Recent History and Strange Observations

If anybody is still checking in on this blog... thanks. I've been massively overwhelmed in the last several weeks which has impacted my previous schedule of ~12 posts per month. Alos, my PBEM Greyhawk game is really taking off. My players have descended another level, finally acquired a bit of treasure from their adventuring :) and found an albino cleric. This albino cleric cannot communicate well with them for lack of overlapping languages but through miming and pictography they have decided they are on the same team for now and are now following this cleric down into the depths of this dungeon.

This albino cleric worships a god Ishu, which is the symbol of a three fold woman (bearing some resemblance to Istus) and they seem to be at odds with another group of clerics who have now captured the half orc assassin. There seems to be a battle of sorts occurring somewhere underground and the PC's found their albino cleric nearly fatally wounded lying on a bed in the dungeon. After quite a bit of debate about whether to heal the man they finally did and he awarded them with some treasure (by showing them how to use some golden masks to make their way past mechanical wasp guardians armed with death poison to pilfer some gold and gems).

But during this encounter I noted something quite odd about PC's. They will sometimes obsess over really strange things that you would have never guessed about. Take this description as evidence:

As Geodine and Esmeralda approach the wounded man he looks up apprehensively toward your strange ensemble. Geodine examines the man from a closer and closer distance noting that his stomach wound will be fatal without magic aid. As Esmeralda comes close to the man and takes first his club and then tries to grab at his Emblem he knocks her hand away and yells out something sharp and quick in his strange tongue.

As the torches draw near and he whips his arms about you note that his skin is pale, he must be one of these albino people you have heard about. Looking closer, his eyes seems to have dark brown pigment, so he is not a true albino - perhaps his skin has not seen the sun... ever. His dress is very simple, dark thick padded armor pants, thick boots, and he is shirtless except for his bandages. His hair is a long mass of brownish yellow and held back with a yellow tie. He has a bit of wispy beard upon his face but it doesn't grow thick.

Nau Gui addresses the man in two languages but he doesn't seem to recognize any of it. Instead he speaks once more in a non-sensical tongue, "Curthag unkthatack arosthack!"

A little later I posted this:

In the chests there are some thin metal masks (maybe steel) covered in gold
paint (you can see where it was scraped off in some spots. Also in the chests
there are more pants, shirts, bandages, a jar of what looks to be a salve of
some sort, and a light cudgel.

The rest of the room is bare except for a deck of cards on one of the small
tables. There are two doors in the back of the room one on the wall to the left
and one on the far wall. Esmeralda hears a slight buzzing noise on the other
side of the door to the far wall.

While some of the pc's focused on the dying man or the strange buzzing noise, and the chests full of strange thin metal masks... other PC's decided it was wiser to spend the next week of PBEM time examining the deck of cards that was mentioned in passing. They got into a minor in game argument over who would keep the deck calling each other grabby among other things. PC's will focus on strange things and forget about your obvious clues, I don't understand it, but it is true :)