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While ultimately that's your decision as to what you feel your character would do, I think it would be more interesting if Arulia realized her mistake.

It appears that Jaded went and dropped a plot hook to get things moving again, the thing is I'm not sure how much Haahqae would be interested as it's neither related to his primary task or his task at hand. It does have relation to a task somewhere farther down the list though...

Wouldn't he identify it as the one who attacked his show?

Yes, he would. However that is a low priority for him right now. On his list of priorities, rescuing Ismene is #1, as well as #2 #3 and maybe also #4.

Right now his job at hand is bringing Yvette and Xlenna to justice, and that is totally unrelated to what happened to his show, what happened to his show would be a distraction.

He cannot draw a clear connection between this and his task at hand or rescueing Ismene. As he doesn't see much of a connection between Ismene and his show being attacked.

Perhaps if he had linked the two incidents as something the prefect considers part of the rebellion he could consider following to maybe, perhaps find out where Ismene is being held. However I'm not sure if he knows that the prefect is holding Ismene as a suspected rebellion conspiritor (Kendra might have told him that, I'll have to go back and check), and he considers the attack on his show to be an attack on him, not an attack by the rebellion, so making that connection seems a little far fetched.

Haahqae has been known to make far-fetched connections before.

You mention that Haahqae knows Elara, but I don't recall the name. When did he meet her?

It was last chapter (12). Haahqae sat and had lunch with a young woman who started asking him about what he knew of the old gods. Haahqae then started asking her what she knew of the old gods. Which frustrated her, because she was asking him. They went back and forth and both got frustrated that the other didn't have any answers.

Where on the map is the procession now?

So we have 4 people on Haahqae's hitlist getting much more then they deserve which might be enough to warrent his attention. The main problem at hand is that they outnumber us, they have weapons and they currently have the favor of the state, while Haahqae's party has 3, a very limited selection of weapons and very few resources to speak of.

So... let's start thinking up plans; since I seem to do that a lot. (Even though I have yet to have a plan go even close to smoothly)

Knife in the dark:
Haahqae follows them back to where they're staying, hidden and/or invisible, then delivers some kind of decisive blow to them such as: poison their food/drink, steal their prize money or kill them all. Possibly all of the above. A problem with this plan is that Haahqae doesn't have poison or much in terms of effective weaponry. Also, there's no guarentee that they're all staying in the same place, they might split up and Haahqae would have trouble following.

Knife in the back:
Haahqae leavers the fact that they caught the guy who attacked his show to pretend that they're in his good books now and develops a friendship with them/works on later jobs with them. Until he's ready to abandon them when they most need him and let them all die a horrible death. Haahqae is no stranger to using lies and deception when he finds it useful, but this plan would rely on them not harboring significant resentment against him and would be very slow. Every day that Haahqae isn't rescuing Ismene brings him closer to insanity and/or doing something really stupid to get himself killed or permanently incarcerated.

It's a nice picture, but look at the frame:
Between Burzan and Reana working as devout followers of Darewind/Fistandantilus and Yvette and Xleena helping out the Belzorites, Haahqae could probably come up with a plan on short notice to claim some or all of them are devout followers of a non-Takhisis religion. This might not benifit anyone much, but it would be immensely satisfying having some or all of them locked up.

They're all so good at this betrayal stuff, let's give them a reason:
Haahqae follows them and finds an opportune moment to get them to turn against each other. Perhaps he could steal some of the prize money before its divided and try to maneuver that into them blaming someone for taking it. Or he could wait and learn about them to find out their weaknesses and fears about each other. And in someway dismantle the trust and friendship that they appear to have in eachother right now.

Although, maybe someone else should think up a plan, since every plan Haahqae has ever come up with seems to eventually be turned against him somehow.

And I really don't trust this Elara girl. She's probably a spy for the church, for Yvette's thugs or both.

A little off topic, but I think I owe a response to this post (even if it is a little late in coming)

JadedDM wrote:It's true that Haahqae does not seem to consider the consequences of his actions. I chalked that up to his poor WIS score. For instance, he seemed to think that the army would not notice his robbery. Or if they did, they'd just shrug it off as inconsequential.

Of course I considered the repercussions of robbing the army; this is a large part of why Haahqae only stole as much as he needed to complete one goal, not stealing enough to solve "all his problems". In terms of the amount of steel used to run a city of this size, I would expect 1000 steel as a sum small enough to be able to be chocked up to miscounting or corruption. He did steal from a literal dragon's horde worth of steel, and I expect feeding/paying for all those solders alone to be in the millions of steel range of business.

Prior to this his show had been attacked, including many soldiers, and Haahqae had not heard anything about them even searching for the perpetrator of such an attack, nor had he heard of anyone accused for the crime and incarcerated. Certainly he figured that if someone could attack soldiers and get away with it, it would be easy for them to overlook the theft of a moderate sum of money.

However maybe they're meticulous and count every copper... Then they would certainly try to track down the thief. This is why Haahqae did his best to leave no evidence on the scene of the crime that he was even there. His success in this regard, wasn't too impressive, partially due to his low wis and partially due to how difficult it is to infiltrate a full-fledged military base solo at this level. I would have not been surprised if they had somehow suspected Haahqae of the robbery given this. (Not pleased, but not surprised)

I hadn't much considered them using some sort of powerful divination spell, because he had stolen the spell components for a simple first level spell which I had got the impression most mages cast before doing their test. I didn't think that the army would bring to bear a much higher level divination spell which likely cost a hefty chunk of the steel he stole to cast, if not more then what he stole. And even if they DID cast such a divination spell, I was not expecting it to divine the school of magic and the race of the perpetrator, without giving any information about the appearance or gender.

Perhaps I had gotten the value of money completely wrong in this world, and summon familiar wasn't a spell that was supposed to be cast by level 2 wizard after running a couple of quests to get the cash for it, but rather a goal to be worked towards by wizards over the course of many levels until they can amass the money for it. If that is the case, having dire repercussions for thinking up and executing a plan to acquire a familiar in one quest (at level 3/4) would make a lot more sense.

Ismene's incarceration was a surprise to me, and not a pleasant one, but instead of complain about it immediately (I felt like I was doing too much of that all ready), I decided to think about it for a bit, and that lead me to the idea "Oh good, plot hook. I've been pretty lost as to what to do for a while now and it would be good to actually have something to do which wasn't just come up with my own plans and attempt to execute on them while getting ticked off at everyone else."

So in this vein of considering it a plot hook to give Haahqae a real meaningful task to complete, I started tossing out a whole bunch of ideas of attempting to gather information to the effect of preparing Haahqae for the task of rescuing her, I had a week to do so so I tried many different things to gather information I would need to complete the task; I had a week to do it and a lot of different ideas to try and I tried them all. And in general, his information gathering just told him that he couldn't rescue her with the resources available to him, and that no one was really willing to help him in any useful way.

By the time the chapter had started I was very far from my goal of being ready to launch a rescue mission; and I had used up all the ideas I had of trying to prepare for it, so I had no idea what to do at all.

I was also getting hints that Haahqae would need help in this mission from other players; but I hadn't got any impression that other players would be willing to help him or that other players would be useful to him. Still, I prefer working with other players (unlike Haahqae), so I'm willing to investigate this avenue further.

JadedDM wrote:I think part of his problem is he keeps bouncing from one to the other. He also gets very easily distracted. I assumed that was also due to his low WIS.

Haahqae's agreeing to work with Arulia/Gobax was largely due to having run out of ideas of anything that could help rescue Ismene and Gobax agreeing to help him rescue Ismene after the job was done (read above where I said I was picking up on hints that Haahqae would need help from other players on this job). A lot of Haahqae's bouncing between jobs as you put it, is because I can't think of any way to make any progress on the job he's currently focused on.

JadedDM wrote:Despite this, I'd say Haahqae has made better progress in his goals than anyone else. I suppose it might help to define 'significant' progress. Where exactly did you see Haahqae at by this point in time?

My goal, in the off-week, was to lay the foundation that he could build on to rescue Ismene within the next chapter or two. This would have given him something significant to do during the chapter, would be interesting and forward the plot. Not only did he fall very short of this goal, but he also didn't have any idea of what to do when the chapter started that could help him work towards said goal in any number of additional chapters.

Also due to the Haahqae's temperament and emotions, he can't just sit around for months on end while Ismene is left to such a fate, it will destroy Haahqae in one way or another if she's locked up (or if he doesn't know what happened to her) for a month or two.

The collaboration of Yvette, Xleena, Burzan and Reana is certainly an interesting development with the possibility of providing a challenge at a more appropriate level for the group right now, but I'm not sure if Haahqae can think strait for long enough to execute on a plan with a high success rate against them while he's being all consumed by his need to rescue Ismene.

TristenC wrote:Where on the map is the procession now?

On River Way, just near the Trench Residence.

Haahque wrote:Knife in the back:

Also worth keeping in mind is how he'd get away with murder without being caught. Remember, the temple has divination and they won't ignore the deaths of their own agents.

Haahque wrote:...and Yvette and Xleena helping out the Belzorites...

Wait...what?

Haahque wrote:In terms of the amount of steel used to run a city of this size, I would expect 1000 steel as a sum small enough to be able to be chocked up to miscounting or corruption.

I understand the reasoning he used. But this reasoning was flawed, obviously. The army cares very much about theft. That is why they have literal dragons guard the vault.

Haahque wrote: I didn't think that the army would bring to bear a much higher level divination spell which likely cost a hefty chunk of the steel he stole to cast, if not more then what he stole.

You are assuming the spell used to divine the theft cost more than the money stolen. You have no reason to assume this. Not all spells cost money. Some don't even have material components at all.

Haahque wrote:I was also getting hints that Haahqae would need help in this mission from other players; but I hadn't got any impression that other players would be willing to help him or that other players would be useful to him.

He does seem to burn a lot of bridges, whether intentionally or not. It seems to have come back to bite him in the butt. Hopefully he can overcome that. This goes back to what I've said before; the vast majority of Haahqae's woes are self-inflicted, even if he doesn't realize that himself.

Shima did offer to help but there was no pick up.

JadedDM wrote:

Haahque wrote:...and Yvette and Xleena helping out the Belzorites...

Wait...what?

Yvette and Xleena were hired to clear out the Belzorite lair. Not only did they barely help with this quest and abandon it part way through, but they also gave the group a very solid reason to be doing something which was NOT clearing out the Belzorite lair. If Yvette and Xleena hadn't betrayed the party, there's a very high chance that the belzorites would have been delt with, therefore as a direct result of their actions; the church was defeated.

And there's plenty of eye-witnesses who would be willing to back up that point of view even if it was put in a way which villainize Yvette and Xleena more then what actually happened.

JadedDM wrote:

Haahque wrote:In terms of the amount of steel used to run a city of this size, I would expect 1000 steel as a sum small enough to be able to be chocked up to miscounting or corruption.

I understand the reasoning he used. But this reasoning was flawed, obviously. The army cares very much about theft. That is why they have literal dragons guard the vault.

Sure they care very much about theft, but why did they immediately assume it was theft? Both miscounting and corruption could have easily been the cause if they even noticed it was gone. I was not under the impression that Haahqae made a significant dent in the army's funds and that they would actually have to be counted to see the difference.

As for the dragon guarding the vault; I was pretty sure that was because dragons like sleeping on piles of precious metals. If it was guarding the treasure then he sure fell asleep on the job.

JadedDM wrote:

Haahque wrote:I was also getting hints that Haahqae would need help in this mission from other players; but I hadn't got any impression that other players would be willing to help him or that other players would be useful to him.

He does seem to burn a lot of bridges, whether intentionally or not. It seems to have come back to bite him in the butt. Hopefully he can overcome that. This goes back to what I've said before; the vast majority of Haahqae's woes are self-inflicted, even if he doesn't realize that himself.

I really can't think of many bridges he's burned; and the only ones he's really burned intentionally were in relation to the Belzorite job which went so poorly. (Specially Arulia asking him for money after the failure). I can't really think of any other reasons he's given anyone to dislike him. (Perhaps I could be reminded of some of these?)

Most of the people who seem unwilling to help Haahqae is primarily because they have their own problems to deal with and don't really care about him at all. That, and that Haahqae has a dangerous task ahead of him with no promise of a reward for doing it.

Kendra -> Is in the best position to actually help Haahqae, and I have no reason to think that she dislikes him, but when he asked her for information she stressed that he can't reveal who gave him such information over fear of losing her job. This makes him rather suspicious that she wouldn't be willing to help him further beyond perhaps providing a little more information.
Tulbas -> Haahqae hasn't seen or heard from this guy from over a week. It's hard to ask help from someone who isn't there.
Arulia -> Haahqae burned his bridge with her, partially because he was angry and partially due to a misunderstanding. Hopefully he can repair it
Grubnic -> Offered to help after "this job" is done, but "this job" is falling apart really quickly. He's hoping to follow up on this still.
Ne-Chanz -> Haahqae has barely seen this guy and doesn't really know anything about him. I would be surprised if either of them has a strong opinion about the other.
Shima -> Apperently he offered to help? I don't quite recall this and I can't find it in their short conversation they had on (Autumn Twilight 20, Dream Dance) either in the first post of the new thread or in the OOC thread when we were talking. I did pick up that Haahqae told Shima about Ismene being captured, and that Shima would be willing to have Haahqae help Shima track down a couple thieves. Shima also said he would contact Haahqae again, and Haahqae doesn't exactly have Shima's contact info as far as I know.

Which is, in terms of the PC's one burned bridge and lots of characters who don't know Haahqae well and/or don't care about him enough to help with no promised reward. In effect he hasn't burned many bridges, rather he's never had the chance to build the bridges in the first place.

In terms of NPCs, we have
Myriam -> Willing to help, but doesn't appear to be much in terms of planning anything, scouting or doing anything else that would help before a solid plan is made.
Jaymes -> I don't think I've burned any bridges with him. I'm hoping that he can be helpful still, although he appears more concerned with his own reward then Haahqae would have liked for such a job.
Yvette, Xleena, Burzan, Reana -> I still don't see much reason Haahqae has annoyed or treated badly any of these people; mostly it feels like they've betrayed him/his party without much provocation. They've given him plenty of reason to not want their help.
Elara -> It's quite possible he's burned some bridges with her, and I'm not even sure if it was intentional or not. It was quite clear that they had different agendas that they were pursuing when they talked, and neither made any progress with the agenda. I'm unsure of if she would be helpful even if Haahqae decided to give her a second chance. Seems like she has a higher chance of backstabbing him then any NPC has up till now (except for Darewind, Haahqae sort of did ask for that via low wisdom).
Cassandra -> afaik she's still on decent terms with Haahqae. She doesn't know about most of the things Haahqae's done to help her out and doesn't really have the resources to help Haahqae even if she did know/care about it. Except perhaps as an extra set of ears, that could be useful.
Cassilda -> afaik she's pretty friendly towards Haahqae, but she doesn't seem to useful to him at this time. He doesn't even know what she's good at doing.
Bear -> afaik he's also friendly towards Haahqae, but he's dirt poor and busy drinking away his own problems. He might be able to be hired as some muscle in a task, but he doesn't seem like he would be too useful in coming up with a plan that has any minute chance of success.
Pen -> Haahqae doesn't have much of an opinion on him, and I'm suspecting visa versa. More to the point Haahqae hasn't a clue where to find the guy.
Magnus -> From his conversations with Tulbas, Haahqae doesn't like the black robed mage much. He's also resentful of how Magnus left him to die in the giant's lair. I don't know if Magnus has any opinion on Haahqae.
Daxia -> Haahqae was in the group the rescued her, which would suggest that she might be willing to help him in return, but as far as he knows, she's disappeared of the face of Krynn and has no idea how to contact her or her allies, if it is even possible.

Am I missing anyone critical?

Haahque wrote:Sure they care very much about theft, but why did they immediately assume it was theft? Both miscounting and corruption could have easily been the cause if they even noticed it was gone.

Are you assuming that the army not only recognizes the likelihood of corruption and miscounting, but have never thought to take any preventive action for either? Or are you assuming that the army is so naive, it never occurred to them that someone might try to skim a bit off the top?

In either case, the MM entry for red dragons specifies that they notice if even a single copper is missing from their hoard. In order to make a withdrawal at all, the officials need to petition the dragons first. The dragons always know the exact amount of money in the vault and are expert counters. So there is no miscounting and no way corruption will work.

Haahque wrote:I really can't think of many bridges he's burned

Mostly I was thinking of how he acted toward Arulia (treating her like dirt, then later realizing he needed her help), the way he acted toward Gobax (insulting and demeaning him, right as he realized he needed someone he could trust to help collect the silver), how he was betrayed by Raena and Burzan only because he kept making Darewind angry and how he was betrayed by Yvette and Xyleena only because he insulted them with such a measly payment offer. Haahqae has a tendency to make enemies fairly easily.

I just want to verify that Haahqae and Arulia are alone on the street now before I make my next post.

The crowd has passed, yes. There are still others going about their daily business, but nobody is focusing on the two of them.

Is Delarn immune to fire?