Dice Trial By Fire - OOC

[Sherwood]

Well, my vacation is almost over. Getting ready to go to the airport for a late-evening flight back to Vegas from Richmond tonight at 8pm. Hopefully I'll have a smooth flight and a quick recovery from the jet lag tomorrow.

 

[Random Word]

Kal Bax

Waaaaait a minute. That's the dead guy in the invisible fortress, isn't it? That's either a very popular name, or one of the Ghost or TARU are lying

 

[Sherwood]

Or the storyteller liked the name and forgot that he used it before.... Give me a minute and I'll fix it.

 

[Sherwood]

Thanks for spotting that, btw.

 

[Psychie]

Silly Sherwood

 

[Random Word]

Hey Sherwood would you like us to keep these NPCs alive? Because this looks like a surprise round against the Admiral, which means unless she uses a surprise negator and a strong defence she could get her heart ripped out and devoured on turn one. Maja could still find herself unable to kill in cold blood and give the Admiral a chance to speak if it would be more fun for you. I as a player have no commitment to killing them immediately, but all the evidence Maja's been given suggests she should die.

 

[Sherwood]

Hey Sherwood would you like us to keep these NPCs alive? Because this looks like a surprise round against the Admiral, which means unless she uses a surprise negator and a strong defence she could get her heart ripped out and devoured on turn one. Maja could still find herself unable to kill in cold blood and give the Admiral a chance to speak if it would be more fun for you. I as a player have no commitment to killing them immediately, but all the evidence Maja's been given suggests she should die.

Thanks for asking, but please, play your characters as you will. I don't have an overriding need or desire to have these two Exalts live unless you so decide to allow them to live.

 

[Psychie]

Sounds to me like Maja's quick actions will probably save us all one hell of a fight against that Solar.

 

[Sherwood]

Yes, unless Maja botches the roll, she will most likely wipe out the Solar with her action, leaving the Lunar as your only adversary.

 

[Random Word]

I don't want to oversell Maja here. This is still an established Solar from the First Age, and Maja isn't a combat focused Lunar. If the Admiral uses her almost certainly large selection of defensive Charms she'll be fine, I'm just saying if she doesn't she could very well die if she hasn't bought her Ox Bodies.

 

[Psychie]

Well, lets see how well you do. In any case, this Solar is still inside her sarcophagus and will not be able to move as freely as she normally could. It will take her some time to get out to be a real threat to us.

 

[Random Word]

As Maja smashes the Solar's head into the back of the sarcophagus, not only does she get rattled a bit, this does have the effect of snapping her fully awake, and now she is glaring up at Maja with rage in her eyes.

Well, folks, it was nice knowing you. If 9 HLs just woke her up and made her angry, we should probably start running She could be rocking some high essence resistance Charms, or just five Ox-Bodies or something, but either way this probably isn't going to end well for Maja. It goes without saying that it seems likely City-killer is the less combat focused of the two. It's about that time in the story where a retrograde advance is the most advisable manoeuvre.

 

[Psychie]

We are dealing with a pair of serious badasses. But that's ok; we are some badasses, too. We'll do everything we can to keep Maja alive and well. Here comes my post to try and do some harm to this Lunar.

 

[Sherwood]

Well done. I'm going to award some xp. 3 regular and 3 Lunar/Solar points.

 

[Sherwood]

I'll have an IC post up in the next day or two. Have been in a fairly crappy mood for a while for no particular reason, so its been a bit of a struggle to get into any gaming right now. Sorry about that, guys.

 

[Random Word]

Sorry! First I was travelling, then Comcast had an outage for four days affecting a few thousand people, so finally we switched to a new ISP. Now I have internet again (an absurd 10 gigabit link - we only have regular 1 gigabit ethernet ports ) , when I get a moment I'll get a post together.

 

[Sherwood]

Sorry to hear about your internet issues! Take your time. There is no hurry.

 

[jaydude]

In terms of getting the fortress to Lookshy or vice-versa, what would be the quickest way to do so? Because I'd like Kuaidao to have an opportunity to actually train people up for the coming undead threat before it arrives.

 

[Sherwood]

It depends on if you wish to bring the fortress to them or them to the fortress. If you go to them, you are dealing with a top speed of 20mph for straight line travel that will bring the mountain over several cities between where you are and Lookshy. It will take you several weeks of travel to get there. If you travel around to try to minimize your exposure, it will take you much longer.

If you take them to the fortress, it will take you time to get to Lookshy and then convince those in charge that you are not full of it and to come with you back to the flying mountain.

 

[jaydude]

Do we have an approximate number of troops willing to fight for us? Are there others among the icewalker tribes coming to our aid? If so, how much are they willing to co-operate with us?

 

[Sherwood]

At the moment, you only have Rory's word to go by, and he tells you that his particular tribe has one hundred fifty people of fighting age and condition in it, with roughly the same numbers from the other dozen or so tribes you have dealt with. They are all willing to listen to you and possibly work together (at least for the moment) since they are all in the direct line of fire of the walking dead. Total numbers vary, but you are looking at probably over a twelve hundred fighters in all these various tribes. They are all very fierce, but not well trained in military tactics, so Kuaidao would have his hands full with that for at least a little while.

 

[jaydude]

Okay. And remind me again; do we have a rough estimate on how long it'll be before war starts in earnest?

 

[Sherwood]

Not yet.

 

[jaydude]

Melinda shakes her head. "The learning machines are capable of imparting knowledge into a person rapidly, taking a lesson that would normally take weeks and condenses them into something a person can pick up in a few days of study." She pauses for a moment, then says, "I suppose that if the learning machines were given a lesson that involved some sort of doctrine that it could be used to make someone believe something, but the information I am interested in teaching relates to the mechanical details of the Titan, not any social or cultural education. Besides, the lessons we would be using are all thousands of years old. If you wished to 'warp' the minds of others, it would require you to make a whole new program, a skill that no one here has. Even I would have trouble doing that, and I have a great deal of experience with such technology."

So the learning machines aren't literal brainwashing? Because that's the impression I (and presumably Random Word ) got when Melinda stated that they would "indoctrinate" those who used them. If it hadn't been for that, Kuaidao would probably be less likely to object.

 

[Sherwood]

Basically it is a way to pump skills into your noggin at high speed, letting you (or your followers) get the needed skills to operate and repair the systems in the place.