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It Belongs to a Museum

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picklepikkl said:
I'd also like to get an Acquisitionist just to see how they work.
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The way I understand it, Aelsabrim is mechanically an Acquisitionist.

Boney said:
The one crew or contact with the most votes will be Pahtsekhen's first avenue for Acquisitions. Those not chosen may or may not be available in the future, and if available, may or may not be unchanged by the time that has passed. Crews might develop of their own accord over time or be developed by spending resources on them, as they grow more experienced or are given access to greater resources; contacts might become corrupt of their own accord over time or be corrupted by spending resources on them, as they are given reason to delve deeper into this illicit avenue for achieving their personal goals.
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Though I imagine a rogue pirate crew will have different avenues of loot to acquire.
 
Omegahugger said:
The way I understand it, Aelsabrim is mechanically an Acquisitionist.
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That's me waffling on terminology. At that point I had Crews and Contacts both being types of Acquisitions, but I didn't like it because Acquisitions was a thing you did, not a person you were, and Acquisitionist didn't fit as a collective term. But the dictionary meaning of Acquisitionist works really well for a pirate crew working for a museum, so now it's Patrons, Acquisitionists and Contacts being types of Affiliates.
 
@Boney should Pahtsekhen have Lizardmen (Surface) on the museum staff threadmark now? Or will it take more than one Learn action (and/or more/better sources) to do so?

Also, the first diffchecker of the thread 🎉

It Belongs to a Museum - Contents - 2025/02/15 to 2025/02/19 - Diffchecker

It Belongs to a Museum - Contents - 2025/02/15 to 2025/02/19 - [QUOTE="Boney, post: 34314923, member: 21872"] [B][U][SIZE=6]Museum Contents[/SIZE] In Storage:[/
www.diffchecker.com

The jewelry and artisan tools seem to be the parts with the most actual new/changed info thats not mentioned in the update:
Boney said:
Jewellery - Lustria, Lizardmen, Value
Partial cultural understanding.

Golden armbands of various sizes. Necklaces and bracelets bearing lines of polished stones. Tablets worn as piercings bearing unknown glyphs, though it has been noted that usually most Saurus in a unit will bear the same glyphs upon their piercings, suggesting some sort of unit identifier or military decoration.


Artisan Tools - Lustria, Lizardmen, Culture
Partial cultural understanding.

These are the tools used by Skinks, the artisan and scholar caste of the Lizardmen, to ply the many crafts of civilization.
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Edit: And i suppose for completions sake i'll include the staff diffchecker even if it really is just the one thing :p

It Belongs to a Museum - Staff - 2025/02/12 to 2025/02/19 - Diffchecker

It Belongs to a Museum - Staff - 2025/02/12 to 2025/02/19 - [QUOTE="Boney, post: 34314914, member: 21872"] [B][U][SIZE=6]Museum Staff[/SIZE][/U][/B] [U]Curato
www.diffchecker.com
 
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Boney said:
That's me waffling on terminology. At that point I had Crews and Contacts both being types of Acquisitions, but I didn't like it because Acquisitions was a thing you did, not a person you were, and Acquisitionist didn't fit as a collective term. But the dictionary meaning of Acquisitionist works really well for a pirate crew working for a museum, so now it's Patrons, Acquisitionists and Contacts being types of Affiliates.
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So:
  • Our Patron is Lutr. Patrons' Interest is extremely valuable because it converts most generously into Goodwill. Patrons can also directly give us some of their stuff to show off if we spend Goodwill. We might be able to gain more Patrons through narrative choices, but there is currently no obvious mechanical lever to poke.
  • Affiliates are people who work with or for us. There are three types: Contacts, Staff, and Acquisitionists.
    • Our sole Contact is Aelsabrim. Contacts know people, can have specific kinds of goods acquired from them, and require an action to hit up but can be hit up as frequently as we want until they become tapped out, but we can Develop the connection to get more/better stuff or to enhance their capabilities. We can spend 1 Goodwill to ask either one of our Patrons or one of our other Contacts for new Contact options.
    • Our Staff is just Pahtsekhen and Fjolnir. Staff Knowledge automatically gives us background on Relics we acquire, and certain staff members might have rare capabilities we can use, and we can Develop them to have more knowledge or capabilities. We can spend 1 Goodwill to get a selection of new options based on our existing Patrons and Contacts.
    • We currently have no Acquisitionists, but the idea is that they're kinda "fire-and-forget" -- we send them with an action but then there's nothing further to do with them until they get back and show us what they found wherever we sent them, and then we can send them again. We can Develop them to give them new capabilities or specialties. We can spend 1 Goodwill to get a selection of new options based on our existing Patrons and Contacts.
  • Our sole Audience is currently Awakening. We can spend Goodwill to Cultivate them and make them more interested in stuff we have, essentially turning Goodwill now into Goodwill later by increasing their Interest in things. We can gain new Audiences through a Broaden Horizons action, and new Patrons and Contacts will give us new options for New Audiences beyond the ones listed.
How accurate is this summary?

EDIT: Left out an important Patron mechanic, fixed.
 
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picklepikkl said:
So:
  • Our Patron is Lutr. Patrons' Interest is extremely valuable because it converts most generously into Goodwill. Patrons can also directly give us some of their stuff to show off if we spend Goodwill. We might be able to gain more Patrons through narrative choices, but there is currently no obvious mechanical lever to poke.
  • Affiliates are people who work with or for us. There are three types: Contacts, Staff, and Acquisitionists.
    • Our sole Contact is Aelsabrim. Contacts know people, can have specific kinds of goods acquired from them, and require an action to hit up but can be hit up as frequently as we want until they become tapped out, but we can Develop the connection to get more/better stuff or to enhance their capabilities. We can spend 1 Goodwill to ask either one of our Patrons or one of our other Contacts for new Contact options.
    • Our Staff is just Pahtsekhen and Fjolnir. Staff Knowledge automatically gives us background on Relics we acquire, and certain staff members might have rare capabilities we can use, and we can Develop them to have more knowledge or capabilities. We can spend 1 Goodwill to get a selection of new options based on our existing Patrons and Contacts.
    • We currently have no Acquisitionists, but the idea is that they're kinda "fire-and-forget" -- we send them with an action but then there's nothing further to do with them until they get back and show us what they found wherever we sent them, and then we can send them again. We can Develop them to give them new capabilities or specialties. We can spend 1 Goodwill to get a selection of new options based on our existing Patrons and Contacts.
  • Our sole Audience is currently Awakening. We can spend Goodwill to Cultivate them and make them more interested in stuff we have, essentially turning Goodwill now into Goodwill later by increasing their Interest in things. We can gain new Audiences through a Broaden Horizons action, and new Patrons and Contacts will give us new options for New Audiences beyond the ones listed.
How accurate is this summary?

EDIT: Left out an important Patron mechanic, fixed.
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All correct, with the minor quibble that I'd consider a Patron to be an Affiliate, in a 'some affiliates are more affiliate than others' kind of way. There's not a lot of options for Patrons in the general area because Lutr's got Awakening pretty centralized under him, though there was an option to convert the Princess into one. Otherwise the easiest way to get some would probably be to get contacts on Ulthuan or in the Old World and see who they can introduce you to.
 
Definitely support getting an acquisitionist on staff/file. But I think we need to decide whether we want to focus on exhibits glorifying the Vampire Coast, the acts/culture of piracy in general, or particularly valuable far off locations/peoples/treasures. While they have some overlap, they are all distinct enough that we'd be better off focusing on a single area of interest to get the most out of our exhibits.
 
Glad my plan went well.

Long term I'd like to get an in with Nehekhara which will first likely require gaining contacts in Arabya. But for now I agree on getting an acquisitionest is also a good idea to broaden our horizons as our current contact is not the best at getting us exhibits that fit our current audience and patrons interests.

Besides gems which we should get at some point.
 
Boney said:
Awakening is a good point to start your investigations, but only to start them, as most local expertise begins and ends with how to kill them - not unimportant, but not fully covering what you were hoping to learn, either. Your next stop is the Citadel of Dusk to extract what local knowledge you can, but that has to be at a remove as it wouldn't do to be showing too much interest in the Lizardmen immediately after so many artefacts of theirs went missing, even if you do plan for nobody to ever find out about that. So you perform something of a reversion to form and once more take on the role of the wandering old sage as you book passage on a boat heading towards the Isthmus of Lustria.
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He's an old hand at using the Old Sage guise to gather information.

Boney said:
This is the part of the world most northerners mean when they say 'New World', the place where they have built their colonies and clash with the northern frontier of the Lizardman society. Skeggi, the Norscan settlement, is by far the oldest and largest of them, and the one you have the hardest time fitting into - your grasp of Norscan is still quite limited, so you have to resort to slapping a year or two out of the more unwelcoming before they stop seeing you as prey. They have a long and storied rivalry with the nearby Temple-City they identify as Hexoatl, one their skalds are quite easy to prod into retelling. Apparently there's something of a cycle to Skeggi where a ruler tries to keep the inhabitants from provoking the Lizardmen, but eventually they grow bold and fractured enough to do so anyway, and the inevitable reprisal from the Lizardmen unites the Norscans once more under a single banner, preventing what would otherwise be an inevitable fracturing into either civil war or a dissolution into individual tribes.
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They do have a long history.

Boney said:
The Lizardmen are divided quite sensibly into four castes: the large, strong labourer class called 'Kroxigor', the small, clever, and agile artisan and scholar class called 'Skinks', the vicious, man-sized warrior class called 'Saurus', and the ruling Priest-Kings called 'Slann'. It is the Skinks that generally handle any peaceful dealings with outsiders, and though remarkably loyal and apparently incorruptible, they show all the usual quirks and foibles of living, thinking beings. The Saurus, in contrast, are dedicated entirely to war and show considerable discipline on the battlefield, to the extent that some theorize them to be constructs or undead of some sort. Kroxigor tend to only be seen with Skink handlers that they follow the instructions of, suggesting either a hierarchy or a deficiency in intellect, and the Slann are rarely seen and when they are, they tend to be performing horrific feats of magical power. There are, of course, specializations within these castes, but depending on who you talk to, some claim entire subspecies amongst them, from well-attested accounts of warrior and scout Skinks to rarer tales of Lizardmen with uniform sets of mutations such as boney crests or spurs or enlarged musculature, always accompanied with a matching change in colouration.
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That's a pretty good understanding of the Lizardmen.

Boney said:
Most conflicts between the Lizardmen and other races center around gold. The Lizardmen, as you've observed, rarely practice any metalwork, preferring stone and ivory for their tools and weapons, with the notable exception of using gold to make ornaments, decoration, jewellery, and stelae. Most of those are only annoyances to lose, leading to some adventurers making away with fortunes worth of gold and having to escape only a desultory pursuit and a few thrown javelins, but when an adventurer steals away with the Lizardman equivalent of a holy book, the response becomes... well, not unlike the response one would get if they stole a golden holy book from a tomb in Nehekhara. This has garnered the Lizardmen a reputation among many in the isthmus colonies of being completely unpredictable and impossible to coexist with. Rather undeservedly so, in your opinion.
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Basically humans get to greedy and really really piss off the Lizardmen.

Boney said:
The Lizardmen are a devout society, with each of their Temple-Cities dedicated to a single one of their Gods that influences some of the character of that city - not unlike your own homeland. From what little the Elves are able to tell you about their pantheon you can see points where you could attempt the beginning of an interpretatio Nehekhara, but the Elves, who are normally quite keen on their own interpretatio Ulthuan, don't even attempt this. They call the Lizardman pantheon the 'Gods from Before', distinct from the 'Gods from Above' and 'Gods from Below' that they worship. These are usually translated by northerner scholars as 'Old Ones' - they tend to be a bit touchy about granting foreign deities the status of 'proper' Gods.

Their funerary customs are a bit limited, as for the most part they seem to be content to leave the dead where they fall. The only exception is for the remains of Lizardmen of particular skill, age, or note, who in eras past seemed to 'earn' internment in the necropolis on Fuming Serpent Island. That necropolis was buried in a volcanic eruption, and the Lizardmen have shown little care for recovering it. It's unknown whether the honoured dead go elsewhere now, or if they simply stopped bothering.

Overall, they're rather similar to the modern incarnation of your own homeland: a strong tendency towards insularity until encroached upon, and then utterly ferocious in their pursuit of a restoration of the status quo. As demonstrated by the Elves of the Citadel of Dusk, they can be coexisted with, and as demonstrated by Awakening, they can be bloodied to the point that they pull back and reconsider further conflict.
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Phat is pretty interested in their religion. The Gods Before, Gods Above and Gods Below bit is really neat.

Boney said:
Saurus Skeleton - Trophy, Lustria, Lizardmen
Partial cultural and biological understanding.

Saurus are the warrior caste of the Lizardmen, highly disciplined and incredibly ferocious in battle. They usually wield jagged clubs or spears, and are often seen riding atop Cold Ones and even larger predators.


Skink Skeleton - Lustria, Lizardmen
Partial cultural and biological understanding.

Skinks are the artisan and scholar caste of the Lizardmen, fast, agile, and clever. When mustered for war, they typically wield spears, javelins, or blowpipes, or ride atop the large herbivores native to Lustria, sometimes with large siege weapons mounted on their back.
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That's handy to have.

Boney said:
The official opening of the museum does not get a visit from Lutr himself - today's him is uninterested or otherwise occupied, it seems - but it does see a visit from Lutr's Chancellor. His expression is hard to read and he did sniff at the bones, but you took that as him checking for any leftover marrow. He leaves without comment, and soon the initial trickle of the curious becomes a flood of the bribed with alcohol to come here, which you take as a sign of approval.

After a few hectic days, the visitors are a trickle once more, but they're a steady and loyal one, made up mainly of those ensorcelled by the skald's stories and those that have left behind earthly pleasures and require more cerebral ones to occupy their days and nights. While not a bustling center of learning just yet, having a steady throughput means that when you next add something, word will spread and people will already be primed to think it'll be worth a look.
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Lutr isn't always going to be present but the Chancellor seems pretty happy.

Boney said:
+31 Interest
+1 Goodwill
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It's great to have that Goodwill.
 
So, from a numbers-focused perspective the mid-term jackpot would consist of getting our hands on a Patron with an affinity for Lustria or the Lizardmen, since it seems like Aelsabrim can easily get us up to like 30 in those categories, which would translate to like 4 goodies per repackaged exhibition just from that alone. More realistically, audiences interested in those themes would also do good numbers. Without either of those we aren't actually getting that much out of that entire part of our collection or any further acquisitions from that direction.

Cultivating Awakening to actually appreciate all that stuff they've been killing, looting and living in is thus a genuine, if kinda boring, path.

The more exciting option is to grab an Acquisitions crew and go steal stuff that Lutr likes. A single vampiric bauble is currently worth as much as nine(!) lustrian relics. The weird mask was thus actually kinda goated. That also means that Paht should probably personally go check for any loose vampire stuff in Awakening this turn.
 
Honestly I think getting the elves on board would make the most sense, as an audience they likely have the most varied taste and unlike the Imperials they are not going to react with superstitious dread to all things vampire related. Once we have some kind of hook there we can expand to either other elven kingdoms or other places where elves often travel like Marienburg.

It is worth keeping in mind what the GM said about the audience of this quest also being important and this not being a quest for mechanical optimization. From that perspective it makes sense to build wide rather than tall, find many audiences and give them each something to look at rather than finding very specific audiences for stuff we can already provide.
 
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Personally, I think our next exhibit should focus on Vampires and Magic, it gives us an overlap between Lutr, Awakening and The Arabyan academics as potential audiences. For that, I think we should recruit a pirate ship to acquire us some vampire artifacts, and research the Arch-Warlock version of Luthor. That should generate us a big burst of goodwill we can expend on lots of things - both new students and new audiences.
 
I'm definitely leaning towards a magic exhibit of some sort, preferably of the necromantic persuasion, but lizardman or something else would be good.

I'm thinking trying to find a contact who can provide us with magical relics of some sort—possibly one of Paht's old students, if such a thing is possible. An Arabyan Sorcerer Scholar shipping out magical knowledge and artefacts to us would be interesting. Or if that's not possible, chasing legends of Harkon the Veilwalker or Harkon the Sorcerer could get us some interesting leads.

Alternatively, I'd like to go the theology route and make an exhibit to Stromfels—Awakening would probably like that, and we could pull in the seedier parts of Marienburg or even Sartosa as an audience as well.
 
So this is my general plan:

[ ] Plan: Expanded Audience
-[ ] New Acquisitionist
-[ ] New Audience - Sea Elves
-[ ] Plants
 
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