Homebrew tabletop game system thread the II

[Kaelan]

"Not being an expert on iconography I would be disinclined to pass judgement on the particulars, though there did tend to be a repeated pattern of blood, bone and sharp points. More prone to deep brooding as opposed to verbal expression. Rages were rare, more along the lines of controlled culling than a total loss of control. You are correct on the humour though – almost human like in its unnatural way.

In his defence it must be stated that he was old for his kind and quite unlike the adolescents. One has never met a more trying group of self-angst and iconoclast than amongst the young of the svartalfven.

Despite their flaws one has to admit that the svartalfven are relatively unbiased when it comes to interaction with other races.

A question in return, from whence did you learn the ancient tongue?"

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Is Dirt descended from Sir Humphrey Appleby, by any chance? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humphrey_Appleby

'The answer is obviously yes,' Detrick says adfter it is translated for him, 'and he's obviously had his brain damaged by them. Been tortured, had his will and spirit broken and been reduced to a blithering idiot. A question to which the answer is yes or no, and that- what happened, did they use him as a fool?

Question is, can we trust him- can you,' meaning the party, 'look after him and keep him out of trouble?'

There is some grumbling from the Bailiff in particular about this, along the lines of why not just kill him; Detrick's respons is 'Because that would be the easy choice. Too damn' much of that already.'

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

Is Dirt descended from Sir Humphrey Appleby, by any chance? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humphrey_Appleby

More likely an ancestor.

I think he's trying to talk erudite and elvish, and wound up with a cloud of obscurantism in place of a language.

IC:

'The answer is obviously yes,' Detrick says adfter it is translated for him, 'and he's obviously had his brain damaged by them. Been tortured, had his will and spirit broken and been reduced to a blithering idiot. A question to which the answer is yes or no, and that- what happened, did they use him as a fool?

Question is, can we trust him- can you,' meaning the party, 'look after him and keep him out of trouble?'

Larric eyes the ogre. Eyes Alfred and Eliska, eyes Verone, eyes his own hands. He thinks so, but pauses a moment in hopes that Alfred will speak.

[Panzersharkcat]

(OOC: Isn't Alfred already asleep? If he is, pretend what comes next did not happen.)

"Yes. Something tells me he will be easier to rein in than William."

[Simon_Jester]

Larric eyes Alfred again. Eyes the giant nine foot ogre. Remembers William.

Tries to figure out which of his companions he can give a look of "my gods, you and I are the only sane ones in the room!" There's Alfred... no. Just no. Eliska? Definitely not. Verone? Ah, shit. Rohal? Possibly.

The werewolf is the sanest man in the room. Life is good.

Nodding to Alfred. "At least he's a simple problem. But I must ask a boon, milord, if it comes to cases, would you mind being the one to armwrestle him?"

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

That comment earns Larric bravado points; good.

Time to unwind, then, and after Dirt has it explained that no, this really is it, this is the castle, off to the room set aside, and thence to sleep- anyone doing anything paranoid, setting watches, setting wards and tripwires for that matter? In theory, you are on freindly territory. Mind you, most of them are probably a little paranoid too.


Whose XP am I still looking for? Larric is in- oh, and yes you can spend XP on adv/disadv in play, cost varies by exactly how relevant it is- one for one for direct, two for one indirect, three for one tangential.

Dirt? he did get two- and this is as good a time as any to put up the character sheet.

Alfred is in, so that's Rohal, Eliska (have Sorchus and Feralgnoll been seen recently, and is it time to be worried yet?) and Verone to post.


I'll wait a little for them to check in, brfore going on to what happens in the dreams of those abed.

[Kaelan]

Dirt looks at the bailiff’s head thoughtfully followed by Detrick
In ogre to himself “C sharp, B”

OOC
Trust me, this is Civil servant speak lite. I can do heavy if you so wish......

Dirt blathers in elvish as a survival mechanism, and as a side effect of his previous job. Why this is so is up to the party to find out.

Side note (XP spend) cultures (Human). PM to ECR of current sheet. I will put it out public after Dirt is more integrated into the party so as not to raise too many questions as of yet.

Back IC
Resisting the temptation to respond to Detrick directly, having understood everything he said, he will wait to see how the party respond. If no response is forthcoming he will address the sorceress again. “I have answered your questions; will you be showing the same manners by answering mine?”

[Kaelan]

OOC
Appeared to have posted after ECR.
Forget the questions to the sorceress, they can wait for another time. When I get a spare moment I will transer the CS over into a post. Most likely will be on\just after the weekend.

[Kaelan]

(double post)

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

The guildswoman says 'Oh, yes. They occasionally passed this way openly in happier times, the surface dwellers that is, and their more liberal wing were happy to share such things- proud of the poetry of the language. it's quite different from the version you speak- more sweeping and less baroque at a base, but it has blossomed out into more dialects than even they can keep track of.'

Anything else, any more comments about the architecture? Not built for Ogres, by the way- never mind this ten foot room nonsense, castles are built out of very heavy stone and the less of it you need, the less airy and spacious it is, the easier to put up, tougher- and cheaper- it'll be.


Oh. Right. Thence to the land of lucid dreaming, then?

[Panzersharkcat]

(OOC: Feralgnoll posted a while back in the SDNW5 threads.)

[Kaelan]

Before lying (sitting?) down to sleep Dirt will hold his evening conversation with fifi.

In elvish.....

For about an hour.....

And then settle down with one arm around fifi, whilst fifi stands guard.

[Simon_Jester]

Dirt looks at the bailiff’s head thoughtfully followed by Detrick
In ogre to himself “C sharp, B”

I would be very amused to learn what that means.

OOC
Trust me, this is Civil servant speak lite. I can do heavy if you so wish......

Dirt blathers in elvish as a survival mechanism, and as a side effect of his previous job. Why this is so is up to the party to find out.

...A past of being surrounded by ferocious and unforgiving elvish masters would be my first guess. Possibly used by one ferocious and unforgiving elf as an expendable goon to tell other, equally ferocious and unforgiving elves bad news...?

[Kaelan]

In the words of Tolkien:

'Go not to the elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes.'

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

PM sent to Feralgnoll and Sorchus.


Eventually, enough nothing happens to let you actually get some rest; there are a few wails and shrieks around the place, a few moments of panic, and at least one prophet of doom shouting loudly- ended by an abrupt thudding noise as of a cudgel to the head.

Everybody's tired. It dies down.

There are long moments of quiet, sliding off into dream- and after some confusion, you find yourselves all in a sunlit forest glade, paths in and out; the light in the air is wrong, it's somewhere to the south of here, but it is green and leafy.

I presume there will be a moment of 'what are you doing in my dream', before a young man walks into the clearing.

Above middle height, wearing what looks like a hedgerow, leaf armour, and looking apart from that as if he'd been dragged through one backwards; long straggly dark hair, clean shaven, sparrowhawk perched on one shoulder, leaning on a staff that has been prudently improved by having an axe blade grafted to it;
looks a bit off hand, absent minded, as if he's contantly thinking of other things and the hawk occasonally has to remind him what's actually in front of him. A huge war- boar shambles along behind him.

'Actually, I think you're in mine. Hello.'

[Panzersharkcat]

He groggily says as he reaches for his hammer, "Umm. Hello. Who are you and why are you barging in on us in our sleep?"

[Simon_Jester]

After hearing the leafy man's predictable reply to Sir Alfred's predictable remark, Larric chimes in. He's feeling a little punchy (okay, a lot punchy) and probably had something to drink before going to bed- it may not have worn off yet.

"All right then, who are we and why are we barging into your- waait a minute, that didn't come out right. Hello, my name is Larric if you didn't know that already..." he looks expectantly at the leafy man.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

'It was one of those if only I knew then what I know now moments; I found myself with a little time between crises, and with a few new tricks since the last bloody disaster to try out, so I decided I might as well actually do it- tell my younger self some of the things that I wish I'd known about beforehand.'

The hawk rolls it's eyes at this point; the boar looks skeptical too. Boars are surprisingly good at that, it turns out.

'It sort of worked, with the usual wish fulfilment effect; only I managed to get the dates wrong, which might actually be why it came off, and besides when I remember what I was like then I wouldn't bloody listen anyway.

So I decided to drop in on whoever else was about, anyone else in the run screaming into ludicrous danger trade, and your minds sort of floated to the top of the pond.'

[Feralgnoll]

OC: Sorry for long delay in posting, a bunch of IRL things went down.

IC: Does Rohals senses detect anything? Trying to confirm or deny if we are in a dreamworld, as well as anything that could be at our backs.

[Kaelan]

Damn it.
Red leaves at night and green leaves in the morning.

Best sit back and see how this trip pans out.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Rohal's sense of the unnatural- welcome back, by the way- is perplexed; so many different flavours of odd. The prime scent, the one that comes without thinking about it, is of the powers used to do this, and it's hard to make sense of them because they're not mainstream, not mainstream at all.

There are a lot of different strands woven into it, some almost priestly, most emanating from a will shaped like a blob instead of a sharp point some with the deep cutting, sitting hard on the world definition of divinely imposed power; all show splash and splatter as if they were put together very quickly, a watercolour of a rite, a little precision sacrificed to a great deal of speed.

You are in a guided lucid dream, he's doing the guiding; could be very ugly if he chose for it to be, but no sign of that at the moment.

The being himself, virtually everything is magical in some way- somewhere in his bundles and baggage, he has a very odd looking crystal sword that has something of the countess' scent about it and a composite bow, the boar and the sparrowhawk both share headspace with him- he has an empathic link there, and there are scents of other links to things that aren't in the dreamspace with him. Including a certain white furred she wolf.

Oddly, you get the sense that he's much more powerful than he thinks he is. Anyone with that kind of ability- and on the ethereal plane he looks like nothing so much as a slightly amnesiac archangel- ought to have at least some tendencies to maniacal laughter; he doesn't.

[Simon_Jester]

OOC, but in Larric's voice- he doesn't know what Rohal is sensing, but he'd say this if he did- "I think I'm starting to like him already."

IC:

Larric mutters to himself: "That settles it, this is the third strangest thing to happen since breakfast. Definitely third." He might be able to perceive that this is really happening (so to speak) but he doesn't entirely trust his own judgment in the matter. And, well, the leafy dream-mage (druid?) didn't interrupt anything important, some nonsense about lampblack, phlogiston, and a snake biting its own tail is all. That wouldn't have amounted to anything.

"It wasn't my fault, I thought I'd do the old hometown a favor and then elves started happening, and then everything went mad and-" arc lamp!- "do you know a lady named Catarin, down around Coroghan?"

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

The hawk turns round to look at Larric, and the druid follows it half a second later.

'Ah. This has been one of those days, has it? I actually missed this bit, what happened?

Catarin- yes, I know her, she's a good person. On the side of life. On the elves, um, how much do you want to know?'

[White Haven]

Silence stretched out as Verone looked around from person to person to person, his lips moving soundlessly as he murmured something to himself. Finally, as conversation began to pick up in the impossible space with the unlikely menagerie, he just shook his head and muttered, "Must have missed some context. Or I hope so, because otherwise there's no reason for anyone else to be pretending this makes sense."

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

Larric's response deserves a bit of thought- unless someone else wants to, he's liable to launch into a quick summary of events, including the full list of strange things that happened to him today.

Getting it out before ECR goes to bed is unlikely, though, so I'll hold off for a while, especially since other people deserve a turn.