Okay, so this is the OOC for Heist of the Century: Resurrection.<br/><br/>Although we have the old OOC, I figured for the new players it's simplest to just make new threads.  I'll be locking out the old ones afterwards, to things should be easy for everyone.<br/><br/>Feel free to talk of anything you want, ask questions or plan strategies.  I am likely to update info and things pertaining to the game here as well.<br/><br/>Update:  More info about Sacrafel and the setting is here!<br/><br/><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>Codex Sacrafeli</strong></span><br/><br/><strong>Sacrafel: High Nobility</strong><br/><br/>Sacrafel is a huge city, home to millions of humans and non-humans alike.  Nobility comprises a small, but influential part of the city's humans.  The current High Nobility, the ones who are entitled to a seat on the Council of Lords which governs the actions of the city are as follows:<br/><br/><em>House Leonid</em><br/>A very old, very powerful house.  Leonid has a long history dating back to the founding of Scarafel, and is currently considered one of the most powerful houses.  Both the house heads and all their 3 children are considered powerful spellcasters.   They also employ hundreds of private guards at their estates.<br/><br/><em>House Terniel</em><br/>A younger house which rose to power very quickly a few generations ago, and is now a major power in the city.  The house heads and their two children are all accomplished spellcasters.  Their private guards number in the hundreds.<br/><br/><em>House Innis</em><br/>Another one of Sacrafel's old nobility, who have managed to cling to power down the centuries, and even expand upon it.  The personal power of the house head is considered to be immense, especially considering his wife has died fairly recently, and he has but one son, who is also reputed to be quite powerful, if into some more esoteric pursuits.  As others of powerful nobility, their have hundreds of personal guards.<br/><br/><em>House Lanfallen</em><br/>A rarity among Sacrafel's high nobility, Lanfallen is a house with mysterious origins.  The original heads of the house moved into Sacrafel mere century ago, and almost immediately rose to considerable power.  The personal power of current heads of house is a mystery, and their two children are quite young on the high nobility's general scale.  They have somewhat less guards than others of similar stature among high nobility.<br/><br/><em>House Jasper</em><br/>Jasper is an old house fallen on hard times.  They still hang on to parts of their old glory, and their personal family is quite large with both heads of the house and 5 children around, though not all of them practice magic.  They field about a hundred private guards.<br/><br/><em>House Hausen</em><br/>House Hausen is a relatively small house among high nobility, but it's kept its ranking for a long time because of the unusually high combat skills of it's main family.  Consists currently of Family mistress (not married at the moment) and three children, all highly proficient battle-magi, according to rumors.  They keep only around fourscore guards.<br/><br/><em>House Lokhat</em><br/>As crooked as they are deadly, Lokhat has a reputation for shrewd deals and plenty of political marriages.  They are among the most beautiful and seductive of Sacrafel's families.  Some of Lokhat's women are widows many times over, and many rumors abound that their husbands didn't die natural deaths.  These days, only the most daring bind alliances of any kind with Lokhat, for although the rewards, carnal among them, are rumored to be legendary, not many survive to reap them.  The family patriarch rules it's dealings with an iron fist, and he has 4 daughters.  They have about a hundred guards.<br/><br/><em>House Sactrol</em><br/>A house which has monetary wealth unsurpassed by others, even among the high nobility.  Their skills in the arcane arts are at best mediocre, but they are the best tradesmen and money-spinners in the city.  Nobody knows quite what deals they broker, but they make more money than any other family.  Currently consists of both family heads and a son and daughter.  They have near a hundred and half private guards, and their are said to be the best money can buy.<br/><br/><em>House Amman</em><br/>Amman is an old family, but they never quite amassed the wealth of power or money that other High Nobles have, because their twisted experiments take most of their resources.  They are somewhat infamous of their dark and foul magical practices, everything from necromancy to consorting with demons and other unmentionable creatures.  The nobles of House Amman are without exception spellcasters, some quite powerful but all depraved to the extreme.  The current family head is the eldest son of previous generation, as people in Amman have fairly short life expectancies.  He has two brothers and one sister.  They only have a few dozen guards.<br/><br/><em>House Melior</em><br/>Melior is quite an oddball among the high nobles.  It has powerful arcane practitioners, yes, and it has wealth, but it's members are rarely seen at parties or any other event.  Only known facts are the family balance sheets submitted to the inquiry offices at quarterly basis for review.  Many hold the opinion that Melior hides some horrible secrets, but fact is that no one has seen the family representation for several years.  According to last years' census, they have a single family head mistress with two sons, and a few dozen retainers.<br/><br/>In addition to the number of guards mentioned above, each noble house has several lesser noble families affiliated with them, either directly by blood ties or by alliances, and they can be drawn upon at the High Nobles' whim for either more soldiers or for arcane practitioners for rituals.  All of the high nobility also maintain lavish keeps in the city, both as a status symbol and as places of last ditch defence, as interfamily and inter-district conflicts have gotten out of hand more than once in Sacrafel's history.<br/><br/>Note to Players:  All players who in some way or other belong to a noble house should probably pick a High Noble affiliation, either for their family or for the character personally, as those who've spent some time at court would have gotten tangled in politics some way or other.<br/><br/><strong>Sacrafel: Underground</strong><br/><br/>In the Sacrafel underground, many kinds of groups operate in completely independence of each other and rarely even meet, but some guidelines exists even on the lawless underbelly of the city.  This is maintained by the 'committee', a loose collection of individually specialized groups of crooks who each oversee a portion of the criminal activities in the city.  No matter what guild, group or organization you belong to, all criminal activity is monitored and taxed by the 'committee'.  The committee specializations go as follows, each committee group is identified with an animal, although no one knows where the tradition began.<br/><br/><em>Rats</em>- Responsible for all pickpockets<br/><em>Owls</em>- Responsible for information trading<br/><em>Wolves</em>- The assassins of the underworld<br/><em>Weasels</em>- The conmen united, for betterment of grander scams!<br/><em>Snakes</em>- They hold the drug and poison distribution rings<br/><em>Ravens</em>- All the fences and stolen goods vendors answer to the ravens.<br/><em>Bears</em>- The protection rackets and all-around mercenaries among the underworld.<br/><br/><strong>Cosmology</strong><br/>What's known of it, at any rate...  Mostly collections of findings from Sacrafel's scholars down the ages and their writings and thesises.  What is known of the planes of existence we inhabit is rather limited.  We know that the world we live in is not the only one out there, after all, our summon spells prove this.  We've thus far ascertained that the planes which seem to conduct most of the travel are the Ethereal, Shadow and Astral planes.  None of them seem all that hospitable, so exploration is only suggested for experienced adventurers.  Shadow and Astral especially seem quite hostile.<br/><br/>Then there are the Inner Planes, as some have coined them, in which reside the cornerstone powers of our world, which make up most things in this Material Plane of ours.  These are the Air, Earth, Fire, Water, Positive and Negative planes.  They are, if possible, even more inhospitable to travelers than the transitional planes.  Nevertheless, these planes are fairly closely linked to each other and our material world, and stationary portals are not entirely unheard of.<br/><br/>The third, and least documented category, is the Far Planes, worlds which exist far outside our scope of imagination.  They are the homes for our mythical god-creatures, even if no evidence to their existence has ever been found, and to all kinds of otherworldly beings.  Indeed, it's where most of those Celestial and Fiendish monsters seem to come from.  From those summons, and from a few other experiements, we've determined that there exist at least some kind of 'Heaven' and 'Hell' out there, though it's unknown whether there's any relation to a soul's journey after death.  There's also the 'Abyss', which actually seems to be something like a wound or a leak in the universe itself.  It seethes with chaos and evil and only spews forth untold destruction.  Budding summoners and fiend-dabblers are advised to stay away from demons and their ilk, and deal only with devils and other dwellers of Hell or even Heaven.  At least those devils will keep to their word, and they don't seem to seek the wholesale destruction of the world while demons are, as a rule, entirely inimical to all life.  All attempts to explore these Far Planes have been cancelled until further notice, (Read: Frozen forever) as people never return from them, no matter what seem to be chosen as the destination.<br/><br/><strong>The Sacrafel calendar</strong><br/><br/>The empire of Sacrafel uses a specific calendar based on the lunar phases of the two moons, the Dark Moon on a lower orbit, and the Green Moon on a farther orbit.  Since the Dark Moon cannot be seen from outside Sacrafel's continent, (the Continent of the Dark Moon, self-evidently enough.)  this type of calendar is unique to Sacrafel alone.They count the years from the founding of the Empire, in the format of Since Founding, or S.F. for short.  The current year is 1102 S.F.<br/><br/>The year consists of ten Moons, which is the time a single moon spends in the dominant position in the sky.  The Green and Dark moon alternate, so there are five Green Moons and five Dark Moons per years.  The Moons are named thusly:<br/><ul class="bbc_list" style="list-style-type: decimal;"><li>The Dark Rising</li><li>The Green Waking</li><li>The Dark Creeping</li><li>The Green Growing</li><li>The Dark Ruling</li><li>The Green Burning</li><li>The Dark Waning</li><li>The Green Weeping</li><li>The Dark Silent</li><li>The Green Quiet</li></ul><br/>The new year's is located during the winter solstice, when the balance between light and dark swings back towards the light.  The moons' orbits are also strange, as they seem to vary so that during one Moon, one of the two is in ascendant position in the sky.  The seasons usually last around three Moons each, except for Summer which tends to only last a single Moon.  Of course, the seasons aren't defined absolutely by calendar, mostly just the weather corresponds to this rule.<br/><br/>Each Moon consists of fours weeks of five days each, each named after the phases of the moon during which they occur.<br/><br/><ul class="bbc_list" style="list-style-type: decimal;"><li>Week of Empty</li><li>Week of Waxing</li><li>Week of Moon</li><li>Week of Waning</li></ul><br/>In contrast, the Weekdays are named simply, going as follows:<br/>Firstday, Secondday, Thirdday, Fourthday and Fifthday<br/><br/>There isn't any special "rest day" among the weekdays, as nobles rest when they want, and commoners don't need rest.<br/><br/><strong>What has gone Before:</strong><br/>At the moment, here is a short recollection what Asleod has arranged prior to the game start.  Includes Some plans he's drawn up, as well as a short description of the first meeting between all your characters.  Since I figure you're all eager to jump into action, I'm not re-enacting that this time.  If you want to check out the previous First Meeting thread with the previous cast, it can be found here:  http://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=108270.0 (http://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=108270.0).  In short:  Folks got to know each other, exchanged insults, threats and bluster where worldviews clashed, and probably managed to get in some flirting as well.<br/><br/>The plan Asleod has for the first hit goes as follows:<br/>The crew divides into two, the Noble group and the Underground group respectively based on their talents and outlooks.  The target is House Leonid's first ball of the autumn, a big social occasion.  The Noble group, obviously, goes in the front door, probably with invitations.  Daniel should have no problem acquiring some.  At the ball, they try to find out possible weaknesses that the crew could exploit in House Leonid or possibly arrange something which would draw guards away from the cellars, as well as trying to fish for any information which would help in future raids.<br/><br/>The Underground group will go in at the same time, entering through the nearby sewer entrance which connects to Keep Leonid's underground cellars.  According to Asleod's intel, the treasure vault lies a couple of levels down underneath the keep, but it's likely to be guarded, hopefully lightly thanks to the party upstairs.  The Underground group will move through the cellars, avoiding or eliminating guards and traps and breaching the vault.  From there, they will cart away as much as they can, and ruin what they can't take.  Alchemist Alexander has generously acquired several vials of a strong acid solution for this very purpose.  Also, whatever clues can be found in the vault to the continued prosperity of the Nobles would be useful to find as well.  It can't be just the money that has kept them in power all these centuries, even if they have the most magic.<br/><br/>Asleod, himself, won't be coming with the group on this mission, as his face is too well known to be shown near Keep Leonid.  Also, he will arrange a distraction the moment the groups start their respective missions, hopefully drawing the precinct guards and some of Leonid's private guards away from the Keep.<br/><br/><strong>Useful Links for the game:</strong><br/>http://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=136857.0 (http://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=136857.0)  <-This OOC Thread<br/>http://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=136856.0 (http://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=136856.0)  <-The Character Archive<br/>http://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=140930.0 (http://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=140930.0) <-The Nobility Thread<br/>http://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=140922.0 (http://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=140922.0) <-The Underground Thread<br/><br/><br/>**********<br/><br/>Another update to the OOC section.  Maybe I should start dating them?  Anyway, this Codex will update every now and then when the group learns something new or clears a particular challenge.  It's sort of like both an Errata page and a Quest Log.