Homebrew tabletop game system thread the II

[Kaelan]

OOC - quick post as I'm out for the night.

IC - Seeing that the creature is still 'alive' dirt will swing his axe against the walls\floor\ceiling etc in an effort to bludgeon it to pieces. If it crawls too far up the axe he will launch the axe as hard as he can against the wall and fire his crossbow into it.

Either way, once the creature is down (by the party or dirt) he will re-join the battle line. With luck somebody else will have dealt with the bee issue.... (I can see another fire ball coming in to play here again).

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Dirt's flailing around seems to achieve something, although he nearly cuts Tamarin in half- she manages to block with her shield just in time; she was in the process of saying something along the lines of hold still, I'll see if I can beat it back (suppress it with Resist Magic and the chivalric code); naturally that doesn't quite work now.

Dirt's doing it the hard way also means he's not available to get Fifi, the insect (and other things) eating carnivorous plant, to help against the bees, of course.

Lisanna thinks about it, rings up her broader bladed sword, the crystal one that looks very interesting. She's interupted by a human and an orc running out of the main door to the fortress, carrying three wounded men between them.

Aburon, for 'tis he, takes in the situation, says 'Wait, I've got a plan. Believe in the bees.'

When someone looks at him as if he's daft, he adds 'Save him of course,' the man at arms with them under his skin, 'it's a dirty trick and an evil weapon- but Hilarion made a mistake sending them against a druid, because whose bees will they be?' Evil grin.

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

Larric would be spectacularly bad at believing in invisible bees if he can perceive them as some sort of belief-manipulating illusion. I can imagine few sorcery-related tasks he'd be worse at, come to think of it. It's probably just as well that he's too busy worrying about the force-field man, which is plainly on its last legs, being as how it is now impaled on a stick and getting bashed against a wall by an ogre.

IC:

Larric sees Tamarin nearly bowled over by Dirt's waving around, and realises he'd better cut matters short before Dirt manages to bring the whole cave down around their ears or something.

"Hold it steady there!"

Insight and Air- he looks at the force-pattern, tries as best he can to find a linchpin, a plane of cleavage, any kind of vulnerable structure to aim for. Then he slugs it with a jag of lightning- straight out of the ground and out from his hand, not bothering with arrows, just trying to arc-cut the creature open.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Simplicity works, for once; that frazzles it to nothing.

What are the rset of the group doing about the bees?

[Kaelan]

Dirt has (had) a large lump of iron on the end of his axe, who care's about some bees!

Dirt will move onto the bee's later if required, once his axe is free.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Oh, good, I was wondering where everybody had gone;

Dirt still has a large lump of iron on the end of his axe. It is, however, now free of blue thing- Larric's lightning fork managing to drop it.

(Incidentally, the carnivorous plant- the children's TV character of the same name is a forget-me-not. would Dirt's Fifi be a devour-me-not?)

Sitrep; Tamarin has a new dent in her shield boss but is otherwise fine, and forward of the line. Dirt is out there too. Lisanna is trying to wield two swords and drag two injured men at the same time, with no better than human average strength.
You have five humans who you were supposed to be holding the way open for, in total, in various states of mental disconnection, and one man at arms being swarmed by invisible and quasi- real insects. (Fifi eats one.)

A druid with a plan, and an orc with a longbow, have just joined.

[Panzersharkcat]

He generally tries to the periphery of where he thinks the bees are and tries to swat at them with his maul. This is mostly to determine if they are real or just an illusion, assuming invisible bees don't have invisible guts.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Given how difficult they'd be to hit if they were real, what does not actually hitting anything tell you? They're small. They're not stupid. They are very agile, and the hammer has a lot of inertia. Good for breaking people and rocks and doors and things, it's not the right tool for the job and it's a hard job anyway.

Much flailing of air occurs, several of the rest of the group have to duck out of the way, and nothing noticeable is hit. If something was, the problem with invisible bees is their guts are bee- sized at best, and also very possibly actually invisible too.


'Stop trying to kill everybody and bloody listen,' the druid shouts at him- he's talking quickly, trying to get the explanation out in time to matter, and adds this bit to Larric 'How'd you make lightning- it's mind but it's also will, isn't it, you have to push it to make it happen- this is too but the wizard tricked the victim into doing the will part, doing the heavy lifting. They were imaginary but the more you hear them the realer they get.'

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

No amount of quick advice is going to help Larric very much, his active participation would contaminate the mental mixture Aburon needs to make his solution work. His mind is disciplined, but it's not self-discipline, it's externally imposed by his environment. So his natural ability to force himself into an altered state of consciousness where things that simply didn't exist before become progressively more real is quite poor. Thinking about how real the bees are will lead predictably to "but they aren't real, are they," which is only going to get in the way.

So, hm...

IC:

The only dangerous thing in the cave is the invisible bees, unless you count Alfred and Dirt waving heavy weapons around and nearly taking some poor soul's head off. He can hear Aburon talking, but doesn't really grasp what's behind it fast enough to matter, certainly not fast enough to change his own mindset, in which... he gives the druid the benefit of the doubt, assumes he's not talking nonsense and would make a lot of sense if there was time to explain anything.

"Hear them? I hear them all right-" he looks at the archery line, which has been standing around doing not very much since the fight started. "-come on, let's get those two off the lady's hands, pull them back and get them out of the way!" He trots over to Lisanna, sets down his crossbow, and starts pulling the body of one of the two unconscious men back. He gestures for Rohal to do the same with the other. Waves likewise to the crossbowman to help him with that- Larric is not a particularly strong man.

While Larric's body is thus occupied, he's at least trying to help with the main task at hand. He concentrates his mind on the sound of bees. He can hear them if he listens, and rather than getting involved in the whichness of what and the relative reality of social insects, he just concentrates on bee sounds, on the awareness of bees, and with difficulty forces all question of how real they are out of his mind. He looks to the archers. "If I got that right... just listen to the bees."

Best the man could do under the circumstances, I think.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Where is everybody? New blood still welcome, by the way...

To push things on a bit, in the absence of other opinions and dissent-

Bees are believed in, and a short duel of influence between the original owner and the druid is fought, which ends with them deciding Aburon is their Queen.

The orc and Lisanna are both watching this and trying not to laugh. Too much, anyway. A large swarm of them ehads into the cavern- and Lisanna stabs the infested man at arms with her healing sword. The wound left by the rapier blade, and the gashes where parasitic wasps (imaginary, of course, but the wounds look real enough) burst out of him heal over.

Six to evacuate, and counting. Anything being done?


About a minute later, the slightly glassy- eyed druid says 'Right, I understand his plan now. Kardren's trying to send light forces ahead to head off the last group out, get them lost and blocked and where they can be surrounded- and probably used as hostages, to bargain for his safe passage. Crap. It's been too long a day for this. Anyone got any ideas apart from the unpleasant and obvious?'

[Panzersharkcat]

He stops swinging the damn maul around. He shakes his head. "I'm no expert in magic. The only thing I can say is the obvious."

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

'You agree that there's no point standing around here, holding the way open isn't enough; we need to go in and break it open. Good.'

[Simon_Jester]

IC:

"Carefully- if we get too deep in there, who's holding the way open for us?"

OOC:

Six to evacuate- um, I'm getting confused. We have three plainly unconscious from the sword of stabbity healing. What about the other three?

[Panzersharkcat]

(OOC: Same here. Just as a warning, I'm pretty much going to be gone all day tomorrow. I have some training thing for work from 11:00 AM to around 5:00 PM and my actual work shift from 5:15 PM to 9:15 PM.)

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

I think we're just going to have to fall back on the assumption that a decision loop in-game is one or two days long. It's a pity, but we can't all have lots of free time; my own luxury along those lines will be curtailed starting around the beginning of July.

I believe you mentioned Feralgnoll being colossally busy- Panzer, could you check with him? See if we should come up with some kind of temporary arrangement until he can resume control of his character?

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

It seems so; when everybody can, then.

The six to evacuate include the three Aburon and Hara were carrying when they came into the cavern;

Hara, the female orc, says in response to Larric 'Good question.' (I'm not even going to try to reproduce her accent- horrendously thick, very unlike her brother's, although there is a definite family resemblance.) Baron Wobblyarse- deVerett- moved too soon, didn't wait for everyone to send back that they'd got the word. Thought that might happen, that's why we were hanging around instead of heading for natural light and air and green things.'

I'm happy to have Rohal be basically sensible and effective until Feralgnoll has time again- word would be good, too.

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

I remember her accent- I never had that much trouble with it, but others might, so yeah.

IC:

"I see two problems. One is biting off more than we can chew. The other is-" he looks at Lisanna- "if you keep knocking people out, we're going to run out of arms to carry them all. About how many people are still down here, do you think?"

[Kaelan]

Whilst nobody is looking Dirt pulls out an elf chew for himself and fifi - it looks as though its going to be a long night, what with mad humans, invisible bee's and him standing in enchantment central.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Considering how much svartalfven magic Dirt's likely seen, he should have a better grasp of what's going on; not trusting it may be slightly more likely than not understanding it.

Fifi is approaching things in a spirit of innocent curiosity, as usual.

No reaction to Hara's blatant disrespect?

Lisanna says 'Perhaps another hundred and fifty.'

Aburon thinks about his response to that for a second, and says to Larric 'I wish you hadn't said that. It's much easier to charge into the jaws of death if you don't have it pointed out first that that's exactly what you're doing...I think it can be done, though.
There are a group of half a dozen or so entities that seem to be the only blocking force in place that actually matters. If you want to hold the gate here, that would be the act of a sensible man.'

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

I don't think it's nighttime yet, Kaelan.

IC:

Larric doesn't react to an orc insulting the baron; I'm quite sure Dirt won't care since he already thinks deVerett is at best a mediocre chief. Rohal- probably not. Alfred might mind (hint hint).

The alchemist scratches his head. "Some to go deeper and pull them out, and some to hold the gate? Do you know what they're like- which would you want to help handle them, more brawlers or more archers?"

He's thinking "split the party;" leave (some of) the rank-and-file troopers and a couple of the PCs here, just in case any more 'scout' groups come to cut us off here, this being an obvious place to stash Rohal at least while Feralgnoll's out. Meanwhile the NPC party and the balance of our own go in and break up the blockage.

But his suggestions about exactly who goes which way could depend on the answer to that question.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

'Two of them are little more than fiery scarecrows, I think- efficient, as long as the people they're scaring don't take them head on. Might have the same kind of trick as the bees, but it doesn't smell so. The undead horse is a bit odd, that I admit. The blob of slime, could be a problem- ah, he's being efficient, he's using the ghost of the same horse as he got the skeleton from. The sixth one is a misery elemental.'

[Simon_Jester]

"Huh. So... knights and-" he looks down at his hands "-wizards." Crap, he thinks. After being the one to suggest it,

"Someone's got to hold the door, then, while everyone else goes..." He pauses to contemplate the usefulness of shooting arrows at skeletons, blobs of malevolent goo, ghosts, and pure concentrated distillate of unhappiness. Not very much. "Maybe we'd better leave the archers behind... milady, could you keep an eye on things while the rest of us go see to the blockage?" He looks at Tamarin, trusting the actual knights to work out the details.

His stance indicates that he's considering all the archers, including Rohal, as a group. Rohal might be nice to have around, granted, but... unless he turns into a werewolf he's not all that dangerous to the creatures describedas an archer.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Tamarin looks to Alfred. 'One of us should go, but someone needs to take charge here and you would probably be better at that than I would.'

[Kaelan]

Seriously thinking about getting those bongo’s our right now (maybe later)...

Dirt’s not too fussed at which group he is in, but would probable be more helpful in plumber mode clearing the blockage down the caves, especially if we need to carry\drag a reasonable number of people back out. If he is going, he will leave Fifi with the archers to look after (Hara or Rohal if either one of them are staying).

“Don’t touch leaves. Here are snack if fifi hungry”, handing over a small pouch.

Checking his crossbow and getting ready to move out he looks at Larric.
“Who more dumb. Them running here to hide, or us getting them out?”

OOC
With his token ability in magic I doubt dirt is going to be flinging any spells at this moment of time (unless you have a plant you want him to talk to, or a small mound of dirt to be opened up)

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

'Not another bleeding necromancer- and besides, you don't have the figure for it.' Hara grumbles at Dirt. 'Lose the skulls.'

'Never yet come across a better method of controlling parasites and malignant growths in the body,' Aburon points out, 'there are positive uses for it- which unfortunately most death magic practitioners don't actually seem to have heard of...how good are you with those?' he asks Dirt. 'Do you think you could make a skeleton and a ghost dance to your tune?'

'No.' Lisanna says, with remarkable fervour considering she nearly made the same decision not a dozen hours ago. 'That is a shortcut too far.'

'In principle you're right,' he admits, 'but if the alternative is leaving anyone down here that we don't absolutely have to, then...we save all we can, and then rely on the people we saved to pull us back from the brink in their turn.'

This is not theory, this is very recent events, and he is convincing her- against her gut instincts, but with reason. 'I do trust you to hit me upside the head when you think I'm going too far.' He adds.

'I'm going to have to start doing it pre- emptively.' she bounces back, but goes along with the plan.

Alfred, Rohal, Fifi, Tamarin's two yeomen staying back, Dirt, Larric, Aburon, Hara, Lisanna heading in for the next part of the rescue, is that the plan?