Fall of the Empire - IC

[Bandededed]

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Probably because I lagged out and didn't realize that it didn't accept my post Oh well. Hopefully we didn't miss anything too important.

Matias

Spotting the gates, he slows his pace until he stops. "I doubt we should just approach, since not many guards will trust us should we appear as we do. Especially if we appear from the swamps instead of the road,"

"I'm not sure if we can take the night off with Pedram in his condition, but it could go a long way towards improving our reception..."

[Sxoa]

"Pedram is not dead yet after travelling through those wretched swamps. I think we should take a night to clean up. I do not think his condition will deteriorate further, and as Matias said it could go a long way towards improving our reception.

Perhaps Ista, you could take a look at Pedram again and see if we have time to spare? Another thing to consider is our cover story. Arab soldiers apparently is less than ideal as they can use sorcery to detect faith. Perhaps arms merchants? We have some gear from the soldiers we killed."

[Jael_Darkwood]

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Seth begins to turn out the pockets of the corpses, efficiently gathering their goods. He looks expectantly at Ista (detect magic plz).

I meant I gather as in take.. :)

Seth

"Agreed." Seth looks down at himself. "We can take the opportunity to disguise Pedram as well... if we make a litter and bring him on it, perhaps we can claim to be mercenaries."

[IAmNotJeff]

Ista casts detect magic on the equipment Seth took.

"I don't know much about disguises, but diguising ourselves as merchants or mercenaries seems fine to me. I think we should avoid the roads when we can.

It's already been two days travelling through the swamp, and Pedram seems stable, so I don't imagine he'll have any problems if we take an extra night to relax and clean ourselves up. "

In the evenings, Ista will make sure to talk to Pedram for awhile and try to communicate with him through the horse.

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CGCl_Andy, can you correct me if I'm wrong about Pedram's condition.

[CGCL_Andy]

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Sorry for the lack of posting yesterday. I had a hard time connecting to the servers the whole day and figured you guys did as well. So I stopped checking and didn't see you posts until today.

@Jael_Darkwood: Seth looted the corpses you killed. But not the extra 2 you found next to Pedram (presumably he had killed them.) you didn't miss anything essential to the plot, but you did miss part of the loot (a couple of doses of very potent poison.)

@IamNotJeff: Detect Magic had already been cast on the equipment and nothing was magical. You are right about Pedram's condition, he will be fine for another day.

@everyone: I've contacted one of the alternates to add to the party as an extra meat-shield we seem to be running short on those. I'll let you know if he is still interested.

The evening is uneventful, at night though Matias notices a strange flickering of light, a fire is burning some distance away. Being in a very damp swamp Matias is almost certain that the fire is man made.

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I'm going with the same watch order as your last night, but this is before the watches even start. Matias notices the light immediately after the night fall.

Q: are you lighting a fire?

[Sxoa]

Jayanti is all for a fire. These swamps are unpleasant enough. However if her more wilderness oriented companions tell her this is a bad idea, she'll go along. Grudgingly.

[CGCL_Andy]

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I am not sure what the party is doing, are you investigating the fire? ignoring it? do you have your own fire? what is this cleaning up you intend to do? and so on... I'll wait to hear from you before posting.

[Bandededed]

Matias

"I see a fire flickering down a ways, friends. It isn't much, but in these swamps any presence of fire is wholly man made. I believe we should send either myself or Seth to investigate and report back.

As for a fire, if those nearby are hostile, certainly not. We don't want them to find us here. If they aren't, then it shouldn't be too bad of a reaction. We might even consider joining up with whoever it is, if they strike us right,"

Matias blinks when he finishes. It is perhaps the longest anyone has heard him speak in months, and he immediately steps off to the side and looks at the others silently as if to make up for it.

[Sxoa]

"I say Matias and Seth should go check it out, one following the other at a distance. As we saw with Pedram, going off alone is perhaps not the safest of actions. We will wait here until one or the both of you return with news or until a new day dawns.

[IAmNotJeff]

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Sorry, I tried to post yesterday, but giant ate it.

"With only 4 of us left, I'm not keen to send two away, but Jiyanti is right: sending one person alone seems to dangerous. If Seth and Matias want to go investigate, they should. Perhaps, if they are Persian, we can recruit some extra help, with out revealing our mission, or at least find someone to take Pedram back to Persia safely.

Pedram, would you like that?

If they neither appear to be scouting for the enemy nor to be exceptionally trustworty, we should simply try to avoid contact with them. "

If it's possible to build a small fire concealed by rocks, or in a pit, so that the fire is not visible, Ista will be willing to do so; otherwise, the party will have to make do without a fire.

[CGCL_Andy]

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I've been having trouble connecting to the forums for the past two nights again. Sorry for the lack of posts, it's too late at this point to start composing a post. I will post tomorrow early evening (US Central time).

Hopefully I won't have connection troubles then.

[Jael_Darkwood]

Seth

Nodding to Matias, Seth stands up, sheathing the dagger he was carefully re-poisoning. Securing his gear, he starts stalking slowly towards the fire, fading slowly into the darkness.

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the server where i store my character is having problems, I have no idea what my move silently/hide checks are... but i think they are fairly good, at least +10... Move silent : (1d20+10)[18] Hide : (1d20+10)[12]

[CGCL_Andy]

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Again sorry for not posting. I seem to get the server downtimes a lot these days. Maybe I should change my posting time.

@Jael: Hide and Move Silently are +14 for Seth. I took that into account.

Seth and Matias disappear into the darkness, while Ista and Jayanti wait with the mounts and the unconscious Pedram.

It takes the two a good 20 minutes of walking to get close to the fire, they arrive unnoticed by the person by the fire. It's a single man, well built and muscular wearing a light hide armor while preparing a meal for himself on the fire Matias had noticed.

His clothing and armor are in a rough shape, and he is unshaven and has clearly spent a long time in or around the swamps.

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You are just outside the illumination radius for the fire, and can see the man from a distance. He seems for the moment unaware of your presence.

You can't tell by his looks whether he is a persian, an arab or from other ethnicities (a good layer of grime and mud covers almost anything visible about him, but you suspect an Arab would not be living in the swamps these days.

[Bandededed]

Matias

Matias looks at Seth and whispers, "Stay here and be ready to cover me. I'll go see who this is,"

He moves forward slowly, making no attempt to hide himself. "Hello the fire!" he calls. One hand rests on a blade hilt, but the other is held in a non-threatening position.

[Jael_Darkwood]

Seth

Nodding to Matias, Seth pulls out his dagger and holds it in a throwing grip, moving slightly closer, but stopping well short of where he would be noticed.

[CGCL_Andy]

The man stands up and turns towards Matias. He Steps forward picking up a rather large axe as he moves forward, but holds the axe down in a non-threatening fashion as well. He is a giant by any standards, towering head and shoulders over Matias.

As he moves closer, Matias's sharp eye see the patches of skin that are still visible through the mud covering the man. The man's skin is as black as night. Matias has never seen anyone with such skin color.

The big man moves forward a couple of steps and replies in a clearly broken persian "Hello, who walking here?"

[Sxoa]

"So...I hope those two aren't dead. Know any card tricks?"

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Just a hi I'm alive post

[CGCL_Andy]

Remo produces a deck of cards out of his pack, and surprisingly knows a few card tricks Jayanti has not seen before.

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My hello's as well! I'll not be able to post tomorrow, next post saturday. Meanwhile the sneak experts should decide what the want to do with the big swamp dweller.

I might have made a confusing description of him. He is a giant by human standards, not by D&D standards. Think Shaquille O'Neal.

[Bandededed]

Matias

Matias drops his hand from his weapon's hilt, and says - slowly enough to be understood, but not insulting - "My name is Matias Arsalam. Who are you?" to cover his surprise. After his tours of duty with the military, he never imagined that he would find such an oddity.

"My friends and I have been traveling for a while, and stopped to make camp. We saw your fire and I came to see who else was in the wilderness tonight. What brings you here?"

[CGCL_Andy]

The man keeps his axe low, and replies "I name Monnyak" to Matias's introduction. He looks confused during the second half of the speech, once Matias is done talking he says "Fire food cooking. Why swamp walks Matias?" He seems to have missed Matias's question. Then all of the sudden he realizes something, you can see his muscles tense as he holds the axe stronger, "Matias with friends? where friends is?"

[Bandededed]

Matias

Matias holds his hands wide, intending to display peace. "One friend is with me, I believe," he turns and places his hands on his hips. "Seth, are you back there? Come on out,"

After he turns back around, keeping his movements slow, he says, "The others are at our camp," and points back toward where they came from.

"We will not hurt you, Monnyak. We want to be friends," he finishes, hoping everything he said comes across correctly - what he wouldn't give to have Jayanti's tongue!

[Jael_Darkwood]

Seth

Seth slowly walks towards the fire, coming to stop across the fire from Monnyak.
He smiles, and, turning his dagger to make it noticeable through the fire, returns it to its sheathe. "I am Seth." Quickly, Seth says 'hello' in each of the languages he speaks, hoping to hit one that Monnyak speaks.

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the server where I store my characters has gone down, not sure if it'll ever go up again, do you have a screenshot of my char or something chief? 'cause I don't even remember what languages I speak. I'll try briefly speaking in each of them to see if one is more comfy, but I can't list them off, heh.

[CGCL_Andy]

Monnyak waits until Seth comes out and introduces himself. He looks at Seth strangely as he speaks in different languages, and then says "Monnyak not understood what you says. Say more slowlier."

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I'm afraid I don't have access Seth's character sheet either. If they come back online I will save a copy, you should do the same if you see them (last time when you didn't remember the hide modifier I checked and they were online.)

[IAmNotJeff]

and then Seth and Matias came back to the camp with their new friend Monnyak. They introduced their new friend to Ista, Jayanti, and Remo, who liked him very much. Ista and Remo made Monnyak a cake to welcome him to the party, and everyone was very happy. Everyone told stories about their lives and made special care to give extra time to Monnyak, since he spoke slowly. They would have spent all night happily talking, except that they knew they had to ride to Ctesiphon the next day, so they did the responsible thing and went to bed early. "And besides, we're crazy responsible" said Ista, and they all went to bed.

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Sorry, too much DMing in my past. I thought things needed a little kick to get moving again.

Obviously, when I say everyone went to bed, I'm not including whoever is on watch.

[CGCL_Andy]

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good eye NotJeff! I was stalling though because the person I contacted isn't interested, I've asked a few more people if they want to join and take over this character but haven't heard from anyone yet.

I can let him hang with you as an NPC until we find a PC to replace him, or we can leave him here and risk going without a meat-shield for a while more.

Let me know what you think, I will continue the story starting tomorrow night one way or the other.

[IAmNotJeff]

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I think DM's choice is best here. Since we don't have any in game way of knowing Monnyak, and he's not played by a human player, I'd be more inclined to leave him behind, but I've played in games where the DM included an NPC or two and it worked fine. If it'll mean less changes to your game plans to have him along, then we should bring him.

[Bandededed]

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I don't know if anyone has the OOC thread still booked, but I posted what I thought over there. We should keep the meat-shield until we get another player, so we have one, at least.

[CGCL_Andy]

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I also think you should keep the meat-shield. The current party mix makes me a little nervous. I will be a bit busy this coming week, I will open an open recruitment thread to get a new meat-shield next week. Meanwhile we can continue with the Barbarian as a temporary smash/then ask questions party member.

Once everyone is back at the camp Jayanti starts communicating with Monnyak, at first it goes slowly but after a few hours her natural knack for languages combined with Monnyak's limited knowledge of persian enables her to talk to him effectively.

Turns out that the man used to be a slave in the Byzantines, originally he is from Nubia and is trying to get back home. He had hoped to get to Persia and book a passage on a ship going around the arabian peninsula but the war has caused him more trouble as foreigners are viewed with suspicion everywhere these days. So he has decided to travel over land to egypt and then down the river Nile to his homeland.

It takes another day to clean him up, and it's practically impossible to disguise him as anything but a slave or a hired mercenary.

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I think the party is ready to get inside Ctesiphon. I believe you had decided to go in during the day, correct me if I'm wrong.

Also I need to know where will you be heading once you are inside the city (possible answers are: to the temple, to the palace or to the market to meet Kavuus's connection.)

[IAmNotJeff]

Ista says

"I'd hoped that the city would be empty, and we could just walk in, but that might be unrealistic. Seth, do you think you could get us to your local contact?"

[Sxoa]

"I agree. I think we should try to meet up with the local contact ASAP. They can give us the lay of the land and from their we can decide where to head."