Re: OOC Chat II
Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2014 12:59 pm
It was a good run. Nearly four years, which is a personal record for me. Usually my old chat-games ran for only a year, at best. Although we could usually get from 1st level to 7th in one year, whereas here it took four years to get from 3rd level to 6th. That's pbps for you. So very, very slow.
I enjoyed NPCing Ulster, Thuskar and Malika, though. Fun facts about them: Let's see...Ulster and Thuskar both suffered deep psychological scars from their experiences in the Pod Caverns. It really messed them up. Thuskar basically had PTSD and would lose it whenever exposed to magical experiments on living things (like that dwarf mage who was mutating those rats). Ulster's trauma manifested in more subtle ways.
You might remember awhile back I talked about writing a short story about Ulster's and Thuskar's origins. Sadly, I never got very far with it. But the story would have detailed what happened that led to them getting captured in the first place. The basic story was, Ulster was infatuated with one of the other mercenaries who protected Merithina. She was the party's scout; I think her name was Aela, or something like that. Anyway, Thuskar managed to pressure Ulster to finally go and talk to her. Summoning up his courage, he approached her and tried to make some small talk, but it was mostly awkward. That was when the Podmen got the jump on them and captured them.
So, right off the bat, Ulster blamed himself for the whole thing. Had he not distracted the scout with his awkward attempts at flirtation, maybe she would have heard or seen the podmen coming, and they wouldn't have been caught unawares. But it got worse. While Thuskar was dragged off to be experimented on by the Shroom and partially transformed into a podman hybrid, Ulster, Merithina and the other mercenaries were put into the fungus cages. And one by one, Ulster got to listen to them (including his crush) be fed into that grinder (he couldn't see anything, as it was dark; but he could hear their screams).
So, yeah. Pretty dark stuff. So when Ulster met Imani, he saw her as unattainable, as she was married already. That made her 'safe' so he became infatuated with her. When Imani joined the party and went as far as to kiss him, it scared him off. She was no longer unattainable, and he was terrified of forming romantic attachments to anyone again, for fear that he would somehow get them killed, as well.
As for Malika, she was lying about pretty much everything from the start. She told that sob story when the party first met her, and it turned out to be false. Then she told another sob story instead--that was also a lie. Basically, Malika was always a thief and a liar and was just using the party in hopes of getting rich off of them. She basically planned to bleed Jerrard dry of all of his cash in Palanthas then dump him when he was of no use to her anymore.
Jerrard had hoped to reform her. And it was possible. But awkwardly hitting on her all of the time wasn't the way to do it. Jerrard often talked about how he respected her and cared about her, and all that, but it was clear to Malika he just was saying those things to get into her pants, so she saw no problem with using him. (Whether Jerrard was sincere or not is irrelevant, the way he spoke and acted toward her certainly gave her the impression he was only interested in her body and nothing else.)
And then there was Lucas, and I don't really have anything to say about him, as he was too new.
Tomorrow, I'll talk some about what I was planning to do for the game's finale, had we made it that far.
I enjoyed NPCing Ulster, Thuskar and Malika, though. Fun facts about them: Let's see...Ulster and Thuskar both suffered deep psychological scars from their experiences in the Pod Caverns. It really messed them up. Thuskar basically had PTSD and would lose it whenever exposed to magical experiments on living things (like that dwarf mage who was mutating those rats). Ulster's trauma manifested in more subtle ways.
You might remember awhile back I talked about writing a short story about Ulster's and Thuskar's origins. Sadly, I never got very far with it. But the story would have detailed what happened that led to them getting captured in the first place. The basic story was, Ulster was infatuated with one of the other mercenaries who protected Merithina. She was the party's scout; I think her name was Aela, or something like that. Anyway, Thuskar managed to pressure Ulster to finally go and talk to her. Summoning up his courage, he approached her and tried to make some small talk, but it was mostly awkward. That was when the Podmen got the jump on them and captured them.
So, right off the bat, Ulster blamed himself for the whole thing. Had he not distracted the scout with his awkward attempts at flirtation, maybe she would have heard or seen the podmen coming, and they wouldn't have been caught unawares. But it got worse. While Thuskar was dragged off to be experimented on by the Shroom and partially transformed into a podman hybrid, Ulster, Merithina and the other mercenaries were put into the fungus cages. And one by one, Ulster got to listen to them (including his crush) be fed into that grinder (he couldn't see anything, as it was dark; but he could hear their screams).
So, yeah. Pretty dark stuff. So when Ulster met Imani, he saw her as unattainable, as she was married already. That made her 'safe' so he became infatuated with her. When Imani joined the party and went as far as to kiss him, it scared him off. She was no longer unattainable, and he was terrified of forming romantic attachments to anyone again, for fear that he would somehow get them killed, as well.
As for Malika, she was lying about pretty much everything from the start. She told that sob story when the party first met her, and it turned out to be false. Then she told another sob story instead--that was also a lie. Basically, Malika was always a thief and a liar and was just using the party in hopes of getting rich off of them. She basically planned to bleed Jerrard dry of all of his cash in Palanthas then dump him when he was of no use to her anymore.
Jerrard had hoped to reform her. And it was possible. But awkwardly hitting on her all of the time wasn't the way to do it. Jerrard often talked about how he respected her and cared about her, and all that, but it was clear to Malika he just was saying those things to get into her pants, so she saw no problem with using him. (Whether Jerrard was sincere or not is irrelevant, the way he spoke and acted toward her certainly gave her the impression he was only interested in her body and nothing else.)
And then there was Lucas, and I don't really have anything to say about him, as he was too new.
Tomorrow, I'll talk some about what I was planning to do for the game's finale, had we made it that far.