Is Despair still with us? Not logged in or posted since December...

Sorry for not posting yet, it has been a busy week with school starting back up. x_x

I'll try to get a reply up Friday-Saturday.

Apologies for the absence gang.  A combo of holiday-fu, helping my daughter move 500 miles away and some health issues.

Welcome back!

In the call of the mountains thread, are we going to jump forward to meeting back up at the ship, or is there more we need to do first?

Sounds like the meeting is drawing to a close in the call of the mountain thread. If someone would go shopping for the supplies we will need for the voyage as a group then I say meet at the ship.

We're going to skip to the ship, but you may shop as Rolen suggests.  If there is anything you want, (and can afford!) just make a note that you are getting it.

Hello all. I look forward to playing with some of you.

Anyone alive in the canyon?

Yep.  Just waiting for something to respond to.

Sorry for not posting yet in Fidelis, but work has been super busy. I'll try to get something up as soon as I can.

Also catching up.  New schedule is leaving me with very little sleep =_=

Unfortunately I'm going to have to bow out of the game.  Best of luck gang.

GM, please remove me from the game.

I'm also going to have to leave; life is catching up to me in the worst ways.  Good luck, and thank you for having me!

Rant was interesting, I will add my 2.3 cents.  I think there are a lot of folk who derive more pleasure from creating the character than from playing it.  They have "a" concept, but no real goal.  Concepts are nice, but if you don't know where you might want to take a character, you can never get there.  So, they make up the concept and they are done.  Set a goal, folks.  Know where to want to get to, then determine how you get there, and then, adapt! because it is never that simple.

Rant over, back to our regularly scheduled fun.

In reply to Lysander (msg # 306):

Yeah, but I really want to play a were-shrimp now!!!

I agree with GM on the whole misunderstood, tragic back story, lone wolf thing. It’s good to have a past, but really it should be for either a bit of flavour to spice up a PC, or give the GM some hooks for storylines. Too melodramatic just becomes unplayable and risks alienating other players if the GM goes too far into it.

OK, sorry, life had me by the short hairs last week. Will catch up now.

Yeah, year-end is almost over for me, yay!

I personally love making tragic backstories for my characters apparently lol, but I don't tend to make lone wolf types or those who are looking for...pity or anything. I just like to have things in their backstory that help motivate them or help me to understand them.

Sorry for just lurking and not posting. Work has been a bear, but I'm trying to catch up and contribute.

Work is still sucking (just spent an entire day grading and I'm still not done x_x). I'll try to contribute when I can.

I am a bit confused. The Paladin went after a good gold dragon? Why? And the people in the overtly good place lie about knowing where one is? Can you see my confusion?

It could be a greater good thing. IIRC, Derne is trying to find the source of the holy water. If finding and sharing that source would be harmful to the gold dragons that live there, I can see why the paladin order and other goodly folk would stay mum about it.

I took the description as Derne's holy quest to find a lost holy item, the source of the holy water into the lake.  It was not that he was hunting dragons, but that it seemed likely that the holy item was either resident in the dragons' demesne, or potentially that they were protecting it, or perhaps indeed central to their home and its safety - does the relic guard the dragons, or the dragons guard the relic, or is it simply lost within one dragon's hoard?
Is Derne lost to the forces of evil along the trail of no animals?
Is Derne prisoner to the dragons - "Welcome, but now you can never leave, friend, sorry."
Is Derne stepping up to be protector to the relic and the dragons ala the bravest of three brothers guarding the Grail?

The paladin order being mum about location of hidden holy relics is one thing, and I agree that would make sense v. "Oh the Holy Handgrenade of Antioch?  Third vault, second rack, second shelf, fourth on the shelf - password for the magical wards is 'Fluffernutter'."

The lying about searches for it, and where the paladin is, and not bothering to check or monitor on their paladins out and about the world... really?
Not caring about the evils the paladins were out to stop?  Even if this is a "we're pretending X to test their metal"... it's really bad.  REALLY bad.  You're projecting to the world that your people don't matter, their quests are not important enough to see if the bad things are stopped or lost things found... oh, but trust us to do whatever is needed??
In the professed bastion of law and order and fellowship?

Is this early onset dementia?
  Or magical curse or geas of some sort (I'm presuming knowledge of that would be beyond first level casters)?
  Or Something foul or impersonating the paladin order?

Sorry, caught up now.

I think we're jumping to conclusions here. There are different shades of paladin orders (especially in 5e where the oaths show a lot of variance), and there could be a lot of very good reasons for them to keep quiet about a place where Gold Dragons live. The very best one might be that the gold dragons want the place to stay a secret (hence the cleric's oath to keep it that way).

If I'm remembering things correctly, Derne went out to find the source of the holy water (not  hunt a gold dragon). He set out knowing only that the water was holy, not what caused it. He may very well be heading over there to see the truth with his own eyes.