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If those of us still here are interested, I may be willing to take over running this game after the holidays have passed. I'm busy until then but I could get us up and running afterward. If you're all interested, let me know and I can start thinking about what I want to do from here.
Is everyone still here? I know the holidays are coming up but I want to make sure everyone is still around.
Personally, I'd just tell him you need him to translate the tomes? Maybe ask if they have any significance to what we saw in the caverns, i.e. the stuff about the harvest and a sacrifice and all that. See what he knows about those weird gnomes without making it obvious that we got into a fight with some weird gnomes inside an invisible hole in the ground. You know, the usual.
Victoria breathes heavily, and for a moment its not sure if nervousness or excitement is coursing through her body. Then she looks around again and snaps the claws out to their full length and narrowing her eyes out at the forest. "Aim for the legs. If you slow it down, it'll make my job easier. Hard to dance with no kneecaps." She looks at the two novices, and her voice is hard. "Once it gets in close, stay back. I don't want to drag your mangled corpse back with the werewolf's." After a moment, she stalks forward toward the lair of the beast. "You three, try to draw it out with gunfire. If you're lucky, you'll wound it. It'll think you three are an easy kill, and when it tries to close the distance... I'll be waiting."
"Andrej, any ideas? If we can figure out what killed the deer, maybe we can..." Victoria's words trail off as she sees the sun dipping lower. "Sh*t," she mutters. She snaps out her Ripper claws—silver, just because she's expecting something nasty—and looks around. "Work fast, Andrej. I'll keep us covered. You two," she says, gesturing to the novices, "You need to be ready. Weapons out, keep your guard up. It'll be after us, now that the sun's setting. If you figure out what it is, Andrej, let us know. It'll give us a head's up on what we're looking for." Victoria leaves the other man to his work after a moment, stalking the perimeter for signs of their monster.
A heads up for all my games; I'm going to be camping from Monday to Wednesday, so I won't be able to post. I should have Internet on my phone, but posting from my phone is a real chore (even ignoring the logout issue I still have on mobile) so I will be silent for a few days. I may keep up if I can get Paizo to reliably work on my phone, but if not I'll catch up when I get back.
I would throw the low card, personally. Since Niles is responding to us this time, it makes sense to throw the low card now when you can't even know what you're playing against. That way you're in a better position to respond next time we're the ones playing second, and you're ultimately in a better spot overall.
"I'm not much of a tracker, Andrej, but you can take a look. I'll take Jaime and see if we can get a better view of the area, find anything unusual; we probably shouldn't leave the two rookies alone, right?" She gives the novice Ripper—who's likely older than she is—a wry grin before setting off for the locations of the attacks. "It's a long shot, but it's possible we might be able to see some wreckage, either on the shore or out in the water; if we can find a trace of the boats that were attacked, we might be able to get a better idea of what we're dealing with. Keep a look out for dead animals, too" she says, squinting to look out over the water from the highest ground she can find. "For the same reason as the boats, but if we've got carcasses floating out in the water it could just be killing for the fun of it. Not that that's good news, but it's better than not knowing. No normal animal is just going to leave perfectly good food, but a monster?"
I was actually thinking maybe we could play our three. It's unlikely we'll get a win with it anyway, and with any luck they'll be forced to play a higher value card against us. However, it's also possible they don't have a card higher than a jack. We'll play it and see how it goes.
While Victoria was never a fisherman, she's spoken to enough of them in her time to know how to get her point across. They were laborers, like her father had been, and she slipped back into the atmosphere of the docks and her old life like she was wrapping herself in a blanket. "Stand back, and listen up," she tells the other Rippers, before waving down one of the fisherman. She starts asking the man about the recent rumors, before moving on to the next man she sees and the next after that, trying to glean a story from them.
Gotcha. In that case, Andre, I suggest we play our own Two; since it's Red, we'll still win the tie and its super unlikely we'll have another opportunity to play it and win. The three isn't much better, but it is a little, and our other two cards are face cards so we should be fine on those.
When you say choose a card, is the goal to have a higher card than the Cabal in that scenario? Is the whole idea that you have to try to manage your cards to come out on top more often than the Cabal? That seems like the most logical explanation to me, but I wanted to check.
Are the rest of you still here? I know Tristan hasn't had time to post pretty much anywhere having talked to him, but I figured the rest of us could keep it going in the meantime. Who is going on the other missions?
I'm also still here, but I admit I also lost track of stuff. I believe Andrej and I were planning to go on the monster hunting mission? I agree that maybe having two of them come along on each mission is a good plan. Them being able to fight and shoot is actually useful in hunting down the creepy crawlies lurking about, and at any rate it makes them a little more useful if they survive and get an Advance. Also, since I did hit 20 XP, I took Berserker as my Edge at this Advance.
Let's be honest, Victoria is best suited for hunting down the monsters around Staithes, that took the fisherman.
Are those faction Edges in addition to the ones in the Core book? I... actually, I really like BOTH of the Slayer options. I may have to look into those for the future. I need a higher Vigor for the other Slayer option, but I planned on doing that anyway.
Victoria grins and Andrej's mention of scars. "We had a bit of an incident, happened to nearly be disemboweled. Our new friend here nearly pissed 'imself when I shot myself up with a dose of morphine. Really, he was white as a sheet." She gives Harry a look and turns back to Andrej. "But we took care of it. It still hurts a bit to move, but I'll survive. I've lived through worse, after all." Victoria adjusts the collar of her shirt, and for a moment one of the horrific scars on her chest is visible. She just shrugs and rolls her shoulders, eager to do something other than sit around. "So, 'Grand Master Colbourne', what's the first order of business? Where are we heading? We've got to set up shop, don't we?"
Victoria smiles when she happens upon the drawing by young Ellie, before closing the letter back up and sliding it into a pocket. "I've been asked to stay with you as well, so I suppose you're stuck with me. I guess we'd better get to work, shouldn't we? They didn't happen to mention where we'd be putting together our new lodge, did they?"
Thinking from an in-character perspective, Victoria would likely want to go with Marsh Fishing; she really bonded with Carolina while we were in Staithes, and given the chance she would likely want to remain based there. Carolina knows something was fishy about this whole business after all, and we have good reason to trust her. It sounds like a good argument from an IC perspective.
Yeah, sorry. Let's have Tristan spend the favor and have you narrate stuff to move us forward. Sorry, I thought we had already agreed on that... I was waiting on you to move us along, Niles. Guess I lost track of what was being agreed on. We get a Favor from this anyway, so Tristan would be staying constant with any he already has. I say we do it.
Unless we're going to have it happen out of character to get the info we need, I'd rather skip it so we can regroup with Andrej and get him back in the game. I know he's been waiting, and it'll be nice to have the whole team together again. If we can quickly wrap it up OoC though, spending the favor is probably worth it.
I do think it might be worth our time to get that invite to the historical society. We do get... something for it, and it seems like that could be worth it. Also, it seems odd to leave it unfinished. However, it may be worth it to pass that up just to get Andrej back in the mix a little faster. I know he's been waiting.
Victoria is at 19 XP, as her reward from the last interlude was some excellent Rippertech as opposed to getting an extra point of XP. I believe Rasheed should actually be at 20, though. I believe with how you regularly award XP, everyone but Tristan and Harry could hit Seasoned with this (Harry could as well, assuming an interlude that gives us +1 XP). Andrej is also close with 18, but seeing as though he wasn't on this adventure with us he probably won't be hitting 20 with us at the moment.
I'm rolling at a -6, so it's... not really worth it for me to try. I'l wait and see if I can help with anything else, though.
"Sir, before we leave, is there a library in town? There's something we'd like to look into. Or perhaps a local historian? Anything of the sort, really."
Thankfully, Irma veered away from me and I didn't have any real trouble. it's looking like Jose is going to hit me some time next week, but that's not a big deal as it should only be either a weaker hurricane or a tropical storm. Anyone have any ideas on where we want to go from here? I just feel like we have more we need to learn about here, but I'm not sure what to do from here. We have a lead about the solstice and a sacrifice, do we want to see if we can find a library and learn more about this? We can't be sure the girls are safe until we've completely dealt with it, but maybe we already have? I really don't know. What do you guys think?
"Unfortunately, I'm not sure we did. The two girls seemed a bit tired, so we carried them back. Poor things fell asleep." Victoria helps the others get the girls inside, hoping to avoid talking to the father as much as possible. "I think we've certainly got a lead on what we're looking for, mind you, but we may be in town a while longer yet."
"Yeah, I'll carry one of them back if we have to. If we're lucky though, the two of them will be up and moving and we can figure out how to deal with... all this. I have a feeling we aren't quite out of the woods yet."
"You can bag it up if you want, but I'm not going to." She looks at the cleaved body in disgust for a moment. "Does magical flesh rot?"
Hey guys, this is a blanket notice going out to all of my games here on the boards. While I am thankfully outside the path of Hurricane Harvey, current projections for Hurricane Irma are sending it barreling up the coast of Florida to sweep much of the eastern coast of the United States. As I live directly on the ocean, I'm already gearing up for a potential evacuation at the moment. While hopefully all I get is a lot of rainfall, it's likely that by the time Irma hits Maryland it will still be at least a Category 3 storm, if not worse. I will have my laptop and such in the case of an evacuation, but I likely won't be able to post with any real schedule or frequency. Moreover, given that I live more or less directly on the ocean, it's more likely than not that if I'm forced to evacuate there will not be a home for me to come back to after the storm passes. The island is not built to withstand that kind of storm, and the last time something anywhere near that deadly swept through, it made an inlet where there used to be a road. My point being, if I'm hit by the hurricane it's very likely I will be off the boards for a long while, or at least my posting will be sparse and intermittent. I'm sure I'm not the only one following the storm on the news, but I'll do my best to keep everyone updated on my status. It's likely the storm, if it hits me at all, will make landfall here early next week. If you see on the news that the storm has hit Maryland and you don't hear from me, that's probably why. I just wanted to put this message up now as I'm prone to losing power during storms and I didn't want to leave anyone hanging. Thanks for understanding,
Niles, Tristan sent Carl and I a text letting us know his laptop is busted, so he may be gone for a bit. He's looking into other ways to be able to post here, but he's not sure if they'll work. Other than that, he doesn't have the money to fix the laptop so it could be a while before he's able to post.
I figured as much. I just wasn't sure how quickly cartridge weapons traveled across the Atlantic, because I couldn't find a ton of info on it when I went looking. I'm going to wait to update my Wounds until I hear from you, Niles. I think this can get me back to 100%, but either way I'm in a better place than I was.
Despite the wound, Victoria barely flinches while Carl begins to treat her stab wound. He can feel her tense up as he prods at it with his medical tools, but she grits her teeth and relies on the morphine to carry her through. When Carl takes a step back for a moment after field stitching the wound, she shakes her head. "Help the others look, I can handle some gauze and bandages on my own." She shrugs off her heavy coat and pulls her shirt up a bit and holds the fabric in her mouth as she wraps the bandages around herself. Once she's wrapped it a few times she loosely pounds the wound with one hand, testing to make sure she's done a good job. "I think that should hold for now, at least until we can get back to our room and change the dressing."
"Maybe? I'm not going to keel over dead any time soon, but if I keep moving around too much I might aggravate it more and then there won't be any fixing it without bed rest. If we don't plan on chopping any more of these runts in half... I might be alright."
"Speaking of treatable, I'm still bleeding over here." Victoria starts looking over the remains of the creature as well, not even wincing at the sight of the bisected little creature on the ground. "I know we're looking for a way to help them and all, but I'd prefer not to bleed out or get sick because no one bothered to bandage up my gaping stab wound."
Victoria looks around to try and spot the invisible creature in order to attack it, but she can't seem to place it.
A question for our history-minded people, as I'm not positive on the answer. This could potentially help us in our fight. The pistols in Rippers are clearly built to represent revolvers given the capacity, but are they more modern cartridge revolvers or are they older cap-and-ball style revolvers? If they're older revolvers, it stands to reason that our Rippers would be carrying gunpowder on them... if so, couldn't we use it to try and coat the invisible creature so we could see it? I know cartridge revolvers became popular in the US in the 1870-1880s, but as we're in England I'm not sure when they made it across the pond in force, to the point where owning one would be the regular occurrence, especially for a private citizen.
Victoria can't quite catch the location of the invisible creature, and instead opts to help Tristan and tries to bludgeon the young girl across the head with the back and of her claws.
While too woozy to notice her fellow Rippers favoring their silver weapons, she does still pick up on Tristan trying to cow the girls into obedience. It's not obvious whether her face twists into a grimace because she's trying to intimidate or because she's in pain, but it's a good bet there's a little of both. "I told you once. We're leaving, and we're going back to your house, understand? You aren't going to like what happens if you don't. Now, drop that and get moving." The claws slide out from underneath the sleeves of her jacket, ready for a fight if it starts. "You're not getting another warning. Now start walking."
I've got a bad feeling about this..." Victoria motions for the others to come forward, and once they do she cautiously approaches the girls. "Emily? Elizabeth? It's time to go home now, I think." She tugs her coat to button in front of her wound, keeping the girls from seeing her injury at first glance. "We need to get going, say goodbye to your friends."
Victoria groans slightly when Carl mentions there being no time to patch themselves up. Still, she straightens up and nonchalantly wipes away some of the blood still dripping from her wound. "Of course we don't, the girls might be in trouble. We need to..." Victoria wobbles for a moment, taking a step toward the wall to steady herself. "We need to keep moving. Let me take a look ahead before we all go running in like a bunch of maniacs, alright?" She looks at Harry for a second, then just shakes her head. "And I saw that look. Don't you say a damn thing, you hear?" Victoria then drops into a crouch, keeping one hand on the ground to steady her, and creeps toward the edge of the passageway to the south. "If there's any more of those nasties, I'm gonna shout and you're all going to try and kill them before we stab me again, or so help me you'll have to call the Pope to get rid of my ghost, y'understand me?"
Also, I don't know if anyone else noticed this, but Niles did put up the basics for melee combat. They have a Parry of 5 and a Toughness of 6, so you'll know if you have a raise or not.
Missing after administering her painkillers, Victoria just attacks the gnome again and again until it falls before her.
His eyes go wide at the sight of Victoria just slamming a vial of some sort of drug straight into her chest. Now was probably not the time to argue over whatever that was and if it was even the correct dosage. Or ever, probably. Victoria is the most terrifying Englishwoman he's come across and he'd rather not piss her off. You're godd*mn right.
Finally overcoming her shock, Victoria reaches into a pocket of her coat and pulls out a slender needle, then jams it into her own chest with a surprising amount of force. While she's still wounded, it seems the pain is dulled as she staggers back into a fighting position. Still panting heavily, she swings her claws with two heavy-handed swipes as Tristan attacks the creature as well, hoping to kill it with her wild attacks before it can retaliate against her. "You can't stop me!" She barely winces when she moves and agitates her wounds. "Damn it! Just f*cking die!"
Okay, awesome. By my reading, I think it would also lower the penalty for someone trying to use Healing on me, so that's helpful. I'm definitely going to pop a dose of that then, I just need to check one other thing and then I can post.
Nice! It'll be good to have our Russian friend back in the action.
Hey Niles, can you give me a guideline of how long the effects of morphine might last for in-game purposes? Victoria has two syringes full of it, but the book has no real mention of how long it nullifies wound penalties. Morphine typically lasts between 2-4 hours, give or take a half an hour, but I don't know if you want to stick with that or not. I'm considering pulling a vial and popping it to nullify my wound penalties for now, but I want to make sure it will last me a while before I do so. I don't want to use some and then have it wear off before we possibly get into another fight. On an unrelated note, have you heard anything about Andrej returning? I seem to remember you saying he'd be rejoining us, but I haven't heard anything from him.
Victoria doubles over as the gnome stabs her in the stomach. She takes a step back and raises her claws in a defensive posture, trying to ward off the creature before it gets any closer.
It's all good, I've definitely been guilty of the same thing. I'll make sure to separate them out in the future if I'm attacking separate targets. |
