[PATHFINDER]Core+APG, playing a Rogue. Currently level 9.

[Senevri]

DING! Level gain.

In tonight's session a grand total of ONE attack roll was thrown. Even that, nonlethal damage.
Our DM did pretty well, all in all:

 - Six children had vanished from their bets in a village. The villagers suspected a dragon. A bit of detective work revealed the kids had a habit of sneaking off on 'adventures' during night-time.
 - There was a mysterious fairy circle, past an old stone bridge. Fairies kidnap children, don't they?
 - The Dragon!! claimed to have befriended the children, but detected as evil. She thought Griffons might be guilty. Our paladin left a pamphlet for her describing a ten-step program on how to stop being evil.
 - Griffons were very territorial and suspicious and just a bit shifty. The dragon was a recent arrival and they would really liked to have her gone, as she'd taken over some of their territory. There was a serious 'honor is life' vibe going on with the griffons.
 
So where were the children? What was going on?

 - A corpse flushed into the shore conveniently during a morning assembly in the village. It was badly burned, and had large gashes like from a claw in it. It was one of the missing children.
 - A bit of forensics work (alchemist and the ranger) found out that the child's hands had been bound, and the cause for death was an initial slash across the throat. Rest of the damage was post-mortem.
 - The dragon was Green, and according to our alchemist, they had acid breath. Still not sure if they're color-coded for convenience. But clearly, a human(oid) was involved.

At this point, we were thinking, maybe there was a druid or a hunter, who had discovered the fae circle (which also seemed to draw in woodland creatures), and had used it on rituals/hunting and had been discovered by the children somehow. Also, the village elder's wife seemed a bit too knowledgeable. And there WAS a humanoid involved, and the villagers were the only ones around.

 - The village began setting up a lynch mob, going after the dragon. They tried to brow-beat us to go at him. Our paladin promised to return with the dragon's head in front of them. Fortunately, he didn't promise to detach it from the rest of the body.
 - The dragon wasn't willing to co-operate until we made SURE the griffons weren't guilty.  So back we go.
And so forth.
We did eventually discover the guilty party, and get the remaining children back, as well as make peace between the dragon and the villagers AND our ranger gained the crown of the Griffon King. Which was a challenge in and as itself, as the ranger's sort of CN and doing it right.

I got to sneak around and pick locks, but I didn't get to stab anything. :/

In any case, level up. I was thinking of Shadow Strike or such, but if this is how our game keeps on going, Skill Focus might be a better pick. My stealth isn't quite stealthy enough yet. I was also considering dodge+mobility, as they're shadowdancer prereqs, and I could provoke an AoO from a mark, and then use a combat maneuver on them without AoO, presuming they don't have lightning reflexes.

But, as said, the way this game is turning out, Skill Focus might be a good pick...

[veekie]

- The Dragon!! claimed to have befriended the children, but detected as evil. She thought Griffons might be guilty. Our paladin left a pamphlet for her describing a ten-step program on how to stop being evil.

I like your paladin's style.

[Senevri]

Everyone is pretty awesome, it's a good game right now.
Still, I shouldn't open my mouth ever (IC). We thought for the longest time the Griffons weren't involved, but there was one suspicious lonely bird, and then I started asking, if a Griffon would risk tarnishing their honor and then reclaiming it through death, if that was what was for the best of the... I guess a bunch of griffons would be a 'pride'.

Basically, I ended doing an idea inception on the second-in-command. :/

So yeah. We had to go and prevent a death match.

[Senevri]

Okay, so bodies were disappearing from the cemetery of a little town called Greenhill, so off we go.
There's a swamp that starts right behind the cemetery and goes on for miles and miles. Great. T_T
We followed zombie tracks, and I got surprised by a Swamp Monster, er, Shambling Mound, which grappled me, and probably would've killed me (constrict, ouch) but the rest of the party came in.
The paladin's Channel Energy healed me a bit, and saved the monk as he dropped to negatives. It also hurt the fast!zombies which had crawled from the fog. Things were a bit dicey for a while, but we kept on dealing damage, the revived monk ki-flurried one of the zombies to dead and I got my revenge on the swamp thing by getting a sneak attack in, which finished it. Sneak attack works on plants, awesome

As it turns out, the necromancer Edgar had been responsible for animating the dead ( HOW evil animating mindless undead is, is a highly debated topic in-universe, apparently. They DO register as evil on paladin-scan. ) In any case, Edgar was using the undead to look into why the sea currents had suddenly shifted and there was no more fish... We got the vibe that Edgar had flunked his divination studies and couldn't actually use the standard animate dead and was using some limited version. In any case, we told him to knock off the grave robbing and compensate the villagers, and he grudgingly agreed, if only to avoid giving the paladin a reason to smite him. He did request we'd carry a message for an old college buddy of his, in the city of Ehb, in the kingdom of Ehb.

So, we travelled onwards. On the way, we investigated a suspicious freshly-painted signpost, and found a People's Republic. Apparently, the reason for the fact that several villages had been found empty by the tax collectors was that the villagers didn't feel like paying taxes for non-existant protection and... so yeah. An idealistic young lady paladin was apparently behind this, having read the works of a dwarven philosopher, Jahl Tarks. Everyone besides the chaotic ranger though this was a terrible idea - not so much in and as itself, but because Eigart would consider this an open rebellion and there'd be war. Our Ranger failed his will save vs. tarksism.

In order to avoid bloodshed, we suggested that perhaps we could apply for some sort of vassalship, and the republic could become, on the paper at least, a new fiefdom with the lady in charge. She could still allow the local council of unwashed peasants to govern themselves. As a delaying tactic, it should at least prevent an immediate war. Hopefully.

Onwards we continued, to the monastery of traditions, where we finally got to unload Krust, the magical medium-sized immortal minotaur, our Monk reported his current progress, and I spent some time dancing in the awesome shadows of the main hall. (trying to put in some in-character roleplay for the Shadowdancer PrC, which I'm taking mostly for fun, as combat is very secondary in this game.)

[Senevri]

Long time no post. Too much has happened, so I'll summarize and you can ask questions for details.
Currently level 7, I have Shadowdancer prereqs + Fast Stealth.

- We ran into the ruins of an infinite intelligence experiment, and completed it on the subject - a famous philosopher - trapped in stasis. He gave us a perfect diamond the size of a football. Considering that nobody in the setting has more than, oh, 1000 gold, it's quite literally priceless. We began speculating that it could be used to cast a spell of infinite power, though.

- We fought a 300ft. tall colossus. Well, we fought ON one, anyway. I very nearly lost both my blades, but the cold iron blade I dropped appeared mystically within a castle's treasure chamber, but imbued with +1 verminbane enhancement. Well, these things happen when you're grasping an unconscious paladin's belt with one hand while you snatch at the climbing rope hanging from the colossus' back, mid-fall....
- Speaking of which, jumping down on enemies heads as a sneak attack is fun.

- We helped a village full of dirty unclean disgusting werewolves. Had a tough fight with five trolls, and a hill giant. The ranger died, but got resurrected by the Plot (he was carrying the crown of the griffon king, which did it, and geas'd him to be a proper king. He also got a griffon cohort out of the deal (he picked Leadership on lv 7), so...
Our paladin got an unusually large jackal as a mount.
The hill giant was fun, we were all completely beaten up - I had 4 HP remaining, so our alchemist gave me an invisibility potion and all of his poisons, so I sneaked into the cave and poisoned the heck out of the giant's dinner, which helped a lot. So, we rescued an artsy elf kid. Well, possibly a half-elf, and a werewolf in any case. Also, up to his ears in Fate, and acting really trippy.

- Fate is doing all sorts of things. We managed to borrow tools from the mausoleum of a legendary halfling craftsman. How legendary? He managed to get Death to wait 'til he finished building this mausoleum. Combine tools with artsy fate kid, and we got someone who could finish the crying statue.

The statue, finished, 'blessed' our equipment. Our alchemist's teamster Gerardo received an everfull brandy bottle, and my adamantite blade got cursed with +1 Vicious property. T_T I really shouldn't have tried my hand at fixing the statue with the Universal Key earlier, I think the statue still remembered me sticking the sword into it's stone.

Magical gear: I have a +1 resistance cloak made by our Alchemist, which causes a noticeable drop in temperature for everyone but me. I also have boots of the winterlands, which stopped my endless complaints about the cold weather, and my two now-magical blades.
My total attack bonus is +11 with 18 dex, weapon focus, +1 blade and 5 BAB. Decent.

We're currently on the ranger's quest for a new crown since the old one got dusted when it resurrected him. We entered a lost communist city where a black-cloaked figure is draining life from everything nearby. (we think.) According to a rather spooky treant encounter we had.

We've been rather crunch-accurate - I believe three of us are optimizers/rules lawyers, but the game itself is very story-heavy. It's been awesome, truly.

[Senevri]

Y'know, the fast pace of a weekly game - well, compared to the rare gaming sessions I usually get to have, is really hurting any attempt to do regular updates.
I'm currently at Rogue 7/Shadowdancer 2, which is a bit bad, BAB-wise, but I want some SD goodies before the campaign ends. Feat pick for 9 is skill focus (stealth), for various reasons, including my tendency to roll less than 10 on a 20-sided die. I have a vicious weapon and a verminbane weapon, and a smattering of other magical gear, but the only combat we had in the last two sessions was a ritual challenge against a grappler orc, done by the Monk (who, thanks to being boosted by the Alchemist and the Ranger, managed to flurry the opponent to unconsciousness), followed by a coming-of-age ceremony for a smarter-than-average orc.

I'm not really getting much out of the shadowdancer, really, but there weren't any critical rogue talents I wanted to pick, and either rogue or SD level would increase my BAB, saves and whatnot. Admittedly, 2 skill points less hurts a bit, but whatever...

A star fell, which may-or-may-not be a part of another plane, signalling a combined attack of orcs on our nation. I got to see one of the succubi manipulating the situation from the background in a dream, when I sneaked into the tent of an orc shaman, using some sort of a ritual to communicate with it.  She had enormous wings and large, beautiful horns.

Since we've already reinforced the choke point between human lands and orcish territories by a score of monks and kobold trappers, we went to check out the star fragment, and a rather suspicious wizard's tower which happened to be here.

The plot, it be thickening.