Homebrew system thread II, part 2

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

There's not really all that much more they can tell you; only what happened before the attack, which was that they were in considerable doubt as to what to do next. Of the spectrum of possibilities, most wanted to go guerilla, move close to and harrass, raid, steal from and weaken the humans. There were other opinions- always are- but none likely to be acted on.

The actual fighting was a confused, terrifying blur, although it does seem- from piecing together what she says, not from what is said directly- that the attack must have been coordinated or prearranged, the wild beasts basically herding her people to be blasted and scattered, then hunting the survivors.

Hunting things in the mountains? It's possible that some of them may have come to you. Come morning, what's the plan?

[Fiji_Fury]

I am all for taking a look at the site in the daylight when we're at less of a visibility deficit. If we find survivors we can send them toward the town/encampment where the mother and children are. Of particular interest is any sign of who or what was involved with the night attack. Perhaps we'll come across Rohal or he'll return to the rest of us with potential information (or scents... although Dale hasn't confirmed the werewolf thing yet, he's pretty suspicious).

Dale is still pre-occupied with his disturbing vision and is perfectly willing to meditate on it until the dawn. When light comes he's in favor of investigating.

[Simon_Jester]

Larric's a little nervous, but being sure those elf-bandits are done for once and for all is probably worth it- though he's not the sort to go poking too much around lightning-blasted corpses.

He'll accompany his friends to the site of the battle.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

No dissenting voices, then?

Bear in mind that you cannot necessarily count for backup on anyone left behind; they will be leaving the village in their own time over the course of the day, some will be there, many will not.

There are a few farms and clusters of farms too small to even call a village along the way- one where the inhabitants have been put to the sword, chances are the perpetrators are already toast.

Nearer three hours than two, before you get to the patch of ground where it all happened. The giant fulgurite (earth and surface rock fused by the lightning bolt) is unmistakable, and thankfully there are relatively few organic splattery bits nearby- the elves who got directly hit by this are little smudges of contaminated carbon, if that.

Fairly obviously, that would have been the cloud to ground strike you saw. Estimates of the power it would take to be capable of that do not make happy thinking. Of everyone you can call to mind, Hilarion maybe, but not from a standing start. Nobody else, not still alive anyway, at least nobody human.

Leaves three possibilities; somebody you don't know, an emerging talent; their own people really have turned on them, and nobody has the elvish culture up enough to really have an idea who's who in the community but there will be several- although still dubious from a standing start.
Most feasible one is actually religious magic- if they couldn't do it themselves, a priest may be able to call upon the aid of a higher being who does have the might for that. Makes it easier and more credible. Still, you'd have to be fairly potent, and fairly noticeable and well known by reputation, even to swing the ritual.

Further away from the centre of it, there are partially burnt corpses, and several who were wounded but have been finished off by tooth and claw. Now that is odd- you know that not much eats elves, mainly because they're walking chemical factories and often quite toxic. Footprints and pawprints, yes, numerous and varied, some of the animal prints large and variously deformed.

There were obviously enough with opposable thumbs, however, to loot the bodies. Clothing and armour and most possessions are still there, but clearly rooted through, and all the small, valuable and magical things that you'd expect to find, even among a group of refugees, gone.

No sign of Rohal. (He'll be back at some point, certainly when Feralgnoll is, and in the meantime, puppies are a distinct possibility.) One definite clue as to who the attackers were- mounted, on fairly heavy horse by the look of the hoofprints.

[Simon_Jester]

None of those hoofprints would happen to be fused/sintered into glass by innate heat, would they? As distinct from the thunderbolt?

Just checking.

Anyway...

"Twisted beasts... might be tied with the ones we've seen before- but Lisanna said Aburon had a hand, and I wouldn't think he'd go with that."

[Fiji_Fury]

"She could have been mistaken. We saw only some of the events from our great distance, and this appears to have been formed of startling power. A ritual makes some sense, although the twisted prints along with heavy horse is odd. It indicates a force of mixed units or perhaps somebody came here to investigate the site before we did. I'm no tracker so I can't tell much more than that the prints are here and varied."

Dale inspects some of the corpses, particularly looking for knives/daggers (extra pointy bits could prove useful). He'll also begin a haphazard search pattern, keeping his eyes open for any sign of runes or religious iconography that might indicate a ritual was prepared at this location. He's letting whimsy guide his path. While doing so, he's trying to stay open to anything approaching the sense of his earlier vision. (Skills: Runes 10, Theology 12, Perception 13, Evaluate 10)

[Simon_Jester]

Assuming Dale explains what he's talking about, Larric starts looking around further out, for runes or traces of magic from where someone might have conjured this from. He is further out, rationalizing that the caster probably didn't want to get caught in the fringes of their own lightning blast, but also wanting to give the zone of wounded-then-devoured corpses a wide berth.

He's also trying to get an idea for whether the impact zone has any particular shape, any modulation, any distortions or features that might indicate a direction for the caster. His search pattern is a bit more systematic, although possibly one that very systematically takes too long to get anywhere. His starting point is decided by his effort to find a logical estimate of the casting point, or failing that by blind chance.


(Runes 11, Thaumaturgy 7, Perception 16, Supernatural Awareness level 2; I don't think Evaluate applies because it's more like "Appraise" but if it does, Evaluate 10. Wits 9 Air 11 if magic applies, since this was definitely electrical Air magic)

[Kaelan]

Dirt sniffs the air.

"Group magic. Many mages work for one. If done by 'svarts not good. Most ego to big to work under 'nother 'svaft unless very strong."

With most of the party looking for further information on the magic, Dirt will keep his eyes open for any potential attacks incase they decide to come back again.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

There's a lot of ground to cover, and most of it difficult to survey; the elvish refugees picked a small hollow, surrounded by scrub and brush, to hide in, and the fulgurite is on the lip of the hollow- broken branches and trampled undergrowth are one of the clearest signs of passage.

Logically, draw a line away from the centre of the dell through the lightning bolt impact, and it'll be somewhere over there. Acting on that, what Larric finds won't be a ritual site; no cleared ground, no traces of points of power, no after- images of sorcery- but a lot of hoofprints. None of them molten, but far too many to be one animal, or even a small group. They seem to come in fairly close together, and then spread out.

What Dale finds are the remains of the battle, and it was a long, confused, running action; interestingly, the animals seem to have been fighting each other towards the closing stages. How cynically was this played? Were the warped ones herded, chased, used as a shock- group against the elves by the more normal ones, and once they hed done their part hunted down and disposed of by the untainted ones- and judging by the hoofprints, the people on the horses? Judging by the burnt and energised patches of undergrowth, the scattered dead and the hoof, paw and clawprints, could well be.

The lack of fixed point, of stable preparation for this suggests it was done not merely on the fly, but literally at the trot, and that narrows the list of suspects down to an elvish warband, or, and worse, whatever elements of the Twentieth Cataphract remain in the county to act as the countess' guard and escort.

The lingering traces of the magic support that- power without subtlety, very strange harmonics that- hard to explain; the closest Larric can come to it is a palimpsest, a previously used piece of parchment that had been cleaned and overwritten, but the previous impressions remain. Much depth of impression, without one dominant voice, only all together.

Collaborative magic, the problems can be summed up in the phrase "gentlemen, synchronise your egos"; a formal set piece is normally the only way to make it work at all, make usually jagged personalities mesh well enough to get a coherent vision and work at the output end. But from rank and file squaddies, and an ungodly mixture of all four major intelligent species at that? More likely to be elvish.

This all takes time, by the way; it'll be around mid- day or later before you get that far. Alfred?

[Simon_Jester]

[Sorry for the false alarm, but OOC: ]

When was the last time anyone heard from Panzer? His 'last on the board' status is still hidden. here's nothing here for Alfred to hit, I'm not sure what he'd do given that fact. Anyone PMed him recently? I think I got in touch a few days ago, possibly a week ago, but my memory's useless these days and I can't find the PM itself...

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

I'm not so worried about Panzersharkcat; sighted relatively recently, and he'll resurface when something happens that plays to Alfred's strengths, most probably. Should be trying to engineer situations like that for himself, of course, but hey.

Now Vehrec, if he's still out there, I really would have to start writing plot around and specifically for his character, with the exact circumstances he'd need to be effective- and the chances of it being picked up on and played through, considering how active he's been?

Sorchus was starting to accumulate threads of plot, but basically disappeared leaving them all hanging. White Haven at least had the grace to inform us that that was what he was doing.

Feralgnoll should be back, at some point, and looking forward to it. I'm not worried about Panzer, at least not yet. Although knowing what his character was doing would be nice.

[Panzersharkcat]

He walks to the edge of the site of the battle and begins inspecting it, trying to figure out what precisely happened.

(OOC: General lack of computer time has kept me away. That and I'm busy trying to build up my own pnp game for Fallout as practice for my own universe's game. Slightly annoyed right now that I finished planning out a character sheet on paper only to realize that I had forgotten to include a limb damage section.)

[Simon_Jester]

Larric has some luck imagining what had to have happened here. He'd probably fit into a synchronized casting like this better than the average mage. He runs on something that might almost be called scientistic druidism, the awe and wonder at natural forces and the joy of knowing it. If there was a god of truth- but never mind, he'll talk about that himself when the time comes.

But he could probably learn to collaborate, given a chance.

Anyhow, Larric goes looking for the others once he's dowsed out the patterns of magic. Avoiding any major concentrations of burned corpses, he moves toward Alfred in particular and calls out "Sure and certain it was a band of magicians, working like one- could be elvish, like the one we caught thought."

[Panzersharkcat]

"Sigh. Again with the elves." Yeah, he's starting to get a whee distaste of them. "Any sign of where they went?"

[Simon_Jester]

"At least these elves got rid of the other elves for us. I think these must have been the elves from around here, not from down south. The southron elves... boom. As to which way they rode off-" he thinks back. He's not much of a tracker, might get the hoofprints mixed up coming and going, then again he might not. He'll give it his best guess, or he'll refer it to a better tracker if there's one in the party. Pity Rohal's not around.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Dirt might be your best bet, for tracking; not brilliant, but- well, assuming that while people may be able to walk backwards to disguise which direction they're moving in (I read a magazine once- you can still tell by the relative depths of each end of the footprint; apparently. anyway, damn' if I could), horses would probably find it a shade more difficult- basically going by where the open end of the horseshoe is, they seem to have come from the south and headed away to the south- east. Auvaine city is twenty miles in that direction, the nearest edge of the Spiral Forest about thirty miles beyond that.

Everyone except Larric also notices that some of the 'mutant' animal hoof and claw prints among the mess, they're very consistent for mutants; bit piggy in fact.

Fifi's having trouble separating out all the animal scents, but a lot of them are a bit too, well, earthy, to be easily believable as elvish.

If you want to follow them, you can- but they're mounted; you're not. Whatever they are, they have a head start, and move faster anyway- you won't catch them, not unless they decide to wait in ambush for you; and if you did catch up to them, what could you do?

There are also much fainter tracks heading west, in the general direction of the woods at the foot of Mount Honeycomb.
Apart from a lot of dead elves and a lot of dead mutant animals, there's not much else actually here. Could be a certain amount of looting worth doing, but apart from that, it's scrubland in a range of low, dumpy hills that slope up to the Orhan, and not mcuh else to do or that needs doing- so what's the plan from here?

[Kaelan]

Looking at the tracks Dirt indicates the direction they travelled off in.

Let's see, reasonable size group on mounts. Most likely won't make more than 50 miles a day if they're riding hard, with about half a days head start Dirt should run them down before the morning. Get's ready to set of after them and looks at the party.

Ah' with humans again. I could carry one of them and rohal will most likely be able to keep up, but not the rest. Still, lets give them the benefit of the doubt and ask.

"Chase main group, or go after smaller group going west? Smaller group look like may be travelling slower, and less problems when we catch. Maybe find out more when we get them"

[Simon_Jester]

"Up the mountain- could be mixed up with the same overgrown beasts we'd seen before..."

Are any of the dead mutants in good enough condition to be examinable? I'm wondering if they look messed up the same way as the mutant wolf Rohal dragged a leg back from.

[Panzersharkcat]

"We go for the smaller group. Easier for us to hunt down and question."

[Fiji_Fury]

Dale is still shaken by his vision and frustrated by an inability to fully comprehend its meaning, or find clues about that meaning while searching this site. Shaking his head in agitation he comes over to join the others.

"This was a mess. Whoever was responsible used a lot of differing resources to make it happen, and had some of its tools destroyed on purpose... those twisted creatures for instance. A win-win for the orchestrators it would seem."

He looks toward the trail and mountain Dirt and the others have been discussing.

"Heading toward the ominous mountain with a wizard, an Ogre and a knight to piece together clues toward a massacre of people we didn't even really like? Insane. Seems appropriate."

[Simon_Jester]

IC:

[but in my usual quote spaghetti form...]

"We go for the smaller group. Easier for us to hunt down and question."

It might be Aburon and a pack of Rohal's furry friends, you know."

"This was a mess. Whoever was responsible used a lot of differing resources to make it happen, and had some of its tools destroyed on purpose... those twisted creatures for instance. A win-win for the orchestrators it would seem."

The alchemist chuckles. "Elves always have an angle..."

He looks toward the trail and mountain Dirt and the others have been discussing.

"Heading toward the ominous mountain with a wizard, an Ogre and a knight to piece together clues toward a massacre of people we didn't even really like? Insane. Seems appropriate."

"Alchemist." Larric smiles. "I think we should be friends, so for now, call me an alchemist, all right?

OOC:
It is, by the way, a BIG mountain. Relevant quotes, all from the DM:

[from the capital of the barony]

Mount Honeycomb is to the north- east, and if you want to think of a smaller K2, steep, sharp and so stereotypically mountain shaped as to be almost unreally mountainous, that's about right; quite a small footprint for the sheer height of the thing, but the foothills and the forest that covers them actually span more than ninety degrees of the horizon, from east south- east to north north-west from Qulan.

[in the context of Rohal's second sight]

The transformation to wolf form was very abrupt; the shock is just starting to set in. Looking up at Mount Honeycomb and the landscape around it, looking past the physical, it's easy to see why this area has the reputation it has.

The entire mountain glows faintly with magic when you look at it out of the corner of your eye; seen head on, it brightens, then passes through that into reflection. Mirroring, blocking, setting the entire area around it faintly alight with thaumaturgical glow.

Things could hide easily under that. Many probably do. The low woods, close to the road, are safe enough- regularly polled and farmed for wood- but higher up, it passes through wild into "no return"- there are probably thousands of people who have gone looking for the Secret of the Mountain in the past few hundred years, and two or three of them claim to have come back.

There are dark shapes, and dark tides, moving beneath the shimmer; best not looked at closely.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Heading off up the mountain, then?

Some of the dead monstrosities are examinable- not necessarily by Larric, but somebody with a stronger stomach could take a close enough look. Short answer, yes. Some of them have been killed by edged weapons, very indelicately- no typical elvish longsword or rapier here. Haeftseax (western kin to the naginata/nagamaki, basically an edged long blade on a stick)- something like that, maybe.

There are plenty of bits in the middle visible, guts and skeletons, and most of them are warped, twisted out of true. Same pattern- warped to fight and kill, everything else deemed unimportant. Some of the creatures are quite interesting; one of what looks to be a centaur, although face contorted into something like a wolf's- long, toothy jaw. Another, if elves had a primate ancestor (apparently, they don't), that would be it.

Time and distance- you can get to the lower woods, be in the trees but below the usual danger zone, by nightfall- at that point you'd be perhaps half a day's walk north of Qulan. Mount Honeycomb (and how did it get that name?) may not be smaller than K2 considering the height of the land it starts from; peak is about twenty thousand feet, but the plateau Qulan stands from is about four thousand, if that- three or four thousand again out of the foothills but after that it's the thing itself, more than twelve thousand feet with hardly a flat surface.

Even for Dirt, that would not be an afternoon stroll- and you can see most of it from where you are, anyway. Probably not worth going up into the snow and clouds. Basically, once you're on the foothills, it begins to get dangerous- once you're past the crest line and on to the mountain itself, that's when the friends you left behind start auctioning off your possessions. Shouldn't need to go that far.

How close are you getting, when you decide to rest up for the night? Watches and defences?

[Fiji_Fury]

After a drawn-out pause that feels like it lasted a week, Dale speaks.

"Alchemist then. After you..." he gestures toward the mountain.

Dale is prepared to take any watch during the night that is needed. He suggests we look for a location that is near the trail we are tracking, but defensible, with either a long view in each direction, or steep walls (assuming there is something like a cleft of rock in the foothills for us to set up in) which will protect approach from all but one or two angles. He assumes that Rohal, should he have survived the night, will be able to follow our trail and the others' scents (he does not know about the werewolf thing, but basically believes it to be true; nothing any crazier than an Ogre gardener to travel with, so he'll make no fuss).

The suggested distance is to double-time it forward when the trail is clear for our remaining daylight, then to hunker down as the sun starts to set. Based on the description that would put us in the forested hills near the base of the mountain (at furthest).

OOC: I assum that nobody has any other ideas, or I'm game to hear them. Failing that, let's hit this trail and make something happen (or get lost in the woods... that could be fun too).

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

I was waiting for the characters with better IC reasons to weigh in; Larric is arguably the last person that should be making this call. But since we need to move on.

IC:

"If we hunker down in a crack, we'd better keep a really good lookout..."

Larric's going to be a bit conservative about this. He's not naturally a woodsman, and between the blips on his magical radar and his general lack of outdoorsiness, he'll probably define the "danger zone" of wild woods and rough hills a bit wider than most. He'll be counseling a relatively earlier halt, to make sure that we don't get into truly dangerous terrain till we have the full light of morning behind us.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Not absolutely necessary; bear the option of deciding it isn't your problem and bottling it in mind...

It isn't great countryside, and is quite slow going. The trees get in the way, cut out a lot of light and mean you find yourselves looking for a handy terrain feature to hide in sooner, and lower down the slope, than you expected. There's a lot of animal movement about, too.

The best place in the area you are in- most of the foothills are below the permanent snow line- seems to be a small hill that has had a landslip- the western side of it has slid leaving a broken- crested hilltop and (after some prodding to make sure the rest isn't going to go too) a nice hollow out of the prevailing winds, and a large area clear of the trees that slid away so you've got clear sight in one direction at least.

It's going to be a long, cold, jumpy night. It's actually Larric who spots something up first; a faintly glowing earthworm. Blink- and obviously not glowing in the physical sense, but magic- imbued, yes. What kind of strange being enchants an earthworm? It's not big enough, doesn't really have the size spiritual as well as physical, to do much- and there are few poisonous earthworms. (Flatworms, now...)

Leave it alone for a few moments, and it will start leaving a faintly glowing trail on the ground, wriggling- it's not runes, it's ordinary handwriting. Well, wormwriting. As dubious as you might expect, but more or less legible- "I thought you were trying to avoid me? A."