Homebrew tabletop game system thread the II

[Panzersharkcat]

He tries to use his perception to determine if the banshee is real or not. He'll let Larric do his thing in trying to persuade the wizard to back down before doing anything else. His only response to Bryan is a death glare and a very rude hand gesture. He knows better than to argue further in the middle of a fight. He will let Larric explain, as he is the magically adept one of the party.

[Simon_Jester]

The wizard has just opened a tunnel through the fog; Larric figures that translates from "uncommunicative faery bastard" into plain English as "you may go." Hence his attempt to convince you, to whom that remark was directed, that we'd better get a move on.

[Panzersharkcat]

Alfred starts gesturing for the whole party to secure Radulf and get a move on through the tunnel before the wizard changes his mind.

[S.L.Acker]

Not having yet hitched up his mount Bryan continues on with his original plan of trying to get himself, his mount, and Radulf out of the fog and into the city. Still, he doesn't fully buy the fact that they're being allowed to go freely after the bits of conversation he picked up and the gut feeling he's having. Thus he keeps his one handed sword at the ready as he tries to catch up with the others.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Part of the problem is that bane sidhe are... not quite elves. There's a complicated bit of backstory that you'll have to find a character who knows it to tell you, but essentially they're the ones who forgot to live; who dived deeply enough into the wonders and practises of magic that they lost touch with flesh and blood, who forgot to keep one foot on the ground- how real they are at the best of times is a question with a fractional answer.
From the simple fact that this one is here, and acting in concert with a living elf, and purposefully, that makes it far more likely it's fully an illusion, a scarecrow or in this case a scare- human.


Radulf is easily collectable; he's in no state to resist. May have to be loaded on the refugees' cart in fact. The lights drift away, and apart. Is there anyone objecting to getting said move on- doesn't sound like it- and are you heading to the Caer, or past it go go straight across the river?

The days are not long, you've got maybe an hour and a half of light good enough for mule and foot speed travel left- there's a good road on the other side of the ford.

[Simon_Jester]

Larric wants out of here, over the river at least; we can negotiate whether to spend the night at the fort (Caer Edric) or press on after we clear the fog.

For himself, he's going to be in favor of staying by default- then he remembers something the carters said about the garrison being "even more thievish than most custom posts" and starts worrying.

He's got quite a few miscellaneous valuables in his mule's packs that he would prefer not to lose, probably the difference between getting his practice and experiments back up and running in... I don't know, months versus a year or more? There's also the possibility of veniality among the guards making someone think it's a good idea to spirit away Sir Ranulf for a reward, although at the moment Ranulf's in no shape to offer it, and there's enough of us to keep a guard on him all night if we have to.

So Larric will be ambiguous in the opening round of that conversation.

[Panzersharkcat]

"I would suggest staying in the fort. Though there may be thieves about, we can spend the night in the same room, or as close to it as possible, and simply rotate watch duty every half hour to make sure nobody's gear is stolen."

[Simon_Jester]

"There is that. It's a long night we've got coming; I for one won't mind being awake for a fair part of it... I wonder if they have a nice, solid dungeon we could clap Sir Hangman in for the night."

[Panzersharkcat]

He nods. "We'll find out when we get there. Same with assigning shifts." He ponders the mist and ponders to himself if it would be possible to do something similar but with a poisonous substance. He makes a note to ask Larric later.

[Simon_Jester]

I'm just going to assume you ask the question, because the answer is easy.

"Could someone do that with something poisonous? You mean that?" He looks back at the fogbank running along three miles of river, and shudders again. "...Well, I wouldn't do it, and there's something else, ah, let me explain. Fog is water in air, right, that's why it gets things wet. Well, here the wizard got the water from the river- not just out of thin air, as it were. So if you want to fill the air with that much poison fog, you'd better find yourself a whole lake of poison first. And if you ever do, tell me where you found it, so I can stay away from it."

[Panzersharkcat]

"But if you were to bottle the substance first and then throw it towards the enemy... No, that would never work. You'd be too far away and I don't believe there would be enough." He shrugs.

[Simon_Jester]

Larric frowns. "It's not... entirely unheard of, actually- bottles of nasty stuff getting thrown around- stink-bombs, flammables of course, some outright deadly. Some alchemists will do anything for a price. But I don't hold with that sort of thing, and if enough of it got around, then where would we be? Be the end of chivalry, the end of any kind of... law, really, aside from "I have more sorcery and better poisons."" He sighs. "Come to think of it, that's about where we are anyway these days, with the Striking Phoenix on the loose..."

OOC:

Larric's answer for how he survived the experience of being in a town the Striking Phoenix hit is that he doused everything flammable in his shop, piled his books in a trunk and covered it with all the non-flammable substances and wet clothes he could find to save as many as he could, then ran off and hid in someone else's basement, figuring that the Street of the Alchemists wasn't a safe place to be when an invading army came over the wall.

What's yours?

[Panzersharkcat]

"Flammables will have to do. I am simply trying to think of more ways to force an enemy to choose between staying in a fortified position filled with poison or fire or into a volley of arrows."

(OOC: I have no answer yet, as I'm only on five of the old thread, if that's where the information is from.)

[Simon_Jester]

OOC, to explain what I meant by what I was asking before:

Alfred is supposedly a knightly sort, although all this talk of gas warfare makes him sound a little more pragmatic than usual for the class.* ECR alluded to this during character creation, let me try to explain precisely:

One of the great problems confronting Kuquan, or the bits of it ECR's portrayed so far, is that when the Striking Phoenix came through, a lot of the local lords and warrior-class... well, to quote the regiment's commander from a story now over in User Fiction...

At the time... it was a sound principle; we wanted them afraid of us, so we did everything we could to terrorise and horrify; we succeeded a shade too well- none would take anything, least of all peace, from us; the brave saw us only as devils to be stood up to and fought, the majority saw us as fiends to be fled from.

That's about the size of it- between the orcish rank and file and the various shades of black, red, bluish-white, and so on magic being thrown around by their caster support, the Striking Phoenix does a pretty good impersonation of what the armies of darkness would fight and act like. Which tends to attract a lot of hostile attention, sucking in the class of people whose role it normally is to stop hell from being unleashed on their peasants.

So the question of why any given fighting man in Kuquan hasn't died in battle against the Twentieth Cataphract (who are very lethal indeed) is likely to be an interesting one, or at least one that tells us a lot about their character. A man like Bryan might honestly answer "no one's paying me enough to fight that!" Alfred's answer might be rather different, and probably deserves thought.
___________

*When I say "knightly" I do not mean "especially chivalrous," necessarily, but the survival of the warrior-aristocrats of this setting hinges on the fact that among the highest-quality of the breed, devotion to their own code of honor they can overcome the trickery and firepower of the average magician. Sir Alfred may not be the kind of man who naturally saves peasants from monsters. But think about what his title implies; I would imagine that his family has held that baronetcy, probably for generations, by being the men who do save peasants from monsters. Nature and nurture will tell, won't they?

So Larric, a man of peasant stock for all that he's moved up in the world, accustomed to a culture in which Alfred is one of the warrior-aristocrats, expects implicitly that this man has certain notions about how wars are fought- the products of a long peace and relatively formalized conflict between noble houses.

So in Larric's implicit expectation, "clean" wars are, classically:
-Limited in scope- no slaughtering peasants without a good reason

-Focused on conflict between the proficient men-at-arms of each faction- no mass conscription, no burning out villages to get rid of guerillas because theoretically there shouldn't be any, or many.

-Concentrated on the exploits of champions- that's partly a necessity, since only champions have much chance of standing up to powerful wizardry and each others' magical equipment. I don't know what the role of single combat between champions is in Kuquanese traditional warfare, but the heroic tradition almost has to exist. And where would a man like Alfred be if it didn't, and the normal response to a big bold man with a big bold hammer striding out into the fray and challenging people was to shoot him full of arrows?

-Limited in means- there are 'lawful' and 'unlawful' ways to fight; a certain amount of trickery, subterfuge, and magic are accepted as part of the business, but if your methods get too unsavory it reflects badly on you and paints a target on your back for everyone else. There are tactics that an assassin- literally a murderer for hire- might use, and which 'everybody knows' are possible, but which 'decent' people would avoid if possible.

It also helps that Larric really doesn't know that much military history, when you get right down to it. He'd have a hard time articulating all of this himself. He's got something of a practical streak when it comes to travel and possessions and the like, but he's no general.

Anyway, that's "clean" war. Dirty" wars, where the rules break down... well, that's what happened to Kuquan this winter, in his mind, and the most obvious historical example he could think of would probably be some of the fighting that surrounded the fall of the Black Towers four hundred years ago.

[Kaelan]

Go to bed early and miss all the fun! I guess thats the draw back from time zones.

Anyhow,

Now theres a tunnel in the fog williams overiding impulse will to be to get the hell out of the fog as soon as possible. As for where we set camp, or keep travelling he has no real care either way. He will take his turn on watch regardless of where we do set up for the night.

As for surviving conflicts williams attitude to war is as follows:
Anything that gets the enemy dead is good. Anything that keeps you alive is better. He has no qalms about fighting dirty. He views looting as the standard way of getting pay in a war (especially given how nobles are likely to expect you to fight for free). Honourable combat is for nobles and knights, of which he is neither.

To Quote George Martin

“Rhaegar fought valiantly, Rhaegar fought nobly, Rhaegar fought bravely. And Rhaegar died. ”

William has no intention of dying.

[S.L.Acker]

OOC:

You've hit it on the head, Bryan hasn't fought them mainly because to his mind no amount of money is worth that level of risk. He can make a solid name for himself on less dangerous battlefields. If he's not the biggest hero around at any given time, well at least he's not in the ground with all the other would be biggest heroes.

IC:

"The Fort seems the better place to stay thieves or not. I might even be able to get us decent lodging, though with six of us and Radulf that might be tougher than I'm willing to lay coin on. At any rate we've burned to much sun to look for a suitable campsite so it's not as if we have much choice," offers the swordsman as he looks back at the fog and tries not to think about what could have been.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Is that a consensus I see before me, it's groupness pointing at the fort?

The Moshar River takes a sharp bend here as it comes up against rock too hard to easily erode, and the ford is right in the angle of the bend, it's actually a bit odder than just a ford. The inside half of it, where the water's fastest and deepest, is almost a proper bridge, arcing from the semi- submerged spit that is exposed at low water over to the bank. It's an odd construction to say the least, but it has stood for some time now.

The fort is actually older, on the highest point of ground within the inside curve of the river, an earthwork ring on the outside, then a stone wall some twenty feet high and ten tapering to five thick, with one gatehoused gate, five small towers around the outer wall and one narrow, tall- five or six storey- tower in the centre. The road runs around the earthwork, then to the bridge.

There are a handful of men on the earthwork and many more on the stone wall; those that are, a mix of crossbow and shield-and-spear men, have come out to meet you, and they are quite nervous. The refugees want to keep moving, the garrison don't mean to stop them.


The only one of them with a long bow says 'Sir, you're, we've been here, listening to the howling, and the screams, and the wind, and the death- rattles, for days. If you are a true knight,' adressed looking at everyone in armour, 'we need help. This was a watch and customs post, check things coming down the river, stop things- little things- coming down from the hills.' You can't see most of the hills, the mist is in the way. Kind of hard to miss a rogue mountain McKinley- Denali sized, though. 'This, whatever's out there has been doing this on and off for days. we're being haunted to death, half of us left, the rest gone off into the mist after- that- and disappeared, or ran, or went-' he doesn't say 'mad' there, but he means it.

'We found a couple of the bodies, we found some of the bones. There were five men of noble rank to begin with, there are two left and one's ill. help.'

[Tasoth]

Says a silent thanks to whatever is in the mist and then the gods for letting it be willing to listen. He would help haul Radulf to the cart and then follow the group out. He stands and listens while the guards address them.

[S.L.Acker]

Huddling in with the group Bryan, voice low, offers, "If we offer to help we sleep in safety and ensure our man gets watched, however it will keep us laid up another day. I would normally be disinclined to help, but who knows what these desperate men will do if we turn them down. I also think a night to get prepared for dealing with whatever is in that mist will give us a good shot of dealing with it. Does anybody else have anything to say against me?"

[Kaelan]

How far away is it to the next village\town again?


That being said, what are the chances that if we don't confront and defeat this thing in the mists it will gain in strength and cause us more problems in the near future?
Question 1: Mage and Priest to the forefront – what is it and how do we kill it?
Question 2: Can we leave the prisoner here under the knowledge that he won’t break free?

Other than that it looks like we’re heading back into the fog again. Time to pair up?

[S.L.Acker]

OOC:

I doubt we head back into the fog with the sunlight nearly gone. I think the best situation is for us to rest, get Radulf secured somewhere. I have enough coin to flash that the guards will be sure to keep an eye on him. Beyond that just giving our Mages time to prepare given the knowledge gained within the cloud should help a ton.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

To where you're going, a long day's foot travel for people who aren't fit, healthy warrior types- sixteen, seventeen miles. To the next place where you might be able to stop and find shelter, five.


How to kill something like that? Think along the lines of- on the working assumption that it is an elvish ranger with some fair amount of zap- trying to hunt a sniper.

Any kind of formed mass attack would just be throwing warm bodies at him, it won't work- you'd lose too many of them. Skirmishing forward towards him, in as many hunting packs as there are people who can resist magic, each with as many eyes behind them as they can cover for, come at the elf from several convergent angles, deny him time to pick you off, close him down and force him to face you on something much more like level terms- that could work.

With the group as it is now- all seven of you, there are supposed to be seven- you'd have to get the tactics dead on, push him really hard to force him to make enough mistakes to give you the win. Could be done. Everything'd have to click into place, but it might work. If you still think it's necessary.

Into the fort, then?

[Kaelan]

Into the fort, and then wait for the elf to sleep.
Elves do sleep don't they?

[Panzersharkcat]

(OOC: Probably lots of guerrilla warfare, hit and run tactics, and outright refusal to fight cleanly. Refining his art through fighting them is how he got such a high tactics score, even if his temper occasionally gets the best of him. At least, that's the rough idea so far.)

Faced between sleeping outside and sleeping indoors but having to do something for those people, Alfred says, "Very well. So long as you make sure our prisoner says imprisoned, I say we take out that wizard in the morning."

[Simon_Jester]

Okay.

IF we do this at all...


Larric and William have the Resist Magic skill.

Larric and Rohal have some degree of second sight and second smell, respectively.

Larric and Eliska have magical ability. Larric's is more offensively oriented. Eliska's is oriented toward the combination of healing magic and wire-fu.

Alfred, Bryan, William, and Eliska are all reasonably dangerous in hand to hand combat.

Larric and Rohal are at least somewhat dangerous in conventional ranged combat.

OOC, it is uncertain whether Sorchus actually intends to participate to a level that makes Eliska relevant; can someone shoot him a PM on that?


This makes for one hell of a logic puzzle.

Add to that the question of who among the fort garrison have the balls to come along for the ride, and it gets more complicated.