arc v: alem | cr & plotting meme

[groundrules]

ALEM

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Sound the drums, head on to war — seized citadel Alem has already been there for the lion's share of a year.

Under the Scavengers' guidance, the four sand worms the party captured gently graze underground corridors allowing the group to reach halfway up Mount Attevar. From there, they quickly infiltrate Alem through a bustling trade route.

Young King Deimar strikes a simple bargain: serve Alem in its bitter last days until inevitable downfall, and the citadel will grant access to its Beacon before the final evacuation is completed.

Sounds simple enough. Now, survive it.

Characters arrive today, with our first proper taste of event chaos due on 27-28 January. Get your character settled in, check out the setting and their assignment, and strike some CR:

■ Arc setting & locations

■ Character assignments

■ New NPC inbox — more this round, because most won't make it so every level has a patron. As usual, reach out to NPCs at will and please share findings with the class!

■ Questions

CR & PLOTTING MEME


<b><small>PLAYER</small>:</b> <b><small>PREFERRED CONTACT</small>:</b> Are you open to plurk / discord friending? <b><small>CHARACTER & CANON</small>:</b> <b><small>THEIR ONE-LINE ELEVATOR PITCH</small>:</b> <b><small>THEIR ASSIGNED LEVEL & ROLE IN ALEM</small></b> <b><small>WHY THEY'RE GOING TO MESS EVERYTHING UP, REALLY</small>:</b> <b><small>THEY'VE SECRETLY GOT A THING FOR RATHAKKU, DON'T THEY?</small></b> Just look at that handsome face. <b><small>PLOTS AND PLANS</small>:</b> <b><small>WHAT THEY CAN OFFER</small>:</b> <b><small>CR YOU WANT</small>:</b> Specificity is key!

Comments

QUESTIONS

[groundrules]

No, the ruling family is not all Targaryens.

[matermali]

Is Vanessa allowed into the Room of Seals when she helps, or does she hand off supplies and such outside because she is also an untrustworthy newbie?

[groundrules]

Not allowed in!

[matermali]

/claws at the door

Re: QUESTIONS

[stephanivien]

How old are Deimar and Haiva? I'm assuming actually adults as it hasn't otherwise been stated, like, Cle-florens. But honestly Deimar looks baby-faced, and Stephanivien is very familiar with just-adult-enough when it come to nobility and battlefields.

Re: QUESTIONS

[groundrules]

Adults, that's correct! You're looking at a ripe 24 for Deimar, 27 for Haiva.

Don't worry, you'll see it on their tomb plates

Re: QUESTIONS

[stephanivien]

Thank you! Stephanivien, wondering why everyone is his baby siblings' age, in the perpetual gripe of eldest sibs everywhere

As far as the tombstones... Wouldn't be the first time (:

[blackscales]

How easy is it to move between areas/levels? It's a siege so I imagine a certain degree of chaos, but beyond the Room of Seals (tm) is there anywhere that people who aren't assigned there would struggle to enter?

Also, for Keep Folk, where are the sleeping arrangements like? Is everyone just in the barracks, in like one big (or several big) rooms with roughly constructed beds? Or do the entourages have their own separate areas?

Edit: Also... how big is 'gargantuan' Irenia. Wrathion has flung himself at dragons bigger than him before so I cannot rule this out, much to everyone's dismay.

[groundrules]

Heya!

— I'd say the big mobility issues are:
Watch towers are difficult to access, primarily because of how under siege they are. You'd get healthy pushback against heading out when Irenia's flying, mostly from people wanting to ensure you're not suicidal. But you can theoretically still go.

The Room of Seals is off bounds (at present), as you noted.

The Gut's Bind caves and glacier lakes are challenging, if you have no real understanding of the lay of the land.

— Keep sleeping arrangements: you can hit up the barracks or the gentry quarters. In Wrathion's case, since he's explicitly assigned to guard Haiva, he doesn't have that choice and needs to stay in quarters close to Haiva's, unfortunately!

— I'll have to come back to you with more explicit measurements, if you need them (just to research), but the idea behind Irenia was mostly that she's a huge battle-ship style dragon, her sheer size and frost blow power is the trouble with her. On the plus size, she's not as nimble or useful in targeted guerrilla attacks.

[blackscales]

That's fine, no need to break out the rulers... I was mostly just trying to judge the... scale of the problem, if you will.




It sounds like we're in Deathwing size territory though.



So could probably sit on a small house and destroy it. Or a... not-as-big dragon.

[reparo]

of course not, some are lannisters

Hey, so legit question. Is there visibility from one tower to another? If for example there was an attack on the Southern Tower while nothing was happening on the Eastern one, could a witch Apparate there to help? I'm happy for the spell to not always work 100%, just because I want to throw her off a tower make life hard for Hermione.

[groundrules]

HMMMMMM so looking at a fortress' walls — I think you'd definitely be able to see activity / clamour at another tower with a telescope? Maybe not the arrows as easily unless there's a rain of them, but definitely the dragon, which is huge.

With regard to Apparating on another tower — tower defence is kind of a Big Hero moment, so make sure you check in with the other tower's squad, so it's not Hermione taking away from someone else's Grand Stand [TM]. But otherwise, sure, I'm okay for you to have her do that!

Re: QUESTIONS

[stephanivien]

Assuming Stephanivien gets his guide, what kind of larger armaments can he expect to see at the towers? It'll be faster if he can retrofit things, instead of build from scratch, tho it's worth noting he can do both.

Broken and/or non-functional is fine, just trying to hammer out a timeline and the supplies details in my head.

Re: QUESTIONS

[jatharin]

So, Alem is vaguely crusades-inspired, go with military tech of that period.

[weifinder]

okay so thea an i were talking about recreating the drama scene where they find "mostly" dead wen ning in the labour camp, except this time it's a npc who is fully dead through some stupid timing or freak accident in the wards.

basically because of learning resurrection, could they a. resurrect an npc, during the course of the evacuations? b. what would the consequences be to wei wuxian (or wen qing) if they do and succeed?

we're thinking of an npc mom, who has two children in tow, one young, one young teen.

[groundrules]

Resurrect her in the style of Wen Ning or of the local grounds?

And where do you want her to be, in Alem or close to Rathakku's territory? ( Think you can see where I'm going with this. )

I'm fine with it, just to finetune the specifics!

[weifinder]

Word is in from our two person collective: local grounds, Alem area!

How bad is our roll!

[bravelyrunsaway]

Down in the guts, are there any scent trails that may be followed? Licyn's a good tracker because he's got an excellent nose, (easy enough to disrupt saying there's something that blows his scenting nose up/numbs it, magically or otherwise), so he'd try to find avenues that don't smell of the dead to navigate people through. Survival thing, etc etc!

[groundrules]

Yes! There are definite hints of human, unhuman and undead travellers in both the mines and the glaciers. There are also very faint signs of blood spillage, indicating there was bloodshed, but very limited.

He can also find signs of where the old passageways were — Deimar's people have now closed them off. There are clear signs of undead there, hinting they were discovered by the dead at some point.

And sure, feel free to assume his nose is guiding him through to find good corridors!

[fushichou]

Hey so how much trouble would kanesada get into if he carefully read some of deimar's love letters to rathakku

[groundrules]

You'd have to obtain one! How do you plan to go about that?

[weifinder]

This because I'm belatedly remembering: so with the dragon scales from Serthica, detecting dead energies, when one is in the Wards or the Guts Bind would they find any unexpected pockets/instances of dead...ness... feelings, outside of the already felt shifts of More Alive/More Dead that the Guts undergo?

[groundrules]

So, this isn't a case of death hiding and finally showing up, it's deathliness spiking — think of it like smoke, and necromancers being the fire alarm in this case. Sometimes the hell gate cracks a little more open, smoke up, MEOOWWWWWWOWWWWWOWWWW. Or sometimes the hell gate is contained by whatever these good folks are doing down there, and the necromancers can feel less death around.

[eyeofthavnair]

Vrtra came into the game with a talisman designed specifically to ward against mind-control and corruption. In canon, it works against demi-gods that have been a huge problem for the populace for eons, as well as against the darkness-infused reality-warped dimension of the Void. Would this protect its bearer from Rathakku's influence?

[groundrules]

Hey! He shouldn't really be in danger from the Clawing if he hasn't died/isn't a necromancer/doesn't have exceptional life or death magic or sensitivity. I think that wasn't his situation, so he should be ok from get-go?