Homebrew tabletop game system thread the II

[Panzersharkcat]

He tries to dance around again and aims for the head.

[Simon_Jester]

Larric follows the crowd, not hurrying quite so much- unloading a cocked crossbow is more trouble than it's worth under the circumstances, so he's trying to avoid bumping into anyone.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Fortune decides that it is with you, in quite spectacular fashion. The conjoined zombie raises it's head and tries to bite Alfred- and meets the head of the hammer coming the other way.

Crunch. Head goes flying in shower of dust (do not inhale) and small bone splinters. the thing twitches, jerks and collapses to the ground.

[Panzersharkcat]

He starts choking and coughing as he accidentally inhales some. When he's done, he turns to Larric and says, "So, what have you been up to?"

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

Larric may be a few minutes catching up, and Alfred just put himself in considerable trouble for no readily apparent reason. I'm gonna wait a bit...

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Nothing much else actually happens; it is time to go, and nobody is dissenting from that fact, although several people are going to need to be picked up and carried. Including Tamarin, who is trying to behave as she thinks a true knight should and ignore the minor ills like the broken ribs she got from being smashed against the wall by the blob. Lisanna's taking care of that.

Nothing much else troubles the front gate until the rest of the party and the refugee column emerge; the light they give off is clear, if a little trouble rippled it's obvious they're a large body of humans, and a few other living things. Fifi is looking worriedly at Alfred, and is very happy to see Dirt come back into the chamber- flaps her leaves excitedly.

As the group of about a hundred start to pas out of the cavern up the spiral, Aburon looks at Alfred, looks worried, mutters something to Fifi, gets a grave nod, says to Sir Alfred 'Well, you got it, but...we may have a slight issue with the after effects. How do you feel?' [the answer should be some variation on "not very well"].

'How close behind do you think they are, have we got time- we, ah, may have to do something fairly drastic to you. If we do it here we may have to hold whatever comes through there off for as long as it takes. If we flee first then, hm, operate, there would be peace and quiet but I...don't like the timing.'

[Simon_Jester]

Larric looks alarmedly at Alfred.

"Wait, you've been poisoned? What happened? Was it that... thing?" He gestures sidelong at the giant five-armed apparently poisonous decapitated zombie, which he isn't looking at too closely- more of the same, and he's still rattled.

[Panzersharkcat]

He mutters a series of very unknightly words to Aburon before answering Larric, "Inhaled *cough* so- *cough* some dust from *cough* that thing I smashed. *cough*"

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Aburon has had a long day too, and reacts badly to Alfred's unknightly words; 'You've seen Hilarion's work, you expect something horrible not to happen? If you don't want to accept help, of course, we could just let you cark it. Slowly, from the inside out.'

[Panzersharkcat]

"You asked *cough* to describe *cough* how I felt. I told you."

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

'Actually, it was the bit along the lines of 'damn' tree- futtering peasant bastard' I was mainly objecting to.' he says. 'Strictly speaking, you're only half right.'

Lisanna adds 'I have an idea- how good an actor are you? Do you think you could convincingly-' twisted grin- 'play dead? Pretend that the death dust worked on you and get close enough to him to-' she glances a the hammer.

[Simon_Jester]

IC:

Larric was probably toward the rear of the blob of refugees who are now shuffling up past us- he was moving carefully, a bit shaken, and may have hung back a bit to make sure Tamarin was being helped along properly.

Did Larric hear, see, smell, or otherwise sense any sign of more monsters in hot pursuit? Or does the evidence suggest that any other enemies will be at least minutes behind them?

If he perceived hot pursuit, he'll say "I don't think we have time- best move and hope for the best."

If he didn't, he'll say "How long do you need? We might make do." He looks around, sizing up the available forces. Hopefully including at least some reinforcements from the knights and men-at-arms who we just went to rescue; he'd be quite put out if they all skedaddled on him.

Either way, he's looking very quizzically and confusedly at the hammer, then... "If you're thinking what I... better mind that after he's hale than before, else it'll come true." He sounds very dubious- he can guess what Lisanna has in mind, and the last woman to suggest a plan like that was explicitly hoping to get him killed.

OOC:

I think there's a bit of a misunderstanding here over whether the unknightly words in question are more along the lines of "back off you meddling bastard" or "it hurts like buggery." Or, the DM appears to have ruled, a little of both. Either is unknightly, but only one is rude to Aburon. Panzer, you should probably be more clear about these things when there are lung-eating parasites involved.

[Panzersharkcat]

(OOC: Yes, it was intended to be more along the lines of "Who shat acid in my lungs?" than anything else.)

"Not very. The coughing may give me away, too." He appears to have mostly stopped, though.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Not hot pursuit, but distant reflected flickers, grey- black light and sour smells- best guess, you have time, but not very much of it. Minutes, should be.

Hara does indeed point out the obvious. 'And if it works, what then, we rescue him from the middle of all the undead and construct monsters that haven't crumbled to dust when their master did? You sure they're all going to go away?'

'Good point.' Aburon admits. 'Maybe we'd be better just running for it. If only it was that simple- this is going to be complicated to fix, so hold still.'

It does indeed take a couple of minutes of very fine work, mostly with the magics of the old faith, after which time the light in the fortress is starting to look darker and closer. Mayber less time than you thought.

At the end of it Alfred feels much better, but Aburon is holding a ball of black light that isn't quite touching his hand. 'Anybody got any ideas about this?' he asks.

[Simon_Jester]

"Bowl it into the hall there-" he flicks his hand toward the entry into the fortress- "hope one of the livelier monsters steps in it and its feet fall off, then get out of here?"

[Kaelan]

Dirt passes the piece of 'blob' on a stick to the bush man. "you say to bring!"
He the picks up fifi and checks she's Ok.
To Larric, "we leave now? No good left in cave. We leave and break roof - yes?"

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Dirt hands the ball of blob-clay on stick to Aburon, who has it in one hand and the black light in the other; he looks from one to the other, and starts an evil grin- then thinks it would be going a shade too far, and throws the black ball away.


Fifi's all right, the plantpot nearly fell over though- not a very stable fighting platform.

Plot question; what, exactly, is she going to grow into? I can go with either or both of the original illustrations, her primary senses are heat and smell- but mainly, is she going to be mobile? How close to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triffid are we going to get, here? Temperament is an entirely different matter, just the structural biology.


Leaving now sounds good to everyone else, too.

[Simon_Jester]

He shakes his head at Dirt. "It's magic, I think it... knows things, there's a will in there, and that ramp's a funny place. I wouldn't want to try climbing out after I'd done the place harm. Let's just go."

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Yes, things are wierd in computerland-

I take it you were waiting for me to execute that, while I was waiting for any other voices? No-one dissenting then, up and out.

On the way Aburon says 'We can't really block access to the fortress anyway, there's an entire bloody cavern of dark elves and their minions living in the broken rock around and on top of it.

What I think is happening is that the colonel is having to come to some kind of arrangement with their overlord to that effect- they get the protection but not the use of it. It's too destabilising to let anybody live in and keep.'

Anybody got an opinion on that?

When you get out, there's the hillside with the cavern entrance in it behind you, a small rise opposite, and low ground to left and right- and the low ground is full of pointy things and people behind them, the baron and his senior survivors are on the rise preparing to control the battle they expect.

Aburon and the orc are intending to go their own way- Lisanna wants him to stay, but he says 'You know how popular I am with the baron at the moment- besides, I don't think this is going to work out the way he does, and you don't need me for what I reckon's actually going to happen. Good luck, anyway- I'll be back when I can.' Wanders off.

Any parting words? where are you intending to slot yourselves in, if anywhere, what's the plan now?

[Kaelan]

Any parting words? where are you intending to slot yourselves in, if anywhere, what's the plan now?

"Goodbye bushman. Stay living. Hope we no see you for long time. You bad luck."

After that Dirt digs out his pot and starts making some lunch. Anybody want some? Whist the fire's going he'll scan the horizon to see if anything is actually heading this way (given how blind humans are).

OOC
with respect to Fifi I'll leave that up to a DM's call based on plot requriements. Dirt only planted the seeds.

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

I live on the eastern seaboard of the US, and have been caught up in the general mass power outages caused by the recent storm which you may have heard of in the news. In my particular case it may be several days before power is restored and my Internet access becomes regular.

Also, starting this Monday I will be working during the day and will probably not be able to access then- but that's the normal course of business and won't stop me from at least checking in on what people are doing in the evenings.

I will TRY to get a post out later today.

[Simon_Jester]

Sealing up of the fortress- aside from the possibility that Verone is still alive down there and didn't get eaten, Larric doesn't like it. The thought of the black elves using the power he felt down there is disturbing, but if they really wanted to do it they'd have done it already, they've been down there long enough. Presumably they can be talked out of it, and if the Countess wants to spend her time on that it's better than having her stomping around like an irritable self-propelled earthquake up topside.

So he's well enough content with that; it's a collision of powers too large for him to have the luxury of an opinion on at times like this.

Thus, Larric nods and is vague but friendly ("G'day!"or something of that order) to Aburon as he recedes into the distance. It's a pity for Hara that he never caught her last name... that could have saved her some time.

Meanwhile, his brain's ticking over, what did he mean by that? Aburon doesn't seem like the sort to run away from a fight, especially not if a friend's involved, and Larric's got a fair chance of having guessed that there's more than friendship there, too. So if he doesn't think Lisanna needs him right now, then he probably expects an anticlimax. Either Kardren's forces creeping out the back way (WHAT back way?), or their turning out to be so unsurvivable outside that they all wither away and perish from the unnaturality of it all, or the fortress simply... swallowing them up. Or something else, stranger, that Larric can't as easily imagine.

The only person who knows anything helpful here is Lisanna, so if he can get close enough to her to get a word in edgewise he will.

"I don't think he'd ride off just before a murthering great battle, so something strange must be afoot. Does he think the monsters are that much less a danger up here than down there?"

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

The news of strange American weather got bumped off the headlines over here by strange British weather- mass flooding in Wales and the north of England, nowhere near me, but there's definitely something wrong with the weather systems over the Atlantic.

Good luck with the new whatever- it- is, too.


The politics of this are complicated, and a shade over the heads of- well, practically everyone involved really, considering how viable a piece this would be in the great game of national and international politics and what Tol Authran is likely to have to say about it all.
None of the characters are desperately interested, either- Larric's got the brains for it but not the mentality, I think it would be fair enough to say, Rohal and Dirt- neither here nor there as long as it doesn't try to bite them, although Dirt's opinion on the dark elves would be interesting. Alfred, now he should be interested, it's things like this that springboard a man to power, if taken right.

With the Orc and the Druid shambling off in the general direction of nice broken ground, thence to Auvaine to cause some carefully tailored trouble, Lisanna watching him go, then she hears Larric and says

'I think his version of events is that Baron Kardren and Hilarion made a catastrophic mistake by failing to leave as fast as they could. After they were told to, by the Countess- who, she, she terrifies me. Do you think it's possible to become a monster by being more than human? Of her I could believe that.
I don't think he expects much more to come out of the cavern except possibly a stray bone or two.'

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

The news of strange American weather got bumped off the headlines over here by strange British weather- mass flooding in Wales and the north of England, nowhere near me, but there's definitely something wrong with the weather systems over the Atlantic.

Good luck with the new whatever- it- is, too.

High school math teaching; thanks, I'll most likely need it.

None of the characters are desperately interested, either- Larric's got the brains for it but not the mentality, I think it would be fair enough to say, Rohal and Dirt- neither here nor there as long as it doesn't try to bite them, although Dirt's opinion on the dark elves would be interesting. Alfred, now he should be interested, it's things like this that springboard a man to power, if taken right.

As he's played, Alfred is a singularly unambitious man- maybe less so than Larric or Dirt. It seems to be an accident of birth that gave him any power at all; he'd probably be quite content as a man-at-arms in someone else's retinue by all appearances...

Larric's interested, but he doesn't expect to be able to harness that power- although if he managed everything in life he ever dreamed of, his next step would probably be to come back to a place like this and try to turn it into the Kuquanese equivalent of Hoover Dam.

Note that's what he dreams, not what he plans. He'd probably never manage that in the natural course of events- because, as noted, not enough ambition.

IC:

'I think his version of events is that Baron Kardren and Hilarion made a catastrophic mistake by failing to leave as fast as they could. After they were told to, by the Countess- who, she, she terrifies me. Do you think it's possible to become a monster by being more than human? Of her I could believe that.
I don't think he expects much more to come out of the cavern except possibly a stray bone or two.'

Larric's eyes go wide. He snorts, then he grins. "If she decides to pound them into rubble, more p- good for her, I'll say that. And since you ask... honestly, I'd have told you yes before I'd ever heard of her, let alone met her."

Given the history of Kuquan, how it was carved out of the Terminal Empire, there has got to be a folk-wisdom saying equivalent to "power corrupts." He uses it, then follows up on it:

"Power corrupts, at least if it's all for its own sake. I don't know where she's from or how she turned herself into such a... a thunderbolt-that-walks. But I'd guess she didn't stop to ask why she was doing it, not till it was done."

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vetg7vWi ... re=related. Hopefully you'll be dealing with a higher class of student than that, although with today's horror stories, who knows?

'If she was all that and nothing else,' Lisanna says, 'perhaps something could be done, she would at least be a common enemy- but she isn't, it's...I think she's trying to climb back out of the abyss. A cause, a meaning, a plan that justifies what she's done, converts the destruction and devastation into the necessary price of something she wants to call a better future-

and someone else believed her, took her at her word and let her raise a regiment to do it with. You know, I don't think I want to go back to Qulan and see it- smell it. I just can't think of a sensible alternative.'


At that point, the mouth of the cavern opens- and a billow of dust...followed by a small, white object, a single solitary skull, rolling out. It tumbles to a stop. Anybody doing anything?