed it."

He continues "As to scrying, I keep multiple distinct anti-divination measures running, and have had only modest interactions with the people of this realm. You're essentially the only one who is likely to know enough about me to check, and while there are ways around just about anything... methods around anti-divination measures tend towards being specific to the target - if you don't know to check, you're going to have problems bypassing them. That's not relevant, though: I'm not speaking of absolutes, I'm speaking of probabilities, which is where much of risk analysis resides. One experiment, in a concealed and mobile fortress, which few have had opportunity to find out about is unlikely to garner much notice. You've got a gaggle of them running around exploring the world. Suppose one of them encountered a few folks built much like you. Would you notice your copy as being out of place? Would you have methods by which to contain and suborn your copy in the timeframe between when your collective would become aware of the problem and be able to mount a response? Would someone like you be able to take a suborned Simulacrum somewhere they'd be hard enough to find and reach to buy time to do a detailed interrogation? Sure, the probability of such a thing may be vanishingly small - smaller, even, than the probability of our Wish-based experiment getting noticed - but the cumulative probability of a thing happening at least once goes up with every attempt - in this case, with each scout. Mathmatically, the probability of a 1 on a fair hundred sided dice is just one percent per roll; over the course of a hundred rolls, though, the probability of at least one rolling a 1 works out to something like sixty percent (I'd have to stop and do the math to get you an exact figure, but that's the ballpark). Your worry about someone finding out about the prior world may be legitimate... but it's a lot more likely to happen from the risk you've already accepted - knowingly or not - in sending out the zillion scouts, and the Wish Transport test will at least give us some measure of how much effort it takes to breach that barrier... I'm assuming you've already tried Plane Shift and Gate?"

He pauses "Although if our world is a dead-magic plane, it's unlikely anything from here is a meaningful threat to the world as a whole. Most self-replicating types are Su-based, and anti-tank weaponry would probably do well against what few things have Ex-based Create Spawn."

"I'm more a fan of Vision that Commune. Partly I would like to delay direct contact with gods until as late as possible and partly I wouldn't trust it to answer how to kill it. But yeah, I'll throw a list together."



"Badass," Tollens comments from the sidelines. She follows the gold statue with attentive eyes as it exits the range.

He shrugs "Eh, it was just the most expedient method. It's not like fire resistance is rare. While it might be a bad idea for me to try scuba-diving in there, partial contact? Not a problem."

The busty man pauses "Although now that I think about it, you probably have gold working tools nearby just for doing this sort of thing, don't you?"

Testing

Spoiler

Show

If you said that IC, Chase would object against it. This was our problem, not the problem of anyone in this world, so it wouldn't be right to gamble somebody else. For most intends and purposes we are gods, so our ethics need to follow.
If your objection is OOC I can have one of the simulacrums volunteer.

Spoiler

Show

Mostly, it's that getting me on a dead magic plane is one of the very few ways of getting rid of me pretty much permanently (Wish-transport rescue would work... probably... but would require someone on the outside checking for the need). I'll cheerfully share information, feed you ideas, and aid in your endeavors provided you seem willing enough to do the same ... but I don't trust you that much. The given response when you suggest the experiment would be that if something does go wrong, better to have someone available who can repeatedly attempt to Wish-transport you out (and revive you if necessary) with the gems already created. Especially as you've only got one way to test if the soul-debt has the possibility of overriding your respawn mechanism if the dead magic zone does in fact kill you.

The gold vanishes as it crosses the edge of the castle.

He nods, and says "So next we'll want to find out how deep that goes - iron created by Wall of Iron powered by gold from the well? What about a spell effect powered by such treasure tied to someone? Will such a person get 'stuck'? Does the spell go away when they cross the threshhold? Ditto for someone with Inherent bonuses from a Wish. Still... good to know."

Jack pauses a moment, remembers a few details from the game, and asks "Oh, also: As the treasure from the Jewel of Everlasting Gold just returns to a place in the treasure city, it's not really a problem if I try walking away with one of the diamonds, as they don't vanish, they just go back into the city, correct? I've got a secondary experiment I'd like to try..."

(Assuming that I get an affirmative)

Jack takes one of the diamonds from the bag, focuses on being the Whispering Tyrant, and walks it out of the city.

Spoiler

Show

The Jewel of Everlasting Gold mentions that the Whispering Tyrant can take the treasure it produces out of the city. A different artifact, the Spear of Shards, has a note about using Use Magic Device to trick that artifact, giving a nice little precident. I'd like to check and see if I can do that with the Jewel of Everlasting Gold's results.

So: UMD check: (1d20+52)[57]

"Can you elaborate on 'do as you want'" asks Bond. "Mostly is that a standing order and in what way should orders be prioritised? Really there are enough ways to interpret things. I think we've even reached a paradox. I am loyal and so do as ordered, I am ordered to do As I wish, I am ordered to kill someone, I do not wish to. You do not wish me to kill this person you ordered me to. I kill this man I betray your desires, I don't and I betray your orders. There are a lot of mental gymnastics here.

Jack nods "So a partial success... you're not freed from the compulsion, but until such time as the 'freedom order' is countermanded, you've at least got the option of weighting the 'freedom order' over others."

Spoiler: OOC

Show

I don't thibk that works anyway.

To quote the spells:

Spoiler

Show

Ah, right. Forgot about those clauses. Ah well. Still, that just means they need to get other materials, and both oil and metals are taken from the earth, so should be available from the Jewel... in a month.

Also: How'd the library search for the Cyclops-speaking fishermen go? Books in games tend to be super-short, and just have a quick mechanical effect, because writing a book takes a lot of effort. Yet they're very likely to now be full books... I'm very, very curious about the information contained, whether it's a bunch of mostly-blank tomes or whether they've been filled with information... and if they have been filled, whether that's information from the game or for this world.

[Sønderjye]

Battle Royale
Scourge jumps 5 feet backwards and extending her arms to the side in a manner of a fight commentates she declares in a thundering voice: "WELCOME.. TO THE THUNDERDOME!"

She then hits the air in front of her, the shockwave following her fist aims straight towards the being. "Succumb!", she orders it.
She hits the air again, yet another shockwave forming. "Succumb!"
Shockwave. "Succumb!"
Shockwave. "Succumb!"
Shockwave. "Succumb!"

Now in close proximity of the being she lets her practiced facade falls and reveals the true horror beneath.

She then taps into her undead energies and tries to overwhelm the being.

Spoiler: OOC

Show

Fear Aura from Lich: Will DC 45 or shaken. There's also a fear aura with the same DC from Nightmare creature but I would assume they don't overlap.

Can I do a perform check as a free action to appear dramatic. No real mechanical benefit: (1d20+71)[86]. Frightful presense activates but the creature (presumably) have more HD than me.

Full attack: 5 Sound Waves
Attack 1: (1d20+52)[68] dmg (4d6+23)[33]
Attack 2: (1d20+52)[61] dmg (4d6+23)[40]
Attack 3: (1d20+52)[66] dmg (4d6+23)[37]
Attack 4: (1d20+52)[67] dmg (4d6+23)[36]
Attack 5: (1d20+52)[58] dmg (4d6+23)[43]

Swift: Quickened Command Undead

Correct, the bigger forcecage.

Glimpse of the Akashi: 2 more rounds

Base

"You don't find at-will simulacrum spells useful? A standard coven has a lot of at-will abilities: clairaudience/clairvoyance, commune, control weather, dream, mind blank, reincarnate, speak with dead, and vision are some of the highlights. Getting the right hags in the mix can add other useful ones, like Simulacrum... and due to a quirk of how they work, they're all just one round casting times. That's in addition to any abilities individual hags have... a mute hag, for instance, gets the ability to apply a permanent Alter Self to others, and has an at-will cure light wounds. They're balls of hate, but can do a lot of good if they're kept controlled."

Scourge's eyes widen: "That.. sounds super useful. Dang, I must have been more out of the loop than I knew."

"As to scrying, I keep multiple distinct anti-divination measures running, and have had only modest interactions with the people of this realm. You're essentially the only one who is likely to know enough about me to check, and while there are ways around just about anything... methods around anti-divination measures tend towards being specific to the target - if you don't know to check, you're going to have problems bypassing them. That's not relevant, though: I'm not speaking of absolutes, I'm speaking of probabilities, which is where much of risk analysis resides. One experiment, in a concealed and mobile fortress, which few have had opportunity to find out about is unlikely to garner much notice. You've got a gaggle of them running around exploring the world. Suppose one of them encountered a few folks built much like you. Would you notice your copy as being out of place? Would you have methods by which to contain and suborn your copy in the timeframe between when your collective would become aware of the problem and be able to mount a response? Would someone like you be able to take a suborned Simulacrum somewhere they'd be hard enough to find and reach to buy time to do a detailed interrogation? Sure, the probability of such a thing may be vanishingly small - smaller, even, than the probability of our Wish-based experiment getting noticed - but the cumulative probability of a thing happening at least once goes up with every attempt - in this case, with each scout. Mathmatically, the probability of a 1 on a fair hundred sided dice is just one percent per roll; over the course of a hundred rolls, though, the probability of at least one rolling a 1 works out to something like sixty percent (I'd have to stop and do the math to get you an exact figure, but that's the ballpark). Your worry about someone finding out about the prior world may be legitimate... but it's a lot more likely to happen from the risk you've already accepted - knowingly or not - in sending out the zillion scouts, and the Wish Transport test will at least give us some measure of how much effort it takes to breach that barrier... I'm assuming you've already tried Plane Shift and Gate?"

"You make a compelling case. No, I haven't tried to get back using Plane Shift or Gate. I suppose we should try out those before blowing diamonds."

"Eh, it was just the most expedient method. It's not like fire resistance is rare. While it might be a bad idea for me to try scuba-diving in there, partial contact? Not a problem." The busty man pauses "Although now that I think about it, you probably have gold working tools nearby just for doing this sort of thing, don't you?"

"Oh, come on. You can't claim that you don't think that picking up liquid gold with your bare hands isn't badass?" He pauses for a moment as he makes a realization: "You actually don't? Try to imagine that you were back on Earth, would you find the idea badass there?"

Spoiler: Oracle Background

Show

Chase was in a dark place when he created Ziana, the oracle warrior, and had a fondsness for pain and suffering as well as admiration.
Ziana hates trolls since they killed her siblings. She was raised in the city of Tolgos by her lone mother who barely scrapped by doing underpaid servant work when the opportunity presented itself. One winter it became so bad that the mother sold her off to slavery. She killed two sets of owners with her bare hands before they put her in the gladiatory to get killed by dinosaurs. That was until Scourge heroicly rescued her from certain death.
She have found a family in the Rashinhi Sisterhood(the witch-cult Scourge have on the castle) and cares little for those outside of it. She will kill anybody who she thinks will threaten it or her fellow witches.
She's a sadomasochist and both enjoys causing and experiencing pain. She also enjoys painting, chess and poetry.

Testing

"Can you elaborate on 'do as you want'" asks Bond. "Mostly is that a standing order and in what way should orders be prioritised? Really there are enough ways to interpret things. I think we've even reached a paradox. I am loyal and so do as ordered, I am ordered to do As I wish, I am ordered to kill someone, I do not wish to. You do not wish me to kill this person you ordered me to. I kill this man I betray your desires, I don't and I betray your orders. There are a lot of mental gymnastics here.

"What would happen if I told you that that order should be considered the utter top priority?"

[spoiler=OOC]Mostly, it's that getting me on a dead magic plane is one of the very few ways of getting rid of me pretty much permanently (Wish-transport rescue would work... probably... but would require someone on the outside checking for the need). I'll cheerfully share information, feed you ideas, and aid in your endeavors provided you seem willing enough to do the same ... but I don't trust you that much. The given response when you suggest the experiment would be that if something does go wrong, better to have someone available who can repeatedly attempt to Wish-transport you out (and revive you if necessary) with the gems already created. Especially as you've only got one way to test if the soul-debt has the possibility of overriding your respawn mechanism if the dead magic zone does in fact kill you.[/OOC]

Spoiler: OOC

Show

I didn't say that you were in the dead magic zone, I need to be in the plane to change it's traits so Tollens is looking at your through the portal. You are outside and available for attempting a wish transport out the next day.

Reverse Rumour Mongering

The scouts are told to gather information about various subjects.

Spoiler: OOC

Show

Taking 10 on Gather Information for 49(plus assists)
Information about someone or something that once killed a god.
If no possible then gather information about something that severely weakened or imprisoned a god.
Information about good places to go or people to question to learn about gods.
Information about good places to go or people to question to learn about magic.
Information about good places to go or people to question to learn about souls.
Information about good places to go or people to question to learn about Earth.
Information about beings more powerful than gods.

Necropolis

The necropolis team is send to gather information about people from Earth as well as using Seek thoughts to find former earthlings.

[Jack_Simth]

Scourge's eyes widen: "That.. sounds super useful. Dang, I must have been more out of the loop than I knew."

Ephermial Recollection shrugs "Hence keeping them around, yes."

"You make a compelling case. No, I haven't tried to get back using Plane Shift or Gate. I suppose we should try out those before blowing diamonds."

She shrugs "Plane Shift, at least, is on my normal known list... I don't really expect it to be sufficient, but are you up for risking going now?" ER pauses, and adds "Also Dismissal, if you're up for that one."

"Oh, come on. You can't claim that you don't think that picking up liquid gold with your bare hands isn't badass?" He pauses for a moment as he makes a realization: "You actually don't? Try to imagine that you were back on Earth, would you find the idea badass there?"

Ephermial Recollection sighs "That's not it, actually... but the only people who actually get it if I try to explain are the folks that have known me for years; the rest think I'm lying, joking, deluded, exaggerating, or otherwise being false. So... I'm not going to explain today."

Spoiler: OOC

Show

I didn't say that you were in the dead magic zone, I need to be in the plane to change it's traits so Tollens is looking at your through the portal. You are outside and available for attempting a wish transport out the next day.

Spoiler

Show

That works.

[ThreadNecro5]

Jack takes one of the diamonds from the bag, focuses on being the Whispering Tyrant, and walks it out of the city.

Spoiler

Show

The Jewel of Everlasting Gold mentions that the Whispering Tyrant can take the treasure it produces out of the city. A different artifact, the Spear of Shards, has a note about using Use Magic Device to trick that artifact, giving a nice little precident. I'd like to check and see if I can do that with the Jewel of Everlasting Gold's results.

So: UMD check: (1d20+28)[36]

Spoiler: OOC

Show

I'd say no, the spear is an item that is specifically noted to be able to be tricked.

Jack nods "So a partial success... you're not freed from the compulsion, but until such time as the 'freedom order' is countermanded, you've at least got the option of weighting the 'freedom order' over others."

"I think so? That is probable but e have to wait and see".

Spoiler

Show

Also: How'd the library search for the Cyclops-speaking fishermen go? Books in games tend to be super-short, and just have a quick mechanical effect, because writing a book takes a lot of effort. Yet they're very likely to now be full books... I'm very, very curious about the information contained, whether it's a bunch of mostly-blank tomes or whether they've been filled with information... and if they have been filled, whether that's information from the game or for this world.

Spoiler: OOC

Show

It would be fruitless, a library originating from Genesis couldn't have information on a creature not native to it.

The books would be filled out with appropriate additional contents.

Battle Royale
Scourge jumps 5 feet backwards and extending her arms to the side in a manner of a fight commentates she declares in a thundering voice: "WELCOME.. TO THE THUNDERDOME!"

She then hits the air in front of her, the shockwave following her fist aims straight towards the being. "Succumb!", she orders it.
She hits the air again, yet another shockwave forming. "Succumb!"
Shockwave. "Succumb!"
Shockwave. "Succumb!"
Shockwave. "Succumb!"

Now in close proximity of the being she lets her practiced facade falls and reveals the true horror beneath.

She then taps into her undead energies and tries to overwhelm the being.

Spoiler: OOC

Show

Fear Aura from Lich: Will DC 45 or shaken. There's also a fear aura with the same DC from Nightmare creature but I would assume they don't overlap.

Can I do a perform check as a free action to appear dramatic. No real mechanical benefit: (1d20+28)[36]. Frightful presense activates but the creature (presumably) have more HD than me.

Full attack: 5 Sound Waves
Attack 1: [roll1] dmg [roll2]
Attack 2: [roll3] dmg [roll4]
Attack 3: [roll5] dmg [roll6]
Attack 4: [roll7] dmg [roll8]
Attack 5: [roll9] dmg [roll10]

Swift: Quickened Command Undead

Correct, the bigger forcecage.

Glimpse of the Akashi: 2 more rounds

Spoiler: OOC

Show

Preform is fine.

Command Undead has no effect.

Rolls:
Concentration DC24: (1d20+28)[36]

Waves of force pummel the creature, causing it to ripple like a sheet in the wind, even tearing brief rents into the beast.

Recovering somewhat it snarls at you and vanishes into mist, once again leaving you alone within it's summoned blizzard.

Spoiler: Oracle Background

Show

Chase was in a dark place when he created Ziana, the oracle warrior, and had a fondsness for pain and suffering as well as admiration.
Ziana hates trolls since they killed her siblings. She was raised in the city of Tolgos by her lone mother who barely scrapped by doing underpaid servant work when the opportunity presented itself. One winter it became so bad that the mother sold her off to slavery. She killed two sets of owners with her bare hands before they put her in the gladiatory to get killed by dinosaurs. That was until Scourge heroicly rescued her from certain death.
She have found a family in the Rashinhi Sisterhood(the witch-cult Scourge have on the castle) and cares little for those outside of it. She will kill anybody who she thinks will threaten it or her fellow witches.
She's a sadomasochist and both enjoys causing and experiencing pain. She also enjoys painting, chess and poetry.

Spoiler: OOC

Show

Background is fine

Testing

"What would happen if I told you that that order should be considered the utter top priority?"

"Well I'd probably have to do that given that it's- Yes, prioritised orders seem to take precedence".

Reverse Rumour Mongering

The scouts are told to gather information about various subjects.

Spoiler: OOC

Show

Taking 10 on Gather Information for 49(plus assists)
Information about someone or something that once killed a god.
If no possible then gather information about something that severely weakened or imprisoned a god.
Information about good places to go or people to question to learn about gods.
Information about good places to go or people to question to learn about magic.
Information about good places to go or people to question to learn about souls.
Information about good places to go or people to question to learn about Earth.
Information about beings more powerful than gods.

Spoiler: OOC

Show

Just to double check, this is the scouts just asking people they find?

Information about someone or something that once killed a god.

The scouts are informed of the impossibility of the act and are unable to get relevant information.

If no possible then gather information about something that severely weakened or imprisoned a god.

A scout in a valley north of where you met Ephermial Recollection has found a city built atop and into a mountain. Asking around the human-dominated populace is fruitless but a member of a race of emaciated looking giants with a cage around it's head seems to be paying marginally more attention to you without stopping its cleaning.

Information about good places to go or people to question to learn about gods.

The scout is directed towards a priest or library by most they ask.

Information about good places to go or people to question to learn about magic.

The scout is simply told to ask a 'court wizard' which after more prodding can usually ve found attending to the nobility.

Others mention a formal academy to the south.

Information about good places to go or people to question to learn about souls.

This scout is another told to see to a priest.

Information about good places to go or people to question to learn about Earth.

Nothing is found no matter who is asked, with most attempts receiving a comment like 'What? like dirt?'.

Necropolis
The necropolis team is send to gather information about people from Earth as well as using Seek thoughts to find former earthlings.

No matter how far is searched, no Earth natives are found.

[Jack_Simth]

Spoiler: OOC

Show

I'd say no, the spear is an item that is specifically noted to be able to be tricked.

The Jack in the ghost shrugs as the gem vanishes, and says "Ah well, worth a shot. Now we just need to play a small game of hide & seek to get it back."

Spoiler: OOC

Show

It would be fruitless, a library originating from Genesis couldn't have information on a creature not native to it.

The books would be filled out with appropriate additional contents.

Jack sighs at the lack of new information.

Spoiler

Show

So I'll need to find a local library somewhere. OK

"Well I'd probably have to do that given that it's- Yes, prioritised orders seem to take precedence".

The spirit states "Which... mostly makes it a full success, although the question then becomes 'can the freedom order be rescinded?' - because if it can, well, it's not very effective, is it?"

Spoiler: OOC

Show

Just to double check, this is the scouts just asking people they find?

Spoiler

Show

Unclear. The Diplomancy skill includes:

Gather Information

You can use Diplomacy to gather information about a specific topic or individual. To do this, you must spend at least 1d4 hours canvassing people at local taverns, markets, and gathering places. The DC of this check depends on the obscurity of the information sought, but for most commonly known facts or rumors it is 10. For obscure or secret knowledge, the DC might increase to 20 or higher. The GM might rule that some topics are simply unknown to common folk.

Retry? Yes. You can retry Diplomacy checks made to gather information.

Basically, the details are handwaived, just like most skills.

Oh, also: Sønderjye brought up on Discord that when I asked about Blood Money and Summons / Planar Bound creatures in the recruitment thread, you may not have understood that I intended to posses them via Malevolence first (looking back, I was bad at wording) so that I'm using their body and type while casting spells. Is that the case? Plan would be to Summon or Planar Bind a creature, posses it with Malevolence, (functions as Magic Jar), cast Blood Money to make components, then cast whatever spell I was after - Permanency, Wish, Simulacrum, et cetera.

[ThreadNecro5]

Oh, also: Sønderjye brought up on Discord that when I asked about Blood Money and Summons / Planar Bound creatures in the recruitment thread, you may not have understood that I intended to posses them via Malevolence first (looking back, I was bad at wording) so that I'm using their body and type while casting spells. Is that the case? Plan would be to Summon or Planar Bind a creature, posses it with Malevolence, (functions as Magic Jar), cast Blood Money to make components, then cast whatever spell I was after - Permanency, Wish, Simulacrum, et cetera.
[/spoiler]

Spoiler: OOC

Show

That would work.

[Sønderjye]

Battle Royale

"Come back and fight you coward!", scourge yells as the thing goings into hiding again. This was getting annoying really fast. She sends and angry wave of magic towards the summoned blizard of the creature.

She conjures a portal to drop her sword into and to pick up a dorje. She then readies herself to the next attack.

Spoiler: OOC

Show

Swift: quickened dispel magic towards the blizzard. CL check (1d20+27)[32]
Move: Summon the dorje of ego whip in exchange of sword.
Standard: Readying to cast Ego Whip from the dorje when she spots the creature the next time. It's mind-effecting.
Charisma damage (6d4+33)[48] Will 36 for half. If fail save then dazed. If needed CL check against spellcraft (1d20+26)[42]

3 rounds of bardic music used.
1 round of Akashi left.

Base

"Plane Shift, at least, is on my normal known list... I don't really expect it to be sufficient, but are you up for risking going now?" ER pauses, and adds "Also Dismissal, if you're up for that one."

"I'm down for whatever as soon as we're tested whether I can actually survive in the being in an dead magic pllane."

Testing

"Well I'd probably have to do that given that it's- Yes, prioritised orders seem to take precedence".

"So.. how do you feel different?"

Spoiler: OOC

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What happens when Tollens makes the plane he is standing in deadmagic?

Necropolis

The team continues their searching.

[Jack_Simth]

"I'm down for whatever as soon as we're tested whether I can actually survive in the being in an dead magic plane."

The corrupted nature spirit considers for a bit, and asks "Have you thought that one through? Please, stop a moment, go through the resources needed for the test, enumerate the possible outcomes you expect, what steps should be taken for each of those possible outcomes, and the associated resource costs for retrieving you from those scenarios - one of which, I imagine, will be something like 'you walk through the portal under your own power', but do include that one as well. Do the same exercise for simply attempting to send you home, and then compare the two. What do you actually gain from doing the test first?"

She continues "Don't get me wrong; it's a good idea to have a dead magic zone set up for disposal of various things, but how much does the test actually benefit you?"

Spoiler

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Given that you want me ready to Wish-transport you out, I'm assuming we're waiting until I can prep more spells to run this test. Is that correct?