The Fellowship Grows, the Journey Continues (OOC)

Out of character chatter about The Fellowship Grows, the Journey Continues thread can go here to avoid cluttering up the Roleplay thread.This is for longer questions and answers related to that Roleplay, general rules questions not answered in the Help! thread can go in General.

Add a link back to the post in question so we can have context. After posting you can right-click on the orange header and select 'copy link address' (or whatever your browser calls it), then paste that in your OOC post.

If we split up to hunt [ref], maybe keep the scene brief (with a single roll for both or one each, to see how well it goes?) so we don't leave half the players twiddling their thumbs.

I agree that both could apply but WIS seems the better fit. DEX may have come into it as a reaction if it went badly and you had to be quick to recover a lost fish, for instance.

Bear in mind that we can't change the Attribute used after the roll (unless an obvious mistake was made and everyone completey agrees, without reservation) as it could change the known outcome and that feels like cheating.

Awesome :)
It's always nice to establish some trust among the group. Besides, how are we ever going to get to your extensive backstory otherwise? :P

Where is that smooth saxophone music coming from? :D

Not from Theo, I can tell you that much. And Daryl is away getting water... :)

Do we want to do anything else before bed?

Lille catches enough to feed the party well, (and there is garlic and other greens to enhance the fresh fish). Ezme's traps can deal with breakfast.

Nope

Nothing from Roald? Does he miss that there may be any tension at all?

Roald is not aware of the situation being awkward for Ezme.

Albert is good to go.

If it is not too late.
I would like Roald to ask about where Lille and Ezme now each other from.

Now that Lille is absent.

But I'm also fine with asking it tomorrow when the whole group is on the road

Fine by me. Decide among yourselves if you want to have the conversation now or at a later date. Let me know when you want to move on.

The only tension Roald knows about is the knot in his back - if only there was some big strong woman to help massage it out... (more smoooth saxophone) ;)

Lille has nothing else to do, and will look pleased/relieved to have brought back a good dinner. She will want to set a watch schedule for sure, although with 6 either we should do 3 pairs, or just 3-4 people on watch and the rest asleep, rotating on other nights.

No one got much sleep last night, so there is both a benefit and a downside to doubling the watch. Downside is everyone gets their sleep disrupted or for twice as long, upside is you have company to help keep you awake.

With 6 of you taking turns you each need to stand watch for less than an hour. Make it an hour each since we can say you are tired enough to go to sleep before it is fully dark.

For 'reasons' I might define who stands which watch, or, at least, place a few restrictions on the order (and pairings if you double up). Let me know your preference and I will set the scenes once Roald and Ezme are done.

That math is confusing. If we aimed for 8 hrs of sleep divided by 6 watches, we’d each do 1.33333 hrs awake, and 6.66666 asleep. Make it 9 total hrs, and we each have 1.5 awake and 7.5 asleep. The latter seems pretty reasonable, unless someone feels otherwise. Of course the first and last get the best deal, with no interruption.

Lille will readily agree to any order the others prefer, or to watching in pairs. I have real life experiences with standing watch, so if any characters have experience with it, let me know. I can share what I’ve learned, even if Lille wouldn’t know it.

All maths are confusing. It is an attempt to tame the fundamental forces of the universe into natural language.
That is a very modern and industrialised view. Before electric (or gas) light, people tended to sleep about 8 hour on average, but in the winter this was longer and in the summer this was shorter. It is just after mid-summer, so the nights are short and it will be dark for less than 6 hours. The dawn will (usually) wake you before your '8 hours'.

If you want to sleep for the full 8, you are welcome to. You are probably tired enough to want to go sleep before it is dark, and you can say you decided to lie-in even after the day starts and plan for 9 and a half hours (8 hours sleep each with an hour and half standing watch (we don't need the exact details, you don't have watches:)).
Why don't you take the first watch, then you can describe whatever details you think would be interesting and benefit the others. Then wake Ezme who can wake Theo.

Do we want to double up the watch duty? It will introduce complications, but we can deal with them.

An hour each seems manageable in terms of staying awake. Do we need to roll for it?

No rolls called for.

We must be much further north than I thought, or this world works very differently than ours. Right now, about a week after the summer solstice, Edinburgh in the UK is getting 6.5 hrs of night. I was expecting our game to be closer to 8hrs.

The first thing that I can say from standing watches is that if I am tired enough, I will sleep longer and sleep through sunrise or other stimuli quite easily. But I know plenty of people who waken much more easily, so that is likely a personal thing.

The rest is just more about what is an ideal watch schedule for different numbers of people and desired awake/sleep times. Lille doesn’t know any of that, so she will not be communicating it. Watches are generally boring without books, movies, music, or snacks and other entertainment. If you really want me to narrate Lille sitting and listening to the sounds of the night I can do that. But I think it would be much more interesting to skip ahead to whatever ‘reasons’ you have for influencing the watch order.

I was not being precise, about 6 hours may have been a bit short, but we don't need to worry about these details and your characters don't know the exact hours. So about an hour and a bit each should cover it. :)
Will do.

Can we read both threads?
Maybe it ruins the fun 😁

Yes, of course. Please do. Don't (overtly) act on them, though.

The Shadow Carnevale thread is already fractured and contains things others in the thread should not act upon. I merely split them because they are 'different locations'.

Holy moly! A lot happened while I slept!

Uh, so... I guess I need to make two posts. One to respond to Roald and another to respond to Theo....

Whoops, sorry. I missed that you had not yet said you wanted to move on.
Yes. Deal with your conversation with Roald in as much detail as you want before they all go to bed. We can come back to Theo whenever it is convenient, he can wait.

Okay. I posted a response to Roald. Lemme know, @Airshark, if you want to continue that conversation or if I should jump ahead to the nighttime. I'm down with either.

Haha! Love that comment :D

No need to continue

Hey, sweet dreamers! I was just curious if you could tell me your character's greatest fear, or at least an image that would represent that fear well....

...for no particular reason... 👀

(This would include Daryl, as well....)

Oh, and also something that your character finds soothing, if you don't mind....

Albert likes the sounds and smells of a bustling tavern. It calms him down.
He has been trying to find his lost aunt Mertle, so if you could work that in as a fear that could work.
Check out this post.

Daryl is a brave knight, the armour proves it! If pressed he would think his greatest fear is to fall short of that ideal, but, what he can not even admit to himself, is that what he really fears is that such failure would leave him alone, that his friends would not accept him if he can not prove himself worthy.

A fear of being alone and abandoned? At a time while he and everybody else seems to be alone at a strange carnival? Seems like a recipe alright. :) (Pity we don't have a player to show us his point of view:)

Is what I read the first time...🤦 If that doesn't wake them up, nothing will I guess :-D:-D:-D

Used to work for people drowned in the Thames, why not here? :)

tell me more!

Thames smoke enema

When I say 'work' I mean someone once told a tale to explain what they were doing to a corpse and the story stuck?

I think I heard about this in a QI episode once.

Oh goodness... Thanks for the belly laugh! Ezme wouldn't dare (curious or no)!

Thanks for the additional character info. Hopefully I'll get to put at least some of that to good use....

(Duplicate post)

Albert didn't have one, but I think his staff became his holy symbol when it received Raynor's emblem back in the temple.
However, he probably doesn't realize that.

I think Theo was present at least once when Albert used this staff in Raynor's name. So he might know.

Do you need to know what else he can find?

That seems right.
Right. He will think of it if we think it will help.

Would Albert be sleeping with his staff on his person? If so, do we think that that would protect him from the physical effects of the shadow-cold [ref]?
Only if it is interesting. :)

Let me know if I need to do a roll or something to determine if Ezme's efforts to help Daryl are working....

Depends what you mean by 'help'. See my questions in the General Chat thread and we can work out what we want to do in the story, then we can see how this moves us towards that.

Your actions do help, he is warming up. If all you want is to get him (and the others) out of danger of freezing to death you can achieve that goal, empowering you to do whatever you need to do next.

When Daryl hears what happened... 🤣

What's he gong to be? Jealous of himself?? :)

I pictured him as a prude. So sharing body heat could make him feel so ashamed he'd never talk about it. Ezme on the other hand might bring it up whenever she sees fit 🤣.
Could be fun...

Could be. :)

haha, no.... Ezme may enjoy shocking folks by making bawdy jokes, but truth be told, she lacks much personal experience with cuddling/intimacy. She is not prude, but she is proud. Larinia forbid she should ever be perceived as desperately throwing herself at a man!

So yeah... Of the two of them, she may secretly feel more abashed about the whole affair because she was the one who actually initiated this "cuddle".

:: tap tap :: Testing the microphone..

No pressure @vagueGM, but wanted to make sure you didn't accidentally forget me over here, given you're having to handle so many individual storylines at once!

(I may or may not be on the edge of my seat wondering how Theo is gonna respond!)

Whoops. Thanks for the nudge, I kept meaning to come back there but it kept slipping away.

Hm.

May I ask what everyone's character's ages are, including the NPCs?

Theo an Daryl are both 'young men', for whatever that means. Old enough to be expected to go out into the world and find a place for themselves and old enough to marry and have kids. I don't know details beyond that.

Theo's slightly younger sister may be in the process of marrying one of the previous PCs.

Theo? 😆

Sure. Could be.

Roald is 27.

Albert is somewhere between 40 to 45 I think

Ok, I’m gonna stop calling him old man now. 😂

Comparatively speaking...?

lol. Oh, he’s older than Ezme. She is actually 27, too.

But 40 is the new 30, right? Right? 😂

No? 40 is still 40, I think? Felt like, at least.

@TheGenerator, let me know when you feel ready for Albert to join the others in the dream, and I will drag your body over to join Roald and Lille....

Er, Albert's body, anyway. :-P

Will do :)

... I think I scent a unification?

Or urination

If you would like me to have your character pee himself in his sleep, that can be arranged.... ;)

Ok, well... I went ahead and posted because I figure the timing on this can afford to be a little flexible. If Albert wants a little more action on his own before he gets together with the others, he can do that....

I hear that is a common way to communicate events inside a dream to the world outside the dream. :)

I wasn't sure if it would be the next post or maybe the one after that we find each other. So I was still leaving it open :)
It's all fine to me.

Thanks for the transportation! :D

No prob. Gonna ramp up the excitement on my side soon. Daryl's on his way, and then I'd like to loop Ezme into the dream, if you all are amenable to the idea.

Do you have a plan as to how to loop Ezme into the dream?

Given that we have just seen Albert swap bodies with the bear, and you have absorbed most of Daryl's 'cold', are you taking his place in the dream? Just a thought?

I was entertaining a different idea, though there’s a certain logic to your proposal. …I think I’d like it to be more intentional on her part, though. Seems more heroic and the like.

Roald is still trying to get out. Hope we don't swap places 😉

Then go with that. Heroic is good. :)

... Trying to give you all a little time to greet Albert before throwing more characters into the mix....

Eh, I’m good, please send help. Could be Daryl, and/or Ezme. Locks and cages are above Lille’s pay grade :P

My logic is that Ezme absorbed some of Daryl's venom -- enough that she would have eventually experienced the hallucination if she had gone to sleep naturally. The honey just helped knock her out quicker.

@vagueGM, I have an idea for how Ezme could enter the dreamworld, if you don't mind me narrating that bit...

Go for it.

Cool. Thanks! Gonna have to wait 'til tomorrow, though.

Just FYI - I edited my last post slightly to try to make it clearer that this is a flashback of Theo (from when everyone was still unconscious).

Is Daryl okay, @vagueGM? I assume so?

Also, are we to conclude that the others have been relieved of their venom via the light of Raynor?

Obviously Ezme is now purged of the bee honey that made her sleep, though it occurs to me that she has not necessarily been purged of the shadow venom which she got from Daryl through "osmosis." Maybe that's okay. Maybe the venom's effects only last for a certain amount of time before the immune system overrides it. Or maybe there will be lasting effects for some and/or all of us... I'm curious to find out!

As OK as everyone else. I meant to mention him, but that got missed.

You guys are welcome to use the spare NPCs in your narrations.
Unless we want to say otherwise. I figure there might still be sting marks, but the black stuff around them is gone.
I assumed that was purified out when the urn was untethered from this world.

Disconnecting the urn also probably explains why Ezme suddenly could not breath the air on that shadow-world? :)
I would assume so. But I won't enforce it if we all just want to put it behind us.

There could be psychological after-effects from the experience, and you might need to recover from the toxin that was in your system, but most of all, you might need to recover from the effects of the that other world that was trying to siphon off your flesh (Carnevale).


It is up to you guys how much you want to play this out going forward.

Will you be indicating what those effects are, or do you expect us to determine that?

I imagine that some lingering venom or aftereffects from the dreamworld (such as Albert's inner bear) might also act as a homing beacon for whatever Ezme released from the dreamworld (though I'd rather not face that dude right away!).

Aside from what you have already been doing (general tiredness and weakness, pretty much carrying over what you experienced there in as much as you want to) I don't have anything in mind.

I am always more interested in narrative after-effects than in mechanical ones, so we can see if anything comes up in the story that links back.
Maybe? We will need some way to bring that back into the story so we don't lose it, but I don't know yet how it will come back.
Sure. Let me know when you want to have it come back, and I will also bear it in mind and look for opportunities.

Roald will conveniently arrive when Ezme and Lille's conversation is done to ask if they are able to get back on route.

Sounds good.

What sort of day do we (the players) want the characters to have? Do we want something to happen to them, or do we want a day of introspection and dealing with recovery? Or do we want to skip ahead to near the border?

An uneventful trip would be welcome I guess. Most of us need some rest so we'll be taking it slowly.
I have nothing special in mind for Roald until we reach the border.

Yeah we can get back to the campfire soon, then I’ll narrate one quick thing and be ready to move on. I agree that our characters could use an uneventful day of rest. I’m open to some time in there for role play and introspection, but ok to play that by ear. Lille will be most interesting in a town setting, but it could also be fun to have more of her personality and quirks come out with this group. Mostly we’ve just seen her in action, so adding some unstressed interaction could be fun. That could be around the next camp fire or at the border, or both.

It would be nice to arrive at some kind of small village where we can warm up, eat and rest. Nothing interesting needs to happen.

I agree with all the others!

Sound like you're up.
Let's see Roald finding the ladies (hopefully they don't think he was trying to sneak a peak), then we can do Lille's 'quick thing' and set off.

Given this, we can skip forward with a few days of quiet travel and (sufficient hunting) then arrive at a small town near the border (we don't need to define exactly how near) where you can rest up, maybe restock, and talk and gather gossip.

You can flash back to any important conversations or realization or anything you may have had on the trip.

There is a slightly weird interaction between Theo and Daryl during Albert's conversation [ref], but we can also save that to be hinted at during the trip.

lol! I was quietly laughing to myself about Roald saying he was going to go check on us while we were bathing. 😂

...I assume you will let Roald and Lille have their planned interactions before launching us to the next thing?
Oh, mannn! lol!

Yep, that's the plan.

Was Roald close to where we were bathing when he stepped out?! He sure sounds like he was up to no good! 😂

In my mind Roald didn't know they were bathing and was taken by surprise seeing them 'wet'.
As in: glad he didn't stumble upon them earlier.

The wildspeak did it end up being a language with words / sounds? Or is it a non verbal body language kinda deal?

More the latter, I think. Definitely some sounds; Albert’s name in "Bear" might be a sort of grunt-huff or something. I just wanted to establish for our characters the idea of our players that he could understand her Wildspeak, if not speak it himself.

That's what I thought too, but didn't want to make a mistake in my reply :)

Ok, all done now. Let’s fast forward, and add montages and flashbacks as we see fit :)

And this, friends, is why it's considered bad luck to have a woman on a boat....

That's a fact, and you don't even need a boat! :)

Nah, you’ve got it backwards. It’s the boys who are being so emotional and moody; clearly the boat/group would work better without them.. ;)

I will try to post tomorrow with a little montage for Lille. Also for clarification - is Roald headed to the waterfall with Daryl in current time, when we’ve spotted the village? Or is that a flashback?

That happens before we get to town.

Okay, so when we see the town, you both are with us, @Airshark?

Yes, that's the plan.

(Cool. Feel free to continue your flashback. No pressure!)

Opinion! -- Is it good/bad/fun/distracting to generate images? It occurred to me that it might be fun, but I don't want to accidentally ruin anyone's experience of the game.

I ... don't have an opinion? Is that a valid opinion? :)

As with formatting, and such, we should not rely on the images, making sure the written words cover all the information we need (some people are blind), but that is not an issue in this case.

I don't mind

I like a picture every now and then. It sometimes triggers ideas that I might otherwise not have had. From a random item in the background or something.

About Roald's chat with Daryl: is there something Daryl will say about his problem with Theo? If not, I will narrate getting back to the group and continue in the village.

@quietpanther, for clarification, is Lille reaching over the fence to communicate with the dog, or did she open it up and stride right through it?

He would rather talk about his fears than address the topic of the awkwardness with his friend [ref]. :)

He heard your suggestion that he talk to Theo, but that sounds very naive to him. How can that fix things? It's Theo's fault, anyway! He should talk to me! I didn't do anything!

Roald could guess that such typical, juvenile, thought-processes are going on.

Lille will reach over a low spot or through a small hole for the dog. I missed the fence before, sorry.

Also thanks vagueGM for the reference to a certain Scottish play - hope it doesn’t foreshadow ill tidings here!

Not today? :)

Ezme is being a quiet observer right now, and I feel silly saying that multiple times, so I may appear inactive over here. But I'm watching and waiting for her moment to take action.

Always a balancing act. Thanks for being clear.

Oops. I guess Ezme ended up ignoring the girl's question because she was distracted by the boys. :-P

It was not really the sort of question that requires an answer. :)

And boys are distracting. :)

Yep. Speaking of...

You wrote in this entry:
So... Theo's very irritable whenever Daryl is around, only slightly moody when neither Daryl nor Ezme are around, and awkwardly friendly when around Ezme with no Daryl? Is that right?

Well, you don't know what Theo is like when you are not around... on account of your not being around. Unless you asked one of the others if he was being weird in your absence... which seems like a difficult conversation to have. :)

The others —with their external viewpoint— may have put more of this together. It seems Daryl and Theo had a falling out, and it seems to have been about Ezme.

I was guessing that the conversation was winding down and so jumped ahead, but feel free to keep chatting with Tomaž, @quietpanther. You can hop to Ezme's question whenever you're ready.

I have å æ ç ė į... But no zchs

How sad for you. :(

ž is pronounced, —as Airshark showed— as a slightly harder 'sh' (his name is Tom-mash so feel free to write it Tomas (and avoid the spell-check squiggles), or even Tomash.

ž can be entered as unicode 17e, or as compose cz, depending on your keyboard/system capabilities... or you can copy-paste, as I do with many names in games. :)

Hey everyone.

It was a hard decision and took a lot of thinking, doubting,... but I decided to leave the game. I've had 2 years of massive fun but at the moment posting regularly is becoming a chore and that's not a definition of 'play' (ok, maybe a bit of 'role' I'll give you that 😉)

Thanks @Vague for their patience, world creation and crazy ideas.
Thanks @Kara and @Quietpanther for their imagination, creativity and crazy writing skills.
Thanks @Gen for introducing me to gamersplane and being Roald's crazy companion for 2 years.

'till next time!

Oh I forgot: thanks for all the puns and other jokes! Zom-bees still cracks me up 🤣

Sorry to see you go. It has been great having you.
Absolutely. We all understand that.

You are most welcome to stay in the game (we will remove the character to clean the Character menu) or come back if you ever feel that you are able to keep up.

Thanks I'll think about it. But knowing myself, I won't be able to keep my mouth shut 😉.

I know the feeling. Do whatever is best for you, you are welcome to come back and rejoin the game whenever, if that suits you better.

Ohhhh… You and Roald will be certainly missed, by Ezme and by me!!

Thank you for anointing us "Damsel of the Duck." One of my favorite moments… I’m so glad we had the chance to become acquainted through this story! Say what you will; I’ll be holding onto hope for more games together down the road… ;)

Oh, dang! And I was really looking forward to the moment when Ezme asked Roald where he got his interesting multi-colored cape… 🤣

Thank you Kara. That's very kind!

@Airshark: Do you want to do anything for Roald's farewell? Do you have any ideas of how/why he leaves?

Generally we have just dropped characters in and dropped them out again wherever we are, ignoring any 'lack of logic' (that is the nature of this game). But if you want to play out your leaving, we can do that. Maybe you want to gift some of your stuff (techni-colour cloak or magic sword?) to the other characters, or something?

Up to you.

I have nothing specific in mind. Didn't think about gifting the attributes... If anyone is interested I can make that happen.

Roald would probably just stay behind in this village.

We can leave it ambiguous. Maybe you had a reason to stay here, maybe you learned news that caused you to need to head home (for instance), we don't need to define the details.

Sad to see you go, Airshark. But I understand. Wish you all the best and many great RPG adventures in the future :)

If you ever miss this game or us, it will be lovely to have you back!

Aww, I will miss you! But good to prioritize what’s making you the happiest in life. I hope you find a great balance!

Did I miss something? Who's hitting children?

She's referring to this comment made by Ezme.

Got it.

We are at that stage :) [ref]. If you have anything you want to contribute now is the time.

It does not look like Albert needs to follow up on his 'army' conversation [ref], and we can carry that through into the evening with everyone present if we want to know more.

Ok sounds good. I’ll let Kara post when real life gives her a moment to breathe :) Then Lille might go find Albert or something.

(Not sure if it was necessary to roll to glean info from the locals since that presumably isn't a risky maneuver, but I did it just in case.)

Rolling does make it risky, though. If you rolled a 6 then I would have to bring the pain. :)

... anyway, your 6 on your expedition [ref] is going to complicate things enough. :)

I was waiting for the right moment (morning) for Roald to say his goodbyes, but I'm afraid I might miss it, since I'm not reading everything in the RP channel.

Can I write something you guys can insert at the appropriate moment? It won't be long.

What is the best way to do this?

If you want we can drop you a message when we are leaving town? Then you can do something 'appropriate to the situation'.If you want to do it now, maybe it is best to do it during the evening meal [ref]?

This happens before Emze goes out and gets into trouble [ref]. :)

I can do it during the evening meal. If the flashback doesn't mess with the flow too much.
Roald was planning on staying in the village but maybe he'll go back home since the village might not be so friendly after all.

Super easy, barely a flashback at all. :)

@Airshark: If you want to respond to Daryl [ref] that is fine, but if have no more posts to give we may just assume you said something that was enough to empower him to keep going, and maybe gave him a sword to keep him on the right track.

Oops didn't read this.
But it's all good. He can take the sword if none of the PC's would like to have A MAGIC SWORD!

I left that open as well. He will make good use of it, unless someone else ends up with it. :)

Hey, so according to the rules, if I fail at something that's a skill, it's a still success but with worse consequences than if I had rolled a 7-9. Shouldn't I at least have a dead animal or something to demonstrate how skilled I am?

Quite so. I gave you the option of coming back with a successful catch, but at the cost of your needing to be out longer.
If it was a short jaunt into the woods they might not suspect you as much as if you were out long enough to gone and done something suspicious, if you have an animal to 'prove' you were trapping, you may be able to use that to talk your way out of trouble. Either way you will need to convince them you are not the enemy, it is up to you what course you are on at the start.

Does that suit you?

I think Albert hasn't really figured out that it's a serious issue between Theo and Daryl. So it was more of an accidental lesson :)

:)

Should I bring Albert into this scene with Ezme? I assume she's got it handled and more PCs would probably complicate things.

As it stands, it does not make much sense to bring Albert in. If we need to we can make a commotion that wakes the rest of the party and brings them in.

Lille would have gone to see if Ezme put down a vial of blood again. She would probably stay there and not continue on to the hunt. Would she see anything if she watched the drop site for a while? She would have done her best to slip away from town unnoticed.

@karabooo, are you happy to have Lille know this 'secret'? Are you happy for Lille to see Wankle drinking your blood? Remember that Lille only knows what you guys told her about the mistlings, so she might not know what is happening.

We know Lille is within earshot of your encounter [ref], so she is there to help if needed.

Kara and I agreed that it would be interesting for Lille to have seen Ezme putting out more blood. We decided that if Lille saw it the night before arriving at the village, it would mean the most likely time for confrontation over it would happen in real game time and avoid the need for flashbacks. Since there hasn’t been time for talking about it yet, I had Lille trail Ezme one more time. I wasn’t sure if Wankle would show while Lille was watching, or wait for her to leave. I left my wording open ended so Lille might have seen him or not.

I meant to mention this the other night but I was posting while distracted. Hope that’s all clear.

Yes, what quietpanther said.

Fair enough. :)

I think it's cool to involve the others with the Wankle story. I'm all for it!

Do we think this needs a roll? I think it might, especially since found-sneakiness would enforce their idea that you guys are up to no good.

It also sounds more like 'social camouflage' (+CHA) than 'moving silently' (+DEX), mainly if you are trying to merge with the crowd rather than stay separate.

Could you clarify what Lille is trying to do (stay close vs merge) and maybe add an appropriate roll? Else we can proceed and your result will be dictated by whatever happens next.

Lille is trying to look like she’s one of them, but happens to be on the edge of the group. She wouldn’t try to get noticed, just slip in with the natural ebb and flow of everyone’s differing pace in the dark. I figured with a bunch of scythes and such, they can’t be too closely clumped together. She wants to walk the fine line between being with them and being with them.

Does that still feel like CHA or should I stick with DEX?

I am not sure how much being Dexterous would help for that. That seems almost completely down to you acting like one of them (with all your experience being part of a group:).

DEX might dictate how long it takes them to notice you, but, unless the situation can be resolved before that happens, I don't see how that really help?

Well, that couldn't have gone any better. :)

How does that look?

Do they end up thinking you went with them when then went out to look for Ezme? That you were there all along?

Or do they not notice you, setting you up in a perfect position to react if things turn bad? (They were wondering where you are, so not being noticed comes with (social) downsides.)

Or what?

Let’s go with someone thinking she was there all along. Is there any other bonus for the 12? General good will that helps if she tries to convince them of something like Ezme’s innocence? Other ideas?

For future reference, Lille currently has her belt with knife and sling+stones, but not her staff. Sometimes you gotta travel light.

Cool. Do you want to narrate your presence and informing them of this?

Possibly you merged with the group around the time they first asked about you [ref], and can make it seem like you have been trying to get them to listen to you since then?
I was sorta incorporating that into having them believe you were there all along and that that is reasonable, that is a pretty tall order since they went out looking for the two women who Hilda (your host) said had not 'checked in'.
Yes. That is included in them not thinking you suspicious as well. It makes the whole situation easier to 'explain away' and less tense.
Nor your new sword. :) That all helps pacify the situation as well.

Let's have a roll (+CHA, I would say) to see how much of this they understood/heard.

On a 6- they obviously only heard the 'of course I told them everything about this town'.
On a 7-9 they heard that you were talking to your goddess, and we can see how they feel about that.
On a 10+ they believe you, that you are not a spy, and maybe just that your behaviour was ill-advised, 'going out at night is dangerous this close to the border'.
On a 12+ they revere Larinia as well, and your being a devotant buys you friendship and help.

7. Phew, THAT was close!

Is the village on fire? Or was it 'just a dream'?

Oh, I thought it was either a threat or a foretelling of the future, but if you want to make it immediate, you could do that too! Up to you!

I can go either way. It mainly depends on whether we all want to spend more time here or skip to the border.

Or we can let the dice decide.

(I don't know if the others have an opinion, but I don't really care either way and am okay with dice rolling.)

Let's see what the others say about spending more time here or skipping to the border.