You may no longer be a member of the Crusades, but it must rankle a man such as yourself to work for the likes of Loric Gavhaul and the Apsis Consortium."
Leontas is willing to let devil summoning pass, and everyone knows what Aspis is like. I
really think that 'Aspis is evil'/'don't you want to be the good guy here?' is not the winning move.
On the other hand, "A cut of the value of the ancient artefacts is easy to lie about and you'd be stuck hoping Gavhaul values your future service enough to not scam you too badly. And we've
seen how much of a damm he gives about those working for him. To him we're
all replaceable."
Because no one is ever going to need to make a roll to convince someone that an Aspis member is going to try and scam them if that memeber thinks they can get away with it.
The roll will be convincing him "therefore we should just totally stab Gavhaul!"
----
And so - as is tradition - BeepSmile is going to steal Goldfish's work, after he's done the done the hard bit of coming up with an actual plan forward, and tweaking some bits of it. (But my plan does reveal that we got people to take over (blatently hints that it's the Pathfinders if pressed), but lies about
when we decided to betray him).
[X] Plan stealing Goldfish's hard work (not credited to Goldfish. Muw ha ha)
-[X] Sirim casts Shadow Enchantment: Hermean Potential on himself as stealthily as possible. (If caught, bluff: "A minor warding woven into my being that might have shielded what I'm going to say next from any divinations made before this point." (because familiars can't cast spells. Obviously.))
-[X] Appeal to both Leontas' sense of greed and responsibility. Gavhaul is a man of fel intent and even poorer character. There are Demons afoot and a Dragon out for his blood, and that of any agent of the Consortium. If he were to die here to dragon claw, few would question his passing.
-[X] "We now know that the adamantine is hollow, and a significant portion of our promised pay is now tied up in getting a cut of the value of those artefacts. Something that is trivially easy to lie about. You'd be stuck hoping Gavhaul values your future service enough to not scam you too badly. And we've seen how much of a damm he gives about those working for him. To him we're all replaceable. So let us replace him."
-[X] "After dealing with his vampire contact and realising the depths of monstrosity Gavhaul is comfortable with, we scrambled to reach out to some friendly contacts[1] to set the groundwork to have their people be the ones in place take the adamantine at the border. We are prepared. We have the aid of a dragon. And we have enough shit to worry about with these three demons without worrying about when Gavhual is going to sacrifice some of us to that eldritch horror he was communing with a few days ago" (If queried, share what little you were able to figure out about the being that Gavhaul was speaking with).
-[X][1] If pressed on the 'contacts' bit, state that they have a very strong preference of going unnoticed here, and would be very annoyed if they learned that we revealed our scheme to anyone. But the addition of demons has forced our hand - glances at self - well, tail. [small joke intended to boost diplo effots]. And if that is (quite reasonably) insufficient, share that our contacts really hate the Consortium, and are willing to direct effort just to fuck them over. (Which should be enough of a hint [happen to have people in the area already + can communicate quickly as an institution + hate Aspis = Pathfinder] for Leontas and Urgor to figure out who we asked for help)
----
I
think that the pathfinder's plan was to have their agents be the ones to take the adamantine at the border instead of Gavhaul's people, I'm trying to be honest here about what was intended, so please correct me if I'm wrong.
It's worth mentioning, the Pathfinders promised us pay for keeping the Azlanti stuff out of Gavhauls hands.
That plus the value of the adamant makes for excellent minimum baseline loot. Enough for all of us, when the Aspis doesn't take the largest cut from the Adamant maybe?
iirc, Gavhaul's cut was 60%? I presume some of that was going to the people he was paying to take it at the border, but apart from what that bit might be, removing Gavhaul means there's a whole lotta more pie to go around.
Honestly, I'm fine with giving up... any portion of our own cut. We've been making
bank on this trip.
10/10 would kill a wererat's father again.
-----
@DragonParadox I'm guessing there's zero way for Sirim to cast a reroll buff for diplo/bluff here, or to state that he had it precast before talking with Leontas?
'Cuz this interaction has me frickin'
tense, man.
www.d20pfsrd.com