Homebrew tabletop game system thread the II

[Simon_Jester]

[rolls die, I seem to have good luck with those general-intelligence rolls]

Larric may have poor impulse control in delightedly "I know something you don't know" scenarios, but he is fairly fast on his feet. He remembers future-Aburon's reference to outlawry notices.

"Hm, I..." he taps his head for a moment. "It might be from a picture, actually. Good likeness, mentioned the falcon- but I can't remember exactly where it was. Description up on a wall, about something or other, I forget- the whole time I was in town was just one thing after another. I'm Larric, by the way. An alchemist. Some of the wizards in Qulan town got wind that Baron deVerett was alive, and the verderer sent a party out- us- to go looking for him. Have you seen him?"

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

The bird caws. 'If whoever drew it can't tell the difference betwen a falcon and a sparrowhawk, no wonder I've been able to keep dodging.' he says. 'Actually I'm not sure if I am an outlaw or not at the moment, or which would be the more troubling answer.

deVerett is organising things near the sphere of spheres- follow the brightest lights in the wall and you should find him. I think this place has- a retort, if that's the right bit of glassware I'm thinking of, this place has acted like a reaction vessel on everyone stuck down here.

Very few,' he says looking across at the court sorceress, 'have come out stronger for it, at least in a good way; mort tainted, weakened. deVerett- I'm not sure we would be doing the world a favour by bringing him out in the state he's in, but I don't see a growing alternative.

What we're doing is trying to get these people clear before he's tempted into crossing a line too many- um, is that mule yours, can I borrow him for a moment?'

[Simon_Jester]

"A good artist but a poor birdwatcher, perhaps? I'm no better, I guess... hm. Lord deMarail looks like he's had something boiled out of him, that's so. And- you want to borrow You Bastard? Go ahead. Maybe he'll listen to you."

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

'deMarail, it's not physical. Not mainly. It's not even the people he's lost. It's that, rightly or wrongly, the option he picked, the way he chose to try to survive was the hard way. No concessions, no compromise, no improvisation- his people surrendered little of their humanity, but lost a lot of humans along the way.

The place didn't give him all he bargained for, even- too many finding out that under the extremes of strangeness and stress, they weren't always- or all the way down- the good men they took themselves for. He, personally, I don't know, depends how well he copes with the aftermath. A month after all of this, he'll either have turned into a caricature of a knight, a walking copy of the Chivalric Code, or he'll be a broken man.'

He's definitely an outlaw, in spirit if not in fact; feels no social subordination at all, perfectly comfortable discussing the flaws of the upper class- and without prejudice, at that. Either doesn't expect to be held to account- or to be perfectly able to defend himself if it comes to that. Probably the latter.

'deVerett- tell you what, you go and see him, and we'll compare notes afterwards. See what you make of him at first impression. The mule- well, avoiding having something boiled out of him is why I want to borrow him, the people here are very hungry.'

That said, he manages to drape two of the confused and weakened across the pack mule's back- apparently without it objecting- shoulders another one, starts up the spiral. Mule trotting along quite happily behind him.

[Simon_Jester]

So just to be sure I understand the situation, after the party has helped a few people up, Sir Alfred basically promises Baron deMarail that he'll come back after we've finished the mission we were sent out for in the first place, and heads off into the fortress interior. Do I have that right, Panzer?

If so, Larric will take full advantage of the directions he got from the druid, and try to guide the party along the passageways toward the center of the fortress, following the brightest lights. What's the interior like?

Verone is, presumably, either still in the holding pattern on the spiral stairs, moving verry slowly (Larric got an impression of a very slow-moving hat, slightly out of phase with his reality, on the way back up with babe in arms)... or he's already wandered off into the fortress doing who-knows-what.

[Panzersharkcat]

(OOC: Yes you do.)

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Already there and disappeared deep into the bowels fits best- unfortunately, this is not a place and a time at which it is safe to leave things, or people, and assume they'll still be there.

The interior is- lines of sight are very short. Straight lines are actually quite few. 'Maze' would be an understatement- as the druid said, it's all interlocking runes, some of them seeming to slide past each other- after five minutes you're fairly sure you've traced the shape of a blivet at least once. The passages of the fortress are in the shape of interlocking runes, and the veins of minerals, many of them semi- precious or better, in the polished- granite walls seem to be the shape of the interlock; one larger runeform is signified by the veis of lapis lazuli, for instance- but all the colours are there, and could not possibly have been found thus in nature.

Mostly it is dark, with the glitter of the precious threads sparking off what little light there is; the ceiling directly over you glows faintly, to light your way, and there is usually enough light ahead to pick your way by- heading towards the brightest does indeed seem to be the way to the centre, to the greatest concentration.

In none of the other senses is it subdued, though. The place was designed, in as far as it was consistent with the runework, to echo in an imposing manner; and all the myriad voices, whispers to screams and back again, echo faintly, again and again. There's a deep bass rumbling at the bottom of it, sounds like someone or thing best not met.

Touch- does skin crawling count? Feels like the moment before the first flash of the thunderstorm, air heavy, tense. Smell of people, smell of burnt dust and burnt air and of strange, turbulent magics.

You do pass a few people- one young man in armour sitting there with his head in his hands, crying, and a woman trying to talk him out of killing himself, you think. There are several chambers that don't seem to be part of a rune form directly, rather as watching and control points, with the richest decoration; you pass two, both have been lived in and abandoned. Things are getting more complicated; you must be approaching the centre. People ahead, too.

As you are about to head on in you realise you've left someone else behind; Tamarin. Fortunately she's catching you up, manages to rejoin just short of the populated area.

'Where did you go- have you seen master Verone at all? I have been discussing matters with our new court sorceress, and it was highly, ah, disturbing. Can I ask how you had planned to tell the tale?'

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

A blivet?

[looks up]

Meanings include: undecipherable monument... unmanageable mess such as ten pounds of manure in a five pound sack...

He's punning again! Fetch the water pistol!

Anyway.

IC:

"We stopped to help that family at the entrance, but Tanner ran on in at the first sniff of the place. And we can't track him in this maze- with luck, he'll turn up..." Larric's fingers trace a sign peasant folklore says can avert evil omens. His fingers run into resistance. It feels like he's moving them through molasses. He shivers a little.

If lighting becomes a serious problem, Larric will try something, but it sounds like it hasn't- yet.

"Tell the tale, what's happened aboveground you mean? Actually..."

[roll general-intelligence check]

"...milady, milord, I think we'd better sit down and talk about that for a-" he chokes off the word 'spell'- "for a while."

He glances to Sir Alfred; is he agreeable to that? What does Alfred want to tell or not tell Baron deVerett at the moment?

[Panzersharkcat]

"I agree. For one, if there are any left still trying to escape, I gave my word I would continue to help them. I will get him out first, as that is my duty but I will not continue to escort him away until everybody I can get out is out."

[Simon_Jester]

IC:

Larric takes a deep breath, eyes watering a little from all the ozone. He restrains himself for a moment; his body language screams "you idiot." He wishes he felt as free and outside the law as that druid, for he would have many words to say to Alfred right now. "You idiot" being among them.

"Milord, there are... two thousand people here? Three? Could be a long day. He might get impatient, and tell you to come along, will ye or nil ye, and then where would you be? And... I don't think that's really the core of the matter. His lordship's been down here in this cave of marvels for the last four weeks, top-side isn't the way he left it. He'll be wanting us to tell him what's happening, he'll ask a lot of questions, we need to have answers for them. And besides that...

The alchemist waves a hand. "What are we going to tell him without being asked?"

OOC:

Panzer, will you please play your character like he has a mental horizon of more than six hours? He's member of a noble family, he's supposed to be able to run things, or at least try to run things, not just smash things with a hammer while someone sits on his shoulder to tell him what needs to be smashed.

I'll grant he explicitly has no political skill, but he can't be this thick. This is his feudal lord he's about to meet, a man who's been living in a bunker and is probably in a desperately confused state. He has no idea what's happened to his lands, how much damage the Twentieth has done, who's still loyal to him, who isn't. He doesn't know about those murders, about the Krylanyans intriguing all over his capital, about the Kardrens of Carfax trying to run chevauchees through the southern part of his lands, about the elves making trouble.

The baron knows nothing. He is going to want information, and is Alfred going to take any active role in getting it to him? In gaining some kind of actual advantage from getting it to him? Or is it all up to the NPC and the commoners?

Please think about this, on a level more than the "purely reactive, what am I hitting with a hammer next?"

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Tamarin says 'By dame Lisanna's word, and I trust her, they have been told- except for her- relatively little. Aburon and his team were up to their eyeballs in practical problems from the first moment they came down here, and chose not to make the situation they found worse by casually telling people things.

She and the druid seem to have fallen into an understanding, and- well, the people here didn't come out any sooner because they were trapped. They had managed to offend the powers of the deep, and were running out of ability to resist them- specifically, they had managed to maim the child of the lord of the underdark. She told a long complicated tale that-' Tamarin has to swallow a lump in her throat at this point; she's lost her man and found her young friend head over heels in love. She is feeling much envy, and trying not to let it show.

'I find it hard to believe in all the details, but the Countess was apparently involved- her scouts, the druid and his friends, managed to make room for everyone to run, confronted the beast and basically attempted to decoy it away; they were too afraid to go. Then Baron Kardren- and some of deVerett's knights, shame upon them- tried sacrificing a child to it to appease it, which would have had exactly the opposite effect, only enraged it further.

Lisanna and the scouting party prevented that, and she states that the Countess managed to strike some kind of bargain with the lord of the underdark, agreeing to heal its' son. They had precious little time to explain anything to anybody, Baron deVerett does know a very little.'

[Simon_Jester]

IC:

The alchemist nods slowly. His jaw is working again. "We won't know just from looking which of the baron's knights were in that. But now I know there's a few I'm glad I'll never be invited to supper with." He looks to Alfred. "Milord, I trust we won't jump into any more duels on account of this? I can't promise the exploding hammer will work twice."

"And, milady... His lordship brought part of the court down here with him- the treasurer, Sir Owell, the elderly gentleman up in Qulan town, he's a stand-in, no? So the ordinary treasurer will be down here, probably brought a lot of the treasure with him. I would, if it were me. And... I'm having trouble keeping it all straight, who d'you think would be his right hand man down here, and his left hand in case his right's giving him trouble?

OOC:

Larric would already know this much: is Baron deVerett married? We know he has two mistresses, but that proves nothing either way. If so, his wife's down here, right?

[Panzersharkcat]

(OOC: I left an escape clause in there in case there were a lot of people left by the time I get back: "I can get out." The word "can" is very flexible as far as interpreting it goes.)

"Yes. Any more would be wasting time. In any case," he stops to think, "we should inform him of our encounter with the Countess and what she said to us. Even if he can venture a guess by her involvement in this, he would do well to get the exact words. That should be the first priority. The murders in the city should be next and then the political intrigue in the capital. While I have a hunch they may be linked, I do not have any real proof. I will not mention those suspicions to him, lest I lead him astray. Finally, we should inform him of the trouble with the elves and the rampages in the south."

(OOC: I really need to take notes. I have never been involved in an RP campaign this long. The longest one I had was half the length and it was a four-year war.)

[Panzersharkcat]

(OOC: Blasted double post. If a passing mod could delete this, it would be appreciated.)

[Simon_Jester]

IC:

"Wise to be careful, telling his lordship about 'deadwood.' That's the sort of thing he might take as a slight, I fear, if it's not carefully done." He's looking at Alfred with a very obvious, but nervous appeal- you can talk to him without getting casually battered aside, you have more rights than I do, will you pass those words on to him? Can you be that polite?

OOC:

The Countess's exact words were: 'I believe it would serve them well to know that my verbal instructions from the Chancellor himself amounted to "cut away the deadwood."'

Now, the "them" she meant was the pro tem government in Qulan: Detrick and the other lords running the place in deVerett's absence. But if she hasn't already told deVerett that herself, he probably could stand to know it too.

[Panzersharkcat]

"I agree." He starts pondering whether to leave that out. He decides against it. "I suppose if we emphasize those are the countess's words and not ours, I can hope he won't be too cross. It is better that he knows her motives, in any case."

[Feralgnoll]

OOC: Back from Kublacon. Will get caught up soon

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Oh, good. Unfortunately I'm about to disappear into the wilderness for a few days- basically roadie-ing, not really proper reenacting because I don't have the faintest idea what we're doing, at some kind of bizarre folk craft festival in the middle of nowhere half way up the west coast of Scotland, for much longer than I actually want to be away for- back Friday night.

This is a commitment made earlier, (and we're going up earlier than expected, dammit) that I can't really get out of without letting the team down; I don't want to do it but without me it doesn't happen so I've got no choice. Crap. I'd much rather be here.


Try to leave you somethig to be getting on with, anyway.

deVerett's not married, was happy to have at least two "official" kept women while angling for a political alliance- possibly the Count Riedell's daughter, who is of age if reluctant. Bit of a player, then.

'The chamberlain and the bannerets.' Tamarin decides. 'The verderer's supposed to be responsible for scouting and sneaking around, but the baron isn't going to trust any one individual to do that, so it sort of drifted into the protocol officer's duties too. Tedrin- Sir Stevell Tedrin- is the man, if he's still in one piece. He's a rogue. Smooth talker, deal- maker, charmer- I'd like to wish him on dame d'Avariel and see who got the worst of it.

Black Will Weyman is the senior surviving knight banneret, according to Lisanna- nickname comes from his temper, which hasn't been improved by being down here. I've never felt safe around him, he enjoys being physically powerful; I wouldn't be surprised if he was involved in the baby business. He liks to loom.

The archpriest, too- Archon Zhered of the Valdemironi, he's well in the baron's confidence, and thinks it's the other way around. A man with a will to power- would rule through the baron if he can't rule over him.'

[Kaelan]

OOC
just a bump to show that I'm still here and reading the posts!

IC
As the conversation has taken on a political slant that Dirt is slowly trying to get his head around, Dirt is going to keep mostly quiet and take in the suroundings, an ogre talking at this point would most likely not help anybody.

Good echo and acoustics in here, I wonder how the bongos would sound, probably get round the entire network of caves.... (maybe later).

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Something probably would occur to Dirt, though.

Aburon used the phrase "a growing solution." As a gardener Dirt's ideally placed to interpret that- and it could indeed stand a lot of interpretation.

Does it mean that the one you've got isn't? That deVerett is part of the deadwood? He certainly behaved in an unchivalrous manner, according to his equal in rank. Does that count as good, or bad?

As said by a druid, and a fairly messy, old school one by the looks of it, a growing solution might just mean something better, something that can outcompete and take over from the official version...hm. Baroness Fifi?

Dirt could loom menacingly, that would be good, especially over Black Will, a man who by the account you have is the worst kind of bully; one who isn't actually a coward.
Considering where the bongos came from, and how the sphere of spheres has to be interacted with, they could have a very considerable effect indeed- Tamarin knows this from Lisanna, and when she sees Dirt thinking about it will say so.

'The sphere of spheres is the control node- the centre of the entire fortress. Lisanna was able to communicate and achieve some things with the ancient powers embedded there, feeding the retinue most importantly, by dancing for it. She literally had to make a song and dance of it, put on elaborate choreographed set pieces to achieve anything. It might not be enough, but playing dead men's skull drums around a powerful thing that responds to music and motion- I'd rather you waited until all the vulnerable are gone before trying that.'


Oh, yes. Forgot to add- 'You don't have to be so deferent, you know.' Tamarin says to Larric. 'As an almost properly appointed and sworn officer of the guild, you do have some social rank- equivalent to a squire, at least.'

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

right, I'm off. Unless something changes, back friday about afternoon American time.

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

This is a commitment made earlier, (and we're going up earlier than expected, dammit) that I can't really get out of without letting the team down; I don't want to do it but without me it doesn't happen so I've got no choice. Crap. I'd much rather be here.

Thanks muchly- but look on the bright side: it's always good to be wanted, if not always good to be the indispensable man.

IC:

Oh, yes. Forgot to add- 'You don't have to be so deferent, you know.' Tamarin says to Larric. 'As an almost properly appointed and sworn officer of the guild, you do have some social rank- equivalent to a squire, at least.'

"Almost. Almost..." Larric stares blankly for a quarter-beat, glances over at Alfred and the others, then- what looks like a choked-off laugh crosses his face briefly. Blank again for a moment longer, then he looks at Dame Tamarin.

"You're right; it's the place and the people we've met, pressing me flat." He takes a deep breath, squares his shoulders, stands up and leans back against the granite wall. He shifts a bit to get his elbow off a vein of semiprecious stone, for no obvious reason. "Thank you, milady, I think... I think I'll be all right now."

To the alchemist, the fortress's magical architecture is at least dimly visible as interlocked bands of forces unnamed, waveguides for powers unheard of. He'd have to make up names for it as he went along, and imagining the look on Verone's face if he tried to explain what he was seeing deters him from trying- he's learned a bit about what professional looks like, a bit that he didn't know before.

Idly, he fishes out a piece of paper, lays it over his slatebook to use as a writing tablet, and pulls out a wrapped stick of what looks like charcoal, but probably isn't- there's a sheen to it. He sketches what looks like a compressed miniature of some of the wiggles on the wall- but that's half-conscious, almost doodling. He seems to have snapped back into focus a bit, if that makes sense.

"If I might... it seems to me that what matters is getting his lordship out of the hole, back onto the ground with his feet running. With luck he can thump on some of the troubles in Qulan town, hard enough that we'll have time to worry about the countryside being afire on account of everything else that's going wrong. Maybe-" it occurs to him that having the baron be well disposed might help Dame Tamarin with her own problems, the estate and the forced marriage. But he says nothing of that, a possibly-improperly remembered remark from a very untrustworthy paladin being the only thing he really knows about them.

He turns his head to Dirt.

"You've been keeping your ears open and your mouth closed, not so? I wonder what that's like- smarter than most of those around you think, not sure of their ways and trying to learn fast... hmp." Larric looks down at his hands and smiles. "Maybe I shouldn't wonder, said like that. I don't suppose speaking in the baron's council'd be wise for you, but at least we've no trouble if it's to be-" nod to Tamarin- "looming day with Sir Black Bill. Though with any luck at all this won't turn to bluster- no good call for it to, aside from hot tempers. No one will want to stay in this hole, after all."

He frowns. "The others- the Archon, a priest of the chief of the gods... I wonder how he'll feel knowing a band of Krylanyans are stirring his stewpot while he's been down here? That'll get his attention- not to say we should mention it first, but he won't like it when we do. Best put it to him so's he thinks we're on his side, not theirs. If some of what we suspect, about poor master Owell, is true... well, it won't be much of a job of play-acting for me. And..." he taps his chin.

"It'd be a great pity, if after all the hard work Sir Detrick's put in, he gets short shrift from his lord for seeing to it that his castle and barony didn't fall apart on top of him. I'd speak well of him, given the chance. And that should come, once we get to the matters of bandits in the north and the southrons raiding over by Coroghan. Toward the end, if we do it Sir Alfred's way, and I don't have a word against that order.

"Sound sensible?" He looks around the room, deliberately including Dirt and Rohal.

[Kaelan]

Dirt Smiles, "Lets loom"

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

I came back to a cronked internet connection, and I didn't have the energy left to dive straight in to dealing with the customer services people- this should work now. It was good, if primitive; we're basically dark age types, but the actual site is even earlier, genuine neolithic standing stones and cairns everywhere, and it's a time which to be honest scares me. If you want proof that the human race evolved, look to the age before formal history, before preserved knowledge; we really weren't very far away from the animals at all.

Yet biologically they were so very like us that I can't help thinking that- forgive the pronouns- man is not man alone, but man multiplied by his circumstances; so much of what we are and what we can do is determined by what we find around us, by the world our ancestors built for us, by what we have to work with, and those people with their rocks piled on rocks were trapped suffering in a prison of time, so much of what they could and should have been just squandered, thrown away into the empty void of the age- but part of what made them human is that they pushed back at the walls of their prison, made space for their descendants to be more.

Hm. Irrelevant rant over, back to a highly advanced hole in the ground.



Looming purposefully then, towards the busier central complex- again a scene of actually quite well organised chaos, priests (quite a lot of them) and armoured men moving through the body, putting units back together, sending strays off in the right direction; into the central chamber where, mercifully, a heavy cloth- a tent- has been thrown over the thing, four feet wide, in the dead centre of the room. Otherwise at least two of you would be completely mesmerised by it.

The lines come together here until there is more glittering crystal and jewel in the walls than there is granite, and flow along floor and ceiling of the round, stepped central chamber to over and around the sphere of spheres, This is clearly, screamingly, obviously a magic thing, and anyone with any talent can feel their blood dancing as they get closer to it; on the other hand few of the nonmagical seem able to look at it calmly, they are skirting the edges of the chamber, scurrying to where they need to go.

There, trying to show that he is calm, unconcerned and in control, is deVerett himself. Give him his due; you could look at this lot and pick him out as the ranking man from a cold start. Tall but not massively so, decent fighting weight- looks much healthier than most- has the bearing about him. How much of it is natural, hard to say, but he does look like a Baron, whereas deMarail looked like an exhausted man in armour.

Messengers are coming and going, people are being dispatched, and things are being done. Whether they are all good or wise things, hard to say. And there's actually a bit of a mental gap to bridge between this man here, in the flesh, who has got his people (if what the messengers are saying is correct) into groups, with a leader and a fighting team and the weak protected appropriately, and the man who left that mess in Qulan behind him.

How do you start out?

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

The obvious angle is that deVerett's officials don't know what to do without the baron giving orders, except scheme for power like crabs fighting in a barrel. Whether that's by accident or by design is hard to say given the present evidence.

(glances meaningfully at Panzersharkcat)

Obviously, deVerett has little need of an escort; it's his own lands and he has plenty of capable armed followers to protect him from any danger he might face on the way back to his capital. He's not as badly off as the man we already met, the baron deMarail.

So what our baron is itching for isn't going to be physical help, it's information.

IC:

Larric doesn't know the baron from Adam, and does have to pick him out as the ranking man from a cold start.

He seems to know how to run things, that's a good sign. The hubbub offers distraction; Larric leans over and murmurs to Alfred: "He's busy, he won't be coming to us, do we go over and introduce ourselves? 'Hullo, we're so-and-so, we came here looking for you to tell you what's going on,' only a bit fancier?"

OOC MK II:

(I want to give Panzer a chance here)