Research and Development Quest [Warhammer Fantasy]
- Thread starter Kaboomatic
- Start date
Kaboomatic
Where the Wild Things Are
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Vote is Closed, winner is food for the food god
- Location
- Wherever I feel like being
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Went one better. "Ogres make everything better".
16 characters
Sick and tired of being Sick and Tired
- Location
- Alta California
- Pronouns
- They/Them
MY GOODNESS, WE HAVE SO MANY GOOD OPTIONS.
I think i'll have to reread the whole thread and sleep on it, maybe roll some dice on what resources to apply to said options.
EDIT: nevermind I caught up, and can no longer vote sadly.
I think i'll have to reread the whole thread and sleep on it, maybe roll some dice on what resources to apply to said options.
EDIT: nevermind I caught up, and can no longer vote sadly.
Last edited:
Turn 1: Research Phase Results
Kaboomatic
Where the Wild Things Are
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Turn 1: Research Phase.
Current Project: Hungry Hungry Tyrants (Multi use food grabber/maker) [3 turns]
Current Budget: 3 BP
Unique Assets: N/A
Hero Units:
Grabthar the Teacher [Mourne Beasts 2] [Gut Magic 2] [Martial Arts 2] [Weaponry 3]
Skagg Burninator [Weaponry 2] [Firebelly Magic 2]
Grok Speakeasy [Mourne Beasts 2] [Alchemy 2]
Grak Gardenback [Gut Magic 2] [Mourne Plants 2]
AP: 4
---------------------------------------
Beastpunching (Grok Speakeasy)
Grok Speakeasy wasn't really familiar with the traditional way hunters did their beast taming. He'd always preferred to just talk to them, convincing them that they should follow him or do things for him, and while the results were the same, his beastspeaking and the beastpunching favored by most were quite different.
Still, the boss had given him a job, and he was going to do what the boss told him, partly because Grabthar the Teacher was both terrifying and also not really that bad of a boss. Wasn't the worst ogre Grok had worked under anyways. The other, way smaller part of his completion of the job was that it wasn't that bad of a job. Not his first choice at least, but not bad.
That being said, Grok didn't have much of an idea on how to look into this beastpunching shit, mainly because of the whole 'not the same as his specialty' deal.
Luckily, Grok knew a few ogres who could help. Not anyone at their little 'research camp' of course, Grabthar was busy with his own shit and nobody else had the necessary knowledge. But Grok had a few hunters who owed him favors, and those favors probably wouldn't ever be useful anywhere else.
So he called them in, and over the course of the next few months, multiple hunters showed up at the research camp, ready to do what Grok needed them to do.
Grok took them to a series of small pens containing various animals, specifically Sabertusks, Rhinoxen, a few blood vultures, and even three Mournfangs. He'd wanted to get a few Stonehorns, but unfortunately Grabthar had shot that proposal down, saying that it'd take too much work and probably kill too many ogres. Still, Grok made do with what ogres he was given, and only a few of them lost limbs. None of them died either.
The gnoblars weren't as lucky, but nobody really cared about them.
The hunters were instructed to demonstrate their beastpunching techniques on the various animals, taking a few from each group so that Grok had multiple trials. After a few arguments and a lost finger or two, Grok was firmly in charge and he'd also agreed to have the hunters do their beastpunching where no ogres other than himself could see.
Thankfully, there were no real troubles beyond that, and Grok was able to get quite a bit of data from the experiments.
For example, while each hunter had different variations on beastpunching, the general style seemed to be the same, beating up the animal in question, yelling obscenities or just screaming incoherently, and then repeating the process over and over until the beast was 'tamed' and would do what the hunter demanded.
Interestingly, in every case, when the beast was finally beaten into submission, there didn't seem to be any resentment or adoration or really any noticeable emotional change. It was almost like the animal was perfectly content with the new arrangement, and saw nothing out of the ordinary with it.
The closest thing Grok could relate it to was what ogres went through when there was a new Tyrant in charge.
Unfortunately, he wasn't able to continue down that line of thought, his funding for this project having run dry and his time relocated to testing and development.
Still, it was interesting.
Mountain Beasts (Grabthar the Teacher)
You decided to pick up the Mountain Beast research piece for yourself. It was one of the perks of being the boss, first choice of basically anything you wanted.
Of course, you did have to bust a few heads here and there, but it wasn't like it was any big loss. For you at least. The ogres who got their heads busted lost a lot. Probably. They weren't really the brightest to begin with.
But that line of thought was more fuckin irrelevant than a gnoblar's opinion, so you dropped it and got back to what you were supposed to be doing: Fucking off into the mountains to do some field research on the various beasties.
It was actually pretty damn entertaining, more so than you thought it'd be. The whole sitting around and not moving thing wasn't that bad, and after you finished observing your targets, you could swoop in and eat em! Well, the ones that probably wouldn't kill you.
You were an ogre, not stupid.
You ate a lot of animals over the past few months, really whenever you could step away from your projects, and you got a lot of damn good observations before you chowed down.
You followed a few packs of sabertusks around, watching as the feline beasts hunted down mammoths and mournfangs, devouring the beasts and ripping gouges out of both their prey and the ground they were standing on, stone getting absolutely fucking annihilated when exposed to their tusks.
You stalked a herd of Rhinoxen, watching them erase entire valleys of greenery in a single meal before moving onto the next, fighting off packs of Sabertusks, orc clans, and chimerae and coming out basically unharmed, engaging in struggles for dominance that caused earthquakes and split the ground apart.
You tracked flocks of Blood Vultures as they descended on food like aerial piranhas, stripping enormous carcasses bare in minutes, diving to hunt prey and skewering them on their beaks. When those dives missed, their beaks embedded themselves into the landscape, and you saw dozens of Blood Vultures buried up to their eyes into ironwood trees.
You even managed to find a few Caveclaws, stumbling on them as the ursine monstrosities were in the middle of a struggle for dominance. You watched as the loser was forced out of her brother's territory and began a week-long rampage through the Mountains, stopping dozens of miles away, near an uninhabited mountain. Then you swore under your brath as you watched that Caveclaw make her own fucking cave with half an hour's work, taking enormous chunks of stone out with vicious attacks until she'd burrowed damn halfway into the mountain.
After that, you decided to maybe go home. But you did get some damn good hypotheses and theories and shit from all of that, even if it was cut a bit short by your lack of budget or manpower.
For one, basically every animal you'd seen had two things in common. One, they were damn fucking strong, biting into rock and shattering stone and drilling straight into ironwood. Two, they were absolutely ravenous, eating about as much as equally sized ogres. Neither of these things were (according to a few caravaners you captured for reference on what regular animals were like) normal things for animals to do.
Pretty fucking neat.
Mountain Plants (Grak Gardenback)
Grak was pretty busy, busier than he'd been in a long time.
Well, alright, maybe that was a tiny little lie. Grak wasn't actually really any busier than he normally was. He wasn't even doing anything different from what he normally did. Looking at cool plants and figuring out their abilities was about as eventful as a gnoblar dying for him. Didn't mean it wasn't fun of course. After all, Grak chose to do that with his time before he was forced to.
So that was basically how Grak spent his time, uprooting or observing plants, sending small animals and gnoblars their way, and seeing what happened.
The answer was 'a lot of stuff' apparently. Grak didn't know there were that many ways gnoblars could die. Seriously, it was pretty cool.
But 'cool things' weren't what Grak was supposed to be looking for. Grak was supposed to be looking for what made the plants of the Mountains 'hell plants' and 'abominations', or whatever the humans he'd captured were calling them.
Grak wasn't really paying attention to be honest. He was thinking about plants.
Those humans might have had a point though. See, while Grak didn't know too much about how plants worked, he did know that they needed food to survive, same as anything else. And like animals and ogres and probably humans too, plants needed food to do stuff.
An ogre could survive on a few mournfangs, but they weren't gonna be good for anything useful.
And the amount of food these plants were getting probably wasn't enough to sustain fire breath or growing extra mouths or uprooting themself and getting into a fistfight with the gnoblar or producing a messed up sound that caused five fangweasels to appear from the ground and kill every animal in sight including themselves and also the gnoblar, or-
Well, you got the idea.
But yeah, it was weird. The plants were pretty obviously getting energy from somewhere, but Grak wasn't sure where. And if they were getting enough energy to do all of this crazy stuff, then they probably wouldn't need to eat actual food right?
Also, according to his captives, plants didn't normally need to eat anything, they just did some magic stuff with sun and water and they were fine unless bugs ate them.
So yeah, there was obviously some sort of weird stuff going on. The problem was that Grak wasn't really sure what. Maybe if he had a few more ogres helping him out, or access to some more exotic plants he'd be able to compare and contrast Mountain and 'regular' plants, but for now, all he could find out was that plants probably shouldn't act like this, but the Mountain plants did and he didn't know why.
On the bright side, Grak did find a bunch of new plants to add to his garden, so, upsides and stuff.
Also he totally got to eat the humies he captured, which was a nice snack. Tileans were always so crunchy. Definitely in his top five humies to eat.
Lavablaze (Skagg Burninator)
Holy fuckin shit da boss actually let Skagg take a look at his Firebelly Lore shit. Skagg didn't really expect this ta happen, but he wasn't about ta look a gift-mournfang in da mouth.
So da first thing Skagg did was go out ta a different valley, where nothing could go wrong if he fucked some shit up.
...Well, actually, Skagg was about ta fire (heh, geddit? Because dey were fire spells?) off all of his spells and shit in da middle of da camp, but right before he could, da boss conked him on da head and said dat if Skagg used dangerous magic in da middle of their camp, da boss would eat him.
So Skagg moved over ta a different area, away from da camp, and began ta start calling on da great Fire Mouth.
It went pretty well, and Skagg gotta lotta forest set on fire, breathing it out, calling up da lava darts and da fire punches, splittin open da earth and summoning da choking gas and da howling smoke, creating tiny eruptions of lava and sending dem out at anything and everything.
By da end of it all, da entire valley was a molten firescape, trees and rock and any animals in da way all burninating, but Skagg didn't really get much done. It was fuckin amazin, sure, very cathartic, but Skagg didn't get anything outta it beyond a sense of calmness and less anger.
Which was kinda weird seeing as Skagg didn't know he was angry before he wasn't. It was worth looking inta, especially since he didn't really have any otha leads.
So whenever he got mad, Skagg cast a spell, sometimes a lava dart, sometimes a fireball, sometimes he just breathed out fire, he liked ta switch it up. Also because of dat whole 'multiple trials' thing.
And den, sometimes Skagg had a few ogres try an' get him mad, after promising he wouldn't hurt em with his magic. Den, he tried to cast more spells when he was at different levels of anger, and recorded da results. Also he punched da ogres sometimes. He didn't say nuffin about not hurting em with his fists after all.
So, after all dat, Skagg had a buncha pretty good data, and all of it led ta some pretty wild conclusions.
See, da madder Skagg got, da easier to cast and stronger his spells were. And after Skagg cast a spell, he got a bit less angry, with da more powerful spells removin more anger dan da weaker spells.
Da Fire Mouth's magic definitely had some sorta rage-based component ta it, but dat was all Skagg could figure out. Maybe if he had a few more valleys he was allowed ta destroy, or had more disposable ogres who could make him happy or sad or a buncha other emotions dat weren't just anger, Skagg could look deeper into da interesting phenomena surrounding his magic, but for now, Skagg'd hafta settle with what he'd got.
Still, it was pretty neat.
A/N: Took a bit longer than I'dve liked, but its done now. Huge thanks as always to @Swordomatic and @Xantalos for looking this over.
Current Project: Hungry Hungry Tyrants (Multi use food grabber/maker) [3 turns]
Current Budget: 3 BP
Unique Assets: N/A
Hero Units:
Grabthar the Teacher [Mourne Beasts 2] [Gut Magic 2] [Martial Arts 2] [Weaponry 3]
Skagg Burninator [Weaponry 2] [Firebelly Magic 2]
Grok Speakeasy [Mourne Beasts 2] [Alchemy 2]
Grak Gardenback [Gut Magic 2] [Mourne Plants 2]
AP: 4
---------------------------------------
Beastpunching (Grok Speakeasy)
Grok Speakeasy wasn't really familiar with the traditional way hunters did their beast taming. He'd always preferred to just talk to them, convincing them that they should follow him or do things for him, and while the results were the same, his beastspeaking and the beastpunching favored by most were quite different.
Still, the boss had given him a job, and he was going to do what the boss told him, partly because Grabthar the Teacher was both terrifying and also not really that bad of a boss. Wasn't the worst ogre Grok had worked under anyways. The other, way smaller part of his completion of the job was that it wasn't that bad of a job. Not his first choice at least, but not bad.
That being said, Grok didn't have much of an idea on how to look into this beastpunching shit, mainly because of the whole 'not the same as his specialty' deal.
Luckily, Grok knew a few ogres who could help. Not anyone at their little 'research camp' of course, Grabthar was busy with his own shit and nobody else had the necessary knowledge. But Grok had a few hunters who owed him favors, and those favors probably wouldn't ever be useful anywhere else.
So he called them in, and over the course of the next few months, multiple hunters showed up at the research camp, ready to do what Grok needed them to do.
Grok took them to a series of small pens containing various animals, specifically Sabertusks, Rhinoxen, a few blood vultures, and even three Mournfangs. He'd wanted to get a few Stonehorns, but unfortunately Grabthar had shot that proposal down, saying that it'd take too much work and probably kill too many ogres. Still, Grok made do with what ogres he was given, and only a few of them lost limbs. None of them died either.
The gnoblars weren't as lucky, but nobody really cared about them.
The hunters were instructed to demonstrate their beastpunching techniques on the various animals, taking a few from each group so that Grok had multiple trials. After a few arguments and a lost finger or two, Grok was firmly in charge and he'd also agreed to have the hunters do their beastpunching where no ogres other than himself could see.
Thankfully, there were no real troubles beyond that, and Grok was able to get quite a bit of data from the experiments.
For example, while each hunter had different variations on beastpunching, the general style seemed to be the same, beating up the animal in question, yelling obscenities or just screaming incoherently, and then repeating the process over and over until the beast was 'tamed' and would do what the hunter demanded.
Interestingly, in every case, when the beast was finally beaten into submission, there didn't seem to be any resentment or adoration or really any noticeable emotional change. It was almost like the animal was perfectly content with the new arrangement, and saw nothing out of the ordinary with it.
The closest thing Grok could relate it to was what ogres went through when there was a new Tyrant in charge.
Unfortunately, he wasn't able to continue down that line of thought, his funding for this project having run dry and his time relocated to testing and development.
Still, it was interesting.
Mountain Beasts (Grabthar the Teacher)
You decided to pick up the Mountain Beast research piece for yourself. It was one of the perks of being the boss, first choice of basically anything you wanted.
Of course, you did have to bust a few heads here and there, but it wasn't like it was any big loss. For you at least. The ogres who got their heads busted lost a lot. Probably. They weren't really the brightest to begin with.
But that line of thought was more fuckin irrelevant than a gnoblar's opinion, so you dropped it and got back to what you were supposed to be doing: Fucking off into the mountains to do some field research on the various beasties.
It was actually pretty damn entertaining, more so than you thought it'd be. The whole sitting around and not moving thing wasn't that bad, and after you finished observing your targets, you could swoop in and eat em! Well, the ones that probably wouldn't kill you.
You were an ogre, not stupid.
You ate a lot of animals over the past few months, really whenever you could step away from your projects, and you got a lot of damn good observations before you chowed down.
You followed a few packs of sabertusks around, watching as the feline beasts hunted down mammoths and mournfangs, devouring the beasts and ripping gouges out of both their prey and the ground they were standing on, stone getting absolutely fucking annihilated when exposed to their tusks.
You stalked a herd of Rhinoxen, watching them erase entire valleys of greenery in a single meal before moving onto the next, fighting off packs of Sabertusks, orc clans, and chimerae and coming out basically unharmed, engaging in struggles for dominance that caused earthquakes and split the ground apart.
You tracked flocks of Blood Vultures as they descended on food like aerial piranhas, stripping enormous carcasses bare in minutes, diving to hunt prey and skewering them on their beaks. When those dives missed, their beaks embedded themselves into the landscape, and you saw dozens of Blood Vultures buried up to their eyes into ironwood trees.
You even managed to find a few Caveclaws, stumbling on them as the ursine monstrosities were in the middle of a struggle for dominance. You watched as the loser was forced out of her brother's territory and began a week-long rampage through the Mountains, stopping dozens of miles away, near an uninhabited mountain. Then you swore under your brath as you watched that Caveclaw make her own fucking cave with half an hour's work, taking enormous chunks of stone out with vicious attacks until she'd burrowed damn halfway into the mountain.
After that, you decided to maybe go home. But you did get some damn good hypotheses and theories and shit from all of that, even if it was cut a bit short by your lack of budget or manpower.
For one, basically every animal you'd seen had two things in common. One, they were damn fucking strong, biting into rock and shattering stone and drilling straight into ironwood. Two, they were absolutely ravenous, eating about as much as equally sized ogres. Neither of these things were (according to a few caravaners you captured for reference on what regular animals were like) normal things for animals to do.
Pretty fucking neat.
Mountain Plants (Grak Gardenback)
Grak was pretty busy, busier than he'd been in a long time.
Well, alright, maybe that was a tiny little lie. Grak wasn't actually really any busier than he normally was. He wasn't even doing anything different from what he normally did. Looking at cool plants and figuring out their abilities was about as eventful as a gnoblar dying for him. Didn't mean it wasn't fun of course. After all, Grak chose to do that with his time before he was forced to.
So that was basically how Grak spent his time, uprooting or observing plants, sending small animals and gnoblars their way, and seeing what happened.
The answer was 'a lot of stuff' apparently. Grak didn't know there were that many ways gnoblars could die. Seriously, it was pretty cool.
But 'cool things' weren't what Grak was supposed to be looking for. Grak was supposed to be looking for what made the plants of the Mountains 'hell plants' and 'abominations', or whatever the humans he'd captured were calling them.
Grak wasn't really paying attention to be honest. He was thinking about plants.
Those humans might have had a point though. See, while Grak didn't know too much about how plants worked, he did know that they needed food to survive, same as anything else. And like animals and ogres and probably humans too, plants needed food to do stuff.
An ogre could survive on a few mournfangs, but they weren't gonna be good for anything useful.
And the amount of food these plants were getting probably wasn't enough to sustain fire breath or growing extra mouths or uprooting themself and getting into a fistfight with the gnoblar or producing a messed up sound that caused five fangweasels to appear from the ground and kill every animal in sight including themselves and also the gnoblar, or-
Well, you got the idea.
But yeah, it was weird. The plants were pretty obviously getting energy from somewhere, but Grak wasn't sure where. And if they were getting enough energy to do all of this crazy stuff, then they probably wouldn't need to eat actual food right?
Also, according to his captives, plants didn't normally need to eat anything, they just did some magic stuff with sun and water and they were fine unless bugs ate them.
So yeah, there was obviously some sort of weird stuff going on. The problem was that Grak wasn't really sure what. Maybe if he had a few more ogres helping him out, or access to some more exotic plants he'd be able to compare and contrast Mountain and 'regular' plants, but for now, all he could find out was that plants probably shouldn't act like this, but the Mountain plants did and he didn't know why.
On the bright side, Grak did find a bunch of new plants to add to his garden, so, upsides and stuff.
Also he totally got to eat the humies he captured, which was a nice snack. Tileans were always so crunchy. Definitely in his top five humies to eat.
Lavablaze (Skagg Burninator)
Holy fuckin shit da boss actually let Skagg take a look at his Firebelly Lore shit. Skagg didn't really expect this ta happen, but he wasn't about ta look a gift-mournfang in da mouth.
So da first thing Skagg did was go out ta a different valley, where nothing could go wrong if he fucked some shit up.
...Well, actually, Skagg was about ta fire (heh, geddit? Because dey were fire spells?) off all of his spells and shit in da middle of da camp, but right before he could, da boss conked him on da head and said dat if Skagg used dangerous magic in da middle of their camp, da boss would eat him.
So Skagg moved over ta a different area, away from da camp, and began ta start calling on da great Fire Mouth.
It went pretty well, and Skagg gotta lotta forest set on fire, breathing it out, calling up da lava darts and da fire punches, splittin open da earth and summoning da choking gas and da howling smoke, creating tiny eruptions of lava and sending dem out at anything and everything.
By da end of it all, da entire valley was a molten firescape, trees and rock and any animals in da way all burninating, but Skagg didn't really get much done. It was fuckin amazin, sure, very cathartic, but Skagg didn't get anything outta it beyond a sense of calmness and less anger.
Which was kinda weird seeing as Skagg didn't know he was angry before he wasn't. It was worth looking inta, especially since he didn't really have any otha leads.
So whenever he got mad, Skagg cast a spell, sometimes a lava dart, sometimes a fireball, sometimes he just breathed out fire, he liked ta switch it up. Also because of dat whole 'multiple trials' thing.
And den, sometimes Skagg had a few ogres try an' get him mad, after promising he wouldn't hurt em with his magic. Den, he tried to cast more spells when he was at different levels of anger, and recorded da results. Also he punched da ogres sometimes. He didn't say nuffin about not hurting em with his fists after all.
So, after all dat, Skagg had a buncha pretty good data, and all of it led ta some pretty wild conclusions.
See, da madder Skagg got, da easier to cast and stronger his spells were. And after Skagg cast a spell, he got a bit less angry, with da more powerful spells removin more anger dan da weaker spells.
Da Fire Mouth's magic definitely had some sorta rage-based component ta it, but dat was all Skagg could figure out. Maybe if he had a few more valleys he was allowed ta destroy, or had more disposable ogres who could make him happy or sad or a buncha other emotions dat weren't just anger, Skagg could look deeper into da interesting phenomena surrounding his magic, but for now, Skagg'd hafta settle with what he'd got.
Still, it was pretty neat.
A/N: Took a bit longer than I'dve liked, but its done now. Huge thanks as always to @Swordomatic and @Xantalos for looking this over.
Last edited:
- Location
- Somewhere in the area
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
Now that we have taken an accounting of the local flora and fauna, the reagents research action should hopefully be easier or give better results. Knowing what materials you have and their general aspects/behaviors makes figuring out how that relates to the outcomes simpler. And knowing what the reagents do and potentially even why they do it should make researching gut magic easier as well.
All of that in mind, I'm thinking something like this for our next research turn:
[] Gut Spark: Grabthar + 1 Budget
[] Reagents: Grak + 1 Budget
[] Cauldrons: Grok + Skagg
Give Grabthar and Grak some budget so they can make good progress, and have Skagg use his metalworking expertise to help Grok make a cauldron.
All of that in mind, I'm thinking something like this for our next research turn:
[] Gut Spark: Grabthar + 1 Budget
[] Reagents: Grak + 1 Budget
[] Cauldrons: Grok + Skagg
Give Grabthar and Grak some budget so they can make good progress, and have Skagg use his metalworking expertise to help Grok make a cauldron.
What gains were you expecting? Research phase doesn't give "gains", it just gives exposition.
- Location
- Wherever I feel like being
- Pronouns
- He/Him
No, it gives information. Which helps inform us on possible routes to follow up on.
- Location
- PA
So for anyone feeling like a dumb git:
Grok found that Beastpunching works like a Tyrant does. Don't ask me what that means, I'm a dumb git that's not familiar with Tyrants.
Grak found that plants are getting more energy then they should have, given the stuff they can do. How? Don't ask me, I'm a dumb git that didn't know the Mountains had plants like this.
Skagg found that being mad makes it easier to cast his spells, and casting spells make him less mad...How do we use that? This dumb git don't know, beyond the obvious.
Grok found that Beastpunching works like a Tyrant does. Don't ask me what that means, I'm a dumb git that's not familiar with Tyrants.
Grak found that plants are getting more energy then they should have, given the stuff they can do. How? Don't ask me, I'm a dumb git that didn't know the Mountains had plants like this.
Skagg found that being mad makes it easier to cast his spells, and casting spells make him less mad...How do we use that? This dumb git don't know, beyond the obvious.
It's still worth it imo, and this is the first turn, it's a learning experience, so to speak.
But basically the take aways for me:
- everything is super dangerous and thus, either to hunt or defend itself, things are hungry on the mountain
-the animals are pretty much acting on the same "hierarchy" as ogres, to the degree you can handle them like a really stupid ogre
-that weasel summoning plant is interesting
-fire belly stuff eats anger for magic, neat
But basically the take aways for me:
- everything is super dangerous and thus, either to hunt or defend itself, things are hungry on the mountain
-the animals are pretty much acting on the same "hierarchy" as ogres, to the degree you can handle them like a really stupid ogre
-that weasel summoning plant is interesting
-fire belly stuff eats anger for magic, neat