You know, Hasvir losing an eye and there being Threaded Man loot lying around if things get lucky enough means we can try dragging them to the Seeress and seeing if we can implant the three pupil eyes in him. And to get started on the body transplant learning like people were saying above.
Also if we survive a swarm of super bees, do we get a Beowulf tiered special ability of "sunlight in veins" because apparently honey is that?
[X] Plan Keep Hammering
-[X] 50d6 Attack (50d6 tricks)
-[X] 34d6 Defense (16d6 tricks, technically...25d6 in practice)
-[X] 0d6 Intercept
-[X] Close near-instantly with Ember-Wing cloak (-6 Orthstirr). Do this again as needed to stay close to the creature.
-[X] Make four 15d6+3 (w/Hugareida) Lightning-Charged Firebomb Strike attacks adding 2 Orthstirr for accuracy (-5 Orthstirr each) as quickly as possible attempting to end this creature's existence. If it winds up trapped in Inertia-Arresting Throw or we've used up all the Firebomb-Strikes use a 17d6+3 Honed x3 Lightning-Charged Skewer-Flick attack using 2 Odr for extra damage (-8 Orthstirr, -2 Odr) to take advantage (not throwing it unless we have to, the idea is to rip it apart against the immobility of the IAT, done as our last attack while it's trapped in IAT if we get multiple attacks and can predict that).
-[X] In response to the first melee attack of any sort, use Contested Movement with Fight of Our Life (-3 Orthstirr, 12d6+3 Hamr roll) to set up a Honed x2 Lightning-Charged Skewer-Flick (-7 Orthstirr) as the counterattack, and use Halting Vortex (-4 Orthstirr) if that somehow doesn't work.
-[X] In response to the second melee attack attempted against us, use a 20d6+3 (w/Hugareida) Inertia-Arresting-Throw using 3 Odr for increased durability (-6 Orthstirr, -3 Odr) to stop it and freeze it in place for a moment, again using Halting Vortex (-4 Orthstirr) if that somehow doesn't work.
-[X] In response to any attempt to shoot us or any attempt to grapple us after those two, use Halting Vortex (-4 Orthstirr), and if something gets through that use up to one 14d6+7 Reinforcedx3 Honed x2 Defense (-5 Orthstirr). If we are attacked with a melee attack that isn't a grapple use those two defenses up then follow up with up to nine Reinforcedx3 Honed x2 Defenses (-5 Orthstirr each, 6d6+7 each) and if we run out of those or our armor is Pierced use Halting Vortex (-4 Orthstirr). If Hasvir is attacked use Halting Vortex to defend him (-4 Orthstirr).
-[X] Tactics – Charge in as quickly as we can and go to town with Firebomb-Strikes, using a jacked up Contested Movement to set up a powerful counterattack, then Inertia Arresting Throw to set up another big hit, and Halting Vortex to tank additional hits as needed.
0~0~0
Your flaming feather-tips leave scorch-trails on the walls as you zip through the air, closing the gap in the blink of an eye. The Threaded Man reacts instantly, body contorting to intercept your movement with a sword swipe — its oversized body extending its reach considerably.
The pace of time trickles down as the sword rushes towards you. Sagaseeker crackles with lightning as you bring it up to bear, the momentum of your flight carrying you forward faster than a mortal eye. (Halla's Hamr: 45+3=48 vs Threaded Hamr: 31, Halla Wins! 6 Damage!)
Sparks snap across Sagaseeker's purring blade as it carves through the corded muscle of the Threaded Man's chest. Blood spills over the floorboards as the monstrosity stumbles back, its muscles contracting wildly as lightning dances across its body.
Dust shakes free as you ram the impaled Threaded Man against the shuddering ceiling. Wood groans as it splinters, the force of the strike cracking a new hole in the roof.
But as you go to toss it aside, the grafted arm snakes forward with a pot-tipped arrow held in its hand. With a surge of strength, the Threaded Man hurls the arrow at you with all the force of a river in summer.
Freeing a hand from Sagaseeker, the Threaded Man slips away from the atgeir as you conjure up a Halting Vortex. It's just in time, too, as the pot smashes against the wall of momentum-stopping power. Sap of the sealwood tree splatters across the surface of Halting Vortex, stopping it from sticking you to the ground.
The Threaded Man lands gracefully on a splayed-out foot-hand. The arrow-launching machine swings up, arrowhead gleaming, and your eyes snap wide. You can't block nor can you dodge without releasing Halting Vortex and the sap with it!
It... it played you!
'No, this is just an unfortunate accident.'
The arrow looses and you have to act! (Ranged Attack: 39 vs Honed+Reinforced Defense: 49+3=52, Defender Wins!)
Halting Vortex falls as you kick off the ground — floorboards splintering from the force. The arrow whistles through the air as you fly back and falling sap grabs it from its flight.
The wall might as well not even have been there as you crash through broken, savaged wood. You twist as you sail through the air and drive your feet into the ground, leaving twin trenches as you skid to a halt on the snow.
The Threaded Man flips up onto the roof and into a three-point landing — its re-acquired cloak flapping in the wind. You meet its cold gaze with a fiery glare, hair flowing in the wind.
(Premature Round End: Fight Moved Outside)
(Unspent Orthstirr and Odr refunded)
0~0~0
(Hugr (Tactics): 6x2, 5x1, 4x2, 3x3, 1x3)8+3(Frenzy)+2(Rounds)=13 Successes
The battle has moved outside the house — which is probably a good thing considering how much damage you were doing to the interior. The Threaded Man crouches on the roof of the house while you stand on the slope of the snow-covered hill.
The compound beyond your fight is an absolute mess. Smoke obscures most of the battlefield, but what you can see doesn't look good. Buildings collapse, fires start, and blood is everywhere. The scent of orthstirr is thick in the air as strength of arm is put to the test. Every once in a while some ability is used, like a lion being manifested or... a ship? Somebody threw a ship!? What in all the realms is going on over there?!
The Threaded Man has regained its cloak, the skin seemingly having reattached — though the damage you did to it is still there. The Threaded Man is definitely damaged, but the normal tells that you rely on to assess damage simply aren't there. Its grip on life is slipping, that much is certain. It can't have all that many arrows left, either.
You managed to disrupt it regaining Frenzy, so you've got that going for you!
From what its shimmers show, it's going to be opening up with its ranged options before moving in... the shimmers get blurry here, but you're able to make out that it might be using multiple swords at the same time?
Endurance: (10/10) | Frenzy: (3/3) | Armor Health: (11/17)
Orthstirr: (198/317) | Odr: (20)
(X) Frami: 106 | ( ) Virthing: 106 | ( ) Saemd: 105
Sagaseeker has 23 orthstirr in its reservoir.
Your Armor has 13 orthstirr in its reservoir.
Shapeshifting is granting you (+1 Damage and +1 Attack-Speed)
Your combat pool is 84d6.
What do you do?
[ ] (Plan Name)
-[ ] (Dice) Attack
-[ ] (Dice) Defense
-[ ] (Dice) Intercept
-[ ] (Dice) (Trick) (Orthstirr)
-[ ] Tactics Write in
0~0~0
AN: Like I said, not the longest of combat rounds, but this is an interesting enough development that I'm okay with it.
No moratorium, but we'll have to see if another update is in the cards or not.
So, we're at 9 Endurance done so far, how damaged does it look?
EDIT: Ah, I see, it's weakening but still has a fair amount of fight left in it, problematic. I'd probably say maybe 20 Endurance?
Of course, it has its damn cloak back, which gives it +12 to defense rolls and can be thrown off to completely negate an attack.
Anyway, if it's going to use multiple swords at once, that seems a prime opportunity to catch multiple weapons in IAT, and it has a countermeasure for Halting Vortex as well evidently.
Am I correct in understanding that Runes are made by first carving a negative space into a medium (stone, wood, metal) and then painting the negative space with a substance (human blood, chicken blood, odr, paint) that will act as a sacrifice and provide power, and the more powerful the sacrifice the stronger but shorterlived the rune will be?
What happens if the sacrificial substance is provided in excess? Like carving runes into a rock and then dropping the rock into a barrel of blood. Or better yet, carving the runes onto the inside of the barrel? Could that sustain the rune's empowerment for longer?
What if the rune was simply bigger so that more sacrificial substance was used to paint it?
What if the rune was arranged in such a way that the sacrificial substance flows through it and is constantly replaced? Like digging ditches in the shape of the rune and then letting a stream flow through and out of those ditches?
Does it seem feasible to carve runes within our inner world?
Could 4 and 5 be combined to carve a rune that gets empowered by the flow of odr coming in through the gate to keep the rune empowered for longer than an instant?
Question @Imperial Fister , my memory's a bit shaky, but when we're using a Folded Attack, are we unable to defend ourselves at all in that window? Or is it just that we can't do a *new* attack during that stretch?
You were holding up the sap from falling on you with Halting Vortex. If you had moved to block the arrow with Halting Vortex, then the sap would fall on you.
Am I correct in understanding that Runes are made by first carving a negative space into a medium (stone, wood, metal) and then painting the negative space with a substance (human blood, chicken blood, odr, paint) that will act as a sacrifice and provide power, and the more powerful the sacrifice the stronger but shorterlived the rune will be?
What happens if the sacrificial substance is provided in excess? Like carving runes into a rock and then dropping the rock into a barrel of blood. Or better yet, carving the runes onto the inside of the barrel? Could that sustain the rune's empowerment for longer?
What if the rune was arranged in such a way that the sacrificial substance flows through it and is constantly replaced? Like digging ditches in the shape of the rune and then letting a stream flow through and out of those ditches?
Could 4 and 5 be combined to carve a rune that gets empowered by the flow of odr coming in through the gate to keep the rune empowered for longer than an instant?
Question @Imperial Fister , my memory's a bit shaky, but when we're using a Folded Attack, are we unable to defend ourselves at all in that window? Or is it just that we can't do a *new* attack during that stretch?
So a barrel of paint with inlaid runes would do for long term runed defenses. whatever they may be.
in regard to runing the Odr gate. while the first instinct is to rune to slow the flow or steel the mind for first timers, I wonder if there is some combination that allow for an even swifter flow. with the caveat that withstanding it is the main problem.
Also possibly long term soul runes effect, but that require keeping the gate low key open all that time which is a mess and a half
For Campfire is there any sort of... hold back the darkness? Ward against creatures of the night? Be Aragorn vs. the Nazgul, basically, or various other instances of fire being used as protection against evil shit.
They use dice once, not multiple times. Like, a 20d6 3fold Attack uses 20 dice, not 60.
But it takes the time of at least two attacks to do a 3Fold attack (they're 1.5 times faster than non-folded attacks, but they aren't simultaneous) and you're stuck with basic defenses only the whole time it's ongoing.
I'm not sure if this is a good idea in this specific fight given the speed disparity. It's not completely unreasonable due to being able to do, like, 15d6 basic defenses right now due to Punching Up, but I'm...concerned.
I personally think we should use IAT (enhanced with Odr) to trap it and go to town like we planned last turn, that still seems valid. We could probably get away with, like, a 3Fold attack while it's trapped, it's true...
Even being ageless in your late thirties or early forties beats the alternative pretty fast.
It may help to explain why a lot of Norse warriors go for it if it comes at a price or involves knowingly sacrificing something or binding oneself to something accursed.
Thanks for the correction, the general thrust was "Use EWC to take to the air, use a folded Kindle-Spinner to bombard on the way down, and pivot to a Leaping Cleave boosted by another EWC at the last minute, which should hopefully strip its armor. Then when we hit the ground, catch its multi-weapon assault with IAT grabbing as many as we can and set up for a finishing blow."
It can't machinegun its crossbow bolts, and it can't fly either. If we stack enough reinforce and hones, we should be able to get more out of striking from the high ground than it can shooting up at us. It was also explicitly called out that it looks like it's running out of bolts as well, which is something I hope to exploit.
The Threaded Man lands gracefully on a splayed-out foot-hand. The arrow-launching machine swings up, arrowhead gleaming, and your eyes snap wide. You can't block nor can you dodge without releasing Halting Vortex and the sap with it!
Thanks for the correction, the general thrust was "Use EWC to take to the air, use a folded Kindle-Spinner to bombard on the way down, and pivot to a Leaping Cleave boosted by another EWC at the last minute, which should hopefully strip its armor. Then when we hit the ground, catch its multi-weapon assault with IAT grabbing as many as we can and set up for a finishing blow."
It can't machinegun its crossbow bolts, and it can't fly either. If we stack enough reinforce and hones, we should be able to get more out of striking from the high ground than it can shooting up at us. It was also explicitly called out that it looks like it's running out of bolts as well, which is something I hope to exploit.
That's probably solid, yeah. Remember that right now we can assign any number of dice to basic defenses (due to Punching Up, we can just have a single 10d6 basic defense, and similar things). That may reduce the Orthstirr cost here a fair bit.
You want to write up the mechanics or you want me to do it?
But yeah, the idea is that we use the Folded Kindle-Spinners when its Only option is the crossbow, while we stack as much as we can in our Basic Defenses as possible, thus forking it into several bad positions, and it's also doing that thing that Father Gerit did to us where it took the high ground, just that we have more options to strike while in the air. It's poetic to end this fight in a similar way to the fight that got us Punching Up in the first place.
We bait out its ranged attacks where its attack speed is limited (Since it has to use one of its actions to reload as well, keep in mind), and then we hit it with a rain of hellfire and a murdercleave on the way down.
