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NorseQuest (A Norse Xianxia)

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Sirrocco said:
So... this guy has been prepping to have Steinarr attack him in his place of power for years now... and he's good enough to prep specific counters to the people who he expects will come after him. Probably worth thinking about that when we build any further plans about the guy.
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Yeah, he's turned his home into a killbox, and he's preparing someone who can outright walk in and kill Steinarr if he doesn't come himself. That Elemental Advantage is not to be underestimated, and Erosion is a hell of a power to have in your toolkit.

Ultimately, there's two enemies who need to be defeated here, Horra, and Hasvir, what we discovered was the Secret aspect of our current mission. Because he's probably trained Hasvir to be his own Steinarr if he should end up getting killed. His other sons don't seem to be that special, but Hasvir looks like the one he's trained to be his ultimate revenge if he ends up getting cornered and brought down. If we fail to drop either of them, we're going to regret it when we make our move.
 
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[X] Incomplete Boon: Speaking Out of Law - Unlocks certain events and gives bonuses towards socializing with beings outside the law. Unlock by successfully socializing with beings outside the law (1/9)

In other words, we need to get them both outlawed well and good.
 
Alectai said:
Joking aside, the fact it's apparently in the Water School is nasty for us. And he's either a gifted illusionist in his own right or has Hamr comparable to Abjorn and could just shapeshift into a Troll in order to break the ice with the one we just had turned back on him.

Either way, I think he's our specific Final Boss, and he's a bad matchup for us to boot because we take extra damage from Water.
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See above regarding the illusion thing. It's a possibility, but not something we should assume based only on this. Like, plan for it in the worst case scenario, sure, but I wouldn't assume it to be true when Horra is right there and could've done that bit himself.

As for the rest...we don't take damage. That's for other people.

I'm mostly kidding, but our build is actually really strongly based on absolute defenses, to the point that actual damage numbers are not something I'm wildly concerned about most of the time. Which is not to say he's not a threat, he's an extremely serious threat and would likely kill us in a straight fight (from the sound of it he's a fair bit older and thus more experienced, and lacks his father's cowardice restricting his orthstirr, at least to the same degree)...but he'd need to run us out of orthstirr first, and anyone can kill us if they do that, no elemental advantage necessary. Like, he needs to touch things to dissolve them, and we can use Halting Vortex to prevent things touching us as long as we have the Orthstirr.

He's a serious threat, no doubt, but Standstill provides enough defensive tools that I think it compensates for the element advantage in practice. For us. Not so much for dad or other family members.

Sirrocco said:
So... this guy has been prepping to have Steinarr attack him in his place of power for years now... and he's good enough to prep specific counters to the people who he expects will come after him. Probably worth thinking about that when we build any further plans about the guy.
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That's definitely something to keep in mind, yes. Ideally, we can, while gathering evidence, also find places he goes regularly that aren't home so we can ambush him outside his defenses once he's outlawed.

Alectai said:
Ultimately, there's two enemies who need to be defeated here, Horra, and Hasvir, what we discovered was the Secret aspect of our current mission. Because he's probably trained Hasvir to be his own Steinarr if he should end up getting killed. His other sons don't seem to be that special, but Hasvir looks like the one he's trained to be his ultimate revenge if he ends up getting cornered and brought down. If we fail to drop either of them, we're going to regret it when we make our move.
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This I'm fairly inclined to agree with. Assuming Hasvir is willing to take up his father's crusade, of course...we know nothing about him personally. He might hate his father for all we know and be very pleased if the man died...seems unlikely, but we should do what we can to check.
 
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DeadmanwalkingXI said:
See above regarding the illusion thing. It's a possibility, but not something we should assume based only on this. Like, plan for it in the worst case scenario, sure, but I wouldn't assume it to be true when Horra is right there and could've done that bit himself.

As for the rest...we don't take damage. That's for other people.

I'm mostly kidding, but our build is actually really strongly based on absolute defenses, to the point that actual damage numbers are not something I'm wildly concerned about most of the time. Which is not to say he's not a threat, he's an extremely serious threat and would likely kill us in a straight fight (from the sound of it he's a fair bit older and thus more experienced, and lacks his father's cowardice restricting his orthstirr, at least to the same degree)...but he'd need to run us out of orthstirr first, and anyone can kill us if they do that, no elemental advantage necessary. Like, he needs to touch things to dissolve them, and we can use Halting Vortex to prevent things touching us as long as we have the Orthstirr.

Like, he's a threat, no doubt, but Standstill provides enough defensive tools that I think it compensates for the element advantage in practice. For us. Not so much for dad or other family members.



That's definitely something to keep in mind, yes. Ideally, we can, while gathering evidence, also find places he goes regularly that aren't home so we can ambush him outside his defenses.
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TBH, Desiccation (Which I suspect is what his Hugareida actually does), is one of the few things that we'd have a hard time countering with Standstill, because it's a formless sort of attack. That being said, there's a point to be made that even if he's not being actively hobbled by Coward Behavior, you'd figure we'd have heard of him by now if he was secretly a badass.

About how old did he look? @Imperial Fister ? Sten tier? More in our generation?
 
Alectai said:
TBH, Desiccation (Which I suspect is what his Hugareida actually does), is one of the few things that we'd have a hard time countering with Standstill, because it's a formless sort of attack.
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The description said there was in fact water doing the dissolving, not raw destruction or something...he just conjured water and used it to erode the thing at super speed, like something between water-based acid and a water-saw, that's impressive but it's also physical and thus stoppable. Plus he had to touch the statue to do it at all, and Halting Vortex can definitely stop him from touching us. Completely immaterial desiccation bolts may be possible, but that's not what his trick does at all and there's no indication he even has the right Hugareida for a trick like that.

Alectai said:
That being said, there's a point to be made that even if he's not being actively hobbled by Coward Behavior, you'd figure we'd have heard of him by now if he was secretly a badass.
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I mean I doubt he's renowned the whole valley over for his prowess, but he could've been on a couple of successful raids and we still might well have never heard of him. He probably does still have some Odrengskapr, but with less than his father and much less Nid his Orthstirr supply is likely to be more robust.

Alectai said:
About how old did he look? @Imperial Fister ? Sten tier? More in our generation?
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I am very interested in the answer to this question, though.
 
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Imperial Fister said:
Mature in how he holds himself. Physically, older than you, younger than Sten.
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How much older is Sten than us, anyway? I got the impression he was in his mid-20s but if a number was given, I've forgotten it. Eric was 4 years older than us, and Sten was definitely significantly older than that, but that's all I've got. I was thinking 10 years, but looking at his description that's how long he was away for, so maybe that's what I was thinking of?
 
Hrm, so Hasvir's roughly 19-21 or so it seems. That's within striking distance given how Halla's pretty good, though he'd still be a deadly opponent.
 
[X] Incomplete Boon: Speaking Out of Law - Unlocks certain events and gives bonuses towards socializing with beings outside the law. Unlock by successfully socializing with beings outside the law (1/9)
 
DeadmanwalkingXI said:
That really doesn't sound like Kabbalah at all. Maybe some sort of pre-Goetic demon-summoning thing, which draws on a few of the same influences, but not actual Kabbalah. I dunno what exactly it is, but it's not even part of a healthy magical tradition, I don't think, it's part of a very unhealthy and unpleasant one.
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I don't think that description necessarily runs counter to Horra learning Kabbalah. It could mean that Horra delved deep into the earth to learn unholy truths carved into the walls of primordial caves. Alternatively, he bought some occult stone tablets for a pittance from a street vendor who had no idea of their true worth. We learned this from a storyteller, so some overly dramatic wording is to be expected.

You know, I did consider a pre-Goetic tradition. I figured it was rather unlikely though, as the tradition would have been long dead in even in the days of Romulus and Remus. Horra managing to find some of that just doesn't seem probable in my mind, even when you factor in the stone tablets.

I think we have very different interpretations of Horra's actions. You see his reckless and self-destructive magic use and assume the source paradigm is likewise. My view is that it's far more likely that Horra's playing with forces he has but a fragmented understanding of. Thus, what he does is a twisted parody of the paradigm he is cribbing from.

Let's say Horra discovered some secrets of Kabbalah from some fragmented and worn old tablets. If Horra found the what (command of spirits) but not the why (God is supreme over all, the conjurer is merely enforcing His laws) that could explain what we've seen out of him.
 
[X] Feat: Calmed a troll and redirected it towards an enemy (+3 orthstirr)
This fucker is Aizen! GOD DAMNIT KYOKA SEIGEITSU!
Those are the worst/frustrating to fight!
 
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Lmao

Oh, this does make me realise that tricking the Troll is less.. Orthsirr boosting that killing a troll, to judge from the rewards. Everyone else probably didn't get (much) Orthsirr from this either.

[X] Incomplete Boon: Speaking Out of Law - Unlocks certain events and gives bonuses towards socializing with beings outside the law. Unlock by successfully socializing with beings outside the law (1/9)
 
[X] Incomplete Boon: Speaking Out of Law - Unlocks certain events and gives bonuses towards socializing with beings outside the law. Unlock by successfully socializing with beings outside the law (1/9)

Imperial Fister said:
Stepping from the shadows of the doorway is a man with a swimmer's build. He inherited his father's height, that much would be obvious to the slightest, most cursory glance from the most casual of observers. Where his frame came from, though, is a mystery.
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…Did Horra go out of his way to find a Water-type wife to marry JUST to bear a son to act as a counter to his long-time foe?
 
Hunter531 said:
I don't think that description necessarily runs counter to Horra learning Kabbalah. It could mean that Horra delved deep into the earth to learn unholy truths carved into the walls of primordial caves. Alternatively, he bought some occult stone tablets for a pittance from a street vendor who had no idea of their true worth. We learned this from a storyteller, so some overly dramatic wording is to be expected.

You know, I did consider a pre-Goetic tradition. I figured it was rather unlikely though, as the tradition would have been long dead in even in the days of Romulus and Remus. Horra managing to find some of that just doesn't seem probable in my mind, even when you factor in the stone tablets.
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The thing he did with the nisse (ie: create flesh armor from the bodies of many other creatures that was bound to verging on part of the creature, as well as driving it quite mad) doesn't even resemble anything in Kabbalah, which makes me very doubtful that's what he was using. Like, per both what we've seen and what was said, his primary trick is some kind of fleshcrafting/necromancy thing involving dead flesh not actually, like, primarily binding spirits...that's super not something that even resembles Kabbalah.

Hunter531 said:
I think we have very different interpretations of Horra's actions. You see his reckless and self-destructive magic use and assume the source paradigm is likewise. My view is that it's far more likely that Horra's playing with forces he has but a fragmented understanding of. Thus, what he does is a twisted parody of the paradigm he is cribbing from.
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I think evidence is that he actually has a good understanding of Norse magic. He's done several things with straight Norse spellcraft not even touching his other magic, some of them pretty impressive. Which means that whatever other tradition he's using may be partial but the part he has is specialized and useful for things Norse spellcraft isn't, and he's survived using it for long enough I think he kind of has to have a pretty solid functional understanding of it.

Shard said:
Oh, this does make me realise that tricking the Troll is less.. Orthsirr boosting that killing a troll, to judge from the rewards. Everyone else probably didn't get (much) Orthsirr from this either.
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If we took the Feat it probably would be similar in the long run...but yes, tricking it was, if it worked, a bit easier and thus also a bit less rewarding. If it makes you feel better we got +1 Hamingja from taking down the Scorn-Pole and are now at 11 Hamingja and 29 Training Dice, and the Hamingja boost is probably applicable to the others as well.

Silverking said:
…Did Horra go out of his way to find a Water-type wife to marry JUST to bear a son to act as a counter to his long-time foe?
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I suspect it's more 'threw him in the water from a young age and forced him to do a lot of water-based activities'...elements don't usually run in families, ours is weird that way, and the other kids don't seem as water affiliated. I suspect Hasvir is 'just' the one the training regime worked on, or at least worked best on.
 
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Yeah, keep in mind that this is probably the usual Perverse Incentives of the current Norse System working against us. We gained Far more from what we actually did than we could conceivably gained from killing it. But it's not awesome like fighting and killing the Troll would have been, so we only got a relatively small bit of Orthstirr (Though that was probably split across the whole team--everyone played a part in this event after all, and especially for Aki and Stig, +11 Orthstirr is probably a decent windfall, even putting aside any intangibles they might have acquired from being part of this curse breaking expedition)
 
Alectai said:
Yeah, keep in mind that this is probably the usual Perverse Incentives of the current Norse System working against us. We gained Far more from what we actually did than we could conceivably gained from killing it. But it's not awesome like fighting and killing the Troll would have been, so we only got a relatively small bit of Orthstirr (Though that was probably split across the whole team--everyone played a part in this event after all, and especially for Aki and Stig, +11 Orthstirr is probably a decent windfall, even putting aside any intangibles they might have acquired from being part of this curse breaking expedition)
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This is true, but remember that the base award would actually be only +7 even assuming it's the same for them as us. We add 4 to all our awards from Drengskapr. Now, Stig in particular (as opposed to Aki, who I suspect sadly lacks that right now) probably has some of that of his own, but not as much as us, and it's good to keep in mind.

I will say that Drengskapr is potentially a good way around the perverse incentives if you play your cards right, though. Just being well liked and respectable turns every minor Orthstirr award into something much more substantial. It matters a lot less on big awards, so people who cultivate a good rep and get lots of little awards enhanced by it benefit significantly more from it than those who rely on single large awards for orthstirr.

That also means that people with Odrengskapr need to chase single big awards a lot harder, which I'm not sure is a good thing or not, but it's something to bear in mind.
 
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Aki is honestly shaping up to be a major character if he doesn't die. He's evolved his Seeing Eyes to (nascent) Seersight, Seergaze is on the way after that. He's got Fylgja 7, even though he's like 12 years old. That's way ahead of many other vikings!
 
Imperial Fister said:
Doing things on raids gives more orthstirr than if you did the same thing while not on a raid
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Well that's the definition of a perverse incentive and definitely needs to be fixed when we clean this mess up.

Shard said:
Aki is honestly shaping up to be a major character if he doesn't die. He's evolved his Seeing Eyes to (nascent) Seersight, Seergaze is on the way after that. He's got Fylgja 7, even though he's like 12 years old. That's way ahead of many other vikings!
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Definitely. I 100% want to recruit him as an ally (or even into our household like Stigmar) long term. Boy's gonna go far if nobody kills him.

I will say I'm not sure he's hit Fylgja 7+ yet, though...we know War-Raven is the equivalent of Wizard-Owl. It makes his Raven fightier, but I don't think it's the Fylgja 7 evolution...on the other hand, he had Fylgja of at least 4 at 10 years old, which is still nothing to sneeze at, and I highly doubt he's ever stopped increasing it, so he might well hit 7 pretty soon.
 
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Shard said:
Aki is honestly shaping up to be a major character if he doesn't die. He's evolved his Seeing Eyes to (nascent) Seersight, Seergaze is on the way after that. He's got Fylgja 7, even though he's like 12 years old. That's way ahead of many other vikings!
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Oh yeah, Aki is absolutely a giant in the making. Just having a Rank 7 Attribute before he's of age is stupidly good. And he's turned that birb of his into an attack helicopter. Combine that with his foresight and you've got an absolutely fantastic guy to have in your camp.
 
Imperial Fister said:
"You've done well, Hasvir," Horra smiles with honest pride in his eyes as he takes his son by the shoulders, "Just imagining the things you'll do one day... I can't wait to see it."
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Does Horra actually care about his son or is Hasvir an arrow that Horra has been preparing and will be let loose and spent at Steinarr and his blood, a prepared sacrifice?
 
Imugi said:
Does Horra actually care about his son or is Hasvir an arrow that Horra has been preparing and will be let loose and spent at Steinarr and his blood, a prepared sacrifice?
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People are complicated, so I honestly suspect it's some of both. Like, he has clearly specifically trained his son to come after our family, but that doesn't mean he doesn't also care for him or expects him to die doing it.
 
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