funky like a fancy cheese right?
NorseQuest (A Norse Xianxia)
- Thread starter I.F. Ister
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- Original Fantasy Action
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- norse mythology (mythology) original xianxia cultivation western cultivation ask sirihand did your mother tell you anything? discussion pleases yggdrasil farming gloating gets people killed granary management hubris is a coward's word you will die norsemen do not die when they are killed the qm has a bad memory the qm is bad at math viking courtroom drama (legal drama) vikings
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You added the level of Infused Wordplay itself (and Infused Hugr itself), but not the Capacity from both.
Our Capacity right now should be 7 Hugr +4 Hugr Infusion +4 Wordplay +2 Wordplay Infusion = 17, then doubled due to Owl Fylgja which is 34. We are listed as 32.
Gotcha.
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Or maybe funky like the music.
finish recall (we just did) then make time to hang out with the Solrun. (finally)
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Next turn. We were told to finish Recall (which we did this turn), then visit the Seeress in Asvir (which we will do next turn) to begin our instruction.
I.F. Ister
Fortifying The Thread
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Jotnar, Aesir, and Vanir are all just different groups of the same 'species' of extremely long-lived and naturally powerful entities. So, yes they are.
Ope I'll fix that when I get a chance. Good catch!
You folks voted for stabbing troll-men first, so after that you start learning magic
0~0~0
Alrighty, voting is now closed
So, assuming we're descended from Odin via the Volsungs, we are not entirely human. Neat.
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Thanks!
You did say we needed to learn Recall first. As it turned out that was no problem, but if we'd rolled badly and needed another turn any visit to start learning magic would've been wasted.
So I'm not disputing your logic here per se, it seems all worked out and you clearly know your way around the mechanics. But it does make me a bit sad, because I think Halla composing poetry is really cool, and the poetry in general is one of the more evocative and authentically norse aspects of the quest.
If we are the point where we have a backlog of twenty four actions that are more important than poetry, maybe we want to think about a new mechanic for how Halla composes poems (maybe based on in-game poems contributed by players) which takes them out of the normal action slots? Or rejig the mechanics some other way? @Imperial Fister, do you have thoughts here?
Lamellar might be an alternative which is closer to Halla's experience and that of other smiths she could learn from? There's an archaeological find of lamellar in Sweden which definitely dates to the Viking age; scholars debate whether the owner was a local and this represents a native norse armour tradition, or a foreign mercenary, but for our purposes it doesn't necessarily matter? If guys have shown up wearing it, or the Varangians have encountered it in Miklagard, then Sten or that guy in town should hopefully have enough familiarity with it to give us a starting idea.
Lamellar plates are definitely big enough to write a series of runes onto, so from that perspective it's ideal as well.
It's kinda implied that there's lots of people who have nonhuman ancestry, but what's notable about our family is that the Gods and nonhuman ancestors still interact with them even after generations.
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Most poems composed in-thread are more or less canonically Halla's work IIRC, and they provide Reward Dice and sometimes a point of Orthstirr. Doing an action on an Inspiration is a bit of a different matter (gaining significantly more Orthstirr for one thing), and we don't really have the actions right now...but we can always make poetry if we like.
Doing spontaneous poems is also often part of other actions rather than being an action in and of itself. It's only Inspirations that are actions.
Additionally, it's worth noting that 24 actions goes quicker than you might think. Combats often take multiple days but otherwise each turn tends to be a day or so of real world time and we thus might be through 8 turns (ie: 16 months) and thus 24 actions in less than two weeks real world time and less than 18 months of Quest Time. That's still a while, don't get me wrong, but it's not actually as long as it might sound like.
It's probably a little longer than that due to some of those actions being combats, but still not too long.
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Ah, cool, I was thinking of maybe writing a lament for Haleikr, so that's good to know. I wasn't sure if player-submitted poems counted as "canonical" or not unless we were dedicating an action to it.
Well, yeah, fair enough, this is a very fast updating quest and we should be very grateful to Imperial Fister for working like a steam train to keep it going. But from what you've said above, it seems like the cost/benefit ratio of Inspiration as an action is going to mean that by that point there will probably be other more pressing/rewarding things to do.
Or we work off our backlog (freaking horra arc) and then enjoy smelling the flowers with poetry? (and lots and lots of Seidr)
So I'm not disputing your logic here per se, you've clearly been Planning Chairman of this quest for a while, and I know how that is. But it does make me a bit sad, because I think Halla composing poetry is really cool, and the poetry in general is one of the more evocative and authentically norse aspects of the quest.
If we are the point where we have a backlog of twenty four actions that are more important than poetry, maybe we want to think about a new mechanic for how Halla composes poems (maybe based on in-game poems contributed by players) which takes them out of the normal action slots? Or rejig the mechanics some other way? @Imperial Fister, do you have thoughts here?
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- Bretonnia
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I don't think it was that lots of people necessarily have nonhuman ancestry, just that quite a few people can trace their lineage back to impressive figures and whatnot. I doubt we're the only person descended from the gods, but I imagine that alone is pretty notable.
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I think they're canonical as long as Halla composing them would make sense, and bearing in mind that they're translated and would thus be a bit different in her language.
Not necessarily. Six of those actions are crafting, and there's a ceiling for how good Crafting is on one person (or even two people), and a fair number of the others are sparring with people we haven't sparred with before but want to. Neither of those are urgent in an ongoing way (ie: we might want to make items for our friends as well, but it's a bit less urgent), and that's nearly half the actions in question (6 crafting, 4 sparring).
Luckily, Seidr is probably mostly a Training thing, so we can do it with Training Dice rather than actions. We're not nearly as backlogged on those.
Oh, and because they got missed the first time, some questions about the combat skills we don't have:
@Imperial Fister three questions in regard to those:
1. Can we put the bolt-thrower we've got in our Armory pocket and then quick-swap it out to shoot people, allowing us to add its dice and Shoot to our Combat Pool on top of our existing weapons? Especially if we get a Shoot Trick to use this with?
2. Would we be able to literally swap the bolt-thrower out and Sagaseeker in to the same Armory Pocket, or would we need a second one for that?
3. Are there any ways to use the Strike skill that aren't dishonorable?
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Huh, Armory Pockets must be very useful for people who still use physical shields. For that matter, swapping out armor as ablative health is still good. As is swapping out armor with different runesets.
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Potentially, yeah, though we haven't figured out a good way to rune up mail or a better armor alternative as of yet. And it's pricey for something temporary like a shield. Not impossible by any means, but pricey.
I.F. Ister
Fortifying The Thread
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Lots of people are, though perhaps not through the Volsungs. You are all the children of Odin, after all
One of the more notable things about Norse mythology is how casually the actual Norse treated their gods — at least in my opinion and for as far as I can recall. I've been wanting to, for some time now, work in a scene of Steinarr getting woken up in the middle of the night by a massive thunderstorm and him going out and yelling at Thor to quiet it down. Thor, of course, obliges. Thor is, after all, 50% brutal violence and 50% absurd comedy.
The poetic inspiration actions are so you always have something you can do with an opportunity to get cool rewards for relatively little cost.(because you can keep rolling on inspirations, even if you've already gotten a poem for it). They're better for when you've got lots of extended downtime, which probably isn't happening anytime soon, unfortunately.
After you folks finish up that slog, there'll probably be about a year of proper downtime before we get to the next item on my list of things that I'd like to do before Halla carks it. Judging by the thread's current long-term planning, that's almost certainly going to be the expedition to Vestfold and Wessex.
As others have mentioned, the poetry that you folks create is in a nebulously canon state. It both is and isn't poetry that Halla has composed herself, by simple virtue of me not wanting to open the can of worms regarding what is and isn't canon.
As for the lamellar topic, I am of the opinion that the find was almost certainly something that that particular viking brought back with him from his time in the Varangian Guard, as lamellar was in fairly common use by the Byzantines. Also, I can't help but feel like it would be absurdly expensive to commission armor in a style like that from people completely unfamiliar with the secrets behind its construction. Sten is a master of his craft, but he's not Forge Jesus.
Oh absolutely, I'm just giving the reason for why it's not happening right this moment.
Aw shucks!
You can, though you would only be able to use the shoot dice for the bolt-thrower's actions. You'd also lose out on anything you swapped it out with and, honestly, I'm not sure I want to deal with the numbers involved in that so we might just have it be a thing you set up during planning or even just scratch that second caveat.
The former.
Yeah, don't use it on other Norse. Monsters are fair game, Outlaws are fair game, non-humans are fair game. If you do happen to punch a Norseman, then don't hit their face and, whatever you do, don't mar them with spilled blood and/or long-lasting marks.
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Totally fair.
Why would it work so differently from the other skills?
I mean, we add all our other skills to combat pool mostly because they represent possibilities we could pull out that the enemy has to be prepared for. We don't use Glima or Cut every fight, but we always get the dice because we could so people have to plan around it. It seems like pulling out a ranged weapon and shooting someone with it would qualify similarly.
Or at least that's how I've been visualizing why the combat pool works the way it does, which is consistent with even backup weapons providing dice.
Nice.
Check. So...using dice from Strike on other Norse would be valid, but dishonorable? Or just actual maneuvers using it, or what?
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I.F. Ister
Fortifying The Thread
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I regard your combat pool as 'how much attention you can spare and then your ability to act with it'. Whenever Halla makes a swing, though the narrative doesn't include it as it would cause a lot of clutter, she's paying attention to how she's standing, the surface beneath her feet, how she's holding the weapon, how her opponent's moving, what the ground beneath their feet is like, what direction the sun's light is coming from, where the nearest rocks are, where her allies are and their conditions, the allies of her opponent, her opponent's weapons and defenses, her level of exhaustion vs her opponent's, how hurt she is, how hurt her opponent is, how much longer she can go vs how much longer her opponent can stand, what sorts of things her opponent might have up their sleeve, and so much more.
When you pull out a new weapon (that's not already on her immediate person and, therefore, something that she's paying active attention to) that changes how her attention is parceled out. If you had the bolt-thrower out at the start of the turn, then it would just be normal, if you pulled it out in the middle of a round, then its dice can only be used for its actions.
Obviously, this isn't set in stone and I can definitely be argued off this.
As for the strike topic. It would more just be the actual maneuvers from it
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Oh, man, this would be hilarious - at least for me it would've been. If you still plan on rewriting the first 'arc' as a proper novel, including that would be an awesome way of setting the tone for the setting, while also being funny.
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This makes perfect sense for something that you just, like, pick up off the ground or otherwise need to work to get out, but something in the Armory Pocket seems like it should be easier to integrate. The whole selling point is instantly drawing weapons from nowhere, after all...with some relatively straightforward training, I'd think you could get use to weapon swapping casually and repeatedly...or at least as casually as drawing a weapon off your belt, and weapons on your belt still add their dice (and those of skills using them) to your combat pool.
I'm visualizing taking a step back, swapping Sagaseeker and the bolt-thrower, taking a shot, and then swapping them back all within seconds as a pretty easy maneuver to do if you've trained for it, and one Halla is definitely keeping in mind attention-wise, and should be able to do fairly readily, I'd think. Like, that seems something she can more easily keep in mind than pulling a sax off her belt with her off hand and slashing someone with it and we're getting dice for those, so it's weird we wouldn't get the same for the weapon in the Armory Pocket.
Like, it seems very strange to me that the highly expensive magic option for carrying weapons doesn't give you the same benefits as wearing it on your belt (or carrying it on your back) does. There'd probably still be a cap to how many weapons you could keep track of, but I think that's been specified as four weapons previously and we only have three right now, so adding another seems like it should be viable to me.
Check. We definitely need to pick up a little bit of that, then.
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I.F. Ister
Fortifying The Thread
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That works for me. There's definitely stuff out there that you could do to increase the number of weapons you can keep track of at once
Ah, so we can use it for body strikes? that's great!
So, in general, monster hunters have the most battle dice, because they can use everything in a fight, huh?
hm?
...Do maneuvers refers to tricks or actually using the Strike skill as is, striking the enemy?
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Like, another eye shapeshift, or more of an inventory skill-trick, a passive for strategy or another Hugr skill?
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