[X] Do a broad aerial survey of Horra's lands, take note of his fields, and do an estimate of how many people he should actually be able to support with what he has on hand. When time and discretion allows, attempt to get closer--paying that many fighters with that kind of equipment shouldn't be something that just anyone can afford without being a famously successful leader of warbands--and yet nobody's willing to talk about him, which suggests otherwise. He's clearly not getting that money in an honorable fashion, and people might let some details slip if they don't think they're being watched. Follow the money, see where it points, if you get a chance to track Horra himself though, it's obviously worth a shot--but approaching his home should be the final step in your investigation--who knows what defenses he has on hand.
Oh my gods im actually awake for a quick vote. Or maybe two?
Dwarfs enjoy most the things that come from the surface, the things that require a steady supply of sunlight to create. After all, much like trolls, dwarfs turn to stone when exposed to the light of the sun, so things that require sunlight to make are highly valued.
Dwarfs are, of all the myriad beings that make up the cosmos, the most like humans. They have similar values and any gift you give to a human can also be given to a dwarf. Dwarfs appreciate quality crafts, though trying to pass human craft off as dwarfwork is a way to earn a speedy death, even if you claim it belongs to a rival clan.
And sure, I'll call the vote here in, like, 5 minutes
Dwarfs enjoy most the things that come from the surface, the things that require a steady supply of sunlight to create. After all, much like trolls, dwarfs turn to stone when exposed to the light of the sun, so things that require sunlight to make are highly valued.
Dwarfs are, of all the myriad beings that make up the cosmos, the most like humans. They have similar values and any gift you give to a human can also be given to a dwarf. Dwarfs appreciate quality crafts, though trying to pass human craft off as dwarfwork is a way to earn a speedy death, even if you claim it belongs to a rival clan.
I guess Superior Quality would be enough that even they'd recognize it as a respectable gift?
Huh, I realize Dwarfs like Gold, I wonder if a hand-crafted golden arm-ring would be considered a princely greeting gift. We do have some gold lying around after all, and picking up the Jewelry-Trick shouldn't be that hard if we focus on it.
Good beer probably wouldn't hurt either. I don't think they can grow hops.
[X] Do a broad aerial survey of Horra's lands, take note of his fields, and do an estimate of how many people he should actually be able to support with what he has on hand. When time and discretion allows, attempt to get closer--paying that many fighters with that kind of equipment shouldn't be something that just anyone can afford without being a famously successful leader of warbands--and yet nobody's willing to talk about him, which suggests otherwise. He's clearly not getting that money in an honorable fashion, and people might let some details slip if they don't think they're being watched. Follow the money, see where it points, if you get a chance to track Horra himself though, it's obviously worth a shot--but approaching his home should be the final step in your investigation--who knows what defenses he has on hand.
I guess Superior Quality would be enough that even they'd recognize it as a respectable gift?
Huh, I realize Dwarfs like Gold, I wonder if a hand-crafted golden arm-ring would be considered a princely greeting gift. We do have some gold lying around after all, and picking up the Jewelry-Trick shouldn't be that hard if we focus on it.
Good beer probably wouldn't hurt either. I don't think they can grow hops.
Scheduled vote count started by Imperial Fister on Apr 20, 2023 at 5:55 PM, finished with 50 posts and 6 votes.
[X] Do a broad aerial survey of Horra's lands, take note of his fields, and do an estimate of how many people he should actually be able to support with what he has on hand. When time and discretion allows, attempt to get closer--paying that many fighters with that kind of equipment shouldn't be something that just anyone can afford without being a famously successful leader of warbands--and yet nobody's willing to talk about him, which suggests otherwise. He's clearly not getting that money in an honorable fashion, and people might let some details slip if they don't think they're being watched. Follow the money, see where it points, if you get a chance to track Horra himself though, it's obviously worth a shot--but approaching his home should be the final step in your investigation--who knows what defenses he has on hand.
[x] Conduct a broad aerial survey of Horra's lands, looking for any suspicious earthworks, pits, altars, standing stones, or anything else unusual from the air that might be a ritual site. If that fails, survey the largest longhouse and if Horra leaves, surreptitiously follow him and see what he does.
I guess Superior Quality would be enough that even they'd recognize it as a respectable gift?
Huh, I realize Dwarfs like Gold, I wonder if a hand-crafted golden arm-ring would be considered a princely greeting gift. We do have some gold lying around after all, and picking up the Jewelry-Trick shouldn't be that hard if we focus on it.
Good beer probably wouldn't hurt either. I don't think they can grow hops.
Gold seems like a safe bet; I'm not sure if arm-rings are a good gift or if they have a specific Jarl-subject connotation here in setting.
Beer, mead, honey and food seem like safe bets. Milk is a traditional faerie gift, which I don't think would come across as insulting in context presuming we gave jugs as opposed to saucers of it.
Some meat with a Meat-Keeping Stick probably wouldn't go amiss, assuming we don't mind the dwarves learning the trick.
Shrugging, you reach your spiritual hand down and with thumb and forefinger, you pluck the first berry from the branch. As you do, it vanishes from your soul with a flex of will and, with an involuntary flick of the wrist, it reappears in your hand.
So we took it from our soul and put it back into the Material world?
Good to know that that works.
Means we could sac a cultivation berry + a feast worth of ordinary food + some high quality craft.
I'm a little leery of too much experimentation with odr when it's hard to get and we don't have much, but we can try some of this next time yeah. For this turn specifically...I think 3 dice in Research is enough.
These I'm a lot less sanguine about. This smacks of using our family and friends as guinea pigs in very dangerous experiments and I'm not thrilled by the idea.
Just to be clear, by the Aki line I meant teaching him what we know to be safe to then see how much he can remember and See in our Soul with his spirit sight.
He could be a great help in teaching cultivation outside of charred soul inheritance, due to his ability to see what someone is doing (think our having friends around to watch over us while cultivating, but now with the ability to see when something is going wrong in soul)
Mysteries abound. I mean, it's not even like "Horra is a dink" is a secret, apparently nobody likes him--and yet he's got a dozen well equipped warriors hanging out around his farm alone? "I'll give you money" only goes so far when the one offering it is a known Drengskapr.
We could go after the bandits we know are out and about.
If they are connected they may let slip information.
Or killing external bandits may lead to fewer people in the compound. The latter wouldn't give us usable evidence, but at least confirm suspicions.
If she speaks (Old) English, she could probably understand Frisian. It's the closest language to modern English and even today it's nearly mutually intelligible. Well, at least to me. Buter, brea, en griene tsiis is goed Frysk an goed Ingelsk.
[X] Do a broad aerial survey of Horra's lands, take note of his fields, and do an estimate of how many people he should actually be able to support with what he has on hand. When time and discretion allows, attempt to get closer--paying that many fighters with that kind of equipment shouldn't be something that just anyone can afford without being a famously successful leader of warbands--and yet nobody's willing to talk about him, which suggests otherwise. He's clearly not getting that money in an honorable fashion, and people might let some details slip if they don't think they're being watched. Follow the money, see where it points, if you get a chance to track Horra himself though, it's obviously worth a shot--but approaching his home should be the final step in your investigation--who knows what defenses he has on hand.
0~0~0
Horra's fields stretch.... well, not nearly far enough to feed over four dozen people. How he supports the people under his care is unknown, though it stinks of outside influence. Though... there have been a few bandit attacks on some of the neighboring regions' farms, particularly in the East.
While it was assumed to be Geirstadters as they came from the East, with how some of these so-called 'farmhands' look, you wouldn't be surprised to learn that they had been at least somewhat responsible. Heck, one of them even has a lazy milk-eye, just like the rumors!
It's then, as you're flying above the farm-cum-village, that you notice a familiar face.
Hasvir walks through the streets, refusing to let his chin fall as he carries a full tree on his shoulder. It's not easy, not for anyone. Trees of that size simply aren't good for carrying — no matter how you hold it, some things are just awkward.
But, to his credit, Hasvir carries it as well as any man can. Men send nods his way, but he steadily ignores them as he makes his way through the streets. Whether it's out of blind arrogance or a desire to not associate with bandits and their ilk, you don't know.
What you do know is that there's something about how he holds himself, something in his face perhaps, that just screams self-righteous arrogance. He's got the kind of face that makes a man want to put an axe through it. He's not ugly, far from it, it's simply something about how he treats himself that ticks those checkmarks off.
He stops before a carpenter's and drops the log in a pile of similarly-sized lengths of wood. Striding forward with long, powerfully propelled steps, he closes the gap between him and the door in a matter of heartbeats. The door opens and he disappears into the darkness within.
As he does, it's then that you notice the tree — that all the trees piled there — has white sap leaking from the axe strokes and broken branches. The sap clearly bears power in its sticky mass, but just what does it do? What purpose does such a thing hold?
Landing atop the bark-clad logs, you decide to find out.
Stripping a leave from the branch, you brush it against the sap. When you try to pull it away, it refuses. Instead of following your will, it sits there, stuck steadfast to the white substance.
You squint your owly eyes as uses and ideas come to mind. If you were of a less honorable sort, you could very well create sticky-traps for your enemies to find themselves in. A man who doesn't move when told is a man who will very soon be dead, as the graybeards like to say.
In the distance, you catch the telltale sound of hammers on metal. A lot of hammers on metal. Some smiths are doing work, it would seem. But work on what? And why so much at once? While you would hesitate to call yourself a smith, you aren't exactly a neophyte either.
At the top of the hill, the door to Horra's home opens and a short, stumpy-limbed and darkness-clad figure emerges. Though the sun shines brightly in the heavens of the cloudless evening sky, the shroud of shadows stays stubbornly clinging to the figure's malformed shape. The way it moves is almost human, but it's just different enough that it makes gooseflesh of your skin. As you make to follow him as he heads towards where the in becomes the out, a muffled conversation springs up from inside the carpenter's building; Hasvir's talking to someone.
You won't be able to both follow the stranger and listen in. You'll have to make a choice.
[ ] Listen in
[ ] Follow the stranger
Afterwards, you'll see what the smiths are up to.
0~0~0
AN: Not a whole lot to say other than that I'm excited to see reactions.
Because the only "Short and Squat" person I can recall is Twoshields.
It occurs to me that Blackhand vaguely recognized him but couldn't recall when. And if he really had a "Business Proposition", why hasn't he made it yet?
Shit, if he's an agent of the Enemy, it might be worthwhile to follow up on that, but Hasvir seems to have a part to play in whatever Horra's next move is going to be. Certainly, it's something to do with the bandits, and knowing where they're going next would mean we can better ambush them.
Damnit, they both seem important, I'm going to roll a d6, on odds, we check Hasvir, on evens, we check the Stranger.
We could give the dwarves meat, mead, and a collection of surface bound stuff. I think we should not give them metal, that's pretty valuable right now.
I think a good way we can soft sabotage Horra is to eradicate the bandits. Visit someone they're attacking and kill all the bandits. Call it a.. a.. hunting action, so to say. And we can probably firebomb that block of trees on our way out. But that would reveal us to Horra.
Yeah, just knowing to be Suspicious of Twoshields should be good enough, it's possible this has nothing to do with it at all, but the evidence seems in favor of him being--if not literally in cahoots with Horra, then possibly an agent of the Enemy. There aren't many people that Blackhand would recognize who were allies and weren't killed in his last stand, and he's the only other character who's literally been described as short and squat, which matches this guy here.
Also possible, though I think we'd recognize an actual Dwarf on sight, they wouldn't be walking around in daylight, and I think it's daytime right now.
Because the only "Short and Squat" person I can recall is Twoshields.
It occurs to me that Blackhand vaguely recognized him but couldn't recall when. And if he really had a "Business Proposition", why hasn't he made it yet?
Shit, if he's an agent of the Enemy, it might be worthwhile to follow up on that, but Hasvir seems to have a part to play in whatever Horra's next move is going to be. Certainly, it's something to do with the bandits.
Damnit, they both seem important, I'm going to roll a d6, on odds, we check Hasvir, on evens, we check the Stranger.
Also possible, though I think we'd recognize an actual Dwarf on sight, they wouldn't be walking around in daylight, and I think it's daytime right now.
We could give the dwarves meat, mead, and a collection of surface bound stuff. I think we should not give them metal, that's pretty valuable right now.
Raw Metal?
Yeah, shouldn't give that unless they ask for it. (Though If we help them in their war*, that could earn us some serious good reputation with them)
But I'd like to have one piece of high quality smithwork among our sacrifices.
Show that we can make 'superior' quality goods.
From the Blacksmith telling us why metal is expensive atm, note it is the Ducklings he has been getting his metal from.
"Apparently, another clan of dwarves are trying to come up from the deeps and have decided that the Meinvaldfjord is a good spot. Of course, the Ducklings have been trying to colonize it for as long as I can remember and they haven't taken too kindly to the Lurkalings — I believe they're called — building underhalls there." He shrugs as there's just not much humans can do about the political messes that stubborn dwarves wind up in. Fighting the earth-dwellers in their underhalls is possibly one of the stupidest things anyone could ever do. "That's about all I know from my contacts, sorry I can't say more. You know how dwarves are."
In comparison, that place is dead. This place, though? It's not just alive, but thriving! The very air hums with power as hidden runes reveal themselves in your presence.
'Home to Oinn, Patti, and Toki, Dwarfs of Clan Duckling'
