seasong's Light Against The Dark II (May 13)

[seasong]

Is it just me, or did you all notice the small 'seasong' tattoo on that dragon's ankle?

Heh. Nice image . However, the Icy Hand of the GM is trying to achieve exactly the opposite! I WANT the PCs to find out... In fact, I want them to find out RIGHT NOW. But I try not to just GIVE the answers, I present challenges that must be overcome.

The challenge: the dragon wants them to get lost.
The solution (demonstrated above): walk slowly, listen sharp.

Other possible solutions that might have taken place: Merideth is an esper, yes? Rather than walk slowly, they could have hauled butt upslope to get her to listen in on the conversation (while being careful not to alert the dragon to her psychic sensor's presence). Or Athan could have made an argument (or bluff of some sort) to be allowed to stay.

If I'd wanted to prevent any of that, I would have just had the dragon send the kobolds upslope and downslope to speak with each side individually, instead of calling them together and revealing that there might be a secret there! By the time the PCs stopped trying to figure out what the kobolds were saying to the Theralis side, the orc side would have been finished with no one the wiser.

 

[seasong]

Vignette: The River of Pain

The orcs had scouts arranged in pairs a hundred feet out in all directions, and single scouts another thousand feet out past that, two hundred scouts in all. The single scouts tended to stay up trees, where they were harder to find and take out swiftly, and carried war drums to beat warnings with. Akeros could sneak by them, given an hour or two, but he needed to know where they were, and he didn't like to rely on chance.

Akeros was a patient man.

In the distance, he heard war drums change rhythm, and waited. Soon enough, a scout began beating queries nearby. Akeros knew where he was now. As the scout beat on his war drum, Akeros slipped between trees, staying away from the orc's line of sight outward.

When the orc stopped, he was 20 feet from him, crouched behind a root, his hair and skin plastered with mud and stains. In one hand, a looped noose; in the other, a sharp knife.

As the scout sighed and stretched, arms overhead and away from the drum, Akeros moved in. He slashed the drum with the knife to prevent loud sounds, and dropped the noose over the orc's head. The scout struggled, and Akeros took some bruises, a knife in the leg, but death comes swiftly in Akeros' hands - the fight was already over, it just took time for the body to stop struggling.

Akeros was a patient man.

Swiftly and silently, Akeros began moving towards the orc camps. The paired scouts were less stealthy. They simply stayed within sight of each other, as a kind of living fence, and stayed in pairs in case of silent attacks on one.

Akeros, resembling a dirt mound, crawled directly between two "posts" of that living fence. He moved slowly and cautiously, blending as much as possible with the natural dips in the ground, occasionally taking a moment between trees to stretch or pick a new spot to continue. It took an hour to cover 50 feet.

Akeros was a patient man.

Then, ahead, his quarry. An orc carefully identified by loyal Theralis espers as the most powerful shaman in the Breaking Cat tribe. Akeros kept his mind blank, and thought of nothing. His body moved mechanically, taking the actions he'd told himself to, without thinking of what those actions were for.

The spirits had warned the shaman that today would be dangerous, so he periodically checked for ill intent nearby. Akeros attacked moments after he'd assured himself that there was none. A poisoned arrow, burning like acid, sprouted from his chest. He had time to realize that it had punctured a lung when the second one punctured his throat and, gurgling, he fell to the ground.

Akeros ran, and the two nearest warbands gave chase. Pursued by half a hundred orcs, all gaining, Akeros ran as straight as an arrow loosed from the bowstring. He had backup to get him out, an arcanist ready to summon a great bird to lift him away, but the sooner he called for it, the sooner the bird would wink out of existence. He needed it at the last minute, not before, to maximize where it could take him.

Akeros was a patient man, even with half a hundred orcs howling for his head.

Ahead, he saw freedom. He was still out of range of easy hits with the spear, and the bird could get him from here. He yelled the signal, and a giant eagle appeared, diving out of the sky for his position.

Then a spear, thrown from a few hundred feet away, with practically no chance to hit while running... hit. It stabbed into Akeros' back right between the shoulder blades, severing his spine, piercing his heart, and finished punching through to rest against the inside of his sternum. As his heart's blood burst into his chest cavity, the world went red, then black.

The eagle, with no orders other than to grab the human below, picked up the corpse as it flopped and rolled across the ground, and lifted Akeros into the sky.

Somewhere deep in the bowels of the earth, Akeros' soul was dragged, screaming, into the river he named himself after.

Hethas is patient, too.

 

[Greybar]

That is an amazing little vignette!

John

 

[incognito]

Live by the sword, die by the sword.

This vignette was very "Godfather" one too many hits for the patient man.

That was very very well written however.

Uh, by any chance, do yyou actually make these rolls (to hit, damage, etc.) Or are they deterimined events.

 

[J. Anson]

Uh, by any chance, do yyou actually make these rolls (to hit, damage, etc.) Or are they deterimined events.

I got the impression that in this case, Hethas passed along enough bonuses to the spear throwers that dice rolls would be impertinent

 

[seasong]

First: rolling dice vs story.

I normally adjust how much dice rolling vs narrative decision according to the needs of the campaign and the comfort zones of my players. With the superhero soap opera I'm running, that means virtually no dice rolls at all (maybe once a session or less).

With Theralis, however, one of the personal challenges I've set has been to make a story out of whatever the dice (or, in really insanely complex situations, averages) give me. Because the PCs are not comfortable with constant dice rolling, I roll a lot of things ahead of time, but the dice still fall (or rather, the spreadsheet random number generator does).

That's not to say that the events are not meaningful. If Akeros died, it was because Hethas sought his soul... and I'll work that into the narrative somewhere. The resulting narrative is a kind of confusion of randomness, my interpretation of it, and whatever goggle-eyed wrenches the PCs throw into the mix (the best part ).

Second: D&D is a difficult, complex system. Handling lots of rolls like that is tedious and boring. So for big battles, or tons of rolls, I tend to do something like this:

Spreadsheet:
A1: random number 1-20
B1: if A1 > 18, random number 1-20
C1: if A1 > 13, d8+5 dmg
D1: if A1 > 18 and B1 > 13, C1*3
E1: DR 10 (stoneskin)
F1: D1-E1 (minimum 0)

Twenty rows of that (for the 20 out of 50 orcs who decided to throw their spears at long range in a desparate gamble), and a SUM cell off to the right, and I know exactly how much damage Akeros took, and I can look down Column F1 to see if anyone did spectacular damage.

Most orcs did zero damage. One incredible, maxed out 13x3 crit did 29 hp (from 39) in a single shot. So while several spears clattered off his back, one did enough to kill Akeros in one shot. For purposes of the story, I went with that one as "the one", and narratively ignored the pinpricks from the others.

I love computers.

 

[Greppa of Tartwater]

What's kind of sad is that the PC's never knew he existed. We won't even know enough to mourn him...stupid orc critical hits.

 

[Peskara]

Great vignette! But I, for one, won't mourn Akeros' passing. I never liked him. I mean, I think he's a great character, but I don't really like him. Especially not if we later find out he killed Chatham, who I really like.

 

[seasong]

Breaking Cat

"Great dragon, what is it you would speak with me about? Our humble tribe has observed and respected the ways of dragons in all places we have been. My ancestor..."

The kobold tilted its head, and spoke for Amalan in orc, "I am not interested in your history, humble or otherwise." It paused to sweep its arm across an arc covering the orc army in the distance, "Orcs have always been in the wild valleys. Orcs have always observed the compact. This is as it should be, and I do not care where they travel, so long as they leave no more trace than they have in the past."

The kobold hissed the next words, angrily, "But orcs have been careless! In the past four years, two tribes, desperately, have damaged the land. I have been forced to take a direct hand! I have had to heal scars in the earth!"

The war chief, ten times the mass of the small kobold, took a step back, "I, Great Dragon, we have not done these things! We are..."

"Silence! You have not done these things yet. And so it is that I will not destroy you yet. But I have observed carefully, these past few years. The tribes have shifted. They moved east and west like too many tadpoles in an orphaned pool of water, trying to find clear space, and tearing into each other to clear it."

The kobold looked intently at the war chief, "But mostly, the tribes move west. Most of the tribes that have done damage are new tribes, from the east beyond my lands. I would know why, and you have come from the farthest east of any tribe. You will tell me what you know."

Upslope, still trudging slowly and almost out of earshot, Athan almost fell backward for leaning.

The orc looked down at the kobold. It was such a tiny creature, pitiful even compared to the humans, and yet his survival, and the survival of his people, depended upon how he treated it. He was not worried about his people's opinion of him, should he grovel. His people had a long and glorious history of grovelling to dragons - it was simply how you dealt with creatures that could flatten entire tribes. But the appeals to pity and demonstration of humility was not working.

He thought of the human. The human leader had bowed, been respectful, but had calmly accepted judgement rather than beg for better. He could understand that, although it was almost will-breaking to speak so to a dragon. He straightened his shoulders, "Very well. You care nothing for my tribe. You care nothing for our history. I have spoken with two dragons before this. Neither made threatening sounds when my people had done nothing wrong. Neither treated my people's history as armorcat dung."

"I will tell you what you wish to know. You are powerful, and hold dominion over these lands, and I believe you have a right to know. But I will not bend my back to a dragon who can not return respect with respect."

The dragon leaned down, and his voice shook the earth beneath the orc's feet, "FORGIVE... MY IMPATIENCE. I AM... TIRED... OF THESE PROBLEMS. I WOULD... SEE THEM... SOLVED."

The war chief suddenly felt many times better about this approach. A tiny voice in his head was still screaming in fear, but he silenced it, "Oh great dragon, your statement fills my heart. I will tell you what you wish without reservation!"

"Far to the east lies a tribe, the Buhkenahk. They hold a mountain sacred to all orcs, and are a powerful tribe. They are stronger even than us, although they have learned to respect our strength. Ten years ago, one of their tribe came to be known as a mighty warrior of legendary power. In battles, he was said to slay ten enemies with every attack, and to have hurled boulders as might a giant."

"That mighty warrior became their new war chief, and became greedy. He coveted larger lands, and had a vision of orcs united under one name: Buhkenahk. It is a grand vision, and he is not the first orc to have dreamed of such a thing. But I will not be called Buhkenahk, and so I and my people traveled west."

"The life of a nomad is harsh. We can not afford pity for another tribe. We have driven tribes before us as we travelled, and they have in turn driven tribes before them. These are the new tribes you speak of."

"I have grown tired of destroying orcs. I have grown weary of war with my own people."

The orc continued to say more, but Athan and the General had left earshot of the orc's strong voice.

 

[seasong]

Great vignette! But I, for one, won't mourn Akeros' passing. I never liked him. I mean, I think he's a great character, but I don't really like him. Especially not if we later find out he killed Chatham, who I really like.

Heh. No, Akeros is not particularly likeable. Cool, yes, but not likeable.