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The Tale of an Industrious Rogue (updated 3-12-2014)
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<blockquote data-quote="Cristian Andreu" data-source="post: 6251514" data-attributes="member: 23822"><p><strong><u><span style="font-size: 15px">Part XV: I Have a Dream (Or Two)!</span></u></strong></p><p></p><p>So this crew of misfits managed to set up a meeting with Twice-Cursed Irina, who constantly and unsuccessfully tried to press the issue of all the troubles the recent incident caused to her covenant and how she needed a bigger cut, but truth is the battle with the other two covenants left the Hooked Fathom weak enough that it was now the STC the one with the better leverage, so eventually she assumed the deal they struck a while ago would take some time to materialize. Instead, she ended up telling the party that one of the eldest hags within the covenant, Ever-Scowling Calpurnia, was a master in the art of torturing mortals through their dreams, and if someone knew how to track them back to their owners, she was the one.</p><p></p><p>Once more and for a brief spell, I got the chance to send these guys on a normal adventure, this time to meet Ever-Scowling Calpurnia in a long-forgotten grotto somewhere in a collapsing demiplane in the Deep Ethereal (filled with all manners of dreams gone very wrong; basically tentacles, tentacles everywhere).</p><p></p><p>The hag sends them for some cosmological hitch-hiking and presents them with a challenge inspired by Plato’s Analogy of the Divided Line. Long story short, Calpurnia handed them over a bag of <em>Terror Dust</em>. As she explained, if sprinkled in the whereabouts of a materializing dream (normally within the Deep Ethereal, but after the incident, some dreamscapes were transmigrated into Golarion), the dust would create a silvery trail leading back into to the mind from which it sparked.</p><p></p><p>So with the tool to find the origin in hand, the party quickly runs into the dream-choked desert and start checking around like kids on a candy store.</p><p></p><p><em>“There’s a minotaur with four arms there; sprinkle some dust on him! And over that tree covered with swords! Oh, and on that room filled with gold pieces too!”</em></p><p></p><p>Basically, I had to spend an hour making up random dreams with a generator I found online while they browsed for stuff that enthralled them. They planned on making them real. The theory they were basing their plan on was something like this: a dreamscape, which is a region of space where dreams take form, when remaining in existence for long enough –meaning the people dreaming its do so for extended periods of time- can materialize. Since this normally only happens in the Deep Ethereal, the results very rarely have any sort of impact in the Multiverse, asides from some odd abominations made of ether and the like. But if for some reason a dreamscape were to form in a planar location containing actual matter, there was a possibility that it took real, solid form. The prospect was both tremendously interesting and terrifying.</p><p></p><p>As it can be guessed, their plan was to find the owners of some of these dreams and find a way to keep them dreaming for long enough for these to materialize within the katapeshi desert. Then they would find a way to monetize it into oblivion.</p><p> </p><p>The Saltspit Dreamscape was filled with all manners of odd, amazing and horrifying things –as dreams and nightmares often are-, and several of them had started to take a wee bit of physical substance in the way of swirling shapes of dust, sand, and salt (which meant the team of vudrani illusionist had to be put to work on double duty to minimize the impact. Still, the good old Imam Salim Al'Salam was managing to stir some trouble back in town, as rumours of wispy demons and walking houses among the sands spread from one tavern to the next).</p><p></p><p>Whenever they saw something that piqued their interest (particularly stuff dealing with oversized gems, monster they could use to open a battle arena and dreams about well-hidden artifacts and the means to get to them –like I was going to put one of those there-), they would send Vorgok to sprinkle the dust, which earned him the new nickname of <em>"The Pain Fairy"</em>; the reason they sent him is because some of the nightmares could prove to be dangerous and mind-twisting, and really, there was no physical or mental blow Vorgok couldn’t stand (the former because of his sheer HP pool, the second because of his lack of room for additional insanity*).</p><p></p><p>I wasn’t going to make it so easy, but truth be told I was enjoying all these crazy plans, so I gave some chances in the form of 1d100. If the result was under 20%, the dream they sprinkled the Terror’s Dust over would be coming from someone in Golarion (after all, dreams can come from any dreaming mind in the Multiverse); if so, I would then roll 2d1000, and the result would indicate the number of kilometers away from where the dream was being had (1 km = 0.6 miles, by the way). Calpurnia’s bag only had 8 (out of 1d10 rolled upon acquisition) uses, though, so there was a good chance of not finding any dream within reasonable distance, or even within their same plane of existence. However, they got lucky on 2 dreams/nightmares:</p><p></p><p>-<em>A Horribly Enormous Shapeless Thing Covered in Teeth That Spat Other Shapeless Things Covered in Teeth</em>. Basically, a gibbering mouther the size of a house. Can’t remember the exact distance, but it ended being in the Screaming Jungles in eastern Sargava, which was about 1,500 miles to the south-west of Katapesh.</p><p></p><p>-<em>The Fountain of Liquid Gold</em>, which ended up being in Jalmeray, Rakhim’s homeland, an island nation which was about 400 miles to the east of Katapesh</p><p></p><p>It shouldn't be too hard to guess which one they wanted to go after first.</p><p></p><p><span style="font-size: 9px">*: The player behind Vorgok, who was really enjoying playing a mentally-deranged barbarian, was overjoyed with the ethereal blast that got him acting even odder -a result of being exposed to raw dreamstuff-, and this led to some pretty amusing situations, including, but not restricted to a reenactment of Don Quixote, where Vorgok would tilt at rocks and attempt to rescue a piece of wood he deemed Dulcinea –along with the sorrowful scene when he accidentally broke it- and a <em>“Smoke, I need to smoke!”</em> that ended up turning Vorgok a cigar aficionado –practice which he kept even after going back to normal. I can’t think of many things more stylish than a Viking-looking barbarian charging at you with a smoking cigar in his mouth. Since he had to spit them out in order to use his bite attack, he ended up setting fire to a lot of random stuff.</span></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Cristian Andreu, post: 6251514, member: 23822"] [B][U][SIZE=4]Part XV: I Have a Dream (Or Two)![/SIZE][/U][/B] So this crew of misfits managed to set up a meeting with Twice-Cursed Irina, who constantly and unsuccessfully tried to press the issue of all the troubles the recent incident caused to her covenant and how she needed a bigger cut, but truth is the battle with the other two covenants left the Hooked Fathom weak enough that it was now the STC the one with the better leverage, so eventually she assumed the deal they struck a while ago would take some time to materialize. Instead, she ended up telling the party that one of the eldest hags within the covenant, Ever-Scowling Calpurnia, was a master in the art of torturing mortals through their dreams, and if someone knew how to track them back to their owners, she was the one. Once more and for a brief spell, I got the chance to send these guys on a normal adventure, this time to meet Ever-Scowling Calpurnia in a long-forgotten grotto somewhere in a collapsing demiplane in the Deep Ethereal (filled with all manners of dreams gone very wrong; basically tentacles, tentacles everywhere). The hag sends them for some cosmological hitch-hiking and presents them with a challenge inspired by Plato’s Analogy of the Divided Line. Long story short, Calpurnia handed them over a bag of [I]Terror Dust[/I]. As she explained, if sprinkled in the whereabouts of a materializing dream (normally within the Deep Ethereal, but after the incident, some dreamscapes were transmigrated into Golarion), the dust would create a silvery trail leading back into to the mind from which it sparked. So with the tool to find the origin in hand, the party quickly runs into the dream-choked desert and start checking around like kids on a candy store. [I]“There’s a minotaur with four arms there; sprinkle some dust on him! And over that tree covered with swords! Oh, and on that room filled with gold pieces too!”[/I] Basically, I had to spend an hour making up random dreams with a generator I found online while they browsed for stuff that enthralled them. They planned on making them real. The theory they were basing their plan on was something like this: a dreamscape, which is a region of space where dreams take form, when remaining in existence for long enough –meaning the people dreaming its do so for extended periods of time- can materialize. Since this normally only happens in the Deep Ethereal, the results very rarely have any sort of impact in the Multiverse, asides from some odd abominations made of ether and the like. But if for some reason a dreamscape were to form in a planar location containing actual matter, there was a possibility that it took real, solid form. The prospect was both tremendously interesting and terrifying. As it can be guessed, their plan was to find the owners of some of these dreams and find a way to keep them dreaming for long enough for these to materialize within the katapeshi desert. Then they would find a way to monetize it into oblivion. The Saltspit Dreamscape was filled with all manners of odd, amazing and horrifying things –as dreams and nightmares often are-, and several of them had started to take a wee bit of physical substance in the way of swirling shapes of dust, sand, and salt (which meant the team of vudrani illusionist had to be put to work on double duty to minimize the impact. Still, the good old Imam Salim Al'Salam was managing to stir some trouble back in town, as rumours of wispy demons and walking houses among the sands spread from one tavern to the next). Whenever they saw something that piqued their interest (particularly stuff dealing with oversized gems, monster they could use to open a battle arena and dreams about well-hidden artifacts and the means to get to them –like I was going to put one of those there-), they would send Vorgok to sprinkle the dust, which earned him the new nickname of [I]"The Pain Fairy"[/I]; the reason they sent him is because some of the nightmares could prove to be dangerous and mind-twisting, and really, there was no physical or mental blow Vorgok couldn’t stand (the former because of his sheer HP pool, the second because of his lack of room for additional insanity*). I wasn’t going to make it so easy, but truth be told I was enjoying all these crazy plans, so I gave some chances in the form of 1d100. If the result was under 20%, the dream they sprinkled the Terror’s Dust over would be coming from someone in Golarion (after all, dreams can come from any dreaming mind in the Multiverse); if so, I would then roll 2d1000, and the result would indicate the number of kilometers away from where the dream was being had (1 km = 0.6 miles, by the way). Calpurnia’s bag only had 8 (out of 1d10 rolled upon acquisition) uses, though, so there was a good chance of not finding any dream within reasonable distance, or even within their same plane of existence. However, they got lucky on 2 dreams/nightmares: -[I]A Horribly Enormous Shapeless Thing Covered in Teeth That Spat Other Shapeless Things Covered in Teeth[/I]. Basically, a gibbering mouther the size of a house. Can’t remember the exact distance, but it ended being in the Screaming Jungles in eastern Sargava, which was about 1,500 miles to the south-west of Katapesh. -[I]The Fountain of Liquid Gold[/I], which ended up being in Jalmeray, Rakhim’s homeland, an island nation which was about 400 miles to the east of Katapesh It shouldn't be too hard to guess which one they wanted to go after first. [SIZE=1]*: The player behind Vorgok, who was really enjoying playing a mentally-deranged barbarian, was overjoyed with the ethereal blast that got him acting even odder -a result of being exposed to raw dreamstuff-, and this led to some pretty amusing situations, including, but not restricted to a reenactment of Don Quixote, where Vorgok would tilt at rocks and attempt to rescue a piece of wood he deemed Dulcinea –along with the sorrowful scene when he accidentally broke it- and a [I]“Smoke, I need to smoke!”[/I] that ended up turning Vorgok a cigar aficionado –practice which he kept even after going back to normal. I can’t think of many things more stylish than a Viking-looking barbarian charging at you with a smoking cigar in his mouth. Since he had to spit them out in order to use his bite attack, he ended up setting fire to a lot of random stuff.[/SIZE] [/QUOTE]
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