Agnaran's Agony OOC

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Post all your comments, questions and ideas about things pertaining to the RP thread or the RP thread itself in here.

Rules are rather scarce right now:

1. No playing another person's character without permission from that character or explicit need, i.e. a ceiling collapses and all characters need to clear the immediate area to avoid falling debris and nothing more can happen until all characters react, else wise they'd be killed by falling debris. The rule includes the killing of PCs without permission, though characters who fail to post of an extended period may become exempt from this rule.

2. No fighting that isn't part of the RP. This is not a place to air your dirty laundry. PMs are a great way to solve such problems (I hope).

The basic premise is that your character has been forcibly conscripted into the defense of the city of Utavas, far north in the Kingdom of Loskgrod. Whether you where originally a mercenary who came seeking employment after hearing of the string of destroyed cities or a hapless subject or traveler of able appearance taken off the streets of the one of the cities or towns of Loskgrod, the ice maidens of Illorun regard you no differently then serfs conscripted into their noble's army, you'll fight because you have to, not because you're paid. You hold no illusion that they won't fail to kill you should you refuse to do as they say. You are currently less then a days march from the city and the ice maidens have been talking amongst themselves about a need to break through the enemy lines to get into the city. You gather that the enemy you face probably isn't humanoid and the disdain that drips from the words of the ice maidens when they talk of the enemy leads you to think that there is a good chance that the undead make up a sizable portion of that enemy, for there are few things that the ice maidens hate more then the undead they don't control.

As the story gets going I encourage members of the RP to start pushing the thread in the direction they want to go and add in their own subplots and what not.

Do not post your character in this thread. I will be making a thread for posting characters in.

 

hmm adding my own subplots, sounds interesting, always nice to add your own flavour to a game, so long as it doesnt conflict too much with what the DM has set down.

kinda made me think of the opening of 300, lol "We march. From dear Lakonia.. from sacred Sparta.. we march. For Honor's sake.. For Glory's sake.. we march. Three days out. Merciless heat. Throat goes dry"

but overall it sounds pretty good. sounds like im gonna enjoy this. first time for this sort of thing, but i like the premise. cant wait to get into the swing of things.


on a side note, i really like al lyour names for places/people. you do this often? making camapaigns or whatever, i could learn a thing or two from you.

 

In my defense, I've never seen the the movie Sparta (I therefore can't be copying it ). I just figured I'd start the RP outside the city just so you're not immediately shoved into the middle of the siege (room for a bit of character develop in the relative lull of the beginning). Also that the city is surrounded makes for such a need, but not to worry, the Church of Illorun has interesting allies to come to our aid.

As for campaign creation, I'm the one who always ends up being the DM as both myself and my friends seem to like it that way. I, by far, have the largest knowledge of world mythology of my friends who play.

 

i wasnt saying you were, i was just saying it made me think of that.

hmm good idea, the start is usually slow, so developing your character a bit more would be great.


in regards to character creation, how specific (or how vague) do you want us to be, ive seen these sorts of things before where people got pretty detailed, and in addition of race and class weapons they included lvl, hit points, armor class, known spells, innate abilities, etc, pretty much everything you could know about a character.

 

It's just any self respecting DM's job to nip those things in the bud. He's got to deny it even if it's true.

I'll detail that when I get the Character thread up. Characters won't need to be very detailed though (race, class, height and age will likely be everything you need aside from a name and some sort of description of your character). Even biographies can be relatively limited for terms of withholding information about your character from other players.


Okay, the half-sisters, Agnama and Illorun, are important the whole way through so I'll give them more detail then the general info found in the World Info thread (yes I know that's a terrible name).

Illorun is the youngest full fledged deity of Waern being almost 3,000 years old. Considered one of the four most beautiful goddesses in Waern, Illorun is one of three goddesses who claims the title of the most beautiful goddess. Illorun is one of two goddesses who claims the mantle of maiden. Illorun resides on the plane known as the Frozen Wastes of Niflhelm which was joined with the Material Plane over 7,000 years ago by Illorun's father. Illorun is the byproduct the cataclysmic battle between the Greater Goddess Grunla and the Greater God Vyndram, who is the fromer god of death, discord, panic and strife, which resulted in Vyndram's death and the loss of Grunla's status as a greater deity. Grunla destroyed Vyndram by attacking directly with her own divine force, but by doing such, some of Vyndram's energy was forced into Grunla where is festered for sometime, before Grunla's body did what it could to purify that raw essence of death, conceiving Illorun. As the youngest deity, Illorun is the most active in the mortal realm. Illorun has few allies amongst the deities, her only true ally being Mairadon. Illorun despises all deities of good and chaos, specially her mother. She also hates her father who, like all deities, lingers on spirit form who tried to absorb his daughter in order to facilitate his own ressurection, which failed. Vyndram has succeeded in binding his soul, however, to his daughter and is now never far from her, at times using his remaining powers to absorb the negative energies of her body and take control of her. Illorun also has a special hatred for the goddesses Sedenira and Neithutet who are the other two goddesses who claim the title of most beautiful goddess. Illorun considers the two her rivals and ever seeks their down fall. Illorun holds incredible hatred the god Cerborar who lusts after her and in times past attempted to rape her. Illorun also despises Ishomi because beauty is her domain, which Illorun desperately wants as her own. Illorun is the half sister of Ohenall, Sedenira, along with Agnama through Grunla.

Illorun is a cold, vain and cruel deity, blood thirsty even by the standards of evil gods calling for regular human sacrifices in order to keep cold and death off the door of mortals. Illorun only excepts the sacrifice of the most beautiful maidens; sacrifice of men has in brought down disasters of epic proportions in the past as Illorun considers such a sacrifice to be a horrific insult. As a goddess of death, Illorun hates sexuality and reproduction on principle and because of her own asexual conception, coupled with her own vainity, believes only imperfection can come through sex. Illorun is said to have never smiled during her existence or felt the pangs of lust or love. She is known to fly into terrible rages if offended however.

The Church of Illorun is entirely dominated by women, for Illorun despises men because of how their sexuality relates to her. Illorun however is served by male druids, rangers and barbarians, but Illorun sees males in these roles as prized animals and requires them to repress any expression of sexuality they would have. Illorun's clerics are known as ice maidens and contrary to the common stories told in the tavers of Waern, ice maidens are not lesbians. The life of the ice maiden is a harsh and cold one, forced to be sexless by their goddess and living in constant fear of their goddess who is apt to take their lives should they displease her as lead most ice maidens to be exceeding cruel and uncaring with the lives of others. Ice maidens especially hate men, but not for the reasons commonly assumed, as most ice maidens worry that they might give in to their own natural drives, which is a sure ticket for death at Illorun's hand (Illorun typically regards women as passive victims in sexual relationships, but that matters not to Illorun when it comes to her prized possessions in the ice maidens who have been soiled should they loose their virginity). No woman chooses to be any ice maiden. Future ice maidens are choosen in their infancy by older ice maidens for their percieved beauty and coloring, forcibly taking these children from their family. Illorun prefers beautiful clerics and the church prefers beautiful clerics with blond hair and blue eyes because they resemble Illorun. The future ice maidens are then raised and trained by older ice maidens to become clerics of Illorun. Most ice maidens pick up levels in fighter and cleric (they emphasize cleric if possible). Only clerics on the fast track for upper levels of the church hierarchy are pure clerics.

The Church of Illorun also has a military arm known as the warrior maidens, who are selected from the future ice maidens for showing little aptitude for divine magic, but excel in melee combat. These women become berserkers of a sort, though they retain their lawful nature and their rages are much more focused then the berserker found in patriarchal society. Warrior maidens prefer to fight on horseback. Warrior maidens are always subordinate to an ice maiden of "equal" rank.

 

Agnama is one of three deities who is a member of the undead. Agnama reached this unfortunate fate through the meddling of Kelgoryd, the lich god of arcane knowledge, magic and undead, who desired to create himself an ally. Agnama was but a fetus with in her mother Grunla at the time, and Kelgoryd's horrific magic turned the little godling into an undead entity that rose fully animate after her stillbirth. Agnama is one of the few creatures that should have become an abomination, but never had her spirit aborted by her divine parent, becoming a true deity. Agnama observes almost every humanoid birth on Waern and whispers the foreseen death of that child; Agnama's predictions are never wrong. Agnama watches over every wake making sure that proper amount of grief is offered to those who have died; she delights in punishing the widow, widower, mother or father who doesn't truly grieve for their spouse or child. Much of this activity is Agnama's own bitterness at what see feels is the lack of grief offered by the world over her fate. Atropals and atropal scions find themselves especially drawn to her, for they see her as a like being. Agnama as few allies amongst her fellow gods, predominately receiving comfort and aid from her mother who seeks to reclaim her child and quell the evil afflicting Agnama. Agnama would like to see her sibling Illorun as an ally, but Illorun despises Agnama's ugliness. Kelgoryd would seek to make Agnama his ally, but she rightly blames him for her fate and hates him with all her essence.

Agnama is a miserable creature who wallows in the grief of others and never seems to be able to let that which is lost left go. Agnama seeks to make mortals express what she considers "perfect grief", an inability to move past that which has been lost, in an effort to make that which is lost never truly lost. Agnama takes a special interest in those who are surrounded by grief and can not seem to move on. Agnama likes to increase the grief in the lives if these people in the hopes that this person can preserve that which is lost for their natural life. There even lingers a tale of an elven king who Agnama found so perfect in his grief that she let his grief sustain him as if it was an immortal soul.

Agnama's church is made up entirely of the undead and is therefore illegal in lands ruled by the living.

 

Just a quick note. There are 8 months in Waern, all named after the goddess most associated with that time of the year. Agnala (named after Agnama) is the equivalent of October 22nd to November 21st. The twenty six day of Agnala is November 16th therefore. The coming month is Illorica, spanning from November 22nd to January 20th.

Also feel free to make use of any NPC I haven't named in the character thread, such as various ice maidens, warrior maidens or conscripts. Also ice maidens don't use the term "male" when talking to male characters (there's a reason drow don't exist in this world and that's what precious little remains of my sanity), as they don't see men as inferior, but necessary breeding stock. Instead it's more of how whites saw blacks in the Americas prior the abolition of slavery. Men provide certain necessities, such as labor and martial services, but interactions should be kept to necessity only. That's not to say that ice maidens always stay true to this, some fall victim to more human inklings.

 

I edited out the bit about the halfling pickpocket, Cortia Bramblehill heading off into the woods. Said actions would have merely slowed down the relief force's entry to Utavas and really had nothing in terms of content. I'll be the first to admit that I don't know where I was really trying to go with it.

 

oh ok then, yeh the city is under attack we really should be hurrying along, though one or two hiccups along the way is to be expected, you cant predict everything. But yeh that bit with the halfing seemed a little limited, and well distracting too i guess.

 

Okay, the undead surrounding Utavas are predominately skeletons, ghouls, ghasts and wights with a scattering of mohrgs and the rare bodak (who would be inactive during the day time). Skeletons make up the notable majority of the undead troops (zombies are impractical for siege warfare, as they are nothing more then arrow fodder with their terrible land speed). There is a notable absence of incorporeal undead (as that would generally make things far more annoying then things need be). Incorporeal undead may be present in particular instances of the RP, but they aren't generic monsters who fly through the city walls and create a city of spectres or wraiths. The undead found in the MM II, MM III, MM IV, MM V, Libris Mortis or whatever other books are out there are not commonly found the undead forces (especially since many of the undead from those books have brutally ridiculous challenge ratings). Vampires and lichs are not found amongst this army as vampires and lichs almost never associate with the goddess Agnama.

Utavas is constructed like a dark age fortress/castle with a wooden palisade around the city (similar to some of the forts found in the American west), accessible only through a wooden gate house. Wood is particularly popular in Loskgrod because of the habit of the ground to sink or settle due to it's marshy nature and wooden walls are easier to deal with then stone walls. However, elevated on higher ground lies the the lord's house or keep which is build from stone and surrounded by a stone wall, accessible through a stone gate house. A trench is dug around it in order to keep enemies from easily reaching it's walls. A trench does not surround the wooden palisade, which is noticeably more vulnerable then the keep as the lords are generally more willing to spend the time dealing with stone that protects them, as opposed to the city. The city palisade is surounded by an earth bulwark in order to help keep enemies off the walls.

 

Will we have much to do with the ones commanding the undead (the clerics)?

 

No, the higher ups, particularly at this point, are unwilling to place themselves in harm's way. However, none of Agnama's clerics are human, those controlling the mindless undead are most likely ghouls, ghasts or wights with some cleric levels. Most of the intelligent undead operate under their own design and motivations (and most simply have flocked to more powerful undead with the hopes of making the venting of their hate of the living more fruitful).

 

I do hope we get to fight them at some point. often if you kill the "master" the "servants" die as well.

 

Oh, we will deal with some of them (under a "traitor in the midst" type theme as undead wreaking havoc in the city are always fun), but the truly higher up ones will dealt with in a situation suitable for the PCs to keep the glory for themselves (I mean you can't be heroes when you have to share the glory with the city militia).

 

right.

Just so long as we do get to fight 'em at some point.

Gets a little boring fighting nothing but minions

 

Here are pictures of the undead that surround Utavas:

Skeleton I can't imagine one really needs this link, but oh well

Ghoul or Ghast

Wight

Mohrg

Bodak

 

Been a while, couldn't remember what the last two looked like, well not so much the Bodak, but the Mohrg, yeh.