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Age of Ice and Blood: A Pathfinder System Heroic Fantasy Quest

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OK, looks like the knight is still in the lead and he has been since some time last night. I think we can safely close it here. Let's see how Sir Roland manages the passage and what he is made of. Vote closed.
Adhoc vote count started by DragonParadox on Aug 6, 2021 at 8:44 AM, finished with 78 posts and 39 votes.
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Well we have to be careful with the genoese, the Italian merchant republics were after all famous for doing insane stuff for power and wealth.
 
DragonParadox said:
Adventuring being what it is you are going to get some kind of scoundrel or rogue eventually and the ship Varley is on is worth quite a lot not to mention its cargo... though of course you do not currently own all of what, you just have most of the armed men on said ship. ;)
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Possession of available weaponry is nine tenths of the law!
 
DragonParadox said:
[] Tiberius Florius Gaius, the young optius of the Third Century of the Fifth Cohort of the Legio X Equestris Your centurion is dead in disgrace by the will of the Emperor, by the will of Cesar they say. You are too young to curse his name for the blood spilled on Egyptian soil in wars of pride and power that saw the sons of Rome cast down, but you are not so young as to name your legion Gemini as to forget the glories and the victories of Gaul.
+Lockstep Discipline (your men belong to one of the most celebrated legions of the age)
+Engineering knowledge (more than the swords of its legions, it is the skill of its engineers that has built the Empire)
-Glory starved (Long has it been since the Tenth has known any triumphs and they hunger for it)
-Fear and Disdain of Magic (While no strangers to superstition the veterans of the tenth have little care for sorcery and those who work it. It reminds too many of their stay in Egypt, and the disastrous loss that followed)

[] Sir Ronald Verley, a crusader returning from the disastrous battles of the Fifth Crusade not with absolution or with peace, but with a deep disdain of all you have seen there. Greed and pride sleep in the same bed and the blood of innocents is spilled like wine in the half of dukes prelates and princes. That lesson you learned in your heart on the sands of Egypt.
+Ship and Crew, as the one in command of most of the armed men aboard the Genovesse ship that was supposed to take you to Sicily as well as the only noblemen aboard it is an easy thing to commandeer the ship
+Fine Horseflesh, the ship holds your horses and the horses of your men, they have so far made the journey in fine form
-Broken Faith, having been lead not to the Holy Land but to Egypt to the Sack of Damieta only to then see the flower of chivalry broken as it marched on Cairo, only to see your lords deal so lightly with those they had before called as devils in human flesh you no longer know what to believe on matters spiritual or temporal
-A motley crew, between your own men at arms, the Genovesse crew and the other passengers there is little to unite you before a strange world

[] Thomas of Kent, an English merchant whose caravan had left Vienna in haste in the wee hours of the morning. You claimed that it was because the papal authorities were prepared to arrest you on trumped up charges, for no reason than being a pious son of the Church of England, in truth there may have been the matter of the copper you sold being less than pure and the spices being cut with sawdust and the wine being watered a tad, but what did it matter? You had your gold and you left your debts far behind you, farther than you thought possible in truth.
+A Wealthy Man, you got your goods' worth and a little more in Vienna and silver and gold are valuable everywhere
+An eclectic education, as a young man you had been sent all over Europe to learn from the best and the brightest even if you did not quite pick up the lessons your father might have wished
-Bad with money, for all you could sell sand to an Egyptian the gold never seems to stick to your hands
-Crooked Merchant, your usual tactics work best when you can move around
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Look at these three starts, for how it informs likely play-style...

1) Is probably more organization / group management oriented. Unless something went terribly wrong in the prologue anyway. Smaller focus on personal combat?

2) This could evolve into the former, but being as we're not a social-specced person, it would largely depend on write-ins and specific circumstances of the disparate parties on the ship lining up, and our own aligning with them. Mostly it seems like a "jump in feet first" start on being a problem solver and fighting enemies would be straight forward, at least on a small scale.

3) Social build, probably heavier focus on intrigue if we went in that direction, or if we focused mostly on bluffing and bullshittery, politics. Least focus on combat overall.
 
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Arc 0 Post 2: Into the Storm
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    • Into the Storm ​

    August 16, 1221 Ano Domini, the Eastern Mediterranean

    You are Sir Ronald Verley, a Normand, a faithful knight of your lord King Henry of England, and you are as alone as any man can be in the midst of the dark and noisome hold of a galley almost two weeks out of port. There is little enough room for a man to stretch his legs on this tub and none to be alone with your own thoughts.

    Do you even want to know? The thought is bitter as poison on the tongue, echoing another familiar voice. 'You do not want to know what is in there, son,' Sir Geoffrey, a man you would have once been proud to hear call you 'son' but whom you had parted from later with cold courtesy and words festering unspoken. You did not know what was behind the door during the siege, but you could guess, oh how well you could guess. The walls were not near thick enough to keep the screams from your ears.

    That morning you eat in silence with the men. The supplies are not quite down to hardtack and salt pork, but they are close. The last of the goat meat has been thinned to a watery soup, the beast itself six days dead because most of the fodder had to be kept for Silver and the other horses. The sailors glare at you sullenly as you pass them, but say nothing, your title keeping the curses behind their teeth now that you had proven that you speak their tongue well enough to take offense.

    Just as you consider if it would be worth it to seek captain Antonio and his pompous tales just for the distraction from your own thoughts, Providence decides to give you a much better one. Clouds rolled in from the west as you watched, black as pitch and swift as hell's steeds, unlike anything you had ever seen, but then you were no man of the sea.

    "Madre de Dios!" you hear from your left, the ship's carpenter, an Aragonese fellow with a missing hand whose salt-scarred face usually bore a heavy scowl but now had been contorted into terrified pleading as he looked at the unnatural clouds. Would that you still had enough faith in the goodness of God to get down on your knees and pray...

    The wind howls, the rain falls in sheets, pelting you like stones cast from the parapets, hail like arrows and beneath your feet the deck bucks and twists like a beast gone mad. The world becomes a blur, a mad dash to save as many as you can, ordering your men below deck and out of the way of the sailors even as you stay to help, or mayhap to perish. If it had been your lapse of faith that brought this curse upon the Marcella than the least you could do was lend your strength to the task.

    ...you push a piece of broken mast from the body of a cabin boy, his face pale as snow save where the blood drips in from his broken lips...

    ...you throw a line to a man swept overboard by the raging waters, only to see him swallowed up before he can grab it...

    ...you look up and see blue-green flame dancing among the sails like some strange phantoms...

    The ship lurches again underfoot and for a moment you have the strangest of convictions as your stomach drops. It feels like you are not floating at all, but falling through some strange abyss. Then a great wave rises from all around the beleaguered galley as though it was a pebble cast into a pond. Two more of the crew are washed overboard and with that the furry of the sea abates, almost as swift as it had come, though the sun does not return, the skies stay laden grey.

    The boy you had saved earlier is pointing at the sky with a look of mute horror on his face.

    "What...?" you do not get beyond that first word, for following his finger you see a break in the clouds and you see beyond them a field of stars and the moon shinning pale silver. The storm had been fierce and terrible to behold, but it had not been so long as to take you from morning into night, on that you would stake your spurs.

    It would not be long now before shock turned to panic and God help you all if panic turned to rage.

    What do you do?

    [] Be ready to support captain Antonio
    -[] Write in (optional)

    [] Take the lead and try to calm the spirits of the crew
    -[] Write in (optional)

    [] Write in


    You are a knight, sworn to lord and land, your spurs well-earned, your weapons in battle tested, but which are your skills and which are your strengths? What do you bring with you on this journey farther than any of you yet know?

    [] Write in character sheet (Level 2 Cavalier)

    Ability Stats (15 Point Buy)

    OOC: Originally I thought about giving you guys more class options, like three or so. The trouble is I was not able to find three classes that fit the character concept, just the one, but this is Pathfinder so there is a lot of customization you can do within that one class. So rather than try to force it for the sake of offering up multiple classes I think it would be best to just go with what fits best. BTW I did try rolling for stats, but the results were garbage, like a lot worse than the point buy would give you, so let's go with that.
     
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    • The ship being swept into an unnatural storm that shifts day to night after a failed Crusade? Clearly, this is a sign from God - but whether it be punishment or deliverance remains to be seen.

    On a serious note, religion or witchcraft are functionally the only ways the crew could realistically compartmentalize or understand what's happened to them, so best we focus their mind on the idea this is some kind of ordeal from the Lord that if they're faithful and brave enough they can withstand rather than have them panic at the idea that the ship has been cursed.
     
    LonelyWolf999 said:
    The ship being swept into an unnatural storm that shifts day to night after a failed Crusade? Clearly, this is a sign from God - but whether it be punishment or deliverance remains to be seen.

    On a serious note, religion or witchcraft are functionally the only ways the crew could realistically compartmentalize or understand what's happened to them, so best we focus their mind on the idea this is some kind of ordeal from the Lord that if they're faithful and brave enough they can withstand rather than have them panic at the idea that the ship has been cursed.
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    Hmm not sure treating the whole event as some higher ordeal is the best choice right now. I don't think the best thing right now is to try and understand what's happening. But rather to get every one doing something to keep them busy and divert all thier potential negative feeling into completing tasks that will hopefully get us to land or something. Because I don't really want the crew to have a religious crisis in the middle of nowhere.

    Edit- On that note I'm wondering if the stars are the same. If we have a navigator or any device like a compass. I know they are recently introduced but if any could have one it would be the Genoese who are traders.
     
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    Also one thing I feel I should note since there has been a lot of talk about social skills, all the social skills are class skills for you guys. If you want to build a social knight you can.
     
    [X] Be ready to support Captain Antonio
    -[X] Be prepared to deal with any mutiny and insist that until we learn more about where we have ended up we must focus on survival.
    --[X] Get to know Captain Antonio. You need to know his character and if you can trust him, as you shall not be shackled to one without principles or scruples in a strange land where your reputation will be associated with those whom you keep company with.
     
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    [Х] Goldfish
    oh wait, reflex

    So.
    We're on a ship full of mildly-resentful crew, who are only held in check by the rank.
    Out actions during the storm could net us some points, I suppose, but only if we really lean into diplomacy/bluff check and a heroic persona with it. And I recon the MC here would have a malus to it, too...

    No one knows the ship's now in a whole new world. Ronald included.
    When the rest of the ships people get that, well, they'll either hang onto the MC as a buoy of normality, or try and fuck off.
    Probably better to start seeing this as a test from the God and go all Zeal at some point, lest they get any ideas.

    The current resources seem to be minimal. Beyond the ship, and some high-quality non-magical horses, there is little food, and considering the salty water everyone's travelling, the landing's going to suck. What with having to find food and water.

    EDIT:
    [X] Crake
    for now this works
     
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    [X] Crake
    [X] My Body Was To Guard the Servants of the Lord
     
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    Yeah, we absolutely need social skills in any build, if we're angling for agency of any sort.
     
    DragonParadox said:
    If you want to build a social knight you can.
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    So you know a fun thing about Cavalier? It allows you to turn into a protector-type tank beyond compare with little in the way of skill point investment required. Given crusader, I think that could fit very well.

    Gimme a bit.

    DragonParadox said:
    Due to being disillusioned of much that you once held in high regard you may not at this point take an Order, but will develop one organically during the First Arc)
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    Need to add in a question here, though. This basically reduces a cavalier to a worse!Fighter given Order is where half of Challenge's effectiveness comes from and a great deal of the class's abilities are also gated behind it. If this is intended, all well and good. But I just want to be sure you're aware of that.
     
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    Snowfire said:
    Need to add in a question here, though. This basically reduces a cavalier to a worse!Fighter given Order is where half of Challenge's effectiveness comes from. If this is intended, all well and good. But I just want to be sure you're aware of that.
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    @DragonParadox acceding to mechanics somewhat, given he is a full knight, it make sense to decide on the Order now, and then give an option to found a new one if the principles and precepts of his former order are found to be incompatible to his new circumstances.
     
    Snowfire said:
    Need to add in a question here, though. This basically reduces a cavalier to a worse!Fighter given Order is where half of Challenge's effectiveness comes from. If this is intended, all well and good. But I just want to be sure you're aware of that.
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    Crake said:
    @DragonParadox acceding to mechanics somewhat, given he is a full knight, it make sense to decide on the Order now, and then give an option to found a new one if the principles and precepts of his former order are found to be incompatible to his new circumstances.
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    Order in this case is not so much an institutional thing as it is a reflection of your inner values. You can be a member of an Order without ever inducting another soul. At level 2 you really do not have that much use of those abilities and I would really prefer for the order to be born of your choices and not just mechanical fiat

    That said if you guys really want an order for the mechanics I can work with that, but you should keep in mind that mechanics inform character. It may well be that what order you choose will end up self-reinforcing.
     
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