The Feast of St. Camilla is an S Tier Party
Cornelis Pietersz Bega (Dutch c. 1631-1664), Tavern InteriorThe Feast of St. Camilla is pretty fun, normally. You tidy up your local graves, repair cemetery fences, say some prayers, and then eat a big dinner and dance in the square. But the Feast of St. Camilla on the centennial is next level. Pro musicians from the city for the dance, chefs from neighboring towns competing to get their dishes on the feasting table, and special blessings, ceremonies and sacraments that only get brought out every 100 years. The quiet town of Oddwall is bursting with visitors. Autumn has painted the trees with splashes of rich colors. The river is low from the dry late summer, and little breezes make it sparkle in the golden sun. The taverns and inns are packed, and everyone with a room to let has filled it, leaving many celebrants to camp in the surrounding woods and fields. Some of these pilgrims have come to celebrate the goddess, or to visit graves of loved ones buried here, but some are just here for the seasonal food, or the laughs. Wall Keep tours are full, with people straining to listen to the docents. Tourists flood the shops and let their children hang off dangerously the bridge. The Flooded Tides Tavern is jumping when a half-orc, a halfling, and a tiefling walk into the bar.
Mogiz, there are people. So many people. In all the woods you've traveled, in all the towns you've skirted, you've never been this elbowed, stepped on, gawked at, asked to pick an apple too high in the tree, farted on, and pushed past. As soon as you enter the tavern, a pretty hobgoblin serving girl hooks your elbow and leads you toward the bar. "You look like you could take a turn off this rollercoaster, friend." she grins. "I'm Mary Tarry." She presses a map of the town of Oddwall into your hands, and addresses you and your two companions. "Anything you need, you just ask. Our lunch special today is hand pies, we have chicken curry and rosemary lamb. If you want that, I can bring you about fifty. Anything else on the menu... good luck. Can I get you three any drinks?"
Donna, there are people. So many people. So many pockets, bags, satchels, and their eyes are so distracted by all these interesting festival sights, so sleepy from all these festival foods. Everyone has spent the morning "tidying the graves" as is tradition, but there are so many people here, and there is no cemetery in Oddwall! Instead, they have the Chapel of Certainly Friday, and a mausoleum with a basement lined in crypts and creches. To keep tradition, special festival cemeteries have been set up around town where people can plant flowers, rake and tidy, around the paper lantern gravestones that will later be lit and sent into the sky to memorialize the dead. All this prayer: a distraction. Weeping: a distraction. Lunch pies: a distraction? Here in the tavern, the tables are set up to encourage community dining -- wide planks with benches. Most seats are taken but people come and go often, finishing up their beer and taking their hand pies back out into the lively town.
Belatsunat, when you enter a room, you attract every eye. Golden fur, horns, and just... that extra something that makes your fans forget where they are and focus on you. Maybe it's magic. Or maybe it's just -- you. You know how to pull attention, play with attention, and use that attention to your benefit. Normally, quiet little river towns like this one would present no competition for your presence. But even in this crowded place, with city folk surging around the bumpkins, in the Flooded Tides Tavern, heads turn to look at you. In the corner of the room there is an elevated stage where a fiddler has just stopped in the middle of a jig to stare at you. He quickly resumes his song -- a simple enough tune which he now stumbles over. The girl sitting next to him rolls her eyes. The innkeeper, a dwarf who's standing behind the bar, growls out, "Take heart, now Suffino. You've got this."
As you're all getting settled in the tavern, you hear some commotion outside, and then the door flies open to admit a young woman in grey hooded robe. She is a priestess of Sombris, and you know this immediately, because she's surrounded by a sort of ephemeral grey mist. Charcoal grey, and dark, it slides around her body like eddies in a river. Sombris is a goddess of shadow and light, and her priestesses always serve in pairs, to reflect both aspects of her divinity. The tavern goes quiet, and she speaks:
"Please, everyone. Please. I'm sorry, Grandal," she nods to the dwarf innkeeper, clearing her throat. "The festival is canceled. I must ask that you all leave immediately." People look around in confusion. "Leave town," she clarifies. "By the--"
"Now, now," Grandal interrupts. "Let's not be hasty. Everyone just keep your seats." Good plan, because a mass evacuation of a crowd this big in a town this small would surely lead to everyone falling in the river. Good thing, everyone seems ready to listen to Grandal, and keep drinking, while they give the priestess a respectful dismissal. "Surely we can work out whatever the problem is, and keep the peace." Her gaze lingers on the three of you, and you see that her mind is full of fear, but she rushes behind the counter to talk to Grandal, and the noise of the tavern resumes, a little quieter than before the dark priestess's presence.
OOC
Welcome to your game! Let's talk about this post and then your first post. Joss and I like to use "you" and speak to you in second person. We sometimes but not always will have separate paragraphs that are directed at you, specifically your PC. We sometimes but not always will address you all. You should always read the whole post, because the paragraphs marked with other PCs' names will almost always have information that's relevant for everyone. If something needs to be secret or private to that one PC, we will note it.
In your first post, you'll make an action block and a stat block to go in the OOC section for your post. The action block tells us in clear, OOC terms what you're doing -- what spell, by name, what rolls, what checks, how many feet you moved, etc. Feel free to dress it up in roleplay and implication in the post itself, but in the action block, give it to us in the clearest of terms. The stat block is like a mini character sheet that you and we and your fellow players can use as a quick reference, for tracking spell slots and abilities used, hit points, etc. You can find instructions on how to make a stat block and an action block in the house rules.
One of the challenges of play-by-post is that sometimes multiple things happen in a GM post, and players may feel that they can only react to the last thing. If we paused to allow everyone to react to every element of every scene, and every line of dialogue, as they would in live table play, the game pace would suffer. So for example in this post you have an opportunity to react to the tavern itself, each of you have a possible hook to follow there, and also you have the priestess's arrival. It's possible to do all that, and even talk about the town itself, or even the road here, in a single post, as long as you clarify your timeline. So, you can start with "On the road to Oddwall" and talk about what you were doing, and then "When he gets to the tavern" and then "After the priestess arrives." This way you can respond to a sequence of events. Typically we won't stop the action unless there's something you need to respond to, but you can definitely respond to earlier things as well. You can even separate your post into sections using hashtags to make larger or smaller headers.
