NorseQuest (A Norse Xianxia)

Alectai · Apr 5, 2023

[X] Plan Trapping Knights And Slaying Falcons

@Imperial Fister , I would like to commit my Bonus Die towards the IAT activation in this plan.

Imperial Fister said:
I'm very happy with how this raid has gone down so far. It seems to be as much of a paradigm shift as I had hoped

I actually like it, because it gives impetus for Long Term Plans--because we just got an object lesson in how superior the Christian System is at creating elite Cultivators, and a sets the foundation for pushing towards Reform.

That being said, I also hope we win, because we're going to need the money and the Orthstirr to make good our losses here. At least Fabvir we can limit the expense on? We do have that preservation stick, and we can probably kitbash some more together on the way for any other Bodily Dead people who we might have--it's probably a hell of a lot cheaper to heal someone who's only taken a single "Fatal" injury than someone who's gone that far and then had decay kick in.

wrecksalot · Apr 5, 2023

[X] Plan Trapping Knights And Slaying Falcons

I.F. Ister · Apr 5, 2023

Alectai said:
@Imperial Fister , I would like to commit my Bonus Die towards the IAT activation in this plan.

You got it

...Hey, @DeadmanwalkingXI , what does the 'Prepare a 15d6 Reinforced Honed x6 Intercept' part of the plan mean, exactly? I noticed that in the last plan but only just remembered to ask that now. Intercepting is a basic action, a mundane move. Unless you're Reinforcing it to oblivion (which would require way more orthstirr put into it to count), I'm not sure what it's trying to accomplish entirely.

Alectai · Apr 5, 2023

Imperial Fister said:
You got it

...Hey, @DeadmanwalkingXI , what does the 'Prepare a 15d6 Reinforced Honed x6 Intercept' part of the plan mean, exactly? I noticed that in the last plan but only just remembered to ask that now. Intercepting is a basic action, a mundane move. Unless you're Reinforcing it to oblivion (which would require way more orthstirr put into it to count), I'm not sure what it's trying to accomplish entirely.

I think it means "Throw 6 Hones on it?"

Or alternately, "Throw 6 Reinforcements" on it. The point I think is stacking up extra dice.

Alectai · Apr 5, 2023

Anyway, my screaming aside, I very much hope that the Rewards of taking a Manor are worth the damage we're taking--and still will take--going forward.

And that this isn't a Hopeless Boss Fight in the works.

Shine · Apr 5, 2023

It occurs to me that the horse, being a cultivator, was smarter than mundane people.
……Sunday mass must look quite strange.

Edit: If certain animals can't eat bread or drink wine for their health, how do they receive Eucharist?
Do their superpowers just bypass it?

I presume it works like IRL people with severe dietary issues, where they get a substitute and we presume that Christ understands.

Ryumancer · Apr 5, 2023

DeadmanwalkingXI said:
Maybe? I don't really have a good idea of the proper methodology for that given we don't share a language.

Didn't we learn English from Jerasmus? I coulda sworn that was a thing.

DeadmanwalkingXI · Apr 5, 2023

Shard said:
How much 'over Orthsirr' can we push into a trick? Like if we dumped as much Orthsirr into Leaping strike could we achieve like 10+ damage?

Evidence suggests no cap, but evidence also doesn't indicate it increasing damage at all. It gets through the armor's 'you must have x orthstirr to do this' but we don't know that it increases damage at all.

Alectai said:
Yeah, honestly? I can see it happening. Because no fucking way a young Squire also has a trained warhorse and a trained falcon, all proper Cultivators in their own right. This place doesn't look that rich, and he's apparently even younger than we are, which suggests he's not even as far along as Gabriel is, and Gabriel had only just qualified for his armor.

That kind of gear isn't getting trained in the middle of a frontier manor, that kind of gear is the fucking Prince of the Kingdom and gets protected accordingly. If the Knight instead leant his Squire his steed and falcon to even the odds, then that explains why the other side has 'Only' taken one fatality so far, if he's just fighting with his cultivation and his plate, in which case numbers matter.

But... Yeah, shit's fucked, and I hope to hell we can resolve this this round, because things are going to start going badly for the other team now that they've lost someone.

I suspect that having a horse is ubiquitous...but then again, giving a squire a more experienced horse is probably also pretty reasonable. I honestly dunno, could see this going either way.

Imperial Fister said:
You got it

...Hey, @DeadmanwalkingXI , what does the 'Prepare a 15d6 Reinforced Honed x6 Intercept' part of the plan mean, exactly? I noticed that in the last plan but only just remembered to ask that now. Intercepting is a basic action, a mundane move. Unless you're Reinforcing it to oblivion (which would require way more orthstirr put into it to count), I'm not sure what it's trying to accomplish entirely.

So, you earlier said that any Honed or Reinforced action was a Trick and you could put as many dice into it as you like. To quote (from a discussion about them counting as tricks):

DeadmanwalkingXI said:
So would this allow us to assign multiple dice to a single defense?

Imperial Fister said:
Yes, yes it would

From there we put a bunch of dice (8 to be specific), and then Hone it a bunch (6 times to match the other actions being taken) and add one Reinforce as well (could have done more Reinforce, but 15 dice seemed like enough? Maybe I should raise that...).

Does...that actually not work? I originally thought it didn't, but then you seemed to explicitly say it did.

Ryumancer said:
Didn't we learn English from Jerasmus? I coulda sworn that was a thing.

Yes, but we're in France.

I.F. Ister · Apr 5, 2023

Alectai said:
I think it means "Throw 6 Hones on it?"

Or alternately, "Throw 6 Reinforcements" on it. The point I think is stacking up extra dice.

That's what I've assumed it means. I'm just confused on the 15d6 part of it tbh.

Alectai said:
That being said, I also hope we win

I do hope so too. It would suck to have to shank Abjorn, but cest la vie.

Really, I'm excited for the children to be born so we can get started with the thing we've all been waiting for : D!

Alectai said:
And that this isn't a Hopeless Boss Fight in the works.

Hopeless boss fights aren't really my thing. If you want a real hopeless boss fight, go spar with Steinarr

Ryumancer said:
Didn't we learn English from Jerasmus? I coulda sworn that was a thing.

You aren't in England. You're in Lotharingia, in Frisia to be specific. The languages here are French, Frisian, and German.

DeadmanwalkingXI said:
Does...that actually not work? I originally thought it didn't, but then you seemed to explicitly say it did.

Ah, I see the miscommunication here. You thought I meant that you could assign multiple dice (from the pool) when I meant that you could assign multiple dice (through the assigning of orthstirr). Reinforce works like Hone, 1 orthstirr = 1 extra dice.

Otherwise you start veering a little too close to, well, a certain little something — a certain little mechanic — that exists in-setting but it would be a spoiler to say anything more.

DeadmanwalkingXI · Apr 5, 2023

Imperial Fister said:
Ah, I see the problem here. You thought I meant that you could assign multiple dice (from the pool) when I meant that you could assign multiple dice (through the assigning of orthstirr). Reinforce works like Hone, 1 orthstirr = 1 extra dice.

Otherwise you start veering a little too close to, well, a certain little something that exists in-setting but it would be a spoiler to say anything more.

It's cool if that doesn't work, but what does it 'counting as a trick' even mean then? That was the original question that you answered 'yes' to and provoked me to ask about multiple dice, as normally it's being a Trick that allows you to assign multiple dice from the pool. Like, this (ie: Hone and Reinforce do not alone allow you to assign more than one die from the pool) is the way I originally assumed it worked, but now I'm confused what 'being a Trick' means.

Anyway, I'll edit the plan a bit to account for that...actually, can we use a Hefty-Halter-Chop as an Intercept? If so, I'll just edit that in.

I.F. Ister · Apr 5, 2023

DeadmanwalkingXI said:
It's cool if that doesn't work, but what does it 'counting as a trick' even mean then?

For the purposes of defending against a Trick, which, admittedly, doesn't make much sense now that I say that 'out loud'.

DeadmanwalkingXI said:
Anyway, I'll edit the plan a bit to account for that...actually, can we use a Hefty-Halter-Chop as an Intercept? If so, I'll just edit that in.

You can, yes

DeadmanwalkingXI · Apr 5, 2023

Imperial Fister said:
For the purposes of defending against a Trick, which, admittedly, doesn't make much sense now that I say that 'out loud'.

Fair enough.

Imperial Fister said:
You can, yes

Done then. I moved a couple of dice from attacks (taking them from 12d6 to 11d6) to up it to 16d6 (since I don't think we can Reinforce that particular action since it counts as an attack...also the orthstirr cost is getting up there). If we use that on the bird it should even do damage (since its face and legs are its weapons), and disarming the squire would be good, too.

Shard · Apr 5, 2023

Imperial Fister said:
Hopeless boss fights aren't really my thing. If you want a real hopeless boss fight, go spar with Steinarr

We could improve our tag team abilities by sparring with our dad along with Abjorn..

Imperial Fister said:
Otherwise you start veering a little too close to, well, a certain little something — a certain little mechanic — that exists in-setting but it would be a spoiler to say anything more.

Hmmmmm

Really the big problem with fighting Christians is how they have actually stacked multiple force multipliers together. Megaresources from peasants who are ultimately expendable either way. Extreme combat focus. Compounding combat focuses with high-end runic plate armor (who the hell makes their armor even?)

...One of the notable weaknesses of Christian Cultivation is that they, very critically, rely on masses of peasants supplying them with resources, faith, and expendable bodies. In medieval IRL history you've got armies avoiding each other and just, IIRC, sniping villages here and there to starve out the enemy. Something you can't really do to Norse villages because everyone is a cultivator. But Norse villages don't exactly pool up their power in a superfighter. And if everyone's a combatant, well, uh, it's a lot more knightly to kill, as opposed to the opposite fighting vs defenseless peasants.

/

Also going forward we should like, stuff our Fylgja full of combat relevant stuff like spare shields, big giant church bells, and so forth.

DeadmanwalkingXI · Apr 5, 2023

Shard said:
And if everyone's a combatant, well, uh, it's a lot more knightly to kill, as opposed to the opposite fighting vs defenseless peasants.

I mostly agree with the post, but realistically everyone isn't a combatant. 99% of women aren't, and neither are most of the children. That's around 75% of the population since half the population is 15 or less. 25% of the population is still vastly more than Christians have, but it's not everyone.

A Norsewoman almost certainly can break a Christian peasant in half with minimal effort (since she is a cultivator), but on average, from what we've heard, her Hamr is probably at 4 or less and she has maybe two or three combat skills at 1-2 (aside from Composure, I suspect that's more common), and thus a combat pool of what, 10-15 at most? Often less? She's really no more a match for a knight than that mortal peasant is all things considered and I suspect their cultivation would look on killing her about the same as it would on killing that peasant, at least in terms of comparative combat prowess.

Now Christian cultivation easily might not care about that since we're talking about pagans here, but in that case they can murder babies just as readily. And may well do so.

Shard said:
Also going forward we should like, stuff our Fylgja full of combat relevant stuff like spare shields, big giant church bells, and so forth.

We currently have survival stuff, which is pretty convenient. We need a Throwing trick before the 'drop something' option becomes really viable, and that requires acquiring such a trick and giving both the trick and the item to the fylgja, plus a defensive trick...it's not crazy talk, but it's a heavy investment. Maybe when its capacity grows or we go on our next raid.

Exmorri · Apr 5, 2023

Shine said:
It occurs to me that the horse, being a cultivator, was smarter than mundane people.
……Sunday mass must look quite strange.

Edit: If certain animals can't eat bread or drink wine for their health, how do they receive Eucharist?
Do their superpowers just bypass it?

I presume it works like IRL people with severe dietary issues, where they get a substitute and we presume that Christ understands.

I feel like that is not a very xianxia answer.

Here is my suggestion: it doesn't matter if the animals can't eat bread or drink wine, because the Eucharist becomes flesh and blood, and the rite also changes the animals where necessary to eat those things. Which has the cooler result that Christian-trained animals all become carnivores or omnivores.

The falcon that just ripped out Fabvir's neck? It's raised on human blood. 🩸 The horse we luckily cut down early on? It was a man-eater that hungered for your flesh. 🍖

Hookahman23 · Apr 5, 2023

A teen with a hard on for Jesus is killing grown viking raiders who out number him greatly.

Drieder · Apr 5, 2023

Imperial Fister said:
I'm very happy with how this raid has gone down so far. It seems to be as much of a paradigm shift as I had hoped

I do enjoy the narrative that at home we owned ass, but on our first raid we nearly get killed multiple times. Really steps up the suspense and adds a sense of weight to all of our future actions.

As an example: before this fight I though we would be going raiding as much as humanly (or superhumanly) possible, now im like "yeah lets go home have some kids (so the quest doesnt just end), grow our farm and spend some time with our family".

[X] Plan Trapping Knights And Slaying Falcons

Shard · Apr 5, 2023

Kind of telling that the Squire has a bunch of Seidr equivalent tricks as a standard thing too.

DeadmanwalkingXI · Apr 5, 2023

Hookahman23 said:
A teen with a hard on for Jesus is killing grown viking raiders who out number him greatly.

Not really? We only outnumbered him 5 to 3 and he's only 'killed' one enemy so far (actually taken out by the falcon, but it was a team effort). The knight might be doing better, but the knight is very much not a teenager.

Shard said:
Kind of telling that the Squire has a bunch of Seidr equivalent tricks as a standard thing too.

I don't think he does. All his overtly magical tricks have been strongly Water-themed. I think he just has a water-based Hugareida-equivalent.

TheCount · Apr 5, 2023

So, that mud slide trick was neat.

And not only we broke his armor but also nerfed his reign, which is extra good.

Too bad we can't just set thing aflame.... We will need a trick for that, for that sweet DoT effect.

I see people remembered of the meat keeping skewer, which is good.

For the plan.... Yeah, this is good.

Too bad we need to wrap it up as quick as we can, otherwise shatter wrist trick would work nice, what with blunt damage killing most knights URL, iirc....

On that note, some blunt trick that goes through the armor either via reverberation or just deforming it wouldn't be amiss in the future.

DeadmanwalkingXI · Apr 5, 2023

Drieder said:
I do enjoy the narrative that at home we owned ass, but on our first raid we nearly get killed multiple times. Really steps up the suspense and adds a sense of weight to all of our future actions.

I think 'nearly get killed multiple times' is a bit of an exaggeration. Versus Father Gerrit, the danger was in getting embarrassed as people had to come help us more than death, IMO. Death was possible, but not super likely. In this fight, our life has not yet been in danger once...Abjorn's life is another matter however, and our life coming under threat going forward is entirely possible.

Drieder said:
As an example: before this fight I though we would be going raiding as much as humanly (or superhumanly) possible, now im like "yeah lets go home have some kids (so the quest doesnt just end), grow our farm and spend some time with our family".

Oh, see, I always expected that we weren't gonna go raiding again for a good long time. Norse women of this era generally breastfed for two years (which also works decently as birth control to help prevent additional babies too quickly), and I expected that we'd stay at home at least that long (so two and a half years minimum including the pregnancy)...though I do think we'll be handling the Horra situation during that time, or trying to anyway.

And even in, like, two and a half years, I feel like our first trip should maybe be a trading voyage to Wessex (to return Gabriel home if he wants to go) rather than a raiding expedition per se, and seems likely to be followed by more children and thus some more time wanting to stay near home. Having kids regularly puts a bit of a crimp in traveling too much...one of the reasons Son #2 is a good choice for next character, due to the contrast. Now, we probably will need to go on some sort of epic quest to get Jarlsoul, but that's one expedition, not constant raiding.

Also, importantly, the point of raiding is largely to get rich. We have safer and easier ways to do that once we have seed money. Orthstirr acquisition is also very good on raids, but it's certainly doable fighting various threats back home, plus the potential of poetry and other avenues. To say nothing of the 10-15 we're gonna wind up with getting per year from Deeds and the farm.

TheCount said:
Too bad we need to wrap it up as quick as we can, otherwise shatter wrist trick would work nice, what with blunt damage killing most knights URL, iirc....

On that note, some blunt trick that goes through the armor either via reverberation or just deforming it wouldn't be amiss in the future.

I'm not sure conventional armor piercing works on Knight Armor very well...but yes, we need some additional high damage/ignores armor options and with our Chop tricks filled but no Pierce or Bash Tricks, that's where we look for them. I think high damage is a more urgent concern (since that works as armor piercing in a pinch), but armor piercing would be good, too.

Alectai · Apr 5, 2023

I wonder if we can do a variant of Firebomb Strike that goes for internal detonations? That was what I was hoping for, but I guess it's not quite there yet.

KreenWarrior · Apr 5, 2023

Maybe a blowtorch move - very highly concentrated fire?

DeadmanwalkingXI · Apr 5, 2023

KreenWarrior said:
Maybe a blowtorch move - very highly concentrated fire?

It sounds like that would be Forgefire or Wildfire rather than Ignition...from what we've seen and heard Ignition generally explodes rather than being ongoing. Something to set off internal explosions seems possible, though, if likely highly expensive and maybe not tied to weapon attacks.

Toboe · Apr 5, 2023

[X] Plan Trapping Knights And Slaying Falcons

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