Sigil

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

@Dragoknighte@rivaan@Remipa Awesome@Lewascan2

The TLDR of the map and actions thusfar:

Between burning some ki, lots of wine, and the sneaky abilities of the party, the Goblins still have not caught on that they are in any danger whatsoever (that you can tell). One roll was close, but no cigar. The battle map is updated to reflect the characters' locations; do with this what you will. Kosara and Hugh are spending quality time behind large rocks, Kathryn is sticking to the road, Marita is taking point, and Victoria is backing her up (while still using the lady as cover, sort of). Morty seems happy to stick with its creator, backing up the backup.

As it sits presently, Hugh has an action readied and a target picked out. When the conditions for this come to pass, even if it's just Hugh deciding that he's tired of waiting and subtlety be damned, he gets to interrupt the flow. This aside, I would suggest that the order of the next posting cycle be determined amongst yourselves before we proceed, if one is waiting on the actions of others. If you are too close to Day 7 before this roll around, go ahead with a two paragraph filler post and circle back to it when it's appropriate to do so.

Example: Victoria is going to back up Marita, as she sees Kathryn stopping at the road. Ergo, Victoria should take her action after Marita, more or less around the time Kathryn does. Being as V is on Day 5, if this isn't resolved in two days then a quick observational post will be made.

Continuing, please put any questions or requests in our Discord's OOC Lounge as per usual. Describe how you got to the spot on the map where you are now, and the fruits of your actions which are to be rolled for this posting cycle if rolls are required of you.

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Victoria Belmont Half-Elf, Bard, Level 3 HP: 23 / 23 Armor Class: 15 Conditions: N/A Location: P14 Action: N/A Bonus Action: Bardic Inspiration (Marita, Kathryn) Reaction: N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

If it were up to Victoria, she might have used the opportunity of the Goblins being caught off-guard to rush in - or more accurately, utilize the superior fighting experience and armament of the rest of her newfound party while giving support somewhere off to the side in relative safety. A little song, bolstering words, and the like while they licked their wounds and then carried about their way afterward. This was not quite the fast and thrilling moment that she might have committed to paper later on. But this group was very new. No one really had a feel for the others' abilities and competencies. No one really shared much past the basics. So, to Victoria's point of view, here they all were pulling a plan out of their collective asses with the hope that it wouldn't result in anyone's death.

Check that; anyone of their deaths. Victoria held no strong opinion against the concept of the party arranging a meeting between the Goblins and their patron deities. There might even be money in it for her.

Still, the plans laid out as they were did not accurately reflect her general role in a pitched battle. It was almost like they saw her as another hand to hold a sword. She did make it a point to mention, as Marita drafted her plan following Hugh's observations, "I concur that my talents are best plied in the shadows, at first, though I fear that after the fight is joined I might do him a disservice." Keeping hidden and being in her presence as she plucked the strings of The Weave were generally not compatible, the showy person that she was. "For staging, yes, I shall join Hugh. Following this, I need to position myself where I might better support those of you in the thick of battle." She looked down to her constant companion, the burlap-wrapped Morty, adding, "I can send him hickory-smoked support if the baddies come a'calling." The rest of that sentence was, "unless she needed it", but it was left unsaid.

Victoria's main point, the one which she attempted to stress in her opinion just earlier, was that her role was that of support. With this in mind, the itinerant Bard stepped up to their two self-appointed frontline combatants and addressed them in quietish tones, "Marita, Kathryn, I know this probably isn't anything new to you. We all have the little parts we play in this dance, though yours are the most important. More than this, yours are the most dangerous. Were I in charge of this, I could think of none better to lead the charge against these creatures." An understanding expression went to Marita first, as Victoria continued, "I will never put my faith in your deity, Marita; not as you do. But despite our differences, I can put my faith in you to see this through. And I do." Turning to Kathryn and having to crane her neck upward to make eye contact (difficult as that was through her helmet), she added this time with a mischievous smile which bordered on the amused, "Now you? I cannot wait to see the righteous carnage you are physically capable of spreading around the battlefield, Lady Half-Giant. You're a force, just look at you."

The inspirational, Necromantic Bard threw back her purple-lined, charcoal cloak to ready for more dexterous movement, then adjusted the strap on her violin case and sword belt respectively. "Now, we know what we need to do. We are warriors. Heroes. We've got this." Looking over everyone equally, Victoria nodded a bolstering affirmation, finishing with, "So let's be heroes. Are we ready? Let's go." While she was not a fan of taking appointments of command, Victoria was an accomplished speaker, able to channel nuanced emotion into every syllable and bring out surprising result in others. It was one of her greatest nonmagical gifts, aside perhaps from her abilities as a performer. Disagreements among the party were meaningless right now as battle was to be joined and blood shed across the warm colors of the autumn leaves. Their first battle would color their every action they took as a group which followed. For everyone's sake Victoria wanted them inspired and optimistic, especially the two out front drawing enemy aggression.

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

@Dragoknighte@rivaan@Remipa Awesome@Lewascan2

To be clear, we are NOT in Initiative order yet. Nothing has been rolled to this effect, continue to do your thing and speak among yourselves in the OOC Lounge in Discord. A couple of caveats to this: 1) Restrict movement to the amount which you would be able to in one combat round. 2) While Initiative has not been rolled, I am doing checks behind the DM Screen (a restricted room in the Discord server) to see when and/or if the group is noticed as a whole. While they appear fairly oblivious, there is still a chance. Please keep this in mind. 3) In the Location part of your header, fill in with the square you are currently occupying, an arrow ( -> ) and the square you are going to.

Example: P14 -> K18

Now, when combat is entered into officially, the posting rules change. Roll your initiatives in the Discord OOC and tag me. I will roll for the baddies and we'll get ourselves an initiative order. The first person in that list has TWO DAYS to handle requests and post their actions. Actions are to be noted in the spaces provided in your header. When you are done with your actions, TAG THE NEXT PERSON IN THE INITIATIVE ORDER in your post. If it's an NPC, that means it's me.

I must admit that there is a flaw in my system here, as it relates to Reactions. All I can say is that we'll cross that bridge when it comes to it. If you can get in a Reaction and choose to, let me know. Until a better system is in place, we will work something out.

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Battle Map

New information, however scant it might have been, led to an increased sense of wariness. This was part and parcel of the adventuring life. In the hopes of maintaining greater openness of movement, the decision was reached among the majority of the party to leave the wagon behind. In all fairness, the increased mobility options were actually secondary to the safety of the mule in a potentially hostile situation, were one to read the metaphorical room.

Being on foot came with some advantages. A mostly unobstructed view was one such advantage, as thick trunks posed the greatest threat to the party's vantage rather than wagon canvas or bright, autumn-kissed leaves. This led to a series of revelations that might test the resolve of persons lesser than the stalwart team of professional soldiers of fortune such as the group which came down the road. To be blunt, it was a brutal sight that posed many more questions than it answered. But let us start with the answers: The laughter and jabbering indeed came from Goblin-folk. What looked like a supposedly organized squad of the mean, green beasties could be sighted in the general vicinity to a cart which was indeed turned over on its side. Three could be seen gathered around a large barrel near the cart. Another three around a campfire, above which something fleshy cooked. One might barely be seen a ways back, near a large rock which jutted from the ground; atop said rock was another Goblin carrying a shortbow. He seemed to have been placed there with the intent of keeping some sort of watch.

But the devil, so to speak, is always in the details. Three large barrels littered the area, either empty or being emptied. One might imagine from the scent wafting about the area that those barrels held wine, and probably very good wine, once upon a time. The scent of noble grapecraft did have its competition, though - the aroma of some manner of cooked, probably unseasoned meat hung greasily in the air as well, lending this place to have a feeling of excesses. And perhaps more stunningly out of place from everything else, a carefully crafted coffin lay out in the middle of open ground near the tipped wagon. It was large enough to fit a Human or Half-Elf, were one in the market for a body box. Perhaps even more gruesome and related to that last detail, was the portion of meat sizzling above the campfire. You can't quite tell from this distance, but you think you might see toes and an anklebone to one end of it.

The Goblins appear to be unaware of the party's presence, or really anything else, at this point. More to the truth of thing, they appear to be in differing states of drunkenness. Hostile to one another as much as anything else, as well. Two of them by the campfire appear to be dead to the world, as is their "lookout" atop the rock. Most of the others are armed with wicked looking knives and short swords. Those who are more active are gingerly filling cups and bowls from the casks of wine, treating it with the utmost of care before scurrying back a few paces and slurping it down unceremoniously. Some still chew on sections of crudely hacked apart meat. Mystery meat, one might imagine.

Your initial intelligence when coming into this region was that Goblins were sighted near the edges of the region bordering wilder lands. To see an obvious presence near to the center of Avonshire went against the usual reports of the region, and counterintuitive to words picked up from speaking to locals.

The ball is in your court, Adventurers.

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

@Sigil
Edit last post for spelling?

@Sigil
Edit last post for spelling.

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Victoria Belmont Half-Elf, Bard, Level 3 HP: 23 / 23 Armor Class: 15 Conditions: N/A Location: Wagon, pointed northward Action: N/A Bonus Action: N/A Reaction: N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Others began to share snatches of illumination of their own homes, but unlike Victoria, they also told a little about themselves in the process. It was good to see these people in a more personal light than that which made them useful to one another. If it came down to it, she could do quite well not knowing anything about her fellow adventurers in any real, personal sense, provided that they get their objective completed and she got another step closer to her own goals. It was, in fact, the reason why she took to the road and got into these little adventures; like many who walked this sort of path, Victoria had her own motivations. Things she had to accomplish. Things which, if the details were fully known, might make others see her in a very different light. But her usual nature put her somewhere in the arena of talkative, inquisitive, even garrulous in the right circumstances. Wine helped. Her more natural personality started to edge into the fore, and quickly she found herself smiling, with mouth slightly agape, ready to share a few words about herself and not just a vague description of home, as others had done.

Of course, common sense stopped her. Not that Victoria possessed an overabundance of it, as she had proven to herself not amazingly long ago, but this feeling of self-preservation gripped her with sudden, icy fingers. She closed her mouth and frowned slightly. Victoria would have to be profoundly less sober and/or feel much safer around these people to divulge certain things about herself. Instead, she put her mind to an interesting and humorous moment in her past to help bring about a contented expression, and refocused her efforts toward the job at hand.

This moment's job at hand involved quietly giving Kosara driving pointers as she led the wagon along. Travel was interesting at times, considering the inexpert nature of the person whose hands were on the reins, but the mule seemed to be an experienced carting animal that knew enough from sheer repetition of routes. Things eventually turned into something of a lull as traffic around them became less during the northward leg of their journey to the Township. Trees cropped up with greater frequency around the road; not quite a fully wooded locale but enough to provide on again, off again light shade from the sun above, cutting off what warmth might still be had from its radiance. Soon enough though, a stillness seemed to take hold of their surroundings.

Victoria was not the first one to notice the sounds coming from ahead. When she did, she breathed a raspy, "Shh shh shh..." tilting her head slightly and taking the reins for just a moment to stop the forward progression of the wagon. The now alert Bard removed her very Bard-y hat and held it up to the side of her head, making an analog attempt to increase the range of her hearing. Whether or not it actually helped, a concerned look formed on her face. She bit her lower lip and peered ahead, hoping to catch something, anything that might clue her in to what was going on.

The breeze, mostly low and calm, kicked up just enough to rustle some leaves about, providing just enough of an opportunity to catch a glimpse ahead, into the unknown. "Curse those trees," she mumbled. Projecting a clearer (but quiet) voice, Victoria enunciated, "A wheel. Sideways, like a cart tipped over. I thought I saw an arm with yellow-green skin, and... hmm." She listened for a moment longer, "And a language I do not know. I know the Common tongue, Elven, and the base language of Orcs, but this?" She shrugged, "Laughter and gibberish to me. I am sorry I cannot tell you more."

Victoria placed her hat down into the wagon with the rest of her belongings and looked to her preserved pig of burden. This appeared to be a hiccup in their otherwise uneventful day trek to the Township of Avonshire.

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

@Dragoknighte@rivaan@Remipa Awesome@Lewascan2

First up - Rapid Reader has missed the cutoff point for posting and has been removed from this RP. No hard feeling on this end, and I wish the best moving forward. Suffice it to say, we're down a druid.

Now, to business:

The collective passive perception was more than enough to pick out that something unusual is going on. The details are fuzzy as hell, but there we are. As the only person actively attempting to perceive, @Lewascan2 may roll in the Discord OOC to try and beat their passive perception rating to get more information on what is going on.

As for the rest of us, it looks like we have a minor mystery on our hands and some decisions to make. Roll them bones, people!

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The sun made it high into the sky, eliminating the frost which remained upon the drier grass of the season. Traffic upon the road, while not extremely crowded in the first place, had slacked into noticing the occasional local cart upon the road. More often one might notice the occasional laborer applying their profession to a large section of cultivated land, the ubiquitous straw hat and loose clothing serving as uniform to distinguish them from traveler or landowner alike. Things seem to be passing by at a constant, unexciting rate, relaxing if one is the type to enjoy long stretches of countryside going through the changes associated with the Autumn season.

While the occasional biting wind still blew across the rolling hills of Avonshire, overall temperatures relaxed into something significantly more bearable than the chill which the early morning brought to everyone. Heavier clothing could be put aside if so desired, though even the ambient temperature below a midday sun served to remind that summer was assuredly in the past. The sky was mostly clear, with cirrus clouds sparingly putting a translucent lens over the cool sunlight above.

Midday came and left; whether the decision to pull off of the road for a quick meal was made or food was partaken while in transit, things went along swimmingly and without incident from any exterior source. The mule appeared to be in decent spirits and physical vigor, thoroughly uninterested in he world around it except for its purpose to continually pull the wagon to which it was attached forward.

After a time, a simply designed but decently enough crafted signpost stood out among the numerous smaller side roads coming away from the main trade route. This one stood in a recessed position from the road yet easily visible, with only the slightest hint of weathering upon it. The road led north, into a area which showed increasing density of trees. Broad leaves of yellow and orange littered the ground here both on and off of the road, opportunistic winds tossing them about every so often. While enough leaves were on the ground as to make a mosaic of autumn color, the trees themselves still looked thick and full for the most part.

In fact, things seem to be humming along so smoothly that it is a bit of a shock when, upon cresting a rise in the road, the sounds of jabbering and laughter can be heard from somewhere ahead. The angle from the rise, combined with the canopy of warm, fall colors prevent a useful line of sight, but you can definitely hear something out of place, even if you can't tell precisely what it is.

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Victoria Belmont Half-Elf, Bard, Level 3 HP: 23 / 23 Armor Class: 15 Conditions: N/A Location: Wagon, driving westward Action: N/A Bonus Action: N/A Reaction: N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

A warm smile formed effortlessly across Victoria's face (as if it naturally belonged there as a permanent feature) when Kosara climbed up onto the driver's bench. The enthusiasm which she showed at the prospect of wagoneering practice was heartwarming. Victoria was ever the fan of picking up new pieces of knowledge and appreciated when others around her showed the same inclination. The magic-bearing Tiefling showed a desire to not just be the person in the driver's seat, but actually absorb the knowledge that was presented her. This made the young half-fey happy. Despite inclinations to win over crowds and put on stellar performances, Victoria felt she would always have a stigma associated with her and the specific talents she possessed. Having someone who knew what she was and still be excited to share a seat so closely with her was comforting.

Being as this was supposed to be a teachable moment, Victoria attempted to assume a more headmistress-ly quality to her voice and mannerisms. She failed, of course. The words were a little too warm and a touch happier than they ought to have been. But it was a noteworthy and humorous attempt. "Take the reins now, okay?" She motioned at other folk about town, singling out a man who appeared to be a merchant or shopkeeper of some kind who was about to set off in their own pulled conveyance. She pointed out the local method of getting the animals to move, be it a motion with the reins, one-syllable utterance, or both. Beasts trained to the harness tended to have similar signals for obedience, though variations existed. "Other than that, it's about knowing what your wagon can or can't do, and small corrections only when necessary. The hard part is knowing when." Animals, especially horses and mules, were pretty good at handling themselves around big obstacles when attached to a wagon. Other times, Victoria might have sworn they were as dumb as a sack of flour.

As their trip set off, the itinerant Bard was a little nervous as Kosara brought them through the open gates leaving the fort town of Darenby, admittedly giving a suggestion or two with more nervousness in her voice than she wished to show. But everything came out okay. This didn't stop her from breathing out a sigh of relief when they were out into relatively open ground. This, she kept quiet. "You're doing great!" she assured.

Victoria took note of who decided to climb into the wagon and who did not, making an attempt to keep herself available for conversation as she was able to. Priority went to instructing Kosara, of course; otherwise social availability was a strength which she exercised religiously. Brief words about home from a couple of them, which naturally made her think of her own. First, she took a note from Marita. Given the interesting backstory and her own sense of curiosity, she was piqued. Kathryn's origins based upon descriptions gave her some suspicions; probably closer to her home city than anyone else's here. Kosara's she knew, more or less, from style of dress and dances. Plus she told everyone outright. Then desert native said a couple of things which made Victoria stop her train of thought with a muffled crash. "Festival of anim... Kind of." She glanced to Morty in the back of the wagon, continuing, "My Morty took that walk not too long ago. They're being taken to a butcher to be smoked and/or cured to feed families over the winter. Properly preserved, those pigs can last all year. Maybe longer. If we're ever at a point that we're starving, Morty might even be able to save our lives." She smiled. This was probably not the best case scenario for her new party to ponder. Practically speaking, it was a versatile resource to have at their disposal. This also explained why the beast did not have the scent of decomposition about it - quite differently, it smelled faintly of bacon and woodsmoke.

Apathetic to the words spoken about itself, Morty stood silently in the back of the wagon, its hollow stare seemingly giving no regard to those sitting around it.

Continuing with Kosara, Victoria mentioned, "Another month or so until we get to winter. I'm not sure exactly when the snows come around here, but back home it would only be a couple more weeks. Five on a warm year." Being that the weather was progressing a little sooner according to the people back in Darenby, Victoria really had no idea when it might be in Avonshire. "As for the snowmen..." Her smile turned to mischief, "I don't think that happens naturally. But we're both distinguished ladies of The Weave. I'm sure we can figure out something."

Shifting to the side and looking back in the wagon, Victoria followed up on a piece of conversation she had taken note of just earlier. "My home is a journey north from here. Buildings, big houses, walls. Libraries. Trade; lots of trade and influence from many cultures. Trees in parks and along wide streets, manicured by professional gardeners. Four crisp and distinctly separate seasons." Then taking a point on a specific declaration, she looked dead at Marita. "Your home doesn't sound like any place I've been yet. Could you tell me more, please?"

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

@Dragoknighte@rivaan@Remipa Awesome@Rapid Reader@Lewascan2

To reiterate my sentiments from the Announcements section in the Avonshire Discord:

This will mostly be a posting round to establish marching order and get in some travel conversation, if that's your thing. Make plans for when you get to the Township, discuss bread recipes, braid each other's hair, discuss your backstories, whatever. If you have plans for specific things, great! Let me know and I'll pass along what your nefariousness has gotten you. We'll get in a roll for random encounters, have lunch, you know - make a day of it. Past this we get to the fun stuff.

Because of the holidays, everyone has a two day extension. Feel free to post as much as you want to, being as we're talking dialogue and travel time, but don't feel rushed. Maybe work on a collab or two with your fellow players. You've got some more wiggle room now. To clarify: 9 day counter this posting round. And have a Merry Christmas. Or Blessed Yule. Whatever works for you.

In short, have fun with the next round of posting, do whatever you need to do (within reason) because after the holidays have more or less passed, we're hopping into the meat of out little adventure. Thank you for sticking with this, I'm glad you decided to join me on whatever manner of story this turns into - adventure, fantasy, horror, crime drama - or some unholy mixture of the four with a few extra ingredients.