[OOC] Death & Taxes

Team Chat: No one start a bar fight or draw aggro; healer's afk.

No worries mate.

sure :)

I'll update things in a bit. In the meantime, happy February! Everyone gets +5 XP for their monthly award. Let me know if you spend it, or feel free to bank it.

W00t! Going to bank mine

Remember they might have beef with catfolk.

I think the information you got on them was that they were unlikely to be familiar with Catfolk or Orcs. They definitely don't like Dwarves, Elves, and Humans, though.

I think we should send out two max, Nera being one of them. A charming individual as the second?

Guess I'll aid Hildar in walking since he probably looks like he has a hangover although he doesn't.

I'm assuming both :)

OK, so I'm happy to proceed with more swamp exploration, but I do want to note that we are way off book here. The original adventure plan was going to start in media res, with you arriving at the village, your mission to find the tax collector already accepted. I decided to walk things back to Nornholt to give you some opportunities to do a bit of background research and possibly go in with some useful intel. The whole Lizardfolk angle was all the result of random Triumphs y'all rolled and never intended to be the adventure itself.

That said, I believe in player agency, and I'm happy to continue improvising Lizardfolk stuff is that's what you want to pursue (and as long as we eventually get to Buzzards' Ford, where the real adventure lies). So far, I've tried to give you opportunities to take the "back door" to the village (with the hunters), but you seemed not too happy with that plan. Then you said you might want to make contact with some Lizardfolk to get information from them, and I told you it would be hard, but doable, and that's where we're at now.

But if the plan is to continue forward to the Lizardfolk village (where this guy is was cast out from), it raises a few problems. First, what are you planning to do with the horse cart and the horses? I don't want to continue into what will be an involved swamp sub-adventure if half or more of the players are forced to hang back and guard the horses. So I think you need to decide if you're going to abandon them and just apologize profusely to Lady Argus down the road? Or take the extra time it will take to return to the Cailn Crossroads and leave them with Tronus's friend (paying her for her services)? But trying to take the swamp and rivers into the village means the horses don't come with you unless you can come up with some plan to move large animals through the swamp.

Second, if we're going to try to get to the Lizardfolk village, I want everyone to participate. So if you deal with the horse problem somehow, we can go that route with everyone along for the ride. But by doing that, you'll have to figure out how to get into the village's good graces when you're 1) foreigners and "civilized people" they won't like, and 2) hanging out with someone they've cast out from their village. Maybe the wine will be enough? Maybe it won't. It's also a big detour that will cost you a couple days of travel.

To be clear, I'm not trying to dissuade you from any course of action. I just want to make sure that the downside of further swamp exploration is crystal clear. I'll do my best to make sure it pays off somehow, but the adventure was never designed to involve Lizardfolk at all. This is all improv at this point. :)

I am squarely interested in getting out of lizardfolk territory asap, as I don't want any unfortunate incidents to occur.

Well I just called on tronus to join us so that one is sorted 👍

Also, I think the idea is to get that promised "surprising the villagers" bonus so I don’t think we’re looking for the lizard village at the moment. We found our guide, so now we can learn more about what is going on around here and at buzzard’s as we go through the swamp (I admit I failed to read the "by the regular roads" part :(

Should we start a thread that has all the info we do know about the situation? Or what we've extrapolated.

Not a bad idea. You're welcome to do so.

Also LOL at this whole scene.

Welcome to March! Please take another +5 XP. Feel free to spend it immediately or bank for later use. Just let me know either way.

(We're also nearing the end of a session, which will be worth another +15 XP, if that helps you make a decision on what you'd like to do.)

I'll be banking again and wait for those 15! what's the total XP you guys have? I think I got the values switched as my total is lower than the used ... :(

90 Total
+05XP Aug XP Monthly Allotment
+05XP Sep XP Monthly Allotment
+20XP Completion of Session 1
+05XP Oct XP Monthly Allotment
+05XP Nov XP Monthly Allotment
+05XP Dec XP Monthly Allotment
+30 xp end of mission
+05XP Jan XP Monthly Allotment
+05XP Feb XP Monthly Allotment
+05XP Mar XP Monthly Allotment

that includes the initial XP? I have had 205 written on the used XP...