"Talk with us and we will stop the digging?"

Gives them an incentive to parley. Granted, keeping our end of the bargain may be a problem.

They're orcs.  Simple = better?

I think Dave has it right.  We worry about holding our end up later.  We're a bunch of charming adventurers after all.  And maybe we will have halted the attacks, which should help.

I'd like at least an outline of your plan before Jaff is long gone. I think when he left, the plan was to attempt some sort of a parley with the Orc chieftain/shaman. I'm fine with a bit of a retroactive adjustment to your plans but it will need to be done soon. If, instead, your next move is to go back to the ruins, you might as well tag along with the caravan. Regardless, once Jaff is gone, he's gone- for at least four days. He won't be able to anticipate any changes in the plan during that time and, as some of you have pointed out, you probably don't want an aggressive rescue party showing up and ruining whatever you manage to do in the interim. Make sense?

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Suggested:

1.  Release prisoner.  He's only going to slow us down and if he does understand Common, discussing our intentions in front of him may give away more than we want.  The message we send him back with, as Dave and Keys say, will be a simple request for negotiations at dawn tomorrow.  Our offer is that we'll stop the mining if the tribes back off from active siege operations.

2.  Negotiations.  Corros and Nic, as the CHAmonsters, will lead on these (Keys, does Corros have Persuasion skill proficiency)?

3.  Assuming negotiations go well enough, enter Yonder's Hole, explain the deal to the miners and garrison, and get them to halt their own operations.

4.  Reconnaissance of the ruins, preferably with representatives from both sides, in search of more information about the Prisoner.  Hopefully, by the time the relief company arrives from Balefyre, we'll have enough info to turn our temporary arrangement into something more permanent.

I thought about putting recon first but I think we need to stop the active siege as soon as possible to prevent further loss of life.  If Yonder's Hole is overrun, taking the place back later will be much harder.

Also, thinking ahead - if we do find useful information, we may need to exfiltrate it by having Ulfgar take rabbit or mouse form and sneak out.

Refinements?

Also, Nic will quietly arrange duress codes with Jaff so the relief company can tell if we're being forced to give them false information.  Notably, there will be separate duress signs for "orcs are making us say this" and "miners are making us say this."

All that sounds good to me.

I never did change Corros's profs so he still has a proficiency in persuasion.

Got it.  FYI, Nic has not admitted it ICly, but he does speak Orc.  :)

Looks OK to me.

What do you want Jenna, Ulfgar, and Gronk to do while you're negotiating? Come with you and try and avoid causing offence or stay away in case it goes pear shaped and you need rescued?

Gronk will need to lend manly legitimacy to the proceedings because Corros and Nic are both little spindly humans.  As for Jenna and Ulfgar, I see two options.  One is to be on rescue standby.  The other is to walk in with us to augment Gronk's show of force because, dammit, we're the group that just dumped ten of their warriors with minimal damage to ourselves and we ain't afraid of no orcs.

I don't know about Spartan, but I have a slight preference for walking in with you. If conventional wisdom is to be on standby though that's not a problem.

I'd rather have you guys in the scene so you aren't twiddling your thumbs for a week of real time.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:47, Sun 29 Nov 2015.

Walking in is fine with me.

Dwarf form or bear form?  We could be all like, "yeah, we have this tame bear who fights for us."

Oooohh...I vote bear.  Mainly because Bears are Awesome^tm  Corros can talk to Ulfgar telepathically should it be necessary.  And instead of insulting the orcs, our dwarf friend can just rip their faces off.

In reply to Corros Graelor (msg # 249):

"What the hell is that?"

"Our bear."

"What's it do?"

"Bear things."

I have an image of Jenna standing scratching behind the bear's ear while the negotiations take place.

I was going to add a witty meme, but bizarrely enough when I did a google search of "woman warrior and bear" the majority of images were arguably Not Safe For Work...

Alright, cool. For the sake of our story, could we get some of this IC? If you need more set up from me, let me know. We don't need to belabor it, but I don't want to jump straight from my last IC post to the ftf with the Orc leadership. Make sense?

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I'll post something IC tonight if no one else has had a chance before then.  Would have gotten it last night but Time-Warner had a service outage over most of the Ohio Valley.

Speaking of animals, another use for the wildshape feature is stealth recon. In my FtF game (I don't DM it), our druid player often transforms into a little inconspicuous critter like a spiders or a squirrel to sneak around and scope places out for the rest of our party. Once she reached a level where she could pick flying critters, aerial recon. This isn't a hint; it's merely something to consider, if you haven't already.

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Sorry, fellas. RL is not cooperating with my writing/RP'ing schedule. I'm probably not going to be able to get a turn up until Friday afternoon.

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No worries.  It happens.  We'll entertain ourselves with the bear until then.

I wont be around on Friday (Xmas lunch, which will be followed by a session in the pub).

I may not be around much on Saturday (depends how long the session in the pub lasts...)

In general my particpation levels across all games may dip for the next couple of weeks as festive shenanigans kick in.

I'll hold off posting until Nic has his say, that way Corros can do the whole mind to mind bit with the shaman and try to impress upon the orcs what The Five and bringing to the table.

Had to deal with wife's office holiday party tonight. Will try to make time to post tomorrow afternoon.

Result - I can still drink with people for hours twenty years younger than me and feel OK next morning.

I'll hold off until after the diplomats have done their thing.
This message was last edited by the player at 11:04, Sat 05 Dec 2015.

I hope your Millennials are better than ours...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sz0o9clVQu8