Prelude to Marriage

Scribe Notes

Summary

Adventure: Prelude to Marriage
GM: Terry
Season: Spring 823 wk
Night: Thursday
Location: Online
Level: Low to Medium

Party

• Uthgard - Mill Sci (?)
• Zardoz - Scribe
• Mirage - Party Leader
• Argus Ramhammer
• Lady Arcadia
• Belladona

Employer

Sabastian

Mission

Help a nice young lady complete some quests set by her prospective father in-law. She must NOT know the help has come from Uncle Sabastian.

Pay

A combination of Investments, art and silver plus neg loot options

Scribe Notes

Seagate 1 Thaw (Duesday)

We met the day of the Guild Meeting and were directed to an interview and meeting room. There was a suspiciously good wine and cheese provided – I thought perhaps we’d either been directed to a room intended for a senior party, or that the comestibles may be the entire payment. After a while Sabastian appeared and provided both more food and a comprehensive background to the mission.

Sabastian has a niece, a human niece, so I think the relationship is more customary than biological. This niece, one Philippa by name, wishes to marry above her social station. She comes from a very rich but middle class (merchant) family and seeks the hand of a young man who is the fourth son of the Viscount of Westmarch. In order that his family might smile upon this union she wishes to make a “name for herself”, by which we understand she wishes to become a famous hero of the realm, or otherwise distinguish herself in some fashion such that his family will view her as a better matrimonial prospect.

Personally I would have thought the pots of money that her family has would have made her a sufficiently suitable matrimonial prospect for a fourth son, as most noble families have a tendency to be land rich and money poor and generally you can't eat the old castles, but anyway this apparently is the course that the young lady has decided upon and her uncle wishes to aid her in this, despite I might note, the young lady having decided that she doesn't want any help from Uncle Sabastian.

Sabastian, not being one to take no for an answer, is seeking to employ a Guild party to go undercover and pretend to not be a Guild party and to not be sent by Uncle Sabastian in order to aid his niece Philippa in achieving her goals.

[Aside: I'm really not sure this is a good thing as it feels like he's deliberately undermining her hero’s journey in order to feel like he is being helpful, or perhaps he has issues with relinquishing control. It would be interesting to find exactly why he feels compelled to intervene.]

From our perspective however, our motives are that he's prepared to pay us handsomely, to loan us all sorts of items, and to provide us with quite a few other mundane items that we may require for this undertaking. Sabastian took from us quite a laundry list of things which required an entire week to arrange. So far, he's been remarkably generous, so we should perhaps overlook avuncular eccentricities.

We asked a number of questions of Sabastian to determine how we might go about aiding Philippa, and Sabastian clarified a number of things including: famous is not the same as infamous, he would prefer that we did not involve ourselves in regime changes, and that he would be displeased if Philippa came to harm. Based on this we discounted some potential courses of action.

The current plan is to take ship to Freetaun, and then journey north to the capital of Hurrell where we can likely locate our nascent heroine. We then need to (somehow) ingratiate ourselves with her, becoming the sort of useful companions who will appear as small background figures when the official portrait of her is made as a great hero of Aladar. We expect to fine tune the plan and introduce some specifics into the gulf between “meet Philippa” and “Philippa is famous”.

Since we cannot be known to be from Seagate, as this would associate us too closely with Uncle Sabastian, and since we need to explain our rather unusual group comprising a giant, human, dwarf, two elves, and a halfling, along with sundry hangers on, we've had papers drawn up that show us to be members of the Adventurers Guild of Freetaun. We don't know if there was an Adventurer’s Guild in Freetaun, but there is now, and we are it.

After loading down Sabastian with our requests we agreed to meet back a week later at the docks. Sabastian and Uthgard headed off to Brastor, the rest found things to occupy them around Seagate.

On Ship 8 Thaw (Duesday) to 10 Thaw (Th'rsday)

We boarded the ship “Silky Dawn” and met Sabastian's associate, a water mage by the name of Riptide along with the captain of the vessel (Thorne Blackwater) who made some rather undistinguished cabins available to us and advised us to stay clear of the crew and not get in the way of their maritime activities.

On the first night out around 2:00 AM an alarm was raised on the ship and our party member on watch Lady Arcadia raced downstairs to summon the rest of her group.

While I must commend Lady A on her alacrity, the amount of detail supplied was somewhat lacking as she roused us and the sleeping crew, and as we prepared to head to the deck, we were unsure of the nature of the threat.

Making hurried preparations we headed up from below-decks to discover that ship had been boarded by quite a number of pirates. These pirates were rather smellier and more disagreeable than is usual even for members of their unsavoury profession and appeared to be already dead and overgrown with barnacles and other sea life.

Mirage decided to give the attackers a sporting chance by blinding most of our crew leaving the party to bear the brunt of the fighting. Fortunately, the pirates’ decomposing undead nature slowed them and despite their considerable advantage in numbers the party were able to hold their own.

The pirate captain cast a mass fear that affected several the party along with quite a few of the already blinded sailors who took this opportunity to shuffle further away from the combat. On a command from the captain several of the putrescent pirates attempted to close with party members to varying degrees of success but this was not enough to shift the balance and as the number of invaders inevitably dwindled the captain withdrew to a corner of the main deck adjacent to the forecastle and barricaded himself behind a wall of bones.

With the rest of the party still fighting in close, drenched in the effluvia of leaking and decaying pirates, Mirage, Lady Arcadia's wolf and your humble scribe charged across the deck to the fo'c'sle and prepared to engage the captain.

Mil Sci

Watch Order

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12
Uthgard				Arcadia				Argus
Zardos				Mirage				Belladonna

Skirmish Formations (Front)

Default

Double File

Single File

Buffs

Long Duration Buffs

Magic	Rk	Effects	Dur	Ut	Za	Mi	AR	LA	Be
Disguise Illusion	12	change height, weight, voice or clothing	13 hours	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Illusionary Aura	6	Partly obscure aura	7 days	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Fire Armour	8	Absorb (36 points magical) fire damage	9 hours	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Fire Proofing	7	Protect vs normal fire	8 hours	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y

Short Duration / Situational Buffs

Magic	Rk	Effects	Dur	Ut	Za	Mi	AR	LA	Be
Shadow Wings (Za/LA)	6	36 mph	3½ hrs	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Witchsight (Za)	6	150' dark, see invisible	3½ hrs	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Shadow Form (Za)	10	22% DEF Melee, 11% Close	5½ hrs	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Multiple Images	10	Three extra images of the target, which can absorb attacks	11 minutes	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Wildfires	10	Burny speedz! (40mph)	220 mins	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Weapon of Flames	11	+12% SC +6 DM (+11 DM vs vuln)	16 mins	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y

Self Only Buffs

Magic	Rk	Effects	Dur	Ut	Za	Mi	AR	LA	Be
Ice Armour (Ha)	15		9 hrs	Y
Project Image	20	become invisible. Can move, hear, see, talk thru image	n/a			Y

Calendar

Spring: Thaw 823 (10)
	Moonday		Duesday		W'ansday		Th'rsday		Frysday		Reapsday		Sunday
		Candlemansa	1	Guild Meeting Seagate	2		3		4		5		6	.
	7		8	Sailing Day	9		10		11		12		13
	14		15		16		17		18		19		20
	21		22		23		24		25		26		27
	28		29		30		1		2		3		4
Spring: Seedtime 823 (11)
	5		6		7		8		9		10		11
	12		13		14		15		16		17		18
	19		20		21		22		23		24		25
	26		27		28		29		30		1		2
Spring: Blossom 823 (12)
	3		4		5		6		7		8		9
	10		11		12		13		14		15		16
	17		18		19		20		21	Floralia	22		23
	24		25		26		27		28		29		30	Walpurgisnacht