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A Villain In A World Of Heroes

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Why are we even spinning a web of lies here?
we could just go with
[x] Thanks, I really appreciate that you care. I promise I will be careful
and just move on without giving specific answers
Or heck we could just go with
[] "I was practicing magic, hand an accident, and was knocked out for a day" which is actually the truth
 
mrttao said:
Why are we even spinning a web of lies here?
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  1. Because there's value in allies.
  2. Because they're not lies (at least in my proposal).
  3. Because figuring out how to spin this has actually given us a reasonable cover goal to work towards.
  4. Because there's a very high probability that dismissing him here and now can get us kicked out, or leave him entirely unsympathetic if/when he discovers anything remotely suspicious about us. If she's going to reject his concern now, there's no reason for him to do anything to help her with any sort of cover story if someone (police, underworld, disgruntled merchant, someone whose house we accidentally broke, whatever) comes looking for her. Just generally, if she's going to be an ass about it, he has decades more experience in returning the favor.

mrttao said:
we could just go with
[x] Thanks, I really appreciate that you care. I promise I will be careful
and just move on without giving specific answers
Or heck we could just go with
[] "I was practicing magic, hand an accident, and was knocked out for a day" which is actually the truth
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If that had been the initial reply, that would have been fine. But since people went with the deception to start with, things are trickier now.
 
[X] Be indignant
-[X] "I did get a pelt, I'll show you. But you have to promise not to tell anyone else." Show him the Ferric Pelt.
-[X] When he freaks out over the fact that it's not a normal wolf pelt answer: "Well of course, If I want to get heroes to buy from me I can't have ordinary leather, I have to have something special."
-[X] Then explain our plan to become good enough to sell to heroes, and that once we know enough heroes and can find a good one, that we can tell him about the murder of our father and have him hunt down and defeat the evil hero that killed him.
-[X] If he objects to this plan, ask him if he knows of any other way to stop an evil hero that goes around murdering innocent craftsmen and burning their shops down other than to hire a good hero? And how are we going to hire a good hero unless we produce fantastic leather armor so that heroes want to buy from us? And how can we make fantastic leather armor without superior starting materials? It all makes perfect sense, but you don't want people to know your plan until you have a good set of products to sell first.
-[X] If he wants to know how you killed a Ferric wolf, tell him you bought a spell book that has an ice spell. You used it to freeze it's joints so it couldn't move fast, and then you put an icicle through it's eye into it's brain.

There, a mixture of enough truth to put him off, and give him a sense of our ultimate goal that will fit in with what is considered "acceptable". Will still think we are going to get ourselves killed, but at least our plan makes some sort of sense.
 
Elder Haman said:
[X] Be indignant
-[X] "I did get a pelt, I'll show you. But you have to promise not to tell anyone else." Show him the Ferric Pelt.
-[X] When he freaks out over the fact that it's not a normal wolf pelt answer: "Well of course, If I want to get heroes to buy from me I can't have ordinary leather, I have to have something special."
-[X] Then explain our plan to become good enough to sell to heroes, and that once we know enough heroes and can find a good one, that we can tell him about the murder of our father and have him hunt down and defeat the evil hero that killed him.
-[X] If he objects to this plan, ask him if he knows of any other way to stop an evil hero that goes around murdering innocent craftsmen and burning their shops down other than to hire a good hero? And how are we going to hire a good hero unless we produce fantastic leather armor so that heroes want to buy from us? And how can we make fantastic leather armor without superior starting materials? It all makes perfect sense, but you don't want people to know your plan until you have a good set of products to sell first.
-[X] If he wants to know how you killed a Ferric wolf, tell him you bought a spell book that has an ice spell. You used it to freeze it's joints so it couldn't move fast, and then you put an icicle through it's eye into it's brain.

There, a mixture of enough truth to put him off, and give him a sense of our ultimate goal that will fit in with what is considered "acceptable". Will still think we are going to get ourselves killed, but at least our plan makes some sort of sense.
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The amount of money you would need to hire a hero to kill another hero, is beyond the means of any leatherworker, even one who workers with magical goods. Your city would have to bankrupt itself to even have a small chance of paying the price. And you are just asking to be killed hiring a hero to kill another.
 
Dark Ness said:
The amount of money you would need to hire a hero to kill another hero, is beyond the means of any leatherworker, even one who workers with magical goods. Your city would have to bankrupt itself to even have a small chance of paying the price. And you are just asking to be killed hiring a hero to kill another.
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It's not so much flat out hiring a hero to kill another hero, as much as getting a large number of heroes for us to meet, who we can then tell our sob story to until we find one willing to take the job on for cheap. There have got to be some heroes who are motivated by a sense of justice and feel a special need to police the actions of other heroes. That's just common human behavior. (Notice that in any MMO that allows Player Killing there usually arise one or two guild that specialize in PKK - player killer killing.)

Maybe I can make that more clear?
 
Elder Haman said:
It's not so much flat out hiring a hero to kill another hero, as much as getting a large number of heroes for us to meet, who we can then tell our sob story to until we find one willing to take the job on for cheap. There have got to be some heroes who are motivated by a sense of justice and feel a special need to police the actions of other heroes. That's just common human behavior. (Notice that in any MMO that allows Player Killing there usually arise one or two guild that specialize in PKK - player killer killing.)

Maybe I can make that more clear?
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Doable, but still extremely likely to get you killed. All it takes is for one person to tell the hero who killed your father, and then you are dead.

And, yes, there are heroes who kill other heroes for justice, but that is usually when they are destroying countries or something. Your father just isn't important enough to draw their attention.
 
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Elder Haman said:
All the more reason for Carlos to keep his mouth shut.
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Still, let's not. I'd rather not get kicked out of the city for being a Villain, even by proxy, because something tells me that news of villains gets around, in an I-don't-want-to-be-associated-with-that-fool way, and that'll force us to go into hiding until we learn how to disguise ourselves.

Remember, we're in an Inn. Eavesdropping is a thing.
 
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Fine... let's keep it simple and mysterious.

[X] Look Carlos in the eye, "Do you really want to know? Do you want to get involved? Because once I tell you, you can't get back out."
 
Elder Haman said:
Fine... let's keep it simple and mysterious.

[X] Look Carlos in the eye, "Do you really want to know? Do you want to get involved? Because once I tell you, you can't get back out."
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Still involves actually, you know, telling him about our villainy, even if that's not precisely how we're going to go about it. Not a good idea. How about just saying that we were actually practicing magic, and the reason that we're being so sneaky about it is because we're actually pretty good at summoning spells? Those types of spells are rare enough to rate being cagey about if we're otherwise a squishy teenage girl, lest we be extorted or forcibly recruited by somebody or something, right?
 
Elder Haman said:
Whatever.

[X] Whatever Dark Ness says to do.

Since no ideas we can come up with are any good I just don't care any more.
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Now I feel bad.:(

I didn't mean to turn you off the quest. Honestly, There wasn't anything wrong with your last vote. If it wins I will figure out a way to extend it a bit, and turn it into a proper update.
 
Guys, we have more things that we can say are what we're being sneaky about than our villainy, you know. We could go with our unicorn horn, or our magical passives, or our elemental summoning spell that we "found on a dead guy in the forest". There are lots of options that could work here, it's just that we're only going at it one idea at a time.
 
Dark Ness said:
Now I feel bad.:(

I didn't mean to turn you off the quest. Honestly, There wasn't anything wrong with your last vote. If it wins I will figure out a way to extend it a bit, and turn it into a proper update.
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Look it's not that I even like my last vote, the problem is that you have given us an obstacle but without the context to figure out the solution that you obviously have in mind.

And you obviously have some solution in mind, hence my frustration. I don't mind the occasional railroad, but you gotta show me the rails.

I mean... who the hell is Carlos?

As far as we understood it he's some innkeeper of the cheapest room we could get. Why is he asking questions about where we were for two days? It's not in the nature of Innkeepers to give their guests the third degree as to where they've been. Guest come, guests go - that's the nature of the innkeeping business. He's acting like some kind of father figure. Why? Is he an uncle or something?

Obviously he knows us, so we know him, and should understand his motives and know what to say to get him out of our way. But we actually don't know any of that.

Right now he's some paper cut out of an asshole nosy innkeeper.

I'm half minded to just kill him so as get him out of our hair.

After all, when in doubt about what to do with an obstacle you fall back on killing and blowing stuff up in traditional quest style.
 
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chocolote12 said:
Guys, we have more things that we can say are what we're being sneaky about than our villainy, you know. We could go with our unicorn horn, or our magical passives, or our elemental summoning spell that we "found on a dead guy in the forest". There are lots of options that could work here, it's just that we're only going at it one idea at a time.
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How do any of those solve the problem of a nosy innkeeper butting into our business?

None of them.

[X] Ignore him and begin plotting how best to kill him and hide the body.
 
Elder Haman said:
I mean... who the hell is Carlos?
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Elder Haman said:
He's acting like some kind of father figure. Why? Is he an uncle or something?
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Elder Haman said:
Obviously he knows us, so we know him, and should understand his motives and know what to say to get him out of our way. But we actually don't know any of that.
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Elder Haman said:
After all, when in doubt about what to do with an obstacle you fall back on killing and blowing stuff up in traditional quest style.
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These... Are some good points here. Now, I'm not saying that we should murder him while surrounded by people who probably at least know us as "that crazy orphan girl", if nothing else, but only the potential hypocrisy of the action is really stopping me from suggesting robbing him and framing somebody else right before we leave for the laughs.


Truly villainy is a heady thing, to so easily remove my tendencies towards non-sociopathic solutions...
 
Oh. He is acting like this because he is a friend of your fathers, and really nosy. His inn was cheap (and he isn't charging you as much as he should, you are staying here practically for free), so you shacked up here, even though you don't know him too well. Now he feels responsible for you, especially since you are just a young girl.

If you have any questions, just ask. If it is something you would know IC, I will tell. I assumed it was obvious with him talking about how this isn't what your father wanted, but I guess it wasn't. Sorry.

Also, you can just tell him to fuck off. He might start charging you full price, but as long as you pay and don't mess with other customers, he probably won't kick you out.
 
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Elder Haman said:
[X] Ignore him and begin plotting how best to kill him and hide the body.
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This is the easy part. If we want somebody dissappeared, then we just kill them and use the earth moving spell to bury them below the cobbles, or dirt, or whatever. As long as we don't make the area too obviously disturbed, nobody will ever know what happened to the guy.

The hard part is realizing that we're probably not evil enough to kill off a friend of our father's Yet.
 
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Dark Ness said:
Oh. He is acting like this because he is a friend of your fathers, and really nosy. His inn was cheap (and he isn't charging you as much as he should, you are staying here practically for free), so you shacked up here, even though you s. Now he feels responsible for you, especially since you are just a young girl.

If you have any questions, just ask. If it is something you would know IC, I will tell. I assumed it was obvious with him talking about how this isn't what your father wanted, but I guess it wasn't. Sorry.
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No, that's cool. I mean, I was starting to pick up that there was something going on, but not what.

So... he's giving us a break on the rent, so that means he feels we do owe him something.

Does he have a wife? Children?

Do we know what his opinion is of the hero that killed our father? Would he want to be able to get justice if it were possible and just hesitating because he sees no way to accomplish it?

I mean, maybe we can put him off with a let's talk about it later - when there aren't people around and then try to sell him on the "attract heroes until we find one motivated by justice and then get him to go after the hero that killed our father" plan.

Sure he'll object to it as dangerous, but he's unlikely to betray us.

EDIT: Actually... in light of the additional knowledge that he was father's friend his request to tell him the truth and offer to help becomes more intriguing.
 
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Elder Haman said:
Look it's not that I even like my last vote, the problem is that you have given us an obstacle but without the context to figure out the solution that you obviously have in mind.

And you obviously have some solution in mind, hence my frustration. I don't mind the occasional railroad, but you gotta show me the rails.

I mean... who the hell is Carlos?

As far as we understood it he's some innkeeper of the cheapest room we could get. Why is he asking questions about where we were for two days? It's not in the nature of Innkeepers to give their guests the third degree as to where they've been. Guest come, guests go - that's the nature of the innkeeping business. He's acting like some kind of father figure. Why? Is he an uncle or something?

Obviously he knows us, so we know him, and should understand his motives and know what to say to get him out of our way. But we actually don't know any of that.

Right now he's some paper cut out of an asshole nosy innkeeper.

I'm half minded to just kill him so as get him out of our hair.

After all, when in doubt about what to do with an obstacle you fall back on killing and blowing stuff up in traditional quest style.
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We're a 14 year old girl who's father, the best leather worker in town was burned alive by a Hero, along with his shop. We then disappeared for days and came back, saying that we had spent that time in the forest filled with monsters. From then on, we've been sleeping at his inn and spending every day god(s?) knows where. Anyone would be curious about what the hell is going on with us.
 
RandomLurker said:
We're a 14 year old girl who's father, the best leather worker in town was burned alive by a Hero, along with his shop. We then disappeared for days and came back, saying that we had spent that time in the forest filled with monsters. From then on, we've been sleeping at his inn and spending every day god(s?) knows where. Anyone would be curious about what the hell is going on with us.
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Reminds me, we really need to find that git Hero. I'm not spending half the game in the tutorial village.
 
[X] Agree reluctantly and quietly "Okay, but let's talk about it later." Whisper, "In private."

Might change my vote, but the new information makes his offer to help more plausible as being sincere.

Also, if we are in private it will be easier to kill him if recruiting him goes badly.
 
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Elder Haman said:
Does he have a wife? Children?
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No kids. But, you are pretty sure he is either married or in a relationship with the cook.
Elder Haman said:
Do we know what his opinion is of the hero that killed our father? Would he want to be able to get justice if it were possible and just hesitating because he sees no way to accomplish it?
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He doesn't like what the hero did, who would? But, trying to fight against the hero would make him a villian, a fate some consider worse then death. It isn't just that he doesn't have away to get justice, but that he, like almost every sensible person, is very afraid of the consequences of doing so.
 
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