The Positively Absurd Adventures and Activities of One Chimminy Plockett, vol. 1: Finding the Favor of the Fairy Queen, available now at a bookseller near you.
The first thing you notice about Cheya Crimsonhide (her family’s farm produces prized red-furred riding bulls, in addition to its primary trade in peacock steaks and hat feathers) is her height. Fully 2.5 meters, she towers over any crowd. She’s lithe, but sturdy, with skin the color and apparent texture of wet granite: sharp, flat and pitted, but with a pleasant face that supports a wide, easy grin. Her hair is a course, sun-bleached red mass tied back in a careless ponytail beneath a well-worn, wide-brimmed straw hat. A pair of functional denim coveralls and broken-down leather boots fill out her attire, but it’s her cloak that finally draws the eye; it’s a shimmering, constantly moving kaleidoscope of peacock feathers that dazzles and obscures, hiding her nimble movements so that it appears she almost teleports from place to place. Her bullwhip is wrapped around her waist and the electrified tip drips sparks on the ground as she twirls. Her voice is quick, a musical contralto as she drily intones with a thick Bringtown accent “Gosh, this heat, ye’up. Well maybe y’don’ mind lendin’ me one’a those tiny 'brellas fah some shade there little un.”
“Oi now, might you be proposin’ a trade there, miss? Any good fairy worth ‘is wings is always keen to make a deal, ay. I must say, I’m quite taken with that there cloak o’ yours, an’ particularly the way it shines n shimmers. Though, I would understand if’n you’re not keen to lose ‘old of it, much the same as I’m rather fond o’ me umbrellas, y’see. They’re quite important to the 'ole ensemble, innitay?” Chimminy flourishes an umbrella in front of his person, a faint trickle of fairy dust tracing the elaborate swirling motion of its pointed, gleaming tip. At the end of the maneuver, he stabs the umbrella downward into mid-air and rests his right forearm atop its hooked handle, leaning against it and peering directly at Cheya’s rightmost nostril. With a huff, he flicks his wings to bring himself up to eye-level and winks.
[OOC: lol @malkav11 thought he was going to get to run a game of Sands of Shurax, the poor bastard.]
What have I done? :P
A man of average height, with bright red hair and a neatly groomed mustache saunters toward the group. He’s wearing colorful silks that appear to be well-made, but are rather faded and worn, as well as a large pack with several oddly shaped stones, bottles of unidentified liquid, and assorted other gewgaws prominently displayed on the outside. He bounds up onto a nearby rock, squinting in the harsh sun as his trinkets clatter against one another, and launches into speech.
“The name’s Orion O’brien the drian psion, and I’m here plyin’ my wares, buyin’ high ‘n’ sellin’ higher. Other merchants just be cryin’ when they spy my flyin’ lion,” here he points to a symbol on a faded pennant above his backpack that could perhaps charitably be read as a winged cat. “I’ve got crystals made of ions, I’ve got dandelion wi-ne, and a bit of psilocybin if you really feel enlightened. I tell ya I ain’t lyin’, so what’ll you be buyin’?!”
He finishes his patter with an obviously rehearsed flourishing bow, then ruins the effect a bit by nervously glancing around to take in everyone’s reactions and see if anyone is rushing to look at his goods. Seeing a lack of immediate response, he sighs and visibly deflates a bit, “well, anyway, I heard you lot might be going into the wastes in search of treasure. And I could sure use some new inventory – would you believe that picking trade goods based on how well they rhyme may not be the soundest business strategy?”
- I’ll spend spend 4 to upgrade Ectoplasmic Growth, another 4 to upgrade Telekinetic Barrage.
- Orion O’brien.
- I’m good with rolling for reputation.
- I’ll go with the group consensus on movement for now, since I don’t really know what I’m doing yet.
Also, the likes of trolls and fairies are familiar enough, but there doesn’t seem to be much info on what the hell a drian is or what they look like. Even the Hexplore it website doesn’t seem to have a race guide or anything, so I’m just rolling with the snippet on the race card and the first thing that came up when I tried to research the matter:
Drians are humans from the city of Dria. There’s also Nemsynese, Phororan, and whatever the Tarri city folk are called in the Sands race spread.
[OOC: Some art here! Mariucchi and co didn’t make it easy to find, though! IC, later, cuz this warriors game is way too close.]
This is awesome. Major hat tip
Just to confirm, sounds like the consensus is cautious movement up the left side? Right now the only thing you can place at the closest edge is a little four hex interstitial tile (a HOTtile just won’t fit) but if you’re moving cautiously you’re not going to get a lot of exploration done either way. It would look like this:
Any of these tiles can be rotated if you’d prefer. That is a Silt Sea Mission location on the boss 4 tile…but one wander in the wrong direction and you’d fight the boss, so maybe not a great idea to try for that one.
If I get a confirmation I’ll go ahead and post the turn.
Looks good to me
“‘Ave ya considered sellin’ some lovely iron pans for fryin’, or a magical tincture fer to prevent ya dyin’? Mayhap a ‘ard steel lock, immune to pryin’? Travel with us; I’ve got more ideas fer tryin’, though if I said we ‘ad sense, I too’d be lyin’.” Chimminy looks thoroughly pleased with himself as the group sets off into the Wastes; he flutters high above the rest to catch a glimpse of what lies beyond the horizon, his eyes chancing upon a shining gleam there in the oppressive sun: the gleam of crystal.
Okay, the above is what the board + party position now look like.
Skills Phase
Cheya rolls Explore and Survival (Navigate is an auto-success when moving cautiously - you can opt to roll it anyway for the possibility of a triple-HEX result, but you can also crit fail and then you don’t succeed. I’ll assume you take the auto-success unless otherwise noted.).
Explore: skill is 1, result is 3. Fail.
Survival: skill is 2, result is 8. Fail. 3 food consumed. 6 remaining.
Akbar rolls Explore and Survival.
Explore: skill is 1, result is 8. Fail.
Survival: skill is 3, result is 2. Pass.
@Ormus, you may either consume 0 food and suffer Heat Exhaustion or consume 1 food. Which would you prefer? (You have 6 food.)
Orion O’Brien rolls Explore and Survival.
Explore: skill is 3, result is 2. Pass. 2 gold gained, for a total of 4.
Survival: skill is 1, result is HEX. Critical Success.
@Thraeg, you may choose to gain 1 Food, Negate an Affliction affecting the group (there are none), or have the group heal 1 Energy (no one has spent any). I will assume you gain 1 food unless you really want otherwise. Also: eat no food and receive Heat Exhaustion, or eat 1 food?
Chimminy Plockett rolls Explore and Survival.
Explore: skill is 3, result is 7. Fail.
Survival: skill is 1, result is 4. Fail. But Fairies don’t have to eat.
@ArmandoPenblade , your racial ability permits you to spend 3 energy a pop to lower any of the above results by 2. Modifying a result to 1 does result in a Critical Success. Do you want to? If so, which roll(s)?
Circumstance
Rolling the D6: 2
Your party spots a massive swarm of ravening scarab beetles darkening the sands ahead. However, as you’ve been taking such care in your travel, you can steer clear. Do you encounter
Or do you discard it? If you fight it, you will need to reduce its Outlast from 7 to 0. Orion will be able to use Telekinetic Barrage to reduce it by 2 per round, but the rest of you will need to either attempt Navigate, Explore, or Survival schecks to reduce it by 1 per success, or use Defend or your Masteries to attempt to weather the swarm’s offense - there’s simply too many to use conventional attacks. (If you succeed at the stat test, you also avoid the effect of the Scarabs’ attack if it happens to roll an action that has that stat icon.) PS: Akbar and Orion also have Creatures as a Favored Opponent, which against swarms/hordes reduces Outlast by 1 each automatically each round. The reward would be gaining 1 gold and 1 food per character.
If you choose to fight, I need a general approach to battle from each player.
Either way, your new friends in Circumstance slot 2:
Unavoidable means you can’t discard them if you camp or move cautiously and encounter that circumstance.
I will eat the food to avoid the heat exhaustion.
The reward for the scarabs seems weak for the pain we would have to endure, especially with our low skills, but happy to have a crack at them if the group wants.
Are we allowed to rotate the tiles as we wish when placing or is it fixed? Might be nice to flip the sand sea mission adjacent to our tile, then move normally adjacent to it so we can’t wander into the Boss, followed by a cautious move onto its space. Nice rewards for just one Navigate roll. Just a thought.
You can rotate as you wish when placing.
I’m ok with this rotation.
Yeah, it would only take two rounds to take them out, but we’d definitely sustain some damage. That piercing effect and the 5 energy effect are hard to defend against at this point. I say we discard the scarabs (though the locusts are worse :(
There are a few tricks you could pull - e.g. Fairy ability lowering skill rolls, masteries forcing a particular action by the swarm - but I agree you’re probably not coming away unhurt. That said, 4 food is not nothing, and 4 gold might well buy a 5 food ration at the Caravansary.
Re: plans to head over to the Silt Sea mission tile: not to dissuade you - it’s not necessarily a bad idea to rotate it at least - but be aware the Ravager will spawn sometime in the next four Ravager phases, and when it does it will be on that initial HOTtile somewhere. if it emerges on you, guess who’s fighting the Ravager? If not, it might very conceivably block your way. It’s not super likely to pop up this turn but the odds go up considerably every subsequent turn.
Wait, what do the rules say, though? Do not violate the Sands of Shoe Racks!!!
Edit: Ah, I read the other post that says rules say you can rotate as you wish! So players should be discussing that upon each tile placement!
Rereading what Heat Exhaustion does, I noticed you can only clear it by eating food as though you were clearing a level of starving. So there is absolutely no reason to choose it over eating food if you have the food to eat. I’ll just assume everyone does so from now on.
[OOC: I think I might like to change @Thraeg’s Explore result to a 1, giving him two Criticals and letting us choose a Circumstance. I propose that we pick The Soaring City pictured in Slot 1 in @malkav11’s post above about the board state.
I’m also onboard with the proposed rotation to let us make our way over to the silt sea location. Gotta take some risks to get some phat lewts!]