The Lands of the River - A Bronze Souls Quest
- Thread starter MissBegot
- Start date
- Original Fantasy
0-14.3: Reach Exceeds Grasp
- Pronouns
- She/Her
[x] Cast Star's Call to blind him.
[x] Maintain Space, stay out of reach as he seems a brawler, you very much aren't.
You run for the open ground to your left, hurling a golden spark at his face as you go. This hand lunges forth and catches you a glancing blow on the shoulder, boney knuckles thumping into your armour. Your feet beat on the packed earth, trying to gain distance. The courtyard offers little room to escape, surrounded by walls and barred doors; even the windows of the counting-house are shuttered. The only refuge is in constant movement.
{+1 Athletics}
Resolve
╞══════════════════╡17/20
Focus
╞══════════════════╡3/20 🌑
Resolve
╞══════════════════╡17/20
Focus
╞══════════════════╡3/20 🌑
The Tax Collector
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You hear the rustle of chains as he brings back the scales for another sweep as you retreat, see the ghostly shape of the blow beginning to arc across your future. You have room to manoeuvre now, to get out of reach, though you also notice, in the shadows of what will be, that you could also avoid his swings by getting inside his reach, past the outstretched hand and under the arm.
What do you do now?
[ ] Write in an Action and a Reaction.
[ ] Write in an Action and a Reaction.
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- Pronouns
- They/Them
[X] Drink from Ye Flask to regain 12 Focus.
[X] Duck under and inside his reach
What I'm thinking is to get under him, then summon the hounds at his ankles where he can't easily swipe them (I'm taking At Our Side pretty literally). Depending on what he plans to do once we're there. If he goes for something to crater whatever's below him then we can duck back out and gain distance again then. Plus it's fun and cool.
[X] Duck under and inside his reach
What I'm thinking is to get under him, then summon the hounds at his ankles where he can't easily swipe them (I'm taking At Our Side pretty literally). Depending on what he plans to do once we're there. If he goes for something to crater whatever's below him then we can duck back out and gain distance again then. Plus it's fun and cool.
- Location
- Soviet Canuckistan
[X] Drink from Ye Flask to regain 12 Focus.
[X] Duck under and inside his reach
[X] Duck under and inside his reach
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Since it keeps coming up, and I'd rather avoid confusion than keep angling for a dramatic reveal, I'm going to reveal now why the flask heals Resolve first.
Being one of the Dead, you are animated by Resolve instead of Vitality, and you can actually cast spells using Resolve if you run out of Focus. In essence, you're having to make up a healthbar using the same mental energy that normally goes into Focus. The Living have much longer Focus bars than you.
So you can keep doing things after you run out of spoons, but it starts burning the resource you're using on not crumbling to dust. Write what you know, and all that.
Being one of the Dead, you are animated by Resolve instead of Vitality, and you can actually cast spells using Resolve if you run out of Focus. In essence, you're having to make up a healthbar using the same mental energy that normally goes into Focus. The Living have much longer Focus bars than you.
So you can keep doing things after you run out of spoons, but it starts burning the resource you're using on not crumbling to dust. Write what you know, and all that.
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
rollin'
0-14.4: Close Quarters
- Pronouns
- She/Her
[x] Drink from the Flask of Life.
[x] Duck under and inside his reach.
You turn abruptly and dart forwards as his hand comes around, ducking deftly under an outstretched forearm as tall as you are, trailing papyrus wrappings brushing through your half-shaven hair. You unstopper the flask one-handed, swallowing a mouthful of lifegiving water as the flailing scales tear up the ground behind you. He glares down at you with golden balefires as he recovers from the swing, bringing his hands together.
As the water washes the fog from your mind, your senses sharpen. For a moment you are struck by the relative silence of battle between the Dead; neither of you are breathing hard, or much at all, save to speak. No pounding of blood, no rush of adrenaline, just intense concentration as you will yourself to move, to exist, moment by moment. Who was this man, before he became what he is now? What tattered soul do you struggle against, behind this monstrous semblance?
Life Flask: 2/4
Resolve
╞══════════════════╡20/20
Focus
╞══════════════════╡12/20 🌑
Resolve
╞══════════════════╡20/20
Focus
╞══════════════════╡12/20 🌑
The Tax Collector
╞══════════════════════════════════════╡
╞══════════════════════════════════════╡
The giant wraps his hands together in a fist, raising them overhead, the bronze spike of the scales pointing down like a sword which he plunges down toward you, the bowls trailing down behind to smash aside anything the spike doesn't impale.
What's your next move?
The Tax Collector is beginning an impale attack, a single-target downward thrust. It will do tremendous damage if it hits, and a glancing hit from the bowls of the scales may knock you back.
[ ] Write in.
The Tax Collector is beginning an impale attack, a single-target downward thrust. It will do tremendous damage if it hits, and a glancing hit from the bowls of the scales may knock you back.
[ ] Write in.
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Wiadi
Uncompromising Radical Leftist
- Location
- Something Clever
- Pronouns
- She/Her
...are we not already inside his reach? The downward strike reads as him attempting a solution to that problem by stabbing down directly in front of himself, in which case we're stuck either sidestepping, backpedaling, or trying to duck between his legs.
0-14.5: Immortal Wound
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Content Warning: Violence, grievous physical injury, but not exactly gore because the Dead turn to dust rather than bleeding.
[x] Dodge.
[x] Cast Windhunter's Call once he's driven his blade into the ground.
You watch carefully and as he begins the downward blow you sidestep smartly, calling upon Suteshet to sent forth her hunt—
He redirects the blow later than you thought possible, too late to react. You were overconfident, didn't move far enough—
The spike punches through your armoured side, below your upraised arm, passing right through your torso and stabbing into the earth beside you. A flailing bowl almost knocks the staff from your hand as it tumbles down.
You should be dead. You are. But that hasn't stopped you yet.
You feel disoriented and profoundly exhausted as the cold bronze disrupts and distorts your spiritual body; your Sah is made from your own self-image, and now your soul wavers between what should be and what has been done to you, as your body begins to fail.
You manage to gasp out the last of the invocation as your flesh cracks and starts to disintegrate, coughing choking dust from a pierced lung. The effort almost finishes you off, your senses dulling as you struggle to remain corporeal.
You are plunged into shadow as your aten is eclipsed, the walls and gateway only grey suggestions in the starlight, your foe looming over you, lit only by the balefires in his eyes.
The dust falling from your wound is tossed in a sudden breeze, whirling it together with dry earth and scattered sand into a miniature sandstorm from which two dark shapes leap, blacker than the night around them. One locks its jaws around a shadowy wrist, sparks flying from its teeth, before the spike is abruptly withdrawn, leaving you to stagger back in a daze as the second hound snaps at air.
Resolve
╞══════════════════╡3/20
Focus
╞══════════════════╡0/20
Stormhounds of Suteshet
╞════╡6/6 ╞════╡6/6
╞══════════════════╡3/20
Focus
╞══════════════════╡0/20
Stormhounds of Suteshet
╞════╡6/6 ╞════╡6/6
The Tax Collector
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Your senses whirling, you watch the giant step backward in the face of the hounds' onslaught, raising both hands again to try and spear one as they circle and snap at his legs. Dust falls from your robes and drifts about your feet. You are so. very. tired.
What do you do? The Tax Collector is drawing back to Short range as he tries (and fails) to avoid being flanked by the hounds, and will try to use the same attack on one of them next. You have breathing space, or at least you would, if your lungs weren't turning to dust.
[ ] Write in.
[ ] Give up.
[ ] Write in.
[ ] Give up.
Oof. Almost the worst possible time for those numbers to come up. It was a good plan, but the dice were not with you. The hounds have aggro now though, and your flask is half-full, so you may yet recover from this!
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- Pronouns
- They/Them
[X]Run Away! Towards the counting house
[X]Down as much of that Gamer God Bath Water as you can.
Ah, getting smacked down. Truly nailing the experience.
So the worst case cost of the hounds invocation was more than our Focus. Did it get subtracted from Resolve or something or is the overflow just waived?
[X]Down as much of that Gamer God Bath Water as you can.
Ah, getting smacked down. Truly nailing the experience.
So the worst case cost of the hounds invocation was more than our Focus. Did it get subtracted from Resolve or something or is the overflow just waived?
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
[X]Run Away! Towards the counting house
[X]Down as much of that Gamer God Bath Water as you can.
[X]Down as much of that Gamer God Bath Water as you can.
0-14.6: A Battle Eclipsed
- Pronouns
- She/Her
[x] Run Away! Towards the counting house
[x] Down as much of that Gamer God Bath Water as you can.
You stumble away, toward a counting-house you can no longer see until you draw closer, a grey shape in the night.
You fumble out the flask and upend it, drinking deep with no regard for your own defence, counting on the hounds' distraction to protect you.
The rush of energy is intoxicating, the fatigue recedes, your senses sharpen, your Sah reasserts itself, closing your wounds. Your body stops feeling like crumbling sandstone, and more like living flesh again. The grey shapes around you take on more definition and colour, and as you turn you can see a gangly figure on the edge of vision, underlit by the reflected glow of his gaze, beset by dark predators. The Tax Collector thrusts down ineffectually at a wheeling shadow, roaring out in frustration as the other nips at his calf from behind. He wheels and gestures to the night beyond.
"Guards! Attend me!"
Life Flask: 0/4
Resolve
╞══════════════════╡20/20
Focus
╞══════════════════╡7/20
Stormhounds of Suteshet
╞════╡6/6 ╞════╡6/6
Resolve
╞══════════════════╡20/20
Focus
╞══════════════════╡7/20
Stormhounds of Suteshet
╞════╡6/6 ╞════╡6/6
The Tax Collector
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You can't see what may be happening beyond the struggle, the gatehouse is lost in the darkness, but your foresight catches a blur of movement and an arrow that will land within the range of your vision, as archers heed the call of their master.
What now? You are at Short Range from the Counting House, Medium from the melee, and presumably Long from the gatehouse and the unseen archers. On this moonless night you can only see things within Short range of you, save for what is illuminated by the golden glow from the Tax Collector's eyes. However, as a Priest of the Moon, you know their phases, and a waning half moon should be rising soon, perhaps in 3 turns.
[ ] Write in.
[ ] Write in.
You're getting to drink from the flask twice in one turn at the expense of forgoing your defence roll; the advantage of not having aggro!
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