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Hey guys. I'm gonna bow out. I lost a friend earlier this month and I've had a hectic work schedule that hasn't lended itself to creativity or consistency. I don't want to hold up anybody else. Thank you so much for a great campaign. Feel free to use Jacques as an NPC or let someone else take over his sheet if they like. =)
Jacques sighs, cracking his neck and snapping open the medical bag on his hip. "Stand fast," he says, before pushing up his glasses and shouldering his own rifle.
"I'd 'ate to 'old us up," Jacques says, then winces. It looks as though the stress of fighting and sorting through the wounded opened his side back up, and he curses, then apologizes to the LT and hurriedly sits down to redo his bandages. "Ze longer we wait, ze more zey eat. Might be ze more of zem zere are." He winces further, cranking down bandages. "All I 'ave to do is stay alive to patch you up," he says, with a grim smile. "It's not like ze bullet holes are in my 'ands."
Once the fight has died down, Jacques spends as much time as they can spare treating the wounded, and making sure to check over everybody in the party.
"Oui, sir," Jacques says to the LT, giving him a sharp look up and down. Unbidden, that old bit of military humor floats through his head--the difference between a PFC and a 2LT is one promotion.
Yikes, good luck to you and your lady WhtKnt. It is Savage Worlds so there's always the possibility of crazy harsh wounds out of nowhere, but it's not the worst. Then again, most of my characters don't survive campaigns either. I should really stop taking Heroic. :')
Jacques is battered and bruised, but not truly wounded. But he feels like his luck might run out before too long.
Jacques cracks his neck and adjusts his glasses as he steps toward the stunned and scrambling German menacingly. "Raus aus Frankreich oder ich werde dich hier begraben," he says in stilted German as he raises his rifle and digs in for the longhaul.
German: "Get out of France, or I'll bury you here."
Jacques throws himself up against the side of the trench as the bullet wizzes into the dirt next to his head, and he makes a quiet french curse, his glasses askew.
Kicking himself back onto his feet, he screams, aims and fires at the Gerry struggling with Aleksei.
"Of course," Jacques quietly sighs. "God forbid we don't land in ze middle of... not a battle." He adjusts his glasses, one handed, as he strides and lifts his rifle to the Gerry just past the engaged Brit...
...Missing wildly, but hopefully avoiding any friendlies and drawing the attention of the Gerry infantry.
"Fighting ze living dead is easier?" Jacques asks Morgan incredulously. "I never signed up for any of zis." He wrinkles his nose. "I'm still not certain I'm not having a psychotic break. We're barely trained privates and we fought an army of skeletons and a castle full of Germans? Ridiculous. Ceux que Jupiter veut perdre, il commence par leur oter la raison." He frowns again, spends some time hemming and hawing, takes a lap around the tent, and kneels, checking his reflection in his boot for a moment as if he'll be able to see the evidence of psychosis in his eyes. "I cannot doubt ze evidence of my senses," he says, finally, standing. "So if I'm crazy, you're all crazy wiz me. I can't promise I'll fight whatever ridiculous foe awaits, but I'll keep ze rest of you alive to do it." Jacques then quietly adds "As long as I am in zis ridiculous fantasy, I would not object to ze pay-raise eizer." French: "Whom God will destroy, he first drives mad."
Coloquially, it's meant like "the crazy die young".
"If I might ask sir," Jacques says carefully. "If 'oo aren't British intelligence, who exactly do you work for?"
"What is ze use, sir?" Asks Jacques quietly. "I suspect 'oo won't believe us."
Jacques casts a mildly nauseated eye over Morgan, leaving his pack inside while he helps Aleksei, weakly, with some of the bodies. "I don't know about spirits," he says. "But it would be a shame to leave zem out to rot." As they work, he'll pull some sort of dogtag or piece of clothing with a name written or stitched into it. If there's nothing on a body, he'll strip off the rank and stow it in their hat. "Nuzzing worse zan a forgotten soldier."
Jacques crosses, following Morgan up to the north. "I'll cover you," he says again, gesturing with two fingers. "But zis feels like it's going to take all night."
"Zat's not half bad, zough it's not what I was expecting," mutters Jacques, rummaging through the shelves for anything useful as medical supplies (or any hard liquor, for that matter). He hangs back a little still covering the other entrances just in case.
Jacques nods silently, limping over next to the door and keeping the other entrances covered while beckoning Northbrook and Aleksei to stack up with Morgan.
Jacques inches into the room, taking the corner near the fire and gestures around for the others to check the doors out of the dining area.
Jacques nods, giving Aleksei a firm grip on his shoulder before kneeling down next to Morgan and double checking to make sure the German is dead.
Jacques brushes past Northbrook and sets a hand on Aleksei's shoulder. He snaps his fingers a couple times in front of his face and checks his eyes. "'oo're going to be fine," he concludes. "Take some deep breaths first."
"Is anyone still wounded?" Jacques asks from the hall. Then, quieter, "Are zere any gerries left?"
Jacques steels himself for an unpleasant time as Kimbers works to remove the bullet. He keeps up a steady stream of both literal and figurative French as the man operates, but at last thanks him profusely. "Oh zank god," he says. "I zought I was going to 'ave to limp all ze way back with zat rattling around in zere." Much steadier on his feet and no longer limping with his gun as a walking stick, he trots off after the rest of the group, just in time to hear a terrible explosion from deeper inside the castle. His medical bag is out and ready as he waits for the smoke to clear.
Jacques waits for a moment at Aleksei's request, but after a few seconds of staring around at the bodies, he follows along, bringing up the rear while grumbling a string of profanity in multiple languages under his breath.
"Oh good," Jacques says blearily, as the gunfire dies down. "Zat's all taken care of zen." He smiles weakly up at Aleksei. "От судьбы не уйти," He says, adding after a second, "I will be fine, friend." He winces, collecting himself and letting Bobby take a look at him, only to realize the full extent of the damage. "Zanks, but, eh..." He says to the Brit, waving him off. He coughs, another hacking one, and then steadies himself against the wall. "Ze bullet 'as to come out."
He fishes in the medical bag for cigarettes, alcohol and tweezers. He stops short, his hands shaking and his eyes not quite focusing, and stands instead. He presses a hand to the wound and commits a horrible act against firearm safety, as he uses his weapon as a walking stick. "I will 'ave to keep for now." He says, and shrugs, hobbling off after Daniel. Russian: A Russian idiom, "No flying from fate."
Jacques tries and fails to steady himself, coughs, and comes back with a handful of blood. Stumbling around the corner, he presses his back to the wall and slides to the ground.
Jacques hisses, the graze on his arm enough to make him lower his rifle and flatten against the wall for a moment. Letting Morgan charge forward and take the heat off of him, he takes stock of himself for a second before concluding it's not that bad and to press on.
"Il peut s'énerver de trop," Jacques murmurs to himself, eyes glancing to Morgan, before raising his rifle and coldly taking aim at Schultz.
French: "He's a little too worked up."
Jacques steps through into the hallway, flattening against the wall. Acutely aware that he's in a killbox, he makes to finish the officer off before he can return fire.
Jacques moves to the opposite side of the gateway from Morgan. His own grenades depleted, he covers around the corner, waiting for the smoke to dissipate. He tries to peer through the smoke and cover the entry if anyone comes rushing through the cloud.
"Let me see what I can do about zat," says Jacques after loading a fresh clip. Pulling one of the potato mashers from earlier, he starts to rig up a couple of the spare grenades to blow the door off its hinges.
Jacques fires before Aleksei darts forward, trying to square up a better shot than his last one.
Regardless of his result, he moves forward when the Russian does, striding up to the wall and flattening himself to it just behind Aleksei.
Jacques nods to Aleksei, mouthing "Da," and raising his rifle before stepping away from the wall slightly and scanning to the north and east.
Jacques shakes his head at Morgan but doesn't argue the point, flattening himself against the wall and popping off another shot at Pvt. Hermann if Bobby didn't drop him.
Jacques points two fingers to the captives and then jerks a thumb over his shoulder. "Get over zere and stay safe!" He says before advancing up to the eastern wall, hoping to set up a better shot at covering the northern courtyard. Stopping against the wall, he tries to line up a shot around the corner...
Oh that's right, advances were a thing we got. The first upgraded Jacques' shooting and stealth to d6 and the second gave him the Jack of All Trades edge. :)
Muttering yet another quiet curse, Jacques snaps his medical bag shut again and hefts his rifle. Not fast enough to make it to the wall, he instead round to the corner and crouches, ready to cover the west and northeast if any more Germans approach.
"If 'oo afford me a moment to bandage up our Russian," Says Jacques quietly from the next room over, "Zen we can try to leave ze way we came."
Jacques, finally steadying his breathing after a long moment of hestiation, follows the rest of the party in, keeping low around the choking smoke, he takes a knee. "When oo're ready for me to take a look at zat ankle, let me know," He says quietly to Aleksei and tries to peer through the smoke-filled room Morgan has entered.
So apologies for my absence. Most of my post time has been while I'm on break at work, but I can't reach Roll20 from my work computer, so... Once I get off shift tonight I'll figure out how to get to who needs fixing. :)
Following Morgan's line of sight up and over, Jacques breathes a quiet curse before taking a knee next to him and firing.
Teamwork makes the dream work. :)
Jacques will give Morgan a curt nod, actually slinging his rifle for the first time in what feels like forever before sorting through the bodies, starting with those in the short courtyard before heading to the ones in the passage along the southern wall. He's hoping to find weaponry or intelligence. As he passes, any bodies that aren't completely beyond repair, he will close the eyes and cross the arms of.
Once he's finished, he'll step away from the bodies, set his rifle against the wall, and vomit. "Pauvres bâtards," he mutters to himself as he finishes, cleaning his glasses, mouth and hands with water from one of the German's canteens and drying up with his handkerchief. He picks his rifle back up, pushes his glasses along his nose, and sets out back to the group with whatever he found.
I think you're thinking of the Gritty Damage setting rule. I still haven't actually gotten the Weird War I book, but I don't think Weird Wars uses it?
Huh. I'm learning how many things I treated as gospel are actually house rules. :) I've always played diagonal movement as counting for 1.5 (as per "difficult ground"). But Clint Black said he plays it as 1 pace in his personal games, so...?
Jacques stumbles past the dead Germans, slumping up against one of the castle walls and covering the room to the west in case anyone else is hiding inside it.
I dunno, Jacques is less of a combat wombat (though his shooting rolls have mostly lucked out) but his skills didn't really fit this situation. :)
Yeah. A steady and speedy recovery to your wife, and please take your time and don't push yourself too hard.
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