General conversation/OOC commentary

Zin is actually out of spell slots at this point soooooo. Her attempts to save are going to be futile.

Perhaps there is some expression or utterance that she picks up on from her close range with Elowin that helps her communicate to the rest that Elowin does not want us to change this outcome. Or any of the other options work as well.

I’m partial to the blade having been coated in a poison that resists healing attempts as it makes for a "truly no one could do anything" sort of farewell … and paves the way for some interesting character development that I don’t think any of us anticipated dabbling in: potential obsessions with toxins.

I’m good with either the poison or the dweller as well :)

The dweller havent really had its time in the limelight. It would make it even more spooky if it was clear that deaths its realm would feed it, instead of going to the respective afterlives

Okay, if that's what you choose, I have some suggestions.

Yes but I'm not sure our GM wants the story to turn into a quest to murder the Dweller to release its captured souls and allow them to finally rest.

As for the idea of Elowin calling off attempts to heal her (through Zin or otherwise), that wouldn't stop Adran.

"She said to let her go."
"She's also delerious from shock and loss of blood."...as he casts Cure Wounds.

Hey, folks: we're going in to a holiday weekend in the USA, and I'm going to Kublacon Fall Friday through Monday, so at the very least my posting rate will be a bit more sporadic, but it may mean that I don't end up posting for some days.

That's fine -- have fun at the con!!

Thx for letting us know - and have fun

Counting down until Adran Galanodel becomes Victor von Doom in 3... 2...

You guys got it, though not perhaps in the expected way. The expected way is for the players to recall that, when he translated the map, Findal pointed out that the map bears the text "The Oathbound Ones" on it, and the text on the wall reads:

THEFO
ATHBA
OLUND
ONELS

It's why I kept mentioning the map, to try to point you guys to it.

When you recognize that text, it becomes

THEFO
ATHBA
OLUND
ONELS

Then it's just a matter of reading the text that doesn't belong.

It's clearly something that players would have an easier time with if they write out the text and/or have it printed on a piece of paper in front of them (as would be default in a face-to-face game). But the wall collapses as soon as someone says "FALL," and Faith did.

Applause all around, y’all. For the GM working with the medium we have and y’all being able to work it out. I saw a bunch of letters and my brain immediately went "no thank you" so I’m glad we’ve got some better thinkers on the team. :D

WHAT TO DO NEXT

I've been putting it off in the hopes that one of our two absent players would manage to reappear, but we are now at the point where I can't delay it any longer: the campaign needs an answer as to what we are going to do with the absent players' PCs and the party going forward. Broadly speaking, that resolves into two broad questions that are interrelated:
1) What happens to Elysia and Ishi?
2) Do we continue with a 4-player party, or recruit more players?

Relevant to this first question is the fact that it has been more than a month since forkbeard lost the ability to log on to GP, and a month since he responded in any way to my prompts/updates in Discord. Kilikina, meanwhile, has been gone for two and a half months. There's nothing to indicate that either of them are coming back to the game any time in the foreseeable future.
So the most obvious thing to do mechanically would be to remove their characters. I'm open to that, but it's really tough from a story or character standpoint: Elysia and Eozindra are canonically the only family they've been able to rely on for years, Ishi canonically has no connections to anyone outside of the party, and everyone is reeling from the loss of Elowin and would naturally want to pull together in their grief (particularly Ishi, for whom she had become a beloved aunty). So I'm also open to continuing with one or both of them in the party...but only if a player or players collectively control them. There is a big decision that the PCs are rapidly approaching, and no one should want the DM making the choices for a third of the party.

In my experience, it's a HARD sell on GP to get a player to come in and play a character created by someone else, but I'm open to that if any of you think that you know someone who'd like to step in and take over one of the characters. I'm not confident that I could find anyone, and I went through a similar situation in another game (though in that case, a player rage quit the site and deleted all his characters. At least here we still have Ishi and Elysia).

One last thing I will say: while I think that six players is a better number on GP in general (primarily for posting frequency, keeping the action rolling if/when a given player has an interruption, and contributing to discussions), we don't need six players, nor do we need six PCs for this campaign. The first group I ran through this campaign was just four PCs, so it's possible to do even with a smaller/weaker party.

So, possibilities I see are (feel free to add your own or comment on these):
1) Remove Ishi and Elysia from the party.
Advantages:
- It's simple.
- It doesn't add any burden to any of you.
- It opens up slots for other players with new characters, if we decide to go that route
Disadvantages:
- It makes no sense.
- The characters are gone if/when forkbeard or kilikina return.
- The party is one-third weaker if we decide to not recruit new players

2) Keep Ishi and Elysia in the party controlled by new players
Advantages:
- The established party sticks together
- No one has to play multiple PCs
- There are two more voices for discussion/posting/gaming/participating
- The party remains at full strength
Disadvantages:
- Finding someone willing to play Ishi or Elysia is tough
- There may be a long delay in finding new players willing to do this, which could hold up the game
- New people will play the characters differently
- Awkward if forkbeard or kilikina do eventually return

3) Keep Ishi and Elysia in the party controlled by one of you
Advantages:
- The established party sticks together
- You players are a known quantity
- You already know the characters
- Can hand back Ishi or Elysia if forkbeard or kilikina eventually return
Disadvantages:
- Some of you will be playing two characters
- There are two fewer players for group discussions/decision making/participation
- More disruption if a given player is absent/takes a vacation
- Possibility of bias in decision-making

4) Keep Ishi and Elysia in the party controlled by the four of you as a group
Advantages:
- The established party sticks together
- You players are a known quantity
- You already know the characters
- Can hand back Ishi or Elysia if forkbeard or kilikina eventually return
Disadvantages:
- There are two fewer players for group discussions/decision making/participation
- Possible disagreement about what Ishi and Elysia "should do" in a given situation (which probably means some kind of rotation of the characters between players, or a set, predetermined way of resolving Ishi and Elysia's actions)
- Ishi and Elysia probably would become "second-class" characters

What do you think?

Obviously, what we decide to do in answer to the first question affects the answer to this second question. But I will point out a few things:

- more players are better for coverage in play-by-post, in my experience
- but players who post reliably/regularly make up for a multitude of problems in play-by-post, and you four have been great and reliable players in all the games I've seen you play, not just this one
- this campaign can be (and has been) completed with just four PCs
- but just four player PbP games are much more vulnerable to disruption and delay if even one player is absent. The dynamics of 3P games are very interesting here on GP: I find that people post less when there are just 3P, I think because each player doesn't want to be seen as "hogging" the spotlight or dominating the game. People tend to wait on posting again until someone else has posted, and that wait gets longer and longer the fewer players there are.

As with the first question of what to do with Ishi and Elysia, I don't think there's a right or wrong answer with regards to how many players we should get, or an obviously correct choice. I just need to start inviting people, if we decide as a group that that's what we want to do.

Touch question where there is no really good answer. I think you have done an admiral job of piloting Ishi and Elysia.

Personally I think that we should try and recruit a new player with the offer of 2 established characters. Chances are that the player want to make their own character, and that should be okey aswell.
The character(s) not selected by the new player, should fade to the background and just slide out of the story. We can make some handwaiving and lamp-shading to patch the story together as we splice the new character into the narrative.

---

This is one of my favorite games here on GP and I really enjoy our game.

Honestly, I greatly appreciate all the effort you have made in keeping those two characters active. I have been wondering for a bit how to handle if Killi doesn’t come back. That said, I have a friend in a biweekly dnd game I play and I have reached out to her to see if she’d like to join in as Elysia. I was actually talking to her about Zin/Sia’s backstory last night when we were chatting about all our various games and characters. She hasn’t played on GP before, but I have told her many times she needs to join. Maybe having an opportunity to jump into a game I’m already rolling with will be more encouraging for her to pull the trigger on pbp games. If not, I can take on both characters also as to ease up on the GM’s burden, but I honestly can’t think of a way to phase out Zin’s sister without grinding Zin to a halt as well.

Just a stray thought, but is there any reason the two couldn't do something like... go get the Morlocks and bring them here? The Lord Mayor is (afaik) no longer a threat, and this seems like a nicer place. The benefit is it removes Ishi and Sia while keeping them at arms length. Should either player return, it shouldn't be too hard to get them back in the action. It also seperates Sia and Zin in the story without truly seperating them. Maybe Sia is too overwhelmed and needs to take some time to get her head straight. She isn't gone so much as just not with us at the moment.

I do like the idea of inviting someone to join, particularly if it's someone who might like to play Elysia. While having six characters isn't necessary, and there's plenty of excuses for Ishi and/or Elysia to leave the party, the issue is making that separation OK for Eozindra. So if someone could be found willing to play Elysia, that would be lovely. If we can't, @Redamancy and the rest of us can come up with some ideas for Zin to decide that it's better for Elysia to stay and her to continue, and we can decide whether to invite others to create level-appropriate new PCs to join in the next chapter...

I don’t have anything useful to add, sorry. I’m open to whichever solution you choose. I think it’s amazing that you’ve played it out this far with the players missing as it is.

OK, so it sounds like there's no objections to seeking one or two new players.

How about this?
I've opened the game to new applications.
@Redamancy - Talk to your friend and see if she will create an account on GP and apply for the game in the next week. If she does, she can play Elysia if she wants to do that. If you tell me that she's not interested after all or she hasn't applied for the game after that week, I'll advertise the openings on 2 December and see if someone else wants to join the game with new characters.

If anyone else has people in mind to play either Ishi or Elysia, let us know here; we can have them apply in the same timeframe.