Between The Spaces We Know (ooc and questions Vlll)

[rredmond]

Hoping that's a superstitious ward. What did Bilbo say, out of the hordes of undead yet and into the village of evil cultists...

[rredmond]

Jerome has already done the paladin thing on this crew, right? Can he sweep them for evil without them knowing?

[Inferno]

Jerome has already done the paladin thing on this crew, right? Can he sweep them for evil without them knowing?

Question for the DM, is the symbol on the wall in a frame or on a plaque, or is it painted directly on the wall?

Answers lie in this old post:

Blessing himself in the name of St. Cuthbert, Jerome detects no great evil within the modest tavern...

...On the long wall behind the bar is painted a large strange symbol.

[rredmond]

Blag!

[Inferno]

Blag!

Is that Orcish?

[Inferno]

Hoping that's a superstitious ward

Is it superstition if the monsters are real?

[rredmond]

It’s superstition as long as long as they aren’t waking Cthulhu from his slumber in R'lyeh.

[Inferno]

[Inferno]

Rudolf asks, "what exactly is asleep up there that you are worried about waking?"

Fyi:

Dread Lore of the Death Shrine:

"Ah fear ye seek that which ye shuid not," an old one-eyed man answers Telkis.

"There is a mountain that no one climbs. Legend holds that a great evil once lived upon the mountain an' forever cursed th' land."

The public house goes quiet again. The voices that filled it are replaced by a palpable dread.

The old man croaks, "Wee little lass or no, if ye value ye souls, ye shuid not go thare."

The old one-eyed man pulls on his pipe and speaks in a cloud of smoke. "'Tis an abandon'd temple an burial ground o' an ancient death cult that ye seek.
"Long ago, the reign o' the cult upon the mountain was endit whan the villagers rose up and destroy'd it wi' help from escaped slaves an traitors from within the cult. The shrine was consecrated by twelve priests wha gave their lives tae trap the Evil inside. Na one goes thare now."

The silence of the other patrons is deafening.

"Dae not go, lassie. Ah beg ye. Forego ye pride. Dae na waken that which sleeps."

And also, every night that you have been in this region (when you haven't assumed the form of the Beast) many of you have been plagued by nightmares of a thing that sleeps beneath the mountain:

Dreams in Darkness:

In the shadow of the dark mountains, Mondegreen, Pyotr and Telkis sleep fitfully, tortured by horrific nightmares.

They dream that an unspeakable abomination lives. Here, beneath these mountains. It could never die.



With a sickening, dawning realization, they understand the horror of Briarsgate that was swallowed up by the Hell Mouth was merely an aspect of the heinous God itself; an avatar, a manifestation, a shadow given flesh and blood.

Perhaps that abominable spawn had died.

But the true horror, the Dark Mother, yet lives.



They dream that the unimaginable colossal thing, coated in eyes within eyes and speaking in the voice of a thousand screams, sleeps now beneath these very mountains, blighting the land with an infestation of unnatural evil just by Its insidious presence.

They dream that the Dark Mother, or 'Shub-Niggurath' as Mouser once called it in a voice that was not his own, is older than Time imaginable, a daemon drawn down from the stars themselves. A creature beyond the bounds of infinity. A terrible shadow that strides the incalculable gulfs of the universe, serene, primal and unending, to sow death and madness in Its wake.



They dream that when the stars are right, It could plunge from world to world through the sky, casting entire spheres into the fathomless chaos of eternal night. But when the stars were wrong, It could not live. Yet although It no longer lived, It could never really die. And so it slept, potent and patient, waiting on the turnings of the cosmos.

Were the stars aligning? Was the Dark Mother slowly awakening? The Horror at Briarsgate... The Thing in the Woods.. were these dread omens heralding the coming of a horror much more unimaginable and final?

Also, in the Lost Shrine of Ancient Evil:

...Beyond the demon portal is a towering chapel to an unspeakable god.




Behind an unholy candlelit altar is an impossibly immense statue of the Dark Mother, exactly as the heroes have dreamt of it since entering these accursed mountains!




Jerome feels a strange kinship with this entity of madness and death from beyond the Outer Planes....

[Inferno]

So as we all know, PbP has its pros and cons.

One con is: between how long it takes to run a module, and that most players on US are also playing in 10 other games simultaneously, lots of info gets lost. It's tough to hold a story arc, or worse a mystery, over the long term because people forget the details.

Players can easily handle immediate puzzles, tricks and mysteries, but less so when they exist over months of real time. The pipe organ that puts undead to sleep is an example of a lost element. Another example is that a character's own magic items are often forgotten... especially newer items.

One solution is for the DM to constantly remind and drop hints. But it can be kind of ham-handed.
Another solution I've seen before is to stockpile important clues and info like this. But it just becomes another thread to check, or not check, like a PC's inventory list.

Is there another solution I'm overlooking?
Thanks in advance.

[Urson]

Jerome to the barman:

wimpy.jpg (153.79 KiB) Viewed 686 times

[rredmond]

I'm going to ask the questions, because I'm likely the dope with the forgotten magic item.
I think we should have started our own "hints" thread, as well as maybe a "magic item" thread and a consumables thread; because it is hard to keep track. I don't remember us picking up a new magic item... was it in the town of undead? I know there was a book or three

Also, I asked the question about what "sleeps" up the mountain as much because I wanted to see if there was any more clarification than their vague foreboding If there was something we missed, something that maybe flies, or can in some other way avoid the ice slide, figured we should probably let them know as we were running out of the town. So I did sorta remember what they were saying and we were dreaming, but not to the detail that you put in the post above though, thank you!

[Inferno]

Thanks Ron.
Sorry. The forgotten magic items was an example from another PbP game. My diatribe was really game agnostic... more of a general observation of PbP as a medium.

I think we should have started our own "hints" thread, as well as maybe a "magic item" thread...

For Briarsgate, the treasure info is stored here.
And the clues thread is here.

[OGRE MAGE]

Personally, I dont think there is a perfect solution for it.

Or any solution, really.

What you already do with the info threads is above and beyond any other PbP DM I have seen so far, and I think it is sufficient. I also utilize those threads from time to time.

All the things you mentioned do contribute to the players lack of memory or mental input, but I dont think there is a lot you can do about it. It is the nature of the beast, I suppose.

[rredmond]

I do think we need threads to avoid parties from lighting up five torches at once, but that's just me.

[Inferno]

Personally, I dont think there is a perfect solution for it.

Or any solution, really.

What you already do with the info threads is above and beyond any other PbP DM I have seen so far, and I think it is sufficient. I also utilize those threads from time to time.

All the things you mentioned do contribute to the players lack of memory or mental input, but I dont think there is a lot you can do about it. It is the nature of the beast, I suppose.

I thought that might be the case. Was just wondering what the braintrust might think about it, as we all continue to explore and perfect the PbP format.
Thanks!

[Inferno]

I do think we need threads to avoid parties from lighting up five torches at once, but that's just me.

Thanks. I currently keep track of lit torches at the bottom of every DM post in the IC thread, under PC Status.

But do you mean a separate thread, like I have for Marching Order, where we tally all party torches, lit and unlit? And other party resources like food and water? Or something else?

[rredmond]

I was making a joke. Alas this is not the right game to make that joke.

[Urson]

There's only so much that can be done, Inferno. People will forget things and wander off-track after something shiny. It's the nature of people. IF/Then statements about torches, heals, and such may help.

[Inferno]

Thanks Urson.