The Sundered Way - OOC

[thinkslogically]

All right, here's the information I've been able to dig up on the Eastern cities and Yuan Ti in general (Nem would have shared this info with the group at the time most likely. Or she will imminently!). Most is rumours and one-off mentions and knowledge checks, but I think we can start piecing a few things together from it all:

EDIT: map

Spider says we're somewhere about 2/3 - 3/4 of the way to Estmont now.

General Info:
The city at the direct end of the main caravan route is Esmont, one of the largest, due in some part to the trade route. There are side routes that head to Torfelna and Krovesh, to the north and south of Esmont respectively. Between where you are and the Eastern cities are the Blasted Wastes that give way to desert before eventually arriving at the Eastern Cities.

Info from Krodop (dwarf):
"The city in the east? You mean Esmont? Or all of the Eastern Cities as a whole? We came up from Krelpo, the snake-folk are causing a stir there, Krovesh is dealing with issues of succession again, though it's more common for that to be the case than not. Esmont itself is about the same as always, but we were only there a few days before heading West, in that time I hadn't heard much out of the North."

Desert Info (from the halfling hermit):
"Ah, uh-huh... the Blasted Wastes were not always such, no they weren't. Used to be cities, towns, all long gone, claimed by rock and desert. Wander far enough, like I did, and you'll find something of interest."

Estmont (info from the halfling hermit):
"psshh. City folk don't know how to listen!". He taps the side of his head. "I do! The Lord of Estmont is not what he seems, if you go there, be cautious of his attention! You show me shinies first, I give good information for good shinies."

"Oh, I answer your purple friend's question, yes? Lord of Estmont only looks human! Used to be old Lord of Estmont, who looks the same, but not-Lord takes his place, you see, yes?"

Warning about gates (from the halfling hermit to Randy):
"The Gate of Y'ah Ga'rihunn must be closed. The Old Ones are moving again. If their followers seize the Gate, this world is lost. I think you know this."

Krelpo (knowledge check):
You recall stories of the Church of Ksszeth, the remnants of a religious order that served the true serpent folk who once held sway over the jungle cities to the southeast. Since the withdrawl of the serpent folk from the goings on of outside civilizations, the Church remained, bolstered by a converts fascinated by the promises that worship of the reptilians gods marketed. For the most part, they were regarded as a quack cult that had gained legitimacy through conversion of several high ranking members of the Krelpo nobility. ((OOC: If you picture a serpent worshiping, smaller, localized Church of Scientology crossed with kids that want to worship vampires because they are exotic and dangerous, you wouldn't be too far off in imagining what I'm meaning here.))

None of the names of political families in Krovesh sound familiar to you.

Comment from Krodop:
A glowing pink Zephyr shrieks and begins mashing the glowing pink vine blight into a pulp, glowing pink bits of vine and tendril scattering across a glowing pink hallway.

Krodop peeks in. "Reminds me of a nightclub I visited in Krelpo... at least, I think it does... that night gets kind of hazy...."

Info on Krovesh (Rudy knew this):
You're somewhat familiar with the storied politics of the Krovesh nobles, though you have no personal connection to anyone currently vying for power, their city is rather well known as exemplifying the worst of political backstabbing.

Torfelna (shouted at Coljin by the Abbey librarian):
"CULTS AND EVIL GODS? HMMM... THERE WAS A SCHOLAR OUT OF ONE OF THE EASTERN CITIES... ESMONT, I THINK? OR WAS IT RAYFALL? NO, IT WAS TORFELNA... THE TORFELNA ACADEMY. I'VE BEEN TO TORFELNA, YOU KNOW. HAVE I EVER TOLD YOU ABOUT THAT? IT WAS BACK WHEN I WAS ONLY ABOUT TWICE YOUR AGE, MAYBE TWENTY, TWENTY-TWO... I WAS ON A VISITING SCHOLAR EXCHANGE. I WASN'T A MEMBER OF THE ABBEY HERE YET, I ALWAYS WAS MUCH MORE INTERESTED IN BOOKS THAN MY BROTHERS, MUCH TO MY FATHER'S IRRITATION. HE SENT ME AWAY TO STUDY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF PORTHOLD. HAVE YOU EVER BEEN TO PORTHOLD? I'VE NOT BEEN BACK SINCE BEFORE YOU WERE BORN...", he takes a sip of his tea, eyes and mind looking back to his youth.

Random info on Yuan-ti:
Ulmwin and Tess recall that Vrael Olo is what those known as the yuan-ti refer to themselves as, Ulmwin recalling that it means "favored ones". From the context, Sibilant Death must be higher than Zihuassal in their social hierarchy, either some greater lord, or possible a deity.

[spiderwrangler]

Wow, thanks, Thinks! I'm becoming aware of how lax I've been in keeping the world info up to date in the OOC thread.

[Rodgeir]

You can also put my new your old map with an extra dot in

[thinkslogically]

Wow, thanks, Thinks! I'm becoming aware of how lax I've been in keeping the world info up to date in the OOC thread.

No problem at all! All my random bits of WA lore, quest info and random hooks are rapidly getting out of hand too so I feel your pain

The search bar is very handy

[spiderwrangler]

Until we use a word too often and the forum says "Nope, not gonna find that for you."

[thinkslogically]

Yes. Or you need to search for a three-letter word... Then it sucks. Actually, I think that's why I ended up building the update index for WA

[BadgeAddict]

I actually have something that could help with information lookup...but it will take a while to whittle it down to only the information and not all the random jibber jabber. I've been meaning to post it in a word doc for everyone but haven't yet. If you're interested let me know and I'll upload it.

[thinkslogically]

What is it?

[BadgeAddict]

It's hard to explain....

But essentially its a Ctrl+P, Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V of every single page of the game up to page 550 or so.

In its current form, with only a few minor edits, its about 1700 pages and nearly 1 million words.

And...I just did Some Find - replace with nothing and I've got it down to 1200 pages.

[spiderwrangler]

Heh, my back and forth with Rodgeir for Dornikal is in a Google doc. It's a mere 303 pages and 94,000+ words.

You MIGHT want to have a chat with him about the eastern cities.

[thinkslogically]

Makes sense, seeing as they've all come from there

[BadgeAddict]

If I'm able to whittle it down to under 1000 pages, I'll see if I can get it into a doc.

[thinkslogically]

Most of the important info probably comes from spider directly, so you could always just cut it to his posts as a first pass.

[BadgeAddict]

That's not as easy as you would think it should be. Currently I'm focusing on eliminating useless word repeats like peoples names and Report to post and such.

[spiderwrangler]

Edit 2: we also have goodberries from Maji so we don't need to worry about food/water at all.

They will handle food, but not water.

[Arch Lich Burns]

Maji can also cast create water...if he wanted to.

[thinkslogically]

Edit 2: we also have goodberries from Maji so we don't need to worry about food/water at all.

They will handle food, but not water.

Sure - I meant that between Create/Destroy water and Goodberries, we're good to go

[spiderwrangler]

Ah, yup. Coljin can also make/purify water.

[BadgeAddict]

Then Coljin could purfiy the wells as well.

[thinkslogically]

Probably, yeah. I guess it depends how they've been poisoned - if the orcs have been dumping corpses down there, we might need to pull those out before we can effectively purify the water.

But yes, we could restore the wells as we travel east, and fix some of the damage they've been causing.

[spiderwrangler]

That would be a great boon to the other folks traveling the roads.

[NotStickFigures]

It’s a whole well. So unsure how well a low level spell will accomplish that. But he will most certainty try

[thinkslogically]

We can always make little boil water alert signs for the wells as we go

"Caution! Dodgy water! We tried to cleanse it, but in case our cleric isn't in good enough standing with his deity to have completely resolved the issue, we recommend boiling the water before drinking. Should be fine for brushing your teeth with though. Thx, Ulmwin and Co."

[spiderwrangler]

A 5ft radius sphere has a volume of 523.6 cubic feet, which is 3,916.8 gallons (14,827 L).

You need to drink 2 gallons per day in hot weather by 5e rules, so you could purify enough water in one casting to last 1,958 people for a day. For your current group of 12, you'd need 24 per day, plus another 60 or more for the 6 mules, even if we round that up to 100 gallons a day, a single casting would purify enough water to last you for nearly 20 days. Of course, that is assuming you are able to target just water with your casting.

And you can cast it as a ritual.

[M0rtimer]

The important question is, though, assuming we cleanse all the wells... Who do we go to to ask for compensation once we're done?