Hemlock Missing?

Things I tried that didn't work:

-Ambush at night
-Tried just going straight to Corl (figured it wouldn't work since it's metagaming, but you'd think a high sense motive might yield something, no?)
-Talking to a badger (inside the Welcome Wench and the one patrolling near his house)
-Talking to all of his close neighbours (Calmert, generic woman walking around the church, Cabinet maker and his family...)
-Getting a Druid
-Getting a Ranger with the Tracking feat
-Summoning an Attack Dog familiar to sniff around
-Explored the possibility it became entangled with another questline (Jayfie, Courier, Rannos and Gremag blackmail...), so tried doing them and seeing if anything changes.
-Talking to the sheep
-Talking to the dogs
-Killing the sheep to attempt an autopsy (those fuckers are surprisingly hard hitting, heh)
-Just letting time pass, advancing the story state to see if something stirs...

No dice.

As you can see I was getting pretty desperate (though I contest most of the above would be valid solutions in a P&P game... except for the autopsy thing maybe ).

And then, by chance, I got it - spoiler:

Spoiler

you just have to talk to a Badger you've met before... i.e. the relevant dialogue node in the Badger's dialogue (any badger will do) only appears if you've conversed with the Badger before (has_met() == 1).

I don't think conditioning the quest lead on

Spoiler

familiarity with the badger

is a good idea. If

Spoiler

NPCs doesn't say something useful, you tend to dismiss them as generic NPCs and never talk to them again...

. So I think the

Spoiler

has_met()

condition should be removed.

Also, I think implementing some of the alternative solutions I mentioned could be a decent exercise for a budding modder. Anyone?

 

I fully agree with the condition removal. Perhaps limit the "next step" person to one of them (I don't know how to HIDE text like Sitra so I'll leave it at that.)

The Tracking idea Ranger thing is a good alternative too- but don't know how they'd create that. Probably just ANY character with a sufficiently high Tracking score should be acceptable...

 

Hi
I even went one step further: I went and talked to Jaroo. You would think that a member of the Old Faith would go and talk to the local Druid when his sheep started dieing. Even if he was a follower of St. Cuthbert it would stand to reason that Jaroo, being the Hommlet "Veterinarian" (If you had a sick animal who would you take it to, a generic cleric, or someone who could actually talk to the animal to find out "where it hurts" ?) and Department of Agriculture inspector, would be consulted at some point. After all, what would Terjon, a city boy with no real experience with animal husbandry know about treating animal illnesses ?? Jaroo would be consulted immediately, because all the other farmers would worry that the "disease" afflicting Black Jay's flock, would strike theirs next.
In answer to Gaear's comment about the Troika design, I didn't think it was that far fetched. Actually the carpet of hemlock on Jay's field is quite logical. It turns out that Sheep are not very susceptible to Hemlock poisoning. In fact according to Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conium it is recommended that sheep be used to control the spread of hemlock in the "wild". Maybe the traders don't know of any other poisonous plants but hemlock (city boys you understand), and kept "upping the dose" until Jay's sheep started dieing. Corl doesn't actually stand in the field for 12 hours every night (I know because there was one time where I waited in the field for him to show and he didn't until I left and came back). So we can assume that the PCs finding Corl in the field was a case of "being in the right place at the right time". As far as Jay's dogs not barking at Corl, dogs are good watch animals, but they aren't infallible. It is quite possible that the dogs wouldn't bark at Corl because they "knew" him. In fact if the dogs barked every time someone walked past Jay's property, he'd never get any sleep. Also keep in mind that the purpose of the FedEx quests was to give a starting party even experience that they wouldn't get butchered as soon as they approached the moathouse. I DM'd the PnP version twice, and I sure as heck don't remember any FedEx quests in the village.
To me the proper way this quest should be reworked, is that at some point, the PCs should be able to ask if Black Jay has talked to Jaroo about it. From there the party would go to Jaroo and Jaroo would say that he had examined the animals and found no sign of disease, implying that the animals had been poisoned somehow. After that it becomes a game of "20 questions" with everyone who lives, works, or walks nearby.
TRC

 

In that case you should prevent them from answering, rather than prevent the player from asking. Otherwise the player may be led to believe they are not relevant.

 

Hi Ted
I still think that Jaroo should be "consulted", after all unless there is a druid or ranger in the party, how are the PCs going to know which plants are deadly, and which ones aren't? I do agree that using Hemlock to try killing Jay's sheep is a dumb idea, and it (at least in our world) wouldn't work. Now that there aren't any "strange plants" laying around the field, the PCs might (logically) assume that there is a disease going through the flock. Think of it this way: If someone told you that their animals were dying one by one and you couldn't tell an edible plant from a poisonous one, wouldn't you ask if that person had had their animals checked by a veterinarian ?? Even if Jaroo isn't used as the starting point to indicate that there is foul play involved, there should be a way to find out from Jaroo that the animals did not die from "natural causes"
TRC

 

BJ: Something's killing my sheep!
PC: I'll go check it out.

BJ: Have you found out anything?
PC: Well, I did find this plant in your sheep's stomach. (sheep's inventory)
BJ: Get off my land.

 

SPOILER ALERT!!!



The sheep AREN'T being killed!

I found out that Mary from Nulb is stealing BJs sheep at night and replacing them with
"worn out" ones that die soon after.

Nefarious, Mary, simply nefarious....

 

On a serious note (my past few posts have been primarily jests) I agree with Gaear on the Black Jay dead sheep problem being everyones.

BUT- I "role play it in my head" as Jay not having told anyone, and suffering in silence because he believes he is cursed nowadays.

And since no one ELSE's sheep were dying it would have reinforced his delusion of being scourged...

 

The Cornish are PEOPLE from Cornwall. King Arthur's mother was married to the Duke of Cornwall. I forget the name of his castle, but I think it's still around.

They are notable because they were British, rather than Anglish.