Homebrew tabletop game system thread the II

[Kaelan]

So, we're back full circle again.
Are we heading into the hills to find our missing judge, and if so are we taking Radulf with us. I don't quite trust leaving him here without us.

[Simon_Jester]

So, we're back full circle again.
Are we heading into the hills to find our missing judge, and if so are we taking Radulf with us. I don't quite trust leaving him here without us.

...What judge?

The only person I'm hearing about is an experimenter who might get eaten by his own Frankenstein monster... oh.

You mean Detrick Lautern. No, I think the plan is to send Rohal to run the distance quickly in wolf form, carrying the message in a case on a string round his neck, or something like that. That way we can stay right here, the message gets delivered to him quickly by a fast, tough messenger who can take care of himself, and he can hurry back if he thinks it's important- which is what Larric was trying to convince him of with the letter.

He'll invite Lady Tamarin to add a note of her own, if she thinks it will help convince him to come back.

[Kaelan]

May be worth having Lady Tamarin write a note just to confirm that what we are saying is true. We don't want him thinking that we're just trying to distract him from other issues at hand (whatever they might be).

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

She has no objection to doing that- on a string would be best, and that bit of what happens next is Rohal's show, get to that when Feralgnoll's about.

In the meantime, you have a solid, dry floor with a couple of blankets and a loaf, and a barrel of small beer, and an awful lot of tired to get rid of. In the morning Alfred will be more or less back to fuly functional, and the chances of anyone sneaking in and trying to murder you in the night are quite low;

deal with the wolf in his own time and move the majority of the group on to the morning, then?


Oh- that reminds me, White Haven PM'd me about joining in, haven't heard from him since. Whenever he's ready- now would actually be a good moment.

[Simon_Jester]

Works for me. I'll try to get in touch with him tonight.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

The night passes...eventfully.

Not for the party, you are more or less all right; Alfred's back to more or less normal- a little thick headed but nothing fresh air won't cure- but there's a lot of commotion, angry noises, people shouting at each other. Somebody accusing somebody else of hiring assassins. Wailing, and tears, and the occasional ominous silence.

Tamarin comes in not long after dawn- quite late in the day at this phase of the year, about 8 am, and I am going to persist in giving earth like times comprehensible to players because mediaeval timekeeping is just too elastic to really measure anything usefully. Split hour timing is about the best possible, and even that can be a challenge.

Red eyed, exhausted, and hopefully one of the PC's makes the connection that as she doesn't have a house any more, she lent you her space in the complex, and has been wandering around all night waiting for you to wake up so she can move back in and get some rest. On the other hand, she was probably there for most of what happened.

[Feralgnoll]

I have all the night to be updating. Im home alone and bored.

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

Great! Now if only our DM was in Hawaii instead of Scotland... I bet everyone would be happier, especially the DM.

IC:

[randomly rolls a d20 against Larric's Human Perception skill, to see if he puts two and two together, gets a 3]

Larric, who didn't actually exert himself all that much physically yesterday, and who's accustomed to getting up brighter and earlier for the ever-accursed customer who wants it bright and early, starts trying to shuffle everyone out into the daylight. He is exceptionally polite to Lady Tamarin, having inferred the subtly non-obvious that she's obviously far too much of a lady to make a point of. He asks one question:

"Was what went on last night... usual, milady?"

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

I wish I had- or alternatively Hawaii sounds good, I'm falling asleep myself here and the coffee is reaching the "are you sure you don't have an ulcer?" stage; here goes anyway.

Pointless trying to follow a trail from Qulan, too many obscuring scents, too much happening. The best thing to do would probably be to make best speed to the right general area and try to pick up the scent from there.

The badlands are not a good place for lines of sight, but for smell, not too bad. it's just possible to find the place where Detrick and his group- figure around two thousand men at arms of all descriptions in normal time, maybe half of those still fit, and he has perhaps one in eight actually with him, numerous hoofprints but, usual rule of thumb, quite a lot of them would be pack horses or mules.

There are mines in the Orhan Hills, it's one of the things the bandits prey on; by one of them is the first real sign that trouble has passed this way, four fresh marked graves, six bodies on gibbets.


Then, trouble. Distant picking their way across the side of a hill, two groups, both slightly magical and trying to hide the fact, one stalking the other- both groups too stealthy to be who you seek, the leading group, the ones being stalked, could be trying to find a good ambush site. The trailing group are easier to get downwind of and get a proper sniff of, and they are very odd.

Metal, exotic oils, lizards, venom. Svartalfven.

Avoiding, doing anything?


Meanwhile the next morning, Tamarin (named for the fruit, by the way, not the small monkey) says 'No, no- we're not quite that troubled usually. One of the town's usual troublemakers, actually- tried to set fire to Shaula- she's the one of the baron's lady companions who has her child. In the family apartments in the castle.

He made a mess of it and was caught, but told about three different stories as to who had hired him and who he was supposed to kill, and who let him in to do it; the physical damage he did was limited to ruining a set of bedsheets, but the moral damage, everyone suspecting everyone else- if that was what the assassin was really supposed to do, it succeeded brilliantly.' she tries to smile sadly, it turns into a yawn she manages to suppress.

'Oh, there are some wild rumours floating around about Edric's Elbow and the defeat of an elven renegade there. Was that really you?'

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

My advice- stop pushing yourself to 2 a.m. It's a little better for communicating with the Californians, but don't punish yourself too badly for our sake.

Also, dark elves, wow, today is going to be just like yesterday only photonegative! Joy.

IC:

"...Sort of. There were two of them, brother and sister, ranger and enchantress. We fought the sister yesterday morning- that was at the fort proper, she'd bespelled Sir Ymbert earlier, Caer Edric was being run by master Hywel, his squire- very good young man, I think. Anyhow, Bryan, a man-at-arms traveling with us, figured out that she was trying to enchant us, called her out. She tried to make a fight of it, but with so many there..." Larric shakes his head. "I can't believe it was only yesterday. It feels more like a week and change."

"Our party, Sir Alfred, Bryan, Eliska, they did most of it, I suppose. Not that the garrison weren't willing, but they weren't down in the middle of the illusions and the fogs to do it. Once they'd closed in on her, kept her from slipping off in the confusion- she never had a chance, I think. Me, I got a few arrows off her way; by the time anything hit her, it wouldn't have mattered."

[Larric generally doesn't deny his magical abilities, but doesn't advertise them, since he's not square with the guild- still planning to straighten that out when there's time, and carefully not using his powers for trade, against law-abiding people, things like that, so that he'll have the best possible set of excuses come the day]

"We went on from there- a nervous walk, because we were sure her brother would be laying for us. He might have killed us all, too, if we hadn't run into another band of elves, six of them, at a loggers' camp just north of the ford. They were looking for him too, to police him up- though I don't know what they were planning to do when they found him. The elves helped us, their chief was badly hurt when the fight came. It was... like before, trickery and magic against steel and numbers, only he was better at it. Bryan dead, Alfred wounded- the healing had him out of it all day, like you saw."

"So... aye, we had a hand in that, and wound up doing more of the fighting than anyone else who'll tell the tale of how it happened. We didn't go out looking for a fight with elven sorcerors, we're... mostly not mad, anyhow-" he whispers "-though I wonder about Eliska sometimes."

"But in the end it turned out to be them or us, and... better them than us, I guess."

[Feralgnoll]

OOC:

My advice- stop pushing yourself to 2 a.m. It's a little better for communicating with the Californians, but don't punish yourself too badly for our sake.

I agree. Stay healthy and in good mental shape!

I will get a good scent of the Stalkers, trying to figure out what they are, then try to skirt the that ambush sight with a relatively wide berth, unless terrain dictates otherwise. Ill have to attempt to remember to tell the magic users this information when I become human again. I will plan on the speeding to the most likely area, as a camp for two thousand men should be easier to find.

[Panzersharkcat]

(OOC: Am I still out of it? If I am, I snort and mutter about intact suits of very ancient armor buried underneath the city. It's based on some weird dream I had when I took a nap today involving me back in high school in a band performance in casual wear wandering off and finding a cave system with very well preserved suits of Roman legionary armor, with skeletons still in them. I naturally fucked up all proper archaeological procedure and looted the armor. That somehow segued into me back at the performance, not knowing what the hell I'm doing, and suddenly listening to the band directors performing some country song or another which then segued into a sermon and people trampling on my looted armor. Then some kid got dragged away for wearing an SS shirt, which I assume was influenced by the Marine thread in N&P, and it ended soon after. What.)

[Simon_Jester]

ECR said your character would be awake with no worse than a thick head. Consider yourself movable.

[Panzersharkcat]

(OOC: I missed that.)

Alfred shakes his head, notices that he's not anywhere near an elf clutching his jewels, and asks, "What happened since I got healed? I remember waving to somebody but that's it."

[Simon_Jester]

"We made it to Qulan. The priestess of Chelet* here granted us sanctuary. The verderer's not here, but we sent... "Mr. Snuggles" off with a message for him. I think we owe a lot to Lady Tamarin, who met us at the gate and took us up to the castle hill. If we can hold out until Sir Lautern gets back, I think we should be all right."

*goddess of community/family

[Panzersharkcat]

"Ah." He gets up and starts stretching out. Still a bit sore, after all.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

To be honest with the dark elves, svartalfven, I really have achieved some kind of wierd inversion- there's a lot of talking to be done about this when you actually meet them, but because of the hole they've been driven into (literally, although in deep- historic time), they simply haven't had room to be as nuts as most of their surface dwelling kin, and have had to compromise with reality to a greater extent; for one thing they tend to sort things out among themselves and then do things for reasons the rest of the world can at least start to understand, it's the surface dwellers who usually hand you a bag of snakes.

'I've never had to do anything like that, I used to...' Tamarin starts to say, breaks off to collect herself, continues. 'I was always teasing Merric about how anything he could do, I could too, except now I'm finding out- I keep imagining hearing him laughing at me, and looking and finding him not there.

You carried on, you didn't look for trouble but dealt with it when it came, with loss, you found frieds to help you through it and did what you had to do. Thank you.'


jumping back to the night- there aren't two thousand men, there are a little over a hundred- two thousand total before this, including house guards, bailiff's and sheriff's men, game hunters, knights' retinues, all sorts- everyone actually expected to wield a weapon added up to about that many. Roughly half survived the attack of the Striking Phoenix, and to be honest the constable has to take most of the credit for that- he sensibly wasn't there.

The rumour is that he ran away, the testimony offered by people who were standing next to him at the time in fact, but since then he's managed to spread it about that he meant it that way, draw them away from the civil target and fight them in the open countryside. (Why they didn't think it worth pursuing him and splattering him...hmmm.)

Detrick took about one in eight with him, so there are a group of about a hundred and twenty at most, less dropouts and losses- still easily enough to be noticed.

The dark elves are odd- as expected; lots of mingling scent, hot rock being one of them-three or four giant spiders, several lizards, at least two of them (from the occasional small puff of smoke) salamanders under blankets of black light, a couple large and fleshy- giant monitor lizards, and they look like they actually have some kind of artillery- class bolt thrower strapped to their back; around a dozen individuals, at least four or five of them human. Good light and noise but poor scent discipline.

Oh. A distinct whiff of the same kind of alchemy that was being used to drive the odd wolf earlier. Not quite the same, along the same lines but not identical.

[Feralgnoll]

jumping back to the night- there aren't two thousand men, there are a little over a hundred

Sorry, I meant to find the base camp where they gathered together before the battle. Thinking it would be easiest to find.

Detrick took about one in eight with him, so there are a group of about a hundred and twenty at most, less dropouts and losses- still easily enough to be noticed.

I will be trying to pick up this scent at the base camp.

In regards to the Dark Elves, I assume they are the ones that are tracking the vile alchemy. I want to sneak close enough to hear any tidbits of conversation they may let out, wait for about 2 hours then sneak away and continue on my journey. I want to sneak towards them in a straight line. Then go backwards away from them loop around, and view the camp from another straight line. http://www.umass.edu/armyrotc/Training/recon.pdf Look for figure 3-3. Its what I will be attempting to do. Also before I go I will be rolling around in dirt, mud and on trees to mask my scent.

Oh. A distinct whiff of the same kind of alchemy that was being used to drive the odd wolf earlier. Not quite the same, along the same lines but not identical.

Staying as far away from that as possible.

OOC: I never spent my points, and spending them right before an encounter seems like metagaming to me. So I would like to put 2 points into stealth and 2 points into perception after I get back to the party. Also as for my appearance as a wolf, I would like to be slightly bigger and darker than the standard wolves of the area.

[Simon_Jester]

Inane OOC banter:

[Hmm, come to think of it, what is the Banter skill good for? I took it mostly because I unable to imagine a character in an ECR-related setting who can't do it. At least, not one with any real life expectancy.]

OOC: I never spent my points, and spending them right before an encounter seems like metagaming to me. So I would like to put 2 points into stealth and 2 points into perception after I get back to the party.

It's all a question of ethics, I guess- I recall the two points I've spent on Animal Handling to "buy" that mule I started with, purely to satisfy my own sense of appropriateness.

But there's nothing wrong with being a bit situational, either, in my opinion: note that I spent most of my points on marksmanship and magic the day we were going to fight those elves, and on 'political' skills that night when I knew we were going to get embroiled in politics.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Points into stealth and perception makes an eminent degree of sense, both in general and in terms of what Rohal has ended up doing- the eyes and ears of the group.


--
Just as well you were deciding to trail the dark elves from a distance, then, because that kicks off.

The elves know they're being pursued, start setting an ambush, and the svartalfven run at them, to close them down before they can finish setting it up.

It's a good fight to be a long way away from. Much zap flies- opening with two artillery bolts from the lizards, both of them tipped with something that burns with alchemical fire, not for the heat as much as for the light- brilliantly, disorientingly bright.

They land and illuminate the elves, who waste time trying to put them out with earth and water; the svartalfven attack animals go in first, the salamander, unveiled now, leading and drawing attention and bowshot on itself and away from the rest.

They can't afford not to shoot it, try to put it down as quickly as possible, throw lots of magic arrows at it; which are answered by the svartalfven's own shooters, including one who looks as if he's using a sling to launch small clay pots filled with alchemical substances.

The salamander eventually slinks away wounded, but does what it was for- let the more fragile others, animals and intelligent beings, get close.

The sensible elves- four of them- run at this point, one of them getting kebabbed in the process. The actual beings, dark elves, moved up during that and come in on the flanks of the group who stayed to shoot. The close combt phase of the fight is over in seconds.

Dark elf victory, and a very comprehensive one at that. Enough flares of light and thaumaturgy doing it to draw attention, though, so they prepare to move off very quickly, not really stopping to tidy up.

Doing anything?

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

I hope, for sentiment's sake, those weren't the same elves who helped us earlier that day.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Too many of them, not the same tactics, moving in the wrong direction- almost certainly not. The svartalfven do have a prisoner, and they quickly wrap him in silk from their giant spiders and head south. The smell does go with them.


Some time after that, heading looking for Detrick again- and if he gets a battle out of this he'll be a happy man; for them, finding the bandits and outlaws to fight them is going to be the hard part.

A few buildings, shelters and outbuildings, bothies and prospectors' temporary shacks, some of which probably have people lurking in them; one incident along the way, and from deep underneath- a surge of magic, half hidden, occluded by something above it; fire and earth and darkness and strange small flares dotting it. Worth bearing in mind for later.


That looping search pattern is a team exercise, isn't it- a body of troops, a platoon or so, moves to a base point and sends out scouts from there, remains in place to support them until the pattern is completed, moves on to uncleared ground, if I understand it; it's a search to be conducted by at least more than one person. There's only one of you; I'm not sure that's appropriate.

Covering ground fast may be more appropriate, especially in the broken hills and valleys where you could easily lose a hundred men, or two thousand if it came to that. Eventually, horses. That's what gives them away- the trail of horse crap and the smell of wool and saddle oils. It looks like two hills, one with an earthwork wall around it, one not, the one with the wall ahs maybe sixty men inside, the bare hilltop something like thirty horse and a hundred men. Plan?

[White Haven]

Aaaalrighty, fluff? Fairly well sorted. Crunch? Still working on that bit. Main stats, skills, fairly well settled, but the magic system seems to be made up entirely of crowbars, especially since the revamp. The number of points required to build up to even basic competence levels seems...extreme. I'll toss you a PM with what Simon and I cooked up so far and see what we can make of it.

[Feralgnoll]

OOC: Sorry for the delay I was out on a date with my Fiancee for Valentines. And the search pattern I posted is supposed to be done with 2 teams of 2. Its Squad level tactics for a squad of 9. A platoon recon mission would have 4 of these types of missions going on simultaneously, but its also Cold War tactics that ROTC teaches us out of an outdated manual, but there is some tactical value there. Yay military. That plan was based upon if the Dark Elves were not moving, now that they are...

OOC 2: Nice battle description!

IC: Ill inspect the battle field after the Dark Elves leave, looking for clues and different things I can take back to the party magic users. Then move on towards Detrick

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

The problem is that you need totally different tactics for one man than for multiple teams of two men. When you're one man trying to watch an enemy, and you turn your back on him to circle away and circle back... well, that has problems.

So when you set up something like that, under conditions different from the ones they were taught to you, you have to ask why the tactics are like that, and whether it's such a good plan.

Oh, one thing. If you're interested in tactics, may I advise that you read The Defence of Duffer's Drift? It was a very good manual written after the Boer War, about the transition from premodern to modernish tactics.

http://www.marines.mil/news/publication ... 0Drift.pdf