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NorseQuest (A Norse Xianxia)

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Imperial Fister said:
'Fighting thanes... I do not recall much, unfortunately. I feel like the details of my combat experiences may very well be in another 'shard' of myself.

What I do remember is that while thanes have far less ability in the esoteric, they are masters of conventional combat. You will not see much in the way of hugareida amongst their ranks—I suspect the class dedicated towards such matters has been lost to the march of time—but their swords are sharp and their throwing arms strong.

A thane prefers to throw javelins and engage in 'javelin duels' with their opponents before engaging in melee combat. If skilled enough to win a javelin duel, then swords are drawn and battle is fought by kin and kith over the corpse and its valuables. Thanes are well-armed and armored, far more then we would expect from our own fighting men. They also have better training, on account of their place in their society as professional warriors. Treat them like you would a Warband combatant.'
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Interesting. So pretty high-level combatants but traditional ones...not a lot of magic or fancy stuff, just good equipment, good stats, good combat skills. That makes sense as something to prepare for at least. Our own equipment is a lot better than average and might match theirs (okay, Sagaseeker is almost certainly straight up better), but we should not expect the same of the equipment of our friends and allies unless we're the ones who provided it, and should assume they probably have better combat skills (ie: higher Combat Pool and possibly more Tricks). I suspect they also have a lower pool of their Orthstirr-equivalent, but they likely do have Infused Stats to help make up for that.

I wonder what their Focus/Frenzy equivalent is and how it works (no idea here), what their Shapeshift equivalent might be (it's probably just straight buffs, not modular ones...maybe more of them? Hard to say.), and what their Soul/Magic stat is like.

Imperial Fister said:
'Thinking of Knights, Priests, and Nobles as separate tracts is incorrect. A Noble's son is a Noble, but can too be a Knight or a Priest.

However, Nobles tend to be more battlefield commanders, providing direction for their Knights and underlings and the tactics used in battle. A Priest will provide the Knight and Noble with blessings of their Lord and their God's guidance. Father Gerrit should have focused on laying blessings upon his flock rather then engaging you in single combat. If he had, it's very possible you and yours would have lost.'
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Check, so both Nobles and especially Priests are more focused on buffing others than Knights are in somewhat different ways (and accordingly worse in a straight fight...Priests probably more so in both ways) and Priests at least can, if they focus on it, make even mortals capable of killing lower-end to mid-range cultivators. That checks out.
 
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DeadmanwalkingXI said:
Interesting. So pretty high-level combatants but traditional ones...not a lot of magic or fancy stuff, just good equipment, good stats, good combat skills. That makes sense as something to prepare for at least. Our own equipment is a lot better than average and might match theirs (okay, Sagaseeker is almost certainly straight up better), but we should not expect the same of the equipment of our friends and allies unless we're the ones who provided it, and should assume they probably have better combat skills (ie: higher Combat Pool and possibly more Tricks). I suspect they also have a lower pool of their Orthstirr-equivalent, but they likely do have Infused Stats to help make up for that.
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notably they are considered equivalent to Warband combatant. not neccessarily Ironbrothers, so likely also Stonesons. I expect Halla to have better combat stats then the majority of Stoneson level Thanes, since she is around Ironbrother level
they probably have steelfather level Thanes too. which we obviously shouldn't engage
 
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alexthealright said:
then the romans pulled out of Britain and the anglo saxons rolled in to conquer it
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OneArmedYeti said:
You are absolutely right, it is so hard to remember everyone that's invaded England and the order.
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Specifically, it was the Angles, the Saxons, some Jutes, and also a couple Franks and Frisians that stumbled in as well. They all eventually coalesced into the Anglo-Saxons that we all know and 'love'
 
Let me try for a more correct QM interpretation.
Imperial Fister said:
'Thinking of Knights, Priests, and Nobles as separate tracts is incorrect. A Noble's son is a Noble, but can too be a Knight or a Priest.
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I'm assuming this is similar to what's going on with the King. He's a King on the Noble track on the Frankish side and also whatever he is with the Saxon mechanics.

It's probably easier to see because the sources are different.
 
What we know as 'Christian Cultivation' could, perhaps more accurately, be called 'Frankish Cultivation' or even 'Carolingian Cultivation'
 
Hmm. Non-sequitur but I'm really wondering more and more exactly how Christian Dice Mechanics work outside combat, what with the d4s and all.

My current theory is that the dice progression in terms of successes is [-1, 0, 1, 2], and they then get only 1d4 per level of their Attribute but 2d4 per Skill level. That means they can become better than the Norse, on average, at things they really specialize in, but on something they and the Norse are both at lower skill in, the Norseman wins. That would fit thematically (specialist vs. generalist and all).

Blademaster said:
notably they are considered equivalent to Warband combatant. not neccessarily Ironbrothers, so likely also Stonesons. I expect Halla to have better combat stats then the majority of Stoneson level Thanes, since she is around Ironbrother level
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Well. Remember, the ones we spotted just hanging around were mostly Middle to Top level. I'd imagine we could indeed out-pool a Middle level one, but not a Top level one. So it's gonna depend on the specific Thane in question. I get the impression that ones on our power level are plausibly gonna out-pool us.

OneArmedYeti said:
Let me try for a more correct QM interpretation.


I'm assuming this is similar to what's going on with the King. He's a King on the Noble track on the Frankish side and also whatever he is with the Saxon mechanics.

It's probably easier to see because the sources are different.
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I'm pretty sure that's not correct at all. Alfred seems to be primarily a Thane, just dabbling in Christian/Frankish cultivation. It...wouldn't really work the other way, I don't think.
 
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Blademaster said:
hmm. can we use Seidr in combat? as much as I understand, its considered bad for men, but Seidr is women's craft. so we might be able to get away with it
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So, a lot of the stigma against seidr use to hurt people is doing it in a way they can't respond to...generally speaking, if you already have seidr using it in combat from within sword's reach is probably fine because the other person can stab you so it's fair. Using defensive seidr (like the anti-illusion spell we picked up) is also probably always fine.

There's a bit of an exception for instant death spells, though. Even if done within sword's reach those are likely to be an issue, especially if you don't have to land a hit to make them work (Unending Time In The Sun is nid when used against dwarves because it's an 'I Win' button, for example).
 
DeadmanwalkingXI said:
So, a lot of the stigma against seidr use to hurt people is doing it in a way they can't respond to...generally speaking, if you already have seidr using it in combat from within sword's reach is probably fine because the other person can stab you so it's fair. Using defensive seidr (like the anti-illusion spell we picked up) is also probably always fine.

There's a bit of an exception for instant death spells, though. Even if done within sword's reach those are likely to be an issue, especially if you don't have to land a hit to make them work (Unending Time In The Sun is nid when used against dwarves because it's an 'I Win' button, for example).
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so depends on context, basically? we might wanna pick up some more combative and offensive spells then. they might come in handy, especially if we can get offense more esoteric then our usual "Fire to the face" magic.
 
Blademaster said:
so depends on context, basically? we might wanna pick up some more combative and offensive spells then. they might come in handy, especially if we can get offense more esoteric then our usual "Fire to the face" magic.
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Seidr isn't actually very good for direct combat, is the thing. Not from anything we've heard anyway...it can do defensive stuff, illusions, maybe curses (though maybe not on a combat time scale), but there isn't a huge amount of it that's actually good offensively. We probably should see what Solrun has available, but I wouldn't get your hopes up all that much, and we have a lot of seidr we need for things other than combat before we focus on this.
 
DeadmanwalkingXI said:
Seidr isn't actually very good for direct combat, is the thing. Not from anything we've heard anyway...it can do defensive stuff, illusions, maybe curses (though maybe not on a combat time scale), but there isn't a huge amount of it that's actually good offensively. We probably should see what Solrun has available, but I wouldn't get your hopes up all that much, and we have a lot of seidr we need for things other than combat before we focus on this.
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we don't really lack in the direct combat. wha we really need are those illusions, curses, debuffs and that kinda stuff. the kind of things that don't neccessarily damage but grant advantage. buffs and debuffs, control and that stuff
we do know Skalds do it effectively, so likely we can too. and its exactly the point our arsenal is rather weak at. we have no lack of high damage attacks
 
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Blademaster said:
we don't really lack in the direct combat. wha we really need are those illusions, curses, debuffs and that kinda stuff. the kind of things that don't neccessarily damage but grant advantage. buffs and debuffs, control and that stuff
we do know Skalds do it effectively, so likely we can too. and its exactly the point our arsenal is rather weak at. we have no lack of high damage attacks
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Right, but what you describe is pretty explicitly a skald thing. Solrun is not a skald and her combat options are likely to be much more limited than theirs inasmuch as they exist at all.

CedeTheBees said:
Did we ever ask Blackhand what he and Hal's shard talked about?
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It sounded like they didn't exactly talk? More 'communed'. But no, nobody has asked details as of yet.
 
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By the way on discord it was confirmed that this.

Imperial Fister said:
[ ] A small bundle of blessed bread
-(This is said to aid in cultivation)
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Would have supplemented our orthstirr with a fervor pool without messing up our Odr cultivation and I'm wondering if we should try and get some bread on this trip

Can anyone thing of a reason why this might be a bad idea?
 
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alexthealright said:
Can anyone thing of a reason why this might be a bad idea?
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It adds another thing we need to throw Training dice at, and we have no bloody clue how we would progress it beyond the like 5 Fervour per combat turn we would get, and 5 ain't a lot of fuel anymore. At the time we had a shot at getting it it was a solid attack per turn tho, but now its pocket change
 
alexthealright said:
Would have supplemented our orthstirr with a fervor pool without messing up our Odr cultivation and I'm wondering if we should try and get some bread on this trip

Can anyone thing of a reason why this might be a bad idea?
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I think we'd have to pray to God to regen our Fervour. Be a Christian and all that? Halla so far has shown no interest in the Bible, so it'd feel out of character for her to suddenly start praying to God. Not to mention that'd also involve converting, which isn't something I really want to do. It'd be cool, I suppose, but I don't see much reason to start using Fervor because I suspect it'd just be an orthstirr equivalent for us at this point - maybe we could learn prayers and miracles and whatnot with Fervor unlocked, but that'd involve finding a teacher on top of all the other stuff we've got to do. Just doesn't seem like a good use of time to me.
 
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