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Public Notices / Re: Issues of the Conch Champion (For public reading)

« Last post by Fiverine on July 07, 2022, 03:44:04 am »

The Conch Champion.  Independent & Accurate, Always.

I Still Hate This Job
I must say I am dismayed that seemingly not a single soul in Conch is willing to relieve me of this burden of editing my own newspaper.  But fine.  I will do it my bloody self if I must.  At least I can say that the recent months have been calm in our fair city.  The threat of war seems to have receded and our greatest danger right now is that of dreadful self-appointed comedians abusing the professionalism of our city proclaimers.  That said, I pride my reporters on being skilled at dredging up dismaying news no matter how good things appear (surely nobody reads a newspaper for GOOD news?).  So please read on and enjoy their efforts!

-R. Hurstport, owner and acting editor.

Mysteries of the Gods
The Conch Champion has been informed that all three Tychean temples in Conch have recently added sealed vaults to their crypts.  While we are a mere newspaper and have no right or interest to meddle in the affairs of the gods, loyal and longstanding parishioners of the temples have complained to the Champion about being forbidden to enter these new rooms.  Nor have parishioners been provided with any explanation of the sudden need for secrecy and security.  This reporter has contacted all three temples to query the matter.  All three gave the same reply that it is an internal church matter and of no concern to this newspaper or the general public. 

-S. Hellsworth, reporter.


Massacre at Hilltop
Yet another tragedy has befallen the halfling village of Hilltop.  A halfling warrior by the name of Lotho Thistlevale went berserk upon returning from a long journey to the west and slew several humans who were in Hilltop on business.  Then he turned his wrath upon those fellow halflings who sought to restrain or pacify him.  Differing accounts say that he was then either slain by the Hilltop militia or narrowly escaped them.  Conch's West Netheril Trading Company had some members in Hilltop at the time and they were amongst those slain.  WNTC has informed the Champion that they have sent a letter to Hilltop demanding the resurrection of their staff and compensation for their trauma. 

-A. Nutt, reporter.


Secrets of the Wizard Tower
The normally reclusive wizard Ptolemy of West Conch has asked for brave adventurers to go to his tower and face the challenge of his "Room of Doors".  Ptolemy told the Conch Champion that adventurers will find both danger and rewards in this room beneath his tower.  This newspaper can only speculate about what awaits any intrepid adventurers who answer his call.  We invite any who survive their visit to write a letter to the editor to explain their experience. 

-P. Krellin, reporter.

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Public Notices / Re: Rumours, Gossip and Whispers.. ((DM Posts Only))

« Last post by Rainman on April 03, 2022, 12:45:41 am »

Those walking the streets of the Upper District of Conch, notice large creates and statues being moved into the Nebular University of the Arcane Arts. Some say these odd looking statues are being added to the university as decorative features but others say they have been bought in to study.

Stories are being told that the Hamlet of Hilltop is currently plagued and travellers/merchants a like have limited their travels to the area. Some say it was from the recent war and battles in and around the hamlet. Others say it is a disease that only effects halflings and due to this hin are questioned and sometimes turned away by guards of villages, towns and cities in the region.

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Public Notices / Re: Rumours, Gossip and Whispers.. ((DM Posts Only))

« Last post by Rainman on March 18, 2022, 11:26:38 am »

In an effort to attract halflings to defend and repair Hilltop, the Mayor has opened up a number of properties to rent. These funds will be put into the new walls at the eastern entrance and repairs to the hamlet.

Rumours persist that there is an evil within the hamlet, some point to the increased mining for the new walls and others think it is under the lake ... either way those left in the hamlet continue to live a hard life after resent events and the continued threat of war in the region.

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Public Notices / Re: Issues of the Conch Champion (For public reading)

« Last post by Fiverine on March 07, 2022, 07:36:39 am »

The Conch Champion.  Independent & Accurate, Always.

I Hate This Job
I'm not in the mood for an editorial today because, well, read the headline.  So I shall let the reporters "do their thing", as they say. 

- R. Hurstport, owner and acting editor.


Heights of Discrimination
In recent weeks the District Authority Nebular has received repeated complaints from members of the more diminutive races in Upper Conch.  A gang of unknown masked humans has been accosting lone halflings, gnomes and dwarfs in Uptown and threatening them or even beating them up.  On a few occasions offensive notes have been left pinned to the unconscious victims.  "NO MIDGETS IN UPTOWN!" was one of the printable ones.  Similar graffiti has been spotted on buildings in Upper Conch of late.  Lone halflings have been the most frequent victims of this outrageous racism.  With no arrests made by Nebular guards yet it is rumoured that the halfling community in Conch may be considering taking action of their own. 

-S. Hellsworth, reporter. 


Ogres Attack Sadardiel Estate
The Conch Champion has been informed that the Sadardiel Estate at Lake Vyctoria fended off yet another ogre raid on the weekend.  The raids have been increasing in frequency and severity.  Lady Apolline Sadardiel has both declared her family's determination to remain on their titled lands and her desire for skilled mercenaries to either join the plantation's garrison or work for House Sadardiel on a freelance basis. 

-A. Nutt, reporter.


Another Bizarre Ruling
Conch's most eccentric judge, Justice Oswald Schenker, has sentenced yet another criminal of Conch to a bizarre punishment.  Creek farmer Mr Percy Leibold was found guilty of being exceptionally cruel to the cats he kept in his barn.  Justice Schenker sentenced Mr Leibold to being transmuted into a cat for a week and living in said barn.  Mistress Abighail of Nebular agreed to perform the procedure at Justice Schenker's request.  The Creek Farms' head farmer Joy Lambton said that Mr Leibold's cat body is already "looking scratched up to hell" from the barn cats exacting their vengeance.

-P. Krellin, reporter.

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Journals & Backgrounds / Re: Theren Sontr'e's Past and to be Future

« Last post by DemonicSpeed on March 02, 2022, 07:58:55 pm »

After many, many years of running his monastery, Theren looks back to adventure as he discovers new lands in which he has not traveled and challenges the might of evil once again. Though he is no longer as strong as he was in young age, he has a bit of spring in his step to move forward in these new times

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Background Progression / Eliezra Baldwin

« Last post by ElvenStarr on February 18, 2022, 04:14:24 am »

Eliezra Baldwin

Eliezra Baldwin was born in the lakeside town of Lyrkos and was the third of five children.  Her family had for several generations run a notable textile business.  As soon as she was old enough, Eliezra learned the family trade and proved a talented tailor, if a little prone to daydreaming on the job.  It was expected that she would stay there until she married and had children.  She knew her parents were planning to arrange a marriage with a scion of a rival company.  Though Eliezra wasn’t entirely unhappy with her lot in life she was impulsive and a dreamer.  She decided she wanted to experience just a little more of life before she was stuck working with rugs and curtains and raising children.  In her late teens she stole some money from the family safe and ran away from home.  But her glorious dreams of adventures and wealth came to nothing.  A few years later she was scraping by working as a barmaid in tavern in Fenwick.  A shameful return to her family seemed inevitable until another opportunity arose. 

A tiefling lady by the name of Tylna came to the tavern with her entourage one night and with flattery, drinks and charm she convinced Eliezra to accompany them on a voyage to Conch.  Tylna said she was starting a "classy escort business" there and that Eliezra was pretty and charming enough to make a lot of money.  The fare for the voyage could be paid back through work, Tylna assured the young woman.  While there were no direct lies about the nature of the work Eliezra would be doing, Tylna deliberately omitted certain details such as that the business would be in the slums, the main clients would be gangsters and Eliezra would be an indentured servant rather than a free woman until her travel loan was paid off.  Eliezra’s new workplace was to be the Loving Lamb of Conch’s slums. 

Tylna craftily applied interest to Eliezra’s loan to stretch out her bondage for longer.  Most of the clients Eliezra serviced were brutes from the gangs rather than the drunk young nobles she’d optimistically expected.  There was one regular client of hers who was kind, a battle-scarred enforcer from the Knots gang named Trewin.  He had been an adventurer and noticed that Eliezra had some untapped potential for swordplay and roguery.  For several months he took her around the slums and taught her some of what he knew.  Eliezra proved adept at handling weapons, forcing locks and disarming traps.  Trewin had a plan behind this training but he was never able to complete it.  Unfortunately, he was one of a few Knots captured in a street fight with the newly ascendant Diiri’s Boys gang and tortured to death. 

After that brief glimpse of self-sufficiency had been torn away, Eliezra resigned herself to slowly paying off her debt until she could flee back to Lyrkos.  Then she could grovel to her parents, take her punishment and go back to working for the family business and taking an arranged marriage.  It seemed almost something to look forward to now.  But fate intervened.  A cleric of Moander came to the Lamb one night.  He was ugly, vulgar and coarse and frightening in nature but also seemed wealthy and generous with his money.  The ladies drew straws for who would accompany him that night.  One of the newer girls got the short straw and sobbed in distress. 

Fatefully, Eliezra offered to take that woman’s place to spare her this client and agreed to split the money with her.  Eliezra spent a few hours entertaining the cleric, but then came down with a fever afterwards. By the next day she was seriously ill with dreadful ulcers breaking out over her body, particularly her face which almost seemed to be rotting away.  Tylna had Eliezra wrapped in sheets and taken to the temple of Tyche to see Kardeen.  He was horrified by her condition which he diagnosed as a virulent magical plague.  But Tylna was even more horrified by the price he put on a cure and was terrified that the plague might spread to her other staff.  Cruelly, she fired Eliezra and hired one of Diiri's thugs to take her away and finish her off.   The Boy was a vulgar half-orc and eager to prove his worth to this gang.  However when he unwrapped the sheets to deliver the coup de grace, he was so repulsed by the woman’s state he simply dropped her and ran. 

Eliezra lay in a dark corner of the slums drifting in and out of consciousness as the disease ravaged her body. Her eyesight began to fade.  The few people who walked past gasped in horror and fled.  In this horrific state, Eliezra made her peace with her fate.  If nothing else she knew she had spared another person this horrid death, and that was a harsh burden she decided she could accept.  Her only resentments were aimed at the city itself, and its complete absence of mercy.   It was so lacking in mercy that even the man hired to put her out of her misery bungled the job. 

The sound of approaching footsteps interrupted her thoughts.  These footsteps did not flee in revulsion.  She looked up with her cloudy vision and saw a blurry, but unmistakable and pitiful sight. There was a man dressed only in a loincloth and his exposed skin was covered in a multitude of welts from what must have been a hellish whipping. His fingers were bent back and broken and he limped upon burned and blistered feet. His face, though plastered with blood, was that of the dead Trewin.  "Follow me, child" he said softly. "You, who would spare another a horrific fate and take on that heavy burden yourself, shall not die here."  The crippled man beckoned to her and she dredged up just enough strength to crawl to his familiar face as he led her.  Occasionally he stopped and smiled warmly with his gashed lips while Eliezra caught her breath.

Inevitably there came the moment where Eliezra could not even crawl anymore.  She looked up to plead for the man to have mercy and carry her.  Instead she moaned in anguish when she realised he was gone.  Yet her weak cry had gained the attention of others.  Several people rushed to her aid.  There was a gnome, a few human men and a woman.  They were dressed in the tattered clothing of beggars though their hands were wrapped in clean linen tied with red cord.  They lifted Eliezra up and carried her to a hidden shelter within a breach in the city wall.   Sister Mylene, Sufferer of Ilmater and caretaker of his hidden shrine then attempted to cure her. 

The disease was resistant to even her magical treatments but with painstaking and exhausting care the elderly priestess was able to cure Eliezra.  Some of the damage Eliezra had suffered was irreparable.  Her face would never be the same, and her hair had prematurely turned almost white.  It only took a single look in a mirror for Eliezra to resign herself to a single life wearing a veil for the rest of her days.  What lies beneath it only Sister Mylene and a few others would know, but it is horrible enough in Eliezra’s mind for her to keep it permanently concealed.   Her only concession to  fashion would become her immaculately styled dark eyebrows

When Eliezra was strong enough to leave the shrine she refused to.  She knew her family would be ashamed of the work she had done, and her face meant no one would ever be willing to look upon her again, let alone marry her.   Furthermore she felt a strong desire to do something, however small, about the appalling things going on in the slums.  It seemed logical to her too that now she would be more accepted in a district of shunned monsters than anywhere else.  She told Mylene of her life to that point, of the man who had brought her to this refuge and her thoughts for the future.

Mylene smiled at this news and told Eliezra that she had been chosen by an avatar of Ilmater to become a supplicant, one of the “Angels of Small Mercies” that secretly worked in the slums.  Brother Trewin had been part of this network until he had been martyred.  Clearly Ilmater had been watching Eliezra for some time.  For her part, Eliezra swore to protect both Sister Mylene and the shrine with her life and bring Ilmater’s light to the darkness of West Conch.  It would prove a lonely path for Eliezra which would bring her many enemies and few friends outside her fellow Angels of Small Mercies.  Her own experiences have not hardened her but rather made her kinder and perhaps even a little naive.  But like her patron, she will relentlessly bear that burden too.  Now she walks the slums of Conch as a defender of the weak, hungry and desperate.  She is Eliezra the Faceless, the Veiled Guardian, the Protector of the Lone Parish... and after she retrieved the Iron Helm of Heroes, a divine champion of Ilmater.

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Public Notices / The Drums of War

« Last post by Master_Sarevok2021 on January 21, 2022, 06:08:16 pm »

Across the lands, pillars of smoke rise from the ground and from an heavenly view one can see the masses of strange mutant creatures marching in military order. Two seem headed toward Hilltop, skirting past Hadrian for now. Another seems to be marching out of the Myconid forest to some unknown location in the lands around Conch. Whatever was causing the build up of mercenaries in the lands has finally come.

War is here.

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Public Notices / Re: Rumours, Gossip and Whispers.. ((DM Posts Only))

« Last post by Rainman on January 18, 2022, 11:41:52 am »

Complaints from the citizens of the Upper District continue to be heard about small tremors that shake their houses, causing minor damage from time to time. These concerns of the citizens seem to fall on deaf ears or dismissed with the local authorities.

Some say it is some type of construct in the sewer area and other say it is coming from the temple, but rumours continue to be heard about what is causing these tremors in the Upper District.

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Journals & Backgrounds / Re: Eliezra Baldwin's File

« Last post by Fiverine on January 17, 2022, 09:24:18 am »

Perhaps Mylene was correct about a storm falling upon the Loviatarian cult and Diiri's Boys, for neither have troubled us for a fortnight now.  I have some new comrades to help protect the shrine and do our good works in Conch.  This has given me just a little more time to rove outside the city gathering information and resources.

During one of these journeys I visited the Hamring enclave.  This will sound idiotic, but whilst exploring it I met a talking donkey named Karetta.  She needed some help retrieving a large bone from a jungle beyond a portal.  I made a few attempts to fetch it for her but found the jungle swarming with packs of lumbering, overgrown lizards.  Each pack seemed more ferocious and dangerous than the last and despite using my best potions and fighting hard I could not push past all of them.  Worst of all, I had to flee some of the largest lizards.  After my final attempt I was standing in the sitting room where the portal sat, feeling quite frustrated and miserable.  I was about to tell Karetta I couldn't complete the job when a woman entered the room.  She was clearly a mage, carrying a staff shining with power.

To my delight, it turned out to be the famed Gabriella "Gabby" Le'Moure.  I had heard of her deeds and research around Conch and knew Pearl and Lauriella considered her a good friend.  I also knew she was an outstanding enchanter of equipment for much of mine had been purchased from her store.  But this was the first time we'd ever crossed paths in person.  Since I had heard of her so long but never seen her I'd imagined her to be an aloof mage who spent her time when not adventuring locked in a tower working on artifice or research.  In fact, she was infectiously ebullient and eager to help me with my dilemma. 

I'd seen my allies Lauriella and Locke wield powerful magics and felt I had some idea of what is possible.  But my estimations were woeful... I have never seen such power as what Gabby could wield.  Normally when working with a mage I would be focussed on protecting them but that was not necessary this time.  Her summoned minions and transmuting spells made short work of even the fiercest of the reptiles, including some ancient horror that commanded them.  I did my part too.  The prime creature resembled a dragon skeleton and was terrifying, yet with words and gestures Gabby turned the monster to stone!  Conch is fortunate that she is a good soul.  With her aid the task was simple, and I was able to bring Karetta the bone she was seeking.  Gabby and I spoke for some time afterwards and I hope we can work together again soon. 

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Announcements / Player Banned

« Last post by Gmork on January 16, 2022, 04:57:19 am »

A player has been banned from our community for making real life threats against another uplayer. Obviously this is unacceptable and we hope we never  see this sort of thing again.  This sort of thing will always result in a ban, there are no warnings and no second chance.