To My Dear Friend Discussion Thread

Welp.

She's one of the most hated 'people' in the empire, and guards will be there round the clock to keep anyone who might want to hurt or kill her at bay - don't want another Dark Mistress popping up when we have a perfectly good one tied up and NOT doing her demon thing right over there. It won't be as easy as just waltzing up and saying hi, even late at night. But you could probably figure something out.

Hmm... We might be able to put Greil's Positive Icon Die with the High King to good use. We also might be able to approach the Grand Oracle for help.

What are we going to do about alerting the guards, guys? Alistar was kinda an important dude. We probably shouldn't just up and leave the scene, else we could become suspects. But I also have a hunch the High King is in on all this so that might happen anyway.

First session summary!

-Retirement party for our dear friend Alistar
-Party guests show up: first Tanith (GX's character,) then Greil (Neo's character,) then The Voyage (Punk's character,) then Mousernet (Dandy's character,) then Adam (Golurk's character) and lastly Fenia (my character.)
-Also in attendance: Some high elf representatives, the Longbeard Thane, the Red, some other people we never identified seemingly of great importance, the King's brother, Alistar's wife, Ruby and their adoptive Tiefling daughter, Yora
-Showed up late: The prince and princess
-Showed up REALLY late: The Deathless One

Most of us arrive while Alistar is still chillin' out, maxin', relaxin' and drinking some fine elven wine that the elves had brought. He's friendly and mirthful to everyone who shows up, gives everyone drinks and food and attention. Yora is busy running around serving everyone their drinks, handling the refills and such. The Longbeard doesn't seem too thrilled with what's on tap so he calls in his own servants to pass around fine dwarven ale, redistributed from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs, of course. The Red is eating by herself, so Greil decides to join her and partake in her sausage. Just. A. Single. Sausage. She eats and drinks herself into a slight coma, then when she wakes up they spar. Afterward, she throws him into a bedroom for some additional grappling practice. The door is magically shut behind them by Fenia. The prince and princess show up saying that the High King couldn't make it, slip in something about the Lord High Magus causing trouble being his reason, but don't get into it.

After the guests start slowly pouring out, Alistar calls the party into his study to meet privately. He gifts us each the magic items we picked and then explains that the Dark Mistress is held up in the castle dungeon and he's concerned that something of great value was stolen from her, and he believes the Blood Knight is behind it. (Let me know if I'm getting any of this wrong, Crow.) He asks us to go talk to her and investigate it because he's not certain he can trust the icons he knows, and then goes to find a drawing of the object that was stolen. Ruby says that she thinks Alistar is just tilting at windmills, but asks us to help him anyway. Some of the party are suspicious of her and possibly of the elves or dwarves poisoning Alistar because of his sudden cough. However, once we've all gotten used to our new items, Greil goes to check on Alistar and finds him in the next room killed. There's a sigil of the Deathless One on the mirror, and we determine that Alistar was killed by a knife to the back, rather than anything apparently monstrous. The window is open and the only thing outside is a woman in rags sitting on the street, seemingly a beggar. Tanith finds a piece of paper behind the mirror after Fenia shatters it in shock. Some of the party take Yora and Ruby downstairs, while Greil checks on the Red who's OK but still passed out. He can't wake her, and downstairs Ruby and Yora scream, attacked and surrounded by four zombies. We kill some of the zombies after leaping into action then get attacked by an animated Alistar ghoul. Once we defeat Alistar, the Deathless One shows up, but is surprisingly furious that her dear friend Alistar is lying dead at the top of the stairs... and somebody has used her symbol. Tanith checks the piece of paper and sees that the drawing on it is of a statue of the Tarrasque. The Deathless One demands that the party, Tanith and Fenia in particular, find out who had Alistar killed, specifically that and not who carried it out. This seems to be backed by a curse on the two, but the Red seeing what the Deathless One was doing, drop kicks the Deathless One out the door. She explodes into bats and disappears.

I'm kinda feeling attempting to rescue the Dark Mistress, but maybe instead of deciding to do that we could try and get a better feel for what icons might be on our side with regards to finding out who killed Alistar, and what icons are sus.

Maybe we should all just go ahead and divulge some of our relationships? Figure out who we want to do the talking with meeting who, if we go that route.

I don't know about straight up rescuing the Dark Mistress. That's a big call that we don't have enough info to make.

Greil has 1 Positive Die with the High King, 1 Conflicted Die with the Blood Knight, and 1 Positive Die with the Platinum Dragon.

Ah.  Right.  Yes.  I said that bard song stacking was a rare enough occurrence that letting it stack was fine.  But if you pick Grand Oracle as the party's go-to icon, you might have a lot more bardsong around...  I need to think about that again.

You won't generally have an NPC following you... though you'll probably end up rescuing them or otherwise fighting beside them a lot.


I wonder who it'll be.  You've got leads and/or reason to visit... all of them except Untamed, Savage One, and Platinum, right?
Not-Miranda again?  Well, GO's pretty different.  High King, Council of Scales, Triumvirate, Dark Mistress, even the Jack or Blood Knight are on the table...  even the Deathless One.

IMO, The Deathless One made it pretty clear that she wasn't going to help us. At least not directly. Trying to go to her would probably just get us killed.

I think the Council or the Oracle would probably end up being our best bets. The Platinum might help too. Personally, my current vote goes to the Council, though that's mostly for selfish reasons. But Greil and the Red getting closer would also help us.

I think Tanith has a positive die with the Elfy Elves?

Honestly, I would say the High King is our bet, but I really think he's involved. Him leaving when he did was a pretty big coincidence, don't ya think?