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We were quite a bit weaker back then, nowadays our peers in combat probably have their eyes on joining the Headsman's Hird.

We were still around Upper Middle...certainly the high end of Middle anyway. And it depends on what they want out of life. Which might or might not be joining a Hird or Warband. Working for a specific person is potentially lower pressure and you get in on the ground floor...

But it's certainly not a given we'll recruit anyone, much less Vagn specifically, I was just noting my hopes on the subject, not necessarily expectations.
 
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[X] Plan the Element of Surprise
[X] (Optional) You're not sure that you can handle this with the men you have, perhaps you should see if there are any men of the Danelaw in the area?
 
[X] Plan the Element of Surprise
[X] (Optional) You're not sure that you can handle this with the men you have, perhaps you should see if there are any men of the Danelaw in the area?
 
A Monster's Advance (alexthealright)
I pumped this out rather quickly and messily so sorry for any grammatical errors it is definitely not my best work


Tower-Breaker looked out across the sea, his ironmasks and nearly the whole of his warband encamped behind him with a rare smile on his face. He had been told a great foe would meet him at sunset in bloody battle, that it would be a foe his match in strength and that if he could slay it he would be truly unmatched among all the world.

"Jarl are you sure that this prediction was accurate?" One of his Ironmasks asked.

He snorted "Do you have so little patience that you cannot wait for a mere 5 more minutes?"

The Ironmask shook his head "No. I simply doubt the word of one old seer"

He shrugged "Well if he was who I thought he was he would not make such a false prediction"

"And if he wasn't?"

Tower-Breaker shrugged again "I'll kill him"

After all no sane Norseman would imitate the All-Father and expect to escape retribution.

They waited and watched the sunset until the last dregs of sunlight began to dip beneath the waves.

The Steelfather sighed and turned to his ironmask "Well. Looks like you were right, now time to start trac-"
He was interrupted by his Ironmask. "Jarl… I think the seer was being truthful."

He turned and saw the creature as it rose from the sea to eclipse the setting sun.

It was almost 50ft tall with gray, leathery skin topped with cooled magma and obsidian-like crags some almost 10ft long, it's body was somewhere between an upright bear and a crude mockery of a man, in a gap between two obsidian-like horns was a single red, glowing eye.

As his eyes met it's baleful gaze, he felt a smile grow across his face.

Then it opened it's jagged mouth and roared, the eruption of sound struck his camp like a physical blow, thralls and tents alike sent flying through the air, most of his warriors were caught off guard by the sound and staggered back as they reached for their weapons.

The noise continued for ten deafening seconds all the while the creature approached closer its enormous strides devouring the space between it and his camp 500ft, 400ft, 300ft.

Tower-Breaker decided that enough was enough, and with a shout almost loud enough to be heard over the roar drew his sword, taken from the shattered body of a Knight on same day he had earned his Kenning and shot towards the beast on the back of a great boulder almost as large as the beast itself.

The thing's eye turned to him as it raised it's arms to brace itself for the blow, the rock crashed into it like a knight on horseback, it's knees bent, pushing it down into the ocean and for just a moment the Steelfather thought it would fall over backwards.

Then the boulder shattered shrapnel pinging ineffectively off his body and ruining his shirt, then he was upon the beast, his sword flashed iron flying from it's edge as a pale gold light extended from it cutting a horizontal line across the creature's face and gouging deep into it's eye, the beast growled, never slowing its advance its eye flashed a bright red and fired a blast at him.

As the beam of heat and force sped towards him he took a moment to revel in his own indestructibility, then the beam struck him, without a place to plant his feet he was sent flying into the ground.

As he absentmindedly tried to remember which direction would move him closer to the surface he heard booming footsteps, the Beast had reached land.

In an explosion of pyroclastic ash, magma, and flying rubble Tower-Breaker destroyed the small hill above him looking on as his warband finally engaged the creature, he saw a young man in fine armor with a short spear shouting a battle cry as he leapt towards the creature and passed some invisible boundary before he burst into flames his body disintegrating in seconds, this happened again and again as the beast continued its slow advance, then an arrow of lightning struck it in the shoulder and Eric God-Taunter drew back his humungous bow a second time and unleashed another arrow.

Then the Ironmasks engaged staying well outside of its range of its internal combustion peppering it with a attacks, it responded with enormous plumes of flame that stretched a hundred feet long lighting up the night with blue and orange fire, it was extending its hand to release another wave of flames when it was reminded that Steelfathers are in fact invincible and that they have little fear of coming out the worse when ramming into almost anything.

The impact sent its head snapping backward with a sonic boom and a resounding crack the Steelfather barely slowing before he unleashed a burst of deep cuts into the monster's throat black blood coating his blade as he pushed his sword in deeper still, even as it melted in his hands.

It shook itself its body crackling with lightning in a fruitless attempt to escape from the man imbedded in its throat even as great waves of fire spread across the battlefield forming walls of smoke and flames.

And then the creature roared a second time and Tower-Breaker was sent flying by the expanding shockwave of ash and sound and by the time he dispersed the ash clouding the sky he let out a cry of rage, for the creature was gone.


With his warband devastated he swore vengeance against the thing that had burned his camp to the ground listing its myriad wrongs in many a rant but he never discovered its greatest damage, later in secret men whispered that the encounter had cursed all who came near him spreading sickness and death, and for the most part they were right, for what does one call radiation poisoning but a curse?
 
I was thinking, that we use some of the Waterwolfs fur to svim in the river and snaks into the castle. But we need to wait until the Knights and the Squire had left the castle. Maybe the people from Danelaw could help with that, by baiting them out. Remeber that is should be the Noble and the Thanes if we can.
 
For the record, so people are aware, on Discord Imperial Fister offered to give the names of a Cultivation System's Soul/Magic Stat (their Fylgja equivalent) for 1 Reward Die each (he might throw in their other stat names as well, or give the Soul/Magic names of a couple of different systems at once, or something like that, from what it sounded like), and would give a basic idea of what a specific one did (like, what the heck Pneuma does, for instance) for a separate 1 Reward Die expenditure. He'd also say what the commonalities are between all the different Soul/Magic stats there are for 1 Reward Die.

I haven't 100% decided if I want to spend any Reward Dice on this, but it seemed like the kind of thing people might want to burn a Reward Die on and everyone should be aware existed as an option.
 
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I think we should set a small squad to focus on Serge when he shows up. Heima, Abjorn, and either Tryggr and Trausti or Vagn. then a few more mobile people to help us with eliminating key targets, like the other chivalrics and the noble. the rest can engage the general Thane, and we should still outnumber them
 
I think we should set a small squad to focus on Serge when he shows up. Heima, Abjorn, and either Tryggr and Trausti or Vagn. then a few more mobile people to help us with eliminating key targets, like the other chivalrics and the noble. the rest can engage the general Thane, and we should still outnumber them

Our tactics depend heavily on what we can recruit in the way of help from the Danelaw. If we can get a couple of actual high end Norsemen to help hold down Serge (the 8th Decade) with some of our people's support then our tactical options expand a lot.

If we don't get anyone that high end then we need to assign one of our elites to Louis (the 5th Decade)...probably Abjorn, or maybe Nokkvi, and then we, Heima, and our other elites all need to be dealing with Serge, meaning that we have to leave the Thanes and Noble to the rest of the crew (specific assignments can be discussed). Which is just not great but he overpowers us as a group so thoroughly I think we almost have to.

If we do get someone sufficiently high end (I'm hopeful for Stigulf Snowbeard, who would still need support, but might bring friends), we can still send Abjorn to handle Louis, and actually maybe send one or more of Heima, Nokkvi, and Vagn to do other stuff (such as Heima going in the back way and killing the Noble, and either Nokkvi or Vagn taking the Squire and his horse and bird), and assume command of the main battle with the Thanes ourselves, which I think sounds a lot better.

Basically, I think our recruitment efforts should focus on 'Hey, wanna fight an 8th Decade Knight?' and we should recruit people for that part specifically...if we recruit a dedicated squad for that we can handle the rest of the battle much better. He just ties up so many of our assets all by himself.

Also, selfishly, I'd rather fight something other than another Knight personally. And if we get a group who can hold him down that becomes tactically pretty solid as well as more fun.
 
If we don't get anyone that high end then we need to assign one of our elites to Louis (the 5th Decade)...probably Abjorn, or maybe Nokkvi, and then we, Heima, and our other elites all need to be dealing with Serge, meaning that we have to leave the Thanes and Noble to the rest of the crew (specific assignments can be discussed). Which is just not great but he overpowers us as a group so thoroughly I think we almost have to.
I don't think we should aim to defeat him. he doesn't overpower us so thoroughly he instakills our tanks. Heima+Abjorn+maybe Nokkvi or Vagn can likely stall him, and then we can go hunting. once all other elites are dead, and with us outnumbering the Thanes, he will likely surrender
 
How about this plan
[X] Plan: use the waterfront.
-[X] (Optional) You're not sure that you can handle this with the men you have, perhaps you should see if there are any men of the Danelaw in the area?
-[X] We will scout the castle using our flygia before finalising our plan, to gather more information, particularly ways to lure the knights outside the castle. But provisionally, our idea is:
-[X] Use the waterwolfs fur to make clothes, so a strike team, so they can can swim under water and sneak into the castle, take down any Wacthmen/guards, and than open up the castle for the rest of men. But only after the knigths had left the castle.
-[X] Makes a lots strawmen and had some of our men take them and set up a fake camp. The idea is to bait the knigths out of the castle, by making them think that a raid is come over land. The camp should be a bit far away from the castle, but still to be able seen from the castle.
-[X] Once the knigth had left the castle, had our strike team begin the plan. We should take down the noble and the Thanes as fast as posseble.
 
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I don't think we should aim to defeat him. he doesn't overpower us so thoroughly he instakills our tanks. Heima+Abjorn+maybe Nokkvi or Vagn can likely stall him, and then we can go hunting. once all other elites are dead, and with us outnumbering the Thanes, he will likely surrender

They probably do overpower us so thoroughly they risk killing our tanks before that happens if we split our forces like that without backup. Remember, we're not dealing with one 8th Decade threat (which is individually more powerful than anyone we've got by a fair bit), but three of them, all used to working as a team. By doing that we're not sending a group of three weaker people to delay one strong one (which would be viable), but three weaker people to each delay a stronger one by themselves, and that's a lot riskier and thus a lot less viable.
 
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[X] (Optional) You're not sure that you can handle this with the men you have, perhaps you should see if there are any men of the Danelaw in the area?

Fair fight is always a bad idea

I'm concerned that Fylgja scouting is gonna end with our owl getting spotted by Serge's bird
 
Hey Blackhand,

Is it possible to alloy a Hugareida of mine with a Hugareida-using trick of an opponent of mine?
Is it possible to use Hugareida with Seidr?
 
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My concern isn't that OwlHalla is bad at scouting. It's that scouting and sentry skills have natural synergy with a bird of preys sharp eyes and ability to fly, so I think it's likely that Serge's bird has focused on those skills. And if they have they will likely be better at them than Halla due to higher cultivation and centuries of practice, at which point it comes down to whether they can peirce Hidden in Rags, which we know is possible because it's happened before.
 
My concern isn't that OwlHalla is bad at scouting. It's that scouting and sentry skills have natural synergy with a bird of preys sharp eyes and ability to fly, so I think it's likely that Serge's bird has focused on those skills. And if they have they will likely be better at them than Halla due to higher cultivation and centuries of practice, at which point it comes down to whether they can peirce Hidden in Rags, which we know is possible because it's happened before.

There is a significant difference between having really great perception and being able to pierce a perception filter.
 
My concern isn't that OwlHalla is bad at scouting. It's that scouting and sentry skills have natural synergy with a bird of preys sharp eyes and ability to fly, so I think it's likely that Serge's bird has focused on those skills. And if they have they will likely be better at them than Halla due to higher cultivation and centuries of practice, at which point it comes down to whether they can peirce Hidden in Rags, which we know is possible because it's happened before.

Without us drawing suspicion with really blatant stuff (which we can avoid) it's happened once, from someone with a magical way to do it. I'd be much more concerned about the Priest doing it than the Knight's companion (and our conventional stealth is likely to work on the Priest).

Additionally, with shapeshifting, we're gonna double our dice pool to 28 and well above what even an 8th Decade Knight's companion has unenhanced by things like Meditation (which, to be clear, likely does have a Perception-boosting option...we know from Gabriel it has a Stealth one). So it'd only spot us even without Hidden In Rags if it is currently specced for perception despite being just kind of hanging out...which is possible enough I wouldn't risk it without Hidden In Rags, but is worth keeping in mind anyway.

Now, to some degree whether it has such a perception boost depends on how slots for that sort of thing are determined. If it's Realm alone and it has 7 slots then one might think it's pretty likely, but we actually don't know what Meditations actually do well enough to evaluate whether that'd be worth it for someone just hanging out.
 
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Hey @DeadmanwalkingXI. what do you think of my plan. That one about baiting the Knights away from the castle.
Is there anythin I need to change.

Seems basically fine for what it is...there's certainly nothing technically wrong with it. I'm just really thinking we shouldn't be making plans that are too detailed right now before we even know our resources. Additionally, I'm a bit concerned about the logistics of trying to make clothing out of 37 wolf pelts in the time available...the loss of money is also less than ideal, though not the primary concern.

Which is to say it seems like a viable plan (aside from, as noted, not recruiting additional personnel, though that's a separate vote), but I'm not inclined to vote for it.
 
[X] (Optional) You're not sure that you can handle this with the men you have, perhaps you should see if there are any men of the Danelaw in the area?

Do we know around what strength the Thanes are?
 
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