The Mage Academy: Located just past the main gate into the caldera of Mt. Gintu, the Mage Academy is split between two groups of students. The Bardic School trains Bards primarily into the College of Lore, although a specialist course in the College of Glamour exists, and also trains many students in music, oratory, and performing arts who don't necessarily earn levels in the Bard class (a distinction for only the most gifted handful of students), who pick up perhaps a cantrip or two to aid their work. The Wizardry School likewise trains many purely ordinary scholars and researchers, but refines the most talented handful of these into actual Wizards. There is a rivalry between the two branches of the Academy, which is encouraged by faculty.
The Imperial Quartermaster's Office: In a wealthier part of the city, on the midle slope of the mountain, the Quartermaster's office has taken over the home of a noble family that fled the city, and turned their fairly extensive grounds into a place to stockpile goods. Weapons and dangerous materials are actually kept in the garrison outside the north gate, but the Quartermaster's office is the place to go for things like new boots and uniforms, raw materials for construction projects, and minor luxury goods imported from the Empire to give the troops a little taste of home. It's also the place that Adventurers who have accepted bounties from the Empire go to get paid - most of these bounties are for taking care of monster activity, but some are for escaped prisoners, deserters, or political refugees.
The Imperial Wyrdguard: The Empire makes extensive use of Arcane Magic, and tries aggressively to recruit its practitioners, but doesn't trust unaffiliated spellcasters any further than they can throw them. The Wyrdguard is made up of equal parts Imperial Mages (Wizards, Bards, and Sorcerers, but rarely Warlocks) and of heavy-armored soldiers specialized in fighting spellcasters (usually Fighters, occasionally Paladins). The Wyrdguard has taken over a part of the Mage Academy campus and monitors activity there heavily.
The Golden Sands Arena Historical Society: A bunch of old ex-gladiators who maintain the parts of the Arena that aren't still in regular public use, to keep the memory of their collective past alive, and make sure Kulshedra never slips back into allowing captives to be forced into bloodsport. Luna apparently pays their wages and covers the upkeep costs of the Arena as well.
Important people:
Erd Gamal: A High-Elf of incredibly advanced age, who has lived in the shadow of Mt. Gintu for far longer than the city of Kulshedra has been here. She taught Mitzy as a student, and is still the Academy Chair of Divinations.
Lars Cenny: A Human in the Bardic School, an eternal grad student who is far more interested in sipping cocktails on the beach than making more than a token effort to ever graduate. A petty thief and mischief maker. To supplement the stipend his family pays him, he has become the academy's primary access point to Kulshedra's black market, both buying and selling, especially drugs. That's not his real surname. He has several parrots, one of whom is named Barbados. He will probably be upset when he sobers up enough to realize he just handed Arly like 30 gp worth of Irrutsk Crystals (an alchemical reagent that causes hallucinations when powdered and spread across the eyeballs) without even charging her.
Sgt. Gierskogal: A Human officer in the Quartermaster's office, an old soldier who was moved out of combat duty after he lost a leg. He's not thrilled about being put behind a desk, but he's extremely good at what he does, especially discretely procuring unusual spell components. He sympathizes with the people of Kulshedra, because they really didn't do anything to earn the Empire's wrath, they just happened to be in the way of the war between the Empire and the Seven Spears Coalition. He's the Quartermaster's Office main liaison with Adventurers and Bounty Hunters doing freelance work for the Empire.
Luna of Serpent's Arch (updated): Having met Luna in person now, you know that she is a very tall human lady, built like a pro wrestler, with features similar to Pacific Islanders on Earth. She has two blue dragons tattooed wrapping around her arms, and wears a modified suit of gladiator's leather armor even when nothing particularly interesting/dangerous is going on. She doesn't carry any obvious weapons, but famously is able to channel Electricity into her unarmed combat style, which she used to stun opponents and establish a reputation for non-lethal victories, earning her the esteem of her former gladiator peers.
Story:
After the first night's watch, the team decided to investigate various leads.
Bruno checked in with his contact at the Quartermaster's office, Sgt. Gierskogal, about the tobacco remnants found on the rooftop where the robed figure was sighted. Sgt. Gierskogal was able to identify that it was imperial tobacco, and that the rolling paper appeared to have been a hand-written grocery list for spell components, indicating that the mage writing it was probably an Illusionist (or at least using a lot of Illusion spells), and was probably trained in Wizardry in the Empire rather than being a local mage. He also warned Bruno that there were likely spies "by the dozens" keeping watch on their interactions.
Mitzy went to the Mage Academy to check in with her old teacher, Erd Gamal, about the coins found among the remains of the rag men. Erd was able to identify them as belonging to a type of scrying that would let the wizard extend their senses to the location of the coin. Erd also made some pointed comments about disasters in Kulshedra's future, but declined to elaborate.
Arly went to her old buddy Lars on the other side of the Academy campus to see if she could get high. It turns out, she could! But not as high as other people might, given her Grung resistance to poisons.
The party returned to the Barracuda's Bones where they were able to confer with Luna, who had returned from her visit to the Firbolgs. She told them about the Golden Sands Arena Historical Society, and how the banners used were around 50 years old, while the memorabilia in the Hall of Champions below the arena stretched back more than 250 years. She suggested that the party visit the Hall of Champions themselves and ask the other ex-gladiators who maintain it more or less as a museum if they had any more information. She kept the banners to have them repaired before returning them herself.
Satisfied that they'd chased enough leads, the party took a long rest starting around midday, then headed to Lady Octavia's warehouse just before sunset. There they chatted briefly with the Fang Brothers, prying into the nature and identity of their partner Starfall, but weren't able to find out much, other than that the brothers had only been working with Starfall for a few months. Starfall descended from the sky, interrupting their conversation, and the three of them left so that the party could take over.
Arly strung out bells on strings as warning signs around the warehouse entrance, but the creature that attacked this time wasn't subtle at all. It first appeared some distance down the street, between two other warehouses, heralded by a muffled thunderclap sound. Instead of a man-shape in the rags, it was elephantine in size, but lacking a head or any other distinction between front and back end. Jut a big massive body wrapped in tent canvas, and four huge cylindrical legs. Shortly after the fight began, Bruno spotted the same robed figure from the night before, this time hovering over the battle. Arly lit the rag monster on fire and she and Mr. Bobo were able to shred it apart. When it died, there was a surge of motion rippling through the fabric as though it was full of birds flapping their wings as they escaped, but nothing emerged other than a sound of rushing wind.
Meanwhile, Mitzy and Bruno were able to keep the hovering wizard on the defensive, forcing him to protect himself with Shield Spells and attack only with Firebolts, until they dropped him with a combination of catapulted lamp, crossbow fire, and falling damage. Arly leaped to catch him, taking the brunt of the damage herself, and ensuring he was alive for interrogation. Mitzy stabilized him, and the party thoroughly bound him, took away his spell components, and stuffed him in a barrel. With his hood down, he appeared to be a Tiefling with bright cherry red skin, who had had his horns removed and sanded down judging by the two flat spots on his forehead. He had a facial tattoo resembling a cross between a road map and a spider web radiating out from his mouth. In addition to spell components, he was carrying a pouch full of lead coins like the ones found in the first batch of rag men (tonight's rag monster had no such coin).
Mitzy and Arly rolled the barrel stuffed full of defeated wizard back to the Barracuda's Bones, while Bruno and Bobo remained behind to stand the rest of the watch. They didn't observe anything else noteworthy that night.
Desert Leviathan on
Realizing lately that I don't really trust or respect basically any of the moderators here. So, good luck with life, friends! Hit me up on Twitter @DesertLeviathan
Realizing lately that I don't really trust or respect basically any of the moderators here. So, good luck with life, friends! Hit me up on Twitter @DesertLeviathan
Realizing lately that I don't really trust or respect basically any of the moderators here. So, good luck with life, friends! Hit me up on Twitter @DesertLeviathan
The Dread Wizards of Vorukk's Hallow - Near the capital of the Panjandrum Empire, close enough to be seen from the city walls, there is a walled-off and heavily-fortified region that the Empire has no jurisdiction over, but regularly sends prisoners to in... tribute? Trade? It's unclear. Vorukk's Hallow is rumored to be ruled by a Necromancer of supreme power, and whatever the nature of the region's political relationship to the Empire, it seems to include Vorukk Wizards traveling and working with Imperial Warmages from time to time, although usually the Vorukk Wizards are subtle enough that no one knows they've left their blighted homeland. A common identification is their spiderweb-like facial tattoos.
Important People
Lord Freyr Hardtack - A member of the Regent Council who fiercely opposed Lady Octavia's rise to power, and may have advised the Empire on the precise legal trickery they used to steal her seat, as well as two others. Lord Hardtack is a human, distinct for the wind-burned skin of a sailor that blends almost perfectly with the reddish color of his beard. He represents most of Kulshedra's larger shipping companies, as well as the Harbor Patrol that is only nominally a part of the Shieldbearers, and most of the dockworkers. His constituents make much more frequent use of Kulshedra's hospitality businesses, and were unhappy to see them organize and gain influence enough to demand protection, especially where it applied to gladiators and sex workers, Octavia's most loyal voters.
Story
Mitzy and Arly rolled the wizard with the spiderweb tattoo back to the Barracuda's Bones in a barrel, while Bruno and Mr. Bobo kept the rest of the watch at the warehouse, until Starfall and the Fang Brothers arrived.
At the Barracuda's Bones, Deadeye Drakke was fairly upset that they'd brought a hostile foreign wizard there. Mitzy kept watch over the barrel while Arly went to get Lady Octavia at her manor up in the mid city. Arly was able to bluff her way past Lady Octavia's guards, and fortunately Octavia was intrigued enough by the news that she forgave the trespass. She and Arly returned to the Barracuda's Bones right about when Bruno and Mr. Bobo arrived. They attempted to interrogate the wizard, but failed to make any headway, as he seemed more frightened of his employer than of anything the party could do to him. As a threat, he revealed that he too carried one of the divination-enchanted coins that the rag men had held, implying that some third party was watching the scene through his eyes. This was extremely unwelcome news, given Lady Octavia's presence, and the interrogation taking place in the store-room of her most prominent property. Mitzy killed him with a ray of frost, and Octavia's guards shoved his corpse back into the barrel and hauled it off to make it disappear somewhere.
After accepting payment for their original contract from Deadeye, the group split up with Mitzy and Bruno going to the Golden Sands Arena to check out the source of the rag man banners, while Arly went to hassle her old buddy Lars for help covering for Lady Octavia. Octavia herself revealed that the contents of the warehouse were quite ordinary, but the heightened security was to protect an access point to a subterranean complex the warehouse had been built to conceal. The catacombs below the warehouse predate even the Goliath presence in the region, and surveys with Goliath loremasters had uncovered evidence that some kind of doomsday device was hidden down there. Octavia sent a spell resembling a messenger bird to her home, and left the Barracuda's Bones under disguise to protect the warehouse.
Meanwhile, Arly visited the Bardic College and recruited Lars and some of this actor friends to fake a scene for whoever was watching through the enchanted coins. They modified the kitchen store room of the college to resemble the storeroom in the Barracuda's Bones to the best of their ability, then had one actor use the coin and view the scene they created from a perspective that suggested it was still in the wizard's possession. Then, an actor who was accomplished enough at magic to cast Disguise Self used the spell first to appear as Lady Octavia, then transformed a second time into Lord Freyr Hardtack, pretending to do so without knowing the "wizard" was still watching, and implying that he had falsified the earlier scene to further discredit his rival.
At the Hall of Champions, located in the basement of the Golden Sands Arena, Bruno and Mitzy were able to gain admission after a brief not-entirely-friendly interaction with two ex-Gladiators who had appointed themselves museum security. Inside the hall, they found the place the Banners had been torn down from, monuments dedicated to five ancient Goliath champions from near the beginning of the city's history. Their names:
Mitzy recalled that Geanath was particularly controversial in his day, because he was a clan chief who still participated in bloodsport. Investigating his monument (a wood carving of Geanath slaying a manticore with his bare hands, mounted on the wall), Mitzy found a secret door. Opening it, another Rag Creature, this one resembling a massive hound made of old lace curtains, leaped out and attacked. They dispatched it and headed downstairs, where Mitzy's darkvision allowed her to spot another Dark Wizard, who appeared to have sections cut out of his face giving him a skeletal appearance. Mistaking him for a lich, the team hurried back upstairs just in time for Arly to catch up. As they compared notes, a howl came from below that was loud enough to rattle the whole arena and disrupt the fight scheduled above, and also draw the ex-gladiator guards inside. One of them panicked and ran, but the other stayed to fight beside the party.
The dark wizard emerged upstairs and used a magic item, a glove covered in strange Conjuration Magic sigils, to animate three more banners as Rag Men. He fought defensively much like the other dark wizard had, but eventually succumbed to injuries and died. The rag men continued to fight without him, taking a few more rounds to fall. Mitzi looted the enchanted glove from him, and found that he too bore one of the divination coins, but found nothing else of value on him.
Realizing lately that I don't really trust or respect basically any of the moderators here. So, good luck with life, friends! Hit me up on Twitter @DesertLeviathan
I screwed up a bit when it came to equipment. I thought you had said starting gear +200gp so Mister Bobo was rocking some custom studded leather armor. As was brought up last night when Rain was making her gobbo you had said +100. No biggie, I'll just bump him down to regular leather armor and spend difference on some manacles (that I thought came with the bounty hunter background but doesn't) and other stupid incidentals.
Eh.. keep it, but you owe the excess to an armor merchant.
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Bad news friends, I am being kept late for work bullshit and have no idea when I’ll actually be done. Could be in time to play, but based on the mess I’m looking at and the number of other people they’ve been able to scrounge up to help with it, I doubt it very much.
Realizing lately that I don't really trust or respect basically any of the moderators here. So, good luck with life, friends! Hit me up on Twitter @DesertLeviathan
The thing that's broken is broken in a way that's probably going to take ~2.5 more hours to fix. Whee.
On the positive side, this is enough overtime to put Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes back into the budget in time for first-day purchase.
Realizing lately that I don't really trust or respect basically any of the moderators here. So, good luck with life, friends! Hit me up on Twitter @DesertLeviathan
It's just going to be hella tedious. I'm spending about 10 seconds actually doing things for every 4-5 minutes of watching status bars fill. Over and over, for each of the accounts disrupted.
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Ahoy! I should be ready to play at the standard time tonight.
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Today’s adventure is brought to you by the Carl’s Jr. Memphis BBQ 1/3rd Lb. Thickburger with a large Dr. Pepper and order of Criss-Cut Fries, because these clever bastards have figured out that I will eat here as many times a week as they’re willing to mail me coupons for 2 free chocolate chip cookies with any combo meal.
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I swear, next session you're going to start seeing answers to questions. I've been spitting out little mysteries at such a pace that I kind of feel like J.J. Abrams writing the first half of a bunch of riddles before abandoning the project with no notes or instructions, and letting the remaining writers puzzle out if any of it was actually intended to be consequential.
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I hope everybody has a backup character ready, because you can’t spell Old Kulshedra Port Catacombs without TPK!
You also can’t spell it without A Mr. Cuckolded Sloth Boast Rap, but that’s less important.
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No worries. We'll take a break this week, and I'll use the time to actually complete the session summaries for the last two weeks maybe.
If you want somebody to talk to, I've got the forums set to send me email alerts for private messages.
Realizing lately that I don't really trust or respect basically any of the moderators here. So, good luck with life, friends! Hit me up on Twitter @DesertLeviathan
oh what it's a real fucking movie and the songs came afterwards what the hell
Haha, yeah! One of my coworkers actually knew about the original, and got into a big argument about whether it was a real thing or whether it was something he imagined when he was a kid. And then he found the remix videos while searching for proof. I guess the real Buffalo Rider movie was pretty terrible, stretching about 20 minutes of action into an hour and a half of movie, and the Guy On A Buffalo videos capture 100% of the material that's actually worth watching.
The real guy the movie was based on was Charles "Buffalo" Jones, but he was a rancher and early conservationist who worked to preserve dwindling bison herds, and there's no evidence he ever saddled and rode one, or got up to any kind of hardass loner vigilante activity. The real dude founded Garden City and later served on the Kansas state senate, and the only thing he really has in common with the movie character is his nickname.
The remix footage comes from the second movie about Buffalo Jones that the lead actor made. Apparently he wasn't satisfied with the reception the first one received, and made the second one two years later, re-using a bunch of the footage and re-hiring all the same actors. I guess after he trained his stunt buffalo to accept a saddle for the movie, he wanted to get at least two uses out of it?
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Posts
Important Groups:
The Imperial Quartermaster's Office: In a wealthier part of the city, on the midle slope of the mountain, the Quartermaster's office has taken over the home of a noble family that fled the city, and turned their fairly extensive grounds into a place to stockpile goods. Weapons and dangerous materials are actually kept in the garrison outside the north gate, but the Quartermaster's office is the place to go for things like new boots and uniforms, raw materials for construction projects, and minor luxury goods imported from the Empire to give the troops a little taste of home. It's also the place that Adventurers who have accepted bounties from the Empire go to get paid - most of these bounties are for taking care of monster activity, but some are for escaped prisoners, deserters, or political refugees.
The Imperial Wyrdguard: The Empire makes extensive use of Arcane Magic, and tries aggressively to recruit its practitioners, but doesn't trust unaffiliated spellcasters any further than they can throw them. The Wyrdguard is made up of equal parts Imperial Mages (Wizards, Bards, and Sorcerers, but rarely Warlocks) and of heavy-armored soldiers specialized in fighting spellcasters (usually Fighters, occasionally Paladins). The Wyrdguard has taken over a part of the Mage Academy campus and monitors activity there heavily.
The Golden Sands Arena Historical Society: A bunch of old ex-gladiators who maintain the parts of the Arena that aren't still in regular public use, to keep the memory of their collective past alive, and make sure Kulshedra never slips back into allowing captives to be forced into bloodsport. Luna apparently pays their wages and covers the upkeep costs of the Arena as well.
Important people:
Lars Cenny: A Human in the Bardic School, an eternal grad student who is far more interested in sipping cocktails on the beach than making more than a token effort to ever graduate. A petty thief and mischief maker. To supplement the stipend his family pays him, he has become the academy's primary access point to Kulshedra's black market, both buying and selling, especially drugs. That's not his real surname. He has several parrots, one of whom is named Barbados. He will probably be upset when he sobers up enough to realize he just handed Arly like 30 gp worth of Irrutsk Crystals (an alchemical reagent that causes hallucinations when powdered and spread across the eyeballs) without even charging her.
Sgt. Gierskogal: A Human officer in the Quartermaster's office, an old soldier who was moved out of combat duty after he lost a leg. He's not thrilled about being put behind a desk, but he's extremely good at what he does, especially discretely procuring unusual spell components. He sympathizes with the people of Kulshedra, because they really didn't do anything to earn the Empire's wrath, they just happened to be in the way of the war between the Empire and the Seven Spears Coalition. He's the Quartermaster's Office main liaison with Adventurers and Bounty Hunters doing freelance work for the Empire.
Luna of Serpent's Arch (updated): Having met Luna in person now, you know that she is a very tall human lady, built like a pro wrestler, with features similar to Pacific Islanders on Earth. She has two blue dragons tattooed wrapping around her arms, and wears a modified suit of gladiator's leather armor even when nothing particularly interesting/dangerous is going on. She doesn't carry any obvious weapons, but famously is able to channel Electricity into her unarmed combat style, which she used to stun opponents and establish a reputation for non-lethal victories, earning her the esteem of her former gladiator peers.
Story:
Bruno checked in with his contact at the Quartermaster's office, Sgt. Gierskogal, about the tobacco remnants found on the rooftop where the robed figure was sighted. Sgt. Gierskogal was able to identify that it was imperial tobacco, and that the rolling paper appeared to have been a hand-written grocery list for spell components, indicating that the mage writing it was probably an Illusionist (or at least using a lot of Illusion spells), and was probably trained in Wizardry in the Empire rather than being a local mage. He also warned Bruno that there were likely spies "by the dozens" keeping watch on their interactions.
Mitzy went to the Mage Academy to check in with her old teacher, Erd Gamal, about the coins found among the remains of the rag men. Erd was able to identify them as belonging to a type of scrying that would let the wizard extend their senses to the location of the coin. Erd also made some pointed comments about disasters in Kulshedra's future, but declined to elaborate.
Arly went to her old buddy Lars on the other side of the Academy campus to see if she could get high. It turns out, she could! But not as high as other people might, given her Grung resistance to poisons.
The party returned to the Barracuda's Bones where they were able to confer with Luna, who had returned from her visit to the Firbolgs. She told them about the Golden Sands Arena Historical Society, and how the banners used were around 50 years old, while the memorabilia in the Hall of Champions below the arena stretched back more than 250 years. She suggested that the party visit the Hall of Champions themselves and ask the other ex-gladiators who maintain it more or less as a museum if they had any more information. She kept the banners to have them repaired before returning them herself.
Satisfied that they'd chased enough leads, the party took a long rest starting around midday, then headed to Lady Octavia's warehouse just before sunset. There they chatted briefly with the Fang Brothers, prying into the nature and identity of their partner Starfall, but weren't able to find out much, other than that the brothers had only been working with Starfall for a few months. Starfall descended from the sky, interrupting their conversation, and the three of them left so that the party could take over.
Arly strung out bells on strings as warning signs around the warehouse entrance, but the creature that attacked this time wasn't subtle at all. It first appeared some distance down the street, between two other warehouses, heralded by a muffled thunderclap sound. Instead of a man-shape in the rags, it was elephantine in size, but lacking a head or any other distinction between front and back end. Jut a big massive body wrapped in tent canvas, and four huge cylindrical legs. Shortly after the fight began, Bruno spotted the same robed figure from the night before, this time hovering over the battle. Arly lit the rag monster on fire and she and Mr. Bobo were able to shred it apart. When it died, there was a surge of motion rippling through the fabric as though it was full of birds flapping their wings as they escaped, but nothing emerged other than a sound of rushing wind.
Meanwhile, Mitzy and Bruno were able to keep the hovering wizard on the defensive, forcing him to protect himself with Shield Spells and attack only with Firebolts, until they dropped him with a combination of catapulted lamp, crossbow fire, and falling damage. Arly leaped to catch him, taking the brunt of the damage herself, and ensuring he was alive for interrogation. Mitzy stabilized him, and the party thoroughly bound him, took away his spell components, and stuffed him in a barrel. With his hood down, he appeared to be a Tiefling with bright cherry red skin, who had had his horns removed and sanded down judging by the two flat spots on his forehead. He had a facial tattoo resembling a cross between a road map and a spider web radiating out from his mouth. In addition to spell components, he was carrying a pouch full of lead coins like the ones found in the first batch of rag men (tonight's rag monster had no such coin).
Mitzy and Arly rolled the barrel stuffed full of defeated wizard back to the Barracuda's Bones, while Bruno and Bobo remained behind to stand the rest of the watch. They didn't observe anything else noteworthy that night.
goblins and kobolds are only two officially playable small races with no PC representation
JUST SAYING
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There's a fair chance that Arly knew exactly what that drug was and how much it cost
sure she's a dufus, but she would definitely try to score free drugs
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so I gotta wolf down some food real quick
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Important Groups
Important People
Story
At the Barracuda's Bones, Deadeye Drakke was fairly upset that they'd brought a hostile foreign wizard there. Mitzy kept watch over the barrel while Arly went to get Lady Octavia at her manor up in the mid city. Arly was able to bluff her way past Lady Octavia's guards, and fortunately Octavia was intrigued enough by the news that she forgave the trespass. She and Arly returned to the Barracuda's Bones right about when Bruno and Mr. Bobo arrived. They attempted to interrogate the wizard, but failed to make any headway, as he seemed more frightened of his employer than of anything the party could do to him. As a threat, he revealed that he too carried one of the divination-enchanted coins that the rag men had held, implying that some third party was watching the scene through his eyes. This was extremely unwelcome news, given Lady Octavia's presence, and the interrogation taking place in the store-room of her most prominent property. Mitzy killed him with a ray of frost, and Octavia's guards shoved his corpse back into the barrel and hauled it off to make it disappear somewhere.
After accepting payment for their original contract from Deadeye, the group split up with Mitzy and Bruno going to the Golden Sands Arena to check out the source of the rag man banners, while Arly went to hassle her old buddy Lars for help covering for Lady Octavia. Octavia herself revealed that the contents of the warehouse were quite ordinary, but the heightened security was to protect an access point to a subterranean complex the warehouse had been built to conceal. The catacombs below the warehouse predate even the Goliath presence in the region, and surveys with Goliath loremasters had uncovered evidence that some kind of doomsday device was hidden down there. Octavia sent a spell resembling a messenger bird to her home, and left the Barracuda's Bones under disguise to protect the warehouse.
Meanwhile, Arly visited the Bardic College and recruited Lars and some of this actor friends to fake a scene for whoever was watching through the enchanted coins. They modified the kitchen store room of the college to resemble the storeroom in the Barracuda's Bones to the best of their ability, then had one actor use the coin and view the scene they created from a perspective that suggested it was still in the wizard's possession. Then, an actor who was accomplished enough at magic to cast Disguise Self used the spell first to appear as Lady Octavia, then transformed a second time into Lord Freyr Hardtack, pretending to do so without knowing the "wizard" was still watching, and implying that he had falsified the earlier scene to further discredit his rival.
At the Hall of Champions, located in the basement of the Golden Sands Arena, Bruno and Mitzy were able to gain admission after a brief not-entirely-friendly interaction with two ex-Gladiators who had appointed themselves museum security. Inside the hall, they found the place the Banners had been torn down from, monuments dedicated to five ancient Goliath champions from near the beginning of the city's history. Their names:
Pukhal Wildwanderer Lakumelo
Geanath Adeptlogger Muthalavea
Kanathi Woundwalker Kulaneaku
Meakan Dawnfrightener Vathunathala
Agkan Threadchaser Kulanakume
Mitzy recalled that Geanath was particularly controversial in his day, because he was a clan chief who still participated in bloodsport. Investigating his monument (a wood carving of Geanath slaying a manticore with his bare hands, mounted on the wall), Mitzy found a secret door. Opening it, another Rag Creature, this one resembling a massive hound made of old lace curtains, leaped out and attacked. They dispatched it and headed downstairs, where Mitzy's darkvision allowed her to spot another Dark Wizard, who appeared to have sections cut out of his face giving him a skeletal appearance. Mistaking him for a lich, the team hurried back upstairs just in time for Arly to catch up. As they compared notes, a howl came from below that was loud enough to rattle the whole arena and disrupt the fight scheduled above, and also draw the ex-gladiator guards inside. One of them panicked and ran, but the other stayed to fight beside the party.
The dark wizard emerged upstairs and used a magic item, a glove covered in strange Conjuration Magic sigils, to animate three more banners as Rag Men. He fought defensively much like the other dark wizard had, but eventually succumbed to injuries and died. The rag men continued to fight without him, taking a few more rounds to fall. Mitzi looted the enchanted glove from him, and found that he too bore one of the divination coins, but found nothing else of value on him.
if anyone wants to hang out, I'll be on discord at the usual time
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The thing that's broken is broken in a way that's probably going to take ~2.5 more hours to fix. Whee.
On the positive side, this is enough overtime to put Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes back into the budget in time for first-day purchase.
hope your overtime doesn't suck as hard as it could
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You also can’t spell it without A Mr. Cuckolded Sloth Boast Rap, but that’s less important.
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Twitter (mean leftist discourse)
Twitch (I stream most days of the week)
Twitter (mean leftist discourse)
If you want somebody to talk to, I've got the forums set to send me email alerts for private messages.
Twitch (I stream most days of the week)
Twitter (mean leftist discourse)
Twitch (I stream most days of the week)
Twitter (mean leftist discourse)
Twitch (I stream most days of the week)
Twitter (mean leftist discourse)
Twitch (I stream most days of the week)
Twitter (mean leftist discourse)
Haha, yeah! One of my coworkers actually knew about the original, and got into a big argument about whether it was a real thing or whether it was something he imagined when he was a kid. And then he found the remix videos while searching for proof. I guess the real Buffalo Rider movie was pretty terrible, stretching about 20 minutes of action into an hour and a half of movie, and the Guy On A Buffalo videos capture 100% of the material that's actually worth watching.
The real guy the movie was based on was Charles "Buffalo" Jones, but he was a rancher and early conservationist who worked to preserve dwindling bison herds, and there's no evidence he ever saddled and rode one, or got up to any kind of hardass loner vigilante activity. The real dude founded Garden City and later served on the Kansas state senate, and the only thing he really has in common with the movie character is his nickname.
The remix footage comes from the second movie about Buffalo Jones that the lead actor made. Apparently he wasn't satisfied with the reception the first one received, and made the second one two years later, re-using a bunch of the footage and re-hiring all the same actors. I guess after he trained his stunt buffalo to accept a saddle for the movie, he wanted to get at least two uses out of it?