"Pathfinder: Annihilation of a Barbarian Tribe (2)" Topic

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Ugh. That is all I can say at the end of this session. Ugh.

My fellow dwarfs (mountaineers and clerics of Torag) were the only ones in the party besides a very small contingent of Abadar Paladins that were of LG-LN alignment in our entire force. Me being the one who convinced Janderhoff to lend them, it fell upon me to roleplay a meeting with them about the plan. I choose to be up front (more or less) telling them the entire plan EXCEPT the summoning of the succubus, and plied upon their sense of justice and delivering retribution to a cannibal tribe that does not entreat others with any sense of peace or honor. While acknowledging our methods would not be honorable by our own standards, a just solution will still result.

The alternative, charging down the saddle to meet them toe-to-toe under a banner of "honor," meets them on their home ground, where they know every rock and bough and in terrain that favors their style of warfare that they have been trained for and our forces have not. They will not respond in kind to any honorable dealings.

I stressed that we could leave the humans to deal with humans, that we dwarfs were needed to help secure the southern flank of the saddle, with clerics and ballistae to handle those we despise the most – the giants. AND that this valley, with water, wood and a forge in the stronghold (built into a mountain) that we could improve upon, this would be a great spot for a dwarf presence on the trade route, but I cannot make that case in the PC leadership unless there was dwarven participation in the battle.

He gave me a slight bonus and had me roll it out… I critted with a 20. Total of 33 (with my other normal bonuses added in also.) So even though they did not like it, and were not enthusiastic, they did not pick up and leave. They grudgingly agreed to participate.

The erineys returned (caked a bit with dried blood) letting us know there are no druids, only totem priests, but that she has been sowing confusion and paranoia with her kidnapping and killing isolated tribesmen. They seem more on guard now, but not towards anything external, even the guards at the slave/food pens are more watching one another intently than their charges.

I took a contingent up to the 60-odd hobgoblins and basically told them we would be killing the horned humans and giants in the other valley, and rescuing their people from capture – so as payment, their people are now paid laborers on the road in this section of the valley. They would be given tasks in accordance with their capabilities and skills such as they may be. So long as they are peaceful, obey and work diligently, they will be fed, protected, paid for their labor. They are not slaves, this is only for the time we are in this valley. Any of the tribe that wants to continue with us as we leave the valley to learn more skills and pay are welcome to do so. I told them the dragon and her lizardfolk are now the authority in this valley, and it is with her and her people that will rest the decision on whether their tribe would be allowed to remain when we leave, so it is up to them to impress upon the dragon and the lizardfolk how peaceful and helpful they can be. Or, you can be killed or driven off; you are totally and utterly outmatched. So long as your tribe remains honest, peaceful and honorable in your dealings, your tribe will be dealt with in the same way.

The "cackling sickness" ended up being what we decided upon for the contagion on the goblins, it is airborne, ingestion not required like "blinding sickness." The erineys seeded the dozen goblins (and gave them each a few flasks of oil and tinder to go nuts and firebomb what they will in their cackling madness…) and we made march for the saddle, 3 days to get there, planning another day of preparation at the reverse slope building pallisades and other defenses to fight from. The lizardfolk contingent, aided by some of our more stealthy NPC's, infiltrate the northern treeline to wait and free the slaves at dusk. The succubus is summoned and had her go invisible to sow chaos among the spreading mad, paranoid Shoanti.

We crest the saddle, set defenses, line for battle and observe… distant clashes of arms, some fires, screams, echoes of mad laughter. The Shoanti are far too busy succumbing and infighting to notice our presence – which is fine, we do not want them untied against a common enemy, let them thin their own ranks. The erineys tells us the giants have gone out of sight, we deduct that with the infighting and chaos erupting all around, they are holding up in the clan cave(s) and want no part of what is going on.

Around 3PM, the lizardfolk and spiders packs w/handlers escort the prisoners they freed into the lines, who are immediately quarantined for healing and restorative magic.

Smoke starts to pour out of the ruins/stronghold, and around sunset, the duergar apparently kept there leave, disorderly march to the west towards us, scrappy and fatigued. Dwarfs have racial hatred for duergar, it is likely they want to join our numbers since we freed them and killed the slavers and they are too weak to survive alone. BUT if they join us, at the very least, the mountaineers and Torag priests WILL leave. No doubt. I whispered to another player to send them off, we cannot have them join us, and he did that – the DM made sure he played on the heartstrings describing them as mostly women and remnants with little small arms at best and no armor, having them plead for their lives, "If we go, you send us to our deaths."

It became evident with that encounter that we have wiped the Shoanti out. There isno way all these slaves could have escaped across their valley to our ranks unless there were none remaining. The cackling sickness causes people to go mad, and once random attacks started, with paranoia and such added in, and the she-devil/she-demon doing their thing against non-infected that had not been attacked yet by those that were mad… Succumbing to the sickness saps WIS score until you have none, then you are helpless as it feeds off your CON until you are down to zero, at which point you die.

The Shoanti have died, been annihilated. The giants never made an appearance, they remain holed up in their cave(s)

I did not realize it until AFTER it was a done deal, really, but a necromancer in the large force we have, a MASTER NECROMANCER, goes off with his crew and raises all those dead Shoanti as "Bloody Skeletons," bring in tow an army of 2,000+ former Shoanti now-undead, bragging at what his, "art," can do to help the cause.

WHAT? WHY?

He makes the case to all that the valley is OURS, even if the giants attack, these can swarm and kill them handily, they are just as valid a tool and resource as any other – they have no soul, no conscience, they can chop wood, dig, sow crops, harvest, fight, and require no food, no water, no pay, nothing but simple instructions. If they are ever injured, they self-heal, never catch diseases, he claims there is no downside to this. And sure enough, he convinces every one of the leadership counsel of their value.

The Abadar paladin contingent left in disgust, unconvinced (as well they should – fortunately they did not declare a crusade to stop it.)

Why is the DM putting us through this? Player to DM, I tell him this NPC action effectively BREAKS two player characters if they allow it. The things that have been done so far have already forced my PC to change my alignment just so I could continue playing in an "honest" manner. He is forcing another player into bad consequences no matter what he decides to do… He is a Priest of Pharasma, his PC either has to leave in disgust, or allow it to stand – which would go against the most basic tenant of his faith and cause his character in game to suffer consequence for not adhering to his faith. So, leave the game, abandon your faith, or allow it and be penalized.

My perception has become, "unless you play an 'anything-goes' character, I am going to manipulate your choices and challenge your PC's morals and your own ethics at every step."

The third player, who recruited this necromancer, does not care; he is ends-justifies-means and tried to get us all to voice objections now or never bring it up again. The new player that joined us last week, well, he is an Oracle apprentice to this necromancer, he joined in on the process, so this is right up his alley and he will make the case this HAS to happen, it feeds into his own PC's story arc.

I told everyone I need to think this over, that I cannot come up with answer of the cuff on something THIS dramatic, at which point the DM chimed in with, "oh, but biological warfare, wiping out an entire tribe was no problem?" I reminded him my PM to him and that I DID have issues with that and voiced it to him, but this keeps getting deeper and deeper and I may need to roll up a different PC because this does not work with my current PC. It is not a good mix of theme of the adventure and the PC developed, no value judgment against the world or the game, the PC and what is going on just does not mix.

I think the DM should have been honest up front and said "this is going to be a bit dark, don't bother bringing anything other than E or N characters and be prepared for actions that would get you in the dock for war crimes in the real world".

Well, here's the thing. I've been playing long enough with him and know his ins and outs by now (especially with the dialog we had with my PM.) The DM will claim, "this is not my doing. Not me, I did not make this happen, my game is a sandbox, you are in control of your characters and what they decide to let happen or not, and what they will do to prevent things they do not like."

He'll say it is our own fault as players by choosing to surround our PC's with the group of NPCs we selected, and the things we are having trouble with are merely a natural evolution with predictable consequences had we thought this through better (our two PCs were supposed to deduce the necromancer would pull this, and apparently we were supposed to either stop him from joining the group from the beginning, or roleplay some kind of restriction for him from trying to do this – BTW, he is over 20th level – adn now with an army of 2,000 undead… so good luck stopping him now, much less getting a commitment out of him up front that we could "trust" even if we had tried.)

So if that is the DM washing his hands of responsibility for the direction the game is going, where do we as players go from here? We have two players whose characters value systems allow for this, and two players whose characters value systems cannot allow this.

1. Leave the game altogether.
2. Have the PC leave in disgust and rollup another PC more in tune with the everything-goes theme of this.
3. Make the case for the necromancer to (a) leave with his undead, (b) put his undead back down and vow never to do this again, in which case EVERY powerful NPC in the group whom he has already convinced this is a useful thing would be arguing, "why did you take him along if he is not to help?"
4. Toss all PC morals/ethics/alignments out the window, and play a grey blob of a PC that just lets whatever happens, happen from here on out.

A very good summing up there, sir!
I suppose it boils down to whose values matter most. A PC is your avatar in the DMs world and if the qualities of the avatar don't mesh with that world, the game won't work. So you could drop the character and roll out with a more evil aligned character and get on with it.

Or, are your values getting irked by the – at best moral ambiguity? I have to say that mine would be, I recall wading through quite blood drenched D&D games but we were fighting the good fight against hordes of eviltude and the party was quite self policing in a moral senses. Sure we scammed each other and I'm sure one or two guys were grabbing some loot if they got to it first – the DM rigidly enforced a rule of splitting the players up if the party split. So if the elf thief got lost, back stabbed a monster that had a nice magic item, he grabbed it and kept shtumm.

I think though that to set the campaign in a evil kingdom, set you a dubious task, provide mainly evil allies and then say "you let this happen" is a bit of a stretch. And I'm not sure how you were to divert the necromancer at all.

Personally I'd walk as I like my D&D to have a bit of morality in it.

1. This sort of decision tends to end up permanent.

2. See below.

3. He won't back down and you know it.

4. Why? Too much like real world defaults.

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2. cont.:

ICly the two of you with scruples could fake your deaths while gathering wood, filling canteens or whatever, and then go 'over the hill' and away from all of this. Abort the journey if necessary. Roll more flexible characters then *if* you wanted to continue with this DM, campaign and other players. It all sounds poorly conceived, or callous to the effects on players.

Good luck.

I may have figured an angle…

We came out of Korvosa, and have a large Asmodean-worshipping contingent (clerics, Hellkights, and joe-schmoo skilled and unskilled laborers.) Korvosa has more of a "culture" issue with accepting more-or-less mindless undead more than a religious issue with them; the common folk don't like undead labor because it represents a threat to their economic well-being.

Things relevant here that the Asmodean church is about, is order, structure, and civilizing the wild. The DM has said time and again that the Asmodean Church is this area of the world is on a sort of PR campaign, going out of their way to be helpful and generous to prove they should be accepted by all, and downplaying what would be the more "severe" aspects of their faith.

I am going to approach the head of their faith (Iphenea Bosch) on the side, and make the case that using or allowing these undead actually represents a threat.

To the civil order in Korvosa itself. If we allow and use to great effect these undead, and our mission is a success, the nobles will take note at how cheap and effective it was, and could push for official acceptance in Korvosa to enrich their pockets. When the lowfolk find out we embraced and used to great effect an undead force as labor and protection, there will be undue strife as it threatens their livelihood. It sets nobles against the people and rebellion could be a predictable result.

This master, by his own words, says he wants to change society. Korvosa is the only local "society," so he can only mean upsetting the current, orderly, status quo. This could also eventually threaten the prominence of the Asmodean faith in Korvosa. No matter who wins out in a societal change in Korvosa. If the nobles win and undead chattel become common, the Asmodean faith decreases as more Urgothan and undead-oriented faiths are welcomed into the city. If the people revolt and win, banning undead, they will trace the roots of the nobles acceptance and example to this expedition and all of our compliance, the Asmodean church suffers then as well.

Think of Cheliax; no where on this world does the Asmodean faith hold more sway than in Cheliax. If the common use of the undead as chattel (like this master is championing) were to benefit order, structure and civilizing the wild, if it furthered the aims of your faith, would this tactic not already be used by your faithful?

It suits only a rival faiths aims to accept and use them.