Homebrew tabletop game system thread the II

[Kaelan]

OOC short post as I have to dash out, will add more when i get back.

IC

Faced with a deranged elf (but with Larric out of the way) Dirt is going to try a different track. He assumes the elf is expecting to fence round heavy ogre blows. Dirt is going to fight in a more defensive manner. Use his shield and reach to buy more time and hold the elf up as we have the advantage of numbers and time.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

The elf does something thaumaturgical; seeing that Dirt is intending to fight defensively and buy time for everyone else to get him, his longsword glows briefly, white and resonating, and he stabs at Dirt's shield, quick fencing thrust and retrieve; the shield starts to wobble, shake, building rapidly- it's probably going to tear itself to bits before long.

He steps back to disengage and whistles for the horses to come to him.


It was a pressure point strike, intended to paralyse and possibly take hostage; resisting that is, well, from numb and unresponsive, Larric starts to have feeling come back into his legs- accompanied by the worst case of pins and needles of his life.

Tamarin, still in her armour, hears to commotion and runs out to see what the fuss is. The elf would have attacked her- tried to stab through one of the vision slits in her helmet actually- but he was too busy trying to resist and deflect Larric's stunning arc, which he managed to do but it takes the time and energy he would have used to strike. He's a litle zorched and impaired, not floored.

[Panzersharkcat]

At the time this is happening, Alfred is sprinting for the elf and will swing for his torso.

[Kaelan]

Right, less fancy this time.

Dirt discards the shield before it does anything too strange whilst in his hand, and presses his attack on the elf trying to close him down, If the horses get too close he's not opposed to taking out their legs as well in order to prevent this foe from running. We've tried the velvet glove, now time for the iron gauntlet. If the elf lives thru this its a bonus - he tried to kill one of our own.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

The heavy hammer comes out, and the elf manages to catch sight out of the corner of his eye- what the elf tries to do is to limbo under it, dodging, and trying to use the momentum to propel Alred into Dirt, leaving them tangled and himself with room to run- it doesn't work. He manages to flow out of the ay of the hammer, but leaves himself off balance, and more or less trapped between you all.

Dirt's actually fastest and- what happens is almost funny, if you have a really warped sense of humour. The ogre swings for the elf, but it's fairly wild, reaching down at him, at an angle that gives him a chance to evade. He dances out of the way, turns to judge the leap onto the back oif his horse- and Dirt simply reverses the axe in his hand and brings it back along the same path, and damn' near cuts him in half.

Alfred and Tamarin both hit him, and living is very distinctly out of the question. He's got three wounds each of which would be enough to kill. Down and out.

What now?

[Kaelan]

Resit the urge to take his skull and turn the rest of the body into a totem pole to warn off other elves......
I really feel sorry for the next elf that the party runs into.

Oh, and collect fifi and see if the shield has calmed down (or do I need to go raiding castle doors again).

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

Actually, of the list of all elves we've met, the ones that tried to kill us only make up 50% of the total. Maybe we should flip a coin next time. See how THEY like it for a change...

IC:

Larric calls out, a touch of panic in his voice. "Ah, Randolf? I'm... help? I feel like my leg's been asleep since 'prenticeship..."

He can feel his legs, but at the moment he almost wishes he couldn't...

The alchemist grits his teeth and mutters. "I'm starting to think the bloody Zarths are onto something..."

[Vehrec]

Randolf finally makes it out-and groans at the sight. "Well danm you lot. Here I just get started in there and you've gone and made it pointless now haven't you? The one in there won't take this well at all. We'll probably have to kill him to, and I haven't even worked out what I could use around here to treat his imbalance. Still." He toes the corpse and looks at it. "Not a total loss. I've been meaning to do a few sketches of the inside of an elf."

Slightly disturbing corpse appreciation aside, he goes for the diagnosis-and in the interest of saving time dipps into the life magic. "A bit of cheating, but sometimes we need our little advantages. Milady, I apologize, where were we?" Now that he finally has the time, he can look at her and then get back to dissect the dead elf.

[Simon_Jester]

"Tried to kill us for no damn reason... the Zarth bandits had more sense..." At least the Zarthans (the surviving ones) had the sense to run away when they were outgunned.

He tries to stagger to his feet and resist the picture in his head of Randolf's dissection- there aren't a lot of things that disturb him more. Back into the tavern, to the crowd of probably angry townsfolk, where he says, simply: "You were right and I was wrong." Then pauses just a moment, and says "You know, I still think the elves from around here aren't so bad, but these new Zarthan elves are even bloodier-handed than Zarthan men."

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Tamarin's injuries are a simple blunt physical trauma; they can easily be dealt with, a matter of strapping up the ribs really. As far as the stung one goes, it's an educated guess as to what Fifi actually poisoned him with but you can cook up something that has a good chance of working and stabilising him before he stops breathing. (Alchemy came up a very good success.)

He is savable, if you think you need him alive- or have a use for a prisoner, anyway.

Dirt's shield is not compromised, now- with the elf dead the magic fades to nothing before the repurposed door falls apart. Fifi is trying not to say 'I told you so', but not very hard. There are two confused horses, now, and the locals are also saying 'I told you so.'

As, for that matter, is Tamarin. 'Perhaps they are actually right, we are made of coarser stuff- loss and grief...leave their scars on the soul, but for most people there is still some anchor to the day to day, something that has to be done, a root to keep one from following the dead- they allow themselves to be affected too deeply, and the madness takes them, takes them away from what they once were.

They have let themselves become monsters, barbarians- and the worst is they seem to know it. We still have a task, though.'

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

Sorry about the edit, didn't expect to see you up.

IC:

Larric, in the tavern, doesn't much care anymore whether the other even madder elf lives or dies.

[Vehrec]

Randolf does care somewhat-prisoner or professional pride at work, who knows? Probably not him, introspection is not his calling. He'll treat the crazy elf-try and stabilize him and give him something to restore his equilibrium at the same time, but even so it's a half hearted effort, lacking in any real emphasis.

As for the elf corpse, well he's going to keep an eye on it and lay out his surgical tools and several blank or scraped clean sheets of paper for this. He's got human anatomy down pat, but elves are still a bit mysterious, where exxactly are the fine points of differentiation? How many cranial nerves? Is the appendix absent entirely, enlarged, the same? Questions one seldom gets a chance to answer, even more exciting because this fellow might be an even rarer example of Elven Abnormalities, the normal physiology distorted and warped my disease.

[Kaelan]

Finally, a Human who doesn’t waste food.

Dirt fish out his platter, eating knife, small jar of spices and set it down beside the humans stack of thin plates and strange knife (don’t really know how they’ll hold the food. Maybe it’s magical). Fifi on his other side. As he seems interested in elf heads he will proffer an elf skull as well for this new human to look at. Must be a thing about this village where people don’t go funny about such things. Must remember to come back here in the future.

“You serve or you want Dirt to?”

[Panzersharkcat]

If Dirt is trying to eat the elf, he'll slap Dirt's hand. If not, he'll just watch Randolf do his work out of curiosity. He won't touch anything, though.

[Kaelan]

OOC - waiting for Randolfs (Vehrec) response before I state Dirt's next action.

Dirt's not eating (yet) as the food has still to be served.

[Simon_Jester]

Larric, inside the tavern, hopes he's not hearing what he's hearing. Dirt has a very penetrating voice, when he isn't mistaken for distant thunderheads.

"Aye, you told me so... now, I hope the fairies didn't spirit away all the ale, because I think I need a drink."

Cue him being out of action and otherwise occupied for a few minutes, while he thinks, and possibly listens to someone rant at him about how stupid he was to think he could talk to the elves.

[Vehrec]

Randolf blanches and turns slightly green. "Serving? I'm not here to prepare a meal, I'm making an examination of the corpse. Gods, do you even know what's in an elf? I could make myself as mad as he was by eating him, never mind the ethical and spiritual implications. Look, this is to learn how to do my craft better. See these intestines for instance..."

Randolf rapidly begins to lecture on the parts of the elf, picking open his wounds with probes and pins, demonstrating not how to carve, but how the mechanism of the body works, at least by his understanding. It's inter-spaced with comparisons of elvish anatomy to it's Orcish and Human equivalents. Apparently, Orcs and humans die more regularly and Randolf has done this before...just not with an elf.

[Kaelan]

He’s not eating the elf....
He’s cutting it up to look inside it....
And the rest of the Humans are OK with this!
But just try to eat an elf you killed or play music and they throw a hissy fit.

See, this is the exact type of Human behaviour that causes Dirt so many problems (and social misunderstandings). This man has problems, but then again so does everybody else in the party so ‘meh’.

Saying sorry to Fifi (they can’t eat just yet, here have a small snack) and putting away his utensils.

Gods, do you even know what's in an elf?

In a low voice so as not to upset the other Humans in the village.
“Umm, yup.” Pointing at the opened up body
“Heart. Bit Chewy.
Stomach. Turn inside out. Wash. Good with stuffed oats, herbs and roast.
Liver, don’t eat. Make you feel sick. If must eat use fava beans.”

this is to learn how to do my craft better

Its also that for Dirt....

Other than that Dirt will try to grasp what he is being told. “You speak elf?”

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Right- the more detail I go into, the more likely I am to come up with something that steps over the line into complete nonsense. Bearing that in mind- and that there are things you really ought to be doing, remember?- the greatest points of divergence are digestive and glandular systems.

Their bone is odd, seems to bend more without breaking, but only in one direction; along the others it hardly bends at all. Muscle is recognisable, but more, ah, diagonal than human- often curves around rather than lies along the bone. They don't even really seem to have a stomach as such, and the liver, if that's what it is, is wrapped around the intestines all the way down- the heart looks as if it performs some of the functions of the human liver, too, it has three (?) extra ventricles and vents what it doesn't like back into the intestines.

Lots of filtration, lots of getting the maximum out of what they do eat; really odd, the lung tissue looks to be of different ages, as do parts of the intestine- is it possible that, in addition to the normal process of slow regeneration, they can actually dissolve and regrow parts of their own vital organs from time to time?

Glands- which Dirt will recognise as "the spicy bits"- everywhere. Most of them quite thickly nerved, too- there is a large nerve cluster above the heart that a lot of these lead to, but independent connections to the brain also. They have a spinal cord, but from the number of individual nerve lines running through the body they don't seem to be as dependent on it as humans.

This is all before going into the fine detail of each and every one- also, no appendix, anything solid that gets stuck gets chemically battered until it is small or well enough coated to excrete. There are thin layers of muscle around the lungs that suggest anything solid or liquid can be 'spat' back out to go down the right way.

Lots of differences intended to support a longer life, and avoid some of the accidents that befall humankind. The head is going to be equally wierd- is Randolf starting on that?

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

This is fun to read!

IC:

Larric would probably not agree with his player on this point. Also, things to do, right. Back inside the tavern, which probably at least has enough raw noise that it muffles the little clinkings and gratings and "good with fava beans..."

The alchemist finishes his drink. He stares into the clay mug for a moment, then sets it down. Looks about for someone relatively authoritative.

"Hullo. So, the news we came here with. It's like I said to the fellows in the other inn. Baron deVerett is alive, and with most of the men he vanished with. They're coming down out of the hills, and they'll want lunch too. Difference is, they don't want to run off with everything, just find something to eat on their way back to Qulan town. Might chase off the rest of those Zarth elves, even. They're long on things and short on food; I'm hoping they'll pay better than the elves, too."

[Vehrec]

OOC: Randolf does have other things to do I suppose, but doesn't that seem like somthing that will stop him now. He's a man on a mission, and how often do you get a chance to do drawings of the insides of an elf? And no, I don't really remember what else he has to do right now offhand...

IC: It's all very fascinating, the veins and arteries and nerves running to and from each gland, and while it's all still fresh, the body still cooling, he wants to get as much of it down on paper as he can. This results in a lot of hand washing, grabbing his pencil, and dashing down what he can see before going back in and moving bits around for a better view. Still, he can't know if this is typical or abnormal, and he's making a bit of a rushed job about it, so the sketches are rougher than what he would prefer.

Dirt is going to keep getting lectured to and a constant stream of speculation about all this. 'Seven chambered heart, they really are nothing like humans on the inside no matter how much they look it from the other point of view, are they?'

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

That's all right, a still slightly twitching but functional Larric is taking care of it. While trying to avoid the sights, and smells, of the dissection- which is being done outdoors, by torchlight, on cobbles, incidentally.

It's only fair to say the locals aren't particularly happy about it- they do not expect graciousness and moderation from deVerett, particularly, still less some of his men. A few names are mentioned that Alfred might know- who's dead and who isn't- Tamarin knows more.

Interestingly, the lord whose domain this village fell in was one of those who ended up in the cavern, and who appears not to have come out. Tamarin very carefully skirts round that.

Most of the locals are grumblingly preparing to do the right thing, there are a few mad sods who willl try to head for the hills anyway, as afraid of being eaten out by the Baron as by the elves.

Would be revolting peasants, there are a couple- but they're not doing very much, the death and dissection of the elf seems to have ended their warlike posing for a little. (When that story gets around, incidentally, Randolf will be a marked man.)

Rohal comes back, part way through the dissection- band of about fifty of them, rags and tatters and shiny swords, about ten miles away and lying up. Waiting for their scouts to report back, maybe.

[Kaelan]

Dirt nudges the doc (necromancer?) and points to the oncoming crowd.
“Best move body. They no like such stuff,” before heading into the tavern. Once inside he will head towards Alfred & Larric (who with luck hasn’t drunk too much and has regained use of his legs).

“Doc man check dead Elf. Find no sickness so village people safe.” Spoiler

Hey, Dirts new to this people growing business.

“And Baron outside.”

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

That's all right, a still slightly twitching but functional Larric is taking care of it. While trying to avoid the sights, and smells, of the dissection- which is being done outdoors, by torchlight, on cobbles, incidentally.

Wait, it's getting dark?

Gah, I lost track of that. I thought we had a few more hours of daylight left, even given that it's midwinter. Although a proper dissection would run for hours, so, yes, would take up what's left of our time.

Rohal comes back, part way through the dissection- band of about fifty of them, rags and tatters and shiny swords, about ten miles away and lying up. Waiting for their scouts to report back, maybe.

In that case, we probably have enough time for our own men to come up, and that's one thing deVerett's people might be good for from the village's viewpoint.

Also, yes, vendetta meet Randolf, Randolf meet vendetta, I doubt any elf of either subspecies really wants human physicians poking into the physiological and biochemical secrets of elven immortality.

Though I think the villagers are more worried about the column of knights coming to take their food than they are about the dissection...

IC:

Larric had one repeat one ale, at first. Maybe one or two more over the course of the long afternoon; he's not a complete lightweight except by ogre standards so he should be fine.

[Vehrec]

OOC: A marked man? He can't be the first in history to have cut open an elf and see how they work. And he's already a grave-robber and a showman, how much more marked can he be?

And is the Baron really here?