Dungeons & Dragons, Call of Cthulhu, Other TTRPGs

[The Cat]

I'm starting to hate him. I've killed the little SOB about 15+ times and he still hasn't dropped my legendary weapon.

He never will. That's what makes him the ultimate evil.

 

[The Cat]

Speaking of living the Dream.
I guess this is the Simpsons for The Legend of Vox Machina.​

 

[The Cat]

Here we go, I think its more accessible.
This one finally gives some helpful advice rather than telling them "That's old school baby" *slide on Sunglasses while 70's rock plays*
I like the idea of giving the players full hit points, the relics seem fun also. regarding magic users, i have a d10,000 random magical effects i typically use for wild magic surges. I think I would let my magic user make a wild cast 3 times per day, rather than the magic missle thing though its not a bad idea.​

 

[The Cat]

I also really like the idea of poisons doing different things other than death, or significantly slowing some species of envenomers

 

[Totenkindly]

Happy late Valentine's Day

 

[Totenkindly]

Another classic RPG moment:

Playing Pathfinder 1e, the dwarf monk and aasimar pally flew NW in the ruined city just to see if they could glimpse the giant "Burning Man" we had been trying to locate, while the rest of the group journeyed SE to reach a downwards staircase we wanted to investigate next.

Against expectation, the monk and pally actually found it. it was a 30' tall burning wicker man essentially (we found out its backstory later, but apparently it was fueled/summoned by the burning of a ton of gnoll prisoners previously). The monk flew near to greet it and only got a fireball for his troubles, so... diplomacy had failed.

We were right near a long-running precipice in the city (which is in levels/plateaus), at the bottom of which is a huge swamp on the next level down.

When the thing attacked the monk, we thought of having the flying monk lure it near the edge, which is what happened. Meanwhile the pally quaffed an enlarge potion and buffed herself, then came at the thing from a flying charge from behind, using her "Inheritor's Smite" (an Ioemadae-specific spell) to get bonuses and a free bull rush without opportunity attacks on it from behind and not needing to move with the creature when it is hit.

So the scene is basically the dwarf is floating out over the precipice with the 30' Burning Man (Huge) taking pot shots at the little dwarf monk, and the Enlarged Pally comes swooping down at hasted break-neck speed into the back of its head from behind, throwing it off the cliff limbs extended. The blow caused a nice but not overall deadly amount of damage -- the goal was mainly to hit it so far that it flew off the cliff.

The Burning Man falls quite a ways before splashing into the swamp and then is struggling like the T-1000 in T2 before its flames go out and we watch it sink into the swamp, as it is too far away from any shore to save itself. The pally and dwarf took some flame damage during all of these maneuvers but overall they managed to throw it into the brink and snuff it.

 

[Totenkindly]

I also really like the idea of poisons doing different things other than death, or significantly slowing some species of envenomers

It just gets back to GMs actually taking charge of their games and tailoring the adventure to the group, versus trying to force cookie-cutter gameplay on others who might not like it or who need time to adjust to new approaches to gaming.

I mean, are we having fun yet or not?

 

[The Cat]

It just gets back to GMs actually taking charge of their games and tailoring the adventure to the group, versus trying to force cookie-cutter gameplay on others who might not like it or who need time to adjust to new approaches to gaming.

I mean, are we having fun yet or not?

Player: I failed my poison save witht he giant tarantula, am I dead?"
DM: Nay child, thou art dancing. "Your feel your heart pounding in your chest, the muscles in your arms, legs, and hips begin to relax and contract at seemingly random, coalescening your body in a frenzied dancing motion as your combat continues." You're dance fighting now. -1 to your attack. you have a 30% at the start of your turn to overcome the posion or its effects continue.

 

[Totenkindly]

Player: I failed my poison save witht he giant tarantula, am I dead?"
DM: Nay child, thou art dancing. "Your feel your heart pounding in your chest, the muscles in your arms, legs, and hips begin to relax and contract at seemingly random, coalescening your body in a frenzied dancing motion as your combat continues." You're dance fighting now. -1 to your attack. you have a 30% at the start of your turn to overcome the posion or its effects continue.

"Poisoning's that so much fun everyone ELSE will be dancing with you!"

 

[The Cat]

"Poisoning's that so much fun everyone ELSE will be dancing with you!"

I maintain that this the superhero we need today.

 

[Totenkindly]

 

[The Cat]

"What do we need torches for, if the whole party has darkvision?"
Also this scene is why Aragorn wouldnt give them a moment to grieve for pity sake outside of moria. But then he'd spent time in Mirkwood, so he was used to dealing with the horrors of giant arthropods.
​

 

[Totenkindly]

That's kind of the moment where I just grab a bunch of flares and run screaming away hoping to reach the crevice end. Gaaah.

"And lo the bards sang of the grievous tale of The Fall of Lumpy and how the Monsters Got Ahead."

 

[Totenkindly]

Episode 11 of the Adventures of Plasmoid Girl

This is why you should never be nice to the Conspiracy.

Zahra reaches out to Modi about the deal to exchange the drives for her roommate Khepri. He has already imaged them, so this isn’t an issue – and he even has time to whip together a “phone home” virus that can track where and when the drives might be accessed after they are returned.

Concerned that the Autumn group has no real intention to let her or Khepri live after getting their drives back, she works with the others to formulate a plan that would allow them both to escape and Autumn to be dissuaded from future strongarm techniques.

We study the address location, which is some kind of depot with first shift out at 3pm, and the second out at 8pm. The closest police presence is about ten minutes away, but the closest military presence is only 2-5 minutes. We also address the possibility that the address is only a meeting place, and Zahra will be taken elsewhere to Khepri’s actual location.

A closer review of the photo reveals little of help. Khepri is being stashed in a newer concrete building, and the bolts holding her are freshly drilled. The young woman is wearing some of her normal clothes – the bare minimum that would avoid arrest for pornographic content, but it would still get her arrested if she got out in public.

As part of the preparation, Samara hides a tracker on Zahra. Zahra also stashes two of the drives in a non-descript bus locker and pockets the key, to be turned over with the drives, so that she might escape being killed outright if they want all of their drives back. Zahra packs a bag of clothes for Khepri for her release, and Rasheed establishes a mental connection to Zahra so she can relay events back as they unfold.

While the group rents its own car, to have transport if Zahra is moved, and waits out in a parking area, Zahra arrives in a taxi at the gate. The address is in a visible building on the other side of the gate.

Zahra approaches the gatehouse, in which sits a single person in a bulletproof vest. She’s five minutes early and waits. No one comes out and the guard ignores her. She waits another ten minutes and still nothing changes.

Zahra clears her throat. “Hello? I’m supposed to meet someone here.”

Immediately she finds herself staring down a gun barrel. “ID.” She looks annoyed but digs it out and presents it. He studies it, studies her, studies it, and studies his computer screen, before finally handing it back to her.

“You’re late,” he says flatly, opening the gate for her before ignoring her again.

Zahra regards him and his smug attitudes. “You really need to work on your people skills.” He doesn’t even look up. The gate finishes rattling open. “I promise you, this is going on my report.”

Zahra approaches the location she was given, which is Municipal Building #8 – some kind of government facility. She sees no one at the door and passes this tidbit back to Rasheed. The facility looks like a typical building built by the lowest bidder contractor.

Inside there is a lobby area, with no one even at the desk. As Zahra goes in, the door slides closed. Then a bulletproof screen slides closed as well – you can see through it but any bullets would be prevented from exiting or entering the building. This is a bit disconcerting.

Zahra remains uncowed, smiling and waving to the camera before walking forward. She goes only a few paces before she notices a faint shimmer coming around the corner ahead, then movement, then a man in an official military uniform is pointing an automatic rifle at her, with a slung grenade launcher underneath.

“That’s far enough, Ms. Nadir,” he says, ordering her to put the drives on the desk. She unslings the bag of drives, tosses it on the desk, then dangles the bus locker key in front of him before tossing that on top of the bag.

“Now step back towards the door, hands up.” When she complies, he says, “Check it,” and two more people appear behind the desk and start going through the bag.

“Where’s my friend?” Zahra demands.

The leader ignores her. One of the two men looks up from the stacks of drives he’s pulled out. “Two are missing.”

“Kill her,” snaps the leader.

“Wait a minu—"

Bullets whine around her.

Rasheed hears a, “Help, they’re FIRING!” exclamation from Zahra before he feels a blast of pain from her and then nothing. He relays this and the team springs to action.

Rasheed ports right past the gate to land outside the building’s door, and Amal flips to Samara and does the same thing by mutating one of her other powers. Modi can’t teleport, but he has something as good or better: The rental car. He sends it barreling through the security fence towards the front of the building.

Unfortunately Samara materializes right in front of him, so while Rasheed ducks out of the way, Samara takes the front of the car full-on and is pinned to the windshield as it plows through the door and the bulletproof curtain, careening into the lobby. As Modi activates his combat form, Masil jumps out of the car.

The two stooges aren’t sure what to shoot, with this car exploding into the lobby, but the leader flips a switch on his rifle and fires without flinching. There’s a ka-THOOK sound and a grenade punches its way through the windshield into the car.

Modi flips out of the car and blasts the leader, while a freaking-out Samara sees the grenade rolling around on the car’s front sheet and dives off, pretending to be dead.

As the leader recoils from Modi’s blast, Rasheed explodes his head, finishing the job.

The car barrels into the reception desk and comes to a stop. Bullets careen into the lobby from outside – the guardhouse soldier, finally doing something, but his bullets miss. A man behind the desk collapses but it’s not clear whether he’s dead or just ducking.

The grenade goes off, showering debris around the lobby and setting the car alight.

As Rasheed mindblasts the soldier outside, Hakim starts blasting people. Masil runs down the hall looking for Zahra. When he doesn’t quickly find her, he runs back to find more targets.

Rasheed teleports out and mindblasts the firing guard, as energy balls from Hakim whiz by. The guard keeps firing wildly.

Modi realizes that the greenish blob on the ground wearing Zahra’s clothes is likely an unconscious Zahra, so he picks her up and drapes her like a heavy stole around his shoulders. Masil meanwhile is grabbing drives and stuffing them back into the bag.

“Has anyone seen the roommate?” shouts Modi.

“Maybe she was never here!”

Rasheed sends a thought out – “Grab phones and wallets if you can, before we leave.” Modi nods, aims, and shoots the final guard.

The fire from the car is now spreading. Smoke roils out the shattered front of the building and climbs into the sky.

Rasheed teleports back in to rifle the head guard, finding a key card, spare magazine, side arm, and handcuffs. Masil has the drives accounted for but can’t find the key. There isn’t time to stay for more. Modi is already running through the remains of the gate and veering into the parking lot. Masil starts dragging the wounded guy but it’s too slow; he slings him up and fireman-carries him.

Back in the building, the sprinkler system finally goes off, spraying water everywhere and generating loud alarms.

They all find Modi in the parking lot wiring a car, with what they think is Zahra tossed in the trunk. They all pile in and drive a half-mile away before pulling back over and getting the unconscious soldier and Zahra out.

“How the hell do we help Zahra?” asks Masil. They can’t even tell if she’s alive or dead. Masil throws her mass on the ground and tries to perform CPR, but he feels her rip as he pushes on her and immediately stops. “That can’t be right.”

Modi suggests they focus on the unconscious military captive first. If Zahra will recover, she’ll have to do it on her own for right now. They take his weapons, clips, grenades, and other dangerous items away from him as he shudders in their grasp. As they are trying to figure out what to do with him, the green puddle stirs and slowly reforms into a greenish version of Zahra. Her eyes open as if she is awake, but she’s not yet moving. Still, it’s a good sign.

Over the swiped earbud comes, “If anyone is responding to this, clear the building and clear the hostage. More forces are going in.”

When Rasheed shares this, Masil does a double-take. “So the hostage was there after all?”

Rashed scans the unconscious guard’s thoughts, which revolve mostly around pain and feeling like his lungs ache (since he’s bleeding through them), and who the fuck were those guys who crashed through the gate – and more importantly, who in their right mind drives a car through a lobby??

Even if the man can’t talk, maybe he can be triggered to respond. Rasheed runs a mental image of Khepri through his mind, and he gets back an image similar to the picture. So the picture was authentic, at least.

Modi monitors the evacuation of Khepri with a drone he has in the area. As she is carried out of the building, a portal swirls open in the air nearby. A big beefy guy (presumably “Brick) walks out, checks the pulse of the dead man, and shakes his head. A scrawnier man also from the portal walks through the nearby fire and it goes out. This must be “Flame”. He disappears into the building’s interior for a half-minute, then walks back out and holds up two fingers. Brick picks up the dead body, he and Flame walk back through the portal, and it all closes behind them. At least we can ID them now.

Modi tracks them with the drone as they take Khepri away by vehicle. It stops partway to the military base at a coffee shop about half an hour away and soldiers take her inside while the vehicle drives away. We’re about half an hour from said coffee shop. Khepri was barely dressed and handcuffed, so we expect this might not be a real coffee shop but just a front. There is a CLOSED sign hanging on the door.

Rasheed flashes an image of the coffee shop into the mind of the unconscious man and gets back an image of a door with a push-button lock and the sequence “448”.

As the prisoner starts shuddering, in the last moments of his life, the group sees Zahra’s green arm snake out to schlup onto one shoulder. Her grip is initially weak as her mass begins to ooze over him but seems to grow in strength as the feeding commences. Rasheed quickly bails out of the guy’s mind, having not enjoyed last night’s experience.

When she is done absorbing him, there are quite a number of implants left on the ground where his body had been – some of them very familiar to Modi. He feels an old anger burn inside of him, as they are the same kind of implants that were placed in him against his will. One of them bears a familiar slogan – “Life should come with spare parts” – which of course is the marketing phrase of SnoTop Augmentive Technologies.

Modi and Zahra share dark looks with each other. “If you want to go to the coffee shop right now, I am coming with you,” says Modi.

“What else would I be doing?” Zahra pauses a moment, then thanks everyone for recovering her.

No one else wants to get between the two of them and the coffee shop. It is a smaller scale business and it’s now about 10:30pm at night, so it won’t be crowded. Still, we place a call to Silent to assist this time, with the goals of (1) rescuing Khepri, (2) gathering data and intelligence while not getting caught, and (3) wiping out as many of these jerks that we can.

“We tried to be reasonable. They tried to kill us.” Zahra’s glare is cold and unsettling. “We won’t make that mistake twice.”

 

[Totenkindly]

Episode 12: The Taking of Coffee Shop 1-2-3

This is the conclusion of the attempt to rescue Zahra's roommate Khepri, who was taken by the conspiracy a few sessions ago.

This has a hell of an ending.

As part of preparation for our raid of the coffee shop, Modi leaves a copy of himself back in the safe room checking out camera feeds, with another monitoring police bands on a rooftop, and organizing the remainder with the usual equipment. Meanwhile, Zahra slips into the dead captive’s flak jacket, changing her body to fit, while the others grab the man’s heavy pistol and IWI Tavor assault rifle.

To avoid getting pulled over for stealing a vehicle, we then hilariously travel to the scene of this upcoming debacle by robo-cab, with the first person inside conveniently covering the camera to prevent identification of everyone involved.

The neighborhood we reach is not busy although still frequented, it being around 10:30pm. The coffee shop is only open for another 20 minutes or so. Getting out with all of our gear still in bags (to not attract attention), we examine the location more carefully and realize we need to be more controlled in our approach, depending. Currently the coffee shop is on the ground floor, along with some other retail stores and a restaurant which are all closed at this time of night. There is more retail business a level down, along the corridors running out to the subway. Meanwhile the next three floors up are office space for small law and tax offices, and then above those floors are twelve floors of residential housing.

We see small groups of people walking down the street, most likely going home, and we don’t want to loiter too long in case it draw suspicion, so we take a final look at each other and then wordlessly head into the shop.

It’s a small business, with only 5-6 tables inside, one in the corner having two old men staring a chess board. There’s one employee at the counter taking orders, while another is sweeping as part of the nightly closing prep.

Rasheed does his typical mind scans but doesn’t pick up anything relevant. No one is really paying us much mind yet. Rashed approaches the counter to distract the employee with a coffee order. On a hunch, he pushes a picture of Khepri’s face through the counter guy’s mind as he approaches, and gets back a thought about the 500 pounds sitting in the employee’s pocket – basically a bribe to ignore the girl being taken to the back earlier. He telepathically relays this to everyone else, plus the information that the staff door that we learned about from the dying guard’s mind is in back next to the single washroom.

As Zahra and Modi immediately veer towards the back hallway, the counter clerk calls out that it’s just a one-person facility back there, but they ignore him. He looks up at the camera a bit plaintively, and even the sweeper turns his head. A few of us notice there is a concealed pistol on the sweeper, although he doesn’t make a move to draw it. Modi also recognizes that he is wearing body armor under his loose shirt.

Rasheed immediately uses his mental pheromones to ease their anxiety. “Yeah, shift can’t end fast enough,” thinks the sweeper after a few seconds, and he keeps sweeping.

The group punches in the code and the door pops open. This draws another look from the sweeper, who sizes us everyone and then very pointedly resumes sweeping. “Eh, they know how to get in, so they must be with the others,” Rasheed hears him think.

While we’re prepared for an assault, ahead is simply another hallway with a single light dangling from the ceiling. The construction seems rather makeshift rather than being part of the original construction. On one side is another door that we know would lead back into the coffee shop kitchen area, with a key lock; there is also another door at the far end.

Rasheed gets his coffee, pays, and turns to follow the others. “Hey, 10 pounds for the cup,” notes the counter clerk, so Rasheed flips him the change.

Once we all regroup and head down the passage, Rasheed picks the lock at the far end. Behind THIS door is a circular stairway down, and this one is very clearly amateur – it’s made of corrugated steel cobbled into the hole at an awkward angle. There is no lighting in the stairwell.

“Oh, this is definitely going into my report,” mutters Zahra.

Rasheed gets out a cheap LED light and we all spiral slowly down the steps. We descend three floors before reaching the bottom. Rasheed still picks up the occasional thoughts from upstairs that bode well for us – the counter guy thinks he would have asked for a bigger bribe if he had known more people were coming, whereas the sweeper keeps wondering how much bribe the counter guy would take to clock him out early.

The level tunnel ahead of us looks like a bunker lined with red LED guidelines. Ahead is a door with facial recognition. Zahra gives it a shot, trying to emulate the face of the guard she devoured recently, and thinks she has gotten it right. But when she reaches out and opens the door, she immediately sees two riot shields propped on the ground and four men with guns pointed right at the door.

There are two riot shields and four guys aiming at the door.

All hell breaks loose. Modi’s bullet plinks off a helmet, while Zahra herself takes two shots that are mostly deadened by the body armor. Silent darts quietly up to the side of the door, flat against the wall, waiting for her moment.

As the hallway lights start to silently flash in some kind of alarm, Zahra snarls as her pseudopod flashes out to strike one of the shooters full in the face. As his whole body jerks into spasms and she sucks out his life energy to heal herself, she slips to the side as well to let the others pass.

Masil cuts into the room, heading for the far-right corner, but he trips over a chair and is shot in the ass a few times. Meanwhile, Hakim – the Amal personality currently at the fore – shoves his way into the room and sends little energy balls blasting through the guards, of which he can see two guys kneeling to support the shields and actually four shooters including the one whose face was burned off by Zahra’s attack. The red lighting continues to flash steadily.

“ATTEND PROTOCOL!” one of the uninjured guards shouts and tosses a flashbang into the air, which almost immediately goes off and blinds and/or deafens some of the invaders. Silent ducks in and stays low, sending her claws through one of the shields to be buried deep in the chest of the man who tossed the flashbang. Meanwhile, Zahra steps into the room and whacks the clearest target with a pseudopod. The man screams, sizzles, and collapses.

Masil scrambles up and dives back towards the men with shields, smacking the man behind one who falls. The only two men still up were either wounded by Hakim or stabbed by Silent. Unfortunately for him, Hakim panics due to his blindness and deafness and just starts spraying energy balls towards where he last remembers the enemy being located, and Masil is in the way. Blue balls rips through Masil’s torso, leaving gaping holes out which sand trickles.

As that barrage ends, Rasheed reflexively teleports behind the last man and mindblasts him, dropping him. Silent yanks her claws out of his chest so he can collapse properly to the floor.

The red lights suddenly stop flashing, as apparently one of Modi’s dupes has been able to turn the alarm off.

Looking kinda peaked, Masil walks up to Hakim shouting, “Can you actually SEE? CAN you?!” and starts slapping Hakim on both sides of his face. Rashed starts screaming into Hakim’s mind to not attack the person slapping him -- it’s a friend – and thankfully Hakim’s vision starts to clear even if his ears are ringing, so he can recognize a furious Masil.

“Stupid donkey!”

As Masil gets a hold of himself, we take a look around the room. Everyone who attacked us is either dead or close to dead – and the battle really didn’t take more than 10-12 seconds.

In this room are stacked storage boxes on one said and a table, chairs, and deck of cards on the other. Ahead there’s two doors in the wall.

We search the bodies and find key cards that we confiscate. Rasheed also swipes a pack of cigarettes. Modi asks Masil for the grenade launcher, so Masil disengages it and hands it over. Our Modi reports that he can see feeds of an empty meeting room, a hallway, and a room with two guards watching Khepri. We just haven’t yet found the locations of these camera feeds.

“Did I accidentally hit you, brother?” says Hakim, his vision cleared now. “We must kill more enemies.” Masil just glares at him.

Both of the far doors open into unconnected hallways. We try the left one first and eventually run across some cables running across the ceiling (“DANGER HIGH VOLTAGE” stickers all over them). We decide this is probably going under the subway and not the tunnel we need, so we walk the 2-3 minutes back and take the right-hand corridor, which ends up much more promising – we quickly reach a T junction with a door to each side.

The left door has a key lock, while the right door has a combination lock. Zahra bends over to study the number pad, and then asks Rasheed to look more carefully because she can’t tell what she’s seeing. Rasheed, more versed in this kind of breaking and entering, can recognize that all the numbers on the pad have smudges, although the button for “3” seems smudged more. There’s also an RFID on the top. When Zahra tries one of the keycards, a little green light flickers, but when we don’t enter the unknown key code, it quickly goes out again.

Modi jacks into the door and spoofs the password, telling the door to open as Zahra hovers over him. There’s a click, followed by two clicks, followed by a pleasant chime. Zahra flattens against the wall as she pops open the door, but nothing happen. This room is full of steel tables fitted with restraints and medical equipment.

“This is going on my report too,” she snarls, striding into the room, which smells vaguely of iodine and alcohol and having eerie stains on the floor that are most likely blood. Was there a code they didn’t violate here in this medical facility, she thinks while looking about, only relaxing slightly when she notes at least they did attach a proper inspection tag to the room’s fire extinguisher.

There are two doors, one of them labeled “Incinerator.” Modi carefully opens it and finds a ceramic box and vent, and in the box sits a weird lizard of some kind that isn’t moving, about 40-60 cm long depending on length of tail. Looking closely, Zahra thinks that, while it’s not moving, it is very slowly breathing and giving an occasional almost imperceptible blink.

“Hey lizard,” says Modi. “Can you understand us?”

“Why would it be able –” starts Zahra, until the lizard looks up and starts talking in perfectly clear speech.

“Of course I can,” it replies. “What do YOU think?

“What are your intentions?”

Pause. “Do you have food?”

Modi fishes around and finally pulls out a protein bar.

“Can it burn?”

Modi shrugs and places it next to the lizard, which opens its mouth. We all jump back as flames erupt to engulf the bar, and suddenly the lizard is tearing

It opens it’s mouth, flames erupt to engulf the bar, and then it chows down. “Ya Allah,” mutters Zahra.

Modi doesn’t seem plussed by the lizard’s fire. He asks if it is free to roam, and it replies it got out once and that was nice. When Modi offers to free it, it asks him if it is allowed to find food, and we tell it that it is allowed to eat any deceased humans we point out to it. The lizard crawls out of the incinerator and wraps itself around Modi’s shoulders.

“Remember,” insists Zahra, “you are not allowed to eat females,” thinking primarily of Khepri and not wanting any accidents.

“What should I call you?” asks Modi.

He says its name is Alliaceous. We quickly settle on calling it “Al” for short.

After we open the other door in the hall, Al sends a flame down the hall to test its breath weapon. While the flame is a bolt that expands into a cone the size of a Coke can, it is long enough to reach the far end of the hall. Rasheed tries to scan the lizard’s thoughts, but it’s just random chaotic thoughts he cannot make much sense of. However, one thought is that someone walked through here that doesn’t smell like “these people” he is with.

On a hunch, Rasheed asks Zahra if she has something of Khepri’s with her, which of course she does because she’s carrying a bag of spare clothes belonging to her roommate. After sniffing an article of clothing, Al reveals that yes, that smell is one of the smells he can sense in the hall – although he adds that “The clothes of the human smell happier than she does in the hall.”

Down the new corridor there are four doors. The first door on the left has a mop behind it that falls over as the door is opened. Modi offers it to Al if he wants it. Instead Al scurries inside, sniffs at a few things, taps at something, opens its mouth much wider than thought, and then comes back out with a can of WD40 in its mouth.

“Don’t eat that now!”

“Oh-ay, eye’uh ea ih ayer,” says Al, as Modi takes it from him and stores it.

Another door leads into a conference room, one of the areas covered by the feed Modi is monitoring, but no one is inside. There’s a PC and projector, and some doodling on a white board that only Masil can read – it appears to be an alchemical procedure to transmute ‘essence of heart’ into ‘essence of liver,’ whatever that might mean. Masil takes a picture of the equations before erasing them.

The further door on the right (which is locked) contains a utility closet with an air compressor, a fuse box, a bunch of wiring, and plumbing access. We open the final door and discover a dimly lit hallway. AS we step inside, the lights come on full. Al says the human smell is here as well.

At the end of this hall are two doors on the left (men and women’s bathrooms), and three doors on the right. Just as a precaution, Rashed announces that he is checking the man’s bathroom – and astonishingly when he walks in there is a pair of men’s shoes visible underneath one of the stall doors. He quietly scans for the man’s mind and picks up the thought, “Uggh, extra spicy sauce was a really bad idea.” After passing this info along, he flashes an image of Khepri through the man’s mind but gets no response except for a toothpaste ad.

As he’s trying to figure out what to do next, the man’s trousers hike up and he opens the stall door. Rasheed hears him think, “Who the fuck is this guy?” right as he mind-blasts him. The blast doesn’t kill the man outright, just leaving him tottering, but he does draw his gun on Rasheed. “Hands up, you don’t belong here!”

Rashed puts his hands up and steps to the side. “Don’t shoot!”

“How did you get in here?”

“Through the door.”

Rasheed tries to pheromone the man to better fast-talk him into believing he was sent to check on the captive and feels his anxiety level rise when hearing the sound of the safety clicking off.

“Who sent you?” demands the guard in his simple uniform. “No one is supposed to know she is here!”

But Rasheed has been fast-talking his way on the streets for most of his life. He launches into some lines about the leader of the hand-off team surviving and ordering him here. The guard hesitates slightly: “Why did he send you? We have everything under control.”

“Considering the shitshow that went down, I’m part of the cleanup crew,” says Rasheed. “One of the men was taken by the intruders, so there’s a big concern he might have talked and that that talk could lead them here.”

“Okay.” Rasheed watches as the guard mentally walks through everything and just hopes his story was convincing enough. Eventually the man lowers the gun, turns on the safety, and holsters it. “She’s in the panic room in the back.”

“Good,” replies Rasheed, trying not to sound too relieved. “Standard operating procedure. Has anything suspicious been reported?”

“The guys upstairs said more guys came in, but we checked the system and the back-lab doors went open – they must be working on something up there. We’re just guarding her; they can do (whatever work they want.” He adds that the “handover” (Zahra turning over the drives) sounds like it was a real mess.

As he walks over and washes his hands, Rasheed carefully puts his hands down and relays to the others that he could use some stronger firepower in the bathroom.

Almost immediately the door smacks open into the wall and Zahra strides in with fire in her eyes. The man glances over, thinking that it’s just Rasheed leaving, then sees it’s someone else. He wheels and tries to pull his gun but it’s already too late – Zahra’s pseudopod lashes out and splatters the man’s pelvis. Already hurt by Rasheed’s earlier mind blast, he drops straight to the ground.

If Rasheed is a bit taken aback at the immediacy of the violence, Zahra seems completely unbothered. She calmly strides to the man’s corpse, kneels next to him, and studies his face for long seconds. Rasheed watches as her features shift until she looks exactly like the dead man, even the slightly disturbed surprise on his face. She starts stripping off his shirt and other articles of clothing, frowning when she realizes his pants are completely unsalvable.

She stands, thinking, then drapes her own clothes in front of her to cover her pelvis area. It will have to do -- if she can think of a good excuse to not have pants on.

Rashed approaches and lifts the man’s ley card, wallet, sidearm, and key ring. He gets the man’s name off the ID and hands the key card, key ring, and wallet to Zahra before they exit together.

Silent has apparently snuck into the women’s room and soon reports back that “there are no more problems in here,” which doesn’t explain what exactly was in there to start with. But no one really wants to ask either.

“You smell human now,” volunteers Al unexpectedly to Zahra. It confuses her for a moment, until she remembers she is wearing a dead man’s clothes.

“Thanks, Al,” she says, nodding to the men’s bathroom. “There’s a snack for you in there.”

We check the final three doors. The first room we unlock with the guard’s keys is just a small storage room. The next is a surveillance office with no one inside – but there is a container on the desk with a suspicious red sauce conspicuously stuck to the lid.

Modi volunteers that, based on the feeds showing on the terminal screen, that this is the computer feed he is tapped into elsewhere. We can see all the locations mentioned – including poor blindfolded Khepri monitored by the two guards.

We carefully use the key to unlock the final door, prepared to fight – and only reveal a large room that would serve as a corner office high in a corporate facility. There’s no one inside. We can see a desk, a monitor, a fancier chair behind the desk, and a projector screen that can be lowered with a projector mounted to the ceiling. On the desks is a file folder with performance reports.

“Where are they?” asked Zahra quietly.

Everyone comes inside and begin to explore the office. It’s Masil who first thinks he can hear a muffled voice speaking, and soon enough he points to a particular wall and tells everyone quietly that there are voices on the other side. When we all listen, we faintly hear crowd noises and a whistle.

The guard had called the hiding spot a “panic room,” so there must be some hidden door in the office that we need to locate in order to get access. Zahra soon finds a gap between one wall and where the screen comes down, in which is a faint seam. Something must open it.

When she searches under the desk, she sees a scuff mark on the floor near the far back corner leg, which reveals a faintly recessed tile when she examines it more closely. When she pushes it, everyone watches as the wall silently folds in, revealing a 5’ corridor with a door at the end.

Zahra gives everyone a look, nods, then approaches the door still disguised as the guard and holding her robes draped in front of her waist. As the door opens, somehow she manages to maintain her appearance while seeing Khepri sagging in her wall chains, dried blood on her wrists and ankles.

The two guards are sitting on folding chairs, with a little laptop open on the third chair and a soccer game playing.

“Is the food here yet?” one says, as they both look at her wearing the guard’s appearance, then notice the robes draped in front.

“Yeah, but don’t eat the spice sauce.” Zahra fakes a grimace. “Does either of you have a pair of pants I can borrow?” She hopes she gets the right blend of outrage and embarrassment in her imitation of the guard’s voice.

It almost seems to work – one guard is trying so hard not to laugh that he can barely hold it all in – but the other one’s eyes widen and then he goes for his gun.

There’s a shot from the other room behind Zahra as Modi fires a rifle blast into the reacting guard, and then Al suddenly pops up to breathe fire on the man. The guard stops trying to fire his gun and instead starts screaming as he goes up like a torch.

The other guard’s eyes bug out at this sight. As he fumbles for his own gun, Zahra snaps, “It’s not funny, asshole,” and her pseudopod slams out, chunking out his entire torso so that his body falls in two sizzling pieces.

On the laptop screen, one team scores and the crowd erupts into a victorious roar.

Silent glances over at Hakim, then shrugs and does nothing.

The “living” guard collapses, no longer screaming at least.

Interposing herself between Khepri and the others, in case of stray firing, Zahra starts sloughing off the guard’s clothes and changing back to her normal shape while slipping into her own robes.

Al sniffs at the air. “Smells like her,” he says about Khepri, “more scared and wounded, but otherwise the same.” He pauses, considering the occasionally twitching corpse of the guard burning merrily on the floor. “Are you going to eat this one?”

As Zahra approaches Khepri, Rasheed tries to scan the captive woman and alarmingly finds that he can’t get into her thoughts. “ENTRY FORBIDDEN,” he hears reverberating through his mind, blocking him out.

Unaware of this, Zahra sees the bandages on her roommate’s wrists and ankles, underneath the restraints, and there is obvious bruising on her ribs, filling her with both remorse and rage.

“Khepri?” she says, carefully placing her hands on her friend’s face as to not scare her. “Khepri, it’s Zahra. I’m here, I’m here. I came for you!”

Khepri jerks in her bonds, tugging at the chains. It looks like she tries to say something but nothing comes out. There is a strained exhale.

“Khepri, I’m going to free you – hold on!” Zahra grabs the chains for each foot, burning through them with acid, then burns through the arm chains as well, leaving the shackles themselves in place for right now.

As Khepri is freed from the wall, she stumbles forward into Zahra’s arms, moaning – and then starts to pull away her blindfold.

Zahra gently takes her hands, trying to prevent her. “Please don’t, Khepri – please trust me, you don’t want to see what is in this room.”

Khepri jerks her head back and forth, then pulls the blindfold off anyway – revealing inhuman, brightly glowing green eyes. As the others take a step back, barely audible, Khepri says… “What… have they done… to me??!”

 

[Totenkindly]

Episode 13: getting the hell out of dodge

What is a great invasion story without a great escape story after?

Zahra pulls out a spare set of clothes for Khepri to change into, while Modi quietly uses bug scanners and trackers to confirm that Khepri is not sending out any signals. One of the outside Modi’s sees the staff lock up the coffee shop, with the two old chess players standing outside the shop still arguing about the moves they should have made during their game.

“Now what?”

“Maybe we should get out – this could all have been a trap.” That lights a fire – with every second we delay, the danger grows. After all, it did not take long for a response to the hand-off fiasco back on base earlier that evening.

Khepri is too weak to run, so Rasheed scoops her up and we sprint for the exit. As we leave, Zahra grabs the performance report file. Meanwhile, one of Modi’s selves turns off all the inside camera feeds in case anyone is watching and tries to knock out any external feeds to the building.

It doesn’t take more than a few minutes to retrace our steps back through the facility. However, as we reach the top of the stairs to approach the coffee shop, suddenly Silent shouts at everyone over the telepathic link to run back downstairs. Being one of the first to the top, even with her bad senses, Zahra can detect a faint whiff of ozone – which means a portal must have just opened, which means Bad Stuff is Coming Our Way. Everyone immediately scrambles back downstairs and sprints for the long hall that might offer an alternate escape route.

Zahra is the last through the door into the hall and just as that door is closing, she hears the door to the staircase bang open and large steps charging through the room. “RUN!” thinks Zahra, trying to catch up with the others.

Ahead of her, Modi can’t help himself but turn to look. In his face Zahra sees a, “Huh, haven’t seen THAT before” expression, and then a sharp frown. Modi has seen a dark form pass right through the door without opening it first, a shape of shadow and wind, with a hooded cowl and two glowing red eyes. When this image is transmitted, the word “Jinn” pops into Rasheed’s head.

As Zahra passes under the electrical cable marked with all the warnings, she lashes out with a pseudopod and burns through the line so that it falls into the hall behind her, dropping the tunnel into darkness. It does not deter the approaching red eyes, and neither does the gout of flame from Al that passes right through the dark shape. Blinded briefly by the flash of fire, Samara bangs into one of the side walls while running.

As the creature reaches her, Zahra feels a deathly chill pass through her as her substance congeals into a more solid version of herself, hindering her ability to move. Al announces the “liquid one got swiped” to the group, as acid splashes from Zahra reflexively onto the walls and floor.

Handing Khepri off to Modi, Rasheed wheels to mindblast the creature. He sees the creature’s glowing red eyes react to that with both pain and rage and wonders if he just bit off more than he can chew. From next to him comes another quick burst of flame from Al that does nothing but light up the hall so we can momentarily see the sizzling walls and electrical sparking.

As the creature lurches for him, passing right through the intervening people, Rasheed tries to grab it with telekinesis but can’t get a hold of it. He reflexively teleports down the tunnel, buying himself a bit more time.

Modi feels Khepri and Al go completely unmoving as the creature passes through him. Masil turns and runs forward with Silent, dragging the blinded Samara along behind him.

Momentarily forgotten, Zahra yanks out her flashlight and shines the beam directly on the creature, also lighting up the hallways. The creature stops and turns back to face Zahra as Modi dodges around it with Al and Khepri. Now she definitely has the tiger by its tail, for good or ill.

An orb of darkness arcs from the shadow to briefly eclipse the flashlight beam and then strikes Zahra – sending a wave of cold permeating through her and a cacophony of voices screaming in pain in her mind. She instinctively tries to cover her ears and somehow manages to not just keep a grip on the flashlight but reorient its beam on the monster.

“IT HATES THE LIGHT!” she sends through the network. Thoughts quickly come back, and she hears, “fallen angel” and “servitor of chaos” mentioned amid the jumble.

Wasn’t there some way to defend against creatures of darkness? Briefly she thinks of how some American film had priests driving out demons, and thinks maybe that will work here, if this monster is really a fallen angel.

She starts loudly repeating a prayer of protection she remembers from earlier times, keeping her light trained on the shadow and walking steadily towards it. “O Allah! I seek refuge in You from the torment of Hell, from the torment of the grave, from the trials of life and death, and from the mischief of Al-Masih Ad-Dajjal!” Unbelievably, she thinks she can see the shadow actually trembling where it hovers, as she shouts the words over and over.

Rasheed yanks out his own flashlight and aims it at the monster, transfixing it now in two beams of light. He isn’t that familiar with the Islam prayers but tries his best to repeat what Zahra is saying.

Quailing, the creature visibly wavers back and forth in the hall – and suddenly darts right into one of the side walls to escape.

Further down, Samara’s vision clears and she shakes her hand loose from Masil, freeing him to yank out his own phone to provide light to see by.

Zahra continues to hurry down the hall, feeling the chill slowly drop from her body. She keeps chanting with her flashlight focused on the side of the tunnel that the creature vanished into. Masil drops back a bit to help Zahra move faster if she needs it. Rasheed keeps his own flashlight out as he hurries forward. continues down the tunnel with his light out. Their vigilance is rewarded as the thing pops out of the wall to swipe at Modi and completely miss.

Masil joins Zahra with his own cell phone light and verse recitation as she confidently walks right past the creature. The shadow quivers behind them, frustrated, then eventually dodges into the wall and never reappears. Zahra keeps chanting regardless in case it’s a trick.

We eventually find a reinforced maintenance door, which is easily opened from the inside. There is a dark tunnel running perpendicular on the far side, with train tracks running along its length – the subway. We do not currently hear a train approaching.

There’s a walking path to the side for the maintenance workers, in case of a train, so we turn left and walk along it looking for a platform. After a few minutes, a light becomes visible ahead. Zahra puts her sunglasses on Khepri to hide her green glowing eyes and squeezes her hand. “It’s going to be okay, Khepri. We’ll soon be home.” Khepri squeezes weakly back but does not reply.

As we get closer to the platform, we hear a kid complaining about having to go home “early” although it’s very late at night. We can see a flashing sign that the subway is on its “night-time schedule – Train approaching in 5 minutes.” The number changes to 4 as we watch.

We can see two cameras monitoring the people who stand on the platform and get on and off the train. Silent says if we get to the far wall, the cameras won’t be able to see us because the arriving train will be in the way. We manage to do this and flatten ourselves without moving against the wall, until the train slides up and we can see the person manning the required seat for the manual override in case the robotic train fails. We shuffle down behind the train before it leaves, hearing the whiny kid complain there are people in the tunnel but thankfully his annoyed mom ignores him.

The outer loop train now pulls up. We can see people on the train as well as a bored security guard, but no one we recognize from the last few days, such as the Suits. The one passenger who stands out is clearly a taller American with a mohawk and American band t-shirt, and the security guard seems fixated on him. Rashed reinforces this by pushing an image of the mohawk guy adjusting something in his waistband, further catching the guard’s attention. As he’s preoccupied, we climb up to the platform and then file onto the train.

We go down two stops, then get off and leave with the crowd. People scan out through the turnstiles with their phones, but when Modi scans his, he gets an error, attracting the attention of a nearby security guard. Since we did not scan on our way in, there is no entry transaction to match with our exit and determine our fare. Modi automatically slips him a payment to cover the cost, but the guard tells Modi the system will just bill him full fare – although this doesn’t stop him from pocketing the cash. This error is repeated as we each scan out, but the guard just writes it off as us having been dumb and looks the other way after Modi’s bribe.

When we emerge on the street, it’s about 1am and nothing is open. Cabs are parked nearby to take people home.

Modi scans Khepri again for bugs but despite a thorough search finds nothing. Suddenly there is a flurry of arguing on the mental network about whether this is truly Khepri, whether she’s just bait or a tracker of some kind, and whether she can be trusted – all of which of course gets Zahra a bit riled up. With everyone just standing around staring at each other without talking, Khepri is beginning to get the idea that something is going on.

“You didn’t find any bugs!” she insists to Modi.

“Which is exactly why she can’t go back to my safe house! It’s obviously a trap!”

“Wait, so if she was bugged,” says Samara, confused, “then it would be okay to go?”

Modi just looks at her as if she obviously doesn’t understand.

Silent notes that it’s hard to tell what was done to Khepri. She has not seen anything before like this, and the results of the experiments tend to differ from victim to victim. Something in Brick’s file, for example, mentioned emotional nullification protocols.

“I think you need to hear her own thoughts so that you can understand she’s a good person,” says Zahra, and turns to her friend to tell her that we are able to talk to each other with our minds and would like to invite her to join. “Because I know you are trustworthy and a good person, and then they will as well.”

Khepri is a little unsure but nods, and Rasheed tries again to link to her mind. There is a very quick “ACCESS DENIED” message like before, but then an ERROR flashes up, and suddenly Khepri is in the network.

“I never knew Zahra had these kinds of friends,” everyone hears Khepri think. “Can they really read my thoughts?”

“What do you mean by THESE kinds of friends?” replies Masil.

While Khepri seems a bit anxious with everyone but Zahra, she is also glad to have been rescued. But Rasheed can also hear other thoughts bouncing around inside the young woman’s head: “These are not to be trusted, they will use you.” This other voice is completely devoid of anything human – it is something “Other” and unnatural.

When Khepri says she is worried about the dog, Zahra says that the dog is fine and we got him first. Khepri initially takes this poorly until Zahra explains that we had to pick up the dog from the authorities and hadn’t yet gotten information on Khepri’s whereabouts.

“Ptah will be so happy to see you when we get home.”

“Is he safe at home?”

‘Not likely,” interjects Modi. While Zahra glares at him, he doesn’t seem to notice.

“They followed me almost as soon as I left,” reveals the young woman.

‘Who did?”

Khepri sends pictures now through the network – a few guys we haven’t seen, and not Suits. In her emotional memory, they are exaggerated to the point of looming shadows marching in lockstep.

She says she tried to stay within sight of surveillance cameras but eventually they captured her. Before she passed out near the public bathroom, she says she can recall one face, which she shares with us – scrawny man, scraggly beard, and rings under his eyes. Then she blacked out and woke up chained to the wall.

Silent doesn’t recognize the man, but we suppose it’s a start.

“Do both of you have somewhere else to stay?” asks Silent.

“Not really.”

After a pause, Modi relents and offers his safe house.

“I need our dog,” says Zahra.

“We really shouldn’t go back to your apartment –”

“I’m getting the dog, with or without you.”

We drive to Zahra and Khepri’s apartment. As we arrive, we can see three police cars surrounding it. We do a slower drive-by to observe.

Rasheed scans for the presumed leader and locks into his thoughts – “What is taking them so long to arrest two people?” The faces in his mind are of Khepri and Zahra. Ptah is apparently still upstairs.

Why would the police be interested in the both of them – and on what charges?

As we drive around the block and come back again, another vehicle pulls up to the police car blocking the entrance. Words are exchanged – and oddly the police car is moved to allow the Maserati Quattroporte sedan to pull in. Rasheed looks at it rather lustily, but Zahra doesn’t recognize it as belonging to anyone in the building.

“So what’s the plan?”

When no one volunteers anything better, Zahra says she will replace one of the policemen to get access to her apartment and retrieve Ptah from under their noses. She modifies her face so she doesn’t resemble herself, then gets out and walks towards the building looking for a target. Before she can get there, a man gets out of the Maserati and opens the back door, with a woman in a navy blue dress stepping out gracefully. Zahra passes back her face to the mental network, pausing in surprise – it’s the undead mistress we were planning to locate earlier.

The woman strides to the policeman in charge and exchanges words, then heads towards the building. As the cop reaches for his radio, Rasheed hears him think, “Damn bitch could have saved me trouble if they had just called this off ahead of time.” Once he radios out, the cops in the lot return to their cars and pull out.

“New plan,” says Zahra to the network, hastily. “Rasheed, you teleport in before she gets upstairs, drop Ptah over the balcony rail to me, and then teleport back out. Can you do that?” Rasheed isn’t keen on this but Zahra has that “Don’t screw with me” tone in her voice and he says he’ll try. As he disappears, she walks briskly towards the area below her balcony.

When Rasheed appears in Zahra’s apartment, he hears the front door click shut as the last cop leaves. The door frame and lock itself are a mess; the cops must have battered it open, and it will all need to be replaced.

Rasheed hurries throughout the apartment – both bedrooms, the living room, the kitchen – looking for the dog.

“He must be scared. Look under the bed, doofus,” says Zahra when he says he can’t find the dog. “And rattle his food bowl.”

When Rasheed puts a little food in the bowl and shakes it, he hears a whimper from the bathroom. Rasheed carefully enters, shaking the bowl; briefly the little dog’s head pops up over the edge of the tub, then ducks back down again.

“Hang on,” says Rasheed, right before pheromoning the dog and linking him to the network. We can now all hear scattered doggie thoughts. “Ptah, it’ll be okay,” thinks Zahra. “Rasheed is a nice friend. He will feed you.”

Rasheed is not nearly as calm, because he now can hear footsteps in the central area of the apartment -- and not just any footsteps, but the distinct sound of high heels clicking on the hardwood floor as they methodically traverse the room. Click-a, click-a, click-a, click-a.

He looks around. There are no windows in the bathroom. There is no place to hide.

He hears the steps approaching the bathroom. “Sorry, boy,” he thinks, and teleports into a different room in the apartment. “Hide, Ptah – hide!” thinks Zahra frantically.

For some long seconds, there is nothing in the link. Then Ptah tells everyone that the lady is very nice and she is scratching his head gently.

Rasheed waits for the woman toleave, and Zahra waits down on the ground, and everyone else waits in the car. Nothing changes. Minutes pass. The woman remains in the bathroom, petting Ptah. It’s clear she’s not going to leave until she gets what she wants.

“Stay in the other room,” thinks Zahra finally, sounding both resigned and annoyed. She walks across the lot and into her apartment building, then up the steps to the third floor where her apartment is.

Outside the door, she takes a long look at the shattered frame and smashed lock, noting she’ll need to make some phone calls in the morning. Then she changes back to her normal human appearance and goes inside, looking at what used to be her safe home. She walks through the central area without trying to be silent, and goes straight up to the bathroom door, pushes it open, and walks in.

The woman, holding Ptah and scratching his head, looks up at her without any surprise.

“Who are you, and what do you want?” asks Zahra.

The woman ponders Zahra for a few moments, then shrugs. “Huh, the direct approach. Okay. You owe me. I’ll be in touch.” She pauses, before holding out Ptah carefully. “Take your dog.”

Zahra steps forward and carefully scoops Ptah up, cradling him against her chest, then looks the woman square in the eyes. “I don’t owe you anything.”

As she turns to leave the bathroom, she observes without much surprise that the woman casts no reflection in the mirror.

“Rasheed?” thinks Zahra. “I’m going downstairs now, with Ptah.” She pauses to grab the bag of dog food and a spare dog dish.

Rasheed waits until Zahra has left and then tries a little peek into the intruder’s mind – but he cannot find it. After a minute or two of summoning his courage, he goes to look in the bathroom, and no one is there. The woman is gone.

Down at the car, if the group had any doubts about Khepri’s authenticity, they fade a bit when Ptah sees her and happily leaps into her lap, licking her face and chattering about how happy she is okay through the network. While they don’t have a frame of reference for Khepri, Ptah does – and he’s convinced she’s who she is.

In a positive turn, we will no longer need to track down the mystery woman. She will find us.

 

[Totenkindly]

So we are learning PF2 to do an "evil" campaign next -- although not conventional evil, just more in the way that The Authority (comic books) is evil. Basically the end justifies the means; if I have to kick that puppy to save the city, that puppy is getting punted over the castle wall because it is lower priority. And I won't feel sad about doing it.

We haven't played a PF2 campaign yet (I'm super-familiar with PF1 and still play that), so there is a learning curve. It also looks like a lot of the crazy class dip synergies were bulloxed for PF2, so we're more or less stuck with internal class synergies to work with.

I am probably doing a Witch -- either Seer Elf or Tiefling. (One of our min/max'ers suggested he's building a Sprite Summoner -- that's gonna be terrifying, he and the other guy who runs half our games are literal terrors with build maxing.) Of course, the one guy is going to do a swashbuckler or kineticist or similar.... he's back to his "go to" list for this lol, he loves combat rogues. That leaves the one guy I mentioned (who knows what he'll come up with, aside from it being nuts and highly effective?) and then the other guy who isn't really a great player and his builds tend to be lopsided and inefficient. We do need some kind of muscle, although the summoner is helping with that.

I already have a feel for her. Her long name is Mercella or something similar -- but she is far better known by the name "Mercy" which is a witchy name in itself. (Which I think is great for a character that views herself as "merciful" but by most standards is anything but -- it fits this campaign.)

With an average CHA, Mercy would be considered pretty but she has a scar or birthday of some kind around one of his eyes/ cheeks that detracts. She is beautiful in her own way, and terrible, and dabbles in secrets and knowledge, and kind of "makes things happen" -- although if you tackle her in one of her specialty areas she can be intimidating. Mostly she is support. I haven't settled on a familiar yet. Patron theme is either Resentment or Spinner of Threads.

 

[Totenkindly]

I never heard of this, apparently it's an old mockumentary that has multiple episodes lol

 

[Totenkindly]

Facebook put a warning on this post in a gaming group, saying it had been fact-checked and deemed false info...

 

[The Cat]

Facebook put a warning on this post in a gaming group, saying it had been fact-checked and deemed false info...

View attachment 30346

While you can't put a price on that...We're gonna do our damnedest to anyway.