Let's Go Steal a Dungeon (MotBM OOC/Planning)

Pan Galactic Garnet Blaster

 

I've also got this effect for helping us regain health when we find places to rest, though it doesn't do any good in the heat of battle.

And I think my character sheet is complete!

 

Is that everything ready?

 

@swirlingflight I think you're right! Thanks.

That's 3 out of 5 done. I still need @esotericPrognosticator to discuss his background feature with me, and @missoyashirou to answer the characterization questions and add the half-orc features to her character sheet.

 

@The Frood Abides sorry for being incommunicado these past couple days! I have been engaged in writing this fucking novella of a backstory, which will in fact not fit in my character sheet post, so I guess it goes separately here. this is because it's 3,200 words. why, Past Me, why.

Spoiler: I don't know what happened tbh

BACKSTORY:
Lyriae was born in a fair-sized coastal city with a bustling port and a strong trade presence. officially, the city was ruled by a baron, but he was more or less a figurehead, poorer than many merchants and possessed of an underwhelming army. in reality, it was ruled by an unofficial council of wealthy merchants, constantly jostling for money and influence; they commanded vast forces of mercenaries, and the courts were ruled not by law but by bribes. the city and almost all of its inhabitants were human, although some of the ships that docked at the port were owned and crewed by elves or gnomes. Lyriae's father was one such; according to her mother, though, he was no common crewman but a prosperous merchant. at the time of Lyriae's conception, her mother worked at a luxurious inn as a cook and occasional server; the inn's clientele largely consisted of passing merchants like Lyriae's father. her mother had worked for years to get her position there, working her way up from the flophouses of the neighborhood where she grew up through the neighborhoods of the artisans and shopkeepers to the highest tiers of the city, where she had a chance to keep a stable job and eventually to better herself. she didn’t often serve the inn’s patrons—firstly because she was a talented cook and best used in the kitchen, secondly because she was too thin and hard-worn to be attractive by the patrons’ standards—and when she did serve in the dining rooms and bar, she was largely ignored. this was not the case, however, with one elf about a year and a half into her employment—Lyriae’s mother noticed how his eyes lingered on her, and she suspected her suddenly more frequently serving duties were his doing. he soon began to talk to and then to flirt with her, and Lyriae’s mother, flattered by the attention of such an apparently wealthy man, entranced by his strange elven beauty, and charmed by his kindness and suavity, allowed him to ply her with gifts and eventually to take her to bed. she had grown to love and depend on him, though not to find out very much about him, by the time she discovered she was pregnant a few months later. she told him, fully expecting that upon hearing she was having his child, he would, if not marry her, then take her and his baby with him to a life of comfort when he sailed from the city. he smiled and promised as much. a few days later, he was gone without a word or a trance.

when the inn’s proprietors found out that Lyriae’s mother was pregnant—and with the child of a guest of the inn, no less—they fired her. no similar establishment would hire her, either, nor even the middle-class ones, and, heartbroken and with her savings beginning to dwindle, Lyriae’s mother had to return to the neighborhood of her birth and the meager, taxing employment she could find there. her family took her in for a time, but kicked her out when her baby was born; among them and in the community at large, she was considered no better than a whore, one of the many women who left for the high tiers of the city and slunk back with a rich man’s child and no money to speak of.

she named her daughter Lyriae, after vague memories of elven names spoken by her lover, and simultaneously cherished her as a reminder of her father and resented her as the harbinger of her own ruin.

Lyriae grew up, therefore, often subjected to her mother’s anger and hearing wistful story after wistful story of her father, whom her mother believed to have been called away by some urgent business and to be still faithful to her. Lyriae worshipped him at five; by nine, she had lost faith in his return to lift them from destitution and held her mother in contempt for clinging to her unlikely beliefs. with no one to care for Lyriae in her early childhood, her mother was unable to work steadily, and by the time Lyriae was reasonably self-sufficient, they were in dire straits indeed. at six or seven, bored while left in their two tiny rooms alone all day, Lyriae began to wander the streets; at first, she was small and pitiful enough to beg, but as she grew and her heritage became clear, she was more likely to receive glares or blows. she was too clearly elven, her eyes too unsettling a silver, her skin too light and her hair too straight to be seen as anything but foreign and therefore untrustworthy and deserving of hatred by the people of her city.

what little money her mother had went towards educating her daughter; she was determined that, like her name, Lyriae would be more elven and therefore more refined than herself, and paid a tutor to teach her to read and write both Common and Elvish. again inspired by her knowledge of elves, she also sent her for furtive lessons with an old apothecary doing a side business as a hedge-witch, convinced that she would demonstrate magical aptitude. as it turned out, Lyriae was in fact able to use magic, although the attitudes of the neighborhood meant that she had to keep this fact well-hidden. her mother was proud and determined that with this education that Lyriae would better herself in the way she herself had been unable to.

the cost of these lessons, however, meant that Lyriae and her mother more often than not went a little hungry, and so once she was unable to beg, Lyriae quickly discovered the ways of living on the streets. she ran wild with the ragged bands of street kids, although, unlike some of them, she did have a home to return to, and they taught her how to make a distraction and then snatch unattended food or coins, to take part in their occasional vicious scraps, and even to use rudimentary weapons. she, in turn, taught herself to nimbly pick pockets, and she used this skill and her powerful natural charisma to become the leader of a gang. she passed her skills on to her lieutenants, and with this advantage they quickly surpassed their neighboring gangs, who were still dependent on “shout, snatch, and run” tactics, and began to move up into areas of the city with better targets.

here, however, they ran afoul of more professional, adult pickpockets, and the threat of serious injury at their hands caused most of the gang to return to their old, poor but familiar haunts. eventually Lyriae was alone again. she grew more skilled as a thief and a liar every day, and though she did have a number of close scrapes, she taught herself to use daggers and eventually short swords with damaging precision and was eventually afforded an uneasy respect.

meanwhile, Lyriae’s mother grew more and more uneasy with the unexplained wounds her daughter acquired, as well as the mysterious money and trinkets she brought home, and when she was eleven or so forbade her from going out on the streets anymore. instead, she got her a job, in the style of those she herself had used to work her way up the city—Lyriae had to wash dishes in the kitchen of a poorly disguised brothel’s bar. her mother warned her to avoid both the seedy clientele and the prostitutes and advised her to just keep her head down until she could get a better job; Lyriae did avoid the johns, as they were the kind of people who would aim a kick at her on the street, but in typical contrarian fashion she began to chat with the working girls as much as she was able. they were by and large bitter and disillusioned, but they had a kind of hardship-forged bond with each other, and some of them were a bare few years older than she was; she found herself drawn to them, and they in turn were friendly to her. this was the point in her life when she fully realized her attraction to women; she was not particularly subtle about it, and some of them thought it was cute. they taught her to kiss and to flirt, and she thought her heart would pound out of her chest when one particular girl, only two years older than she, would kiss her in furtive dark corners.

it was around this time, shortly before she turned thirteen, that puberty hit Lyriae with a vengeance. her mother, while too skinny for the upper-tier merchants and their ilk, was indeed beautiful, and the fact that she had inherited the grace of her father, mentioned so often by her mother, became quickly apparent. she appeared very mature very fast, and it was certainly an attractive maturity. the brothel’s madam, sensing an opportunity, put her to work exclusively in the bar, and the men who had ignored or spat at a skinny elven girl quickly discarded their prejudice in favor of ogling a slender elven woman. Lyriae was paid more, but she was also subjected to leers and groping and a prevalent inability to understand that she was not in fact a prostitute, and what made her skin crawl most was that she was not allowed to pull the dagger in her skirts on a man who grabbed a handful of her ass but instead had to smile and ignore him.

it was several months into this that Lyriae’s mother got sick. at first it was just the kind of cold everyone got at least twice a winter; then it evolved into a nagging cough that ate into her until she could barely move around their rooms, let alone work for the ten hours a day her job demanded. Lyriae was suddenly solely responsible both for herself and a woman made both helpless and prone to lashing out by an illness for which they could not afford a doctor. her current job, even with the raise in pay and her previous careful saving, was simply not enough. her mother urged her to find employment in a more reputable inn, but unlike her mother, Lyriae was not a skilled cook, and so far as she was concerned no possible reimbursement could make up for the helplessness she felt as a barmaid.

she thought about it carefully. she had the skills of a pickpocket and an experienced street fighter, as well as a natural knack for lying; she was literate in two languages and had basic magical offensive abilities; and she had the knowledge of seduction and persuasion she had picked up in the brothel. as far as she was concerned the formal education she had gotten was useless, but she remembered the way the johns and her mother’s community had treated her. she was attractive, that was a fact, and if she was going to be treated like a whore, why not be paid for it? on her own terms, of course.

she quit her job. a dedicated course of pickpocketing and a pillage of her savings later, she had assembled a set of jewelry and several of clothes that were luxurious enough to get her in with juicy targets, respectable enough to not immediately get her pinged as a whore, and scanty enough to attract the attention she wanted. shortly thereafter she went to work.

her modus operandi was this: she would sit in an inn’s bar whose owner had an arrangement with her and look decorative. fairly soon she would notice someone wealthy-looking expressing interested in her, go over, and start to flirt. it was usually very easy to get this man—it was almost always a man, firstly because mostly men frequented the establishments she visited and secondly because not very many women responded positively to her flirting—to pay for at the very least several drinks and maybe a meal. she would make sure he kept drinking as much as if not more than she did, which, as her alcohol tolerance was incredibly disproportionate to her actual size, would quickly result in him becoming very tipsy, if not drunk. during this process she would continue to flirt aggressively without actually revealing anything true about herself while extracting as much as she could about the state of the man’s finances. if her initial assessment was incorrect and he was not in fact wealthy, she would get a meal out of him and move on to the next target. if he was, and if he was carrying a substantial amount on his person, she would get him drunk, cut his purse, and leave him in the bar, usually after promising a later meeting to which she would not show. typically she got close enough to pick his pockets by groping him; if he got aggressive about pursing her after that, she would drug him with one of the mixtures she’d picked up from the hedge-witch. he’d be quickly knocked out, wake up with symptoms like a bad hangover, and figure he’d got blackout drunk and had his purse cut while helpless; she’d leave him a flirtatious note giving a phony way to contact her to alleviate suspicion, and ignoring passed-out patrons was what she paid the innkeepers to do. she also carried a concealed flask of very strong alcohol to spike the drinks of targets who weren’t getting drunk fast enough.

if the man was staying at the inn and made mention of a decent sum of money in his room, she’d get him slightly less drunk, pretend to be drunk herself, and make it clear that she’d be an easy lay. eventually he’d be convinced that it was his idea to take her up to his room and do so; she’d make sure he locked the door behind them, citing modesty. occasionally she got lucky and he passed out or was too drunk to fuck all by himself; otherwise, she’d have sex with him, which was generally not enjoyable for her but almost always was for him, and sometime during the process apply a topical poison. it got in through broken skin; if he had a suitable cut already, she’d apply it to that, but if not she had a very handy set of false fingernails to which the poison could be applied that worked quite nicely. after he passed out, she’d rifle through the room as obtrusively as possible, make the lock look inexpertly jimmied from the outside, leave a note praising his sexual prowess and promising she’d locked the door behind her, and exit via the window. the poison was nastier than the drug she put in drinks, and he’d be sick for a day or two after, but nonetheless he’d conclude that she’d left innocently and his room had been broken into afterwards. the innkeeper or a member of the staff would usually helpfully report a suspicious character going upstairs “after your elven lady friend left.”

there were only a few problems with these methods: one, she was at risk for pregnancy, which she solved easily enough with another drug. two, she did not at all enjoy seducing or having sex with the vast majority of her targets, as they were both drunk and usually very much pigs. three, she could use the same inn only very infrequently lest it garner a reputation for pickpocketing and burglary; luckily, there were a lot of inns in the city, especially once she graduated from middle-class ones to the higher tiers. three, she ran into trouble with madams who thought she was stealing their clientele; she solved this one by steering clear of establishments associated with brothels and by greasing palms every now and then. four, after a while word of her, if not her exact methods, got around to the thieves’ guild, and she had to dodge not only the forces of the law, such as they were, but also agents sent by the guild to take her out of business. these last were indubitably the hardest part of her job, and she was well-practiced in staying alert, running quickly, climbing fast, and losing pursuit, as well as increasingly proficient with melee combat. she did not always avoid injury—one thief left her with a slash through her eyebrow and down her cheek, which barely missed her eye, stopped her from working until it healed well enough to cover over with makeup, and consequently made her very cross—but she kept ahead of the guild and stayed alive, which was ultimately all that mattered.

her mother was too ill to find out what exactly Lyriae was doing, but she certainly had her suspicions and made her disapproval loudly and clearly known. nonetheless, Lyriae’s work kept her comfortable enough, even after the doctors said there was nothing to be done, and they even moved out of the rooms that Lyriae had lived in all her life and into a four-room suite in a slightly better neighborhood. all the while, Lyriae kept saving everything not strictly needed for working and living expenses, although for the longest time she wasn’t sure why.

then, soon after she turned seventeen, she realized. the satisfaction of bamboozling someone completely and the giddy rush of making off with their money had worn off; her cons were old, and she was nearly as bored as she had been washing dishes. she wanted something newer and better, and, as far as she was concerned, there was nothing newer and better left in this city. even if she got rich enough to lounge in luxury among the richest merchants—and wouldn’t that be nice—she’d still be bored. she wanted to do something that was never boring; she wanted to travel and see the world and ply her trade in a hundred different places in a hundred different ways.

she thought of the stories of adventurers she’d heard: parties of wizards and paladins and magic-wielding clerics, killing monsters and getting treasure and becoming heroes renowned across the land. she didn’t think she would ever be a hero, but she figured that even heroes needed someone to pick pockets or locks sometimes, and if she could survive in this city, she could survive in a dungeon. and adventuring, whatever else it was, did not sound boring.

she returned to work with a vengeance. she was less cautious and more aggressive; the only thing that mattered was getting money now, not her long-term prospects in the city. the thieves’ guild’s efforts to take her out grew in frequency and intensity; she responded by switching from her previous strategy of avoiding if possible to killing every agent she could. her wealth grew. eventually, nearly two years later, it was enough. she sold the tools of her old trade (except, of course, for the poisoned fingernails), bought the ones needed for her new one, paid a good-hearted neighbor to look in on her mother once in a while, left enough money for her mother to live on well past when the doctors said she’d die, and left the city.

she wasn’t guilty, she told herself. she didn’t miss anything or anyone she’d left behind her. she wasn’t looking back, because ahead of her was a brave new world full of everything she wanted.

anyway, so, uh. that's a thing. I know you said to not get too attached 'cause we might all die, but at this point if she dies I am totally recycling her. anyway. good luck reading that, and I guess you can let me know what feat(s) you think would be suitable?

edit: also, I'm pretty sure this is the case, but the Players' Handbook doesn't explicitly confirm it—attempted seduction would fall under Persuasion, right? that is, as you can see, hugely relevant to Lyriae's background. :P

 

this is probably a dumb question, but I have very little idea what that is! I get that our icons are supposed to represent us the players (or possibly our characters? in which case may I suggest you substitute headshots of my and swirlingflight's character picture for ours), but I have no idea what those things along the top are. also I'm not entirely what purpose the grid serves. is it a combat map?

I'd like to point out also that Lyriae has the highest AC (16, from a light armor base, I fucking love my Dex modifier), followed by Alabaster the delicate flower, who has AC 15. he's hard to hit, but he can take like two hits max. :P also, although Stella has the highest number of HP, her Const bonus is +3; Lyriae's is +0, and if that was Stella's bonus, she'd have 22 HP. I'm still laughing about that. god those rolls were terrible, we're all gonna die...

I'm also still laughing about the sheer number of skill proficiencies Lyriae has. I think I accidentally picked the race and class that hands down just has the most.

edit: re: the squishiness problem—I could actually take the herbalism kit as one of my background proficiencies instead of the disguise kit, if Frood'll allow it? it is somewhat justified, which actually wasn't intentional, but ah well. and she wouldn't have practice using it to heal people, but I'm sure she'd learn. I can't actually afford to buy a kit, though, seeing as I have 9 cp total funds. ...would it be entirely illegal for someone else in the party to buy one (it's 5 gp) and just, like, give it to Lyriae? or for Lyriae to borrow 5 gp from somebody if we start somewhere where a kit might reasonably be attained?

 

@esotericPrognosticator thanks! And yeah, that'd be Persuasion.

I see what you mean -- Urchin fits the earlier part of her life but not the more recent formative one, and Charlatan doesn't cover the specific con she runs. However, "she was well-practiced in staying alert, running quickly, climbing fast, and losing pursuit" suggests that the Urchin feature, City Secrets (double non-combat movement speed for entire party through urban areas) would be a great fit. Is there a reason it wouldn't work?

The grid I'll be using for combat maps (modified, of course, to the size of whatever room you're in). The icons along the side represent your characters (I thought of using your characters' headshots, but then it would be Lyriae, Sarnai, Star Shape, Anime Character, Whatever Wiwaxia's Icon Is, and I prefer consistency). The icons at the top are various foes you might encounter during the game -- I pulled those images from the adventure PDF. The actual combat maps will make more sense. The image I uploaded was mostly to test how the forum would display certain things, so that diagrams wouldn't get all lossy or shrunk to illegibility.

I'll allow the herbalism kit thing if someone else in the party is willing to buy it. You've been working together long enough to pool resources. Bear in mind, though, that it'll only be useful if you get your hands on the materials necessary to brew up antitoxin or healing potion. Even if you don't have the kit, your proficiency with it will help you identify herbs.

 

@The Frood Abides wow, that was speedy! man, you are the hero the world deserves for reading through all that. anyway. Urchin does fit pretty well, but I think I was caught up in some rule or other saying some other part of the background had to match the feat? like, some of the proficiencies or some such. ...possibly it was the equipment and I didn't think the Urchin equipment would be suitable, so I ruled that background out, and then I forgot to rule it back in when I decided to buy my equipment. ahem. well, anyway, if you'll okay it, that does sound good! speaking of backgrounds, though, did you see my question(s) about herbalism kit proficiency?

also, great! she is going to make a lot of Persuasion checks, probably. there's a reason I gave her an 18 Charisma!

I mean, as it is, it's Troll OC Headshot; Landscape with Flock of Flying Things, Possibly Birds; Star Needlepoint; Anime Character; and Wiwaxia, but I take your point. :P (btw, Wiwaxia's icon is a member of the genus Wiwaxia, although I don't know what species. or rather, a model of one, since they went extinct ~2.5 million years ago. they were probably mollusks, although that is a subject of debate. I think they also might've been worms?) also, thanks for explaining, I just... couldn't tell that those icons were supposed to be anything aside from abstract art... also, btw, if anyone wants me to make their character in a dollmaker so they have a rough ref I'm totally down! just send me, like, as much appearance detail as humanly possible. :P

oh, good! I'll take that proficiency, then. @Wiwaxia, @missoyashirou, @thegrimsqueaker, @swirlingflight, anyone got 5 gp to spare? also, I'd appreciate a little bit more backstory on, like, the party—how long have we been together? how'd we meet? approximately how long would we have been adventuring to get to 5th level?

 

Hissses, no, my remaining silvers and coppers are mine, prescious. Gollum, gollum.... But sigh, yes, I can chip in a little bit. I only have 3gp total, I can't and won't fund the whole thing. We could even say we bought it from Sarnai's herbalist family.

I'm in a good position to have known at least two people pre-adventuring, between failing to become a wizard but making the attempt anyway (our wizard at the local wizard university) and learning bardic skills (our entertainer paladin).

I assumed in my backstory bits that I've done at least some adventuring with other people; some rough idea of a dwarf mentor, haven't fleshed out yet.

 

I read quickly. English major :P

You've probably all been adventuring for a year at least. I'll leave the rest up to the group. The prologue post I've drafted just has you together for the heist. If you're short on ideas, I'd suggest an Ocean's Eleven-style meeting, where two or three of you knew each other beforehand and recruited the others whom you knew by reputation.

 

So I want to establish that there is a badass dwarf of a history professor. One who likes shit like hunting down old enchanted items to see how they tick, and describing major magical duels and times when magic really fucked things up.

They're the one Sarnai learned the most from.

 

Liron took one class from them as an elective, never thought she'd use anything from it, and has since lost her notes from that class. she regrets this.

 

I like this professor a lot.

FYI, I will be traveling August 11-14, with unpredictable Internet access, so I would like to at least get the IC thread up and running before then. I'll just put up the intro post Wednesday if missoyashirou hasn't finished Stella's responses: it'll be a while before the background questions become relevant, anyway.

 

tbh, Liron is generally upset that she can't bring all of her notes everywhere. one spellbook just isn't enough- there's so much interesting magic in these dungeons and vaults! she'd really like more time to take notes, but monsters and thugs keep attacking, which is just plain rude. don't they understand that there's research to do?

 

@esotericPrognosticator I just realized that proficiency in the poisoner's kit might fit your background better than the herbalism kit. Would you prefer to choose that or stick with herbalism? There's going to be a small amount of overlap, but quite different applications.

 

@The Frood Abides I was planning on both, actually? as far as I can remember, with a custom background you can pick two tool proficiencies and two skills? I may be wrong about that, in which case the poisoner's kit is definitely more appropriate and I'll go for that. no way can I afford it, but whatcha gonna do.

 

@esotericPrognosticator I thought you'd got disguise and poison originally, then swapped out poison for herbalism. If you're going poison/herbalism instead, then I have no problem, that's totally appropriate and legal. My bad.

@swirlingflight while I'm nitpicking people's sheets, you've got Common and Dwarvish purely off being human. You get 2 bonus languages from the Sage background that I'm not seeing written down.

 

@The Frood Abides nah, I swapped disguise for herbalism, so yeah, it's gonna be poison/herbalism. it's a metaphor. or something. does my sheet not reflect that? I thought I edited it, but I may've been mistaken.

 

Your sheet reflects the update, it's all good. Probably my mistake.

 

This is a very beneficial nitpicking, I approve and appreciate!