seasong's Light Against The Dark (FEB 06)

[seasong]

Random Notes on Arms & Armor

Steel is a secret art, known to a few rare cultural groups who sell their elite equipment for a high price. These groups are mostly allied with each other, and treat the potential discovery of the method by another group much like the USA treats the development of nuclear arms.

Theralis is firmly in the late iron age. Armor is too heavy for moving quickly through mountainous terrain (if you expect to be fresh when you reach the battle), and iron swords are far more expensive than iron-tipped spears.

Theralese spears are designed for quick, easy production: the typical spear head is a wedge-cut chunk of iron bound to the head of the shaft. The shields are more sturdily built - they are a thin plate of flattened iron bolted into a hardwood frame, and usually take a bit longer to make than the spears.

Archery is known, but an accurate arrow takes more effort to make than an entire spear... and the mountains sharply reduce the range advantages of the bow. Add to that the years of extra practice required to make a good archer, and the spear wins out yet again.

Theralese captains also have a sword, a single-edged wedge-shaped bar of iron about two feet long. It is a weapon of last resort (just as the captain is the fighter of last resort).

 

[seasong]

More language notes...

Arcanist magic centers around the use of words of power. At low levels, these are more like powerful phrases, but as the mage gets better at channeling, slowly switch over to syllabic runes.

All spells involve a spell circle (traced in the air, drawn in the dirt, a placement of stones for a ceremony), and one or more sigils contained within. This is the source of the spell's raw power - the portal through which extradimensional energies are tapped. The words of power merely shape its exit.

The language used for the words of power is a nonsense tongue, in that there is no actual translation for the majority of the words. To the arcanist, each word is simply a verbal sound that does a particular thing, not a method of communication. With that said, however, there is a certain logic to the syllables, and skilled arcanists can sometimes infer what kind of effect to expect from an enemy caster, even if the arcanist is not familiar with the specific spell.

For readership convenience , I will continue to refer to spells by their 'common names' rather than the sigil + syllable combination that an arcanist would use to accurately state what he was doing.

 

[incognito]

He-LLO! I know I'm not the only one reading this bad boy - any commentary?

 

[seasong]

The usual Tuesday night GM cancelled, so we ran another session of Mountain Thunder tonight. I'm now 2 sessions and a game year behind.

Oh, and in case the number above shocked anyone... yeah, time sprints sometimes in my campaigns. In this case, however, that's partly the fault of what happened in the aforementioned 2 sessions. Heh.

Ingredients to come...

Fireball
Darkvision
Reinforcements
Clever use of a cantrip
Orcs
More orcs

 

[seasong]

He-LLO! I know I'm not the only one reading this bad boy - any commentary?

We're really only just getting rolling with the actual story - not nearly long enough for a solid population of readers. And I've probably scared people off with my inconstant writer disclaimer at the very beginning, but I prefer to be as forthright as possible. I'm not a very good pimp, I'm afraid .

That said, I would love commentary from anyone. It's really the audience that keeps me going, after all!

 

[incognito]

commentary

yeah seasong, here's a Q:

What's with all the male nudity in your game? Don't make me quote the lines, but dang, dude! Put some leather on those poor chilly bastards! One word "shrinkage" - reason enough to wear clothes in the mountains.

Also, is more orcs really an ingredient? More orcs with dramatic rings of irony now, THAT'S an ingredient



My only suggestion thus far is that you edit your original post where you *claim* to be an inconsistent writer - you should see the crap that P-Cat puts his readers through.

 

[seasong]

Re: commentary

What's with all the male nudity in your game? Don't make me quote the lines, but dang, dude! Put some leather on those poor chilly bastards! One word "shrinkage" - reason enough to wear clothes in the mountains.

Bah! It's a balmy 60 degrees out! They've got knee-length tunics and sandals, ought to be enough for anyone. Why in my day...

Also, a few points:
- The imagery is grecian; Theralis is not greek, but they have similarities.
- Half (HALF) of the force is female. Remember, all good children serve for a year.
- Shrinkage is good for athletic events and soldiering. Less wear & tear, yes?

On the plus side for the sensitive, it won't be coming up much throughout the story hour. My goal is to hover somewhere around PG in the writing.

editted: Hey! I went and looked, and there's only one line on nudity. The 'otherwise naked' in the arms & equipment commentary is referring to their lack of armor, not their lack of clothing.

Also, is more orcs really an ingredient? More orcs with dramatic rings of irony now, THAT'S an ingredient

Think of it this way: the 'orcs' ingredient is where you see a buncha orcs, and they are trying to bust through your shield wall and stick you in the head with the foreleg of a trapping mantis.

'More orcs' is when you're thinking, "damn, that's a lot of orcs", and suddenly there's a whole bunch MORE. The ingredient, more properly, could be called "overflowing cup: even more of something in the scenario".

My only suggestion thus far is that you edit your original post where you *claim* to be an inconsistent writer - you should see the crap that P-Cat puts his readers through.

Editted. And you're right. I'm often overly cautious in self-assessment, and the first two weeks of this, I've done almost daily posts . I need to improve my pimpin' skillz.

 

[Capellan]

Re: Re: commentary

I need to improve my pimpin' skillz.

Well, your updated sig suggests that you've grasped step 1!

Step 2 is to make posts in story hours you think are cool, so that the readers of those will also check out yours.

Not that I know anyone who does that, of course

To get back to the subject at hand: good story hour. I've not had a chance to check out the web page in any detail as yet, but the levelling ideas seem interesting. I like the setting, too - but then I have a fondness for using historical settings as influences on my own campaigns.

So, if Theralis corresponds to the Greeks, does that make the Orcs the Persians? Are we seeing Thermopylae, here?

 

[seasong]

Re: Re: Re: commentary

To get back to the subject at hand: good story hour. I've not had a chance to check out the web page in any detail as yet, but the levelling ideas seem interesting. I like the setting, too - but then I have a fondness for using historical settings as influences on my own campaigns.

So, if Theralis corresponds to the Greeks, does that make the Orcs the Persians? Are we seeing Thermopylae, here?

Afraid not - Theralis is based more closely on pre-Messenian Sparta, with some lazy assumptions of Athenian-like advancement after that (the name, in fact, is taken from Therapne, a settlement that may have been Sparta's origin point ). Thermopylae would still be a long ways off.

There are some similarities between Eastpass and Thermopylae, however...

And thanks for the commentary . It really does keep me going.

 

[seasong]

The First Battle of Eastpass, pt III

Spread along either side of the eastern valley, what looked several hundred orcs camped in groups of 10-50. Tucked under shading trees or just laying flat on their backs in the morning sun, they more than doubled the number of defenders.

Greppa finally crawled up on watcher's rock, careful of his recently sealed wounds, and got a better look.

The orcs, sprawled about the slope of the mountain until they were hidden by the forest beyond, had completely blocked off the Eastpass trail north, and with it, any trade or help from that direction. Most were resting, although a few here and there wrestled while others formed circles around the competitors and jostled each other a bit. The spears... the spears were everywhere. Greppa hadn't suspected there could be so many insects of that size, and yet here were some 6-7 hundred orcs, each carrying a small collection of them.

He was glad he'd kept the two spearheads. They were rather neat, in a way.

Merideth and Athan, meanwhile, busied themselves with the wounded. Or rather, Merideth did, while Athan, unscratched, tried to make himself useful. It wasn't easy to be a hero, he was coming to see.

-----

The day passed slowly, the humans watching the orcs, the orcs watching the humans. But the orcs did not attack, merely continued to laze about.

Captain Agina was not fooled, and told everyone to rest in shifts until nightfall. Then everyone was to be awake.

In the deepest part of the night, the orcs finally attacked. As Agina had surmised, they intended to take full advantage of their uncanny nightvision. Eastpass quickly filled with dark shapes, wildly stabbed spears, quiet grunts of pain. A few humans held torches aloft as much as they could, but the torches always attracted thrown spears.

And the orcs were no slouches at throwing.

Greppa continued trying to hit the orcs with his spells, but began to feel useless. Captain Agina was beginning to think so, too, he knew.

Merideth continued to vaccilate between exhaustion and casting the best healing spells she knew.

And Athan, frustrated by his inability to connect with the enemy in the dark, was soon switched to longspear, where it was more difficult for him to wear himself out.

It was a long battle for everyone.

And then, the orcs retreated. They'd caused only a little damage, and no one had died. Of course, no orcs had died, either. And the defenders were tired, while only the majority of the orcs were still fresh, having ignored the shadowed battle.

-----

With morning, however, reinforcements finally arrived, with another two hundred youths with spears... and Hurath, Greppa's former master, flew in.

Greppa couldn't help but grin - he'd always known that Hurath could fly (it was one of the spells he'd carefully copied in the dead of the night, although unable to fully understand yet), but he'd never seen it.

When Captain Agina began discussing finer tactics with him, however, and mentioned Greppa's lesser shadow killer (wondering, perhaps, if there was something better he could be doing with his spell casting), his stomach knotted.

That was another of the spells he'd carefully copied in the dead of the night.

Hurath gave him a hurt look, and Greppa quietly tried to disappear among the other soldiers while they continued to talk. And he was almost glad when the soldiers on watcher's rock yelled ORCS!

-----

This fight ended somewhat quickly. Hurath flew up to watcher's rock, grabbing Greppa along the way, and coldly surveyed the orcs sprinting up the mountain toward the pass.

Then he smiled, drew a full circle (Greppa did not recognize it immediately), and spoke powerful words: "bothfalli mu taran!"

A streak of fire shot down upon the orcs, and then expanded in mere moments to encompass an entire warband, sucking air from their lungs and burning their flesh horribly. The orcs screamed, and started to run away as a second fireball bore down on them and snuffed what remained of their lives.

Hurath looked a bit winded, but began casting again, this time directing the fiery death towards a second warband, further down slope.

That was enough for the orcs, and they began retreating en masse.

Hurath swiftly flew down to Captain Agina, and requested fifty of her soldiers to assist him in chasing the orcs a bit east... enough to clear the road north. He received them, and the fifty of them began jogging down the mountain to keep the orcs on the run.

Hurath, and the soldiers who went with him, never returned.

to be continued...
probably tomorrow morning