RED OAK: Return to the Pass of the Hounds

[Woe]

Argh! Wifi network failure! Long message lost. Summary follows.

Chests: I'll save a knock spell for them.
Barricade: Yes, that's what I meant.
Abigall: Tiana will try reverse psychology. If Abigall doesn't want to do it, that's ok. We'll find out tomorrow how many there are. Hopefully the party will be fine even though they don't know how many they'll encounter. Maybe Bruce's suggestion will work out after all.

What to do while resting: see OOC thread.

[Longman]

Ooops. I always copy my posts on here, before I hit send, coz of that.

Abigall is not sucked in by the RevPsy trick.

Sounds like you are spending the night down below. Of course, someone (like Anna) goes and tries the outer door and finds it locked. "Hey! I thought you opened this!"

Tiana can be surprised, or otherwise. Your call. Maybe she knows something about Knock only working for a short time against more powerful locking spells.

The secret door is permanently open, though.

I'll check the OOC thread later to see what you do overnight...

[Woe]

During downtime, and all done serially:

Every item, Abigall will first rule whether each item is evil magic or not. The party will only experiment with not-evil magic.

Tiana will study the crystal and runes on the sword. Talin will take a swing or two with it to see if he can guess. Kilian will try the goggles out. Depending on the look of the ring, one of the PCs (wing it -- Kilian = big signet ring, Tiana = delicate ring, etc). Freya will try out the dagger.

Talin will also try to read the codebook he picked up.

[Longman]

Talin's book reading:

It's in a dialect of Sader, plus a lot of code that he can't read. He has never learned to read Sader so it is tough going. It looks like instructions on using various items at the tree-house, for those stationed there, plus a log of the potion use over the last year.

- Belladonna Poison: ...bolt...fire. It .... but it will stop ... most likely. (10 doses a bottle).
- Antidote: drink about ...to recover in case ....
- Remedy: drink a full...the night before... or...the change... 2 days before...never run out...return to Cyn Dol...find agent.
The dagger - if...Cruthy... wield...as...normal weapons...no other time...
The whistle: blow this if...summon...at no other time.
The glass: Look...full moon, once a remedy...Old Man...talk with you...no other time...

After that it is all a ledger of potion use. Names in code. Can't tell what potions are being used.

Incidentally - all the above items are magical, except antidote and poison. The dagger is quite magical and Abigall hates it. The dark glass is VERY magical and she hates that, too.

More to follow...

[Longman]

see post above

On the item checking:

The distinction between evil and good magic is maybe a bit misleading. The Cruthy you have met think that all human magic is 'bad' because it does not come from nature, but from somewhere else (i.e., another plane). This does not mean that every artefact you have found is actually for an 'evil' purpose. It just means that it is human magic, from an extra-planar source.

To make things simple:

The healing potions you have found are good old natural magic.
The lycanthrope remedy is both types of magic
Anna's hairpin is natural magic. It has no runes. That's probably why they tried to steal it.

Everything else you have found is old human magic.

On inspecting the ornate dagger, Freya can see some very tiny magical inscriptions on it, of a type similar to the style you now know is human magic.

After that, plus what Talin just read in the treehouse code-book, I'm giving you a chance to stop, and pick what items you actually investigate more closely. Check your pooled loot and let me know.

[Woe]

Let's go with the original post save the crystal and dagger.

During downtime, and all done serially:

Tiana will study the runes on the sword. Talin will take a swing or two with it to see if he can guess. Kilian will try the goggles out. Depending on the look of the ring, one of the PCs (wing it -- Kilian = big signet ring, Tiana = delicate ring, etc).

Tiana will also try to figure out what the various runes mean, by cross-referencing the codebook descriptions with Talin.

[Woe]

And nobody playing with toys during their watch.

[Longman]

The 'code' in the code-book is not the same as the magic runes. It's just normal script, but funny made up words.

It turns out all the items you investigate have small human magic runes on them. It seems to be part of the human magic item set up.

Thus, Tiana now has a fair array of human magic runes at her disposal and has copied down all of them. One occurs on every item, some occur repeatedly, others only on their individual item. If she got a good work space and a week or so of time she could probably work out the meaning of quite a few of them.

The sword does not seem to Talin to be anything other than a normal sword. Tiana guesses that many items have small charms on them to protect them against rust and aging. Some items have these runes and others. The sword only ha these runes. The DM tells you this is correct - it is just a preservation charm. It's on the helmets as well.

The goggles do not fit Kilian very well. They make everything appear a bit sharper and better focused. He's not sure what they do but he suggests keeping them and trying them out periodically in different areas.

The ring is tried on by Anna, as it is quite delicate and human-sized. She says it makes her feel quite nimble on her toes, and she has a strange sense that she could dodge arrows, or even grab them out of the air.

"Can I keep this?" she says to Talin. "It's really neat!"

Up to you if you let her, or give it to Tiana.

Nothing happens during the night of Sun Aug 24. In the morning (Mon 25 Aug) Bruce (now 5/9) and Kilian (now 16/22) both get a hit point back and the mage is on full spell capacity.

If you waited round another day and night, Bruce would be on 7/9 and Kilian on 19/22, by tomorrow morning (Tue 26 Aug).

[Woe]

Would it violate the rest restriction if the party retires from underground to the tower?

[Longman]

No, it would be OK. Although it is much more comfortable here. The tower is a bit of a dump compared to this place.

At the moment it is the morning of Mon Aug 25. Bear in mind if you want to get out, that's a Knock spell used for the day, too. The door is still magical.

(And you and I both know it's got Wizard Lock on it...)