Chapter 12 - You can never go home again

[Cadrius]

Hey, y'all. Just wanted to give you a heads up that I actually have some plot in store for the next chapter. It will shake things up a little bit: give us some progression of time and change the scenery.

I don't believe in extensively plotting things out, but the meat of it will involve Cadrius going home to the Hundred Duchies and finding that shit has hit the proverbial fan. I've got a few hooks for each of the characters involved, but, as always, you are welcome to take, reject, or go entirely off on your own tangent.

It's what makes this game great.

[itches]

I suggest we fight a circus cannibal clowns. It's a story that is just begging to be told.

[Gralhruk]

Posts! In the plot subforum! Life is grand indeed.

[Black Plauge]

I think that the Church of Hieronious and its plot to use the threat of an orc invasion that we've discussed before could be the trigger for this. The Hundred Duchies (or part thereof) might be the sacrificial lamb that the Church plans on handing to the orcs in order to get other nations to unite behind them.

[Cadrius]

I agree that we should maintain the church corruption theme throughout. It has some definite legs.

[itches]

The church having an orc ally/minion with enough power to threaten/invade all of the hundred dutchies is fairly big. I was thinking something more along the size of enough to invade a city, which is still pretty big. Do you want to shift to this scale?

[-J-]

what are the goals of the church - Is there a pontif who wishes to take over the lands himself? A secret cabal of dukes who wish to unite/subjugate the rest ofthe lesser dutchies? Does Thuranauch want to destabilize the Dutchies in anticipation of an imperial reclaimation?

If the worship of Hieronious is as wide spread throughout the human lands it seems, it then raises the question as to which branch/faction of the church is acting - who do they control, what do they know, are they acting alone, what are their allies goals?

Maybe its neither the orcs nor the humans who are ultimately behind seeding the hostilites between the orcs and humans, maybe a third party. A dragon who want to keep the pesky humans fighting each other so it can have some peace, a cabal of demonologists who wish to use the ensuing slaughter in some infernal blood ritual (they could even be magically hidden memebers of the church), the fragments of the elven nation who wish to see the humans driven from the continent. etc etc ad nauseum.

[Cadrius]

Not to be overly cryptic, but you can leave those details to me.

[itches]

Dun dun darr!

[Gralhruk]

The entire hundred duchies as a sacrifice seems kind of large to me also. I'm fine with leaving it to you guys to decide in the next arc, though.

[-J-]

i was more like a really big battle, but in order to get the really big battle you need to get alot people peeved enough to try to kill each other.

[Black Plauge]

If the Hundred Duchies are as fractured as Cadrius's posts thus far have implied, then I could see the church planning to sacrifice some of the smaller boarderland duchies, where their influence is likely less. However, once an orc horde gets on the warpath, its hard to slow them down and the cost could end up being much higher as each duchy acts to protect its own interests before those of the collective whole.

As for church goals, we've already discussed them as being ensconced within the political structure of many places through their role as judges, and because they tend to maintain a standing "army." However, we haven't put them as being the formal heads of any territories, so these positions are somewhat percarious. Perhaps one of the goals of this maneuver is to change that. The plan might be to sacrifice a few duchies to the horde to bring home the threat. Then, the church, with its standing "army" would take the lead as forces were gathered to push back the orcs. This would in turn put them in position to take charge in any reconquered territories and thus establish formal church control over some portion of the human lands. Once that's done it'll be easier to "merge" or "ally" with neighboring lands for strength rather than outright take them over.

[Stringbean2142]

Just as a question, heading to the Hundred Duchies is still the plan for chapter 12, right? I'm polishing off my second IC post, and if things are going thataway I'd like to start bending Keiron's trail towards the Duchies myself.

Cadrius, your playing things close to the chest but can you tell us if it's the whole of the Duchies that's affected, or just part? If just part, I'd like to maybe thread a few rumors in as Keiron starts to get closer. Vague things, and most will be contradictory, but it will help set the mood. I've been reading a lot of Lovecraft lately, and just have the picture in my head of an old man telling fantastical stories in an inn about the troubles in the Duchies. This is still a ways ahead, I know, but I like planting seeds when I can. It makes it seem like I have a plan, instead of winging it like I really am...

[Gralhruk]

I think having Keiron head toward the 100 duchies and hear various and contradictory rumors is a fine idea. As far as I know the rest of us are still headed there.

[itches]

So are we still planning this for Chapter 12?

[Black Plauge]

I don't see why not.

[Gralhruk]

What BP said.

[Cadrius]

Bringing this back up to the top to cover some new ground. After much deliberation I realized I was trying to cover just too much with Chapter 12 (the introduction of the duchies, the Church's involvement, the orcish threat, the continued malice regarding the curse and the undead, etc). As such I've elected to split it into two chapters.

Chapter 12 - The Road
Chapter 13 - To Ruin (I'm kidding about the title)

Chapter 12 will deal with the aftermath of Isac's death as well as the long journey west to the duchies and the stronghold of Heironeous. Here's a loose plot arc for you to find hooks in:


Laying Isac to rest
Signing on with the last merchant train headed down from Karkas and Enderin and west to the duchies
Bad things begin happening every night. Guards and other travelers begin going missing each evening only to be found in the morning--dead. But a sinister pattern begins to emerge
The seeds of fear and doubt are sown
Suspicion is cast toward the newcomers...particularly when the bodies begin showing signs of a specific malicious purpose
Bad things ensue
The travelers arrive in the duchies (with/without the caravan)


I have more details than this but I wanted to at least lay out a framework for y'all to think and work with.

Chapter 13 will still revolve around a bunch of what we've already talked about re: the Duchies, the plot, the orcs, etc.

Sound good?

[itches]

Just don't try to do too much, things progress muchly slow in this game. Also we need a reason why we didn't turn to the wizards when the impending zombie plague hits. We didn't part on the best terms, but they're much closer.

[Gralhruk]

Haven't we had our fill of wizards? Besides, priests get rid of undead. Wizards just have sex with Nicos.

[Black Plauge]

Gral's got a point on that last one.

[itches]

Fireballs get rid of zombies too. Okay sure, priests are better suited to doing it, but the priests are far away and the mages are right around the corner. On a meta level I agree, don't go to the wizards. But we need an IC reason why we don't atleast try.

[Gralhruk]

Shade would out and out refuse, after what we went through there. But on top of that, Cad has connections to the church of Hieroneous in the duchies and might actually be able to get us the help we need.

[itches]

After chatting with Gral this is what we came up with.

itches: So basically when we become aware of the zombie issue, Nicos suggests talking to the mages about it, Shade threatens to stab him, they argue in a way that in no way carries sexual overtones and we decide to compromise (send a message and Nicos only gets stabbed a little). We encounter Maeko again and convince her to head out to talk to the mages while we go to talk to the church?
itches: Sounds like a good enough plan to take to the thread and let the others pick it apart
Gralhruk: Excellent
Gralhruk: *stabstabstab*

Also Cad, I may have got the initial scale of this zombie thing wrong. Is it that every person who gets suck turns into one, or just some of them?

[Gralhruk]

Yes, apparently itches was thinking the whole world was on the verge of zombie-dom, and after our conversation this morning I thought it was considerably more limited than that.

[Cadrius]

Plague is the wrong term--as Gral so astutely mentioned to me this morning. It's really more like a curse that's brought onto local areas via an agent or agents (be they material, supernatural, or choose your own adventure). It's not a Zombie Apocalypse (yet). It's more like a Zombie Uprising.

Additionally, it is over 800 miles from Tradeholm to Karkas and the Citadel. That's 800 miles through less-traveled roads than those that lead to the duchies and it's going north into rugged terrain as we start to close from autumn to winter. That would be rough going and risky if we were concerned about the threat of undead.

[itches]

800 miles?

[Cadrius]

873 miles (http://online-roleplaying.com/forums/showpost.php?p=273887&postcount=5236) under what I assume are ideal, or at least favorable, traveling conditions.

[itches]

:tired: That map is not canon (http://online-roleplaying.com/forums/showthread.php?p=273911#post273911)

[Cadrius]

Would you prefer that I make up a distance?

[Gralhruk]

It's kind of a moot point. Didn't we just decide that Shade and Nicos would fight it out?

[Cadrius]

Okay. So you dislike the map and the distance. That's perfectly fine. Can you offer alternatives for direction, distance, and so forth? I'm all about building a consensus on this chapter/region/world we're creating, but I need more than just a rejection of my proposal here.

I think we can all agree that the Citadel and Karkas were supposed to be on the fringe of civilization with Tradeholm (and possibly Enderin?) being the last of the bigger towns in the region. Whether we call the distance between them 800 miles or 400 or 200, it doesn't really matter.

[Black Plauge]

I think the distance between Karakas and the Citadel has to be less, as we played out that whole journey and it took only a few days.

The distance from the Citadel to Tradeholm, however, can be almost whatever we want it to be. We only played out the first 6 or 7 days of that trip (until the day after Shade left) and then glossed over the rest of it (after the break-up Shade's next appearence is in Tradeholm, and after Blarth let's slip Shade's ruse, Blarth and Nicos are next seen stepping onto the dock in Tradeholm, having caught a barge for an unspecified amount of time). That puts it at least 250 miles, and probably further. The only thing that is clear is that the Citadel is generally up river from Tradeholm.

With winter coming on, it's not unreasonable to think that there are no further caravans heading upriver, especially as that is considered frontier country. If the journey to the Duchies is largely down river, into more civilized lands (and thus along better roads), or at least through territory which is no less civilized than the area around Tradeholm, then any extra distance to the Duchies is more than made up for by the ease of travel.

Heck, even if it's a break even proposition, the party's experience there has certainly soured Shade on the wizards and Blarth isn't their biggest fan either.

Plus, its not like this journey starts with a goal. Mostly we're fleeing Tradeholm and the site of the combat with Skathros at first. Chances are we aren't going to head towards the Citadel during that period. It's only after the party comes across the first few signs of the Zombie Curse taking effect that the need to alert authorities would come to mind and by that point we could be closer to the Duchies than to the Citadel (depending on how long it takes to manifest itself).

[itches]

You know, I keep forgetting about winter. Downside to living in the land of enternal summer, little facts like "winter exists" and "cold can kill" slip my mind.

[Black Plauge]

Never wander further than 30 degrees away from the equator.

[Cadrius]

I agree with all of the above and will adjust my opener to Chapter 12 accordingly.

[itches]

You know, looking back, it's amazing at how easily I accepted the concept of a zombie apocalypse in this setting. Totally ignoring the fact that it would require a significent shift in tone.

[Cadrius]

Would it?

[Gralhruk]

You know, I keep forgetting about winter.
I wish I could forget about winter. 7 hours today plowing and shoveling, and I still have a couple of hours tomorrow.

[itches]

That's what you get for living in the artic