Connell makes his way to the back of the room, and takes a seat at the empty table. He eyes the card game at the adjacent table, and tries to understand the objective, as he has no experience playing such games.
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A wave of disgust overtakes Connell as he looks up at the man atop him. The disgust begins to well into anger, an urge to hit the man, to knock the rest of his foul teeth out. A burning light overtakes his cool gray eyes, but after just a brief moment he is back in control. This man means me no harm, I must continue on my way and see what I can find. Connell waits for the man to clamber off him, and if he is forced to wait more than a few seconds, he simply tips the man off him and strides into the bar without a word, and without looking back. Pushing through the saloon door, he enters an environment that he has never been in, and he is not sure how to behave. He glances around the room briefly, and attempts to act casual as he looks for a corner to hang around unnoticed, so he can observe the other patrons.
It is strange that these people do not even regard this totem in their town. Perhaps it is only used in special rituals or ceremonies. As he's approaching the doors, someone comes flying out of them at him.
Connell wraps powerful arms around the person hurtling towards him, and if the force of impact could be harmful, he falls backwards to break the fall for both parties.
Landing in the dust, he quickly releases the individual, and looks them over, trying to determine whether they are looking for a fight, making an escape, or just drunk. For the moment, Connell is silent. It suddenly occurs to him that he has not spoken in English for many, many years.
Connell barely notices the strange looks, shying away and breaking eye contact from the ones that pass nearby. The Mohtautau tribe does not have a written language. All the same, Connell's sharp eyes scan the surface of the obelisk, admiring every shape and angle. He tries to remember the written words of his childhood: English, Irish Gaelic, and Latin spoken in Catholic mass. He tries to recall the symbols of tribes that write their language. He tries to interpret how the townsfolk interact with the thing: is it a ritual symbol, a place of worship, or perhaps just a societal emblem?
If nothing interesting happens: Connell's interest wanes around mid-day. He is bored of the obelisk, and thinks his mark unlikely to visit such symbols of authority or religion anyway, more probably the killer is a ruffian and a menace to society. He sets off towards the nearest public place, be it a saloon, a general store, or an inn, in hopes of viewing more of these strange people. He is particularly interested in finding the rougher looking areas of town.
Connell begins to stir just before the sun rises. Dawn has always been his favorite time of day. In the forests and the mountains that he roamed in his past, daybreak was the time to hunt, the time that the creatures of the night returned to their burrows and dens to sleep, and the creatures of the day came out of their burrows and dens to find water. A moment of great stillness existed between these activities, a time for a hunter to prepare, to find a position along a game trail, and to wait in silence. The desert is different, though. The creatures of the desert are scarce and they scuttle around in the night. They return to their sand burrows in the morning, before the burning sun can assail them. You can forget trying to find water after the sun returns. That morning stillness of the desert extends through the day. Unless, by chance, you encounter a human, the strangest of animals. Connell makes a morning meal of cactus pulp, the edible plants of this region providing the primary means of both food and water. He sets his eyes on Hobbs, and shakes the sand out of the deerskin that serves as his bed under the stars. During the day, he wraps it over his body to protect his skin from the brutal sun. He feels determined to enter the city, but he’s not sure what to do once he gets there. Picking up his few belongings, he tucks away the Ace of Spades he found yesterday, and quickly plunges forth into this unpleasant new place, as one might leap into a frigid lake. The townspeople are beginning their days as Connell walks among them, but apart from them. He feels foreign, and his time with the natives has caused him to forget his own skin color. The people see a tall, strong man wearing a simple shirt and pant made of lightweight, stretched hide, sporting moccasins, but the man wearing these clothes is white, with jet black hair and calm, steady, gray-blue eyes. Passing by the general store, his fingers roam into his pocket to find a single dollar coin, the last dollar he never spent, a remnant from his life before the tribe. He remembers, then, that this currency is the way of the white man, and he will need to trade for money to eek out his existence among them. He comes at last before this strange obelisk at the center of town. What strange religion do these people follow? His eyes scan the markings as he thinks back to his childhood, and the Catholic statues of sacrifice, or of saints. He wonders what this statue could mean, and why it is important to the townsfolk here. Out of curiosity, Connell finds a place to sit, and observes the people of the town. This seems as good a place as any to scan the faces of passersby, and he keeps a mental tab of shady-looking characters and how they go about their day, specifically looking for anyone wearing large boots matching the tracks he found in the sand, and recently traveled; not clean and fresh like the finer folk, nor obviously a tradesman or local farmer. Indeed, Connell is scanning for the outsiders, folk not unlike himself, yet somehow fouler.
I think Gameplay will be up tonight! I'll be out at a bday party tonight, so if gameplay goes up I won't be responding until tomorrow. So don't take my delayed response as disinterest :)
Was there a single event that drove Connell to leave at such a young age, or was it more something he'd wanted to do for as long as he could remember? Connell always wanted to leave. He was born with a heart for adventure, and a love for the wild lands outside the cities and towns. His spirit detested the congestion and disease of cities, preferring the free open air. Storytelling Version:
His mother’s thick Irish accent seemed to float in the midsummer air, slicing through the mugginess as Connell played outside. “Connell, won’t you be a good lad and fetch your mum a pail of water from the river?” Scooping up the oversized bucket, he ambled down the road, day-dreaming about running away. He thought of the small store of goods he had tucked away under the bed he shared with his brother, about enough food to last him a week, he figured. Absentmindedly, his fingers ran atop the reeds down the path to the riverbank, feeling what little nature was left in Chicago, enjoying the late afternoon sun on his face. “Oh, hello Connell,” a weary looking Mrs. Wortham drew his attention back to reality. “Hello, Mrs. Wortham. Is James about?” Mrs. Wortham’s frown drew further, and her eyes grew dimmer and fell to the ground. “‘Fraid not, lad. James is very ill, he’s got dysentery.” Shaking her head, she hefted her pails and headed back to the small Irish neighborhood. This is no way to live, cooped up in tiny houses, spreading illness between our poor homes. His thoughts shifted to tales of Ireland and the beautiful countryside his parents had shared. He could never understand why they had left, it seemed such a happy place, but then again parents were complicated. That’s the way to live. I want to be free, with soil underfoot and stars overhead. In America, that’s the life of the adventurer, the hunter and trapper. I have been thinking about this for a long time, and tonight, I’m really doing it. I’m leaving. That night, he slid out of bed, quiet as a mouse. The floorboards creaked as he made his way to the front door, but his father would be too weary from a long day’s labor to wake from his deep slumber. Out on the road, the air smelled fresher than he ever remembered, and the ground felt like his own under his springing step. He was free from life in the city, and now he was a real adventurer. Was it common for the Mohtautau to take prisoners as they took Connell? Along similar lines, is it at all common for them to take in a white man as one of their own? Prisoners were common in tribal warfare, and for many purposes. Sometimes used for leverage in ransom, sometimes brought back as a symbol of strength and executed publicly, sometimes for labor or information. There was no precedent for taking in a white man, but there was a special connection between the elders and Connell, as he was a young, strong, and wild. The young braves at first viewed Connell as a trophy, but the elders saw his strength, wisdom, and his distance from white society. They were so impressed that they allowed him to join the tribe, and part of their reasoning was to soften the tempers of the younger tribesmen and show that wisdom and mercy are important leadership qualities. Does Connell know why the Osage tribe attacked his own? Were the two often at war? If so, over what? The two tribes were often in competition for the area’s resources, but rarely met in battle.. In times of plenty, they were tenuous allies, but in times of scarcity their friendship quickly faded with the larger Osage tribe applying pressure on the Mohtautau to find new territories. The Elders of the Osage were known to be wise and patient men, but after several of the council passed on, the younger chiefs were excited to make a name for themselves. The Mohtautau were an easy, smaller target, and in the minds of the younger tribe, a constant thorn that should be removed. Their bloodthirst boiled over into total violence, rather than the typical, patient tactics to strong-arm smaller tribes into more distant territories through smaller battles or raids. What is Connell hoping to find in Hobbs? Connell is on the Road. His life has been shattered, and his hopes are defaulting to those of his childhood, if tempered slightly by reality. He is looking for a life of American adventure: hunting, trapping, and fighting when necessary. He knows he is strong, and he knows he can find work using that strength. He has no society, no friends, and no knowledge of the current territory, but he also has no home to turn back to. More immediately, Connell is projecting his frustration at his inability to fight back against his own enemies on his discovery of murdered victims outside of town. If he can find the murderer, he will not find it easy to hold himself back. He found a few clues at the scene; .38 caliber casings, large bootprints in the sand, and the dead man was clutching an Ace of Spades, perhaps some sort of killing mark. An empty leather wallet was tossed on the ground nearby, so Connell guesses that simple robbery was the motive. He is hoping he can find the murderer and bring vengeance, but of course he has no experience investigating these sorts of mysteries, and is overwhelmed by the number and variety of the people in Hobbs.
If Connell has just arrived in white civilization, he is suffering from culture shock. He's probably not carousing the town trying to meet friends. But we could say he's been hanging around town for a whike. More likely, he met one or more of the party through happenstance. Perhaps he saw someone becoming a victim, and stepped in. Perhaps he made a major social error, and one of you debonair types swept in for the rescue. Perhaps he worked up the nerve to hang out at the bar, trying to pick up a lead on the murderer he followed into town. I think this type of interaction would build a better long-term foundation for someone with tribal inclinations.
It should be easy to catch on. Not sure what iur GM style is, but generally you should have an idea of the risks. For example, if you're playing dice with the village idiot, or a naive settler that just got into town, you probably take them as less of a serious threat. If you're playing dice with a couple of tough looking gangsters, you probably know the chances of getting shot in the face are higher. In other words, the consequences of your actions will generally follow the fiction that it comes from.
So how bastardized is the west going to be?Oh, incredibly. I don't know enough of the history to be historically accurate in the first place, and I certainly care more about us crafting a good story than how well it "slots into" reality. My assumption is that we will follow the DW model of "draw maps, leave blanks" and sort of unveil the details as we go. Which certainly doesn't lend itself to historical accuracy or adherence to a particular fictional canon. I figure we borrow heavily from what we know about history, while creating a vibrant world that feels like the Wild West you see in film and literature, and also feels like our own.
But it'll still be often important to have cover, and don't forget that you can also use Grit, too...Let's change that to 1d3 instead and see how it plays. I suspect that there will be a few things that we'll want to change as we go. Thanks for the explanation, I hadn't given much thought to grit yet. Let's see how it shakes out. I think the ability fits the character I am envisioning, which is the important part. D3 sounds about right, enough that it's not used too often, not so much that I am afraid to use it at all, but I will stick with whatever you say. I was mostly wondering whether I misunderstood the HP. Each one is oh so very valuable! As an aside, my work computer doesn't seem to like the security on this site, so I guess I'll be wearing my thumbs out during the day.
Am I understanding correctly that the HP I rolled to start is my Max? If so, Berserker may not be a very helpful ability when I rolled only 9hp... |