A New Life (PbP Game)

[LadyBhaal]

Lady sighed at that. "Unfortunately, we're heading into war. We will be participating in war. We will be killing people. Raigne, I'm sorry, I really hope you can keep your sanity through this. Joshua too" she says, watching him walk off.

[Raigne]

Raigne watches Joshua walk away and then forces herself to look at the corpse again. She kneels next to it, and with one of her arrows she lifts the holy symbol to eye level to examine it.

[Lothmar]

~listen check - if I hear what joshua says~
'He'll have to come to terms with it on his own I suppose,'
"Yep, quite a shame he refused to surrender." He Grunts working to close the gate.

[MuthSera]

~listen check - if I hear what joshua says~
'He'll have to come to terms with it on his own I suppose,'
"Yep, quite a shame he refused to surrender." He Grunts working to close the gate.

Spoiler: show

Keeping in mind that he is in your presence, speaking audibly, under favorable conditions, the listen DC would actually be -5.

Several peasants lend aid. The gates are now closed.

[MuthSera]

Raigne watches Joshua walk away and then forces herself to look at the corpse again. She kneels next to it, and with one of her arrows she lifts the holy symbol to eye level to examine it.

It's a circular black obsidian pendant.

[Raigne]

After examining the pendant, and waiting for Joshua to be out of earshot, she looks over at Lothmar. "No offense to you, my diminutive friend, but is that really what happened? This corpse is split open like it's been butchered." She points at the holy symbol dangling from her arrow. "As a cleric, he can't have been wielding a blade bigger than a dagger. How did you manage that wound with a dagger, I wonder?"

Not waiting for a response, or assuming she wouldn't get an honest one if she did, she continues, "Do any of you recognize this symbol?"

Spoiler: show

As you've described it to me, I'm assuming it's an unadorned or uncarved obsidian circle, with no other details on it. Edit: Specifically she's asking if anyone can name the deity it's associated with. I'm assuming if it weren't obvious it was a holy symbol, Muth would have said it was a necklace (unidentified), right?

[Lothmar]

Wiping his brow he gives an excited "Woo!" He smiles slightly. "Thanks for your help, now lets focus on enjoying ourselves eh!?" He says ushering the peasants back to party trying to get them excited again. "Be right with you," He adds breaking off only ten or so feet from the cluster of his companions.

He listens to Raignes question. "Quite observant of you, but really whose saying I didnt repay what was borrowed? To a man who threw my gesture of good will back in my face as he tried to leave our friend as a lawn fixture impaled to the ground." He adds pulling out his tiger steel shields. "Not only functional like bracers of armor, they're also a mean weapon." They wrap around his forearm and the blades extend well past the hand, kind of like a punching dagger but better quality, it was definitely exotic. He adds demonstrating a flurry of blows in the air (d6 piercing or slashing). "But, I needed my hands free to drag noah back so I cleaned 'em off and put 'em away. (Wait, did she just call me a cleric? Also two handed, small creatures can wield medium weapons...) Besides; I wasnt about to ruin a childs innocence by letting him kill a man, even if it was to preserve Noahs life, not when I can take that burden." He add in reference to Joshua. He then eyes the obsidian "Could be a bad 'gaming' reference, obsidian and what-not... But I dont remember a core diety off the top of my head that used obsidian, maybe a god of darkeness, could easily be referencing the sphere of night."

Unlashing his weapons from his arms and putting them away again he took in a deep breath and recomposed himself. "But If we have the time we should definitely take a few days after the ceremony and work on general team work; True we just started this and we really needed to focus on practice in our respective fields, but I think we can all easily see now the difference between a group of individuals and actual teamwork. But thankfully we were on the defense, we had the number and most important luck and courage were on our side this time," He adds rubbing under his nose for a moment. "Now, who wants to hook this ass kicking machine up with a nice cure something wounds?" He adds with a playful wink and a slight laugh being the only person with an 'assumed' confirmed kill.

"But hey, I got lucky the injured ones kept on running giving me a shot at the leader; Thanks to my man here, who took on three at once, show him some respect! And of course our boys in uniform, Good work out there guys. And Noah, nice hustle - A for effort there bud." He adds wrapping one arm around Chrono's leg back and giving him a playful punch in the side with his free hand before waving back at the guards and then wrapping the second arm around Noah trying to usher the two to the party with him. It was obvious he was trying his best to lighten the mood, stress usually forced him into an odd state of mind and he usually tries to relieve it with a bit of comedy.

"Wait, wait this is no good." He looks up at the two on either side of him. "I almost forgot Rangers Pink and yellow." He adds with a smirk. "Come'on, lets have some fun; After all, more people participating the sooner we'll be safely warded off from the bad guys. Then we can think seriously in relative saftey. Come on, if none of this interests you," He adds motioning to the three of them. "Im sure you two can find something to your respective taste." He knew he was basically tap dancing over a mindfield but he'd rather everyone be a little miffed at him rather then depressed or angry like he really was.

[chrono]

When Chrono hears about the sign on his forehead, he looks puzzled for a moment, then raises his hand toward his face, but stops halfway. After a brief hesitation he relaxes and looks at his feet for a couple of seconds, then shrugs and says rather cheerfully. Well, I guess that answers two important questions with one go. Then he bursts out in a short laugh (he sounds genuinely amused).

When Raigne speaks, Chrono gives her a strange long look: That's not how Arcane Mark works..., he says And that in itself is probably important, I might be able to use it later on...

He looks away, then glances at Lothmar and says Dude, what does mine say? and grins.

As Lothmar flashes his moves with the punch daggers, Chrono observes him with genuine fascination. Although he had dropped in to watch Lothmar's training a couple of times for a few minutes in the last month, he had obviously missed the fact that Lothmar apparently is a small shredder on legs. Yes, me against the three mages was pretty heroic-looking I guess. Totally not my style, I don't think any of us should try that again. I agree that we definitely need to work on our teamwork.

I also should change this armor for something lighter before we go anywhere, he mutters.

[Raigne]

Spoiler: show

After looking over the other responses, Lady already took the holy symbol from the corpse. I missed it. Should we assume that I asked her if I could look at it, or something? Also, I'm gonna guess the gold mentioned previously is in the small bag, rather than loose about his person. Also, Lothmar, she was referring to the dead guy with the cleric comment. Joshua said you disarmed him, and the conclusion she drew was that you used his own weapon against him.

Raigne appears satisfied with Lothmar's response. Was he wearing the daggers before? I don't remember now. Did he have time to disarm an enemy, drop that weapon and put the others on if he wasn't? If he punched the cleric repeatedly, there'd be several stab wounds, not one giant slashing wound.

"You know, we play these games, and we never really consider what happens to the corpses when we kill things. If it's all the same to you, I'd like to move this body, first. It doesn't need to be here at the gate where children might see it, and it doesn't take very long for a decomposing body to start to smell. Have you ever smelled a corpse before? Go ahead and rejoin the party, if you need to, but please excuse me from joining you."

She fishes the small bag out from where it was being kept, peers inside and then calls out again, "What do you want to do with the gold, Lothmar?"

She stands and looks down at the body again. The wound is gruesome, and while she's seen gory wounds before, she's never seen them on a dead humanoid in person. She closes her eyes to steady herself for a moment, and then studies the nearby buildings, looking for somewhere out of sight but easily guarded to put the corpse. There has to be somewhere we can bring him until we can find out what to do with him. The avatar may want to take a look, and who knows what these people have been doing with their dead since the ground froze. It would probably be a bad idea to bring him to the long house, and it's through the crowd anyway. "I might make a suggestion about the holy symbol, Lady. Keep it away from the long house. Show it to the avatar when you get a chance, certainly, but not there. Actually... perhaps one of the angels might give you the benefit of their bardic lore?"

[Lothmar]

"Ah yes, a most excellent idea." He adds in a tone that implied he was thanking her for her responsible behaviour. "Well even split I suppose unless we're not allowed to keep our spoils..."

[chrono]

Chrono gives Lothmar a wide grin. Well now, splitting fairly and splitting evenly are two completely different ways of doing it. After all, it was your kill. Buuut we'd never agree on what's fair, so I guess we should go for even.
Chrono turns away, then back toward the others. You know, I'm not one to give up loot, but right now I have no need for it. I'd like to keep one coin, but whoever needs to make final purchases can borrow my share.
Unless we're allowed? I'm still high on adrenaline and there will be trouble if someone tries to cross us right at this moment.

[LadyBhaal]

Spoiler: show

Raigne, I doubt I got to take the symbol as my next action was to cast CLW on Noah, and I would have dropped trying to take the symbol to do that. However unless you want it I'm happy to take possession of it for now

"I agree Raigne that we should move the body, let's ask the guards if they have a morgue here or something. On a purely wild guess I'd say that the emblem represents 'oblivion', black hole style. But I'm expecting to be wrong here, and kinda hoping."

Spoiler: show

Knowledge:Religion on the symbol anyway, just in case it helps

[Raigne]

"A morgue isn't likely, since these aren't exactly people of science. I am thinking the barracks might be a good spot, for now. I don't know if he can be reanimated or if they can summon a new spirit into him, but I want some guards keeping an eye on him just in case, you know?" She picked up one of the sheets of paper that wasn't too bloody (like one from the middle or bottom of the stack), wrapped the symbol in it, and handed it to Lady. Not really wanting to be in charge of the money, she would call to Lothmar as a heads up, and toss the bag to him. She'd call a couple of guards over and, if they had a suggestion of where to put the body, take it, or if they were willing to keep it at the barracks, help them move it there.

[LadyBhaal]

"From what I remember, he can be rezzed, reanimated, or used to host a new body, just not by any of us right now." Lady asks a guard what they normally do with bodies, and accepts the holy symbol from Raigne.

[chrono]

Hold on, Chrono says to both girls, did that guy have anything else on him? Hopefully anything that would help us figure this whole thing out, or at least something vastly expensive? He smiles faintly at his own joke.
This world is very suspicious... We seem to live in DnD and even confront DnD players, but in normal DnD you usually get to loot the dead guy's armor. That always bothered me, since you were taking an armor that failed its wearer fatally at least once, which in itself was a good reason not to take it at all. But this armor is ruined, which means this DnD world comes with both craziness and realism, which is never a good sign.

[Raigne]

She gave Chrono a withering look, and said "Help us move him and you can look yourself. Do a damn cavity search if you want, but you can do it inside."

Spoiler: show

Whatever suspicions Chrono might have, Raigne doesn't give a rat's ass about money right now. You'll find the pearl if you look for it. Raigne didn't bother. She doesn't even know it's there.

[chrono]

Chrono shrugs and grabs one end of the blanket. Still glaring at Raigne, he says: Is it this time of month or are you in a permanent PMS? He sighs.
Just lead the way, will ya...

At this point his attention stops at an edge that shows from under the dead body. Ooh, what do we have here, he says as he lets go with one hand and pulls the blade free. This will definitely help solve a part of my gear problem... Does anybody mind if I kept it? he says addressing everybody and gives the sword a little wave in the air.

Spoiler: show

I assume with my overwhelming appraise I can at least figure out it's a masterwork weapon.

[MuthSera]

Chrono shrugs and grabs one end of the blanket. Still glaring at Raigne, he says: Is it this time of month or are you in a permanent PMS? He sighs.
Just lead the way, will ya...

At this point his attention stops at an edge that shows from under the dead body. Ooh, what do we have here, he says as he lets go with one hand and pulls the blade free. This will definitely help solve a part of my gear problem... Does anybody mind if I kept it? he says addressing everybody and gives the sword a little wave in the air.

Spoiler: show

I assume with my overwhelming appraise I can at least figure out it's a masterwork weapon.

It's obviously masterwork, by your estimations.

[Lothmar]

He waves his hand over his shoulder as if to say he didnt care. He was tired and was in no mood to play detective so he left them to thier devices and entered the party. As he left he uttered "Well you guys have fun playing CSI or watching the wall, im going to go get a feel on party morale, i'll be back in a few." However this was mostly to just hide himself so it wasnt obvious where he was going.

~Appropriate stealth / other checks if needed~

[Raigne]

"Whatever. Let's just get this guy inside."

Spoiler: show

I'll note again that I have asked for guard assistance and am following their lead in terms of where this corpse is going, since the person in charge of the guards must have missed it...