Homebrew system thread II, part 2

[Panzersharkcat]

Hmm. I thought Dirt and whatnot also left to regroup. Oh, well.

Anyway, he jams in through the middle of their line to try to break it in two. If they succeed, he'll order them to break off and attack the divided line and attempt to envelop them. Crude diagram to try to show what I mean.

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EDIT: Stupid thing won't show properly. A bunch of spaces were removed when actually posted.

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

OK then, less diagramming in ASCII text and more descriptive language...

IC:

Larric keeps an eye out for any thrown weapons his way. He's invented two tricks on the fly this fight, for now he's sticking to what works: another lightning arrow, aimed at widening the gap in the line or making a second one.

[Panzersharkcat]

Quick and dirty two minutes of MS Paint.

[Fiji_Fury]

Dale has been juggled a little bit recently, and he'll keep spry but defensive. Dirt has the mass and strength to barrel through targets, so Dale will try to keep himself mobile and safe while the Ogre thumps more skulls (and limbs... and torsos... and...)

Based on the last description, it seems Dale is back-to-back (roughly) with deBerrey and has an arc of spearmen spread out in front of him. Time to faciltate this defensive maneuver then:

Use motion magic to aid in leaping far and left, away from deBerrey and toward the flank of the leftmost spearman in his front arc. If Dale sticks the landing and has an opening at teh spearman, slice and dice. If not, reset stance and keep the shield up with eyes ready for deBerrey's next move.

[Kaelan]

Need backup here, the fights taking too long. Speaking plant to fifi "I'll close 'erry in, you take him down."

On his next attack Dirt attempts to parry and step inside deberry's guard and pull him in with the back of the shield. Then he'll hope fifi can take him down or at least blind him by attacking his face.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

The description was enough; the actual event as the wedge crashes into the line is not as neat as the diagram, and depends very much on who gains the advantage over who- the left hand side of their line holds tighter than the right, Alfred has to fend off two attacks on himself, blocks one but the other leaves a fairly deep dent on his breastplate, and the wedge veers to the left before breaking up entirely into a mutual melee, everybody mixed in with everybody else in no formal order at all.

The lightning arrow has an interesting effect, though; hits a shield, but discharges in a spectacular electrical flare (and sets the shield on fire) that finally reaches tipping point for some of them- the first of their lot to break off and run do so just after that goes in. Nobody killed, but several out of the fight.

Dale leaps, lands by the spearman- who tries a rolling parry to take the blade out of his hand; Dale pretends to let it work, steps into it at the right moment and more or less cuts the spearman's foot off. The other two promptly try to kill Dale, of course, and he has to give ground to stop one of them kebabbing him.

Dirt's plan actually comes close to working perfectly; de Berrey feints with a cheap shot, exactly the sort of thng someone overconfident would try on a big slablike an ogre, but Dirt hooks him in before he can switch to the real attack; Fifi darts out, de Berrey tries to fend her off and fails, and just after he hits the ground Dirt realises that de Berrey's sword is sticking out of his left shoulder, and it's stinging quite badly.

[Simon_Jester]

Larric looks at the fight- a few of the deserters running for it suggests that we might be able to knock them out of the fight altogether. We don't have a well-defined enough line for another wintry blast to help much- some of our men are probably facing the wrong way in the confusion. We outnumber them, he's optimistic- he looks back to the flanking group. Sees deBerrey down and Dale fighting two men; he whips his hand around and throws a jag of medium-voltage, stunning current to shock one of the spearmen.

[Panzersharkcat]

He focuses on the man who dented his breastplate, jabbing at his solar plexus and then swinging up to try to catch his jaw. Seeing that Dirt is in a slightly bad spot, if he succeeds, he'll try to fight his way to de Berrey. He'll bellow out to the nearest men to secure Andrea and get her out of the fight, if she hasn't already. The plan is that he will try to take on de Berrey himself, try to shatter a knee or arm and then hold him with sword or dagger at de Berrey's throat to try to get the rest of fighting force to stand down.

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

Uh... Panzer?

[sanchopanza]

"My lord, de Berrey is unconscious; the ogre's pet plant got him."

[/sanchopanza]

[Panzersharkcat]

(OOC: Scratch the part about shattering knees or arms, then. I was under the impression he was down but not out and could get back up. Nonetheless, holding him at dagger point remains a good idea.)

Instead of fighting his way to de Berrey, he barks out to Dale, "de Berrey is down! Seize him!"

[Fiji_Fury]

Dale processes all this as he dances backwards, avoiding the spears and soldiers who want to skewer him.

"Your leader is down!" Dale shouts at the spearmen. "Yield or die!"

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

OK, I think that's actions from everyone except maybe Kaelan. Cool.

And some day, Panzer, I'm going to stop Sancho Panzaing just so that I can watch the hilarious fail that results from your character attempting to carry out logically pointless and physically impossible actions. Reminds me of a time when one of my players in a game I was DMing wound up hitting on Angelique... not quite realizing that Angelique was a three hundred foot warship and not a person.

Also reminds me of the great gazebo hunt.

[Kaelan]

"Ow"

In retrospect a sword in the arm is probably a good thing at this moment in time, otherwise deBerry would be suffering a decapitation at waist level, followed swiftly by drum making 101. Still, at least it wasn't an arrow to the knee.

Dirt kicks deBerry onto his front and places a foot squarely onto his back to keep him down. He then glares at the remaining skirmishers daring them to come claim his prize with fidi hissing over the shield.

[Panzersharkcat]

(OOC: I think even I would have spotted the fact that I'm trying to flirt with a ship. Unless, of course, I wanted to play my guy as somebody who really likes machines.)

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

I saw an argument on Warships1 once about whether ships have souls; it was basically settled in two words. "Warspite." "Enterprise."

Mechanically a ship may well have sufficient complexity to possess emergent properties, idiosyncrasies and particular gripes and good points that do simulate at least an animal level of personality, and wishful thinking- anthropomorphic thinking you could say, but I prefer the older term- covers the rest of the ground.

That's the middle case, the rational explanation that explains rather than dismisses, anyway. There are weaker and stronger cases to be made.

Of course, if we're talking AI, especially if something like second life is in play, all bets are off; there's a fluff short story from Transhuman Space which includes the line "You're under investigation for a suspicious biological package. Why did you send a dozen long stemmed red roses to one of our SIM-7 Predator Autonomous Kill Vehicles?"


Tangent aside, that's basically the end of the fighting- there is some more violence as the survivors disengage, but most of the deserters look distinctly disinclined to lay down their arms- they'll choose to run, but would still fight in order to avoid being caught. The standing remaining two skirmishers leap out of the path of larric's lightning and run for cover, the survivors of the main line, dragging some of their wounded with them, mostly start shuffling away in small blobs and packets- some have turned and ran.

That was about fifty percent casualties on both sides- there are about fifteen of them left and twenty- five of the fifty you started with. Andrea's just about conscious and could do with being helped, and held, up (serious wound right leg- compound fracture of the thigh), de Berrey's completely paralysed, his ensign is still twitching from the electric shock and being dragged away.

[Panzersharkcat]

"Secure and gag him. I will not have his poison tongue drip lies into unwary ears." He then makes way to Andrea and helps her up, carrying her in a fireman's carry, which probably has a different name around here.

[Kaelan]

So the boy help the girl but leaves our poor ogre who took down the villain with a sword in his arm....

"Dale, bit of help?" Indicating the couple of feet of steel sticking out of him. With his good arm Dirt lays down his Shield with fifi and then hefts his axe. Looking at deBerry with a smile, "lunch 'n drum time"

[Simon_Jester]

Larric is the sort of person who'd come over to help Dirt, so far as he can- though he has little or no medical aptitude, he's basically limited to "hold this in place over wound" and such. Hopefully he and Dale can at least wrestle a bandage over Dirt's shoulder to stop the bleeding, and rig some sort of sling for his arm- I forget if Dale is up to much more himself.

He'll urge a caution on Dirt, though. "Wait a bit. They-" he nods to the baronial troops, or what's left of them- "won't like it. Come to it, I don't like it either..." he trails off, shuddering a little. "Just... wait. Let's get this sling tied on proper, now."

[Fiji_Fury]

Dale comes over to Dirt and inspects the wound.

"This needs to come out, although it is important that you don't move when we do so. Larric, we'll need something to staunch the blood on either side of the should (entrance and exit wounds). It is much better if that something were clean*."

"Dirt, human customs make it offensive to eat the dead. You should understand that it is unsettling to us when bodies are eaten. In our minds only monsters and the undead do such things. Do you want people to see you as a monster? If they do, it might be much harder to," Dale pauses here, struggling for the right word, "...garden or cultivate them."

Dale's knowledge of anatomy is essentially that pointy things in people are bad. They need to not be in people. Therefore the sword is going to be pulled out, and some healing applied. First Aid lets me know that removing an impaled object is a bad idea. I doubt Dale has exactly that kind of training and besides... Ogre. Plus, there is no EMS on the way to this scene. No fancy paramedic or hospital is available.

"Please take your foot off deBerrey. Perhaps Fifi can guard him? In the meantime, you sit down. This is going to be unpleasant."

Before taking out the sword I'm waiting for confirmation on field dressings from Larric and consent from Dirt.

*Clean being a relative term given the technology, understanding of microbiology (nil) and relative practices of the late mideaval, early rennaisance period.

[Panzersharkcat]

"Or you can sit down on de Berrey."

[Kaelan]

"Fine!"
Dirty look at Alfred with former promises of heads and food walking off. "Best not sit. Would kill errey." Now to the task at hand. "Tie him, poison not last for long. Arm can wait until done." He then lays down his pack and reaches about for some poultice herbs along with needle and thread.

Once deBerry is secure Dirt will try to direct his current nurses in how to best remove the sword and dress the wound without too much cursing.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

If Dirt sits on de Berrey, there probably will be a short crunching noise- and would that actually be an entirely bad thing? How many lives and how much fuss would a timely sword to the neck, about thirty hours ago, have saved? The only point of taking him alive would be for trial, and it would be a show trial so that justice could be seen to be done; and it would be a hollow show at that- which is actually Andrea's advice. Considering she's got a serious wound, it's quite coherent.

'Nothing left to find out. He's got no claim to innocence, not now. No point to a trial. No more questions you need to ask. You know what he's done.'

(She's basically talking about an inquisitorial rather than adversarial system- in the context of this world, the elves lean towards the legal model of probe the incident, seek the connections, establish truth and determine crime, responsibility and blame from there, they're fascinated by the thinking involved in it all and a complicated case can be better than theatre; the dwarvish tendency is to assume that everyone involved will stand up for kith and kin and it's going to dissolve into a dispute, might as well assume so from the beginning and prepare against it.)

If Dirt's feeling romantically left out, he could always try chatting up Hara- or the Sargeant- Major. Either would be a deeply worrying thought. His thick skin stopped quite a lot of that impact, could have been worse- it's not actually all the way through and seems to have stopped against rather than punched through the bone. As it is, normal good practise would say remove the foreign body, it's too new an impact to have left any dead tissue yet, clean out the wound anyway and cover it. Doubt it varies that much.

That done, what from there?

[Panzersharkcat]

(OOC: Yeah. Thank you, de Berrey, for teaching Alfred, in-character, to be much less inclined to negotiate with anybody. Does anybody do the Roman pilum thing, with a soft shaft but a hardened tip to penetrate shields and render both the shield and javelin useless? Archer ranger might be too high to render it useful but it's something I've been mulling over.)

"Aye. We shall have to bring him with us, regardless, to heal you. We may as well place him under quick trial before execution while we are there. I had considered handing him off to the peasantry he had terrorized but concern for wound and concerns of ambush by survivors on trip back have scuttled plan."

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

Larric was actually... kind of willing to let Dirt kill and drum-ify de Berrey. Simply advising that Dirt wait until he's not surrounded by irritable soldiers, and then trying not to think about what might happen next.

If he were a cold, hardened individual he might have actually said something like "just wait until no one's looking" or even try to arrange that, but he's not. He does disapprove, he just really thinks the world would be a better place with fewer Captain de Berreys in it.

Julian might have, if no one was listening, but Julian doesn't exist.

OOC MK II:

The thing about our negotiation was- we didn't so much screw up by talking to him in the first place, as by not putting in the time and effort to secure our own position. There were effectively four power groups in the de Berrey estates when we arrived: us (and our troops from Alfred's estate), de Berrey and his deserters, the villagers, and the yeomen of the forest (think Robin Hood, only with more small farmowning and less highway robbery).

As soon as de Berrey saw that the situation had changed, he immediately perceived that he needed to somehow secure at least ONE of those power blocs on his own side, because he could not deal with having all three united against him. We missed our chance to knock him out before he could do that, by not attacking immediately after allying with the villagers. But we could have survived that error if we'd also thought to make contact with the men of the greenwood, and explain the situation to them. Then de Berrey would not have been able to trick them into attacking us.

Unfortunately, in that case he defaults to the same plan as before- run to Qulan and try to worm his way into the Baron's graces. But the point is, talking to him wasn't a mistake as such, the problem is that if we were going to go the talky route we should have talked to ALL the NPC factions, instead of letting Faction A turn Faction B against us by leaving B totally ignorant of our motives and actions. If we'd moved very fast we might even have been able to bring Faction B and Faction C (our allies) into the fight on our side at the same time before de Berrey could

It's obvious how decisiveness pays off in a fight. Now we see how it also pays off in social conflict and negotiations: de Berrey got inside our OODA loop and stayed there pretty much the whole time until we were able to literally drop out of the sky by magic in front of him and cut him off.

IC:

Larric thinks de Berrey is better dead, is worried that a trial may not deliver the desired outcome, would have been quite happy to hand him over to the peasants. He would honestly have been willing to feed the deserter-captain to an ogre, or at least stand aside while that happened. But he's not willing to kill a man in cold blood himself, or directly suggest it, call it hypocritical if you like. He scowls at de Berrey's prone form, unsure what to do.

Grimly: "Aye... I'll witness that he tried to poison three score or so people to death, and killed two elders and a baby while he was at it. He deserves the chop just as well as Radulf did, that's for sure."

[Panzersharkcat]

(OOC: And the version of James Hagen I considered rolling up would have tried to kill him from the beginning because he is an enemy of the peasant classes. Of course, he would never have gotten that far in the first place since I'm pretty sure he'd have been skewered for being a frothing revolutionary who can't shut up. [Main version of him is more or less a Batman expy, but with less in the ridiculously prepared and mastered skills department. He gets his ass kicked a lot by supers.] Also, typo. Archer range, I meant.)

He stops to scratch the stubble on his chin. "On the other hand, I risk his lies poisoning minds during his trial." He puts Andrea down, gently, and caresses his hammer. He walks over to de Berrey's body and holds up his maul. "If anybody has objection to summarily executing him, speak now or hold tongue forever."

If nobody objects, he'll request sword to decapitate him. As a bit of mercy, he'll do it while de Berrey's unconscious.