I'm trying to tailor the game to your interests, so please let me know if you can still play or if I should remove you. I hope everyone can still play. Here's what I tried to do:

The goal is to attain the Cuirass of Hope, adjudicating whether it is the ultimate weapon for battling the fire elementals. If you're able to slay the fire elementals and bring their black fire (it takes some rules elements to change their colour, something of a Craft skill but infused with song, given the sonorous odes to Apollo resound even now in the halls of the place of the dead, the temple). The fire elementals are servants of Apollo and their death forces them into a form which makes their black fire able to bend like wildfire.

The city is such that the Parthenon and the black fire upon its altar are able to end the riots by heeding the goals of the thieves commanded by Jil, whose goals, dousing the fire in the central lake, will ease the riots Rodney King style. Already you're surrounded by smashed windows and loud screams, but the gods will speak words to settle the furor, even using charm spells on small animals to allow Artemis to witness the combat directly, contacting other cities by beacon if the riots don't settle down fast enough. The spires rise into the distance, overtaking communal views, with turrets on some of the buildings fielding a windowed glance at a cupola that was Turkish in origin but supposedly also where there is housed a history of "black fire." And it's connected to the library with the Gilded Halls, where preludes toward interpersonal love are printed at the local printer, for the tech level is such that fliers are churned out, many of which litter the streets even now.

The sloping streets offer tides in heavy rains of Dionysian dolphin song, which is supposedly on several graffiti selections throughout the city, obviously painted with brushes rather than aerosol. The city sits in a nest of smoug, with Golgotha's acid rain (1d4 + 2 in 3 bursts, WILL save halves) hurting the dolphins but also allowing for the paint to become magical glyphs that those who imbibe hallucinatory drugs comme Delphi maintain. The black fire is supposedly able to enrich those glyphs to create real items, kind of a STR 5 check to break them and get the constituent magical energy, essentially if you take the materials to Skie's Treasury, you are able to get items that sing the song of the gods in a noble manner.

The magical tunnels are able to be collapsed, which is what some of the gods want to do, to keep the riots in the city as low key as is possible. But your mission is to deliver the fire to the pictures, sing it to the dolphins, and maybe see about the clean-up of the city before bringing the fire to Skie's Treasury to have new weapons for slaying the creatures in the countryside (it'll take one hour of horse travel to get there, and there are plenty of horses in the mix) and Skie knows secrets about how to get the items even more powerful at cities patroled by the shadow, which is soon to be Baden's Bluff if you don't act quickly. In other words, the items, like the Cuirass of Hope, are able to do slashing damage to vulnerable astirax to re-arrange Artemis's board, for she scries as an interlocutor without being explicitly on one side or the other, Greek or Dark. You might be attracting the attention of Izrador if you travel, so be aware.

My feeling is as follows

Let's try this. To try it

• Don't post our actions. Not at all. It's up to us to post our actions
• Only do a little thing at once and let us react. Sure it takes longer, but we understand what happens and can do things

It's really nice to have a goal. Getting the Cuirass of Hope is a good target.

Questions:
I didn't understand the bit about a craft skill with song. Is that a skill we need to have (I don't). Or are we to find someone with the skill. And which craft skill is it
I didn't understand the bit about the tunnels. Is that just something that exists, or do you want us to collapse the tunnels?

Let's break down this section

• Deliver fire to the pictures. What pictures? How do we move the fire?
• Sing it to the Dolphines. Which dolphins? Where are they? How do we know what song to sing? What skill is it (Craft or Perform) I don't have either
• Bring the fire to Skie's Treasure. What fire? And where is Skie's treasury. I take it Skie is a person
• Secrets to make the weapons more powerful. Cities patroled by the shadow... Which cities? What kind of shadow is doing the patrolling? What has this to do with Baden's Bluff?

And I get that the Cuirass of Hope can do damage to something, although I don't know what a Astirax is
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As you can see I am very confused. Let's work out how we can get rid of this confusion.

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Now imagine this was a book. A novel. We are a group of heros. We have to be recruited. This is usually done by a person. That person usually has knowledge and we can talk to him/her. We can roleplay that talk. We can ask questions. They can answer. Perhaps we don't understand so we can ask more questions. Things become clear. Sure it takes a while, but actually it's fun.

Why don't we start with that person. Decide who it is. Have them meet Aranea and I, and we can chat. At the end of the chat we'll have a much clearer idea of what is going on, what we have to do. Just remember to give us time to ask questions. There's no hurry!

Astirax is a setting creature. Kind of like a Shadow creature save that they sense magic. They also consume magic from spellcasters. They are servants of the Dark Lord and may attend his clerics or other devotees. That is about all I know

Scary stuff!

The black fire:

Size: small; pocketing this item and withdrawing it is a free action.
Shape: curvature suggesting that if placed next to other items, fire would spread in ten rounds, which is what the flames in the squares will spread like as well.
Cost: If exchanged at Skie's Treasury, which is located in the second row from the center in the northwest quartier of the city, you can earn 5000 gp in in-store rewards, as there is a wall teeming with goods in haphazard fashion which include the exploits of all the older adventurers.
Nature: non-magical but supernatural

This item, if used against creatures immune to fire, will grant you spell immunity to falls, as the wind is chimney-like in the city, with drafts causing the assertion of monk-like fire rituals such as snuffing out candles with one's bare fingers and walking on coals, both seen in the city as colliseum-like endeavors that all the mudbloods use in their pursuit of bodily perfection.

There is a wind rotating around the bottle that you can use to contain the flame, but there is the ability to shatter it up to 50 feet if thrown as a projectile, with STR x 5 being the extra range that you can douse the horizon with.

You read on the street about Skie's Treasury and a couple of people at the various injunctions of the city are muttering it as well, prophetically. The renunciation of deeply=held beliefs mark a turn in the milieu that suggests that the riots are religiously-based in origin, tipping the scales in the city toward the accumulation of wealth, as far as RPG factors go. If you deliver the fire to the Treasury, you will receive a certain token with a beholder on it that permits you to be in a certain monetary network, and in fact the words on the coin suggest something about black fire. It's what everyone seems to be muttering about except something about a shackleborn. The minions of the dark lord aren't too far away, so you might want to deliver the fire before long or else ten minions with dogs descend upon the city, something that would be a rather challenging encounter.

The stairs to the temple seem to rise into the distance, with greeneryn all around and there is an interest in decreasing the city's temperature so that in case a volcano erupts, there is air elemental (which Skie is rumoured to know about), which allows for the creation of more glassware using the mine that exists, in the church's cathedral of St. Cuthbert in the northeast (I assume you have a map that you can consult, alongside the black fire in a bottle (it's like bottled lightning). Delivering the fire will end the riots, and there is a needs for glass in their aftermath that makes your voyage here, which was to research and potentially join, the shadow, based on certain prophecies about "shackleborn" and the church will surely have more information for you once you arrive there and secure the next sequence plot-wise. The fire elementals seem to respond to Jil, whose harlequin paint on her face marks her as a trooper who is comfortable with her place in the city, having roll terrain on a scroll written on that you find in the street, she having dropped it. The impetus to battle will fall on you if you do not get the fire into the church. The other part of the prophecy is about magically pushing some kind of riots toward the exterior of the region in order to create a sort of ghost landfill. There's also some general knowledge in the mix about dolphins and ghost word.

So if I'm reading this right, what it means is if we defeat these fire elementals that are in small groups around this Temple then we will get some of a special resource [black fire] that we can either use as specialized wondrous magical items, or we can turn it into the city Treasury or sky Treasury for different rewards and that's nice.

Then we hit some areas about prophecies and we start talking about some other NPCs that I have a hard time keeping up with again.

Being magical creatures it kind of behooves us to not side with the dark lord as their minions consume magic. We may not be big fans of the Greek gods but it seems like the dark lord is going to be the most natural enemy for us as much as the Greek pantheon may be placing side bets on the whole issue they shouldn't want to destroy us outright but they may have their own ideas for how to best deal with the shadow which could play into some complex undertones for our adventures.

THOUGHTS ON PROBABLE BACKSTORY
 I think that it's perfectly reasonable for us to have met in a forest near baden's bluff and are trying to take care of the dark ones local foothold. My characters species may have left a clutch of eggs hidden in a deep and wild place which would just happen to be where the fairies have a ring nearby and so using a somewhat older and forgotten circle for whatever her own reasons might be to leave the fae realm for a little while, we may have been together from soon after maevre's entrance into the mortal realm.

An Astirax, might have been drawn to the fae magic activation and come to investigate. Knowing they are a thing I have magic natural attacks 50% of 9 attacks 1 of which reduces speed to 0 is tough for a lone shadow to beat. Especially as incorporeal creatures have no strength to break a magic web with. We may have come in after hearing the Greek Pantheon was mounting open resistance to the darkness that had tried to eat us.

Of course, I'm negotiable... I just wanted to put thoughts out there.

@Areanea
I like your thinking on this Araenea.

The only tiny problem is 'how do we kill fire elementals'. I have powerful attacks based on fire to which they are immune (sucks to be a fire user in this encounter) I can melee with them but I don't have fire immunity and we don't know how powerful they are, and if it goes wrong we are dead...

Perhaps we should try something.

I've re-read the GM's last post (a few times) and I can't work out what is happening or what we have to do. Any thoughts on what our next step should be?

I think these are non-standard fire elementals. Do you by chance have any gift or equipment for healing?

I have a few potions and the skill.

A little. About one combat round in three if I hit something I can do a small heal...

That's almost saying 'not really'!

I do have a decent amount of fire resistance (10 points) if I do stuff. Probably that will help.

Ah well... I guess we start... I'll post something tomorrow (it's late here) about attacking fire elementals. Let's start with just one...

Well I am even more rubbish against these than I thought... Still I've made a combat post. Let's see what happens

Sorry for not posting a bit, I would assume you guys need more than 2 to continue? Lady Maevre had mentioned 3 as her minimum at one point. I bumped the prompt but to no avail. We can continue with just 2 if you would like.

I can post tomorrow if so.

It's all good. Let's try this

I have posted in the IC.

Let's do the combat posts very slowly. One round at a time to get used to it. Small amounts of information. Otherwise we are going to get very confused!

I'm for continuing.

Are you continuing to play, Eleni? I had forgotten that you might've been given I didn't parse what you had posted (i.e. I didn't see a post after I had posted, but no big deal, just checking in).

Hopefully we can get the crunchy aspects going pretty soon, is there anything else I need to know before continuing? Waiting for Eleni, and I'm pretty tired again tonight so hopefully we have 3 moving forward and I can post tomorrow.

Still no sign of Eleni, how's my new posting style? Better? Worse?

I feel that it is a lot easier to follow. I need to read it over a few times because there is a lot there to unpack still...

There is still a lot as Aranea says. But it's managable.

By the way just for your planning of encounters... I did terrible damage because they are fire elements, immune to sneak attack, immune to fire damage, and to survive them I traded off attack for damage. And I was unlucky when I rolled the die!

I do do better damage vs most things.

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Still confusing things:
I don't know what an Auron is. Is it a langauge? If so I don't think either of us speak it. Mind you I haven't picked languages yet... And as the daughter of the Queen of Air and Darkness I should probably select it!

Do we know what the Crown of Eurydice is (looking at Aranea here)




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Oh... and it was nice having the gods bickering in the background in previous posts. You started with that and it was confusing because we didn't know what was going on. Now we do... just letting you know it was cool

-maybe I'm not rememAuron is a neutral classification of creature but above(outside) the normal classification... So a truly neutral or predominantly neutral (if I remember right they could still be lawful or chaotic). The way celestials are good and fiends are evil.

I would roll fey ancients in the same kind of category.

Yes, the crown is part of a set of gear Aranea is seeking to help strengthen freedom and fight tyranny.

So... I re-read it. And re-read it.

And have no idea what to do... None.

• Should I speak in Auron...
• but how do I do that?
• Is it a skill?
• Is it something I can do?
• Or something I should learn how to do?
• And if I need to learn how to do it, where do I learn to do it?

Or

• Should I speak in Draconic
• But I don't know how to speak in draconic...

Or

Do we ignore this and

• go after another fire elemental?
• But something strange is happening to the fire elementals, and they aren't fire elementals any more

What do we do Aranea? GM?

The elementals are about 20' away from you, now shifting in a given pattern as though dipping into other elementals elsewhere, they sharing the roulette that gives them birth, and some of them can even whip up water if it is nearby or if they favor water to earth they can tear up the earth like digging dogs to secure clay deep within the earth's crust. The elementals, as Aranea was explaining, are part of the myth of the elder beasts, celestials, archons, and angels of various caliber. They synthesize or differentiate based on their position in the firmament, and some even speculate that fire elementals come from the stars, and are thus the source of the names of the gods. Astrolabes and sextants usually pay homage to lenten dieties such as Demeter and there is a navigational elemnt of ascorbics that belies any connection with the god Poseidon. The waves that quietly rumble on the coast of ancient Greece yield bronze statuettes that the city of Baden's Bluff is known for, and there is an ethereal overlay combining fantasy with reality but the acropolis is often visually highly saturated, the water around it often too calmly blue.

Metals mined in the hills produce vibes in the city well exceeding any expectations that the gods will relieve their duties as workmen and laborers and instead people set up shrines to deities that are like herms but fish-shaped, suggesting a cone-like cephalos with the ability to breathe freely even upon the ethereal plane, but some believe that certain viewers of the slideshow that is Hades produce a crucifixion type effect, a prolonged cry that eases souls into accepting their fates. The elementals are red and blue but seemingly personify the tastes of the pantheon, literally incarnated in the spot of the doric and corinthian architecture making up the retinue tagging along for a cosmic ride. The weathering of the stone suggests you could find a solid mass of rock that will combine with the rock and glass in the countryside to be the raw materials of a fine production of magical items. Your goal is to find out what dolphins, glass, black fire, elementals, and thieves to figure out which temple to which gods (gotta buy the map at Skie's Treasury, according to the prophecies you read this is the place the demons raided and for this reason). Basically you have a hodge-podge of symbols and need to discover syncretism in them, solidifing grasps over finer alchemies that magic upon the Aegean gave birth to. Rocks have a hardness of 10 and the marble versions have a hardness of 20 with the stipulation that you use mithril to harvest them. This is also your ticket to completing the garb of the Crown of Eurydice, and incising draconic runes upon the weapons breathes the past's magic into your raiment.

I read that. More confusion. I have no idea what to do.

Aranea do you know what to post? I'll follow along and see if anything makes sense

Does it seem that killing these elementals is the only way to secure the dark fire?

How many elementals are there? And what type are there? It seems that they are transmorphing and doing stuff.

At the moment I can't work out what the situation is, other than the graphic description. In order to post I have to know

• What our goal is
• What the situation is in terms of enemies
• What the situation is in terms of the description of the surroundings

• The first... I am not sure about. I guess it's kill elementals.
• The second... no idea at all.
• The third... is descriptive and pretty and I am happy with it

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Suggestion
I think I would like a clear 'Status' block at the end of a GMs post. It could look like this. Without it I have no idea what the immediate surrounding is

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For now
I'll go attack another fire elemental. I assume there are still fire elementals around, but I'm not sure...