Homebrew system thread II, part 2

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

If they have a domain large enough to need one, and if they have followers with insufficient other occupation to need kept busy, yes- otherwise, not so much. The fascinating thing about feudalism is how much it isn't a system; there's a general idea, but individual communities, individual localities, tend to play the game of catch as catch can, a lot depends on the individuals involved.

In the Norden lands, law enforcement would be in the hands of - actually, good catch. Hadn't thought of that. They're big enough, there would be somebody. Probably another cousin, who is lucky enough to be still with you after having to have two limbs reattached when he was run over by the Twentieth; Aelred, and he's still not really up to going hunting- protect and defend, yes, try to keep order and keep the refugees from damaging themselves or the permanent inhabitants- he'll be trying to calm people down at the moment.

'I'd say you should take twenty.' Atheleyne decides. 'Enough to do what needs to be done without leaving us too short here to defend ourselves.' She looks sharply at Dale, thinks for a second, says 'I'm afraid you're probably right. Rally who and what you can of them, what happens in the long run will depend on them agreeing to the settlement, but there probably will be some bloody work.'

So- Mr Snuggles can't be in two places at once. What has priority, sniffing for fools (and think how indistinct that was) or going in search of a solution and Lisanna?

[Simon_Jester]

Larric scratches his chin- now shaven, that's part of morning ablutions when he's in a place with at least a vaguely credible mirror and so on. He looks at Sir Alfred. "That stuff's going to be a menace as long as it's hanging around, until someone finishes off the last of it. Slowing down on that part just isn't going to go well. Lisanna could certainly finish it off, and to get the word to her- Rohal's a great messenger and cross-country man. Better at that than he is at thief-taking, I'd think."

[Panzersharkcat]

"Agreed, then. Aelred will be tasked with finding who tried to steal the chemicals. Rohal, change of plans. I need you to do as Larric has suggested and get the message to Lisanna."

If that's all, he gets them all tunics, including Rohal before he leaves.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

It takes a little time to get everyone together, twenty bodies with kit and provisions- three mounted and on embarrassingly better horses than Alfred, eight bowmen, nine spear and shield. None of them exactly the first team, some too old some too young- then again, where you're going, none of them will be the first team either, they're kind of dead.

Rohal is well away by the time you actually get going, all with heraldic signs- if you choose. Dirt gets two opened out and stitched together, and it looks as unlikely as might be expected; nobody thinks of making a plant cosy.

Physically it's not far, it's not even a full day's ride; close to two-three hours' walk or half an hour's canter. Familiar ground to several of the men at arms, and probably Alfred also. At least, until this.

What the Norden lands borrow from the past- using an old hill fort- the de Berreys looked to the future; the family seat was basically a large country house, which looks as though the ground collapsed under it and then ejected it back up again. It's rubble, and there could not have been survivors. Most of the town next to it was burnt to the ground, too. Being close to the forests around the mountain, most of it was wood.

There doesn't seem to be a centre left at all, really; what the men at arms can tell you is that of the half dozen farming hamlets- clusters of three or four or six farms and farmhouses- around the village and the big house, two of them got trampled too- you'd have passed the remains of one- but the others were bypassed. The survivors ended up in one or other- A cluster of three strung along one valley, Upper, Windways and Lesser Pava, Old Eleb, Raceford and Rew. Two cadet branches of the family, the larger and more aggressive of which ended up holding the Pav Valley.

Nobody's got the bit in the middle, at least has feet on it that you can see- there's a small twist of woodsmoke from one of the houses. What's the plan?

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

For reference, a cadet branch is a branch of a noble family descended from younger sons- they don't inherit the main title, but have status and respect from being part of the overall 'umbrella' of the family line. With the baronet de Berrey dead, they have a pretty good claim to his title... or would, if his toddler son came down with a sudden case of dead.

[I'm hoping Panzer will have something, holding off from posting IC right now]

[Panzersharkcat]

We gather intelligence. He makes way to the house with the woodsmoke and knocks on the door. If asked, he will proclaim, "I am Alfred Norden of Lillehammer. I have come to restore order to the land placed under the care of my family by the Baron deVerett. I have questions to ask of you pertaining to the location of the boy de Berrey."

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

03;51? Ten to four in the morning, which is what it was here when I got that? How late do you seriously expect me to be up and with it enough to reply? I know we've got time zone issues but this, dear god, aargh.


Anyway, there's a call of 'Go away.' from inside the house- old woman voice- and one of the bowmen watching the surroundings calls out a warning- 'Movement, polished metal coming down the Pav.'

Lesser Pava was one of the villages that got hit, it's within line of sight from where you are. Sharp eyes- Larric and Dirt both make it out- there looks like some small movement in the ruins, too. In Old Eleb which is also visible from where the house stood, there seems to be some commotion- a town meeting of sorts, everyone in the centre by the well arguing with each other.

The old woman gets more expansive- 'Things are bad enough without you coming to prey on us- go away, I'll give you nothing.'

[Kaelan]

Dirt (happy he has new 'clothes', but still no chain yet) offers to knock on the door if Alfred wants... Or we can go greet our(?) fellow contrymen before they come to blows.

Quielty to Larric Dirt enquires, "Why we taking 'dem other humans? You said Alfred trying to keep his people alive. Maybe best to tell young ones to keep back when it get dangerous." After which he will load up his crossbow just in case its needed.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Dirt's offering to knock on the door has interesting consequences; turns out the place, one of the few surviving buildings of the town, had a back exit. The old woman hears an orcish or at least near- orcish voice, (same genetic group, Genus I said earlier but really I get lost in the details of the Linnaean system without examples to follow)- and panic ensues.

Anyway, there is some clatterign around then there are four children, all between five and ten, emerging from the rear of the building and running for their lives, and the old woman- who's probably chronologically not that far gone, late forties, but a hard life and looks older- with a frying pan, ready to try to hold you off long enough for them to escape.

She doesn't seem to know quite what to make of you all; looks confused but determined.


(I'll be up as long as I reasonably can, but that's usually 2 or 2.30ish, just about.)

[Panzersharkcat]

"Calm down. He won't hurt you." He looks at Dirt and pats him on the arm. "It looks like we won't get anything here. Have you spotted anything?"

(OOC: I'd say move to Lesser Pava but Alfred hasn't spotted it yet, in character.)

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

03;51? Ten to four in the morning, which is what it was here when I got that? How late do you seriously expect me to be up and with it enough to reply? I know we've got time zone issues but this, dear god, aargh.

In California it was 9 p.m.; there are days when I literally CAN'T post until that late (in my own time zone). One of our simple, practical problems- the lower bound on our decision loop is governed by the shape of the planet.

IC:
Larric looks to Dirt. "Looks like she had the same idea you did." Young ones to the back...

At the (grandmother?) now that Alfred seems to be preoccupied with the tactical situation- Larric turns on the calm-down-Charm-Persusasion. "We're not here to wreck anything, ma'am*, and we're not here to take anything- all we want to know is who's taken the boy, which way, and what they've got to answer for."

*[Trying for... respectful, without implying a superior social standing obviously. Insert appropriate medieval term here]

OOC MK II:

I'm unclear on the geometry. Is that town meeting in the next village over? Or is it here, just well hidden? About how far away is Old Eleb, where that meeting is occuring? Are the soldiers coming from Lesser Pava?

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

More geography; where you are is actually slightly north- west of Qulan, in the bit between the mountain and the Orhan Hills, it's still fairly green here- another five miles or so north it starts turning into the fringes of the badlands. It's also fairly wrinkly, I think rolling hills is the term, and the Pav is one stream that flows, northwest-southeast, down the valley between two of the hills; from where the de Berrey house and surroundings were, you can see up most of the valley.

The armed men- a few sharp glints from spearheads and axeheads, you think- are coming from Windways Pava, which you can see; some time ago, generations easily, a stone outcrop collapsed from erosion or wizard, leaving scattered rocks across the landscape, some of which were since rearranged to make the place more defensible. In fact, there's obviously a story there as to why the de Berreys didn't use it to try to make a stand. Seems the survivors, one of the cadet branches, regrouped there anyway, and are now coming out to see what the fuss is about.

The de Berreys had a large country house, not massively fortified, and a small town around it- actually less than a hundred or so- of the people who worked for or served them directly, or of the trades that only the entire community could support. The house was camoufleted to death and then ejected back up, the town is ninety percent destroyed, the old woman and the orphans were in one of the few buildings that made up the other ten percent.

Village may be optimistic too, the six smaller ones were basically a few farmhouses with three or four extended and probably interrelated families more or less clustered together on the same good patch of land.

Old Eleb is too far to make out individual people without optics or active magic, but close enough to tell the difference between a mud square and people with not quite mud coloured clothes standing around; about a mile distant. it's actually on the nearest permanently dry bit to the floodplain of the Pav, downstream of the house- you have a little elevation, enough to see over some of the lower cottages.

The old woman is quite suspicious initially, quite guarded- eventually is persuaded a little, enough to explain that the current line, their grandfather's younger brother had children; most of them moved far from home, one of their sons ended up in the King's army and when his unit was shattered, not far from here, he took what survivors he could and made for his own family ancestral lands.

The other line comes from a generation further back, an illegitimate son born to a mistress the then lord later actually married, but the baron of the day refused to acknowledge the earlier children; common knowledge, though, and it seems they have the lower reaches, the two other villages which are actually over hills from the main house- and probably the current heir.

(Not actually in so many words, but that's what you make of it anyway.)

Plan?

[Panzersharkcat]

Since he still hasn't spotted the guys from Windways Pava yet and nobody has told him even after asking, he thanks to woman for her help and motions to move toward the villages over hills from the main house.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

One of the bowmen did spot them, and called it out; the rest of the group might be ostentatiously unworried by it all but one of the men at arms would have pointed it out. (They're getting slightly more obvious now- actually they're trying to decide whether or not to raise the unit standard they came away with.)

One of the men at arms will certianly say 'What about that lot, then?' and gesture in their direction. You outnumber them, twenty plus the special talents of the party to fifteen, and they are also wondering whether to make a confrontation of it or go back to the villae and get more bodies. Evidently they decide to brazen it out, and press on. One mounted, fourteen foot, look mostly spear and shield.

[Kaelan]

Keeping his crossbow ready to fire and ushering some of our smaller men at arms to the back,
"We try talk first or breakfast?"

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

Never has a knight needed a Sancho Panza as badly as Alfred. Dirt, you go hold off the windmills while the rest of us talk sense into him!

Er, Sir Alfred, one of your troops specifically alerted you to their presence, two ECR-posts back. Ah, I see, the third ECR-post took care of it.

IC:

"Yuck." Larric shudders. "Talk. Talk, that's it! They have to know there's more of us, like as not heavier-armed too. And if the woman is right and those over there-" he waves in the general direction of the approaching troops and the collection of rocks they're using as a fortified strongpoint- "turn out not to be the ones who have the boy, maybe we could use the help?"

[Panzersharkcat]

(OOC: The one starting with "More geography?" Didn't catch anything at first reading that said he was told specifically. Still not certain. Was it the part in that post that said "The armed men?")

"We talk." Hammer slung across his shoulders, he hails them. "Hail to you. I am Alfred Norden of Lillehammer. With whom do I speak?"

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

It was the one that started with me telling you even if I was conscious at 3:51 AM I would be extremely unlikely to be compos mentis. (Actually, most of the time...)

Dirt and Larric spot this one- the burnt out village they have to pass to get to you, there is a group in there hiding in the ruins. There's the occasional small shuffle of movement; the people in there are trying to decide what to do. In the end they let the moving group pass, hiding from them as they go by (and probably meaning to ambush them on the way back.)

The group coming down from the Pava don't spot them, head for you instead. Man for man, in fact, there's not that much in it or the edge slightly to them; most of them have their shields in the colours of the king's army. They decide to brazen it out;

the leader announces himself, 'Cornet'- (rank, not name)- 'Meredell, of Prince Heribert's Own Light Dragoons. What business have you here?'

Before you post anything Panzer, go back and look at the post that does start with "more geography"- about who the two cadet branches actually are.

[Panzersharkcat]

A light bulb turns on in his head. "I could ask you the same question. In fact, I would except I can hazard a guess as to your intentions in returning to your family's ancestral lands. Land which, by the way, has been placed under the control of my family by Baron de Verret."

(OOC: Sic? Who has the documents saying it was granted to Alfred? I wanted to produce it with a flourish except I wasn't sure if I had it or if it was buried deep inside a bag. The latter would really kill the moment.
"... by Baron de Verret"
*starts digging through bag* "Er... Hang on."
*finds it* "There we go."
*whips it out*)

[Simon_Jester]

IC:

Larric is probably the sort of person who'd remember to carry the documentation. If there's such a thing as rolling Intelligence checks to see if he remembers, go for it. He's big on the written word at any rate.

More generally-

Larric, thinking rather quickly and not wanting to end up on the point of a lance, makes a rather conspicuously dubious glance at Sir Alfred, and finishes the sentence Sir Alfred didn't realize he... hadn't finished in a satisfactory way- "held in trust and until young de Berrey is of age to take control of the estates himself. Is the boy safe?"

There, does that help smooth over the diplomatic problem?

OOC:

Sir Alfred just pulled a major "there is no forest" incident; the way he phrased it basically makes it sound like he aims to conquer the de Berrey family's lands out from under them, which our friendly neighborhood dragoon Meredell will probably take exception to. Violent exception.

[pictures Sir Julian facepalming, somewhere in the ether where un-rolled-up characters reside]

[Panzersharkcat]

(OOC: That was done on purpose, actually, since he wasn't sure if the dragoon had intended to harm the boy eventually. Wanted to get a reaction out of him first. But still, bad phrasing. Should have been "under the care" rather than "under the control." In the ether of un-rolled-up characters, James Hagen would have tried to kill him while yelling about the worker's revolution.)

He shoots Larric a look that's a mix of annoyance and thinking that was most likely better phrasing. "Yes. I had sworn to the baron that I would treat the boy as my kin. Hence my presence here when I heard word he was held captive."

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

Larric isn't really a diplomat, he just... the thing he aspires to, the heroic version he aspires to be when he's trying to, is someone who... carries truth like a lamp.

Heroism as seen by a man whose vocation is best described as "intelligent analytical honesty," if you will. At heart he really does believe that honesty will carry you through most situations, when you're not actually dealing with an enemy. He'll default to telling the truth, and trust himself not to end up in a situation where he's ashamed to admit to his own actions and intentions.

Certainly he'll default to telling the truth rather than risk getting into a fight with a bunch of angry men with swords.

[Fiji_Fury]

Dale keeps silent. He will, however, scope out the incoming dragoons in detail. Are they deployed for what looks like battle, or is this a wary direct approach for something else? Are the men looking fresh, tired or battle weary? Where are their eyes looking? Given that Sir Alfred is interacting with their leader, Dale will deliberately examine the armed followers.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Sooner or later, if he doesn't rise to the challenge and continues in his previous trimming ways, someone probably will nickname the Baron de Ferret; chances are it'd probably be Lisanna. (One R, two T's.)

The dragoons are mainly watching you; the group and the retainers. Given that they're supposed to be light, fast mounted infantry, and that only their leader is on horse, they're not best equipped- uniforms are not of the best, many bits of local cloth and dress. Scruffy, actually, apart from the weapons. They are on edge, suspicious, keyed up.

They are also most unhappy to recieve that proclamation. They look very disgruntled for a moment, then the cornet says 'Oh, you mean the hostage? The Captain's cousin, the one the outlaws are holding?'

Some of the squaddies have difficulty keeping a straight face- a couple are boggling, a couple of the quicker ones are grinning, and Larric could see the wheels turning in his head. He's lying; a well delivered, barefaced con intended to get you and the other lot to do each other in.

Before you got here it was a bit of a standoff, between the army officer and his deserters (really, they are) with blood ties to the area, and the actual natives. Now you've wandered onto the scene. The Cornet's quick, you have to give him that.

On the actual military odds, hitty- types will reckon that if it kicks off now, between you and this lot, depending on how the luck goes and how the talents of the party affect it all you should win- but not clean, you'd lose a few people on the way. Better than facing them and however many of their mates are left in the village together.

(Panzer- you were watching the Seven Samurai recently? Go a movie back, to Yojimbo. Might give a few useful ideas.)

[Simon_Jester]

"Outlaws? Enough of them to be a problem for dozens of the king's soldiers? Who are they, and who outlawed* them?"

Sir Alfred has local knowledge of the area and should be able to spot any obvious lies- Larric's just relying on Human Perception and his own instincts. So he's trying to get them to elaborate the lie, in hopes of figuring out what's going on.
_________________

"Outlaw," gentlemen, is a technical term, not just