Spire's Shadow (OOC)

I understand the alignment concern, but my reasoning is as follows: We were asked where we would end up, and as a servant of Tharmekhul Zhegre would end up in that god's realm. Tharmekhul is an assistant to Moradin and has no temples of his own -- his rites involve tending the forges in Moradin's temples -- so it would seem that his realm would follow the same rule and his clergy would end up in Moradin's realm on Mt. Celestia. Gods don't always put their realms on Outer Planes which match their alignments (see the Heliopolitans on Arcadia, for example).

Were we using standard alignments, Zhegre would be Neutral Good. Primarily he cares a great deal about duty, enjoying craftsmanship and helping out his fellows. He would personally have strong lawful leanings, preferring to act with logic and forethought, but is broad-minded enough to appreciate the spirit of an artist or the need for the unexpected. If he were heading somewhere as a simple petitioner, Bytopia would probably be the place. Or, indeed, Mt. Celestia, if he became more stalwartly lawful in his old age.

Okay, I've read through the IC thread. I see we're waiting for Baba, but unless the GM has a better proposal for involving me in the plot, here's a quick thought:

Zhegre has been interested in this Spirelight business and was planning to attend the Spire seminar at the Festhall with a few other friendly Ring-Givers. What with all the commotion yesterday -- more than usual even for Sigil! -- the group decided it might be better to walk to the Festhall together, and equipped for possible trouble. Fortunately, it didn't seem to happen on the way there. (Or did it? if you'd like to have something else happen.)

They see the trouble with the portal and the nathri getting grabbed. One of the others in Zhegre's group eyes the portal, using the Portal Sense feat, and says, "That's bothersome. Wherever it goes feels underwater-ish... squishy enough to move in, but no air."

Quite alarmed, Zhegre (rather impulsively for him) says, "My debt to anyone with bottle of breath -- necklace of adaptation -- anything that can share air!"

{The plot points I'm trying to address are that Zhegre is hastily looking for a way to jump through the portal with something that will create air for several people on the other side, so as to save everybody's life. He is offering his word as a dwarf and a Ring-Giver to owe anybody who has an option. Getting back to Sigil is secondary, but as long as he has air, Zhegre can last a few days, summon some local elementals, and get guidance to a settled region of an elemental plane, or so he thinks. So, how to get air? "Gust of Wind" is an evocation, and I don't see any limitation saying it can't be cast underwater, so it looks like it could be used to create an air pocket there. A bralani can cast gust of wind at will. It is a 6HD monster, so it can be summoned with Lesser Planar Ally, a Clr 4 spell; being good and seeing people in danger, it would hopefully be willing to help at the "several days" size of task. The total cost would be 2500gp of debt to whoever cast the spell as per the normal PHB costs, plus whatever payment the bralani requires. So things might go like this:}

"I'll go you one better," says a cleric in the group -- a respected older priest. He prays momentarily, casting Lesser Planar Ally, and a bralani appears. He points the bralani at Zhegre.

"Zere are some people behind that portal who need air on vatery plane," Zhegre explains hastily. "I vill go to help, but I need magic for zem to breathe, to last long enough for us to get to safe haven. Can you help?" Presumably it does, and Zhegre and the bralani grab some peanuts, run for the portal, take a deep breath, and dive through!

They find no one nearby on the other side, but the currents bear them toward the same air pocket. Turns out the bralani wasn't so madly necessary, but it's not like Zhegre knew that. So, okay, he owes a fellow Ring-Giver a cool 2.5G -- or possibly a substantial spellcasting favor -- and possibly something to a bralani, but such are the breaks of life on the Great Ring.

This ends up with Zhegre's primary interest in all of this being academic curiosity and general helpfulness, but given his personality those could count for a good deal.

Hello everyone. Duckluck suggested that I post my character concept on the OOC board so that everyone could get a feel for it. So, a "brief" history of P&~P (pronounced, "pee and not pee"):

There was once a lowly quadrone on Mechanus, following orders since the time he was constructed. One day, a pentadrone gave him an order to go pickup some scrap metal from one of the border towns in Outland. And so the quadrone went to the location described by the pentadrone to look for the small pile of metal. Little did he know that there was a mischevious tiefling wizard nearby who had been observing the little quadrone. The wizard thought he might enjoy heckling the quadrone and so he approached the quadrone, saying "hail, quadrone class entity."

Modron: "greetings, half-fiend. This quadrone has been sent to acquire scrap metal from blacksmith Glain. Has this half-fiend seen the target blacksmith?"

Tiefling: "oh, yes! You are in luck, lowly quadrone. The blacksmith is right behind this building. Follow me."

Modron: "this quadrone thanks you and will follow."

The tiefling began casting a few choice illusions and led the modron around the corner, snickering. When they arrived, the modron saw a nondescript man holding a blacksmith's hammer standing in front of an open furnace. There was a small pile of nondescript metal laying in front of the anvil. The blacksmith said to the modron, "hail, quadrone class entity. You're here for the metal, I assume? Well, there it is, right in front of the anvil. It's yours, take it."

And so the modron bent its little legs and reached down to pickup the metal, but the metal did not rise with its hands. Instead, its hands passed straight up through the pile of metal. Blinking a few times, the modron realigned itself and attempted to pick the metal up again. Once again its hands passed through the metal. This time, the modron noticed that the metal wasn't entirely opaque. The modron was able to see through the metal to the ground. The modron's eyes widened and it began muttering, "it's metal, but insubstantial. It's metal, but translucent. It's metal, but it's not metal!"

The tiefling snickered.

The modron frantically began thrusting its hands into and out of the pile of metal, increasing its volume and continuing, "...metal. Not metal. Metal. Not metal..." Overexerted, the modron fell unconscious.

When it awoke, the tiefling was standing over it. The modron felt alone. No longer part of the great heirarchy of Mechanus. No longer one of many in the service of Primus. No longer itself. The modron knew that it would no longer be accepted by modrons. And so it stayed with the tiefling, who felt somewhat remorseful about the anguish he had inflicted upon the quadrone.

(this is getting a bit long... i'll do ADD version for the rest of it)

Modron took the name P&~P to remember that it had been tricked into believing a contradiction.

P&~P became obsessed with illusions and studied them endlessly.

P&~P joined up with the Guvners so that it could try to fully understand laws (both multiversal laws and man-made laws).

Modrons don't usually recall what made them go rogue, IIRC. In fact, not all of them were quadrone modrons, though some probably were of course. For some reason, they start looking like quadrones when they go rogue.

It sounds like P&~P is going to be a specialist wizard, illusionist? That's a really interesting choice for a modron! The name makes it sounds like he's interested in how to discern between truth and untruth, and illusionists certainly have a unique point of view on that philosophical question. (Also, in 2e, illusions didn't work on Mechanus! Dunno if that's still the case in 3e.)

(Psst, Duckluck: maybe future OOC chat for Spire's Shadow should go in a new thread, unless you want to be 'Now Recruiting' forever! ;^) )

As Jem suggested, P&~P will be a wizard focusing in illusion (but not actually becoming a specialist). Its planar alignment will be Mechanus.

Obsession and the need to belong underlie P&~P's personality. It is obsessed with Orders, in the Fraternity of Order sense of the word. P&~P tries to catalogue and understand all manner of orders so that it can gain an understanding both of the multiverse and of its place within the multiverse. To this end, the modron uses illusions to discern the underlying patterns in the response systems of intelligent life forms by subjugating them to various artificial stimuli.

It is obsessed with trying to find a community in which it belongs, which leads it to being overly friendly / overly helpful. Some people find this trait annoying and who could blame them? Having a little box jumping around trying to explain how it can tell you the exact circumstances in which any given action will or will not succeed can irritate even the most patient berk.

As for the illusion... It wasn't really the illusion that caused P&~P to go rogue, but the illusion is what P&~P thinks caused it to go rogue.

Where do you want me to post all the details (stats, feats, full background, etc) for P&~P? I saw the Character Index sticky in the main RP board, but that one looks rather crowded.

What ECL should I make the modron? Can I use 6 Munch points to lower the level adjustment of the Rogue Modron race to +0?

P&~P now exists within the myth-weavers database. The first part of his backstory appears exactly as I posted it on the forum, so you can skip it. The end is all new, so feel free to read it.

You might have to search for the name "P" rather than "P&~P" the search seems to have some issues with non-alphanumeric characters. My username on the myth-weaver site is galwinganoon, so it may be searchable by that.

The end of the backstory worked rather well and makes for easy tie-in with the rest of the group.

I had a question, though. I spent 500gp on 10 books that P&~P carries around with it. Are books usable like Masterwork tools? Meaning, can I use an expensive book to add a +2 circumstance modifier to my knowledge checks if I have at least a minute to peruse them? If not, it's not a big deal. I can just reduce the price of the books from 50gp each to about 10 or so since they won't really be mastework quality.

Can't wait to start playing.

I like the idea of reference works giving bonuses to knowledge checks -- in fact, I posted a similar sort of item, Courses, over in Civic Festhall a few days ago: the post is here. And they're even Guvner-oriented, so P&~P would probably have heard of them, if Duckluck's okay with them existing.

Duckluck, if you'd like to use galwinganoon's price there for books, or set some prices for Courses, I think Zhegre will hop on that train the next time he's in Sigil and has some cash to burn. :^)

I know I am coming into this thing a little late and all, but there is an official source regarding books and Knowledge bonuses.

Its out of the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook (core). It says (verbatim):

"In general, a book lot costs 1,000 gp and provides a +2 circumstance bonus on a specific Knowledge check, such as a Knowledge (arcana) or a Knowledge (religion).
Alternatively, you can purchase a book lot on general topics, which costs 3,000 gp and provides a +1 circumstance bonus on all Knowledge checks. Circumstance bonuses from multiple book lots do not stack.
To make your libraries more interesting, the DM can allow extended or master book lots that take up more than one lot in a library. Comprehensive book lots cost 5,000 gp, occupy the space of 3 book lots, and offer a +4 circumstance bonus on the appropriate Knowledge checks. Master book lots cost 20,000 gp, occupy 6 book lots, and offer a +6 circumstance bonus."

Granted, the main drawbacks is the space issue (and to a lesser extent, making the Knowledge check with the circumstance bonus requires more than a standard action to utilize the resources).

-space could in some ways be mitigated with extradminesional storage spaces (Heward's Handy Haversack being a good pick since you only need think of the title and it will be at the "top" -also, Boccob's blessed book variations also assist with volume concerns.

Unfortunately, no, it does not. The only thing it mentions is that a common personal librabry can hold between 2-3 book lots.

I'm cool with the bonii being up to the GM's whim, and am totally nabbing some books next time I've got the opportunity to get some good ones. Or a few run-throughs on some Courses -- they'd basically be similar to the titles P&~P has there, just non-losable, and I'd be willing to shell out a bit for that extra utility -- but even if the Courses are thumbs-down, I'm still hitting a bookstore. Gad we're such geeks. Isn't it great?

(By the way: cubeclamp and cubey haversack. Just spotted that. Hee.)

(Hmm... does Tharmekhul have scriptures? If so, I really oughta have a copy.)

Wow.

I finally finished reading all of the chapters for the new Planescape campaign setting. It's taken me about a week, but it was a great read. I made a couple slight changes to P&~P's character sheet, given the new information. I included the name "Automata" instead of "border town" and I took the spell "analyze portal" instead of "dispel magic." And yes, I realize that the "portrait" of P&~P is pretty awful, but it took all of my artistic abilities to make it. javascript:emoticon(':oops:')

Also, just to make sure I know what's going on in the game at this time... The PCs were going to attend a lecture, ate some peanuts, and fell through a portal into the plane of Ooze? M'rek wasn't there, so he had peanuts shoved down his throat and was pushed through the portal. After fighting some ooze mephits they are now in the process of escaping the room in which they were trapped. Is that about right? :oops: :oops:

*whistles aimlessly*

Been a couple of days since anybody posted; we've been trying to, you know, climb through a door for a week or so now. I think we've all established our intents for how to do so, mm?

Same here guys. Linji and I are treading ooze until that door's sorted out.

I just finished reading the campaign so far. I'm excited to jump in.

Also, good call on Dispel Magic. I traded it back in for lightning bolt. Although it's going to be weird to play a wizard without a 3rd level bomb spell such a spell didn't really fit with the character concept anyway.

I'm here to say that I'm a douche for not posting, and I'm sorry. It's not cool.

(I'm still awesome for existing, though. Oberoni 8, Universe 2.)