Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Tolly7249 08-09-07, 03:30 AM	Anyway, here's the thing. My GM (with a bit of help from me cause I am the local authority on Final Fantasy goodness) is running a Final Fantasy XII campaign in Eberron. It's been rockin' like crazy, but my character's suddenly found herself in a spot of bother. Vayne d'Cannith. (Just think about that for a second. Scary, no?) Our major bad guy, very distantly related to Merrix d'Cannith, currently the Consul for a small city called Dernholm. Our GM made the city as a starting point, it's on the very edge of what used to be Cyre so it's not exactly a nice place ANYWAY, but our characters are very fond of it regardless and we do NOT like Vayne's recent leadership. (Vayne introduced the XII version of Judges as a law-keeping group in Dernholm, and we HATE THEM with a passion. Especially since the rest of House Cannith thought it was a brilliant idea and took them on.) Anyway, after quite a lot of mucking about, crossing Eberron back and forth like lunatics, and generally getting the snot beaten out of us by Judges whenever we get close to finding something useful, we got an unexpected bit of help from Larsa d'Cannith. (Several years older than in the game, and a fair bit wiser when it comes to his brother too.) He helped us collect some very useful papers and a strange weapon (remember the Gun Mage weapons from Final Fantasy X-2?) to help us discredit Vayne, or, as the rest of the party suggests, justify killing him dead. This is where the problem lies. My character is a Cannith Artificer (oh yes, SO original, but she's fun to play regardless), and although she wants to get Vayne just as badly as the rest of the group - that little stint in the Nalbina Dungeons was exceedingly bad for her, she's still got the scars to prove it - she really doesn't want to kill Vayne. She'd much rather have him tried publicly, being a fairly lawful type as well. In a party of Chaotic characters, this isn't going down well at all. Can anyone suggest a way to help me persuade them to do this the official way for once? She really, really, REALLY doesn't want to take part in what will effectively be murder, especially not against a member of her own house.
Rechan 08-09-07, 10:25 AM	she really doesn't want to kill Vayne. She'd much rather have him tried publicly, being a fairly lawful type as well. In a party of Chaotic characters, this isn't going down well at all. Can anyone suggest a way to help me persuade them to do this the official way for once? She really, really, REALLY doesn't want to take part in what will effectively be murder, especially not against a member of her own house. Ask yourself this: "Why don't I walk up to a legal authority figure in Khorvaire, like the Sentinel Marshals, or members of House Cannith, present the evidence of this guy's wrong doing, and let them take him out?" If your answer is "Because there's not enough proof to convince them to go clean this guy's clock", then kicking in the door and dragging him out kicking and screaming isn't going to get him any closer to being sent to prison. If you present evidence you found in his compound, the guy could claim "They planted that!" If your answer is "There's no authority over this guy beyond the Sentinel Marshals" (since this place is partially in Cyre?) who are you planning on trying this guy in front of? Who has legal authority over the area he's in? What about House Cannith? If your answer is "He's too powerful for the local authorities to take out", then you could simply walk up to the authorities and say, "This dude is bad news, he's plainly doing wrong (here is our evidence), we're taking a shot at him. If we bring him in, you've got our back, right?" I think you will have a stronger argument if you can show them how it will go down if you just bring him in alive. Then that makes the precaution of trying to take him in alive in a fight worth it. If they just want to kill him because they hate him, I don't think you're going to win that argument.
Tolly7249 08-09-07, 11:43 AM	Well, I'm boned. XD Seriously, though, because of a whole bunch of backstory stuff, he only answers to House Cannith's higher-ups, and to his own Judges. We have a Judge who we might be able to talk into helping us (I talked the others into not killing him, so he owes me big time), but just how much help he can be at this point is debatable. You know, what with the whole Judges-being-loyal-to-Vayne thing. At least we now have a witness willing to attest to the authenticity of the signed orders we managed to 'liberate'. As for House Cannith, well... we tried going to Merrix, but we couldn't even talk to one of his toadies, let alone show him what we've got. Same thing happened everywhere else we tried, we think he may have found out what we're planning. We can't even get to Larsa d'Cannith, which is actually very worrying... Our last plan is to go to the other Dragonmarked Houses with what we have in hopes of getting enough political pressure to get him tried. The problem with that plan is that he's very very clever and very very charismatic, as my artificer will attest to (albeit with great shame), and he'll eventually find out what we're doing and then there'll be serious trouble. Far as I can see, we're really in trouble. Frankly, I've been advocating sitting back and waiting for the rebels to do their bit. At least it'll add some weight to our story. But not only are my allies Chaotic, they're highly impatient. Chaotic Stupid, really.
Belkar 08-09-07, 11:51 AM	Okay, your original question was "how do I convince my party that it's better to bring this guy before a court than to kill him?" If I'm not mistaken? Assuming that you can bring him to court and that it's a legitimate option... how can you convince your party? Easy. If they really want to see this guy in pain, convince them that nothing is worse for a noble of his stature than to be debased publicly and labelled as a criminal. Death? Well, it's just too easy. For most House members, excoriation is worse than death. Don't know if you can swing enought pull with Cannith to get the guy excoriated - or if his "conviction" would do the job for you, especially if it's heinous enough to make Cannith want to cut all ties with him. But yeah. Death is easy and relatively painless, when compared to a lifetime of humiliation and debasement, possibly as a - *gasp* - commoner! Few things worse for an arrogant dragonmarked noble, I'd say. :D
Tolly7249 08-09-07, 12:06 PM	DUDE. I am SO using that arguement now. "Well, guys, do we want him to die... or do we want him to SUFFER?" That would work. And my character won't feel guilty about it! Woot! (No wonder you're named after the homicidal halfling...)
Ravenstein 08-09-07, 03:03 PM	Could you try blackmailing Vayne with the information you have? If you could, then he goes along with it and a) might try to assassinate you. If you can fight that off and prove he sent the assassins, then you got even more. Maybe Merrix will listen to you then. b) he just goes along with it and you have him in your pocket. You could manipulate him into doing what you want and eventually he'll crack and do something stupid and either get himself ousted or he'll resort to point a) and then you go from there. Also, if the province you are in is on the edge of Cyre, it also has to be on the edge of some other nation. Perhaps you can seek aid from that nation to overthrow him (perhaps he thinks he's on sovereign Cyre land, but in reality he's squatin' on another nation's land). As much as he doesn't think he answers to someone, we all answer to SOMEONE.
Tolly7249 08-10-07, 10:58 AM	Got home from my session a couple of hours ago, and I would like to state the following: Our GM is an evil (dude, you know what goes here)!!! We had it all planned, we were gonna go to House Sivis first, cause, y'know, they seemed like the right people to 'trust' with the information, ha ha... Vayne, having probably caught on to our plans by now, sent a Judge after us, luckily it was the one who owes Ameri (my charrie) big time, so we thought we were alright. Yeah, um, no we weren't. Vayne had somehow found out about Ameri and Larsa's little affair, and gave us an ultimatum. Either we go back and return what we took, or he kills Larsa, kills our Judge, and generally makes our lives hell. Oh yeah, and he's got some kind of slave collar on Larsa so he can't try to escape and nullify said threat. Ameri, of course, turns back. The Barbarian/Fighter goes with her, cause he's CG and he doesn't want Larsa's and the Judge's deaths on his head... and well, the Rogue and Hexblade pretty much had to come along, because the threat of being beaten to a pulp by a half-orc and refused healing is pretty strong. Oh, and just to drive home how much trouble we're actually in, Merrix had died 'of a sudden illness' (yeah right) during our absence and Vayne had taken his place, and his first act (after sending our Judge anyways) was to form an alliance with Jorlanna d'Cannith and have Zorlan d'Cannith discredited and excoriated. We screwed. We so very, very screwed. This time Ameri's gonna get the Hexblade to curse the sod and then let rip with her collection of fun blasting toys. Vayne doesn't get to live after this one. I am so totally gonna lose my Lawful alignment for this. But hey, he started it.
Hopeless 08-11-07, 03:47 PM	Anyway, here's the thing. My GM (with a bit of help from me cause I am the local authority on Final Fantasy goodness) is running a Final Fantasy XII campaign in Eberron. It's been rockin' like crazy, but my character's suddenly found herself in a spot of bother. Vayne d'Cannith. (Just think about that for a second. Scary, no?) Our major bad guy, very distantly related to Merrix d'Cannith, currently the Consul for a small city called Dernholm. Our GM made the city as a starting point, it's on the very edge of what used to be Cyre so it's not exactly a nice place ANYWAY, but our characters are very fond of it regardless and we do NOT like Vayne's recent leadership. (Vayne introduced the XII version of Judges as a law-keeping group in Dernholm, and we HATE THEM with a passion. Especially since the rest of House Cannith thought it was a brilliant idea and took them on.) (Make them House Deneith to make them seriously nasty...) Anyway, after quite a lot of mucking about, crossing Eberron back and forth like lunatics, and generally getting the snot beaten out of us by Judges whenever we get close to finding something useful, we got an unexpected bit of help from Larsa d'Cannith. (Several years older than in the game, and a fair bit wiser when it comes to his brother too.) He helped us collect some very useful papers and a strange weapon (remember the Gun Mage weapons from Final Fantasy X-2?) to help us discredit Vayne, or, as the rest of the party suggests, justify killing him dead. (Do you mean the bit where you can literally change classes at will or just to add firearms to the arsenal?) This is where the problem lies. My character is a Cannith Artificer (oh yes, SO original, but she's fun to play regardless), and although she wants to get Vayne just as badly as the rest of the group - that little stint in the Nalbina Dungeons was exceedingly bad for her, she's still got the scars to prove it - she really doesn't want to kill Vayne. She'd much rather have him tried publicly, being a fairly lawful type as well. In a party of Chaotic characters, this isn't going down well at all. Can anyone suggest a way to help me persuade them to do this the official way for once? She really, really, REALLY doesn't want to take part in what will effectively be murder, especially not against a member of her own house. Its a lawful society, unless they allow you to give him the chance to surrender it will be just cold blooded murder and hasn't enough laws been violated already? Chaotic is one thing, but not giving you the chance to talk him down is nothing more than an act of evil and given who you're talking about such an act might make him talk long enough to figure out his real scheme after all if those judges are that tough they will need to be dealt with first nd then you can use their armours to sneak in!
Hopeless 08-11-07, 03:52 PM	Got home from my session a couple of hours ago, and I would like to state the following: Our GM is an evil (dude, you know what goes here)!!! We had it all planned, we were gonna go to House Sivis first, cause, y'know, they seemed like the right people to 'trust' with the information, ha ha... Vayne, having probably caught on to our plans by now, sent a Judge after us, luckily it was the one who owes Ameri (my charrie) big time, so we thought we were alright. Yeah, um, no we weren't. Vayne had somehow found out about Ameri and Larsa's little affair, and gave us an ultimatum. Either we go back and return what we took, or he kills Larsa, kills our Judge, and generally makes our lives hell. Oh yeah, and he's got some kind of slave collar on Larsa so he can't try to escape and nullify said threat. Ameri, of course, turns back. The Barbarian/Fighter goes with her, cause he's CG and he doesn't want Larsa's and the Judge's deaths on his head... and well, the Rogue and Hexblade pretty much had to come along, because the threat of being beaten to a pulp by a half-orc and refused healing is pretty strong. Oh, and just to drive home how much trouble we're actually in, Merrix had died 'of a sudden illness' (yeah right) during our absence and Vayne had taken his place, and his first act (after sending our Judge anyways) was to form an alliance with Jorlanna d'Cannith and have Zorlan d'Cannith discredited and excoriated. We screwed. We so very, very screwed. This time Ameri's gonna get the Hexblade to curse the sod and then let rip with her collection of fun blasting toys. Vayne doesn't get to live after this one. I am so totally gonna lose my Lawful alignment for this. But hey, he started it. Forget what I said, I've two suggestions for you. 1) Karrnath might be interested in sorting Vayne out given he's threatening their Cannith support and 2) I think you might want to warn someone in the Dark Citadel after all the next step a megalomaniac like that is a throne and Breland is where Merrix was based (although I'm betting he's still alive, not even Vayne is that skilled that he can pull one on that character he's (Merrix) probably setting up his new lab in Xendrik and it was his double that Vayne killed!)
Tolly7249 08-12-07, 04:56 AM	I have plans. As we're kinda stuck heading back so we don't get some people we actually LIKE killed, I have been plotting and scheming and asking questions of my GM. (At this point I would like to note that a Dedicated Wraith and the portable hole we 'borrowed' from Vayne's stronghold are the best investments I ever made.) The PLAN: 1. Using my Craft: Drawing skill I'm gonna copy the orders and other papers as best I can. GM says that as long as I don't fail, they'll be passable for cursory inspection, and that's all we need. The Hexblade is going to give me his scroll of Arcane Mark so I can make sure that they hold up even better. (On the condition that I make him a new one when I get the chance, of course.) 2. Disable the gun-thing. It runs off a Siberys Dragonshard, so I'm going to take it out and replace it with a 'blank' one I took as part of my loot from a side quest. 3. Prepare an escape route. Turns out our Judge used to pilot airships for House Lyrander before bad things happened with his brother and he left to avoid being associated with said bad things. So, as he was ordered to bring us to Vayne through the most secure route possible, the rogue (bless his twisted little heart) is going to talk him into commandeering one when we get to Dernholm, ostensibly to deliver us to Vayne. 4. Abuse my Magic Item skillz. Using Craft Wondrous Item, I'm designing a magical bracelet that I can use to teleport the group from Vayne's chambers to the waiting airship with our Judge at the helm. Haven't decided on what spell to use yet - might have to settle for making a few smaller items. Whichever. 5. Give Vayne the (disabled) gun, get him to uncollar and release Larsa, give him the (fake) papers and use my item to zap outta there. 6. ****-bolt for the Karrnathi border. I am proud of this plan. It'll be the most I've gotten to use my non-infusion abilities since quite early on. What d'yall think?