Before you get too swamped with people spending PT, can you add me to your clan on the character page if that offer is still open.
I'd like to be related to the rest and not just to you and then to them peripherally, assuming they're OK with that.
Harald is still thinking it over, but most likely will pursue orthstirr in winter instead of farming if there are any opportunities to do so, he doesn't want to hunt the Eagle that killed Kare because he thinks the bird hard counters his Soil based Martial Style, he's gonna join a Crab hunt if anybody launches one or just guard otherwise. He will do duty to kin and join the birb extermination mission as a porter and baseline combatant if requested.
It's totally still open, I'll add you to the list.
EDIT: And done. Everyone's Ordstirr should also be correct now, and thus they can spend it on PT if they wish. I already did so for Ragnarr and other people who already posted what they want to do.
Redaxe fresh from the wind-horse(1)
Suffers the path of the sole-thorns(2)
Slaughter-reeds(3) grown of wolf's wine(4)
turns his foe to wolf's food(5)
Decided to try something with kennings, meanings below
1. Wind-Horse = ship
2 the path of the sole thorns= claw wounds
3 slaughter reeds= weapons
4 wolf's wine = blood
5 wolf's food = corpse
Grid Frostdottir stirred from the shadows of death, the scent of herbal smoke and chanting of the Seeress still lingering in her nostrils. Her body ached as though it had been reassembled from a thousand pieces, but her mind was sharp, filled with a renewed sense of purpose. Her younger brother, Vlos, clung to her side, his small face wet with tears. "Grid, I thought I lost you," he sobbed. Grid pulled him close, her heart aching at the sight of his fear.
"I am here, little one," she whispered, stroking his hair. "And I am not going anywhere. But I have work to do." She lifted his chin, meeting his eyes with a fierce determination. "That mouth-tree made a grave mistake, and I will see to it that it pays. But first, I need to grow stronger. I need to gain Ordstirr and perfect my Ice Kunna." Vlos nodded, his trust in her unwavering, and with a final hug, she sent him off.
Grid wasted no time. She knew she needed Ordstirr to become strong, and the only way to gain Ordstirr was through acts of glory. While she is confident she can kill most of the creatures surrounding the village as long they don't catch her off guard, she would rather focus on improving her relationship within the village to gain future allies. With the village in its current state, there currently is no method to preserve food. By making use of her Ice Kunna and the runes she learned when studying the Norse language she should be able to make a contraption to preserve food.
With that contraption she would earn the respect of the village and gain Ordstirr. It will also make it easier to recruit allies to help her with her revenge. She will then go and recruit allies to hunt the Mouth-Tree, and she will show that mouth-tree that it made a very dangerous enemy that day.
Gather a sufficient quantity of salt. We likely have salt in our supplies, but we can also look to eventually harvesting sea salt. We would want to create an artificial, water-tight pool. Maybe we could line a pit on the beach with enough rocks that the water would mostly evaporate over the course of a day.
Take a whole fish and clean it and de-scale it. We're feeding Norsemen, so we want a large one! We likely have fishing going on, but we might want to look into the creation of an artificial fish trap on the beach. (You do this by creating an artificial pool using stones; if done correctly, fish will congregate there during high tide and will be trapped when low tide comes).
Shave a portion of truffles into rendered animal fat which has been pounded and salted, store in a cool place (perhaps buried in a jar in the beach) for enough time for the truffle flavor to infuse.
Clean the fish, removing the innards, and stuff with aromatic herbs, sliced truffles and nuts, if available.
Coat the fish in a light layer of the rendered fat.
Moisten the salt with water so it becomes a paste, then pack the paste around the fish.
Wrap the salted fish in banana leaves and tie.
Leave the fish in the embers of a fire until it is cooked through.
Break the crust, clean the salt off the fish. Apply some of the truffled fat as a finisher, to taste.
Hm. +3 for the houses and +1 for surviving... I've imagined Erik as being reasonably literate, though poetry is a great struggle for him. I think I'll add runes/literacy. So there's also some slight updates to the family section.
(I've been keeping this continuously updated until the end of Winter 1. I will repost this after that time, just to keep things semi-current and allow me to get a sense of development over time)
Erik Hardhead (1 PT Carpentry, 1 PT Runes/Literacy, 1 PT Force Kunna, 1 PT Spear Kunna, 2 unspent Orthstirr for seasons + 9 for the frog hunt as of winter end + 3 for the AAR omake for the hunt plus 1 seeress upgrade for the gator corpses)
Appearance: Age 20, florid, ruddy complexion, dark brown hair, slightly taller than average, with unusually though not freakishly long arms.
Personality: Erik has a habit of taking very noticeable pauses, sometimes short, sometimes long, followed by abrupt action or speech. He likes to listen, but after he's listened for a while, he'll usually start liking to talk for a while. This pattern of cycling back and forth between action and inaction can be seen in most things he does. He has a reputation for perfectionism and carefully following through on agreements, but also for being rather inflexible about what he sees as an important matter, even by the standards of the honor-focused Norse.
His 'force' kunna tends to express itself with sudden, explosive bursts of force or motion. Thus, for instance, while his ability to lift or carry heavy burdens is unremarkable by the admittedly insane standards of the Norse, he often strikes much harder or faster than those who don't know him would expect. He got his nickname as a boy by headbutting a ship's anchor on a wager; the anchor lost.
Combat Style: Erik is a passable archer, but only uses the bow for hunting. His close combat with spear and shield is enough to see him through skirmishes- deft, but not the stuff of legend. What you really have to watch out for is when he throws the spear. Very forcefully.
Family: widowed mother Unna, age 46, wife Svanfrid, age 19, daughter Ingfrid, age 1.
Erik, Unna, Svanfrid, Ingfrid birthdays in
summer, winter, summer, winter
Oh, by the way, @I.F. Ister , I think that maybe two actions per season might be a good thing permanently, just given that each turn represents like six months. It's not so much that the community needs the action economy, as that it feels kind of unrealistic to imagine that a person would focus monomaniacally on one and only one thing for six months at a time. "Do one thing most of the time, and go on one adventure" or something like that seems a little more reasonable.
Oh, by the way, @I.F. Ister , I think that maybe two actions per season might be a good thing permanently, just given that each turn represents like six months. It's not so much that the community needs the action economy, as that it feels kind of unrealistic to imagine that a person would focus monomaniacally on one and only one thing for six months at a time. "Do one thing most of the time, and go on one adventure" or something like that seems a little more reasonable.
It think it's less that your action is the Only Thing You Do and more so the primary project that you're working on that season, accompanied by lots of smaller work that represented by how you spent ordstirr at end-of-season.
The catch is that how you spend ordstirr is a function of self-improvement work, whereas something like "do you hunt a monster at any point in this six month period" is theoretically separate from "do you spend most of the six month period hauling rocks to build a fieldstone structure." But I don't want to be too much of a bicker-er about it, I guess.
Hm. +3 for the houses and +1 for surviving... I've imagined Erik as being reasonably literate, though poetry is a great struggle for him. I think I'll add runes/literacy. So there's also some slight updates to the family section.
On the subject of multiple actions, maybe something like an active/passive thing? Like...you can only do one big thing but can also note 'When not doing that I farm/build/write runes on things/etc.' Which would let you do two crafting-y actions or double up on something like I Farm A Lot, but not do two big exciting things likely to require a lot of QM time?
On the subject of multiple actions, maybe something like an active/passive thing? Like...you can only do one big thing but can also note 'When not doing that I farm/build/write runes on things/etc.' Which would let you do two crafting-y actions or double up on something like I Farm A Lot, but not do two big exciting things likely to require a lot of QM time?
Yeah. The "you can only do one big heroic thing per turn, but you can do a big heroic thing plus a mundane thing, or two mundane things" is a good deal. It also encourages the characters who want to focus on badass heroics to remain a bit grounded in the community, because just because you're out hunting a bunch of goddamn lightning-farting dinosaurs or whatever doesn't mean you aren't also working to get a good harvest in.
Yeah. On the other hand, one active thing per person (plus maybe getting to participate in defense of the camp just so we don't have a scenario where people get slaughtered without a chance to defend themselves despite having applicable combat skills) is more than enough to keep everyone having a lively amount of adventure.
Yeah. On the other hand, one active thing per person (plus maybe getting to participate in defense of the camp just so we don't have a scenario where people get slaughtered without a chance to defend themselves despite having applicable combat skills) is more than enough to keep everyone having a lively amount of adventure.
Yeah. Presumably actually guarding the camp is a 'Passive' action, and then if the guards don't either take out the foe super quick or completely screw up other people in the camp can come help.
Yeah. Presumably actually guarding the camp is a 'Passive' action, and then if the guards don't either take out the foe super quick or completely screw up other people in the camp can come help.
That works well. In the Summer turn, because of the desperate lack of basic shelter, Erik would have been putting both the 'Active' and 'Passive' actions on "build house good," and it would then explain why he didn't get to participate in the driving off of the Gravitysaurus Rex, because he'd be classed as "a guy who was just in the camp," and the guard force repelled the big lizard before he even refocused and realized what was going on.
That works well. In the Summer turn, because of the desperate lack of basic shelter, Erik would have been putting both the 'Active' and 'Passive' actions on "build house good," and it would then explain why he didn't get to participate in the driving off of the Gravitysaurus Rex, because he'd be classed as "a guy who was just in the camp," and the guard force repelled the big lizard before he even refocused and realized what was going on.
Yep. This is exactly what happened to Ragnarr as well, his two actual actions were a scouting mission and then the language learning passive, so the guards scared the T-Rex off before he could even get woken up.
This also gives completely combat-oriented characters something they can do as a passive without having to feel too bad (guarding the place is useful work). Personally, I'm probably gonna grab something else to do, but it's a good option for people who don't want to.
'This can't be happening!' Valo thought, 'By Njord, this must be a dream!' as he sunk deeper into the domain of his ancestor.
Before today the ocean was the path to glory, it was the great mirror to his beloved sky, and now it was how he would die. That was before the Jomsvikings appeared out of nowhere/finally arrived. We had known they were coming./No, that's not true! Yet Blackhand did nothing./how is this-. Power draws challengers and there are no more famous adventurous, glory-seeking challengers than the Jomsvikings. Perhaps that was why there were raid trails today? Were we preparing for them? Had they simply come far earlier than expected?
'It matters not,' Valo thinks as the cloying depths took him. 'I die, with no honor, no weapon in hand, having been blown overboard having not even gone raiding.'
Just as his eyes close a hand grasps his collar. They shoot open again.
'Vidar!' Valo realizes. Looking over his shoulders he sees him, Vidar Icebreaker, his elder brother had saved him.
Vidar was a young Gute hero, made in the spitting image of their Godly ancestor Njord. An accomplished raider, with a powerfully built yet sleek build, hair blonde and salty white, beard as full as the greatest among them. Vidar often led his own expeditions out toward Tarkhan but he had once been chosen to go raiding with Blackhand himself. Vidar was known as a strong swimmer having even cut through an iceberg in a race to win in spectacular fashion.
"Come now brother, you've yet even to see true battle! You're not ready to join the Aesir among the stars you so love! We have to get back to the ships" Vidar says as you break the surface.
Valo coughs up mouthfuls of seawater as Vidar drags him swimming as hard as he can toward his ship. As he catches his breath, he sees Gotland's burning, sinking form in the distance.
"Brother you've got to help out or we'll not catch up!"
Vidar's words cut through stupor/pain/anguish/shock/horror…focusing Valo on the act of survival. If they did not catch up to the ships they would drown and join the Draugr, or be eaten by Joton or some passing Sea monster. He was running low on Ordstirr, and so stoked his Frami. Using his Kin-finding trick from his Guiding Light Kunna he and Vidar made great progress toward their contingent of fleeing ships.
"Almost there, brother! Almost there! Just a little while longer!" Vidar said.
With effort, they got to the final stretch to reach the ship. Their father Halvar Sunshaft throws out a length of rope for them to catch. Yet as Valo successfully grabs it he hears a roar of pain.
Turing he sees a gleaming harpoon head sticking through his brother's chest green ordstirr still coating it. The Jomsviking Snekkja had caught up!/What?! That wasn't there before! Vidar grabs Valo's as the harpoon's tether line goes taught. Valo wails in anguish as his body is subjected to a tug-of-war. He looks forward and sees his father desperately reeling in his sons. He looks back and sees his brother's face wet from the sea, stained by blood running out of his mouth, from the tears he's shedding.
"Sorry little brother. Looks like I won't be able to take you on your first raid after aAARRGH!" Vidar says as Valo once more feels his body threatening to be torn, desperately holding onto the rope for dear life.
"I was hoping to use this trick to slay a serpent or chase down some sinking treasure but I guess I'll improvise." Vidar says with a wry, blood-stained smile, "Promise you'll watch my last deed brother."
Valo can only shake his head no as he goes to reach a hand for his brother.
"You've got to promise me, Valo! Please."
Another pull, another tearing sensation, another scream rings out, and a pair of hands let go.
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A/N. First omake on the site, feedback would be appreciated.
