Homebrew tabletop game system thread the II

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Yes, he thought about it and decided it would be too petty to do.

Nothing appears to have gone catastrophically wrong in the rest of the castle, it's all still there, a couple of minor incidents. A theft, one of the younger guild members going a shade mad and having to be lassooed down off the battlements, an incense burner exploding at morning prayers in the temple of the chief of the gods. A few bad omens, nothing of imminent catastrophe.

[Simon_Jester]

Larric takes the rare opportunity to sleep in a little, assuming that having an ogre crashing around doesn't make that impossible (I feel sorry for Dirt, it's got to be painfully cramped for him getting around inside the castle). Routine morning ablutions proceed as usual, with the traditional burst of startlement when there turns out to be a newt in the water he's splashing into his face.

He goes looking around for other people in the party, to see if they're up and/or eating yet.

[Kaelan]

Dirt wakes up early, a hang up from his days with the Svartalfven. How’s the saying go – ‘he who wakes up last never wakes up’. Then a quick check around the room – (sound, smell, eyes) for death traps, intruders and other unpleasant surprises about his person before he starts to slowly move.

A cautious opening of the door, and he pokes fifi out for a quick check followed by himself. Waiting for a servant to head down the passageway. Given how much on tenderhooks the humans here are Dirt’s going to put off going wandering around the castle and town until the rest of the party wake up. As soon as he sees one he’ll just offer one instruction “Food” and give a friendly smile. With luck food will come back. He doesn’t want a repeat of last time when he dug something to eat up from one of their ‘giveyards’ and they got all upset.

Assuming food comes back Dirt will eat, feed fifi and keep some aside for those who are sleeping in. In the interim he will mentally run through what’s in his backpack and what he thinks they are going to need to travel up into the mountains. Firs, blankets, tents, rope, and food (for this lot - Dirt doubts they can survive on grass, weeds, and bark) come to mind immediately. From past experience a few dozen stout iron spikes with a sturdy hammer might also come in handy along with a block and tackle.

When Larric wakes up and finds the newt.
“You going to eat that?”
If not, Dirt will feed it to fifi as a treat.

[Kaelan]

OOC
hope this works...

FiFi in Dirts eyes

[Kaelan]

and in everybody elses

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Hm, obviously with the shield, it'll have to go face up so everyone will see- and generic stats for Fifi; I'll just give her a monster stat line and we can fill in things like personality later. On average most such plants are quite grumpy, that being what they're for, but Fifi, having had a chance to see the world, is probably more outgoing and friendly. Although being covered in poisonous spines, only somebody with thick skin (ahem, Dirt) can safely pet her. She's going to hate it when he's not able to carry her around any more.

Young semi- sentient carnivorous plant, bite 10 dv 8, sting (prickly like a nettle) 14, dv 5+ paralytic poison, dr 4 wounds 3, perception (heat, smell) 14;

these will change as she grows, and come to think of it could probably have XP spent on them.


The castle servants mostly work to the deVerett family- although spying could be accomplished for a small fee; they are not the greatest admirers of the party at the moment. There is a long wait, during which it would be reasonable to expect some argument takes place, before they come back with a fairly mixed assortment of stuff.

Someone has thought 'give them any old rubbish, they're no friends of ours', someone else has clearly thought 'bribery's cheap, give them something decent and see if we can't win them over a little'; a large earthenware jar full of hot porridge, two large loaves, but a bit on the fusty side, two small loaves of fine white bread still warm from the oven, a string of lukewarm- ish sausages and a cold roast loin of beef, a large jug of small beer and a small jug of wine.

The rest of the castle is starting to wake up too, nobody bothers you for a while, although somebody probably will sooner or later.

[Simon_Jester]

Ah, porridge!

[noms]

[rewind tape slightly]

And yes, the newt bounced on the floor after Larric found it by accidentally flinging it in his face along with the splash of cold water. The alchemist is quick enough on the uptake to realize what Dirt is talking about, obliging enough to be willing to hand over the newt, and just barely fast enough to catch it without undue effort, before it skitters away.

"If you like... here."

[plant noms]

Not sure exactly what to say about Fifi, Larric simply watches the plant eat the newt, murmuring... "looks elvish." Lacking much faith in the ogre's Kuquanese outside of dream-logic, he tucks into a bowl of the porridge with a few bits of sausage sliced into it, and doesn't start a conversation. He's probably not sure how much of the complicated dream to believe, at least until he does start talking with someone- dream-visits are hardly unheard of, but they're not the default assumption.

When Sir Alfred gets to an approximately woken-up state, Larric looks at him a little strangely. "Do you remember a dream last night that felt... real?"

[Kaelan]

"funny snake, pig, and bush man?"

Dirt will wait until everybody has eaten before finishing off the rest, remembering not to eat the crockery this time.

[Simon_Jester]

"Yes, the druid- his name was... Aburon!" He looks at the ogre a little more nervously than usual. "So all those things you said..."

[Kaelan]

"D man run castle. We help. lady no come back to hurt. Yes?"

Dirt's thinking that with more practice he may yet master this language.

[Simon_Jester]

Larric nods slowly and in an exaggerated way, and smiles. "Yes. That's good. I'm glad."

He looks around at the others, whoever's awake. "Do the rest of you remember this, or is it just me and him?"

[Panzersharkcat]

"Yes," he says as he eats. "I remember. The druid fit his description. Thought he woke me up in the middle of the night. Wish I wasn't so rude to him."

[Kaelan]

OOC:
Now appears to be a good a time as any to transpose Dirts Character sheet. Note that this is post XP spend on Culture (human).

Dirt "Deadhead"

Social
Temper: 10
Plant Handling 11]
Resist Magic 5
Intimidate 7

Fellowship: 8
Culture (elf) 8
Culture (orc) 8
Culture (human) 5

Charm: 8
Plant Handling 9
Resist persuasion 8

Mental
Logic: 12
Artillerist 8
Herbalism 10
Perception 9
Physician 9

Creativity: 12
Art (flowers) 8
Musical Inst. (skull bongos) 12
Surgeon 10

Education : 8
Craft (plants) 8
Monstrology 8
Survival 5

Physical
Strength: 19
Athletics 14
Axe 16
Brawl 12
Shield 13

Endurance: 24
Athletics 18
Resist injury 20
Res. Dis. 18
Survival 16

Agility: 12
Athletics 8
Dodge 11
Crossbow 11

Magic
Forces: 2
Fauna 2
Earth 2

Talents: 2
Flora 3
Motion 1

Advantages
3ap Cast iron stomach.
Dirt likes “spicy” (re poisonous for most species) food. A hang up from when his former boss would try out concoctions on him.

3ap Supernatural alertness
This ability is how Dirt has managed to stay alive for so long, and avoid plants that would misbehave by trying to bite him as well as general elf sneakiness. It’s also why he never bothered to learn how to be stealthy as in his mind nobody is – they just walk funny sometimes.

Disadvantages
3ap bad reputation (humans)
Being the subject of fireplace tales, and the fact that small children cry and villages lock their doors when dirt walks through tends to make him feel a bit unloved at times. No actual criminal offence as such, just general prejudice by the population at large.

3ap Code of honour\duty (loyalty)
In Dirt’s mind and upbringing the group is more important than the individual. Once he has bonded with a social group he will view them as a form of family. He will stand in front of incoming arrows, be the last to leave and enter combat against suicidal odds to protect those who he would consider part of his extended family. This would be a 5ap disadvantage, but Dirt has to bond with the group first.

2ap Duties (baby plant)
Dirt has a small plant he is nurturing from his former job. It’s still young and needs training, but is mostly content eating small creatures such as rats and the like.

2ap Phobia (large bodies of water)
Dirt can’t swim, and as such does not like any water that come higher than his waist, or getting his head wet. This can make bath times fun.

[White Haven]

"Hmm. Seemed...remarkably incoherent for a supposedly-coherent dream. I guess it's all about context. Still, I slept fantastically once I stopped trying to pay attention to the timewalking dreamdruid, so that's a consolation prize. Still, wish it would have made enough sense for me to ask him more about how he managed it, that would have been interesting, while less astronomically hazardous as oh dear I can't believe I asked the Countess for a tutorial." Verone, mid-sentence, sort of...catches up on what he's been doing the past day or so and more or less slithers to a halt, blinking owlishly. Not that he wasn't there for it, but it was just all so damned interesting that he didn't...really...consider the implications at the time.

Blink.

Blink blink.

Blink.

"Excuse me, I need to work out how to counter that little implosion trick she showed me, on the assumption that she'll probably test it out on me if we ever cross paths again."

With that, Verone begins fishing through his pack, finally withdrawing a sturdily-bound field notebook and leafing through it until he reaches a blank page.

((If Larric peeks, the entire thing is nothing but margin-to-margin diagrams and runic notations, not a single character of any actual nonmagical language to be found.))

[Feralgnoll]

How many XP points do I have?

[Panzersharkcat]

(OOC: You have six.)

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Six points, yes.

The problem with what Verone's trying to do is that it depends on a couple of things he simply doesn't have yet- hasn't learned yet, and with time and mastery really should. There's no practical or legal wall between him and them, not for an accredited guildsman, but the casting she showed him depends very much on the higher arcanism, magic that primarily and purposedly affects other magic; and he tries to break it down, comes to the realisation that it's a lot more complicated than it looked at first.

There's not one twist in it, there are at least three; light and sense to fool the eyes, something religious-exotic and insight to fool the mind, induction and antimagic to fool the casting- in theory, it ought not to work at all. It's too complicated for something to be done in the field, at night, by hand and eye. This is something that you inscribe into the floor as a trap for an intruder- or as a prison- not cast on the fly.

Perhaps she had more than a simple trick in mind- subvert this and that's a long step towards thaumaturgical escapology in general; likely that he may have to escape from something like this in the future. That the group may have to. Hm.

[Simon_Jester]

Larric does look over Verone's shoulder; he's beginning to get a pretty good idea how the man thinks.

"Just remember, she's on the other side of a wide river from the common run of wizards. Be careful you don't wind up soaked by trying to vault over it in one go. I know know about you, but I couldn't keep all those chords, that round-ripple-thing, the in-and-out, and the backspin all in my head at once, I think my ears would start smoking if I tried to keep up with a quarter of it. Maybe an eighth."

It would take a very long explanation for Verone to grasp exactly what Larric is talking about, not because it isn't anything he didn't know was in the shield-breaker already, but because it's being talked about in terms of ad hoc vocabulary invented by someone who sees magic in vibrations-and-waves terms foreign to his frame of reference. Explaining it formally would probably require a significant pile of higher mathematics or linguistic shortcuts equivalent thereto... which Larric doesn't actually know.

[Feralgnoll]

Ok so I'm a little rusty on the level up rules but I put points into tracking, stealth, dodge, and perception.

Temper; 11 base 4 (8)
Determination 14,

Fellowship; 10 base 3 (6)
Human Perception 9, Streetwise 9

Charm; 9 base 3 (6)
Animal handling 9 , Resist persuasion 9

Logic; 13 base 4 (8)
Geology 6 , Herbalism 6 , Perception 10 , Physician 6, Tracking 10

Creativity; 12 base 4 (8)
Musical instrument 8 (violin) , Scrounge 8, Surgeon 8, Tactics 8

Education; 10 base 3 (6)
Apothecary 6, Vet 6

Strength; 12 base 4 (8)
Axe 8 , wolf attacks 12

Endurance; 13 base 4 (8)
Resist survival 8, Resist injury 9, Resist disease 9,

Agility; 15 base 5 (10)
Athletics 10, Dodge 10, Stealth 11, Survival 10; Archery 14

[Simon_Jester]

OOC: Oops. Typo. Corrected here:

"Just remember, she's on the other side of a wide river from the common run of wizards. Be careful you don't wind up soaked by trying to vault over it in one go. I don't know about you, but I couldn't keep all those chords, that round-ripple-thing, the in-and-out, and the backspin all in my head at once, I think my ears would start smoking if I tried to keep up with a quarter of it. Maybe an eighth."

[White Haven]

"I can swim quite well," Verone murmurs, distracted enough that the metaphor has more or less just glanced off his psyche, at least at first. At the increasingly-incoherent terminology, though, he frowns, replays the last few seconds in his mind, and then looks up with an arched eyebrow.

And then down at the rune-festooned page. And then up at Larric, and then he looks down again and...wiggles the book a bit. Then looks up again. His eyes narrow as thoughts play out over the inside of his eyeballs, and he speaks up at last, "Ball of fire. Describe it, in your own words."

[Kaelan]

"humph, and they watch me"

Dirt will start checking his pack. When done he'll start re-knotting his rope so the rest of the group can use it. When done he'll address the party "stores?"

[Simon_Jester]

Larric, to Verone:

"It's... round. And it's... on fire. That's about all I know. Or did you mean some ball of fire in particular?"

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Actually, Larric might be the best person for that too; he knows a man with a boatyard, so getting rope, spikes and things should be relatively easy.

There are clanging sounds- glancing out of the window- well, the shuttered hole in the wall, the hall has glass, the keep doesn't- there's a fight going on; after a couple of seconds, seems to be just friendly sparring- although there's a lot of flicker and flash happening.

Seems to be dame D'Avariel showing off or working something out of her system, probably both. She's attracting quite a few spectators; a lot of eyes. Calling them up one by one to cross swords with them.


What a perfect time for something sneaky to happen.


Oh, by the way, I'll be away in a field the next couple of nights- anything that needs to happen urgently, post soon.

[White Haven]

Not quite a facepalm, but the exasperated sigh definitely communicates a similar emotion. "Describe, if you would, your procedure for conjuring a ball of fire, presumably with the intention of hurling it at someone you would rather were on fire."