Hope you're well, DM!

Recovering from slaughtering and butchering chickens.  Some of my work surfaces need have height adjusted.  I'm leaning over too much, and it makes by back hurt.

On the plus side, though, the freezer is a bit more full now.

I've had back pain all my adult life, and only in the past few years did it become apparent that standing over surfaces of inappropriate height for 30+ years had caused my back to bend/arch somewhere it shouldn't. And then one day it popped and I was off work for nine months. No fun at all.

That really sucks. Nothing to do for it? I have some intermittent pain in my lower back at the top of my hip. It causes me to be real stiff. My flexibility has gotten worse, which has exacerbated the pain. I've lost a bunch of weight recently, and that's helped some. Maybe I'm just older than I think I am...?

I've been super busy, and I'll be away from the computer for much of the coming weekend. Sorry for the delayed posting.

Ugh. Sorry for the hold up on my part. Will try to catch up tomorrow or the next. Super busy.

Hey guys, sorry for the absence lately. Been really busy. Hoping for some more time to be freed up with colder weather beginning to roll in and autumn finally here. I love this time of year!

You need not apologize. We are posting at a pretty relaxed pace, altogether :-)

I'll catch up tonight. Early snow has me scrambling. I'm thinking that Hamburg would like to hire a retainer or two. Probably some oddball types like himself. ;-)

Yes, good DM: how do we go about hiring retainers?

One might conceivably hire a crier, post notices, or go where individuals with the particular skills you seek tend to congregate.  Merchants tend to hire guards near ports of entry and around warehouses and inns.  The rest might be more interesting to find.

What type of hirelings do you have in mind?

Dancing girls?

Dancing girls are available, but prices can be steep, and are based on skill, the number of "protectors" of theirs that you need to pay for (zero, in cases of low-skill, no-name dancers), and the level of intimacy (if any) you desire.  The price will go up if you expect them to follow you out of the city, as well, and even more so if you want to go somewhere dangerous with them.  There might be very few interested in a cave dive.

What'cha looking for?
This message was last edited by the GM at 19:27, Tue 31 Oct 2023.

What a week! Sorry for being so absent. I'll get my head in the game Monday. Or so...

Regarding retainers: maybe guards to watch our horses as we go into the ruins, something like that.

How many of which type of retainers do you want?  I know that this has gone on for a long time with little activity, but I'd like to at least get us moving on numbers so that we can continue with the narrative.

A few guards for the horses makes sense, with enough promise of pay that they don't run off with our steeds at the first sign of danger. Other than that Lanliss hadn't really planned on any hires.

It's been long enough that I don't remember what I was thinking... Sorry for the brain farting. Not easy being in Hamburg's head... it's pretty crowded in there!

Sometime in a bit over a month, my wife is expected to go into labor.  Likely between the new year and mid-January I will become suddenly unavailable, likely without notice.  Babies are so unreliable like that.

Serious, what were we thinking, having a kid at our ages?  I've already got a son who is more than old enough to be fathering a kid (technically, if he had started out early, he could be a grandfather at this point, but we thankfully don't see much of that anymore in western culture).

It's probably just that babies are awesome, and she hadn't had one yet.

Or maybe I have a deep-seated internal hatred of sleep...

Wow! So happy for you! That's awesome! Of course coming from me you know that I'm extremely pro-baby. Seriously though, it's awesome. My youngest is now four, and I'm trying to savor every minute. After my wife's wreck almost two years ago, the doc said she was done. I think that was God's way of telling her, because she's pretty stubborn. Anyway hope things go well for your family.

I've been busy/distracted and feel badly I haven't helped push this game forward lately. I'm happy to wait a bit if you need time DM. This is a fun group that's been together for a long time, so I'm guessing we're all good with a pause. I'm always here, just busy sometimes. Holler when things get get back to normal (nyuk nyuk)

Congrats DM! I'm way too old to have more children, and am happy with the ones I already have, but then again I started late anyway.

A pause would be welcome at this time of year anyway - best wishes of the Festive Season to one and all!

Congratulations, DM! That's fantastic. No complaints from me--the oldest of my kids is getting married in February, so a glimmer of hope for grandchildren soon for me :-)

I am only intermittently on RPOL these days, but around whenever you can continue things.

In the end, I think, your efforts will turn up three guards (each of whom brings leather armor, a shield, a sword, a dagger, and a shortbow with arrows), two teamsters, a pair of hired wagons (each with a pair of mules), and a female quartermaster/cook who insists that she can dance, despite her somewhat matronly frame.  This should run 35 GP per month, or just over 1 GP per day, with trail-quality provisions for nine (since the halfling easily eats as much as the taller folk), plus four mules, running a mere 95 GP more (since the cook can watch for spoilage, and you don't need to have food pre-cooked).

This totals 130 GP per month, although costs will be higher if you want to hire the group for any lesser period of time.

Let me know what you think, when you check in again.
This message was last edited by the GM at 03:53, Wed 03 Jan.

Sounds great to me. I'll be afk until Saturday. Going to hotsprings with wife and kids. It'll be hard to pry my old bones out and back into the cold!

That sounds fantastic. Roak approves!

Voran thinks that's pricey, but he defers to the people who actually count coins in the party.