Homebrew system thread II, part 2

[Jub]

It's not the best position to be in, and a hard blow to the shoulder doesn't make it any better, but that's not enough to keep Bertram from doing his best to defend Dale. As he dodges, blocks, and parries while looking for any chance to thin the enemy ranks, he calls out to Dale asking, "Did you have some plan leaping in like that or are we in the middle of this mess for fun?"

[Jub]

OOC: Can I use some combination of Con, Human Perception, and a combat skill to feint into a sudden burst of offense after being pushed back into full defense? Or, if that doesn't happen maybe use determination after taking another, hopefully glancing, blow and counter attack unexpectedly?

I'm just trying to think of any little tricks that Bertram might be able to use to get him and Dale some breathing room.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Good question; in principle yes, in practise much iffier- those skills take at least a moment of reflection and thought, and in a duel yes, you could, but in a multi sided melee only at an extra hazard to yourself.

[Jub]

All right, taking that into account Bertram will do his best to exploit any openings that come up, but unless it's too good to pass up the defense of himself and Dale will come first.

[Fiji_Fury]

Is the priest down? From the sounds of it, he is. If not, then Dale is tied up disrupting the servant of Valdemiron with the pointy end of the sword. If at all possible, Dale would prefer to wound rather than slay, but he isn't beyond killing the priest either.

If the priest is down on the other hand... Dale will aim to meet up with Bertram who is pushing toward him, taking a few of the men in between down with quick sword strikes. Resolving his vulnerability of being isolated will be the next goal once that priest is out of the rotation. Hearing Bertram's grumbling, Dale doesn't have the time really to respond as he's engaged in a melee one way or the other.

[Simon_Jester]

Heartened by his success and still trying to protect Dale (not that he wants Bertrand dead or doesn't care, but he's spent a lot more time with Dale and is beginning to feel a real friendship with him), Larric briefly considers another pressure-curtain barrage to follow up the first.

Then a mace tumbles awkwardly end over end through the air from a (presumably mostly-deaf and very angry) temple guardsman. Larric was stepping left when the guardsman expected him to step right, saving him from a nasty bludgeoning more by accident than anything else. Then he sees another guard whip round in a motion he's seen out of Dale, and the alchemist cries out "gaaaahh!" and ducks as fast as he ever has in his life. The knife blade damn near parts his hair. Were good old Verone in Larric's place, it'd probably have set his hat-brace ringing like those svartalf fan-blades two years back.

Larric is pushed back to defending himself directly- he tosses a jolt of lightning at the guardsman who threw the knife, while trying using his peripheral vision to find some allied troops he can form up with, shouting "Come on, get them while they're still reeling!"

[His Divine Shadow]

I got a pretty old desktop PC, a Core 2 E6600 with only 2gb of ram. Got a 600gb and 160gb drive, upgraded the GPU a few years ago to a Geforce GTS 450. Don't do any gaming so I think I'm good with that card yet.

I'm wondering what's a cheap upgrade path here. I'm thinking a new case with motherboard, cpu and RAM, then my old HDDs and GPU into it and call it a day for another 7 years.


I guess I should have read more than the thread topic, this doesn't seem to be about building your own systems at all.

[Simon_Jester]

We're waiting on Dirt, yes?

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Well, that and me being generally totally disorganised, it being market time; relatively relaxed at the moment though, we haven't got to the seventeen hour days yet...

it'll take Dirt a round or so to get down from the battlements anyway, so we have Dale and Bertram trying to hold off the temple guard long enough for help to break through to get to them, Larric defending himself with what I think may actually be his first lightning bolt, and the ikhrani militia taking advantage of the chaos you're causing to take down the rest of the temple guard.

(There is a loud clang and a scream, as one of the temple bells is torn loose and falls on a valdemironi acolyte, in case you were wondering where Lisanna had got to.)

The lightning bolt works very well, if messily; the target screams, writhes, smoulders and collapses, twitching, before finally crumpling to a motionless heap.

Dale and Bertrand end up fighting back to back, frantically holding off the temple guard- before the Ikhrani militia shove their way through, and the valdemironi start to run; they don't really ahve anywhere to go, and mostly it's a matter of chasing them and making them yield.

Fight's mosty over- sore arms, bruises, howling for breath, mostly undamaged though. Next moves?

[Simon_Jester]

Hm.

Realistically?

Larric stops with a paralyzing attack the shakes. If anything saves his stomach it's that he hasn't eaten in a while.

[Cedes initiative for the round; others will probably have to proceed without him to keep it]

[Kaelan]

OOC - sorry for the delay, it's been a manic week for me.

IC
Having cleared the battlements Dirt looks down from his higher than normal vantage point. Seeing that the battle is almost won he changes his mind of loosing his crossbow and saunters down to the shaking Larric.
"You getting better. Not as wobbly as last time," with a friendly pat on the shoulder "missing all the fun now."
With that he trots after the crowd.

[Fiji_Fury]

"Thank you Bertram."

Dale scans the scene and nods toward the temple doors.

"We have work to do yet inside. Can the militia set a perimeter while we head indoors to break things?"

Dale will listen if Bertram has other ideas, but assuming this is the basic plan, he'll head to the temple and try to scoop up Larric and Dirt along the way.

[Jub]

"Anytime," responds Bertram in a dryly sarcastic but friendly tone.

Rubbing his shoulder Bertram looks to a militia captain and says, "There's no point in bringing the bulk of the militia into the temple so I'd like to ask you to hold the gate while we do what needs to be done to end this madness."

Assuming the militia captains agree to hold the gate while the party enters the temple proper, Bertram will try to dig up any rumors or local wisdom about what lays inside the structure looming before the party.

[Simon_Jester]

Larric begins to pull himself together, and shakily joins the heavy hitters (presumably Lisanna, some Ikhrani priests, and various PCs) near the gate of the main temple building.

If he doesn't see Ikhrani priests there, he's going to worry and start looking for one.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

It's market time so things are chaotic, we are in an ambient state of wibble, don't expect too much sense...

Basically it looks as if the fighting is mostly over, they've run out of people to fight you and places to fall back to. The wooden temple doors are lying in splinters in a puddle of water, something thaumaturgical happened there.

The internal layout looks like a small amphitheatre, seating is three quarters of a circle, the altar taking up the other quarter with statuary and movable runestones, this is probably the physical anchor of the paperwork that bewitched the citizenry. Doesn't look like there's anyone left to protect it, but it is crackling with power. Lisanna and two Ikhran acolytes are there looking at it and trying to figure it out.

Any bright ideas?

[Simon_Jester]

Runework and structures of magical force aren't a perfect way to rouse Larric from his daze, but they sort of work. While he assumes that the priests and especially Lisanna are more experienced at finding the key nodes in this standing wave of energy, he looks anyway.

Larric is looking for any location in the spell that can be made... 'rough,' as a place where impedance to the flow of energies can be introduced, and the power of the spell damped down and drawn off in relative safety.

[Jub]

Bertram mentally steels himself to resist the magic that emanates from the altar. The man-at-arms raises his shield and holds his axe defensively as he enters the temple, eyes darting around, ensuring that no final dangers lurk within. If he fails to spot any dangers he'll take up a position at the door to give the magically inclined a chance to work without fear of fresh threats.

[Kaelan]

Let's see....
Party of PC's with an altar of unknown magic.

Based on past experiences Dirt will prep to grab Larric and run when the 'phoom' starts to happen.......

[Fiji_Fury]

Dale will examine the altar carefully, looking for the flow and type of power. While Larric and Lisanna (by trade & memory) probably have a better grip on the overall "how to stop it," Dale will look for what kind of imprints this ritual has. We've suspected that what the Valdemironi are not acting entirely alone, so can Dale pick up anything else distinct about the ritual, the artefacts or the organization/flow of power that reminds him of anything?

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

OK, the total ambient chaos has faded for now, and the next major hiccup is going to be migrating to Windows 8.1 from XP. which given the state of the hardware means it's new computer time in the next couple of weeks. Joy.

Anyway, the place is empty- everyone here turned out to resist you, there are none left. the main danger, it seems to Bertram, is the altar.

Dirt's preparing for a quick getaway is at least logical; dark elf altars are certainly usually up to no good, it's more or les what they're for.

Larric and Dale are looking at the thing, and this is a problem because the players' instincts are correct, you're doing the right things, but the characters do not really have the skills for the job; Dumb luck plus a small good thinking bonus then, not really trying to identify strand by strand, just looking for the things which don't fit and don't flow properly- and trying to do this without getting sucked in, more importantly.

I don't think I've ever made an explicit statement of what the core Valdemironi powers are; but now you are acting with people who do know and can tell you.

What seems to be the case is that a lot of things that were originally along the lines of inspiration and charismatic leadership used to be possible, but largely withered away, leaving the priests of the god nowadays with mostly the cynical, brutalist side of it all.

Organise, Discipline, Extract Truth, Blackmail, Delegate; and all of them are woven into this, and hm, most of you have some kind of supernatural alertness, so I will say there is a sort of black-iron quality to it, a slightly metally, slightly bloody taste, and the smell of fear under the incense.

And there are strands that differ from that, perhaps three shades of other wills woven into the flow, a farmyard, barnyard stench, a tang of brass and unctuousness, as wel as the twist of steel and spice that you were looking for that probably belongs to the war goddess.

Probably help obtained through coercion, but whether that help took a proactive part in shaping and subverting- very probably and certainly the warrior goddess' magic is in deper and doing more to shape the flow than the others, but...

fascinated and trying to make sense of it, Larric is so close to it his nose is almost in the stream, and a couple of the Ikhrani are almost as deeply drawn in. Hm?

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

Is the problem that Larric lacks the specific skills of a Valdemironi priest, or that he lacks skills that a generalist wizard would normally possess?

Hm. This is a question I've never actually asked, and should have- but if Larric wants to be an effective wizard, what skills SHOULD he have, which he is not now developing? I've pushed "Runes" and am working on "Thaumaturgy." What's missing, that he should develop, either as a magic skill or as an ancillary?

This is the sort of thing that wouldn't come up in a regular game where the player is more free to actually, y'know, read the rules.

IC:

Larric shares with the Ikhrani priests a fascination (literally) with magical craftsmanship. On the other hand, he has a streak of stubborn "I knows my rights" in him that tends to pull him back when entranced.

He shakes his head, tries to stubborn his mind into a clearer state, and turns to one of the Ikhrani priests

"Could this thing be drawing... drawing our wits into it so it can make us follow the spell? Maybe we should just concentrate on bringing an end to it. The last time I saw something this complicated break up, it blew up and knocked down a whole building; do you see anything that can make this less bad?"

[Jub]

Bertram, trying to add anything he can, speaks up and says, "If it's going to go boom if we unravel it incorrectly, wouldn't the best thing to do be to wrap the altar in layers of defensive or nullifying magic before we go prodding at it? Also, if it's trying to draw our minds in, couldn't we try purposely siphoning the magic away by feeding it people that have a good chance to resisting it?"

[Simon_Jester]

Larric looks at Bertram angrily at that last bit.

"Do you remember the last time someone set a huge, fantastic curse off in this town? I was smack in the middle of that, and I watched someone jump into it to save us. I am not feeding anyone into another one, not if we can get away with just blowing up the temple of the people who made the curse in the first place."

[Jub]

"I'm certainly no expert when it comes to these things, it was merely a suggestion," snaps Bertram, a little defensively as his personal feeling of futility reaches the fore of his mind. Mind racing he casts his mind inward to look for anything he might be able to add aside from another person feeling an exploding temple.

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

It's not so much Bertram's making a suggestion, as that the suggestion amounted in Larric's eyes to proposing to sacrifice people to make a magical result take place. He's seen a volunteer do that before, he's seen the handiwork of ancient necromancer-cabals who did it regularly, and it really shook the hell out of him.