Is anyone interested in a setting up a regular D&D night/

Crideas has delivered the information about the Fire Giants to the dwarves of Forge. He awaits word from King Firebeard regarding the results from the interrogations.

Having explored the pit of various exotic snakes, Tarnesha, multiple times and gained beyond passing familiarity with the place, Crideas will begin scrying to find if there might be a poisoner/assassin harvesting the venom. If he can confirm any details, he will see about an interrogation of his own to ferret out any further information on Highfang.

I will be manually resetting the server about 15 minutes before the scheduled start time today (to update the live module and update a server-side hak file).

FYI Crash to desktop as soon as I tried to open the temple door - loading screen got about 10%, then bam.

As DM, my loading screen got to about 90% before the server crashed.  I'm thinking it might be due in part to something scripted in that area, which I will attempt to fix and test before we continue right where we left off (next weekend).



On the upside, it looks like our player population has been increasing lately.  At the height tonight, there were 11 players and 1 DM online at the same time, with some of the players participating in the adventure night campaign and the others off in another area.

As a side note, if you RickRoll us in-game again, there will be no forgiveness.

daveyeisley wrote:As a side note, if you RickRoll us in-game again, there will be no forgiveness.

Would I do that?  

The Amethyst Dragon wrote:

daveyeisley wrote:As a side note, if you RickRoll us in-game again, there will be no forgiveness.

Would I do that?  

That's like asking if Aurora would kick a kitten

The Amethyst Dragon wrote:
On the upside, it looks like our player population has been increasing lately.  At the height tonight, there were 11 players and 1 DM online at the same time, with some of the players participating in the adventure night campaign and the others off in another area.

Well actually ....

And 14 during the night if you count Ranara joining in late to the trip to the Dark Realm. The evening added up to some nice XP.  Was lagging my old computer a bit but not too horrible (still looking forward to a new compy soon), and being as there were enough front-liners to take care of most things, is why I tried to keep my mage way back.  And she didn't kill any party members with Weird, so it was a good night.   Lovely to see the place populated!

So, did we accomplish anything at all with the Highfang plot, or was that cut off due to technical difficulties?

The Amethyst Dragon wrote:

daveyeisley wrote:As a side note, if you RickRoll us in-game again, there will be no forgiveness.

Would I do that?  

For those following along at home, take note that he doesn't deny what he did.

At least he didnt load the audio file into a hak in preparation... It was all text.... But it was *our* PCs stuck in cutscene singing the lyrics!

Bad conniving Purple reptile!

Lady Ramana actually wishes we'd have more dancing like that choreographed song we all did.  Temple festivals every season!

I know, I know, don't encourage him.

Neva gonna give you up, neva gonna let you down......

Best thing about Saturday was having dave and jay and mannyJ all online. Was like old home week!

Short recap from last week:

Adventurers met up in the Sleeping Dragon, and Crideas recapped the relevant events from Veleron's history, the blood crystals needed to make him vulnerable, and how Highfang was the best lead they currently had. He then related the information provided by King Fireheart from the interrogation of another traitor he had found and executed. The Fire Giant traitors had been recruited by Highfang to conquer forge and find an ancient key somewhere in Forge, which they would then deliver to Highfang for some unknown purpose.

The loose end regarding the murdered Fire Giant Emberbeard, and why he had chosen to head to Icereach was still unclear.

After some discussion the adventurers headed to forge and seached around, then spoke with the various Dwarven merhcants with little success (in some part due to some of the party being rude and antagonistic to the Dwarves). At last they spoke with the weaponsmith, whose brother had returned from an expedition to the Necopolis of Alatha with various magic items he had found. The smith had melted most of them down, but one item, an old rusted key, would not melt.

The adventurers convinced him to sell the key, and he told them his brother had found it on a road, wedged in between two stones. He did not know what it was supposed to unlock.

Their new goal was to find the lock in Alatha that the key was intended for, so they travelled and explored. They found a temple to Dalix which seemed 'new' - perhaps it had been shrouded in powerful magic until the key was brought near. They prepared to unlock the door and investigate the temple for more clues...

daveyeisley wrote:(in some part due to some of the party being rude and antagonistic to the Dwarves)

You forgot to mention it was the dwarves that started it. 

I have the chat logs - don't make me post them

Well, to be fair, I wouldn't remember all of it since I was just being Ama, and that's what she generally does, but I tried to make her relatively tame. Consider the whole methodology was against her principles and she's quite an outspoken girl, so the pent-up pressure would probably have to go somewhere.

That said, they did start it at least once - that I'm sure of and nothing short of logs will convince me otherwise. 

Well, I can assure you from my perspective they didn't - I have re-read the logs. In the end, it boils down to how you want to RP your character. Posting the logs and having a debate won't serve any purpose - I was kidding about posting them anyway. The main thing was, it settled down before it derailed the event for everyone - and there was more than one PC involved. I am not singling anyone out, because that's pointless. It didn't cause an actual problem, hence why it was just a quick aside in the summary.

To explain a bit more:
Basically, when you have an event that players want to participate in and you smoosh a range of PCs together with differing alignments, the RP is going to result in friction.

It was very nice that everyone stretched their RP a little in order to make it work. I want to thank the players who made that sacrifice.

I had gotten tells regarding some players wanting to have their evil PCs playing both sides, and possibly start PC intrigue and misinformation shenanigans. While the idea certainly has merit in theory, it would have been a barrier to including everyone, since Crideas would not have just openly shared every detail he knew with people he didn't know or trust, let alone inviting them to participate. And if the rest of the group wanted to include everyone despite his warnings, then Crideas would not have participated, which would have sucked.

It also had possibilities of instigating PvP combat which would have further derailed things. I play other RPGs that involve a lot of backstabbing and political intrigue, and I would prefer those elements not invade my NWN playtime - it can be exhausting keeping track of information, misinformation, IC information, and OOC information. And then when the PvP does happen, it almost always involves someone being upset OOC afterwards.

So yeah, thanks to everyone for keeping things simple and 'heroic'. Nobody should want Veleron to win, I am pretty sure the little bugger doesn't even believe the Gods should have any power over him.

Nice recap Dave, I'll post Anna's view of it in a journal later. Just haven't gotten around to it because of general business. I also took some screenshots last time. Mostly of the storytime with "uncle" Crideas at the SDI.

Who ended up with the key at the end?

Skywatcher gave the key to Crideas

Ah, good to know. There's a couple things Anna would have begun to research at the end of the adventure (or rather, after the demon realm romp afterward). I wonder if that'd be doable? Anna's of a logical mind, she like to do her research if possible to avoid nasty surprises. It things like, divine the temple area with Legend Lore and use the facilities of the Wizard School and Dawnholm's library, etc.

Sent you a PM, .

Charter currently down, posting from phone, will be there if and when internet comes back up.

Darn, wish I didn't have to miss this week's fun

Two more crystals located. One was located in the ruined temple to Dalix, which had been desecrated and re-devoted to Sorgath - it was guarded by many demons which Veleron had unleashed through a one-way portal from the Dark Realm. Veleron had laid a plague enchantment on the crystal itself to spread a contagion to whomever bore it, and that virulent disease would then spread from the bearer across the lands. After two of the party contracted the disease, they quickly sequestered themselves until the cleric could cure them. Associates and allies were called in to make sure the plague was contained and clerics were available to triage any new cases.

The other crystal was found after the Adventurers, stymied by a lack of solid leads, beseeched a Daramokian Cleric of Kalas for any clues he could offer. They were led to find a pearl diver who was rumored to have found one of the remaining crystals centuries ago, but then mysteriously has been paid to retire from diving. Philonius the drow had little to offer, as did Curtis the purveyor of water-breathing equipment at Bluecove. The adventurers were on their way to talk to some dragons who lived in the ocean, since they were old and lived close by.... and then things were derailed slightly for a time ( had to go), but they scoured the ocean floor and eventually located the 4th crystal.

Both crystals have been anchored, leaving only 2. Icereach now stands as the last remaining lead the adventurers have - and it is a tenuous lead at best.

And fun it was... the night in pictures (kind of really abbreviated)....

We scoured the Calithian ocean floor thin in search for that gem! XD

Anna was lucky finding it after scaring the life out of a shark with one of her illusions. \o/

'Twas fun, even the chaos and the anticlimatic battle against Lord Highfang in the beginning (which no one really noticed they had killed before made us aware thanks to magical confetti lag).   

Oh yeah, that was great fun. One of my favorite parts was interrogating demons - partly due to the fact they were accidently killed by some party members during the process, so it took a few tries. They also had diffrent personalities.

But the sneaky curse was tops. Assuming the demons' words of some sort of apocalypse meant an  invasion, the party was running around the realm trying to locate it - thus serving to spread the disease further. Brilliant!  

Although not everyone was completely unaware of it.  

daveyeisley wrote:After two of the party contracted the disease, they quickly sequestered themselves until the cleric could cure them.

Let's skip the details of why Ama took so long to come back.

Angel of Death wrote:
'Twas fun, even the chaos and the anticlimatic battle against Lord Highfang in the beginning (which no one really noticed they had killed before made us aware thanks to magical confetti lag).   

To be fair.. he went down with a Dev Crit from Skywatcher. I doubt even Lord Highfang knew what had happened... one minute preparing a battle for us, the next cleaved in two...

RustyDios wrote:

Angel of Death wrote:
'Twas fun, even the chaos and the anticlimatic battle against Lord Highfang in the beginning (which no one really noticed they had killed before made us aware thanks to magical confetti lag).   

To be fair.. he went down with a Dev Crit from Skywatcher. I doubt even Lord Highfang knew what had happened... one minute preparing a battle for us, the next cleaved in two...

True. XD

And yeah, @Lasombra: I loved the devilish clever plan with the plague too.   (Even though Anna does not approve )

In my defense, if I had had any notion he was not immune to critical hits, I would have stayed well back from him.

Well, I don't think any of us realized that Highfang was even there. In a sea of combat with 40 drow, you don't hold down tab and check each nameplate. It might have worked a little better if maybe he had shouted something at us before the fight started, so we would have seen the name in our chat windows and been aware that he was present.

Heh, if there was that many regular drow around, even tab-highlighting would have made noticing him difficult.  For me, when about 10 or more baddies are on screen, the name popups are so numerous and crowded it's easy to miss.  I could imagine it was a sea of magical confetti too which makes notice even more difficult.

Skywatcher wrote:In my defense, if I had had any notion he was not immune to critical hits, I would have stayed well back from him.

To be fair... um.. wasn't Lord Highfang an Undead of some sort? Or did I get massively confused somewhere?

The Wiki wrote:
(Undead are)... immune to sneak attacks, critical hits, mind-affecting spells, paralysis, poison, and disease. Since they are already dead, they are immune to death magic, level drain, and ability drain.

So if that is the case maybe you just got a copy/decoy and we might meet the real Lord Highfang in Icereach ... ... ... ...

Not to mention with it lagging as it did, would take a while for names to pop up, too; which would give ample time to kill stuff without realizing.

@Rusty: I actually always thought that, too, until someone explicitly stated that he's a drow. Evil minds think alike? 

hehe...I was typing up something in the chatbar for Lord Highfang to say, when all the drow in between him and the PCs somehow ended up as corpses before he could get the words out.  He was the only one with a glowing red sword though...

Which comes out to about 20 pixels of confetti amid 1000 pixels of confetti?

I will be in Chattanooga this Saturday for a wedding, let me know what goes down!