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NorseQuest (A Norse Xianxia)

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Alectai said:
Also? Halting Vortex is amazing for our build, as we're seeing here. It's just amazing in general I'm thinking. The ability to make a scary attack just Go Away for only a single charge of Orthstirr goes to show just how impressive Standstill is conceptually.

It's expensive now, but if we can master it, it'll be fantastic.
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Dude caught a falling tree for us. You can expect the results to be badass.

I just kind of love the fact that Standstill was effectively a gift from our husband-to-be. We carry his protection with us everywhere we go, even when he's not there to provide it himself.

I'm really hoping I'm right about him gaining a Muna off of us right before the Halfdanby fight, and I'm kind of looking forward to finding out what it does for him.
 
So, I'm thinking. "He's going full Defense. Now is the time to punish that."

I'm thinking... Inertia Arresting Throw to lock his sword down, then go for Leaping Cleave Trick for the finisher? He's attached to that sword, so his immediate reaction probably won't be to let it go, which'll create the opening.
 
Alectai said:
So, I'm thinking. "He's going full Defense. Now is the time to punish that."

I'm thinking... Inertia Arresting Throw to lock his sword down, then go for Leaping Cleave Trick for the finisher? He's attached to that sword, so his immediate reaction probably won't be to let it go, which'll create the opening.
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He's too good for us to try and use one attack, I think...especially such an expensive one. We need more than that to bring him down and he has a higher dice pool to boot.

I do agree we punish him here though. One second and I'll post my idea.
 
Alectai said:
That's why I suggested using Inertia Arresting Throw to lock his sword down before we began.
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It helps, but he can still dodge even afterwards. Nothing prevents it...he can also resist being disarmed. Inertia-Arresting Throw is effectively an opposed roll...I'm reluctant to rely on it against someone going full defense with a higher dice pool than us. It's worth a try but not as something we need to succeed at to set up the next thing.

EDIT:

[X] Plan Seizing The Opening
-[X] 29d6 Attack (all in tricks)
-[X] 0d6 Defense
-[X] 0d6 Intercept
-[X] Make one 8d (9d with Hugr) Inertia-Arresting Throw to disarm him (-6 Orthstirr), then three Honed 8d Power-Chop attacks (-6 orthstirr), be prepared to abort one Power Chop for a 7d Hefty-Halter Chop if necessary to stop a serious attack (-3 Orthstirr)
-[X] Be prepared to use Contested Movement (-3 Orthstirr) or Halting Vortex (-8 Orthstirr) as necessary to defend, though they probably won't be
-[X] Tactics - Basically, freeze his sword and go to town with the atgeir. It's simple, but it should be effective and it's not wildly expensive if he really is going full defense.

So, here's the plan for that. Basically, disarming followed by wailing on him. We'll see how that works out.
 
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DeadmanwalkingXI said:
It helps, but he can still dodge. Nothing prevents it...he can also resist. Inertia-Arresting Throw is effectively an opposed roll...I'm reluctant to rely on it against someone going full defense with a higher dice pool than us. It's worth a try but not as something we need to succeed at to set up the next thing.
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Honestly, how does this kind of thing work in terms of Opposed Rolls? It's basically fucking magic, right? How does it generate a dice pool @Imperial Fister ?
 
Alectai said:
Honestly, how does this kind of thing work in terms of Opposed Rolls? It's basically fucking magic, right? How does it generate a dice pool @Imperial Fister ?
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It's still something that you are throwing at the enemy. It's invisible, yes, but people can still sense it approaching and decide to do something about it. Whether that something is grabbing someone else and throwing them at it or simply getting out of the way.
 
Sirrocco said:
That could be a pattern for a cultivation society, but it's not this one. We also know that old Vikings are utter raging badasses that basically terrify the rest of the world... so the Norse have depth as well as breadth. Further, we had Steinarr (who is impressive but not overwhelmingly so) taking down a knight in full plate armor, and we know that the Christians consider "knight in full plate" to basically be walking juggernauts that few can stand against.

So it's not just an assumption.
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I mean, Steinarr is, I think, overwhelmingly impressive by many reasonable standards. He's Hallr's son so he had the best possible instruction when he was young and has made it to the age of, what, 40? He's likely in easily the top 10% of the Norse population on age alone (okay, 20%, but the women mostly don't count from a combat prowess perspective), and likely quite a bit more so than that on prowess.

But fair enough, I did say I thought this was pretty likely anyway.

Sirrocco said:
Let's look at what I actually said.
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Sure.

Sirrocco said:
"If... (which seems reasonably likely) then it's possible" I'm not leaping to conclusions here. I'm presenting one that occurred to me as both plausible and worthy of at least a bit of consideration. Also, there's a factor that you're not necessarily keeping in mind.
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You're right, sorry for missing some nuance there. I legitimately believe that a lot of other possibilities are a lot more likely, though.

Sirrocco said:
People do what works.

People want to live. They want to thrive. They want to win. Ur-societies try stuff, and they grab the ones that work better. If this one simple trick just worked better, then you'd see strong incentives to adopt it, and you'd get more cultures who were doing that thing. Norse cultivation is so bare-bones that it's almost instinctive. Arts get explained in mere sentences, and they're not particularly complicated sentences. It takes a while to practice them, but getting far enough to say "Ah, yes. This is a thing that works, and I should study it more." isn't hard. Basically, the barrier to entry for any given culture to discover something very much like Viking cultivation is pretty darned low... and yet the Vikings are notable for it. They keep wandering the world and terrifying the natives and eating their gods sometimes (Hi, Hallr!) and the Byzantine Empire hires them as mercs. So to my mind there has to be something that they're doing that makes it all go that other cultures have a strong incentive to not do. The Nornir, then, stand out as a really obvious thing that might be driving that difference.
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I mean, I think all my explanations except maybe #2 make it pretty clear why other people don't do this. Like, #1 argues that there are tradeoffs involved, #3 is just 'it depends on population density' so it's hard to duplicate intentionally, #4 involves being willing to use techniques that are likely worse for you personally just so the inefficiency helps others, and #5 is based on a high mortality rate. It's also external rather than internal, which makes power easy to lose...not something people with a lot of power are gonna be attracted to.

None are 'Oh, this works so much better, everyone will use this!' All have very real down sides.

Sirrocco said:
Now, is it certain? No. It's possible to spin any number of explanations as to why it might not work like that, but I think that "reasonably likely" is not too far-fetched a claim.
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I'd say 'reasonably likely' requires it to be in at least the top three most likely explanations...I'm not buying it as top three material.
 
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We could also just insult the crap out of him to prevent him from regaining focus (or making any good decisions).
We can't use nid against him, but we already provoked him to do something that made his friend throw himself at the ground and beg for Gabriels life.

Then good offense and defense mix to defend at uncoordinated attacks and abuse openings.
 
Toboe said:
We could also just insult the crap out of him to prevent him from regaining focus (or making any good decisions).
We can't use nid against him, but we already provoked him to do something that made his friend throw himself at the ground and beg for Gabriels life.

Then good offense and defense mix to defend at uncoordinated attacks and abuse openings.
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This is a Spar, not a battle to the death, we want to drub him to settle honor's sake, not break his spirit.
 
Toboe said:
We could also just insult the crap out of him to prevent him from regaining focus (or making any good decisions).
We can't use nid against him, but we already provoked him to do something that made his friend throw himself at the ground and beg for Gabriels life.

Then good offense and defense mix to defend at uncoordinated attacks and abuse openings.
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I'm pretty sure that loses us the respect we just gained, which seems more important to avoid than losing the fight, honestly.

I'm also not sure this actually works. We can finish him now before he gets his focus back, I think, while using Barb-Tongue would become an opposed roll...we'd have 9 dice if we invested orthstirr. Would he have less? Maybe. But he might also have significantly more, and either way dice pools are swingy in this system and I'd rather not risk it when there's a clear route to a clean victory here.
 
Alectai said:
This is a Spar, not a battle to the death, we want to drub him to settle honor's sake, not break his spirit.
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Agreed on the "not a battle to the death".
Disagreed on "not break his spirit".

DeadmanwalkingXI said:
I'm pretty sure that loses us the respect we just gained, which seems more important to avoid than losing the fight, honestly.
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Is this about making friends with him or resolving the fact that he struck us without killing him or gaining nid?
Because loosing to a shackled slave after he gave us nid-worthy insult sounds... nid-y.
 
Toboe said:
Agreed on the "not a battle to the death".
Disagreed on "not break his spirit".
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Why? Breaking his spirit seems likely to make enemy of both him and Jerasmus. We don't need additional enemies.

Toboe said:
Is this about making friends with him or resolving the fact that he struck us without killing him or gaining nid?
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I mean, it can be both.

Toboe said:
Because loosing to a shackled slave after he gave us nid-worthy insult sounds... nid-y.
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Eh. I'm skeptical that losing to someone who's been in combat training more than twice as long as us is somehow inherently shameful...but more importantly I'm not convinced doing this actually increases our odds of winning in any significant way at this point. His focus is broken, we can just hit him a bunch and win, no insults needed.
 
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Yeah, the fact that he has to start spamming "Don't Lose" instead of "Try to Win" is telling in how vulnerable he is right now.

And like I said, this is the "Body Language taken to the Extreme" stage of Befriending, we'll be fine!
 
Eh, I feel that insulting him is in pretty poor taste for just a spar. I'd rather not worsen our (already pretty bad) relationship over such a thing. We're sparring with him in the first place to defend our honour, and we also have the upper hand. Don't see any reason to crush his spirit on top of that. Unless we get absolutely destroyed, I don't see us earning nid from losing.

Also, that was a really cool fight. From what I understand, Focus seems to be some sort of buff that Knights can keep active - unlike the Norse, who can do a lot of damage at once through the use of Tricks involving orthstirr, a Knight's Focus probably isn't as explosive in terms of power. I imagine they can keep it up for much longer though, and as Hallr said they can replenish themselves with it. I could be completely wrong, but that's what I gleaned from the fight.

Anyway, I agree that we should probably capitalise on this and go all in on the offensive. If Gabriel is focusing on defense though, I wouldn't be surprised if he manages to dodge IAT.

[X] Plan Seizing The Opening

Also, on the topic of Steinarr, I got the impression that he was a pretty big deal as he has a kenning, and from the way Halla speaks about them (admittedly, not a lot) and the fact that the only other person we know that has a kenning is Hallr - and I think we can all agree that Hallr was probably one of the best - makes me think that Steinarr is really strong. Not to mention he's 45+, in a society where people die really young.
 
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I'll call the vote in two hours. I forgot that today is Saturday, so I'm free for the entire day. Also, I'm super hyped to write the next round

One thing to keep clear is that Focus isn't orthstirr's counterpart. I don't think that it's being confused for Christian Cultivation's Power, but I just want to make that clear.
 
Alectai said:
I don't think losing would be Odrengskap, as long as we didn't get crushed. Which hasn't happened I think.
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Yeah, if we manage to hurt him, I think even a loss avoids real problems with our cultivation.

Exmorri said:
A dreng is the sort of person you want at your side in a fight, among other traits. Losing to a thrall sounds like not the sort of person I want at my side in a fight. But we'll see. ;)
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He's not exactly a normal thrall, though, and I do think that matters for something like that.

Constenanto said:
Also, that was a really cool fight. From what I understood, Focus seems to be some sort of buff that Knights can keep active - unlike the Norse, who can do a lot of damage at once through the use of Tricks involving orthstirr, a Knight's Focus probably isn't as explosive in terms of power. I imagine they can keep it up for much longer though, and as Hallr said they can replenish themselves with it. I could be completely wrong, but that's what I gleaned from the fight.
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Focus is a state of being, I think, in which there are a number of advantages the most important of which is that you don't take damage. Like, damaging you breaks your focus rather than actually causing Endurance loss. So it's refreshable prosthetic Endurance at the very least. That's self evidently really good, especially since it seems free.

The disadvantages are harder to spot. Gabriel definitely has fewer tricks...but that seems more the shackles than the cultivation style.

Constenanto said:
Anyway, I agree that we should probably capitalise on this and go all in on the offensive. If Gabriel is focusing on defense though, I wouldn't be surprised if he manages to dodge IAT.
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Yeah, I'm a bit worried about that myself. We'll see what happens. Hopefully if so it uses up enough dice that most of the Power Chops get through.

Constenanto said:
Also, on the topic of Steinarr, I got the impression that he was a pretty big deal as he has a kenning, and from the way Halla speaks about them (admittedly, not a lot) and the fact that the only other person we know that has a kenning is Hallr - and I think we can all agree that Hallr was probably one of the best - makes me think that Steinarr is really strong. Not to mention he's 45+, in a society where people die really young.
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Yeah, the vibe I get is that Steinarr is in fact, scary as hell, even by Norse standards. He's not anywhere near Hallr's level...but then very few people are so that's not saying much. I think he's by far the scariest living person we've actually met, though.
 
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Exmorri said:
A dreng is the sort of person you want at your side in a fight, among other traits. Losing to a thrall sounds like not the sort of person I want at my side in a fight. But we'll see. ;)
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There's no shame in losing to someone with five years of combat experience on you in a spar where life and death weren't at stake.

I'm pretty sure Odrengskapr though is more being a shifty, squirrely bastard who technically isn't doing anything Shameful but that you can't really call Honorable. Loki for instance would be the poster boy Odreng, you wouldn't want him at your back in a fight, but that doesn't mean he can't get shit done either.

Nid is the Bad Thing that you need to avoid.
 
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