The Harbinger of Ferocity

D&D 5e -- The Lost Children

I would argue the evidence suggests against that, the group being utterly uncoordinated and completely incoherent versus what seems to be a pretty obvious band of organized opponents. Granted him just slinking away? That makes complete sense - no need to get involved in matters that don't include you after all. Hard to do that however when a highwayman manages to stumble into the only jaguar in the wood!

D&D 5e -- The Lost Children

Going forward then, given her turn is upcoming and spent on that, she rolls a 19 on her Dexterity check to tie the bandit, with her advantage roll coming after being much lower at a 7. I will post this again when it comes to be her turn, but this should allow Jamil of Azalorn to act on his own turn now, @Guardian Angel Haruki.

D&D 5e -- The Lost Children

Since we are tying the bandit to prevent him from being another enemy, is Shaedra rolling a Dexterity check to tie him, with advantage from Safira's Help action, or is it going to be considered an effective success between us both, @Guardian Angel Haruki?

D&D 5e -- The Lost Children

Thank you, @ihinka, it will not be forgotten in events to come. Shaedra might not be the most intelligent of elves, but she certainly isn't forgetful apparently. One less enemy to fight is one more chance to live after all.

D&D 5e - The Lost Lands

The Vale

The Crypt,
Currently

With a thunderous ring, like a tremendous golden bell struck, a great light poured from the restored alter and dimmed calmly to an hour of dawn. Its warm radiance, welcome from the dead of night just moments before, shattered the army of darkness; all their forms instantly vanished before it, destroyed perhaps, or more likely banished. As the soothing glow raced over the fallen, no more their fate hanging in the balance, it met the light just within the doorway, the mirror image to it. All things restored in balance and harmony, the penetrating sound, one that did not reverberate as it much should have in the confines, suddenly raised with it all the ghosts of the defeated.

Soon ethereal spirits, like those they fought before, took shape and stood in tremendous number crowding the Hall's sacred crypt. Countless men and women of heroic stature like Valmjr, glimmering with echoes of life after death observed them in utter silence, evidently restored too after their own defeat at the hands of the ones who sought to extinguish the light. Without protest, they looked from the woman atop the steps, the flame illuminating her figure, then on to the three men prone upon the floor who were rousing to their feet, then to the woman and gnome and beyond. They nodded once and dispersed, content with what they witnessed and seeing no need for another battle, winking out as they turned to leave one by one.

Katia, in the aftermath of her vision, found the Flame of Dawn to no longer sting, its drifting heat waking silently before her as a reminder of the impossible thing she bore witness to, pleased to be returned to its seat. It was not the fire that spoke to her, but something behind it and not in the literal sense at that, just something it was tethered to across an unfathomable distance. The sister Fire of Dusk, its companion, glimmered and shown in almost mirrored image from the room beyond as they seemed to dance in time together, two halves of the same whole.

As for the figure who the lone templar squared off against, the imposing leonine knight, he stood himself upright and lowered his weapon.

"It is done. Your companions have restored the order to a world where there is no good and no evil, only conflict." His voice restrained, calm and relieved, he shifted his eyes from Theodore on to Wick who was slowly lifting herself off the timeless stone.

It was true now that the cloaked figure mentioned it, the air filled with only one indecipherable energy, one of passion and aimless ambition, the same force that seemed to compel and ask conflict and mindless revelry at the same time. There was no overwhelming sense of good or evil in spite of what their hearts might well have demanded them to think, but it did well to explain the hostility and chaos of everything. This realm, this Ysgard, lived for the thrill of battle, thick as a fog almost.

Sheathing the sword across his back, the Green Man turned to move, to apparently depart without any other word.

Effects

Katia has delivered the golden fire to the altar, which has lit the room. The Shadows are instantly banished, defeated by the light, with their magical darkness vanquished as well. This effect, like that applied to Katia when she fell to 0 or less hit points, is dawn. All characters have now benefit from a long rest, meaning their spells for the day are restored, their hit points and hit dice recovered, and all other benefits associated are acquired.

The combat has ended, leaving the party successful. All of them are immediately advanced to 5th character level, with the bare minimum amount of experience needed. In addition, they have all gained a new unique spell that is usable once per long rest. Any class using old Unearthed Arcana material that received an update in Xanathar's Guide to Everything must now make those changes.

Score
Celestial Temple

Map
???

@Cu Chulainn, @Gordian Nought, @Hekazu, @JBRam2002

D&D 5e -- The Lost Children

It seems you are the only one who can assist in lending Help in tying the man captive, @ihinka. As for the Wildwalker's initiative, she has a 17 there, @Guardian Angel Haruki.

Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

I love how most of the people that are congratulating Alabama for voting Jones are just pretending to care. And they will probably say how Alabama is still racist and inbred.

@The Spectre

I am not sure if you were following Twitter and the trending hastags, but exactly this played out in verbatim. There was a point when Judge Roy Moore was leading that almost all of the tweets were bashing Alabamians for being "racist inbreds", then going back to congratulating them on not choosing him later on. They are just as insincere as you think they are. They care nothing for anyone but themselves.

Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

@catchamber

You seem to be operating under the misguided understanding that people are somehow not servants and subjects to God in Christianity. This is more or less stated throughout with the caveat that God, specifically through the story of Jesus, wants people to be his friend as well. The liberation you are speaking to is the liberation from sin and death, having nothing to do with personal liberation beyond that aside from any they themselves find or work toward that is in accordance to the plan. So your argument of "not being worthy of respect" is nothing greater than an argument of, "Well I don't like that.", to which I will note, "I do not care." Not only because it is a non-argument, but because it is immature and childish of a perspective. People are not as awing or worthy of a place as they think themselves; overvalued and overrated.

Continuing, the concept of free will against omnipotence and omniscience is not an actual issue. A simple example will suffice here, in that no matter what it is you choose, the greater plan has already accounted for all of your choices and will react accordingly. You might think you have won yourself a battle against God in Christianity, but all you have done is provoke a reaction. To further simplify this, it is plainly evident God operates by a laissez-faire philosophy, or that which is explicitly a "hands off"; he isn't playing chess like an amateur and moving pieces all over the board just to demonstrate he can.

Oh, you chose a passage did you? Interesting one you chose, given you have clearly misunderstood what it is talking about or the scenario it is presented in. Let us try not to play the game without context next time, it only degrades your attempt.

Revelations 20 NIV

Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. 2 I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

5 He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”

6 He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life. 7 Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children. 8 But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”

Strange that you chose Revelations of all examples to try that, as this sort of comes at the tail end of the entire judgment component (of which came in Revelation 20). No less, here is the part that people all love to forget, "... for the older things has passed away." and is literally titled "A New Heaven and a New Earth", followed later by “I am making everything new!”. So yes, that is accurate, it just requires the judgment of God on the soul and the death of all things to be remade anew. No small order there.

Again you parrot your demand to be respected as a human being when realistically, if we are going to play by standards of Christianity which we are debating the merit of, let us not forgot the Old Testament God who could and did literally smite people. I would have to say that by contrast the fact at all he can forgive the unforgivable, let us step aside from all the Jesus examples because those are easy to go to and people subsequently ignore them because they roll their eyes at the name, and not choose to utterly destroy men as he did in the past just for speaking ill of him or even looking upon him or his relics is a pretty large step forward in respect.

Do you know what is unworthy of respect? People who think that a force that power or grand needs to respect them. It goes to the old example of, to an ant man might well be God. He has the power to sustain them, to nurture them, to care for them, they dwell in his home and his land, but at the same time he could totally and unmercifully with little thought annihilate them. Yet the man who pays his ants no mind but avoids stepping on them, who is he? Clearly avoiding killing them is a measure respect. We could go round and round with this, but I have no intention to, I just merely enjoy a laugh at the notion people somehow deserve respect just because they are people in the context of gods and forces all powerful. To further clarify, for myself and myself alone, I view people as any other animal or any other thing, just that they have copious amounts of hubris and more intellect than wisdom.

In short, your opinion of what "deserves" and is or is not "respect" holds no water in the context of this faith or debate. Obviously to an outsider, as you well seem to be, that notion is strange but in context? That man bends knee to God is no need for thought. Neither is the fact that all problems will be solved in time, which we saw part of in Revelations, it just is not on your time. Again, I repeat that people are so obsessed with themselves that they erroneously believe it is about them. No, people are one component of the entire story, and the greater the crowd, the more negligible he individual.

@Xandrya

That is the issue with religion in place of faith if I can be honest. People have turned a very personal, introspective, insightful thing into an external process and an institution, a machine. This is to be expected of humans and you are honestly not the first, surely not the last, who I will hear this from. It is not a game of prayers and recitations, of attending church and trying to live the stereotypical "wholesome Christian lifestyle", but rather a thing explored by feeling and experience. In an institution you are exceedingly unlikely to experience this and instead more likely to feel mundanity. For that I am sorry, people have a terrible habit of poorly reflecting the message they intend.

No less that you did it not for yourself but for someone else is, without question, a major issue as to why you probably felt nothing and are in part probably somewhat resentful. Any faith, any religion, is not so much a group exercise as it is a process meant for each person. Your attendance, essentially under duress, is going to evoke more negative than positive. Speaking from a personal perspective, the people who attend just because they are being coerced into it tend to come out of it for the worse, while those who are curious and want to know more who are brought by others to a place of worship tend to flourish there.

As for people barging into lives with faith, yes, that is a sore trope, but a major factor forgotten in this day and age where man has traded his gods for his new captors of proposed knowledge and science, is that human beings cannot escape faith. It has been with them since their most primitive of existences as any amount of research into prehistory can show; man has been obsessing over the notion until recently. But now? Now people are skeptical of it and cling to their new, unofficial faiths - faith in fact alone - and snub just about anything which cannot be utterly and completely explained by fact. It creates this situation where those on either end of the isle tend to force themselves upon others; we all know that screaming athiest just as much we know the screaming Christian. We want neither at our door critiquing everything we do.

D&D 5e -- The Lost Children

When in doubt, forget then remember that you have rope as a druid for some regularly inexplicable reason. I feel this is one of those few times I have ever had a character who is justified in this behavior, that moment where you yourself forgot about it but the character remembers. Regardless, given I am assuming we are short on time, whoever is willing to help then please do - otherwise she is intent on binding him to hold him temporarily by herself, even if we enter combat.

D&D 5e -- The Lost Children

The others followed, not so much her that much was to be thankful for, as she dove into the low brush and soon found her way to the pinned man and her company, the latter of which had grasped him with splayed claws and forced him into the dirt and leaf litter upon the ground. At first she considered asking the ebon beast, its sleek fur making it an inky blot in the forest's dark background if it were not for the glinting, glowing insects staying at bay, but as she went to speak the others set in about the man with their own individual furies. Words were tossed and thrown, some hurled like spears in their incomprehensible eloquence while others were overt and blunt like a sling launched from a stone; much talk about danger, other talk about demanding answers, talk still about some... bandits?

She knelt down, looking from the crow-man - rather the kenku - to the forest next as she spoke in hushed tones to the cat who she set an arm about. Her hand cupped to his ear as his jowls snarled with lightly frothing saliva in menace, her intent not to surrender anything of worth to the man held captive in the sharp, hooked claws of a cat, intending the message solely for the panther and his sensitive ears.

"Jamil they think more are coming. Try not to kill too many of them if they do. They might be the only ones to know what is going on - everyone else doesn't seem to."

The elf woman glanced about where her knee fell to rest, her keen elven eyes piercing the dark, but she gave up on that and came to a new, better idea. Vines would have worked for a time, but people often had rope. In fact, she had rope, which was a miracle it came to her so fast that she set down her pack and unbuckled the coiled hempen thing. Normally she had little use for it, but she could later thank her unintentional foresight of keeping it around.

"Someone help me with this rope, we need to tie him if what you say is true." Shaedra said, thinking with as fleet of foot in mind as she could as the others seemed prepared for battle. Jamil of Azalorn could join them if things took a turn for the worse, but the wild druid would much prefer the man be subdued first - the last thing she wanted was him to hurt them, only to then escape.

Effects

Shaedra Galandoel will drop her Explorer's Pack and take the 50ft of hempen rope from it. She will ask someone else to use the Help action to assist her in tying the man up or let someone else willing do it and Help them instead.

@Guardian Angel Haruki@JBRam2002@Pennydumb123@rush99999@ihinka@Cu Chulainn@0 Azzy 0